It has been a very productive September and October, with quite a few games completed or almost completed. In terms of game quality, 2019 has been pretty astounding. Perhaps the most consistent level of quality I have ever experienced throughout a year of gaming. I think that is one of the great benefits of picking and choosing what you want to play out of an extensive backlog. It has made me rethink whether or not having a backlog is that terrible of a thing, when it forces you to curate and dedicate time to whatever interests you the most at any given time. Anyway, you can read my last update here. So far I have completed 28 games in 2019:
Covered in Previous Updates
God of War (2018) (5/5)
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (4/5)
Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance (2.5/5)
Kingdom Hearts 0.2 Birth by Sleep: A Fragmentary Passage (2.5/5)
Kingdom Hearts III (4/5)
Hitman (2016) (5/5)
Assassin's Creed Origins: Gold Edition (4.5/5)
Pokémon Sun (3/5)
Pokémon Ultra Moon (4/5)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (5/5)
Enter the Gungeon (4/5)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (4/5)
Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition (3.5/5)
Nioh - The Complete Edition (4.5/5)
Super Mario Maker 2 (2.5/5)
Into the Breach (3.5/5)
NieR: Automata (4/5)
Dead Cells (3/5)
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (4/5)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna - The Golden Country (4.5/5)
Newly Completed
Red Dead Redemption 2
Well on one hand I was right in my last post - once I finished the epilogue I immediately uninstalled the game and will probably never play it again. The epilogue was honestly a slog and didn't really do much for me, but it does seem necessary to bridge the gap between RDR and RDR2. I am at least grateful they didn't add this in after the fact as single player DLC like Ubisoft would. Man, what a game though. I'm not sure I ever felt this intense sensation of a long journey coming to an end like I did here. The story 100% worked for me, and while not all the systems did, I think the sum of all those systems brought me closer to truly feeling like I was Arthur Morgan in 1899.
I have seen many complaints about the formulaic, rigid mission structure and the combat feeling samey. I have to say this was just not an issue for me whatsoever. I appreciate a good balance between open-world and linear story-telling, and I think Rockstar really nailed blending the two here. And the gunfights are the gunfights, if you enjoy them the combat won't tire on you, at least it didn't for the 60 hours I played. 4/5
Cuphead
I think the complaints about the difficulty of Cuphead are very overblown, and if that is keeping you from trying it out you are doing yourself a great disservice. I cleared everything on Regular in just under 6 hours, which is short, but certainly kept the game from overstaying its welcome. The art style is, of course, some of the best work the medium has ever seen, and the music was so good I'm considering ordering a Vinyl pressing. I mentioned this in my last post, but the gameplay is not quite as precise as I would like, particularly the hit boxes and the flying sections. I think this is partially just due to the art style presumably being overlayed on top of geometric hit boxes, but I can't say for sure. 4/5
Dragon Quest
Considering this released nearly 4 years before I was even born, I think Dragon Quest has held up shockingly well. There is no party, which was slightly disappointing considering it is such a staple of the genre, but I think Dragon Quest II might have been the first game to even introduce that concept! The exploration could be slightly tedious at times, and you are forced to grind during certain parts of the game to progress, but overall I really did have a good time with this. I would highly encourage the mobile port since it is best served in 20-30 minute chunks and not during extended gaming sessions. I don't know if I am going to dabble in any other early DQ entries after getting a taste of this one, but I think it was a valuable experience to have under my belt before starting DQ XI. 3.5/5
Risk of Rain
While I was playing Risk of Rain I would constantly find myself getting "in the zone", a feeling I would also attribute to games like Tetris and Lumines. Time seems to melt away and you just kind of lose yourself in the rhythm of the music and gameplay. For achieving that feeling in an action platformer, Risk of Rain deserve top marks. The game is not without its flaws, though. Most of the classes felt pretty useless to me, I didn't really like many of the enemy designs and the levels are quite dull. But if you need to burn an hour or two on a flight, this is the perfect jump in and jump out game that I feel most people could appreciate. 3/5
Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception
I started this title in January and I am only just now finishing it 9 months later. There is a part towards the end of the story where you leave the main city and are just fighting in this strange war and I just sort of fell of it because I didn't find any of the storylines compelling anymore. I am happy I came back to it though because the ending was excellent and surprisingly challenging. I think if you are looking for a visual novel with a little more action than most, this would be my top recommendation. The SRPG elements are certainly few and far between, but it is enough to feel like more of a game than a book, which sometimes I prefer to something like Stein's Gate. I hope I find time next year to tackle the sequel, stay tuned! 4/5
Slay the Spire
This one has been particularly fun because it is the first game since Civ VI that I have been able to get my partner interested in as well. It was awesome to develop strategies together and see how our styles diverged as we both got more experience under our belts. I originally had it on Steam, but I ended up picking it up on Switch as well so we could play at the same time! Definitely one of my favorite games of the year and something I think I will come back to consistently for some time. My only minor nitpick is I wish there was some form of progression other than the 5 unlocks per character. It would be neat to get cosmetics based on unlocking certain achievements or beating the game on higher level ascensions. 4.5/5
Yakuza 0
I knew I was going to like this series, but I think I underestimated just how much of "my jam" it actually is. I feel like this game takes everything I love about JRPGs like Persona and blends it with equal parts serious gangster story and ridiculous, over-the-top nonsense. The mini-games are so well done, particularly the Cabaret. The characters are surprisingly complex and layered, even characters that are introduced and exit within a single quest sometimes get significant development. I am pushing 100 hours and nearing 100% completion at this point, and I still have yet to find any of it a chore. I am not the greatest at the combat, not really in my wheelhouse skill wise, but I think I will be able to make it through the Climax Battles to nab that Platinum. Just might take me another month or two! Without a doubt, Yakuza 0 gets to join the ranks of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and God of War as my third perfect score this year. 5/5
The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan
This last title was an impulse buy during Halloween weekend that my fiancé and I opted to play during Halloween weekend. We played through Until Dawn together a few years ago and had a great time, so we thought this would be fun to dip our toes into. Overall, we definitely still had fun with it, but I do not think it lives up to the standards the developer set with Until Dawn. The characters are really unlikeable, the plot is somewhat interesting until it is immediately not, and the game ends so abruptly I thought we did something wrong and caused a sequence break or something. If you really like games of this style, I think it is probably worth checking out for $10, otherwise I'd say probably skip it. I might re-play it alone to explore some other story paths and develop more of an appreciation for it, but for now it is shelved. 2/5
Games I'm Currently Playing
I will keep this brief since I will want to cover most of these games in my final summary post at the end of the year. I am very close to finishing Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age, Celeste, and Dishonored. I am hoping to check off the latter two by tomorrow night for good. I have sunk about 80 hours into DQXI and am currently just taking care of "post-game" events before I go and fight the final Act III boss. I would expect to play that off and on for another couple weeks before I am totally satisfied with my time with it. Finishing these 3 games will put me at 31 games completed, leaving me with 5 more to finish by the end of the year.
I have pre-ordered Death Stranding and Pokemon Shield, which will basically consume the next month of gaming time. On one hand I am super excited to experience these on release because I think there will be a lot of discourse about both games, good and bad. Even if they both turn out to be disappointing, which is very possible, I think I will still appreciate being part of the conversation. My last 3 games will likely be smaller experiences so I know I can achieve my goal, maybe even something from my Original Plan like Gravity Rush, Papers, Please, MGSV: GZ, Hotline Miami, or Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. We will see, looking forward to what the next 2 months will bring!
Submitted November 06, 2019 at 06:17PM by Brandtstyle https://ift.tt/2Nk5LIG
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