A year of rediscovery and holy-shit-I-can't-believe-i'm-playing-this
Greetings Ogre Chronicle faithful! After the shittiest couple weeks I've had in a while between my car nearly flooding and the removal of one of my teeth, I'm finally back in the saddle. It is Valentine's Day after all, and for me there's no greater love in my life than video games, much to the dismay of my parents hoping for me to finally get married! One of the habits I've picked up recently over the years is going over all the wonderful games I played to completion this past year to chronicle my thoughts for posterity's sake so I remember the experiences and emotions they invoked and aren't lost to time.
Whereas in 2020 my gaming experience could have been defined by its sheer volume
(I beat more than 30 entire games, with a large portion of them not exactly being short in length), 2021 had about only half of that. The main difference, however, is several games were of series that I am extremely fond of and had been waiting a very long time to once again dive into. I also think the general quality of the games I played were very high as well, proving the old adage of "quality over quantity" true. As always, I hope my quips and musings on these games encourage you to consider trying them out yourselves!
Raging Loop
In an effort to get over my silly fears of horror games (and to actually play the games my friends gift me) I decided to play this spooky visual novel centered around what is essentially a deadly game of Werewolf/Among Us in a remote Japanese village. Coming back home from late nights at work just to play this is total darkness was the highlight of my days early on in the year. Its filled with eccentric characters and engrossing narrative twist and turns, although know it is quite wordy, and remember, there's no such thing as werewolves.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
This game is truly one of a kind in terms of genre, being a chaotic mix of intensive Real Time Strategy gameplay while also juggling an absolutely massive story in an interactive visual novel format. As intimidating as the scope of narrative may seem with thirteen central characters and a plot centered around time travel, the game does an excellent job of both endearing you to each of these characters and the world they inhabit whilst always giving you the tools to keep track of the story with its expansive, detailed glossary and timeline functions.
Spiderman:Miles Morales
To me, the Insomniac Spiderman games are the absolute pinnacle of action superhero games, and it was a complete no brainer to pick up this followup to the original. While it is clearly reusing many assets from the original, the improvements made to the combat on top of just generally interesting (and relatable) character arc of Miles seeking to step out of Peter Parker's shadow made it just a high quality experience all around. It also makes me crave the Spiderverse movie sequel even more.
Bravely Default II
Role-Playing Games are pretty easily my favorite genre of games going by the sheer percentage of games that I play (Spoiler Alert, more than half of this list is them) and my favorite part of them is mastering the games systems to a degree where you figuratively and sometimes *literally* break the game in half. This is basically the name of the game in the Bravely Default series, where you take four heroes with a variety of European accents and a boatload of unique classes that you can mix and match their abilities with and go absolutely *nuts*, all set to the killer tunes of REVO of Linked Horizon fame. This is definitely one of the games I was talking about in terms of finally being able take another spin in the series.
Trails to Azure
It takes a lot to get me to jump through the hoops of emulating/patching in order to play games, but love makes you do silly things, and my love for the Trails series and its witty dialogue, endearing characters, and its huge overarching narrative spanning multiple games and locales is no exception. Whenever I catch myself muttering ACAB I know to make a conscious exception for ace detective Lloyd Bannings and his quirky crew, who fight increasingly ridiculous foes that should be far above their paygrade like a hard lesbian chainsaw-gun wielding mercenary and fully medieval armored lady knights (one of my favorite design tropes in games alongside witches with big poofy hats).
Ys IX:Monstrum Nox
Continuing my love fest of all things Falcom is the latest of Adol Christin's action packed adventures as he gets tossed into the city-sized slammer of Balduq and becomes an edgy yet sharply dressed crusader of the night. The Ys games are a constant stream of fast paced combat that'll put your reflexes to the test especially at higher difficulties, combined with the typical high quality original soundtrack Falcom is known for.
Monster Hunter:Rise
My journey as the only Gunlance user on the planet continues in the latest entry in the Monster Hunter franchise.. The game isn't quite as visually impressive as Monster Hunter:World being on the Switch compared to a PS4/PS%. Relative to everything else on the system I thought it looked pretty good. The action based gameplay is as weighty and satisfying as ever with a lot of general quality-of-life improvements that made things a lot less of a chore at times. Also Magnamalo is a cool as shit monster design, might be my favorite in the series next to Bazelgeuse.
Scarlet Nexus
As I grow older I try my best to to consciously force myself to try new things. Scarlet Nexus was a completely new IP by Bandai Namco and outside of its initial reveal trailer I purposely refused to learn anything else about it until it released and bought it blind (I did the exact same thing for another game of their called Code Vein). I was pleasantly surprised with what I got, an action oriented RPG where you use a stable of cool telekinetic powers to slay otherwordly beings and unearth a massive conspiracy. The game demands a level of competency that forces you to have a solid understanding of game mechanics, especially at harder difficulties, which I found very refreshing as many of these types games can turn low effort braindead mashing after the initial going. Also, the lounge themes in this game have no business being so catchy
Tales of Arise
Yet another longly anticipated game of mine from a series that is very dear to me. I've been playing Tales of games for nearly two decades with Symphonia back in 2003, and until Arise released the five year gap between games was the longest in the series history. It was sooooooooo worth the wait. On top of just being one of the most visually impressive games I've seen on the PS5 yet, it still keeps the frantic fast paced ARPG gameplay and colorful cast of characters the series is known for. This was hands down one of my favorite games of the year, the type I'd recommend to many of my friends even remotely interested in this genre of games, with the other being....
Guilty Gear Strive
If you follow my socials I'm sure you've likely seen plenty of my clips playing this. This was personally my choice for game of the year. What makes Strive such a surprise is that it was a last minute decision to even buy at all, thinking my fighting game heyday was well past me and not sure if I wanted to invest the time into such a demanding genre. Holy shit I could not have been more wrong. Simply put, this game just oozes cool, from the character designs, the gameplay itself, and the absolutely killer soundtrack that blends Hard Rock/Metal with an incredibly variety of genres. It boasts the best netcode of any fighting game I've ever played to this day, which was typically my number one gripe about playing fighting games. Also, it has Nagoriyuki, the single coolest motherfucker on the planet as a Nigerian Vampire Samurai.
NEO:The World Ends With You
FOURTEEN YEARS I've waited for a true sequel to the original TWEWY, one of the most unique (and carpal tunnel inducing) RPGs I've ever played. Similar to what I said about Persona 5 Royal last year, the game simply oozes style with its vibrant colorful visuals (Was somewhat worried it wouldn't handle the 2D to 3D transition well but was pleasantly proven wrong!) and quirky cast of characters, and especially hits hard as the story doubles as a great commentary on our increasingly online and interconnected society on top of the struggles of playing the Reaper's Game.
Metroid Dread
The original pioneer of the wide open 2D Action/Adventure genre named after itself in Metroidvanias is finally back, with the first new chronological entry in nearly TWO DECADES. Metroid Dread is a pretty solid contender for the hardest game I played all year (Probably for the spookiest too). Samus Aran's latest adventure pulls no punches and demands a pretty high baseline of pattern recognition and twitch in order If you decide to give Metroid Dread a try, get used to the (LOUD CHIRPING BIRD NOISES) and constantly dying because you mistimed your parries
Shin Megami Tensei V
Imagine Pokemon but instead of collecting cute animals with elemental powers you bargain with a cavalcade of various demons. gods, and mythological beasts to fight for your cause in order to pursue your preferred alignment of the universe at large, and you have the Shin Megami Tensei series in a nutshell. As a mythology geek this series always ticked the right boxes for me, and in a rarity for turn based RPGs, status debuffs are actually not garbage in this game! Also its not often I see my name mentioned in media proper so I am obligated to gas it all the way up whenever I do
Halo:Infinite
I have not been shy about my aversion to First Person Shooters, as I have absolutely pathetic levels of twitch and dexterity to excel at them. The Halo series was always an exception to that for me, with its floatier, higher time-to-kill gameplay just resonating better with my style of play compared to the twitchier arcadey style of shooters like Call of Duty. The gradual additions they've made to the core gameplay like the improved movement options in sliding/sprinting and aiming down sights without losing its core identity impressed me, and as always its a blast to play in big groups.
Thanks for making it all the way through in one piece! I hope my personal experiences with these games makes you consider giving them a shot on your own! As an aside, this article marks the 2 year anniversary of me retiring from pro football and originally starting Ogre Chronicle with my original articles . Whether you've been following from the beginning or even if this is your first time reading, thanks for taking the time out of your busy days to listen to me rabble on about my passions!. Happy Valentine's Day everyone
(A couple of bonus pieces! I complied a list of song of my favorite music from these same games in this YouTube Playlist here! If you want to see me grade these games (and a couple extra others I didn't mention due to being live-service) in a more traditional manner with scores and the like, catch out this link here!)
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