Blake Reno's Top 5 Games of the Year
Blake Reno, Contributing Editor
5. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore (Switch)
Earlier this year, I was looking for something new to feed my JRPG addiction. Dragon Quest XI fed it last year with its refreshing simplicity. And this year, I’ve been anxiously awaiting Bravely Default II. Enter Tokyo Mirage Sessions. I had overlooked this game on the WiiU (yes, I was one of the few who had one), but a friend of mine had played it and kept comparing it to Persona. They were correct. TMS feels like diet Persona or Persona-lite. It’s a game that goes the opposite direction: focusing on the bubbly positivity of Japan’s entertainment, but retains the look and feel of Persona. The battle system is different enough, too. Instead of granting the player additional turns for hitting enemy weaknesses, it launches combos fulfilled by your allies. While this battle system doesn’t take as much thought as some, it feels good to hit a weakness and then watch your allies bombard an enemy with 14 different attacks as you just watch. It’s not quite as stylish or complex as Persona 5, but it feels every bit as satisfying. While the story isn’t anything to write home about, it does have some moments that I found comedic and it doesn’t try too hard to make the player laugh. The dialogue and character actions all seem like things actual people would say and do. TMS has all the elements of a good JRPG, while being grounded in the everday life of human beings.
4. Yakuza 0 (Played on Series S and XBO. Also on PS4)
The easiest way to describe Yakuza 0 is Grand Theft Auto set in Japan in the 1980s. Sure, there’s less chaos, but there’s a wide variety of distractions: bowling, batting cages, karaoke, going to the disco to dance, and running a cabaret club. As other open world games continue to get bigger and wider, Yakuza 0 keeps its sandbox small but dense with things to do. What really blew me away in Yakuza 0 was the quality of the writing. There are 100 sidequests in the game, and the writing for almost all of them will either tug at your heartstrings, make you audibly laugh (or shake your head at the absurdity), or both. That’s not to mention the incredible main story: full of incredible animation work, voice acting, and twists and turns. Every single aspect of the game is enjoyable in its own little way.
3. Slay the Spire (Played on Switch and XBO. Also on PS4, Steam, and iOS)
As someone who’s played the arena mode in Hearthstone a lot, a deckbuilding roguelike seemed right up my alley. The issue was that I did not like roguelikes because it feels like repeating the same content over and over again. However, despite what on paper feels like a small number of enemies, cards, and bosses, Slay the Spire had me hooked for months. The different characters with completely different sets of cards and playstyles makes every single turn feel like a situation you’ve never been in before. Every turn, every battle, and every run presents a set of new problems to solve. I think I must have put over 150 hours into the game in just a few months, but I’m only at ascension 15 (out of 20) on all four characters. While it feels light on content, the game is so expertly crafted that you’ll be constantly finding new ways to win. And while a lot of games don’t push me to try harder difficulties or “post-game” content, once you beat the game with each character, you unlock ascensions, adding difficulty modifiers to the base game. Oh, and they stack on top of each other. So after I felt like I had a reasonable mastery of the game, it adds a new twist that asks you to reevaluate your own skills and redefine your idea of “mastery” via these ascension levels.
2. Katana ZERO (Played on Series S. Also on Switch, XBO, and Steam)
It’s a weird thing to say that a pixel-art game is the most violent game I’ve ever played. I’ve played games where the gore is more realistic, but just how visceral and real some of the stuff that’s said and done to the characters by other characters in this game is head and shoulders above anything else I’ve experienced. Katana ZERO is a game that makes killing an art both because of how (mostly) fair the difficulty feels and how the gratuitous violence of the gameplay is incredibly important to the game’s story. In addition, the neo-noir feel and the fact that it owns its early-mid 1990s aesthetic through its gameplay, menus, and visual effects make the fictional city of New Mecca feel close to home. Speaking of which, if there was a story in gaming that does a better job of detailing the horrors of the last 50 years of American history (I can’t be specific without spoiling parts of the game), I haven’t played it yet. It’s the richest 5 hours of gaming I’ve experienced in a long time.
1. Ori and the Blind Forest Definitive Edition (Played on Series S and XBO. Also on Switch and Steam)
Ori is a metroidvania that instead of focusing on combat, makes exploration and platforming interesting and fun. While it’s not without flaws, it’s some of the most fun I’ve had simply navigating a world. Ori zigs where other metroidvanias still use the same old move sets for exploration. What Super Mario 64 did for exploration of 3D worlds, Ori does for metroidvanias. And while the escape sequences are possibly the most difficult and sometimes frustrating part of the game, having these incredibly difficult platforming sections as “bosses” that test your platforming skills was an absolute treat. Another thing Ori does right is rewarding the player “ability points” via experience gathered mostly through exploration. Players can shore up their weaknesses by dropping points into the three ability trees (combat, exploration, movement). It lets players lean into their strengths and stops them from getting bogged down in the game’s difficulty. Additionally, Ori doesn’t force backtracking on the player like a lot of metroidvanias do. While some players may enjoy looping back through old areas, doing so often borders on tedium. In Ori, you feel like you’re always exploring new territory, except when you choose to go back to get a health or energy upgrade you didn’t have had the proper skill to get before. Finally, the story of Ori and the Blind Forest resembles a Pixar film in the best way. Its beauty and simple ability to get at your emotions without much dialogue is incredible. The ending of the game had me bawling my eyes out. That’s something that games have a hard time doing when so many games, especially big budget ones, try their darndest to achieve those emotions through overdramatic animation, melodramatic voice acting, exposition dumps, and excessive backstory. Ori is nearly perfect in everything it sets out to do. It’s changed the way I think about metroidvania games.
For more GOTY fun, check out Claire Brownstone and John Ferrari’s lists!
