2024 was kind of a wild and interesting year for games for me. I’m not sure I’ve ever played so many RPGs both new and old and some of the longest were absolutely massive, close to or even well above 100 hours. There was also a very interesting spread of new games beyond that too which made comparing them to each other a difficult task and nearly all of them were quite good so it’s a shame I don’t shout out more in my annual GOTY blog. While not really a factor in this blog, I do want to at least touch on in the intro here I had interesting dives into my deep backlog this year. I played some games I had been kicking around for years and started working through my PS3 and Vita backlogs in particular which wildly ranged in quality from extra awesome to absolute junk. I certainly was never bored in 2024!

Before I get into my top ten favorite games of 2024, which as always is my favorite games of the year that spoke to me the most rather than the best games per se, I want to quickly give a shoutout to four honorable mentions. Throughout the year, I always keep a running list of games that might make my final list as I beat them and usually cross off ones when they no longer have a chance. This year I had four make it to the very end which is unusual, but it reflects that the battle for tenth place this year was extra tight. My first honorable mention goes to Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes which is one of the best fighting games I’ve ever played. The only problem is I just didn’t get to play it with friends so it fell off for me this year, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and I’m looking forward to the next two DLC characters. My second and third nominations go to Ys X Nordics and Mario & Luigi Brothership which I played back to back. They had amusingly similar premises of siblings on a boat exploring unknown islands and adventuring together, but were of course quite different in practice as Ys is an action RPG and Brothership is turn based. Both were really excellent RPGs that’d I’d definitely recommend as each were just shy of making my top ten. My final shoutout is for Infinity Nikki which is an open world RPG dress up game platformer gacha game that deemphasizes combat. It really does a bit of everything (fishing, bug catching, and photography are big components too!) and despite some dark elements at the edges thanks to the wild lore it remains earnestly extra cozy and inviting throughout which is not easy to do! As of this blog post, I’m having a great time playing it still beyond where the initial story largely wraps up.

With my honorable mentions done, let’s move on to my top ten favorite games of 2024!

10: 1000xRESIST (Switch, also on PC)

1000xRESIST wasn’t on my radar before it released, but after a few of my friends were gushing over it I knew I had to check it out and I’m so glad I did. It’s one of those games where you’ll want to tell people don’t look anything up, just play it, which makes it hard to recommend and I’ll largely be telling you to do just that even if my blog forces me to write a little bit more than I would otherwise. When I first started playing it, I was a bit nervous as it was playing around with some high concepts. In the backstory, a group of aliens has almost entirely wiped out the human race with a deadly plague and a new society is born from the DNA of the sole survivor. You play as one of them, The Watcher, whose job is to review the survivor’s memories and watch her “sisters” carefully. Multiple stories unfold across a very long timeline and it was very possible the developers could have bitten off more than they could chew, but 1000xRESIST boldly marches forward in surprising directions and ties together its many big ideas and themes both beautifully and personally. While not my favorite game this year, 1000xRESIST was one of the absolute best and is a stunning work of art that I highly recommend checking out.

9: Stellar Blade (PS5)

I’m a big fan of character action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta so I was always curious how Stellar Blade would turn out. Aside from an array of mostly terrible outfits (which sadly extends to more than just the main character) the rest of Stellar Blade is generally stellar across the board. While comparisons have been made to Nier Automata, Stellar Blade stands out by being not so much an imitator but rather a “here’s how I’d do it” kind of experience and by having a much richer, more difficult, and satisfying combat system. The windows for perfect dodges and perfect parries start off perhaps too rigid, but you get used to it and both skill tree and equipment upgrades help take off the roughest edge of it while keeping the challenge and satisfaction from mastering them. Combat feels satisfying even in normal encounters, but of course shines brightest in the extra rad boss fights, a few of which I died over twenty times challenging. Anytime I beat one on my first try I felt on top of the world. Stellar Blade is such a gamey game in the best way and beyond combat I had an especially good time exploring every last inch of the two open world zones which offer two distinct experiences to pick away at (twisting valley paths of varying elevations and an open desert and city to explore). I’d be remiss to not give a shoutout to the excellent soundtrack which really stands out this year with its use of vocal themes and heavier guitars and electric edge. I especially dug Silent Street Battle, Tachy Mode (which is a very amusing theme for the Devil Trigger equivalent mechanic), Belial (which fits well for the energy exuded by my favorite boss in the game), and Everglow. I ultimately dug Stellar Blade so much I played it twice to fight the other final boss and claim the Platinum Trophy.

8: Love Live School Idol Festival 2 Miracle Live (Formerly on iOS and Android)

By far the weirdest game on my list is Love Live School Idol Festival 2 not because the game itself is weird, but because the English version had both its release date and shutdown date announced in the very same tweet which was absurd and heartbreaking. I knew I’d only have four months to enjoy School Idol Festival 2 and only three of them would be “normal” where it’d cycle through events and banners. It was within that very weird context, I set off to play the game, and ultimately, I thoroughly enjoyed my brief time with SIF2 as I logged on and played daily to the bitter end. School Idol Festival 2 featured every song from all four major Love Live groups, μ's, Aqours, Nijigasaki, and Liella, plus as far as I’m aware every other song produced for the greater franchise up to then including the Hasunosora group’s songs and the School Idol Musical songs for a grand total of over 600 songs which grew further with a few updates. While the scoring was affected by the gacha mechanics which made it worthless, SIF2 would track full combos across every difficulty and clears on the highest difficulty, Master, were often hard won even as your teams leveled up and you had access to members with better healing. Learning to get better at the rhythm game was thus still excellent fun and I ultimately beat every song on Expert and on Master before shutdown including the hardest track “Colorful Dreams Colorful Smiles” (why they made that particular one DragonForce hard I’ll never know lol) and the arcade tracks that forced you to play it like a keyboard so you could hit more than two notes at once. While there sadly weren’t many story elements in SIF2, experiencing all 600+ Love Live tracks in School Idol Festival 2 really boosted my love for the songs and the greater franchise. I ended up buying so many tracks on itunes right as the game was shutting down and have been enjoying listening to them throughout the year and some of my prior favorites I enjoy now more than ever. While we still thankfully have the PS4 game, I hope one day we’ll get a new Love Live rhythm game that’s as extensive and fun to play and master as School Idol Festival 2 that doesn’t have an expiration date.

7: Ace Attorney Investigations 2 (Switch, also on PS4, Xbox, and PC)

I had wanted to play the sequel to Ace Attorney Investigations for years even if the original wasn’t one of my favorite Ace Attorney games especially since it was the last missing Ace Attorney game in the West. Thanks to the new Investigations Collection released this year, I finally had my chance to play it and I was both surprised and excited to discover it was one of my favorite Ace Attorney games overall and perhaps the best in the series. Investigations 2 once again makes Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth the main character and regularly teams him up with Kay Faraday and Dick Gumshoe to solve increasingly elaborate crimes by investigating crime scenes and cross examining witnesses. What makes Investigations 2 special is that all five cases here directly build upon each other. It’s literally all killer, no filler from top to bottom which isn’t typically how the Ace Attorney series operates. The characters’ stories develop and a grand mystery is presented and unraveled over the course of the whole game which is fantastic, so much fun, and so satisfying to experience. I really enjoyed the new characters here including Eddie, Gavel, and Eustace and I especially dug there is a case where you alternate between playing as Edgeworth and his father to solve a case in the past and present. The actual gameplay of solving the mysteries is excellent in Investigations 2 as knowledge you learn earlier in the game regularly comes back to help you. Sometimes in these games I find myself not in tune with the logic they want you to have to progress, but Investigations 2 was one of the best in the series here as well as I usually was in lock step with the logic and I was able to guess some of the bigger mysteries before I was directly asked to which is always a good feeling. Now that I have played every Ace Attorney game, I sincerely hope more games in the series will be announced soon, as Ace Attorney is too fantastic to stay dormant.

6: Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth (PS5, also on PS4, Xbox, and PC)

I really dug pretty much everything in Yakuza 7 except its switch from brawler gameplay to turn based RPG combat as it was just too stiff, basic, and somewhat boring. All LAD8 really had to do was fix the combat, and it thankfully does as you can team up with your friends to amusingly push enemies around the battlefield and have them crash into others to set up cool combos, but it also does so much more to really stand out as not just one of my favorite games in the series, but also one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Like A Dragon 8 follows both Kasuga Ichiban and Kazuma Kiryu as they get involved in an over the top adventure across both Hawaii and Japan. While the story begins with Kasuga and Kiryu teaming up early on, both eventually assemble their own parties composed of returning characters from Yakuza 7 and a few new characters who are all fantastic to spend time hanging out with. Kasuga mostly adventures in Hawaii which is a really refreshing and exciting new location to explore and it is here you get access to the Sujimon League and Dondoko Island. Sujimon is essentially a spin on Pokemon, as you can recruit and assemble teams of the various enemies you can find in the world and through a gacha lottery system. It’s goofy, especially with all of the weirdos to recruit, and perhaps a little too simple, yet there is a pull to recruit as many as possible and I really enjoyed tackling both the trainer and gym battles. Dondoko Island is an absolutely wild take on Animal Crossing as you need to clear the land, gather resources, and develop lodging and attractions, all while fending off pirates and taking care of your guests, to transform an island into a five star resort. It unlocks at a very funny point in the story if like me you decide to play through the entire thing the moment it unlocks. I found it thoroughly worth it to put the main story on pause as I had a fantastic time making the most of each day both running and developing my resort, including decorating and expanding my own house, and I didn’t stop until I had uncovered every last mystery of Dondoko Island. All of this and the rest of the side activities and main story, probably would have landed LAD8 on my list, but what really elevates it is Kiryu’s story which carries the full weight of the series behind him. I don’t want to go into details, but he gets his now third goodbye of sorts here and as one of my favorite characters in games it is just absolutely incredible how much it lands. I loved Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth so much I played it for 137 hours to claim the Platinum Trophy. It was such an incredible and fun experience from top to bottom and I can’t believe the next game, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, which is a 10/10 incredible title and concept, is just around the corner as I am ready for more.

5: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)

I have always wanted a Zelda-led Zelda game so Echoes of Wisdom with how its premise plays out and how it was essentially how I always envisioned one would be was immediately so cool. Echoes was thus a dream game for me from the jump and the idea of summoning monsters and objects seemed to have a ton of potential as it really sparked my imagination so my only question was if the developers nailed it or not and they absolutely did. What surprised me most from the start is just how much power they give you right off the bat, how surprising some of it is like the incredibly versatile beds and a very powerful spider that lets you crawl up the sides of cliffs, and how it manages to remain interesting over the course of the long journey as you add even more new abilities and monsters to your arsenal. While Hyrule oddly has some base familiarity as it builds off the Link To The Past Map, I was most glad to see how the world expanded beyond that classic game’s borders which was an entirely separate dream Zelda wish fulfilled. I actually explored pretty much the entire map once it unlocked which was tremendous fun as one of my favorite things in games is getting into trouble, which you could do quite easily here as forcing yourself to come up with solutions to obstacles when you don’t have all of your tools is great fun. While I’ll probably always be a little let down how the series has shifted away from “traditional” dungeons, the dungeons in Echoes of Wisdom are easily the best “open air” dungeons so far as the distinct one room challenges are fun to approach and conquer and since they manage to frequently have some cool puzzles that spread across the dungeon more like a classic dungeon would. I won’t say which ones are from which specific dungeon, but some of my dungeon highlights include one where I realized myself I could skip to the boss room immediately with the powers I had which was wild and another where it had multiple entrances and the challenge was figuring out how to poke at it from a few directions to crack it open. Two things I dug about Echoes of Wisdom is that it has the best side content in the 2D games with some fun minigame challenges that reminded me of the N64 games and that it has major optional dungeons and caves which were incredible and something I hope future big 3D games will take inspiration from. What perhaps I most loved about Echoes though was that I got to play this open ended game alongside a bunch of my friends and it was so much fun to swap stories together and discuss our evolving thoughts as we went. I’ll never forget how big a kick we all got in particular about how the moblins in the world would set up whole camps to defend a treasure chest filled with only a small bunch of grapes. I’m really happy The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom absolutely delivered on being a dream game for me and it was truly awesome how it was even so much more on top of that.

4: Dragon’s Dogma II (PS5, also on Xbox SX and PC)

When I think about the first Dragon’s Dogma I primarily think about its absolutely bonkers ending and aftermath, but also that it was such a fun game to play as well. Dragon’s Dogma II may not have the same kind of wild ending that will live in infamy for me (though the one it does have is very cool), but overall, I think it’s a much stronger game that is most of all just an absolute ton of fun. Games that have friction are often memorable, but depending on where it lies can really swing a game to be better or worse. Dragon’s Dogma II I think places its friction in the right spots. Saving your game and fast travel in particular are each kind of a pain for their own reasons, but the friction behind them plus what comes from the day and night system and the loss gauge ultimately leads you to carefully plan out your adventures into the dangerous world carefully and keeps you more engaged throughout. This works really well because the design of Dragon’s Dogma II’s world is thoroughly engaging and always feels handcrafted. I especially dug the various caves you could come across as they each spiral out in fascinating ways and are regularly filled with awesome bosses to conquer. While you might expect it given everything around it has friction, the combat of Dragon’s Dogma II refreshingly doesn’t, outside of managing stamina for your special attacks and hanging onto giant monsters Shadow of the Colossus style (which is even better here than the first game) because it cares about chaotic fun above all else. For a perfect sense of this, when you are playing an Archer class for example, you have unlimited normal arrows and only have to manage your special ones which keeps the focus purely on ripping through the many, many combat encounters as you wander the world. I had a fantastic time with combat throughout my full 58+ hour journey and I loved the sense of progression as I began taking on bigger and bigger monsters. One last thing that elevates the journey that I have to give a shoutout to is the Pawn System that returns from the first game. In addition to your personal Pawn that levels up alongside you, you get to continually recruit and cycle through Pawns from other players which are very jolly and talkative and add so much color to your journey. Some of them I’d get attached to if they stayed with me for a while so I’d always feel bad if something happened to them or when it was time to part ways.

Before I wrap up, I’d be absolutely remiss if I didn’t share that my favorite personal video game story of the year came from Dragon’s Dogma II. There was a quest I ended up stumbling upon by rescuing a lost kid from a cave filled with wolves. The goal was to escort him back up the mountain roads to a small town I hadn’t visited yet. Thankfully, one of the Pawns I was journeying with knew where it was located so I thought this would be pretty easy. And it was…at first. Halfway up the mountain path I got into a fight with a big troll and the moment I killed it I was immediately ambushed by a griffin and while I probably should have grabbed the kid and run away, I decided I had leveled up a lot since I last tried fighting one so now seemed like a good time to try again. As the fight starts it’s going well until the griffin blew one of my pawns and the child off the cliff! Luckily there wasn’t much of a drop to a small cliff right below so both of them were fine. I try next to hop on the griffin, but here’s where things get really bad because it flew off with me riding it to the top of a small mountain and inexplicably the kid teleports up there with me! So now I’m panicking and searching for an escape route and I figured if the kid teleported up with me clearly he could teleport down. Nope! Instead, he is stuck up there with griffin menacingly flapping his wings and I discover to my horror there is no normal way to get back up there and rescue him as I ran around the whole mountain. No matter how far I ran away he just wouldn’t teleport to me. I tried running to the town and I found his grandfather who was surprisingly very jolly and made no reference to him which was absurd. My last idea was to run back to the cave I found him in and thankfully he’s there and just says “I gotta get it together!” which was the funniest thing he could have said. Now a new problem presented itself because it was night time and zombies would be popping up on the road, but every time they appeared I had learned my lesson and just grabbed the kid and carried him completely out of combat. When I finally reunite him with his grandpa he says “It’s a miracle you’re back!” which uh…yeah, I’ll say! This kind of story really gets to the heart of why I loved Dragon’s Dogma II. While it may not have had a story and characters that stayed with me like a lot of my favorite games, the design, gameplay, and stories I took away from it I’ll truly treasure.

3: Astro Bot (PS5)

One of my favorite genres is 3D Platformers and there are tragically never enough of them. I really enjoyed the free Astro’s Playroom which came with the PS5, so I was really looking forward to Astro Bot’s next huge adventure and it absolutely delivered joyously. When I was playing Astro Bot, I couldn’t help but think of it as the third Mario Galaxy game we never got. Astro journeys through space and comes upon levels that regularly explore a theme in full with few repeated ideas between them and he has a fairly limited, but satisfying moveset. Some of my favorite levels included the level where you can shrink in size, the sponge level, the PlayStation button shapes challenge levels, and the Uncharted and LocoRoco crossover levels. The boss battles were also a major highlight especially as they often included the powerups to help you beat them and the energy of the presentation, music, and animations rocked. While it may not be breaking too much new ground regularly, Astro Bot is above all else very fun and I often had a big smile on my face while playing which I found very valuable. While it feels like a small tease the way it has been spaced out, I have enjoyed Astro Bot has seen regular updates since it came out and it looks like there is at least a little more ahead. I hope we don’t have to wait too long for another Astro Bot adventure, because this was simply one of the most joyous games of the year.

2: Trails Through Daybreak (PS5, also on Switch, PS4, PC)

Trails Through Daybreak was an especially exciting Trails game to finally play because it finally started a new arc in the greater Trails series that is both chronologically and design-wise beyond the Cold Steel games which we first started getting way back in 2015! While I loved the Cold Steel games for the most part, Daybreak is extra refreshing as it features a mostly all new cast in a new country, Calvard, and includes a new adult protagonist from the start, Van Arkride. Daybreak is strongly driven by Van and ultimately the mysteries that revolve around him. Van is a Spriggan, essentially an odd jobs / fixer who, while still having red lines he won’t cross, will accept jobs from not just normal citizens, but also criminals and those in the gray between. While Van is also a lovable goof, when he is on the job it is refreshing that he can put his experience and connections he has already established to work. There is a morality system in play as well as you choose how to resolve conflicts according to Law, Gray, and Chaotic values, that actually affects a pretty substantial portion of the story ultimately as well as how side content plays out. While I favored Law since I had read up on how it worked and most wanted to work with the Law characters down the line, I often enjoyed actually role playing a good few of the choices and was surprised at how tricky they could be and again by what the unintended consequences could be. While there thankfully are no romance options like in past games which makes for a stronger story I feel, like past games you do get a choice for who to spend your free time with in between your bigger work trips. Like Reverie before it, I found the writing in Daybreak had really improved from the Cold Steel games and was much more thoughtful overall. Both the story cutscenes and the free time sections really benefitted from this so I found the choices of who to spend time with both more difficult to make and ultimately more rewarding. I found the core story of the game one of the strongest in the series as it heads in and commits to a direction I never would have expected when I first played Trails in the Sky fourteen years ago. Its biggest moment is shocking and absolutely lands.

While the story and characters are absolutely the main attraction in Trails Through Daybreak, I did enjoy the new combat and equipment systems as well. While I prefer the classic Trails battle system, after ten games it was exciting to finally have to learn a new combat system entirely. While it resembles the classic system in a lot of ways, the first major change is it does let you begin and technically even finish combat as a light action RPG which does help the pacing. Where I truly dug it though, is that there is now a combo counter that if you can build it up right starts adding a substantial damage boost to your attacks. By the end of my journey, I was regularly building up 50+ combo chains and dealt double damage constantly which was very satisfying. Additionally, the way you equip spells and claim benefits in the new Xipha shard system leads to more interesting choices than ever. The moment I started unlocking the bigger abilities, like the killing blows, I immediately took interest in the system and started coming up with all kinds of fun and powerful builds as some of the abilities really synergize well together. As I wrap up here, I do want to give two quick shoutouts to all of the fun NPC storylines to follow (including the return of one of my all time favorite NPCs who finally gets a name) as well as the soundtrack which Falcom nailed as usual. Overall, I had a fantastic time with Trails Through Daybreak and I’m so excited the next adventure with Arkride Solutions is barely a month away as of this blog post as while this game thankfully wrapped itself up very well, there’s some lingering threads I’m eager to see followed up.

1: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PS5)

While Final Fantasy VII Remake was my 2020 game of the year, I really didn’t know what to expect from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth as it moved the story away from Midgar into the world map and beyond of the original Final Fantasy VII. Would it be a full open world or would it be just a series of wider paths? It seems obvious in hindsight that it’d move to large open zones sort of like a less fantastic Xenoblade, but what I wasn’t prepared for was both how natural it would feel and the feelings the world and game as a whole would invoke. One of my big takeaways from Final Fantasy VII Remake was that it had clear and immense love and respect for its source material even as it boldly pushed into new directions. In Rebirth, the overwhelming sentiment I unexpectedly got was that this was the game and world that the Final Fantasy VII developers always envisioned and it is the best game in the series since to really capture the energy of not just Final Fantasy VII, but the other two PS1 adventures, FFVIII and FFIX, as well. When I stepped out onto the Grasslands outside of Kalm, I felt like I was actually standing on the world map of FF7 as I took in the sights and listened to the amazing soundtrack which was an incredible feeling. As I began adventuring, more and more classic Final Fantasy kinds of activities popped up in evolved forms such as the various Chocobo activities like racing and digging for treasure (FFIX!), the new card game Queensblood which absolutely rules, and an astounding array of minigame challenges. Later in my journey when I entered the Gold Saucer in particular, I was blown away how my favorite location from the original game had been transformed from some modest flat prerendered backgrounds to a dream amusement park designed and brought to life in drop dead gorgeous 3D graphics complete with lovably updated and entirely new attractions. Some of the major zones themselves also really caught me off guard, in particular the forests of Gongaga and the Cosmo Canyon region because you just couldn’t fully experience what the PS1 version of the game was trying to depict at remotely the scale Rebirth can.

Navigating Rebirth’s large world is excellent fun whether you are doing it on foot and battling monsters with the awesome combat system or taking advantage of vehicles and chocobos which like FFIX have different skills according to their color. Like the Xenoblade games, the levels here become increasingly complex to navigate and there are plenty of worthwhile areas to explore off the beaten path whether for direct rewards or just checking out the gorgeous sights. Before a patch weirdly altered the controls, Cosmo Canyon was easily my favorite zone in Rebirth as it revolves around using a Chocobo to fly up to and navigate small paths cutting out of the canyon walls. I enjoyed knocking out the wide array of open world activities and side quests in Rebirth especially since a good handful offer plenty of unexpected fun like a seemingly simple escort mission with a dog having a very amusing theme song (incidentally, the massive soundtrack in Rebirth is tremendous) and others leading to minigames like Fort Condor or the Frog Jumping game. It was especially amusing when I began to notice virtually every unique NPC from Final Fantasy VII Remake returns in Rebirth and while it was ridiculous I always enjoyed seeing what was next for those characters and began to enjoy tracking them down. Before I started, I never would have believed the roles Chadley and Johnny play in Rebirth especially. Like Remake before it, the story itself is really brought to life by a great script and an excellent voice cast. There’s a ton of great humor throughout both the main story cutscenes and the side quests and I’m glad how Rebirth gloriously celebrates some of Final Fantasy VII’s goofiest moments like Cloud riding the dolphin. While I had some mixed feelings about the very end of the story where the big shenanigans happen, which still had a lot to love to be clear, overall, I really enjoyed the grand 97 hour journey of Rebirth and I’m so excited to play the final game in the trilogy whenever it’s ready. For being such a thoroughly expansive, satisfying, and always fun experience, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth stands tall as my 2024 game of the year!

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Thank you for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’m always curious what you think so definitely reach out to me and let me know. Also, I’m curious to know what your favorite games of 2024 were too! You can find me on Bluesky @justinmikos.bsky.social. My Twitter account is locked down and inactive at this point.

While that’s the end of the main portion of my blog, I do always share my full list of games completed for the year at the end of my GOTY blogs. I beat 64 games this year divided evenly between new and old games. Other than that, until next time!

2024 Games I Beat (32)

Under Night In-Birth II Sys:Celes
Love Live School Idol Festival 2 Miracle Live
Mario Vs Donkey Kong Switch (All Stars)
Splatoon 3 Side Order
Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth (Platinum)
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Princess Peach Showtime!
Penny’s Big Breakaway (Platinum)
Pepper Grinder
Granblue Fantasy Relink
Dragon’s Dogma II
Final Fantasy XVI The Rising Tide
Endless Ocean Luminous
Stellar Blade (Platinum)
Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door Switch
Alan Wake II Night Springs
Celeste 64 (100%)
Magia Record Scene 0
Nintendo World Championships NES Edition
World of Goo 2
Trails Through Daybreak
1000xRESIST
Another Code: Two Memories
Another Code: Journey Into Lost Memories
Emio The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club
Astro Bot (Platinum)
Ace Attorney Investigations 2
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
Alan Wake II: The Lake House
Ys X Nordics
Mario & Luigi Brothership
Infinity Nikki

Old Games I Beat In 2024 (32)

Octopath Traveler II
Fashion Dreamer
SEGA Bass Fishing
River City Girls 2 (co-op replay)
Mario & Luigi Paper Jam
Donkey Kong Land
Borderlands 2
Super Mario Land (100% Replay)
Super Mario Land 2 (100% Replay)
Gears 5 Hivebusters
Star Fox Adventures
Metroid Prime Federation Force
Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World
Mutant Mudds Deluxe
Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2
Ar Tonelico Qoga: Knell Of Ar Ciel
Super Mario Bros (Replay)
Way of The Samurai 4
Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory
Modnation Racers
The Legend of Zelda The Minish Cap (Replay)
Legasista
Toree 3D
Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut
htol#NiQ: The Firefly Diary (True End)
Atelier Rorona Plus
Dino Crisis
Street Fighter 6
Breath of Fire III
Parasite Eve
Donkey Kong Land 2
Donkey Kong Land III

My favorite genre of video games is certainly RPGs. I grew up playing and loving RPGs on the Super Nintendo and at this point I almost always either have an RPG I’m playing or I am actively thinking about the next RPG or two I’m going to play next. As the amount of RPGs I’ve played over the years has only increased, I’ve only been more interested in trying to create a favorite RPGs list I could then easily point to. Now that I’m turning 32, this seemed like a great and interesting time to put this together. I’ve been working on clearing out my PS3 and Vita backlogs this year so I’m finally about to be diving into the classic PlayStation RPGs I missed growing up. In that sense, capturing a snapshot of my favorite RPGs right now will be cool to have, because my tastes will inevitably be broadening a little further down the road. I’m eager to get into discussing the games since I’ll be covering so many, so the last thing for this intro here is just to mention, as always, I ranked my favorite RPGs here rather than trying to come up with a best list and I limited myself here to only games I finished. With all that said then, here are my top 32 RPGs at 32!

32: Like A Dragon 8 Infinite Wealth (2024, PS5, PS4, Xbox SX, Xbox One, PC)

The Yakuza games always felt RPG adjacent to me, so the series transition from an action brawler to an RPG in LAD7 made sense on paper. The combat in its first attempt sadly fell flat since it was way too basic and stiff, but thankfully LAD8 fixed that core problem with combat that is both lively and excitingly dynamic as you push enemies into your friends to set up big combos. With that core pillar solid now, everything else from the wonderful and refreshing setting in Hawaii, to the wild buffet of awesome minigames including a fantastic Animal Crossing inspired one called Dondoko Island, and the amazing characters including Kazuma Kiryu whose personal story carries the full weight of the entire series behind him to excellent effect, is able to come together to cement Infinite Wealth onto my favorite RPGs list.

31: Diablo II (2000, PC)

I have so many fond memories of playing Diablo II with friends and family that even if I’m not ultimately all that wild about it in single player and have no attachment at all to the story (outside of Deckard Cain of course) there was no way this wouldn’t make my list. Slaying demons with characters that only get ever more satisfyingly powerful due to cool loot and learning powerful new abilities is excellent fun and the randomized dungeons and enemies give Diablo II immense replay value. The friend I played Diablo II with most would lose access to his copy frequently which meant we regularly replayed the opening acts especially as characters would get deleted online if you didn’t play for 90 days. That we still happily threw ourselves at it over and over again despite how crushing losing your characters would be was a testament to how much fun Diablo II was.

30: Chrono Cross (2000, PS1, PS3, Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

Chrono Cross is an odd game as it doesn’t really resemble Chrono Trigger much. It was already my favorite PS1 RPG when I first encountered it as the large party of characters, unique battle system, and awesome colorful vibes just really spoke to me. Even when I was young, I appreciated its wild connections to Chrono Trigger and its high concept story, but when I finally replayed it a few years ago I was just so blown away with exactly how they built the story off the events of Chrono Trigger and Radical Dreamers in such fascinating and thought provoking ways. The many routes through Chrono Cross are such a cool thing as well as there are so many stories you’ll inevitably miss on a first run through. This is a game I’ve only become more satisfied with over time.

29: Tales of Symphonia (2004, GameCube)

When I was growing up, I mostly just had the RPGs my brother introduced me to on the SNES and N64. Tales of Symphonia was one of the first RPGs that was totally mine after a neighbor introduced it to me. I loved it so much that I actually replayed it three times on the GameCube back to back though it took me close to 20 years later to finally revisit it. On my latest replay, I can absolutely see why I became so attached to it. The initial journey is a solid enough adventure, but as the story transitions into the second parallel world it hits you hard with a shocking betrayal and starts playing with even more wild ideas. The combat is fairly restricted compared to future Tales games, but it is still a lot of fun to chain together big moves and conquer both the weaker and more powerful enemies alike. The characters are all a bunch of lovable dorks too and really shine and get fleshed out in Symphonia’s optional cutscenes called skits.

28: Blue Reflection Second Light (2021, PS4, Switch, PC)

I’m a big fan of the magical girl genre and outside of the first two Blue Reflection games there hasn’t really been a big 3D console game that has captured that kind of story. While Second Light does lose the Persona-like school structure from the first Blue Reflection which is disappointing, everything else about it is such a vast improvement over its predecessor including offering way more lovable characters (I especially love the main character Ao), a more exciting battle system even if it’s too easy, better dungeons that are properly themed to each character, and a much better story that much more significantly captures and speaks to the themes of the best magical girl stories. I always tend to gravitate toward characters the most in RPGs, so the new dating system where you hang out with characters in the mysterious school surrounded by ocean you live in is awesome. Through all of the dates that shift based on your dialog choices, Second Light really rounds out the characters and gives you so many effective opportunities to spend time with them. Second Light is one of the rare modern games I finished and loved so much I decided to replay it on the spot to make new choices and unlock the true ending.

27: Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep (2010, PSP, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

While not my favorite Kingdom Hearts game as this list will attest to, I usually consider Birth By Sleep the best of the series. The story and game structure that has you follow three friends who go on separate journeys and watch their friendship be tested and threatened before the tragic finale tears them apart works very well and the voice actors do a tremendous job selling it especially Leonard Nimoy who plays the big villain Master Xehanort and Haley Joel Osment who plays his partner Vanitas and reprises his normal role as Sora. My favorite part of BBS is perhaps though the very cool ability system that has you level up individual abilities and then combine them together to create powerful new attacks and unlock permanent new upgrades, abilities, and buffs. I’ve never seen another game play with such a cool idea and the best part is it is so much fun that it makes replaying Birth By Sleep three times to see the full story such a joy.

26: Trails From Zero (2022, Switch, PC, PS4)

Trails From Zero is one of the few Trails games I’ve played multiple times and I’m very glad I have because with the official Switch release in particular that added extensive voice acting, I really came to appreciate just how excellent this RPG is. While it is the fourth game and the start of the second arc in the Trails series, Trails From Zero is surprisingly a fairly standalone adventure that also surprisingly doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. Zero tells the story of the formation of the Crossbell Police Department’s Special Support Section and follows them as they resolve their first major case. The party is mostly restricted to just the four main members of the SSS, Lloyd, Elie, Tio, and Randy, and you really forge a strong connection with them and, just as significantly, Crossbell City and its people. Unlike many other Trails games, in Zero for most chapters the full city and surrounding areas are open to you so you’ll be able to converse with the same NPCs and follow their stories over the full course of the game. Regularly engaging with all of the NPCs is daunting with the full country regularly open, but when events begin to escalate, you’ll know and be invested in everyone involved which gives the story great weight. The adventure itself and the combat system are excellent as well, which makes Trails From Zero such a joy to play.

25: Dragon’s Dogma II (2024, PS5, Xbox SX, PC)

I already really liked the first Dragon’s Dogma and will never forget its absolutely wild ending, but Dragon’s Dogma II still caught me off guard by being such an amazing refinement that completely consumed me. I really appreciate exactly where Dragon’s Dogma provides friction to the experience. While the combat is breezy fun first and foremost (an archer will never run out of normal arrows for example) and I love it has a big Shadow of the Colossus component as you can climb on big enemies, Dragon’s Dogma places restrictions on both saving your game and fast travel and also regularly asks you to carefully plan out your adventures lest night falls and much more dangerous creatures emerge. This forces you to really engage with each of your sessions and demands that you become very familiar with the world which is great. I haven’t played a big open world as engaging to explore as Dragon’s Dogma II’s since Zelda Breath of the Wild. I became so familiar with the big routes you regularly travel through and had an absolute blast exploring every cave and conquering all of their challenges. I made so many wonderful memories while exploring, including an escort mission that turned into an absolute disaster as a child got trapped on a mountaintop with a griffin after I got flown up there and he weirdly teleported up there after me. Also, I have to give a big shout to the Pawn system where you can recruit AI party members from other players. They add so much personality to the adventure and regularly elevate individual stretches when you become attached to them.

24: Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door (2004, GameCube, Switch)

Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door is one of my all time favorite adventures with Mario as it takes him well out of his comfort zone as he explores the town of Rogueport and its surrounding areas in search of Peach and the Crystal Stars. There’s just so many awesome stretches of the journey such as the Glitz Pit wrestling arena, the adventure in Twilight Town where my favorite character Vivian joins the party, and an adventure alongside the most memorable NPC Flavio to a deserted island haunted by the ghosts of pirates, and all of it is elevated by a very fun and funny script. The battle system from the prior game really comes alive here as they have every battle take place on a stage with a live audience and introduce new mechanics like partner health, stylish moves, and super guarding. There’s such a fun progression to exploring Rogueport as every new partner and every new paper transformation, like turning sideways or into a paper boat, opens up more and more of the world. I hope one day Mario will go on another adventure as wild as his adventures in Rogueport.

23: Trails Through Daybreak (2024, PS5, PS4, Switch, PC)

Daybreak is the newest RPG on my list as it released only two months prior to me writing this blog, so in some ways I’m still processing it, but wow what an awesome adventure it was. Daybreak follows Van Arkride, a Spriggan / odd jobs fixer who works in gray areas, as he accepts his latest case to find the missing Genesis relics that belonged to his client’s great grandfather. Van is the oldest Trails protagonist at 24 and it is very refreshing to have a more mature Trails protagonist who is already established in the world and has made so many connections. I thus really enjoyed the journey through Calvard and I especially appreciated it headed in a direction I never once expected to see in a Trails game with a plot point which hit so brutally hard. Completing the fresh start feelings Daybreak offers for the series is the new battle system. I definitely prefer the old system as the ways you can manipulate turn order have sadly diminished, but I still really enjoyed learning and mastering the new system here that revolves around building up as big a combo as possible to rip through health bars.

22: Final Fantasy XII (2006, PS2, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PC)

Final Fantasy XII was my introduction to the Offline MMORPG genre and wow what a fantastic entry it was. My playthrough lasted 120 hours which is absurdly long, but I loved slowly building up my team and venturing farther and farther into the fantastic world of Ivalice. The big deserts at the start gave way to rad sky islands, lush jungles, and more that inspired such a great sense of adventure. I’ll never forget either the 100(!) floor tower on an island that even had a treacherous basement I never fully explored that essentially served as the final dungeon. While FFXII is best known for its Gambit system that lets you program character behavior, I personally enjoyed issuing the majority of commands myself which gave FFXII a very classic and cozy flavor. I was interested in the story and did like the characters, but given how long my playthrough lasted the cutscenes were so spaced out I’m not sure I could describe it at all. While probably a few years off, I hope one day I’ll revisit FFXII not just to see how I’d feel about it today, but also to explore every last inch of it which I never did back on the PS2.

21: Xenoblade Chronicles X (2015, Wii U)

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that right from its announcement completely captured my imagination and I’m sad there has never really been a game quite like it since. Xenoblade X pushed the Xenoblade series into a full open world adventure on an alien planet named Mira. The environments are absolutely fantastic and the level design is tremendous as there is so much to discover not just on foot, but again inside the giant transforming robots you acquire, that can eventually even fly into the sky as well, which opens the full world to you. These three levels to exploration only make the game and exploration experience ever more memorable and valuable. This speaks well to the experience as a whole as there is just so much rich depth here to discover as your adventures on Mira progress. Your hub town of New LA expands in function as you discover new alien friends on your adventures and I love how your combat options evolve along with it. By customizing my individual moves I was able to create an engine to regularly overclock my character and deal massive damage to the extent when it came time for the final boss, I ridiculously never ended up hearing the final boss theme as the music changes when you overclock. Incidentally, the music for Xenoblade X is tremendous as Hiroyuki Sawano’s score virtually only trends towards a tone of absolute bombast. I especially adore the boss battle theme, Uncontrollable, as it feels like you are fighting to an anime OP which wow more games need to do that. Hopefully one day Xenoblade X will return, because I’d love to one day explore every last inch of Mira I missed on my original playthrough. I also hope that maybe I’ll finally be able to understand the mech combat as well, which is different than the on foot combat, on replay.

20: CrossCode (2018, Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox SX)

I wasn’t too hot on CrossCode when I first started out, but the moment it clicked I could not believe how rich and thoroughly generous an experience it is. CrossCode is sort of a mix between 2D Zelda with its elaborate dungeons and 2D Solo Ys combat for its melee combat, but it has plenty of its own flavor thanks to its unique range combat where you throw tons of balls at enemies (which also frequently play a major role in puzzle solving) and due to the elements (fire, ice, etc,) you swap between. While the dungeons are perhaps the most satisfying sections of CrossCode, especially as they end in intense boss fights, the overworld exploration is awesome as it features increasingly elaborate jumping puzzles for treasures and shortcuts and there are plenty of great quests and minigames as well. I also really connected with the story as it goes in surprising directions with so much emotionally at stake for the characters. I was very thrilled CrossCode got substantial epilogue DLC a few years later that offered more of everything that made the core game special and wrapped up a few loose ends for the story.

19: Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (2017, PS4, Switch, Vita, PS5, PC)

Ys VIII is such an awesome game. While the story has various dramatic twists and turns and is quite good, the game itself is primarily about being shipwrecked on an island full of dinosaurs and other mysteries and being asked to explore every last inch of it while awesome rock music blares in the background which is even better. There are very light Metroidvania elements present and parts of the island are restricted by how many castaways you have rescued, which both help to guide and propel the experience. The action combat is fantastic with the six playable characters that all have very different movesets between them (Dana is especially fun to control) and it has excellent core mechanics backing it up. I especially dig how Ys VIII not just features a Bayonetta-like Witch Time mechanic for perfect dodges, but also features a separate damage boost for perfect parries. Interestingly, both bonus effects can be stacked if you perfect parry and perfect dodge back to back which is awesome and so satisfying to trigger. The game has a really great gameplay loop as you’ll be exploring for a while and then will inevitably return to the Castaway Village you build up over the course of your exploration. Since you are on a deserted island, the services you’ll make use of here require you to trade items you’ll discover on the island which is very clever and works well. While it hasn’t happened yet, I definitely want to replay Ys VIII from start to finish because I had such a fantastic time with it.

18: Final Fantasy XV (2016, PS4, PC, Xbox One)

I’m not sure I’ve ever had a game I had ever so strongly anticipated like Final Fantasy Versus XIII, as a decade of trailers, demos, and more, all with immense promise, led up to it. When it finally released as Final Fantasy XV it definitely didn’t live up to my expectations, (how could it?) but the game we did get was still super special and more than the sum of its parts. The combat is definitely the most relatively disappointing element as it’s fundamentally fairly weak as you only have to hold a button to attack, but I did enjoy it worked well no matter if you were fighting small creatures or colossal creatures and the ability to throw your sword and warp to enemies or different areas around the battlefield was still super cool. FFXV’s world, which mixes both mundane modern elements and fantastic elements alike, is just super inviting to explore and getting to experience it with the four bros that make up your party as a big road trip together is so much fun and sticks with you. I really dug discovering the many dungeons that are hidden throughout the world and was blown away by the final Pitioss Ruins you can discover that’s surprisingly filled with a true gauntlet of tough platforming challenges. The emotional ending to the main game really hit me hard and while it was unfortunate the last of the DLC was canceled, I did dig the bonus episodes we got with the other characters that were each more impressive than the last. One day I’ll definitely have to read the novelization of what was supposed to be the final ending, but honestly, it’s a road trip I never want to truly end.

17: Kingdom Hearts III (2019, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

I still cannot believe both how long it took for Kingdom Hearts III to come out after Kingdom Hearts II and everything that was produced to build up to it. That included the mobile game that I played for over 1,000 days in anticipation that didn’t quite do its job right as the English version of Union Cross wasn’t caught up in time before KH3 dropped. Good times though. When KH3 finally arrived, it largely, thankfully, thoroughly delivered. The structure of the story is odd as the majority of the story events are reserved for the big final battle, but thankfully the Disney Worlds that lead up to it are easily the best of the series, as they finally are not restricted to the PS2 world design that every other game followed, and since they frequently break away from just following the plot of the movies they are based on. The Toy Story world for example has you team up with Woody and Buzz to stop Young Xehanort who is causing trouble at the local toy store while the Pirates of the Caribbean world incredibly resembles Assassin’s Creed Black Flag by being a small open world you can cruise around on your pirate ship. I had a wonderful time playing through the main game and then revisiting KH3 a year later when the DLC released. If I had misgivings about the combat prior, this was ironed out in time for the DLC which featured some of the absolute best super bosses Kingdom Hearts has ever seen. They were so awesome and satisfying to conquer and I beat all of them except for Yozora who was on an incredible level of complexity and difficulty even further above the rest. One day I have to go back and beat him.

16: Trails of Cold Steel III (2019, PS4, Switch, PS5, PC)

Trails of Cold Steel III is an immensely satisfying game especially for how it advanced the greater Trails series story forward, as each act of the story serves to build upon the events of the prior multiple game greater arcs. The first act for example builds upon one of the major threads from Trails in the Sky while the second act builds upon the events from the Crossbell games. All the while, major players in the Trails universe are clearly assembling and gearing up for a grand showdown. Cold Steel III felt like the Avengers Infinity War of the series in this sense and was immensely satisfying. But it’s more than that too, as Cold Steel III picks up after a time skip following Cold Steel II and once again follows Rean Schwarzer who is now a teacher at the newly opened Thors Academy Branch School. Here Rean teaches the next generation Class VII and over the course of the story reunites with a never ending parade of his friends and acquaintances from the first two Cold Steel games. The amount and frequency of reunions and how they play out is absurdly goofy in practice, and yet every time a reunion occurred, I couldn’t help but love them. The only weak link in Trails of Cold Streel III is that the default difficulty is notably too easy in comparison to the rest of the series as you can just melt everything, but that could easily be fixed for me in any future playthroughs by bumping up the difficulty to Hard or higher.

15: Trails To Azure (2023, Switch, PC, PS4)

I played Trails To Azure after I had finished Trails of Cold Steel IV with the excellent Geofront fan translation, so I knew a lot of the plot beats walking in, but even so Trails To Azure is an absolutely wild adventure and until Daybreak came out felt like the one Trails game that truly played for keeps with its story. If you know how it ends, you know exactly how much is on the line as you follow the expanded SSS on their biggest adventure. I especially loved the new additions to the party here, Wazy and Noel, as Wazy is always an entertaining trouble maker and Noel shines bright in combat. The combat in the game is fantastic and I appreciate there are many extra tough challenge fights that test your full understanding of it. Compared to Zero, there is some great side content in Azure as fishing duels are introduced here and the always fun Puyo Puyo ripoff Pom Pom Party makes its debut here. Trails to Azure is a truly special game and an awesome, powerful end to the Crossbell arc.

14: Odin Sphere (2007, PS2, PS3, Vita, PS4)

For many years I considered Odin Sphere my all time favorite PS2 game, but I just haven’t yet committed to a replay to reinvigorate my love for the game. Even so, my fondness of it remains very strong and I still frequently think about more adventures that could potentially take place in that world. The story and characters are wonderful and I love how it teases and reveals the full story across the five character stories that build up to a truly epic finale that has stuck with me ever since. The action RPG gameplay is fantastic in Odin Sphere and I love the resource management involved. After every fight photons remain from your defeated foes and you can either suck them into your weapon to fuel leveling up or use them to grow seeds that grow fruit and even edible creatures that serve to both replenish your health and boost your total HP. At the start of each character’s story inventory space is tight, so managing it effectively to make sure you are prepared for all of the fights and boss fights and effectively level up is an interesting task. I’ve only played Odin Sphere via the original PS2 version which suffered from horrendous lag and long loading, but I’ll never forget while the lag detracted from the experience obviously it also added to it as it gave you extra time to plan out your actions. One day I absolutely have to replay Odin Sphere, I’m long overdue for a replay.

13: Final Fantasy VII Remake + Rebirth (2020 + 2024, PS4, PS5, PC)

In the interest of including more games on this list, I decided to pair Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth together which perhaps is odd as they are very different games ultimately (one is very linear and one revolves around big open zones) and yet perhaps because I’m still in the release year of Rebirth I can’t help but consider them together for a list like this as the experiences are so deeply connected. I’ve written prior on my blog about my relationship with the original FF7 which is a classic game that meant a lot to me at the time, but didn’t really stick with me as the years passed. In that sense, I never was that extra level of excited for a Final Fantasy VII remake, and yet both Remake and Rebirth are some of my all time favorite RPGs as they both have immense respect for the past and yet always have their eye on blazing their own trails. The characters here are dramatically more fleshed out and lovable than their original incarnations and are brought to life with a fantastic voice cast. The action combat is incredible fun and blends ATB into it in a satisfying fashion. Remake definitely has the highest highs of the remake series so far and the ending is absolutely amazing, but Rebirth is no slouch either with its incredible open zones that invite awesome adventures and give you a crazy buffet of excellent minigames to enjoy. The final game in the trilogy is perhaps my most anticipated RPG currently as the quality of the first two games have been obscenely high and I can’t wait to see how they try to one up themselves.

12: Trails Into Reverie (2023, PS5, Switch, PS4, PC)

Trails Into Reverie is the big culmination of Western Zemuria and brings together the casts of the Sky, Crossbell, and Cold Steel games together with a few new characters for one last big adventure. It is an immensely satisfying adventure thanks to a noticeable jump in writing quality that really gets to the heart of the characters and their journeys so far and also speaks to the future that lies ahead for each of them. Reverie’s structure is perfect for this thoughtful introspection as it plays out in not only the awesome main story that is split into three campaigns you bounce between, one following Lloyd, another Rean, and a third with a new character named C, but also in various short stories called reveries that take place both before and after the main story. The story is the main attraction for Reverie by far, but it also has the final iteration of the classic Trails battle system and explores it with virtually every playable character in the series so far as they tackle a randomly generated dungeon that encourages you to mix up your teams and smartly emphasizes boss fights where the combat system shines brightest. Finally, Reverie has a ton of minigames included within it including returning favorites like Vantage Masters and Pom Pom Party and new minigames including a very fun magical girl themed railshooter complete with its own story. Altogether Reverie is one of the absolute highlights of the Trails series and it absolutely serves its purpose as a fantastic conclusion for Western Zemuria.

11: Neo: The World Ends With You (2021, Switch, PS4, PC)

Neo is the rare dream sequel that absolutely lived up to its predecessor and most spectacularly as part of that translated the core appeal of one of the most unique 2D RPG action combat systems into full 3D. Neo stars primarily new characters as they make their own journey through The Underground version of Shibuya as part of the new Reapers game. Discovering a mix of new and familiar faces throughout your journey in Shibuya is a big part of Neo’s appeal. Like the original game, pouring yourself into all of the various systems, yields tons of rewards. Figuring out your pin layouts and equipment, how you choose to navigate shopping and eating, determining the level of self-imposed challenge you should put yourself through for better item drops, and fun personal choices like setting your menu music all make the game feel yours in such satisfying fashion. Perhaps my absolutely favorite element of Neo that has stuck with me far beyond the adventure, is the absolutely incredibly soundtrack that is stuffed full of original vocal tracks across different genres all sung from a good pool of different singers. Last Call, Breaking Free, and World Is Yours are just a few of my favorite songs. Neo The World Ends With You was such an awesome experience I happily replayed it on the spot in New Game+. I don’t know if we’ll ever get another sequel, but what we got here was absolutely special and I’ll treasure it forever.

10: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild (2017, Switch, Wii U)

Breath of the Wild was a dream game for me as it took major influence from the spectacular level design of the Xenoblade series and paired it with both incredible action gameplay and a very cool physics system. The land of Hyrule is brought to life at a level never before seen in a Zelda game and amazingly is completely open basically from the very start with no real direction to guide you aside from a simple goal to “Defeat Ganon.” It is thus adventure at its purest as you drive the entirety of it by picking out what to explore at every step and ultimately decide when to end it by triumphantly storming Hyrule Castle which is a fantastic finale. While there are dungeons here to discover, the most common type isn’t terribly exciting, but thankfully the new smaller sets of challenges collected together in Shrines thoroughly explore the possibilities of both Link’s abilities and the physics system in both combat and puzzles. While your core abilities, including magical bombs, are limitless outside of cool down timers, managing the rest of your inventory and resources as you proceed with your adventure frequently results in interesting choices outside of and, more interestingly, inside of combat. The way combat can devolve into you being chased across Hyrule and how you are encouraged regularly to take desperate moves like throwing weapons that are about to break at enemies is always great fun. Breath of the Wild was the first Zelda game since Zelda II that felt like a proper RPG and I’m really curious to see how they’ll be building on this foundation established here and in its sequel going forward because already it is such a spectacular achievement.

9: The World Ends With You (2008, DS, iOS/Android, Switch)

I’m always so glad I took a chance on the original The World Ends With You because it ultimately became my favorite DS game of all time and has stuck with me ever since. When the story begins, the main protagonist Neku is thoroughly unlikable and yet as he spends time with his partners in the Reapers Game, Shiki, Joshua, and Beat, he slowly grows as a person and becomes a character you are absolutely rooting for. The core message of The World Ends With You is fantastic as it encourages you to put yourself out there and try as many new experiences as possible to get the most out of life. In addition to the characters and themes, I really dug how the game expanded as you went. It’s New Game+ in particular featured an unforgettable and hilarious additional level as well as new bonus objectives to the main game that unlocked reports that expanded on the lore and story. What also made TWEWY such a blast was the awesome combat system. All of Neku’s psychic moves on the bottom touch screen are granted by the pins you level up, evolve, and swap between and on the top screen you control your partner with the D-Pad. The big gimmick is that you need to time your combos between the two characters to keep passing a light puck back and forth to build up your combo damage which is also occasionally used to take out certain tough foes. Finally, I of course have to mention the outstanding soundtrack filled with so many loveable vocal songs like Calling, Hybrid, and The One Star. Just wandering around town was such a treat thanks to the soundtrack and I still enjoy listening to it to this day.

8: Kingdom Hearts II (2006, PS2, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, PC)

I had played a little bit of the first Kingdom Hearts game prior to playing KH2 as I had both borrowed and rented it for a while, but at the time I had not finished it. I’m not sure exactly why then I decided to pick up Kingdom Hearts II, but I’m forever glad I did because by the time I finished the extended tutorial following the end of Roxas’ Summer vacation I was absolutely hooked. The story here with its mix of cozy, wistful, mysterious, and epic vibes really spoke to me and the core gameplay was just so fantastic. Even as KH2 evolves in complexity over the course of the larger journey with Sora it just never stopped being such an absolute blast to play. I especially dug the new Drive forms where Sora would borrow one or more of his friend’s powers to wield multiple keyblades which also unlocked and leveled up entire new abilities for his base form like high jumping and gliding. I never was much of a Disney fan, but Sora’s quest to find his friends and teaming up with familiar Final Fantasy characters in Hollow Bastion to take on the evil Organization XIII was awesome and ended in truly spectacular fashion. RPGs are fairly long so I don’t tend to replay them too often, but Kingdom Hearts II is my absolute favorite Kingdom Hearts game and never fails to brighten my mood. I have regularly replayed it over the years and every time I do I always have an awesome time with it and appreciate it even more.

7: Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars (1996, SNES, Wii, Wii U, Switch)

There are three Super Nintendo RPGs that stuck with me the most growing up and forever cemented my love of RPGs and the first is Super Mario RPG. This game is ultimately fairly breezy, especially if you are an RPG veteran, and yet simply put it is just super fun and never fails to put a smile on my face. While the length of Super Mario RPG is relatively short by RPG standards, it is absolutely packed with memorable moments, bosses, and minigames and is tremendously well paced as a result. I always think of the stretch from Moleville to Marrymore as being my particular favorite to point to as you go from exploring the mines to rescue some lost children and escaping with them in a wild mine cart ride, to traversing the awesome Booster Tower, and then chasing Booster up Booster Hill to ultimately crash his wedding with the kidnapped Princess Peach. I really dug how Super Mario RPG expanded Mario’s world and had him meet cool new friends like Geno and Jonathan Jones and had him square off against the Smithy Gang and the unforgettable super boss Culex. The gameplay here is excellent too, as it was one of the first RPGs I played that introduced timed hits for extra damage when attacking and more defense when blocking. It also featured isometric platforming which is fairly weird and yet I always dug it a ton and especially enjoyed how they explored its potential over the course of the game (the 3D maze in the Sunken Ship was always a personal highlight). I definitely prefer the original version of Super Mario RPG still as the remixed Switch version really hurts the balance, but I did want to mention here I really did dig the new post game they added with the new super bosses. I’ve been dreaming of a true sequel to Mario RPG for years so to even get a smidge more was so special.

6: Xenoblade Chronicles (2012, Wii, New 3DS, Wii U, Switch)

The original Xenoblade Chronicles will always be a special game for me as I took part in the letter writing campaign for Operation Rainfall in the hopes to see the game release in the US. It ultimately did of course and wow it absolutely lived up to and exceeded my expectations. I had correctly pegged from the trailers that Xenoblade would be a true successor to Final Fantasy XII’s legacy and even more than FFXII I was absolutely engrossed in exploring every last inch of Xenoblade’s fantastic world built on the backs of two colossal robot gods. The Gaur Plains, Satorl Marsh, and the Eryth Sea especially really captured my imagination and I just really enjoyed running through them, clearing out monsters, picking up collectibles like coins in a Mario game, and taking in all of the sights. Like FFXII, Xenoblade is an Offline MMORPG, though it functions a bit differently in practice. Here characters will auto attack the enemies they are facing and all of their special moves are on cool downs. Combat is more engaging regularly compared to FFXII as you have to manage enemy aggro and take advantage of positioning, as special moves regularly grant bonuses from the direction you attack monsters with, to best come out on top. I especially love the boss fights that push your skills to the limits and are typically set to the fantastic boss battle theme You Will Know Our Names, which from the name always made it feel like it was your own theme song. While the epic journey is pretty cool and has a wild ending, what I enjoyed the most from the story were the characters at the heart of it. There are a handful of optional interactions, called Heart to Hearts, that help flesh them out, but their personalities shine brightest in the repeated dialog lines from combat that have been adored and memed by fans ever since. I only need to hear someone saying or writing out one of the lines like “I’m really feeling it!” or “Aw yeah baby!” to have all of the good memories of Xenoblade rush back to me and that’s very special.

5: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022, Switch)

I didn’t think another Xenoblade game would ever surpass Xenoblade Chronicles for me given the very special place it has in my heart and yet Xenoblade 3 together with its expansion Future Redeemed narrowly manages to edge it out for me on most days. When I started out playing Xenoblade 3, I was skeptical too as it was repurposing imagery from both Xenoblade and Xenoblade 2 as part of the story, but by the time my 150+ hours of adventure in Aionios were over I’m not sure why I ever doubted because I didn’t want my adventures to end. I was completely blown away on three separate occasions by the world Monolith put together as the zones were absurdly massive and rich with fantastic sights, monsters, and adventures. The story was a big step up over prior Xenoblade games with a fantastic core cast at the center of it and a string of awesome hero characters that made the seven(!) person battles livelier than ever. The themes it explored with the Endless Now, the Moebius, and the lives of the soldiers versus the people in the City were fascinating. I made sure to see absolutely all of the story elements and I especially dug how with the Colony quests in particular many of them would begin to crossover with the stories of other colonies which was always so satisfying to watch play out. The combat system and especially the new class system was excellent too. The latter especially could really change how you approached battles as every class played differently and different combos of classes gelled super well together. I gravitated myself towards the Martial Artist class because it had a move that let you dodge attacks which is super cool as it added a new dimension to combat. The other big new addition of Ouroboros robots was a ton of fun as well as unleashing its power as you pleased always felt special. I have to give a final shoutout to the incredible soundtrack especially with the battle music which makes every encounter so exciting. In particular, I have to shout out the Moebius Battle theme which is so unbelievably epic both in the game and on the official soundtrack. I’ll never forget experiencing it for the first time late at night against the final boss of chapter 2 because I was not prepared for how powerful it is. 

4: Chrono Trigger (1995, SNES, PS1, DS, iOS/Android, PC)

Chrono Trigger is the second of the RPGs that stuck with me the most from the Super Nintendo and is probably the one that I think about the most. Chrono Trigger is an excellent adventure with so many memorable legs of the journey like exploring the Future for the first time, storming Magus’ Castle in the Middle Ages, and exploring the magical Kingdom of Zeal in the Ice Ages. I love the colorful party you assemble on your journey including the silent protagonist Crono, his best friend and genius scientist Lucca, a rad robot from the future named Robo, and potentially even the Demon Lord Magus who was a villain earlier in the story. Every character has their own techniques and spells to learn as they level up and thus have clear, exciting roles in the party. The combat system contains the ATB bar I love in a lot of Square games and most interestingly features a major positioning element because as enemies shuffle around the battlefield they can occasionally line up just right for your special moves to be most effective. While I tend not to use them too much, I do enjoy the double and triple character combo attacks that deal a lot of damage and look spectacular. What really helps set Chrono Trigger apart for me from many other RPGs is that the core adventure is relatively short and thoroughly excellent with perfect pacing. Additionally, it has a generous section at the end where the world opens up for you to tackle side quests before the final battle and not only was it the game that first featured New Game+, it takes advantage of it in a fascinating way that opens up the possibilities of the adventure. Chrono Trigger is a game all about time travel and once you begin New Game+ you can finally take advantage of the ability to challenge the final boss Lavos whenever, since your party was already powerful enough to beat him. Depending on when you do it while replaying the story, you’ll trigger alternate endings as you leave certain problems throughout time unresolved. Most of these endings are not spectacular, but the interesting ones like the characters never rescuing Leene or having them take over Magus’ role in the Middle Ages, spark the imagination enough to make you wonder what other adventures are possible. I hope one day we’ll get a new Chrono game, but until then I’m always going to enjoy revisiting and dreaming up potential sequels.

3: Magia Record (2019, Formerly iOS/Android, Currently Youtube)

Magia Record is most certainly the most unique game on this list for a variety of reasons, but perhaps none more so than the fact that as a live service gacha game it only lived for less than 18 months with the English version between 2019 and 2020 and now even the Japanese version shut down this year in 2024. And yet, it’s still not over for me, because a fan translation group has been tirelessly translating Magia Record and releasing the cutscenes with English text on Youtube and have continued to do so, even with the game currently unplayable by anyone. I guess I can’t say for sure that I will ever finish the story as I’m relying on others and yet it seems increasingly inevitable as only a mere 12 hours or so remains to be translated to finish the core story. Magia Record is a spinoff of my all time favorite anime Madoka Magica. Not only did it reinvigorate my love for my favorite anime series, over time it became definitively its own unique thing that I have come to cherish perhaps even more than the original series. It’s with all of this context, that Magia Record has become a game so incredibly special to me and perhaps one day might potentially even top my favorite RPG list if the story fully delivers. Magia Record juggles an absurd number of characters, well over 100, and yet somehow it gives everyone such a chance to shine across the extensive main, event, and character stories. I especially enjoyed the story of Arc 1 as Iroha Tamaki searches for her missing sister Ui in Kamihama. Through her determination in the face of endless adversity, she manages to inspire a group of friends and ultimately the whole community around her as they attempt to dismantle a powerful and violent cult and destroy colossal monsters that are threatening their town. While I don’t know if it’ll stick the landing as I’m only 2/3rds of the way through, Arc 2 has built off the story of Arc 1 in the most fascinating and satisfying of ways. It has greatly expanded the number of factions and introduced so many new characters for me to care about and so far has been such a wild ride. While Magia Record lives basically as a story only now, I have to of course briefly still discuss when it functioned as a proper video game, it was easily my favorite gacha RPG I ever played. The combat was well balanced for both PVE and most impressively for PVP. Managing your team’s growth and finding the right combos of accessories that played well with your character’s Connect abilities held my attention for 18 months. I also especially dug when the gameplay and story worked together as recruiting and using the gacha characters made sure you cared about them when they were suddenly introduced into the greater story and how the big final boss of Arc 1 was a global raid boss for the entire server to tackle. Magia Record was and continues to be one of my favorite RPGs ever.

2: Final Fantasy VI (1994, SNES, GBA, Wii)

Final Fantasy VI is the RPG to this day that I compare to all others as every element of the experience works together to create something truly special. The turn based combat is fantastic and engaging throughout as the fourteen characters (plus some guests!) all have a unique ability that sets them apart from everyone else. Sabin, my favorite character, has access to Blitz techniques for example that are amusingly executed by entering fighting game inputs, while Mog for example can Dance which changes the background of the battlefield and has him cycle through sets of abilities. This is already a good foundation for combat, but it’s the relics and magicite systems that truly make these characters yours as relics can wildly impact how a character functions (my favorite relic combo for Sabin for example lets him dual wield weapons and counter attacks) while magicite lets you both learn magic spells as you please and grants you level up bonuses to control character growth. The journey is incredible with so many memorable set piece moments in the first half like the Phantom Train and Opera House that gives way to a completely open structure in the back half in the World of Ruin that constantly rewards thorough exploration and has so many amazing dungeons for your teams to tackle. While the cast is fairly large for an RPG, nearly everyone gets their chance to shine across both halves of the game and their individual stories are excellent with Cyan’s in particular being such a standout. I also have to give a shoutout to Nobuo Uematsu’s soundtrack which just has so much personality and adds so much to each step of the journey. Terra’s Theme, The Decisive Battle, and Searching For Friends are just a few of my favorite FFVI songs. I wish the original SNES version of this game was more easily available because I’d love more excuses to replay it. Final Fantasy VI is a true RPG masterpiece and one of my all time favorite games.

1: Trails in the Sky FC + SC (2011 + 2015, PSP, PC)

Trails in the Sky is an absolutely special game for me. I took a chance on it back on the PSP and while I loved it from the start, halfway through it really began to hit me just how special this game was and how this was the game that most spoke to the kinds of RPGs I loved most growing up. My tour of Liberl on foot with Estelle and Joshua endeared me so much to both them and their greater world. Conversations would play out longer than most RPGs and the NPCs had so much character as their dialogue would update after every major story event which sounds basic on paper, but the execution here was just so effective at selling that this world was far larger than the adventure at hand. I felt almost as sad leaving towns behind as I would the lovable characters like Olivier, Kloe, Tita, and Zin, who rotated in and out of my party. What I most loved from the first two Trails in the Sky games, is Estelle’s journey. She begins her journey from her small countryside town with a lot to learn, but by the end as a result of all of her experiences, she becomes a true and inspiring leader that others can rely on. While I always look back on Sky FC (First Chapter) the most fondly, Sky SC (Second Chapter) as it completes Estelle’s journey is immensely satisfying and it becomes hard for me to separate the two in that sense hence why I grouped the two games together here. Both games feature an awesome battle system that is sort of a mix of games like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy Tactics. There are two big features that make it stand out, namely how easy and satisfying it is to manipulate turn order to claim benefits for yourself and push penalties onto your foes and the Craft Points system (CP) which is a resource that rises as you deal and take damage and fuels each character’s special craft attacks and their powerful Limit Break-like S-Crafts. Like many of my other favorite RPGs, Trails asks you to make interesting decisions both on and off the battlefield. In regards to the latter, I especially enjoy the possibilities of playing around with both powerful accessories and kitting out your character’s orbments, which grants access to both spells and buffs. I frequently would make strengths even stronger and enjoyed turning Tita for example into a glass cannon who could generate CP very quickly to make frequent use of S-Crafts. Trails in the Sky is an absolutely incredible game. While it is the start of my favorite RPG series that operates on a level no other does by being all directly connected to each other, it is because of its own merits entirely that it is my favorite RPG at 32.

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Thank you for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I always love chatting about RPGs so I’d love to hear what you thought of my list and what your favorite RPGs are. I can be found these days on both Blue Sky and Twitter @JustinMikos. Until next time!

​One of my favorite games growing up was the original Super Mario RPG on the Super Nintendo. It along with Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger inspired a life long love of the genre that remains passionate to this day. Super Mario RPG itself also remains one of my favorite Mario games as it really expanded what Mario and his world could be in a way the platformers often alone could not. While I haven’t missed picking up every Mario RPG since at launch, back when the 3DS rolled around I fell behind keeping up with the Mario RPGs on the system. One in particular, Sticker Star, I just could not get into and my attempts at playthroughs always ended in Wiggler’s woods if not sooner. Back in 2021 though, I finally finished the game and I knew then clearing the other two 3DS games was only a matter of time. Last weekend, I finally finished the last Mario RPG I was behind on, Mario & Luigi Paper Jam, and now that I’m fully caught up, I thought it would be fun to rank every Mario RPG to date. For this blog, I’ll be ranking both versions of Super Mario RPG, all six Paper Mario games, and all five Mario & Luigi games. There are other non-traditional Mario RPGs out there, including some of the Golf and Tennis games and arguably the Mario and Rabbids games, but I’m focusing on the three more traditional JRPG series here. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get right into it.

13: Paper Mario Sticker Star (2012, 3DS)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paper Mario Sticker Star is unquestionably in last place as it took me numerous attempts to get through the abysmal first half of the game. Unlike prior Mario RPGs, Sticker Star ditches regular attacks in favor of one use sticker items, removes unique NPCs from the series in favor of generic Toads throughout, and removes XP and leveling up altogether. For the first half of the game, this all serves to create a dreadful situation where it becomes ideal to run past every encounter and thus skip as much potential gameplay as possible as battles are just resource drains with no benefits. While the first two zones are fairly colorful to walk through, the third zone with Wiggler’s woods, is largely a repetitive poisonous swamp that you are required to run back and forth in filled with annoying encounters. It is so draining to get through that I had two separate playthroughs end there. In my successful playthrough of Sticker Star however, I ruggedly trudged on and thus finally made it across the ocean for the first time. While the core problems remain, Sticker Star thankfully becomes the game it clearly wanted to be in the back  half of the adventure. The fourth and fifth zones in particular are full of exciting set piece levels including a haunted mansion to explore, a mine cart ride, and a river rapids ride in a jungle. These scenarios and better standard levels help indirectly make up for the lack of personality in the NPCs. Thanks to the increased inventory space, more varied sticker items, and the increase in the amount of money you get from encounters and at the end of each level, running into and fighting enemies doesn’t feel like a complete resource drain anymore. The encounters themselves are more complex as well so dipping into your resources to find the best tool for the job regularly proves a more interesting decision to make as well. It’s sort of tragic then Sticker Star is so split in quality, because if the front half of the game were as strong as the back half it easily would rank a little higher overall.

12: Mario & Luigi Dream Team (3DS, 2013)

Dream Team is the first of the two Mario & Luigi games on the 3DS and focuses on Mario and Luigi taking a vacation to Pi’illo Island where they’ll meet a good handful of original characters sort of like the original Superstar Saga. The big gimmick is there is a Dream World that you’ll regularly visit when Mario enters into Luigi’s dreams. In the Dream World, you’ll team up with Dreamy Luigi who can multiply and transform himself to traverse obstacles, execute super moves in battle, and transform into a giant version of himself to take on the biggest bosses. While all of this sounds potentially great on paper, I found Dream Team to be just too dragged out somewhat across the board. Momentum through levels feels slow and having to make regular stops to the Dream World doesn’t help. I also noticed and began to strongly feel that there regularly isn’t a lot of variety between combat encounters as it feels like you are fighting the same enemies too often. Sadly, unlike most of the rest of the Mario RPGs, I strongly feel I wouldn’t be interested in revisiting Dream Team again in the future.

11: Mario & Luigi Partners In Time (DS, 2005)

Partners In Time, the first DS Mario & Luigi game, was one of the harder games on this list to rank as unfortunately I only played it once at launch nearly 20 years ago and barely remember it. Partners in Time features Mario and Luigi traveling back in time to help Baby Mario and Luigi fend off the Shroob alien invasion. The babies of course help out with both overworld traversal and in combat directly. I seem to remember not entirely enjoying the addition of the babies as they didn’t feel like an elegant addition and they are obviously limited as characters. I also remember the level design being a bit more restricted compared to the original Superstar Saga and I don’t believe the main villain and their group either made too much of an impression outside of the alien theming which were some other disappointments. I think if I were to replay it, Partners In Time would end up around here on the rankings so I don’t feel too bad about its placement necessarily. While I’m in no rush to do so, I am potentially interested in revisiting it in the future so I’m going to give it the edge over Dream Team at least.

10: Mario & Luigi Paper Jam (3DS, 2016)

Paper Jam is the final 3DS Mario RPG and while it is my favorite of the bunch as it is quite fun to play, it unfortunately suffers from a generic Mario story and world. Paper Jam most notably brings in Paper Mario as a third character to accompany Mario and Luigi on their journey who excitingly mixes up both traversal and combat. With three characters all running in a line together, the dense level design of the prior Mario & Luigi games is regularly replaced with more open fields to run around in which feels refreshing. You get four different abilities over the course of the game that incorporate Paper Mario to tackle obstacles and navigate challenges and these feel snappier and more enjoyable to execute than Dream Team’s. One more interesting thing about traversal, while there are essentially only six levels you’ll run through, as the game progresses big cardboard pieces are falling from the sky as part of the story and radically shake up how you navigate each area as they open and close pathways and introduce other challenges which is very cool. In combat Paper Mario has a really unique central gimmick where he can make six copies of himself which alters his attack properties, increases his damage immensely, and lets him dodge traditional damage when his copies get hit. Paper Mario’s Trio attacks, as well as the normal Bros Attacks, are all fairly spectacular, fun to use, and all remain useful throughout the full journey which is ideal. Paper Mario then, as well as the new battle card system that lets you activate buffs, recovery, and more without wasting a turn, helps shake up combat throughout the adventure and manages to mostly overcome the super bizarre decision to largely limit enemy encounters to one type / set up per screen (i.e. one screen will have four goomba enemies to encounter and each one will always have the same two goombas plus one koopa troopa in it). If it wasn’t for the paper thin story (“Oh no, Bowser is causing trouble!” is about it) and the lack of any notable characters at all, this would have had a good chance at being a little higher up.

9: Super Mario RPG (Switch, 2023)

I had an excellent time playing the Switch remake of Super Mario RPG, perhaps more so initially than a good few of the games ahead of it, but I think I’m going to put it lower on the rankings as while I feel it is distinct enough as a remix of the original to warrant ranking in the first place, I don’t find it’s terribly essential either despite a few very cool things it does. Right away you’ll notice there’s a new system added that adds buffs to your characters as long as you continue to chain action commands together. It’s very generous to build up as if I remember correctly, you only need to chain five action commands in a row to get the full benefits applied. The issue here, is that the game wasn’t necessarily rebalanced around this new gauge as it, the new super team attacks, and the new reserve party feature, were clearly fine-tuned for the new post game super bosses. Experienced players will thus largely be mowing down enemy mobs and perhaps most disappointingly bosses very quickly as a result. However, there is a very cool new addition that keeps regular combat exciting which is the introduction of random elite enemies. Some of these, especially early on, can really throw you for a loop as they have a generous amount of HP and can deal a lot of damage and trap you with some nasty status effects. While the new graphics and especially the new music were exciting to experience, my favorite part of the remake was certainly the new super bosses which put your skills to the ultimate test and introduce and explore new mechanics not seen in the original game. I’ve always dreamed about experiencing new Super Mario RPG content and while this was really such a tease of the possibilities, it was a wonderful tease I won’t forget.

8: Paper Mario Color Splash (Wii U, 2016)

Color Splash is ostensibly Sticker Star 2, but it transforms all of that game’s weaknesses into strengths. Instead of stickers of varying sizes to manage, you instead have cards which are more straightforward. Thanks to the generous amount of money the game showers you with, you can easily replenish your deck in between levels and while there isn’t traditional XP still you do get hammers from battle that increase your paint supply that powers up your attacks. The generic Toad problem is directly addressed as well by giving every Toad the most punchy, hilarious, and sometimes out there dialog as possible. You’ll want to find every last one of these guys just to see what they’ll say next. Bowser’s minions plus the Koopalings also help add a little personality to your adventure as well. Finally, while the game features distinct, separate levels again like Sticker Star before it, these levels are much more distinct locations that are interesting to explore and are often united by cool overarching themes like a Pirate adventure and a train moving across the world. Before the Switch is fully retired, I hope Nintendo will bring back Color Splash because it would be a shame if the game remains trapped on the Wii U.

7: Paper Mario The Origami King (Switch, 2020)

The Origami King is the fourth distinct take on Paper Mario and I feel it does a better job of more comfortably shifting the series into more of an adventure format than its last attempt. Out in the field, you’ll be throwing confetti around and hitting things with your hammer regularly to find Toads scattered around in the world as you work towards solving the bigger puzzles in the world. While not quite as out there as Color Splash, great humor and sharp writing carry the game hard even when unique NPC designs remain annoyingly off limits. Like Color Splash, The Origami King largely works well within that big restraint though and even manages to sort of bring back partner characters to great effect especially with the standout character of the game Bobby the Bob-omb. My favorite part of the game is definitely the exciting locations you visit including a ninja and movie themed theme park and a big ocean you explore in a way that’s highly reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker. The two new battle systems being puzzle based for both regular battles and the boss battles is an interesting idea that works well enough for the game, though I wouldn’t necessarily want to see it return. Finally, I do want to give a quick shout out to the excellent soundtrack throughout full of peppy songs and big musical numbers. The Mario RPGs in general are blessed with great soundtracks and The Origami King is certainly one of the best.

6: Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story (GBA, 2009)

I mentioned in my Partners in Time section that it was tricky to rank because I barely remember it, unfortunately Bower’s Inside Story is sort of next in line there as I’ve also only played it once right when it came out, but I do remember really enjoying it. Bowser’s Inside Story is most memorable of course for featuring Bowser as a major playable character throughout the adventure. While he is roaming around the overworld and contending with the awesome return of Fawful from Superstar Saga, Mario and Luigi have been shrunk down and are exploring inside Bowser himself. There’s crossover of course where sometimes Mario and Luigi have to help Bowser from the inside in order to progress the story which is a neat relationship. I remember enjoying both the flow of exploration and combat throughout the game and of course the extra focus on Bowser, who is always a fantastic character in the RPGs, and Fawful, one of the most funny and memorable villains in the whole series. Out of all of the games here, Bowser’s Inside Story is definitely the game I want to currently replay most.

5: Super Paper Mario (Wii, 2007)

I’ve always had a lot of fondness for Super Paper Mario ever since I first played it and I was so pleased to find that it absolutely held up when I fully replayed it two years ago. Super Paper Mario is interesting in that it is essentially an RPG platformer which is a very unusual crossing of genres. The biggest gimmick in the game is perhaps Mario’s ability to shift the perspective from a 2D platformer to a 3D platformer, but I don’t really consider that too central to the experience. What I most remember Super Paper Mario for is the very memorable scenarios and characters you meet on your adventure. There’s an extended sequence for example where a whole world is on the verge of being sucked into a black hole and it ends with Mario being sent to the Under Where (hell) which is just super absurd for a Mario game. There’s so much other bizarre stuff too such as a level where Mario gets unfairly saddled with a big debt and you have to work it off by running on big hamster wheels and ultimately sneaking around the prison he is held in. As for the characters, I really dug getting to adventure alongside Peach, Bowser, and Luigi which is actually a fairly rare team up across the Mario games. I also really dug the villains including Mimi, who can horrifyingly transform from a cute girl to a hideous spider, and Count Bleck, the main tragic villain at the heart of the story. While the story and scenarios steal the show, exploring the levels and conquering the puzzles and challenges within is great fun.

4: Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga (GBA, 2003)

Superstar Saga was the first Mario & Luigi game and, while I don’t believe I knew it at the time, it was created by former developers who worked on Super Mario RPG. That background which informed elements of the design alongside this feeling of confidence the game exudes really drew me to the game when it first came out and it easily remains my favorite of the series. In Superstar Saga, Mario and Luigi travel to the Beanbean Kingdom after Princess Peach’s voice is stolen by the evil witch Cackletta and her very memorable henchman Fawful. Like the two other Mario RPGs before it, Superstar Saga relies on action commands in battle that primarily revolve around Mario and Luigi’s abilities to jump and use hammers and most interestingly often has you manage both brothers at once. Performing well during enemy attacks often leads to counter attacks which keeps you invested in every part of a battle. Superstar Saga, more than the future Mario & Luigi games, has excellent pacing throughout. While it is perhaps a little too skewed towards combat, the dense world is interesting to explore and open up as you unlock new abilities, and there are many fun minigame challenges scattered throughout the adventure to break up the action including wild challenges revolving around jump roping and surfing. I also love there are plenty of interesting characters to meet through the world including the dashing Prince Peasley and the unique residents of the Beanbean Kingdom. Even with its refreshingly short run time, it feels like there is more meaningful adventure here than any of the longer future Mario & Luigi games which is very impressive.

3: Paper Mario (N64, 2001)

I loved the original Paper Mario right from the jump as it presents the Mario world like a dramatic pop up story book which makes encountering both familiar and unfamiliar elements feel fresh. Even as it is grounded in the Mushroom Kingdom, the world Paper Mario depicts feels wonderfully distinct. Toad Town has some great character thanks to the train station and wooden dock areas especially, plus it sits above a complex underground sewer area and right next door is a delightfully gloomy overgrown forest and a haunted mansion filled with Boos. As your journey continues, you’ll journey to a nearly deserted volcanic island, inside the world of a toy box, a frozen palace, and more. My favorite parts of the game and its direct sequel are the partner and badge systems. Over the course of Mario’s journey, he’ll recruit a handful of allies like Goombario, Kooper, and, my favorite, Bombette. These partners are distinct characters who help you out in battle and have distinct abilities in the overworld including revealing information about the area you are in and flying over large gaps. By collecting special blocks hidden in the world, you can upgrade your characters and teach them new abilities to keep them relevant throughout your journey. The badge system is also very cool as you equip them to learn new moves and grant Mario and his partners new abilities. Each badge requires BP to equip and since you can only increase your BP slowly as one of three level up bonuses against HP and FP (magic) choosing what badges to have active is an ever evolving decision and helps personalize your adventure.

2: Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door (Gamecube, 2004)

The Thousand Year Door is one of Mario’s finest adventures of all time as it both regularly and wonderfully takes him out of his element and is backed up by engaging systems and lovable characters. In TTYD, Mario journeys to Rogueport to find the crystal stars and unlock the secret behind a door that hasn’t been opened in one thousand years before the villainous X-Nauts do. Rogueport lives up to its name as crime is rampant in its grimy streets, but it is full of interesting characters you’ll want to get to know. Beyond the city walls lies memorable adventures such as saving a town from a dragon, becoming the champion of a wrestling-like battle arena in the sky called the Glitz Pit, and saving a gloomy town bathed in perpetual twilight whose residents are slowly being transformed into pigs one by one with each stroke of a bell by an evil monster. The Thousand Year Door has my favorite party for Mario in an RPG as it includes characters like Goombella who can personally comment on every area and enemy in the game, a baby Yoshi you help hatch from his egg and get to name, and my favorite character Vivian who originally sides with the Shadow Sirens. Since I’m talking about characters, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Luigi’s unforgettable role in the game where he appears at a local tavern and shares clearly embellished stories of his own wacky adventures in the Waffle Kingdom which further get hilariously muddled by other separate accounts. Combat in TTYD resembles the first Paper Mario game, but now takes place on a stage viewed by audience members. By performing action commands and stylish flourishes the crowd will grow in number and help charge your star power gauge faster that lets you unleash some of your most powerful abilities. As part of battling on a stage, occasionally stage props will collapse onto Mario and his enemies alike and sometimes audience members might try to throw either helpful items or rocks at Mario. In the latter case, you have to be prepared to kick them out first before they can act. At the time I’m posting this blog, we are less than 20 days out of a remake of TTYD which is cool and I’m looking forward to experiencing it, but one day I really hope we can get a new adventure that lives up to the high standard this game set.

1: Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES, 1996)

The original Super Nintendo version of the very first Mario RPG, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, still remains my favorite Mario RPG decades later. As a huge RPG fan, perhaps that isn’t too surprising as unlike the rest of the Mario RPGs it was made by Squaresoft, the creators of Final Fantasy, and its RPG elements remain the strongest in the series with interesting equipment to manage for your five party members and larger health pools for both yourself and enemies to contend with. Battles are turn based, but introduce action commands where well timed button presses that differ in timing between every attack can help you deal more damage and help you better defend against enemy attacks. While fairly breezy for RPG veterans, Super Mario RPG still has a good deal of bite in it that future games don’t always touch (especially when it comes to its memorable hidden bosses, Jinx and Culex). Since I’m talking about combat, I have to mention one of my favorite characters in the game is Geno who is a doll come to life and is an outstanding presence in combat since he can shoot giant energy blasts from his finger tips, throw “destructo discs” like in Dragon Ball Z, rain down energy beams from the sky, and more. He’s unbelievably cool in the context of a Mario game and I still think about him fondly.

The best part of the game though is the excellent pacing as you’ll quickly move through unique scenarios at a rapid pace. My favorite stretch of the game for example is always going to be Moleville through Marrymore as you begin by rescuing kids trapped in a mine, which has its own twists and turns and finishes in an exciting mine cart escape minigame, which is then followed up by teaming up with Bowser to ascend Booster’s Tower (Booster is an odd, Wario-like fellow) which is riddled with traps, puzzles, and enemies, then a race up Booster Hill, and finally it culminates when you crash and rescue Princess Peach from getting married to Booster by fighting a giant wedding cake. Mario RPG is just such a wonderfully goofy and fun game throughout and that’s just one of the bigger zones in the world map. Other memorable moments include falling down a massive water fall which transitions into racing down a river atop a barrel, discovering a pirate ship submerged beneath the ocean, and a trip to a kingdom in the clouds. One other thing that helps Mario RPG stand out is its distinct isometric presentation which sparks the imagination and leads to unique isometric platforming. The mix of challenges and obstacles that revolve around its platforming remains engaging and surprising throughout the game. Like my other favorite games of all time, every time I replay Super Mario RPG I always find new things to appreciate about it and always have a tremendous time. It is without a doubt, my favorite Mario RPG to date.

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Thanks so much for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’d be curious to know what you thought. If you have played the Mario RPGs, I’d love to hear about your favorites! I’m most easily found on Blue Sky these days @justinmikos.bsky.social , but I am still on Twitter as well @JustinMikos. Until next time!

With another year behind us and my last unfinished top ten contender complete, I’m finally ready to share my top ten favorite games of 2023 blog! I played a ton of awesome games this year so the competition was fierce. I’ve also been reordering my list all year as all ten games here and my runner ups all spoke to me in different ways and figuring out where they all ultimately fit, especially with distance, proved very tricky. I have a ton to cover so let’s get right into it with my honorable mentions.

This year I actually have six(!) honorable mentions which is much more than usual. For my top ten GOTY blogs, I always pick games that first released in the current year so graphical remakes, remasters, and rereleases aren’t eligible to be included. That said, I have to give a shoutout in my honorable mentions this year to four of them: Super Mario RPG, Advance Wars 1 + 2 Re-Boot Camp, Metroid Prime Remastered, and Trails To Azure. These four games are all some of my favorite games of all time and had awesome upgrades and additions included such as the battle system remix and new post game super bosses in Mario RPG and the new online versus mode in Advance Wars that made them feel extra special. My fifth honorable mention is for Master Detective Archives Rain Code which is the latest game made by Kazutaka Kodaka the creator of Danganronpa. It’s a wild, messy adventure, but it all comes together for a spectacular finale spread across the last two chapters. I’m really looking forward to seeing how they build upon it in the sequel!

My sixth honorable mention was my most welcome surprise of the year, the Arc 2 fan translation of my all-time favorite mobile game Magia Record which infamously shut down in English back in October of 2020 right after teasing Arc 2! This fan translation has been running for a few years now, but I only just discovered it after checking the Magia Record wiki following the release of the exciting first trailer for the fourth Madoka movie back in September which reignited my love for my favorite anime series. While you can actually play the game again if you are willing to jump through some hoops, I was content with watching the translated cutscenes on Youtube which is about as close to ideal as possible. The fan translation is in progress, but you can watch roughly half of Arc 2 without issue which amounts to 30 hours of fully voiced cutscenes in the Main Story and a few hours of additional unvoiced cutscenes in the Another Story campaign. While you obviously lose out on getting to enjoy the combat, big duels, and monsters, the way this was done where the fan translation group injects text into the game and preserves some of the fun localization quirks like Alina speaking Italian makes it feel like the game never left. Of course, all of this wouldn’t matter if the story didn’t live up to Arc 1, but it absolutely does. I was really impressed how smartly it picked and built off some of the most interesting threads from Arc 1 to create an exciting character focused set up. All of the main characters I loved from the first Arc like Iroha and Tsuruno wonderfully return and some of the side characters like Karin, Ryo, and Ikumi, are elevated as well to stand alongside them. At the same time, Arc 2 introduces four main new factions: Promised Blood (my favorite!), The Tokime Tribe, the Neo-Magius, and one other initially shrouded in mystery. All of the groups are filled with entirely new characters all eager to clash with the original characters and each other. With a massive cast to juggle, the story could easily fall apart, but at least for the first half of Arc 2 it somehow manages to make all of the characters and plot elements gel amazingly well together and it’s only getting more interesting and dramatic as it goes. My favorite chapter so far was definitely chapter 6 which had immense payoffs for Felicia’s story in particular among other dramatic showdowns and revelations. I can’t wait to continue the story whenever Another Story Chapter 6 drops!

Ok with my honorable mentions done, let’s move on to my top ten favorite games of 2023!

10: Octopath Traveler II (Switch, also on PS4/5 and PC)

My blog was delayed as long as it was because I just had to finish Octopath Traveler II before settling on my final ten games which I did after 83.5 hours. Octopath Traveler II shares a similar structure to the original game where eight characters are largely traveling their own journeys, but are brought together for turn based combat with a job system that evokes Final Fantasy V. As you level up and advance through the individual stories it becomes safer to venture farther and farther out into the world to discover new towns and optional dungeons. Like the first game, the basic flow of combat is to build and spend BP to power up your actions and break enemy shields to deal massive damage. Your understanding of the job system, which lets you take on sub-jobs and mix and match learned skills, allows you to come up with devastating combos to conquer the most dangerous enemies with ease. The familiar elements and structure definitely impacted my enjoyment as well as the pressure I felt to finish it quickly, but the core gameplay is rock solid and fun and the new additions and refinements really elevated the experience over the original. Chief among the improvements is that the new characters all rock! I really liked all eight of the characters this time and was invested in seeing their stories through whether that was Hikari’s journey to take back his kingdom from his violent, usurper brother or Castii’s journey to rediscover her lost memories and create a cure for a deadly plague. My favorite of the group is definitely the merchant, Partitio, who has a huge heart and infectious energy (I especially love his “Yeehaw!” line in combat lol.) The new map is another big improvement as it is less video game-y in layout which makes exploration significantly more interesting and I appreciate there’s a wonderful surprise to discover inside it halfway through the journey. Finally, while it is unfortunately only at the end and fairly short, Octopath Traveler II actually gives you a team up adventure with all eight characters interacting at once this time. This dramatic end to your journey, complete with a wild final boss, makes for a memorable end to your adventure.

9: Final Fantasy XVI (PS5)

It’s been quite a long time since the first 100% new mainline Final Fantasy game was presented to us and XVI was largely worth the wait. The game starts off confidently with a violent prologue, but does unfortunately lose a lot of steam in the main narrative when the focus shifts roughly two thirds of the way in from the more grounded human drama to the inhuman villain who is a charisma void. But even though the story doesn’t quite stick the landing, there is a ton to love about XVI. The main characters, including the protagonist, Clive, as well as Cid and Jill, and the awesome Hideaway characters like Gav, Charon, and Blackthorne, make for some of my all time favorite Final Fantasy characters. The voice acting that brings these characters to life is exceptional too and really elevates the story including some of the more shaky narrative moments. I did largely enjoy the action combat system for the majority of my playtime, but I did find it came up short of hitting the level of depth I wanted from it. Far and away the biggest triumph of XVI are the epic Eikon battles. These fights between colossal beasts channel incredibly rad Asura’s Wrath-like energy with the big hits and explosive moments driven by being as awesome and entertaining as possible. When I think of my favorite moments in games this year, the Titan and Bahamut fights in particular are near the top of my list. Finally, I do want to give a shout out to the amazing soundtrack throughout. I’ve never played Final Fantasy XIV (not for lack of trying), but I’ve always heard how revered Masayoshi Soken’s soundtrack was for XIV. The soundtrack he put together here is phenomenal and especially elevates the most exciting moments of XVI. In particular, I adore Find The Flame, No Risk No Reward, To Sail Forbidden Seas, Our Terms, Ascension, and Away.

8: Spider-Man 2 (PS5)

I knew my love for Spider-Man 2 was going to be dampened by Venom and while it ultimately was, I still had an awesome time with the third Insomniac Spider-Man game. Both Peter and Miles are immensely lovable characters and getting to spend more time with them and the extended cast, especially on Miles’ side, was very welcome. I also largely really enjoyed Harry Osborne who essentially appears in person for the first time in the Insomniac games. While I just don’t vibe with Venom, Peter’s relationship with Harry drove much of the story and had some excellent moments attached to them both in the present and in flashbacks. Both the amazing set pieces in Spider-Man 2, like chasing Lizard up the side of a skyscraper, and the heartfelt quiet scenes, like spending time with a lost old man in a park, are equally amazing. As I was playing, I was regularly blown away by the spectacular graphics the game boasts. There’s a mission in particular where you chase after Peter as Miles when the Black Suit has taken over and I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing as I was battling villains in torrential rain with the New York skyline brilliantly rendered in the background and it was all running flawlessly. Beyond the story and presentation, the gameplay itself somehow feels even better than ever. Swinging through the city is an absolute blast, I love the stealth gameplay where you pick off enemy camps one enemy at a time, and when it switches to beating up hordes of villains it feels immensely satisfying thanks to the new abilities for both Peter and Miles. I can’t wait for more Insomniac Spider-Man after having such a great time with Spider-Man 2. Some of the plot threads this game leaves off on, both in the main story and in some of the very cool side quests, are very compelling and I’m so excited to reconnect with them and the characters in the DLC and games to come.

7: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Future Redeemed (Switch)

My 2022 GOTY was Xenoblade 3 so I was really looking forward to its DLC expansion Future Redeemed and it 100% delivered. While Future Redeemed is a prequel to Xenoblade 3, it really serves as the big conclusion to the trilogy as it brings back Shulk, Alvis, and Rex for one last adventure who team up with new characters Matthew, Nikol, and Glimmer. The main character, Matthew, is a lovable goof and I was especially pleased he has the Martial Artist class from Xenoblade 3 as the basis for his moveset since that was my favorite class in the base game. The combat remains a blast in Future Redeemed and while not much of a game changer, the new team up attacks are very cool. What stands out most for Future Redeemed on the gameplay front is exploring the new Cent-Omnia region that sits in the center of Aionios. This massive map has many secrets and hidden paths to both find and create yourself and the exploration music attached to its various zones is more in line with Xenoblade 1 and 2 which is a huge treat (the new battle theme incidentally rules!). Like the base game, there’s a very light Metroidvania element as you learn how to craft new devices that open up new routes throughout the world. I really dig the new progression system in Future Redeemed as nearly everything you do feeds into leveling up your characters and most excitingly there are major upgrades to find by exploring. While I don’t want to get too much into the details for people who haven’t played it yet, the approach to the big town at the center of the map was awesome as a huge fan of the series and the final ending of the adventure was absolutely wild and over the top. While the Xenoblade trilogy is now truly over, I’m so excited for what the future of the Xeno series might hold. As for Future Redeemed itself, my only real complaint is that it ended because I was so down to keep on adventuring which is an excellent place to be.

6: Like A Dragon Gaiden The Man Who Erased His Name (PS5, also on PS4 and Xbox One/SX)

When Yakuza 6 first came out, I hadn’t finished all of the Yakuza games up to that point so Kazuma Kiryu’s, at the time, big farewell adventure didn’t quite have the impact it was supposed to have for me. Like A Dragon Gaiden is obviously not Kiryu’s final adventure as he is set to be one of the two main protagonists for Like A Dragon 8, but even so Gaiden is set up like yet another farewell to Kiryu, as it sends him on one more solo adventure that both reminds us of his “greatest hits” in a way with a return to brawler combat, the return of Pocket Circuit, etc. while introducing new characters for him to befriend and/or clash against. The story begins with Kiryu being forced to work in secret for the Daidoji group. He is essentially dead to the world at large to protect their secrets so the group will not threaten his family. As part of the story, Kiryu now has access to an additional fighting style that incorporates more precise hits as well as secret agent gadgets like a Spider-Man-like whip, drones, and jet boots. These new abilities complement his classic moveset very well and give even more energy to the finest brawler combat in the series. One of the major side activities in Gaiden is an extensive arena mode which is so exciting to take on in large part because the combat is such a blast this time. Beyond combat there is of course a generous array of side activities including substories and minigames. In particular, I really latched onto Pocket Circuit racing since I actually never really played it in prior games it had appeared. While it is somewhat rigid, I had fun upgrading my car to take on the increasingly elaborate courses and increasingly difficult competitors. What ultimately elevates Gaiden for me is absolutely Kiryu and the story. There are so many fantastic scenes with Kiryu right at the heart of them including an extended sequence where he parties across town, his many encounters with the two major villains that end in awesome fist fights, and the emotional ending that works as well as it does by carrying the full weight of the series behind it and because of an absolutely stellar performance by Kiryu’s Japanese voice actor. As I’m writing this blog, I’m barely a few days away from Kiryu’s next adventure which seems to be absolutely massive in comparison, and yet the story here is just so fantastic, exciting, and impactful that I think Gaiden is going to stick with me for a long time.

5: Tevi (Switch, also on PC)

Tevi is the follow up game to Rabi-Ribi which was an indie bullet hell Metroidvania game that was generally really awesome, but it had major problems with some poor, embarrassing character designs and too much fanservice that made it not the easy, strong recommendation it should have been. All Tevi needed to do then was to tone down the fanservice elements which thankfully it does. What’s cool about Tevi though, is that it is an even better Metroidvania than Rabi-Ribi by somehow being even grander than that already massive game and because it evolved its combat into an almost 2D Devil May Cry-like experience while still keeping the bullet hell flavoring of Rabi-Ribi for extra spice. The story of the game makes a bad first impression with some tired anime jokes and cliches, but after a few hours those elements largely disappear and I came to enjoy the main characters, especially Tevi herself and her friend Sable, and was invested in where the story was heading. While the story does a good job guiding you through the world, I was really impressed with how huge the maps are and how unrestricted you generally are in exploration. While I had a sense based off the completion percentage of how big the game was exactly, I was always impressed running into new zone after new zone, most of which do not reuse themes between them.

In addition to the standard permanent stat boosts and ability upgrades to find, scattered around Tevi’s world are a ton of badges to sometimes discover and to sometimes purchase. The badge system resembles Paper Mario’s at first glance, but you ultimately can equip far more badges in Tevi than you ever could in Paper Mario as your limit continues to increase over the game. This means most badges aren’t terribly dramatic, but through them and the new crafting system you can really shape Tevi’s abilities in a way that feels unique to you which is very cool. The normal movement feels expertly fine-tuned for both exploration and combat and it remains engaging through the full adventure. The same goes for Tevi’s moveset in combat which increases in options and complexity as you level up. My favorite part of Tevi is definitely the boss fights that really put your skills to the test. One on one duels return in Tevi and are better than ever, but I was most glad to see giant boss monsters for added variety. As the game goes on, most boss fights have multiple phases and due to the exciting Devil May Cry-like action and the demands of the bullet hell patterns, these fights become very intense and spectacular. I especially adored the final boss fights which I couldn’t believe I conquered on my first try. As I was out of healing items and my health bar was flashing as I entered the final phase, the final boss began just spewing bullets everywhere and the screen literally started tilting left and right to emphasize the chaos and yet somehow I still managed to pull through. It was an unforgettable ending to an amazing adventure.

4: Pikmin 4 (Switch)

It’s been a decade since Pikmin 3 and while I will be forever disappointed the awesome co-op modes from prior games did not return and also due to how frustrating some of the simplified controls can be in practice, Pikmin 4 offers the best and most substantial campaign in the series which is wonderful. For the main game, Pikmin 4 does not feature a day limit to complete your tasks so you can tackle levels at your own pace which I personally prefer even as I enjoy working efficiently. Exploring each of the levels is immensely fun as you build up your army, slay monsters, create shortcuts, find treasure, and discover and conquer Dandori challenges and caves, the latter of which gloriously return from Pikmin 2. Pikmin 4’s main levels are especially amazing including the first ever beach level (complete with a sand castle you explore and a tide that recedes halfway through the day) and the first ever indoor house level for the series. The treacherous final level is another standout, as it is filled with poisonous mushrooms and terrifying creatures not to mention some of the most dangerous challenges including the fantastic final boss. The Dandori challenges and caves are my favorite part of Pikmin 4. I adored the challenge modes in prior games, so the Dandori Challenges in particular that give you a limited amount of time to collect everything and kill every monster are immensely appealing and satisfying to perfect. While one of them is a dud, the ten extra hard challenges in particular represent the peak of the game for me as it becomes such a fascinating, puzzling, and skillful challenge to keep all of your Pikmin working as efficiently as possible. Caves don’t offer the same rush element, but I appreciate all of them feel like proper challenges since they are all hand crafted this time.

While the levels, challenges, and caves are the heart of the game, there’s a lot of fun elements beyond that which really make Pikmin 4 uniquely exciting and extra special. I haven’t mentioned Oatchi yet for example, who is a constant, lovable companion throughout Pikmin 4 and is essentially both an extra captain and a hero unit who can substantially change the tide of battle and very efficiently complete tasks. Ice Pikmin and Glow Pikmin are both awesome additions to the normal Pikmin types and both have distinct, useful purposes. On the opposite end there are fun, new enemies to face off against including terrifying, tall, blue, bipedal crabs and a disco ball robot spider. Finally, there are some fun new modes as well that mix up the standard gameplay in interesting ways. Night missions for example are essentially defense missions against hordes of enemies while the unlockable Olimar campaign evokes Pikmin 1 with a tight-ish time limit (it’s a bit nicer than it first appears). All of these elements and more make Pikmin 4 my favorite campaign in the series and make it an absolute blast to play. I’m looking forward to one day experiencing it all over again.

3: Super Mario Bros Wonder (Switch)

Super Mario Bros Wonder is an absolute delight from start to finish and was my favorite game last year on a gameplay level. While I adored the New Super Mario Bros. series, with my favorites New Super Wii and New Super U eclipsing even the revered classics, I was ready for a new take on 2D Mario. While Wonder resembles the new Super games at a core level, in other ways it is a fresh take on the series with new power ups (Elephant Mario and Bubble Mario are my favorites), new enemies, a lovely new graphical art style, and plenty of new mechanics. The structure of each normal level is a radical rethinking of 2D Mario games as roughly halfway through the focus shifts dramatically when you grab a Wonder Seed. Suddenly an onrush of new enemies may appear, Mario might transform into wacky new forms, the stage might turn into an auto scroller or shift to advancing vertically upward, and even sometimes the enemies break out into song. Reacting on the fly to the new challenges and unexpected surprises the Wonder Seeds present is great fun and I both appreciate and am astounded by how while you can roughly boil it down like I just did, ideas aren’t really reused much at all in the main campaign across so many levels. Zooming out a bit, I appreciate the flow of challenges in Wonder as there is an extra hard level tucked inside each world and there are short mini challenges, called Break Time levels, to break up the normal levels. Overall, Mario Wonder feels like the 3D Mario team made a 2D game with all of the constant creativity present, which as a much bigger fan of the 3D games, I couldn’t be more pleased. One tradition of the 3D Mario games in particular I was very happy to see finally represented here is that Mario Wonder ends on an extra, super difficult final challenge if you manage to complete everything else. This final challenge is an incredible send off and I’m still thinking about just how cool it, and the game as a whole is, months later. I hope we won’t have to wait too long for a follow up to Wonder, because I’m so excited to see what the 2D Mario team will make next.

2: Alan Wake II (PS5, also on Xbox Series SX and PC)

I did not think when I first played Alan Wake back in 2010 it would take 13 years for the sequel to release, but I am super happy this is the one we actually got because Alan Wake II is a triumphant sequel that captivated me from start to finish and completely blew me away. The story for Alan Wake II is split between two characters. The first is Saga Anderson, an FBI agent called in to investigate disturbing murders in Bright Falls, (the setting of the first game) and the second of course is Alan Wake who remains trapped in the mysterious and ever shifting Dark Place. A significant amount of time has passed between when Alan first arrived in Bright Falls and Alan Wake II which is great because many of the original characters are still around, like the rockstars of The Old Gods of Asgard and the radio host Pat Maine, and plenty of quirky new characters have come into prominence like the Koskela Brothers who run a coffee themed amusement park named Coffee World. Like Remedy’s prior game, Control, Alan Wake II leans ever harder into mixing gameplay, music, and live action cutscenes. I don’t want to go into details, but the section of the game where The Old Gods of Asgard’s song Herald of Darkness plays is awesome, lovably goofy, and incredibly creative. It is my favorite sequence in games this year by far. While Herald of Darkness is the absolute standout sequence, there are so many fun things to discover in Alan Wake II whether that is the goofy live action Koskela ads, fun crossovers in Remedy’s shared universe, and amusing encounters with NPCs. Circling back to the music, the vocal songs in Alan Wake II are tremendous and add so much to the experience, whether they are driving gameplay sequences, capping off chapters and speaking to the greater themes in play, or are simply wonderful surprises to find hidden in the world.

While the story and presentation elements really steal the show for Alan Wake II, the gameplay is great fun as well as it shifts the genre from action (which I do still prefer) to survival horror. While you can definitely accumulate a great horde of resources, especially as you become better at the game and you upgrade your inventory space, ammo can still become quite tight and since health doesn’t regenerate fully by itself there’s a degree of tension as you move between the safe areas bathed in light. Knowing when to engage in combat and when to run away and regroup becomes crucial to stay one step ahead of the groups of Taken that can harass you. While the dodge roll feels too tough to execute for how limited it feels, the actual gunplay feels very satisfying with your weapons having an extra satisfying pop and blowback to them. While I didn’t play these games myself growing up, I watched my brother play a handful of old PS1 era survival horror games and I really like how Alan Wake II sort of taps into the energy of those classics. This is most apparent in my favorite area of the game, Coffee World, which has narrow passage ways and puzzles to solve that involve carrying key items and information back and forth and just has great spooky vibes throughout. I hadn’t mentioned it yet, but some of these levels are just so menacingly brought to life with the stellar graphics that make you feel uncomfortable even if you are carrying a lot of powerful tools, healing items, and weapons. I do want to mention too, Alan’s gameplay in the Dark Place operates quite a bit differently than Saga’s as you’ll often shift the world around to solve puzzles and open new paths. It’s fairly simple in execution and yet it feels so cool and satisfying to play through.

I’m again really glad we got such a fantastic sequel with Alan Wake II. I’m looking forward to seeing what the DLC will bring and even if it takes a while for Alan Wake III, I’m glad Remedy is moving fully ahead bringing more amazing and truly distinct games to life. Alan Wake II is a very special game that I’ll treasure for years to come.

1: The Legend of Heroes Trails Into Reverie (PS5 and Switch, also on PS4 and PC)

Trails Into Reverie is the 10th game in the long running series and serves as a final farewell to three different sets of characters from the past three arcs and serves to set up and tease the future of the series as it looks Eastward towards the country of Calvard. Trails of Cold Steel IV promised something similar by bringing characters across arcs together, but was undermined by a plot that didn’t play to the series strengths as too many things were explained with “the magical curse did that” versus more grounded explanations. In Trails Into Reverie, despite the even larger cast thanks to even more returning characters and a fun set of new ones, it manages somehow to send off everyone properly and give them each their chance to shine thanks to sharper and more thoughtful writing across the board. In so many scenes, the writing cuts to the emotional heart of the matter and shows how much the characters have grown because of their journeys which is just so satisfying to experience. I also appreciate you do not just get the three main campaigns here, but also a good number of short stories called Daydreams. These Daydreams work on many levels as they serve to give specific characters the spotlight, have a varied range of genres, tone, and plots, and often fill in fun backstory the main story just doesn’t have the time for. All of this of course matters because I generally love the main playable characters at the heart of Trails (Estelle, Joshua, Lloyd, Rean, Altina, etc.) down to some of the most obscure NPCs some of which I was both surprised and thrilled to see return. While the characters are what I fondly think about most from Reverie, the actual plot was great fun and kept me guessing for a while about the big developments and how it would all come together. I also felt it was very successful in getting me excited for the future of the series in Calvard especially with the final Daydreams that occurred mostly as a sparse visual novel.

While the characters and story are undoubtedly the main attraction, Trails Into Reverie is also a fantastic JRPG to play due to the classic turn based combat system even more frequently operating at its peak and due to a generous array of great minigames. Trails Into Reverie has a different approach from the rest of the Trails games by having three main characters whose stories and parties you bounce between as well as a randomly generated dungeon called the True Reverie Corridor that also houses the Daydreams and minigames. While the main game operates like a more focused Trails experience as side quests don’t really exist (there are still missables), it’s in the True Reverie Corridor in particular that Reverie’s combat system really shines. Every time you enter the True Reverie Corridor and reset it, you’ll get a fresh array of challenges to tackle that often encourage you to mix up your party members since meaningful rewards are tied to completing them. Having to mix up your party pairs well with the high concentration of bosses and elite monsters in the True Reverie Corridor because the combat system shines best when you are forced to put it to the test and have to regularly come up with new ways to come out on top. Having fresh parties and frequent tough challenges thus only further encourages that. I was impressed with the general difficulty curve here as well as somehow another new battle mechanic is introduced called United Fronts which give you access to very powerful attacks and healing and somehow the game’s difficulty holds up well with yet another powerful tool in your arsenal. All in all, I’ve always enjoyed Trails combat all the way back to the original Sky FC and while the appeal of the series’ combat has shifted in different ways since, Trails Into Reverie I’d consider one of the strongest entries as it kept me engaged virtually the whole way through the adventure. As for the minigames, there really is an impressive amount on offer here including a new magical girl themed rail shooter complete with story scenes attached, the return of the card game Vantage Masters which absolutely rules, the return of the Puyo Puyo inspired Pom Pom Party, and so much more. All of these minigames offered great, fun diversions from the main game and helped contribute to Trails Into Reverie feeling extra substantial.

In totality, what Trails Into Reverie ultimately does is very special. It somehow meaningfully builds off the prior 900-1,000 some hours of directly connected JRPG storytelling and gameplay proceeding it to create something that wonderfully pays tribute to everything that came prior, it successfully and excitingly establishes where the series is going, and it also operates in the moment as a fantastic JRPG that is so satisfying and enjoyable to play through. Trails Into Reverie is both an incredible achievement then and an awesome game. It is my 2023 Game of the Year.

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Thank you for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’m always curious what you think so be sure to reach out to me and let me know. I’m curious what your favorite games this year were too! You can find me mostly on Blue Sky these days @justinmikos.bsky.social , but I am still on Twitter as well @JustinMikos. 

This is the end of the main portion of my blog, but as in prior years just below I will share the list of the games I finished last year divided into 2023 games and older games. Octopath Traveler II I finished in 2024 so it is unlisted below. Until next time!

2023 Games I Beat (30)

Forspoken (Platinum)
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line
Metroid Prime Remastered (100%)
Kirby’s Return To Dreamland Deluxe
Magolor Epilogue (100%)
Trails To Azure Switch
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon
Like A Dragon: Ishin!
Advance Wars (Reboot Camp)
Xenoblade 3 Future Redeemed
Advance Wars 2 (Replay via Reboot Camp)
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom
We Love Katamari Reroll
Final Fantasy XVI
Trails Into Reverie
Pikmin 4 (100%)
This Way Madness Lies
Master Detective Archives: Rain Code
The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails
Super Mario Bros Wonder (100%)
Spider-Man 2 (Platinum)
Alan Wake II (Platinum)
WarioWare Move It!
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Waves 4-6
Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name (Platinum)
Yohane the Parhelion: Blaze In The Deepblue
Super Mario RPG Switch
F-Zero 99
Pokemon Violet The Teal Mask
Tevi

Old Games I Beat In 2023 (30)

Mario Super Picross (100%)
Samurai Maiden
Breath of Fire
Breath of Fire II
Earthbound Beginnings
Earthbound
Donkey Kong NES + Arcade
Fire Emblem GBA
Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones
Katamari Damacy Reroll
Golden Sun
Golden Sun The Lost Age
F-Zero GP Legend
Zero Wing
Earth Defense Force 5
Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga (Replay)
Mario Golf
The Mysterious Murasame Castle
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Replay)
Motor Raid (Replay)
Fighting Vipers 2
Donkey Kong 64 (101%)
Wario World (100% Replay)
Star Wars Rogue Squadron II (Replay)
Mario Golf Toadstool Tour (Replay)
F-Zero GX (Replay)
Kirby’s Air Ride (Replay)
The Legend of Zelda Four Swords Adventures (Replay)
Ducktales Remastered
Tales of Symphonia (GameCube Replay)

​I’ve done a few deeper dives into games on my blog over the years including Xenoblade X, Magia Record, and Xenoblade 3. After 110+ hours of gameplay, I recently finished The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom and I find myself very eager to discuss it at length. I’m not going to shy away from spoilers, which would be hard especially given how muted the prerelease information was, so if you haven’t finished your own journey with Zelda, I encourage you to return to this blog later. To structure this blog, I’ll first discuss my concerns in the lead up to Tears of the Kingdom and then I’ll dip in and out of topics as I follow my own journey through the game. Tears of the Kingdom is an absolutely massive game that offers tons of freedom for how you can approach it. Everyone’s experiences are going to be wildly different as a result which I find fascinating.

When Tears of the Kingdom was first announced, my main concern rested with the reuse of the same Hyrule we explored in Breath of the Wild. There are plenty of games I really enjoy that feature reused maps such as the Trails games and the Yakuza games, while there are other games I really don’t. One game that featured a reused map that negatively impacted my enjoyment was The Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds which reused the overworld of A Link To The Past one of my absolute favorite games ever made. Prior to A Link Between Worlds ever existing, I always wondered what it would be like to return to A Link To The Past’s world and expand the map outward. When you climb Death Mountain for example, you can see the land beyond Hyrule. A hypothetical sequel could have possibly featured a new path in the forest nearby Death Mountain to lead to these unexplored lands. Instead, what we got with A Link Between Worlds was just a very lightly remixed version of A Link To The Past with even the new dungeons often playing around with similar themes. While I’ve replayed A Link To The Past countless times, I’ve been relatively down on A Link Between Worlds compared to other Zelda games that I haven’t had much desire to revisit it at all. I’ve come to realize, I’m generally fine with map reuse when I feel there are still surprises to be discovered whether that’s new characters, big story moments, and/or proper new adventures. In the absence of info, I started pinning my hopes towards the original map size, the potential of the sky islands, and my dreams for underground content for Zelda TK. 

I had two other major questions/concerns walking into Tears of the Kingdom, specifically dungeon gameplay and a last minute concern regarding construction and vehicles. While I really liked the shrines in Breath of the Wild, which often offered a few quick puzzles and challenges to solve, the full dungeon equivalent of the Divine Beasts left me wanting as the spaces felt too small and the challenges within, both combat and puzzle solving, felt too simple and disconnected from each other. The elemental and animal dungeon themes blurred together thanks to all four sharing materials and design elements. Far more successful was Hyrule Castle, a dungeon you could amazingly approach from any angle and engage with as much or as little as you wanted as well as the motorcycle themed DLC dungeon which suggested the Zelda team still had excellent dungeon design in them. As for my other concern, while I thoroughly enjoyed Breath of the Wild’s physics systems, I was concerned in the February 2023 trailer there seemed to be an expanded focus on constructing and vehicles. I’ve to this day never connected with Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts since the controls always felt too clunky so I was worried about Zelda seemingly evoking that game and shifting away from actions the player could do directly into something more indirect.

I’m eager to get into discussing the final game, so I’ll start from the top. The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is the direct sequel to The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, my 2017 Game of the Year. The game starts in a fuzzy, few years gap following BOTW that sees Link and Zelda investigating deep below the depths of Hyrule Castle to find the source of the Gloom emanating from it. Coming into contact with Gloom makes people sick and during gameplay can disable some of Link’s heart containers unless properly treated. Link and Zelda ultimately discover the mummified corpse of the most prominent Zelda villain, Ganondorf, breaking the seal placed on him. Amidst the chaos that ensues, Link’s Master Sword is broken, his arm is severely wounded, and finally, while falling down a chasm, Zelda is seemingly teleported away. The game shifts to an extended tutorial on the Great Sky Islands where Link wakes up with a new magical right arm inherited from Rauru, the first King of Hyrule. TK’s tutorial is somewhat disappointingly more structured than the Great Plateau of BOTW and oddly sets high expectations for the rest of the sky islands that goes unfulfilled. It introduces key concepts you’ll need to survive one by one like hunting, cooking, and managing extreme temperatures, as well as Link’s new arm abilities and ancient Zonai devices. Link’s abilities from the last game are all gone now and are replaced with Ultrahand (which lets you grab and glue things together), Fuse (which lets you combine items with your equipment), Ascend (which lets you fly through most ceilings), and Recall (which lets you rewind time on objects only). There are lore reasons for both of these, but as a result of this ability reshuffling, bombs are now harvested from Bomb Flowers and are most often used by being attached to arrows, and, to encourage Fuse use, all weapons have been rusted out and have miserable durability and damage until they have been Fused with an item. As for Zonai devices, you’ll frequently use these with Ultrahand in construction and puzzle solving. These frequently resemble real things in our world like fans, rockets, and fire hydrants, but there are unique items too like the stabilizer that helps objects stand up straight.

Once you have completed the Great Sky Island tutorial, Zelda TK finally allows you to dive down to the surface which is when the game is astoundingly, fully open to tackle however you like. While you are gently pointed towards the newly established Lookout Landing just outside Hyrule Castle, which I knew from my Breath of the Wild experience must contain the paraglider (an incredibly valuable exploration tool), it is possible to march straight to Ganondorf if you know where he is waiting or even do the rest of the main quest before it is ever given to you. If you discover parts of the main quest earlier than intended, the quest chain and dialogue will account for that which is very cool. What is most interesting about this approach, where nothing is required or strictly pointed towards, is that for better and for worse it is entirely possible to miss out on entire systems, abilities, equipment, and story elements or discover these things later or even earlier than is perhaps ideal. For another immediate great example of this, when you first land on the surface, Hestu, a big Korok who dances for you to expand your weapons, shields, and bow inventories when you give him Korok Seeds is apparently nearby, but I never saw him at all. For at least 20 some hours then, I had no idea how to expand my inventory which is a very useful thing to be able to do! The tradeoff of course is that when I did finally encounter him it was such a big moment in my greater journey. While I was generally fine with the rest of the systems, items, and abilities you can miss for hours (stuff like the Master Sword and Phantom Abilities make for great rewards), both Hestu and armor upgrading via the Great Fairies are the two systems I wish were available in a more straightforward way.

Let’s talk next about Lookout Landing which I consider the definitive location of Tears of the Kingdom. Outside of a very cool temporary Gerudo town, Lookout Landing is the only new town in Zelda TK (which is disappointing!) and it evolves over the course of the main quest. You begin by reuniting with Purah from Breath of the Wild who ultimately gives you a new paraglider and regularly gives you new main quests to pursue and a little extra direction to other areas of interest like Lurelin Village and the Depths. There are a few shops and facilities available at Lookout Landing including a very handy fast travel point, a free bed (which is incredibly useful since the game is most difficult at the start), an armor shop, a kitchen, and a goddess statue (used to upgrade your health, stamina, and later on your phantom sages). As your adventure progresses, new characters arrive at Lookout Landing and more facilities and services become available like Hestu, a stable, and a bargainer statue. I was especially happy to discover a very elaborate tunnel network even eventually opens in the emergency shelter below which is very satisfying to explore. There is unfortunately a static feeling to Lookout Landing as well. Perhaps I missed quests that would fix these issues, but I never figured out a way to get the cook to return to Lookout Landing and while you do gather a diverse force at Lookout Landing it never really feels like they accomplish anything.

Before I explain my immediate goals on leaving Lookout Landing, I should briefly mention here if you are unfamiliar with the final game, Tears of the Kingdom did opt to expand the world of Breath of the Wild, but interestingly it does so vertically both up to the skies above with the newly arrived sky islands and below into the newly revealed Depths rather than horizontally anywhere on the surface. The original surface map does however get a substantial number of new caves and wells to explore some of which are quite complex. To be clear on this, the three layers of the world are directly layered on top of each other seamlessly. It’s possible to jump off a sky island and directly descend down to the surface and through a giant hole in the ground to enter the Depths and there are even a few cases where you do this to complete challenges and solve puzzles.

Upon leaving Lookout Landing with my paraglider my immediate goals were to check out the Depths for the first time and then activate every tower so I could see the full topography of the map. As I just mentioned, you can enter The Depths by jumping down freshly opened up chasms in the earth. Thankfully there’s one just outside Lookout Landing so you can get your first taste of it immediately. While prior to launch the Depths were a complete secret, I had expected there to be a substantial underground component to Tears of the Kingdom based off the very first trailer. I thus had expectations and an image in mind for what the underground zone walking in should be. I’ll discuss this in full later, but sadly I walked away with mixed feelings overall. When you first descend into the Depths, you’ll immediately notice it is pitch-black outside of a few glowing orange plants. These are called Lightroots and upon walking up and activating one the area around it will be illuminated and it becomes active as a fast travel destination. In the same way I wanted to claim all of the towers immediately to get all of the surface and sky map data, I knew immediately upon claiming my first Lightroot I’d want to light up the entirety of the Depths before my game was over.

While I activated a few Lightroots immediately, I quickly left and turned my attention back to claiming all of the towers. This meant I was interacting with the surface map I was well familiar with from Breath of the Wild. While I didn’t know the extent of it just yet, my frequent, singular focus toward objectives would come to define my experience interacting with the surface map in Zelda TK. While Breath of the Wild’s map was large and offered tons of room to explore, I remembered so much of the broad strokes from my 65+ hours I spent with BOTW and its DLC. I thus largely knew then what areas of the maps were immediately changed and also had a good sense of where they would place items and areas of interest like shrines and caves which often made large swaths of the map feel less valuable. Yet, when I did relax and take in the world I was in, I was regularly reminded why I was so won over by Breath of the Wild originally as some of the areas are just so amazingly realized and wondrous. Zelda TK generally looks a smidge better than BOTW and its performance being more consistent makes the world feel even more solid.

​Since I keep bringing them up, now is a good time to talk about caves. The original Breath of the Wild had a few caves, but Zelda TK has a significant number of them cutting into and twisting around the earth. Caves are often filled with materials including gems that are mainly used to make money, but also have use in crafting and weapon fusion. Caves can feature bosses and enemy gauntlets to fight as well as shrines and armor to discover. While they tend to blur together in appearance as a majority of them are normal caves and wet caves that have hard to climb, slick surfaces, there is enough variation to keep them interesting including lava, ice, desert, and even a few dungeon-like caves. What really sticks out about caves are how complex they often are in terms of their layouts. They often twist around themselves in engaging and satisfying ways that make them a joy to explore and some even feature mine cart tracks to ride, rivers of water, ice, sand, and lava to navigate, and environmental puzzles to solve. As far as brand new spaces in Zelda TK go, caves are my favorite overall because you never know just what you are in for whenever you enter one.

Let’s talk about towers next. There’s 15 of them and some are tricky to reach, others have enemies guarding them, and a few have a small quest or puzzle involved in order to activate them. I have two favorites I definitely want to talk about. One of them is first surrounded by thorny vines and while your instinct is to light the vines on fire, this particular area of the map has nearly constant rainfall. At first, I moved on hoping either the rain would break or I’d learn of a way to break the rain, but on my return trip it was still a constant downpour. This turned out to be one my favorite puzzles in my adventure as the solution I came up with was to build a wooden roof over the thorns near the door. Now that they were out of the rain they could be properly lit on fire and I could activate the tower. Another very cool tower had me entering a cave below and riding a raft across a swift moving river so I could use Ascend and enter the tower from below. Incidentally, this was a recurring and very fun use for Ascend where you knew of locked buildings on the surface map and by memorizing the coordinates you could enter them from cave networks below by jumping through their ceilings.

When you first enter a tower, Link is launched high into the sky and pulls out his Purah Pad tablet to scan the surrounding land and sky areas. From that point on, you can fast travel back to the towers and launch out of them whenever you want which is ideal to get somewhere quickly by paragliding. What became my routine when first entering a sky tower was to use the height I gained from launching upwards to paraglide to nearby sky islands. If you exclude the Great Sky Islands, roughly 80% of the important sky islands are easily accessible by launching yourself from a tower and these largely proved disappointing. While the Great Sky Islands were large enough to feature mountains and rivers to traverse, most of the rest of the sky islands are thin and narrow. Worse though, they largely feel copy and pasted in function. When you paraglide onto your first set of sky islands in a chain, you’ll often traverse some narrow walkways and make use of prebuilt or nearly built Zonai devices to traverse to the next small island in the chain. This usually leads to a plus sign shaped island that in the center has a launch pad that can rocket you to other nearby islands, one end will have Zonai device dispenser (essentially a gacha capsule machine where you gamble Zonai charges you acquire when you defeat robots to hopefully get items you want), and finally another end will either have a shrine ready to enter or it will task you to bring a nearby crystal over which is pointed to with a laser beam to activate it. Now if it is one of the crystal shines either you’ll be fighting a Flux Construct boss (perhaps my favorite boss in the game as you have to Ultrahand away its core block to dismantle and damage the shape changing robot), making simple flying vehicles to transport it, or moving islands around with nearby devices to create a path. These activities are all pretty fun so it’s just a shame it feels so mechanical with the repeated islands and layouts.

The other 20% of sky islands out of reach require you to make use of vehicles which I haven’t really talked about yet. Vehicles are constructed with Link’s new Ultrahand ability by grabbing nearby objects and gluing them together. When your creations don’t have any electronics on them, like a simple raft or bridge, it’s just a matter of placing them where they are needed. But if they do involve a Zonai Device, like say a fan used for propulsion, it will dip into your portable energy cells if a battery isn’t directly attached to the device. When you begin the game, you only have one battery icon made up of three pips which can deplete very quickly unless you dip into your Zonai charges which you might want to save for the gacha machines. Thankfully your humble energy cell capacity can be expanded over time to up to sixteen batteries or 48 pips. You need 100 energy charges to expand your energy pool by one pip and you need either 300 normal pieces of Zonaite or 15 pieces of Large Zonaite to make 100 charges. That’s a lot of Zonaite! Barely any Zonaite can be found on the surface so you’ll have to go down to the Depths in order to mine any or claim it from defeated enemies down there which is an arduous task. Zonaite is also used with the one hidden arm ability, Autobuild, which handily lets you reassemble your most recent creations and ones you have saved, so the grind to max out your batteries isn’t even straightforward. In the midst of all this, I do appreciate Zonaite gives each layer of the world a purpose. The surface is where most of your adventure and building happens, the sky islands are where you gather new Zonai devices (every gacha machine offers different items) and demands the need to construct batteries, while the Depths are the clear path to harvesting more Zonaite. Outside of the colossal grind to really empower your creations and some slightly clumsy item rotation controls, construction with Ultrahand in general is simple and powerful to execute with. It’s especially impressive too if you attach a control stick part as vehicles, both ground and flying machines, just intuitively control. While I’d like to see future Zelda games focus on the playable characters abilities directly again, I’d be sad if building doesn’t return in some fashion in future games because it’s that cool.

While there aren’t many interesting, unique sky islands and chains, there thankfully are a few. One of my favorite chains features scattered islands orbiting a Death Star looking orb that is extra high up in the sky. These islands are engulfed in a low gravity field which makes Link jump far higher and any rockets launch objects significantly farther. When you finally travel up high enough to paraglide into the Death Star like orb, inside is a puzzle revolving around manipulating light beams. Another extra cool island is engulfed in thunderstorms. I didn’t know it was ultimately attached to the main quest so I visited it early by building a flying machine (I made a really simple but effective one by attaching two fans to a control stick lol). With my machine I flew over the island and effectively parachuted in. With all of the lightning in full effect, I removed my equipment and stumbled around in the fog until I found a shrine and ultimately a door that led to the resting place of the fifth sage. I was shocked when I had a cutscene play and my main quest updated ahead of the main story. One other set of islands that proved very cool were the labyrinth islands that involve all three layers of the map. On the surface you have to renavigate the returning treacherous mazes on the ground now covered in gloom to activate a door in the sky labyrinths. By pulling out and putting away your paraglider to ride wind currents you can navigate these suspended 3D mazes. Finally, your efforts culminate in you diving back down and through the earth to fight a construct boss. I’ll talk about them specifically later, but some of my favorite shrines in the game were housed in the floating labyrinths which made them even more special. Finally, I was both thrilled and terrified when I discovered my first sky island in the corner of the map above Eventide Island that was home to a King Gleeok Super Boss. King Gleeoks are the toughest challenge to conquer in Zelda TK as they are three headed dragons with fire, ice, and lightning heads which makes them tough to plan for (normal Gleeoks only have one active element). They also hit like trucks and their large health demands significant resources to deplete. Killing my first King Gleeok was one of my favorite achievements in my adventure.

​When I was done activating all of the towers, I turned my attention towards tackling my first regional phenomenon and first dungeon. I had hit up enough of the stables and talked to enough people reading the newspaper to see the game was pushing me towards the Rito Village first so I decided to make that my first stop. Along the way I encountered Impa in a field next to a geoglyph, artwork that covers large swaths of the surface. I had encountered a few earlier in my adventure, but didn’t know what you had to do with them, namely search for a small pool of water. These were the actual tears of the kingdom and functioned as the Memory equivalent from BOTW. In this game, the tears revealed Zelda had traveled back in time 10,000 some years ago to the founding of Hyrule. From this point on you could activate the tears in any order and unfortunately I just so happened to grab the last one next. The Zelda series regularly mistreats Zelda as she is often kidnapped and/or cursed in most games and thus needs rescuing. Somehow Tears of the Kingdom is the worst Zelda has been treated so far and this one actually made me angry. In that final memory, it’s revealed that not only was Zelda removed from all of the events of the main game, again, this time it is because she was inexplicably sent to the past through no choice of her own just so she could have the opportunity to lose her humanity for 10,000+ years by becoming an immortal dragon so her body could guard and revive the damaged Master Sword. I was so let down and upset by this terrible revelation about Zelda’s role in the adventure since I was hoping since she was rescued in the last game she’d actually get to participate in this adventure and instead we got this absolutely insulting nonsense. Following this, the rest of the story never recovered for me. I was also disappointed that many of the more interesting characters like Rauru, Mineru, and Ganondorf were also once again largely relegated to the past story rather than being active forces in the present day story as I often found them more interesting than characters in the present.

​The first part of the main quest, the regional phenomena, tasks you with visiting each of the four main towns you visited in BOTW, namely the Rito’s, Goron’s, Zora’s, and Gerudo’s. Once again, the towns are facing a crisis of some kind, for example an unnatural cold snap for the Rito. While I enjoy interacting with townspeople, it struck me how low my interest was returning to these towns walking in as only the main characters in each town had made lasting impressions from BOTW. Still, I did enjoy returning to Zora’s Domain because of the interesting architecture and I adored seeing the new goofy statue erected depicting Sidon and Link’s heroics from BOTW. I also really enjoyed the Gerudo town because I didn’t expect to have to break into an emergency center all of the townspeople were using to hide from the Ghibdo hordes outside. I enjoyed exploring the shelter so much I gladly took up a side quest that involved taking pictures of ancient tablets hidden inside. Each town ultimately points you towards an approach to each dungeon and my favorites were certainly Tulin’s and Sidon’s. Tulin’s has you climb up a series of sky islands and flying ships to reach the Wind Temple and it was my favorite traversal in the game thanks to Tulin’s partner ability to summon a gust of wind which lets you launch yourself forward while paragliding. Sidon’s, who is my favorite of the modern champions, has you cleaning up gunk in Zora’s Domain like it is Mario Sunshine, tackling cool puzzles on a fish shaped island and the Ancient Zora Waterworks, and ultimately ascending high into the sky by swimming up a waterfall. Outside of Sidon, I think the characters at the heart of these quests just being ok means the lead up to shrines didn’t quite leave the impact I wanted. 

The actual temples themselves are generally a major improvement over the Divine Beasts from BOTW as the puzzles and combat encounters are better and more tightly united. One of my favorites is the Fire Temple which heavily revolves around riding and adjusting the routes of minecarts. It becomes particularly engaging once you have to start thinking both horizontally and vertically. The Fire Temple also prominently features one of my favorite mechanics in the game of cooling chunks of lava, picking them up with Ultrahand, and then gluing them together to solve puzzles. Another temple I really enjoyed was the Lightning Temple as it begins with Indiana Jones-style ruins exploration before you enter a vertical chamber that has puzzles and puzzle rooms that connect across floors. Unfortunately, there is one major part of one temple that fell flat. The final temple, which occurs after a welcome return to Hyrule Castle and an exploration of the Zonai Ruins, starts off strong with collecting, transporting, and assembling pieces of a robot. Sadly, if riding the robot was supposed to be a power trip it was anything but for me, as even equipping cannons to it barely made enemies flinch. I was left wondering how much of the sequence was scripted versus how much was impacted by enemies leveling up as your playtime increases (an annoying feature shared with BOTW) as I was 100 hours in by then. I quickly opted to fight most monsters during the robot section on foot which was underwhelming.

All of the temples culminate in boss fights that have you make use of your partner’s abilities and are all fairly good fun even if they are a tad easy. My favorite was the final temple’s boss fight as you fight in a wrestling ring essentially and have to use your robot to push the other one into the walls of the arena. Clearing dungeons offers a great reward as they let you bring the spirits of your friends along so you can continue to have access to their abilities. You can ultimately fight alongside all five of them in battle at once too which helps makes battles feel more dynamic. I’m really glad I chose the Wind Temple first, because Tulin with his ability to create wind gusts and his clutch shots with a bow made him a very valuable partner for the majority of my journey. Yunobo’s ability to break rocks and Riju’s ability to summon lightning were also versatile and interesting to take regular advantage of.

After I completed my first dungeon, I turned my attention to the Depths and began the process of lighting all 120 Lightroots. This was easily the most draining task of the game. While I had individual moments of fun like throwing a bright bloom seed into the darkness and seeing the terrain illuminate in unexpected ways or by taking out enemy camps and bosses to secure more Zonaite, the core experience here was really looking ahead to the next orange dot and stumbling my way in the darkness while dodging enemies and Gloom to activate the next root. While I was blown away that the Zelda team managed to mirror the amount of space as the surface, I think I would have greatly preferred a more focused and visually interesting experience as most of the Depths really blur together being so gray (even the alien looking plant life gets drowned out). I was disappointed there was so little to discover below the surface outside of the mines that help you process Zonaite. There’s a very cool Shadow of the Colossus looking statue in the Northwestern portion of the map, another beneath the Great Mine (which has a good side quest attached to it where you must find and reattach its eyes), and a few showdowns with Master Kohga who returns from BOTW and is goofier than ever. I’m glad at launch there were a few easy item duplication tricks to take advantage of, because if I didn’t have a way to speed up the Zonaite collection grind I’d probably feel even worse about the Depths. As it stands, I’m disappointed the substantial new world for Tears of the Kingdom is so blah. I am glad however I cleared out the Depths because it made it so much easier to find all of the 120 shrines on the surface as these are all placed directly above each Lightroot.

When I completed the Depths, I turned my attention next towards clearing all 152 shrines (32 are in the sky) and like in BOTW before it, I really enjoyed the Shrines overall. There may be too many free shrines, where just reaching them gives you the reward, but there are still plenty of interesting ones. My favorite, because it was so unexpected, was a tribute to the Halo 3 final Warthog escape sequence that featured a very similarly controlling vehicle, low gravity, and slanted panels to drive on. Another cool video game reference was Shining in the Darkness, inspired by the old school dungeon crawler of the same name. You have to navigate a maze with only a flashlight and it is satisfying to notice the hole in the ceiling that you can Ascend through to ultimately get out. There were also many great shrines built around construction. I don’t remember the names of these, but one served as my introduction to cooling down and assembling lava chunks which I mentioned I really enjoyed in the Fire Temple. Others had you assembling vehicles like planes and sleds, while some had you build things like rail cars, a prize scooper, and a baseball hitting machine. Any shrine that featured, foldable bridges often proved really interesting as well as the physics involved were often so fun to play around with.

​My favorite shrine type in Tears of the Kingdom were the combat shrines that took after Eventide Island in BOTW by completely stripping Link of all of his equipment. You have to plan your route carefully through these shrines to carefully pick away at enemies and acquire more and more powerful equipment. My favorite combat in the game took place in these shrines as a lot of the combat systems (Fuse especially) shine best when you have to make all of your resources count and also when enemies are lower leveled because status effects and explosions are more devastating. While it certainly would change how bosses function in the overworld perhaps for the worse, these challenges do make me wonder if the next Zelda game should ditch stats again and focus more on fun interactions in combat. Regardless, I really hope if Zelda TK does get DLC we’ll see more Eventide-like combat challenges. Since I’m on the subject of combat, I’ll just say overall it remains fairly similar to BOTW. I liked it there and I again like it here even with new quirks like Fuse meaning you regularly have the right tool for every occasion and the loss of remote bombs meaning you don’t have a free weapon disarming move. Zelda TK does address one of my bigger complaints about BOTW, the small enemy roster, by introducing some new enemies. I already mentioned I love the new boss monsters like the Flux Construct and the Gleeoks, and these are joined by a good handful of normal enemies too. I particularly enjoyed fighting the ancient robots, Horriblins, Like Likes, and Ghibdos.

Before I discuss the last section of the game, I do want to give a brief shout out to two of my favorite side quests that centered around two returning towns, Lurelin and Hateno. Lurelin has been invaded by pirates which are composed of higher level monsters. When I first visited Lurelin I was overwhelmed, so I felt so accomplished when I felt ready and ultimately did drive them out. I appreciated this wasn’t the end of the side quest as you both get to defeat the pirates once and for all on Eventide Island (I had found their empty hideout earlier in my adventure and was very confused why I couldn’t clear it) and rebuild the town itself by gathering materials and repairing the buildings. Hateno village has been consumed by fashion which threatens the traditional farming roots of the town. This felt like a classic Zelda town quest as you had to investigate both mayoral candidates’ schedules and secrets and talk to everyone in town. Since I’m talking about towns, like in BOTW before it, I largely forgot to interact with Tarrey Town again until after the credits…whoops. Perhaps it would have meant more had I finished the quest in BOTW, but I did enjoy the vibe of the town. After finishing the Side Adventure there, I found the house construction service that opens up to be conceptually neat, but I felt limited with how few rooms and furnishings are available.

Once I was done with all of my goals for the game, clearing every shrine and Lightroot, completing the main quest, and tackling enough side quests, I was ready to march into Ganondorf’s lair in the Depths below Hyrule Castle. I actually unexpectedly stumbled into his hiding place early on in my adventure since I wanted to see the rest of the obscured murals from the prologue. It was so cool to discover such an intense enemy gauntlet for a Zelda game and be overwhelmed with how treacherous the terrain was as most of the ground and walls are covered in Gloom. Even with dodging some of the bigger enemies, including the Lynel, I was really happy and satisfied with this final challenge. When it came time to fight Ganondorf, I was at first a little let down facing some of his weaker troops, but I was happy to see the Sages join the fight directly as it better tied the modern day story together. The actual battle with Ganondorf was excellent even though I was overly prepared walking in as I had great equipment, tons of fairies, and many full health potions. I especially enjoyed seeing Ganondorf perfect dodge some of my attacks and I adored when round 2 started his health bar doubled in the most comical way possible by only extending far to the right. The extra final battle where Ganondorf turns into a dragon was a simple, but still spectacular finish. It reminded me of my favorite battle in Shadow of the Colossus in a great way and I loved the super over the top final explosion when you finally defeat him for good.

I walked away from Tears of the Kingdom certainly with some mixed feelings. A solid majority of this game I thoroughly enjoyed, while other elements felt like a retread (the surface map), others were draining and repetitive (the Depths), and one key story element, the worst treatment of Zelda herself yet, was wildly disappointing. BOTW and its DLC took me about 65+ hours for my first playthrough and I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. With Zelda TK, I rolled credits at 110+ hours and felt that even though it was such a bigger adventure it certainly wasn’t always a better adventure. Some of the uneven qualities of TK I do think I’ll value more as time goes on as I do think a good deal of the choices made here are interesting ones I didn’t fully vibe with rather than being necessarily bad. While this is true to an extent of every game, I think because of Zelda TK’s huge open ended nature my enjoyment was really impacted by how I chose to approach and navigate my way through it. Whereas with a game like A Link Between Worlds I just walked away more cleanly disappointed, I’m really interested in talking about Zelda TK further with others and seeing their opinions in the weeks, months, and years to come. While it hasn’t been announced either way yet, I am looking forward as well to see what DLC might add to the experience. Finally, I’m left more curious than ever what exactly the next open air Zelda game might look like after Tears of the Kingdom. Some of the new ideas presented in Zelda TK, like Ultrahand and caves, I’d love to see how they fit in an entirely new world to explore and there’s so much potential to rethink core systems here like the combat and exploration. Despite where I am personally relatively down on Tears of the Kingdom, I’m very glad it overall was such a fascinating, unique, and exciting experience.

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Thanks for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’m curious what you think about Tears of the Kingdom, so definitely reach out and share! I’m on less these days, but you can still find me @JustinMikos on Twitter for now. Until next time!

2022 was largely a quiet year for me for better or worse. In some ways this applied to gaming as well as I largely spent the year focusing on conquering my deep backlog and replaying old favorites. Even so, I still managed to complete 25 games this year that I considered eligible for my annual games of the year blog. Compared to the last few years, there weren’t quite as many strong contenders as some of the games I was most looking forward to didn’t pan out exactly as well as I hoped. While narrowing the list down was fairly easy, I did find it tricky to figure out the exact order to put the final ten in as the way these games spoke to me were all quite unique which made it difficult to choose what to value most.

Before I dive in, I have to give two quick honorable mentions. The first is for the official release of Trails From Zero. I already featured Zero in my 2020 GOTY blog with the release of the Geofront fan translation that forms the foundation of the official version, so I didn’t want to feature it again. However, I have to note the exponential increase in voice acting substantially increased my opinion on a game I already loved as it enriched so many scenes and further deepened my love for the characters. Zero would be my second favorite game this year had I featured it so I can’t recommend it enough. My second honorable mention goes to Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit In Wonder Labyrinth which almost made the cut here. It’s another fantastic and satisfying Metroidvania from Team Ladybug and it has a cool core mechanic as you swap between channeling two magical elements to dominate enemies, absorb attacks, and navigate the world.

With all of that said, let’s dive right into My Top Ten Favorite Games Of 2022!

10: Lunistice (Switch)

There are not enough 3D platformers out there and when I saw the trailer for Lunistice I knew I had to check it out. The low polygon look was charming, but what sold me was the fluid movement. It’s been over a month since I flew through Lunistice and I’m still thinking about just how fun it was. The controls are simple with two sticks, one for movement and one for the camera, and two buttons for jumping and attacking that are comfortably mapped to the shoulder buttons. You can double jump in Lunistice and your attack, which you can interestingly mix in after the first or second jump depending on the situation, essentially functions as a third jump as well. The moveset/controls are perfect for tackling the array of interesting obstacles across each level with both satisfying precision and speed. Beyond just reaching the goal, there are a ton of collectibles on the main path for each level as well as usually obvious optional challenges that test your skills. While I finished the game with 100% completion in roughly two hours, I felt welcomed to return down the road to perfect my runs and was happy to unlock two extra characters for future playthroughs.

9: Chocobo GP (Switch)

Chocobo GP was buried this year by launching right next to the grand return of Mario Kart 8 with the Booster Course Pass which is a huge shame because while it does smartly borrow from Mario Kart 8, Chocobo GP absolutely has its own excellent flavor that I thoroughly enjoyed in addition to the fun Final Fantasy theming. While the story mode is fine and has some silly moments, the real star of Chocobo GP is the free to play online GP mode that gathers 64 racers and has them compete in four rounds to determine the champion among them. For the first three races, you must finish in the top four to advance to the next round which gives you a little breathing room. At least at launch when the player population was at its largest, it was quick to find games and each race became suitably more intense as the field narrowed down to the top players. I have years of Kart racing muscle memory as I’ve been playing Mario Kart since I was two which meant I actually regularly came out on top of GP races which was an awesome feeling given how intense the final race of a GP can be. Beyond the GP mode, the extra precise controls, items that level up in strength and function, and a special limit break that varies per character all add so much personality to the overall experience. If you have any love for Kart Racers, I highly recommend checking out the free to play version of Chocobo GP which offers the full GP mode. My favorite character, Chocobo, is one of the characters available and feels incredibly powerful on the road.

8: River City Girls 2 (Switch, also on PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox SX, and PC)

I adored the first River City Girls and played through it multiple times with friends so my expectations were high for River City Girls 2. I was delighted to have another adventure with Kyoko and Misako and I’m glad the rougher edges of the first game were thankfully absent here. The new characters are all a lot of fun and my favorite is definitely Ken, the son of the big mob boss who is incredibly arrogant, but can never back it up as he is both pathetic and kind of dumb. The brawling remains excellent and is enhanced with the addition of new moves for each character, new accessories, and a second slot for recruits which is extra welcome since there a ton of powerful new ones to find now. There are new areas to explore in River City, including a spooky forest and a super high tech building, and all of the original areas are revamped and expanded which was great since I loved seeing how the city has changed. I was especially excited to find there are now secret rooms to discover in River City that help you unlock very powerful recruits. The new soundtrack is absolutely delightful as it goes far harder and funkier than before and I love the new vocal songs that compliment the returning vocal songs from the original. As of this blog, I’ve thus far only finished my solo playthrough, but I have begun to play online co-op campaigns with friends. From what I’ve played, I’m fairly impressed with how well the online functions which is important given how hard it can be to meet up for local sessions these days. I really hope I can make one happen down the road to try out the new four player co-op, but it hasn’t happened just yet. In that sense, my journey with River City Girls 2 has only just begun, but already I definitely can say this sequel lived up to and in some ways exceeded my expectations.

7: Splatoon 3 (Switch)

Splatoon 3 may not have offered a new big pillar addition to the series like I wanted walking in and its new limited time events are a letdown, but it is otherwise a welcome refinement of Splatoon 2 and offers tons of high quality fun. The biggest improvement is the revamped lobby and the addition of a second multiplayer queue for the ranked modes that lets you more easily bring in friends to the various multiplayer modes. Prior to Splatoon 3, if you were a group of three in particular the only modes you could enjoy together were Salmon Run and Turf War, but for the latter you weren’t guaranteed to be on the same team which defeats the point. Now you can play any mode easily with friends and for single players there are now two options for ranked modes to choose from which means you can totally avoid Clam Blitz and don’t have to wait as long to play Tower Control. There are two new mechanics introduced in Splatoon 3, the Squid Roll and Surge, but I didn’t find them particularly impactful. What I did find though was the increased player speed in Splatoon 3 leads to more wonderfully cutthroat matches and the new and remixed weapons and specials further encourage aggressive play. I had so much fun playing the multiplayer mode that for the first time in the series I actually hit S-Rank.

I similarly had a blast with Salmon Run 2.0 thanks to the new egg throwing mechanic that opens up increased strategies and efficiency which means the enemy hordes can be even more brutally aggressive than before. While it largely resembles the original experience, Salmon Run 2.0 definitely feels the freshest of all the revamped central Splatoon pillars thanks to the elegant new mechanic and an array of new enemies and events including a potential bonus round against the terrifying Godzilla-like super boss, Chohozuna. The final of the three main Splatoon experiences is the new campaign that incorporates some of the wonderful flavor of the Octo Expansion into the traditional structure. There’s a lot of excellent challenges even if there are a few too many shooting gallery challenges for my taste. While overall I would say it’s weaker than the Octo Expansion, it does have a memorable final boss and an absolutely incredible extra hard post game level that I adore. Overall, Splatoon 3 may not be an exciting game in terms of new ideas, but it does offer tremendous, quality fun and a strong base to build on as a service game.

6: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Waves 1-3 (Switch)

I don’t normally include non-story DLC for games in my favorite games of the year blog, but I’m going to make a necessary exception here for the first three waves of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass. I’ve played an exceptional amount of Mario Kart 8 throughout the pandemic, mostly with my Mom often multiple times per week. It is my favorite Mario Kart game and getting to play with family and friends is always awesome. While the 48 tracks we’ve had for nearly seven years are pretty much all excellent, it can get boring playing the same ones after hundreds of hours. Enter the Booster Course Pass which came from out of nowhere and promised 48 new tracks over the course of two years for barely $25 which is an extraordinary deal. Most of these courses are reworked from the Mario Kart Tour mobile game and are a mix of old retro courses and new to me Mario Kart Tour original tracks. One of them however, Sky High Sundae, is of more uncertain origin as it hit both games at the same time and there are seemingly more of these brand new tracks on the way which is very exciting. While the courses started off visually a bit rough, by Wave 3 the graphics more closely resemble the base game as far I’m concerned so we are getting both quantity and quality now with these new tracks.

The 24 tracks we have already are an incredible shot in the arm for Mario Kart 8 and have revitalized my passion for the game. So many old favorites have returned like Choco Mountain, Coconut Mall, Mario Circuit 3, Rock Rock Mountain, and Maple Treeway. A few of the deeper cuts have been wonderful surprises like the arcade-y bliss of Shroom Ridge which I completely forgot about until its glorious return and others like Rainbow Road 7 I’ve enjoyed much more here than I did in their original games. As for the new to me tracks from Tour, I was skeptical of the city courses as I had tried out Tour briefly and was not impressed. While the repeating theme is a bit of a drag, the city courses have a cool gimmick with shifting routes per lap and individual quirks to help them stand out from each other. Berlin, Sydney, and Tokyo in particular have become some of my favorite tracks in the game. The biggest surprise though is the incredible Ninja Hideaway course from Mario Kart Tour. Ninja Hideaway is legit one of my absolute favorite courses in Mario Kart 8 now as it uniquely features a cycling elevator that rewards a big clump of coins and often demands quick, unique decisions to navigate, two floors to jump between for most of the course, and a few uniquely wicked turns. I’m already so thoroughly happy with what we have from the Booster Course Pass so far that it’s hard to believe 24 tracks are still on the way next year. I also can’t wait to see how the game continues to evolve. We already have been surprised with a huge very welcome extra addition alongside these courses, the item menu that lets you finally disable lightning and blue shells, so who knows what else could await.

5: Pokemon Legends Arceus (Switch)

I always liked Pokemon the franchise, but for the past twenty years I did not care for the mainline Pokemon games despite growing up with Red and Blue. Silver was the last Pokemon game I had beaten and given how much time had gone by and how rigid the formula and battle system had remained, I doubted I’d ever get back into Pokemon. After waiting for reviews, I decided to take a chance on Pokemon Legends Arceus and I’m so glad I did as it reconnected me with a series from my childhood that once meant so much to me. Arceus’ open zone design and action gameplay for throwing Pokeballs is a revelatory step forward for the Pokemon franchise as they more directly connected me to the world of Pokemon. I felt more personally connected to my team than ever before too because I could throw their Pokeballs to have them pop out into the world at any time one by one. I also enjoyed Arceus’ altered battle system as deciding if you wanted to attack normally, quickly, or powerfully but slowly was regularly a more interesting decision than just attacking with the right element as in other games. The danger in Arceus, especially thanks to the presence of elite enemies and the chaotic time distortions, kept me more on my toes than Pokemon Violet and regularly demanded me using more of my team which I appreciated.

What definitely hooked me in Arceus though was trying to catch them all and fill out enough of the Pokedex to rank up. In practice, you’d basically enter an area and throw Pokeballs at everything that moved which was extra fun with how fluid it was and how interesting the Pokeball’s throwing arc was. While not as advanced as it would be in Pokemon Violet, there was a fun social component of sharing discoveries and stories in regards to catching all of the Pokemon. My own hunt to catch Bonsly particularly stood out to me as I tried getting him to spawn for a good hour before I finally saw and caught one. I also appreciated unlocking new traversal abilities tied to befriending different Pokemon you could ride around the world as they enhanced and expanded my quest to catch them all. Scaling mountains in the fourth map in particular was so much fun as the world design played off the ability well. Beyond the main gameplay, I also just really liked the world, vibe, characters, and story of Hisui. While there may not have been too many surprises, the big moments in Arceus proved effective. I’m still sad there was no DLC expansion for Arceus since I would have liked to see more of its world beyond the game and short anime special.

4: Ai The Somnium Files: NirvanA Initiative (Switch, also on PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox SX, and PC)

I liked the first Ai game a lot, but I loved NirvanA Initiative as it smooths out the roughest edges, dramatically improves both the investigation and Somnium gameplay, and delivers another amazing adventure with great new and returning characters and incredible twists that I’m still thinking about. Before diving in, Ai NirvanA Initiative is interesting in that while it obviously means more if you played the first game, it begins by saying the cases between games are unrelated and offers a test to see if you played the first game or not. Depending if you answer correctly or not, the dialogue shifts in interesting ways to avoid addressing the first game even while the conversations characters have with you still make sense. I didn’t realize I was actually experiencing this myself at first before retaking the test and I came away impressed with how it was handled. I think more story focused games should study how it worked here since it allows more people to jump in if the premise intrigues them and still allows them to enjoy the big twists from the prior game.

In NirvanA Initiative you begin by discovering half of a body in an empty stadium in what comes to be known as the half body serial killings. Essentially bodies are being split in half and the other half is appearing seemingly perfectly preserved six years later. You follow two characters investigating the case, Mizuki in the present timeline and Ryuki who was investigating the case from the beginning. In both timelines you investigate the crime scene for clues and ask questions to witnesses and other people of interest. Like the first game, occasionally you bring characters in to investigate their dreams to hopefully reveal answers they won’t share or perhaps aren’t aware of themselves. I mentioned it at the start, but the investigation and Somnium sections are significantly improved in this game and most of the annoying dream logic that resulted in a lot of trial and error is thankfully gone from the first game. Being such a story heavy game, I can’t talk about the experience in depth here, but I really cared about the main protagonists, the awesome side characters like Gen, and I enjoyed the story and often humorous dialogue. There’s a lot of goofy heart in this game that’s so endearing and most of the Somniums are much more interesting and engaging (Gen’s and Iris’s are my favorites). I want to talk about them so badly, but all I can say is that the big twists are amazingly well executed and are my favorite story moments of the year. I also enjoyed one particular post game unlockable that is a huge treat for fans of director Kotaro Uchikoshi’s past works. I especially can’t wait for Kotaro Uchikoshi’s next game after NirvanA Initiative was so incredible.

3: Pokemon Violet (Switch)

If Legends Arceus reconnected me with Pokemon, Pokemon Violet absolutely sealed the deal that Pokemon is part of my life again. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet together presents another vision of the bright future of the Pokemon series by presenting the first ever open world Pokemon game. As you cruise around on your Pokemon motorcycle, you’ll encounter Pokemon wandering the lands, waters, skies, and caves of Paldea. Navigation is very fun especially once you unlock the abilities to climb walls and glide. Aside from not being able to manually throw Pokeballs with aiming and precision, the structure of the game is in many ways an advancement of Arceus as there are even more Pokemon to discover and you can tackle the gyms and other challenges freely in any order. I have every Pokemon I can catch alone in Violet at this point because I scoured every inch of Paldea in my quest to catch them all and I had an absolute blast doing so.

What made Violet so special and what elevates it over Arceus, is the ability to connect with friends online and inhabit the same world together. While there is only one true co-op activity, the Tera Raid battles that can be very difficult to conquer, being able to explore the same world to discover and catch Pokemon together is a much more meaningful activity than simply trading Pokemon directly as you would in prior games. I was pleasantly surprised to find too that you can dip in and out of the social experience while still in it because if you want to take on one of the challenges in the world, like the gym badges, you can tackle everything while still connected to your group. This leads to cool moments where say I was taking on a Titan Pokemon while another friend was taking on Team Star and a third friend made a discovery and invited everyone to join them when they had wrapped up their business. I loved giving directions to friends when this occurred like “fly here, jump across the river, and head to this big tree” as it made the world feel more tangible. I played online with my brother and one of my best friends online for hours at a time for the vast majority of my playtime and it elevated the whole experience so much that I can’t imagine doing it alone.

I did sadly find however I didn’t generally enjoy the combat as much as in Legends Arceus. In far too many situations I found myself using the same attack without thought, but thankfully combat is often over fairly quickly. Pokemon catching, while still easily the most satisfying part of the game, also lost its luster a bit when I realized how absurdly effective Quick Balls are at capturing Pokemon on the first turn of combat. I wish there was more higher level trainer battles too, but when I was in sync with where the game wanted me to be level-wise, which I thankfully was for the Elite Four, I did have a lot of fun. I definitely grew to like the story and characters in Violet and the ending of the game was excellent with some big story reveals and emotional moments in a very cool final area to explore. The ending of Violet was particularly moving in a way I can’t imagine its equivalent in Scarlet could live up to. I have to give one final shoutout to the music as there were so many awesome tracks during the adventure. I especially enjoyed Mesagoza’s main theme, the Tera Raid battle theme, and the two Team Star themes. Overall, I loved Pokemon Violet and it’s certainly my new favorite Pokemon game as it truly evolved the franchise. I’m so excited to see what the future of Pokemon holds because if they unite the best parts of Arceus and Violet we could have the ultimate Pokemon.

2: Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch)

Kirby and the Forgotten Land is Kirby’s first ever 3D action-adventure game and it feels so effortlessly made you’d think he’d have had tons of these under his belt already to be so refined. Forgotten Land reminds me so much of the best parts of my favorite N64 3D platformers like Bomberman Hero in how the many levels are wondrously presented and navigated, but of course executed on a level those games could only dream of. While Kirby is still very powerful, the developers smartly limited just how effective his ability to float through challenges is which increases the range of potential clever puzzles and challenges. Brawling with your copy abilities that you can upgrade in power over the course of the game feels great. During the awesome boss battles, I especially appreciate HAL added a Bayonetta-like dodge to Kirby’s arsenal as it feels satisfying to use to easily dodge hits and get your big counter attacks in.

What I dug the most though was how thoughtfully designed each level was. Most of them have lots of secrets to discover and encourage clever uses of Kirby’s main abilities and his new Mouthful Mode ability where he tries and comically fails to swallow large objects like a car or a big light bulb. One of my favorites for example is a water level where if you equip Kirby’s ice ability you can skate down flowing rivers of water. There are also alternate dimension challenge room levels that explore the power ups one by one to their full potential. Beyond the gameplay, the levels are just visually very engaging. I especially loved the third world, Wondaria, which is an abandoned theme park and across levels you visit many of its attractions including a roller coaster and a colorful haunted house. I kept going back and forth between whether Pokemon Violet or Kirby and the Forgotten Land would claim second place, but I think what pushes me toward Kirby is that it just feels like such a complete, polished classic from the journey to the credits and beyond. It is easily the best Kirby game since Super Star and I think I’ll definitely be happily revisiting it many times in the future. 

1: Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch)

In 2012 I played through Xenoblade Chronicles and it became my game of the year and one of my most treasured games. Now ten years later, here we are. A new Xenoblade is once again my game of the year. Xenoblade X was a messy masterpiece I loved to pieces, but Xenoblade 2 despite being one of my favorite games the year it came out also really rubbed me the wrong way and that feeling has only grown with distance. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a return to form for the series and serves as a complete tonal rejection of Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s worst elements and I couldn’t be happier. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 properly begins on the battlefield between two nations, Keves and Agnus, as they battle to literally harvest the life force of each other. Their soldiers know only of war in their brief at best ten years of life so they have little reason or position to question the structure of their world. Before long three soldiers of Keves and three of Agnus are brought together and must journey to the ends of the world in hopes of changing their fates and the rest of the world. It’s an epic quest grounded by the best party of characters in the series who you thoroughly get to know across the main story and the side content much of which is of spectacular quality. My favorite is definitely the hero and ascension quests that are all fully voice acted as you get to befriend a wide variety of characters who are also trying to survive Xenoblade 3’s harsh world as well as the colony quests that gradually unite the different colonies together.

My favorite activity in Xenoblade 3 was exploring every last inch of the world of Aionios. Every region is full of monsters to defeat, treasures to claim, bosses to fight, and secret areas to find. While it can’t possibly top the full open world freedom of Xenoblade X, Xenoblade 3 is easily the best of the rest as the individual zones that make up Aionios are both huge and incredibly dense. I won’t discuss the final time here, but I was blown away three times by exploration in Xenoblade 3. First was the Fornis region which initially seems to be a straightforward trek through desert. After progressing through the story enough, you’ll reach a section of the game I’ve dubbed the crossroads as it is the huge intersection of four major areas, the desert behind you, the hills ahead, an entirely different desert to the left, and a treacherous canyon to the right. What’s further shocking isn’t just that Fornis hides all of these zones or that two of those are optional at the time, but that the region still hides even more secrets beyond this grand reveal including dungeon-like caverns, two more towns, and even an area a little beyond the hills in front of you. That engaging scale and density appears again in the vast Erythia Sea of the Cadensia region that is littered with interesting islands to explore, a few of which even give off truly alien Xenoblade X-like vibes.

The combat in Xenoblade 3 is fantastic as you juggle different gauges and work toward managing your position, setting up combos, and building towards unleashing your giant robot Ouroboros forms at their most powerful or towards your limit break-like special attacks called Talent Arts. Combat regularly gets refreshed thanks to the addition of a class system that lets you combine attacks and abilities together similar to Final Fantasy V. One of my favorite classes was definitely the Martial Artist which with the right build and set up could easily do 50,000 damage or higher with one attack. Even better, the Martial Artist proves more engaging to play than some other classes since one of its moves has an evasion property which means you can dodge big attacks with proper timing. Managing the classes, equipment, and abilities of your party too, including by choosing your seventh party member, to create cool class combos is immensely rewarding. Before I wrap up here, I also have to give a huge shoutout to the amazing soundtrack in Xenoblade 3 especially in regards to the abundance of amazing battle tracks like Keves Battle, You Will Know Our Names Finale, and A Formidable Enemy. My absolute favorite Xenoblade 3 song, Battle! Vs Moebius, gives me absolute chills every time I hear it as it’s truly on another level. I sincerely hope we can get the full soundtrack available on itunes soon like Xenoblade 2’s before it because I’d love to rock out to these tracks and more whenever I want!

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was an all-encompassing experience that gripped me for over 150 hours of adventure and I’m still fondly thinking about it months later. I can’t wait to return to Aionois whenever the DLC continues rolling out and I’m so intrigued by the potential of the upcoming big story expansion. In that sense, the story of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is far from over for me, but already I’m so deeply satisfied and moved by the experience. Like Xenoblade Chronicles before it, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is not just one of my favorite games this year, but it is an experience that personally means so much to me and makes me excited for the future of video games and their endless potential. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is my 2022 game of the year.

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That concludes my favorite games of 2022 blog! I hope you enjoyed it! Like prior years, I’ve kept a record of all the games I beat both new and old and will share them below this blog. I’m curious as always what you thought of my top ten and would love to hear your personal favorite games of the year. Feel free to reach out to me on my Twitter @JustinMikos. Until next time!

2022 Games I Beat

Pokemon Legends Arceus (100%)
Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth
Picross S7 (100%)
Kirby and the Forgotten Land (100%)
Lost Judgment: The Kaito Files (100%)
Radical Dreamers (All Endings)
Chocobo GP
The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
Switch Sports
Ai The Somnium Files: NirvanA Initiative
Klonoa 2 Lunatea’s Veil
Live A Live
Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Splatoon 3
Bayonetta 3
Mario and Rabbids 2: Sparks of Hope (100%)
ElecHead (100%)
Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince
Lunistice (100%)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
Long Live The Queen
Pokemon Violet
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Booster Course Pass Waves 1-3
River City Girls 2
Sports Story

Old Games I Beat In 2022

Alan Wake Remastered
Manifold Garden
Horizon: Zero Dawn (Platinum Trophy)
Horizon: The Frozen Wilds
Streets of Rage 4
Kirakira Stars Idol Project Ai
Chicory
Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love
Super Mario Kart (Replay)
Mario Kart 64 (Replay)
Mario Kart Super Circuit (Replay)
Mario Kart Double Dash!! (Replay)
Mario Kart DS (Replay)
Mario Kart Wii (Replay)
Mario Kart 7 (Replay)
F-Zero Maximum Velocity
Zack and Wiki: Quest For Barbaros’ Treasure
Super Mario Advance 4 World E (100%)
Affordable Space Adventures
F-Zero X
Kirby’s Dream Course
Kuru Kuru Kuruin
River City Ransom
Ufouria The Saga
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water
NinNinDays 2
Super Mario RPG (Replay)
StarTropics
Chrono Trigger (100% Replay)
Chrono Cross (Replay)
Halo Infinite (Heroic)
Zelda II The Adventure of Link
Blaster Master
Zoda’s Revenge StarTropics II
Kirby Super Star (100% Replay)
Super Castlevania IV
Paper Mario (Replay)
The Legend of Zelda A Link To The Past (Replay)
Final Fantasy VI (Replay)
Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door (Replay)
Super Mario 3D World(Co-op Replay x2)
Super Paper Mario (Replay)
Klonoa: Empire of Dreams (100%)
Pokemon Snap (Replay)
Klonoa 2: Dream Champ Tournament (100%)
Part Time UFO (Co-op Replay)
Fire Emblem Awakening
Yoshi’s Island (100% Replay)
Star Fox (Replay)
F-Zero
Star Fox 2
Bravely Default
Trails From Zero (Replay)
Pokemon Puzzle Challenge (Replay)
Kirby’s Avalanche (Replay)
Metroid Prime (100% Replay)
Metroid Prime 2 Echoes (100% Replay)
Metroid Prime 3 Corruption (100% Replay)
Drill Dozer
Sin And Punishment (Replay)
Sin And Punishment 2: Star Successor (Replay)

​When I turned 25, I ranked my top 25 games at 25. For 30, I’d like to rank the other big entertainment pillar in my life, anime. While I’m generally just a big fan of animation in general, I decided to stick to just anime since it is the type I watch most frequently and it keeps comparisons simpler since I categorize anime separately anyway. I’ve kept a running list for years ranking all of the anime I’ve completed watching so I had a head start, but I still reevaluated every single show and movie I’ve seen to put my final list together. In the interest of highlighting as many awesome shows as possible, I grouped related media that would have taken up an individual spot in the top 30 together. When I do list multiple media in one entry, the first show/film listed I consider to be the most valuable and will be the only media being directly compared above and below it. I know that’s a little weird so I will have a title only top 36 at the bottom of my blog for those curious. The 30 anime I chose here are all ranked as my favorite anime at 30, the ones that currently mean the most to me, so not necessarily the best or the ones that historically meant more. My top 30 anime of course will change in the future, but right now at this moment, these are my top 30 anime at 30!

30: A Certain Scientific Railgun

Railgun is a spinoff of A Certain Magical Index and stars Misaka Mikoto, the Railgun, who is one of the most powerful espers living in Academy City who has developed and honed her electromagnetic powers. The show basically operates in two modes, slice of life and a battle series where Misaka and her friends fight off an array of powerful psychics, monsters, and more. The animation for the fights is generally awesome and the vast range of powers and uses keeps the fights exciting. My favorite part is definitely the second season where we get a significantly expanded story of how Misaka learns and confronts the fact that she has been cloned thousands of times over and how those clones have been put to use in deadly experiments. 

29: Pop Team Epic!

Pop Team Epic is an absurdly strange rapid-fire skit comedy starring Popuko and Pipimi. For every episode, the first half of the show is virtually completely repeated in the second half with one half voiced by female actresses and the other half voiced by male actors. Moreover, every episode stars completely different pairs of voice actors for Popuko and Pipimi for each half which adds to the absurdness. I loved how you really have no idea what you are in for as it ropes in all kinds of animation styles and even live action segments. My favorite segment was the story of Hellshake Yano which is told by people manipulating and flipping pages drawn in a big notebook which you really have to see to believe how cool it is.

28: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

I’ve only seen the first two seasons and one of the movies for Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, but I thoroughly enjoyed them. A short monster of the week start to the show gives way to explosive magical battles that continue to grow in scale and excitement. Seriously if you love explosions, this is an excellent show on that front and the action really gets a significant level up in season 2. I really like all three main characters, Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate, and while the side cast doesn’t appear too frequently, I do enjoy them as well. I really hope one day the full show and movies become more easily available on Blu Ray because I’d love to see it to completion.

27: Yurikuma Arashi

Yurikuma Arashi makes a horrendous first impression where I wouldn’t blame anyone for rejecting it, but as the show goes on it becomes readily clear what the show’s very positive message is. Yurikuma Arashi tells the story of Kureha Tsubaki living in a fairy tale-like world where humanity has erected a wall to keep bears out. After two bears sneak into the human world, Kureha’s best friend who she is in love with is killed by bears like her mother was prior which reignites her hatred of bears. Yurikuma Arashi is ultimately a love story and about overcoming how society judges and restricts women’s behavior and actions. While not a factor on this list, I really appreciated how the manga offered a completely different universe and story using the same characters.

26: Little Busters!

Little Busters tells the story of Riki Naoe and how his friends, a group called the Little Busters, want to share something fun together before the oldest in the group graduates high school and joins the working world. The group settles on playing baseball together and early on it is teased that their world is hiding a secret of some sort. Little Busters! is based on the visual novel of the same name and it explores the various routes of the game by having new members join the team one by one. Each character has their own multi-episode story to work through like the transfer student, Kud, wanting to reunite with her parents and, Mio, who seemingly has a twin sister taking over her life. These individual arcs do range in quality, Komari’s I think is even quite poor, but I really enjoyed how the characters and story fully came together and the episodes where the group of friends just hang out were a lot of fun.

25: Gundam Wing

Gundam Wing was one of the first anime shows I ever watched on Cartoon Network and I watched it when I was quite young. My favorite parts back then of course were the giant robot fights both in space and those grounded on Earth which were rad as heck. If you asked me back then what the show was about, I honestly don’t know whether I’d be able to tell you or not, because when I finally rewatched it when I was older, I definitely remembered the broad details, but I was surprised just how all over the place the plot and character relationships are. This was not a show like Dragon Ball Z where you could skip five episodes and still be generally fine! But even with the plot and character relationships constantly changing, I do think Gundam Wing is still a generally fun show to watch and the big personalities shine through and make their impacts.

24: Love Live Sunshine / Love Live

One of my favorite parts of attending Anime Expo is the concerts, and in 2017 I decided to go to the idol concert since I had nothing else planned for that period. The final group was by far my favorite, Aqours, who had a fictional backstory explored in the anime Love Live Sunshine. I checked it out because I enjoyed their songs, but what I definitely didn’t expect was to come to enjoy it so much. After seeing videos of the original Love Live group, μ's (pronounced muse), performing, Chika Takami decides she wants to start a school idol group at her high school. At first, she only has her childhood friend You Watanabe joining, but eventually the group grows to nine members and they decide to compete in the nationwide Love Live competition. Sunshine is definitely my favorite of the four Love Live shows because it is ultimately a bittersweet journey filled with both major setbacks and major triumphs that each hit hard for the group.

23: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann

Gurren Lagann is awesome! What begins as a singular struggle against a giant robot invading an underground village ignorant of the world keeps growing in scale until the battle ludicrously comes to engulf the whole universe. This growth in scale is gradual over the course of the 27 episodes and I think it does a great job at making the most of each step in the journey before upping the stakes and scale. It also has a well-placed time skip in the middle of the show where it's fun seeing just how much the world and characters changed in a such a short time. While I don’t love everything about Gurren Lagann, it’s very juvenile at times, the attitude and energy of the show is largely infectious and fun.

22: Steins;Gate

I loved Steins;Gate right from the premise. A self-proclaimed mad scientist creates a time machine using a microwave that allows him to send text messages back in time. I’ll never forget when I first started watching the show and I got to the big moment where Okabe’s manipulation of time caught up with him and when I went to watch the next episode it wasn’t there because Crunchyroll’s streaming rights had apparently expired. This moment scarred me for life in regards to streaming shows and subscriptions in general because I really wanted to know what happened next! When Steins;Gate came out on Blu Ray years later, I really enjoyed the story’s back half and ultimate conclusion.

21: Angel Beats!

I’m forever glad I took a chance and joined my college’s anime club right at the start of my first year as it really reawakened my love for anime which had fallen off when Toonami stopped broadcasting. Eight of the shows I saw there made my list today (including my number one) and the first episode I ever saw there was the first episode of Angel Beats that culminates with a spectacular battle that takes place to guard an exciting concert that’s very well animated. The premise of Angel Beats is that a bunch of high school students are trapped in a limbo of sorts and are battling an angel that opposes them. There’s an interesting mix of action, comedy, and musical performances and the wacky characters are collectively a lot of fun. The emotional ending where the last few say their final goodbyes is great as well.

20: Working!!

Working!! is a work place comedy set in a Denny’s-like chain restaurant. An entertaining collection of weirdos work at this restaurant to the extent you’ll wonder how it even functions including the waitress who is deathly afraid of men and the lazy manager who mostly eats parfaits all day. While the comedy is a lot of fun, the best part of Working!! is definitely the romances that build across the three seasons. It took a long while, but I was very glad Working!! ultimately did get a third season since it was a satisfying conclusion.

19: Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

I have mixed feelings on Sword Art Online as it regularly sabotages itself and goes off the rails too many times to count. Thankfully Sword Art Online Alternative was handled by a different author entirely, who uses every quirk of its setting to craft a wildly entertaining adventure across two team-based VRMMO battle royales. I really like the main character, LLENN, who initially just wants to live a different life to her normal existence, comes to really enjoy video games and cares so strongly about the connections she makes with her new friends. The gun-based action is awesome with lots of strategy and regular moments of bombast. My favorite moments are definitely when the main character enters a state of berserker rage and hilariously starts hallucinating her gun, P-Chan, is talking to her and a separate time when the main antagonist returns to battle with a light saber like she is Darth Vader.

18: Cardcaptor Sakura

I saw bits of Cardcaptor Sakura when it aired on TV as The Cardcaptors. I definitely enjoyed the episodes I saw, but it didn’t mean much to me then. I finally watched all of it after seeing the Clear Card anime and I really enjoyed it! It really has a great mix of slice of life following the characters going to school and following them on trips versus the fun magical action. While definitely a kids show, it was also surprisingly violent at times where the characters would get placed into real danger which certainly kept it interesting. My favorite part of the show is definitely the cast. Sakura is a great heroine and her best friend Tomoyo who wants to document her life on video is ridiculous in a great way. While I’m just ranking the original TV show here, I will say I definitely enjoyed both movies and the sequel anime.

17: Durarara!!!

Durarara has a huge cast of characters that regularly meet and clash with each other in Ikebukuro and it’s just a ton of fun. There’s a lot of big threads and ideas in play over the course of the story from gang wars to demonic swords possessing the populace. Of course, my favorite is the face of the series, Celty, a Dullahan riding a motorcycle in search of her missing head. I think my favorite part of Durarara is definitely the characters. The big personalities like Shizuo and Izaya definitely steal the show, but there are tons of fun side characters too like Kadota’s group and Akabayashi. I also have to give a shoutout to the many amazing opening and endings to the show that are slickly put together and have amazing music attached.

16: Fate/Zero

One of the first shows I ever checked out on Crunchyroll was Fate/Zero and wow what a great early pick that was! I didn’t know anything about Fate prior to this and I can’t remember if I knew at the time Gen Urobuchi, who wrote Madoka Magica, also wrote Fate/Zero so I believed I mainly just clicked on the cool looking poster. I loved the basic premise here, as seven wizards summoned historical figures from across history to battle each other and claim the wish granting holy grail. The awesome action and big moments brought to life with high quality animation are incredible, but I think my favorite moment is early on where it rapidly cuts between the main hero and villain reading about each other’s exploits and they basically hype each other up as the ultimate badasses which makes their inevitable showdowns all the more exciting.

15: Granbelm

Granbelm was a big mix of things I knew I would love. It had basically everyone involved with the Re:Zero anime, including the character designer and studio, teaming up to create a magical girl, battle royale, fought with giant robots. For whatever reason I put it off for a few years, but when I finally sat down to watch it, I absolutely loved it outside of the goofy robot designs. There’s a lot of fun personalities clashing against each other and the robot action is awesome! I really liked the main character, Mangetsu, and I found the mysteries surrounding her and her adversaries interesting. I also enjoyed the bittersweet ending.

14: Attack on Titan

I have mixed feelings about Attack on Titan. I wasn’t pulled in by the first few episodes and didn’t end up watching it until my anime club decided to show it where I finally saw the early big twist that hooked me. I eventually began reading the manga monthly which meant I was always now waiting to see it animated. At a certain point, I had a strong feeling the ending was going to be a colossal disappointment which it was! While we still have to wait for that to be animated as of this blog, the journey in between the start and finish is largely so fun and compelling that it still ranks highly for me. Seeing humanity take down titans while swinging around like Spider-Man doesn’t get old and regular new threats and mysteries are compelling.

13: My Hero Academia / Two Heroes

When Crunchyroll added My Hero Academia, I ended up watching the first season in two days. The premise of a young boy living in a world of superheroes finally being granted powers to fulfill his dream was an amazing hook. What I’ve really treasured about this show was getting to have a superhero story and universe where you don’t know the outcome for its mysteries and characters as so many of the Marvel and DC shows and movies are all inspired by comics where you can guess the trajectory through cultural osmosis. “Oh, they are bringing in this character and this story, here’s what to expect” does not apply with My Hero Academia even if you still expect the heroes to win ultimately. There are so many fun characters to root for like Deku, Todoroki, Ochaco, and Iida, and across the show and movies they all have plenty of moments to shine. 

12: Mob Psycho 100

I wasn’t a big fan of One-Punch Man at first, so I was skeptical walking into Mob Psycho 100, but I was completely won over by the characters and blown away by the amazing animation. Mob is such a great character. While he has incredible powers, he is most focused on his ordinary everyday life and protecting his family and friends rather than seeking adventure or fame. His mentor Reigen, is a hilarious con-man who amusingly fails upwards, but he truly cares about Mob when it counts. When action does pop up, it is absolutely incredible thanks to studio Bones going all out. As of this blog, we are awaiting season 3 and I cannot wait to see how it all ends.

11: Dragon Ball Super / Super Broly

I had a love / hate relationship with Dragon Ball Z growing up. On one hand, its amazing fights 100% blew me away and I came to love so many of the characters like Goku, Vegeta, Piccolo, Gohan, and Krillin, but its horrendous pacing where you could skip a week and feel like you missed nothing, and the Buu arc in particular being so dumb, made me think I would never care about Dragon Ball again. But then a perfect storm happened, Dragon Ball FighterZ from my favorite fighting game developer was announced, and the Dragon Ball Super anime had all of its episodes come to Crunchyroll. Once I got through the early arcs, I eventually got so hooked I was regularly watching ten episodes at a time. It was amazing having new Dragon Ball adventures that really spoke to what I loved most about Dragon Ball and the final Tournament of Power arc was an amazing spectacle. I really hope Dragon Ball returns to TV soon!

10: Re:Zero

Re:Zero tells the story of Natuski Subaru who gets sent from Japan to a fantasy world. At first, he is excited this will be a typical isekai experience where he’ll get everything handed to him, but he quickly and violently discovers his only superpower gained is being able to die and be sent back in time to “save points” not of his choosing. Re:Zero sort of works like unraveling a giant puzzle as Subaru learns new information with each of his lives and it’s often most interesting and satisfying as he puts that knowledge to use. I appreciate how well written the characters are, as characters rightfully distrust Subaru who has to learn to become a better person who can actually help the people he cares about. Re:Zero is excellently paced and the big moments and reveals are regularly shocking and every cliffhanger is painful. I think a 3rd season is inevitable, but if we never get more, what we have is such a deeply satisfying experience with a great conclusion.

9: Hajime No Ippo The Fighting!

One of my favorite friends on Twitter, Nate Ming, always raved about Ippo so when it came to Crunchyroll I knew I had to check it out. I was pretty hooked right away, but what sealed the deal was the end of the third episode, when Ippo’s soon to be rival Miyata says to himself after his first sparring match with Ippo that his hits were powerful and that “boxing has just become incredibly interesting to me.” I love the general loop of Hajime No Ippo as he trains with his friends at the gym to prepare for his next match, he meets and comes to understand his next opponent which usually causes him to adjust his training, and then they finally meet in the ring. Each of the boxing matches are awesome because the hits have real impact and you always know what each boxer has on the line for each fight. I really hope one day I can continue Ippo and see the second and third series officially because Ippo’s journey is so exciting and inspiring. 

8: Nichijou

Nichijou is a celebration of animation and an anime that always makes me smile and laugh. It is ostensibly a comedy about strange moments in everyday life with a touch of surrealness. The skits in each episode vary in length and subject matter, but what doesn’t change is how Kyoto Animation lovingly animated all of it. One of my favorite early moments was definitely a scene where a bite sized piece of sausage falls off one of the characters bento boxes and the characters are shocked and horrified in slow motion as it bounces around the room. Another of my favorite scenes is when Yuuko is being punished by having to stand outside her classroom and witnesses the principal get into a wrestling match with a deer that wandered into the school. While I don’t expect to get more animation for Nichijou, I am glad the author has recently begun drawing more of the manga again years after the series ended.

7: March Comes In Like A Lion

March Comes In Like A Lion follows Rei Kiriyama who is a young, professional Shogi player and is battling depression while living alone. While he doesn’t feel worthy, three sisters who live together, the Kawamoto’s, are friends with Rei and frequently invite him over for dinner. There is so much grief to work through in the series, but also a ton of warmth to experience as well. While the main characters, including Rei’s rival Nikaido and his eventual mentor Shimada, are my favorites, a really fun side cast slowly builds up over the course of the series, many of which are Rei’s opponents and friends at the Shogi Hall. Shaft does an exceptional job bringing the series to life and clearly has a ton of fun animating the expressive characters and the moody imagery that serves as a metaphor for the characters’ feelings. March is my favorite anime that I consider an important watch that offers more than just entertainment which it’s also excellent at. I’m really glad it has wide, universal appeal because I can’t recommend it enough.

6: Girls Und Panzer Der Film / Girls Und Panzer

Girls Und Panzer is a wacky universe where tank combat is considered a fun sport where virtually no one gets injured and Der Film is basically “tanks are awesome, the movie.” The film has a really unusual structure as the vast majority of its run time is solely dedicated to two tank battles with only the middle 15 minutes or so offering a smidge of story and character development. While the first half of the film is already excellent, the back half is truly spectacular as the high school teams seen in the TV series band together to form a 30 tank team and square off against a college team of 30 tanks. Like the TV series before it, Der Film combines all the fun of a sports team show with tank action, but here the action is more gonzo than ever. To tease it a little bit, the finale of the film takes place in an abandoned amusement park and they make the absolute most of the setting for the final exciting battles.

5: Baccano!

Baccano strangely starts with the final episode chronologically that offers a framing device for the story and tells you one thing clearly, something really bad happened on the Flying Pussyfoot train. Baccano is a fitting name for this story, as it means ruckus in Italian. Set during the Great Depression three stories play out, the journey of the Flying Pussyfoot across country, the search for a man named Dallas who has gone missing, and the story about the mafia who encounter an elixir of immortality. Each episode regularly bounces between the three stories and multiple protagonists and villains. My absolute favorite story is definitely the Flying Pussyfoot as two armed forces, two groups of train robbers, and a monster called the Rail Tracer are all battling it out aboard the moving train. Baccano is very concerned with having a wild, fun time, and it’s criminal it never got more than the one TV season and a few OVAs. What we did get is still an all-time classic and I’ll treasure it forever.

4: Monogatari

Perhaps the hardest anime to place on my list was the Monogatari series that began with the Bakemonogatari anime and even included a film trilogy with the Kizumonogatari films. When I first watched Bakemonogatari I was very unsure how I felt about it as it is a very sexually charged series and the main character, Koyomi Araragi, while lovable, is regularly a terrible person. It took until the final, 12th episode where I could finally see where the heart of the series truly lied and every subsequent TV series, OVA, and film absolutely rewarded that initial investment. The full cast is excellent (I especially love Shinobu and Kanbaru) and I was always surprised how much I enjoyed the many protagonist shifts. My favorite part of Monogatari is that there is a mystery at the heart of each ghost story and as the characters examine it over and over again the final truths revealed are always so interesting and satisfying. Monogatari ended in animation for now at least with Zoku Owarimonogatari and I haven’t rewatched any of it since. I always hoped I could continue the series with the novel releases in English, but sadly they stopped with Zoku Owarimonogatari as well. I cared so much about the series for so long, but now I’m wondering exactly where it fits in my life. For now, I bumped it down from second to fourth place. I definitely need to rewatch it in full sometime.

3: Symphogear

My first experience with Symphogear was Crunchyroll tweeting out a video and calling it one of the best scenes of all time. For whatever reason, I clicked on it and was 1,000% sold. The scene, which I’d later learn was basically the no context opening of Season 3, featured three magical girls boarding a rocket shuttle that has lost control upon reentry. From here they guide the ship to a safe landing, but this is not before Hibiki Tachibana, the main character, punches through a mountain (which forces a guy at base to update the tallest mountain wikis), through a canyon, and safely as possible through a small town. It was perfect, the action, the concept, the dialogue, all of it. But if you want a sense about why this is one of my favorite series when I later reached this point watching the show, I discovered there was still two more huge fight scenes and a well animated concert in the same episode alone. Symphogear is awesome and always strives to be as over the top and entertaining as possible. I love the main characters and the music, both the openings and endings as well as what the characters sing in battle, is incredible. It also has a perfect ending in season 5 that was so good I had to take a long break from anime since nothing could come close to topping it.

2: Yu Yu Hakusho!

My favorite show from Toonami was without a doubt Yu Yu Hakusho. When Yusuke Urameshi dies saving a child about to be hit by an incoming car, he is given a second chance at life and is tasked with becoming the Spirit Detective of Earth who solves supernatural crises involving the spirit and demon worlds. After solving a few early cases, he eventually joins forces with his rival, Kuwabara, and two of his former enemies, Kurama and Hiei, to take down even more powerful threats. It’s here that the show really hits its stride as the dynamic between the four friends is amazing and they all have fun powers, techniques, and tools for the battles ahead. While the very final stretch of episodes is very whatever, the peak of the show between the battle with the Four Beasts, the Dark Tournament, and the Chapter Black arcs is unforgettable. I sometimes wonder if the shows I loved growing up are as good as I thought they were and I was so happy to find when I rewatched Yu Yu Hakusho on Blu Ray how exceptional it still was.

1: Puella Magi Madoka Magica / Rebellion / Magia Record

When I first watched it in Anime Club, I obviously loved Madoka Magica a lot, but it was when I rewatched it again and again to show friends and family, that I became sure it was my favorite anime I’ve seen to date. Madoka is a densely crafted show filled with wondrous, but haunting imagery that makes the absolute most of its twelve episodes. While it first presents itself as a standard magical girl show, it’s obvious from the imagery and plot details that something more sinister lurks beneath the surface. It’s a perfect tragedy between the six characters at the heart of the show and it ultimately ends on a bittersweet, but magical ending. Every time I watch Madoka Magica, I still pick up on new details I didn’t catch or truly appreciate on a prior viewing which is what makes watching it so rewarding. My favorite character is definitely Madoka herself as she begins the show very uncertain of herself, but becomes more decisive and able to stand up and protect what she believes in as the show continues. I also have to thank Madoka Magica for introducing me to my absolute favorite musical group, ClariS, who provided the amazing opening theme song for the show, Connect. Overall, Madoka Magica forever cemented my love of anime and I’m still inspired by everything it achieved and its final message of hope. It is without a doubt, my favorite anime at 30!

…

That concludes my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it and thank you for reading! I always love discussing anime so feel free to share what you thought of my favorite shows and share your favorite anime with me on Twitter @JustinMikos. Below is my top 36 anime that shows where all the related media that I had grouped together would have placed. Otherwise, until next time!

1: Puella Magi Madoka Magica
2: Yu Yu Hakusho!
3: Symphogear
4: Monogatari
5: Baccano!
6: Madoka Magica Rebellion
7: Girls Und Panzer Der Film
8: March Comes In Like A Lion
9: Nichijou
10: Hajime No Ippo The Fighting!
11: Re:Zero
12: Dragon Ball Super
13: Mob Psycho 100
14: My Hero Academia
15: Attack on Titan
16: Granbelm
17: Fate/Zero
18: Durarara!!!
19: Cardcaptor Sakura
20: Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online
21: Dragon Ball Super Broly
22: My Hero Academia: Two Heroes
23: Working!!!
24: Angel Beats!
25: Steins;Gate
26: Girls Und Panzer
27: Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann
28: Love Live Sunshine
29: Magia Record
30: Gundam Wing
31: Little Busters!
32: Love Live!
33: Yurikuma Arashi
34: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
35: Pop Team Epic!
36: A Certain Scientific Railgun

​Since its launch at the very end of July to almost the very end of August, I was consumed by Xenoblade Chronicles 3. It took me 100 hours to roll credits and I knew I was far from done as I still had so much of the game to see and experience myself. I ended up putting another 42 hours in before reaching my current stopping point. Across my first 142 hours with Xenoblade 3, I mapped out every corner of Aionios except for the very last level 95+ cave, I completed every quest in the game I could find, and I maxed out affinity with every location. I made the decision to stop when I did in large part due to waiting to see how the DLC expansion content will be integrated into the game, not for a lack of enthusiasm to fully wrap it up.

As I did for Xenoblade Chronicles X, I’m excited to share my full thoughts on the game fresh off my first playthrough. The Xenoblade series has meant so much to me since before the first game even released in the US, so I’m very excited to both put together and share this blog. Given just how enormous and complex this game is, I needed to write this blog to properly sort my feelings out on the game. Even so, I still feel hesitant to make definitive statements on certain fronts, so please forgive me when that happens here. I think it’s a great problem to be so overwhelmed by this game and I was always pleased to find it truly challenges the almost impossible to overcome throne the original Xenoblade Chronicles sits on in my mind. I’ll say it upfront, I do think Xenoblade Chronicles 3 ultimately edges out Xenoblade Chronicles as the best game in the series, though in my heart it’s still battling it out to become my favorite. I’m just too close to the experience still and the story of Xenoblade 3 is far from over as we have three more rounds of DLC ahead which will add new heroes, which I’m very curious to see how they will be implemented, a new challenge mode, and a significant story mode expansion so it may be a while before I know for sure.

​Before I dive in, I’d like to lay out how this blog is organized and to set spoiler expectations. Let’s start with the latter. In this blog, I ultimately want to discuss the story of the game in detail. It’s so wrapped up in my feelings on the game that talking around it would do a disservice to the game and just make for a weaker blog. I also want to feel comfortable talking about combat mechanics and the game’s structure and again dancing around details just seems ill-advised as that’s where the depth of the game lies and my overall thoughts evolved throughout my full journey. So yes, there will be full spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in this blog beyond this paragraph and if you haven’t finished the game yet I encourage you to return to this blog after you have rolled credits and dived into the post game, a first for the series. If you want to hear my mostly spoiler free thoughts on the game, I encourage you to check out my Twitter thread of my first playthrough. If you are unfamiliar with Blue Reflection Second Light, an RPG from last year I loved, you are good to go there. I noted a major connection the two games share which I will bring up again in this blog so watch out! By nature as well, expect full spoilers for the rest of the Xenoblade series in this blog, it is just unavoidable. For this blog’s structure, the rough plan from start to finish is to cover my initial expectations walking in, discussing the premise of the game and its structure. I’ll then cover individual elements including exploration, combat, music, the characters and story, and then finally discuss my overall feelings. There is a ton to discuss so let’s dive right in!

To properly kick this blog off, I have to discuss my expectations walking in. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the sixth Xenoblade Chronicles experience and my reactions to the first five thoroughly informed my expectations. The original game was my 2012 game of the year and won me over by being the complete package. Every element is excellent and works in harmony to create an unforgettable experience. When I replayed Xenoblade with the Definitive Edition, I wrote a blog laying out my full thoughts on the game like I am here. My thoughts on Future Connected are included as well. Xenoblade X was another game of colossal importance for me that I considered at the time a messy masterpiece. Its level of execution could not always reach its absurd ambitions, but darn if X isn’t so loveable and always arresting all the same. I strongly yearn for Xenoblade X to be brought over to the Switch, not just because my Wii U will one day fail me, but to have an excuse to play it again and hopefully check out the multiplayer with friends.

The largest factor hanging over my expectations for Xenoblade 3 was the infamous Xenoblade Chronicles 2. While it was still one of my favorite games the year it came out (at 9th place), the more distance I had from it, the more it personally felt like a relatively big disappointment. It was obviously a step back in quality and ambition from both Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade X with flatter environments and a less dynamic combat system. The pacing of the game is thoroughly mixed for the first thirty hours until it largely gets its act together for the back forty or so. While the story and characters did win me over ultimately, the juvenile and horny tone never sat right with me. To this day, I’ve never recommended Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to anyone. In fact, I’ve largely discouraged people to check it out given its worst content and given the first 30 hours are a slog. It’s a shame given there are elements of Xenoblade 2 I do really enjoy including the majority of the characters, the excellent ending, and the largely awesome soundtrack. So of course, with such a marked shift in tone and quality, I wondered what the next main Xenoblade entry would be like for years. The two smaller experiences following Xenoblade 2, Torna and Future Connected, gave me immense hope that the series was back on track as they more closely resembled Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade X. My hope was that Xenoblade 2 would stand as the black sheep of the series and now with Xenoblade 3 I can thankfully say yes, it is.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 properly begins showing two nations at war, Keves and Agnus. The goal of the war is to kill as many of the enemy soldiers as possible as the two sides are literally harvesting the embers of life that leave slain soldier’s bodies. The war is being fought across the world of Aionios, between organized groups of soldiers called colonies. Each one has a Flame Clock that shows the amount of energy each colony has collected and each soldier’s life is tied to their colony’s clock. If the clock were to deplete, every soldier would die so they are forced to fight. There’s little questioning of the structure of this world by the majority of the soldiers themselves as they are literally born and raised to fight for their ten years of life. In the initial battle, we see one colony being wiped out entirely, and it is here that we meet three of the main characters, Noah the main protagonist, and his friends Eunie and Lanz. Noah is an off-seer who sends off the lives of departed soldiers so they can rest peacefully. While Noah has some questions about the structure of his world, the weight of the flame clock prevents him from acting on them.

By the end of chapter 1 the story begins to shift as an urgent special operation Noah’s colony is sent on sets Noah and his friends lives on a different course. They are tasked to destroy an unknown force and Noah’s squad happens to reach them first alongside a squad from Agnus ultimately composed of the other three party members, Mio, Taion, and Sena. While the six soldiers are battling it out, a giant monster appears and wreaks havoc killing some of their friends who had come to assist them. In the middle of this confusion, that unknown force led by a man named Vandham, activates the Ouroboros Stone which transforms the party into Ouroboros. This frees them from the shackles of the flame clock and allows them to Interlink between each other in set pairs which basically temporarily transforms them into giant robots of immense power. This allows them to overcome that giant monster who identifies as a Moebius and gives them insight into the memories and emotions of their partner. After a series of events, the six soldiers alongside two Nopon, Riku and Manana, decide to team up and search for a city in Swordmarch (the sword of the Mechonis from the original Xenoblade that pierces the land) that will hopefully give them more answers about Moebius and allow them to live beyond their ten years of life.

In chapter 3 the greater structure of the game comes into focus as you are able to explore the world of Aionios with more freedom. Noah, armed with a sword called Lucky Seven, is able to destroy Flame Clocks in a way that actually frees the people of each colony rather than kills them. From this point you are able to continue advancing the story or break off at any time to dive into various side content including huge optional zones to explore, hero and later ascension quests, and a vast array of side quests mostly attached to each colony you have liberated. Every colony liberated has a hero character to recruit that fills a rotating seventh slot in your party (the main six characters are locked in your party) and is heavily tied to the story of each colony. Zeon for example, the leader of Noah’s Colony 9, is a childhood friend of Noah, Lanz, and Eunie, and tries to address the food shortage his colony faces by growing crops. These characters are not just important to recruit because they flesh out the world and story, but because each one has a unique job that the party can learn and master.

I love the structure of Xenoblade 3. For the first time in the non-X games there truly is an overwhelming amount of quality side content to pursue beyond the main story. For exploration, my favorite element of the Xenoblade games, you no longer just have small optional parts of the main story areas you are in to explore, but often huge distinct areas to get lost in and have your own adventures in. As I played through the game, I often kept mental notes of optional areas I should explore once my level closed in on them. While there is no reward to mapping out the world, it was addicting filling in the map myself by wandering through it and seeing every last inch of the beautiful and fantastic world. I often wondered and was often satisfied with how the world connected itself together and figuring out how to reach certain places was as immensely satisfying as exploring them. I can’t speak to Xenoblade 2 since I don’t remember how it worked there, but at least in Xenoblade 3 compared to the original game I appreciate that you no longer whiff attacks on monsters more than three levels above you. With the right equipment, ability spread, and tactics then you can take on monsters many levels above you and come out on top. It’s such an empowering and deeply satisfying feeling that enriches the thrill of exploration into unknown territory when there is no artificial failure barrier because the amount of danger you can risk is far greater. 

Recruiting heroes and experiencing the greater stories that develop across locations is another excellent source of quality side content. Having recruited everyone along my journey, I could not imagine having not and ultimately seeing their stories through given how much it adds to the greater experience. While I waited until after I rolled credits to finish all of them, I’m also especially glad I saw every colony story through while maxing affinity. I’m always a huge fan of when you tackle side quests that introduce characters that later all come together as a community for a final quest. Xenoblade 3 does have a few quests with tons of crossover including building the giant robot together with Colony 30 and their neighbors, but more often it is one hero character or prominent side character working together with one another or the people of the individual colonies coming together. I don’t think I’ve had a game that’s ever had as many quests like these with such a fun range in scale, so I felt especially catered to and loved how they enriched the world. There’s a lot of a-ha moments in being confronted with a problem and then knowing who you need to turn to for help whether it’s an individual or a full community.

With the premise and general structure covered, I’d like to move on to discuss more specific elements of Xenoblade 3 starting with exploration. My favorite part of the Xenoblade series is unquestionably exploring the amazing and truly fantastic worlds Monolith designs and brings to life. I was skeptical of the strength of Xenoblade 3’s exploration element during my journey because while Aionios lacks some of the impossible fantasy landscapes that define the series and straight up reuses imagery from both Xenoblade and Xenoblade 2, I ultimately walked away deeply satisfied. Aside from X which reigns uncontested with its open world structure, Xenoblade 3 became my otherwise favorite game in the series for exploration. Walking into the experience from the prerelease information I was unsure whether Xenoblade 3 would be open world or have open zones like 1 and 2. I was initially disappointed to find out it was open zones again, but what I could not tell early on was exactly how huge, dense, and complex these zones were.

On three separate occasions, I was ultimately blown away by Xenoblade 3’s world. The first was the Fornis region which in chapter 2 is a guided experience. However, once you reach chapter 3, you quickly stumble upon my favorite area of the game that I dubbed the Crossroads. While it obviously has a proper name and is connected to a major area, the Crossroads are special to me because when you enter them the music fades away and the stunning scale and vision of Xenoblade 3 is fully revealed. The Crossroads is the intersection of four different areas of Fornis. The North where you came from leads to Colony 4, the Eastern path leads to Dannagh Desert, the path to the West leads to a deadly valley called Elaice Highway, and right before you to the South lies Ribi Flats a verdant, peaceful cliffside that you’ll have to scale. Even then, what I still could not imagine about Fornis was that there were still distinct biomes to find, two more colonies to find one of which is literally hiding inside a mountain, and two substantial dungeon-like caves. When I made each discovery one by one, I felt each time no way can Monolith make this land more complex and yet they did.

Since I’m talking about Fornis, I might as well bring up the new to Xenoblade 3 party skills which once found grant you new abilities like being able to ride down wires or walk over hazardous ground. There’s so few of them it’s not much of a Metroid element, but even so I did get a great kick out of getting a new one and knowing where to run back to explore new areas. Fornis has perhaps my favorite use of one as there is a mountain in the lower Western corner of the Dannagh Desert that I just did not know how to climb. Walking around the perimeter of the cliffside didn’t help as the only ramp was a sand flow that prevented you from climbing up it. At this point I found my first trick door dungeon which was a pleasant surprise and from there tried to figure out how to enter the two seemingly random door icons on the map to no avail. When I gave up, I returned to the Aetia region you begin the game in and ended up heading towards Mio’s colony, Colony Gamma, where I ended up learning an ability to climb up sand flows from the commander/hero Teach. Now the adventure was back on so I happily scaled and explored that mountain that thwarted me previously. It was a great moment in my adventure.

I mentioned I was blown away three times, so let me move on to the second time, the Cadensia region with the Erythia Sea. At this point in the journey, I thought Fornis was going to be the exceptional standout area after the Pentalas and Keves Castle regions were more linear. When you first enter Cadensia you are basically at the base of Swordmarch and the home of the Lost Numbers simply called, City. They task you with the next part of the journey of sneaking into Agnus Castle and give you a boat to cross the Erythia Sea. The port for the boat is inside a cave inside a small mountain, so when you emerge out into the Erythia Sea it feels awesome seeing the full sea before you. There are many islands scattered about to explore at your leisure with my favorites being Daedel Island, Corne Island, and the Levi Sandbar. The whole sea in general is just classic Xenoblade as most of the islands offer satisfying mini adventures. Take Daedel Island for example which after climbing up the beachside leads to a fortress of Gulkins, a sea themed offshoot of Tirkins. After you blast through them you can repel into the central core of the island that is filled with humongous dinosaurs and other seemingly prehistoric beasts. If you are properly leveled, you can fully explore this central core area including battling enemies in the lake, near a small cave, and later on the cliffside tackle a boss to reach the giant plant at the island’s center. Levi Sandbar offers similar thrills as there are rivers of sand to navigate, an underground spider den to find after falling in quicksand, a military base to conquer, and castle ruins to explore atop a small ridge. Throughout the sea there are sealed treasures to discover, tons of unique boss monsters to defeat including two superbosses, some very interesting caves to find, and, most impressively, the base of Agnus Castle is part of the same map. There’s so much adventure to be had in the Cadensia region and I was happy it remains relevant to the end of your adventure because it was the region I was most happy to be in.

The final moment of exploration that blew me away was the return to the Aetia region which is also my favorite long term payoff in Xenoblade 3. When I first approached the edge of Cadensia and saw it say I would return to Aetia I thought it was a mistake since I had definitely finished mapping out the Eastern edge of Aetia earlier. Prior to this, I had noticed that the remains of the Gormott Titan from Xenoblade 2 hung above Aetia and thought it’d be cool to explore up there, but I thought it was just decoration. Well it absolutely wasn’t! When you return to Aetia you are in a snow filled region called Upper Aetia and while it isn’t required for the main story you can complete the full loop of your journey around the world by climbing down into Cooley Lake, which was a portion of the map that haunted me throughout the adventure. I had so many ideas for how to reach Cooley Lake including what ultimately turned out to be an unconnected high level cave and a mysterious cliffside I couldn’t reach, as well as the edge of the battlefield at the beginning of the game. I had just ruled out the battlefield before heading to Upper Aetia for the first time. When I reached the Cloudkeep of Upper Aetia and turned around and saw the fantastic view of the battlefield where the game began and knowing it was all one huge level was such a wild moment I won’t forget.

​To wrap up my discussion on exploration, not only was I constantly compelled to push forward and see everything, I just ultimately came to really appreciate the world of Aionios to an extent even more than the original Xenoblade game whose best maps are also seared into my memory. I came to know Aionios like the back of my hand especially as I ran through side quests in the post game. Often, I’d be sent somewhere in the world to address an issue and feel yes, I know exactly where I’m heading and I’m excited to head back there. Along the way I’d often look into other things I had left unfinished like tackling unique monsters that were above my level prior to open up new fast travel points. I loved exploring so much that when it came time to fight the final boss and I wasn’t ready for my journey to conclude just then, I of course jumped right back into exploring and in this case fully mapped out the Lower Maktha Wildwood.

Ok, that covers exploration, so time to move on and discuss combat. I’d like to discuss the combat system itself of course and, in the process, I’ll discuss both party building and the job system as well. Xenoblade 3 thankfully returns to a combat system closer in spirit to Xenoblade and Xenoblade X where positioning matters more than ever. There is no question in my mind, this is the best combat system in the series yet when you are in the middle of it as there is so much more to immediately manage as well as more systems and strategies possible to tap into. When the game begins for the character you control, you simply have three basic Arts assigned to face buttons and a powerful Talent Art that fills up as you perform tasks that support your combat role. For example, attackers need to mix in positional attacks, attacking from the front, back, and side with specific Arts, to fill up their Talent Art’s gauge. Arts from Keves classes fill up after a time based cool down while Agnus classes fill up every time you auto attack. This distinction is important because ultimately you can equip up to three more Arts from classes from the opposite nation. In other words, you’ll have three Arts where Arts recharge over time and three that recharge through auto attacks which is especially interesting to juggle when they have a range of cooldown lengths. The second set of Arts is mapped to pressing up, right, and down on the d-pad and here is where an interesting decision comes into play. Arts that line up on the UI horizontally (Up and X, Right and Y, and Down and B) can be activated at once as Fusion Arts by holding ZR. In a Fusion Art, the main Art of your current class triggers and combines both the damage and bonus effect of the other Art, like Power Charge or Bleed, to it. Somewhere in there is some kind of damage multiplier as well given how easy it is to spot as your damage increases throughout the adventure. There’s another bonus as well because Fusion Arts help power up your Ouroboros form while the downside of course is that you must wait for both Arts to be charged which might leave one Art sitting unused for a while.

Ouroboros is the other main part of the combat system to manage and plan around. When the set pairs of characters Interlink, Noah and Mio, Eunie and Taion, and Lanz and Sena, they fuse together to form a powerful robot that is impervious to damage. Each Ouroboros also has its own set of arts and eventually when the Agnus crew get their own leading Ouroboros forms you can swap between the two to take advantage of even more Arts. Each form has their own role and purpose. Noah’s Ouroboros form is generally amazing at dealing damage and setting up big combos for example while Eunie’s Ouroboros form is good for healing allies and can even revive them. While a general goal of combat for longer encounters should be to charge the Ouroboros gauge to level 3 for max damage, sometimes activating it early to dodge a hit to keep a character alive is crucial. It’s important to remember that when two characters Interlink you might lose out on key roles in your party like your healers so you need to account for that when party building.

​While normal combat and Ouroboros combat are the most regular features of combat to consider, they aren’t the only ones. For the first time you can swap to any of the six main characters at any time which is great if you need a specific thing to happen that the generally good AI is not addressing. In addition to positional attacks, there are buff fields your party lays down that you can take advantage of if you move your party into them like attack up, healing, and haste/art recharge. This can be done individually or by making use of orders to cluster everyone together. There are also two limit break attacks to consider implementing. First is Chain Attacks, which I generally avoided in regular combat since they deal an absurd amount of damage. I did like using them occasionally as a get out of jail free card however since it is a very good way to completely refill your health. The second limit break is by far my favorite and one I enjoyed working towards. You need a lot of charges to build it up, but if you can manage to fill it without dying, Noah’s second unique talent art, Unlimited Sword, is incredible. When activated, Noah draws forth Lucky Seven and gets access to six unique Arts that grant buffs and debuffs consistently and a unique Talent Art that guarantees a very powerful Smash combo. You obviously draw a ton of aggro, but if you properly time the Smash combo you can interrupt enemy attacks. Alternately, you can hide temporarily in your Ouroboros form which grants easier access to Noah’s special Ouroboros talent art and maintains the timer for Unlimited Sword. Since it is so difficult to build and maintain, I had no remorse attempting to work Unlimited Sword into my longer fights unlike the absurdly powerful Chain Attacks that have little drawback beyond the long animations.

I want to briefly talk about one of my favorite fights I experienced as an example of how this all comes together. Around 15 hours into my adventure, I picked a fight with an elite scorpion monster four levels above me. Early on I swapped between characters to get everyone in position since we didn’t start the fight united. This set me up to take proper advantage of buff and healing fields for my whole party. From there I swapped to Noah who was using the Flash Fencer job to power up his attacks including his first Lucky Seven special talent art (not the limit break) and I took advantage of fusion arts to charge my Ouroboros as best as I could. I was able to dodge some of the biggest hits of the scorpion by swapping to Ouroboros, but unfortunately when he was at 25% health left my two healers went down. Unless you have a special item equipped or have access to Eunie and Taion’s Ouroboros revive, when your healers die you can no longer revive people. With my last four members, I did a hail mary Chain Attack and in the last round barely managed to kill the scorpion. My reward for the battle wasn’t just the thrill of it as it turned out this scorpion was guarding a secret location oasis in the top left corner of the Dannagh Desert. It was so satisfying to triumph here and see such an awesome spot. Most of my favorite fights in Xenoblade 3 would resemble this one as I regularly tapped into many of the combat systems at key points in order to triumph.

I’ve touched on it throughout my discussion of combat, but let’s talk about party building and the job system. I think even considering X which had a deeper range of possibilities, Xenoblade 3 despite ditching proper equipment is the most fun to build parties with since it readily presents interesting choices to play with. For the six characters always in the field, you are directly in charge of choosing their class, arranging their arts and fusion arts, and equipping three skills, three accessories, and finally three gems. The first choice for a long part of the game isn’t necessarily the most interesting in itself, but rather for how you plan your character growth. There are many weird quirks of the job system to consider when it comes to learning and mastering classes. First you have to complete the hero quest to recruit someone with a new job into your party. Upon doing so, one of the main six characters instantly becomes the class inheritor and has access to it as well. In order to teach the job to your other five characters you’ll need to have either the hero or someone who has mastered the job in your party with the job equipped. The more characters who have the job equipped the faster the other characters will learn it, but the game doesn’t tell you that you must also fight monsters at or ideally above your level to really move the process along. Since you permanently learn skills, arts, and eventually talent arts for your effort, it’s best to learn every job and master them as you play. When you don’t have jobs to learn and master, choosing your seventh hero can become quite strategic as they can make a surprisingly huge impact on keeping your party healthy vs dealing a lot of damage. I was mostly focused on leveling efficiently so I didn’t play around with possibilities of the job and hero systems as much as I’d have liked to, but every once in a while, I’d randomly assemble really cool and effective combinations which considerably raised my opinion of the system as a whole.

​To talk about how these choices all interact, I’d like to discuss my favorite build. While there are many jobs I enjoyed playing, like the Flash Fencer, Sword Master, and Full Metal Jaguar, my absolute favorite was Ghondor’s class, the Martial Artist. What makes the Martial Artist inherently special beyond its high critical hit rate is that most of its attacks I favored have inherently short cooldowns. This meant I could regularly sneak Arts in while my Arts drawn from other classes were recharging and, in the process, really charge my selected Talent Art quickly. One of its best Arts has an Evade effect which makes you entirely invulnerable to damage and lets you turn Xenoblade 3 into more of an action game where you can dodge the most devastating attacks. The Martial Artist’s Talent Art is particularly interesting as it boosts its strength by draining the power from charged Arts which can be weaker than just using Fusion Arts, but is sometimes more powerful especially when an enemy has high defense. While the Martial Artist has a lot of inherent strengths its real strength is that with a solid build to accentuate its strengths it becomes absurdly good. For Fusion Arts, I mainly picked Arts with short cooldowns and made sure I had the Flash Fencer’s Power Charge. For equipment, including accessories, skills, and gems, I prioritized choices that sped up attack and boosted critical hit rate. I also made sure to equip my absolute favorite accessory that doubles Fusion Art damage. Finally, I always made sure my healers had access to the fast art recharge field of Miyabi’s Troubadour Class and regularly brought along Miyabi herself as well which meant my Arts practically instantly charged. All of this together let me regularly fire off Fusion Arts as much as possible which could easily deal around 50,000 damage or higher in the right conditions. My Talent Art could also charge very quickly which was especially great if it was Noah’s unique Unlimited Sword Talent Art.

I’d like to move on now to briefly discuss the music of Xenoblade 3. In general, I was greatly pleased by the battle themes while I felt underwhelmed by the field music. It feels like there is less unique battle music overall in Xenoblade 3 compared to Xenoblade 2, but it does make up for it by having cool variations for the boss battle themes that speak to the tone of the fight at hand. On the quality front, I think Xenoblade 3 is my new favorite for battle themes. Keves Battle and You Will Know Our Names Finale are particularly cool for featuring the flutes used in the main story. My two favorite tracks are definitely, A Formidable Enemy, which is the theme of all elite monster fights, and Battle! Vs Moebius, which plays for all Moebius fights. The Moebius boss fight theme in particular gives me chills every time I hear it as it’s truly on another level. I also have to give a shoutout to the post game battle theme remix of Drifting Soul which takes one of my favorite themes of Xenoblade 2 into a very cool new direction.

On the other hand, we have the exploration themes for Xenoblade 3 which left me disappointed. In a vacuum they are all generally fine, but the songs that play when you are exploring are just so muted compared to the bombastic themes I loved from past games. There is no equivalent at all to something like the Gaur Plains theme from the original Xenoblade or Gormott, Mor Ardain, and Tantal from Xenoblade 2. Most of the songs in Xenoblade 3 are just generally wistful and melancholic which does work very well to accentuate the story and themes of Xenoblade 3, but I’m sad it all kind of fades into the background without a range of tones. The one exception is the Erythia Sea theme which is still quiet, but the melody of the piano is just catchy enough to stand out and it feels fitting for being leisurely at sea. While the general exploration themes let me down, I do like the town themes. The one for the City in particular is especially distinct and reminds me of the Nier soundtracks. I’m not terribly familiar with the names of the music for event tracks yet so I can’t give many shoutouts here, but to wrap up my music discussion, I will say I especially enjoyed, Remnants of Memories, and the end credit’s theme, Where We Belong.

​For my final section before my overall wrap up, I’d like to discuss the characters and the story. I can confidently say this is my favorite cast of core characters in a Xenoblade game. For the main eight there are no weak links at all. Eunie and Lanz are definitely my two favorites. Eunie is just incredibly funny with her rude remarks and regular exasperation, but she does truly care about all of her friends and has some good drama with remembering and overcoming the trauma of her past lives. Lanz is definitely the heart of the group and has meaningful moments with all of the main characters and a good number of hero characters. He also has my favorite repeated line of post battle dialog in the game “And I was the MVP…You’re all thinking it!” The second half is delivered with such amusing conviction that I always laugh when thinking about it. I like Noah and Mio a lot too. I had become iffy on Noah during the events of chapter 5 and 6 and later how he forgives his dark counterpart N, but those moments just seem weirdly out of character mostly in regards to how thoughtful and insightful he is in every other part of the story. Mio too suffers in the same story sections as Noah and again shines everywhere else, but I do give Mio the slight edge over Noah because the story really does a great job when focusing on how she spends her remaining time left both heroically and when she is more vulnerable. Riku and Manana are probably my next favorite pair. Riku always has the best wisdom and truly cares about all of his friends and I love his super deep voice. I was skeptical about Manana since she doesn’t get much to do in the main story, but her bubbly personality really shines in side quests and she gets so many of the game’s best silly lines. Sena and Taion definitely get less to work with than the other characters (Sena even gets robbed during her own ascension quest!), but I definitely love what each brings to the team. Sena has a ton of energy and wants to prove herself even as she is haunted by self-doubt and Taion alternates well between thoughtful analysis and snark.

​I greatly enjoyed the cast of hero characters overall. There’s a truly surprising amount of variety between them despite most of them being leaders of a Colony or faction and I was obviously thrilled both Nia and Melia returned. For new characters, I already mentioned Miyabi was definitely the MVP in my group in battle for fast Art recharging, but I also really enjoyed her relationship with Mio and her ascension quest, a cooking contest with multiple contestants and judges, which was very fun. Zeon was excellent too. I initially confused him with Garvel, the bully from flashbacks, and was very relieved to find out they were different characters because Zeon is an excellent friend and I love his intense passion for growing crops, especially potatoes. I also enjoyed Ashera who has by far the most amusing entrance in the game as she asks you to fight off her own colony who both hate and love her. Ashera’s ascension quest really fleshed out her character and the lore of the game as we learned prior to the main game the Homecoming ceremony was a brutal affair rather than a sad, celebratory one. My favorite hero character was definitely Ghondor. Her filthy language and aggressive personality make a bad first impression, but I was fully won over when she very amusingly returns to rescue the party in chapter 6. I became even more endeared to Ghondor the more side quests I played as we see many different sides of her across them.

​While the main party and hero characters are awesome, sadly Moebius, the villains, are not. While Moebius starts off with a great first impression with the maniacal D and that incredible boss theme, the ones you regularly encounter in normal side quests are just so mustache-twirlingly evil and even sometimes just downright incompetent that you lose all respect for them as adversaries. While it’s kind of the point that they are drunk on power, when the rest of the game is confidently presented with so much thoughtfulness, it’s just a real bummer most of the villains are just a parade of jokers. Perhaps if they leaned into camp more it would work out. The Moebius for Colony Tau for example sounds like an evil British grandma which is very amusing. Aside from D, there are three other villains who stand out in Xenoblade 3, Shania, N, and Z. Shania is probably the best in the game. She begins the game as a regular human and betrays the entire party to escape her mortal existence. In Sena’s ascension quest Shania returns as a Moebius and you learn how her upbringing drove her to only see her failures and the worst in people despite the support she did have. I really like N’s tragic backstory and his villainous actions in the plot have the most impact, but I do think he loses massive points for just being incredibly dense for 1,000 years. His redemption arc thus fell completely flat for me. Finally, I have to talk about Z, pronounced Zed, the ultimate villain of the game. In discussing the game online, I realized I may have misunderstood Z’s backstory. I think he existed prior to Origin, but regardless if he did or didn’t I do think in either case the idea of Z being powered by humanity’s fear of the future is pretty cool and his obsession with cinema is amusing. Unfortunately, the final, very dragged-out boss fight with Z is such a letdown, that I do think less of his character.

As for the story, I definitely enjoyed the biggest beats. The opening in particular is presented with such confidence that you really feel you are in for the adventure of a lifetime. The end of chapter 2 where the party really teams up for the first time is also very exciting. Things start to drag a bit in chapters 3 and 4 as the game settles into a predictable rhythm, but thankfully chapter 5 is incredible. The party meeting the Lost Numbers in full and seeing the normal human life cycle is such an incredible, wondrous moment. Of course, the best moment in the game, even with parts I disagree with, is when the party rescues Ghondor from prison, but ends up getting captured themselves. N’s twisted actions that seemingly culminate with the death of Mio and Noah is incredibly shocking. I mentioned it above, but I really liked N’s backstory revealed here as he was ultimately broken from all of the time loops he experienced. When Noah returns to reality from his dream journey and truly pulls Lucky Seven for the first time is an incredible, empowering moment. Rescuing Nia at the end of Chapter 6 is another fantastic moment, as Nia presents herself to the party as someone of legendary status and importance, but we the players know she is just winging it completely and constantly on the verge of being discovered. The final ending is definitely the most affecting moment of Xenoblade 3 for me. Seeing the two parties running after each other as the worlds begin to separate is so simple in concept, but is executed so effectively I definitely got misty eyed knowing they seemingly won’t reunite easily if truly at all.

While that covers the big moments, I do have to touch on the backstory of Origin and Z which has been contentiously received. Personally, it never really bothered me. I’ve played so many games and seen so many anime where the universe has to be rebooted that I wasn’t fazed beyond Tora from Xenoblade 2 seemingly being the idea guy behind Origin (incidentally, Tora is the worst!). I mainly thought it was incredibly amusing that the final dungeon name and concept were identical to Blue Reflection Second Light from not even a year ago considering it was rumored Xenoblade 3 had a chance to be launched at the same time. I know there are only so many JRPG stories out there, but it’s a bizarre coincidence two developers came up with the same ideas likely simultaneously. As for Z, I’ve also played many games where an evil being was created or empowered by the negative thoughts of humans so again, I remained unfazed. For me, I really think the stories of the characters coming together, the main party, the heroes, the people of the Colonies etc., are going to be what I remember most about the story of Xenoblade 3.

With all of the major elements discussed, it’s time to finally share my overall feelings and wrap this blog up. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Xenoblade 3. When I rolled credits at 100 hours, I really did not want to leave Aionios just yet, because I enjoyed exploring it so much and enjoyed hanging out with all of the characters. It’s such a cozy and deeply satisfying experience from start to finish. Xenoblade 3 was the first Xenoblade game where I knew early on I had to do everything and I basically have since I completed the post game outside of clearing the final cave and super bosses which I’m saving for when the DLC drops. With possible exception of X, I think Xenoblade 3 has the most compelling game structure of the series and on many fronts easily the best side content. Again, outside of X, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is my favorite in the series for exploration as its world is just so wondrous, vast, and shockingly dense. It blew me away on three separate occasions and offered so many more surprises beyond that. I felt incredibly compelled to map out the full world and outside of the Erythia Sea, I basically have. The combat is easily the best in the series with so many interesting tools and systems to draw on including more action elements if you want to tap into them. Party building may not have as much depth as X, but it does bring the most generally interesting decisions forward and make them easier to play with. While I didn’t play around with its possibilities too much, I still had great fun with the job system and stumbling upon really cool combos. The music in Xenoblade 3 may not have satisfied me for field music, but I thoroughly enjoyed the combat music including one of the all-time best boss battle themes with Battle! Vs. Moebius. Finally, I really enjoyed the characters, especially the main cast and heroes, and the story overall. While some of the backstory is a bit whatever, the big ideas and themes landed for me and I adored the ascension quests and colony stories.

I think Xenoblade 3 overall is definitely the best game in the series even if it doesn’t excel on every front like the original Xenoblade Chronicles. But while it may be messier, I definitely had the most fun playing Xenoblade 3 and I did not want to put it down until I saw nearly everything the game had to offer. I’m very glad it is a huge rejection of Xenoblade 2’s vision for the series and is instead back on track with what Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade X started. Xenoblade 3 is absolutely a huge evolution for the non-X games and raises the bar for what I expect from the series. I do hope after Xenoblade 3’s DLC expansion releases we’ll see either a return to Mira or an entirely new world divorced from Xenoblade and Xenoblade 2, though I do think there is potential to return to Xenoblade and Xenoblade 2’s worlds in the future. Even if it isn’t as open as Mira, I also hope we’ll see a return to an open world structure. I feel Xenoblade 3 is the peak of open zone design, but another game as phenomenal as Xenoblade 3 would be hard to complain about. Regardless, Xenoblade 3 fully reawakened my love for the series and I can not wait to play Monolith’s next adventures.

​That concludes my latest and longest blog to date, thank you so much for reading! I’d love to hear what you thought about Xenoblade 3, so definitely share your thoughts with me on Twitter @JustinMikos. Until next time!

​In the early morning hours of March 10, 2022, I fully finished my final Wii U game, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. While it was a commercial flop, I still really loved the Wii U and there are some things it offered that I dearly miss on Switch that should be givens like the ability to message friends directly and, most importantly, to buy and own Virtual Console games forever. I still have many Virtual Console games to play and replay on the Wii U which thankfully I can mostly entirely enjoy on the Wii U gamepad even when I unhook the console from my TV. It wasn’t just those features and others like the Miiverse (RIP) that made the Wii U special, but rather it’s small, but stellar library of exclusives. Now that I’ve exhausted all of my proper Wii U games, I’m eager to share my thoughts on my top ten favorite games on the system. As I put together this list, I decided to include Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE for consideration even though I only fully finished it on Switch since that version didn’t really alter much of the core experience. Perhaps contradictorily, I also decided I wouldn’t consider either of the HD Zelda remasters since those core experiences I first experienced on the GameCube and Wii though I do have to say both the Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD are excellent. With all of that said, let’s get right into it!

10: Paper Mario Color Splash

Paper Mario Color Splash was the direct follow up to Paper Mario Sticker Star, which at the time I had tried to finish twice, but each time was thwarted by Wiggler’s dreadfully boring forest. While I learned last year Sticker Star does eventually become the game it wanted to be in the much better back half as I finally finished it, Paper Mario Color Splash turns all of Sticker Star’s weaknesses into strengths and is excellent throughout. While it still features one time use abilities for every attack, by making them cards instead of stickers it removes the annoying inventory management of Sticker Star. Fights still no longer give you XP, but they give you tons of money to easily replace your deck and hammers that steadily increases your overall paint supply which is used in both exploration and in battle. Once again Toads are the primary NPC to find in the world, but this time the writers really went out of their way to craft hilarious jokes and dialogue which makes you actually want to meet all of them. Finally, while the world map is still divided into distinct levels, clear themes unite each set such as helping a train reach its destination or scouring the seas for pirate treasure. A lot of people missed Color Splash as it released at the end of the Wii U’s life, so I hope it comes back one day and gets the much better reception it deserves.

9: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, the game formerly known as Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, is an exploration of the Japanese entertainment industry and is closer in tone to a Persona game than a traditional apocalyptic Shin Megami Tensei game. In TMS, the world is currently being threatened by evil spirits called Mirages attempting to suck the life energy, Performa, out of humanity. You play as Itsuki, a young man who enters a partnership with one of the good mirages, to become a mirage master. The good mirages and biggest bosses are all spirit versions of Fire Emblem characters including Chrom, Caeda, and Tiki, which is certainly an odd way to do a crossover. The gameplay is ripped right out of SMT, with exploiting elemental weaknesses leading to big combo chains called Sessions here. I really appreciate that each dungeon in TMS has a clear theme, including photo shoots and a movie set, with no randomized elements to make each one feel more meaningful. TMS is divided into chapters and you are free to revisit earlier dungeons for side quests and to claim treasures you missed without worrying about a time limit like Persona which is ideal. While I mentioned already the crossover elements are a bit lackluster, I’m very glad TMS#FE is far more concerned with telling its own story. Every party member works at Fortuna Entertainment and, aside from Itsuki who is more of a supporter, every character works in different aspects of entertainment. For example, Tsubasa and Kiria are idols, Touma is a Tokusatsu actor, and Mamori is a child actor hosting her own cooking show. While the main story introduces their stories, each character has side quests that continue their journeys that truly makes them endearing. I also have to mention the game has slick presentation throughout that makes the game feel extra energetic and special and I especially adore all of the vocal songs. The main theme, Reincarnation, sung by Yoshino Nanjo is far and away my favorite, and I also really enjoy Dream Catcher and Beastie Game.

8: New Super Mario Bros U & Super Mario Maker

When I was putting together my list, I kept going back and forth on whether to place either New Super Mario Bros U or Super Mario Maker ahead of each other. I settled on cheating a bit by putting them together here as a tie, but honestly that does feel right even though they are two different experiences. New Super Mario Bros U was a launch title for the Wii U and had an excellent, creative, single player and co-op campaign with an awesome, challenging World 9 post game and an amazing challenge mode for Mario masters. It became my favorite New Super Mario Bros game and my favorite 2D Mario game overall when Nintendo added the Luigi U DLC campaign. Luigi U was an entire set of short 100 second levels to blitz through that were a good deal tougher than the original game stages and still featured three gold coins to collect which made them satisfying to master. If I only considered just how much fun I had and the sheer amount of clear, steady satisfaction I got from each game, New Super Mario Bros U would be ahead of Super Mario Maker. Where it becomes fuzzier, is just how brilliant Super Mario Maker is and how wonderous it felt despite a few frustrations. Designing Mario levels with such an intuitive interface was such a blast and something I always wanted to do, but couldn’t until Mario Maker came along. A steady stream of new levels, from both Nintendo and other creators, ranged in quality, but were astounding in how they frequently broke the rules of Mario and how much creative fun they were. In addition to the lack of single player content, the most notable issue with Super Mario Maker besides missing elements/enemies later added in Super Mario Maker 2, were that levels that went unplayed online were cruelly delisted from the servers which was heartbreaking when you spent so much time creating them. It’s hard for me to weigh which experience is better, quality versus wonder, but since New Super Mario Bros. U and Super Mario Maker each compliment and elevate each other, I think instead it’s right to celebrate both together.

7: Pikmin 3

While I do miss the underground levels and the huge co-op mode of Pikmin 2, Pikmin 3 is still a phenomenal game. This time you have three captains to manage and can pause the action at any time to decide what your next action should be. This makes it easier than ever to multitask and optimize your actions which shines incredibly well in the new mission mode where you strive for perfect scores in the shortest amount of time. While there weren’t many levels at launch, the DLC levels for mission mode, including a unique 2.5D tunnel level and a difficult factory level, were extra spectacular and were so much fun to clear in co-op. The main campaign was also a lot of fun even though it was breezier than Pikmin 2’s. Pikmin 3 introduces two new Pikmin types, Rock Pikmin and Flying Pikmin. While the former feel redundant of the bulky Purple Pikmin, the Flying Pikmin are both awesome for dodging obstacles and swarming enemies. Pikmin 3 also features some of the biggest and best bosses of the series, so I’m glad there is boss battle mode to challenge them freely. Pikmin is such an awesome franchise, so I really hope we finally get a Pikmin 4 soon.

6: Bayonetta 2

Bayonetta 2 is one of the absolute best action games I’ve ever played and certainly the most over the top. The beginning of Bayonetta 2 is truly spectacular, where you fight hordes of angels on top of a fighter jet in the middle of a big city that culminates in a battle with a giant Godzilla monster. While things understandably calm down in the next level, the action always steadily rockets back up including fighting a giant sea serpent while surfing on a piece of debris in the middle of a giant vortex of water and fighting hordes of enemies in giant mech. Even when it isn’t being completely over the top, the core action is just immensely satisfying as you can swap between sets of weapons easily and dodge big attacks to enter Witch Time to punish enemies. Boss fights and challenge rooms really put all of your skills to the test especially the super hard post game arenas with back to back fights. There’s a lot of cool unlockables and fun secrets to find including unlocking Nintendo costumes like Princess Peach’s outfit which lets you summon Bowser’s fists to crush opponents. I recently replayed Bayonetta 2 and it still holds up amazingly. I have no clue how they can, but I can’t wait to see Platinum try to top Bayonetta 2 with Bayonetta 3 later this year.

5: Splatoon

I’ve always been a big fan of third person shooters and Nintendo released an instant classic with Splatoon. In the most basic mode, Turf War, you try to cover as much of the multiplayer maps as possible with ink. Standing in enemy ink drastically reduces your speed which gives you further incentive to spread as much of yours as possible. In essence then, Nintendo cleverly made map control a very tangible element to interact which is awesome since map control has always been quietly key to success in team shooters. The three main competitive modes are interesting as they each put their own spin on map control. Splat Zones is simply King of the Hill, Tower Control, my favorite, has you escort an on-rails tower into an enemy base, while Rainmaker, the most complicated, lets you take any path you want to bring the Rainmaker weapon into the opposing goal. Fights in Splatoon are fierce as ink flies in every direction, Inklings can dive in and out of ink for extra mobility and to sneak up on opponents, and it’s easy to rejoin the fray with a quick glance at the map and super jumping to your allies. I really love the colorful aesthetic of the game and especially its awesome soundtrack bursting with personality. Finally, while it is very short, the Mario Galaxy inspired campaign is awesome and culminates with one of Nintendo’s all time best boss fights.

4: Mario Kart 8

It is hard to divorce all of my fond memories made in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, which has slight tweaks that really enhance the experience, from the initial experience on Wii U, not to mention the impact of new courses from the Booster Pass which barely rolled out Wave 1 at the time of this writing. Divorced from Deluxe, I think the original Mario Kart 8 makes sense in spot 4 on my list. It was up in the air in the beginning, but the moment Mario Kart 8’s original DLC began rolling out that added 16 new tracks to the game and the new 200cc mode, Mario Kart 8 cemented itself as my favorite Mario Kart game. Already, the new anti-gravity mechanics were awesome and opened up the potential for engaging alternate routes in the tracks. 200cc is super unique as well, as you rocket forward on the course and actually need to feather the brake to navigate tight turns. The item balance, which was out of control with power items on the Wii version, has thankfully been calmed down in 8. The addition of the Super Horn, a defensive item that can crush the Blue Shell, is a game changer. Mario Kart 8’s graphics are impeccable and the jazzy soundtrack featuring a real Mario band is amazing and lovely. The best element of Mario Kart 8 is certainly the track selection. There are so many awesome new tracks like Mount Wario, Toad Harbor, Cloud Top Cruise, and Wild Woods, amazing retro tracks like Yoshi Circuit, Royal Raceway, and Wario’s Goldmine, and incredible crossover tracks including Hyrule Circuit and my two absolute favorites, Mute City and Big Blue. I have no idea how the Mario Kart team will ever top Mario Kart 8, especially now with the Booster Pass in 8 Deluxe, but I can’t wait to see them try.

3: Xenoblade X

Xenoblade X is a messy masterpiece that I love to pieces and I lament every day it remains trapped on the Wii U because way more people need to play it. Xenoblade X wonderfully captures the feeling of exploring a hostile alien planet on such a grand scale. Virtually everywhere you look offers impressive sights and sounds as well as hostile aliens to combat. The most amazing part of Xenoblade X is that the way you explore the planet changes significantly twice during the adventure. You begin Xenoblade X on foot, but eventually acquire a giant transforming mech that can cover a lot of ground quickly in vehicle mode, before ultimately gaining the ability for your mech to fly. While the world does essentially shrink with each upgrade, there is of course even more locations you can access and ground exploration still has its place. Because it was so intimidating, across my 75 hours of play I never did quite get a handle on mech combat so I ended up fighting the final boss on foot where I had built an engine to constantly enter overdrive for four times the damage. I appreciate Xenoblade X lets you explore upgrading your character with little hand holding as discovering myself how to make an overdrive engine felt so special. While exploration and combat steal the show, the story is no slouch either as there is so much to discover through side quests. The questions the game raises are so interesting that it is especially frustrating that to this day we still don’t have a sequel in sight. Finally, I do have to mention I love the soundtrack by Hiroyuki Sawano. He basically only composes songs with one tone, bombast, and I can’t get enough of it. My absolute favorite track is the boss battle theme, Uncontrollable, as it brings huge anime OP energy to every boss fight which way more games need.

2: Super Mario 3D World

My 2013 GOTY was Super Mario 3D World because it offers so much joyful, satisfying fun from start to finish whether you are playing by yourself or tackling the game with friends and family. A majority of the levels are a huge step up in creativity and purpose from its predecessor 3D Land. Scattered throughout each normal level are three green stars to collect and one stamp and in the original Wii U version they aren’t saved between deaths which makes collecting them a proper challenge. Incidentally, while the Switch version of course has a clear edge with awesome online play, I do think the slower speed of the original is the ideal speed for the game and makes each space feel more meaningful to play through. It probably would have been my GOTY back in 2013 with just the already strong main game, but what truly cemented my love for 3D World is the glorious post game that features tons of new exciting levels, a fifth playable character with Rosalina who gets the awesome Mario Galaxy spin jump, tough remix levels, and the ultimate gauntlet in the Mario series, Champion’s Road. While I’m currently most interested in seeing Mario explore a true open world after Bowser’s Fury for his next adventure, I really hope we also get a sequel to Super Mario 3D World one day. There’s nothing else like it.

1: Super Smash Bros For Wii U

Even though I loved it a great deal from the start, Super Smash Bros For Wii U (aka Smash 4) was not my favorite Wii U game when it first came out. Over time though, as new DLC rolled out and patches smoothed up the gameplay, it evolved into my favorite game on the system. I ultimately put 142 hours into Smash 4, which was almost double its closest competitor, Xenoblade X. While I enjoyed Brawl’s slower speed at the time, Smash 4 opted for a middle ground between Brawl and Melee’s lightning fast speed. As a result, fights were more exciting, but still manageable and easier to read. While I immediately gravitated back to my favorite character, Lucas, when he returned as DLC, there were tons of awesome new characters to learn. My favorite was definitely Shulk from Xenoblade. Shulk was a slower sword wielder with long reach, but he stood out from the rest by having access to five different buff states with his Monado Arts. By activating a Monado Art, you could dramatically raise one stat at the cost of another which made matches with him incredibly technical. I love too, Shulk came along with the Gaur Plains stage (my favorite background for Final Destination) with a handful of the best Xenoblade songs to rock out and fight to including You Will Know Our Names. Other newcomers I really loved included Lucina, Robin, Mega Man, Duck Hunt, and Cloud. While learning the characters was especially fun, the most excitement of course was playing the game locally with friends and the introduction of eight player Smash made it better than ever. While I’ve still never played a true eight player Smash game, being able to accommodate groups of five, six, and seven is amazing. My favorite memories of the game were playing intense first to five wins sets with my friends. These heated showdowns were so intense and the big moments were always so fun and emotional which made Smash 4 a staple when hanging out. While Super Smash Bros Ultimate holds the crown as the best Smash Bros game these days, I made so many fond memories with Smash 4 that I still treasure today.

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That concludes my latest blog and I hope you enjoyed it! I always like hearing from my readers, so if you have any favorite Wii U memories be sure to reach out to me on Twitter @JustinMikos. Also, in case you missed them, I did recently put out My Final Wii and Wii U Games blog as well as My Top Ten Favorite Wii Games blog, so check those out if you are interested! Until next time!

​As I entered 2022, one of my major gaming goals for the year was to finally finish some of the games in my deepest backlog. By the end of the year, I definitely wanted to finish both my final Wii games and my final Wii U games and maybe tackle my final Xbox 360 games as well to retire the consoles. Over the past three months, I played through both my final Wii games and my final Wii U games. For the Wii games, my two final disc games were Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love and Pandora’s Tower. I also had a digital copy of Zack and Wiki to play on my Wii U which I started promptly after finishing Pandora’s Tower. I had to plug my Wii U back into my TV that day which proved very weird when hours later it was announced the Wii U and 3DS eshops would be shutting down forever in March 2023. I mention this not just because it was a weird, disappointing coincidence, but because I scooped my final Wii U eshop purchases as a result including one of my final non-Virtual Console Wii U games, Affordable Space Adventures. The other Wii U game I still had to play was Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water which I had bought when it released and never played much of. Fatal Frame was part of my decision at the time to buy an external hard drive for the console which maybe wasn’t the best of investments considering the Wii U releases were almost entirely dried up by then, but it did free me to purchase more Virtual Console games and later Affordable Space Adventures without having to worry about the miniscule storage space the console came with. To be fair, I don’t believe we knew The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild would also head to Switch at the time, but yes thankfully it did work out.

In this blog, I want to talk about these final games I played to primarily wrap up both consoles. I still have games I want to replay on the Wii and I will continue to keep my Wii U at least connected to my power outlet so I can play my remaining Virtual Console games on the Wii U Game Pad. I mentioned this in my Top Ten Favorite Wii Games blog, but I always regretted not writing a similar blog for my final PS2 games after I had finished my Top Ten Favorite PS2 games blog. I think talking about what games I was determined to finish before I retired my consoles would be interesting, so here we are today! I’ll discuss my five final Wii and Wii U games in the order I finished them. With that said, let’s roll right into my first game then, Sakura Wars!

Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love (Wii)

The game that had been holding me back from completing my final Wii games sooner was definitely Sakura Wars. I had made a few attempts to play Sakura Wars ever since I picked it up towards the end of the Wii’s lifespan, but I just wasn’t really connecting with it. When the pandemic started in early 2020, I had started a fresh playthrough of Sakura Wars and by chipping away at it here and there I managed to make it into the third chapter for the first time. Usually when I put a game down for more than a year, I typically start over from the beginning, but in January this year I actually picked up my playthrough since it still felt fresh in my mind. At the time, I still hadn’t fully figured out how the battle system worked and I really was not connecting with the characters, but picking up my playthrough and fully focusing on it proved to be a great decision. I made sure this time I had a guide handy so I could scope out which of the many, unmarked limited time events I wanted to clear most which helped cut down on some the friction of only being able to save at set checkpoints in each chapter. While I still have some complaints about the game I’ll delve into, with less friction and finally understanding how the battle system works by engaging with it more I ultimately had a fun time with the game.

So, what is Sakura Wars? Essentially, there are two halves of the game, a dating simulator and a turn-based strategy game. The characters you date in the dating sim are your mech pilot partners in the strategy game portion and by raising their affection for you by doing well in the dating sim you boost their stats/abilities in the strategy game. The premise of Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love is most definitely unique. You play as Shinjiro Taiga, a Japanese naval lieutenant in an alternate version of the 1920’s who is sent to New York to join the New York Combat Revue, a secretive military unit that uses mechs to fend off demonic forces threatening to steal the creative energy of humanity for nefarious purposes. When Shinjiro arrives in New York, he learns the New York Combat Revue was originally expecting a different, more experienced pilot, Shinjiro’s uncle, and as a result of his inexperience they want nothing to do with him. Through his perseverance, Shinjiro is eventually offered a job as an usher at the Little Lips Theater which is both a front and the day jobs of the New Combat Revue. Over the course of the story, Shinjiro does eventually get to join and ultimately lead the team. As a quick aside, I have to mention there is a truly unusual and weirdly amusing plot point for a video game at the start of the game, where the New York Combat Revue members all actively distrust and give Shinjiro grief for an extended time when they first meet him for having a baby face. This thankfully does die down as they get to know and trust him, but again it’s weirdly and amusingly unusual for a video game.

I want to talk about both halves of the game ultimately, so let’s start with the dating sim. The Sakura Wars series in general puts an interesting spin on the dating sim genre with its LIPS system (Live & Interactive Picture System). Essentially, LIPS makes dialog choices more complex and stressful by introducing a time limit to your dialog decisions, sometimes asking you to adjust the intensity of your dialog delivery, and as it judges how you perform in minigames and button/stick input challenges. Letting time run out and saying nothing is sometimes a valid choice as well. This system has a lot of flexibility inherent to it as it works for not just dialog choices, but also to perform actions like cleaning a room or participating in a sword duel. To do well in the action segments, you’ll have to efficiently click the sticks in certain directions and slide them in others as fast as possible which on Wii is made awkward because the second stick is instead a D-Pad. I generally like this system, but since stat boosts are on the line, I feel like the developers made it extra unclear what the correct responses sometimes were where choosing a dumb or insensitive response was still rare, but still too often the correct one. I generally liked most of the cast in the game, but as a result of this system I never really grew to love any of them either since they were often more fickle than they probably should have been. I ultimately chose Gemini at the end of the game since she and Shinjiro had decent chemistry, but I can’t say I was invested in the decision. I did still enjoy the general story though and chapter 4 with its bizarre subplot of the citizens of New York fighting, unknown to them, possessed birds in Central Park was incredibly memorable thanks to the script and voice acting becoming as goofy as possible to sell it. (see below)

​My favorite half of Sakura Wars is definitely the turn based strategy game. Its ARMS system, Active & Realtime Machine System, predated Valkyria Chronicles’ combat system and while they are a bit different the core values of both systems and their mission designs are similarly excellent. Your robots all have different stats and abilities. For example, Cheiron’s mech can strike an extended distance in front of it to hit multiple enemies, while Subaru’s attacks with fans in a circular pattern and often has stealth activated to conceal its movement. Every attack with your mechs builds up meter that you can use for tag team attacks, super moves, and for healing. Since the enemy forces often outnumber you, you’ll take plenty of hits during combat, but by moving and attacking efficiently with your limited energy you can often wipe out multiple foes in one turn. Most of the missions sport incredible variety between them. While they often have a clear goal, like defending a position or wiping out the enemy force, each one has its own quirks to consider like fighting on multiple fronts (including mixing ground and air combat which each function differently), dealing with hazards like artillery and sinking sand, and contending with the threat of reinforcements. There are also very tough, often giant bosses to overcome that further put your skills to the test as they often target many of your allies at once which makes balancing attacking and healing very challenging. It’s important and difficult to make sure you win every fight without losing any of your allies’ mechs, because their stats will take a hit that makes even more difficult future missions even harder. Like I did in the dating sim, I often had to reload my save to attempt missions a few times to perfectly triumph. While there is an overwhelming number of options and information at your disposal that isn’t explained much, learning all of it and conquering every challenge is ultimately very satisfying and made me glad I finally played Sakura Wars.

Pandora’s Tower

I always wanted Pandora’s Tower to be my final Wii disc game as it was the final game I picked up for the console, so I had been waiting until I had finished Sakura Wars to finally play it. Pandora’s Tower was the third game in the Operation Rainfall campaign and was always the one I was least interested in even though I still wanted to play it. When I wrote a letter to Nintendo to bring the three games to America, I probably should have written that I wanted to beat all three games in my letter, not just play them, because my run of Pandora’s Tower ended in tragedy. For all of the years it sat in my collection unplayed, I was unaware that a significant portion of players of the North American version encountered a glitch that caused the game to crash when entering the final levels of the game. Ever since it came out here, there was never a surefire method discovered to avoid and escape the glitch. Even though I was mostly retiring the console after this game, I still wanted my console in good condition so after I tried various methods and suffered five hard crashes and five hard resets, I had to retire the game forever. While I never did finish the game, I did read about the various endings, which stings because I believe I was on track for either the best or second best one, but I did at least get closure.

I mentioned at the start of this section, I was always less interested in this game compared to Xenoblade and The Last Story and it was mainly due to its premise. Your girlfriend, Elena, has been cursed to slowly transform into a monster and you must enter twelve mysterious towers suspended over a huge chasm in a forbidden land to bring back beast flesh to hold off the curse. As your mysterious guide Mavda explains, by defeating the bosses of every tower and having Elena eat their flesh, you’ll ultimately be able to break the curse. From the outset, its obvious something is off about this deal and unraveling the mystery is a huge part of the game through tons of written notes and flashback sequences. The twelve towers sort of function as lite Zelda dungeons as you solve puzzles and defeat enemies along the way. There is a time limit for each trip to a tower since Elena’s curse will progress when you are inside a tower. Since I’m not a fan of body horror (the main reason I was always less excited for this game) I successfully always made sure to return just in time for the curse to never progress. While there are twelve towers to explore, I was disappointed to find there was only six actual dungeon themes as they repeat across the other six. I ultimately didn’t get to play the two final dungeons due to the glitch. They probably would have been an extra cool finale as you traverse both at once, but the other five themes are pretty good. I especially enjoyed the two water towers and the two themed after a clock tower as they involved activating and making use of various machinery.

​Beyond the story premise, the other unique idea in Pandora’s Tower is the Oraclos Chain you are equipped with in addition to your standard weapons. While your basic attacks are frustratingly fairly basic all being tied to one button (this isn’t remotely Devil May Cry), the chain offers unique actions for combat as you can bind enemies, swing them around to clear enemies away, and throw them against walls and off cliffs. By shaking the Wii Remote on bound foes, you can rip off both flesh and items from enemies using the chain as well, the latter are often used in basic crafting and unlocking upgrades for your weapons. The chain is also heavily used in traversal and puzzles as well as you use it frequently as a grappling hook to scale up the obviously very vertical towers, and to grab and throw objects around. One of my favorite uses of the chain in puzzle solving was to break a rock using the chain and then grabbing a broken part to throw and plant in a wall to then use as a ledge to grapple up with. The chain frequently sees inventive use in the boss battles against the masters of each tower. These monstrous foes come in a wide variety of forms and by maneuvering around the arena, throwing objects, and ripping off parts you can expose their weak points to actually deal damage. Perhaps more than anything else, given how fun bosses were to defeat I was disappointed I didn’t get to challenge the final boss battles after suffering the game crashing glitch. Ultimately, I’m not sure how much I liked the game overall and without seeing fully how the gameplay and story came together or not makes it hard to judge, but I did enjoy the gameplay for the most part and I’m glad I was able to play what I could.

Zack and Wiki: Quest For Barbaros’ Treasure

I had always heard Zack and Wiki was a great game, so a few years ago I ended up getting a digital version of it on the Wii U. I thought it was some kind of adventure game with puzzles, but it’s actually a very old school point and click adventure game divided into short levels. The twist is that many of the interactions in Zack and Wiki use the Wii remote in various ways such as grabbing and placing objects or using tools like a saw or an umbrella. For the most part the motion controls work very well and feel clever, but there are a few interactions that are incredibly frustrating such as the sword duels which frankly I’m still not sure what motions caused them to actually work or not. While there is an in-game hint system you can take advantage of, stumbling around each puzzle level and figuring out the solutions is the most fun part of the game. There’s a good variety in the levels as some require you to disarm ancient traps and machines, others ask you to sneak into enemy bases to sabotage and steal from them, and others present boss battle challenges to overcome. I didn’t totally vibe with the game’s Saturday morning cartoon tone (which is odd in that I usually like media like it) or really connect with the characters either except your goofy bunny airplane pilot who always wears sunglasses, Johnny Style. While I get why it was designed the way it was and think it would be worse in some ways if they changed it, I still wish there was an option to control Zack directly with the D-Pad or a control stick since it further disconnected me from the character. I still think Zack and Wiki is a pretty good game, but I wasn’t very in love with it either as some of the trial and error puzzles and one hit kill traps didn’t always feel interesting to overcome.

Affordable Space Adventures

When the Wii U and 3DS eshop closures were announced, there was inevitably discussion online about final essential purchases for both consoles. Affordable Space Adventures came up the most for Wii U since it took full advantage of everything the Wii U has to offer and after playing through it myself, I agree it definitely does! You pilot a little space ship that was supposed to be on a safe trip to an uncharted planet. When the game starts it’s obvious you are cut off from the company guiding your trip and most of your ship systems aren’t operating. While your ship still functions, you need to reach a functional beacon to signal the company back on Earth to come rescue you. The full functionality of your ship gradually unlocks as you progress through each level and can be controlled primarily on the Wii U gamepad. By adjusting the power of certain systems, your ship becomes hotter and colder, uses more or less electricity, and makes more or less sound. It can feel annoyingly too artificial at times, but various alien artifacts and alien life that stand in your way will react violently if your temperature, electricity, and noise gauges exceed certain values. Yet, that is the core of the game and overcoming every obstacle is often super fun! A common example for how to cut down on noise for example is to first build up speed using the electric engine and then cut all power to the engine so only the antigravity function keeps propelling you forward with your built-up momentum. In addition to adjusting gauges on the Game Pad, you often have to tilt it to angle your ship up and down to navigate tight spaces and use the buttons and sticks to maneuver your craft and engage the scanner and landing systems. While I didn’t get to experience it myself since the service has been shut down, there is a moment the game tells you in advance that will use the Miiverse and even offline it is still super cool. While I didn’t get to experience multiplayer since the pandemic is currently restricting my ability to hang out with my friends, I hope one day I can as splitting and coordinating the various piloting duties among friends and overcoming every challenge I imagine is lovable chaos. Also, I could use all the help I can get overcoming the super hard challenge levels since I couldn’t even clear the first obstacle! Even alone though, I had an awesome time with Affordable Space Adventures and loved the full journey, especially the ending. I’d definitely consider Affordable Space Adventures an essential purchase for any Wii U fan.

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water

My final Wii U game was Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water and while I ultimately did not have a good time with it, I’m still glad I played through it. I had attempted playing through Fatal Frame at least two other times, but never progressed past chapter 1 since the tutorial doesn’t make a great impression. With momentum on my side, this time I pressed forward and finally made my way into and through the proper game. There are three main characters in the game that you alternate control over between each chapter, Yuri, the main character, Miu who gets captured by ghosts during the prologue, and Ren, a man who is troubled by recurring dreams about a cult ceremony. At the start of chapter 2, the most important person in Yuri’s life who prevented her from committing suicide in the past vanishes on Mt. Hikami. Worried something has happened to her, Yuri sets off with a flashlight to investigate the mountain at night starting from the base of the mountain. I wish I had just booted up chapter 2 in my past attempts, because Mt. Hikami itself, is far and away my favorite part of the game. The graphics and sound work together to build an appropriately realized spooky atmosphere. The weather effects, like rain and fog, further help realize the mountain setting even as you are restricted to set paths to explore. All of the abandoned buildings, both modern and traditional, are interesting to explore and I often loved finding pieces of lore scattered around that help you piece together the greater mysteries of the mountain. While there are frequent hitches in the game’s performance, it doesn’t detract too much from the setting.

I wish Mt. Hikami was in a different game, because Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is ultimately a chore to get through. I think there are three main issues with the game. First, the game is not scary at all. I’m a wimp when it comes to horror so maybe that is a good thing, but the game also operates to an extent that it is supposed to be scary so it falling flat sucks any tension out of the experience. Nearly all of the ghosts you encounter on the mountain lose their impact as they reappear over and over again and since they are attached to combat with an arcade style score system which further makes them feel artificial. There is a mechanic in the game where you can touch ghosts as they fade away and see their final, tragic memories, but it displays them as black and white film footage that is blurry, lacks impact, and is often too over the top to be taken seriously. The second issue, is that while the gameplay is unique as it uses the Wii U gamepad as a camera to photograph and attack ghosts, combat is almost always incredibly drawn out as you either are waiting for a ghost to attack to score a Fatal Frame bonus or you take multiple pictures to release spirit orbs one by one that you ultimately all line up by tilting the Wii U gamepad to trigger a damage multiplier. Aside from scoring points to upgrade your cameras to increase your damage and film reload speed (which still remains slow), combat feels further pointless since ghosts deal such insignificant damage especially when you consider the mountain of healing items you are forced to enter each stage with (not to mention any you find and add to your stock pile during each mission). My final issue with the game is that while the lore is interesting, the actual story is not. It moves at a glacial pace and is vaguely infuriating as characters keep climbing up the mountain after you’ve rescued them. You’ll often enter interesting areas, like the doll house or the main shrine, but then return to it immediately in the next chapter and explore it again as a different character which obviously loses impact. I did replay the final chapter to see both the bad and good endings and while there is a ton of repeat content to work through to do that, I did ultimately enjoy the final destinations of every character’s journey in the good endings to the extent I felt the arduous journey was worth it enough.

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That concludes my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I always love hearing from my readers, so definitely feel free to reach out to me on my Twitter @JustinMikos. Now that I’m done with all of my Wii U games, I will be writing my top ten favorite Wii U games blog next so please look forward to it. Until next time!