​If nothing else, 2025 was another great year for video games and I’m excited to share my thoughts on my favorites as always. I beat 28 new games including remakes this past year and I thought everything I played at minimum was pretty good which is unusual and quite welcome. Still, a handful of games stood above the rest which made figuring out my top ten this year outside of the bottom cutoff a bit easier. While not the focus of this blog, I did beat 28 old games last year as well. My big focus there was continuing to chip away at my PS3 backlog and I’m down to just 15 games left as I enter 2026 so I’m hoping this is the year I finish it!

Before I get into my favorite games of 2025, the ones that resonated with me and that I enjoyed the most, I do want to give three honorable mentions here. My first is for my 11th placed game this year, Mario Kart World. I had a great time with Mario Kart World with friends and family and the single player is definitely the best in the series, but I think it just missed the cutoff because the number of normal race tracks is a bit too low and some expected features were MIA for most of the year. The first big patch we got in December is promising as it finally added custom items and significantly altered a few routes to make them some of the best in the game. Hopefully a mix of free and paid updates will help make it into the staple game it should be because the foundation is already quite excellent with racing that feels more exciting than ever. The second honorable mention I have is for Magia Exedra. I’ve played a handful of games this year I’d certainly consider better and it’s a shame since I first blogged about it the story of Exedra has mostly spun its wheels all year with remakes and more fluffy events outside of Crescent Memoria (a fully voiced Magia Record prequel story), but even so it’s still so cool to have an all new Madoka mobile game going. I’ve been having a great time playing it daily since the RPG half is a good deal of fun (I’ve ranked in the Top 50 for PVP for 16 seasons in a row which is amusing) and some of the events have been fairly great like the Mitama detective events and the recent New Years event. Hopefully in 2026 the story will pick up, but for now I’m still having a great time with Magia Exedra!

Finally, I want to give my third honorable mention to Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition. I don’t consider more straight rereleases and remakes for nomination on my top ten favorite games of the year blogs and Xenoblade X Definitive Edition sat right at the border where I might have considered it eligible as while a new mechanic does completely change the entire flow of combat for the better, I didn’t consider the experience as a whole substantially evolved over the Wii U version and the cool new epilogue story alone wasn’t enough to make my top ten. That said, wow! Xenoblade Chronicles X is even better than I remembered and I already really loved it. This time around I was fully determined to see virtually every last bit of the game so I made sure to do all of the quests this time and learned how to craft, build, and actually use mechs to see the post game content that eluded me on the Wii U. I had such an awesome time once again exploring the world and this time digging even deeper into it. One of my favorite new discoveries in particular was definitely the extensive water treatment plant quest line which feels like such an essential part of the experience to me now with how wild it gets. The new combat is the best combat in a Xenoblade game to date as you can now cancel cooldowns with a limited resource that fully refills after every fight to employ new strategies never remotely possible and take on even tougher foes earlier. I hope Monolith is strongly considering implementing something similar for the next Xenoblade and taking a look at the already more interesting equipment and ability systems compared to the rest of the series. While the new epilogue isn’t really what I envisioned for a Xenoblade X sequel, I still had an awesome time with it as I dug the new weird main character and exploring the new zone.

With my honorable mentions complete, here’s my top ten favorite games of 2025!

10: Metroid Prime 4 Beyond (Switch 2 and Switch 1)

I went back and forth if Metroid Prime 4 Beyond or Mario Kart World would make the cut for my top ten list this year, because like Mario Kart World there unfortunately was a feeling of relative disappointment with Metroid Prime 4 Beyond sadly. The game has some major issues including: way too linear level design which also causes the levels to blend a little too much together, obnoxious handholding paired with an uncharacteristically sloppy menu option to disable tutorials that introduces other problems, NPCs that are weirdly handled, and finally a previously blank slate villain whose motivations and presence feels murky at best. There’s no denying all of those core issues and other quirks feel worse especially in the context of the eighteen plus year gap between Metroid Prime 3 and 4 and yet even so, I still had such a blast playing through Prime 4 and it does enough right for me that I walked away pretty happy with it.

The big thing I think Prime 4 gets right above all else is that it feels like a Metroid Prime game in enough key ways which given the large gap between games wasn’t something I felt was a guarantee. Moving Samus around in the world and the presence she has, plus the way combat flows, and how scanning offers the same cozy and thoughtful feeling prior games gave me, all comes together to still feel refreshingly unique all these years later. The presentation is generally astounding and while it annoyingly trends too much to indoor environments, seeing the world and hearing the terrific music is definitely a highlight of the experience. Fury Green, Volt Forge, and the Ice Belt were definitely the best levels, but Flare Pool and the mines definitely have their strengths too. While the main paths were a bit lacking in puzzles, when it came time for 100% item clean up, I found the usual array of clever puzzles I expect from a Prime game just off the beaten path and in the new Ocarina of Time-like puzzle holes in the open world desert area. Speaking of the desert I feel it and the motorcycle are the biggest swings in the game and while I dislike the lack of music (seriously Nintendo, give us a radio for your open world games), I had a good time soaking in the sights, cruising around at high speeds, and finding structures of interest I could approach from any angle. The other swing, the new psychic items, reminded me of how Twilight Princess found new riffs on classic items which is fine, but depending on the item those new wrinkles wildly varied in excitement. The psychic tether for the morph ball and the new grappling hook that lets you hold onto walls were probably the best here while others like the psychic boots were a misfire. The final thing I really have to give a big shout out to are the bosses that are easily the best in the series. There are so many clever ideas here, a few with some excellent spectacle, and some that are just classically excellent. My big hope here is Retro will tackle Metroid Prime 5 next and take what worked here, discard what didn’t, and make a game entirely theirs, because I think a lot of the major elements here are all pretty excellent even if a few others are holding them back from reaching their true potential.

9: Unbeatable (PS5, also on PC)

The moment I saw a trailer for Unbeatable I knew right away I wanted to try it as it oozed style and the idea of an adventure rhythm game sounded like a lot of fun. Unbeatable is essentially two games in one, the adventure game divided into six episodes and a classic arcade rhythm game and both sides are quite excellent even if the adventure game portion steals the show. While I imagine the writing style and voice direction could drive people up the wall, I personally really dug the dialogue in Unbeatable as it was often very funny (some of the dialog choices are wild) and how clearly vulnerable the characters are made them easy to connect and sympathize with. While the whole band is great, I especially liked the main character Beat and her friend Quaver and the relationship between the two. The story often skips ahead regularly and doesn’t always reveal what Beat is thinking despite how she acts seemingly like an open book and I really dug how this worked here because it made the journey through the game more surreal and ultimately uncovering what was going on with both Beat and the world a really interesting mystery. The extended ending is especially heartfelt and emotional and I loved how the story wrapped up especially with the final concert. The actual adventure gameplay mixed with various rhythm games was the fun mix I hoped for walking in. Exploring the world with the real slick mix of detailed realistic 3D environments with 2D cartoon characters running around is great fun and adds to the surreal road trip vibe of Unbeatable. As for the minigames, my favorite is definitely the baseball game that feels ripped right out of Rhythm Heaven.

I definitely have to mention the music which is incredible throughout. There’s a fairly wide range of genres covered, but my favorites are definitely the vocal tracks by Peak Divide that have a lovable punk rock vibe and are excitingly guitar heavy. These are the songs that are sung by the band throughout the story and are regularly used to end each chapter with a bang. I sincerely hope those songs and the soundtrack as a whole get added to itunes soon since they’ll certainly stick with me beyond playing Unbeatable. Speaking of the music, the other half of the game, the arcade mode, is also a great deal of fun even if at least on lower difficulties like…Hard…a bit simplistic. While it can become as complex as a four button rhythm game, on the lower difficulty settings Unbeatable is mostly just using two buttons and adds complexity with some delayed notes and obstacles in the note chart that ask you to hit the opposite button from the track they are on. I had a great time beating all of the songs I could on Hard mode and even beat one song on Unbeatable difficulty before I felt satisfied for now. I say “all of the songs I could” because unfortunately while I love Unbeatable as it stands the PS5 version has tons of glitches that makes it hard to recommend including: numerous crashes and soft locks, a failure for credits to roll which corrupts your save file, menus that break in multiple ways, and random deletion of your rhythm game scores. None of this was clearly a game breaker for me (well except the literal last possible second one I guess that forced me to watch the credits on Youtube), but it is a shame it mars something that has so much heart and really connected with me. Hopefully Unbeatable will get some needed patches and QOL additions down the road, because I’d love to put more time in with the rhythm game especially.

8: Trails Through Daybreak II (PS5 also on Switch and PC)

There have been twelve directly connected Trails games now which is wild to think about. While Daybreak II sadly doesn’t advance the grand story too much, it still makes some interesting moves and has some wonderful focus on some of the characters especially during the bonding events. While the story becomes most interested in time loops which allows for some intense and dark scenarios to play out, I was more interested during the early game structure which sees Van go on business trips with the various members of Arkride Solutions while Swin and Nadia from Trails Into Reverie return to take over running Van’s Spriggan / fixer jobs in Edith while also enrolling in Agnes’ school. The middle chapter of Daybreak II is also super interesting as tons of factions all gather together on the same island and get wrapped up in vacation activities, navigating a battle royale, and figuring out the dark secrets of the island. While exploring the world and spending time with the characters and NPCs is always the biggest highlight of Trails games, I was pleased the battle system got some needed tweaks especially by making the UI more readable again and bringing back stealing bonuses from enemies while keeping the stuff that worked well last time like shard skills. One last thing I want to give a shoutout to, like in Daybreak you can watch movies with your friends and you get a small clip from the film to watch yourself. My favorite by far this time was definitely Sharkferno which looked super goofy, inspired an amusing range of reactions from your party members, and amusingly enamors an NPC you can check on a few times about how it changed her life. Everything related to it is very funny and unforgettable and I’m hoping it gets referenced in Trails Beyond The Horizon.

7: Ender Magnolia (Switch, also on PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series SX, and PC)

At the start of 2025, three Metroidvanias I was very excited about, Blade Chimera, Ender Magnolia, and Momodora Moonlit Farewell, all came out within a two week period which was awesome and wild. All of them were excellent, but Ender Magnolia, the sequel to Ender Lilies, was definitely my favorite of the three which made sense given how much I loved Lilies. Ender Magnolia has a very large world to explore and early on where you keep stumbling into more giant zones to explore one after the other is wonderful. While I really dug the progression from slower Dark Souls-like combat to more speedy DMC-like combat in Lilies, I really appreciated in Ender Magnolia that combat was speedy right from the start as it gives the experience a more unique identity and is my preference too. Ender Magnolia gives you a variety of weapons, abilities, and accessories over the course of the game and it’s really fun to find what works best for you. Unlike Lilies, I did actually switch up my loadouts a few times over the course of the adventure which kept the long journey fresh. While combat is speedier in Ender Magnolia, I do appreciate Magnolia has a good deal of bite to it still especially during the boss fights which demand a great deal from you regularly and feel so satisfying to conquer. While I do think Ender Magnolia lacked some of the good surprises and rough edges Ender Lilies had which makes it less memorable, it’s such an excellent and engaging adventure from beginning to end. If the developers make a third game, I’ll be there day one for sure.

6: Kirby Air Riders (Switch 2)

The original Kirby Air Riders is one of my favorite games of all time especially as I often maxed out the clock in City Trial Free Ride with friends as we had fun cruising around the city in the different vehicles and making up our own fun. I don’t think I’ll have that similar relationship with Kirby Air Riders as the new City Trial map Skyah doesn’t inspire me the same way (it’s great otherwise though!) and yet in every other regard this is certainly a dream sequel to the original game. The three modes from the original return alongside the new Road Trip mode and feature tighter mechanics such as star trails that help you catch up from behind, better vehicle balance, more engaging race tracks, and of course plenty of new additions and enhancements like more vehicles and more events for City Trial. Altogether, all of the enhancements and additions make every core mode so much more fun to play compared to the original game and I had such a blast knocking out every achievement in the achievement board for all four modes as the moment to moment gameplay regularly made me smile. While all of the modes are great this time including the new Road Trip mode where you level up your vehicles by choosing which events to pursue and where you spend your money, the star of the show is of course City Trial which is more chaotic than ever thanks to the increased player count and increased number of events and mechanics. While the achievement boards encouraged me to mix it up, my favorite City Trial matches usually revolved around leveling up the new Paper Star because you get so much maneuverability in the air with it which makes it easy to claim items in the floating rings and on the sky islands that occasionally appear. I’m really glad you can play all of these modes online as they shine so much brighter playing with real people. I’m looking forward to enjoying Kirby Air Riders for years to come because wow they nailed it.

5: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (Switch, also on PC)

The most ambitious game of the year without question was The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. The game begins with a roughly 30+ hour prologue (that was good enough it probably would have made my list alone) where the main character Takumi Sumino is brought to Last Defense Academy and is forced to fight “school invaders” for a hundred days alongside his fellow classmates. It doesn’t go perfectly despite their best efforts, so when Takumi is presented with the opportunity to redo his hundred days there in the hopes of getting a better ending for everyone, he chooses to take it. From here The Hundred Line becomes a choose your own adventure with twenty two different routes and over 100 endings to see. Even with skipping as much repeated content as possible, it still took me over 165+ hours to see every single route and possible ending. What’s amazing about this game isn’t the length necessarily, but how the genre of the story shifts entirely between routes and even sometimes during the same route. One route might revolve around a handful of murder mysteries for example, while the next route is a romantic comedy route, and another is a science fiction route. You’ll see so many sides of the characters over the course of the journey and even characters I disliked in other routes could have awesome moments in others. The writing is really sharp and lively which is important in a game that by nature can be so repetitive. I definitely stuck with The Hundred Line because it regularly had so many surprises and fun ideas constantly across all of the various routes and the two biggest endings, the one by Kazutaka Kodaka and the other by Kotaro Uchikoshi, are immensely satisfying.

While the story is definitely the main reason to play The Hundred Line, there is also a fun grid based strategy game here with some light RPG elements to enjoy. I appreciate due to a story conceit your characters can’t permanently die and instead actually revive between rounds of the strategy game which makes it very breezy and makes the strategy more about how efficient you can be. Your damage numbers are generally on the low side like a Paper Mario game, so upgrading your attacks whether it’s through limited use items (which recharge after every battle) or through permanent upgrades can make a substantial difference. Every member of the Special Defense Unit has a completely unique set of abilities like Yugamu (one of my favorite characters on and off the battlefield) being able to deal +1 damage to any enemy with a status effect or Kurara being all about setting up tower defense structures and traps. Your party shuffles around depending on which route you are on which is cool, but after your second successful run through the story, the strategy RPG starts running out of steam sadly as your stats become too high with everyone and “repeat” battles can be skipped entirely. The latter is certainly a good thing given how much of an extended marathon The Hundred Line is and makes sense with how the game is balanced, but it is a shame something that is such a fun part of the experience early on eventually vanishes almost entirely outside of a very cool “final” battle. I have less love for the other major gameplay system where you wander around the destroyed world on something that resembles a Mario Party map to gather resources used to craft gifts and upgrades, but I kind of appreciated it as something different even if it was kind of annoying. While I don’t think I’ll ever replay The Hundred Line due to its excessive length (roughly a week of my life!) I am looking forward to the story DLC the director keeps teasing since I’d love to go on new adventures with the cast and see even more of the world.

4: Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter (PS5, Switch, Switch 2, also on PC)

The original Trails in the Sky is a very important game for me. It was my 2011 GOTY which kicked off my love for the series and Falcom as a whole and has gone on to become my favorite RPG of all time. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a 3D remake of the original game that adds extensive voice acting, new character animations, and completely changes the battle system away from a strictly turned based system that was like a mix of Final Fantasy X, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy Tactics to a new hybrid combat system that often begins with action gameplay and lets you swap over to turn based combat that incorporates some of the best ideas from across the series. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter doesn’t replace the original game for me, which I didn’t expect it to as that is the version I’m so attached to, but what it does do in almost every category aside from the drier script filled with some annoying quirks is enrich the experience by doing some things the original game could never do. Obviously, the new 3D graphics and lively animations steal the show here given how big a leap it is from the original game and how it is even such a step up from the Daybreak games (not to mention the lovely voice acting too), but what sold me on this version of the game was the first trip to the nearby ancient tower in Rolent. In this version of Sky, you can seamlessly leave town (something new to the series), seamlessly switch between exploration and combat which makes for an engaging trek up the mountainous terrain, and then actually approach and look up to the top of the tower. While 1st Chapter does cutaway to a dungeon interior when you enter and explore the inside, once you reach the top of the tower you can freely survey the surrounding countryside because it is all part of that first map. Trails has just never done this before, certainly not in the original version of Sky, but even too in the more modern games as the maps are often segmented and not too large.

The new battle system is a great deal of fun and dramatically alters the pacing of the game. While I do miss it doesn’t have the exact kind of mechanic where you could steal bonuses for yourself and push penalties on your enemies by manipulating turn order which I feel was far more elegant and exciting, the rest of the new combat system feels cozy in the best way. Like in the Daybreak games, you can swap between real time and turn based combat, which you can take advantage of to weed out weak enemies quickly and leave the enemies that require more attention for the turn based combat. I was going for an extra thorough playthrough which did annoyingly ask me to grind for a few drops and it was nice to just smash through the same handful of mobs with the action combat quick. 1st Chapter also has some of the team up attacks most frequently featured in the Cold Steel games which feel satisfying to build up and unleash. I had a good time too making decisions off the battlefield. They simplified it a bit which is fine by me, but they otherwise kept the core idea from Sky where specific Quartz you equip gives you access to different spells which makes figuring out the ideal loadout for you paired with what accessories you find compelling as you can become very powerful with the right set ups. Of course it is the story that it is the main attraction and again the new presentation adds a lot to the experience as certain scenes really benefit and become more emotional than they ever could be with just text and character portraits. There are also a few extra quests and while a few are neat, I found generally they didn’t add too much to the experience which is kind of a bummer. It’s a shame the new script is weaker and doesn’t match terms and pronunciations, but thankfully the voice acting papers over some of the worst of it. I think if Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter was an entirely new experience I’d be higher on it than I am here, but otherwise yeah this was easily my favorite RPG this year and I had such a blast playing through it.

3: Ghost of Yotei (PS5)

I liked playing Ghost of Tsushima a good deal, but I felt it was dragged down by regularly teasing and then shooting down supernatural elements (it was always just some dude) and worse how the story felt like the Japanese Culture Expert meme at times where “honor and shame were huge parts of it.” Both of those felt regularly deflating, but I took some hope from the Iki Island DLC that focused on the more human parts of Jin Sakai and his story that any potential sequel would be better at least on the latter issue. Ghost of Yotei isn’t just better than Ghost of Tsushima, it is thoroughly more spectacular, excellent, and more wildly fun than the first game. After a shockingly violent prologue that successfully establishes why the main character Atsu would want to seek revenge on the Yotei Six who killed her family and now years later are causing all kinds of chaos in the lands around Mount Yotei, the game lets you loose into the open world with little direction sort of like The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. I really enjoyed this early part of the game where you figure out how things work because most activities you complete give you information on leads to follow, some directly related to the main quest and the rest to other activities you can tackle. I’m not much of a graphics person, but wandering around Yotei’s world was incredible because the graphics are basically almost entirely immaculate and arresting with so much vivid color. I’m not sure I’ve ever taken so many screenshots because I was so captivated by the scenery. While Atsu’s far more human story was my main motivation throughout my journey, I did enjoy Sucker Punch fixed the other tonal problem with Tsushima by actually having some legit supernatural elements alongside the ones that turn out to be less than they seem. I actually didn’t know what was around every corner of the world as a result here which made scouring every last inch of the land more exciting.

My favorite part of Tsushima was definitely the gameplay and Yotei is actually even better. Like many of my favorite games, I found little friction when playing Ghost of Yotei as I could play it for hours with little fuss or desire to get distracted. Combat heavily features in most activities and while it does bring back the simplistic system where in this case certain weapon types (rather than stances) hard counter others, it introduces a new disarm mechanic that on paper sounds very simple where you can knock weapons out of your enemies’ hands, pick them up, and then throw them back at them (or someone else) for far more often than not a one hit kill. In practice because it is so powerful, it often completely upends the flow of combat in an exciting way as if you don’t panic and nail the throw you can decisively shift a battle in your favor in an instant. Battles on the whole then felt a bit scrappier in a way that also fondly reminded me of Zelda Breath of the Wild. While the battles against weaker enemies thus stole the show, I did also really dig the one on one duels. The boss fights against the Yotei Six in particular are especially challenging and exciting and I certainly enjoyed there was a hidden super boss that was so tough it essentially asked you to tap into Punch-Out skills where you had to make rapid quick reads over and over again to eke out a win. One other gameplay shift I dug is that while the first game relied on “detective vision” a lot where you could mark enemies and see where they were, Yotei actually doesn’t offer that skill until potentially late in the game (I was on the later path) so it forces you to be more actively engaged during stealth gameplay which I think is the right call. Overall, I had an awesome time playing through Ghost of Yotei and the story was excellent for the most part. I’m really looking forward to whatever Sucker Punch makes next.

2: Donkey Kong Bananza (Switch 2)

My favorite game to actually play this past year was undoubtedly Donkey Kong Bananza. I was a little skeptical when I started out because while I thought punching / digging through the world was enjoyable and novel, I wasn’t sure exactly how the experience would evolve as it continued. I clearly had no reason to fear, because as Bananza continues it starts playing around with how different materials interact with each other and then it starts adding new Bananza abilities and gives more focus to the level design with more enemies, obstacles, other mechanics, and constant surprises and it becomes very clear very quickly you are playing a game that is just super joyous, clever, and fun. It’s a little hard to talk about Bananza without diving more into specifics then so I’m going to dive into the gameplay more than usual, but I will avoid talking about the very final level and extended ending except to say it was awesome. I remember exactly where Bananza started to win me over was the ice and fire level early on because some of the more interesting ideas start coming into focus. As a soft material, DK can grab snow and start throwing pieces of it together to make bridges into the sky. Snow / ice can obviously harden lava as well too which creates new paths through the world. These kinds of interactions radically change how you view the world and how you can possibly navigate obstacles and solve puzzles which feels extra novel in a platformer context. Bananza does a great job of having more open ended interactions in the world and really narrowing in on mechanics too especially in, but certainly not limited to, the challenge rooms.

The other gameplay mechanic I want to highlight here was ultimately my favorite part of the whole game. In the second to last normal level, you eventually encounter these zones where bits of the arena that are there or that you bring into them create trails behind them that then orbit around a set point in a specific way. It’s possible to not engage with this to the extent I did which is why I like to and feel comfortable talking about this in my blog, but at the very end of the level there is a very fun toy you can play with if you so choose. It’s a turret that can target you and when it does it too leaves a crystal trail alongside every bullet’s path. What ended up happening when I played with it is that I kept creating more and more paths and suddenly it felt like I was building the final battle arena of a rad JRPG or anime together with this turret (see the picture below). I’ve never encountered anything quite like this before and certainly not at the scale and complexity DK offered. While this was the peak of excitement DK offered, it so frequently taps into so many creative ideas like this and explores them so thoroughly that I was just thoroughly engaged throughout my whole adventure.

​I have a few more quick things to touch on before I wrap up here. I can’t go into this first one at length because the full extent of it I think is best experienced for yourself, but one thing I did really enjoy over the course of DK Bananza was just how much loving tribute it pays to the entire DK series which was something I didn’t expect walking in. The most overt and extensive stuff was of course spectacular, but I think what really makes it work for me is that it also explored ideas prior games have explored in this new 3D context. My favorite Donkey Kong game for example is Donkey Kong Country 3 and it features Ellie the Elephant who you both ride and transform into. While there is a big elephant themed level and an elephant Bananza transformation, one thing I really dug is Bananza even got into exploring the idea of using the elephant to store water and using it throughout a level, but it did so in 3D in this more open ended way than DKC3 ever could. By further exploring ideas prior games had explored like this, Bananza just feels all the more genuine and full in its celebration of Donkey Kong. Incidentally, DK himself is lovably brought to life throughout with incredibly expressive animations and poses. While on rare occasions I felt a disconnect with the old Rare and Retro DK and this new DK, on the whole Bananza DK just exudes fun which makes him so much fun to root for and play as. DK’s companion throughout the adventure, Pauline, is also an awesome character and I love her dialogue throughout especially some of the goofy chats before they head to bed each day. Finally, I do want to give a quick final shout to the music which is excellent. I especially enjoyed the Bananza transformation songs and the final vocal song Heart of Gold which is in contention for Nintendo’s best yet. I really hope the soundtrack doesn’t become trapped on Nintendo Music since I’d love to be able to get Heart of Gold on itunes similar to the Mario Odyssey songs. Overall, I had an absolute blast playing Donkey Kong Bananza last year and getting all 777 bananas (my favorite number!) and just wow I’m really excited to see what the team here does next.

1: Magia Record (Youtube, also playable again)

If you’ve read my blogs for a long time or know me more personally, you are probably aware of my all time favorite mobile game Magia Record and how much it means to me. When it was getting started in English back in 2019, I already liked it enough for it to make fourth place on my annual top ten favorite games blog both because the RPG portion of Magia Record was a great deal of fun and since it helped me reconnect with my favorite anime Madoka Magica which at the time I wasn’t really expecting to get more of. In 2020, Magia Record became the first and I believe still only game to be featured on my GOTY blog twice as it was a live game. I placed it in second place which I have mixed feelings over, but I think at the time it made sense for it not to claim first place as it wasn’t obvious how much it’d stick with me. That year the write up was quite a bit different in tone, since Magia Record had won me over even more thanks to finishing the terrific Arc 1 story where it truly became its own distinct thing I loved, but it also broke my heart as the English version actually shut down before the year ended even as the Japanese version continued on. I didn’t think it was likely, but I hoped one day I’d get to continue the story. Years passed and it wasn’t really looking good there’d be an official way to ever experience more of Magia Record, but in 2023 I discovered a fan translation group called Magia Union Translations that was injecting text into then still ongoing Japanese version and the quality of both the translation that preserved the English localization quirks (like Alina speaking Italian) and the technique far more often than not made it feel like the English game never shutdown. Even just watching the translated videos on Youtube, Magia Record was back in my life suddenly in a way I never believed it would. You can actually play the game again even thanks to the efforts of a separate group, Puella Care, but at least currently I’ve stuck with just the Youtube videos to finish the main story and watch event stories I missed from the official English version and of course beyond that. Magia Record is making my top ten favorite games blog this year and is on top because the fan translation group filled in the last missing parts of the translation of the main story over the course of 2025 and thus I was able to experience the ending of the adventure I began 6.5 years ago and yes it was bittersweet, emotional, and most of all about as “perfect” an ending as you could get which left me leaving highly satisfied.

This year for Magia Record, I ended up watching Arc 2 Another Story Chapter 8 through the end of Arc 2 in Main Story Chapter 12 ultimately as gaps were filled in one by one and then moved on to see Puella Historia, The Epilogue Events, and The Final Story (which altogether was roughly 40 hours of new story) along with a handful of event stories that had already been translated including The Tokime Clan’s and Promised Blood’s backstory events. For the main story of Magia Record then, I was picking up from the cliffhanger I had been left on the year prior when the Kamihama Magia Union (the group the main characters from Arc 1 founded), the Tokime Clan, and Promised Blood were attempting to unite together only to have members from each defect to the Neo-Magius who had stolen the Automatic Purification System and whose leader, Himena, was revealed to have survived an assassination attempt. This stretch of the story was exciting as each group had to win back the defectors, Folklore of Zero’s wild backstory was revealed, and ultimately the united groups had to stop the Neo-Magius and all of Himena and Hiko’s wild and deadly plans. I especially enjoyed Yuna and Juri’s magical quest to save Ao in this stretch from the Kimochi of Fear because it went in such an unexpected and memorable direction to resolve everything between them. The final two main chapters of Arc 2 ultimately focused on battling the two final villains of the story, Kyubey and Mikoto Sena, the latter who was quietly built up for years across various event stories and even in the PVP mode’s story cutscenes. While I was a little skeptical of Mikoto when she was first introduced, as the final chapter progressed, she won me over as a fun counter to Iroha. What I loved about this stretch of the story is how the writers made the most of every character and idea/toy in play to make for an exciting and surprising conclusion to the story that managed to tie all of the themes they had been building over the years together. I had seen the design prior, so I was especially curious to learn how Iroha’s ultimate form, Infinite Iroha, came about and what the end of her story looked like and wow yeah, I was not disappointed in the end of my favorite character’s big journey. Iroha remained relentlessly kind to the very end and managed to win over and unite everyone behind her and even death literally could not stop her on her quest to save everyone.

Puella Historia surprised me since I thought walking in it was just going to be historical stories Yachiyo would be reading about in a library or something, but it was actually a big time travel adventure story where the modern day cast had to travel back in time to retrieve Iroha’s scattered concept and help the historical characters’ stories both remain on track and have a slightly better ending which made it way more fun as a final adventure with all of the characters I loved. The individual stories only got better as they went too with the Tibet, Pompeii, and final story, Pillar of Tomorrow, being the big highlights. While the epilogue events were sadly a bit shaky (not helped by the fan translation not putting its best there), it all came down to the Final Story for what would be my final impression of the game and as I mentioned earlier yeah it was truly bittersweet, emotional, and most of all about as perfect an ending as you can get. While I was hoping Iroha would get some final role or words here, the Final Story was actually about the impact she left behind on her best friends and family and the greater community as she left to manage the Magia Record (which turned out to be an actual thing that was neither my first or second guess for what it would be lol). I’m not sure if the Final Story will stand as the final word on these characters, especially with the follow up game Magia Exedra clearly building parts of its main story off of Magia Record, but getting the ending we did felt so cool to see how these characters had grown so much following the events of the story told over multiple years.

I still have more Magia Record to enjoy over the years whether that’s through the fan translation with seeing more event and magical girl stories I haven’t seen and whatever new stories Magia Exedra brings like Crescent Memoria, but my main journey that I began 6.5 years ago in June 2019 finally ended in 2025 triumphantly. The last 40 hours or so of the main story that I saw this year were awesome and I’m so glad I got to experience Iroha Tamaki’s full story because she is just an exceptionally cool and inspiring character. Magia Record is one of my all time favorite games that mean the world to me and it is undoubtedly my 2025 game of the year.

…

Thank you for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’m always curious what you think so feel free to reach out and let me know! Also, I’m curious what were your favorite games from 2025. I’m most easily found these days on BlueSky @justinmikos.bsky.social.

As usual now as I wrap up my GOTY blogs, I do like to list all of the games I beat this year. I finished 56 games last year, 28 from 2025 and 28 from prior years. The last game I finished this year was Magia Record which made for a very cool end to 2025 gaming for me. Aside from this then, see you next time!

2025 Games I Beat (28)

Donkey Kong Country Returns HD
Blade Chimera
Ender Magnolia (100%)
Momodora Moonlit Farewell (111%)
Trails Through Daybreak II
Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii (Platinum)
Magia Exedra
Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition
FAST Fusion
Mario Kart World
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4
Donkey Kong Bananza
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (100 Endings)
No Sleep For Kaname Date
Kirby and the Forgotten Land: Star-Crossed World
Lost Soul Aside
Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter
Ghost of Yotei (Platinum)
Once Upon A Katamari
Pokemon Legends Z/A (Full Pokedex)
Hyrule Warriors Age of Imprisonment
Magia Record Arc 2
Metroid Prime 4 Beyond (100% Everything)
Kirby Air Riders (100%)
Skate Story
Unbeatable
Dear Me, I Was…
Magia Record

Old Games Beat In 2025 (28)

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Grief Syndrome
Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga
Suikoden
Kirby’s Dream Land (100% Replay)
Gran Turismo 6
The Ocean Hunter
Spikeout Final Edition
Virtua Fighter 3
Kirby Super Star (100% Replay)
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze (100% Replay)
Mario Strikers Battle League
Pokemon Violet The Indigo Disk
Sly 2: Band of Thieves (Platinum)
Toem: Basto DLC
Theatrhythm Final Bar Line (Ultimate Replay)
Portal 2 Co-Op (replay)
Suikoden II
OverBlood
The Legend Of Zelda: Four Swords (Replay)
Mario Kart 64 (Replay)
Breath Of Fire IV
Magia Record Arc 1 Exedra Version
Sly 3 Honor Among Thieves
Sly Cooper: Thieves In Time
Battle Princess of Arcadias
Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga 2
Magia Record Scene 0 (Replay)

Normally on my blog I write about things I enjoy, but today is different as I’m addressing this blog primarily to Nihon Falcom, creators of the Trails and Ys series, and also to other Falcom, RPG, and video game fans who can help spread the message. For the past 15 years, I’ve been a huge fan of Falcom’s works as I’ve written and talked about them extensively whether on my blog, social media, forums (where I’ve made numerous threads), and in person with friends and family. I’ve played the entire Trails and Ys series and have played and picked up other games as well like Tokyo Xanadu and Zwei. Many of their games are some of my all time favorites and have topped my Game of the Year lists with the original Trails in the Sky in particular being my favorite RPG and my third favorite game of all time behind Super Mario 64 and Super Metroid. Falcom games mean the world to me and inspire me in so many ways, so it came as crushing news to hear that Falcom was now actively using Generative AI in their company. On my own end, I want to do everything possible to convince Falcom and all 69 of its employees that work there that this is the wrong decision for the company and that they should course correct immediately by eliminating all Generative AI use at Falcom before too much damage is done to the games they make. As part of this, I decided to write this blog that I’m going to share on social media in the hopes it can get enough attention to ultimately reach Falcom directly. We are all connected on the same internet so I think with the help of others who feel similar this is possible and I hope my message here can transcend the language barriers between us.

In prior years, talk of Generative AI at Falcom was limited to its potential use in speeding up localizations, which is also a very large issue that could greatly damage their quality and thus their international reputation and sales. Falcom fans in general are used to high quality translations thanks to the hard work at XSeed, NISA, and fan translation groups like The Geofront, that bring the scripts to life and make them so enjoyable to read. A Generative AI translation that can never understand greater context would inevitably damage their scripts. The issue here today however, which is what sparked this blog, is that at their recent investors meeting on December 18, 2025, president Toshihiro Kondo responded to a question about how their company is actively utilizing Generative AI by sharing it is being used to create image idea boards, for brainstorming ideas, to cut out library research, and to revise their scripts for typos and grammatical errors. While he does say upfront that they will be cautious about using it in regards to their games due to legal concerns, let’s be honest all of this has to do with what is ultimately going to be going into their final games and worryingly it starts at the idea stage which most directly impacts the final script and core game.

As I get into this, I first want to discuss the problems with Generative AI in general and my stance on them. When I’m talking about Generative AI, I’m specifically discussing the technology called Large Language Models like ChatGPT and Claude which takes a prompt from a user and presents an output by ostensibly guessing what the answer is one individual word, pixel, etc. at a time. The problems with Large Language Models are numerous and deeply fundamental to how and what they produce. Large Language Models are trained on art and data stolen from other artists and people far more often than not without their consent with the end goal in art in particular to remove jobs from artists and undercut them. The output can never be original as it can only regurgitate old ideas since it just guesses what the next likely word, pixel, etc. is when generating an answer. They thus always lack any and all context that is crucial to understanding how a real person would communicate ideas and facts. Large Language Models are essentially every time they are used a magic trick as they put out something that can look varying degrees of correct and they are programmed to do so with confidence and readily agree with what you ask of them even if you knowingly create a prompt that is false. The creators of Large Language Models promise the world with what they can do, but because they are actually only made to do one thing (take a prompt from a user and create an answer by guessing individual words at a time) the technology cannot and will never do what the creators of LLMs say they can. LLMs do not currently think and will never be able to think, as they are not designed to do that. They are often wrong and “hallucinate” ideas and information that doesn’t exist because they were never designed to actually synthesize and present information, just the illusion of information with confidence. In addition to being highly unethical and destructive to the environment due to the absurd amount of power needed to run LLMs, these models are thus dangerous in the sense that they will lie to you constantly and do so in a way that seems supportive. You don’t have to take my word for it either, pick a subject you are knowledgeable in and ask questions directly about it or tell it something is not true repeatedly even if it is and watch it fall apart in front of you.

Why would you want to use a technology that regularly lies to you? What do you think that does to you as both a person and artist? I don’t use Generative AI LLMs like ChatGPT myself, and I never will, but I of course encounter them and their output regularly due to the companies that promote it cramming it wherever they can in an attempt to normalize it and the people interested in sharing what they “made.” Take Google for example which regularly shows you an AI generated answer to many potential searches. Since they introduced them, I’ve seen laughable claims like someone hundreds of years ago named John Backflip was the creator of the backflip and he had a rival named William Frontflip. I’ve seen straight up lies that look like truths as they pretend to cite legitimate sources, but attempting to follow back to the source reveals no mention of what the AI cited. Google Images has become flooded with AI junk too. For example, when you want to look for character fanart, you can spot the AI images right away as they have too many fingers on their hands, the lighting is off, and increasingly common lately are people with multiple heads. Multiple heads incidentally have even extended to “real world” Google AI ads which looks disturbing. Speaking of real world applications, an increasingly common use of AI is to create deepfakes and false reality images and videos which is another association companies and people that use LLM’s are going to be linked to. If there’s a running theme here, AI produces slop, which is embarrassing to look at and be associated with. 

When it comes down to it in art, I don’t want to read something people couldn’t bother writing and I don’t want to see something people couldn’t bother drawing. In Falcom’s case, you may be thinking well it’s just for a few preparation things, what is the harm? I mentioned it as I introduced the problem, but Falcom is essentially poisoning the well for their games at the idea stage if they are using it for brainstorming and trying to skip research. These are the ideas that will most impact everything that will follow and you cannot come up with original ideas from Generative AI as it can only regurgitate the ideas that are already covered in its unethical datasets. Even if you are just using it as a companion to bounce ideas off of, you picked a technology that will readily agree with you which can make bad ideas that need more work more likely to be considered good enough. If you fudge the research stage, you are shortchanging yourself on actually understanding what you set out to research and you are greatly increasing the chances false and made up information will make its way into your productions.

More than anything else, using generative AI is an embarrassing betrayal to yourself, to the art you make, and to your fans. Until now, everything Falcom has made was with real people putting in the hard work to come up with ideas and bringing them to life. When you look at the Trails series specifically, it is an absolutely stunning human achievement as they’ve made thirteen directly and heavily connected games, not to mention the spinoffs, adaptations, and additional media, that juggles so many characters and ideas and creates a world that’s regularly becoming bigger and more fleshed out all the time. Fans who have played the games and have been thorough talking to every NPC and completing all of the quests have almost assuredly spent well over 1,000 hours in Zemuria (over 40+ days of their lives provided they didn’t sleep, eat, etc.!) and have been excited to keep going. Even if Falcom course corrects now, which they absolutely should, suddenly an element of doubt has been introduced into the whole grand saga. Was that odd sentence here and there intentional or did an AI touch up introduce ideas that weren’t supposed to be there? What if a character and their story wasn’t actually authored by the people at Falcom? What if the end of the Trails saga was heavily altered by a robot? We can’t just treat your games anymore as being the product of your hard work, but now with constant skepticism and that just sucks. 

I’m writing this blog, because I’m genuinely upset and disappointed in Falcom that they ever thought any of this was a good idea and because I genuinely want to encourage them to get back on the right track. Falcom, you’ve never needed Generative AI to accomplish everything you have in the past, and you absolutely do not need it now or ever in the future. Your games are occasionally messy and yet there is this endlessly compelling and inspiring core that drives them. I mentioned it at the start, but Falcom, your games mean so much to me that I’m constantly compelled to share about what makes them so special at any opportunity that makes sense. Even with this current mess you’ve made here, I want people still to play the Trails games you’ve made already because I want them to experience something so incredible and inspiring. I want them to fall in love with your games so they can be mad right alongside me that you ever thought you needed to embarrass yourself using Generative AI to keep making these games. You have made so many wonderful characters, have made a world so rich and vast unlike anything else where characters and ideas constantly grow and evolve, and until now has been done with so much careful thought. I loved reading about for example the thoughts you had into developing Calvard for example as a country of immigrants and wanting people to take what they learned there as how it could apply to the real world we live in. What you’ve accomplished in your games inspires me regularly to write not just blogs, but also stories and characters of my own.

When you say you want to take a shortcut here, it’s frustrating because it’s like darn do you even know what you’ve made and what you’ve accomplished so far? Do you not believe in yourselves? I hope if you read this blog, it encourages you to break away from Generative AI on the spot. You’ve inspired so many fans and I’m writing this blog and letter of sorts as one of those fans to hopefully inspire you to believe in yourselves again. It would be so much easier on my end just to say screw Falcom for using Generative AI and stop playing your games on the spot, but I believe you all are worth it and that what you have done and what you can still do matters. Falcom, please stop using Generative AI in your company. Sincerely, Justin Mikos.

For the past year or so especially, I’ve been making a focused effort to clear out my PS3 backlog. When I first started, I had a list of over forty games to either play through or decide to retire for good which I did end up doing for a few of them. I recently hit a big milestone of only having twenty games left, so I thought now would be a good time to reflect on some of my favorite games I’ve played as part of this long term project. I regularly enjoy playing older games each year and despite my best intentions, I don’t tend to blog about them often so I’m pretty excited to share my thoughts here.

Before I get into it, I thought it’d be fun to quickly share a little bit about how I approached tackling my PS3 backlog. I first tackled my PS+ games since I don’t own them so Ducktales, which I finished back in December 2023, and Tokyo Jungle, which I didn’t end up finishing, were my first two games. I had a few games in my PS3 backlog that would require me to play some games on my Vita first, so after also wrapping up my PS+ backlog there back in the Summer of 2024, I went to tackle those next. I didn’t end up vibing with the older Persona games sadly, but I did play and finish Breath of Fire III which I will talk about later on in this blog since this is a good opportunity. At the same time I was tackling the Vita games, I set out to play the PS3 games I figured I wouldn’t be too hot on. Since I thought this project would likely take two years or longer, I wanted to first weed out games I’d likely cross off the list (Time and Eternity was one for example because despite visually looking kind of cool that game is miserable to play lol) as well as get through stuff that I did want to finish that stunk (like the Neptunia games) while my enthusiasm was high. I remembered I put my final Wii and Wii U games off for so long in part because I didn’t save games I wanted to play to the end. This cut my list down more quickly too ultimately which made the project less daunting. Once I got down to the last thirty, I noticed I had an unfortunate mix of three RPGs to only two games in other genres (with some fudging by including action RPGs in the latter lol). My strategy from here to the end is to tackle the remaining games in sets of five that I decide from the remaining games after I finish each set. The goal is to not make that ratio worse and to space out the games and sequels from the same publishers and franchises. I still allow myself some flexibility to push games around so I think it’s been going well. I think that covers it, so let’s get properly into it, here are the first set of highlights from my PS3 backlog!

Atelier Rorona Plus

I mentioned my approach to tackling my PS3 backlog upfront because it took a few months after I really started focusing on it before I played my first truly great game as part of it, Atelier Rorona Plus, and it currently still stands as my favorite so far. I’ve picked up various Atelier games over the years and started but never got very far in any of them. As an RPG fan and since I liked Gust’s other games like Blue Reflection and Ar Tonelico (well minus the awful third one lol), I figured I’d have a decent shot at liking the Atelier series especially since the usual basic premise of a young girl discovering alchemy and making a career out of it always seemed interesting. Part of what always discouraged me from determinedly tackling the Atelier games is that, for the ones I briefly played at least, there appeared to be a major focus on meeting strict deadlines which I found off putting because I’ve found I’ve gotten choice paralysis in other games that featured them. I thus never had given Atelier a serious shot and now I’m so glad I finally did.

​Atelier Rorona Plus is a game about managing deadlines, but rather than being about managing strict deadlines, it is actually about seeing how much you can achieve during long set windows of time. The premise of the game is that Rorona’s alchemy instructor has put her entirely in charge of running her atelier after the kingdom rules it will be determining if it is allowed to remain open depending on how well the atelier can perform across twelve tasks in three years. Essentially then you’ll be given a basic task, like crafting medicine, and the goal is often to then craft as much medicine as possible and at as high a grade as possible in a ninety day window all while managing other tasks like exploring more of the world and completing jobs for individual citizens. Simply completing the main goal of a given window is easy then, so it’s about doing as many victory laps as possible afterwards while completing whatever goals you then decide for yourself. The game gives you enough information and does a good job guiding you so that you’ll never overextend yourself provided you plan properly. I especially enjoyed exploring the world and opening it up as parts of it were story restricted and others were blocked off by needing to craft more tools like better bombs. The combat system is solid turn based fun as you can see combat order in advance and react accordingly. A majority of enemies you can tackle well enough with just your party, but then for the extra tough monsters your alchemy creations will often make the difference. If I had one complaint, I did wish the game was less event based and more structured than it was, but the general thrust of the story of Rorona becoming more confident and finding her place in her town hit well. While I still haven’t tackled it yet, I’m looking forward to finally playing Atelier Totori, the sequel, as part of my PS3 backlog in the near future since I loved Rorona so much.

Breath of Fire III

So technically I played Breath of Fire III on Vita with the PSP port, but it was in service of playing Breath of Fire IV on my PS3 (which I’m playing now!) and I’m not sure when else I’d get to talk about it, so I’m doing it here! My brother growing up had Breath of Fire on the Super Nintendo and while I tried playing it a few times growing up, it wasn’t until a few years ago when I was working through my Wii U Virtual Console backlog that I finally played both Breath of Fire and for the first time at all its sequel. The first Breath of Fire is a pretty basic RPG and is really most notable for having a guy that can turn into a dragon as the main character which is pretty awesome. I never knew anything about the second Breath of Fire at all before I played it and while it still prominently featured a guy who awesomely could turn into a dragon it also had this obsession with…toilets…like a distractingly wrong amount. Every town had toilets, there was a character you could recruit in the bathroom, and toilets even regularly and heavily featured in the plot including a secret toilet elevator in a castle and two(!) separate toilet dungeons. It was a far better game than the original, but darn it was weird.

It was with that strange context, I had absolutely no idea what to expect from Breath of Fire III, a game I similarly had never heard really anything about walking in. Breath of Fire III ended up being my favorite one yet and the first I felt pretty positive on all around. What struck me up front is that despite being much more modest, it channeled some Mega Man Legends Saturday morning cartoon energy with its art style and humor, even though it is ultimately a more dark and serious adventure than Mega Man. There is a great sense of adventure here (even when the story becomes more narrowly focused in the back half) and I dug the cast much more than the prior games since everyone had their chances to shine and since you could talk to them regularly when you’d stop to make camp to save and rest up on the world map. When I played through it, I dug my strategies regularly evolved over the course of the adventure as I continued to learn new skills like new Dragon forms for Ryu and Rei’s Weretiger berserker form which you can direct with the proper set up. Breath of Fire III thankfully wasn’t unforgettably weird for the wrong reasons like the prior game and I’m glad I checked it out because I had a great time playing through it.

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

For the longest time, my experience with Metal Gear Solid was limited to the original PS1 game which I first played fifteen years ago with one of my friends from high school, Revengeance which was too incredible to skip, and the two Metal Gear Solid Vs which I also enjoyed. I had also played well over a decade ago now the Tanker portion of Metal Gear Solid 2, but not much at all of the main game featuring Raiden for whatever reason. I was excited then here to replay the Tanker portion of the game, which was a big leap forward over the original Metal Gear Solid in terms of gameplay and presentation yet is similar in tone with Snake as the main character, and then finally see what Raiden’s story was about. I had heard about MGS2 being the weird entry of the series, but I definitely wasn’t prepared for how strange parts of it were with some of the bosses like the vampire and the bomb guy who rolls around on roller skates before getting into the really wild stuff.

I enjoyed the stealth game in this playthrough much more than MGS1 and over my first encounter with MGS2. I think having more games under my belt helped me to better appreciate and make use of the variety of tools and abilities both Snake and Raiden have. While I didn’t care about the number of deaths I took to do so, I had a good time “perfecting” rooms as much as possible. I was really impressed in particular despite the Big Shell having a seemingly basic design of two hexagon shaped structures, exactly how much variety it would offer in itself and as challenges were thrown on top of it like bridges collapsing and sections flooding. I definitely didn’t think walking in that I’d be remiss that you actually don’t visit all of it during the course of the game. I think what’s most going to stick with me was the big story twist regarding the colonel melting down and the aim of the patriots. As the game essentially predicted, the world is becoming more cruel and faceless with the advent of the internet, how online communities behave, and even things like where AI is flooding the world with junk. Yet the final message of the game, delivered by Snake, is hopeful because he feels it is up to the people to fight for what matters most despite the direction the world is heading in.

Shin Megami Tensei Digital Devil Saga

I’ve picked up a handful of Shin Megami Tensei and Atlus games over the years and while there are some I’ve enjoyed, some I only briefly dabbled in and others I’ve retired for good. A big point of pain is regularly Atlus’ combat systems which I don’t always vibe with and sometimes actively dislike. In the past year in particular, I decided I had little interest in engaging with Persona and Persona 2 after seriously trying them for a few hours each so I was kind of nervous I wouldn’t like Digital Devil Saga. While the story of the game is sadly thin despite the cool premise and world, here I found perhaps my favorite Atlus game to actually play which is good since the majority of the experience is dungeon crawling. Digital Devil Saga features the Press Turn system common in many Atlus games at this point, but it stands out by having a fun character growth system with clear and decisive rewards, presenting more choices in battle than just “hit the weak point” (which is still important of course), and fairly engaging resource management. I’m glad it didn’t feature demon fusion and instant game over if your leader dies, which I have mixed feelings about at least from the Atlus games I’ve played so far. I’m looking forward to playing the sequel in the next few months.

Gran Turismo 6

The first PlayStation 2 game I ever had was Gran Turismo 3 which came with the console. I liked the game a lot, but when I was so young I didn’t really understand the game nor did I necessarily want to brake around every corner lol. I didn’t vibe with Gran Turismo 4 much and when it first came out, I didn’t put much time into Gran Turismo 6 either, but I kept it in my backlog since I wanted to give it a proper shot. Gran Turismo 6 is perhaps my second favorite game I’ve played in my backlog so far. I didn’t expect it to sort of tap into my love of RPGs with buying and upgrading my cars (though it’s often either a little too basic or too in depth which is annoying) and since I knew what to expect walking in and have been driving in real life for years now, I had a much better mindset to approach Gran Turismo on its own terms and I had a lot of fun! The game is very rigid and unforgiving in many ways which makes properly learning how to best navigate each turn and getting gold medals all the more satisfying. There are a ton of cars and tracks in the game and though it is a bit annoying the game seems to favor a handful of tracks more than the others, I enjoyed all the variety nonetheless. When I started Gran Turismo 6, I wasn’t sure at all how much I was going to play and I was wondering if I’d hit a wall at some point, so I’m really glad I both managed to hit credits and had such a great time.

Sly 2: Band of Thieves

I played the first Sly briefly in elementary school once thanks to a friend and when the HD collection came out, I think I played the original in full soon enough, but I didn’t get very far in the sequel for whatever reason. I started a fresh save and found the first level kind of boring, but as I kept playing, I definitely got into the groove of tackling the smaller challenges that would build up to the big heist. I didn’t realize I liked the characters all that much until a midgame twist sees Sly and Murray captured and Bently has to then break them out of prison which was also incidentally one of the best levels to explore as it was densely laid out and had enjoyable verticality. The core gameplay that feels like a more basic Assassin’s Creed in some ways is pretty solid and I appreciated the variety of challenges as the game continued. While I may not be as wild on Sly as I was on Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank, by the time I was done I wish I had played this one sooner. I’m looking forward to wrapping up the original series soon.

Suikoden II

I played the first Suikoden game for the first time earlier this year and had a good time, so I was looking forward to playing the sequel and decided to play it a little earlier than first planned. I was really intrigued by Suikoden II as it has such a legendary reputation and while I’ll cut to the chase and say I don’t think it quite lived up to that for me, I did have a very good time. The gameplay surprised me by largely being very similar to the first game with a few tweaks and QOL bumps. The combat is a little too basic as normal attacks and the occasional Unite move will help you get through normal encounters just fine and bosses will then melt under your saved up spells. Yet the pace of the game moves well as a result and I do dig it gives you good flexibility to bring your favorite characters in and feel comfortable to bring in members who have been sitting on the bench for a while. Like the first game, I became hooked on Suikoden II the moment you unlock your castle because it is so cool to see it become bigger and better as the story advances and as you continue to recruit more of the 108 Stars of Destiny who expand its function. One thing I did enjoy more than its predecessor were that the strategy battles now resemble Fire Emblem rather than the clear rock, paper, scissors battles in the original. Sadly, I do mean it when I say they resemble Fire Emblem as they heavily rely on luck and there are very few you actually play to the extent I was regularly calling it Vibes Emblem. The story was definitely the sharpest jump over the original Suikoden as it plays for keeps with a truly monstrous villain who delights in razing towns. The moment to moment writing hit harder, a lot of the big character moments landed well, and even the humor sprinkled in was often good fun. I really enjoyed more characters than I expected had returned from the prior game and I can definitely see why when Trails was first starting it got regularly compared to Suikoden. After really enjoying Suikoden II, I’m definitely looking forward to playing the third game soon!

OverBlood

Until now, all of the games I’ve written about in this blog I’d consider good games. Well, OverBlood is not a good game, but I had a blast finally playing it so I’m certainly considering it a highlight. I first encountered OverBlood watching Game Informer’s Replay series and was one of the commenters back then encouraging them to play the full game which they gloriously did after their first time playing it swiftly ended in a game over. I had shown the Super Replay to many of my friends and one of them got me a copy of the game on Amazon for a few cents as either a birthday or Christmas present. While I dabbled with it when I got it and even did some commentary on the Replay Live episode that featured it when I interned at Game Informer, it wasn’t until a few weeks ago I started increasingly kicking around beating it as a bonus game for my PS3 backlog. With determination to beat it, more experience with tank controls, knowledge from seeing it played in full before, and a guide handy for the more opaque parts, I flew through OverBlood with little fuss. Combat is super easy for the most part as your health refills after every encounter and most of the enemies go down easily with your basic punching combo as it locks them in place. I was thus able to save all of my ammo and healing items for the final three fights which made them not too difficult either. The biggest danger is the one hit kill traps and interactions that are not always immediately obvious especially as some of the ones that function sort of like quick time events actually change the behavior of your button controls. The runaway trolley in particular accounted for two of my three deaths during the run since I didn’t think crouch would suddenly function as dive to the floor for example.

The real reason to play OverBlood isn’t for the gameplay, but rather because it is extremely goofy. It takes itself fully seriously throughout, with sarcastic comments being the only intended humor in the script, which makes the fact that it is very funny even more so. All of the animations in the game are super silly in both normal gameplay and in cutscenes. The main character, Raz Karcy, is constantly finger gunning, he regularly pushes goofily against invisible walls as he navigates the environment, and anytime he gets hit in combat he gets sent violently flying backwards. Raz is a colossal dork despite I think intended to be something of an everyman especially as he develops such a strong attachment to a robot he names Pipo who dies an hour into the adventure. When Pipo dies Raz says “Don’t leave me Pipo!” before the camera begins to pull back and he shouts “PIPOOOOOO!!!” which is hilarious. Most cutscenes incidentally often feature voice lines that cut off early and some are so distorted you often can’t understand what they were trying to say. Additionally, while I didn’t see any this playthrough outside of the trolley, the instant death cutscenes are super amusing especially as Raz regularly screams at the top of his lungs for them. All of these elements and more really come together to make OverBlood such a fun time. It was even better experiencing some of these elements first hand while playing. In particular, I always got such a big kick out of the crouch walking animations that I’d often find myself taking a break from puzzle solving to laugh from just walking around. While I certainly would not recommend OverBlood on normal merits, the gameplay is clunky and the story is whatever, if you want a very silly, unforgettable bad game that isn’t too intolerable to actually play provided you know about the voice recorder and how crouching works for puzzle solving walking in, it’s hard to top OverBlood.

…

Thanks for reading my latest blog! I hope you enjoyed it! I’m planning to write a Part 2 PS3 Backlog Highlights blog either when I finish ten more games on my backlog or when I finish all remaining twenty games so it’ll probably be sometime next year when that will happen. I’ll certainly be blogging again on a different topic before then so keep your eye out! I always enjoy hearing from my readers, so always feel free to reach out to me to share your thoughts! I’m publicly easy to reach these days on Bluesky @justinmikos.bsky.social. Until next time!

Magia Exedra is the follow up game to my all time favorite mobile game, Magia Record, so when it was announced it’d be a global release it instantly became one of my most anticipated games. I was excited of course to once again have another Madoka Magica mobile game to play daily made by the same developers, but as I learned more I did have two concerns walking in, namely that Exedra seemed to be looking more backwards than forwards with its premise and that I may not vibe with the combat that at first glance looked fairly simple and also since the combat resembled that of another mobile game I didn’t care for. It’s been a month now since Magia Exedra first came out and I have been playing it daily since launch, so I wanted to share my initial thoughts on a game I intend to play long term.

I actually want to start with one of my conclusions before properly diving in, simply that I’m having a lot fun and currently at least I plan to play daily until the game shuts down. I want to mention this upfront, because often when I write my blogs, I focus on games that I enjoy a lot. I tend to write long blogs and often when it’s something that I’m more down on, I regularly decide it’s not worth it. As I’m about to delve into, Magia Exedra is a game that I was already strongly emotionally attached to walking in on a handful of fronts and while I do have a good deal of criticism for it, I don’t want it to be lost that I’m also genuinely enjoying it despite its shortcomings.

​To start diving into my thoughts on Magia Exedra, I should first elaborate on how I felt about its predecessor Magia Record, which has come in and out of my life in odd ways which has only strengthened my fondness for it. As a side story of the original Madoka Magica anime, Magia Record follows a new character named Iroha Tamaki who is searching for her missing sister Ui in Kamihama, a town where both magical girls and witches are gathering as dangerous rumors begin coming to life. Arc 1 of the story primarily focuses on the many new characters in Kamihama including the friends Iroha makes and the members of a cult they end up clashing with called the Wings of the Magius, but it also features characters from the original Madoka Magica anime whose story in Kamihama is told in parallel in the Another Story campaign. I played Magia Record every day when the English version was active which at first helped me reconnect with my all time favorite anime, but as the game progressed it became its own distinct thing that I in many ways love even more than the original Madoka anime. The extensive cast of characters in particular has really stuck with me (with Iroha being one of my all time favorite characters) and I especially enjoyed going on new adventures with them across the more dramatic main story, a variety of event stories, and in the more personal magical girl stories. I was thus heartbroken when it shut down a year and a half into service, but a few years later it returned to me thanks to an awesome fan translation group, Magia Union Translations, that is hard at work translating the entire game into English. Thanks to their ongoing Arc 2 fan translation, I’m getting to experience an even more grand story with so many new characters to meet and exciting new threads and mysteries to follow and unravel.

​I had to describe Magia Record first, because sadly Magia Exedra is currently not remotely offering the same kind of story experience which is quite disappointing! Unlike Magia Record which was primarily looking forward over its hundreds of hours of cutscenes, Magia Exedra so far is primarily about reliving the stories of Madoka Magica and its various spinoffs in a visual novel format. The premise of the greater story is you are following the shadow of a magical girl who wakes up without her memories and emotions in a mysterious lighthouse surrounded by a black void. The nameless girl’s only companions are A-Q (a green colored Kyubey) and a thus far silent little bird guy named Nighthawk who hoards treasure and runs a shop. A-Q tasks your character to dive into “windows of memory” to retrieve memsparks which will restore light to the lighthouse. In practice then, the game flow is selecting a level, wandering almost ever forward through dungeons (you can only walk forward or backward and occasionally turn at an intersection for a challenge fight), and then watching cutscenes. While Magia Record had a similar setup of either being in a fight or being in a visual novel cutscene (no dungeons to walk forward through) and worked well, Magia Exedra is so far most frequently kind of dull because if you’ve watched Madoka or played Magia Record, you are just rewatching a lesser version of something you are already familiar with and not experiencing a new story moving forward. There is little discovery and little to spark your imagination when you are just revisiting something you are already familiar with. I’ll discuss the remake elements more shortly, but circling back then to that greater story premise my fear of Exedra looking more backward than forward thus sadly panned out. While I have seen some new story content that I’ll again discuss in more detail shortly, the overarching lighthouse story is honestly even worse than I expected so far walking in because I’ll just come out and say it has gone absolutely nowhere despite how much time I have put into the game so far. Technically the Nameless Girl has become more rounded emotionally, but in terms of where her story is currently it has only gone from her being told to collect memsparks to simply she wants to collect them now by the time credits roll. That’s it! There is nothing here! It’s a further shame too because I like both the Nameless Girl and A-Q from the little bit they have gotten to interact with each other in game and in the fun weekly online promotional comic Magia Etcetera. While the Nameless Girl doesn’t have anything deeper going on so far, at least there are a few crumbs in the relative desert to chew on for A-Q for whether he is up to something or if he is ultimately friendly or not. He’s certainly unique from Kyubey at least.

​Since I’ve already started discussing the story elements of Magia Exedra, I’m going to first dive into the main story campaign now and then discuss the event and magical girl stories before moving into discussing the gameplay. As I mentioned, the bulk of the main story campaign consists of remakes of Madoka Magica and its various spinoffs. Thus far there is the main Madoka campaign which is fully finished, the first half of the Arc 1 Magia Record campaign, and a long single dungeon campaign for Oriko Magica which was a manga spinoff series I never read. When you finish the main Madoka campaign credits roll and a teaser video plays for more story content to come from the movie Madoka Magica Rebellion and Scene 0 which was an original what if story presented inside of Magia Record before the game shutdown in Japan. From the opening movie of Magia Exedra (and the original teaser video), presumably we’ll get more short campaigns like Oriko’s for Kazumi Magica, Suzune Magica, and Tart Magica. All told, this is an extensive number of stories being remade as a visual novel here!

The Madoka Magica campaign is in some ways the most involved of them. Despite the show being much shorter than Magia Record, the Madoka Magica campaign is given the relative premiere remake treatment and is far and away the largest amount of story and dungeon gameplay in Exedra currently available. After a fun unique little prologue tutorial sequence that recreates the very start of episode 1 of the show (you get to guide Madoka up the first set of stairs), you are then thrust into the gameplay loop I described earlier for the entire rest of it of picking a level, walking ever forward through dungeons, getting into standard fights and boss battles, and watching some flashback sequences. Unlike the rest of the vast majority of Magia Exedra, the Madoka Magica campaign features full voice acting as it features the voice work from the show. The script literally matches the Blu Ray translation which I was freshly familiar with as I recently rewatched the anime with friends. There are a few images from the anime inserted, some good fresh new ones for the game, some less than hot new ones for the game, and rarely some new 3D cutscenes that recreate a few key scenes from the show like battles with witches in first person and the scene where Madoka talks to Homura for the first time in episode 1 of the show.

Unfortunately, I was fairly bored by all of this! While it’s kind of an interesting thing to see, this is perhaps the worst way to experience the original Madoka Magica story as it is painfully and frequently broken up into very small chunks and you lose all of the cool visuals, atmosphere, and action the anime offers. While I appreciate the same script is essentially there, that also means there are no surprises or fun quirks to latch onto in this version as a result. While I didn’t entirely skip over it, I was frequently tapping the screen to speed up cutscenes which is dire. I would never elect to play through this again as long as the anime is readily available and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to newcomers either. If I did want some variety, there’s always the manga adaption too which has excellent artwork, doesn’t frequently interrupt itself, and feels worthwhile and novel enough on its own terms.

The one thing the Madoka campaign really has going for it, are the 3D graphics for the dungeon gameplay. While you are essentially just walking down corridors, they do at least look really cool! The big labyrinths from the show like the Dessert Witch are given lavish 3D recreations and due to the game structure where each labyrinth is essentially given three unique layers and a unique boss room, some of the labyrinths that you only get a glimpse of in the show have expanded sections entirely. It definitely got me wondering if some of these sections were based on ideas that never made it into the original anime or if the artists came up with new ideas entirely for Exedra which is fun to think about. Like the show, many of the new sections really capture and spark the imagination which is far more than I could have asked for walking in. I also got a kick out of the new witches they added to the game. In the show you only see a familiar of the Artist Witch for example, but here in Exedra you get a never before seen labyrinth and the witch herself. Of all the genuine new content in the game, this has generally been the most awesome so far.

With keeping the Madoka campaign in mind as the baseline of sorts, I can sort of roll through my thoughts on the other campaigns more quickly. I was glad to see the Magia Record campaign follows the story of the game over the separate anime universe (the anime ostensibly features completely different versions of the characters that I like less), however it doesn’t feature any voice acting at all which is a colossal bummer given Magia Record featured full voice acting for the main story and also disappointing unlike the Madoka campaign the story is very much edited down with many scenes, including a few of my favorites absent altogether. This is a different kind of disappointment then because unlike the Madoka campaign, I actually would have gladly welcomed a proper remake given at least currently there is no official way to reexperience Magia Record as a proper video game (fans have uploaded the old cutscenes to Youtube and there is a fan made app in development). In a potential full remake, there also wouldn’t be that downgrade element that the Madoka campaign suffers from given a proper Magia Record remake inside Exedra would be in the same exact visual novel format just with different combat. The only true perks in Exedra’s actual Magia Record campaign are again seeing the labyrinths recreated in 3D and perhaps surprisingly a few new unique Live 2D animations for characters. Also, while I can’t say for sure if it originated here as I haven’t seen all of Magia Record, Tsuruno’s Dad has an actual Live 2D model which is kind of wild because he used to be one of the blue silhouette guys I’m guessing for budget reasons despite how frequently he appeared in the story often with full voice acting. 

The Oriko campaign is perhaps the most interesting of the ones released so far. I’ve never read the manga so this was an all new story for me which I greatly appreciated after primarily playing remake stories. I can’t tell you how well it was adapted as I never read it and sadly it is again not voice acted, but one thing I enjoyed was the cutscenes were notably longer than the ones in the other story modes which made it feel less start and stop. I guess the big issue here was I just didn’t really like the two main characters, Oriko and Kirika. While I liked how off the rails the story got and it was interesting it essentially followed two villains, I didn’t really enjoy or relate to either character’s motivations. I did enjoy characters from the original Madoka series appeared in the story which I wasn’t expecting and they each had some fun roles. I also dug the ending was extra exciting as the final boss fight was tied well into the story and was a menace to overcome. The way the Oriko campaign was handled overall does make me more excited for the other spinoffs, Kazumi, Suzune, and Tart, as at least as a newcomer it felt like I got a thorough adaption here and the visual novel format worked well enough. None of the upcoming stories I’ve read either outside of the first volume of Tart and I don’t have too much knowledge of the characters beyond some of the crossover Magia Record event stories those characters appeared in so I’m excited there is going to be substantial new to me story content to look forward to.

Incidentally, since I’m talking about future content, I am curious about how the other two adaptions will pan out. My big question for Rebellion is largely if it will get voice acting and I guess what they might pick for boss battles given the movie has an unusual story structure. Scene 0 again I’m wondering if it will have voice acting as well as seemingly the Madoka stuff with voice acting is getting in and there are only two extra voice actors for Mabayu and her guardian Sakie. I watched a very quick and dirty translation of Scene 0 last year on Youtube (like a few steps over Google Translate) and it’s…not a great story! I like Mabayu a lot in a vacuum, though if you consider her story as canon, it gets messy very quickly and I don’t think a more thoughtful and enjoyable translation would improve that even if sure it’d be pleasant to have. Still, unlike some of the other remakes, I actually think an edited down version of Scene 0 has potential as there is some fun, interesting stuff there that comes about as it plays with the original Madoka timeline, but it takes a while to get there.

As for all new content within the main campaign, thus far I’ve only gotten a very small taste of it as it is tied to replaying the game on Nightmare mode (the third and thus far highest difficulty level) which you unlock one new cutscene for when you clear each dungeon. This is unambiguously presented as “what if” content and thus far as I’ve only cleared one dungeon, I’ve only seen one round of it. I can’t say if any of the episodes are connected to each other at this point, but the one I did see so far was much more substantial than I expected, probably more than five minutes, and was a very fun slice of life story with Madoka and Sayaka traveling to another town to look for a hard to find classical music CD store. These segments also lack voice acting outside of the brief lighthouse segment at the end of it which is a shame. Still, if the rest of these short stories are as fun as the first one, I’ll be looking forward to seeing more even if it isn’t as cool as offering a cohesive new adventure or building out a world quite like Magia Record.

While the main campaign is almost entirely looking backward than forward so far, the event stories and magical girl stories are thankfully mostly new here. I can’t speak to the magical girl stories much as I’ve only seen one episode of Madoka’s so far, but it was enough to confirm it’s completely different than her Magia Record story which is exciting. So far, it’s very slow going to actually unlock these stories which is disappointing, but hopefully as the game continues the boss rematch mode will offer more and more XP to unlock those stories faster and the specific XP boosters will be handed out more frequently. As for the events, which I was most looking forward to walking in since this seemed like the most likely source of brand new stories, we’ve only seen five so far, but I’m optimistic here. I kept mentioning the lack of voice acting throughout most of the game so far not just because I was disappointed, but also because two of the event stories actually do have voice acting as they are visual novel adaptions of drama CDs. It’s very rare drama CD’s / audio dramas ever make their way over here, so while it’s technically not new story content, it’s very much new to me and both of those have been good fun. One was another potential version of the backstory between Mami and Kyoko (separate from Another Story) and the other was a fun what if study session / party of sorts with all five main Madoka characters hanging out. I have no idea how many of these exist, but I’d be down for more for sure. As for the other three events two of them were fun what if stuff, including a silly April Fools event that had an elaborate animated dance cutscene, and the other was a Magia Record story that seemingly could fit into the timeline as Mitama and Momoko deal with a parallel world encroaching on theirs. The latter wasn’t too hot, and it’s a shame you sort of needed to have seen five separate Magia Record stories to really get the most out of it making it less newcomer friendly, but otherwise it was pretty cool to get a new adventure centering around a character I didn’t expect to see again.

​Alright so that’s the story elements of Magia Exedra covered, so now I can dive into the gameplay. Like Magia Record, Magia Exedra is a gacha game and here you are only pulling for characters as you unlock Portraits, the Memoria / accessory equivalent, exclusively through gameplay. Aside from the $18 I threw in at launch primarily to support the game, I’m ostensibly a fully free to play player for gachas since I have no interest in gambling and they never directly sell anything worthwhile so my experience is going to be through that lens. Magia Record had some fairly generous pity systems as every 100 pulls you were guaranteed a five star character and that counter extended across banners. Since the banners also included accessories, the currency for pulls was handed out fairly generously. In Magia Exedra every 200 pulls you are allowed to just outright pick a featured character in a banner, but that extended counter across banners does not exist so to be strategic you’ll probably want to have 60,000 gems saved up before pulling. As a free to play player, about a month in I have over 50,000 gems saved up so I’m getting fairly close to be able to do my 20 ten pulls and get a guaranteed character I want which is exciting. While I thus haven’t been pulling with gems outside the tutorial pull, my first ten pull, and the $18 ten paid pull (Which I got Madoka from! Woohoo gambling!), I actually have been able to pull from the gacha fairly frequently still because Magia Exedra very frequently gives away Magia Keys for completing challenges. These keys, which were not in Magia Record, do not contribute to the guaranteed character counter so there is little incentive to hoard them unless I guess your favorite character isn’t in the normal gacha pool yet. Magia Keys come in three levels, the generic ones, the guaranteed four star or higher keys, and the guaranteed five star keys, so you’ll get a good range of characters from using these. I did want to mention the gacha mechanics upfront because it does factor into combat for better and for worse pretty heavily as unlike Magia Record where dupes opened up accessory slots getting dupes of characters in Exedra opens up game changing abilities for your characters. For a sense of this, getting my second dupe of Homura in particular has essentially doubled her damage output as it gave her a two turn strength buff when she uses a battle skill and a 60% damage increase for her follow up attacks which is wild considering how many more opportunities to attack over other characters she has to begin with.

I’ll talk about the actual combat now which is thankfully a lot of fun. Fights in Magia Exedra ask you to bring your team of five against whoever you are facing against whether they be familiars, witches, Uwasa, or rival magical girls. Each character is locked into one of six elements and one of six roles. While the elemental affinity of each character isn’t too crucial so far, the roles absolutely matter. There are Attackers, Breakers, Defenders, Buffers, Debuffers, and Healers. My current party for example consists of three Breakers, Lux Madoka, Pluvia Madoka, and Mito, one Attacker, Homura, and one Buffer, Tsuruno, and I have dabbled with having two Attackers, a Defender, and a Debuffer in different teams. Once you are in combat you only have two primary options on a given turn: a single normal attack that gives you a node or using your characters battle skill which costs a node. You enter combat with five nodes (enough to fire off everyone’s battle skill once) and can hold up to six so there is a push and pull to basic combat. All characters outside of the three star characters you will quickly ditch additionally have a magic gauge that rises as you deal and take damage which when full lets you interrupt turn order to fire off a big special attack. Unlike the Trails games S-Crafts, these special attacks are an additional action that doesn’t replace your characters normal place in the turn order, though some do have effects that boost everyone’s magic and grant extra turns and of course if they break an enemy that can significantly set their turn backwards.

In practice, while the combat appears very simple and can be if you dramatically overpower your opponents, there’s actually frequently a lot of things to consider even when the number of possible actions in a given turn are low. In tough fights especially, managing your health, the battle skill nodes, your buffs, your magic gauges, which enemies you target when, when and how you break things, and when and how you max out the break multiplier, can matter so you have to plan ahead to be most efficient and come out on top. My favorite character in combat, Homura, sort of exemplifies how all of this can factor in. Currently as my only Attacker she is the one dealing the most damage to bosses by far with her battle skill and special attack (which deals a lot of damage to one target and decent splash damage to the enemies to the left and right of her main target), but she also has a big extra gimmick to her with her “follow up” attacks that trigger whenever at least one enemy’s break gauge empties or if you max out their break multiplier. The follow up attack targets whoever her or another character was directly targeting, but if the enemy directly targeted dies before her follow up triggers, Homura will then target the next enemy alive with her grenade to your right (or to the left if no one remains on her right). Since some characters can attack multiple enemies at once and there is also the potential Homura’s follow up attack could fill her magic meter, figuring out how to best take advantage of her devastating follow ups is crucial. A further quirk for Homura is that her big special attack where she summons her SHAFT rockets also gives her, often immediately, an extra action, so making sure you have an extra battle skill node to take advantage of that is crucial. That’s just one character on my team; others have interesting quirks as well like Tsuruno’s party buffs given by her battle skill and special attack that can combine together for even more damage or how Pluvia Madoka can boost everyone’s magic with her special attack.

​Cool designs aside, standard enemies sadly blur together even if the core gameplay is fun, but combat of course is put to the test frequently in the boss battles. Some are fairly straightforward as you merely need to break the boss, raise its break multiplier, and then pound them with your special attacks to triumph. Others however offer some of the most interesting challenges in the game. The Mermaid witch for example is perhaps the most memorable and it makes sense you get a free five star key as a reward for defeating it given the challenge is so high. Unlike most bosses, the Mermaid witch has two phases and while the first one is straightforward the second grueling one is anything but. Every time it attacks it begins stacking a strength and defense buff Debuffers infuriatingly can’t remove (the language says they can remove any buff!) so you know the longer the fight drags on the worse it will be for you. What makes it worse though is that it is also recharging its break gauge each turn so it becomes a real test if you can overpower its healing. Once you finally break it, you can raise the break multiplier as high as 800% damage so it is crucial you come prepared to do that. What I didn’t notice at first and why I was left wondering why when I had sometimes put it in break I was dealing far more damage than other times, is that the Mermaid witch also has a second and even more dramatic damage reduction buff so if you happen to break it while that buff is applied you aren’t going to get much out of that break gauge break so you have to time or delay it strategically amidst everything else. Keeping track of your opponent’s health and its buffs as well as all of your resources and being ready to best take advantage of your moment to really rack up damage is just so cool when it all comes together. I won’t go into full details as it is fun to discover these for yourself, but there are a handful of other cool gimmicks bosses have like shields to break through, familiar summons, and deadly counters to contend with. 

As I battled my way through the game, I was also frequently thinking about and engaging with the character growth systems because a lot of the appeal of Magia Exedra is heavily tied to numbers and managing resources over time. Each character has roughly seven things to level up: character level, magic level, special attack level, ascension, portraits, Heartphials, and their support characters. Various activities like upgrade quests, events, and PVP, give the resources to level these up and I appreciate it’s more streamlined than Magia Record as you don’t have to deal with weird drop rates for items that don’t apply to every character and resources are clearly tied to each category (the art supplies of course only level up the portraits for example). These systems / activities all feed into each other in satisfying enough fashion as well which is always appreciated though it is of course a little daunting at first as you have to constantly bounce around menus and figure out what everything does. I haven’t mentioned it until now, there is a classic mobile game stamina system, but like other mobile games I have recently played thankfully it is only tied to the upgrade quests (where you can gather EXP and magic upgrade items quickly) otherwise you are welcome to play as much or as little a day as you want (I’ve been aiming to clear one dungeon per day). The other interesting thing about those upgrade quests is they level up as you clear the main campaign and you’ll get more and better rewards as you go which makes it easier to level up more characters faster. A lot of the daily activities you can skip over once you’ve cleared them once which is also a nice QOL quirk older mobile games didn’t always feature. 

There are three limited time activities I want to quickly touch on to wrap up my discussion of gameplay: PVP, Score Attack, and the Tower mode. One of the reasons I actually had faith Magia Exedra’s combat would be good was because PVP in Magia Record remained interesting for an entire year and a half. While the combat is a lot of fun and I’m pleased the character growth part of Exedra is satisfying to work through and isn’t heavily impacted by the gacha, despite how dramatic dupes are with ascension, sadly PVP is just completely whatever here despite the balance seemingly being firm enough to keep it interesting. For whatever bizarre reason, the developers don’t let you fight matches yourself which at first made sense to me since fights can horribly drag on, but due to the way rewards work, I’m finding in practice it’s best to just fight weaker opponents consistently where matches are over quickly anyway and would only be faster if you fought them yourself. Since it is set up the way it is, I just skip over watching all five of my daily fights which is just so whatever. Somehow, I’m in the top 100 players currently for season 2 which might be concerning insight into the game’s health or my team is just awesome, who knows! As for the other modes, Score Attack presents a new boss fight to challenge for a few days at increasing difficulty levels and the goal is to figure out which difficulty your team can best shine in to raise your score as much as possible. It’s a fun break from the standard fighting and I appreciate despite reusing the boss models, the fights themselves do not function as their standard fights. Charlotte’s Score Attack fight for example revolved around it stealing magic from your party even though the normal fight doesn’t feature that ability at all. The Tower is basically just a battle arena against increasingly more difficult enemy teams and bosses. It’s not terribly remarkable aside from seeing the Mirrors labyrinth in 3D, but it is a neat way to see how far your team has come.

​Before I wrap up, I do have a quick few other topics to touch on. First, I mentioned it earlier, but the presentation outside of the lack of voice acting is generally amazing. The menus are slick, the witch labyrinths are amazing, and I adore how awesome the characters and monsters look. The game looks really good in screenshots (I’ve taken a ton), but it looks extra rad in motion especially in the over the top special attacks. There’s a great array of excellent familiar music from both the anime and Magia Record inside the game and while there is very little so far, I’m happy with the few new tracks here. I really like the theme song for the rad opening movie, Lighthouse, and I’m glad you can hear it in game whenever you want. I’m less pleased however there is no way to rewatch movies in the otherwise very comprehensive gallery mode including that very rad opening movie. Hopefully they fix that soon and also add Lighthouse to itunes. Finally, I do want to mention the Unions feature which so far isn’t very exciting. I’m in one with a friend and all it offers are simple weekly goals to work towards asynchronously. It’s weird how lacking Unions are even for gacha game standards so I hope they have something more for the feature planned down the road.

After one month of playing, I think I can best sum up my thoughts by saying that while I’m disappointed a lot of the story so far is playing the greatest hits badly, I’m mostly through the bulk of the recap content so I’m optimistic about the future of a game that I want to play long term. I’m moving more into stories that are new or new to me at least and while I’m not sure Exedra is going to hit the same way as Magia Record did as that game was almost always looking forward to new adventures and building out a broader universe over its seven years of life, I think there is potential at least for some fun new adventures ahead even if they sadly don’t have too much exciting connective tissue between them. While they do have a lot of recap content still to make for the main campaign (especially if they ever do Arc 2 of Magia Record), I’m at least hopeful Exedra will eventually do something cool with the lighthouse story as I do like both the Nameless Girl and A-Q. Thankfully beyond that I’m having a lot of fun with the game. It’s so cool seeing these characters, the monsters, and labyrinths I love brought into lavish 3D graphics. While it appears simple, the combat is a ton of fun in the moment as you decide how you will juggle resources and take advantage of combos to navigate fights. Similarly, the character growth systems and resources are a lot of fun to juggle and make use of long term while the gacha gives you new characters to build your teams with and when you pull dupes major buffs to shuffle up your strategies. I have no clue how long Magia Exedra will last and I’m sure it will inevitably break my heart when it inevitably shuts down, but for now one month in I’m excited to keep playing.

…

I hope you enjoyed reading my latest blog! Thank you for reading it! I’m always curious to hear what you think, so be sure to reach out and let me know! Also, I’d be curious to know if you are playing and enjoying Magia Exedra. You can find me on Bluesky @justinmikos.bsky.social. Until next time!

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!

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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)