I thought this might be a fun type of post to upload once a year. I want to write reviews for most of the games I play, but they require a lot of time and effort to publish. Some day in the future maybe. Instead, it’s much easier to list out the games I played and give a short description of my thoughts.
So, here’s the first entry into this potential series of annual posts. The games are listed in the order I played them in.
What I played
Final Fantasy VII Remake
I technically started playing this game in December of 2022 but beat it after the year changed, so it counts. I played the original FF VII before playing the remake. The Remake is good but also flawed. It’s good because it’s a good game. Much more detailed story, insane music, good graphics, fluid combat. It would be great but there are some problems:
- The remake was a Playstation exclusive for a year, then an Epic Games exclusive for one more, then Square Enix finally published on Steam and were brave enough to ask $90 CAD. Third class citizen treatment.
- It’s about less than 1/3 of the whole FF VII story
I think I’ll wait for the remake to be complete and play them at once. It might take 6 years, but I’ll wait. Playing the first part was fun, but having to wait years for the next part interrupts the fun. Square Enix are trying hard to squeeze money out of splitting a game into three parts, and I’m not going to buy into that.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 + Torna the Golden Country
I started XC2 some time in September of 2022 but had to put it on hold because of school. As a game, I have mixed thoughts on XC2. It’s great overall, but could have been a lot better. There are no tutorials to explain anything, the UI feels clunky, there’s a gacha within the game, and the story is worse than XC1. The game isn’t bad, but I definitely have mixed feelings. Torna was a great DLC, streamlining and improving a lot of XC2’s mechanics.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 + Future Redeemed
I think this is my second favourite Xenoblade game after the original/Definitive Edition. Feels like a much higher budget title than the previous two games, concludes a trilogy extremely nicely, and is just generally solid. All of my complaints from XC2 didn’t appear here.
Future Redeemed, a Torna-like DLC for XC3, is the best DLC I’ve ever played for any game. It provides the best fan service (not that kind) to players who started from XC1 and is very fun. Overall, I really enjoyed XC3. I’d like to write a review on this game when I can write it out.
Looking forward to XC4 or some type of successor in the future.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Had this one on my backlog for about 2 years. I played the reboot Tomb Raider way back in high school on a laptop, then Rise of the Tomb Raider on my first desktop. I always liked Tomb Raider games for the visuals, and I was ready to play SoTR with upgraded specs. I had a high refresh rate 1440p monitor, 6800 XT, and 13600K. But then nothing went right.
For some reasons, SoTR kept crashing on my system. The only way I got the game to run stably was using DX11 and capping the frame rate to 60 FPS. There was even one moment where going above 60 FPS breaks the physics engine during a puzzle. This was a game-ruining experience. The game itself is fine by Tomb Raider standards, but the fact that I had to handicap my system so badly to run it felt disappointing.
Atelier Ryza 3
I would normally get new Atelier games soon after they are available, but I waited a while this time. Apparently Koei Tecmo thinks it’s a good idea to charge AAA prices for a niche game, and also retroactively increase older game prices… yikes. I’m happy to tell them that their strategy clearly is having some effect, it caused a long time fan like me to give them less money and later.
I have mixed feelings about Ryza 3, and the trilogy to an extent. While the overall production value has risen significantly since Ryza 1, the overall games have gotten worse in my opinion. It might be a bit mean to say this, but I’m somewhat happy Ryza’s trilogy is over. I want to see a new trilogy and protagonist; Ryza, the games and the protagonist, wasn’t exactly for me.
VA-11 HALL-A (Vallhala)
Did a quick run through of this game, and it only took about 10 hours. Vallhala has been on my backlog for at least 5 years now.
I thought Vallhalla was ok. I enjoyed some visual novels (Steins;Gate, Fate SN, DDLC (does this count?)), but I guess Vallhala wasn’t exactly my type. It’s still pretty fun though, feels good to play and relax with a real life drink. Good music as well. Dorothy is the best.
Current WIP/queue
- Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin
- Mirror’s Edge
- Atelier Rorona
2024
Fun fact, I started drafting this post way before the publish date. I think I wrote about FF VII sometime in July, so this post is kind of like a small time capsule. It’s a little odd to know that some of the stuff I wrote here is half a year old.
And also, it’s 2024. Happy New Years. Every December, I find it difficult to believe that another year passed, yet here I am again. I’ll see if I clear enough games to write about them like this again. The goal for 2024 is to continue reducing my backlog. I have big titles like Stellaris and Civ V, so I’m unsure how it’ll go.