Board 8 > transience's top 100 games -- almost 2022 edition.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Played Xenoblade for the first time this year with the Switch release. It was highly addicting for the first 75% of the game. The last 25% was still fine, but I didn't really enjoy the direction it took.

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ugh Castle Crashers is just so cheap feeling when there are so many better beatemups both in the genres heyday and today. Its the very definition of button masher.

if you want the real roguelike goodness its time to try Caves of Qud

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which beatemups?

yeah, once the big reveal happens I feel like the game gets a little juvenile in its storytelling. lots of big sword action and screaming.

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51.



They put out a remake of this game a few months ago and oh my god I kinda hate remakes. Actraiser is a game of a specific time period and you can't recreate that.

Actraiser is a game of two genres mashed together: combat and simulation. Neither section on their own is especially interesting, but put them together and it has this really neat back and forth. The progression is what makes this game feel at all cohesive - it's just really cool to develop a land and then rid that land of evil. It also has a killer Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack. This game was essentially a SNES launch game, the definitive mode 7 game, and those aspects really cemented it as a next gen title at the time. I still think this game is charming as hell to play today. Maybe a little simple for 2021, but super charming.

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transience posted...

53.



Roguelikes -- real roguelikes -- are crazy. I'm fairly convinced that you can only play one of these games with any kind of competence. There's just too much to know. I've played this game for over 100 hours, mostly play just a single class out of fear of having to start over in learning, and have 3% of the achievements. You know, because there's 1782. I gave it a run last month and it's even significantly different from the last time I played it because these games are essentially live games. It came out 9 years ago.

TOME is a pretty soft roguelike, one with actual graphics, modes that disable permadeath and have some unlockables, like additional races and classes. But it's still a monster to try to untangle, even playing just a single class. There's just so much here that it's dizzying. I'm probably terrible at this game, and I've never actually beaten it, though I've gotten incredibly close. This game is great but it ultimately comes down to how much time I want to invest in it, and I'd need to sink months in to really get good at this. I'm not that monogamous with my games but I do like this thing.

oh hell yeah


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50.



The best Castlevania game! I really like Portrait of Ruin because it straddles the line between metroidvania and classic Castlevania. Those games are usually differentiated by whip (classic) vs. sword (metroidvania) and Jonathan can equip both. In Portrait, you wander a main castle and find various portraits and go into these neat little themed levels that are a little more linear. Not completely linear or anything, but it's pretty clear that you need to get to the end. It's not a maze.

Portrait also has some nifty movement options thanks to having two characters. There's some cool movement tech that works well for speed runs, and unlike most of these games it's not too hard to pull it off. Portrait is just good, man. The last couple of hours of the game is super enjoyable because you have lots of movement options and attacks. Bosses are really fun to tangle with and the last boss is oh so good. Great game.

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Portrait is good, but I don't know if I'd call it the beJONATHON

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transience posted...

The best Castlevania game!

Not sure I can agree with this if Bloodstained counts as a Castlevania game
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I didn't like Bloodstained at all, the little that I played of it

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Oof. That's somewhat fair, since Bloodstained starts out kinda poorly, but damn does it slap once you get the more exciting powers.
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I always hear good things, but I backed it on Switch and it was a technical mess when I played it. it also just didn't feel good as a result. I should go back, but like, there have been so many other metroidvanias to play lately

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oh shoot I haven't started reading yet but tag so I can read it

also not sure if you saw the sports discord top 100 games list earlier this year, but I finally had the drive to put together a top 100 myself and joined in there (partly fueled by reduced work during the pandemic + extra free time)

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I don't even know what 'sports discord' is! I mean I assume it's a clique of dudes in the board 8 discord but beyond that

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Bloodstained's my personal favorite non-Ori Metroidvania in a long time, but yeah, there certainly is a flood of them. I think I only played three this year (Dread > Axiom Verge 2 > Ender Lilies) but there were a bunch of others I could've played too.
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I haven't played AV2 yet. AV1 was a disappointment for me but it was alright. I don't know Ender Lilies

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AV2 shares a lot with AV1 but it's one of the most different sequels I've played. Changes the combat to melee instead of ranged, new protagonist, and no mandatory bosses - much less combat focus and more exploration focus. I still liked AV1 a little more for various reasons (mainly I thought its story was actually pretty cool and didn't care for AV2's) but there's a lot of cool stuff in AV2, and not liking AV1 definitely doesn't mean you won't like it.

Ender Lilies goes for more of a combat focus. Adds some Souls-y elements, as is hip in games nowadays, but not the annoying one (having to collect resources from your corpse). It's pretty basic in most ways, but the audio and visual elements are fantastic, and it still feels good to play.
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transience posted...

I don't even know what 'sports discord' is! I mean I assume it's a clique of dudes in the board 8 discord but beyond that

That's pretty much it! I mostly hop in the b8 discord to chat about sports stuff, 90% of the rest of the discord is foreign to me.

some comments so far:
Dragon Warrior - ah yes, someone else who wandered the green dragon cave torch-less

Spelunky 2 - I have a hard time separating this from 1 as well, because yeah, they are so similar. I think I'm higher on 2 for now because it's newer? but we'll see how that shakes out in the future.

DWM - I remember chatting with you a bunch about this when I was getting into this! I haven't tried the 3DS remake, but that's a shame to hear it's not quite the same.

Golf story - I played that very recently. Now there's a game with some charm

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I also didn't really care for Bloodstained, especially compared to the better CVs (DoS, PoR, SotN). Admittedly I played it on the Switch but it was after a lot of the bigger issues were fixed.

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49.



The origin story. It's kind of shocking to go back to AA1 because it feels so basic in comparison to the more recent games. I think the newer games tend to be way overwritten, but AA1 barely even tries to flesh out its story for the first 3ish cases. It feels like a different structure with 3 day trials and such brevity.

Still, this game gets bonus points for being where it started. Phoenix's character development is almost entirely in this first game. He probably gets more in AA1 than in AA2-6 combined. The relationship with Edgeworth and Maya gets ironed out here too. So, while I don't think AA1 is the best AA game on a technical details level, it's way up there just because of the story that it gets to tell.

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Yeah, PW1 feels so different as the series goes on just because of its simplicity.

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That's what makes it the best.


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yeah, being overwrought and complex isn't what made me love aa; it was its bold characters and punchy dialogue and simple-but-poignant soundtrack.

the question every case after 1-4 has had to answer is "does this added feature/time improve the experience?" sometimes the answer is yes, simply because more aa is good. and more often the answer is that it added something, but took away almost as much or even more.
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manfred von karma still the goat

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48.



Take everything said about EO5 and apply it to EO4, but with more interesting classes and a better world map progression. EO4 gives you an airship and an overworld to explore before you go into dungeons, and that split is pretty cool. All of the cool dungeon stuff still applies here, though it's missing a lot of the QOL stuff that later EO games offered (mostly just speed of battles/movement). Still, this game feels like it's clearly the best one to just play, and I love some of the synergies between the characters in this one the most.

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47.



Phoenix had pretty much run the gamut of random prosecutors and situations in his home location, so they throw him in to a new place/legal system with great results. The odds stacked against you system of Khurain ups the stakes and makes for a much more interesting setting than, well, whatever AA5 was. AA5 is a lot more nondescript.

But maybe the biggest twist in series history is that this game is secretly not about Phoenix. It's about Apollo Justice, his backstory and his ability to go beyond his master's shadow. After AA4 and AA5, it's beyond appreciated, and the final case has an end-of-trilogy feel that's matched only by AA3's final monster case. This game certainly isn't flawless -- what's up case 4 -- but I prefer a game that hits the highest highs than one that's merely good at everything, and AA6 certainly does that.

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Yeah AA6 has much higher highs than AA5, but it also has a lot more that I totally forget. I dont think I could you a single thing about cases 2 or 4, though 3 and 5 easily make up for it.

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case 2 is fairly memorable, and case 4 is memorable just because why am I doing any of this

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I dunno, after your write up I had to look up what case 2 even was!

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case 2 is memorable just because of the defendant and circumstances, and how it foreshadows the coming events of the game. it's not a great case though.

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46.



A nifty little ninja gaiden-like with a lot of neat movement tech. The Messenger plays like a metroidvania despite its level-based, linear structure - until later when the game opens up and actually does turn into a more traditional 'vania. This game's difficulty pushes you to master its movement abilities, and pulling off long strings to clear a challenging room feels real good.

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I thought that the Actraiser remake was good enough.

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One thing I enjoy about AA6 is how heavily advertised Maya is, and then shes around for like six minutes total.

Just to be clear, I do love the game, though.

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45.



This game has a really good story that builds and builds as the scope gets bigger. It's impressive that they can do that with like a dozen characters in an ensemble cast, and without really having much in terms of villains. There's Kefka and that's kind of it, and you don't even really see him for most of the game. Most of the struggle is just faceless against an Empire.

The gameplay lets it down a bit, and nothing is more obvious than when the world of ruin begins and the story stops pulling you along. FF6 is kind of boring once everyone learns the same spells and the uniqueness of each guy fades away, along with the story stopping from pushing you forward. It pulls it from a top game to merely a really good JRPG. I actually played a mod recently that rebalanced a lot of the combat and that helped make it a lot more fun. Of course, that also added Leo as a playable character and that was kinda silly!

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Anagram posted...

One thing I enjoy about AA6 is how heavily advertised Maya is, and then shes around for like six minutes total.

Just to be clear, I do love the game, though.

She's used as a reason to sell the DLC

SoJ is really great when it's firing on all cylinders, but it feels like an uneven experience and I think part of it is the pacing. Almost every case is probably longer than it actually needs to be.

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yeah, that is true. its got nothing on great ace attorney though!

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Yeah, GAA has the same problem for sure. I don't expect future games to fix it though!

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44.



This little narrative adventure game ate me up in 2015. It has a ton of intrigue that led to a lot of theorycrafting about what was actually happening, and that meta-game made it feel like more than just a quick episodic adventure. Life is Strange offers this awful-yet-nostalgic view of what high school was like, and despite it seeming miserable for everyone involved, that strange pull grounded it in a place that made it feel familiar and charming.

I'm not sure why, but I never played any of the Life is Strange sequels. I even bought one like 3 years ago and just never bothered. Sometimes I'm just good with a singular experience?

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43.



I've tried and tried and I will just never be good at this game. I have a mental block for learning how to avoid some of the patterns in the later game. I would need someone to break it down second by second, almost like if I was trying to learn how to play a really hard song on the piano or something. I don't have that kind of dedication to this game - I kind of float in and out of it every few months, die a lot, love every second of what I play and then ghost it for another year.

Ikaruga's intensity and patterns are in a class of its own. I'm sure other shmups are harder or more flashy or whatever, but there's just something about the light/dark mechanic that hooks me instantly. I want to be good at this, but maybe not enough to actually put in the reps.


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Yeah, the first Life Is Strange was enough for me. I've had no interest in any of the others.

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I'm happy to see Life is Strange is still on the list after all these years. Obviously you're a bit late for the community theorycrafting, but if you ever want something with a similar atmosphere, I thought Before the Storm and True Colors were both worthy prequels/sequels. I still haven't played LiS2 so I can't vouch for it.
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oh, I did play before the storm. I kinda forgot about it!

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42.



This charming little deckbuilder has a lot of really neat ideas. Each class plays really differently and there are all kinds of neat little challenges and rules to mix it up even more, not to mention mod support that lets people build tons of new cards and unique modes. I check in on Dicey Dungeons every few months and there's always something new going on with it, like a recent holiday challenge mode that turned the game into a puzzle game where you have to kill the enemy in one hit or else it healed back to full HP and you had to try again. Stuff like that is cool and gives this game life.

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i enjoyed LIS but played it like 2-3 years after the fact, so none of the community element of it. don't think i'd have it anywhere near this high as a result, but i still really liked max and chloe
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yeah that seems fair

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41.



Inside is this terrifying silent movie about a boy running from... something..? The framing of every shot in this game feels like a master class in design. On its face it's a fairly simple puzzle platformer, but everything here is gross and terrifying and brutal. You get suffocated and drowned and burned and eaten and electrocuted and you name it. You're this (seemingly) helpless kid just trying to escape.

And then you go inside, and, oh my god.

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Damn, two games (Life Is Strange and Inside) that are sadly not available as Switch physicals. I guess I'm going to have to buy a PS5.

okay, a warning: we're about to get into the rpg zone of this list. it's just how it worked out this year. we'll get out of it... eventually.

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RPG zone best zone

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oh, and if you thought the whole list has been rpg zone: hahaha

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40.



THE KING RETURNS. Hironobu Sakaguchi can make a mean RPG when he wants to. This game got neglected because of its platform (Apple Arcade) but man, it is straight up a classic Final Fantasy game! It feels like it was transported straight out of 1999. We've got prerendered backgrounds and a really interesting turn based combat system here. I got super duper into everything this game has to offer: the characters, the visuals, the story and especially the turn based JRPG gameplay.

This game was split into two parts: it was inspired heavily by the Gooch replaying FF6, so take from that what you will. The second half is very quest based and hard as hell. Even big fans of Fantasian like Heroic Mario got crushed by its difficulty in the second half and couldn't hang. But for weirdo JRPG combat fans like me who like to impose dumb challenges upon myself like a four job fiesta or beating old every FF game solo, this is right up my alley. Hopefully they add an easy mode at some point though because goddamn is the second half brutal.

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