Board 8 > Arti's Top 10 Games of 2020 and 2021 (and other lists)

(+) Yeah! (+)

lol oops

Instead of doing the list last year I ended up ranking my top 100 games of all time instead of my top 10 games of 2020, so this kind of fell by the wayside while I did that (and it's why I had none of the 2020 games I played in the top 100 in the first place). I had planned to do the top 10 of 2020 afterwards, but I forgot all about it. That topic is still up, by the way. My list is in there somewhere.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79323228

Now though, I will be doing both the top 10 of 2020 and 2021 in here now that the trophy contest at TrueTrophies is pretty much over. Here are the 2020 games that I've played over the last two years:

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Astro's Playroom
Death Come True
Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories
Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Genshin Impact
Ghost of Tsushima
Granblue Fantasy: Versus
Kandagawa Jet Girls
Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition
Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory
Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS
Nexomon: Extinction
Pic-a-Pix Classic 2
Pic-a-Pix Pieces 2
Puyo Puyo Tetris 2
Robotics;Notes Elite
Rocket Arena
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin
Sakura Wars
Streets of Rage 4
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack
Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~
Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen

Should be a fun ride. First update will probably be later today.

GUESS WHAT KAKAROT

caps

No Hades, Ori 2, or Yakuza: Like a Dragon is sad. Let's go 13 Sentinels.

A list of 2020 games I own but in 2 years I still haven't played any of them

5) Bugsnax (PS5)
I finally did get a PS5 this year sometime in the fall, however near the time I was going to play this the developers announced a free DLC with trophies that they will add to it, and integrate it into the main story as best as they can. So I decided I will wait until that addition instead. I will definitely get to it once the DLC is released!

4) Robotics;Notes DaSH (PS4)
As you can see, Robotics;Notes Elite is up on the list above, but I have yet to start this title, which has a character returning from one of my top 10 games... only problem is, I don't really like that character and I feel he will just bring the overall product down, especially considering Frau from the original Robotics;Notes is still there. I will get to it at some point.

3) The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV (PS4)
Waiting for the releases of Zero and Azure to even make a dent into this series now, so I'll be playing this one in 2023. I still have to finish Cold Steel II and Sky 3rd so there's still a lot of Trails to go through before I get there.

2) Yakuza: Like a Dragon (PS4)
I stalled out on the Yakuza series somewhere in 3, because the combat in the game is bad and not fun to play. Makes sense, since it's a remaster of an old PS3 game and not using the new engine like Kiwami 2. Eventually I should get through that one and continue the series, even though the whole genre of the series has changed now.

1) Hades (PS4)
Waited for the PlayStation release, got the PlayStation release... and left the game on the bookshelf for the last few months. I want to play some Switch games right now so I won't be jumping into this one right away, but I should be starting it up soon. Not soon enough for this list, though - maybe it'll be on a list next year.

I was going to tag but somehow I have played zero of your 2020 games. I will root for Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories purely off of its enticing bad B-movie title.

Only played 13 Sentinels, Robotics;Notes Elite, and Utawarerumono of the 2020 games. Fairly easy 13 Sentinels > Utawarerumono 1 > R;N ranking of those 3 for me.

ya go my 13 sentinels for #1. and utawarerumono to make the top 10 somewhere. r;n i can take or leave.

Honorable Mentions

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (PS4, PS5)
This game is an exact copy of Puyo Puyo Tetris 1, with a new storyline (that isn't that good) and adding some new characters to play as such as Sonic the Hedgehog - and it's also available for PS5. I liked the original game enough to put it on my 2017 list (#9 at the time), but there isn't much to add here from that - and when I did play this game for the first time the story mode 'fights' were completely ridiculous difficulty wise, but seem to have been reduced a bit when I replayed it this year. So ten hours of fun stuff and then fifteen hours of idly grinding puyos for the platinum, just like I remembered the first game being. Those ten hours are good enough to keep it up to this placement, at least!

Rocket Arena (PS4)
One of EA's many EA Partners published games, this game is a 3v3 competitive third-person shooter with various objective modes picked at random. There's matches for both playing against other players and playing against bots - though I played some matches against other players with Nick and Wigs on my team we mostly stuck to playing against bots to grind out the trophies and eventually the platinum. The grind wasn't that bad, and was done mostly on double EXP weekends to lower the number of matches needed. We still have no idea why Wigs had such massive bugs with his stats well above what was needed for some of the trophies. Unfortunately, the developers have pretty much abandoned the game after the latest patch last year, so it will probably go down soon.

Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ (PS4, PC)
An indie dungeon crawling turn-based RPG is a rarity these days - I had this on my PSN wishlist for a long time before finally purchasing it in a recent sale. As the title implies, your party members in this game are all zombie girls that have somewhat retained their personalities even after becoming undead, and you explore various places in a town to gather supplies and find a cure for the zombies. All story-events are fully voice acted, which is a nice surprise for such a niche game, and there's also miscellaneous event scenes scattered throughout the various dungeons. Many require certain party configurations, but the game tracks them for you if you don't have the right characters. I finished the first two dungeons and have met almost all the characters already - and I'm having a good deal of fun from it.

There is nothing honorable to mention about rocket arena

10) Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory
Square-Enix
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Released November 13, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: No

Starting off with a game that would have made the list even if I did make the list a year ago.

In 2020, I attempted to play through Kingdom Hearts (the first game) and I found out that it has aged extremely badly, so much that I ended up dropping the game. I did get pretty far, even all the way up to Hollow Bastion, but eventually it was just too frustrating to keep continuing on, and the Disney references had pretty much ended by then so I didn't care much anymore. I dropped it in the early months of 2020, and have not earned a trophy in the game since.

So we have this rhythm game, a very similar game to one of my favorites of all time in Theatrhythm that recaps the entire storyline of the series. I decided just to play this, and with the Kingdom Hearts in a nutshell videos I can get the basis of the plot down enough that I can jump in on a theoretical Kingdom Hearts 4 and hope it has more modern combat than whatever KH1 had (though, I doubt KH4 will be the next game in the series given who's directing this). In the end, it was a very good choice; I sped through the entire game's story in a single day.

You would think that I would like this game a lot more given it's similarity to Theatrhythm, but there's a good few differences here. When I played Theatrhythm I had played the majority of the games that were featured in it - Melody of Memory had none of that besides a few Disney songs and some of the KH1 tracks (and Calling, I guess). A lot of the music sounded the same, so much that it was a chore to play through some of the songs - and by the way, you have to play every song on every difficulty to get the platinum trophy. And then grind even more to hit 100,000 enemies! I hope you enjoy Xenahort's battle theme over and over again. The game also has a lack of modes - there's just the story and free play that are worth playing, and the less said about the COM battle mode the better, because it was awful in Theatrhythm and is awful here.

I still enjoyed my time with the game, it's just not as good as some of the other titles on this list.

goodbye Rocket Arena, GTFO

Arti posted...

2020, I attempted to play through Kingdom Hearts (the first game) and I found out that it has aged extremely badly, so much that I ended up dropping the game. I did get pretty far, even all the way up to Hollow Bastion, but eventually it was just too frustrating to keep continuing on

Shoulda finished. I haven't played all that much of them tbh, but the one witb the damn cards (Chain of Memories????) has the worse gameplay. 2 is better and BBS is great gameplay that actually doesn't suck.

9) Sakura Wars
Sega
PlayStation 4
Released April 28, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: No

Sakura Wars is an interesting case. Back on the Wii I played the only other localized game, So Long My Love, and it didn't really grab me at the time so I set it aside. Never went back to it. So here we are with the only other localized game in the series. It's a complete reboot, so none of the original story really matters here. You've got your main character drafted into the Imperial Combat Revue's Flower Division, led by Sumire Kanzaki, a returning character from previous entries.

The main combat portion of the game is completely changed in this game - instead of a turn based strategy RPG, we have an under-developed action game instead. You control the main character and one or two of the heroines in battle and beat up enemies as you traverse through a stage. The mechs never upgrade, so your character at the beginning of the game is the same at the end. The battles eventually get boring enough that you can pretty much just sleepwalk through them and finish. It's definitely the low point of the game, but thankfully there aren't that many of these sequences.

Where Sakura Wars shines is in the story and characters. The scenario draft was done by the director of 428: Shibuya Scramble, Jiro Ishii, and while it's definitely not comparable to that game it has its own charm to it, even if it gets very anime at times. Many different artists were also brought in to design the side characters of the game, and some of their characters really look like they came right out of different series - such as Hakushu Murasame, who looks like she just came over from a Persona game.

The characters are all well-presented and you have chances within the game to have multiple conversations with all of them - the five main heroines included - and raise your relationship with all of them. Characters that you have become friends with show up on a special screen in between story chapters and battle scenes. Your decisions use the LIPS system present in other Sakura Wars games, where you're given a number of choices with a time limit - usually with another choice that is auto-selected if time runs out. The only problem here is you might need a guide to get the character ending you want, as most people will end up with the main heroine Sakura as she has the most chances to interact with the protagonist. I managed to get a choice at the end with all five of them selectable, and got all their endings from that save.

I did get the platinum in this, but I don't recommend going for it unless you really like the game, as it requires multiple S-ranks on every battle mission in the game, and finding multiple collectibles in each exploration chapter that are highly missable.

But you can play koi-koi with all the characters in the game, including every side character and all of the villains as well. And that's important.

Soundtrack Links
Geki! Teikoku Kagekidan -Shinshou-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3pRL-IVlZg

Kubo

8) Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot
CyberConnect 2 / Bandai Namco Entertainment
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC
Released January 17, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: No

Here's the first game that probably wouldn't have made the list if I made it at the regular time - at the beginning of February I had only finished the Saiyan saga, and only beat the game in August last year.

DBZ Kakarot is an action RPG that goes through the entire story of Dragon Ball Z from the Saiyan saga all the way to the end of the Buu saga. You mostly only are able to play as the main characters of the storyline, which include Goku, Vegeta, Gohan, Piccolo, and Trunks at various points. Other characters like Krillin can be added as support characters that can aid in battle. All the dub actors from the Funimation dub of DBZ Kai/Super return to reprise their roles here, which is always welcome even if it is standard for most Dragon Ball games. I never did watch most of the Buu saga during Dragon Ball Z's original run on Cartoon Network, so there actually was part of the story that was completely new to me.

Combat is pretty good for most of the game. You have your team of one main character and two supports against however many enemies. You can attack via melee (the character will dash towards the enemy automatically if far away), through ki blasts, or by using special attacks such as a Kamehameha. The support characters can also use their special skills via a different command, such as Krillin's Solar Flare. Some battles are challenging, mostly if they don't involve Vegeta who is the most broken character in the game. Vegeta learns Big Bang, which is an effective special against every character in the game with little difficulty.

The only demerit this game has is the open world, which is extremely empty of actual things to do. You can fly around and get orbs, but you'll get so many from battles that you will never need these. There's hunting and fishing spots, but all these unlock are some encyclopedia pages and recipes (plus Shenron can just give you the completed dishes randomly in the first place). All side quests are highlighted on the map, so there's no reason to do anything out of the way. I wish there was more of a reason to explore around, but there really isn't much to do outside of the main quest and any side quests collected.

Fortunately, the game is still fun to play through the entire story line, and the Super Finish cutscene is pretty funny, especially when you do it to a character in a friendly story match, like when I had Gohan Super Finish Goten in a training match.

Big Bang Attack Spam

7) Nexomon: Extinction
Vewo Interactive, Inc. / PQube
PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, iOS, Android
Released August 28, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: No

How ironic that a new Pokemon mainline game gets announced right before I write up this game for the list. Anyway, Nexomon: Extinction is a monster-catching RPG that takes a lot of its inspiration from Pokemon, but differentiates itself enough that makes it a much better title than most of the more recent games in that series.

One of Nexomon: Extinction's strengths is the storyline and dialogue throughout the series. It starts off like any other Pokemon title, where you're a kid that finally reached the age of becoming a Nexomon tamer, but that's basically where the similarities end. The Nexomon world is under siege by a number of tamers controlling powerful Nexomon known as Tyrants, and as expected your character will have to do something about that; however, it's not as clear-cut as I'm saying here, and it deviates in some surprising ways. The dialogue is also spot-on, as the characters will frequently break the fourth wall and comment on how absurd the game gets or how various tropes keep happening throughout the game. The main character is a silent protagonist, but they placed another character along with the main character so there's actually some worthwhile dialogue when characters are talking to the protagonist.

Battling in Nexomon is a bit different than expected due to the stamina stat; all Nexomon have an amount of stamina, and more powerful moves use more of this. If stamina gets low, a Nexomon must skip a turn to restore a small portion of its stamina. It provides more strategy to manage the stamina of all six of your party members. Nexomon: Extinction also uses level scaling to make it more challenging. As you level up the Nexomon in your party, the entire game levels up with you, so there's always a decent challenge coming up throughout the entire storyline - and even the postgame, where I started with all tamers having Nexomon ten to fifteen levels above my current party (and you can keep challenging tamers as much as you want, and they keep upgrading their teams by evolution and leveling up to around the mid 70s). The final battles in the storyline also have a decent challenge to get through, as the tamers have varied types in their arsenal.

Cores also provide a nice customization aspect in the game. You collect shards of different types throughout the game, and can use these to provide different effects to your Nexomon, such as a buff to different statistics or more EXP in battle. Each Nexomon can equip four cores, so there's a decent amount of what you can achieve there.

Overall, I was impressed at Nexomon: Extinction's execution on how it overturned a genre that was getting quite stale to me. My only complaints with the game are that it runs a bit sluggish in the menus, and the game is actually very short in its length. Neither is too big of a deal, though, and I will eventually get the final few trophies which involve catching all the Nexomon in the game at some point later.

6) Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout
Mediatonic / Devolver Digital
PlayStation 4, PC
Released August 4, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: At the time, maybe (somewhere in the low ranks)

Fall Guys is an interesting game to talk about in a list made a year after the fact; as the game has gone through many updates since and has strong support from the developers continuing to update the game. Regardless, I'll try to look past that and talk mostly about the game as it was in 2020.

Fall Guys was announced as a PS+ game in August of 2020, it was so popular that the servers kept crashing for days after the launch. The game is a battle royale that takes place on various stages that are divided into races, survival stages, team stages, and ending with a final stage with a single winner. You have control over a single Fall Guy with the ability to jump and grab, and that's it. It's a very simple game to start with, but the real twist is all the different stages that are available, with different variants of the same stage to keep the levels challenging enough for everyone.

Even with all that, it probably wouldn't have made my top 10 just with that. A huge amount of us from the board 8 discord played a ton of this game in the initial month it came out, including myself, @ninkendo , @WiggumFan267 , @Whiskey_Nick , @TheLastObelisk, @TheKnightOfNee , @iiicon , @MegamanX , @Bartzyx, and even some more people that I might be forgetting. Being grouped up in these games gave us a huge boost in the various team games as the game did its best to keep the group on the same team whenever possible. Seeing SHINE's winning five games in a row while grouped up was an amazing sight to see, especially since four of those wins were on Royal Fumble.

We still play the game from time to time even now - I usually rotate my costume between Godzilla, Knuckles, Kizuna Ai, and 2B from the various collaborations that Fall Guys has made with other franchises. I hope the game continues and gains more popularity when the Xbox One and Switch versions release - seems like it would be a great game on a console like the Switch!

Soundtrack Links
Survive the Fall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2TpZXnWVsw

Final Fall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qndGfHoXNYA

it was me

5) Robotics;Notes Elite
Mages Inc. / Spike Chunsoft
PlayStation 4, Switch, PC
Released October 13, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: Yes, 80s

Robotics;Notes is the 3rd visual novel in the larger Science Adventure series. Due to the irregular release schedule of the games, I've had to read pretty much all I can out of order (and with Chaos;Head Noah probably coming soon, that's yet another game that will be out of order, as that's the first game).

Robotics;Notes goes through two different storylines throughout its narrative, one being the creation of a robot by the Robotics Club of Tanegashima High School, and the other deals with the Kimijima Reports, a record of computer files left by a man named Ko Kimijima that supposedly tell of an apocalyptic event happening in the near future. The story follows Kaito Yashio, a member of the Robotics Club and the one who seeks out the Kimijima Reports that are scattered throughout Tanegashima Island. The game takes place in the year 2019, nine years after the events in Steins;Gate. Several characters from that game either appear or create messages on Twipo, the game's version of Twitter.

For what it's worth, Robotics;Notes follows the general path of a Science Adventure visual novel to the letter - an interesting startup to get you hooked, but then a large lull in the middle until it winds up getting to the conclusion. Unfortunately, unlike Chaos;Child or either of the Steins;Gate games the lull takes a large portion of the story, making it much less interesting overall than any of those titles. However, the final chapter sequence after unlocking the last path is exceptional, as well as some of the individual character endings a bit beforehand, and is well worth your time to get to those points.

I am planning to do a full re-read of the entire series once Chaos;Head finally releases, so maybe I'll try out the re-translation patch on it? I still enjoyed it regardless!

Soundtrack Links
Correlation Diagram Under the Sky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilW6KV3AHUM

Frau rules

Didn't like the rest of the anime much.

they let books onto video game lists now?

Frau probably the best character in R;N, yeah, but I actually warmed up to most of the cast over time.

Didn't think it measured up to Steins;Gate or Chaos;Child though. Granted that's a very high bar for me.

I'd probably rank R;N below both Chaos and S;G games, but the first one is still fantastic.

Oddly, though, I loved the "lull" where you're just doing everyone's routes more than the main plotline. Part of that may have been that the anime truncated those segments a lot, and I'd already seen the anime, so it was new to me? *Shrug*

(let's not talk about dash)

Fall Guys what a bad game

Arti posted...

A lot of the music sounded the same, so much that it was a chore to play through some of the songs - and by the way, you have to play every song on every difficulty to get the platinum trophy. And then grind even more to hit 100,000 enemies!

Ugh and then they have the audacity to make the in-game 100% impossible because they want you to get a million points when you get like 200 per song. Even after grinding for the plat and going for other challenges you'll still end up with less than half the score.

4) Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL-STARS
Bushiroad International / Mynet Games
Android, iOS
Released February 25, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: Yes, 50s

The latest (at the time) Love Live game to be released outside of Japan was this mobile game, described as a "rhythm action RPG" by the developers.

This game's storyline depicts an alternate storyline to the anime series and other games by having all three of the school idol groups ('s, Aqours, and Nijigasaki) all being active at the same time period rather than years apart. The player character is a second-year at Nijigasaki that frequently corresponds with all three of the idol groups in the main story, bond episodes, and side stories throughout the game. I had always wanted to see 's and Aqours actually meeting at some point but the anime storyline made this impossible in a canon series, but this game does it perfectly.

The gameplay, true to the description above, is a hybrid of a rhythm game and a RPG. All cards in-game have three stats; appeal, which determines their score potential; stamina, which determines the health they provide to the party; and technique, which determines SP skill strength and chance to get a critical. When playing any song in-game, you bring along nine cards split between three strategies, and the current strategy's appeal and technique determines your score for each note. With every note played, your stamina decreases and some songs require healing or shielding cards to keep your play alive - even if you are heading for a full combo of the song! Each card has a set active skill that triggers at certain criteria, a passive stat booster for itself or other cards, a skill that is used when playing notes, and a number of insight skills (could be either active skills or passive ones) that are customizable and are obtained through training. There's also equipment to enhance statistics and the expert difficulty songs go really hard into trick notes and other crazy things - which may require a different card setup to even pass, and then get a S-rank.

The game, like most mobile games of this nature, runs events at regular intervals. Two of them are just typical mobile game events where you just play songs to get rewards, but the other two are based on the game's mechanics themselves. The SBL (SIFAS Big Live) places you with nine other players to pass a certain number of songs, and then ranks you based on certain criteria such as your score in the song or the number of skills used, for instance. The trick here is that all ten players are playing at the same time and will send and receive trick notes from each other - all helpful buffs, but they depend on what the other player sending the skill has in their main strategy. The second event, DLP (Dream Live Parade) tasks you with climbing a ladder that has a number of songs, with increasing score thresholds and difficulty as you progress up the ladder. The trick here is that once you use a card in one song, it's unusable for the rest of the ladder unless you use a consumable that you unlock by fulfilling certain tasks on the ladder, or by using the full restore you get each run around. Sadly the DLP towers haven't been updated in quite some time now, so this part of the game is very underutilized. It still gives rewards by pushing out a limited lower difficulty tower each time it is rerun, so there is still some reward to keep going through it.

Of course, no writeup of this game will be complete without at least talking about the gacha... and it's pretty fair, with the base UR rate (5%) for this game being much more generous than most mobile games that I've seen. I've gotten most of the main meta cards when they were released up to a point, so I've never felt it was that much of a problem. It also has the spark mechanic if you somehow get really unlucky with one card that just won't drop.

I still continue to play the game today and SBL ends in 50 minutes and I haven't done today's plays so BYE

Soundtrack Links
I'm Still...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ToW01yQ2bs

Kokoro Magic A to Z
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE_I45s7Fhw

unless they show it, not what you'r elooking for

3) Ghost of Tsushima
Sucker Punch / Sony Interactive Entertainment
PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Released July 17, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: Yes, 50s

A rare AAA video game purchase by me. I really liked the trailers that Ghost of Tsushima had produced before its release, as well as the historical setting of the game.

Ghost of Tsushima takes place during a fictional retelling of the first Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274. A Mongol invasion fleet led by the cousin of Kublai Khan invades the island of Tsushima and fights the samurai led by Lord Shimura and his nephew Jin Sakai. The battle is a complete loss for the samurai, with most of them ending up dead and Lord Shimura being captured. Jin manages to survive after being nursed back to health by a thief named Yuna, and sets out to defeat Khotun Khan and rescue Lord Shimura. I found the main storyline to be quite compelling throughout, and I enjoyed the resolution to the full story as well. To anyone that played the game to its conclusion, I chose to spare Lord Shimura at the end.

The game is told in three acts, each one focusing on a different portion of the island. In each section there are multiple areas overtaken by Mongol forces that can be liberated, as well as a large amount of other optional tasks to pursue. Each main character in the storyline has their own sidequest chain that spans multiple acts. There are also many other sidequests that can only be obtained by exploring the map thoroughly. By the end of the game though it does feel too much like a checklist of items to complete - the fox shrines especially were just annoying and there's a few where the fox just gets completely lost in the scenery and it took me a few tries to follow it successfully. The sidequests though are much more involved, and I especially liked how the character storylines resolved. Jin's caretaker, Yuriko, has an especially powerful sidequest chain, and was definitely one of the best.

The game tries to both use stealth mechanics and action combat in its many Mongol encounters throughout the game. In general, the farms overtaken by the Mongols rely more on stealth to liberate the area, while other areas may rely more on a combat approach - but both are viable in most areas. Jin has a variety of tools such as firecrackers that he can use to distract enemies while he sneaks up and assassinates them - or gets to a certain target point in the camp. The more action based areas usually has Jin facing down a powerful Mongol, and some may even lead to a duel where Jin fights the enemy one-on-one. The only annoyance is sometimes you're trying to save a villager from a Mongol that rushed up to them - and you instead hit another enemy close by while you watch the villager die. The lock-on system of the game has its faults, but the combat is very fluid and Jin gets many tricks through the various stances he can switch between.

My main memory of the game is riding almost through the entirety of the second area to get Jin's father's armor well before doing anything else there. It was an interesting ride through the various environments to do so. I still have yet to play Legends, the Iki Island DLC, or do the New Game+ trophies, but I'll do them when I feel like playing more Ghost of Tsushima (and when I finally actually buy the DLC).

Soundtrack Links
Jin Sakai
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueRpihDmk8c

The Fate of Tsushima
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE3MjcPyc6U

The Way of the Ghost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDqjle2qnw4

Poor FF7R

2) Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen
Aquaplus / NIS America
PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4, PC
Released May 26, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: Yes, 50s

A while back I said that I would play the Utawarerumono series once Prelude was finally released over here, and in 2020 that finally happened. I'm glad I did since it's almost required for some of the events happening in the third game, not much in the second though. While Mask of Truth is definitely the highlight of the series, that and Prelude stand high over Mask of Deception in both story and gameplay overall.

Prelude to the Fallen stars an amnesiac man discovered in a forest by a family of two girls and their grandmother. He wears a particular mask on his face that cannot be removed. After being named Hakuowlo by the family, he gets accepted into the village after recovering from his injuries. The rest of the story takes place across the continent Hakuowlo finds himself on, and his search for who he actually is.

Prelude is a hybrid between a visual novel and a strategy RPG, however it leans more towards the visual novel side as the story is front and center here. It even takes a while to get to the first battle of the game, since the protagonist is injured for quite some time. The strategy RPG is pretty bare-bones, especially compared to the Mask games, by limiting stat-ups to only attack, defense, and magic defense. The optimal way to play is to raise attack at every opportunity and you'll easily win every battle even when playing on Hard mode, like I was. This doesn't apply to the bonus battle after the game, which gives you pre-set characters to use instead. Even with this game having the most story battles than any of the other games in the series, it's still mostly an easy task going through it all - I didn't lose a battle the entire time in the game and had to purposely lose one as one trophy requires the Game Over screen to appear at some point.

Of course, with a visual novel being the main game it needs to have a good story and characters, and the game does a solid job there. The main story goes into the politics of the various nations that Hakuowlo finds himself entangled with, and the large breaks between different battles allow for a lot of slice of life events to flesh out the characters a bit more. It gives you a greater impact as the story unfolds throughout the game. The soundtrack is always a treat, with this remake adding in music tracks from its two sequels and remastering others (such as the ones linked below) to provide a better experience.

While this a game and world that really expands in its sequels, the first game is still a great title that is not to be missed.

Soundtrack Links
Re:boot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It_UWy3H8ek

Re:boot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgol2-lAX3U

Prelude is great, yeah. Really glad I played it and got into the series.

but where #1

WiggumFan267 posted...

but where #1

here #1

1) 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
Vanillaware / Atlus
PlayStation 4
Released September 22, 2020
Would make my top 100 list if re-written: Yes, top 20

I have never been that much a follower of Vanillaware's titles - I own Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, Muramasa Rebirth, and Dragon's Crown as well as this game, but the only other one I finished was Muramasa, and it was only one of the two paths in that one. There was a lot of positive buzz around this one, so I decided to pick it up - though I didn't start it for a couple months after release, and then had to delay playing it due to the trophy contest with it giving very little points there. Finally, when I did get to enjoy it, I found it to be the best game of 2020.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim takes place in multiple time periods - the main period is 1985, but it expands both into the past and present to the years 1945, 2025, 2065, and 2105. The thirteen main characters that you control come from all over the different time periods, who cross over with each other during their storylines. In all periods, the threat of the kaiju looms over the city where all thirteen of the characters live - the kaiju attack each during each time period, as 2025 and future periods are all in ruins from their attacks. I'm a big fan of sci-fi like this game, which appealed to me more than the fantasy style of Vanillaware's previous titles, so that was a big plus.

When you're not uncovering the plot of the game in the above story sequences, you are tasked with destroying the kaiju in real-time strategy battles. You get four types of Sentinels, three of #1, #2, and #3, and 4 #4s. You choose six for each battle to protect a base from being destroyed by the kaiju. The different numbered sentinels have different skills and loadouts depending on what number they are, such as #1 sentinels being specialized for melee combat, while #3 sentinels are more adept at ranged attacks. Even with the different loadouts, the sentinels aren't really that balanced - I think Natsuno had like 20 MVPs by the time I was done with the combat portion, and Megumi's sentinel was so worthless I had no reason to ever use her. To counter this, a Sentinel will have to recharge if used in two battles in a row (or later upgraded to three battles) so you can't field the same sentinel over and over again. This can be quite an annoyance as some levels require you to use certain characters for the mission objectives! I looked this one up so I didn't lock myself out of any of the objectives, just in case. I ended up enjoying the combat portion by the end of the game, even though it lagged quite a bit on my base PS4 when some large waves of kaiju showed up. And this game is coming out for the Switch as well - I'm not sure how well it would run there and it feels like they'll have to downgrade it a lot just to make it work.

Because the game is so spoiler-heavy I can't really say much without spoiling something, so I'm just not going to talk too much about it. The plot and characters is the true highlight over the combat, and it all ties itself nicely in the ending, answering almost all the questions the game throws at you over the course of its storyline.

Character ranking:
Natsuno Minami > Ei Sekigahara > Takatoshi Hijiyama > Yuki Takamiya > Tomi Kisaragi > Nenji Ogata > Juro Kurabe > Keitaro Miura > Iori Fuyusaka > Shu Amiguchi > Ryoko Shinonome > Renya Gouto > Megumi Yakushiji

Soundtrack links
Isoleucine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yhh41Z77_Y

Deoxyribose
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggDdPlIVlQU

naked underage girls piloting mechs: the game

Nice, great game for first place. Megumi the correct last place character too!! Natsuno also great

how dare you disrespect the yakisoba-pan angel

Great choice for #1, 13 Sentinels was absolutely a 10/10 game.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories was robbed

Arti posted...

Natsuno Minami > Ei Sekigahara > Takatoshi Hijiyama > Yuki Takamiya > Tomi Kisaragi > Nenji Ogata > Juro Kurabe > Keitaro Miura > Iori Fuyusaka > Shu Amiguchi > Ryoko Shinonome > Renya Gouto > Megumi Yakushiji

I agree with first and last place here, so good enough...!

13 Sentinels great game, Sekigahara best character

Hell yeah Love Live!
It's becoming practically unplayable, but under Klab it was still worth putting in the hours.