Current Events > I'm gonna rate and rank the games I've played/beaten over the last two years.

(+) Yeah! (+)

THE LIST:

Neo: The World Ends With You
Fire Emblem: Three Hopes
Persona 5 Royal
Persona 5: Strikers
Persona 4 Golden
Hypnospace Outlaw
Rune Factory 4
Monster Train
Rimworld
Deep Rock Galactic
Pokemon Violet
Divinity 2: Original Sin
Monster Sanctuary
Monster Train: First Class
Slay the Spire
SM64 Romhack B3313( 0.7)

16- Monster Sanctuary

Game is still good. A solid 7.5/10 for sure. Honestly, there really isn't a "Bad" game on this list because I don't seek them out. The issue is that there's certain team compositions that are flat out better than others, and certain that really can't be used later into the game or against some of the optional content. I got lucky and got my 1-eyed Pikachu early to carry me through the rest of the game, but there's a lot of "useless" monsters and no real way of identifying them early until you understand more about the game's mechanics and what it really values. The story exists. The soundtrack is good, and there's a lot of content for what you're paying for. It's a perfectly fine game to sit and enjoy while disassociating from whatever ails you, the grind isn't tedious and the skill trees are all pretty fun to navigate. It doesn't do anything special, but it doesn't really do anything poorly either.

15- Fire Emblem: Three Hopes

8/10 There's a lot about this game I actually enjoyed more than Three Houses. Shez is a way more interesting protagonist than Byleth, Arval is way more active in the story than Sothis, and the cast of characters doesn't relentlessly jerk off the protagonist every time a meeting is called. A lot of the music remixes hit just right, and between Heaven and Earth is an incredible remix in particular. The story is about as good as a "Alternate reality" story can be, and the map design is surprisingly good for a Dynasty warriors style game. A lot of the side objectives hit the right balance between being piss easy and frustratingly difficult, where you might have to redo the level, but you understand exactly what you did wrong while you're doing so. Unfortunately, the idea of replaying half of the exact same game to get to the original content with each of the Three Lords is as mind-numbingly stupid as it sounds. I got halfway through my first replay and just stopped. It's not a riveting enough genre for sustained replay, and although the story structure is about as interesting as it could be, once you know the twists and hooks it really suffers during subsequent replays. Still a fun game, worth playing, with a banger of a soundtrack.

14- Pokemon Violet

8.2/10 Sword and Shield was an ambitionless mess of a game. There were several points where playing through it that it felt like it was made out of obligation, rather than ambition. Violet doesn't have that problem, instead its ambition outweighs its competency. From the stupid fucking minimap, to the constant slowdowns and graphical glitches, Pokemon Violet just can't get out of its own way. I'd go as far as to say that of everything new innovated, there wasn't a single thing introduced that I didn't like or think of as an improvement. That's honestly huge for Gamefreak, who is often regressive in their changes from generation to generation. Tera-type changing is the best mechanic that they've ever introduced(Better than Megas, I said it.) and Tera raids are so much better than Dynamax raids that it honestly doesn't even deserve a comparison. I play competitive as well, usually floating between 100-1000 in Master Ball when I binge, and this meta was way more enjoyable that Sw/Sh as well(Until the fissure bullshit happened). The only real complaint from a design perspective is that the new introductions are so strong and relevant that it really sorta hurts a lot of the existing choices of pokemon. There's quite a few pokemon introduced that competitively can be summed up as "X, but better!" Still, the best story since B/W, a passable overworld, and tons of quality of life improvements mean that despite it legitimately sucking in some aspects, it's still a game worth playing within the franchise. I don't know where it falls for me among the series, but it's probably top 3 tbh.

13- Neo: The World Ends With You.

8.5/10 This game was designed to fail financially, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. A sequel, directly linked to its predecessor through story, more than a decade and a half after the original released. Difficult to pick up and play, with a combat system that has a "epiphany point" once you finally adjust to everything going on. The visuals are crisp, the soundtrack is amazing, and the story is good by JRPG standards and alright by non JRPG standards. TWEWY has always been a character focused series, and this game certainly nails the characters and cameo's that appear throughout. The pacing of the story is weird, but it's intentional so you can't really complain about it. Really, my biggest complaint is about the sheer inaccessibility of the game. The story is even more hidden within secret reports than the last one and honestly somewhat incoherent if you never played the first game. A lot of the references also don't make sense without prior knowledge, and there's even a point where I, who played the original game multiple times, had to look on youtube for context to a scene where I didn't recognize the character who was driving the plot(Final Remix things apparently.) Ultimately, it's a good game I can't recommend because I'd have to recommend the original with it, and I can't even do that because every rerelease of it that isn't on the DS is lacking in some way compared to the original.

12- Monster Train: First Class

8.7/10 And now I'm realizing that I have it listed twice in the OP. Oh well. Really fun roguelike deck building game which has better design for the main game than it does the DLC. Unfortunately, the DLC limits a ton of potential deckbuilding options because it's so incredibly focused on scaling your DPS up as opposed to all else. This eliminates a ton of potentially viable strategies that absolutely work in the base game and really hurts the game overall. With that said, fusion is really cool, divine shards are really cool, and the entire idea behind trading immediate gain for stronger enemies down the line is a great concept. Tons of playtime in the game too, and it functions great on Switch. Having just recently beaten divinity 25 with all 30 class combinations, I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of the purchase, and it's honestly one of those games where I'll binge it for a couple of weeks, put it down for a couple of months, and then eventually come back to it refreshed and happy to play it again. There's a lot of value in that type of game and this exemplifies the concept as a whole.

Rock and Stone

DRG, Rimworld, and Pokemon are the ones I've played from your list.

GeneralKenobi85 posted...

Rock and Stone

DRG, Rimworld, and Pokemon are the ones I've played from your list.

Rock and Stone! It never gets old.

11- Rune Factory 4

8.8/10 If Stardew Valley didn't exist, I could say this is hands down the best Farming sim I'd ever played....but you'll notice that Stardew Valley isn't on this list. With Stardew, I finally reached the point of nothing left to really do. Rune Factory 4, through having actual difficulty and a more fleshed out combat system really keeps that from happening. The cast is mostly great, even the lackluster villagers are "Fine". The town feels like a town, with villagers frequently interacting with each other and tons of unique events that trigger seemingly randomly. It has a story, but it's just "okay". It feels very generic and very much so like a vessel for the gameplay to really shine through. But between what feels like an almost perfected farming sim and combat that while somewhat shallow in practice, has a ton of depth in equipment farming and crafting, as well as procuring the best materials you need to do so. There's an unreal amount of depth hidden below the surface of almost every mechanic in this game and it feels almost surreal when you finally see something like a tutorial for maxing equipment and you realize how much the game just does not tell you. Oh well. And just for reference/arguments sake; Dolce best girl, Leon best boy.

10- Divinity 2: Original Sin

9/10. It's an almost perfect RPG for me, giving me nearly everything I want from a big-ass sprawling RPG. Multiple methods of play? Check. Fair difficulty and damage scaling? Check. Ability to ruin the fair difficulty and damage scaling through abuse of mechanics? Check. Ability to turn your primary protagonist into a walking god capable to dismantling even the strongest enemy in minutes? Oh you best believe it. There's just so many ways to play Div 2, and it's surprising because ultimately it is a linear game. You have all these interesting characters that can be your party members, or you can say "Fuck it" and go with just one person, or alone and take advantage of the perks of the "Lone Wolf" skill. A lot of the decisions remind me of the old Bioware RPG's, but there not being a tacked on morality system or something of the nature is honestly a great decision. Sometimes, I want to make a "bad" decision, without fucking over my build or playthrough by doing so. It also isn't quite as comically evil as a lot of RPG's that give you the option. You're not going to rob a woman of the last memento of her husband, sell it for 500 credits, and then murder her for it not being worth more. No stupid bullshit like that. A lot of the sidequests have tons of depth to them, which is honestly the draw of the game. The story is good, the sidequests are good, the mechanics are good. The pacing is bad, but that's also because of the internal obligation you feel to complete side quests to stay properly geared and leveled for the main story content.

9- There is no number 9, I listed Monster Train twice in the OP and only caught it afterwards. Why omit 9 in particular you ask? Yeah.

8- Persona 4 Golden

9/10 Honestly even as I'm writing this I'm having second thoughts about moving it back to 10 behind Divinity 2. Persona 4 is more aloof and fun than Div 2, and it has a lot more interaction between the cast, but it is not a game without flaws. First, the good. P4G has the best grinding mechanic I've ever enjoyed in an RPG with Shuffle Time. It's amazing and somehow turns what should be the worst part of the game with it's (mostly)randomly generated story dungeons, into an absolute timesink where you don't even notice you've been killing shadows for the last hour. The first 80% of the game is highly enjoyable, the primary antagonist would have really benefitted from being fleshed out more, and honestly, external content(P4G anime) feels somewhat required if you want to elevate the protagonist and the story overall. My biggest gripe is that everything that comes after December is bad. Not "Alright", not "Fun, but...." It's bad. It's tedious, it makes the game feel like it's dragging, and ultimately, over time it completely removes any sense of scale and finality that the game had going for it. And that sucks, because the final, final, final boss theme is probably the best song in the game and it's honestly tainted by the journey it took to get there being so lackluster. I know Golden added a ton of unique interactions and original scenes, and that's great, because that's the strength of the game, but these new endings are absolutely "not it" and I cannot believe that nobody stopped them at some point and explained to them that they were damaging the story of the original by including it.