Board 8 > Board 8's Top 20 PlayStation Vita Games - The Results

(+) Yeah! (+)

V3 is the weakest in the series because cases 2,3, 4, and 5 are all blah, IMO.

V3 > 2 > 1 >>>>> UDG easily

#3. Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2012)
Total Points: 34
List Appearances: 12
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/6/6ba51d3e.jpg

Writeup taken from 3DS list and provided by OrangeCrush980
Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward is a visual novel with some gameplay. The main focus of the game is by far its story, so Im going to talk about the general premise of the game quite a bit. Ill avoid any actual spoilers, but if you want to enjoy one of the best visual novels ever completely blind then dont read this and just play it.

The game starts with 9 people stuck in a strange building. Theyre greeted by an AI called Zero III who forces them to play a Nonary Game. The rules of the game are that the group has to divide up into groups of 3 to solve 3 escape rooms. After completing the escape rooms, they then play an AB Game which is based on the Prisoners Dilemma. In each group of 3, 2 of the people vote against the 3rd person. The pair and the 3rd person can individually choose to either Ally or Betray. If both the pair and the 3rd person choose ally, all 3 of them get 2 Bracelet Points (BP). If one subgroup chooses betray while the other choose ally, the betrayer gets 3 BP while the ally loses 2 BP. If they all choose betray, then their BP stays the same. After the first AB Game, theres 2 more loops of doing an escape room followed by an AB Game, and then afterwards theres just more AB Games until the Nonary Game is over.

Once any player reaches 9 BP, he or she can open the exit to the building, which will permanently close several seconds after its opened. Its possible for all 9 players to escape if they always choose ally or they otherwise wait for everyone to reach 9 BP, but that requires everyone to trust each other. And some of the players arent very good at hiding their true colors.

The games rules are further enforced by the bracelets which each player was forced to wear. If a player drops below 1 BP, refuses to enter an escape room, or otherwise breaks the rules, that player dies. Likewise, if no one in a group votes in the AB Game, that whole group dies.

You play as a young man named Sigma and can often choose who he does the escape rooms with and how he votes in the AB Games. This leads to the game branching into 9 main routes and a bunch of bad endings. Unlike Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (this games predecessor), this game has a flowchart which makes it easy to jump between routes. Unfortunately, the game does start a little slow, which is made worse by the routes branching a bit too early and thus some of the earlier scenes get repeated for each route. But once you get near the 2nd AB Game of each route, the brilliance of how the game is setup really shines through. Theres a lot of drama around the possibility of players with only 1 BP being murdered or players with 6 BP escaping early.

But all of that said, the real appeal of the game to me is all of the mysteries and all of the plot twists. Why are these 9 people being forced to play this game? What is this Radical-6 thing that keeps getting mentioned in the escape rooms? Is the mastermind behind this game one of the 9 players? All of those and a lot more get answered, and theres a bunch of plot twists along the way. When I first beat this game, I stayed up until 3 AM to get to the end, which is something thats very rare for me to do with any media.

The characters are pretty great too. During calmer parts of the story, its fun to see all of the jokes and banter that Sigma, Phi, Clover, and Tenmyouji offer. Theres several great serious character-driven scenes too of course. The rest of the cast can be a little more hit or miss for reasons I shouldnt go into too much detail about. Due to the nature of the game, you cant expect everyone to be likeable of course, so some of that is out of necessity. Stuff like the gameplay, music, and visuals are mostly fine to good too, but for the most part people are here for the story.

This is my favorite visual novel overall since it has so many crazy twists without the twists being too unbelievable or too numerous. Though it certainly took a while for some of the twists to really sink in and for me to be okay with them.

Oh, and just realized, due to the 20th place tie, those "honorable mentions" are actually 22-31 lol

Probably safe to say that Persona 4 Golden demolishes this. Which I mostly expected after Persona 3 Portable won the PSP.

Yeah, it's Persona 4 Golden > Danganronpa 2 for the last two spots. I don't even need to look up the topic, it's pretty obvious given what's left.

Top three are pretty spot on so Im cant complain!

#2. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012)
Total Points: 38
List Appearances: 12
First Place Votes: 1
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/ee395cd1.jpg

Writeup taken from PSP list and provided by MrSmartGuy
Danganronpa is such a cool concept. In every game, a weird, eccentric, evil bear named Monokuma traps 15 or 16 high school students in a closed environment, and will only allow them to escape if they are able to murder one of their classmates and get away with it in the subsequent class trial. If the murderer gets caught, they will be executed, but if they get away with it, they alone will be allowed to escape, while everyone else is then executed. The player takes the role of one of the students, and has to do their best to try and survive the ordeal to the end, by solving all the murders, complete with a comic book-style ending to each one.

If only the team behind the series had the slightest idea how to make a game fun, Danganronpa could have been a truly ascendant franchise. The groundwork for something outrageously engrossing is set in place, but every time any of the games attempt to actually engage with the player, it fails in just about every way imaginable. If they ever stumble upon a game mechanic that isnt a pain in the ass in one game, just wait until the next game, and theyll ruin it somehow. Even the main mechanic of finding holes in classmates testimonies is somewhat tarnished by having to aim your Truth Bullets at the statements in real time, and if you miss, you have to start the testimony from the very beginning, wasting several seconds of your valuable time.

There is a single minigame in the entire series I actively like playing, and it's in this game (Logic Dive)! There are several that I consider inoffensive, but these games came out in the 2010s and we should hold a higher standard for its minigames than well I didnt hate it.

But for real, screw all that, lets talk about the goooood stuff, and Danganronpas concept is just way too damn strong for it to be held down by not being a fun game! Its about so much more than that! By that I mean having all your favorite waifus fall into despair and kill their friends. Thats really what everyone wants to see, and Danganronpa 2 pulls that off better than anything else. It's legitimately one of my top 5 favorite narratives I've ever read, and one of them that's higher is its further sequel.

But before we get there, I briefly gotta mention Danganronpa 1 (and for the love of all that is holy, please let us already have mentioned Danganronpa 1 in this list). I hate it. It's a really bad game. I mean, a REALLY bad game. Thankfully, it's propped up by a passable story with extremely intriguing concepts. And unfortunately, understanding what's going on in DR1 is entirely a prerequisite to understanding what the hell is going on in the tale of DR2.

And what a god damn tale it is. Not only is there some top-notch drama and intrigue, the mysteries behind the murders are WAY more fun to unravel, and it feels that much more bittersweet to take those dastardly killers down. The ending of DR2 makes about as much sense as 1, but it does it in such a cool way that I can't help but smile any time I relive it it some way.

Gonna give this its own paragraph because its just that important. Case 5 is my favorite murder mystery in all of fiction. I cant even begin to go into why without spoiling the very basis of it, but good lord is it awesome.

With its ridiculous premise, its expertly-crafted murder mysteries, and crazy twists and turns, Danganronpa has become easily my favorite series to watch other people experience for the first time. Even Danganronpa 1, despite being an objectively bad game, is wildly entertaining, and still has this weird charm to it that makes you want to see how others react to being put through the same gamut that you did. Its very hard to explain what I mean if you havent experienced it yourself.

If you havent yet, and youre up for something a bit weird, give Danganronpa a try! If you do, make sure you hit me up on Discord, because I loooooove talking people through their time with it, and VERY unlike the DR fanbase, I'm able to keep spoilers to myself! For Pete's sake, if you plan on trying the series out, do not google Danganronpa, do not look up voice actors for Danganronpa, do not peruse videos on Danganronpa; you must basically swear off the internet until you are done because the fans just do not f***ing know how to not ruin it for everyone else. I kinda hate that I consider myself part of its fandom sometimes.

Sometimes.

CHARACTER RANKING:
Nagito > Hajime > Gundham > Sonia > Ibuki > Chiaki > Fuyuhiko > Byakuya > Peko > Nekomaru > Kazuichi > Mahiru > Mikan > Akane > Teruteru > Hiyoko

#1. Persona 4 Golden (2012)
Total Points: 55
List Appearances: 17
First Place Votes: 5
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/a/a567e830.jpg

Writeup taken from PS2 list and provided by tazzyboyishere
Who could have thought wed see one of the finest PS2 games dropping nine years after launch, long after the PS3 had been sent to market? I mean, in a way it makes sense. Part of the reason God of War II was so good was Santa Monicas familiarity with the system, and confidence in pushing it to its absolute limits. But not only was that not the final masterclass exclusive (at the time) for the console, it was also made with first-party money and marketing. If God of War II was meant as a death knell for the PS2, niche developer Atlus defied fate by putting out, quite possibly, the greatest RPG ever made.

Atlus isnt all that niche anymore, of course. Sure, they arent a huge market force like Capcom, but they usually put out critically and commercially successful games. Their most recent game, Metaphor: ReFantazio, though only technically published by them (Its just another Persona game and it is so fucking good), is probably going to receive some GotY nods, and has already surpassed a million sales! But in 2008? Yeah, they were relatively obscure outside of Japan. Shin Megami Tensei was their biggest franchise, and most of those games didnt even come to the States. Persona 3 and 4 were initially branded as SMT games over here, Im assuming because of the franchises mild success over here. But theres a reason Atlus is a well-known entity today, and its because of this fucking gem.

Lets start with the gameplay. While I havent played the first two (technically three, given there are two Persona 2s!) games in the franchise, I have played Persona 3, so just comparing it to that, there are quite a number of improvements. The obvious one I think most agree on is being able to control every party member. Persona 3 being as good as it was in spite of that handicap is kind of insane, but now the 1 more combat system opens up so much. Dungeon-crawling is also a bit better, as theres quite a bit more variety in the design. Its still mostly randomly-generated hallways, but you get some solid thematic choices for the visuals, enemy design, and music. Through the dungeons it explores concepts of sexuality and identity, which are so rarely discussed in a genre dominated by teenage party members.

Back are the social links, which have become a big part of why people love these games, including myself. I used to see people calling these games part-dating sims, and I think that stems from Persona 3s decision to prevent you from maximizing the levels of female characters without entering a romantic relationship. Basically, Persona 3 required you to engage in unethical non-monogamy in order to see every characters story, and to maximize the combat benefits of the class of Persona they were linked to. This was thankfully removed, as you can have platonic relationships with women, just like in real life! You still arent allowed to be gay or bisexual though, which is a bit lame (And an ongoing problem with the games to this day, in spite of all the twink protagonists). And my word, are these some good social links! I promise I will limit my Persona 5 bashing (Great game but I have PROBLEMS) to this statement, but I really felt it dropped the ball on presenting memorable storylines for its NPCs. I actually played Golden for the first time after having beaten Persona 5, thinking I may have just aged out of the writing or some dumb shit, but no, I loved these characters (except for Yumi)! My particular favorites, outside of the major characters, were Naoki and Hisano.

Of course, I cant fail to mention the main cast of characters here. This is potentially my favorite set of characters in a JRPG. I loved everyone except Rise and Teddie on my first playthrough, though Im not entirely sure why I didnt like Rise then, but I do think I had some weird anti-Laura Bailey bias and just shat on all of her characters. I was a scumbag teen back then so I give myself a pass. Great character. I still dont like Teddie though. I particularly connected with Kanji. As a bicurious teenager who was so scared of that hint of gay in them, it was nice to relate with a video game character in learning how sexuality is a spectrum. Perhaps in the modern day, his particular journey is crass, but Id never seen anything like it at the time. LGBT characters were almost universally recognized as insane, evil, or comic relief back then, so it was a pretty solid step forward. The major non-playable characters, Dojima, Nanako, and Adachi are all fantastic in their own right, though digging into why would require me to get into spoiler territory. Lets just say they all have some of the most gratifying character arcs in gaming.

I find it hard to believe another game will capture the same particular magic that Persona 4 did for me. It was a game purely about being a teenager that I played when I was a teenager, and that level of connection was perfect. Even on replay, I still get those same feelings. Persona 4 defied the standard we had set for gaming in 2008, releasing on outdated hardware with little to no mainstream marketing, and becoming a cultural touchstone in spite of this. It matches the games themes of being an outsider and doing all you can to be your true self, regardless of how the world expects you to be, all too well.

Man, the top 5 of this list are all in my top 20 games of all-time. VITA might not be a deep console, but it had some real bangers.

Thanks again to all who participated and lurked alike! This actually did better than the Genesis list (22 submissions to 20), so that's better than I anticipated!

Next up will be PC (2010s) with a side list. Haven't decided which of the planned side lists to do yet, but we shall see! Should go up either later today or tomorrow

Thanks for running this

I'm excited for the next list

PC 2010s... wow. My list might have literally no overlap with anyone else's. Looking forward to it!

Only problem with pc lists is I have to look up when games came out.

I remember last time I had a bunch jn the 2010s though