This year has been kinda strange. I’ve played:

• Star Ocean The Divine Force
• Like a Dragon 8
• Unicorn Overlord
• Eiyuden Chronicles
• Digimon Lost Evolution

…and, if you dare counting them:

• Nioh
• Elden Ring SotE
• Code Vein

Like a Dragon 8 is probably the best one, although I think it was weaker than 7 was. Mostly because I only played these and the whole thing about Kiryuu kept dragging - it was a swan song to a character I didn’t know beforehand (he’s the main character in 1-6).

Unicorn Overlord was mostly great, although towards the end most of my gameplay devolved into rearranging units until the preview showed me winning. The first half didn’t suffer from this and was really good.

Star Ocean The Divine Force was surprisingly awesome. It has a bad rep, but I think it’s the only game I’d describe without an ‘although’. Combat was fun enough, I liked the story and the movement was plain fun. I haven’t touched any other SO, but I’ve got Second Story R on the pile.

Eiyuden would be a good game, but it did crash increasingly often towards the latter half and included long segments without save points. Also, the balancing was off by a lot, even with all challanges on, I’ve been overleveled by up to 20-30 lvl at one point.

If you count Soulslikes, it’s a toss-up between Nioh and ER DLC. Elden Ring is the better game, no questions asked. However, I’ve burned out in its open world and got sick of my long buffing routines before most DLC bosses. In addition, I’ve got a weak spot for loot systems like Borderlands and Nioh kinda goes for that.

I played first Persona 3 Reload which took me till september to finish and i haven’t touched the dlc i have already bought. It’s fine as a game, but other Atlus games were just better.

After that i played Unicorn Overlord. I’m bit addicted to that game, well let’s say i sometimes skip a bit of sleeping time to play more. For sure one of my favorites of this year. I played it in octobery again in the harder mode, which is not much harder when you more experienced. So for jrpg’s that the most played game for me this year.

Then i played Final Fantasy VII Rebrith. I like it, i guess i would like it a lot if i play it again and skip a lot of the side content, which is sometimes fun, sometimes tedious but for sure it interrupt the good story experience a lot. I will play it again, but only doing story, i think that a better experience, only doing maybe side quest, because they add more to the world of the game.

i finished soul Hackers 2 this year but startet it on release of the game, was that 2 years ago? i don’t like the dungeon design, but the characters and story are good. Just these dugeons were so boring.

I played Metaphor ReFantasio, the game that would probably my game of the year if i have to nominate one. Well i guess i was more addicted to Unicorn Overlord, but Metaphor ReFantasio is a better experience overall. Good story, good battle system. A lot Persona, Shin Megami Tensei mechanics, but more polished. But it’s not my favorite game i have played this year.

My favorite games this year were for sure The Legend of Heroes Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure. Ok Trails from Zero is fine and a good game and of course story wise it’s connected to Trails to Azure or other Trails games. But it’s not that good. It’s fun. I like the story but it’s rather simple and has a lot stuff that is just about support Person X. Even in parts of the main story. That’s makes it not that exiting in the first half of the game of sometimes in between. The battle system also need some improvements, because it’s very very simple, just attack and heal. Put all your 4 chars together, attack and do aoe heal, almost all of the enemy could be solved like that. And the difficulty come more from more dmg that anything else. But the final from Trails from Zero, i liked it. It’s the kind of exaggeration that i like.

But ehh Trails to Azure was so much better, i would cosider is to be one of my favorite game of all time. I have played Trails of Cold Steel before Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure and it finally fill some story gaps for me. I didn’t know it’s at about the same time as the first two games of trails to cold steel. I also like the characters als already know in these two game (Juna, Towa) even though they don’t have an important role at all. But what makes Trails to Azure so much better than Trails from Zero is, well everything. You have a far better story. I said the end of Trails to Zero is exaggerating, but well i guess it’s not compared to Trails to Azure. The plot developement in Trails to Azure is just insane. Also the battle system is way better than in Trails to Zero, you have more tactic in that game not just using heal and attack, but also need to use some status effects and so on. Also the dodge tank comes back for me…well that game comes out before Trails of Cold Steel. But it’s really needed, at least again one way to powerful knight you have to face in that game on a tower. I need to resume soon with Trails into Reverie… this year.

So my favorite game that came out this year is Metaphor ReFantasio, my most played game is Unicorn Overlord and my Favorite played game this year is Trails to Azure.

Its old, but I have been trying out The Legend of Dragoon on PSX. I typically drop turn based combat JRPGs pretty quickly because I find the combat boring and repetitive (and simply too often random battles), but so far The Legend of Dragoon has been respectful of my dislike of those.

Random battles are not obnoxiously too often, mostly because it happens in small areas that are between towns or story areas which have more scripted battles. Though I wish I could have zero random battles, this is a fine compromise.

The combat is enough to hold my interest with the QTE (shockingly) for bonus damage. Though since I am playing on an emulator, the timing is out of sync and I have to press the button a little earlier than the game shows. Regardless, this is a nice mechanic. Same for the button mash bonus damage on magic.

The story is quite interesting so far. I don’t believe I am too far into the story yet, as I just saved the town of Hoax. Pacing also doesn’t seem too bad. I don’t like grinding and I don’t feel like my character is morbidly underleveled, and I haven’t really been doing side quests or grinding yet.

My gripes with the game so far:

• No journal or text log - normally I don’t mind this. But sometimes I don’t play for a while and then I forget where I was supposed to go. Some games used to be pretty good with this by making every NPC have some dialogue that would hint at where you need to go next but I havent found this to be the case in this game.

• Random battles - as mentioned, I wish there were zero random battles. But I understand this game came out at like, peak random battles time, and it hasn’t interrupted me too much yet.

• Combat arenas - have good variety, but when you fight in the same area it is always the same arena. It would have been nice to have maybe two or three variants of arena per area, for some more variety.

• Combat Moves - I wish the game allowed me to use any combat move my character knows by pressing different button combos. For example, if there are two moves: XXX and XXOX, on the third attack I wish it would allow me to press either X to end with the first move or O to continue with the other move. Maybe the game does this and I just am not into the game far enough yet, but the UI makes it seem like this is not possible. It could give me more variety in not hearing Dart say “VOLCANO” (text you can hear) in the same way every single time.

• Camera distance - for whatever reason I really wish the characters could be bigger on my screen. The prerendered backgrounds look really good, but in some cutscenes the character models get close to the camera and they have pretty good looking texture detail. I wish the game was a bit more like Brightis in this regard, but I can understand why that is not the case. This is only a minor desire.

• Enemy Combat - I wish all the enemies would take their turns at the same time instead of one at a time, if they have consecutive turns. Since the end result would be the same as there doesnt appear to be a turn interrupt mechanic.

So far I like it though, and I do plan to continue playing.

Metaphor was really enjoyable. I like the persona games but I like having adult characters that aren’t all waifus.

Terra Memoria was short and good. The most refreshing feature in it was an NPC that told you if you missed something and would teleport you there if you wanted. No missing things, no worrying I’d need a guide, etc.

Played this year but didn’t come on this year: Tales of Bersaria had great characters and I enjoyed the humor in it as well. Zestria was way too saccharine and Arise’s writing was awful.