Welcome to the Japanese niche games deals and discussion thread! Feel free to talk about local and import Japanese games here. Our goal is to maintain a thread dedicated to active deals on niche games including RPGs, Visual Novels (VN), Shoot'em ups (Shmups), Musou, etc. Also maintained are pre-orders for standard, limited and collector's edition games with key release dates provided.
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Figures put up their pre-orders months and months in advance. Japanese figures still cost way too much of a premium for me, and I find myself not being as attached to anime characters anymore, so I mainly buy a few random Miku figures now and then.
To start off with, this is a pretty fun nukige romp. The brother seems to be more of a loser in this one than the first. The sisters have somewhat similar personalities to the characters of the first, but have some nuances. I'm averaging finishing a route a night and each full route is taking me about 4-5 hours I believe. I usually choose the bustier girls to start for VNs, as their stories are usually under cooked. On the contrary, in this game the route was pretty fun and a lot of stuff happened overall. It was good route with my 2nd route being a bit more meh and way too straightforward.
The music isn't memorable. The voices for all the characters are good and the art is pretty good quality too. There seems to be added drama to the routes, which isn't totally necessary, but extends routes.
Overall so far I feel this game is weaker than Imouto Paradise 1, but still not bad. I'm enjoying it enough and do recommend if you want a longer Nukige type game. I will give a last impressions after I finish off the 4 remaining routes, but so far it's aight. 7/10
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game that I believe could have been great, but is unfortunately dragged down by the many little quirks it has. Normally these kinds of quirks are annoying but can be lived with through the duration of a game just fine. However this game I feel has so many of these quirks that it made it more of a pain to deal with on top of actual bugs you may encounter. So while you're reading this, individual things may seem insignificant but together as a whole weighed down on me from fully enjoying the game.
The games story follows a similar pattern to other games that Tetsuya Takahashi has written in the past. It's more lighthearted this time around, but if you're familiar with the past games he's written then you'll know what to expect. As for the story itself, it did lend itself to some nice high points on more than a few occasions. On the other hand, there are more than a few low points as well. For me, most of the low points were when they attempted to switch gears to something a bit more lighthearted. If you've read my previous thoughts on games I've played, I don't really enjoy scenes that are completely overexaggerated with overblown body movements. For me, those kinds of scenes on any decent story really take me out of any immersion I'm feeling with the game. There are more than a few of these scenes and I feel like they're really love or hate. I'd probably dislike them a little bit less if the animation was smoother as that kind of comedy I feel doesn't lend itself well to poor animation.
Characters on the other hand I felt were fairly likable. I can see some people disliking a couple of them either due to their eccentricity or the common tropes they exhibit. They even use some common tropes in non-standard ways for games that you may have seen in Anime as well (Exhibit: Glasses), which was kind of an interesting way to go. Also much like past Xenoblade games, you've got another Nopon party member. If you absolutely abhor the past two Nopon party members that the Xenoblade games we've had, then this one may not change your view on them. I believe they were handled much better this time around, but past resentment may make it hard or impossible to like them. Thankfully if you don't, the next party member you get will be a tank that allows you to replace them in your party pretty easily.
Design wise I felt the world itself was pretty great. You have plenty of environments that look pretty great and are designed decently well. However near the end of the game, the actual room to room design was pretty poor. It made traversing the final areas of the game extremely tedious and not particularly fun. Character designs on the other hand are very hit or miss. Especially when you get to the rare blades since they were designed by various artists and what they wanted to add. So each one doesn't necessarily conform to the game world, but instead to each individual artists tastes and drawing style. Thus you should probably expect some to be very hit or miss due to this. I'll use Vess as an example. Her design is very much a 90s anime character reject with a voice to match. I really liked her quest, but man do I hate everything else about her.
Localization is... well... pretty damn subpar in my opinion. If you play with English voice overs on, then you're better off skipping to the next paragraph. Part of it being bad is half because of all the changes they decided to make with the original Xenoblade Chronicles game. They added in a bunch of stuff to try and give it their own personality that I don't really feel is close to what the game tries to convey. The other half was because there were more than a few times where my mind auto-translated the Japanese voice overs while reading the English subtitles and they were exact opposites of each other. I don't really mind when translators and editors fluff things up here and there, but I don't really like it when they change the message that's being conveyed. That kind of thing just grates at me. The last thing I should mention in regards to localization is the Japanese voice overs include heart to hearts like usual, but the English voice overs have yet again neglected to voice any heart to hearts. Very disappointing honestly.
Sidequests have been both improved and stagnant. They've improved them by eliminating the stupidly large quantity of quests they've had in the previous Xenoblade games. Also I feel due to that, the general quality of quests in regards to writing has improved over the previous games. This is especially true with blade specific quests that each blade has. I felt they were pretty good as a whole, but still far away from something like Witcher 3 has with its sidequest narrative. As for the bad parts, you're still required to collect a ton of materials or make a bunch of items. Simply put it relies too much on grinding and RNG to a certain point. If you're someone who skips gather points here and there, you'll definitely hit walls with quests on more than one occasion. The other part of quests I felt was lackluster was that there were quests that just kind of abruptly ended when I felt they should have gone on for at least a few more dialogue boxes. Too many sidequests or heart to hearts just kind of abruptly ended.
The gameplay has a lot of tedious things associated with it that are mostly unskippable. This will be very long, so bear with me on this. Like I mentioned at the beginning, individually these are tolerable things but with the frequency of encountering these things and the amount of different things that are bloated, it really started to grind on me. I will say however that they introduced gameplay changes too far apart to the point where the combat is pretty poor through a good chunk of the game until almost all of it is unlocked.
Lets start with gathering. They've improved it slightly by increasing the amount of items you get per node. They take it a step further and give blades passive abilities that supplement gathering by allowing you to gather even more items from nodes that are specific to that gathering type. To go into detail, lets say I have three blades with the Mining passive on it. Two of them are at level one while the third one is at level three mining. When you gather from a point that has mining materials, you'll randomly (fairly high chance) trigger their passives kicking in. This constitutes the blade with the passive sliding on screen, having a short sparkle animation and then giving a voice line. This isn't too much of a problem except that it's not skippable and you have to wait for the voice line to finish before the next one kicks in. So you're looking at an extra three seconds for each blade that kicks in per gathering point. If they were skippable, it wouldn't be so bad.
More of an extra minor gripe on the gathering though is that some points felt pretty inconsistent. There were times when I was in a cave with zero water or sand and I'd hit a gathering node by a stalagmite. Instead of getting something sensible like minerals, I got fish. I felt like I was literally mining for fish. Being a long time MMO player, it was kind of ironic given the meme "I mine for fish" that has been around a while.
There are also interaction points that make use of other passive skills from blades, such as Jump, Focus or some kind of elemental mastery. Like gathering points, they cause the blades that have the same on screen animation that continues until done. After the first one finishes, you're able to skip the rest through pushing a specific button. If you don't skip it, it will keep going until it goes through all equipped blades that have related passives. An example would be that if a point needs 3 focus but you have a total of 8 focus across four blades. It will showcase all four of those blades if you don't skip the rest of the animation after the first one. However you'll often find that these points will require you to switch up your equipped blades on everybody and then sometimes hit a second interaction point that requires a second set of different skills, which then requires you to switch out your blades again. Then after that's done, you have to switch your blades back to your battle ready blades. I think it would've been better if it allowed you to select up to 3 blades you have for each character that have the required skills instead of causing you to take the time to switch out blades through menus.
Next up is the games navigation system. This is one of the worst navigation systems I've seen in a game that actually included one. The primary map via menus is alright, but doesn't do particularly well topographically. It tries to accomplish it by using a gradient texture to indicate height, but it doesn't so it particularly well. There's also no real good system in place to help see where you've explored either for those exploration enthusiasts out there. I'm not saying it needs to go full blown fog of war style like previous Xenoblade games, but something minor that is toggleable or something would have been great.
Besides the detailed map in the menu, you've got the mini-map in its small and large form. The large transparent map is absolutely useless in every way imaginable. They're supposed to 'fix' it with a patch, but its kind of useless to me at this point. As for the small mini-map in the top-right, it's alright but like the detailed map fails at proper topography and does not display any real information at all outside of what you're tracking via the quest system. So most of the time you're better off using the detailed menu map in almost all cases to try and figure out where you're going. Despite all these little issues the biggest offender is the navigation compass. It will try and point you in the direction you should be going, which includes side paths it wants you to use to reach your destination. However it's incredibly insensitive and is more of a "general direction" rather than a specific one. This means you could be moving in the opposite direction you should be going or run past a side path that you needed to use to reach your destination without even realizing it.
Combat itself is alright, but I hope you like quick time events because they're fairly prevalent after a certain point in the game. Most of the combat is locked behind certain points in the story that take way too long to happen for the combat specific gameplay to be unlocked. They expect people to make heavy use of new gameplay elements the moment they're introduced. Although I don't expect most to fully take proper advantage of a few earlier ones such as smashing enemies or proper art cancelling. Without making absolute full use of the combat systems, it takes far too long to kill. Time to kill is something that needs to be lowered on menial fights in the first half of the game.
I have two issues with combat. The first being potion healing. You use a skill that can generate potions, which then generates a random amount of potions which are scattered around the enemy. The range from where they can bounce to when generated is extremely inconsistent. This is a bad way to heal and unfortunately seems to be a very common healing skill across blades. Since you have to find out where these potions landed, if they didn't fall off a nearby cliff, you'll have to run to get them. It would be nice if they appeared more consistently nearby where you can easily run to because then you could use them as delayed healing.
Then you couple that issue with the fact that you don't attack when you're moving. Sometimes you have to run for 10 seconds to get all the healing potions you made appear, which is absolutely ridiculous and a long time to go without attacking or doing anything else on that character. On top of that enemies are far more mobile in this game than previous Xenoblade games in combat. This makes proper combos and doing things like smashes much more difficult.
The game also lacks any real helpful hints/tutorial system via the menus to go back and re-check if you forget something. So you need to make sure to read all the tutorials as they come up or else you may miss pertinent information unless you find somewhere online that will explain it. This seems to be a common issue that most people will run into if you can't figure it out because the systems aren't explained particularly well.
Finally you have the blade system, which is quite unsatisfying to use thanks to RNG. There are 28 rare blades in the game, about 20 of which are pure RNG through their terrible gacha system. You acquire common, rare and legendary core crystals throughout the game. However none of those guarantee you to get a rare blade. Early on it takes about 20 common cores to get a rare with standard luck. However as you open more, the chance to obtain them begins to drop drastically. Rather than rare blades together having a specific % chance to obtain, each individual blade has something like a .25% chance to obtain with a common core drop. The chance is increased with rare and legendary cores, but honestly it's not that much better from what I've noticed. Thus when you only have a couple blades left, it can take over 100 cores of varying quality just to summon one of the last few rare blades.
On top of that, when summoning a blade you have to sit through the first animation but am able to skip the second animation. You can't summon multiple at a time, so this takes a considerable amount of time if you want to summon a lot. And you'll want to summon a lot to ensure you get enough blades for your party members so you can use them in battle. However there is a limit to the amount you can carry based on your squad level which you can level up to 5. So you'll have to dismiss them once the available slots are all used up. This also sucks because you can only dismiss one at a time and it takes way too long to dismiss each individual blade.
Plus when dismissing a blade, you can obtain items depending on their quality (1-4 stars/crowns) and how far you've leveled their trust/affinity. Using a legendary core and getting a common blade will net you a 4-star quality common blade. Leveling and then releasing them will give you an item that allows you to switch blades from one character to another. This is another annoying gameplay system because without that you only get something like three on an average story playthrough. They needed to be a little more readily obtainable at the very least so you could switch blades to other characters without having to dismiss them and re-summon them with a different one if you're RNGeezus incarnate.
The way you make money in the game is also fairly poorly thought out. Enemies, outside of bosses, drop a pathetic amount of money. It's impossible to make a decent amount without a metric ton of grinding. So instead you're forced to salvage at salvage points. Like gathering points, you can have blades with passive skills that boost quality/amount of the basic drops but not the chest drops I believe. Like gathering too, you can't skip their animation either, so while they may be useful, it takes entirely too much time. Also using the basic cylinders for money are useless. You'll need to use the more expensive silver or golden cylinders. There are premium cylinders as well, but they're too expensive and don't make enough return. Thus should be saved for the sidequest or two that actually require them. Of course salvaging, like specials and chain attacks require the use of QTEs, which gets tedious if you're farming for money.
Then you've got the various bugs the game has. It's easily the most bug ridden Xenoblade game to date. You need to make sure you save the game as often as you don't mind having to re-play. There's no guarantee any of them will happen to you, but it's better safe than sorry. I've had the game crash several times, get stuck on a load screen, clipped through the world to my death, clipped through ladders on more than several occasions which caused me to go out of bounds and more.
Finally I just want to say that I don't hate the game, but all the systems in the game that waste time for aesthetics design choices with pointless animations coupled with all the progress I lost over the crashing and infinite load screen, it just frustrated me. There's more I could probably talk about, but I'd rather not back edit at this point and I think I covered most of my most frustrating things with the game.
I think my last record was around 2,200 words with my Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth post. This one beats that with almost 3,000 words. Took longer than I thought because I kept writing it while I was angry at something else, which caused me to go on some bad tangents. Ended up deleting those and starting from scratch. I'm sure I left out some things as per usual, but when you get to the end you look back and think " it, good enough."
Also since Christmas is over, I figure it's a good time for everybody to post their top five favorite or games of the year and maybe give some ideas to people with some fresh money to spend. For the most part they coincide with each other, but I tend to favor the first over the latter since I tend to look at things more technically if I go the GOTY route. So either or, depending on your preference.
My five favorite games of 2017 that I had the most fun with:
Utawarerumono (Mask of Deception & Mask of Truth)
- Easily one of my favorites for its storytelling and cast in the game. Probably my favorite game this year and this is coming from someone who typically does not really enjoy Visual Novel experiences. If you let voice dialogue auto-progress, it takes around 50 hours per game. If you read and skip, you're looking at half that time based off of a friend who went that route. The game has a crazy amount of voice acting.
A Hat in Time
- Slightly beats out Mario Odyssey for me. Someone else said it best when they said, "Odyssey gives you more of an experience where you interact with the levels. A Hat in Time gives you more of an experience where the levels interact with you." Mario Odyssey is great too, but I had more fun with this game.
Horizon: Zero Dawn
- I really like fantasy stories and sci-fi stories and this combined them fairly well. I felt everything was fairly well designed and I thoroughly enjoyed my experience.
Nioh
- I'm not big on Monster Hunter games. Particularly because of the slow combat, but I loved Nioh. I just hate the way co-op was implemented and hope they fix it in the second one. But man did I absolutely suck at this game during the beta.
Trails in the Sky the 3rd
- It should come as no surprise that I like Falcom games. If it wasn't this one, then it would've been Zwei II. The game just does quite well with its own narrative while setting up so much of the future games in the series. It also has one of the most disturbing optional scenes out of all the games I've played.
Thanks for the massive write up and helpee to finally relocate XBC:2 to the skip bin. I had been on the fence about it but having not been a fan of the prior titles was hesitant because I never seem to learn my lessons. Everything you typed up confirmed my suspicions and will keep trucking on Yakuza Kiwami and FF:XII while I wait for NISA to wrap up the Y's VIII retranslation project.
Also since Christmas is over, I figure it's a good time for everybody to post their top five favorite or games of the year and maybe give some ideas to people with some fresh money to spend. For the most part they coincide with each other, but I tend to favor the first over the latter since I tend to look at things more technically if I go the GOTY route. So either or, depending on your preference.
This game was exactly what I was waiting for and more. They completely delivered with a phenomenal story, breathtaking combat, and an engaging time/schedule system that really keeps you on your toes. On top of all that, the aspect that most stands out is how stylized and polished the whole game looks. Even the smallest of details like the menus and tutorials are decorated fashionably. The overall presentation of the game, from it's visuals, to character design, to the soundtrack is all blended so well together into an excellent product, that really stands apart from all other video games. This is one of the most unique games I've ever played, and I loved every second of it.
Hitman: The Complete First Season
This was a hidden gem of 2016, but because of how the game was split into parts, it never really caught on and was overlooked. But as an entire and complete package released in early 2017, it's a truly terrific action/stealth game. It's all you can ask for in a Hitman assassination game, open-world, tons of freedom, and multiple ways to complete a contract, either a clean and quiet way, or messy and full of bullets. The thing that stands out the most is it's replay-ability, where the more you play, and the more different challenges you beat, the more new weapons you unlock, which wind up being able to be used for other chapters as well. The game also has increasingly difficult challenges, so the fun just keeps on going and going.
Horizon: Zero Dawn
An absolutely amazing game that really shakes up the action genre. From it's stunning visuals, to it's face-paced combat, to it's captivating story, Horizon shines because it just does everything so well. It's difficult to even nitpick and find any flaws in this game. Gameplay with the bow and arrow feels refreshing and more fun that any shooter I've played in a while. The story progresses at the same time a mystery unravels, and it's one of the best sci-fi stories ever told, with a huge emphasis on details and emotion that heighten story-telling to new levels. And the robot dinosaurs are just so damn sick!
Tekken 7
This fighting game is super complex and fluid, which is a really great thing. Whereas most fighters now tend to deliver an easy approach for beginners, Tekken 7 just lets everything go, and expects you to learn it by yourself. And there's a ton to learn. But once you sit in the lab and grind out combos for a specific character, or learn how the movement works, you really feel like you've gotten better which is a reward in itself. Character/Costume design is what stands out here, and it is full of options, with some examples that put other costumes DLC to shame. Overall, one of the best Fighters of the year, next to Injustice 2, and for good reason.
Resident Evil 7
My 1st Resident Evil game, and I loved it! It was spooky, difficult, and kept me on the edge. The story was super interesting, and made me keep playing it, even when I was scared out of my wits. The gameplay really stands out here though, since you always feel like you are low on supplies, and each time you restock on ammo, you are just hoping it will last you until your next save point. Each boss fight, puzzle, stage feels like an accomplishment to beat. In terms of horror, this delivers on so many levels, from survival horror, to jump scares, to a ton of different kind of phobias. It's fun, it's scary, but most importantly, it's a great game!
From games I beat this year rather than necessarily ones that released this year my favorites in no particular order were:
Final Fantasy XIII
Persona 5
VOEZ
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva Future Tone
Samurai Warriors 4
I did also enjoy Pokemon Sun, Fire Emblem Warriors, DiRT 4, and Forza 7 - but I wouldn't quite call them favorites.
I really do like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 quite a bit, but I haven't finished it yet (I'm near the beginning of Chapter 6). I usually don't like open world games very much, but I'm enjoying this one. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but getting my footing, learning the combat system, getting lost on quests, farming money for specific things, and the RNG of the core crystals is sort of giving me a vanilla WoW feeling in a weird way. I love that if I start to struggle with an encounter I can go cash in side quest XP, upgrade aux cores/core chips and usually feel their effects on making the characters' powers increase. When I first tried the other Xenoblade Chronicles games I think I was trying to rush. I think I wanted to beat as many games as I could to wipe out my backlog rather than spend a lot of time in games, but for 2 I was prepared to take it slow and for things to not be streamlined. I think that patience has made a huge difference. I've also been on vacation this month. I've been busy with a lot of things that aren't work instead, but I think playing any game on vacation/break will make you feel better about it.
I definitely do agree with Draekon that the game needs more overdrive protocols. I didn't know you could get them from 4 star common blades with a full affinity chart upon release, but that's still pretty extreme. In my playthrough so far from RNG for rare blades I've gotten:
2 healers and 1 tank on Rex. [Kora, Nim, Godfrey]
1 tank and 1 healer on Nia [Electra, Ursula]
1 attack on party member #4 [Agate]
1 healer on #5 [Boreas]
So I've matched role once. Haha. I have about 30 common, 30 rare, and 3 legendary core crystals hanging around, but getting the roles so messed up with so few items to fix it almost makes me not want to deal with them (It makes me feel like I need to look at a list of blades to determine which I want equipped to whom and plan out future bonds/overdrives first - but for now I just want to play)
By the way, if you farm enough money for the Inherited Core Crystal in Torigoth please do be sure to talk to the seller again with the blade equipped.
Life is Strange Before the Storm - can't believe a new developer could some how top the original
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - Best cast out of the 3.
Persona 5 - worst than P4, but still a very good game
NieR: Automata - amazing soundtrack, story, and gameplay
Tales of Berseria - best Tales game in a long time
Super Robot Wars V - glad I am finally able to play an official release.
Imported both Yakuza games otherwise they would be on the list. Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception could be on the list but I feel like I need to play the other game first. Only on chapter 2 in Chaos Child but could like the llist.
--Best fighting game to come out in years. My pick for best game of the year. The gear system is revolutionary for the fighting genre, which offers both cosmetic and stat-based bonuses.
Uncharted Lost Legacy
--Found this to be more enjoyable than all the previous Uncharted games. Lost Legacy's shorter length was nice too, since there were no parts that dragged. Great puzzles, fun action scenes, and the best ending sequence of any UC title.
Friday the 13th
--While the game still needs dedicated servers, it definitely provides a unique multiplayer experience that few, if any, other games offer. Being a fan of the film franchise, the developer got so much right in terms of atmosphere.
Aside from those games, I've been very disappointed with most of the other 2017 releases. I haven't played Horizon Zero Dawn, but I just picked it up, so maybe that'll make it onto the list...but as of now, I only have a top 3.
Zelda Breath of the Wild -
There isn't much I can say about this game that hasn't already
been stated. It catapulted the Switch into success by being a
refreshing take on open world games and not being shy about letting
you loose in a world you can get lost in. The developers
figured out a way to make you want to go somewhere without
actually telling you to go there. Hard mode is what really did it
for me, it makes the game so much more alive than normal mode
and it gave me a reason to go back.
Splatoon 2 -
400 hours into the multiplayer and still going strong.
This is easily the game I've played the most this year and for good
reason. It's such a faux-competitive/fun experience where you can
tryhard if you want but ultimately it doesn't mean much. It's all
about having fun and just enjoying the experience.
Salmon Run is so addictive and It's the only reason why i dread the
online nintendo app since I wish I could just chat with ppl while playing
this normally to coordinate better.
Nier Automata -
Admittedly I was late to the party on this one. But it didn't take away
from how interesting the story was and how fluid the combat is.
Even then my biggest takeaway from this game is the soundtrack
and how I still listen to some of the songs from time to time
on youtube. One of the few games I enjoyed on PS4 this year.
Tales of Berseria -
The first JRPG of the year and one that ended up being hard to top for me.
The story does so much world building, leading to Zestiria that it gave me
more appreciation for that game. The cast is great and diverse and
while Velvet starts out as a one note type of character her development
actually comes across as meaningful and important as you reach the end.
It's not perfect but it's one of the best Tales games I've played.
Hatsune Miku Project Diva Future Tone DX -
Technically it shouldn't be in this list since it's basically just DLC in a disc but
I can't stop playing this damn game. It was my GOTY of last year bar none
and after so many hours I still keep going back.
yakuza kiwami
grand theft auto 5
gravity rush remastered
dragon quest builders
Danganronpa 2
i just got a bunch of games for Christmas: tales of B, Dragon Quest heroes 2, star ocean, Gravity Rush 2, ect. so I'm sure those would of made the list .
If we're talking our games of the year mine was unquestionably no contest Yakuza 0. That was honestly a perfect game to me. Such amazing balance between humor and seriousness, incredible story lines that blend into a remarkable tale, great characters with brilliant character development, a ton of bonus content and fairly well designed and customizable gameplay. Yakuza 0 was my first Yakuza game and since playing that I've since played Yakuza Kiwami, Yakuza 2 and 3 and am about to start 4 and while I've enjoyed each game thoroughly none have been nearly as good as 0. I truly love the series now though and I have 0 to thank for that. I definitely recommend it to everyone who hasn't played it.
Loved this game so much. Was fun to run around hacking stuff and doing the missions with all the new skill sets and using the race car and drone. First game I have ever platinum'd and I do not finish games unless I really like them.
2. Horizon: Zero Dawn
Really enjoyed playing Alloy story from start to finish. Like the task of learning different ways to kill the robots with different weapons and loved the fact your main weapon is a bow and arrow and not guns. I loved the story and was fun progressing through and learning what happens to earth and how the robots were created. Excited to see where the series goes from here.
3. Dragon Quest Builders
Dragon Quest is one of my favourite series and to build within like Minecraft was super fun. I liked the different levels and skills and rooms you get. I hope we get more like this to come and mP but this is a fun game to play.
4. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia
Was nice to play some retro Fire Emblem where the game does not focus on shipping characters and you actually focus on the characters and the storyline which was super fun and kept me along for the ride. Love the characters and storyline and of course, the classes are the best.
5. Fire Emblem Heroes
I know this is not a console game or Switch/Nintendo but I played so much of this game that has got to be over 200 hours. This game is just super fun to play and make different characters and skills and try to make the best and your favourites as well (M Robin) for me. And like others I have spent way too much money on this game then I care to mention.
Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness (Cross-buy with )
Uncanny Valley (Cross-buy with )
Source. Sacred 3 is also an RPG, but it's pretty trash in my opinion. Hard to say whether that Psycho-Pass cross-buy is real as sometimes the blog is wrong.
I honestly didn't finish many games in 2017. I get distracted a bit too easily, and jump around to rogue-like games way too often. I somewhat envy guys like Draekon and others who finish a multitude of games. Anyway here is my top 3 games of 2017.
3. Persona 5
This game came out on my birthday and I played it for about month straight. Honestly...I need to finish another dungeon, but I'll hopefully get back to that as a New Year's resolution. Otherwise it played, looked and sounded great. It honestly felt weaker to me than Persona 3 and likely 4 as well. It still was a worthy game, but really could have used some trimming of the fat, especially near the end where everything felt like it dragged.
2. Yakuza 0
Now this one was fun. Lots of side activities and a pretty good story, along with a pretty decent fighting system and graphics propelled this one highly for me. I think what held it back for me a decent amount was that it was a prequel. I knew where the story was going to end up. Still the aesthetic and everything else made this a very solid game.
1. Da Capo 3 R
This one is easily my game of the year. It had a very long prologue and was a very long game in general. I disliked the game a bit at first, but the more I played the more I really got to know all the characters. Also this game has some of the most natural relationship building, with it going slow but steady and the characters working out their problems. It had gorgeous graphics and some very good music. Also the story was pretty epic and really flowed well. There is also a true ending which made me want the sequel to this one so badly. Just a very high quality VN.
I did play quite a bit more VNs and a few RPGs and other games, but honestly they didn't leave a strong impact on me. Also I have missed many games I need to play like Nier: Automata, Horizon and a few others, which are in my backlog.
I honestly hope next year I play more and more games and can focus more on beating a few. I will do my best there, and likely play lots of VNs like usual. I'm a very harsh critic nowadays, as I've played multitudes of games, so only a very few games really impress me anymore. It's the curse of having played so many, and affects me a lot with anime and books as well, but I still enjoy the hobbies anyway.
- Tokyo Xanadu eX+ - In case if any of you were wondering, I actually got to play TX early on the PC. I actually went late into the night yesterday (this morning) to finish it off. I'll put my full thoughts below but TL;DR: If you like Falcom style games you'll still love Tokyo Xanadu eX+ even though you'll notice that the eX+ seems to have even LESS gameplay (than what it was before and compared to every other Falcom game).
And does this even count?
- Sonic Forces - Finished in one sitting. Best thing is the soundtrack (but even that suffers - thanks for referencing Sonic Mania's main titles and then proceed to use...the Yamaha Genesis soundfont for Classic Sonic). I'll keep this one as short as the game: I actually had some fun with it but Sega should have just launched it on Steam first with the "Early Access" tag on it, and people would have forgiven the shoddy controls, lazy level design, and the bugs. Well until it would go official with all the same issues (like ARK Survival).
And a game that you finish but don't really "finish"...
- Hatsune Miku Project Diva Future Tone - Except for the stupid season pass paywall for some of the other songs (that I wanted to play) it's definitely worth a full $60. Unlike PDX. I love playing it in short spurts as my time to play games shrunk exponentially this year. Only problem for me is that it took $1000 MSRP headphones to get perfect scores on hard. Yeah. Hard. I still play like an idiot on Extreme BUT AT LEAST I PASS! HAHAHAHAHA!
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Everything about this game was completely different than the Zeldas we've played until now. At first I was a bit skeptical about the new combat, equipment and cooking mechanics, but they were actually really well integrated into the gameplay. The main story might be a bit lacking, but I feel that is because you are thrown in the middle of the world and left to find out what to do on your own. (Not linear at all, which was refreshing) There are also so many enjoyable side quests. Every time I boot up the game, I feel like there is always something new to do even though I am already 80+ hours in.
Persona 5
No surprise here. As a huge Persona fan, I've been waiting a long time for this one. The art direction, UI design and graphics really stood out to me. The music was amazing, so much so that I imported the soundtrack for it. The Social Links (Confidants) were pretty well done, and introduced some memorable side characters for me (Kawakami, Sae, etc). There were a few instances where the story was not very well established (especially towards the end), but it was overall enjoyable. I believe my total play time for my first playthrough was 106 hours. I still need to do another run to try and get Max ranked Confidants.
NieR;Automata
Didn't know what to expect from this one, besides 2B is awesome. (Based on all the fanart on Twitter) After playing through the main three endings, I was absolutely taken with the game. The music is so good that I bought the soundtrack for it as well and listen to it on a regular basis. The combat was really well done, I am reminded of a mix between Bayonetta and Devil May Cry. The story was also really interesting, and made me want to go through and achieve the alternate endings. Oh, and did I already mention that 2B is awesome?
Yakuza 0
As someone who imported the original release of the game, I knew that this was going to be a great game. Unfortunately, since my Japanese is not the best, I could only understand about half of what was happening in the story. Fast forward a year later, and the game has been released in the West. My enjoyment of the game was exponentially increased. The characters are so interesting, the story is very engaging and we get to learn more about Majima (who is one of my favorite characters besides Kiryu). The switching of characters/stories was really well implemented and each of their battle styles are also so unique that you do not get bored. Side quests are awesome as always in terms of Yakuza games, and I really had a blast going through them. That hostess club minigame for Majima was also one of my favorite things from the game. Also, don't ever mention that Pocket Racer minigame to me. EVER. lol
Fire Emblem Warriors
I know it may be a bit strange for a Warriors game to be on a top games list, but that's how much I love Fire Emblem Warriors. The main story is decent, but not that memorable. However, the main focus in the game for me is History Mode, where the classic maps are used. These maps have scenarios between characters and the battles within are all pretty unique. The Bond mechanic introduced also helps promote replayablity as there are support conversations between EVERY character once they reach max Bond. I'm already 40+ hours into the game and still have a bunch of History Mode maps to go through. There's also DLC, which is a great bargain for me since you get 3 new characters for each one and 3 new History Mode maps. I will definitely continue to play this game as time goes on.
Interesting note: 2 of the games on this list have been purchased twice, because I originally imported them (Persona 5 and Yakuza 0). Also, based on what I have played from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it was really close to being added to my list. However, since I have yet to actually beat it, I did not add it in. I am currently more than 60 hours into the game and really like it.
Here's hoping 2018 will also be another great year of gaming~
I did play quite a bit more VNs and a few RPGs and other games, but honestly they didn't leave a strong impact on me. Also I have missed many games I need to play like Nier: Automata, Horizon and a few others, which are in my backlog.
I'm surprised you haven't played Utawarerumono despite all the praise I've given it seeing with how into Visual Novels you are. Actually I'm surprised you didn't get it day one like so many other VNs.
- Tokyo Xanadu eX+ - In case if any of you were wondering, I actually got to play TX early on the PC. I actually went late into the night yesterday (this morning) to finish it off. I'll put my full thoughts below but TL;DR: If you like Falcom style games you'll still love Tokyo Xanadu eX+ even though you'll notice that the eX+ seems to have even LESS gameplay.
Eh, I felt the game was just average. Better than a lot of the trash and it has some good points, but when you actually compare it technically to say Cold Steel or Ys, it's quite lacking. I found it to be the worst Falcom game I've played to date pretty easily. Plus the translation gets noticeably worse the further you get into the game with the biggest noticeable quality drop starting at about the 50% point in the main game. It's so incredibly inconsistent that it's rather abrasive.
Though I'm curious what you mean by the game having less gameplay over the original. I already beat eX+ all the way through the After Story and I haven't heard of anything having been removed either.
I sadly did get it day one....I just didn't play as many games for these last few months. Been super busy, but also just haven't been as motivated. It's high on my backlog list for sure. Danganronpa 2 is first for my Vita VNs though.
And now time to do a Drake-style review for Tokyo Xanadu eX+. Um, don't worry Drakeon I love you very much.
LOTS OF SPOILERS. DO NOT CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY PLAYING THE GAME!
This is a full 3D interactive...visual novel. You heard me. Visual novel. I say that because out of the 65 hours I put into the game after-story included I probably spent like...six or seven hours killing stuff (greed) and maybe about a half hour on all the bosses. I might go do a in-depth calculation of that later but I'm sure it's gonna be pretty darn close to that.
Sometimes the same odd control responses still existed from the Vita version and occasionally I would get hit with no chance to dodge or sometimes I would miss an attack that visually I'm pretty sure I should have taken damage. It's not all apparent in the main game but when you get to the harder battles, the weaknesses start to show (and quite a bit in the very last boss).
I really enjoyed the eX+ actual gameplay since the dungeons and enemies were much smarter and hit harder. No longer was I able to cruise control like I did in the main game on Vita. The trouble is that the contrast of quality of the dungeons were clear enough to frustrate me like "why couldn't they tweak the regular content?" Even just improving the AI or enemy count would help a bit. You'll go through the main story but in between each main chapter you get an eX+ side story to play through. That also adds a somewhat odd learning curve for those who aren't familiar with the game already. I do want to note that the very end of the game it's explained why the eX+ stuff happens in between and it's meant for the player to go, "Oh, so that's why this stuff wasn't there in the Vita version." Kinda clever.
Maybe I should try "Calamity" difficulty. I don't know.
If I have a few tips for any of you who haven't played I do have a few tips that can make this game stupid easy:
- CRITICALS: I often focused on amping critical damage and frequency and that helped a lot. Made a lot of dungeons and bosses last half the time they did on my Vita playthrough where I wasn't really setting things up seriously.
- DRIVE-BYS: So how do you survive in the Xanadu? Don't get hit of course! What's the easiest way to do that? Don't play this game Amp your ranged attacks! Here's the catch: every character has to stop and stand still to fire off a ranged attack. Except for Yuuki. With him you can still sprint and shoot off bolts at your targets and never even have to worry about dodging an attack. He isn't a heavy hitter so I had to equip him with a ton of extra gems and charms to buff ranged attacks and criticals. I probably wasted two hours just setting up gear for everyone. Totally worth it though. Asuka and Rion are pretty good at their ranged attacks too so if you pick up my play style, be sure to bring them to fights as much as possible.
Graphics? Well...they look and run better than Vita. It's so much easier to dodge attacks now! Runs pretty well too for not having any real graphics customization settings. Nothing more to see here.
I feel like I've been here with this story before. As one character in the game said, "It'd make a great anime!" Well...it could. Make a typical anime I guess? Were it not for some of the personalities I'd find the story rather dry. Since I'm not all that familiar with ANY anime I will leave it at that. Some notes I feel worth mentioning:
WARNING: MEGA SPOILERS!
- Kou is a typical guy who wants to play hero and doesn't know why. Well he does find out at the end. Mostly. Still just wants to be Mr. Do-Gooder. Fortunately his brand of occasional sarcasm made for some good laughs, especially with one character.
- Asuka is a b---h for the first half of the game. She softens up after a major event but then kinda doesn't get a lot of extra story developments afterwards.
- Sora and Yuuki didn't get a lot of story time in the Vita. The eX+ content gives them some much needed screen time but even so, Sora is one of those that gets kinda left behind as the story goes on. Yuuki got more interesting screen time thanks to his family later in the main game.
- Mitsuki - The one with the biggest...um...you know...has the smallest amount of interesting story elements. She's a workaholic. She's student council President. She kills monsters that (try to) touch her.
- Shio was interesting with the whole gang that isn't really all that bad. I love how Kou and Co. get freaked out when the Yakuza dudes show up and at the end of the day...they're actually pretty good guys. Just like a lot of Falcom characters.
- Rion is best girl. Her story directly ties into the Eclipse and Greed affair while a lot of them are mostly indirect (like someone related got caught up/died because of the Eclipse). She also has some of the best banter with Kou which goes on throughout the entire game. It's a weird but funny interaction when she talks to Kou like he's a fan of her idol group SPiKA and he always has a deadpan response as a comeback. Finally she has a great ranged attack so be sure to use that to your advantage.
- Towa. Yep. Evidently the Eclipse sucked in Towa Herschel from Trails of Cold Steel and spat her back out as Towa Kokone. She really needs to let go of Kou. Like...REALLY REALLY needs to let go. It's freaking me out!
- Magical Alisa/Demon Prince Rean - Rean you suck at fishing! I lost so much yen to that mini-game! UGH! Oh... there may even be Sen IV spoilers in this game so watch out.
- The ending: First of all, Kou should let go of that last thing the final boss said. He was conniving enough to use Mr. Gorou's past against him in the worst way possible. So what's keeping the boss from saying that last thing just to screw with Kou's head? Surprised no one brought that up. Not even Rem who foresees a sequel.
And that's about all I have to say about the characters.
The translation...oy, where do I start? It's...not bad actually. Do be ready as it seems that even we testers missed a bunch of typos especially in the eX+ part. The first four chapters are like super clean and nice. Then Chapter five hits. There were some moments where I had to really step back, press up on my D-pad to pull up the message log and reread what was said. Most of the time I was able to figure out what was going on during the awkward lines. I still wish they didn't throw "quotes" all over the place. Oh and I loaded up the PS4 version on launch and for some reason the PS4 version had some untranslated text on the calendar date screens. And I was like, LMAO we PC people win again! I should check now to see if it got fixed. I'm sure it did...
Finally it's no full review without me mentioning the soundtrack. At first I found it just above average but it grew on me over time and I like it a lot. It's no Kiseki or Ys score but it's still good. The eX+ tracks reference other of the original tracks so it feels like it's an organic addition to the whole score instead of the music feeling tacked on as filler. I greatly appreciate that.
SPiKA is still the highlight of the whole soundtrack. Maybe it's my Rion bias.
Finally, I just realized that the instrumental version of "Seize the Day" is only in the first print mini album. Dang. Stream the music in the spoiler tag below.
TL;DR: If you liked Falcom games, you'll find a lot to enjoy here but be ready to not really "play" all that much. And if you read all of what's in the spoiler tags, Thanks. And Rion is best girl.
Eh, I felt the game was just average. Better than a lot of the trash and it has some good points, but when you actually compare it technically to say Cold Steel or Ys, it's quite lacking. I found it to be the worst Falcom game I've played to date pretty easily. Plus the translation gets noticeably worse the further you get into the game with the biggest noticeable quality drop starting at about the 50% point in the main game. It's so incredibly inconsistent that it's rather abrasive.
Though I'm curious what you mean by the game having less gameplay over the original. I already beat eX+ all the way through the After Story and I haven't heard of anything having been removed either.
Yeah I do agree with you that it's probably the worst game Falcom put out. That said, I haven't played a LOT of their older stuff but I'm sure they're all better.
Also...I guess I did word that a bit badly. To clarify I felt like with the eX+ content the ratio between actual combat and the "visual novel" content got worse. Geez, now I'm throwing around the quotes like the translation!
I'm one of the (apparently few) people who is enjoying XBC2 although I can easily see why the game drives some people up the wall. I'm ~40ish hours in and enjoying every minute of it, particularly the combat. I normally despise QTE style actions but this just nails it for me. I did switch to the Japanese voice overs within the first 20 minutes playing the game and I never do that. They are that obnoxious.
Nioh is amazing, wonderfully done. I hated it at first blush because I'm so accustomed to Souls games and I had to adapt, once I did my appreciation grew tremendously. Some of it is/was extremely broken at times but overall it's a great game.
Cuphead was a surprisingly fun and infuriating game. I never felt like it was unfair, just extremely demanding and ultimately very satisfying. That f'ing dragon though!
Horizon: Zero Dawn has been on a ton of lists, I don't have anything better to add to what has already been said. Great game, beautiful, amazingly well done given the pedigree of the devs.
Culdcept Revolt because...well I enjoy Culdcept and am always really happy to have more to play.
They are especially for EDM, techno, etc. I've heard more detailed and more balanced headphones but only the Elear seems to make the songs come alive. Makes me wonder if the engineers at Focal are Vocaloid fans.
Oh and I wasn't kidding about the scores either. Never got scores this good until I used the Elear.
Haha I didn't get through many games at all this year. I spent nearly half the year completely going through Fallout 4 on survival. I've actually liked everything I've beaten this year, but my top picks are -
Nioh
I was looking forward to this game since the first trailer I saw for it, and then the betas made me even more excited. I loved the combat and loot. I had a ton of fun coming up with ways skills could work together, and reading ways you guys did over in the forum we had for the game. I also loved the environments, setting and graphics. The only thing that bothered me about Nioh was the patches that changed the skills. I never played online so it felt like a SP game only to me, so when balancing patches hit when I was nearly done with my NG+ playthrough, I was too annoyed to try a new build. I opted to just not patch.
World of Final Fantasy
I decided to play this at the start of the year instead of instead of 15. I was craving an ATB turn based Final Fantasy, and this really hit the spot. I loved all references to past FF games, and the way the game wasn't afraid to make fun of itself and past FFs. Plus, catching all the iconic monsters from previous FF games was a ton of fun. I think I was in the minority with liking the story. It was cliche, but sometimes that's ok. And the art style was so adorable. It was just an overall charming game.
Culdcept Revolt
It was my go to handheld game since it came out. I just love culdcept so it was bound to be a favorite.
It should be noted that I haven't played through some really notable games this year like Nier, Yakuza, or Persona yet. Those are some of my favorite series so odds are they would have made it on the list. I barely started Persona and then let a friend borrow it for an eon. One of those 3 will probably be the next game I play.
Currently, I'm playing XB2 and Touhou Genso Wanderer. I am loving them both atm, but roguelikes are one of my favorite genres and we don't get many on consoles, so I'm biased there. XB2 I'm still very early in. It is currently my handheld game I'm playing, so I'm pretty much just playing it when I am out and waiting, or just a bit before bed.
Being a big Batman fan, I paid full price for this when it first came out (I know, not very CAG of me, considering how cheap Telltale games always end up going for). IMO, it was Telltale's best game thus far. Highly recommend it.
Being a big Batman fan, I paid full price for this when it first came out (I know, not very CAG of me, considering how cheap Telltale games always end up going for). IMO, it was Telltale's best game thus far. Highly recommend it.
Yeah, I loved Injustice 2 also! It's tied with Tekken 7 for my favorite fighter of the year, but I agree with what you said. The gear system really is innovative and completely changes how fighting games are played. Definitely recommend it to anyone, both veterans and beginners to this genre.
Just beat Lost Legacy today, and I really enjoyed that too. I might even like it a bit over UC4, since it's short and didn't drag on, and had less stealth segments. The set pieces were amazing too, some of the scenes were crazier and more chaotic than in UC4.
I like Friday the 13th, but for some reason can't seem to find games easily, almost never encountered a full lobby either.
Also, you sure are a huge Batman fan! You still have the highest score (by a lot) out of anyone on my friends list for Batman Arkham Knight. In fact, it's over 1,000 and I was struggling to break 200.
Just like dsman3717, because I've not beaten it. I didn't feel comfortable adding it to my list.
I'm 94 hours in and at chapter 7, other than the horrible RNG for rare blades I like quite alot about the game.
it, good enough."
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Sacred 3
Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness (Cross-buy with 
lol
