Zevox
2020-01-01, 03:21 PM
Kind of surprised nobody else made something like this prior to the new year. So everybody, what are your favorite/"Game of the Year" picks from last year, and what are you looking forward to this year?
2019 was a little shorter on great games for me than its predecessor, but boy did it have a couple of stand-outs. My favorite and clear personal "Game of the Year" being Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The story and overall writing quality of that game far surpassed the series' previous standards and my expectations, and the gameplay was even improved in fun and interesting ways, despite some gripes with the difficulty not being very high (at least prior to the release of Lunatic mode, haven't tried that yet). I haven't previously had a single favorite Fire Emblem game, but now that one is clearly head and shoulders of the rest. A strong second was Devil May Cry 5, which is just a superb, extremely fun action game and a great return to form for that franchise after its thankfully-failed reboot attempt. Also, it's the first true DMC game that I beat on Dante Must Die difficulty, which was so satisfying.
For a personal favorite genre of mine, fighting games, it was kind of the year of DLC for me. Oh, there were a few new releases, and I tried a couple of them (Mortal Kombat 11 and Samurai Shodown), but didn't wind up liking them all that much. But the steady stream of DLC for Smash Ultimate and Dragon Ball FighterZ, and the couple of updates for BlazBlue Cross Tag gave me plenty to love anyway. Joker, the DQ Heroes, and the dream-come-true of Banjo in Smash; Videl and Gogeta in DBFZ; and Neo, Adachi, and some very nice balance changes in BB Tag were all much appreciated. BB Tag in particular is honestly one of my favorite fighting games of all time at this point, with so many characters that I just love playing, and fewer online issues than the other two thanks to its great lobby system - plus it just stands out that of every fighting game I play these days, and even compared to many I used to play, it's the one where I have the most fun and get the least frustrated even when I'm losing a lot.
For the coming year, probably the biggest things for me at the moment are a couple of new fighting games: Granblue Fantasy Versus and Guilty Gear Strive. And strangely, I'm more looking forward to Granblue than Guilty Gear, despite Granblue being based on a Japanese mobile game I've never touched while Guilty Gear is a series I've played before. I just found myself enjoying the Granblue beta they held earlier this year quite a bit, and some of the characters that have been revealed since then look quite fun (Percival and Zeta); while in contrast Guilty Gear has the problem that I never did find a character that really meshed with me in its last iteration, and the information we've been getting about how the new one's mechanics differ from the older games concerns me a bit, since it seems to be moving away from the things that previously seemed to define that series, slowing things down and drastically shortening combos in favor of more damaging individual hits. I'm cool with a new game like Granblue being ArcSys' more Street Fighter-esque, "grounded footsies" fighting game, a little less so with the idea that they might move one of their legacy series in that direction, since I tend to prefer the fast-paced craziness and lengthy combos their games otherwise embody, so them moving an existing series away from that is a bit concerning. Still, I've wanted to get into Guilty Gear, and with new characters being added to this one there's hope that I'll find someone I gel with this time. Also, hoping to see some cool additions to Smash and Dragonball continue - and while I'm not expecting it since the big 2.0 update feels like a likely place for them to stop work on that and just move on to the next game, I hold some small hope for additional BB Tag DLC.
Outside of that, the only big-ish one that we know of at the moment (unless I'm forgetting something) is the Final Fantasy 7 Remake (or the first part of it, anyway), which has kind of caught my interest despite me not being a big Final Fantasy fan and having never finished the original FF7. Mostly because the gameplay looks pretty darn good, and a certain big fighting game Youtuber I follow who is a huge fan of the original has been singing the game's praises for how well it's doing representing the original characters and story that he loves. So perhaps this remake will a good way for me to find out what it is that so many people liked so much about the game.
Also, while there's no release date yet, I'm hoping that 2020 will be the year Bayonetta 3 finally sees the light of day, after the past two years of near total silence since it was announced. And there's a couple of expanded re-releases I'll probably grab in the form of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore and Persona 5: The Royal. Beyond that, just crossing my fingers that there's some actually cool stuff for the next-gen consoles when they launch in the Holidays this time, rather than the lackluster starting lineup those have had the past couple of generations.
2019 was a little shorter on great games for me than its predecessor, but boy did it have a couple of stand-outs. My favorite and clear personal "Game of the Year" being Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The story and overall writing quality of that game far surpassed the series' previous standards and my expectations, and the gameplay was even improved in fun and interesting ways, despite some gripes with the difficulty not being very high (at least prior to the release of Lunatic mode, haven't tried that yet). I haven't previously had a single favorite Fire Emblem game, but now that one is clearly head and shoulders of the rest. A strong second was Devil May Cry 5, which is just a superb, extremely fun action game and a great return to form for that franchise after its thankfully-failed reboot attempt. Also, it's the first true DMC game that I beat on Dante Must Die difficulty, which was so satisfying.
For a personal favorite genre of mine, fighting games, it was kind of the year of DLC for me. Oh, there were a few new releases, and I tried a couple of them (Mortal Kombat 11 and Samurai Shodown), but didn't wind up liking them all that much. But the steady stream of DLC for Smash Ultimate and Dragon Ball FighterZ, and the couple of updates for BlazBlue Cross Tag gave me plenty to love anyway. Joker, the DQ Heroes, and the dream-come-true of Banjo in Smash; Videl and Gogeta in DBFZ; and Neo, Adachi, and some very nice balance changes in BB Tag were all much appreciated. BB Tag in particular is honestly one of my favorite fighting games of all time at this point, with so many characters that I just love playing, and fewer online issues than the other two thanks to its great lobby system - plus it just stands out that of every fighting game I play these days, and even compared to many I used to play, it's the one where I have the most fun and get the least frustrated even when I'm losing a lot.
For the coming year, probably the biggest things for me at the moment are a couple of new fighting games: Granblue Fantasy Versus and Guilty Gear Strive. And strangely, I'm more looking forward to Granblue than Guilty Gear, despite Granblue being based on a Japanese mobile game I've never touched while Guilty Gear is a series I've played before. I just found myself enjoying the Granblue beta they held earlier this year quite a bit, and some of the characters that have been revealed since then look quite fun (Percival and Zeta); while in contrast Guilty Gear has the problem that I never did find a character that really meshed with me in its last iteration, and the information we've been getting about how the new one's mechanics differ from the older games concerns me a bit, since it seems to be moving away from the things that previously seemed to define that series, slowing things down and drastically shortening combos in favor of more damaging individual hits. I'm cool with a new game like Granblue being ArcSys' more Street Fighter-esque, "grounded footsies" fighting game, a little less so with the idea that they might move one of their legacy series in that direction, since I tend to prefer the fast-paced craziness and lengthy combos their games otherwise embody, so them moving an existing series away from that is a bit concerning. Still, I've wanted to get into Guilty Gear, and with new characters being added to this one there's hope that I'll find someone I gel with this time. Also, hoping to see some cool additions to Smash and Dragonball continue - and while I'm not expecting it since the big 2.0 update feels like a likely place for them to stop work on that and just move on to the next game, I hold some small hope for additional BB Tag DLC.
Outside of that, the only big-ish one that we know of at the moment (unless I'm forgetting something) is the Final Fantasy 7 Remake (or the first part of it, anyway), which has kind of caught my interest despite me not being a big Final Fantasy fan and having never finished the original FF7. Mostly because the gameplay looks pretty darn good, and a certain big fighting game Youtuber I follow who is a huge fan of the original has been singing the game's praises for how well it's doing representing the original characters and story that he loves. So perhaps this remake will a good way for me to find out what it is that so many people liked so much about the game.
Also, while there's no release date yet, I'm hoping that 2020 will be the year Bayonetta 3 finally sees the light of day, after the past two years of near total silence since it was announced. And there's a couple of expanded re-releases I'll probably grab in the form of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore and Persona 5: The Royal. Beyond that, just crossing my fingers that there's some actually cool stuff for the next-gen consoles when they launch in the Holidays this time, rather than the lackluster starting lineup those have had the past couple of generations.