Noi’s Games of the Decade (2010-2019)
The last decade of video games sure feels like a long time, given that it spans almost the entire length of two console generations. Lots of new franchices, sequels and the rise of ports and remakes have led to a landscape very different from the one the generation started on. From among that sea of chaos, here are some of my top choices, whether because they were my favorites or influenced me in some way. Text size and image spam per entry may vary.
Dark Souls (2011, FromSoftware / Bandai Namco)
Let’s get this one out of the way.
Dark Souls is a landmark title that uprooted and changed most games as we know it. While far from my favorite entry in that series, there can be no denying a game that serves as such a bar for comparison that everything gets likened to it. And it isn’t hard to see why, either. At this point in the generation, there was a wave of released games that placed a heavy emphasis on narrative and presentation, choosing to present big bombastic set pieces at the cost of its core gameplay. From among the Uncharteds, Mass Effects and Deus Exes, comes this really janky action RPG that tries and succeeds at proving that you can release a difficult, intense game that focuses on player skill, growth and exploration and still get the attention of the masses.
Which isn’t to say that Dark Souls lacks a narrative or a story, it’s just not as important. The game’s word is created in such a way that you feel like an intruder stepping into the middle of an ongoing, nasty affair. Connecting passages, doors, elevators and tunnels make the locations feel real and persistent, rather than being just a linear set of levels to clear. The story is there, hidden within item descriptions, world design and indirect story telling, but the choice is given to the player on how much they care to invest into learning all the pieces of the puzzle. Even then, there are a lot of blanks to fill that are left up to the player’s imagination and interpretation, not unlike games of decades past. I spent an admittedly long time just trying to piece together how things connected and how characters were related, further becoming invested in the miserable world FromSoftware created.
An important factor to talk about regarding Dark Souls, which ends up being crucial to the experience, is the community that builds up around each game. Built-into the game is a system that allows you to leave messages for other players, some giving helpful advice on how to avoid traps and reaching hidden areas, others intentionally misleading players into deathtraps and pitfalls. This aspect of the game actually extends to things like wiki entries, where players pool information on how to overcome the game’s boss fights, farming strategies or discuss hidden lore details. Playing a Souls game on release, with a community of players all scouring and excitedly sharing information is a very different feeling from playing them any time down the line, once they’ve been figured out and thoroughly examined.
Dark Souls is far from perfect. The second half is made up of mostly recycled assets and has some of the worst designed boss fights in the series. Bugs and glitches are pervasive everywhere. But there’s a clear attention to detail in the way the game is presented, in its NPCs, its gameplay, its environments and even its item placement, that resonates among the people who play the game. This care and attention continued into FromSoftware’s later releases, leading to multiple sequels and sub-series. It influenced every other action game that came forward, causing other franchises to even copy its control scheme and structure. Everyone wants to be Dark Souls, but much like the Call of Duty craze before it, it’s hard to do so without feeling like a hollow copy.
Amusingly, its this trend that Dark Souls started that leads right into...
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (2019, From Software / Activision)
With three sequels and one Bloodborne under their belt, FromSoftware were looking to try something decidedly different from what they’d done up to this point. Rather than make a new action RPG along the same lines, they opted to make... an action game with light RPG elements. Okay, maybe not that different, but hear me out.
I love Sekiro. It’s up there with Demon’s Souls as my favorite game in their lineup, precisely in all the ways that it both is, yet isn’t like a Souls game. All those same wrinkles that I praised Dark Souls for are present here, but in a significantly more polished fashion. Because it’s an action game first and foremost, a lot of the thought normally put into things like character builds, stat allocations and weapon choices instead are focused on techniques, sub-weapons and your own ability to parry enemy attacks. Sekiro shares the same framework as earlier games, but feels way more dynamic and free-form as a result, as I grapple my way through areas, sneak kill enemies and just proceed with a much brisker pace than its Souls brothers allow.
When I started playing Sekiro, I basically treated it like I did all the prior Souls titles. Slow. Methodical. Strike at enemies, side dodge their attacks, strike again. This approach got me nowhere fast. My fiancée laughed at me as I died for the umpteenth time to the same mini-boss. General Naomori Kawarada had my number, and he knew it. So I ventured in a different direction, only to stumble into another spear-based wall of similar difficulty. Clearly I was doing something wrong. It wasn’t until I reach I reached Genichiro Asahina, the man who curb-stomps you in the game’s prologue, that the game’s many attempts at getting me to learn how to play finally clicked in place. Sekiro isn’t a game where you wail on an enemy until they die. In fact, you don’t need to strike them at all if you’re good enough. Parrying is the name of the game: it increases the enemy’s posture meter and, when it breaks, you can land a deathblow on them. Reducing enemy health simply makes the posture meter reduce at a slower rate, making it easier to break as fights go along. It’s this tense back and forth between offense and defense that make encounters in Sekiro such an intense experience, with the feeling of victory washing over me after every bitter encounter.
No multiplayer means battles can’t be cheesed through player numbers, but the social information sharing becomes even more relevant than before. Enemies and boss fights have so many intricacies and details, from specific attacks and unique ways to counter them, to the different effects that subweapons can have on them. Each time I watch someone play the game, I discover a new strategy or trick on how to clear an enemy that I struggled with. I watch as that same person is blocked by sections that I had an easy time with due to discovering a strategy or trick they didn’t know. The kicker of course being that knowing all this information isn’t enough: you still need to get good enough at the game’s systems to execute everything you read about rather than discovering a single overpowered weapon that trivializes the game.
With another fantasy game on the horizon from developer FromSoftware, I can only hope that Sekiro continues to be supported the same way its previous titles were. I’d love to play more of this game before they move on to something new, specially if said new game is more like Souls and less like this one.
Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (2017, Capcom)
Resident Evil is weird. A franchise that’s gone through many ups and downs due to questionable choices from its developer Capcom. Coming on the heels of the most polarizing entry in the series and many requests to “return to its roots”, RE7 was a sink or swim test to see if Resident Evil could recapture the spark that had made it such a success in the first place.
I personally don’t have that much love for franchise as a whole. While I somewhat appreciate the original titles for what they did at the time, I never found the act of playing the games all that much fun. With RE4 taking the franchise down a more action-heavy path, I felt like the mainline entries started becoming basically bog standard action games (and in the case of RE6, not particularly good ones). RE7′s January release came and went, and I kept hearing about how the game was such a great revival of the aspects that made Resident Evil special in the first place.
Boy, was I not prepared.
Effectively a soft-reboot for the franchise, RE7 discarded all of the baggage carried on for more than a decade in order to present a new story with a new set of characters and a new setting. No Umbrella Corp, no Jill Sandwiches. Rather than another world-threatening virus, this game opted to tell a more local, personal story, with small scale encounters to match it. Rather than the action focus of earlier games, you don’t machine gun down hundreds of zombies and punch boulders out of the way. RE7 makes single zombies life-threatening and dangerous to manage. It feels like it belongs to a completely different compared to the three games before it, in a good way.
RE7 is creepy. It’s unnerving. It’s distracting. Sneaking around the Baker residence, knowing every member of the family wanted me dead. Skittering noises and subtle, distant groans keep you on your toes. The oppressive atmosphere and lighting makes you fear ordinary household items while a shadow slinks away in the background. You know a horror game is doing its job right when you dread actively turning it on to play, which is how I felt during my time with it. Sometimes a game doesn't have to be all out scary. All it needs to do is make you feel like something is actually looking over your very real shoulder.
I hope Capcom takes notes from this game’s success and builds on it, but without veering back into the track that led to the series’ action titles in the first place. We have enough of those as it is.
The Binding of Isaac (2011, Edmund McMillen)
Roguelikes are hard to get juuuuust like for me. I don’t mind the idea of starting fresh on new attempts through the token dungeon/labyrinth/whatever, but I enjoy having some form of progression to mark just how much time I’ve put into the game. On the flip-side, permanent progression can make the game really unbalanced, with either cranked up numbers and difficulty raised to compensate for your ever increasing stats, as the game has to account for the increased levels in order to continue providing a challenge.
Enter Isaac. I first caught wind of the game through some random streams, as I watched people attempt run after run of twitch-based shooting in a rather messed up setting, with all sorts of creepy monstrosities. But more importantly, I liked the idea of Isaac’s takes on the genre: starting from scratch while having progression-based unlocks that you could acquire on successive runs depending on RNG. But ultimately, whether or not you clear isn’t truly dependent on said RNG, but due to not being an RPG, instead relies on your own skill and ability to make the best of the items you find along the way.
Enter basement. Die. Learn potential floor layouts. Enter basement. Get further than before. Experiment with trinket combinations. Die. Enter basement again. Get even further. Learn more. Repeat. Reach Mom. Unlocks new floors. Go again. Unlock new character. Learn how they’re different. Die some more. Unlock more stuff. This constant loop was enough to entertain more for 51 hours in the original Flash version, then double that on the remake. I’d still be playing that version, but the developer for it isn’t one I particularly care to support anymore, which is unfortunate.Still, what original Isaac is lacking in sheer amounts of content and engine upgrades, it makes up for in art and tunes. Edmund McMillen’s gross, unnerving art style is shown in full display, while Danny Baranowsky’s tunes are arguably way better Jams than the replacement soundtrack from the Rebirth version. It’s not just me either: Isaac’s popularity has influenced a whole slew of games like Slay the Spire and 20XX, both of whom proudly wear the influence on their sleeves. A good legacy for a great game.
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2014, Scott Cawthon)
The story of how Five Nights at Freddy’s came to be is pretty great. Scott Cawthon, who had only created family-friendly christian games up to that point, had received tons of criticism about his characters looking like scary animatronics. While initially discouraged, he took that feedback and created a horror game using the same style of characters. The game took off immediately, with much buzz among people online talking about the out of nowhere indie title scaring the world by storm. Now there’s tons of sequels, spin-off media, and even a movie in the works, all born from said criticism. It’s a pretty great underdog story.
FNAF’s concept itself is fairly novel too. Rather than play as a character who has to explore a creepy location while running into monsters and scary things, you play as a stationary security guard who has to avoid getting jump scared by the monsters that slowly but surely come to you. You must manage your power reserves while looking at security cameras and flicking doors on and off to prevent animatronics from coming inside your room, doing so long enough to survive until 6 AM. The different animatronics respond to and behave in different patterns, so the player has to learn how to juggle them and survive.
The thing is? I’m a big coward. So I’ve never played a single one of these games.
I’ve never really been one for watching Let’s Plays, partially due to not having much interest in the idea of watching people play video games when I could just do it myself. That basically changed once I started watching people like Markiplier experience the spooks that I was too much of a coward to go through myself. Starting from 2014, I’ve basically spent years just watching him go through every game in this series, wincing along at every unexpected jump scare and even tabbing out of the video when I knew something would pop up. As a viewer, I feel like I got my own unique experience that I wouldn’t have had from just playing FNAF alone.
And it’s not just this game too. This game served as a springboard for the idea that there is some value in being a passive observer for someone else’s experience through something. So what if I wasn’t the active participant? I’ve read all the wiki entries. I’ve looked up supplementary material. I’m just as invested in the characters, setting and lore as anyone else. Though obviously not an expert at playing the games, my time with this series isn’t any lesser than someone else’s. There clearly must be something to it, since movie theaters wouldn’t be as popular as they are if crowd watching something wasn’t popular.
Maybe some day I’ll put on my big boy pants and try to play any of these games. Until that day comes though, I’ll just watch someone else do it instead.
World of Final Fantasy (2016, Square Enix / Tose)
The fact that this isn’t celebrated as Final Fantasy’s 30th anniversary game is a crime that continues unabated.
Announced in the same press conference as the Final Fantasy 7 remake, World of Final Fantasy has always been a game that’s been criminally overshadowed by a larger release from the same company. WoFF was released just a month before the series’ next big mainline title, despite it being the game that actually showed more love, care and attention to the legacy of the series. No, not just because it’s crammed full of fanservice. That’s just the icing on an already solid package.
The game stars Lann and Reynn, twin summoners that are able to capture and control creatures known as Mirages. If you’ve played a Final Fantasy game before, you’ll easily recognize these creatures since they encompass almost every common enemy, summoned beast and staple from the franchise. Mirages vary in both size and abilities, which is important due to the ability to create “stacks” of party members according to their size. While you don’t get to play as any of the mainline FF characters (until the latest DLC update anyway), they can be summoned to unleash powerful one-time effects: both supportive and damaging. WoFF does an incredible job of introducing people new to the series with many of its legacy characters and staples, as well as featuring its own sincere and genuinely touching story of hope versus adversity (which isn’t afraid to get dark when the time comes for it. Seriously.)
Collecting and raising Mirages satisfies my need for a slightly more complex Pokémon game. You only ever control the two main characters, Lann and Reynn, but their attacks, stats, spells and abilities are determined by the Mirages you assemble in either character’s “stack”. Once you’ve min-maxed the heck out of your party composition of choice (or played with your favorite Mirages, like me), you can tear through random turn based encounters with either relative ease or absolute difficulty depending on how effective said combination of Mirages works. Because you almost always have access to your entire collection of captures critters, it’s really easy to swap them in and out as needed. You use specific types of Mirages to traverse through the overworld too, but thankfully the selections for monsters to use for that are relatively flexible.
Having played through WoFF with my significant other, we both had a lot of fun capturing, experimenting and using completely different setups to go through the game. Naturally we each had sections we breezed through while the other one struggled, which let us give each other advice on how to progress through the game. There’s virtually no ineffective Mirages in the game due to the nature of stacking, since it’s easy to find a different sized monster that compliments your other choices.
I could spend forever gushing about how much I love World of Final Fantasy. I The music, both its original tracks by Masashi Hamauzu and its plethora of Final Fantasy arrangements by Shingo Kataoka, is made up of nothing but bangers with zero duds in between. The writing and localization is top-notch, with personalized descriptions for every single Mirage in the game (there’s 200 of them!) that both reference and poke fun of all kinds of series trivia. The incredibly cute art style that makes me smile no matter what I’m currently feeling. If there’s a single Final Fantasy title from 2016 that should be put on a pedestal and remembered, it’s this one.
Final Fantasy XV sucked anyway.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn (2010, Good-Feel / HAL Laboratory / Nintendo)
It was February 2013. I had just finished playing through the second game in an awful PS2 platformer series that had just about sucked the positive vibes out of me. Feeling quite blue and depressed, I looked through my backlog of unplayed titles to see if there was something that could clear the funk out of my system.
As I stared into the dark void, a bright pair of beady blue eyes stared back.
The Kirby series has always sort-of been Nintendo’s trusty workhorse series. Kirby games don’t really push the same sales numbers or earn the same sort of accolades that its contemporaries do, but it always has some form of presence on their systems. This allows the franchise a form of flexibility to try out new ideas or concepts that would seem appropriate for the ball of pink fluff to explore, whether its making a compilation of eight micro games or a racing game, to turning him into a stylus controlled ball or a swarm of clones. It’s that same freedom that led to the creation of this lovely game.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn is the ultimate feel good title. The funk I mentioned a moment ago? By the end of my time with Epic Yarn, I’d already forgotten what I was sad about. The game does its best to pull you into its warm, fluffy embrace, with soft characters and smooth backgrounds and a cheery/upbeat score that never fails to make me smile. There’s no danger of death or being injured, so you don’t really need to concentrate or stress too much while playing. When you smoosh enemies they crumble into little yarn pieces. When you unlock a new level or world, the cloth and textiles that make up the world spring to life and expand to reveal cute new animated yarn creations. Kirby transforms into different vehicles of mass destruction but they’re all so cute and have his smiling face on it, so its easy to forget exactly what he’s doing.
I mean, just look at the Kirby submarine.
I think my fiancée is rubbing off on me.
Personally, Epic Yarn is the series at its most creative. There’s only so many times they can remake Super Star before my interest starts waning, which is what most of the Kirby platformers after it most amount to. I’d rather have another one of these than another one of those any day of the week, specially as a game to fall back to on a bad day.
Yakuza 0 (2015/2017, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios / Sega)
Yakuza as a series is pretty eccentric. From its director/producer, its JAV actresses turned 3D models, to its unapologetic asset re-use in order to both keep budgets low and be able to churn out new yearly releases. This latter point can be a big point of contention for many people, but it actually adds to the one element that I find myself appreciating most when it comes to the franchise.
See, I live in a neighborhood where there’s only two roads you can take to get to places. Said roads are lined by all sorts of businesses and builds, like fast food restaurants, two story complexes and small businesses. I’ve been driving back and forth through those roads for almost 20 years now, watching as stores go out of business, are bought out and re-populated. I’ve seen entire complexes get demolished to make brand new buildings. I’ve watched as the old two-story building where I used to get tutored as a kid grows greener, mossier and more overrun with plants as the years go by. Even though nobody goes there anymore, my memories of time spent there still remain all these years. It’s the same everywhere else: I recall the single time I ate at this one restaurant. The one building where I worked part time for a month. The gym whose membership I let run for way too long. So many businesses, houses and locations that I’ve frequented either many times or just once, that carry on even though I’m no longer there. Inversely, maybe tomorrow I’ll have to drive to a house or building that I’ve seen many times before, but have never had a reason to go there until now. A place that has existed this whole time, but until that moment, had never been acknowledged by me.
Yakuza, probably not intentionally, invokes the exact same feelings in me. I’ve walked down the streets of Kamurocho many times. I’ve seen the city change and evolve as the years go by, from the of the 80′s as depicted in Yakuza 0, to the modern age styling depicted in Yakuza 6 and Judgement, its related spin-off game. I remember locations where important story events occurred, where entire sub-stories developed and concluded. Some games take me insides complexes that had been completely ignored in games prior, while later games may just give a nod at the events that occur in the now vacant lots and inaccessible interiors. But even though the dramatic events may be long over, my memories remain as I stroll down the familiar alleys and look at the flashing lights of the oh so subtly changing Kamurocho. The city doesn't undergo that many dramatic changes, but as someone playing as long as I have, even the subtle twists are felt once I start feeling around.
That’s the feeling I get any time a new game in the series is released, as I prepare for a new trek down an old familiar street, not knowing what I’ll experience in the immediate future. It’s a really precious feeling.
So why Yakuza 0 in particular? Honestly, it’s the best one of the lot. Not only is it a great starting point for people afraid of jumping into this long running series, it honestly feels like the one influenced by the most creative ideas, some of which have gone to become series staples or influenced other features post-0. The time period the game takes place in is distinct compared to the others too, as its the only game that takes place before the 2000′s. It’s two playable protagonists present two alternate perspectives to the ongoing conflict and very different play-styles to enjoy, each with their own major side activity to pursue as a means of earning money.
If you’ve never played a game in this series, give it a try. If you’ve lapsed from too many of them being out there, also give it a try. If you’ve played every other game but not this one... what are you waiting for?
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag (2013, Ubisoft)
There’s something wild about the fact that the entire Assassin’s Creed franchise grew to become the colossus we know it as within the span of the last decade. Brotherhood, the follow-up to the incredibly successful Assassin’s Creed 2, kicked off the annualized release pattern the series would soon follow, expanded on the concepts introduced in AC2 and gave the world more of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an iconic character whose popularity still lingers an entire decade after his introduction. By the time Brotherhood’s successor rolled around the following year, it was time to move on from Ezio and proceed to the next phase, not an easy act to follow-up on. Initial previews for Assassin’s Creed 3 seemed promising, showing the oft-requested setting of colonial America and featuring a native american character as its protagonist. How did AC3 fare upon release?
It was bad.
Unfortunately for me, AC3 was the one entry where I’d decided to go all-in on. I bought the premium super edition. I picked up my copy on its midnight release. I dumped hours into what I thought was going to be the best game in the series. After all, after the Ezio trilogy had been so great, how could AC3 be any worse than those? It didn’t take long to get extremely burned on what I thought had been a publisher/developer whose output I’d previously have 100% of my trust. If anyone ever wondered what drove me to be as critical of the media I consume as I am today, Assassin’s Creed 3 can take a large part of that responsibility.
There’s a laundry list of reasons why AC3 failed as hard as it did, without even taking into account more subjective opinions like its protagonist not being an interesting character or the setting not actually being all that interesting. Rather, the entire game had an absurd lack of polish, huge performance issues, a significant number of game breaking bugs or glitches and a fundamental misunderstanding of what made the Ezio trilogy fun: slowly trekking through boring, barren landscapes, completely un-intuitive UI, poorly designed side activities and terribly-structured narrative that barely made use of the setting where the game took place. While those were all things slightly addressed in the game’s downloadable content, the damage had already been done.
When details started popping up about Assassin’s Creed 4, I was naturally very skeptical. “lol they’re rushing to the next numbered entry because 3 was such a stinker”, I thought. Even as more promising details came to light, I didn’t really have much interest in immediately picking the game up. Enough damage had been done after all. It was only when I decided to pick up a PS4 at launch that I gave in and gave the series one last chance.
I’m glad I did.
While AC4 was built on the same fundamental structure as AC3, it’s blessed by having more time to flesh out its ideas and structure. Gone are the barren landscapes, replaced instead by the rolling seas and densely packed islands on the Caribbean. Sailing, which started as just an overlook-able side-activity in AC3, was fleshed out and became your main form of travel, with upgrades and customization options fleshing out what you could do with your ship. Combat once again featured a radial menu to select your weapons and tools that didn’t take you completely out of the action. An expanded assortment of firearms and assassination tools allowed for new ways to sneak through enemy locations or rampage through a barrage of combatants. It’s a true return to the highs of the Ezio games, with all the charm and creativity befitting the era it takes place is.
As someone who lives in the Caribbean, it’s very rare to not only get the kind of representation that AC4 brought to the table, but for it to be done as respectfully and accurately as a game featuring topics like slavery could be done. That bundled together with probably my favorite combination of story, gameplay and side activities lead to an experience that the series hasn’t really managed to top for me. Sadly, with the way Assassin’s Creed has changed over the years since then, this will probably remain the last truly high point for my own enjoyment.
Undertale (2015, Toby Fox)
If you’ve read more than one “games of the decade” write-up, seeing this name pop up among the list shouldn’t really surprise you. I’d honestly be more surprised if you hadn’t. The surprise smash hit of the decade has managed to sneak into everything from concert recitals to fighting game downloadable content, in no small part due to what a tight, lovingly crafted package it is. I’m not really going to get into any of those details, because plenty of significantly more eloquent people, my fiancée included, have written about what makes this game special.
Instead, here’s a short list of things Undertale taught or reminded me.
1. Every person, no matter how big, small, square, round, human-like or furry they are, has the potential for an interesting story.
2. Properly implemented leitmotifs that change and echo through the game are rad.
3. A game doesn’t have to be 50 hours long to leave a permanent impression.
4. Just because a piece of media has an intolerable fan-base/community doesn’t mean the content in question is as bad as them.
5. Kickstarter can actually fund some quality stuff, once in a while.
6. Just because something exists in a video game doesn’t mean you need to force yourself to experience it. If it isn’t fun, it isn’t fun.
7. Uhh.
8. Dogs are nice.
9. Anime isn’t real.
10. Writing lists with actual points is hard. No wonder click-bait is popular.
Asura’s Wrath (2012, CyberConnect 2 / Capcom)
If there were ever a textbook example of a game completely and utterly sent to die, it’d be this one. With a terrible demo before release, a non-existent marketing campaign, and the worst post-release support ideas at the time (releasing the true ending as extra downloadable content was not seen as a popular move). All the external decisions made about this game led to it being unceremoniously buried and forgotten, never to be seen again even in this decade of ports, remasters and remakes for even the most obscure of older titles.
It’s a shame too, because if you’ve ever wanted to see how to perfectly portray a battle shonen anime is like in video game form, this is what you’re looking for.
Asura’s Wrath is a game I never knew I wanted to play, but very quickly fell in love once I did. Knowing what I do now about the fate of the game, I feel bad about picking the game up at a quarter of its full price, but that terrible demo really did make for a bad first impression. The game stars Asura: one of several deities who oversee the Earth and purify it from the Gohma, demons made up of all of the earth’s vices and impurities. After many dramatic twists, Asura is framed, betrayed and set against his fellow deities to rescue his daughter Mithra, with the occasional help of his best frenemy, Yasha. Asura’s Wrath could have been a simple series of punching bouts strung together, but the cast of colorful character genuinely draws you in and charms the heck out of you. Asura’s Wrath will put you through the entire range of emotions, with some really touching moments getting me to genuinely sympathize with the struggles of the game’s two protagonists.
Of said emotions, anger is naturally an important one, though not necessarily in a good way. Important enemies in this game don’t really have health bars. Rather, punching enemies fills up your wrath/burst meter, which makes the fight progress to the next phase. These intermissions are where the game gets the most exciting, with plenty of quick time presses timed with the action (though these only affect the final score, so really, they’re just there for show). Where anger might unintentionally factor in, unfortunately, will be in the many times the game stutters, tears and lightly hangs when the action gets really intense. Poor performance is Asura’s Wrath’s one glaring weak spot, as its easy to tell that the majority of resources went into polishing the presentation instead. It’s a shame too, since said performance problems also leak into the combat sections, making some bits more frustrating than they should be.
But to put such a huge spotlight on combat (like Capcom did) is doing Asura’s Wrath a disservice. The combat sections are the connecting tissue between the lovingly crafted, bombastic, wall-to-wall insanity that is the game’s cutscenes. Two deities will wax philosophically about the worth of a single human being vs the whole of humanity before one launches the other from the moon to the Earth, then impaling them with a sword that covers that entire length. In another tragic moment, the game’s entire color pallet dynamically shifts to and from grey-scale before fading to white. The absolute care for every aspect of the game’s presentation in every moment of every scene, from its most climactic battles to its most somber moments is really what makes this game as special as it is. When you have a development team that even measured the timing of achievement/trophy notifications and used them to maximize either comedic timing or dramatic moments, you know you’ve experiencing something special.
Asura’s Wrath’s rough spots weren’t really enough to damper my enjoyment of the game, however. Like I said, Asura’s Wrath is a game I didn’t know I wanted. The more I played it, the more engaged I became, the more I liked the characters and story presented. There really is no game like it out there with such a unique concept and execution, and its a real shame that, given its reception,it’ll likely be the last of its kind. I’ll just be in a corner, sulkily whistling a familiar tune to myself.
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward (2015, Square Enix)
It’s hard to put my feelings behind Final Fantasy XIV to words. What started as curiosity about the franchise’s new (and unknowingly, doomed) online title in 2010 has morphed and evolved into something of a lifestyle. Having signed up since day one of the game’s relaunch in 2013, it’s difficult to be even remotely objective when talking about a game that has both accompanied and assisted me through many difficult periods in my life I’m a testament to the power of online games: I met some of my best friends through FFXIV. I’ve ended friendships through it. I’ve dealt with the death of known acquaintances, their online data living on as a form of digital tombstone.I started and graduated from college while playing the game. I learned how to manage my own finances and spending habits with the game’s subscription model. My relationship with my now fiancée blossomed and became serious through our interactions and bonding activities that FFXIV enabled. It’s no wonder I half-identify with my digital in-game character, one who I’ve customized and molded through the years. Even now, with my interest in the game at its lowest point due some pretty disappointing design choices, I can’t imagine when or what it would take for me to stop playing the game.
Out of the four major launches in the game’s lifespan, the Heavensward expansion is where I believe Final Fantasy XIV was at its best. The relaunch had done a good enough job of restoring my faith in the franchise after a run of subpar spin-offs, re-releases and mobile releases. While not without its downsides, Heavensward and its post-release patch content fired on all cylinders, introducing and fleshing out what are now some of the game’s most memorable characters, plot twists and settings. So popular that to this day, content, locations, enemies and characters introduced in Heavensward continue to be utilized to this day.
While always subjective, all the playable job classes felt diverse and unique among each other, each bringing something to the table that others couldn’t do. Each job has its own nuances and barriers of entry, which provided a nice challenge while on the road to being able to optimize and synergize each role’s talents, with some jobs having much higher skill ceilings than others due to their very design. While that may have led to some level of exclusion (lord knows some jobs were under-powered for most of the expansion), I much prefer that over the game’s current trek towards making every role incredibly similar to achieve some vague notion of “balance”.
The sad part about ongoing service games is that, as the game develops and changes, it becomes impossible to return to what one believes were the game’s golden years. Final Fantasy XIV in 2020 is not what it was in 2015. And barring a Wow Classic-esque relaunch, I’ll likely never get to experience that time of the game again. Yet even without doing so, I’ll never forget the great times I had with my friends and acquaintances or the bonds I created as a result. Maybe some day I’ll be willing to let my personal home vanish with the game’s odious auto-demolition system. But until that day comes, I’ll continue hoping that the game someday undergoes a proper return to form and I’ll again feel happy about logging into the world of Eorzea.
Granblue Fantasy (2014, Cygames)
Some might find this entry either really surprising or not at all.
One would be forgiven to still not know much about this franchise, despite making recent headlines through both of its animated seasons and recently-released fighting game. At its core, Granblue Fantasy is a mobile browser RPG launched on the Mobage platform in 2014. Backed by an all-star cast of ex-Final Fantasy developers, artists and music composers, Granblue Fantasy was designed with the idea of making a large scale fantasy RPG that could be played anywhere. Even I sometimes forget that at its heart its a game played on a web browser, the same format that used to be plagued with facebook-tier time wasters and throwaway shovelware.
For the first two and a half years, Granblue Fantasy started as a Japan-only affair. I started my own journey into the game in 2016 when, purely out of a desire to challenge and develop the skills of its developers own in-house skills, Cygames decided to add an English language option to the game, offering a full localization of most of the game’s content on the same day as its Japanese offerings. It was a rocky start, with some early events having a delay on said English location as they launched, but by now all of the kinds have been ironed out and every new piece of content comes out with multi-language support. For what’s technically a Japan-only mobile browser game. Crazy.
What constantly impresses me about Granblue Fantasy is, partially, developer and publisher Cygame’s unrelenting support, maintenance and insistence on making sure players routinely have something to do. Where other service games tend to rest on their laurels after achieving a measure of success, Granblue Fantasy continues to have a comprehensive schedule of in-game events, activities, updates, and even irl gatherings and conventions arranged by the developers themselves. None of this naturally comes cheap, but the answers given by staff pretty much state that they see no problems re-investing the mountains of cash made by their game into expanding the game and, frankly, spoiling players with content updates, fully voiced monthly events and even rebalances for older playable characters that they have no incentive to do. It’s nice seeing a publisher so open about their ongoing support for a game celebrating its sixth anniversary.
