Noy's Games of 2026

Games I played in 2026 with some short-ish reviews :) 2024-25 games lists is also here 24 | aspec bluesky for real posts and crossposted reviews:https://bsky.app/profile/noydacoy.bsky.social

[noydacoy]

23. BALL x PIT

Rating: 8/10

Played on: Switch 2

Infinite dopamine simulator the video game. In a world full of Vampire Survivors-like games, I feel like it's difficult to stand out when the OG just does it best. This breakout version of the concept comes the closest I've seen so far. Characters offer a good amount of variety, there's always something new to unlock, and runs are short and sweet. The hub world base building aspect is an interesting concept, but feels a little underbaked and out of place with the rest of the gameplay loop. It's fun enough, but once you have dozens of buildings and resources to fit in there, it's mostly just trying to puzzle where everything can go as opposed to fully strategizing the optimal place for every building.

Not too much more to say on it, just that it crashed about three quarters of the way through my second run of the final level, so I took that as a sign that I should be done playing for now. I'll probably hop back in when another update drops, but for now, this was the ideal game for one of the rare Nintendo Online game trials (much like how I got into Vampire Survivors). Got me hook, line, and sinker.

[noydacoy]

22. Super Mario Bros. Wonder - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park

Rating: 5/10

Played on: Switch 2

Meh. There are so many better ways to spend $20. It's still Mario Wonder at its core, so there's some value here, but the main game is tight enough of an experience to really not need this (hence why it came 3 years later). The new boss fights are alright, but they would have been better if you didn't have to do them 3 times, and once without being hit at all. The minigames are... there? I only played a few of them, and they're ok. Closer to Mario Party minigames than full on Nintendo Land attractions. The Toad Brigade missions were more tedious than fun, and despite the decorations and collectibles being cute, there's way too much grinding involved to get all of them. I didn't end up doing it. Just go buy an indie game or two instead. Or replay the main game, it's still really good!

[noydacoy]

21. Baba Is You

Image

IS

Rating IS 9/10

Played on IS itch.io

Review

IS

Baba Is You might be the most challenging puzzle game I've played. It's fascinating to me how simple the concept of pushing rules around is, but in execution, it gets surprisingly complex. Often times, the rules are only there to be broken. Your assumptions are always challenged, and you always get the "aha" moment once everything clicks into place. From the beginning of the game where you are just learning how each of the different rules work, to the secret levels after the credits, the levels always did something new. Even stages which were remixes of other levels with just one word or block missing could have vastly different solutions.

AND

Nothing made me feel smarter than solving a level after staring at it and experimenting for half an hour, but interestingly, I didn't ever feel too guilty about looking up hints or solutions to levels when I was completely stuck. The game is clever enough that even if I had to look something up, even just reading the solution step by step could give that same "aha" moment feeling. Unlike some puzzle games, there are almost never any red herrings or extreneous elements here, so its just about figuring out exactly how to manipulate what you have, and breaking every assumption you initially had about the level.

AND

I think my favorite part of the game has to be the several twists near the end of the main levelpack. I won't spoil exactly what happens, but organically finding out what you could do to access more levels after beating the "last" level was one of the most satisfying feelings I've ever had discovering something in a game.

AND

The music and visuals are relaxing and perfectly minimal. The extra content that was added post launch with the museum of unused levels and new adventures with fun additional words like "3D" are super cool, even though I've barely dipped into those yet. Plus, you can make your own levels? I'm sure people have made some disgusting abominations. This game is so worth the time and money, just experiencing some of the brain blasts is worth it in spades.

[noydacoy]

20. SOMA

Rating: 8/10

Played on: Steam Deck

SOMA is an incredible sci-fi horror story, with intense themes surrounding identity, humanity, reality, and the sense of self we are burdened with. It has a unique and beautifully terrifying setting under the Atlantic Ocean, with a rare positive spin on the ocean for the genre - the scary monsters and horrifying elements come from inside the man-made structures, not nature. Unfortunately, this story is trapped in a modern horror video game, with most of the tropes and issues that I dislike from the genre as a whole.

I’m not typically a traditional horror fan, I’m usually more here for the psychological, mind-bending, reality altering kind of horror than spooky monsters or serial killers chasing you. I love games and stories that deal with these unsettling elements, especially when they aren’t explicitly a “horror” game. Games like OMORI, Lisa: The Painful, and even Majora’s Mask are some examples of games that have similar themes to most horror games without the tropes and frustrating parts. SOMA was very close to being a perfect experience for me, but being labeled as a “horror” game really hindered its appeal for me personally. The monster stealth/chase sequences feel more frustrating than terrifying, and the enemy behavior is… not the smartest, which really ended up taking me out of the immersive experience a lot of times. There’s some weird subplots that feel like they’re present just to pad the runtime, a bunch of characters who are hard to connect with considering they’ve been dead since long before the events of the story are playing out, and some of the scary stuff that happens is told to you through backstory logs rather than shown in gameplay. Of course, the opposite is true as well for all of these examples, with interesting characters and subplots interrupting your main journey, and quite a good amount of environmental storytelling shown to you, but the rough edges really stuck out to me.

All that being said, the story as a whole was really enjoyable. It had me hooked the whole way through, and the ending especially was incredibly well done. Catherine is a fascinating character, especially when thinking of the implications of who/what she actually is. I would have appreciated a bit more on our main character, Simon, but he did have quite a few interesting elements to explore.

Overall, I loved the story, was pretty meh on the gameplay overall, but this definitely got closer to the types of horror I do enjoy.

[noydacoy]

19. Wandersong

Rating: 10/10

Played on: Steam Deck

Wandersong is a beautiful piece of art. It perfectly encapsulates themes of identity, tradition, imposter syndrome, and friendship through both its gameplay and story. I’m not surprised, considering this is also the team behind Chicory: A Colorful Tale, and more recently, Beastieball! It hit especially hard for me because I chose to play it during the week I was getting married! I eloped with my wonderful partner, so the idea of breaking tradition and doing what makes sense for you really resonated with me.

First, I need to talk about the characters. I love the trope of the player character not being the “protagonist” of the story. You are just a lowly bard, wanting to change the world through sheer willpower and determination. You have a boundless amount of optimism, and fuel everyone you talk to with happiness and hope. It’s great to see such a happy character thriving, and even greater to see what happens when the world challenges that optimism. For example, your main companion through the story, the grumpy witch, Miriam. She’s a character that my past self relates to a whole lot. Most of the time, she is grumpy just for the sake of being grumpy, she’s still figuring out who she is, she has a lot of imposter syndrome, and doesn’t really know how to make friends. I used to struggle with a lot of these things as a high schooler and college student, and I still do struggle with some of these things. Watching a character like Miriam experience these things while also making lasting bonds and growing was really powerful. I nearly shed some tears during a couple of her monologues near the end of the game.

Then there’s the hero, Audrey, who is a very interesting case. Obviously, she’s the hero, the rightful protagonist of this story. She kills the monsters to save the world! But no hero is perfect, and Audrey definitely has some… flaws. She’s a narcissist, insecure, and let’s the title she is gifted get to her head. I won’t spoil exactly how she fits in to the bard’s tale and the overarching plot, but I thought that it was a super unique take on a character who feels so redeemable that you don’t see very often in media.

The story itself being is a fun take on the typical hero’s journey adventure, as a character who was supposed to just be an NPC. It works well as a parody of those kinds of stories while also giving it plenty of respect and appreciation. I’ve already gone over most of the main characters but I loved all of the side characters each chapter would introduce too! Everyone has their own backstory, motivations, and opinions, and they all flesh out the world brilliantly.

The gameplay itself is also super fun, I was a big fan of the musical puzzle-platforming. While simple, the puzzles were fun to solve and the musical accompaniment from the bard’s singing made everything so dynamic and cute. All of the different unique gameplay styles were interesting and varied, from singing specific melodies in order, to spinning your joystick around to sing scales rapidly. Even some of the non-important gameplay elements like dancing or pitching each note up and down with the triggers were fun additional touches that just showed how much love and care was put into this game.

Of course, the game’s soundtrack also slaps. You can’t really be a musically focused game and not have a soundtrack that you can bop along to everything. Every song is dynamic, with the bard being able to belt out into song pretty much whenever you want. It adapts to each of the notes that you hit and different environmental factors also can join in the background and add more instrumentation.

Overall, I’m so glad this was the game I chose to play during one of the best weeks of my life. It made me laugh, was really close to making me cry, and resonated with me very deeply. I’ll happily recommend it to anyone!

[noydacoy]

18. Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth

Rating: 8/10

Played on: Switch 2

Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between and outside of the gender binary... I'm a Digimon fan now. I had SO much fun playing Cyber Sleuth, and I'm glad I'm finally giving this series a shot. Disclaimer, I played the Complete Edition but haven't played Hacker's Memory yet, as I poorly depecited in the image above. I'm counting it as a separate game so there will be a different review for that when I get to it. Also, I'll probably compare to Pokémon a lot. I'm sure Digimon fans are annoyed by that by now, but it's my largest frame of reference so... sorry.

Playing this with very little prior knowledge of Digimon took me back to 2013 when I played Pokémon X for the first time and discovered Pokémon was actually pretty cool and fun. One thing that Digimon immediately does better though is the sense of discovery. My favorite part of this game, by far, was finding new Digimon, seeing silouettes of what they could evolve into, and making it my life's mission to find out what the evolution looked like - WITHOUT looking it up online first. The amount of times I would evolve my cute little rookies into some horrible monstrosity was more than made up for with the badass designs of most of the ultimate and mega level Digimon in this game. I have discovered so many favorites, and I feel more attached to most of them than I do for most Pokémon, simply due to the fact that I raised them from their little baby form. Hours of effort, grinding stat points, evolving and devolving, and hundreds of battles to build up friendship points - all of this really feels like you're bonding with your little friends. Pokémon does this too, of course, but I honestly felt that this game makes that bond feel stronger.

Honestly, the systems felt like a lovely fusion between Pokémon and Persona, in a weird way. Much like Persona, the next forms of your monsters may look and play completely differently from the previous form. Unlike Persona, and more like Pokémon, you still know it's your little guy under there, and it's just grown up and gotten stronger. I find it harder to get attached to the demons in Persona, because you're consantly fusing them to make new ones, but here, I felt like I had a core team that I kept making stronger, like Pokémon. Also, having 11 slots for party members was amazing as a new fan who kept finding cool new favorites to use.

Battling is also pretty fun here! The typing system is super interesting, with each Digimon having one of 4 main types (vaccine, data, virus, and free), and an elemental subtype. It has the traditional rock paper scissors formation for the main types, with free being the neutral option, on top of a (much simpler than Pokémon's) type chart for elemental types. As long as you have a decent variety of main types throughout the game, I found the elemental types didn't matter too much, given their smaller boost to damage done than the main type advantage. This, along with the massive team size, was great for experimenting with new Digimon and not having to worry too much about doubling up on type combinations, unlike when I play Pokémon and have to divy up my 6 party slots with 6 entirely different typed Pokémon, since it feels suboptimal to have two water types on one team.

So, overall, I loved the gameplay and basic loop of this game. There were some minor grievences I had here and there, especially when it came to certain evolution requirements, repetative side quests, and some dungeons with massive encounter rates, but overall, I found that I actually quite enjoyed the grind-y nature of the game, since there was always something I was working towards. It's definitely not for everyone, but at the point of my life I'm at right now, a game to sink dozens of hours into to get a new funny guy was just what I needed.

Unfortunately, I don't have as many good things to say about the story experience. Most of the time, it was strangely hard to follow, due to an exceptionally poor localization job. I understood the broad strokes, but in moment to moment gameplay, there were a lot of weird spelling, punctuation, and grammactic errors, obvious "word for word" translations from the original Japanese text rather than trying to make sense, and even some pronoun and name switching. None of this ruined the game - I wasn't really playing for the story anyway - but it definitely took me out of the experience a bit. I think some of the characters were fun, and plot twists were interesting, but it's certainly not the best "a bunch of kids attempt kill a god" story I've seen.

I try to rate games I play based on the experience I had with them. Sometimes, my rating is more objectively based, other times, the subjective emotions take hold. Here, I'm averaging the two - on an objective, game design level, this probably gets a 7/10, maybe even a 6/10 if I'm being pessamistic. Subjectively though, I had so much fun with this game, I'd probably put it around a 9/10. I'm averaging that out to an 8/10, along with a healthy dose of motivation to play Hacker's Memory, Time Stranger, and many other Digimon games in the future.

For those curious about my taste - I picked Terriermon as my starter, and some of my favorites along the journey were Impmon, Gatomon, Lekismon, Wisemon, the whole Lucemon line, Minervamon, MarineAngemon, and maybe my all time favorite, Valkyrimon. There are so many more I used and loved, but these ones were some of my favorite designs.

[noydacoy]

17. Vampire Crawlers

Rating: 9/10

Played on: Steam Deck

Goddammit, they got me again. I avoided Vampire Survivors for a long time because I knew it would suck me in, and when I finally tried it a year and a half ago, I learned my suspicions were correct, and got hopelessly addicted to it. I 100%ed the main game, played through a lot of the DLC, discovered plenty of fun secrets and broken strategies, and found all of the vampires the game had to offer. Then, just when I thought I had broken the addiction, a spinoff roguelike deckbuilder is announced, with dungeon crawling like Etrian Odyssey. And suddenly there’s a demo for Steam NextFest that I play for like 4 hours straight. And then a few months later the game comes out and I’m already pretty damn close to 100%ing it within a week.

If there’s one thing this team is good at, it’s keeping you addicted. The dopamine of hitting a super high combo with your cards is incredible, evolving and upgrading your abilities is just as satisfying as it was in Survivors, and it impressively feels like a good brain scratcher and a good “brain turn off and watch number go up” game. I’m glad I played the first game before this, because it’s genuinely impressive how they mapped the functionality and usefulness of different weapons and items to a completely different genre. I’ll cautiously highly recommend this game - just beware that if it hits your brain just right, you will be addicted.

[noydacoy]

16. CloverPit

Rating: 9/10

Played on: Steam Deck

LET’S GO GAMBLING! Aw, dangit! LET'S GO GAMBLING!

I adore this game. Great unsettling atmosphere akin to Inscryption, a satisfying mix of luck and strategy, fun unlockables, and a variety of items and synergies. The game nails the addicting and satisfying nature of hitting a jackpot, and the fact that you are spinning slots for your life makes it even more thrilling and intoxicating to hit a good roll. There are many surprises and mysteries here, some I still haven’t discovered even after rolling credits once. Plus, the DLC adding fusion items for a respectably low price, even more gameplay depth is added to the core gameplay loop. I don’t want to say too much here to not spoil the surprises in store, just play the game, it’s so good.

[noydacoy]

15. Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers

Rating: 8/10

Played on: Steam Deck

Another casino roguelike, but this one feels completely different from Balatro, due to it being in development at the same time. Blackjack lends itself surprisingly well to this style of roguelike. Having the difference between your score and your opponents equal damage done makes a lot of intuitive sense, and hitting a blackjack giving you a bonus depending on your suit feels satisfying every time. I haven’t experienced all of the decks in this one yet, but from what I’ve played, I’ve found two dominant strategies - drawing your entire deck of low valued or negative cards to eventually hit 21, or making your entire deck worth 10 so you can consistently score 20 and only lose health if your opponent blackjacks. This game feels more akin to StS or Balatro though, in that getting your deck to the point of running one of those dominant strategies is the struggle, and being able to adapt to different opponents decks that disrupt your scores or cards is just as important. It will definitely be a game I continue playing after writing this review.

[noydacoy]

14. Raccoin: Coin Pusher Roguelike

Rating: 7/10

Played on: Steam Deck

Raccoin manages to be very unique feeling while also wearing its inspirations on its sleeve. Clearly inspired by the casino roguelike craze post-Balatro, and the physics based roguelike style of Peglin, this coinpusher game has plenty of fun synergies and possibilities.

In fact, I’d argue it has… too many synergies. It took me about 4 runs to completely crack the game wide open. I got a score of 2.5e199, and only stopped because I got bored and wanted to start a new run. It’s satisfying and dopamine providing, sure, but when that happens every run, it loses its luster pretty quickly. It’s not that there’s not enough content, it’s almost the opposite - there’s too many things to help enhance your score. There’s coins, clips, consumable items, gadgets and stickers to put on your board, a wheel to customize, expansions to how many coins you can have, different characters, and probably more that I’m forgetting or haven’t even unlocked yet. There’s multiple difficulty levels too, but honestly the game didn’t hook me enough to want to pursue those.

Overall, much like how I felt about Peglin, it’s fun for the first few runs, but it gets repetitive and stale pretty quickly. I could go into a huge game design rant about input vs. output randomness in these kinds of games, but I’ll save that for another day.

[noydacoy]

13. Slay the Spire II

Rating: 9/10

Played on: Steam Deck

Speaking of sequels, here’s the big one! I’ve been excited for StS2 for years, and I’m so glad it’s finally here. It’s in a very unique position, as StS was THE foundational deck-building-roguelike experience that most games in the genre took inspiration from. Now, nearly a decade later, StS2 takes elements from those inspired games, mods of the original game, and its own fun and unique ideas to make a brilliant new experience. Cards can be upgraded in more than one way, there’s a multiplayer mode that I have yet to experience, new and old characters have fun new synergies and mechanics, there are different branching acts, a slew of new enemy and boss mechanics, events, relics, and so much more. There’s even more lore and unlocks compared to the first game, which helps the extrinsic replayability factor as opposed to just focusing on the intrinsic value of getting better at the game.

So why have it rated as a 9/10, when I gave the first one a 10/10? Every aspect feels improved and fleshed out compared to StS1, right? Well, almost every element. Much like the first game, we’re starting the StS2 life cycle in early access, so balance is a bit wonky. I got into StS1 after all of the content updates and balance patches, so I had a nice, consistent, battle-tested experience the entire time I played that game. Playing StS2 in early access is a whole different beast, with balance patches regularly coming out, some enemies and cards feeling much stronger or weaker than they should, and some mechanics completely changing over only a couple days. This review is for the game a month or two in, and it’s likely the game will be in a completely different state if you come across this in a year or two. Knowing what MegaCrit is capable of with the first game, I’m 99% sure that my final rating for this game will hit that 10/10 once there is new content, final balance tweaks, new alternate acts and a finale act similar to the first game. But, as of now, there’s still a lot of tweaking to be done. I’m excited to witness the process this time though!

By the way, character rankings and opinions for those curious:

Necrobinder - Easily my new favorite, I love Osty being a tank of temporary HP and/or an absolute powerhouse, Doom is a really fun mechanic to play with, and the animations are super fun.

Silent - I’m so happy my favorite StS1 character was buffed to infinity. Poison finally feels insanely good, discard and the new Sly keyword is absolutely busted, I was initially hesitant about shivs feeling nerfed but they’re definitely just as strong, if not stronger than they were in the first game. Plus, the new design slays (pun fully intended).

Ironclad - I liked the Ironclad well enough in StS1, but runs always felt difficult to get started for me. Now it feels like there’s a lot more options and directions for his builds to go, and more cards to get into certain builds. Exhaust, strength, and barricade builds are all still satisfying, but now self damage builds and strike focused builds have more options and feel much more viable.

Defect - Despite the awesome new design, new glass orb and the hype of its reveal after we weren’t sure if it was even alive in this game, the Defect feels pretty same-y to how it played in the first game, but maybe even weaker. Focus for your orbs feels harder to get, power builds still require a lot of setup to get rolling, and builds not focusing on the orbs still feel weak. Maybe this is just a skill issue on my part, but the Defect hasn’t clicked with me yet.

Regent - Finally, the Regent. I like him conceptually, a big bonk sword that you build up through the fight is a really cool idea, but the energy cost and the focus on multi-foe encounters in this game make it feel cumbersome to utilize to the fullest extent. My most successful runs have pretty much just ignored the sword and focused on the stars, which are still fun, but this makes a lot of the card in his kit feel pretty underutilized. I can see a few tweaks making him really fun though!

[noydacoy]

12. Monster Train

Rating: 8/10

Played on: Steam/Steam Deck/Apple Arcade

It’s been a while, huh? Where’ve I been, what have I been playing since FFVI last month? Well, in between sessions of my current RPG, my first Digimon game (Cyber Sleuth), I’ve been playing a lot of deck builder roguelikes! My reviews have historically come out once I beat a game, sometimes I even wait until I 100% complete it. I’ve sort of gotten into this mentality that once I write and publish my review, I’m done playing that game - with only a few exceptions over the last few years. I want to break that habit, and feel like I’m able to go back and play more of a game after I review it, so I’m starting by reviewing all of the deck builders I’ve played this month in rapid fire fashion. Some, I’ve been playing for months, others I’m only a few runs into, but all of them I have defined enough opinions on to feel comfortable assigning a score to and writing a small review of. Most of them I’ll probably continue playing after I write these reviews.

Monster Train is an amazing roguelike, with elements of auto-battlers, tower defense, and of course, deck building. The amount of options and customizability you have before each run is staggering, with the combination of 2 of 6 clans, different primary and secondary champions for each clan, 25 Covenant levels for difficulty modifiers akin to Ascensions in StS, and many different randomly assigned starting decks. Every run feels completely unique, each combination of characters lets you play differently, and prioritize different things. Some of my runs focused on beefing up one unit to destroy everything before they could get past the first floor of my train, others focused on magic items that did a bunch of damage while my units tanked hits, and my favorite runs involved killing and reviving my own units to make them stronger.

The sheer amount of options makes this game arguably even more replayable than some of my favorite roguelikes like StS and Balatro - but that freedom is a double edged sword. The learning curve here feels very steep. I’m on Covenant 12 right now, and I still haven’t felt like I’ve cracked the game. Most of my runs on the higher difficulties I’ve done have felt like I was just scraping by. It’s satisfying in its own way, but for how many hours I’ve played, I feel like I should’ve had a run where I feel completely unstoppable, like some of my favorite runs in other roguelikes I love. This doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the game too much, but I have found myself gravitating towards other games where the learning curve is a bit less steep, despite the massive amount of content and potential I still have left in this game. I’m definitely not done with the game, I’ll probably come back to it every so often for a run or two, and I do want to try to sequel eventually!

[noydacoy]

11. Final Fantasy VI

Rating: 9/10

Played on: Steam Deck

I can see why this game is a lot of people's favorite Final Fantasy. However, knowing that before playing it warped my expectations, and probably made my overall experience worse. I still love the game, but I went in with the intent of seeing everything the game had to offer, because I knew so many people loved it, and I wanted to understand why. In trying to 100% complete the game, I definitely understood, but the experience was hindered compared to if I had just gone at my own pace and played my way.

But let's start with the general stuff. This game is the peak culmination of everything the NES and SNES era Final Fantasy games stood for. I'm of the opinion that apart from FFII, every game from I-VII improved on the previous one, which is pretty rare for a long running series like this. VI had the epic, grandiose story like I, II, and IV, the named, complex, and tragic characters of IV and V, the extreme customizability and flexibility of characters in battle of III and V, and the beutiful soundtrack to rival even future games like VII. The ensemble cast is fun, with a few main characters that get most of the development, like Terra, Locke, and Celes, and then a bunch of very one-note characters to just fill out the gameplay variety. I definitely prefer the more tight-knit cast of VII, but the main trio in this one were all great, Celes especially is such an interesting character.

The grand twist that happens in the midway point of the game is easily the highlight here. Stepping out into the overworld and hearing the new world map music gave me chills the first time I heard it. The game transitions from its themes of magic vs. science and rising up against a strong empirical force to something far more somber and meloncholy, like finding hope in the midst of despair and recognizing reasons to continue living in awful times. It hit really hard, especially with the current state of the world, thirty years after the game came out. Finding hope, humor, and value in the people around you was a very powerful message, as cheesy as it is.

Gameplay-wise, the game becomes an open world adventure in the second half, which was revolutionary at the time. With so many options for places to go and quests to complete, I was definitely overwhelmed, and had a guide I was following in order to make sure I didn't miss anything. While I am glad I got to see everything the game had to offer, I regret not doing it in my own way and at my own pace - that is the fun of Final Fantasy games, and I skipped over it because I knew the game's legacy and didn't want to miss out. This definitely is going to influence how I play the rest of the FF games, and probably other games in the future. I want to go into FFVIII and IX without caring about seeing every bit of missable content, and just playing at my own pace, activily going against my perfectionist nature in order to get more enjoyment out of them. Sorry to get on my soapbox here and talk about my experience rather than the game itself, but is that not why you're reading my review specifically? There's a million other reviews on FFVI you could seek out if you want a more objective view.

Either way, despite some of the annoyances, like missing ONE treasure chest in a non-backtrackable area, hunting for hours in the Veldt for a specific rage for Gau, or rolling for Joker's Death with Setzer's slots, I did enjoy my time with this game. It may not be my favorite FF game, but I went in wanting to understand why it is many people's favorite, and I do believe I accomplished that. And, now that I'm finally done with the pixel era, I'm so excited to finally play the newer games in the series, with bigger and riskier leaps.

[noydacoy]

10. VVVVVV

Rating: 7/10

Played on: itch.io

VVVVVV comes from the early age of indie games that I saw from afar as a kid that I told myself I wanted to experience eventually. It's in the same vein as Cave Story and Super Meat Boy to me, both games I also want to play eventually. Well, now is the time! This game takes the simple premise of one button platforming and creates a whole Metroidvania out of it. Except, there are no items for progression, just 20 optional secrets scattered around the map and fun platforming challenges. Instead of jumping, you just flip gravity, and despite the simple concept, each area puts a fun new twist on it. Disappearing platforms, lines across the screen that flip you automatically, screen wrapping, etc. The game is hard, but fair, for the most part, with only a few spots where I felt cheated by offscreen surprises. Overall, its a fun, quick 2 hour romp, and I enjoyed it!

[noydacoy]

9. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Rating: 9/10

Played on: PS5

Let me make one thing clear before I continue. I like this game! There are many flaws and gripes I have with it, I don't think it's game of the year, decade, all time, etc. I'll probably spend a lot of this review explaining reasons I didn't like the game as much, but the experience overall was enjoyable and I think it is quite a grand accomplishment for this new team of indie developers.

To show that I liked it, let's talk about the good parts. Great parts, even. This game is incredibly fun to play. While it definitely took some getting used to, I really like the way that the turn based combat plays out. The Mario RPG esque action commands for stronger attacks and dodges and parries were very satisfying to get right, even if it took a while to understand the patterns. The flexability from the lumina and pictos systems were vast, and really let you do whatever you want with each character. Additionally, each character had so many different options for skills, combos, and synergies with the rest of the cast. Every time I got a new party member, I was entralled by their new moveset, and tried to find as many fun combinations of moves and party members as possible.

The aesthetics of the game are also incredible. The visual fidelity is impressive, and, argueably more important, the environments were varied and beautiful. So many games with realistic graphics fall into the trap of being filled with muddy brown and gray environments that all look the same, but this game had so many interesting, memorable, and colorful locations the whole way through. The fact that each of the major dungeons and locations are all strewn about a modern take on an old Final Fantasy world map made everything feel so much more connected. I got lost in the worlds so many times, due to the lack of minimap and being very... directionally challenged, but I perferred that to looking at just a corner of the screen with waypoints and quest markers. It helped me really take in the beautiful scenery and feel connected to the world.

Now, I think the sound design needs an entire seperate paragraph. All of the characters had fantastic voice actors, and made the world feel full of stakes and the characters feel emotional. The sound effects were punchy and satisfying, and were helpful cues for timing the dodges and parries. And then of course, there's the star of the show, the soundtrack. If I were to describe it in a word, it would be surprising. Nearly every single song would start in one way, and evolve throughout the battle or exploration phase and become something that felt cohesive, yet completely different. There are so many different inspirations and genres here, sometimes all smooshed into just one track. The orchestral pieces were emotional, the jazzy Gestral songs were full of fun and whimsy, the many different battle themes all got me hyped to hit the parry timings right, and the environmental themes sucked me into the world. If I hadn't played some of the best rhythm games of all time already this year (UNBEATABLE and Rhythm Doctor, looking at you), this would be a strong contender for OST of the year for me.

You may have noticed that I haven't talked much about the story. That's because I have some very... mixed feelings on it. First of all, I'm a big fan of character driven narratives. It's why some of my favorite JRPGs are the Final Fantasy and Persona games. This game has about 2, maybe 3 strong characters with 3-dimensional identities and personalities. Most of your party is full of one-note characters that barely get any development or backstory throughout the game, and this is especially noticable for the female characters. Lune and Sciel are both so sidelined for the entire main plot, with backstories and side plots delegated to optional quests and cutscenes. They just feel like fodder to fill up the party so this could be a character based RPG. Their movesets are fun, and I think their backstories are at least slightly interesting, but they just feel like they're not the main focus for the entire story.

Maelle is easily my favorite character, with just how much she is developed, and how flawed she is. Many of the themes of her story center around grief and loss, and the ways that she deals with that loss is imperfect and flawed. A lot of her decisions hurt more than help, which make her story feel even more tragic. All that being said, there's a lot of dancing around that central theme of grief, without quite getting into the nitty gritty of it. Without spoiling, I was left with a lot more questions than answers about the world, and felt that the rules weren't quite defined enough. I understand wanting a bit of ambiguity in the story and world, but I was more confused than satisfied during most of the ending, and I didn't feel like the characters explored the themes of grieving and death in the best way. I did like the ending, and thought it was fairly well executed, but there were a lot of questions that I still have about the game, and may have to do some wiki diving to fully understand.

One other aspect that really irked me happened right at the end of the first act. I won't spoil exactly what happens, just describe my problems in vague terms. Basically, there is an opportunity to develop the three main female leads that is squandered for the chance to introduce and develop another male character. It forced the story to move faster than it needed to, cut off a lot of time for some more character development and theme exploration, and felt... pretty sexist honestly? Maybe that's just me exaggerating, but with the lack of female character development and agency throughout the rest of the game, it felt pretty on the nose.

Maybe my opinions will change with time, more knowledge of the story and characters, and some evolutions of my own thoughts, but right now, this game sits pretty firmly in the same tier as Metaphor: ReFantazio for me. Gameplay and vibes were fantastic, but there are a lot of things I'd change about the story and characters in order for this to be a fantastic game. No game is perfect, but I do think this one is a major accomplishment.

[noydacoy]

8. Fire Emblem

Rating: 8/10

Played on: Switch 2

(Yes, I know it's subtitled The Blazing Blade, and yes, I know it's actually the 7th game in the series but the first one localized overseas, just wanted to stay consitent with the title on the console I played it on.)

The curse is finally broken. I have finished a Fire Emblem game! This series has always been fascinating to me, ever since I played Brawl as a kid and didn't know where the heck these blue haired swordsmen game from. Since then, I've tried Awakening, Three Houses, and this game, but always stopped between halfway and 75% of the way through. I don't know if it was boredom or just a loss of interest, but it happened consistently everytime I tried to play one of these games (except the Warriors spinoff, I put so many hours in that one).

After dropping it in 2023, I finally had a renewed interest in this GBA classic, and booted it back up this month. I then proceeded to play it and only it until I finished it, because it FINALLY got it's hooks in me. While I struggle to get into medieval fantasy adventure stories because they tend to just be proper noun fests, the characters here were strong enough to keep me interested. I love the relationship between the three protagonists, the twists that occur in the latter half of the game are well executed, and the main villain is comically evil while having a surprisingly sympathetic origin story.

The supporting cast was also great. I won't lie, I made liberal use of the rewind feature on the Switch emulator to ensure none of my units died (and I only messed up and had to restart an entire chapter a few times). But that was because I wanted them to stay alive so I could learn more about them and continue using them. Unfortunately, unlike the more modern entries, the support conversation system feels very sidelined here. I only managed to get about 3 of them throughout my entire playthrough, as I didn't really know how to trigger them. They're some of my favorite parts of modern Fire Emblem, and I barely got to experience it here, which is definitely a bit of a bummer.

That being said, I much prefer the style of this game compared to modern Fire Emblem. The pixel art is immaculate, the attack and crit animations are some of the best animations in video game history, and the soundtrack is full of bangers. Everytime I recruited someone new, I had to bop along to the iconic "Together, We Ride" theme for a while before continuing.

Despite some bumps along the way, I really enjoyed this game, and will definitely be giving Awakening and Three Houses another go soon. I'm also very interested in Binding Blade now, since this one was a prequel to that and I still don't know anything about Roy! How has it still not gotten an English translation (officially)!

[noydacoy]

7. Life is Strange: Before the Storm Remasted

Rating: 8/10

Played on: PS5

Prequels are so hard to get right. I mean, the inherent premise of writing about what happened before the interesting stuff in the original material occurs already places a massive challenge ahead of you. Plus, you don't want to tarnish the reputation of the original, or retcon a bunch of stuff that happens. All that being said, I think Before the Storm is a surprisingly good effort to make a sequel for the incredibly emotional and powerful Life is Strange.

Everything this game does feels like a natural extension to the world of Life is Strange. Chloe and Rachel's relationship doesn't feel forced, and it feels properly built up through the events of the story, you get to see the beginning of Chloe's character arc, and it doesn't feel unsatisfying to leave it halfway through, because the next game picks up essentially right afterwards.

Gameplay is inherently less interesting due to Chloe not having Max's rewind powers, but I'm glad that they didn't try to introduce some gimmick to make up for that and retcon the fact that Chloe actually has magic rewind powers too but just for this game or something stupid like that. It also feels fitting, since this is a prequel, and all the events of the first game are already set in stone. No undoing allowed. All that being said though, the choices still were effective, powerful, and emotional - just not as much as the first game. Despite knowing what happens by the end of these prequel events, I still managed to almost tear up a few times, especially near the end. And MAN, that bonus episode was brutal.

Overall, I think this game is as good as it could have been for what it is. Is it necessary? No, but it doesn't ruin the first game at all, just enhances the world a bit more. Is it as good as the first game? Also no, but it really didn't have to be. I respect it for what it is. And, it let me see Chloe be somehow even gayer than she was in the first one, so that's a plus.