First, lemme just give a shoutout to last year's winner, Robot Arena 2. Just as I was finally tiring of it, I found another mod that completely overhauls the game, introduces a bunch of real-world robot opponents, and basically just breathes new life back into a well-worn game. I still mess around with this game almost daily, if only for a few minutes. Definitely deserved that win last year if I'm still playing the dang thing.
Let's get started.
8: Garfield and His Nine Lives
System: Game Boy Advance
Developer: Lucky Jump Games
Publisher: The Game Factory
Genre: 2D Platformer
Release Date: May 5, 2006
Date Beaten: February 28
#Ruined: Garfield is a Chatzy favorite for laughing at!
As part of a Chatzy promise to "garf a field", I played one of Garfield's many, many video game outings, specifically this late GBA title from a no-name studio. Obviously it's not a particularly good game, but it's not awful either - just a pretty standard platformer with a Garfield theme. It bears no connection to the 1980s television special of the same name.
When I said standard, I meant standard - this is as typical as a platformer gets, really. Run around, jump on platforms, kick or avoid enemies, collect stuff, and either get to the goal or collect a certain item (or collect a certain item and THEN get to the goal). You get nine levels, three boss fights and a rather decent soundtrack.
7: Altered Beast
System: Sega Genesis
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Beat-Em-Up
Release Date: August 14, 1989
Date Beaten: February 27
#Ruined: Pretty sure I've used the grave line somewhere...
Accidental Segaplot research, what's up?! Every year I try to include at least one "albatross" game that I played as a kid but never finished. This year, Altered Beast was that game. It's a primitive autoscrolling beat-em-up that would be utterly forgotten if it wasn't a piece of video game history - this game was one of the launch titles for the Sega Genesis, and it was included with the console for the first few years of its' life before Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 took over later. Aside from that, the only other things people remember are the silly animal transformation sequences and the poor-quality voice acting. WISE FWOM YOU GWAVE.
The point of the game is to fight your way through a medieval menagerie of horrors in search of blue two-headed hellhounds (based on the Orthrus from Greek mythology... and now you know the deal with Orthros, the two-headed dog boss from Bravely Default). These enemies, when killed, spawn powerups. Collect three of those and you transform into an ALTERED BEAST and can fight the boss, the imposingly-named Neff. If you take too long to collect the orbs, though, Neff will fight you while you are still in human form, and then you're screwed because the powers of Beast Form are essential to winning the fights. Do this five times and that's ballgame.
Altered Beast is clunky, somewhat cheap, and relies on memorization of when enemies spawn and what they do for success. Fortunately, the game is extremely brief and can be finished in half an hour or less, so it doesn't wear out its' welcome too much.
6: Super Metroid
System: Super Nintendo
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Metroidvania
Release Date: March 19, 1994
Date Beaten: February 3
#Ruined: Metroidplot 2014 got the meat of its' inspiration here.
I don't think I've ever encountered a game I wanted to quit on more times than Super Metroid that I still managed to finish. This game is hailed as a classic, and it DOES feature nice graphics, cool ambience, and a great story that aside from some text in the intro is able to tell an interesting tale solely through sprites. I picked up Super Metroid largely because it was the only 2D Metroid I had not yet beaten aside from the ancient original game - I beat Zero Mission over a decade ago, Fusion followed several years later, and Metroid II was taken care of a few years back. I thought I'd saved the best for last, but unfortunately Super Metroid just is not my kind of game. I can acknowledge it was made well, but it wasn't very fun for me to play most of the time. The lack of direction led to a lot of wandering and squinting at a GameFAQs map, and I got stuck frequently. The boss battle with Ridley near the end was the final of the many roadblocks that almost ended my run before the credits, and he was so immensely frustrating I had to give myself extra health and missile packs and STILL almost lost to him.
I certainly do want Nintendo to make more proper Metroid games considering the inexcusable way they've treated the series since the Prime subseries ended, but they aren't so much for me to play as they are for Metroid's fans to get what they've been trying to shove money at Nintendo for for the last seven years.
5: Pokemon Trading Card Game 2
System: Game Boy Color
Developer: Hudson
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: RPG
Release Date: March 28, 2001 (Japan only)
Date Beaten: February 23
#Ruined: I lifted one of this game's opponents for an RP cameo when Viola challenged the Elite Four.
One of my missions this year was to finally tackle two video games I've wanted to play for years but, due to various levels of incompetence in Japan, never got released here. Both games are very text heavy, but fortunately fans came to the rescue and released fan translations for both of them. Abandoned by their creators, these games can now finally be played by the people who appreciate them.
The second and final game in the TCG series (Pokemon Trading Card Game Online is nothing like these two Game Boy titles) pits you against Team Great Rocket (no relation to the actual Team Rocket) and their cards from the new (at the time) Team Rocket expansion of the card game. This game features a ton of content compared to the already-decently-sized first game, packing in that game's entire world plus a second, bigger world! Some of the returning buildings have gotten nice makeovers, you can collect and use multiple coins instead of being stuck with the Pikachu coin from the first game (though that one is still here), and it's just all around a very impressive game that contains a ton of cards to collect and play with. I also have a give a special shout-out to the ludicrous storyline and virtually everyone you meet being obsessed with Pokemon cards, culminating in the game's villain going on some top-notch rants about how other people were using Pokemon cards wrong and only he knows what's best for them, resulting in allusions to the age-old trading card debate of Players Vs Collectors.
As usual, there's a strong luck element in the card game, and you can have an agonizingly hard duel with an opponent and lose, then challenge them again and win in thirty seconds. Your deck's quality will certainly help, but even a really good deck will lose to bad luck.
4: Pokemon White 2
System: DS
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: RPG
Release Date: June 23, 2012
Date Beaten: January 1, 2017
#Ruined: Hmmmm... You'll see. Maybe.
I personally divide the Pokemon main series up into three "eras". You've got the Game Boy era, with RBY and GSC. Then, when Gen 3 rebooted everything and blocked Pokemon transfer, it began a new era. This era includes the third, fourth, and fifth generations. The big leap to 3D kicked off the third and current era that so far includes Gen 6 and Gen 7. Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 were the final entries in that second era, and they're a very worthy sendoff.
If you come to B2W2 expecting them to be like Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum, you're in for a surprise. It's true that B2W2 aren't 100% new Pokemon games - they're set in Unova, the same region as the original Black and White, and the vast majority of towns, routes, and dungeons from those games are present here as well. However, a tremendous amount has been added. There are over half a dozen towns, several new gym leaders, a new champion, a completely new plot, a slew of Pokemon from older gens that were either postgame or unavailable in BW (including legendaries), and a lot more. Victory Road is completely remodeled. Every gym has its' own remix of the gym theme and is completely different from BW. The playable characters are different, Kyurem factors into the story instead of being an afterthought, there's a new rival, a new minigame where your Pokemon become actors in movies, and the Pokemon World Tournament, an insane spin on the Battle Tower that features oodles of cameos from across all four previous generations. You even get to finally battle some of the many characters from BW that went unfought, such as the Shadow Triad.
Overall, these are extremely impressive games with a lot to do. Their very brief online life is a crying shame, and features like Join Avenue and White Forest are difficult or impossible to get any use from without any Internet access. Naturally, they're also missing some of the modern conveniences of the 3DS games, but I still highly recommend B2W2 for hardcore Pokemon fans, especially if you're subscribed to Pokemon Bank, because you can transfer all the cool Pokemon you catch here into your Gen 6 and Gen 7 games.
3: Ace Attorney Investigations 2 and Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney: Spirit Of Justice
Systems: DS and 3DS
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom
Genre: Visual Novel/Adventure
Release Dates: February 3, 2011 (Japan only) and September 8, 2016
Dates Beaten: January 22 and November 16
#Ruined: Give it time.
I won't talk a whole lot about these two story-wise since, as mystery novels, that's pretty much a spoiler minefield, but suffice it to say I quite enjoyed them both and they live up to the standards set by the rest of the series for quality mystery fun with twists, turns, thrills, chills, and spills. I've ranked them together because I couldn't decide which one I liked more. I think I slightly preferred AAI2's plot, but SOJ's technological advances are also welcome.
Ace Attorney Investigations 2 follows Miles Edgeworth as he takes on a series of murder mysteries, many of which have very high stakes. Spirit of Justice, meanwhile, sends Phoenix Wright to an exotic country with bizarre and cruel traditions and a cult-like devotion to their dangerously bigoted religion. Both games feature interesting mechanics new to the series. AAI2 uses Logic Chess, which is basically a timed dialogue tree where you need to ask the right questions in the right order to get a blabbermouth to accidentally tell you something vital. SOJ introduces the ability to see the deceased's final minute or so of life before they died, and you deduce what happened by examining their five senses and comparing them to testimony.
I need to make a special effort to point out the extremely high quality of Spirit of Justice's graphics compared to previous installments. While Dual Destinies took the series smoothly into 3D, it still acted mostly like a 2D game. Spirit of Justice, however, takes full advantage of the third dimension without losing the little quirks that make an Ace Attorney game feel like an Ace Attorney game. Things like close-ups, pans, and rotations make the game world feel more alive, and some beautifully smooth animations that would require a Skullgirls level of fanatical devotion in 2D are easily pulled off here. SOJ is easily the best-looking game in the series, and the production values really help take it to the next level.
2: Pokemon Moon
System: 3DS
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: RPG
Release Date: November 18, 2016
Date Beaten: December 2
#Ruined: UH, UH, TEAM SKULL
Oh, Game Freak. So wonderful, yet so frustrating. What an enigma you are! I've got a lot of praise and a lot of criticism for Moon. Lemme break it up.
First the good. Pokemon Moon features EASILY the best storyline in the history of the series. It's a gripping tale with some shockingly dark moments, breaking new ground in the Pokemon verse by crossing lines we as Pokemon fans have been conditioned to think would always be there. I'm not going into detail for the sake of those in our community who haven't finished yet, but rest assured: if you wanted the Pokemon universe to get a story worthy of the rich potential the world offers, you won't be disappointed. The last two gens also tried to weave good plots, but faltered in different ways. Gen 5 suffered from overdosing on characters, many of whom got very few lines and a large chunk of which were never battled or did anything meaningful. Gen 6 was less plot-heavy, and though it had its' moments it suffered from failing to give strong personalities to many characters, quite a few of which ended up extremely forgettable as a result (If you remember any of the named characters that were part of Team Flare besides Lysandre and Xerosic, I'm impressed).
I also want to praise the effort made to introduce unique new Pokemon. Some of the ideas fall a little flat (oh boy, another pure Normal mammal on Route 1), there are lots of interesting concepts and rare or new type combinations to be found, and although only about 70 new Pokemon were introduced, a serious chunk of them are non-evolvers or only evolve once, so as to squeeze the most out of the limited number. I also must praise the Alola Forms - a way to add "new" Pokemon without bloating up the Pokedex too much, these unique takes on old Kanto Pokemon are pretty interesting, even if the character designers were no doubt snickering to themselves with some of the ideas they were putting in (Persian, Dugtrio, and Golem are the obvious Pokemon to point to here).
The PC has been simplified. "Deposit" and "Withdraw" are FINALLY gone, which was long overdue since "Move" accomplished both - now you just press A and bam, there are your boxes. The old "battle box" feature has been smoothed out a bit better, which is nice. There's more postgame content than in XY. The graphical bump, which I was admittedly wary of at first because I loved the cute little SD models, was actually very welcome, as it helps the world feel more real and really helped the cutscenes avoid dissonance (either by using the silly SD models for serious scenes, or for being jarring by swapping to detailed models and then jumping back to the SD ones. Gen 6 did both methods at different times). The new SOS Battle mechanic is an interesting new way to acquire hidden abilities, Pokemon with high IVs, and even shinies, and you can easily disable it by giving a status effect to the wild Pokemon if constant SOS calls are interrupting your catch attempts.
There are some other pleasant changes. Catching a Pokemon with a full party now lets you see the caught Pokemon's summary, and you're given the option of adding it to your party right away without having to run back to the PC. The Pokedex is more fun to fill out as it FINALLY shows you the entry for events that aren't catching a Pokemon (evolving, trading, and gift Pokemon). Event and giveaway Pokemon, such as Magearna, have your OT instead of someone else's, meaning events can FINALLY be nicknamed without hacking - a blessing for those of us who like to name our Pokemon. When not battling, you can heal Pokemon of bad status for free using Pokemon Refresh. Some weak Pokemon that needed a boost in their stats, like Beartic and Masquerain, got buffs and are now a bit more capable. The long-worthless attack Leech Life got a huge buff and was put on a TM, making it better than X-Scissor. And one of the best changes of all - HMs and all of the annoying, frustrating limits associated with them are GONE! Instead, you can summon special "Ride Pokemon" to help you move around in the overworld. The Ride Pokemon have also replaced the bicycle and the Item Finder, keeping your bag a little less cluttered in the process.
Unfortunately, while Game Freak was doing great work on the surface, they made a lot of annoying mistakes that you'll mostly only find once you start really digging into the game. The most glaring is Festival Plaza, an unintuitive, slow-as-molasses sideshow that has replaced the smooth and easy to use PSS from Gen 6. It features quite a lot of unique content, special items, and bonus features, but nearly all of them are luck-based or unnecessarily limited in one way or another. For example, you can get a paint shop to color white clothes you buy in other stores... but each shop can only paint items in one color, certain colors are exclusive to either Sun or Moon, and you need to give the store owner a specific kind of berry to produce the dye to color your clothes. Just like that, a feature that could have been fun is locked away by barrier after barrier, forcing players to jump through hoops for something that should have been a simple purchase in an in-game clothing store.
As usual, a bunch of features from the last gen are gone. Super Training has been removed, replaced by Hyper Training - but unlike the extremely accessible ST, HT is only available if you pay an NPC in Bottle Caps, which are incredibly rare items despite being literally garbage you should get free every time you buy a Fresh Water from a vending machine. On top of that, Hyper Training (which raises a Pokemon's base stats, allowing them to mimic having 31 IVs in every stat) is only available to Pokemon that are level 100, for some inane reason... and the return of Gen 5's experience weighting plus the lack of any opponents with levels higher than 65 or so means training Pokemon to level 100 is a tall order indeed. Why this couldn't simply be available to any level Pokemon, and why it needed to be locked behind the equivalent of Bitcoins, is just another example of Game Freak being idiot savants. Also gone are Pokemon-Amie's minigames (the caring part is still there, and the feature is now called "Pokemon Refresh" since French jokes don't work in Alola). Mega Evolving is still around, but not a single new Mega has been added - instead, half of them were taken away, leaving Pokemon like Beedrill who need their Megas to be usable in battle high and dry until the stones inevitably get added into the next Gen 7 game (probably SINNOH CONFIRMED).
Perhaps the most obvious bad thing to say about Sun and Moon, though, is the very poor variety in Pokemon. Despite Gen 6 having fewer Pokemon to work with than Gen 7, the enormous Kalos Pokedex, 450 strong, is 150% the size of Alola's 300 Pokemon. Worse, the Pokedex feels smaller than that because the same Pokemon appear again and again and again - Yungoos/Gumshoos and Rattata/Raticate absolutely infest the region, sucking away variety for the sake of making a joke about invasive species in Hawaii. Many of the coolest new Pokemon are extremely rare - one of the most unique and cool ideas the series has ever had is only found with 10 percent odds if you fish in ONE spot in the entire game, and only if the water in said spot is bubbling - otherwise it's a one percent chance (oh, and speaking of - they still haven't fixed fishing sometimes pointlessly not working, which does nothing but waste the player's time). These "ten percent if bubbling" spots are all over the game, hiding tons of Pokemon people have to dig for through dozens of Magikarp encounters. The lack of variety in Alola after they'd gotten it right in Kalos is just so incredibly foolish, and a huge waste of the massive Pokemon roster.
Now, I know I had a lot of bad things to say, but in all honesty the good FAR outweighs the bad. Many of my problems are pretty minor, and only the lack of species variety and the poor online system can really be said to do real damage to the game's quality. I criticize because I care. I want Pokemon to be the perfect experience it comes so close to being. I'm rooting for it! This is my favorite series of all time, after all! But as long as they keep screwing up on simple issues, especially when those issues were solved a generation ago and are now back for no reason, I can't gush about the series without adding a few grumbles on the end.
I think, in summary, the best way I can phrase all this would be that if you only play Pokemon to get to the end and see the credits? Then you're going to have a great time. It's only the completionists like me that really start seeing the issues, because for casual players who aren't trying to get everything and catch 'em all, a lot of this gen's problems don't apply. They just see the good graphics, fun characters, and awesome story. That said, even with the problems, this is still a fantastic game even if you're gunning for 100% completion - but I just can't give my game of the year award to a game that made missteps this blockheaded.
So for number one, then, how about a sequel that actually addressed the flaws of the series and took pains to get rid of those flaws?
1: Bravely Second
System: 3DS
Developer: Silicon Studio
Publisher: Square Enix
Genre: RPG
Release Date: April 15, 2016
Date Beaten: May 6
#Ruined: Edea! Yew! Praline! Tiz! Rifa!
Like the Ace Attornies and even Pokemon Sun and Moon, Bravely Second is a game reliant on its' storyline, so I will refrain from talking too much about that. Even though I'm pretty sure everyone who cares about Bravely has either already beaten both games or been spoiled on everything, I just prefer to avoid talking about game plots in these reviews. Just in case, y'know.
But there's still plenty to praise without that! Bravely Second continues the tradition Bravely Default started of taking the traditional JRPG and modernizing it without losing what makes the genre great. Lovely quality-of-life features like a toggle-able encounter rate and change-any-time difficulty make these games so much more accessible than old RPGs on the NES and SNES. Lots of characters, locations, enemies, and assets are reused from the first game, but while it surely helped save time and money in development it doesn't feel all that cheap, not least because BD players know and care about these places and characters and will probably be happy to see them again! The voice acting is as fantastic as ever, lending real personality to even random NPCs, and the soundtrack is once more magnificent, with many of the first game's tracks returning alongside a host of very fine new ones. The new characters are great fun (I especially liked Magnolia, although she's oddly less spunky in the actual game than she was in the preview video seen at the end of Bravely Default) and fit in perfectly with the universe Silicon Studio has created.
What puts BS over the top for me is the lengths it went to to correct mistakes the first game made. Most crucially, the oft-maligned repetitiveness the first game settled into towards the end is gone. While there are quests available to redo later in the game, this is actually welcome because you had to pick between two job classes earlier, and now you get your shot at the other one. Speaking of the sidequests, everyone's favorite chef Edea takes center stage in them as two asterisk holders squabble over something or another, and while some of them are dark, tense confrontations where it feels like both sides are right and each could lose something important if not chosen, other quests are a riot where the stakes are laughably low, reaching its' nadir when one character doesn't even know what they're supporting, let alone why.
Overall, it's got great graphics, great voice acting, great music, a great plot, improved production values, less repetition, and didn't throw away any worthwhile features. Aside from the gentle pushing of players to spend real money on SP Drinks to cheat their way past tough opponents and feeling a little uncomfortable at times with how much the fourth wall gets played with, Bravely Second does virtually nothing wrong.
Fantastic game. When's Bravely Third?
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GB's Game of the Year 2013: Pokemon Y (3DS)
GB's Game of the Year 2014: Bravely Default (3DS)
GB's Game of the Year 2015: Robot Arena 2 (PC)
GB's Game of the Year 2016: Bravely Second (3DS)
And we're back on the 3DS RPG train! I love you dearly, Pokemon Moon, but you made simple and obvious mistakes while Bravely Second fixed almost everything wrong with the first entry while avoiding further snafus. Ultimately I'll play Moon more, but I can't give it top honors after seeing it make such elementary-school-level mistakes, even if it DID do so many other things right. In recognition of working hard to improve and delivering a lovely adventure, Bravely Second snags the gold.
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