I only finished five games all year, and two of them were disqualified for reasons you'll soon see. However, I beat two other games very late last year - so late that they missed the last writeup - so they are being added to this year's list, bringing me back to five games. Without further ado, here's the games I beat this year and my opinions on them!
Honorable Mentions: Pokemon Emerald and Crystal Systems: Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: RPG
Date Beaten: April 18 and April 22, 2014
Why are they honorable mentions? Because I can't really count them - I technically never beat Pokemon Emerald or Crystal until this year, but I had already beaten the near-identical Ruby, Sapphire, and Gold versions. I generally consider all of those near-identical "versions" to be the same game, so Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald together are all "Pokemon GBA Hoenn" while Gold, Silver, and Crystal are all "Pokemon GBC Johto". Remakes like FireRed and LeafGreen are separate, however, so Omega Ruby will have its time at bat next year.
My Crystal run was a pure nostalgia run, although the ability to speed up play with the emulator made grinding bearable. The highlight of the run was finding a shiny Skarmory and adding it to the team. Later in summer I returned to Crystal and beat Kanto, capping things off with a nice fight against Red.
The Emerald run was... unconventional, thanks to the game being wrung through Pokemon Randomizer. You can get all the details about the upside-down world Ariel was thrust into here.
5: Golden AxeSystem: Sega Genesis
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega
Genre: Beat-em-up
Date Beaten: December 31, 2013
#Ruined: Served as the inspiration for Tyra's name.
I'd always wanted to beat Golden Axe as a kid, but I just wasn't good enough of a player. Fortunately, the magic of emulation saves the day! Golden Axe is a simple beat-em-up with a medieval theme and a basic story. Choose from the barbarian, the amazon, or the dwarf and beat the crap out of the same five guys a couple hundred times. It's not really anything special, but it was a nice nostalgia trip and the end credits are amusing.
4: Avenging SpiritSystem: Game Boy
Developer: CP Brain
Publisher: Jaleco
Genre: 2D Platformer
Date Beaten: August 15, 2014
#Ruined: None
Easily the most obscure offering in the class of 2014, Avenging Spirit was a strange game released early in the life of the Game Boy as a port from arcades. In Avenging Spirit, you play as the ghost of a dead man who goes on a rampage to save his girlfriend from the mob. In the process, you take control of enemy characters and use them as your playable character, which is essential as your ghost form is slow and unable to stay in the physical world for long before growing exhausted. Each character controls differently and has different skills - for instance, you can possess a girl who can run fast and jump high, but her melee attacks are risky and weak, or you can take control of a gangster dude who moves more slowly but wields a gun for ranged attacks. There are around a dozen different enemies to possess, and some are better than others, but the nature of the game means you may be forced to use a sub-optimal character or one you'd never willingly pick sometimes, which is a good thing as it encourages adapting to the levels to fit your current situation.
It's a tough game, and the cute graphics hide a shockingly grim story (even the better of the game's two endings is bleak), but the concept is unique and interesting. The closest parallel I can think of is the N64's Space Station Silicon Valley, but even then they play very differently. This one is worth digging up for fans of retro platformers.
3: Space Invaders Infinity GeneSystem: Android
Developer: Taito
Publisher: Taito
Genre: Shmup
Date Beaten: December 30, 2013
#Ruined: Inspired 2013's minor character, the Mothership.
A crazy shooter that pushes the limits of what can be considered "Space Invaders". Less difficult than the insanity of Space Invaders Extreme but still fully capable of impressive fights, Infinity Gene is a short but fun romp through varied stages, pitting your tiny and ever-changing ship against a wide variety of bizarre wireframe foes. The touch controls are great - the ship shoots automatically so you can focus on dodging.
Other versions of this game include a "Music Mode" that takes a page from Beat Hazard and generates levels based on uploaded MP3s, but the Android version lacks this mode and loses a lot of replay value because of it.
2: La Pucelle Tactics
System: PlayStation 2
Developer: Nippon Ichi
Publisher: Mastiff
Genre: Turn-based Tactics
Date Beaten: October 8, 2014
#Ruined: Samhain and Yattanya originate from here.
Started all the way back in 2011, La Pucelle sat unfinished for years before finally getting beaten a couple months ago. The difficulty stemmed from a late-game sequence that takes away many of your party members for a boss fight - if you haven't been leveling the two you're left with, the battle cannot be won without grinding. The lengthy cutscene before the fight doesn't help. After a couple of grinding sessions, I was finally able to get over the hump and complete the game. I'm very happy that I was able to finally take down this white whale of my backlog.
Anyway, La Pucelle can be seen as a predecessor of sorts to Disgaea - it has many similar concepts and ideas, but they are noticeably cruder in execution - the game feels smaller, and a lot of Disgaea's game mechanics are here but in an unrefined form. You can see the beginnings of the Item World and Geo Effects here, as well as other Disgaea staples like playable enemy classes, a postgame with ludicrously high level requirements, and a fair amount of fanservice.
The main character is Priere, the world's curviest nun, who gets wrapped up in a series of increasingly-serious misadventures culminating in (what else) saving the world. Like Disgaea, the game is full of goofiness to go with the serious business - Priere's first special move is a kick to the balls, and there's no shortage of that Disgaea staple, silly equipment descriptions. La Pucelle is fun but NIS had clearly not perfected the Disgaea formula at this early stage. It's harder to grind, the difficulty is inconsistent, and there's no New Game Plus despite the ludicrously overleveled bonus bosses in several chapters you can't fight later. Another minor example, but one that Disgaea players need to adapt to: in Disgaea, you can move your character either before or after performing an action. In La Pucelle, if you perform an action before moving, you forfeit your move for the turn.
It's not a bad game at all, but not quite what I'd consider Game Of The Year material...
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1: Bravely DefaultSystem: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Square Enix/Silicon Studio
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: RPG
Date Beaten: March 26, 2014
#Ruined: Heavily inspired much of my 2014 megaplot and provided multiple music tracks used both there and elsewhere. Origin of Fiore DeRosa, Edea Lee, and Praline a la Mode. Mammon makes a cameo appearance.
Oh, Bravely Default. You could have been one of my favorite games of all time. But you still won in this small field.
Bravely Default is an epic RPG adventure dozens of hours in length. Although it doesn't make a big stink of it, it's essentially the sequel to Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light, a game I gushed about quite a bit a couple years ago. From the cute and likable main characters (designed by Akihiko Yoshida, my favorite character designer and the guy who gave us Final Fantasy Tactics) to the wide variety of enemy foes, from the expansive, immersive world to the lovely soundtrack, Bravely Default nails the hard-to-quantify "atmosphere" I've talked about in the past that only an elite few games like Skies of Arcadia manage to convey. I love the graphics, the music, the cast, and the gameplay. About 30 hours in, I thought I had a game that could crack my top ten ever, or even top five.
Unfortunately, Bravely Default is not quite a top-tier game thanks to a poor design decision that is difficult to talk about without leaking spoilers. Suffice it to say that after the first four chapters, the game takes a steep dive in enjoyment as it descends into very repetitive content. However, things start picking up again in Chapter 7 and the finale is as good as the first three-fourths of the game was. There are also numerous things you can do to make the repetitive lategame less of a problem, and you can get to the good stuff in an hour or two if you know what you're doing.
Regardless of that late slog, however, Bravely Default remains the best game I've beaten in 2014. The world it creates is immersive and interesting, the presentation is excellent, and a variety of spectacularly smart options and features take a lot of the most boring parts of RPGs and do away with them. Turn off random encounters! Easily get multiple endings! Be clearly informed of points of no return! All that and a pretty cool plot, too. So, top ten? Ehhh, probably not. But top twenty? Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
Bravely Default takes top honors this year! Look out, though, Class of 2015... I got two Pokemon games for Christmas, so the competition is going to be stiffer next time!
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GB's Game of the Year 2013: Pokemon Y (3DS)
GB's Game of the Year 2014: Bravely Default (3DS)
Surprisingly enough, both awards so far have gone to games that actually came out the same year I beat them! Unsurprisingly they are lengthy RPGs in series I enjoy, and then subsequently #ruined by injecting them into ZFRP.
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