Comments on: 2021 Games Roundup

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2026 09:32:32 +0000

By: Ninja Foodstuff

Ninja Foodstuff — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 15:39:56 +0000

As someone who did in fact bounce off stardew valley multiple times (despite buying it on multiple platforms) I’m curious what you found the tipping point to be?

Also, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy has what I consider to be a decent implementation of the active reload mechanic.

By: Zekiel

Zekiel — Sun, 09 Jan 2022 21:38:27 +0000

Hear hear!

By: Ninja Foodstuff

Ninja Foodstuff — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 16:42:43 +0000

Totally agree with this!

By: Zachs

Zachs — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 07:49:25 +0000

It’s always a treat to read your thoughts, even (especially?) on things I wouldn’t have given a second look. You have fans! Write as much or as little as you feel like, but it’ll always be appreciated.

By: Alende

Alende — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 19:18:39 +0000

Happy New year. I understand the part about you liking to write and the obstacles, but pls write some more in 2022.

This was a goos list.

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 18:10:01 +0000

Monster Train might not have the skill ceiling as high as StS but I like its approach to the formula. It expects you to win your first, maybe second game. Griftlands, another good game, is similar. In StS you can’t even attempt to “win” (kill the heart) before you’ve unlocked all the characters and won act 3 as all of them. Only after you’ve achieved that you can try to win the game. And then you get ascension levels which only gradually rise the difficulty. This is a crazy difficulty curve. I think a lot of people were hurt by StS. I know I’ve been, I still didn’t kill the heart with the 4th character. Monster Train might not have that feeling of pride and accomplishment but it’s much more approachable without sacrificing complexity.

By: Andrew Currall

Andrew Currall — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 09:00:15 +0000

Love this post. My thoughts on the few that I’ve also played:

* Slipways is indeed very good. It’s a bit of a brain-burner; it’s more abstract than it looks (although not *that* abstract); it’s definitely not for everyone, and I personally can only take it relatively small doses, but I do keep coming back.
* Monster train is amazing. Probably my best game of 2021 (like you, I came to it a bit late). I’ve sunk well over 100 hours into it, and still not quite 100%ed it (including expansion), but I agree it doesn’t have quite as high a skill-ceiling as Slay the Spire.
* Stardew Valley is good. Personally I’m pretty sure I’m finished with it now, but I got a lot of fun out of it.
* I never played Ziggurat 2, but I did play the first game. I enjoyed it a lot, but had to give up because of a game-breaking bug- the game sometimes froze mid-run, and since it deletes saves when loaded, this terminates your run- you can’t just reload the game. Very disappointing, and I wouldn’t buy Ziggurat 2 because of this.
* Loop Hero is dreadful, and I would rank it a lot lower. Really don’t understand the buzz its generated.
* Inscryption is… interesting. The first act is pretty good, actually- if the whole game were as good, I’d be quite happy to recommend it. Basically no disagreement with what you’ve written.

By: Scandicus

Scandicus — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 20:59:55 +0000

As a serial Yakuza game player (finished 0 through 5 in 2021 and just started on 6), I’d suggest skipping the remasters of 3 (aged poorly, un-fun combat) and 4 (thoroughly incomprehensible plot) but giving 5 a chance if you generally like the series (particularly if you can get it on Game Pass). There are multiple player characters with distinct fighting styles, and while it too reuses many minigames, each character at least gets a large distinct “side story” minigame (on approximately the scale of Cabaret Club Czar) with new mechanics.

The story’s not high art, but it’s mostly coherent and actually tries to develop its characters as people a bit instead of taking a basic “Kiryu-saves-the-day” plot and festooning it with complex conspiracies and plot twists.

One thing that helped me make sense of the franchise was an idea I think I saw on the Yakuza subreddit, which is that Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio only really began to lighten up and parody itself around Y5 (which preceded 0 in publishing order). They managed to get a little bit of it back into the Kiwami titles, but in some ways I think Y5 is a closer relative to Y0 than either Kiwami is, which makes sense in view of the order in which the non-remakes were originally made.

Thanks for all the reviews–I’ve really enjoyed browsing the archives here over the last few months.

By: Drinking with Skeletons

Drinking with Skeletons — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 02:09:52 +0000

Going to once again say that I like FFX-2 significantly more than FFX. It’s a much more fun JRPG and kind of ahead of its time mechanically.

I will also stump for FFXII The Zodiac Age as an excellent and often misunderstood entry.

And as far as remasters go, FFX HD almost ruins the experience by dumping unavoidable super bosses into the endgame.