2019 ended up being a pretty grueling year for me personally. It can probably be best described as a year of a lot of ups and downs–and I know that is typically a fairly cliche thing to say, but well it feels especially true now that it’s over. This was a year where I accomplished a great many feats but all of them felt as if they came at a great cost. It was a year where I regressed on some things and accomplished some others. I had a lot of fun in 2019 but I was also deeply stressed out for a large chunk of it and going in and out of doctor’s offices because of said stress. Ultimately it was the quintessential Twenty-First century experience!
I didn’t play too many games this year, especially if you count only games from 2019 in this list. Because of that I am gonna change some things up from the past couple of years when I wrote my lists. This time I am going to create some new sections. First we will have the typical ‘favorite games of 2019’, next there will be a sort-of runner-up category of ‘games that aren’t from 2019 but I played them in 2019 so I will include them anyways’, and finally we have the miscellaneous category of ‘games from 2019 I wish I played but didn’t’. For the most part I will really focus on just the 2019 game section, so don’t worry, but I really wanted to talk about some more games in general too. So without further ado here are my favorite games of 2019.
Section I: Favorite Games of 2019
AI THE SOMNIUM FILES
AI was easily a game I had on my radar all year long since I was a major Uchikoshi fan to begin with (999 being one of my all time favorites) and his hotly anticipated follow up did not disappoint. It was uniquely an Uchikoshi experience right down to its incredible ARG advertisement campaign leading up to the launch of the game that really made AI feel special even before I got a chance to play it. Following Tesa’s online streaming career in real life months before the game hit store shelves, and weaving through tons of fan theories about said videos was something else.
Playing through the game to find out what it was truly like had me giddy after all those months, and it really delivered on everything I wanted out of it. Great characters, fantastic and hilarious dialogue, and some of the albeit expected, but still executed super well, story beats that Uchikoshi is famous for. My time as Kaname Date, a special agent with the elite police force known as ABIS, was great. I went on dates with high school girls, argued with 12 year olds, shook down otakus, leered at waitresses, stole women’s underwear, and even got to do a little bit of actual police work on the side!
I kid of course, but Uchikoshi’s usual sense of comedy is clearly on display all throughout the story, and anyone familiar with his previous games can expect a sort of more serious Punch-Line out of AI. I honestly think it’s best described as Uchikoshi combining the serious elements from his previous works like 999 with the more light hearted characters of his later works like Punch-Line. Overall it’s a great cleanser for fans after the rather grim Zero Time Dilemma. The puzzle elements, while not as nearly strong as the Zero Escape trilogy, still feel improved from Punch-Line’s, and the framing device of diving into people’s dreams in order to solve said puzzles, works really well.
AI: The Somnium Files was one solidly written game on every front, both from the original writing staff and the localization staff; who all went above and beyond in presenting an incredibly well executed script and an absolutely gut busting hilarious English audio option. AI is probably one of the best English dubs I heard in the last decade for a video game. A feat even more impressive considering almost every line in this 30 hour game is voiced. Then there’s the fact that AI is probably one of the best looking Uchikoshi games in easily a decade. Gone are the super stiff and awkward 3D models from Zero Time Dilemma, and the strange, awkward, and low budget feeling weird mix of old anime footage and 3D models of Punch-Line. AI is what giving Uchikoshi an actual budget must feel like and it feels great.
Out of the games I did play this year I would easily feel comfortable calling this one my favorite.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose
The original 2016 PS Vita release of The Caligula Effect always interested me a lot. On the surface of the game is yet another “Persona Clone” trying to cash in on the success of a popular franchise but when you looked under the hood more you could see it came from some pretty high pedigree–with Tadashi Satomi the writer of the original trilogy of Persona games returning to pen this title and a whole slew of talented musicians (that are far too many to list) doing the soundtrack. Caligula brought its A-game with those two departments … and that was pretty much all it brought. The game was marred with terrible reviews; some even going as far as to say the battle system was nigh unplayable. Add to it a lukewarm localization from Atlus and a digital only release, and yeah, I was curious but stayed my distance.
2019 brought with it a shiny new remake for the PS4 that improved on almost everything wrong with the original on Vita–completely remade from the ground up in Unreal Engine 4 with a brand new battle system–and along for the ride is the added bonuses of even more great new music, new party members, and an all new story route. So how does it fair? A lot better!
Overdose is still far from a perfect game however, but I found it was probably the best “Persona Clone” I have played so far. It has a lot of flaws, with some bad dungeon designs, and some overly obtuse game play mechanics that are not properly explained in game; not to mention some fairly bad difficulty balancing as it went on–but it is definitely far more playable than the original Vita version and dare I even say, still a good game. I had a lot of fun with it at least despite its flaws. Of course the main stars of the game are still the music and the amazing story and that’s where Caligula Effect shines the most. In a lot of ways it felt far more satisfying than Persona 5 did to me.
You’ll hafta excuse this little tangent here, but among my friends P5 is infamously a game I was very disappointed with. I know I will get a lot of flack for this. Hell I hate myself for even being like this considering how much everyone else seems to really like it. It isn’t like I enjoy being that guy coming in to ruin everyone’s fun–but I just can’t help it. Persona 5 is a fantastic game on the mechanical level–with some of the best dungeon designs the series has ever seen, a battle system that feels pretty much perfected by this point, and a whole lot of content and things to see and play (sometimes bordering on too much). All of these Caligula Effect severely lacks as well. These are easily elements where this game greatly needed to be polished. But P5 was also a super safe game that at the end of the day did not feel as poignant or meaningful as all the other past entries in the series.
What did P5 even have to say? “Politicians are bad”? Yeah, no shit. “Lying is bad except when we do it then it’s good”? Ah, excuse me. “Brainwashing people into believing what we think is right makes us just and any repercussions or arguments against it will all be disregarded after the first boss fight”? Yeah, this game is a mess thematically, I’m sorry. (Not to mention the best plot twists were stolen wholesale straight from Persona 2, sorry not sorry lol). This is where the Calgiua Effect really came through–to an almost therapeutic level. Where P5 stumbled terribly thematically, Caligula Effect soars. This was the story I wanted P5 to have. This was the emotional weight I wanted to see in that game. This was the “I have a message I want to scream out and I don’t care how controversial, dirty, or uncomfortable it makes other people feel I still need to say it!” that the Persona series used to be.
Anyways I lost focus. To get back on track, I will just say that the Caligula Effect really delivers interesting, poignant takes on the typical “Persona Clone” game premise right down to the fact that this game is a “Persona Clone”. Because of that the characters have to be high schoolers. They are all trapped in this virtual world recreation of high school; are all forced to assume the form of high schoolers despite their real life appearance and ages being different. That right there is the sort of meta commentary on modern Persona you can get from Caligula Effect.
At the end of the day all these characters are deeply flawed individuals, many of them sick and desperately need treatment for their mental health issues. Most of them simply cannot survive in the real world. Attempted suicide, eating disorders, social anxiety disorders, autism, all these mental health issues and more are what the characters deal with in Caligula Effect. The cast may even be better off in their virtual world prison just reliving the same three years of high school over and over again on repeat, never coming to terms or facing their issues. But despite that the aptly named go home club wants out. They choose to face the world, they choose not to run away from reality itself anymore and escape their Matrix prison cells and return back to their flawed lives in the harsh and cold reality.
Collection of Mana
This is a game I never thought would get localized but somehow it actually happened. When Collection of Mana initially released in Japan sometime in 2017 I desperately pleaded for the game to come out in America; sadly it didn’t. Fast forward two more years and at E3 2019 it is dropped right into our laps! That alone is just awesome to see. This is the first physical release of a Mana game in who knows how long! The franchise was so dormant for such a long time just buying this collection and having it on my shelf made me so happy.
But even better than that for the first time ever Square Enix has released Seiken Densetsu 3 and has finally quelled the long debate of whether or not to call it Secret of Mana 2. Thank god! That dumb debate is finally over! Trials of Mana is a localization miracle in of itself and playing it again brings back so many memories of my high school days emulating the game (and many, many other SNES titles). It’s good to finally own it in some capacity. Haven’t seen such a miracle localization since Atlus released Shin Megami Tensei I back in 2014.
Daedalus: Awakening of Golden Jazz
It’s no secret that me and my ol’ boy Jake Hunter (that’s Jinguji Saburo for those of you not in the know) go way back. The Jake Hunter series is one of my recent obsessions over the last decade. The games span all the way back to the original Famicom Disk system in Japan and have changed publishers and even developers multiple times yet have still stuck around all these years and have been fairly consistently good too. It is one of the oldest and longest running visual novel series, and anybody who is a fan of hardboiled detective noir fiction will feel right at home with it.
In this newest entry you play as a much younger Jinguji trying to discover the truth behind his grandfather’s apparent murder. The investigation takes you all the way to New York City and eventually involves an old conspiracy centered on “Daedalus”. This is a prequel which makes it probably one of the easiest entry points into the series we’ve seen get an official English release. With the American setting and no need to know any past continuity (this is an origin story after all), you probably couldn’t ask for a better start to get into the series than this.
Everything about Daedalus is beautiful. The real life photography used as backgrounds–all shot on location in New York City gives the game such a unique atmosphere. Added with the color pencil like tone of the character art, and neo-noir esque story and this game almost feels like a Hotel Dusk 3 at times. The story is simply fantastic and the ending twist had me screaming in excitement. It all comes together so well and leads into such a legendary and beloved series. I really can’t recommend it enough to fans of detective games.
So you guys ever play a game until you become absolutely sick of it? Like you just played it religiously nonstop for months. Like before you knew it you had something like 200 hours clocked in already? Guess what game that was for me. Go ahead. Guess!
Fire Emblem Three Houses came in like a wrecking crew and destroyed my gaming slump this summer. Once I got my hands on it I never let go until I beat all four routes in the game. I was a fiend. I was 100% addicted on this game. Three Houses started out good enough for me. I still felt the previous entry Echoes was a more interesting game but the more I played Three Houses the more it became one of my favorite games in the series. It’s so fresh, it’s so fun, and it’s so full of best boys! Yes, the memes alone that Three Houses brought with it are all worth an award of their own, and are an essential part of the FE3H experience, don’t at me.
The other most essential part of the experience is the military academy setting. Having three different houses to choose from, four different alliances to forge,students to recruit, paths to discover, it all makes the game perfect for sharing with others. In my friend group I played Black Eagles on my first run while my other buddies played Blue Lions and Golden Deer. Sharing the experience of each house and having our own rivalry over our fictional video game alliances was all so much fun!
This was a solid entry in the Fire Emblem series and the first time said series has really faced HD, and it succeeded so well! I feel like a decade from now we will all be looking back at Three Houses as an incredibly important and great part of the Fire Emblem series.
Legend of the Tetrarchs
I like Kemco RPGs. I like them a lot. They are a sorta morbid and strange hobby of mine. Most of them however are fairly pretty basic, and some are downright bad–but there’s usually one universal truth between any of their releases: they are all kinda cheap looking. Well not anymore!
Legend of Tetrarchs is the first Kemco RPG I played where I truly felt it looks on par with its obvious SNES inspiration. The sprite work is gorgeous, enemies are huge and fully animated, and the character designs are all fantastic. If you put this on a SNES cart and told me it came out in 1994 I would 100% believe you. This is all thanks to the fact that Kemco as a publisher has really turned around over the years and has greatly slowed their output down from a new game every month to a new game when it’s ready. They are allowing the developers that work under them more time to release much higher quality work and are targeting home video game consoles and PCs much more heavily than their original mobile phone focus and it really is paying off.
Tetrarchs is a great game, and a wonderful sign of things to come from Kemco. I really enjoyed this one a lot, and feel like it’s the best Kemco game to recommend for anyone looking to get into this company’s line of retro inspired RPGs.
Never in my life would I think liking a pokémon game would be a controversial opinion to have but I really liked Shield. Is it a perfect game? No, of course not. Does it feel rushed? You bet it does. But is it bad? Hell no. Even with its flaws this is still a pokémon game and damn fun one at that, don’t let anyone else try to convince you otherwise.
I thoroughly enjoyed Sword & Shield. I actually loved all the new pokémon in the game like Falinks and Grimmsnarl, and the soccer themed arenas for gym battles—something I thought seemed kinda dumb—turned out to be a total blast. There’s just something so exciting and fun seeing two pokémon dynamaxing in a huge arena and duking it out in front of a roaring crowd. Heck I even liked the characters which really is saying something since the story regrettably doesn’t give them much to work with. I’ll be darned, I started the game laughing at Leon and Hop but by the end I fell in love with both of these boys quite a lot. Just a darn shame there wasn’t much story this time around after I enjoyed the plot in Sun & Moon so much.
Overall Sword & Shield was a flawed entry, but still a good showing for the first real major HD output of Pokémon (or actually does Let’s Go count instead?). Now if only the game was a bit longer though, I would have liked it even more.
Note: I really only just started playing this game earlier last week but I was having such fun with it that it felt wrong to skip out on mentioning.
The newest SaGa game is here, and it’s both incredibly gorgeous and incredibly ugly. I dunno how to feel about that still. Never before have I seen a game with such a wonderful artstyle and such terrible character models. The world is so pretty, the story book art is so wonderful, and the general aesthetic is so pleasing to look at. But then the ugly character models that look like they popped out of 2003 rear their ugly heads, and the hideous mobile phone looking UI makes it all the worst. I guess I am just ambivalent to how the game looks.
But moving beyond that into much more important things, this game rocks! The classic SaGa game play style is back and you essentially wander around the world making your own story as you go along stringing together all sorts of crazy feats that you do in the neighboring lands. This is one funky and weird game and yet is it so addicting. The combat is fast paced, and tons of fun, and the patented go anywhere and do what you wanna do aspect of SaGa still makes for a great chill game play session. Scarlet Grace also feels like it might be one of the better entry points to the SaGa series as well for new players who may have been interested.
I honestly did not think I would get to play a new SaGa on a home console again so I am honestly happy with just that too.
Yu-No: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World
The original Yu-No is a legendary eroge (let’s just say that means sexy visual novel, okay) from 1996 that was deeply influential to tons of creative minds in the Japanese PC gaming market and would go on to serve as the major inspiration to the 2009 phenomenon Steins;Gate. This remake, ironically made by 5pb/Mages of Steins;Gate fame is an incredibly loyal recreation of the original for better or worse, and it’s because of that I sadly find it hard to recommend for everyone.
There are tons of elements that did not age well since the game originally came out more than 20 years ago. Some of this is not Yu-No’s fault per se since it was a major inspiration for tons of later games in the visual novel genre which in turn gives it a bit of a “Lord of the Rings dilemma” whereas Yu-No can come off as cliche to modern audiences at times but it is in fact the very thing that invented those cliches and did them all first. I think any huge fan of Steins;Gate that may be somewhat interested in Yu-No because of its obvious influence on Steins;Gate will feel this the most.
For anyone that can look past that though you are in for a treat. Especially the second half of the game that is still not matched to this day out of the genre and a real mind screw through and through. That entire part of the game was insane and holds up so remarkably well. Also it should go without saying (but I’ll say it anyways) but the soundtrack is absolutely the stuff of video games legends and easily stands toe-to-toe with some of the best from Falcom during that same era of PC gaming.
Yu-No: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World
The original Yu-No is a legendary eroge (let’s just say that means sexy visual novel, okay) from 1996 that was deeply influential to tons of creative minds in the Japanese PC gaming market and would go on to serve as the major inspiration to the 2009 phenomenon Steins;Gate. This remake, ironically made by 5pb/Mages of Steins;Gate fame is an incredibly loyal recreation of the original for better or worse, and it’s because of that I sadly find it hard to recommend for everyone.
There are tons of elements that did not age well since the game originally came out more than 20 years ago. Some of this is not Yu-No’s fault per se since it was a major inspiration for tons of later games in the visual novel genre which in turn gives it a bit of a “Lord of the Rings dilemma” whereas Yu-No can come off as cliche to modern audiences at times but it is in fact the very thing that invented those cliches and did them all first. I think any huge fan of Steins;Gate that may be somewhat interested in Yu-No because of its obvious influence on Steins;Gate will feel this the most.
For anyone that can look past that though you are in for a treat. Especially the second half of the game that is still not matched to this day out of the genre and a real mind screw through and through. That entire part of the game was insane and holds up so remarkably well. Also it should go without saying (but I’ll say it anyways) but the soundtrack is absolutely the stuff of video games legends and easily stands toe-to-toe with some of the best from Falcom during that same era of PC gaming.
Section II: Favorite Games I Played in 2019 But Are in Fact From a Different Year
428: Shibuya Scramble (2018)
What can I say about 428 that I haven’t already said in my two incredibly long blog posts I wrote earlier this year? I really recommend checking those out if you enjoy unique games, text heavy games, or visual novels.
But I guess I cannot sing enough praises about 428, can I? So let me just say it is a fantastic game that you won’t soon be forgetting if you play it. The story is so interesting and well written, the localization painstakingly fantastic, and the music and presentation so uniquely Japanese. This is a game that you won’t see come out every day, it’s a game that really sticks with you after you play it and you won’t soon forget it either. It’s a perfect game, and there’s nothing more I can say.
Punch Line (2018)
Uchikoshi’s funny game. It came to a shock of some Zero Escape trilogy fans but Punch Line is sort of a return to form to his earlier more romance esque kind of games like Ever17 and Memories Off. Except even zanier and crazy because if the protagonist Yuta Iridatsu sees panties twice in a row the entire world explodes! What starts as this strange Ghost Trick like experience soon turns into an even more bizarre superhero story about saving the world from terrorists and creating the strongest hero team ever assembled.
Punch Line is bizarre, and just so hard to even put into words without spoiling all the best parts of it. It’s so funny, but at the same time deals with serious issues you would not expect, I am willing to bet a lot of the later LBTQ+ character moments will take quite a few people by surprise in particular. Uchkoshi admitted in an interview that although Punch Line came out first, he actually wrote it after the third Zero Escape game, Zero Time Dilemma, and did it as a way to cheer himself up from the depressing and dark tone of that game. It definitely shows, but I really loved the game all the more for it.
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (2017)
A unique mix on the visual novel genre that is largely character driven dialogue told through a huge cast of episodic characters you talk to in a bar. It all comes together as a grander story by stringing together everything you learn about your setting, Glitch City, and the protagonist Jill’s character growth through talking to the wide variety of patrons who come into the bar.
This game is just fantastic and shows what a small but talented team can do. It’s hilarious, really relaxing, and has a great dystopian sci-fi feel while never being too overbearing about it and actually remains fairly down-to-earth in spite of the turmoil going on in the streets; no doubt an influence mirroring the developer’s experience in their native country of Venezuela.
Section III: Games I wished I played in 2019
2019 was a year full of a lot of games, and I barely got to touch a fraction of them. Here’s a short bonus little section of games that really caught my eye but I never played. Maybe some will make it to the blog in full in the future?
Astral Chain - This looks like a fantastic action game! Love the design of the world and seems to bring back a lot of the classic pick up and play but tough to master 90’s Japanese style to me.
Daemon X Machnia - Holy crap a big super mecha game on Switch! Sign me up! Sadly this dropped while I was stuck obsessing over Fire Emblem and I missed it then and things kept piling up and stopping me from getting it later.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 - Hot damn, the first Dragon Quest Builders was one of my favorite games the year it came out and this is shaping up to be even better than that! Really gotta get around to it when I can.
Grandia HD Collection - I bought this the day it came out. Still haven’t played it! I really need to find the time to indulge in it. God Grandia I and Grandia II are some of my favorite JRPGs and are both some of the finest games from their respective generations. I can’t wait to sit down with them again on my Switch.
Heroland - Brownie Brown is back (okay the name is different now but still) and their new game seems to have all the charm of their old works like Mother 3 and Magical Vacation. I really need to find some time and money for this.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening - This game is a bit of a weird place on this list. I do own it, and I played it for 2 hours but got very frustrated with its somewhat archaic retro game design and decided to put it back on the shelf for a bit. I wasn’t in the best of moods when I played it, and I think the depression really got in the way of my enjoyment of it. I definitely wanna restart the entire game fresh from the beginning when I’m in a better mood.
Luigi’s Mansion 3 - I loved the original Gamecube game but have since then never touched any of the games. I really wanna go back and even replay the original (maybe on 3DS and while I’m at it play the sequel on there too) as well as this game.
New Super Lucky’s Tail - This game caught my eye a lot when it was shown at Microsoft’s E3 a few years back, and now this enhanced port/remake for Switch caught my eye even more! It looks so fun and adorable! I really wanna give this a spin if I can.
Ragging Loop - The first of Kemco’s many visual novels (yes that Kemco from earlier in this list, you heard right) to get a localization and it was a huge deal in Japan too. This was by far their most popular of their visual novels they released digitally over there and it sounds fantastic! I really have to get it when I have the time and money.
Resident Evil 2: Remake - I love the original, heck it was the original on the N64 that got me into Resident Evil in the first place! This remake has been 17 years in the making as far as fans are concerned and it delivers on everything from what I’ve seen. Gotta get around to this bad boy at some point.
Spirit Hunter: NG - The second entry in the Spirit Hunter series and a darn good looking game at that. The first entry Death Mark I still have unplayed on my PS Vita and it haunts me. I need to play both of these some time.
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair - I didn’t play too much of the first Yooka-Laylee game but what I did play I enjoyed. This looks like a huge improvement on it as well and well I am also a gigantic DKC fan to boot so it’s music to my ears.
