234 | Gaming Year in Review 2020

[straightforwardly]

I just realized that I probably won't have time to post tomorrow (not unless work lets me out early like they did on Christmas Eve, which, would be nice! but I'm not going to depend on it), so I decided I'll post my end-of-the-year wrap-up posts now.

First up, my gaming year in review!

This year, my gaming list was a bit more difficult than usual to compile due to the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice—there were a lot of games I played only a little bit of before setting aside. Ultimately, I decided that I’d only put games in my “Other Games Played, Not Yet Beat” list if I’d actually gotten to the point where I logged them into backloggery as well.

(I also didn’t include games that I played two-player on with my brother, but, then, I never do.)

Games I Beat in 2020
Tangledeep (Steam)
Heart of the Woods (Steam)
Tangledeep: Legend of Shara DLC (Steam)
missed messages. (Steam)

Highway Blossoms (itch.io)
Prince of Cats (itch.io)
Spring Falls (itch.io)
Mon-cuties For All (itch.io)
The Lost Art of Innkeeping (itch.io)
Corinne Cross's Dead & Breakfast (itch.io)

Astrologaster (itch.io)
Tales From Windy Meadow (itch.io)
Marie’s Room (itch.io)
Inverness Nights (itchio)
The Witches' Tea Party (itchio)
Retrace (itchio)

GRIS (Steam)
Fire Emblem Fates - Conquest (3DS)
Fire Emblem Fates - Revelation (3DS)

BAKED:MAGIC (itchio)
Lenna’s Inception (itchio)
That Which Binds Us (itchio)

Our Life: Beginnings & Always (Steam)
The Rose of Segunda (Steam)

All Games (Beat) = 24
Visual Novels = 9, unless I miscounted

Other Games Played, Not Yet Beat
Tales of Berseria
Mages of Mystralia
World’s Dawn
Pokémon Conquest
Pyre

A game released this year (2020): Our Life: Beginnings & Always! And possibly others, but that’s the only one I know for certain off of the top of my head.
A game you can finish in a day: Most of them, honestly! On the top of my head, I think the shortest was BAKED:MAGIC, a visual novel which I 100% completed within less than an hour. (That being said, I don’t recommend it.)
A game you've been meaning to play: Both GRIS and Fire Emblem Fates fit into this category!
A game chosen for you by a loved one: None. My poor brother got his hopes up re: Phantasy Star II, but then I ran into technical difficulties, and once those were solved, the mood had passed. Next year, maybe!
A game you've previously abandoned: Abandoned isn’t quite the right word for it, as I always meant to get back to it, but I started Fire Emblem Fates - Conquest last year, wandered away partway through, and didn’t get back to it until nearly a full year later.
A game that intimidates you: If we’re looking at the ones I actually beat, then none, honestly? The most difficult one mechanics-wise was Tangledeep, but even then I was never intimidated. Now, if we’re talking about games played overall… then definitely, definitely Pyre. I switched it to easy mode and promptly went “...is there maybe an easier than easy mode? ;_;” (I know you can progress even when you lose battles, but… I don’t want to fail my party, sob. This is why I stalled out on despite, despite loving the characters, atmosphere, and story so much.)
A game you've already solved at least once: Also none, strangely!
A game with an unusual control scheme: Well, Pyre has some fairly unique gameplay. And the spell-crafting aspect of Mages of Mystralia was also different—I really should get back to that one at some point, if only to discover whether my theories about the shifty talking spellbook are accurate.
A game you should have played when it was first released: There’s not anything that I really regret not playing earlier, but I can’t help but note that I seem to have a tendency to play Fire Emblem games just as the fandom is packing up to move on to the next fandom-popular one in the series.
A game released before 1990: None this year, I think?
A game you’d owned for a long time but had never played: It’s not one of the ones I beat, but Pokémon Conquest. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that I dreamed of.
A game that has been the subject of controversy: Nothing that I’m particularly aware of? Unless crying over the wasted potential that is Fire Emblem Fates’ concept + characters counts as a controversy.
An award-winning game: I don’t keep up with gaming awards, but if GRIS hasn’t won something, I’ll eat my hat. And also rage at the unfairness of the universe, because that’s arguably the most perfect game I’ve played this year. A stunning argument in favor of video games being art.

Comments

[batman]

I think the whole Western fandom is in agreement that Fire Emblem Fates had such potential only to squander it in the most pointless and annoying of ways. There was such promise in having to choose between your blood family and your adopted family, and Conquest basically turning you into a monster was not what I wanted from that.

[straightforwardly]

It really is such a shame! I was so excited about these games when they were first announced, and particularly Conquest—I'm very here for characters viewing their adoptive familes as their family, and the moral complexity of Conquest's set-up sounded really promising, but instead we got... whatever that plot was??? To this day, I still don't understand what made Ryoma go "ah, yes, this is clearly a Good Idea that I'm willing to die for" at the end.

But I do adore both sets of royal siblings & especially the Nohr royal family, so I am still grateful for the game(s) giving me at least that much, even as I'm silently screaming at the utter waste that is everything else.

[batman]

I really liked the royal siblings, and in particular the Nohr ones as well, though I have a fondness for Takumi because his reactions to what Corrin had done were pretty reasonable all things considered. (Though really, I just wanted him and Leo to kiss. Is that too much to ask for?) I mean, I get that they refined the game so that Three Houses was a much better game for it and not just becaues the characters had feet, but to follow up Awakening with babyrealms and whatever the heck was going on in Conquest or Revelations was such a waste.

[straightforwardly]

Leo and Takumi absolutely should have been able to kiss! Their interactions were my favorites from the Nohr-Hoshido sibling counterpart pairs. And yeah, I also really liked Takumi in particular! I just have a soft spot for his personality type, and, like you, I did like that he got to be a counterpoint to his siblings' open acceptance of Corrin. Corrin was raised in enemy territory! His reaction made sense!

I'll admit that I straight-up ignored the babyrealms part of the game. Admittedly, "next generations" are a hard sell for me in general—I like how Awakening did it, but that's more of an exception than a rule for me—but even setting that aside, it was just such a stupid concept, and I was happier pretending that they didn't exist at all.