#ended up working and playing metaphor refantazio for most of it 8^)

[toanw]

Masami (Cure Rainy), Sarina (Cure Amarelo), and Kanon (Cure Asterism) dressed up for a Harvest-themed Red Carpet \o/

[bmaxwell]

Game of the Year 2024: The Top 10 Two 5's?

This was a weird year for me and video games. I played a lot of them, as usual. This year saw a ton of big JRPG releases, which are very much My Jam. I had a hard time really engaging with the hobby though. Some of it was due to logistical issues but most of it was due to getting back into board games.

I had trouble splitting focus between hobbies, I always have. Whatever I am into, I am INTO it hook, line, and sinker. That's not to say I didn't enjoy videogames this year, I did. But when it came time to make a top 10, I had trouble putting together a list. Usually I end up with 15-20 that I have to pare down to 10; this year I had trouble getting to 10. Worse is that no game really blew me away.**

So, rather than go through the motions, I am going to do Top 5 Board Games and Top 5 Videogames for 2025. The videogames will be 2024 releases, while the board games will be games that were new to me in 2024 (I've been away from the hobby for 8 years).

5b. Ark Nova

Ark Nova is my posterchild for the modern midweight Eurogame. It has a lot going on and, when I read the rules, it didn't stick at all. When I set it up and played through a few turns it was all pretty straight-forward.

While there are a lot of options, none are especially complicated. Ark Nova is a table hog and the first couple of games run a little bit long, but it became a favorite 2-player game for my wife and I.

Players are competing to build the best zoo, each with their own personal board to populate with enclosures and animals. Some will require specific conditions (enclosure must be next to water or rocks, or you must have a certain level of scientific expertise, or you must be partnered with a zoo from Africa or Australia, etc). Animals increase your income and the appeal of your zoo. You can also contribute to conservation projects - juggling conservation with your zoo operations is key to victory.

It's a plate-spinning game where you need to do A and B in order to do C, but you actually need to do Z before you can do B, and so on (complimentary). It also features a wombat.

5v. Metaphor: ReFantazio

I have a lot of feelings about Metaphor ReFantazio. It's stylish as hell, it gives you a party of highly customizable, interesting characters, and the premise feels fresh and weird - the king is dead and the public is going to vote in his replacement so it's a sort of popularity contest.

It has a few stumbling blocks - some built into the game, and some are my own fault. First, the game's weather system was a thorn in my side - admittedly because I didn't engage with it as much as I should have. When the weather is bad, combat is harder; okay, no big deal. It turns out I underestimated this element - the game's combat system includes resistances and weaknesses, and when you hit an enemy's weakness you get an extra action. This is crucial to doing well in combat and will be instantly familiar to any Persona fan.

This aspect of combat goes away in bad weather. I went into a challenging dungeon in bad weather and struggled with it for hours before deciding that it wasn't going to work. I had to reload a save from some 5 hours prior (because of the way the game's expeditions and calendar work). This took the wind out of my sails for a while.

There's a lot I like about the story, though it was asking me to accept one too many weird surprise moments late in the game. And I usually love Shoji Meguro's music, but the soundtrack to this game was a massive letdown for me (I'm alone in this, I know). Lots of chanting and weird vocalizing had me reaching for the mute button rather than buying the OST. I love the voice acting, combat system, and writing (the character back stories are excellent - Heismay in particular).

Ultimately, it's a game I want to love more than I do, and it left me with a bit of melancholy.

4b. Azul

I don't think of myself as a fan of abstract games, but I often enjoy them when I find myself playing one. Azul has become a favorite for my wife and I. It plays up to 4 players, but it's far and away best with 2.

Players take turns drafting tiles to fill out their personal board, but it's very much NOT a multiplayer solitaire game. Keeping an eye on your opponent's board, considering what they need and how to stick them with unwanted tiles is every bit as important as focusing on your own board.

It's quick to play, full of interesting choices, and opportunities to stick your opponent and gloat (or curse them when they do the same to you). Plus, it has nice chunky tiles you can clank around in a bag.

4v. Bloomtown: A Different Story

Honestly Bloomtown is a microcosm of my 2024. It sounds great on paper, and I'm impressed with it and enjoyed my time with it, but it never really hooked me.

It's an RPG about a young brother and sister who are staying with a distant relative in a small town for the summer.*** There are shenanigans and hijinks and, eventually, supernatural peril. The only real criticism I can aim at it is that it very clearly takes its inspiration from the Persona series - maybe a little too shamelessly sometimes. The menus, music, and battle system feel uncomfortably close to Persona. But imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and I really didn't have a problem with it.

It's a game I admired more than enjoyed, and it's squarely a Me Problem.

3b. Harmonies

A recurring theme in this best of 2024 list: the videogames that should have landed for me didn't, and board games that shouldn't have resonated did.

Harmonies is a fairly light, short multiplayer-solitaire game with a strong spatial element. That description doesn't fill me with optimism. Players have their own private player board where they are placing different terrain types in an attempt to attract different types of animals. It's all pretty abstract in execution, but the visuals and theme are a big part of the hook for me.

A big part of the appeal with boardgames is the tactile experience of handling the cards and pieces, sitting at a table with friends in meatspace. Harmonies is the posterchild for this - the artwork on the animal cards is gorgeous, the wooden terrain pieces are slightly oblong and it feels great to bang them around in the bag, hoping to fish out that mountain or water you need.

It engages my brain but doesn't overstay its welcome. It became a comfort game around the house in 2024 and it's still going.

3v. Astro Bot

Astro Bot Rescue Mission is the best VR game I've ever played and one of my favorite games, period. Astro's Playroom was a lovely pack-in title that showed off the PlayStation 5 in a fun way. Astro Bot is a fucking corporate mascot who wants to celebrate the history of the Sony PlayStation™ brand with you, and it should be the most cynical, hollow thing ever made.

It somehow works though. It all has a fluffy "aww shucks" charm that pierces my jaded, pessimistic defenses. Some of it is cheating a bit - it's playing on the history of PlayStation, a train I've been chugging along with for 30 years now. I have lots of nostalgia, and this is laser targeted at me. It's not just the big hits, lots of little niche weird titles (the kind that Sony has largely ignored as The Industry has gotten bigger and more risk averse) are here too. Sure, I expect to see Lara Croft and Kratos, but it's nice to see games like Mister Mosquito and Gravity Rush represented too.

It's all delivered by way of a tight 3D platformer full of curiosities and wonders. It introduces new mechanisms then sets them aside before they wear out their welcome. It all feels good to play, the world is a shiny, joyous sandbox that tucks its more challenging bits off into margins where the sicko can crash their ships onto the rocks of timed challenges filled with tricky platforming. It just does everything right. Astro Bot is on par with Mario in terms of quality for me, and that's saying something.

2b. The Crew: Deep Sea Mission

Modern boardgames are intimidating. I've researched, purchased, taught, and played them for years and I still get overwhelmed learning them. I can only imagine how an outsider must feel looking at a board full of wood and cardboard and cards and numbers, like a science project threw up on the dining room table. Will I be able to learn this? Will I have fun? Will I feel stupid? I'm feeling stupid already! Oh god.

Most people (in my part of the world anyway) have some history with traditional card games like Rummy or Poker. And (specifically in my area) trick-taking games like Euchre. They'll see a stack of cards on the table and I'll ask if they know Euchre - if they say yes, then they're already familiar with the concept of leading, following suit, taking a trick, and how a trump suit works. Great, we're already 80% of the way there. Additionally, it's a cooperative game so no one is going to be stranded on their own.

The most important bit - it's really fun! Each player gets their own goal(s) at the beginning of the hand, and the team collectively wins if all goals are achieved. Everyone is invested regardless of whether their own personal goal is simple, and everyone has hidden information so there's no danger of an Alpha Gamer taking over and directing traffic. The difficulty is easy to scale, the hands are quick, and the game has provided plenty of moments where - after a moment's pause - the last card is played and the table erupts in cheers or groans. All in a small, inexpensive box.

Can't ask for better than that.

2v. Balatro

In a weird way, Balatro being this high on the list is indicative of how bad a year 2024 was for me with videogames. Not that Balatro is bad - it's great - but I wasn't captivated by it the way a lot of people seem to be. I played a LOT of it (it was my second screen PC game for most of the year). It was a convenient habit for me. It's so easy to pick up and play for 20 minutes or 4 hours.

I love and miss Poker, but Balatro isn't Poker. Not really. It's an audacious game about making the best Poker hand you can. "Best" is relative here though, because you can break the rules of Poker in terms of the value of a given type of hand (you can boost the value of a Full House, Two Pair, and so on) and by way of dozens of Jokers which aren't a part of the deck, but modify your game in plenty of ways big and small. One says that Spades & Clubs are interchangeable as are Hearts & Diamonds; if you get that, you'll want to pump up the value of a Flush hand for that run. Watch out for an encounter that nullifies your Hearts suit though, as it will nullify your Diamonds as well.

One of the great joys of Balatro (and roguelikes in general) is that it lets you feel absolutely unstoppable before somehow stopping you. It's a game about making broken combinations of things. You're going to break the system. Balatro knows this and welcomes it.

1b. Oath

I enjoy bite-sized games. They're easy to fit into my life. Battle Line, Innovation, Race for the Galaxy. I need one other person and ~45 minutes. You can play easily several games, building up the knowledge and experience that is so important to enjoying tabletop gaming.

On the other end of that spectrum are games like Oath. Oath is a long, rules-heavy mess of an experience. It wasn't until my 3rd or 4th game that I started getting the hang of the systems (and Oath's games are generally not short). The most skilled player will not always win. It's a game that only thrives when played by the same group several times, and when those players give themselves over to the experience.

That description should be enough for me to steer clear of Oath. I picked it up based mostly on glowing praise from Shut Up & Sit Down and, for some reason, this whole messy box works for me. It's easily my favorite game of 2024 and one of the best ever.

It inspired most of the (few) posts I put up last year. I don't get to fully enjoy many of my favorite games because they require a dedicated group to play somewhat regularly. If I could have a regular monthly group dedicated to a single game, it would be Oath.

1v. Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Well.

Ichiban Kasuga is a wonderful himbo with a heart of gold, and this game feels like (among other things) a long goodbye for Kiryu Kazuma. The game has all the quirk and heart that the series has always had, and the combat system feels tighter than the last time around.

I believe Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is the best 2024 game I played last year that isn't named Persona 3: Reload. I still haven't finished it. Part of this was due to logistics. I've touted the quality of the Xbox Play Anywhere system for years now; this allows you to play supported games on an Xbox console then pick up that same save on PC and vice versa. This has always worked beautifully, and the freedom to play at my PC or on the couch is wonderful.

Infinite Wealth, however, would crash when I played it on console. Not with any consistent trigger, but always within a couple of hours. I'd lose my progress, which is incredibly deflating - particularly for long, sprawling games. That would put me off the game awhile, and I'd hope that an update or a reinstall would fix it, but it never did.

That creates a layer of yuck around a game and, combined with my general inability to fully engage with the hobby last year, means I never finished it and will probably start over one day. As I write this, I wonder if the issue has been fixed and I feel the familiar mix of hope and dread that comes with it. **Persona 3: Reload doesn't count since I already played it and loved it ~15 years ago. ***Related: I watched Gravity Falls this year and it is terrific.

[three--rings]

Well, I've finally finished Metaphor: Refantazio.

133 hours. I told my husband I was going into the final final fight (I think) and then it was another hour until I got to the actual final fight. It's been two and half hours total until the actual end of the game.

So okay any major spoilers I'll put behind a cut. First, yeah this is a great game and I recommend it, especially if you're a Persona fan, but also if you just like large fantasy rpgs.

It's turn-based combat, but that doesn't make it easy, as it's quite a bit more difficult than any of the Persona games. And there are some very unique mechanics that make it very tactical. If you like really metagaming and minmaxing, I feel like you'll like this very much.

Me, honestly it was a little too challenging. Like, I played most of it on Normal difficulty and was fine, but then there were some insane difficulty spikes that eventually had me turn down to Easy for the rest (and I did not sail through.) It's a game that is difficult to tackle without grinding, and I'm pretty grind-resistant.

The story is really excellent with timely progressive themes about the role of art in making a better world and what a better world looks like. I found the plot compelling, except for the pause at the 80% mark where everything stops for a month. And I'm happy with the reveals, which were neither too surprising or too predictable.

Character wise, overall I think I enjoy some Persona characters more. Except for Heismay, who is one of the best Atlus characters ever. He's really a different tier from the others. Mostly in that I wish the others had a little more exploration or depth like he does.

So all of that was good, I overall really liked the game. But my main complaint is that DAMN it feels long. Like, okay all Atlus games are long (especially cause I've played them all in their extended versions.) But this one FELT long. In a way that got old about 70% of the way through.

Like, I'd say 80% of the story took me roughly 60% of my playtime. The rest came in the last month of the plot, when I was just working on grinding and leveling up and taking on high level challenges.

Hold on the game is literally still going. Credits were happening and there's still game....This game has like 4 times the endings of LOTR.

Okay that last cutscene exemplifies what i'm saying. I didn't need that last anime cutscene just to repeat a couple more times the themes of the game and show me the same ending I already saw. Like, I fucking get the point okay... damn.

Honestly I don't want more of this game, though I think there will be DLC/extended cut. I want an 80% cut. I want all the story where you visit different cities and then you face the endgame The End.

Copying this from the bottom of all my spoilery game complaining:

Otherwise, a great game. Definitely something to check out if you're disappointed by DA:V or Avowed or whatever other AAA fantasy RPGs have been letting people down this year.

Mechanical spoilers below, no major plot spoilers.

Instead you go to all the cities and then there's the second of 5 fights against the Big Bad Guy, and then there's another month of you running around doing requests and tackling secret dragon temples and grinding just so you can then face the final dungeon before the final bossfight. Which is actually 4 final boss fights in a row. Which, like, again, it's a game that WEARS YOU DOWN. I'm TIRED.

It feels like a game bloated with dlc actually, with a bunch of sidequests and extra content but this is only the base game. And you can theoretically skip them, but then you will be terribly underleveled.

I did the second Louis fight after doing every single quest of any kind up until that point. I hadn't really struggled against any bosses, they were challenging but fine. And he kicked my fucking ass so badly because I was about 8 levels under-leveled. I had no way to get through the fight other than reducing the difficulty. I tried it like six times.

So I did and I put the difficulty back to Normal, but then I got to the first dragon temple and put that shit back on Easy cause F that.

The other major problem I had other than being underleveled was that I couldn't find the Royal Archetypes on the Archetype page. I got like till 15 days before the deadline when I looked it up and after several pages of look for that info, finally someone said where you have to look. I'd unlocked them but didn't know it. So I was behind on that.

Still finished with all Royal Archetypes at 20 and they did make the final fight pretty simple. Without I imagine it would have been a little challenging.

So that's what I mean, you HAVE to do all the extra content if you want to unlock and level the top tier Archetypes and you basically need those to beat the final fight. So nothing is skippable.

So yeah IDK, 130 hours is a lot but I feel it a lot more with this than with P5R or P3R. (I put P4G down for a year at like 80% so I can't compare it.)

Otherwise, a great game. Definitely something to check out if you're disappointed by DA:V or Avowed or whatever other AAA fantasy RPGs have been letting people down this year.