Games of December 2022

Apparently this is was the year of being pretty focused on one game at a time and this time up it was Tactics Ogre.

My top five games (by play time) for December were:

1. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - Given how bad I often am at tactics games and how hard I bounced off Tactics Ogre when it came out on PSP, I'm a bit amazed at how much I'm enjoying it now. I'm not necessarily doing super well, but I'm certainly having fun. There's something about the flexibility of the different units and the customization of weapons and skills that makes the game perpetually interesting.
   
   


2. Tunic - My partner and I agreed to play this together. The exploration element and the mystery of the instruction booklet is really cool. As the person with hands on the controller I ended up getting seriously smacked around by the second boss and that kinda dampened my enjoyment. I think the approach to accessibility, adjustability isn't quite right.
   
   


3. Rune Factory 5 - I figured I should check out at least one farm sims in the year of farm sims.  It's no where near as good as Stardew Valley on any criteria you'd choose to name. It has no internal consistency in design, narrative or game play. It's also not interesting, far to into anime tropes (or maybe memes), no balance of challenge, no fun in the farming or crafting. It also has really frustrating slowdown and jank. Disappointing and it sounds like that's indicative of the year of farm sims.
   
   


4. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Replaying has been fun, the little I've done. They tied in a lot of things that you don't see until later. I am a little disappointed that there's not too much to do in a new game+, but there's still enough that I'll finish the second play through at some point soon.
   
   


5. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vrooom.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for December:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

2022 in Games

 One of the benefits of tracking what I play is that I get to make a little post at the end of the year talking about what I played and how my year was in video games. While 2022 was not a great year in a lot of ways, it did have a lot of pretty good video games in it.

Time Spent

I played 33 games for 600 hours in 2022. That's about the same amount of time as last year, but with fewer games. It was a pretty tactics / RPG heavy year, so had quite a few games that took a lot of time and then a few games trailing along at the end.

Overall my top 10 games by time played where:

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - 158 hours
2. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - 74 hours
3. Triangle Strategy - 64 hours
4. Hollow Knight - 49 hours
5. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - 43 hours
6. Ogre Battle 64 - 35 hours
7. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - 28 hours
8. Loop Hero - 27 hours
9. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - 23 hours
10. Eastward - 22 hours

Xenoblade was an absolute joy to look at. Good in a lot of other ways, but Monolithsoft know pretty games.

Finished Games

Last year I started tracking games I finished. The list is pretty short this year, but mostly the games I finished were the ones that took the longest to play.

• Dragon Quest Builders 2
• Triangle Strategy
• Eastward
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Building myself a farmstead.

Favourite Games

I've recorded how I felt about the new games I played this year, but overall my favourites for 2022 were:

• Eastward
• Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
• Ogre Battle 64
• Super Mario Odyssey
• Tactics Ogre: Reborn
• Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Nothing really surprising on there. The one game that *maybe* should be included is Dragon Quest Builders 2, but I'm not sure I loved it so much as got obsessed with it.

If you haven't played Eastward I would suggest you look it up and spend some time with it. I think it's an absolute gem of a game and a wonderful example of a really well designed and built game. Especially if you loved 16-bit era games, there's a lot there for to feel nostalgic about but in a new and well thought through way.

The whole game is beautiful and rundown and messy and sharp all at once.

Things about Games in 2022

My PC broke in late 2021 and I spent all year meaning to get it fixed, (or replaced) but never really got around to it. There are a whole mix of factors into why, but the outcome is that I spent all of my game time on the Switch, which worked out well with a number of big RPGs and some really strong tactics games.

I'm utterly in love with Tactics Ogre: Reborn. I'm not quite sure why that series gets to live in my head so deeply, but I love them and Reborn has been a lot of fun. Sparks of Hope is also really good and just below that "Favourite" threshold, but certainly fun to play. I've grumbled a lot about Triangle Strategy, but it is a really strong take on the Tactics Ogre / Final Fantasy Tactics model. Other than my complains about slowness, I think the other reason Tactics Ogre wins for me is that it gives you so much more flexibility in how you want to take down problems.

2022 was a good, stable year over all (as far as games go). Beyond getting a little taken away by Dragon Quest Builders, I was pretty intentional with what I played and I played a lot of good games. 

Eunie's the boss.

Games of 2022

Considering that I'm not always the best at going out and playing new games, this has been a pretty new year for me. I've played eight new games and while some where maybe a little more up my alley than others, all of them had something to recommend them. They're all Switch games because I really need to get off my butt and do something about my poor old PC.

I've sorted all eight new games into rough categories based on how much I liked them.

The Alright

• Mario Strikers Battle League

  

  With some updates, this might be better than it was when I played it. It's a well put together game, and in multi-player it might be great to play, but playing single player was just boring.

• Rune Factory 5

  

  Given how great Stardew Valley is, the question feels like "can a studio make a farming sim game with that much quality?" Rune Factory 5 is a pretty strong indication that no, they can't. At a very high level there's some fun to be had here, but honestly the low production quality makes it pretty hard to really have fun with. The game has technical problems and design problems and world building problems and story telling problems. It hasn't felt like a game that would reward playing too much, but it's pretty and good hearted.

The Good

• Nintendo Switch Sports

  

  If you have the time to play and want to move, this is a nice modern version of Wii sports. It has a very Wii, fun, cozy vibe (you get to play volleyball in a bookstore), and it does a lot to get you up and moving. We played once or twice and never really got back to it which is why it ends up as "Good" in my estimation.

The Very Good

• Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope

  

  There's a lot to really like in Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope. I think it's a fantastic sequel and moving tactics games off of the grid works really well the way they've implemented it. My only complaint, such as it is, is that there hasn't really been a reason to pick one team over another and to upgrade any character one way over another. I haven't played as much as I might have, so that might not be a real problem as you go later in the game.

• Triangle Strategy

  

  As I've said in my monthly updates. This game is slow. Overall I think it's a wonderful modern tactics game, but I can be in and out of a mission in Tactics Ogre in 15 minutes and here it's way longer. You have to jump through multiple cut scenes for every story mission. The story is really well written, the art is beautiful and the mechanics are great and inovative. Overall it should a great or excellent game, but it just feels like a wonderful concrete block in my life.

The Great

• Tactics Ogre: Reborn

  

  I'm probably *slightly* overselling Tactics Ogre: Reborn, just becuase it's my current obsession as I write this, but it hits all of the things I love in a tactics game and something about it has just felt really, really satisfying. It also has all the trappings of Ogre Battle which I love, possibly without reason. I barely remember the PSP version of Tactics Ogre, but this seems to have all of the ease of use of a modern game, and it moves so much faster than Triangle Strategy.

• Tunic

  

  Tunic has been great. It's stylish and charming and the dynamic of putting together a 8-bit era manual is really really cool. My partner and I have been playing through it together and for the most part it's been an absolute gem. My only complaint is that either the combat is tuned really hard or I just suck at it. It might be a side effect of being the person who does the controls and wanting it to be fun for the puzzle solver, but it really kicked me out of the game when the second boss completely stomped me.

• Xenoblade Chronicles 3

  

  I really do love XBC 3, especially the characters. The mechanics are very good and the story is very good, but at the end of the day I spent as long as I did playing it because of how much I love the main six. I think, honestly, the game would have been better with even more focus on them and less on the big plot. As I've said before the Eunie and Sena Show really sold me on the game and it elevates the rest of an already great game.

Games of November 2022

November was a little more normal, but I spent a lot of recovering from the nonsense from October. I did finish Xenoblade and started a New Game + playthrough.

My top five games (by play time) for November were:

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Starting a replay has been really rewarding. There's a lot of things I didn't recognize on my first playthrough that I hadn't seen or noticed or understood. It's also reinforced just how awesome Eunie and Sena are.
   
   
   


2. Ogre Battle 64 - Snow ... but also, the second half of the game still has some pretty interesting parts. It's always a nice game to chill out with.
   
   


3. Tactics Ogre: Reborn - Way back, when it came out on PSP, I picked it up, found it really hard and kinda gave up. Getting to revisit it on the Switch has been good so far.
   
   


4. Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope - I drifted off of Mario + Rabbids a little faster than I thought I would. I still think it's great, but it just didn't have a time it fit into during the month.
   
   


5. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Mario Kart felt into a bit of the same as Mario + Rabbids. Not much time really to play it, and honestly, much as I love it, if I had time there was something more appropriate to play.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for November:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of October 2022

I'm not sure there's been a month before where I've only played 3 games, so that's novel. On top of that, between being sick and some other things, I almost totally lost track of what I did play so this is by far the roughest estimate of play times ever. That being said, my time in the tracker is almost exactly the same as my time on my Xenoblade 3 play-through so I must be kinda close.

So that being said, good riddance to October 2022.

My top five games (by play time) for October were:

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Having realized how much character means to me in stories and games, I've really been able to lean into "The Ongoing Adventures of Eunie and Sena, Plus Their Other not as Funny Friends". I'm not sure that I played any "main" story at all during October, but the quality of the side stories has been really high. I have a couple of complaints about the coupling of the side stories to the main story and just mechanically I've been so high levelled for such a long time that the bulk of the gameplay has kinda stopped.
   
   
   
   


2. Mario + Rabids: Sparks of Hope - A fantastic game, that is exactly what it needs to be. The tactical combat is fun, interesting and low stakes enough that it's easy to throw yourself at something and see if it works. Breaking off the grid for movement has also been great, so I hope the folks working on XCOM (or Marvel Midnight Suns) are taking notes. The story is also charming and perfectly supports everything that's going on.
   
   
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - You know the story here. Push button, receive serotonin.
   
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for October:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of September 2022

October has been a wild month, so I'll be honest that I don't really remember what my thoughts were about games back in September. That being said, September was definitely dedicated to Xenoblade 3, so really there's not to say anyway.

My top five games (by play time) for September were:

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - Back in August I mentioned how much I find characters to be the thing that ties to me a story and honestly the characters in Xenoblad 3 haver really hooked me. Eunie's the boss and Sena needs you to remember to use your mouth-words.
   
   


2. Hollow Knight - I've enjoyed messing around with Hollow Knight. I feel a bit like I may need to "git good" to really get everything out of it, but honestly, just wandering through Hollownest is a lot of fun.
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - As always; Push button, go fast, shiny colours.
   
   


4. Triangle Strategy - It's maybe not fair, but my quest to get the "good ending" is getting hung up on the game being just hard enough to require me to pay attention and my general irritation at how slow the game is.
   
   


5. Super Mario World (Nintendo Switch Online) - I've really been looking for quick games I can quickly play and which feel really good. SNES games don't *quite* feel like that for the most part, but Mario World is maybe the best.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for September:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of August 2022

I set out to really invest time in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 this month and did that fairly well. I took a day off just before it got busy and it was nice to pick up something I could just play. Since then I've tried to play an hour or so at the end of the day and I think that's been a good way to play and it's helped me to structure my mind and life.

My top five games (by play time) for August were:

1. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - I bought the first Xenoblade Chronicles during "Operation Rainfall" and played a little bit. I bounced off because what was then the MMORPG style didn't appeal and the story didn't really grab me. I ended up watching Chuggaconroy's Let's Play which was really impressive and touching and later I watched his Let's Play of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Neither game was for me, and I bought 3 mostly because it was the big JRPG coming out this year and people really liked it.

   

   As it's turned out, I'm really enjoying it. The story is interesting, I'm enjoying the combat and I love the characters. This year I've realized how much loving the characters in a game or book or show is the real indicator as to whether or not I'll love the media overall. I recognize that with JRPGS it's a matter of when, not if we'll have to fight God to save the universe, but the journey seems like it will be worth it.



2. Loop Hero - Loop Hero has continued to have a lot of interesting moments. I don't think I love the game (I don't love the characters for one thing), but it has a lot of combinations and moments that are engaging. I find generally with rogue likes there's an issue with the difficulty curve feeding the interest curve, but I think Loop Hero really has that nailed down.
   
   


3. Hollow Knight - The more I play the more invested I am in the story of Bug Knight. The developers have done a huge amount of environmental story telling and the difficulty (so far) has been just right to keep me picking it up. Doing a fresh play through I'm able to do so many things I couldn't the first time and the game really rewards taking the time to practice and gain skills.
   
   


4. Triangle Strategy - I'm still chugging along with Triangle Strategy. I hope that this will be there move games following this one, either in the series or out. I think a lot of the things in this could be better, but everything that's in it is good.
   
   


5. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Push button, go fast, shiny colours; what's not to love? (Actually, I really miss the beautiful specularity that the original game had that seems to be missing from the crazy DLC package, but that's pretty minor over all.)
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for August:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Games of July 2022

Time is funny. When I play Eastward, it bends all of my expectation of time and I'm perpetually surprised at how little I played it. When I play Loop Hero it seems to go the other way and I feel like I played for a few minutes when an hour has passed.

My top five games (by play time) for July were:

1. Loop Hero - Loop Hero is pretty good. I'm not sure I'd have started playing it, but a few people online swore by it and it wandered past me when I was buying stuff on the Nintendo eShop. (I still need to fix my PC). It's a mix of RPG and Rogue-like and NES throwback nostalgia bait, but at it's heart it has a lot of interesting ideas and the game play is really compelling.

   

   I'm reminded of a short story Navigators by Mike Meginnis, which I listened to LeVar Burton read on his podcast. The stories aren't exactly similar, but there's something about the stories that we wove into games on the NES or Atari where we filled in a certain dark richness. Loop Hero puts that up front and I guess follows a trend for gothic themes right now. (Still waiting on Nona the Ninth.)
   
   



2. Hollow Knight - I really love the feeling of getting better as I keep playing Hollow Knight. I also really enjoy the depth of the story told in the game and shape of it in general.
   
   
   



3. Eastward - Eastward is a very good game. I pushed through to complete it and I'm really glad I did. As I've said I'm fascinated by how dense it is. I feel like I played significantly more Eastward than I did Loop Hero or Hollow Knight, but as you can see I didn't play that much. The story is good, if a little convoluted, but the characters really stand out. If you like the idea of a slightly dark adventure with good people in the style of earthbound, then I think you'll like this game.

   

   The combat feels like it's just on the verge of being really interesting. Even though it felt good to play, I found it to be a little limited, but I think there where quite a few things I didn't really understand how to use properly. When I finished the game, I wanted to play it again right away to really get good at the combat.

   
   
   


4. Triangle Strategy - I'm very slowly trying to work my way through to the "Good Ending". I'm disappointed that the game is so slow and the story ends up being rather frustrating (or maybe dull). The actual tactical game play is fantastic and I think the voting mechanic is really interesting. It's another really good game, but it's hard to play and doesn't pay off as well as some others.
   
   
   


5. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - I don't know why this is on the list again, but here it is. I guess I'll say it's possibly the easiest game to pick up and play.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for July:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of June 2022

I like that in the chart of how much I've played, you can see the exact moment my brain released it's clamp on Dragon Quest Builders 2. Now that I can look around again I'm trying to get back to playing more games.

My top five games (by play time) for June were:

1. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - Playing in free-mode, after the story's finished hasn't been as compelling as the story mode, even though I found the story mode kept getting in the way of playing the game. I think this will settle in to be something I play every once in a while, but I also don't think I have the patience to build anything like the things I see in pictures from other players.
   
   


2. Mario Strikers: Battle League - I've always had a complicated relationship with the Mario sports games, aside from golf, and I've also found that the Switch Mario sports games have been just a little shy of the personality and interesting game play that I'd like them to have. Battle League feels like it's sitting right at the cross of these two problems, it's pretty hard and not that interesting. Playing with other people might help with that, but the league structure doesn't feel like it's working and I got my ass seriously kicked in the one online game I played.
   
   


3. Hollow Knight - It's been nice to pick Hollow Knight up again and I'm surprised how much better I am at it than I was when I first started. I've been enjoying the feeling of motion and freedom.
   
   


4. Mario Golf: Super Rush - As always, Super Rush tends to be my lunch break game when working from home. I'm enjoying that it seems to still have interesting things for me to get better at, even if it still feels a touch bland just like the other Switch Mario Sports games.
   


5. Eastward - If you asked me, without looking it up, I'd say I played almost as much Eastward as I have DQB2. It's a very dense and intense game and it feels like every moment you play is important and interesting.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for June:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of May 2022

"I want to play lots of different games this year," he said.

"Oh look, the some Dragon Quest games I haven't played are on sale," he said.

"Hmm, people have said Dragon Quest Builders 2 is pretty good," he said.

"What happened to May?" he said.

My top five games (by play time) for May were:

1. Dragon Quest Builders 2 - So I had figured this would be the kind of game I might dip into here and there. I may yet do that, but I hadn't realized that the game is actually (or at least to start) a 60 hour Action-RPG. It's a game with a lot of flaws, in terms of controls, gameplay and story, but as you can see, I struggled to put it down. If you'd like to spend some time building things in a Dragon Quest world, this is the game.
   
   
   


2. Eastward - I stalled out a bit on Eastward, mostly due to Dragon Quest Builders 2, but also Eastward is a bit weird about progress in the story in the same way Earthbound is. When we were suddenly making movies with monkeys, I felt a little less compeled to pick this up.
   
   
   


3. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - The theme for everything else this month is, I decided to play Dragon Quest Builders 2 instead.
   
   
   


4. Triangle Strategy - Dragon Quest Builders 2.
   
   
   


5. Mario Golf: Super Rush - Dragon Quest Builders 2.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for May:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Video Games of April 2022

April was a pretty quiet month. I don't have too much new or interesting to talk about. I am finding I miss my PC so it's probably about time to go and get that fixed.

The only even remotly interesting thing to talk about is that I've decided that I want to try to play at least 50 unique games this year. Currently I'm at 22. It's a very unimportant goal, but I feel like seeing more things sounds like fun.

My top five games (by play time) for April were:

1. Triangle Strategy - I finished my first play through. As I've said the last few months, the game play is outstanding. I think the construction of the story and the implementation of choices and the voting system are a little unweildly and not quite as fun as the might be. It's still worth playing if you like that kind of grid-based tactics game.
   
   
   
   
   I looked ahead to a second playthrough and decided that trying to get all four endings wasn't going to be worth the work. It looks like the "golden ending" is the only ending that's worth the time, so I've decided to do a second playthough with a guide.
   
   In new game plus, they introduced several new and interesting levels outside of the story and those have been excellent. Most of my playtime this month has been on those levels.
   


2. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - This has been a great game, especially when my brain isn't up to something more story heavy. Beyond playing for it's own sake, I got interested in which courses are the most popular in the online multi-player so I've been doodling a new program to calculate power rankings. (I haven't written about it yet, but may do a little later). So in addition to the intrensic joy of playing, I've enjoyed the extrensic happiness that comes from "I got more data."
   
   
   


3. Eastward - As far as I've played, Eastward is an artistic tour-de-force. The game feels very intentionally and carefully built, and the world feels very intricate and lived in. The story leaves me feeling slightly uncomfortable, in the way that is very remenisent of Earthbound and Mother 3, but more grown up .
   
   
   


4. Mario Golf: Super Rush - Lunch golf is good. Maybe not the best use of lunch every day, but 20 minutes of Mario Golf still makes me happy.
   
   
   


5. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - This was a month where the top five has some pretty low numbers on it, so I played less than an hour of Breath of the Wild. Still, as always, I apprecate how after all these years, there are things I've never seen and that are great.
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for April:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month: