My Favorite Games of 2019

I'm getting better at not buying more games than I can consume in a year, but I still play the occasional free-to-play indie title and wind up with a number of commercial games through promotional giveaways. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.

These are the 12 games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2019, in the order I played them. If the game is available on multiple platforms, the one I played on is listed first. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

Doki Doki Literature Club (Windows, Mac, Linux)

This is an excellent pay-what-you-want indie title that has been sitting in my backlog for a while. It was really popular in 2017, but never got close to the top of my list due to the fact I play a lot of visual novels and visually DDLC fell out of my usual genre preferences, even though I knew there was a twist. Despite its cheerful appearance, there's a not suitable for children or those easily disturbed warning for a reason (specifically those suffering from anxiety and depression). The less you know the better it's supposed to be, but if you want to be spoiled there's also my VN Talk write-up for the game.

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard (DS, remade as Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight on 3DS)

The Etrian Odyssey series is made for people have a fondness for old school dungeon mapping; the kind you do on paper. This is a game out of the unfinished backlog where I started it years ago and abandoned it. As dungeon crawlers go though, I like the EO series for providing us with lush, natural looking dungeons; non-traditional monsters; and an interesting variety of classes to build a party out of. EOII introduces an additional healing class which is nice, and expands a bit on the late game twist from the first EO, but otherwise doesn't have much in the way of twists itself. Overall I think I like the first game better, but the second isn't bad.

Code:Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~ (PS Vita, PS4) *

This is the second fandisc in the Code:Realize otome series. Though it came out on Valentine's Day in the US, it's actually Christmas themed. Most of its content is alternate universe material based off of the Finis route in ~Future Blessings~ and will expect you to have played the previous games, but that said it's an excellent send-off to your favorite characters and well worth it if you enjoy the franchise. Those love interests who didn't already have weddings in their original timelines, finally have them here as bonus epilogues.

The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince (PS4, Switch) *

Liar Princess plays like an indie puzzle platformer, though it comes from a more established Japanese publisher. A wolf accidentally blinds a prince who was trying to catch a glimpse of her while she was singing, and to make up for her mistake, the wolf gives up her voice to take on a human shape. She pretends to be a princess from a neighboring kingdom so she can guide the prince to a witch who can restore his sight, but along the way she has to take pains to hide who she truly is out of fear the prince would call her a monster. The story is very sweet and a little sad, and the art design is fantastic.

We Were Here (Windows, Mac, Linux)

A friend and I played this on a whim since it's a two player co-op puzzle-solving game along the lines of real world escape rooms, and it's free to play. Both players are separated and have to work together to solve clues that will enable them to be reunited. There are no jump scares, but the atmosphere is definitely on the side of creepy. It's possible to get game overs in a few places if you take too long, but the game has several checkpoints so you'll never be more than a quick puzzle away from where you failed. We Were Here took my friend and I about two and a half hours to get through and it was a fun way to spend an evening, especially if you like puzzles and escape rooms. You do need voice communication though, so if you're not playing in the same room you'll need a mic and the game comes with voice chat capabilities.

Divinity: Original Sin (PC, PS4, XB1)

I'd been hankering for a good party-based western RPG in the void of waiting for another Dragon Age, and though the worldbuilding took me a little time to get into, the game itself is pretty fun, though a bit merciless. It's turn-based, which is an oddity in this day and age. Each move takes a certain number of action points and each character gets a certain amount a round. Feels very table-top. The story is serviceable, but hampered by pacing issues. The dual protagonists are what the player makes of them, and I'd advise having some personality conflicts between them to bring out the more engaging banter. I played the Enhanced Edition which added additional quests and reworked some of the story (including the ending).

Persona 3 Portable (PSP, versions without female protagonist also on PS2)

Persona 3 Portable is the only version of Persona 3 to have a female protagonist option, and game is substantially different for it. All the Social Links have been redone, so even though the dungeon delving and overall plot is much the same as the original male playthrough, there's a lot of new secondary content and tons of VO has been rerecorded to change pronouns to match to the protagonist's gender on the female route. I can't imagine how much work that was, since English is so heavily pronoun dependant, but Atlus really went the extra mile, and I'm grateful. I actually had this game sitting partially completed for years, but just went back to it so I could finish before I played Persona Q2, which features the return of the female protagonist.

Bad Apple Wars (PS Vita)

If you like otome and have a Vita, this is a solid afterlife romance with no locked characters and is completely yandere free. (Which I consider a plus.) The art might not be as pretty as some, and there are a couple questions the game never answers, but I like the way it chooses to integrate romance-specific scenes into the common storyline so it feels natural rather than having the player bumble around trying to score points with a particular bachelor. In most cases, you have to work to get a bad ending. Showing up at all of a love interest's color coded scenes and not hurting him during late game Soul Touches is pretty much all you need to do to get the best endings, and the in-game flowchart makes it incredibly easy to revisit old scenes.

Final Fantasy XV (PS4, XB1, Windows) *

I went into this game with fairly low expectations, having bought it due to all the memes and a really good Christmas sale. Mark me surprised. This ended up being my second favorite Final Fantasy of the four I've played. It's not a perfect game, not by a long shot, but what it does well, it does really well, which is specifically the friendship between Noctis and his companions. The first half of the game is ridiculously open world just as the second is ridiculously linear, but oddly enough, the second half wouldn't work as well if all the free time in the first half didn't exist. It's a difficult issue to resolve from a gameplay standpoint, but I respect the gamble taken.

Death Road to Canada (Switch, PS4, XB1, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android)

This game boils down to being a more actiony, violent version of Oregon Trail. Instead of heading for Oregon, you and your buddy (or buddies since up to four people can play) are stuck in a zombie-filled America and you have to ration your supplies and scavenge for more as you head for the only safe country left; Canada. Like Oregon Trail, gameplay is a mix of random events, choices you have to make, and careful management of your resources. Something is going to go wrong along the way, and sometimes you'll die, but playthroughs are short enough that it's easy to just try again.

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth (3DS)

This is one of those games that's not going to make sense to anyone unless they've played at the bare minimum Persona 5, but really, you'll get the most joy out of it if you've played Persona 3 and 4 as well. For people who've missed the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable she's back and gets a ton of face time. It's a little bizarre thinking of a cast of 28 characters rolling through a dungeon all at the same time, but everyone gets to weigh in on everything even if they're not currently in the active party. It might not be realistic, but this game primarily exists as fanservice, so some break in reality is acceptable and even welcome.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments (Windows, PS3, PS4, X360, XB1)

I'm not a diehard Holmes fan, but I do love myself a good detective game. Controls are a bit wonky for someone unused to FPS games, but the mystery-solving is good and I like that the game lets you make the jump from evidence to answers without necessarily confirming whether you are right. The possibility of getting it wrong and allowing the game to continue after you do, adds a little edge that other mystery games lack. It won't affect later cases, but it's nice not being forced to replay segments in the game until you follow the logic a developer had in mind. I would have liked this one more if two of the casess weren't hard to solve due to dubious logic or misleading dialogue from Holmes himself.

I'm Just About Done With Persona's Length

I was a little over 90 hours into Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth when November hit and I shelved it to focus on NaNoWriMo. I was disappointed that I didn't get to finish it, but I really wanted to get back into writing after being out of commission most of the year.

After finishing my 50,000 words, I came back to Persona Q2 and decided to power through to the end so I could finish before the end of the year.

About 95 hours in, I realized I'd likely finished all known side quests and had about two floors of dungeon left to complete. This would probably clock in about a 100 hours. (It was eventually 100 hours and 22 minutes, so my guess was really close!)

And I realized, this is way too long.

I've felt all right up to 70 hours with an RPG, even 80 for one I'm really enjoying, but something about crossing the 90 hour mark really deflates my balloon, even for a franchise I'd ordinarily enjoy. I mean, Persona Q2 is pure fanservice. I got to build a dream party out of all my favorite characters from Personas 3-5, even the female protagonist from Persona 3 Portable! There's nothing wrong with the combat system, the persona collecting, or the story. It's just so long that I was ready for it to end at about 90 hours.

I ended up doing a lot of gaming this year due to being on medical leave and lacking the focus to do creative work. (I seriously tried doing revision work while going through radiation treatment and ended up deciding to lay down instead.) So this year I had a lot more game time than I ordinarily would.

This is a day and age when the capacity for a game to be long is greater than ever, but as a working adult who loves games, this also means that there's also a lot out there that I really want to play that long games prevent me from getting to.

Persona 5 was similarly a 100+ hour game for me, and though the upcoming Persona 5 Royal rerelease is supposed to streamline some of the gameplay in acknowledgement that perhaps it was too long, Royal is also adding new content, so the end result is likely to be the same length or a little longer.

I don't precisely remember my Persona 4 playthrough time, but I think it was about 80 hours, which is long, but not unforgivably so.

I usually buy the extended versions of the various Persona games at some point, FES and Golden, so I'll likely get Royal as well, but I already know it's going to be something tossed in the backlog and when I finally get around to it I'll play on the easiest difficulty because I already did it "for real" on the original version and a second time around would just be to see the new stuff.

Atlus is probably in the planning stages for Persona 6. I can't imagine they're not already thinking about the next game while they're milking Persona 5 for all the spin-offs/updates they can get.

But please, shorter this time. And while I'm asking for ponies, give me a female protagonist too.

RPG Talk: Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth

In which I talk (write) about RPGs from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: 3DS
Release: 2019

Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth was going to be the rare RPG I played the day of release. Being built on a hybrid of the Etrian Odyssey dungeon delving mechanics and the Persona fusion system, it's easy enough to play through without requiring much in the way of a walkthrough, which solves my biggest issue with most modern RPGs (needing a walkthrough to make sure you don't miss anything).

Unfortunately my health problems escalated right about when my pre-order arrived so I set it aside and eventually forgot about it, even neglecting to list this on my Reader's Pick poll, which Final Fantasy XV won.

But I came back to it afterwards, and was happy I did.

Since this game is less than a year old, here is your spoiler warning as I'll cover everything up until the end of the game.

Persona Q2 is first and foremost a fan game. It exists as a crossover to allow the casts of all the modern Persona games (3-5) meet each other at the peak of their Persona-fighting abilities. The first Persona Q did much the same thing, only with the casts of 3 and 4.

Unfortunately there appears to be no continuity with the first game as the returning characters behave as if they've never met each other before, but the structure is very similar. For some reason or another, each cast has stumbled into movie worlds connected by a single theater from which the audience cannot leave due to a series of locks placed around the door to the exit. Much like the first game, completing each dungeon (in other words, a movie world) grants a key that removes one of the locks.

Unlike the first game, where players could play from the perspective of the P3 or P4 casts, this one is solidly from the POV of the P5 crew. The player starts with them and Joker is the only one allowed to make dialogue choices. But the flipside of that is that the P3, P3P (yes, the female protagonist is here!), and P4 protagonists all have actual personalities that make them their own people.

The P3P protagonist is especially a ray of sunshine. Though she has her doubts and can be overly cheerful at times, she gets to hang loose in a way that the other female party members don't. She's used to be outspoken and marching to the beat of her own drum, because where she comes from, she's the party leader and she has the confidence to match.

Also, it's about time she got featured in a spin-off game! I understand the male P3 protagonist is canon, but the P3P female protagonist has never been offered in other games, even as DLC when she could be safely included without worrying about whether her existence breaks the laws of reality. She's long been a popular request in the English fan community, and Persona Q2 has finally brought her back in a big way, making her a major player in the storyline. She appears much earlier than any of the other Persona casts, joining the Phantom Thieves as early as the second floor of the first dungeon.

While the story of Persona Q2 isn't her story in particular, her subplot is given a lot of space. She meets the Phantom Thieves while separated from her companions, so one of their early goals aside from trying to figure out their current circumstances is to reunite her with her team. But the second dungeon yields the P4 Investigation Team rather than SEES, and when she finally does meet SEES in the third dungeon, she's distressed to discover that not only do they not recognize her, but they have a different leader who she doesn't recognize.

The male P3 protagonist is pretty accepting about it, concluding that they are essentially alternate universe versions of the same person (which they are), though I wish the two of them had more lines interacting with each other. It would have been funny if they commiserated over the P3 cast's foliables as only people who share the same group of friends could. Sadly, they might as well not exist to each other for the majority of their time together, which makes their mutual farewell, with the understanding that they'll never meet again, ring hollow. This could easily have been fixed with a special screening side quest to unlock a team attack, but oddly the game never tries.

Since Persona Q2 is of debatable canonicity, it's not surprising that its story is ultimately not about the Persona characters or the struggles they're currently in the middle of. Rather, like the first Persona Q, the story is about the new characters specific to this game; Hikari, Nagi, and Doe.

When the Phantom Thieves first arrive, they quickly figure out their new situation. They are trapped inside a movie theater with two other people; the theater curator, Nagi, and a high school girl, Hikari. There is also a mysterious inhuman projectionist called Doe (for John Doe) that doesn't speak or seem to be hostile, but nevertheless runs the movies that the Phantom Thieves can enter by jumping through the movie screen.

Each of the movies revolves around some element of social unfairness. For instance, in the first movie, Kamoshidaman, the superhero runs the city because he's the hero, so of course he's in the right. But he's not actually a nice person and makes objectionable judgement calls. Though people might privately feel disagree, no one is willing to call him out on it because he's the one in charge and to fight him is to lose.

By journeying through the movie, the Persona casts are able to change the endings to those movies by defeating the various bosses and convincing other characters that it's okay to disagree, that it's okay to be yourself, it's okay to have a different opinion.

All these changes have an effect on Hikari, who (though it's not immediately apparent) is suffering from memory loss. Hikari is incredibly shy and introverted, so she understands the various characters who are oppressed in the movie worlds. Standing out and making trouble can actually make it harder for the person who has to endure the scorn of others. But as each movie is changed, Hikari comes to understand that even though putting one's head down is the easy way, it's not really the way she would like to live.

This culminates in Hikari getting kidnapped by Doe and being brought into the fourth movie world, which is a musical that reflects the worst moments in her life. Being berated by her teacher, even though Hikari was following the rules, was what led to the formation of the movie world with the abusive superhero. The other movie worlds are similarly inspired by key moments in Hikari's life that caused her to give up what she believed in.

Since Hikari has grown over the course of the game though, she's now able to challenge Doe on her own terms and recognize him as a distorted fear that her father (who actually loves her a lot) would reject her in the same way that so many other people in her life have. After coming to terms with Doe, she realizes that her father doesn't hate her and regains her sense of purpose. This allows everyone to leave the movie theater.

But, since this is a Persona game where things happen due to the involvement of supernatural entities, that's not the end of everything. Though Hikari is free to leave, and by extension so is everyone else, there's one more dungeon to defeat Enlil, the being that trapped Hikari in the first please. Enlil is fine with Hikari leaving since her theaters are supposed to be a way to placate for people who've given up, but naturally Hikari wants to restore to hope to others who were like her, so the team stays long enough to beat up Enlil.

While Hikari's story isn't bad, it's not as heavy as Rei's storyline from the first Persona Q and lacked the same punch when the truth was revealed. Perhaps being the second game it wasn't surprising that the main thrust of the plot would be around Hikari instead of the established Persona cast, but it also felt that the messaging in the movies was too explicitly geared towards someone with Hikari's personality, making it obvious by the second dungeon that Hikari was the reason we were going through these movies at all.

The rest of the game is pure crossover fun. Shinjiro (known to be a good cook) gets to feed Yusuke (known to be frequently hungry), Akechi and Naoto get to solve a mystery together, and Makoto and Mitsuru get to talk about what it's like being a student council president.

If anything, having the entire roster of the modern Persona games shows what sort of tropes are in play and how the design team has tried to make them all a little different, by mixing and matching character attributes or putting a little spin on their personality. Makoto might be a student council president like Mitsuru, but she's also a knuckle-wielding bruiser in combat like Akihiko. Junpei, Yosuke, and Ryuji might all fill the male protagonists' best friend role, but removed from that they don't feel like the same person copied and pasted into three games.

That said though, I think the next game should avoid student council presidents, detective princes, and wealthy heiresses (all of which were revived in Persona 5). And though I know it's unlikely to happen, it would be nice to see a male navigator character for once as Persona Q2 made it glaringly obvious that every navigator the series ever had has been female. A lot of the party roles, elemental alignments, and weapon types switch across genders. Even the protagonist has had a female option. But the one thing we've never had is a male navigator. We've had males in that role temporarily (like Morgana and Teddie, who are notably both "not human"), but they always leave it once the real navigator shows up.

As far as the ending goes, Persona Q2 ties itself up better than its predecessor, which left the door open for everyone remembering their encounter. (I suppose this means that for the P3 and P4 casts, Persona Q could have happened after Persona Q2 to preserve continuity.) Everyone loses their memory of the movie world when they go home, which naturally makes everyone sad, especially since everyone wanted to see the movie Hikari would make once her love for cinema is rekindled.

The game takes steps towards making this "reunion" happen by featuring the P3, P3P, and P4 casts taking the unusual step of sitting down and seeing a movie together. The P3 protagonist picks up a DVD even though he's not really sure why, and in the P4 time period Nanako mentions that the movie they're going to watch has a dinosaur that looks like Yosuke, which was leading me to believe that Hikari had come from a time period before all three games. Since she never confirms what year she's from, that would have been entirely possible, and I would have found it heartwarming, if she'd turned out to be a director beloved by all three casts.

Unfortunately the P5 cast's epilogue wrecks that but having them attend a high school movie festival (showcasing films are made by high school students), where they watch Hikari's movie and when the director of the film is introduced, the game cuts just as the P5 protagonist recognizes her. So what was even going on with the P3 and P4 casts? Why is there a movie with a dinosaur that looks like Yosuke that has nothing to do with the events of this game?

I don't know.

Though I enjoyed the game, it was just a little too ham-handed, and even the supernatural events felt like rehashes of previous Persona games (Enlil's motivation is a lot like Izanagi's from P4 and Doe's existence is like a cognition from P5). I enjoyed it for the gameplay and the crossover fun, but this isn't one of the better spin-off stories.

Persona 3 and Its Spin-Offs

I've been playing Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight and it's been giving me thoughts about how Persona 3 fits among the rest of the Persona games and why it didn't get the same kinds of spin-offs that its successors did.

Persona 3 was the first of the modern Persona games, popularizing the high school sim/RPG hybrid model the games have been using ever since. It's also the most daring of them, as I think Atlus felt free to make it different both from its predecessors and its successors. Once they realized they were on to something, and they ended up playing things safer with later installments.

Being in the middle of the current five game series, Persona 3 has the darkness of the previous games, but laid the groundwork for the more optimistic games to follow. Though 3, 4, and 5 are often grouped together as the modern Persona games due to featuring the same game design, thematically Persona 3 doesn't fit. For one thing it had the gall to kill off its protagonist, and there is a playable pseudo-sequel called "The Answer" in Persona 3 FES that is largely about the rest of the cast coming to terms with grief over his loss. That's heavy stuff for a JRPG.

It didn't limit the death tally to the protagonist either, also killing off another party member, Shinjiro, not by any supernatural enemies, but simply other humans.

One of the taglines of the game is "Memento mori" (Remember you will die). Characters summon their personas by pointing evokers designed to look like guns at their heads and pulling the trigger. The trauma of performing the mock suicide is what makes the evoker work.

And it's not just that Persona 3 is darker than its successors. It also felt free to be strange. The modern Persona games tend to have at least one non-human party member, but Persona 3 had two, and neither of them were a sort of shadow creature. Instead we have an android designed to fight Shadows, and a dog. Not a special talking dog, but just a regular shiba inu in every way other than the fact it can summon its own persona.

Since Persona 3 was an overhaul of the series from the previous installments, it didn't have much to lose. It could afford to be edgy and weird, both in regards to what previous Persona games were like (the high school sim element proved to be a big hit) and what future games became (it retained a lot of darkness the parent Shin Megami Tensei series is known for).

But being unique also made the game unwieldy when it comes to spin-offs. It has the largest playable cast of the modern Persona games (though it's less noticeable because of Shinjiro's death two-thirds of the way through and the fact Koromaru is a dog) and because they killed the protagonist, this meant he was unable to return for spin-offs in the same way that the P4 protagonist could return again and again with the canonized name of Yu Narukami.

Persona 4 Arena was pretty neat in that it added older versions of Persona 3's Akihiko, Mitsuru, and Aigis as playable characters. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax took it a step forward and added Junpei, Yukari, and Ken to the roster, making all of the Persona 3 cast playable except for the dog, the dead people, and Fuuka (who has had a non-combat role). I remember when they did this, I wondered if someone at Atlus was kicking themselves (or someone else) for having the P3 protagonist sacrifice himself, ending his marketability. A grudge match, or even a dream match, between Persona protagonists would have been fun.

Eventually the two of them to meet through Persona Q, an Etrian Odyssey style cross-over that brought them both to a sort of pocket dimension that was not tied to a particular time and place, so we got to pull both teams from the middle of their story. It was fun and rather goofy seeing the characters interact with each other, and the game permitted the player to choose which team to play as, allowing those who wanted to play as the P3 cast to remain with them the entire way through.

And then the Persona 4 life cycle ended. Anticipation moved on to Persona 5, which had a longer development cycle than I suspect Atlus would have liked. P3 and P4 both managed to release ahead of their in-game calendars, even in the US with translation delays, but Persona 5 came out in 2017 in Japan and 2018 in the US. From the in-game calendar and references to the P4 cast, P5 clearly takes place in 2016. If Atlus had kept to the ahead-of-the-game-calendar release they were probably originally shooting for a 2015 release.

After Persona 5's release, people suspected the spin-offs would continue as a way to fill the void between new Persona games, and they did, starting with a dancing game to follow up after Persona 4: Dancing All Night. But what I didn't expect, was that it would be partnered with a new Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight.

I'm pretty sure Persona 3 would not be getting a spin-off title now if not for Persona 5, but I'll take it. I suspect since Atlus was already working on Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight, most of the groundwork needed for Dancing in Moonlight was already done. They would still need to change the music tracks, create the character models, and write/record a new script, but the game engine was already there and it probably wasn't terribly difficult to retain the key staff for both games.

The result is beautiful.

We've never had high res models of the Persona 3 cast and they're fantastically realized. Most of the US voice cast returns (Fuuka and Ken use their Persona 4 Arena VAs rather than the original cast).

The story, such as there is, is pure fluff. Everyone is in a dream state pulled from some point in time prior to the final battle, except for Elizabeth, who is clearly existing in a future after Persona 5 since she is aware of both the P3 protagonist's fate and that her younger sister has a guest of her own.

This adds an element of tragedy to an otherwise happy game about cutting loose in a dream to relieve stress (and if you remember the later parts of Persona 3 it gets really dismal for everyone). The characters frequently talk about what they're going to do in better times, once it's all over, including how they want the protagonist to continue to be involved in their lives, which we know isn't going to happen.

Everyone feels uncharacteristically crazy about dancing, but aside from that, they're much the old friends I first met years ago. The lyrics to the opening song (which appear to be written by an American employee at Atlus, since her name appears elsewhere in the credits in another position) bank heavily on the nostalgia and what it was like for the P3 protagonist and the player to leave their friends behind and then join them again for a night of dancing.

There's still Persona Q2 on the horizon for cross-over material, and realistically that's probably all we're going to get of the P3 cast unless there is a P5 fighting game that's willing to age them even further. (I'm a little doubtful about that, but would still be okay with it.)

But I suspect that will be it for Persona 3 spin-off material, which is too bad. It paved the way forward, but for whatever reason it didn't catch on quite as much as its successors.