Happy 2025! Why am I late to writing the second half of this post from June (where I talk about every game I played in the first half of 2024)? Because for some reason I was sick all of December and I'm still sick now typing this, but I'll be damned if I don't tell everyone how many visual novels I played this year.
1) Lkyt.
That's right this list is starting out with GAY PORN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WAHOO!!!!!!!!!!!
Lkyt. is a BL game by parade (of Room No. 9 and NO, THANK YOU!!! fame) that takes place in a fantasy Japan-coded universe, which is a break from their previous works taking place in the modern day. I think this is the safest of their games to recommend -- I could see this being a great entry-point yaoi game if you wanna get into the genre, it’s short length (roughly 10 hours) helps in that regard.
The cast is likeable, all the routes are solid, and they push things just as far as they need to go for the
setting. There’s some great gore/graphic violence in here that’s at
just the level it needs to be -- if you want to see fucked up stuff, you will, but not so much that it feels way out of place or goes on for too long. I'd say the only downside is the story shares some of the same plot beats across different romance routes, they could have spread their wings more with this world’s
concepts by making four completely unique routes... but maybe they didn't have the budget. Story still maintains a good pace, though.
The art is UNBELIEVABLY beautiful by the way. It almost has a dignified feeling to it. I also really like that the guys are pretty huge in this game, though they do semi-fluctuate -- some sprites look generally big, but then when said characters are in CGs they’re WAY bigger. I can overlook this, they’re big when it counts (for all the CG glamor shots). Basically Lkyt has no twinks, everyone's got meat on their bones or is flat out hunky/hunk-leaning bears. And god bless them for that.
It's a pretty pricey game at full price when you consider its length, so I'd recommend getting Lkyt on sale. Regardless if you get it on sale or at full price, it's important to actually buy these kinds of games to encourage more translations to get made!
4/5
2) Valkyria Chronicles 4
This game has been on a journey with me. I picked VC4 up shortly after launch, and from there it traveled with me across many house moves -- to the point where I lost it while moving and found it in a different house, after a different move. I had played a handful of chapters back when it came out but then lost it, and then my PS4 exploded so I lost all of my save data anyways. Does your PS4 ever do that thing where it's like "hey dude, don't unplug me before I fully turn off or I'll lose all your data" and you're like "sure dude" and then it really does lose your data? I was so fucking mad dude it happened after like a 7 hour Judgement play session and I KNOW I unplugged it after it had turned off--
Basically, I had a fresh start with this game over the summer and finally beat it all these years later! I liked VC4 a lot actually, way more than I liked VC1 (which I played back in 2016ish). The plot's focus on the futility of fighting a losing war felt very raw and gripping in this entry. The main squad’s whole dynamic and backstories were way more compelling to me than VC1's, too. Sorry if you really like VC1 and you're reading this, but this was a step up for me in a lot of ways.
I also REALLY like that they included side stories for all the random NPCs you can collect. This was a solid move that I don't remember being in VC1 (perhaps it was as purchasable DLC?), it really endeared me to the side characters way more than I already liked them. I can't get enough of random insignificant characters.
Weird tangent, but this was also the first game I heard with Greg Chun in it that I thought, “Oh wow! He can actually act!!”. This came out in 2018, and around this time Greg Chun had a lot of breathy, not super emotional roles (and when he did have to get emotional, like Adam Nier Automata yelling for example, it did not feel right). No hate to my man, he’s proven himself time and time again since then, but Raz was one of my favorite characters from VC4. Not only for his actual story but his fantastic acting.
Now where VC4 drops the ball a bit writing-wise... the romances. They leave a lot to be desired and some scenes where you’re
supposed to think “kyaaaa, my otp!!! >w<“ made me full body
cringe. Walz and Crymaria are probably the most interesting couple idea
on paper, but the writing for them is really not enjoyable to read at all
due to their very-anime-like tropes rather than feeling like people. If you can't picture what this means, imagine a Danganronpa character that doesn't survive until the endgame. They act very trope-y, they have certain ticks or quirks that they love to mention, they don't act like a real person does. Like, they can't stop the bit for even five seconds.
That's what I mean by how Walz and Crymaria act. In
the hands of someone better they probably would have been my favorite
couple, I love the cliche of a weapon learning to be loved, but I
detested almost every scene they were in.
All the other romances were Just Okay. I have no deeper thoughts on them than that.
Gameplay is a positive but leaning toward mixed bag. I liked about 80% of the maps, but the boss maps were actually hell on earth. If you're strategypilled you can cheese some of these, which I ended up doing because I didn't want to burst a blood vessel playing a video game. Also maybe this says a lot about me but I LOVE using snipers. Snipers are so awesome in VC4, you can really go crazy with some of the commands you can give and make them SHRED tanks. GENIUS game. Of course my sniper girlfriend could shoot a tank at the exact right spot with a gun and make it explode.
Give this one a try if you haven't already, it's been a LONG while since VC4 released but it's a banger that I don't hear anyone talk about.
3.5/4 (would be a 4 but i hate looking at raita's artstyle so much it affects the score)
3) Advance Wars Re:Boot Camp
I was actually pretty hype for this remake— I knew what Advance Wars was as a Fire Emblem fan but had never played one before. It briefly got delayed to hell, but it eventually came out! I don't have any friends that are into Advance Wars (or rather, I do but they don't post about it a lot/I only found out after I played this game) so I was more or less going in blind when I bought this a few months after launch.
Unfortunately this one didn't click with me. I love SRPGs, I love looking at grids and making people go places. Just can't get enough of it! But for some reason the gameplay didn't work for me. It feels unbearably slow and most maps are either "you're crushing them" or "they're crushing you" with sometimes a secret underlay of "you need to play this map or specific way or it's going to suck ass". At that point why am I even playing this video game if you only want me to play it a certain way? Or do my tactics just suck that bad? The hardest SRPG I ever beat was FE5 and I feel like if I could do that I should be able to beat this but nope.
The story is a huge afterthought and not even in a funny or cute way. And stories that are basically huge afterthoughts CAN be good if they're funny or cute in some way! We all love Kid Icarus Uprising but let's be real, the story is kinda whatever. It's the greatest comedy of all time so we don't really care. You're there for the jokes and funny moments, not because the space pirate chapter was a gripping masterpiece of storytelling. But in Advance Wars it's SUCH an afterthought and almost feels like they were mad they had to make up reasons to progress the plot. There's like zero reason to care about the stakes Advance Wars 1 pretends to have.
The art style is ugly and I hate it terribly. The models look incredibly cheap and shiny and it doesn't seem charming like plastic army toys, it looks like iPhone game. The pngs for the characters are fine enough but I dislike how much they bobble around, which somehow adds to that cheap feeling.
I have no nostalgia for advance wars, so the music, which I believe is either the original game’s or remasters, is extremely grating and I also hate it terribly.
I dropped the game two or three chapters before the end and didn't even touch the sequel. Just dejectedly returned it... I bought it for myself for my birthday :/
2/5
4) Trauma Center: New Blood
Hey, this is an official New Blood banner from Nintendo but these are NOT New Blood characters. I hope the guy who made this in 2008 got FIRED!!!!
To round off my Trauma Center deep dive I did in the earlier half of this year, I played New Blood, which I honestly didn't even know existed until getting all the ROMs downloaded. It takes place in the same universe as the rest of the games but follows an entirely different group of characters. There's also a focus on multiplayer in this one, where every single level can be played either by yourself or with a friend (hence why there are two doctor protagonists. I wanna be the girl character! Actually her special move didn't come in handy as much, I was the boy character most of the time.).
Let me just say this game is REAL hard even on the normal difficulty, probably to account for the multiplayer aspect. I was sweating and shaking while playing this. I get why the difficulty was raised but also are Trauma Center fans notorious for having friends to play these games with?? Who invites their bros over and says "Okay guys who wants to help me reset this guy's arm?!". I think the multiplayer aspect is nice to have but maybe don't make a whole game around it I dunno.
Plotwise it's nothing crazy. There are some terrorists but that's not really new for Trauma Center.
Classic doctor stuff, they all go through this.
I'd recommend this game if you played other Trauma Center games and liked the gameplay aspect. It's not an outright bad time but nothing stuck out to me on this one, it was just more Trauma Center gameplay. Which I like! Until it's really hard and I don't like it anymore.
I played this after Trauma Team, a game I liked a LOT, so my less than lukewarm opinions on New Blood are to be expected. Can't beat kino.
2/5
5) Paradise Killer
Unfortunately did not fuck with this one at ALL. I'm going to link my thoughts to it on Backloggd cuz I wrote a lot, but TL;DR: Art direction less than desirable, advertised as a visual novel but is absolutely not, the solution to the mystery is kinda cheap, all of the characters are extremely insufferable and the worldbuilding feels really far up its own ass.
Had some good music tho.
2/5
6) Pikuniku
A cute little puzzle game about how capitalism is bad. You know how like every mid tier 90s movie for kids is about how an evil business man is coming into town and building a mall where the local skatepark is or some shit? It's got that vibe. I liked this, it had some goofy humor and cute puzzles.
My only complaint is the Japanese in the logo says Pikunikku, not Pikuniku. Give me the extra K.
3.5/5
7) Saya no Uta
(just copying my backloggd review for this part i don't want to dignify this game with thinking about it any more)
TW: Talking about SA, skip this review if you don't wanna read all dat
Saya no Uta is a really, really interesting concept that gets bogged down by the fact it’s Urobuchi behind the wheel. I love the set up, I love the idea of lovecraftian monsters and the madness people go through because they can’t even comprehend what they’re seeing— but jesus christ the H scenes in this just ruin it.
Saya no Uta is a “darker” game, and Urobuchi is a famous woman hater, so going into it I had sort of suspected there would perhaps be some SA. I genuinely was shocked by how much there was. It’s hard to put this into words without sounding insane, but SA as a plot point can be done “””well””” (a million quotations there, it is bad to do SA obviously and if you can’t understand the difference between that and taking it into writing quality get off my post) if they are tonally in line with the plot and handled maturely. In something like Fatamoru, it is treated seriously, they do not show it explicitly, they may go into detail but they never try to double dip in the “this is fucked up” and “this is sexy” wells.
Saya
no Uta does this double dipping and it sucks big time. Saya gets SA’d
by the neighbor and instead of treating it with tact, they have a very
long drawn out scene with CGs depicting it and moaning voice lines and
so on so the player can jerk off to it. Down the line with Yoh it’s the
same thing. I can’t later feel the same rage Fuminori feels recalling Saya’s SA because the game showed it to me in a “Ok, you can jerk off
now” way. How can you include sexual assault as an element to your dark
horror story while also lacking the artistic integrity to handle it like
the horror it is?
I genuinely wish Urobuchi could write darker
subject matter without including women being sexually assaulted/brutally
murdered/a combination of the two (see: psycho-pass). And I wish I wasn’t a woman so I wouldn’t feel so grossed out reading his various
works. It is really not a fun time to see him treat women like shit
simply because they are women. If you disagree with the prior sentence,
let me know why they didn’t include a Kouji SA scene when Yoh jumps him
at the asylum in the exact same way Saya jumped Yoh at Fuminori’s house—
the answer is because he’s a guy, and it’s not sexy for a guy to get
SA’d like it is for a woman.
I don’t even want to go into how Saya’s appearance is that of a little girl, check his harddrive man i dunno what else to say
also YEAH. i played this on vnds for some reason
1.5/5
8) Doki Doki Literature Club Plus
Went back and forth on whether to include this considering this is more a "what I played for the first time this year" list and I've already played DDLC, but Plus has new content, so I'll add it here.
I could probably be one of the few visual novel heads that really likes DDLC. I think everyone is quick to say "this basically copied Totono" but in my opinion the similarities are broad enough, and at the time of DDLC's release it didn't even have an English TL. I don't think Dan Salvato was enough of a vnhead to see Totono, see the 2-5 YouTube videos on it that had ENG subs at the time, and think "I'm gonna copy this EXACTLY". If anything, I think DDLC got people more interested in Totono and we eventually got a TL so everything worked out! Win win for everyone.
I had already read DDLC when it first came out, but I was interested in trying Plus to see the new stuff. My review of DDLC is that it's good and you should play it. My review of DDLC Plus is that it's fine? And you should play it if you liked DDLC I guess.
DDLC Plus includes two big things - a bunch of short stories of the girls prior to the game's start, and some kind of meta game taking place through emails and files on your desktop.
For the latter - I actually didn't see much of this because the way it was implemented into the game itself wasn't very well done. To get around the issue of not being able to delete character files on a console, Plus gives you a desktop where you can go into the files and delete things from there. Sometimes if you open files at a certain time as the time on your desktop, you'll unlock new information in this secondary meta narrative.
...I say this, but I rarely saw any of them because the windows for unlocking some of these files have really narrow timeframes and you can't change the desktop clock in the settings. You have to change your CONSOLE'S time??? Literally why even implement this desktop time gimmick if I have to keep fucking with my Switch's settings? Kind of really annoying! Anyways I'm sure some interesting stuff is in here but I didn't feel motivated enough to dig through it all thanks to this.
For the former - I'm actually mixed on the short stories. I like that they all gave new art for the girls and had some cross-character interactions that we didn't get to see much of (since the base game focuses on you and the girls, not the girls' relationships with each other). But the contents of the short stories were... Ehhhhhhhhhhhh.
I don't keep my finger on the pulse of the DDLC fandom or any of its criticism outside of Totono parallels, but apparently the short stories were added because DDLC had received backlash due to its handling of sensitive topics from the first game (the whole suicide and abuse and mental health stuff). Now I've never been abused and never committed suicide so can't give my feedback there, but I do have extremely poor mental health and I didn't think that any of it that was depicted in DDLC was bad. The game was only 4 hours long so there's really only so much it can say in that timeframe regarding the topics there.
The short stories in Plus are all about the girls going through some kind of mental health tryst and crying and then feeling better. I think there are 10 stories total and not a single one of them doesn't have one of the girls crying in it, one of the girls suddenly speaking like a mental health counselor to logically explain their feelings, and then a teary happy resolution.
They even have a realistic depiction of a panic attack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In my opinion the novelty of these started to wear off around the halfway mark and just felt patronizing and weird by the end. Like these girls are in high school, why are they fighting for their lives like this in every story? Why were there no stories of them just having normal high school hijinks? Studying for tests? Holding a bake sale? I saw people saying these were "wholesome", what's wholesome about 10 stories of girls having nonstop mental breakdowns???
In some of these stories they barely even know each other for a week before they break out the therapy talk, they're essentially strangers, if a stranger talked like this to me in high school where all I did was want to kill myself and play Smash Bros I would never want to talk to them again.
My aversion with these stories could also just be because of my own relationship with my mental health. Maybe other people felt comforted or empowered by them, and I'm not gonna say you can't feel that way. That's awesome if they helped you out. But I super didn't care for these.
Imagine if you were playing super mario and super mario suddenly stopped wahooing around to look at the camera and say "Have you considered talking to a therapist? Wahoo! You should get medicated if possible! Yah-Hah!" and bounced back to normal and i wasn't supposed to say "why the fuck is super mario talking to me about not killing myself"
3.5/5
9) The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story
First let me just say - do not play this game with the English dub. I put it on because I will almost always opt to listen to English dubs if they're available and this one is actually pretty bad. Smart alecks will snidely read this and say "Heh, that's cuz most English dubs are bad!" and the truth is they're really not, and a lot of Japanese games can be poorly acted too but you don't notice because you don't speak the language. No shade to any of the English voice actors - voice actors who I could BARELY find the credits for, Square Enix put these fuckers in witness protection after releasing this - I think it was just bad directing, and a lot of the actors have other roles where they sound better. But yeah, keep it to the Japanese voices (the Japanese acting is also not 10/10 either but whatever).
I'm not someone that has a lot of experience playing FMVs (the only other two I've played are 428 Shibuya Scramble and Death Come True), so I can't weigh this against a ton of other games in the genre. But it IS a mystery game, and I can judge it based on that -- and I think it's whatever.
The premise starts off pretty strong -- you follow a chain of murder mysteries throughout different time periods and have to figure out how it relates to a modern day mystery taking place in front of the main character, who happens to be a mystery author. There's some human experimentation and immortality thrown into the mix to keep the story larger than life, too. The main gameplay mechanic is reviewing clips from the chapter you've watched and connecting points of logic to create theories about what happened, and then figuring out which is the truth (ex: you can guess "She left through the front door" and "She left through the window" and present which you think is the truth, though if you're wrong then you get a game over).
But for some reason, I found myself caring less and less as The Centennial Case progressed, and I don't know why this happened. Could it be because the actors in the game are playing multiple people across different timeframes, so I don't particularly care about the stakes that much due to the sheer amount of people involved? Is the mystery just not that intriguing after a while? Is the gameplay mechanic of linking clues to an overall mystery also not really that interesting after a while? It could be these things or even other things not listed here. I dunno.
Centennial Case is weird because it involves a family and their helpers, so it feels like everyone should have a connection to the main mystery that makes solving it all the more exciting. But in reality only like a small amount of people are involved with the Big Bad of the game's big plot, and all I could think of while the Big Bad was explaining this to the whole family was "damn, some of these guys must be so fucking confused right now".
One part of the game that gets seemingly universal praise across all reviews is a section where the gameplay does a whole new turn and you're basically in an escape room for a while. It's the only part of the game that's like this and it has some pretty fun puzzles. I wish more of the game had sections like this. If this team at Squeenix does another FMV game like this I hope they lean into this aspect way more.
I'd say give this a shot if you're running out of mystery games to play or want a higher quality FMV game to try out -- regardless of mystery, I do think it's a pretty looking game with decently filmed scenes. Maybe you'll like it more than me! Who knows.
2/5
10) Your Turn to Die: Death Game by Majority
I was waiting for them to release the final chapter of this before I played it, but after over a year of waiting I said fuck it we ball, I wanna play it now. The final chapter was supposed to come out in 2024 or something. Why am I Ciconia'ing myself again FUCK!!!! I NEVER LEARN!!!
Anyways this game's pretty darn good for what's out so far!! I really like it a lot.
There's not too much you can really say about YTTD without going into full spoiler mode, but I've found it to be pretty intriguing and entertaining. I only have some basic ideas for how the final chapter will go which is pretty exciting. They foreshadow some things in the chapters leading up to the final one that will probably make their way back to being relevant in the final chapter -- I think proper foreshadowing is something that a lot of mystery games accidentally sleep on doing unrelated image of raincode here, so it's nice to see it here. I'm sure there'll be twists in the final chapter but I probably won't be blown away by every single reveal. Again, keeping it vague so as to not give spoilers...
I also really, really, REAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLY like the art direction/visuals of YTTD. Like so so so much. Something about the textured 2D sprites of the characters combined with these sort of old school computer graphic style to represent the ingame maps, character models, minigames, etc... Ohhhhhhh it scratches my brain in a perfect way. Such a unique visual style that really makes it stand out among other death-game-centric games. YTTD is such an artistic marvel.
This is one of those games that I like so much I kinda don't even know what more to say about it and don't really see myself making content of it. I think I've spoken about this before on this blog, but does anyone else feel this way about some things? You feel satisfied enough by a game that you're just like... "Ehhh I don't wanna draw much for this game if at all... I'm good."
As another example, I feel this way about Undertale/Deltarune, too. This doesn't make it better than other games I like -- for example, putting this in a room with AITSF, which I've drawn a lot of, I still like AITSF more -- it's just a very specific way YTTD has sat with me.
Maybe the above paragraph doesn't make sense to anyone who also hasn't experienced this feeling, I'm writing half of this post while getting over a fever. Anyways, you should totally play YTTD, and maybe someday that final chapter will come out!
4.5/5
11) Cake Mania 1-4
Technically this shouldn't be on my list because I played these when I was 9, but hey enough time has passed that it's basically like I'm playing it for the first time. I was going through something weird in October where I really wanted to play Cake Mania. 3 is probably the best one because it's so dumb.
12) Diner Dash 1-5
Technically this shouldn't be on my list because I played these when I was 9, but hey enough time has passed that it's basically like I'm playing it for the first time. I was going through something weird in October where I really wanted to play Diner Dash. They are basically all the same.
13) Slow Damage
Slow Damage is possibly Nitro+Chiral's first game that's both incredibly ambitious and able to stick the landing with their ambitiousness. It's also their third game where the setting is a really shitty disenfranchised city in Japan. But third time's the charm, this one's actually pretty good!
I wrote a lot about Slow Damage on Backloggd which I'll just link here since it's really long and I don't wanna copypaste all of that in. This is a yaoi game, with GAY SEX, so this might not be for you, but if you're gonna pick any yaoi game and your first thought is "teehee let's play DMMD!" -- Do not play DMMD, it blows, it sucks, it's lame, play Slow Damage it's so much better it's not even funny.
A "retranslation patch" for Slow Damage came out that you might have seen around depending on what circles you're in online (aka do you follow a lot of fujoshi or not), and I am firmly against this patch, which is weirdly transphobic and makes the pretty good localization into a literal and boring Japanese translation. Do not play it. Just buy the game from JAST Blue and enjoy.
I have trouble deciding if this or sweet pool is my favorite Nitro+Chiral game. I'll go with sweet pool for now, but this is still fantastic.
As they're by the same company, Saya from Saya no Uta also shows up in this game as a figurine in this CG. Unfortunately deducting .5 points for this (JOKE)
4.5/5
14) A Date With Death
A Date With Death is a frustrating read for me. A lot of effort has been put into it aesthetically (the UI is great, chat gimmick is neat, and there is a lot of customization you can do of your character, their room, their chatroom icon, etc), but writing-wise this really doesn’t scratch my itch.
The basic plot is that the main character is a magnet for bad luck/close calls to death (like "a piano almost falling on them" type of scenarios they're getting out of) and one day receives a message from someone claiming to be the grim reaper -- and this person is intent on taking the main character's soul. Pretty interesting premise!
The premise is good, but the inner workings of A Date With Death are honestly a huge letdown for me. It's set within a short time limit, which is already a risky thing to put into a romance game (gives falling in love after a week a feeling of impracticality), but the main character starts flirting with the love interest, named Grim/Casper, really fast, and he reciprocates equally as fast. Don’t get me wrong, he’s adorable, but it felt less like a natural buildup to a budding crush and more “yeah the game has a really strict timeline so let’s make them flirty almost right out of the gate”. I don’t mind stories with only one love interest, but because of the short timespan and lack of a deeper plot, the romance really failed to capture my interest and I kinda got annoyed by the constant flirting.
The way the story is written, it feels like I should already know who Grim/Casper is and already have a crush on him before playing it. If you told me this game was made to compliment a preexisting game (something like a spinoff where you could date a character from a previous game), then it would make so much more sense to me.
Like, he's cute!! Don't get me wrong!! But I need way more breathing room to enjoy flirting with this guy so fast.
I could see this concept being really interesting if it was stretched
over a month’s time ingame and the MC and LI got to know each other much
better. As it stands though this was kind of disappointing. It is free,
which is nice, and maybe you might think I’m being harsh when it comes
to a game that’s FREE, but I think I’ve given a decent amount of
constructive criticism, and whatever game they make next could improve
upon previously mentioned points.
Great character creator though. I kinda wish they put the effort they put into the customization into other aspects of the game.
2/5
15) Lunar maiden, River-side Angel, and the Godlike Moment
You reading this post right now: "god fucking damn this is the most scrimblo bimblo ass visual novel name i've seen yet from lone"
I really liked GM (gonna shorten the name of the game to just GM / godlike moment), but I actually can't recommend it to 90% of viewers for two reasons:
1) The translation is a mess and really bungles the story. I think most people who haven't dealt with machine translation nonsense before will have a hard time getting through this because the mistakes really get annoying. You don't realize how much a translation makes or breaks a game until you play something like this. I have the added benefit of knowing some Japanese (so I could hear the voicelines and understand what was really being said for some parts) and being patient, but I can't recommend this to people unless they've also been in the DeepL visual novel trenches before.
VNDB has this translation credited to AI, which I'm also unsure about because some of the lines are so specifically English oriented that I find it hard to believe AI could get those parts right while also getting other parts wrong (ex: flubbing basic grammar and sentence structure, but translating "watch subscription movies" as "Netflix and chill" or translating "black sugiru joke ("black joke" = the term for a dark joke in JP)" as "that's too hellish" and not just leaving it as "black joke" in ENG). Is AI this advanced where they know how to translate this stuff into such natural English...? Who knows.
2) GM seems to have gotten a price cut recently so it's only 11 dollars, but the translation issues + it being pretty short with an ending that kind of just Happens, it's not exactly a great way to spend your money. For just a couple extra bucks you could buy The House In Fata Morgana, A Summer's End - Hong Kong 1986, Lightning Angel Litona Liliche, trying to think of more games I like that are in the 11-15 dollar range but you get what I mean. There are better options out there.
All this being said, I still really enjoyed GM. I'm a real big sucker for stories where every character is just miserable, which this game definitely delivers on -- the main character girl is a schizophrenic whose parents killed themselves so she lives alone in public housing, and the guy she falls in love with is an equally depressed enigmatic loner. They're basically the only characters in the game, which is just about them meeting, falling in love, having sex, and struggling deeply with their mental health and places in the world.
Now you might say, "Lone, how could you like this but dislike the extra stories in DDLC Plus?". I've ruminated on this a bit and I think the answer is the Plus stories felt very corporate and sanitized and this game feels very raw. You really get the sense that the author feels at least some of the things GM's characters feel. That's not saying Dan Salvato hasn't got his own problems -- idk him maybe he's going through it too -- but that's the impression I get when comparing these two. Plus's stories are all like "things suck but it's gonna be okay with your friends by your side!" and GM is very "life sucks and happiness is temporary", and between those two options I will slurp up stories like the latter without restraint, every time.
Does this say some crazy shit about me? I'm normal I promise. If GM was longer with a better translation, it would probably be a certified Lone classic, but for now I can only say it's a game I'll be thinking about for a long time. Which is still a pretty high praise!
3.5/5
16) Halo Reach
This game is so good what the fuck do I even say about it man. I've been trying to think of some kind of nuanced review to give but I really have nothing. Sometimes a game is so good that there's no need for any fancy words or long YouTube essay. It's just so good.
Of course, I was so clueless about Reach I didn't even realize it was going to end with everyone in it dying until JB (@gunbusted on twit) flat out told me that was what was going to happen. To quote him, "The game that opens with your helmet cracked on the ground might have some characters dying in it.". To be honest, I just thought it was a sick visual and so hearing this, I basically was like awwww fuck.
My favorite character was Kat, because I'm genetically predisposed to like girl characters because they are girls. I love women so much. So if you remember Reach, you remember that in one cutscene she just gets shot in the fucking head and dies, completely out of nowhere. When this happened I SHRIEKED. I think we were talking about what couples we shipped in Naruto at that time while watching the cutscene and the entire mood just shifted after. Like, head in my hands level of grief.
The way that they pick off characters one by one in Reach is just brutal. Some obvious death flags get tripped, like with Jorge, but deaths like Kat's and Carter's just leave you feeling hollow inside. The way your team gets smaller and smaller over the course of the game until it's just you... Unreal. By the time the Pillar of Autumn pulls out and Keyes's sexy ass leaves you behind, you've been beaten down so many times, lost so many friends, that there's this sadness gnawing at you.
The Noble Team in Reach isn't a team that's bursting with character development or a whole lot of character traits, but the way that everyone's deaths still manage to effect the player -- or at least, EFFECT THE LONE -- is crazy.
And then... the "CURRENT OBJECTIVE: SURVIVE" text!! I recognized it from the memes!! For one second I thought, "Haha like the memes :)" and then that sickening futility of what that text meant kicked in. What the FUCK man!!!!!!!! oh my GOD!!!!!!!!!
After we had finished playing Reach I just had my head in my hands and all I could say was "Damn". Just made my heart hurt. What a game, man.
Also, here's a fun fact -- I went on YouTube to see if there was any way you could survive the ending, and it was there that I found out that this message was at the end of the game:
Which I didn't see the first time because it's removed in the Master Chief Collection... :,) That kinda sucks bigtime! Especially because MCC also removes the credits here, too. So for a minute you're just watching the Pillar of Autumn floating in space in silence with nothing else on the screen like, "What is going on here LOL". Glad to get some clarity on this but it's also kinda sad.
Reach closes out my Halo playing, which I started this March. It feels like Halo is an old friend to me now, but in reality I've been into it for less than a year! Weirdly enough I gained some followers from all my Haloposting so if you're one of them reading this, thanks for sticking around haha. Again, no interest in playing Halo 5 or beyond, but I did pick up Halo Wars during this winter sale, so I'll be trying that sometime. Also I need to watch Halo Legends...
I posted this on twitter when I first finished it but here's my Halo character tierlist:
And as for my game ranking, I think it's Halo 3 > Halo 2 > Halo Reach > Halo 1 > Halo ODST > Halo 4. Really the only one of the group that I dislike is 4.
Anyways, Kat and my spartan OC are happily married and living on a farm somewhere on a faraway planet. Amen.
4/5
THE LONE GAME AWARDS
"Hey guys! Geoff here with The Game Awards. We've got a great lineup this year, and what I mean by that is Lone only played like four games that actually came out in 2024, which is up from her number of playing three games last year that came out in 2023."
"Now, are any of these games in Lone's Game Awards? Well, the genres she played were basically all over the place, so we just have a quick bunch of recommended games and a top 3 list to show you, but no. No 2024 games made her top 3. I fucking hate this job"
If you like romance, check out...
JACKJEANNE! Didn't get to play as many otome games as I wanted to this year, but this was truly a great game. Tons of content, oh my god. Check out my post from the first half of 2024 for more thoughts on it.
If you like SRPGs, check out...
Unicorn Overlord! The story isn't going to blow you away but what it lacks there I think it makes up for plenty with character interactions.Gameplay was really fun, if you're more SRPGpilled than me you'll probably find some insane ways to minmax your gameplay. I really liked this one, hope Vanillaware makes a game where being gay isn't a joke someday.
OR Valkyria Chronicles 4! Stronger story than Unicorn Overlord in my opinion and also has solid character moments too. Compared to Unicorn Overlord there's less ways you can completely break the gameplay, but you can get pretty damn close with some of the commands you can unlock throughout the game.
If you like horror, check out...
Spirit Hunter: NG! A great step up from Death Mark, and you don't even have to play that to play this. Plot was solid, diverging paths in the story were cool to have, and the main character is pretty chill. This is probably my "unexpected banger" game of 2024 too.
OR Your Turn To Die! This surprisingly had a lot of scary moments. NG is more classic, jumpscare-y spooky horror, and YTTD is psychological, suspense horror-- it leaves you with a deep sense of dread while playing.
If you like gay sex, check out...
The Master Chief Collection! Charbiter forever
and NOW...
LONE'S TOP 3 GAMES OF 2024:
3) Trauma Team
This is the best entry in the Trauma Center series, I talked about it more in my previous post. It has it all -- fun new gameplay sections, a great plot, lesbians. I have truly no idea if this is hailed in the Trauma Center community for the kino it is, but it's a standalone game, and you know what that means... You could play this badboy RIGHT NOW. Grab your Wiimote and lock the fuck in, we've got lives to save in Portland, Maine.
Is there a fandom for this? Please direct me to it. More importantly, please direct me to the Maria x Tomoe fanfiction.
2) Halo 2 + Halo 3
sorry this was the first chief x arbiter pic i found so i just copypasted it in
Do not separate them. Maybe it's cheating to combine Halo 2 and 3 into one entry, but they're two halves of one story, and y'know what? It's my list! And I say the combo pack of Halo 2 and 3 are great. I love Master Chief, I love Cortana, I love Miranda, I love Johnson, I love Arby, they are ALL my best friends. I have a much different perspective on this series than people who grew up playing it but I'm very glad that the general consensus seems to be that people like these two entries a lot.
Truly the Utawarerumono 2 and 3 of Halo. Please play the obscure visual novel series Utawarerumono to understand this comparison.
AND NOW....
FOR GAME OF THE YEAR:
....
............
........................
PIKMIN FUCKING 4 BABY!!!!
IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS GAME BLOCK ME BACK. PIKMIN 4 RULES. I LOVE YOU PIKMIN 4. GREATEST GAME ON THE SWITCH THAT ISN'T METROID DREAD. I LIKE IT EVEN MORE THAN XENOBLADE 3!!!!
I LOVE YOU ICEMIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
PIKMIN 4 GREATEST VIDEO GAME TO EVER DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In Closing
What a year for gaming. I replayed a lot of games this year too that I didn't talk about here (Metroid Fusion, Zero Mission, AAI2, etc). For 2025 I'd really like to crunch through my visual novel backlog. Here is what I'm currently playing/planning on playing in the future:
- AGAIN - A Cing (Another Code / Hotel Dusk) game that is famously regarded as "not as good as Hotel Dusk". I like it so far, though it's pretty simple (and has a decent amount of typos)
- MAMIYA - Visual Novel that's lowkey gay. There isn't much else to say about it as I'm halfway through the ending DLC and still feel pretty mixed on it.
- Cupid Parasite - Sweet and Spicy Darling - big otome game to cross off my list. Didn't get to touch this last year...
- All of the Famicom Detective Club Games - i'm going to find out what made the smiling man smile
- Yakuza 5 - I'LL FINISH THIS I SWEAR
...And other games. And hey, Metroid Prime 4 is dropping this year so I get to play that finally! Will it be peak or mickey? Only time will tell. My money is on mickey.
Overall Tierlist for 2024 :) I've been playing Mamiya but decided not to review it until beating the DLC, because I have a Lot of questions that the DLC should answer... or im gonna be annoyed
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