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bmaxwell · 4 months

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Game of the Year 2023: Honorable Mentions

It's an honor just to be nominated.

Octopath Traveler II

Octopath Traveler II landed better for me than its predecessor. The visuals are lovely, the soundtrack is awesome again, and the writing is better this time around. I put around 50 hours into this game, and I hit up against a boss fight that took me ~45 minutes to lose. Tried a couple of times and lost the drive to come back. Excellent RPG with some pacing problems and spongey boss fights. Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical

More of a visual novel musical than a roleplaying one, the game's story and aesthetic immediately hooked me. Everything about the game hits except - crucially - the music. I cared about the characters and was invested in the story, and the way you make choices that affect the story and the current song is a really neat hook. The songs just don't have the juice though.

Dredge

In Dredge you play as a fishing boat captain (or, if you prefer, you play as a boat). You go out for the day, make your catch, and come back to port to sell. If you find yourself out at night you might encounter some weird sights and sounds, your light might flicker and die, and the vibes are generally Off. There's a lot of weird shit happening and odd characters sending you out for fishes. It's a wonderfully foreboding world full of mystery and intrigue. It's a game that is somehow chill and disturbing at the same time.

Wildfrost

Wildfrost is the best card game I played this year with some neat mechanics and lovely artwork. I had it on my second screen quite a bit. My biggest issue with it is that it's too easy to overlook something and blow the game unless you really pay close attention (a Me Problem). Each character on the screen has its own timer, stats, and text. And that's normally not a problem at all for me, but when your champion dies the game is over. Too many of my plays ended when my champion died unexpectedly. Again, a great card game but not a good passive second screen game.

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

Deckbuilding tarot visual novel game. Writing, music, and overall vibes are just wonderful here. Reminiscent of The Red Strings Club. My only real complaint is that everything surrounding the main conflict of the story is more interesting than the political posturing and campaigning for the new leader of the coven which much of the game centers on.

Sea of Stars

Similar to last year's Chained Echoes, I can tell that there's a really good game here but it just never completely clicked for me. I played quite a bit of it and enjoyed my time with it, but didn't feel compelled to keep coming back.

Lamplighter’s League

The elevator pitch for this game is XCOM but with an Indiana Jones theme. I somehow managed to enjoy it more than either of its inspirations. It feels a bit like a fancy version of Pathway. It's a little rough around the edges, but I had a blast assembling a team of weirdoes to battle cultists and steal relics.

Fire Emblem Engage

I have to stop playing Fire Emblem games. Like Pokemon, the combat is passable but ultimately disappointing for me. It's too quick, too wham-bam rock-paper-scissors for me. Engage brings back characters from the series' past, which is unfortunately lost on me. I enjoyed the game's visuals and goofy Saturday morning cartoon aesthetics, but the combat never hit for me.

Dave the Diver

This one was not on my radar at all when it released, but Dave the Diver really impressed me with its writing, visual style and charm, and variety of minigames. The cast of characters and story are great, particularly the sushi restaurant portion of the game. The storyline with the underwater kingdom hurt the pacing for me a bit, but this game is still a banger.

Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line

I've never gotten into a rhythm game that didn't involve a plastic instrument before now, but pressing buttons in time to all the Final Fantasy music while little chibi Final Fantasy characters fight little chibi Final Fantasy monsters is somehow very compelling to me. I played this game on and off all year long as a nice way to unwind with a song or twelve.

Dead Space Remake

I missed this game the first time around, glad to have caught the remake here. It's been a great year for survival horror games, and Dead Space is a good one. "Alone and terrified on a crashed space station in a part of the universe humanity really shouldn't be" is well-worn territory and for good reason. It's compelling when done well, and Dead Space does it well.

Super Mario Bros Wonder

Time and nostalgia, man. I have no idea how to rank this game or even how to verbalize my thoughts and feelings on it. It's a callback to the games I played growing up. Most sidescrolling platformers these days are metroidvanias, indie titles, or both. Getting a game from Nintendo that feels like a true successor to Super Mario World some thirty years later is wild.

It's not that they haven't done Mario sidescrollers between now and then, it's just that they have felt rote and joyless, like they ticked the boxes and released it. They felt uninspired. Super Mario Bros Wonder is not guilty of that. It is bursting at the seams with life and joy and creativity and (forgive me) wonder. They're not afraid to get weird with it, to introduce new elements and new enemies without going overboard with them. Every new stage is full of potential because you have no idea what they might throw at you.

A lot of this comes from the new Wonder Flower, a powerup you can find somewhere in each level that feels like an acid trip. Warp pipes come to life, the hills bounce, the walls bleed, and you can see sounds and taste colors. The game also adds equippable badges that let you float when you jump, jump straight up when clinging to a wall, swim faster, or any number of things.

Listing off new features doesn't mean much without execution, and it hits on all cylinders here. They've also added a strand element that the player can opt into, where you can see ghost outlines of other players and help them out or get help from them. It's especially useful in finding secrets (Oh, someone's way up there? How do I get up there?). It's a neat take on co-op, akin to getting helpful notes from other players in souls games.

The Nintendo of the past 5 years or so feels confident in a way that had been missing for a long while. Mario Odyssey, Bowser's Fury, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and now Mario Wonder all feel like they've grown beyond the shackles of their series' past and are bold in a way that's wonderful to see.

Fuga: Melodies of Steel 2

The sequel to one of 2021's best games did not disappoint. It largely brought more of the same: orphans, tragedies of war, furries, and tank on tank battle. I don't see any of those things much, so this was a welcome entry for me this year.

Dordogne

This is a perfect game pass game. An indie title I'd never heard of and doesn't immediately appeal to me, but it's on a service I already pay for so why not? It's about a young woman going back to her recently deceased grandmother's home in France, where she'd spent a summer as a young child.

She is recovering memories and unearthing the source of family trauma - the kind that often bubbles up with the passing of a matriarch. The game really takes its time lingering on small details - every step of making tea in grandma's kitchen, the dusty old photos in the living room, the old train set in the attic. These little details can surprise us with how strongly they hang on. I found myself thinking about the time I spent with my own grandmother (the only grandparent I ever knew). Remembering the worn deck of Authors cards we played with, the way her hands looked as she washed green beans we picked together.

I brought my own experiences to the game, and I think that's the point.

Endless Dungeon

Games don't always have to reinvent the wheel to leave an impression and provide enjoyment. Endless Dungeon was a fun co-op twin stick dungeon crawler that my wife and I played. The moving and shooting felt good and it provided plenty of challenges to overcome together. In a year that didn't include Diablo 4, this might have hit harder for us.

Like a Dragon Ishin

Give me my Yakuza in whichever form you like. Turn-based, real time, Modern day, 80's, feudal Japan, zombies. Fuckin' whatever. I'll clean my plate every time. This one's ending smelled pretty funny from an historical/nationalism point of view, but the rest of the game felt like historical Yakuza tourism and I am here for it.

The Last Spell

This game is an early access success story. I played a lot of it before it went 1.0, and I kept enjoying it after. You're managing a small base that is being invaded by hordes of enemies every night. You control a small band (3-6) of heroes tasked with mowing down wave after wave of monsters, backed up by traps, ballistae, and catapults if you choose to build them.

After the night passes you level up your heroes, build up your little base, outfit your crew with new gear, and do it again. It does one of my favorite things in games: it makes you feel stupidly overpowered then pushes you to your limit. My victories usually end with my town almost in ruins, which is the perfect difficulty. Lastly - and definitely not least -the soundtrack is a prog rock cornucopia.

Final Fantasy XVI

Final Fantasy XVI has been a polarizing release, with some fans put off by the clear Game of Thrones inspiration. The gameplay is 3rd person action where you're only playing as Clive. As someone uninterested in Game of Thrones and not especially precious about the sanctity of the Final Fantasy series, this is a fantastic game.

It does spectacle and bombast in a way no other game did this year. The game revolves around eikons - the game's pantheon of summons like Bahamut, Ifrit, etc - and the battles between them are filled with button mashing and quick time events.

Unfortunately the button mashy combat was hard on my hands because I am old now, and the maybe the PS5 controller is uncomfortable for that? I enjoyed the game every time I picked it and played it, but I didn't find myself drawn back to it frequently.

It's in good company with 90% of 3rd person action games I've played. I had fun with it and didn't finish it.

Resident Evil 4 Remake

I never played more than an hour of this game before the remake. It follows the path of every Resident Evil game I've ever played, starting off very strong before ending with a sort of wet fart in the back third of the game. That said, it's a great game and I understand the love it gets. That opening section of the game in the village is top tier, and there are some great characters along the way. This probably would be in my top 10, but I don't like lining remakes (even excellent ones) up alongside new releases when it comes time to hand out awards.

Super Mario RPG Remake

Similar to the RE4 remake, this would be 100% in my top 10 if it was a new title and not a remake. I played this in 1996 when it originally came out. The notion of Square making a Mario RPG was bonkers, and they pulled it off incredibly well. That novelty is gone in 2023 after we've seen Mario in all kinds of genres, but the execution still holds up beautifully.

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gamenewsnet · 1 month

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ICYMI: Game-News.co.uk Charming roguelike deckbuilder Wildfrost makes its way to mobile - #Wildfrost http://dlvr.it/T4jvtS

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entertainmehub · 1 month

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Game-News.co.uk Charming roguelike deckbuilder Wildfrost makes its way to mobile - #Wildfrost http://dlvr.it/T4ft3C

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vel-sig-gaming · 2 months

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[Wildfrost] Review: "RNG" means "Skill Issue"

Card games are one of my favorite types of games. deckbuilding is fun, finding synergies like roguelikes or just looking for combos like a fighting game, it's like building a miniature game. Getting insane combos is fun in any game. There's a lot of room for different artstyles and mechanics in card games that can drastically changer he pacing and gameplay while still keeping the same genre. And recently I found wildfrost is one of the exemplars of what a card game should be.

It's a roguelike game, and you have a very limited deck selection. You'll only have about 10-15 chances to pick up a card all game including shops, and there's about 8 battles per run. Despite that it's still insanely deep and with enough synergies to make even standard 40 card deckbuilders weep in envy.

For starters, you can (usually) only play one card per turn, and you have a battle grid as well. So despite the action limit many things are still happening so the exemplary never feels slow. Cards attack automatically when deployed, and you have units or spells, basically. Combat normally looks like playing units and keeping them safe with spells while shutting down the enemy's threats, you can move your units around to dodge but if your leader dies it's all over.

The real fun part is charms and crowns though. Roguelike games are always famous for insane combos that are super inconsistent,t that's the high notes of that genre However, this game gives you consistency (for a price.) you can buy crowns which effectively allow you to play any card for free on turn 0. This makes each run feel standard enough, as it's not hard to force a specific interaction.

Combine that with charms which have a million different effects, ranging from +2 attack to "This card hits all enemies'.

The neat part is that everything ties into each other, in the sense of both charms and the actual cards. That charm that gives +2 attack? Can go on units, sure, but it can even go on spells. Even things that normally don't do damage. That card that had 0 attack, but applies a tiny debuff to all enemies? Guess that just got overpowered. It's all these little interactions, making any effect apply to any card in essence that maks you feel like a true gamer when making combos, And it's also why this game can afford to be so hard.

Indeed, thats the main criticism others have of this game, that it's unbalanced. Sad to say, everyone saying that is not only wrong, they're bad at the game. Because after a while playing it's VERY clear to see that the devs thought of everything. it's why some cards have pre-build effects like hitting all enemies, or consuming on use (so you can't apply consume effects to them again) or a million tiny effects like that. And when you see what the devs intended, it's crazy fun to break the game.

On the side of actual complaints though, Much like slay the spire though, you'll find that the first few difficulty modifiers make the game EASIER instead of harder (harder enemies, but more gold, for one.) Plus, in some fights, there's clearly an intended counter that if you don't have you just die, probably. Not to mention certain combos feel WAY too reliant on a single card that you only have like 6 chances to find before a boss slaughters you. Plus, the IMO most fun card in the game is only unlockable on the 3rd difficulty modifier. And lastly, for a roguelike, it felt no longer quite appealing after beating the final final boss just a few times, Though a 33 hour playtime can hardly be called a bad deal.

To summarize, it's a very good game. If you like hard games, strategy, card games, or just the general aesthetic it provides, it's worth every penny. Oh also the music is a banger, especially for the final 2 fights. Insanely fire.

youtube

Final recommendation: 8/10

#game review #game recommendations #card games #deck builder #roguelike #Youtube

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gertlushgaming · 1 year

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Wildfrost Review (Steam)

For our Wildfrost Review, Where the sun has frozen over, and the world has succumbed to the Wildfrost. The town of Snowdwell and its survivors stand as the last bastion against an eternal winter... Build up a deck of powerful card companions and elemental items, as you battle to reach the Sun Temple and banish the frost once and for all!

Wildfrost Review Pros:

- Decent cartoon-like graphics. - 523.88MB download size. - Steam achievements. - Controller support. - Graphics settings - display mode, max fps, and v-sync. - Blood can be set to normal or rainbow colors and a blood amount slider. - Card battler gameplay. - Three leaders to choose from each round and it randomized from avatar, to name and any abilities. - Each card has a countdown icon that once it hits zero, the card/s will attack. - You can rename your leader. - Redraw bell - use it to redraw cards at any time, it ends your turn immediately unless you charge it up by getting it's counter to zero. - Enemies come into the battle via waves and you can see how many plays it is until they appear. - Fast snappy interface. - Your leader must be on the board for you to play the cards below. - Companions can be recruited and placed on the board, put in front of the leader and the enemy usually attacks them first. - Inspect cards give a more in-depth view of a card both friendly and enemy cards. - Recall cards so they can heal, more a thing for companions as leaders cannot be recalled. - Boss encounters. - Leaders and companions will auto-attack once their counter reaches zero. - Combo counter bonus. - The map has multiple routes and different scenarios from treasure, and battles to claiming journal pages. - If a companion gets killed, they actually get injured and if they survive the next battle (lower stats/health) then they get fully healed. - Snowdell is the town you are tasked with helping. Unlock new buildings by completing challenges. - Daily voyage - a harder game type that randomizes a game every day with random cards and modifiers. You only get one shot a day. - Handy quick new run button after defeat. - The journal keeps the names of all leaders you have used and any pages collected that give back stories. - Charms can be equipped with a card to adjust their stats. - At any point, you can rearrange leaders and companions on the board. - Devilishly addictive. - Wooly Snail is the shop where you can buy cards, charms, and upgrade cards. - As you unlock parts of the town, you fall into playing more as it just keeps going and going. - The journal keeps tabs on all encountered enemies, charms collected, and companions. Wildfrost Review Cons: - For the first hour or so it feels very samey as you grind to increase the card types you encounter. - A lot to take in. - Slight learning curve. - Difficulty spikes. - Bare minimum graphic settings. - Cannot rebind controls. - The tutorial does miss out on a few key points. - Daily quests are daunting more because of the bombardment of new card types and mechanics. - A lot to keep track of. Related Post: RunBean Galactic Review (Xbox Series S) Wildfrost: Official website. Developer: Gaziter and Deadpan Games Publisher: Chucklefish Games Store Links - Steam Read the full article

#Indie #PC #steam

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