#but like the sport itself is practically identical so why is it so fucking impossible for some people

[fortyfive-forty]

grabbing fistfuls of my own hair rocking back and forth repeating to myself like some kind of fucked up wizardly enchantment you should care about womens sports because its literally the same fucking sport why do i have to bend over backwards to convince you to care about womens sports like at an abstract level it is the exact same fucking thing and yet you cannot bear to possibly watch it unless you think the women are hot or there is some sort of social gain why is it so hard for you to care about womens sports when they are literally doing all of it better than the men

#i stand by my belief that womens sports are more entertaining anyways but i know that is somewhat personal preferences so ok! fine! #but they are the same then! #obviously yes there are legit differences in ~style~ and such based on the way different sports have evolved #ex: female basketballers are statistically better shooters than male basketballers #but like the sport itself is practically identical so why is it so fucking impossible for some people #to get interested in a sport they claim they love #just because women are doing it #i'm not sitting here like 'mmm how do i convince people to watch women's sport' like a legit plot #i'm just baffled i really don't understand #i mean i do understand of course but i'm just tired of it being this way lol #i want to talk to more people who have the level of brainrot i have about women's sports and it feels like everyone i know well #is just not that interested in the women even though they're interested in the men #of course there are people online but i get self-conscious and i don't know anyone well enough to truly go to the depths of my own brainrot #this is just a combination of genuine frustration but also my own loneliness lol #< wayyy more dramatic than it actually is for the record i'm not like lonely lonely #i just want someone who actually understands why i go nuts over this and who i feel comfortable spamming about it 😭 #blah blah blah words

[bengiyo]

Hi Ben!

I saw Vee from You're My Sky in your most misunderstood characters list and now I'm curious, what's your opinion on this series as a whole? Gifs tell me that it has a high production value, great cinematography and Suar in it, so I'm quite tempted to give it a go. But it's rarely talked about so... is it really worth a watch?

I love You're My Sky because it was the first show to follow in the wake of I Told Sunset About You and try to bring rich color, engaging cinematography, and and structured presentation of character dynamics after ITSAY. It's also a sports BL that takes its sports portion super seriously. It's also the show you should watch if you like when the younger guy is pursuing the older guy, because that's true for all three couples.

The show has three couples in it, and I really liked how the show kept all three couples at about the same moment emotionally throughout the entire runtime. It meant that we sometimes wouldn't see one of the side couples for a while, but I much prefer that to having the couples be in really different places and throw off the emotional tone of an episode.

Our primary pairing is between Thorn and Tupfah. They are childhood friends. Thorn followed Tupfah to his college after a few years and was confused why Tupfah no longer plays basketball. Theirs is a friends-to-lovers story where Thorn has been pining for a long time.

This show let us also see them spend time as a couple and face real complications that a couple of two aspiring professional athletes would face, including availability for college practice and potentially ending up with different clubs. There's also a great deal of examination of the kinds of coaching environments athletes might suffer or thrive under.

The second couple, Saen and Aii, aren't a sports couple, but Aii is older and graduating. He's focused on leaving Thailand and pursuing a professional career in Japan. In them you get a determined, sociable younger pursuer and a standoffish older interest.

I really liked where they went with this couple because we got to see a grandmother giving a knowing smirk when she enters the bedroom after their first night together, and we see them deal with the impending stress of being in a long-distance relationship for likely years.

I wrote about Vee in the ask you mentioned, but to reiterate, Vee is assigned to work with his sister's boyfriend on the track team. Vee, being the flirty little shit he is, teases Dome and is having a good time until it gets way too serious for both of them and he's having a panic attack in the middle of a race.

Their story is compelling because it doesn't end in success on screen. The social politics of their attraction make it impossible for them to consummate this romance under the current circumstances, and the show explores how this choice impacted the sister as well.

And then there's the basketball! This show does so much cool shit with the camera and the frame around the basketball itself. It also has a robust supporting cast in the basketball team. There's a beautiful scene of the whole team giving space to Thorn and Fah to figure out something important, and there's another lovely scene where they talk about gender identity.

Truly, as a man who enjoys sports and sports dramas, they did not fuck around when it came to doing the sports portion of this. The only other BL I remember being this serious about the sports was maybe Project S: Spike. Almost all the gifs are going to be the romance stuff, but the sports stuff in this show is well done.

I'm a big fan of this project, and I think it has some of my favorite presentations of masculinity in genre. I will probably rewatch it after I finish this UWMA rewatch.

Thanks for the ask!

#answered #you're my sky #thai bl

[kewltie]

Bakugou Tatsuya was born three minutes earlier than his twin and Katsuki had never let that go. They'd competed over everything – their parents’ attention, in sport and the school rankings. It was but a simple sibling rivalry, until it isn't anymore. Not when the heart is out on the frontline and neither of them is known for their mercy.

"Four hundred and eighty-eighty, huh," Tatsuya muses, looking at the scoreboard that was just posted for the first term finals. "We tied up." Not a first for either of them, but considering the prize of their wager. The results are startlingly revealing. "I thought you didn't care."

The weeks leading up to the finals, he'd locked himself in his room and crammed harder than he even did for the entrance exam for U.A., while Katsuki was out with his friends nearly everyday. To play, Tatsuya had thought, but clearly that wasn't the case at all.

He should have known. Identical twins. No matter how many people say that their similarity ended at their appearance, the level-headed Tatsuya and the firebrand that is Katsuki, they're two halves of a whole. It seems falling for the same person is written into the code of their DNA, the fabric of their very being. And neither of them is up for sharing, because for there to be a winner there must be always be a loser. It wasn't always like that though. Tatsuya would cripple his pride for Katsuki, his only and most precious brother, if it comes down to it.

He could take a loss. Or two.

But for the first time in a long time he doesn't want to let go of the hand holding his. Not even for Katsuki. And so the battle line is drawn around Izuku. He just didn't know how serious Katsuki would take it. Unlike Tatsuya, Katsuki had always kept his true feelings locked away and buried it under layers and layers of gruffness and rough exteriors.

He'd guarded it so zealously that it'd fooled Tatsuya. Once.

"I don't." Katsuki sneers beside him. "The bet was who would get a better rank in the finals and I just wanted to kick your ass. It has nothing to do with Deku.”

"Is that right?" He raises a brow.

"Yea," Katsuki says with a dismissive snort.

"So you won't mind me taking Izuku out on a date either way?" Tatsuya says, low and pointed. He'd never need to use his fist to hit where it hurt the most. His words are weapon themselves. "It doesn't bother you at all?"

At his words, Katsuki's jaw clenches as his hands balls into a fist at his side and his body tenses up like a dynamite ready to explode and all his triggers are named Deku. It's hysterically easy to read him like this.

Why couldn't Tatsuya have seen this all earlier?

Before the seed of this searing love toward Izuku took root and grew within him till it became this unmanageable thing, spilling out of him in droves. He doesn't know how Katsuki was able to hide it that long, when it's feels like an impossible millions things stuffed in him and he’s overflowing from it.

"You didn't fucking beat me," Katsuki finally answers, and his voice is unexpectedly cool against the violent storm brewing in his red eyes. "We’re tied up, so Deku isn't yours to take."

"Who you think deserve it then?" Tatsuya presses, pinning Katsuki with a glare of his own. "You, who made him cried countless times in the past?"

A thick blanket of silence falls over them, it's suffocating. Stilted against the noise of the hallway, but expected. This is a familiar battleground. Revisit a hundred times before again and again under a different kind of light and setting. In class, the field, in their home.

It's always been a contest for them. An unending series of question: who's smarter? Who's stronger? Who is the best? Who—? Who—? The answer didn't better so much as the thrill of the chase and the battle leading up to it. But then, the question became, who does Izuku loves the most?

That was when it stopped being a game between them. It’s a full blown war now.

Katsuki flexes his hand, clenching and unclenching it at his side, as though quietly mulling over it. Over the idea whether if he should answer the hit from Tatsuya's words with a physical jab of his own.

Katsuki takes a deliberate step forward toward him, but Tatsuya holds his ground. He won't be move. Not even for Katsuki. If he was a kinder person, a better older brother maybe, he would have step aside for Katsuki, but Tatsuya is tired, so very tired, of being the 'good' one, the good twin as though he only exists to be Katsuki's foil; the approachability of his image to balance out Katsuki's prickliness.

His yang to Katsuki's yin. Opposing forces working in mutual harmony, but to never stand apart.

"Tatchan is Tatchan and Kacchan is Kacchan," Izuku had once said, consoling him after another physical altercation with Katsuki. "I think it's amazing to have a twin." He'd smiled wistfully. "You guys share the same womb for ten months and that bond is stronger than anything, but you're also your own person with your own goals and desires. It doesn't always have to be an and/or thing."

While Katsuki and Tatsuya clashed over everything because they're dumb boys with an over competitive streak a mile wide, Izuku was playing the peacemaker between them. He probably doesn't expect that he would be something the twins would ferociously fight over too one day.

"Are you going to punch me now?" Tatsuya challenges.

Katsuki stops just shy of him, arms still at his side. "I should," he answers with a sharp grin of his own; the spread of his teeth is menacing and purposeful. "I really fucking should, just to shut up your arrogant mouth, but then I would be playing right into your hand."

 Tatsuya's eyes narrow minutely. It's easy to forget for all of Katsuki's violence and foul mouth, he's as keenly intelligence as Tatsuya. His score on the board speaks for itself.

"You—" he starts, but the rest of his words are swallowed by a familiar voice calling their name.

"Tatchan, Kacchan!" They both turn toward the noise and catches sight of Izuku running up to them with a breathless joy. "I heard!" He draws to a stop in front of them, breathing heavily and a face flushed with delight. "Congratulation for making it to the top ten out of our entire grade! You guys are amazing to tie for 2nd place." His grin is infectious and exuberance, dolling out affections and admirations like he got an untapped well of it.

Katsuki's face twists in annoyance. "Fuck 2nd place and the rest of the plebs. Should have taken first instead."

Tatsuya hums in agreement. They really should have.

Izuku pouts. "Hey, I got eight place and I'm happy."

"Because you're dumb and don't know how to not settle for what you rightfully deserve," Katsuki snaps, looking pointedly at him. Not that Izuku even catch any of his underlining meaning as he only looks sheepish in answer.

"You did great too, Izuku. I know how hard you study for that," Tatsuya says instead, much to the resentful glare of Katsuki aiming toward the side of his head. Not his fault that Katsuki's clumsy and inefficient way with words get his foot stuck in his mouth often.

His ineptitude is Tatsuya's advantage.

Izuku perks up with a shy and sweet smile. "T-Thank you, Tatchan!" he says. "It's all due to our study sessions. You’d helped a lot!"

Katsuki's miffed scoff can be heard loud and clear, but Tatsuya wisely ignore it to push for his end goal. "Then how about we go out this Saturday to celebrate finishing our finals and making it to the top ten?" he asks with careful deliberateness as he avoids meeting inevitable explosion beside him. He knows what to come after, but Katsuki only goes deathly still and quiet against his provocation.

Izuku's audible gasp is the only thing that can be heard. "Oh," he breathes, eyes widen in surprise. "Um," he scratches his cheek, looking anywhere but at them, "the three of us then?"

Tatsuya shakes his head. "No, just you and me." He pauses. "Will that be a problem?"

Green eyes flash toward him. "N-No, of course not!" he insists, an attractive blush rises to his cheeks. "I would love to join you on Saturday!" He casts a furtive glance at Katsuki. "But, um—"

"We have a track meet this Saturday," Katsuki cuts in, severe and low. The fact that he has been quiet all this time and hasn’t raise his voice since Izuku had joined them is startlingly enough; it's the calm before the storm. Katsuki's ire had been simmering under the surface; Tatsuya doesn't have to see it. He can feel the animosity seeping out in waves.

Izuku scrunches up nose in realization. "Oh, yes I forgot about that. Sorry!"

"It's a practice game against Tohei High, right?" Tatsuya counters, not even considering for a moment to give Katsuki an inch. "Izuku doesn't have to be there. And he's not even an official manager of the club so why do you drag him to these things?"

Katsuki bristles, anger finally getting the better of him. "The little shit begged to join us! I didn't fucking invite his ass," he hisses. "He's such a pest—" his brain catches up to his thoughtless mouth at last and the rest of his sentence died an awful, regretful death.

Izuku flushes, gaze dropping to the floor as his shoulders droop. "I see," he says quietly. "Then it wouldn't be a problem if I go with Tatchan instead."

With only Tatsuya's eyes on him, Katsuki's face goes through a gauntlet self-hatred, guilt and hurt before settling for resentment. "Fine. Do whatever the fuck you want," he snarls, voice twisted in such open derision and disgust that it's a marred of feelings. At himself, Izuku, or Tatsuya, nobody knows, but his anger is palpable enough that Izuku jerks his head up to look at him.

But Katsuki already has his back to them and is making his way out of the quagmire of a situation before anyone can get another word in.

Concern and anxiety etches across Izuku's face as he stares hauntingly at Katsuki's retreating back. It's wrought with worry over Katsuki.

Tatsuya desperately wants to reach out and ease his anxiety, but Izuku made the decision for him. "Kacchan, wait!" he cries out, running after him. He stops momentarily to look back apologetically at Tatsuya. "Sorry, I'll see you this Saturday then!"

And then he's gone. Just like that. After Katsuki.

While Tatsuya is left alone all by himself when there used to be three. He got a date out of Izuku. It's a victory in the most basic definition of it, but it feels hollow. Why is it that Katsuki is the one who ran away, but all Tatsuya sees is defeat in the vacant spaces they had left?

Because, he knows, it's an empty victory. He may have won this battle, but the war isn’t over. Far from it. Izuku has yet to choose his side and Katsuki may have retreated right now, but he hasn't thrown in his towel yet. After all, the best things are always worth the fight.

#bakudeku #fic snippet #bakugou twins au

[bmaxwell]

Best Games of 2020

2020 was a lot. It will be remembered for many things far above and beyond video games. COVID-19 shut the world down in a way never seen in my lifetime. It changed day to day life for many of us, and cost many of us loved ones. It was also the year when the ugly parts of our capitalist society were shown in broad daylight. It feels like 2001 again in that our lives will be divided into pre-2020 and post-2020.

For me personally, I was able to keep my job and work from home, and no one close to us died to the pandemic. We stayed home as much as possible, wore masks, wiped down groceries, and did our best to control what we could. It can be hard to talk about stuff like video games and sports with the usual sort of fervor when the world feels like it’s falling apart around us. It feels like playing the violin aboard the Titanic. But self-care is especially important in times like these, and it’s healthy and necessary to close Twitter, or for-the-love-of-god fucking Facebook and get a breather sometimes. Finding a balance where I could stay informed without completely submerging myself in misery wasn’t always easy. 

And so. 2020 was a pretty good year for games, though it must be noted that there is a cost to that escapism - the industry is rife with stories of abuse, burnout, and coverups from companies such as Ubisoft and CD Projekt Red, Naughty Dog, and many others. That can add an additional layer of exhaustion to what is supposed to be a relaxing escape. So I can understand the people who say they don’t want to hear about abuse in industry, they just want the games. But also, fuck those people. “I don’t care if you suffer to entertain me, I just don’t want to hear about it.” Fuck the whole entire way off.

But I digress. Like most years, I played a lot of games. I played a lot of coop beat-em-ups with my kids this year. Minecraft Dungeons and Streets of Rage 4 didn’t make the list, but I spent hours playing them with my middle child. And it wasn’t a 2020 release, but I had a blast playing River City Girls with firstborn. It was a good year for fans of tactics games with stuff like Gears Tactics, Troubleshooter, Wintermoor Tactics Club, and Fae Tactics. 2020 also saw new console releases, though the launch lineups were especially thin. 

Gaming-wise, 2020 was the year of Xbox Game Pass for me. I spent most of this console generation (justifiably) dogging Xbox for their lack of platform exclusives, but I decided to pursue an Xbox Series X before a Playstation 5. Game Pass is the main reason for this. The “Netflix for games” thing has finally become a reality, and Sony just doesn’t have an answer for the bonkers value of Game Pass. We head into the new console generation with Microsoft leaning heavily on Game Pass subs, Sony still banking on a few console exclusives, and Nintendo, uh, doing their own thing over there. What a fascinating time for the industry.

Honorable Mention

It’s an honor just to be nominated.

Monster Sanctuary

If you start with Pokemon, strip away the anime, and mix in a healthy dose of metroidvania, you have Monster Sanctuary. This means there are monsters to collect, level, and evolve, and lots of combat revolving around elemental strengths and weaknesses. And I am here for that shit. A game like this lives and dies by its combat, and it’s very satisfying here. The game has plenty of choices about which skills to focus on for each monster, which gear to equip, and which monsters to keep in your active roster.

That said, between a couple of nasty difficulty spikes and some super-frustrating puzzle rooms, I was close to walking away from the game on multiple occasions. It’s a testament to the game’s quality that I kept coming back to it.

Animal Crossing

Animal Crossing on the Gamecube is one of my favorite games ever.  Each game in the series since the first has felt like a small incremental change from the original. I played Wild World on the DS quite a bit, City Folk a bit less, and A New Leaf not at all. I was thinking that maybe enough time has passed that I could get wrapped up in New Horizons, but I fell off it after a month or two. 

I’m wondering what I would want from a new Animal Crossing game, and the answer is nothing. How much can you change the game and still have it be Animal Crossing? I don’t think the game is bad by any means. My whole family shared an island community for a couple of months. It’s impossible for a new game in the series make me feel the way that first game did. 

The most memorable part of New Horizons is the museum. The museum is huge and absolutely lovely, with fish, bugs, fossils, and art each having their own wing. There were a few nights where the tranquility of the museum made for a nice end of the day.

Tell Me Why

My wife, firstborn, and myself have made a nice routine of playing through “choices matter” games together (starting last year with Detroit Become Human and following up with Life is Strange 2). Tell Me Why is the latest one one of these we tackled as a group. These game have created some memorable moments for us; who could forget their child yelling for them to “shoot the hooker”? (thank you, Detroit Become Human). 

Tell Me Why was on my radar because it’s One of These, but also because it features a transgender protagonist. As a parent of a trans child, I was both excited at the prospect of this and also worried that it is such an easy thing to fumble. I’m pleased to report that DONTNOD handled the writing of the trans person very well without being hamfisted, preachy, or tryhardy with it. The character of Tyler is a believable trans man, and the topic is spoken of matter-of-factly without placing special focus on it; being trans is a part of Tyler’s story, but it’s not the entirety of his identity.  

Less impressive to me was the story itself - especially the way it wrapped up its main conflict. The game trades in the idea of memory being imperfect, which is fascinating in and of itself, but I did not like it as a game mechanism. How did this REALLY happen? One character remembers it one way, and the other remembers it differently. Choosing between them felt cheap and hollow to me; I want you to tell me what happened, don’t ask me to choose. Still, I enjoyed my time with the game, and it feels like a step forward in mainstream storytelling for LGBTQA characters.

Ghost of Tsushima

Ghost of Tsushima is flat out gorgeous. Practically every area and every moment in the game is begging to screenshotted to the point where it can sometimes pull me out of the game world a little bit. That’s not necessarily a complaint because, as I said, the game is freaking beautiful. But every part of the world looking like a painting makes it feel more like it takes place in a fantasy world and less like a game from feudal Japan. 

I also had some ludonarrative dissonance going on with the game; you play as Jin, one of the few surviving samurai in his homeland which has been invaded by the Mongols. His uncle is being held prisoner, and combatting the occupying force would be impossible without using dishonorable techniques like hiding, attacking from a distance, and ambushing from the shadows. I, however, have no qualms and savored every opportunity to catch my foes unaware. So Jin voices his doubts, then goes into a camp and proceeds to cut his enemies down from shadows as I cackle with glee.

Ghost of Tsushima also combines dark souls-esque* combat with Ubisoft-style open world gameplay where you’re hunting down icons on a map. That kind of open world game is hard for me top stick with, especially after I spent ~30 hours with Assassin’s Creed Origins early in the year. All of makes it sound like I’m pretty down on Ghost of Tsushima, which I’m not. I’m hoping I’ll come back to it at some point when I have more of an appetite for One of These. 

Crown Trick

My Dungeons of Dredmor hole has not been properly filled in a long time. Chcocobo’s Mystery Dungeon is the closest I think. These games are what I think of as roguelikes, though the progression between runs makes them roguelites. *tips fedora*

Crown Trick is a turn-based dungeon crawler where the map is a grid, and each time you act, the enemies act. Add to this clockwork puzzle gameplay a good variety of weapons, relics, and events and you’ve got a lot of replayability. It doesn’t have Dredmor’s ridiculous combination of skill classes, but it does have a neat Mega Man-esque system where you defeat minibosses and add their skill set to your build.

Top 10

10. Star Renegades

Star Renegades was not on my radar at all until I heard Austin Walker talk about the game on Waypoint Radio. Two things gave me pause:

- It’s a sci-fi-ass game. It’s a setting I don’t care for. Star destroyers and aliens and galactic battlecruisers aren’t my jam. - Austin Walker’s enthusiasm is infectious. I’ve tried games after hearing him gush over them and those games haven’t worked for me.** That’s not an indictment, he and I just have different tastes.

Star Renegades ticks a few important boxes for me: it has a lot of characters to unlock, it’s highly customizable, and the combat is turn-based with a twist. Every action, whether friend or foe, appears on a timeline. Some attacks will push their target’s action back on the timeline, so there’s a puzzle element to the combat that keeps it feeling fresh. You can choose the makeup of your party on each run, which helped give the game a buttload of replay value.

It’s not flawless by any means. The writing tries a little too hard to be cheeky and ends up feeling tryhardy and a little flat. A decent run in the game would often take 2-3 hours, which makes it feel deflating when it ends in failure - which it frequently did. The sections of the game where you move between zones on an overhead map feels needlessly clunky, and sometimes I ended up with movement points I couldn’t spend because of how the game handles that system.

I enjoyed Star Renegades a lot, but my time with it was weird. The game has unlockable characters, so unlocking them all was my first priority. The game’s runs are pretty long, I was playing sub-optimally trying to unlock things, and the game is more difficult than I’d expected. It took me a long time to complete the unlocks, then I had a hard time actually finishing a run successfully. Eventually I was ready to be done with it and turned the difficulty down to easy**** just to finally get a W. Still, the positives far outweigh the negative here, and Star Renegades is one of my favorite games of 2020.

9. Immortals Fenyx Rising

Man, something happened to me this December. I’m currently finding myself playing a lot of Forza Horizon 4, Destiny 2, and Immortals Fenyx Rising. None of these is My Kind of Game. Immortals is probably the least surprising of these, because it at least has swords and bows and stuff. 

Still, I dismissed and mocked Immortals Fenyx Rising when it was first shown. It was called Gods & Monsters back then, and the idea of Ubisoft making yet another open world game, this time aping Breath of Wild was not appealing at all. I only ended up with the game after trading in Cyberpunk 2077 for Xbox credit and looking into Immortals because I was very surprised to see it on Game Informer’s game of the year list.

To get a few things out of the way, it absolutely recycles a lot from Breath of the Wild: you’ll be hang gliding, scaling walls as a stamina meter drains, finding shrines that contain puzzles and combat and climbing towers to get a vantage point and find points of interest on the map. The latter feels the most fumbled in this game  - you can zoom in and survey the landscape, and your controller vibrates when you are looking near a point of interest. Move the cursor over it and press a button to reveal it on the map. They split the difference between Assassin’s Creed’s “all the icons pop in automatically” and Zelda’s wonderful “manually mark places that look interesting to you on your map” system and ended up with something neither functional nor interesting. 

That’s where my complaints end though. The game’s art style is similar at a glance, but it’s vibrant and gorgeous, and never feels like Breath of the Wild. The combat is snappy, responsive, and challenging. The puzzle design is often creative, clever, and rarely frustrating; most of my frustration has come from my overthinking the puzzle solutions. There is plenty of gear to find, and the game’s cosmetic options are intuitive and welcome. The game’s narrative is better than I expected;  it feels like a B-tier Disney movie. The writing has made me smile a few times, and made me roll my eyes a few times. Zeus as comic relief is a pretty major miss, but it’s fine apart from that. It helps that I’m already familiar with Greek mythology. 

It’s a huge, beautiful world where traversal and combat feel great. It’s sometimes hard to get anything done because I am constantly distracted by tracking down an icon on the map, or just exploring because I saw something cool or strange. Not all of the puzzles and challenges work, but that’s okay because I can move onto something else. Immortals Fenyx Rising is this year’s Dragon Quest Builders 2: gaming comfort food where it feels good to sit back and check things off a list at the end of a long day. Still don’t like the name though. And fuck Ubisoft.

8. Atomicrops

The first mention of Atomicrops I remember was “What if Stardew Valley was a twin stick shooter?” which is bullshit, because the games bear no resemblance beyond “there’s farming”. Beyond that first blurb, what appealed to me is the idea that the game’s days take place in 2 phases: during the daytime, you go out and fight baddies to gather seeds, and at night the baddies invade your farm and you fight them off while planting and watering crops.

It’s also a run-based roguelike, and I am 1 of 26 remaining people who is still psyched to play those. Give me a challenge, mix up the details, let me upgrade stuff between sessions, and turn me loose. The game has a good variety of weapons and the challenge is satisfying and rarely feels unfair (apart from the bullet hell problem of too much stuff on the screen at times). I don’t love the art style, but the music sure makes up for it.

7. Wintermoor Tactics Club

A game needs more than charm to be memorable and enjoyable. Charm can go a long way though, and Wintermoor Tactics club has it in spades. It takes place at a small college, and you play as a girl named Alicia. She and her friends are members of the school’s tactics club, and much of the game takes place around a table littered with graph paper, rulebooks, and snacks. As someone who loved tabletop RPG’s in simpler times, and never had the traditional college experience, a prettied-up version of that appeals to me in a huge way. It’s not wholly idyllic though, and it touches on issues of discrimination and what it’s like to be an outcast.

The gameplay itself is pretty straightforward tactics stuff and it works fine but isn’t really the draw here. I was propelled through the game largely by a desire to meet the next character, get the next story bit, and keep basking in the game’s wonderful aesthetic and smart writing. There’s something lovely about sitting around the table and playing a game with friends, and this game really captures that.

6. Ratropolis

Ratrpolis is “A fusion of roguelite, tower defense, city-building, and deck-building!” which sounds like a hodgepodge of nonsense. And it kind of is. It’s a city building game where you are periodically being invaded from either the left or right side of the screen (or both). You choose from 6 leaders, each with their own pool of cards and play style, start with a basic deck of cards and slowly evolve it. The cards consist of buildings, military units, and various economic and military buffs. The major things that set this apart from favorites like Slay the Spire are that it happens in real time, and there is an economic aspect to manage. Tax money comes in every few seconds, and it’s possible to make poor decisions early on and not understand why you feel hamstrung later.

I spent a lot of games like that, not really understanding why I’d be doing okay and then get overwhelmed. I had a few rage quits early on, but I could tell that there was something there. I started approaching it with the mindset of building an economic engine in the early game, and I started having a lot more fun and success. Each of the 6 leaders feels distinct, and figuring them each out has been a lot of fun. Runs are usually no more than about 30 minutes, which feels about right.

5. Final Fantasy VII Remake

Despite identifying as a big JRPG fan, I’ve never enjoyed a mainline Final Fantasy game enough to finish it. This year I finished 2 of them: Final Fantasy XV and the Final Fantasy VII Remake.*** I played the original Playstation Final Fantasy VII release, I think I got through disc 1 and a little ways into disc 2. It didn’t resonate with me, so I came to this year’s remake with no reverence for the game. When many of the original game’s fans got upset with how much the remake changed the script from the source material, I didn’t have a horse in that race.

The remake is gorgeous, the combat and upgrade systems are engaging, and the story is interesting enough to keep me wanting to see what’s next. The 1997 release of the game had some stuff that isn’t going to play the same in 2020 like the scene where Cloud is crossdressing, the game’s themes of environmental activism, and, uh, the entire Don Corneo storyline come to mind. But the game handled all of this pretty well. I’m glad to say that this is one of the best RPG’s I played this year, and I look forward to the next entry whenever the hell it comes along. Cloud is still an unlikable punk though.

4. Monster Train

Slay the Spire was a surprise hit a couple of years ago, and inspired a lot of folks in the indie space to take a crack at the deckbuilding genre. Monster Train managed to to take inspirations from Slay the Spire but still feels like very much its own thing. Both games have you progressing through a series of encounters consisting of battles, shops, or small events trying to defeat the big bad at the end of a journey. You start with a deck of basic cards and upgrade them and add new cards along to way. You can’t really start a run planning on making a certain style of deck, you just choose from the cards available and watch the strategy form. The way this process tickles my brain makes these games endlessly replayable. The “one more run” is very strong here.

Monster Train differentiates itself in a couple of ways. First, where Slay the Spire was always just your one character battling one or more enemies, here you are summoning multiple creatures on the lower 3 levels of a 4-level train (I don’t know either). If the enemies reach the top floor of your train, they attack your core directly and eventually defeat you. This adds a strong spatial planning element - now you’re thinking about which combatants you want on each floor, and in what order.

The other notable difference between the games is that while Slay the Spire has four heroes, each with their own unique pool of cards, Monster Train has five factions. It’s one better. The first three factions feel pretty standard from a creativity point of view - red/green/blue are fire/nature/ice. The last two factions you unlock feel wholly unique though: there’s a faction that summons weak, cheap units and feeds on them for combat bonuses, and one that is made of candle beings who are powerful, but melt away. Okay, the real reason is that each time you play, you’re choosing a main faction (each has 2 champions to use from) and a secondary faction (you don’t get their champion, but you get access to their pool of cards). This makes each run feel unique and makes the game feel endlessly replayable. Even after unlocking all of the factions and their cards, and winning a run on the hardest challenge setting with each faction, I’m still playing Monster Train.

3. Spiritfarer

If Kentucky Route Zero is my “It’s Not You, It’s Me” game this year, Spiritfarer might be my “Love at First Sight” game of the year. The game’s striking visuals grabbed my attention immediately when I first saw the trailer at E3 2019, and it was billed as a game about saying goodbye. My only reservation was that it was coming from Thunder Lotus Games, whose previous titles (Jotun and Sundered) both fell flat for me.

Spiritfarer ended up being everything I was hoping for. You play as the newly-appointed ferryperson for the boat that transports souls from the land of the living to the land of the dead. Your ship acts as your base of operations, and you build living quarters, a kitchen, a forge, and lots of other facilities on it. The beings who join you on your ship are anthropomorphized animals, each with their own story. Your job is to help them be at peace, then send them to the next life once they’re ready. 

In practical terms, you’re spending a lot of your time sailing from island to island to talk to people and find resources. There’s a plenty of crafting and time sinks in the game, and I appreciated the excuse to luxuriate in this game world. No game made me cry this year, but Spiritfarer (Alice’s story in particular) sure did try. It was the perfect respite for the nightmare that was 2020.

2. Yakuza: Like a Dragon

A lot of Yakuza fans were concerned over this game’s switch from the series’ usual brawling combat to turn-based RPG combat. I was not one of them. Everything about this game sounds like the sort of fan fiction someone like, well, like me would come up with on a late night drunken bender. “What if it was Yakuza, but like, JRPG battles? Why would that happen.....OH oh oh what if the main character was a big fan of DRAGON QUEST so he just, like, saw the world in those terms? You could have party members, and a Pokedex of all the weirdo scumbags you fight, and you could change jobs by going to a temp agency!”

All of that is in Yakuza: Like a Dragon. And I love it. The series’ producer says they decided to pivot to a turn-based combat system after positive reaction to an April Fools Day Yakuza RPG joke they put online. And there are some rough spots. Your party members get caught on the world’s geometry sometimes, and combatants are constantly milling around so AOE abilities feel like a crap shoot. The Yakuza series has always had about 30% too much combat, so translating it into a genre known for grindy gameplay feels like a perfect storm of sorts. Thankfully, I’m a fan of grindy RPG’s so all of this is directly in my wheelhouse.

This eighth game in the Yakuza series is the first with a new protagonist - goodbye Kiryu Kazuma, hello Ichiban Kasuga. Where Kiryu was very stoic, Ichiban is a hothead with the perfect mix of kindness, earnestness, and stupidity for a JRPG hero. He is an incredibly likeable and charismatic character, and I hope Ryu Go Gotoku Studio tightens up the battle system and keeps this iteration of the series running.

1. Hades

Hades seemed like a slam dunk. My favorite studio was making an action RPG based on Greek mythology. The announcement was the best possible version of “AND you can play it right now!” I bought it (in early access) immediately and played it a bit, but I didn’t want to burn out on it so I only briefly checked in on it every few months. As a result, my hype was pretty low when the game reached its 1.0 release. 

Once I decided to fully engage with the game though, I was unable to put it down. SuperGiant’s games have the best writing, music, and voice acting in the business. That’s a pretty high bar to aim for, and they hit it once again with Hades. Both of their post-Bastion games (Transistor and Pyre) are games that I have to recommend with an asterisk though; the gameplay parts of each game is an acquired taste and will put some folks off. 

Hades, however, I can give a full throated recommendation for. The gameplay is tight and the combat feels good. There’s a lot of variety in the weapons, so you can either find one that fits your style and stick with it, or do what I did and change it up every run. They also managed to achieve something incredible - they largely took the sting out of losing in a run-based game. There are things to unlock between runs as you’d expect from a roguelite. I found myself enjoying chatting with the denizens of hell as much as the moment to moment action gameplay. I’d respawn back home and make my rounds, taking to people and spending my cash. I had a route I’d travel each time, and that route ended with Skelly in the weapons room. Oh, the gauntlets grant a bonus if I use them this time....the door to start a new run is just right over there....okay I can do one more run tonight.

That personality and dialogue is sprinkled throughout the runs themselves too, in the form of the various Greek gods you talk to and get boons from. The variety in weapons and boons give the game tremendous replayability and give the game a deckbuilding feel. Every character in the game is incredibly well developed and well-acted. Zagreus is a likeable and relatable protagonist. He wants to get away from his disapproving father and find his estranged mother, and he and his father can’t see eye to eye. 

The story and gameplay in Hades do equal lifting, the game is an incredibly complete package. The game also provided a couple of the most memorable moments of the year. Hades might just be SuperGiant’s best game. It’s certainly their most complete game. 

*It’s very much on the lighter side of this gameplay style, akin to 2019′s Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order. Plus there are difficulty settings, which I appreciate.

**Invisible Inc, Dragon’s Dogma, and The Outer Wilds come to mind.

***Final Fantasy VII Remake is only the first installment in a series

****Cloaked in shame and failure.