#onyramble

3DS Games Highlight

This year was a special year for me, my husband got me a 3DS for my birthday. As someone who spends most of their time playing DS games, this was a total game changer.

Last year I emulated Fire Emblem Awakening, and was blown away at the idea that the 3DS was capable of running the graphics in that game... imagine my shock opening something as visually stunning as Kid Icarus Uprising!!! HOLY SHIT??????

Unfortunately I quickly found a criticism of the console that leeched throughout all games released on the hardware. The importance of the 3D upper screen. Many games on the 3DS removed most interactive elements from the lower screen, opting for menus instead :c

Nintendogs+Cats 3DS

I loved Nintendogs as a kid, surely this iteration on the formula will impress me and warm my little heart up INCORRECT In this world, it's kill or be killed... Translation: In 2011, you no longer pet the dog on the head with your finger, you instead pet a silhouette of the dog and then watch it react in HD 3D on the upper screen. This is, infact, the worst decision ever made, maybe the world was fit to end in 2012 after all.

Luigis Mansion

This game is a classic I never played, and naturally as a port it doesn't use the touch screen well either. It was still fun. My only problem with the controls is that the R bumper on my 3DS was busted so it was a gamble whether the suck machine would suck or not. Also in this version of the game they removed all the dust, which is the only downgrade.

Style Savvy: Fashion Forward

I love dressing girls up, I'll dress girls up forever. I love interrogating girls about their personal lives, getting the goss and then choosing the hairstyle or make-up fits them. I easily prefer the DS game, but this one was cute too. The thing that stood out the most about this one is the atmosphere. As far as I know, this is the only game in the Style Savvy series with a premise beyond running a shop. The entire game is thematically based around miniatures, you are in a small handbuilt version of the world, running a shop with mini people in it, you decorate your own mini miniature. It just feels very whimsical and makes me nostalgic for the books I grew up reading about little fairies through tiny doors.

Chase Cold Case Investigations

It's really funny noticing the games that tried to use Live2d from this era. Aside from that, this game fucking sucked lmao, mean man protag sucked.

Project Mirai DX

I slam my hands on the table, Project Diva Megamix REMOVED THE DIVA ROOM!!! Where will I pet my vocaloids and give them gifts now??? FEAR NOT! Project Mirai is a pet simulator, with a Rhythm Game taped on the back. It is easier to open up the alarm clock function, where your vocaloid of choice sleeps next to you, and will awaken by your side when your custom vocaloid alarm blares at 6 the next morning. It is less clicks to access that function than it is to open the RHYTHM GAME GAMEPLAY ELEMENT OF THIS GAME Madness.

You get to GIVE YOUR FAVOURITE VOCALOID A BUDGET YOU GET RECEIPTS WHEN THEY TAKE MONEY OUT YOU RECEIVE A RECIEPT THAT SAYS "i saw watermelon on the TV so I was craving some" - ¥1000 The Rhythm game is proper engaging too! It features unique chibi style animations that differ from the ones used in the mainline arcade games. It is like taiko, and there is a button mode for those who don't feel like scratching up their touchscreen. This game was the highlight of my 3DS, there is dress up, room decoration, minigames, interaction, and Gumi. After all my prior disappointment, this game was everything I needed.

Kid Icarus uprising

OH YEAAAA BABY LETS FUCKING GO I FEEL LIKE IM PLAYING DRAGON NEST ON MY DELL LAPTOP AGAIN. This game makes you play a third-person shooter and turns the touch screen into a fucking trackpad mouse. I loved every second.

It fully accepts that the players haven't seen the original game before, and whenever you run into a big boss, Pit is like "oh waow it's that guy from this game" and then they show you an image of how the enemy looked in the original game for comparison, what a gem. The dialog between Pit and Palutena was tongue in cheek and just peak.

Good game

Ever Oasis

This one, I haven't had a chance to finish yet, but deserves a mention for how it has totally gripped me. Desert setting, Toon Link and Zelda-like protagonists, develop your town through side missions between fighting back the darkness bit by bit to protect what you have worked hard to build... GOOD SHIT!

A sweet chibi art style in an environment of lush oasis. Gigantic pots far in the distance trickling sand into an abyss. Sprites and fairies.... WHIMSY!!! YEAH!!!

There's a lot of heart here.

Thats it for my 3DS games this year, now for the rest!

Games I dropped this year

I'm overdue for some negativity I thimk

Disco Elysium

Unc had a panic attack and died before god taught me how to give him his meds. I lost all my progress and didn't feel like getting dressed just to be called slurs again. I'll give it another go next year I swear on me mum

Moonlighter

Really, really cool game. Incredible pixel art with charming animation, pretty characters that slowly grow your town as you rebuild your business. Addictive dungeon crawling elements, satisfying roguelike system.

Unfortunately, as a lover of this style of game, I just would rather play the older games in the niche. If you are looking for an addictive and very enjoyable game with a smooth gameplay loop, this is the one! It really is incredible and I do love the work put into it by its creators.

I found myself craving characters who spoke oddly, gameplay with cracks because the developer had such a specific vision that they couldn't quite make it work. In this game it was all there, but I didn't get attached to it. This year I found Ever Oasis and Recettear fulfilling of that want.

Nier Automata

Beautiful game, the weird little robot colonies, and the cracks in the rules fed to the androids. It isn't as subtle as I'd like its messaging to be, but it was nice all the while. Then I reached the AAA part of the game where you are given quests and your only way to know where to go is to follow waypoints. I hate waypoints, I hate walking to god knows where, in an area I'll never learn to recognize because I'm too busy following waypoints and maps, to a spot that I won't remember, to kill enemies I've seen 1000 times before, for a quest that I have already forgotten the story behind, from an NPC I don't remember the face of, because I've already done 30 of these quests before.

I think I would rather just watch the cutscenes at that point, so I put it down.

Horizon Zero Dawn

I picked this one up purely because it has the option for Danish subtitles. I moved to Denmark this year and have been trying to learn the language. The simple dialogue in English with the simple Danish subtitles really did help me understand and remember a lot of words! The combat was incredible, I enjoyed the world so much, and Aloy is a fascinating character. I fell off playing it because I had the same problem that I did with Nier Automata. I desperately wanted to remember the events of the game, the characters, the places, but the game design is the antithesis of that. I hate waypoints and think they ruin open world games that have become dependent on them in most cases.

Voice Love on Air

This one fucking burnt me.

Promise of directing cute boys for BL audio dramas, stat builder gameplay, and Otome VN sections, yes please.

My girlfriend bought me this one for my birthday, I was HYPED.

Only to be met with AI generated icons for inventory, Audio drama cover images, and potentially backgrounds. This will sound surprising, but this is the least of my issues with the game, it would still stop me from playing it, but the most heartbreaking part was that the game was horribly translated. I can only imagine it was done by a machine. There were no feelings, the characters talked so straightly that I was lulled into a bored trance.

This is the only game I refunded this year. What a brilliant premise, with such soulless execution on all fronts.

Rune Factory 2

I have loved Rune Factory 1 ever since I was tiny. I enjoyed 4 but not as much. RF 1 was filled to the brim with charming writing and small issues with a much larger idea in the centre, it was endearing. I was finally able to play the second game in the series hoping that it would remain charming. It absolutely did. I loved my time with this game.

The premise is extremely ambitious, it goes like this: You play an amnesiac who happened upon a small town, you settle there, spending your days farming and chatting with the locals throughout the year. When you find a spouse, you decide to fund the building of a school in the village. Here's where the game does something totally unexpected. After all of that, the protagonist remembers exactly what he was here to do, and vanishes. You now play his child in the village he abandoned, farming with his old diminished tools, and adventuring out to dungeons that have been out of reach for the past 30 hours of gameplay. The main menu of the game changes to feature the kid you now play as, and there is even a second animation that plays when you open the game to reflect the change.

I couldn't tell you more, because this is where I stopped.

It takes a long time to marry a villager in a harvest moon type game. So in the first phase of the game I had amassed millions of gold, fully automated my farm, upgraded everything to max that I could. So when I played as the kid, I didn't need to farm anymore, and all that was left was the dungeon crawling and the village chatting. Theres unfortunately not enough things you can do to fill the days with, and you end up waiting several minutes to progress the days every single day. I sadly just got bored by that and had to put it down. So sad :C maybe I will try 3 next year

that being said I love that it tried so hard with the premise, I just wish that they added some sort of balance to the second half of the game so that I had something to do between quests!

The rest of the games that I finished this year!

BoxVille

A cute game that is extremely inspired by Machinarium. It has interesting puzzles and 0 dialogue. I enjoyed playing it with my husband.

Final fantasy 15

I feel a hole in my heart for the 4 boys in their car that would often sit on my TV while I was cooking or cleaning. It started as my husband playing it, and I found it a bit dull but I got really into the side content of this one at the end. Look up the behind the scenes on the Pitioss ruins, it is such a perfect dungeon to critique games and make people that are so comfortable with predictable game design uncomfortable.

The Pitioss ruins is an 8 hour dungeon with no combat, only platforming with the games' engine that isn't built for it. It uses weird immersion breaking camera angles, and makes objects move in ways that don't look natural. It was developed by a texture artist on the project.

My husband and I walked into it without knowing. I remember leaving the PC running because we were midway through it when we had to go to a family lunch to celebrate us getting engaged, then coming home and picking it right back up.

Paradise Marsh

POETRY GAME, I LOVE POEM GAMES, I already want to replay it just to bask in all the energies that the writer put forward in this fucking masterpiece. I was totally entranced by this one.

IT HAS FROGS TOO WHAT MORE IS THERE

I loved this one so much I just don't have the words to express it.

7 days to end with you

Another game that I loved so much that I don't have all that much I can sum into words. This is one of my favourite puzzle games. A small scale mystery game, you wake up in a world you don't know the language of, and get to build up a custom vocabulary. Writing your own words under each set of symbols one word at a time, it's a truly unique experience.

I recommend playing in a group, discussing words, and laughing when you mistranslate something so wrong its funny. We got her calling us "Tiny Nutrient Stranger" and it hasn't left my head.

Night in the woods

My friends warned me not to play this game for a while, because they thought it would hit me so badly mentally that it might make me feel horrible or trigger something.

The setting and characters felt deeply rooted in rural US culture, and I really enjoyed watching what was going down, but it felt very focused on it's relatable elements, which I couldn't really relate to myself. I loved learning about the setting and the history of the area. It was really well put together, and didn't mind being a bit weird. The rhythm parts were super vibey. I really loved daily life elements too. I just didn't have a big emotive response that I was preparing myself for. I accidentally bought a fish and a shakey bakey, not knowing what a shakey bakey was, and then I ruined Beas dinner, ouch. I really like Gregg.

Amnesia Memories

Classic Otome title, holy shit, banger.

The premise is that Orion knocked you out of your world through unknown events and is now helping you return. The problem is that there are 4 parallel worlds you get to choose from, all named after card suits, and you have to discern things like your job, work timetable, who your boyfriend even is.

This is what totally sold me on the game

You are already dating the person of the version of the world that you choose. Most otome engage with the hunt of finding a man you like and seducing him till he can't say no.

Amnesia Memories opts for something entirely different. You are already in a relationship with the character you chose. What you have to do now is figure out who they are, and what is happening in your relationship. You are an amnesiac, and don't remember anything, but you don't want them to cotton on that anything weird has happened to you. It is insanely juicy, the drama you figure out bit by bit. There is also an overarching plot that continues through every route and ends in a 5th dimension that answers the questions of how and why Orion fucked up your memory and timeline to begin with! CI NE MA

Life eater

Another puzzle game I threw on in a group call.

Minimal story telling through dialogue, but the gameplay uncovers details you wish that you didn't know before you abduct the person you've been tracking down. This game makes you a horrible person.

Mogeko castle

What. The. Fuck.

Clinical trial Game changed my chemistry Miniatures

A collection of 4 small stories by a Danish developer. I played because it included Danish text and voice over to aid in my practice.

Recettear

If this was a modern light novel it would be called "My dad left to be the hero of the next big JRPG, now I have to pay the debt fairy to avoid homelessness"

This game is similar to moon lighter, but it was a quirky small scale game with rough edges and weird dialogue. I am entirely endeared to this one.

Rise of the Golden Idol

This game was so swept up in its hatred of capitalism and modern life it forgot to have an interesting plot. The puzzle sections were amazing, but the overarching story and ending really let it down. The original was just so flawless that there was no way that the developers could one up it with its sequel.

EASY DELIVERY CO

This was like, probably the only game I streamed this year, and wow, it totally sucked me in. The aesthetics, the vibes, the lack of any map directions beyond the maps themselves. I really enjoyed reading my chat with this one because a lot of them had grown up in places in the US just like it and were feeling very nostalgic. It added a layer of charm I didn't expect.

Fitness Boxing Feat. Miku

YEAAAAAAAAAA BOXING WITH MIKUUUUU MIKU BOXINGGG

I think this game does what all fanart should do. I was totally lured in by the inclusion of Vocaloid. I even had a negative bias towards boxing. By using the image of vocaloid but including their own original characters and original commentary, I am now totally invested in the Fitness Boxing series and would love to try Fitness Boxing 3.

The Vocaloid characters are your training buddies, they aren't written as insane boxers, they are simply learning alongside you, it's cute!! This makes room for the original personal trainer characters. I think it establishes it's brand so well despite having Vocaloid being the draw for it.

So your vocaloid partner cheers you on and complements you for what you did well during the game but the trainer is reminding you to keep your core active and breathe. I have learnt A LOT about muscles and breathing from this game.

Sonic R

Our first pair of guests staying in our extra room brought this into our house. I think everyone needs to sit down with a friend who deeply loves sonic just to watch them recall, and perfectly execute, their way around a game practically held together with duct tape and bubble gum. Unforgettable experience.

THANKS FOR READING