Board 8 > all of the games I played in 2022, but the twist is that I'm not Mac Arrowny

(+) Yeah! (+)

40. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4 (SNES): I won't say too much because a lot of Koei Strategy games will appear MUCH higher on this list but let me just say, I do not recommend playing this one. Look higher on the list and play one of the games from up there.

39. Nobunaga's Ambition Taishi (PS4): Probably shouldn't even put this on the list because I only played it for a few minutes but it's a pretty big disappointment. Classic case of 'let's change a bunch of stuff to try and attract casuals who would never touch any game in this series' and then makes a product which doesn't make anyone happy. Still, there's no reason to play RotK4 on SNES when the Genesis games from the same era are strictly better. Taishi, you could argue, there is some reason why someone might want to play it, because there's no other games that are in the 'similar but better' niche due to this one being at least unique.

38. Bleed: Mac recommended me this game and I got it on some Switch sale for like 99 cents or something. It was okay, but I didn't play it more than maybe 10-15 minutes before forgetting about it. I'm not saying it's terrible but it clearly was not good enough to hold my attention. Might be something I pick up in the future and end up loving it though.

37. Pokemon AlphaRuby: This one was missing some of the magic and fun that I had while playing other Pokemon games this year. Not sure why since I'm fairly sure I like RSE more than DPPT but... I dunno. Maybe it was because I played this right after X. I lost interest and didn't even finish it.

36. My Time At Portia: I was pretty excited for this game and wanted to love it but I really did not. Did not like any of the villagers, and got tired of the day to day gameplay loop really fast. And this is coming from someone who loves farming/life sim games.

35. Naruto to Boruto Shinobi Strikers: If this game existed when I was like 14 I can tell you right now I would have absolutely loved it, and played it extensively. I'm not even going to say that I've grown out of liking Naruto, as I definitely still like Naruto. Problem is that I just no longer have the patience to play this game anymore, and while I do "like" Naruto still, I don't like it THAT much for it to be enough of a draw for me to stay invested in this gameplay loop.

Wanted to make sure I got to #35 in the first post so I could get all of the negative ones out of the way. Most everything from here on out will be praise for games that I enjoyed playing.

MariaTaylor posted...

36. My Time At Portia: I was pretty excited for this game and wanted to love it but I really did not. Did not like any of the villagers, and got tired of the day to day gameplay loop really fast. And this is coming from someone who loves farming/life sim games.

This is basically how i felt when i played this a few years ago. The gameplay loop is just too much and too tedious from what i remember

MariaTaylor posted...

38. Bleed: Mac recommended me this game and I got it on some Switch sale for like 99 cents or something. It was okay, but I didn't play it more than maybe 10-15 minutes before forgetting about it. I'm not saying it's terrible but it clearly was not good enough to hold my attention. Might be something I pick up in the future and end up loving it though.

oof, too bad you didn't like it

yeah the system for digging out the areas under the city was..... not for me, I can say that.

anyway here's more stuff.

34. Final Fantasy V: I thought this was going to be the year that I finally beat Final Fantasy V but this was not it. I got further than ever before but I eventually reached a point where I wasn't completely sure what to do next and I did not care enough to look up a guide. Sad days.

33. Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen: I replay this game honestly every few years, and 2022 was one of those years. Well, to be clear, I've never beaten it, but I usually put around 20-30 hours when I do play it, have a bit of fun, but then lose interest. This is a weird game that I think has a lot of flaws, I agree with pretty much all of the complaints about the game and don't particularly gush about the features that people often talk about who love the game... yet, in spite of that, I still find myself enjoying the experience of playing it. Would be probably a million times better if the world was not so big and empty, as the only thing worse than riding a horse for 5 minutes to get somewhere is walking on foot for 15 minutes to get somewhere.

32. Warriors of the Eternal Sun (Genesis): Pretty nostalgic game that I've played a lot but never beaten. I got the urge to play it again this year. Had not played it for a very long time, but still couldn't motivate myself to finish the entire campaign. Still, aside from the initial start up grind, it can be kinda fun to enjoy this simple game for a short time and see how ancient 16 bit devs try to make D&D work on an archaic console.

31. Aerobiz Supersonic (Genesis): Doesn't have the same greatness as the other Koei Strategy games that I played on Genesis this year, but it does have the same kind of simple charm. The novelty of having a strategy game where the goal is to manage your own airline company is hilarious and satisfying in its own way. This is one of those games you can surprisingly find yourself enjoying way more than expected, but it's not contesting for any greatest game ever awards.

30. Romancing Saga Minstrel Song: Extremely solid port of what was already a good remake. I got a lot more into the Romancing Saga series this year after I found out that RS2 and 3 had been officially localized and were available on Switch. As someone who played shitty translations of RS3 when I was younger, it was very nostalgic but also satisfying to finally play the game in a more... digestible format. Unfortunately, this write up is about Minstrel Song. It might have suffered from the fact that I had already played a lot of Romancing Saga 3 right before this came out, but I did not get super into it yet. That might change in 2023.

29. Mass Effect 1/2: There is still a lot to praise about this series, but I have to admit that the games absolutely blew my mind when they first came out and... trying to replay them now, I was not quite that blown away by it. I did finish all of ME1, and it's the first game to appear on this list that I did play and finish in 2022. But I stalled out partway through ME2. There's a chance I come back to this and maybe ME2/3 will be on my list next year.

28. Final Fantasy 14: I guess I would say I kinda like this more than I dislike it. I liked it enough to keep playing for a few months. But ultimately MMOs are not for me and I don't think I'll ever go back to it. Didn't even finish the main story, and even the core gameplay got stale to me after a while.

27. Outer Worlds: This game isn't perfect but I think there's a few things that make it worth giving a chance, and allowed me to have fun with it. This is actually a game that I dropped in a previous year, and came back to play again in 2022. Actually finished it this time, and quite enjoyed it. Although it does drag in the later half, and none of the party members are super compelling, the actual ending sticks the landing if you're willing to get through to the end.

I think a lot of the Outer Worlds party members have strong introductions and get less interesting later in the game. Parvati was great for a while.

Parvati's personality evaporates into thin air the moment she decides she is in love with another person, yeah. I agree with your assessment overall there. If the characters had better loyalty quests like the ME2 cast, they'd be better. From a gameplay perspective some of the characters have interesting niches, though. Overall the gameplay was the area where I thought Outer Worlds made up for its other flaws, since it has some very interesting/unique quirks.
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26. Phantasy Star Online 2/New Genesis: New Genesis kinda sucks but it's the game that SEGA clearly wants you to play so they are pushing it hard. PSO2 is actually the game you want to play, but SEGA doesn't want you to play it anymore, so the game barely has any support or reason to continue playing. Sad. I'll likely go back to playing Blue Burst at some point in 2023 when I get the urge for more PSO, but this game ended up being a bit of a disappointment considering how long I waited for it. I did play for about 2 months before it lost my interest.

25. Skyrim (Legendary Survival Mode): I've played enough Skyrim in my life at this point and yet the experience of playing the game in Survival Mode on Legendary difficulty was still a fresh enough experience that I got super into it for a few days... might have even been a few weeks? Either way, it's a fun experience and one worth trying out. One trick to make this actually fun is to never go to Bleak Falls Barrow and simply roleplay your new life in the world of Skyrim without ever having to deal with annoying dragons spawning randomly all over the place. The lack of fast travel is what ultimately killed this experience for me. While I did have some extremely tense and fun moments as a result (like my deadly hike back from Winterhold to Windhelm the first time!) , it ultimately led to the same problem I have with basically all open world games.

24. Shadowrun (Genesis Version): Unlike Warriors of the Eternal Sun I think this game is absolutely timeless. The gameplay loop is extremely intuitive and can be very addictive; There are even some concepts and ideas this game uses that I want to try implementing into my next development project. This feels like a precursor to the model that would later be used for a lot of sandbox and MMO style games, but the small size of the Genesis cart stops things from sprawling too much and, in my opinion, makes the experience even better. You don't need to ride your horse for 5 minutes to find something interesting, the place you want to go is like 6-10 seconds away. Still, it does suffer from its age, and has a hard time competing with the better games I placed higher on the list. By the way, this is a totally different game from the SNES version if you've already played that.

23. Pokemon Red: This game is also still timeless in its own way, despite being full of minor issues. It might be nostalgia that causes me to still look upon the game favorably, but it also may just be that the game was very well designed for its time even considering the problems it has. For this run I used all Evolution Stone Pokemon, and I even used the glitch that allows you to evolve them without using Stones (well, the ones that were convenient to do...) So in this case I took one of the glitches in the game and turned that into a reason to make it interesting/fun to play again.

22. Dragon Warrior Monsters: You can definitely argue about whether this game or Pokemon RBY is better, but I will not. Really don't care enough to argue about it. I like them probably about the same amount, and was too lazy to think about which one I preferred.

21. Lufia 3: I think this is in contention for being the best Gameboy Color game in the entire library and, as a result, it ranks pretty nicely and neatly right above the other Gameboy games on this list. It might actually be a better overall designed game than the next entry on the list, but that one has the advantage of modern day polish to offset its gameplay flaws.

top 20 already so hype...

20. Fire Emblem Awakening: For a very long time I would say I was not a huge fan of this game, despite loving the Fire Emblem series. There are some questionable gameplay decisions, like the Pair Up system in this game being absolute nonsense from a determinstic strategy perspective. Every so often I'd try to give the game another fair chance but still fail to get into it. Finally I've reached the point where I tried it again in 2022 and ended up being able to appreciate the things this game does right while not focusing too heavily on the negative aspects. I haven't cleared all of the Paralogues or the final chapter yet, but I played through about 80-90% of the game on Lunatic and I have a solid roster of characters and I intend to continue playing through the game at my own pace.

19. Fire Emblem 8: Another game I've been playing for over a decade and I did another 2022 replay. Much better designed campaign and map design than Awakening. There's a bit of a tradeoff here when it comes to core mechanics. 8's are more simple, but more tightly designed, while Awakening has the benefit of deeper mechanics... yet some of those mechanics make the game worse, not better. Overall I prefer the traditional Fire Emblem experience so I placed this higher. If they did a remake of Fire Emblem 8, I think it would benefit from taking some of the mechanics from newer Fire Emblem games and throwing them into the mix... but it's VERY difficult to argue that Awakening is the place you should look when making those considerations.

18. Pokemon Shining Pearl: I know a lot of people were disappointed in these games, but I did end up having enough fun with it to play all the way through. Maybe the fact that I haven't played any DPPT since the days of the original DS. I played postgame stuff a little bit, but not as much as some other Pokemon games.

17. Pokemon X: A dropped game from a previous year that I finally got back to in 2022. Glad I gave this game another chance as I did end up enjoying it quite a bit. I have good memories of playing this at the start of 2022 until I had my fill of the postgame and eventually put it down.

16. Pokemon Shield: Unsurprising that these games are all ranked together since Pokemon games are really fundamentally very similar. I've been playing Pokemon Shield off and on since I think 2020, but I played it some more this year and it's actually the only one of these three consecutively listed games that I'm still playing in 2023. I think the Sword/Shield games are extremely underrated.

There's actually a few.

DQ monsters 1 is basic, but fun. It has procedurally generated dungeons but the game largely revolves around a tournament so the goal is to befriend monsters from random dungeons and then prepare for the different opponents you'll face in the tournament.

DQ Monsters 2 has more of a main plot and you travel between many different worlds and dungeons. The randomized dungeons are gone. Also there's two versions with a male and a female protagonist, as opposed to DQM1 where you play as the brother trying to rescue his sister.

DQ Monster Joker I haven't played yet, but I know it exists.

MariaTaylor posted...

36. My Time At Portia: I was pretty excited for this game and wanted to love it but I really did not. Did not like any of the villagers, and got tired of the day to day gameplay loop really fast. And this is coming from someone who loves farming/life sim games.

I actually really enjoyed Portia but was never able to get into any of the other farming/life sims outside of the firat animal crossing. I just much preferred being a builder to being a farmer.

The characters were nice for what they were but yeah most were super shallow and the twin brothers were awful, I will give you that.

I never really got tired of the loop though, maybe cause I really mixed up what I did day to day based on my current needs or what I felt like doing? I'm sure there is a more efficient way to play but I rarely struggled with deadlines so I didn't care. Exploring mines once you got the scanners, the fishing, and the simple combat were all fun to me. And seeing the changes to the town as you built new tech or progressed through quests was cool, and I enjoyed the world and story.

That makes sense, it's an interesting take. It might be because I played so many farming sims already that I burned out on Portia easier. Although I think it really comes down to the fact that I didn't enjoy the digging minigame. I agree the building and crafting was good. My ideal life sim would certainly include a crafting mechanic that was at least as good as Portia's.

Next on the list is going to be the most controversial placement, considering it's likely to be many people's game of the year and I rated it below a bunch of Sega Genesis games that look like they were ported directly from the NES

(really anything below first place for this game would be potential controversy so 15th is borderline heresy)

15. Elden Ring: I don't know about this one honestly. I still haven't been able to motivate myself to even play halfway through the game yet. I'm enjoying it 'well enough' at times but struggle to truly get into it. And for a FromSoft game that's a bit of a letdown. Played every Souls game since Demon's Souls, at release, on the PS3. This used to be one of my favorite franchises but I did not love Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring is... well, they turned something I used to love into an open world game, so there is that. I don't know why devs have decided the ultimate goal is to put as much empty space into their games as possible. It especially hurts in this case because they did it to a game that I otherwise know I would have loved. Core gameplay is still fairly solid in spite of that, but even that still has some problems. Like DS3 this has become one of those games where I try to play it and then go 'nah, I think I'll play Bloodborne again.' It's arguable if I even really enjoyed playing this more than any of the Pokemon or FE games ranked below, but it was likely just too tough for me to rank the game any lower than this.

14. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV: I don't like this as much as the classic Koei games, at the end of the day, but it's still a very enjoyable experience as a way to play a RotK style game with a more modern polish. I played this one a bit and I'm probably not done with it yet, but I played it enough to say that it's a very worthy successor to the RotK series name, unlike Taishi which was a total failure for me as a Nobunaga's Ambition game.

Are the NES koei strategy games worth playing for someone that really likes 8bit era games (but not strategy games so much).

spoilers for later in the list:

the Genesis ones are the best ones to play in my opinion. I was joking about them looking like NES games but in reality they're actually quite a step above that. I wouldn't bother with the NES games because the Genesis games are similar in vein but better. I believe at least one of them is pretty much just a port but with added content and better graphics.

that being said if you don't like strategy games you are not going to like these games. they are extremely, extremely cryptic menu-based games with almost no real action or anything to do outside of navigating menus, and the systems for managing your kingdom can be very unclear unless you consult an instruction manual or even better a guide that explains how everything works.

try Aerobiz Supersonic on the Genesis if you want something that's a bit more unique, and feels more like a 'simulation' game than a strategy game. I talked about it earlier on the list but essentially you own a company that tries to build airports all over the world and... that's basically the entire game. still, I feel Aerobiz Supersonic would appeal to casuals a lot more than the games I personally rated much, much higher.

13. Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions: At one point in my life I am sure that FFT was my favorite game. At this point I still feel a strange connection and can get easily addicated to the core gameplay here even though it's almost for sure worse than a lot of other strategy RPGs I have played. On a day-to-day basis I'd rather sit down and have a good game of Mahjong than play this game anymore in my life, but I did play it for a bit in 2022 and relived the nostalgic feeling from when I played this the first time as a young teenager. The translation of War of the Lions is absolutely atrocious, though, and ruins just about every great moment in the story.

12. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: I got really into the duality of teaching characters the proper skills using JP, while managing their EXP gains so they gain levels in the correct classes for optimal stat gains. This is probably more fun to me than the actual experience of the story or even map design of the game FFTA itself, but, given how my brain works, this does still deserve a fairly respectable spot on the list as a result. I also got the Steal Weapon ability as early as possible and played around with stealing enemy weapons to get other abilities early, which makes the game even more fun for someone with my unique brain chemistry. This is worse than the original FFT, but has a better script than War of the Lions, so...

11. Mahjong Soul: I've been playing this game for years, and 2022 is no different. I go through some periods where I stop playing for a bit, but I often go through periods where I am playing at least one East-South game of Mahjong per day. Sometimes two. I absolutely love the game of Mahjong and this is a VERY solid, western friendly client to play it. Highly recommend to anyone who is interested in it.

get hyped for the top 10

MariaTaylor posted...

28. Final Fantasy 14: I guess I would say I kinda like this more than I dislike it. I liked it enough to keep playing for a few months. But ultimately MMOs are not for me and I don't think I'll ever go back to it. Didn't even finish the main story, and even the core gameplay got stale to me after a while.

I'll do the FFXIV brigade a solid and get this out of the way: you just have to play 100 more hours to get to the good parts! It's really the best Final Fantasy once you get there!

Omega Ruby has some very fun post game stuff. If you liked RSE more than DPP originally then probably worry it to try it again sometime.

colliding posted...

I'll do the FFXIV brigade a solid and get this out of the way: you just have to play 100 more hours to get to the good parts! It's really the best Final Fantasy once you get there!

this is true and it's why i don't recommend anyone play FFXIV. If Maria didn't make it out of ARR then it's no wonder she bounced off. It's like a 100-hour tutorial with a generic fantasy story. but even when you get past that you're basically forced to play on "Very Easy" mode until you reach level cap and do optional content. though the story does get better and the visuals/music are fantastic.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Omega Ruby has some very fun post game stuff. If you liked RSE more than DPP originally then probably worry it to try it again sometime.

nice. sadly I have a problem where I can't transfer pokemon from my 3DS games to my Switch games, and this makes me super unmotivated to continue playing the 3DS games. like transferring Pokemon between Shield, Shining Pearl, and even Pokemon GO! is all valid, and that makes those Pokemon feel more "valuable" to me because they still have that sense of permanence. I'm not a master Pokemon breeder or anything, so when I went out of my way to breed a really specific Absol in Pokemon X that I used for catching Pokemon in the wild, it felt really cool to have one. however, now, this Absol is stuck forever in Pokemon X, and that's kinda sad, and makes the effort feel more wasted. on the flip side I got a Ditto with perfect IVs from a French player in Pokemon Shining Pearl, and I was able to trade it over to Pokemon Shield to help with breeding Pokemon in both games. the Umbreon that Voltch sent me, I was able to use that to make Eevees in both games. etc. etc.

There's just a lot of reasons why it's tough for me to go back to the non-Switch games now, even if some of those are just purely in my own head. after all, I did play Pokemon Red this year as well, and I enjoyed it. and I had lots of fun with Pokemon X while I was playing it. so yeah.

colliding posted...

I'll do the FFXIV brigade a solid and get this out of the way: you just have to play 100 more hours to get to the good parts! It's really the best Final Fantasy once you get there!

sounds exciting..!

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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/6/7/AAZU_LAAEFvD.jpg
10. Romancing Saga 3 (Switch)

As I hinted in my Minstrel Song write up I played this game a ton, learned all of the systems, and just really, really enjoyed the fact that the game was presented to me in a more playable and polished format. A lot of the old fan translations had issues with text display and menu display, and with this game being a little bit on the cryptic end when it comes to some of the gameplay elements, those quality of life issues made it even harder to truly understand what you were supposed to be doing.

The version on Switch is extremely good and makes this game far more playable in my opinion. I'd be suprised if there are any die hard defenders of the fan translations out there but who knows, maybe they exist.

Essentially you pick one of the potential starting characters, make some choices about your starting build and then after playing through the prologue you have a lot of freedom with how you explore the world, complete quests, and even which party members to recruit. The default build for most main characters are usually pretty solid. It's possible to make an even more optimized build if you know what you're doing, but it's also possible to mess up and make your main character kinda suck if you just pick stuff randomly.

If you've never played a Romancing Saga game, I'll briefly try to explain the system beyond that. So in this game in particular your basic stats (Str/Dex/Int/etc.) are set when you create your build, and all party members have fixed stat arrays. You can equip some gear that gives minor bonus to these stats. After battle you sometimes randomly gain HP, MP, or SP depending on what you did in battle... Characters who don't know any spells and don't cast any spells will never gain MP, but this is also important because characters with 0 MP are better at unlocking new combat skills. When you use a weapon in battle, like say a greatsword, there's a chance that your "Greatsword" wielding proficiency will go up at the end of battle. Now, here's the really weird part; Whenever you make an attack in combat, there's a % chance based on your proficiency, the level of the enemy, and some other factors, that determine if your character will randomly learn a new skill and use it in the middle of battle. Every character in the game has different types of skills they are better at learning. Anyway, once you understand the system fully, it can be really fun. If you don't understand it at all... well, it's kinda cool, but maybe confusing.

Like Shadowrun on Genesis, Romancing Saga 3 mostly avoids my problem with 'open world' games due to the limiting factor of the SNES cart, and how the world was small and the interesting things were all very close together. It's also full of mini games and other things to do along the way.

I don't know if this port came out in 2022, but that's when I found out about it. It's probably one of the newer releases in my top 10 for this year... despite just being a port of an SNES game. Whoops.

the long awaited NES game ported to Sega Genesis write up

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/0/1/AAZU_LAADOyZ.png
9. Nobunaga's Ambition (Genesis)

Extremely simple but satisfying strategy game. I've been playing Koei Strategy Games since I was about 12 years old and this was the first time I EVER completed a campaign from start to finish. I want to replay this again at some point, I might do it this year. I'd played the original NA before, though I don't remember which version, and that might matter. The NES version has a lot less polish than this.

Either way it 100% clicked with me this time and it got me into the habit of playing more Koei stuff for the remainder of 2022. I'm for sure always going to remember this playthrough of Nobunaga's Ambition where I united all of Japan under Uesugi Kenshin's banner, and it inspired me to get back into Koei Strategy games for months afterwards.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/9/9/AAZU_LAADOyX.png
I would probably not actually recommend this game to anyone. You spend 95% of the time looking at a map of japan, either the zoomed in map above or an even bigger map divided into DOZENS of territories. So basically the way Nobunaga's Ambition gameplay works is that for each territory you control you get one action. As you conquer more territories you have more actions per turn but also more fronts that you need to defend. There's a LOT more depth here than a game like, say, Risk, because in addition to building troops you need to manage your gold and troop economy, the loyalty of each province, and other micromanagement stuff that only appeals to insane people such as myself.

There's a market but from my playtesting it seems to suffer from constant inflation over time, making it tough to know what is actually 'buying low' or 'selling high' for that matter.

Additionally there's a strategy you can use to send ninjas into rival territories and mess with them. Apparently you can win the entire game by utilizing mostly ninjas, but I didn't use them much. Other Koei strategy games that came later would have FAR more advanced subterfuge, espionage, and political mechanics... which led to me enjoying them even MORE than this experience.

EDIT: I forgot to mention this but there is a random check during various seasons to see if something like flooding or a plague happens. I got this presumably rare instance at the very end of the game where after I conquered the final territory, the game rolled for seasonal events at the end of the turn. I was treated to a cutscene and a message about a plague sweeping over Japan, affecting several territories, and then the game transitioned over to the 'you united all of japan and won the game' cutscene and the ending. Another reason why this playthrough is always going to be super memorable to me.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/6/9/1/AAZU_LAAEF4z.jpg

8. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 (Genesis)

This game is similar in terms of presentation to Nobunaga's Ambition 1, but it is like a world above when it comes to the depth of the game mechanics. I was pretty blown away by just how much I ended up loving this game and feeling like it does an extremely good job at what it attempts to do. It added so many features while still keeping the simplicity and charm of Nobunaga's Ambition.

If you know anything about the Dynsasty Warriors games, you might be interested to know that this series is basically a compliment to that one. While Dynasty Warriors are action beat em ups, the Romance games are turn based strategy. But they're all based around the same historical events, and even made by the same game company.

So basically the major difference between Nobunaga's Ambition and Romance of the Three Kingdoms is this; In Nobunaga's Ambition you get one action per territory you control. But in Romance, you have a bunch of vassals under your command and each vassal can perform one action. This leads to a lot more actions per turn, and they also increased the calendar from 4 Season to 12 Months, leading to more turns overall. Adding a larger variety of actions you can perform makes it so that all of your officers are usually busy doing many different things.

If I want to say one downside of this system it's that it makes each turn take longer, and the game as a whole is much slower as a result. I have never finished a Romance of the Three Kingdoms campaign and united all of China like I did with Japan in that Nobunaga's Ambition playthrough.

Are these basic as hell strategy games going to appeal to everyone? No. But if you are like me and you're going to love these games even when you're 90 years old, I honestly think ROTK2 on Genesis might be near the top of the list for this era.

7. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3 (Genesis)

If you've never played any of these games it might surprise you to know how different they are, even the ones that came out around the same time, despite having the same basic premise. For example I'd strongly recommend playing the Genesis versions as for me personally the SNES adaptations of these games that I tried were a lot worse in presentation and playability. Anyway, 3 adds the ability to create your own characters and offers a bigger campaign.

I think I like the battle system in 3 less, and I enjoy how 'basic' 2 is in a lot of ways, making it and the original Nobunaga's Ambition very easy to pick up and play. On the flip side, the depth of the mechanics to RotK 3 is extremely satisfying for the days when you're willing to sit down and engage with it.

This game has a much bigger focus on both politics and espionage, two play styles that I absolutely LOVE. It's extremely satisfying to pull of a trick like sending a forged letter to an enemy officer who has questionable loyalty, making him grow even more dissatisfied with his ruler, and then send a politician to convince that officer to switch over to your side in the same turn before the enemy has time to react and reinforce his loyalty. I also made a habit of allying myself with strong rulers and then asking them for money and other gifts constantly. Hilariously, asking them for gifts actually makes them like you MORE instead of LESS but I think this is a fun quirk of the game that isn't too far from reality. I've known a lot of people who were really happy to offer generous aide, and actually seem pretty offput if you refuse their gifts.

Around the time when I first played all three, I rated RotK3 as the lowest because it lacked the simple charm of the other two, but after a while it ended up being the one I continued to play the most, and rated the highest. I could write, and have written, paragraphs and paragraphs about the various ins and outs to the different mechanics in this game. But I'll just leave this by saying I enjoyed the game a lot and in my opinion this is the best Koei game of the 16 bit era. And might even be the best RoTK game overall.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/7/8/AAZU_LAAEGAa.jpg

6. Story of Seasons Pinoeers of Olive Town

I like the characters in this game a lot less than Friends of Mineral Town, but it has gameplay elements that I think individually work a lot better. The overall gameplay is still a wash at times as there are other things which feel clunky and unsatisfying. Ultimately I decided the games are pretty similar in quality but this one is maybe slightly worse. Still, it proves that XSEED and Marvelous current team can still make decent games even if they aren't just re-releasing the most highly rated Harvest Moon game of all time, so that's something.

One thing I will praise about the cast is that almost every member gets a lot of development and feels more interesting after you start dating them. But this leads to the unfortunate situation of feeling like you need to date everyone in town to get the most out of the experience, or feeling like character development is locked behind the dating mechanic. Even after the extra scenes I think there aren't any characters in this game that I loved. They were all just mostly okay.

I would have posted pictures from my ingame wedding or posted pictures of my farm but I am way too lazy to transfer screenshots from my Switch to a platform that I can post them directly onto GameFAQs. So instead, you get a generic picture.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/7/9/AAZU_LAAEGAb.jpg
5. Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town

As someone who loved Back to Nature as a young pre-teen and has played just about every re-release and remake of this game... actually I have played just about every single Harvest Moon game ever released aside from some of the newer ones... I thought this was a solid remake. The classic content is pretty good, although changed in some aspects, and sometimes for the worse... it's often for the better especially in terms of gameplay/convenience. For the new characters Jennifer is extremely solid, one of the best cast members. Brandon is pretty 'whatever' though.

By the way the reason why a lot of similar games tend to be clustered on my list is because I'm the type of person where, if I enjoy something, I really just want more of the same thing. Games which change up the formula, like Taishi, and even to a lesser extent Elden Ring, end up feeling disappointing to me. While getting 'more of the same' as what I'm already enjoying leads to me rating the new material just about the same -- which is fine. Looking at these two games, or the three Pokemon games I rated together, they all placed pretty highly on the list. I know what I like, and the main thing I want is for them to keep making more content that is similar to what I already enjoy.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/6/AAZU_LAAEGLe.jpg
4. Etrian Odyssey 5

Not my first time playing this game, and likely won't be the last. Although I haven't beaten 5 yet, I tend to have a lot of fun with this one designing new guilds and seeing how my characters fare on the first few stratums. My current party is currently sitting on stratum 3 which is kind of like the hellish difficulty spike in EO5.

I think there's a pretty good consensus that this game has the most brutal 3rd Stratum difficulty spike of any game in the series, but I might be wrong about that. As a weird example of how my brain works, I don't even consider this a downside. If anything I consider it a positive. The idea of my battle tested guild members getting thrown into the most deadly gauntlet possible is a great way to test my strategy and builds.

One thing in particular I really like about this game is that it adds the most unique character building dynamic seen in the series thus far (Having race and class sets instead of just classes), while at the same time being the first game since the release of Etrian Odyssey 2 to capture the same feeling of exploration and dungeon design that was in Etrian Odyssey 1. As a big fan of the classic EO1/2 experience this one stands out to me as a solid game in the series because of its ability to innovate while still feeling familiar.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/8/8/7/AAZU_LAAEGLf.jpg
3. Etrian Odyssey Untold 2

Okay all that being said and I still prefer the remake of EO2 more...

I'm a huge fan of Untold 1 and think it's even better than the original Etrian Odyssey - a game that I freaking absolutely love, so that's high praise. Untold 2 fixes basically all of the minor issues with Untold 1 (like the ridiculously high Grimoire drop rates and them taking up space in your main inventory!) and is arguably an even better upgrade over the already fantastic EO2. So, yeah, this one is top tier for me. "I've been playing EO2U until the battery indicator in my 3DS comes on and I have to charge it." is an actual quote from me this year.

Never got into RotK or Nobunaga's Ambition much even though I am a big fan of the time periods. I heard RotK XI was generally regarded as the best modern(ish) game.

Also I wonder if you have heard of Taiko Risshiden which is also a Koei game set in Sengoku Japan but plays more like a sandbox RPG.

Do you play Paradox games?

handsomeboy2012 posted...

Taiko Risshiden

I hadn't heard of it before right now actually. Well, after looking it up, I had HEARD OF Inindo: Way of the Ninja, but I didn't know it was a part of a bigger Koei series, and hadn't ever played it or seen anything from the game. If I had to say, I'm probably more interested in Sangokushi than Sengokushi. But even with that being said, this series looks super interesting. I'm going to check it out in 2023 for sure. Thanks for sharing!

Raka_Putra posted...

Do you play Paradox games?

Going through their list of games I have played

Cities: Skylines
Crusader Kings II (But only briefly)
Magicka

And that's it. Although I am a lot more familiar with Paradox Interactive, assuming that's what you're talking about. I did not realize they had released as many games as I see on this full list. I have been intending to play a few of their games at some point in the future but I haven't got around to it yet.

(Mostly because my PC sucks)

Oh yeah I did mean Paradox Interactive, since it seems like they share similarities with Nobunaga's Ambition series.

I've heard a lot about Crusader Kings (mostly 2) and also one of my best friends at University was a huge Mount & Blade fan. He was the kind of person who would just randomly bring it up and start talking to me about it completely unsolicited.

Forgot to mention that Taiko Risshiden doesnt have a English translation, you need to know Japanese (or Chinese) to play that.

Worst case scenario I can at least check out Inindo, which seems to be related to Taiko Risshiden in some way. Aside from that I have..... pretty limited.... ability in reading Japanese and Chinese. Depending on how simple the game is I might be able to figure something out. Especially since, with turn based games, you can take as long as possible to translate text.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/7/7/AAZU_LAAEGUt.jpg
2. Fire Emblem Fates

Absolutely incredible game. I have played and cleared Birthright before and put the game down for a while, and man am I glad I came back to it. I love the core mechanics of this game so much and, as someone who does not care about story in most games at all, the absolutely ridiculously stupid story and characters in Fates barely bother me. If anything there are parts of the story that I actually am highly amused and sort of love how stupid they are.

I usually just skip all cutscenes anyway and spend hours thinking about which characters I am going to build, how I will get them the class sets and skills they want, who to pair together to create interesting child units, etc. etc. And, in all seriousness, the game does have some great characters such as Takumi, and the Birthright route does have some emotional moments that can actually land quite well.

Fates fixes every single mechanics problem that Awakening had and adds many more interesting mechanics.

In Awakening there were lots of skills, but most of them were absolute trash. I remember going through the list of skills in Awakening and being blown away by how many of them did virtually nothing in battle. In Fates there are a bunch of skills that actually have value, and the skills are distributed very nicely among many different classes.

Innate Class Sets are balanced much better in this game, and the ability to expand your Class Sets allows both parent and child generation characters to be playable; unlike Awakening's system where children inherited an expanded Class Set and were pretty much always better.

The Pair Up system in Awakening was utter garbage, giving a small % chance to sometimes activate a defensive or offensive action. It is possibly the worst core mechanic ever seen in a Fire Emblem game, as it could fundamentally change the outcome of an engagement, sometimes snowballing into derailing an entire battle based on actions with a less than 50% activation rate but checking multiple times per turn. The only way to avoid this was to grind your characters to a level of power where these activation rates stopped being meaningful.

Fates on the other hand has the absolute best Pair Up system, possibly the best gameplay mechanic ever added to a Fire Emblem game. It allows for clever movement and positioning play similar to the Rescue system from classic games, but with a ton more depth. There are good reasons to have your characters paired up sometimes, and keep them separate at other times. Both formations lead to completely different styles of play and most importantly it is 100% deterministic. Characters in Attack Stance will always attack. Characters who are Paired Up will always build up the Guard Gauge, and you can see exactly when a Guard is coming and plan around it.

Anyway, I'm going to continue playing this game a lot in the future, no doubt about that. Anything that can place above an Etrian Odyssey game on my list is very noteworthy. After finishing Birthright Lunatic I did a second run where I allowed people to pick the units I used, and forced myself to build a party around those units. The freedom of character builds in this game allows for a lot of creative decision making which makes this kind of run even more enjoyable than something like, say, FE6 where the characters all have a fixed level of power and a draft is more about wanting to get strong units. I'll probably do another 'pick my units' run at some point in 2023 -- hopefully in Conquest. I'm not sure if I'll be able to beat Lunatic Conquest before that time, though, as it's a difficult route.

Bonus: Persona 5 Royal Deluxe

I was pretty lazy when gathering entries for this list, and I know that I probably overlooked a few things. There's some other Genesis titles that I played and dropped quickly, or other games that I started near the end of the year and I know I'm going to continue them in 2023. However, with regards to P5R, I literally just forgot that I played it in Early 2022 and not Late 2021.

I did not finish this game yet. I think I was about halfway through it. Maybe a bit earlier than the halfway point. This game has a lot of things going for it, things I really enjoyed which actually made me want to take an even deeper look into the Persona series as a whole. But it also has other aspects that can definitely wear down a person with my mentality.

The battle system is interesting, but after I fought a certain number of battles it started to feel like the novelty of doing the same thing over and over again was wearing off. Additionally, while I like the narrative structure of how the story is presented, with the calendar always moving forward, it started to feel like more work and less play to try and manage my time efficiently and plan out everything I was going to do. This is exacerbated by the fact that there are SO MANY events and conditional things you can only do on specific days of the week, or stop being available on certain dates, and there's no way of knowing this information without looking up a guide.

The solution would obviously be to not care about that stuff and simply play the game but... I don't know if it's that easy for me to do that. I didn't want to follow a guide that just tells me what to do every day, but I did want to look up information about things like when certain characters stop being available, or things that can only be done on certain dates, and plan my activity around that. As a result I would sometimes spend an HOUR getting ready to play the game before actually playing it.

Without a doubt, these factors contributed to me eventually putting the game on indefinite hold. I want to finish it in 2023 but we will see what happens. I went most of 2022 without picking the game back up, and I even had let it slip my mind when making this list.

Ultimately I'd probably still rank it in the #10 to #14 range if it had been on this list. I don't really finish that many games, something that will be seen when I post all of my stats at the end, and typically I simply rate things based on how much fun I had with them while I was still playing it. As soon as I stop having fun, I will typically put a game down. This is also why if I do complete something it usually means I think very highly of it.

Anyway, I'll write something about the #1 rated game that I played in 2022 tomorrow... and then some fun stats, I guess.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/2/2/1/AAZU_LAAEGgV.jpg
1. Bloodborne

I'm going to be playing this game for the rest of my life and yes I did play it in 2022. I'm already playing it again right now in 2023. In fact, it's my most played game of 2023 so far.

While these top games on the list are all strong contenders in their own way, it's tough to rank them against each other because they all appeal for different reasons. Fates is one of my favorite strategy RPGs of all time. Etrian Odyssey games have the best character building and turn based battle mechanics. If I play an EO Game at some point in the year, it's probably going near the top of my list. Bloodborne has my favorite gameplay from an action perspective, but a big part of what I love about it also relates to what I love about other games. Character building, and RPG stuff. I think people who worry about Bloodborne (and other FromSoft games) being too hard really overlook the fundamental RPG mechanics, and usually make the game more punishing or difficult as a result.

The series used to have a reputation of "hard, but fair" which has over time mutated into this completely inaccurate "punishing difficulty" reputation. I think that's a result of an expanding player base who can usually only succeed at games when the game unfairly gives advantages to the player, so, to them, a "fair" game actually feels quite difficult. Even with that being said there are plenty of advantages the player can use, but you have to actually think a little bit about how to play the game properly in order to get the most out of them.

I played some really good games this year, but Bloodborne still feels like it is my favorite game. It has held this position for a long time, and so it's not that easy to dethrone it.

Next Up...... some stats.

Note that I counted Mahjong Soul as a Completed game and a Repeat game. Reason being that I played it in previous years, not for the first time in 2022. Additionally, while there's no real way to beat it, I've probably invested a ridiculous amount of hours into the game at this point. I completed many seasonal events, including some of them with very respectible placements. I've also grinded my way up to a pretty difficult rank. Short of becoming a legitimate professional Mahjong player in real life -- which, at this point, I might put up a good fight against some pros -- I don't know if there would be a higher requirement for saying I "beat" this game.

1. Bloodborne (Completed. Repeat.)

2. Fire Emblem Fates (Completed. Repeat.)

3. Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 (Incomplete. Blind/Remake.)

4. Etrian Odyssey 5 (Incomplete. Repeat.)

5. Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town (Completed. Repeat.)

6. Story of Seasons Pinoeers of Olive Town (Completed. Blind.)

7. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3 (Genesis) (Incomplete. Repeat.)

8. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2 (Genesis) (Incomplete. Blind.)

9. Nobunaga's Ambition (Genesis) (Completed. Blind/Remake.)

10. Romancing Saga 3 (Switch) (Incomplete. Repeat.)

11. Mahjong Soul (Completed. Repeat.)

12. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (Incomplete. Repeat.)

13. Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions (Incomplete. Repeat.)

14. Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV (Incomplete. Blind.)

15. Elden Ring (Incomplete. Blind.)

16. Pokemon Shield (Incomplete. Repeat.)

17. Pokemon X (Completed. Repeat.)

18. Pokemon Shining Pearl (Completed. Blind/Remake.)

19. Fire Emblem 8 (Incomplete. Repeat.)

20. Fire Emblem Awakening (Incomplete. Repeat.)

21. Lufia 3 (Incomplete. Repeat.)

22. Dragon Warrior Monsters (Incomplete. Repeat.)

23. Pokemon Red (Completed. Repeat.)

24. Shadowrun (Genesis Version) (Incomplete. Repeat.)

25. Skyrim (Legendary Survival Mode) (Not Sure. Repeat.)

26. Phantasy Star Online 2/New Genesis (Incomplete. Blind.)

27. Outer Worlds (Completed. Repeat.)

28. Final Fantasy 14 (Incomplete. Blind.)

29. Mass Effect 1/2 (Completed. Repeat)

30. Romancing Saga Minstrel Song (Incomplete. Repeat.)

31. Aerobiz Supersonic (Genesis) (Incomplete. Repeat.)

32. Warriors of the Eternal Sun (Genesis) (Incomplete. Repeat.)

33. Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen (Incomplete. Repeat.)

34. Final Fantasy V (Incomplete. Repeat.)

35. Naruto to Boruto Shinobi Strikers (Incomplete. Blind.)

36. My Time At Portia (Incomplete. Blind.)

37. Pokemon AlphaRuby (Incomplete. Blind/Remake.)

38. Bleed (Incomplete. Blind.)

39. Nobunaga's Ambition Taishi (PS4) (Incomplete. Blind.)

40. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4 (SNES) (Incomplete. Blind.)

For the MMOs I know they technically have infinite content, but in my case I did not beat the main campaign or reach endgame in either game so I'm fine with not counting them as completed. You could make an argument that I made it to endgame in PSO2 while ignoring the story quests but it's not worth splitting hairs over.

Skyrim I was ultimately not sure how to categorize it. I did not complete the main campaign. But at the same time, completing the main campaign was not my goal. I did achieve my goal of surviving and becoming a self-sufficient character in the world in Survival Mode on Legendary Difficulty. In this case I'd probably make the argument that I did "complete" my playthrough, just not the main quest intended by the developers. But ultimately I again found it wasn't worth splitting hairs over, so I just left it as unsure.

Note that several of the games marked as Incomplete/Repeat are games that I DID finish at some point in a previous year, but I did NOT finish the playthrough that I started in 2022.

Completed Games: 11/40 (27%)
Incomplete Games: 28/40 (70%)
Repeat Playthroughs:25/40 (62%)
Blind Playthroughs: 11/40 (27%)
Remakes: 4/40 (10%)

I only complete about 1 in 4 of the playthroughs that I start.
This would have only gone up to 30% if I included Skyrim.
I put about 70% of playthroughs on hold at some point
Most of them I will not come back to, but some of them will be completed in 2023
Persona 5 Royal Deluxe is not included in these stats
So that's another game indefinitely on hold...

10% of games qualified as blind playthroughs of remakes.
I didn't count stuff that was a direct port.
27% of games were blind playthroughs of games I had never played before.
62% of the games I played this year are games I have played before.
I have a tendency to simply replay games that I know I like...
Or sometimes things I haven't played in years and want to try again.

To showcase this, 8/10 of the games in the Top 10 were Repeat Playthroughs if you include the remakes as Repeats. The remaining two games were both parts of a series that I already knew I liked, and was looking for more games in the same series. I do not try new things often. And when I do, it rarely holds up against my established favorites...

Someone said that Bloodborne has the cheapest deaths in the series do you agree?

I don't think so. I guess I'd have to know what deaths they are referring to in order to make a proper response. That being said, Dark Souls 3 literally has an area where a boulder trap comes through and kills you even though there is no visible boulder trap before you enter that area. In almost every other instance of every other Souls game, and Bloodborne, you can see any traps before they are triggered as long as you pay attention. But in the DS3 case the boulder is not even loaded into the game until after it rolls down and kills you. So that one really stood out to me in terms of cheap deaths.

Either 12 or 14 strategy games, depending on your definition.

That's 30% to 35%

I was going to do RPGs but there are so many of them on the list it pretty much defeats the purpose of adding them up. Basically almost the entire list except Bleed is probably an RPG...

Just curious, how do you feel about Etrian Odyssey Nexus? Ive only played 4 (which if I remember some of your previous posts correctly, you dont like) and that one, which I enjoyed but not enough to seek out more of the series. Your write-ups are making me interested again though, especially if you think Untold 2 and 5 are notably better than Nexus.

Nexus is a slog compared to the other games. It goes on longer to the point where it had to tack an extra 30 max levels on to fit the content, so you have your characters with the main part of their kit running at 100% way longer than the other games. It's just a very stretched out game IMO.

JeffreyRaze posted...

Nexus is a slog compared to the other games. It goes on longer to the point where it had to tack an extra 30 max levels on to fit the content, so you have your characters with the main part of their kit running at 100% way longer than the other games. It's just a very stretched out game IMO.

Sounds like something that would appeal to me if I ever can catch up on this series

I agree Nexus is a pretty bloated game, but it's still quite fun. it does have its charm points. I think it did really well at giving fanservice to people who were already fans of the series. there's also some very interesting mechanics and build decisions. and there are some things that are missing which are a bit of a shame. axes for example. and they didn't include ANY of the playable races from EO5.

I highly recommend you check out 5 if you want something "different" from the EO games you've played thus far, as EO5 is easily the most unique game in the franchise. if you want something that is like the most simple, perfect core Etrian Odyssey experience then Untold 2 is the best.

you are also correct in remembering that EO4 is my least favorite, and one of the things that Nexus borrowed from 4 is having a bunch of small dungeons all over the place. both EO2 and EO5 use the structure of one massive dungeon that you slowly chip away at over time, which is a vastly preferred structure for me. although ultimately it comes down to the character building mechanics and the freedom to builds. those are always the most important thing to me in EO games.

later games lock character build choices behind story progression. earlier EO games give you full access to your entire build from the very beginning. that's one key reason why I still prefer EO1-3 over the later games. although there's little reason to play EO1 or EO2 anymore since the Untold games exist.

Thats great information, thank you. Ill probably try 5 sometime soon

One cool thing to note about EO5 is that you are given the option to create a character of a specific race and class, and then switch them to a class that is normally exclusive to a different race. You can do this at any time after you complete the tutorial.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/2/AAZU_LAAEGuQ.png

Here's some data that I made by calculating the relationship between the capped stats of each race vs the highest racial stat cap. You can see that humans are solid defensively with high HP, Vit, and decent Wisdom. They also have the niche of having the best Luck in the game. And when you need Luck, generally you want to have as much as possible.

What's also interesting is that in addition to your class skills you also have a set of skills that belong to each race. The union skills can be strong enough to build your entire party around them, so that will factor in your choices as well. Although it's still fine to simply start a party with the default race/class settings, clear the tutorial, and continue the game with the same party. Truthfully the default races and classes were balanced with this in mind. But there are other interesting things you can do if you want to mix things up.

EDIT:
So basically to make what I was saying more clear, I'll give an example. Your stats are determined purely by your race in this game, and so switching a race into a non-default class is how you get an alternate stat spread onto a class. Houndmaster is a great example for this. The healing and guard skills of the Houndmaster scale purely based on Level, while hound summoning and hound skills require TP, and bow attacks scale with strength.

For this reason, there are three viable candidates for Houndmaster (some classes really only have 1 or 2)

Therian is the default Houndmaster race. They'll have solid bow attacks, and their healing and guard skills will be good because those scale with level. Their TP sustain is also decent enough. The biggest weakness of the Therian Houndmaster is they will be a little bit more frail, although the Hound itself will still serve as a good tank.

Brouni is an alternate race choice. The healing won't benefit from the high Wisdom stat of the Brouni, but it still scales to your level. Most importantly you'll have lots of TP for summoning the Hound and commanding it to do guarding and healing actions every turn. Additionally, this will be the most durable Houndmaster. Since the Brouni has good HP, Vit, and Wisdom. In addition to a tanky Hound, you probably don't need to worry about the Houndmaster getting killed by stray physical or elemental attacks. Due to their low strength, the Brouni Houndmaster is going to have very weak bow attacks, and will likely spend most of their turns commanding the Hound.

Human (Earthlain) is somewhere in between the two. It's a stronger physical tank than the Brouni, but a little weaker against Elemental attacks. Has the worst TP sustain of the bunch, however, so after you summon your Hound you won't have as much TP for using the different skills. Your bow attacks won't be as strong as the Therian but they will still be quite strong, as humans have the second highest Strength in the game.

All three of them are functional and you can decide which race you prefer for a Houndmaster based on two factors; Which role is needed more for the party OR which race provides a Union skill that the party is currently lacking. If you have a sole DPS character who outputs crazy damage, and your entire offensive strategy is based around them, then it's probably not that important to have a Therian Houndmaster with the highest damage output possible. The extra TP and sustain of the Brouni Houndmaster could be better for supporting the rest of the party, and the Brouni Union skills are also quite good, too.

MariaTaylor posted...

22. Dragon Warrior Monsters

heck yeaaaa

MariaTaylor posted...

DQ Monster Joker I haven't played yet, but I know it exists.

It changes a lot of mechanics and stuff. I like it but it feels like a different series from DWM. There's also a Joker 2, and a DWM3 (we never got it over here, it had like a caravan and you put one dude or mon on each wagon) and I think Japan got a Joker 3 and a remake of the OG iirc. I love them. For my money they peaked with the second one, and I'd take the old ones over their contemporary Pokemons, but tastes vary.

I wanna get into Romancing Saga, somebody recommended Frontier as a jumping-on point. Probably should get into Etrian Odyssey proper too, I've played and liked a good bit of Persona Q and Labyrinth of Touhou.

Is it worth swinging back to the old Ro3K games if I've only played newer ones? (but liked them) (but never had the attention span to finish a game) I think the ones I played are like, 8 and 11, and I have 14 sitting on my backlog.

AriaOfBolo posted...

I wanna get into Romancing Saga, somebody recommended Frontier as a jumping-on point.

Minstrel Song is a remake of Romancing SaGa 1, and it's pretty high quality, too. It's now available on Switch although it's basically the same version that has been out since PS2. I actually think RS3 on Switch is extremely new player friendly though, probably even more than Minstrel Song, despite being a straight port of a SNES game. it's also cheaper than Minstrel Song. so less investment needed to try it out. (I got it on sale for like 2 dollars or something, full price IIRC is still less than 10)

AriaOfBolo posted...

Probably should get into Etrian Odyssey proper too, I've played and liked a good bit of Persona Q and Labyrinth of Touhou.

for Q all I will say is that I don't think it actually made Persona fans or Etrian Odyssey fans happy. so I wouldn't let that influence your expectations too much. it lacks a lot of the core elements that makes EO games great. the same is also true for Labyrinth of Touhou, even if LoT is a fun dungeon crawling in its own way. the appeal of the game isn't excatly the dungeon crawling. that's more of a vehicle for gaining EXP and loot. although the dungeon crawling is a good structure for this type of game, because the dungeon design and exploration in EO is also solid. there are environmental puzzles and, in addition to random encounters, strong mid-boss type enemies you can see on the map. often times there are clever solutions to avoid these bosses so you can come back and fight them later under more favorable conditions. the real draw of the game is the character building and how well designed the battle system, player skills, and enemy encounters are.

look at my post above. this topic contains only a small fraction of the insanity of the kind of person who enjoys playing Etrian Odyssey. I have like 10 different EO related spreadsheets that I personally made, as well as having done paragraphs and paragraphs of character and class analysis that barely anyone else has even read. anyway, point being, neither Labyrinth of Touhou or Persona Q include any kind of character building system, and so they don't represent a real Etrian Odyssey experience to an outsider. Persona Q also uses a battle system that is more familiar to Persona fans, and neither the random encounters or bosses even come close to touching the greatness of the enemy encounter design in Etrian Odyssey. you just have to play one of the actual EO games to see for yourself. Untold2, Nexus, or 5 are good places to start.

Nexus will be the easiest and works almost like a "sampler" of every other game in the series. it contains classes from all of the other games, as well as ported and remixed dungeons from previous games. for the same reason it also might be more appealing to someone that is already a fan of the series, but I do think they did a good job of making it appealing to new players by making the feel of the game more casual and less daunting.

Untold 2 actually has a mode where you can play with pre-generated characters, and has more of a story mode to hook players that otherwise would complain about the game 'having no story.' Although I feel this does eliminate some of the fun of balancing your own party and choosing your classes, it's still better than the Persona Q solution because it still allows players the freedom to customize their own character builds on each of the pre-generated characters.

5 as mentioned above is the most unique game in the series but it's one of the more story-heavy games that doesn't feature pre-generated player characters. And the dynamics of race/class character building are interesting. so if those appeal to you based on what I've said above, it's probably a good place to start. although the standard campaign dungeon crawl in 5 might be the hardest of the 3, I believe it has difficult settings, so you can play on easy mode if you're really worried.

AriaOfBolo posted...

Is it worth swinging back to the old Ro3K games if I've only played newer ones? (but liked them) (but never had the attention span to finish a game) I think the ones I played are like, 8 and 11, and I have 14 sitting on my backlog.

Nobunaga's Ambition on Genesis for sure is worth AT LEAST trying out. there is a little bit of a difficulty curve getting started, as the territories in the game are NOT all balanced. I can provide a list of the territories where you can start the game and have an enjoyable experience as a new player.

if someone enjoyed Nobunaga's Ambition, then yes I would recommend checking out RoTK 2 and 3. However, I wouldn't just recommend it to any person, since I think most people would find the games slow, obtuse, and boring.

Here's the fiefs that you can actually choose as a starting location if you want to play the game without getting immediately run over:
Uesugi (2) : Really strong all around, with a good starting position. I just sat there building up my city for a while and then nearby fiefs starting sending me gold for non-aggression pacts and marriage pacts, which was cool.

Tokugawa (8) : About as strong as Uesugi but has a highly contested starting position. Lots of fighting all around you. It's probably best to let them focus on the weak territories and exhaust their own resources, then try to expand. If you try to expand quickly, you'll be left stretched thin and get attacked from multiple sides.

Kitabata (13) : I didn't test this one myself but it seems like a slightly weaker fief than the above two. Hard, but playable.

Miyoshi (15) : This one is on the average/weak side BUT it has a special property that is worth noting. The merchant is ALWAYS available in this territory which makes it a really interesting choice if you want to go for a more domestic playstyle. As a bonus, the territories around you are fairly weak, so they most likely won't bother attacking you for a while and you can play the simulation game.

Takeda (16) : Just like Kitabata is the hard mode version of Tokugawa, Takeda is like the hard mode version of Miyoshi. He's got about the same strength and also starts out in the non-contested section of the map. Only difference is that you don't have guaranteed access to the merchant, so it'll be a bit more challenging.

Oda (17) : Obviously if you pick Oda you'll have a pretty good path to victory, since he's the strongest starting commander. That being said he actually does start in a highly contested area right in the middle of the map. I would actually go as far as to say that Uesugi is the best starting position if you want an easy game, while Oda is the strongest option to play a 'normal' difficulty game but with a strong character.

I actually went and looked up my list of good territories to start with in Nobunaga's Ambition, just in case anyone wants it. Might as well post it now and have it available, rather than waiting till someone asks and them having to wait for me to find it.

This is for the game mode with the smaller map, not the map of full japan. But this would also be the easiest mode for a new player to get into anyway because the game is smaller and therefore faster to complete.

I beat the game with Uesugi Kenshin, starting in area 2. It allows you to gain a foothold in the right side of the map and slowly work your way from right to left.

Thank you for the wisdoms Maria, duly noted on all points.

MariaTaylor posted...

neither Labyrinth of Touhou or Persona Q include any kind of character building system, and so they don't represent a real Etrian Odyssey experience to an outsider.

Well now I'm curious because the character building in Labyrinth of Touhou is one of the main draws for me! I'm gathering it's a lot more open in EO?