I love 2D platformers, especially metroidvanias. Some of my favorite ones (not just metroidvanias) are Battleblock Theater, Dead Cells, Hollow Knight and the Ori games.
I also think 3D Platforming sucks, so I try to avoid games, where this is the main gameplay. I’ve played some, like Portal or Grow Home, which I thought were good, but you probably won’t ever catch me playing some 3D collectathons or something.
I absolutely adored Hollow Knight, but my favourite platformer gotta be Celeste. In no small part due to its accessibility, but also great character writing, organic learning curve and gorgeous soundtrack!
On a more replayable side, my most played platformer is Dead Cells - which is understandable, since it is a roguelike.
Overall, in a platformer game I value learning curve and ease of controls more, since I’m not very good at this genre (as opposed to soulslikes, where I usually welcome the challenge). But of course, a good story transcends genres.
Can’t believe Celeste is so buried in a thread about platformers. It’s challenging but never unfair (game mechanics even weigh in the player’s favour, e.g. coyote time). A common complaint about difficult platforming is the brewing impatience from having to constantly restart, but Celeste’s reloads are so fast that this becomes a non-issue. Other than C-sides (and maybe some rooms in the hotel level), levels are small enough that you don’t have to slog through everything to get to the failure point.
Celeste is masterpiece tier for me, and I highly encourage anyone who remotely loves platforming to give it a try.
Even C levels felt fair to me. The only level I genuinely got frustrated with is the final final chapter, as it relies on some advanced platforming tricks I can’t perform consistently. But then again, it is basically a free DLC for the game so I understand the difficulty spike
Kerbal Space program wasn’t on the list, and maybe OpenTTD? The latter is also great when you have a random setup (the game is 10Mb, runs in anything and has zero needs) and have only 20 minutes to play.
rarely, i like to play a fluffy, feel good game with no real stakes. enter: Flynn, Son of Crimson
there is absolutely no chance of anything really bad happening in the game, the worst that happens is your powerful guardian diety dog loses his powers at the beginning of the game (but it’s OK, he just rests until you reclaim his powers and he feels better). you never really feel like anyone is really in danger, you get to play a pretty fun 2d action platforming game, and it has some really fun sections later on that make you feel awesome
it wraps up nicely in probably 20 hours too, if you want to 100% it, so it doesn’t overstay its welcome and lets you experience all of its content with low demands. really a lovely little experience. it’s not pushing the envelope at all, but if you want basically 20 solid hours of lighthearted fun, this is a great way to get it
FF VII and FF VIII where the first two games I played in the series, but i was very young and didn’t really know what I was doing. I think we had rented one game, and borrowed another. I really don’t remember much about either game, but FF IX came out on ps1, and to this day it’s my image of what FF means.
The unique worlds, characters, incredible (at the time and not bad for today) cutscene cinematic. It was the first game I discovered you can outpace yourself and wind up in a battle with a level 60 dragon when you’re only level 13.
My brother really got into FF X and i remember watching him play. To this day, I hate Blitzball lol. We both sucked at it.
FF VII-2 for the psp was actually really cool. I don’t remember much anymore but the story, gameplay, and music were all great. I would like to try replaying it!
I played a little of XIII and quite a few hours of XV. The games have really changed. Especially XV, some things have improved for the better but there’s a lot of tropes and unfortunate stereotypes that could have been…removed.
(For the most part, excepting those I haven’t played the main questline end-to-end.)
SSSS: X
S: VII, XIV, XVI
A: XIII, XII, Tactics, FFTA, VIIR, VIIR-2
B: VI, IX, XIII-2, Type-0
C: VIII, IV, Crystal Chronicles, Dissidia, X-2, LR: XIII, Bravely Default
F: Crystal Chronicles S, the Android port of FFT
I love everything I’ve listed at C… for me, that just means “interesting ideas that I really love and hope they’ll revisit, but that ultimately didn’t land for me as a game in the form it was released in.” And yes, Bravely Default is a Final Fantasy game imho.
[Sorry for continually editing this, the Markdown formatting keeps giving me issues.]
For context I played the first one on NES when it came out. I liked how the different games each felt imaginative and a little different yet familiar due to certain common themes. I liked the games where the battles felt more tactical, like X, XII, and of course Tactics. I really like the setting of Ivalice, couldn’t say why but the setting is just appealing. I don’t like the turn the series has taken lately. XVI was a shallow action game and an even shallower RPG with paper-thin characters acting out a superficial imitation of A Game Of Thrones. I was way more invested in the character arcs of the cast of characters in VI than in the forgettable cast of XVI.
I actually really liked 16’s main storyline. Not sure where I rank it, exactly, but parts of it were extremely cool.
What I did not like were the barrel-bin jrpg-tier sidequests where characters show up out of the blue because they’re supposed to be in this scene and “you really thought I wouldn’t see the two of ya’s slinkin’ off” was all I guess the project had the budget for.
I can’t tell you how many times it felt like a character would tell me to go somewhere to do a thing because they can’t go, and so I’d go do it, only for them to show up anyway so they could thank me with sad music.
It was just exhausting how shallow and uninspired most of the side content was.
XVI looks like an Ivalice-setting game to me, but without the tactical approach of XII/Tactics. I enjoyed the story for what it was, but felt that the game tried too hard to be like one of the cool kids classic installations in the series. It didn’t have a new idea, a spark behind it, only a concept that it has to have all notable FF elements like familiar summons, moogles, enemies, weapons, etc. But it’s a good game overall, didn’t go through development hell like XV and sold well.
While Visual Novels are not my favourite genre, there are a few entries that I would like to highlight, because I enjoyed playing them quite a lot:
Pyre: While it isn’t marketed as Visual Novel, it pretty much is one. To be precise, it is a Visual Novel with sports-game elements. The world-building in this one is excellent, as is the art. The visuals alone would make this game worth playing, but there is also the soundtrack, and the gameplay of the sports events is pretty fun too. Oh, and the story. This game really requires tough choices. It’s from the same studio that made Hades, Transistor and Bastion, and it shows.
Griftlands: Again, not marketed as Visual Novel, despite very clearly being one. This one is a Visual Novel with card battles and deck-building. Just as with Pyre, the world-building in this one is outstanding. The card battles are well done. It’s no Slay the Spire, but it’s still pretty good. Also, it has some of the best jokes I have seen in games recently.
Loren the Amazon Princess: Again a Visual Novel that is primarily marketed as something else - this time Role Playing Game. And to be honest, it has everything you would expect from an RPG: inventory management, character stats, JRPG-style turn-based battles, trading, a world map,… But it’s still pretty much a Visual Novel with RPG elements. It has a massive scope for an indie game, and is overall pretty well done. To be blatantly honest, I played this mainly for the RPG parts, but the story isn’t bad either, once one gets past the initial “I see your party has no rogue, mind if I join?” part. The setting is still being actively developed by the studio behind it, who have released several other visual novels (with and without RPG elements) set in the same world, with recurring characters.
Pyre was the game that made me get into visual novels. Took me about 10 minutes to go from ‘When do I get to the game part’ to ‘Idgaf about soccer please just keep talking to me’ and I think it’s because it wasn’t marketed as a VN. All in all, everything supergiant touches is gold.
Doki Doki Literature Club & Danganronpa Trilogy got me into VNs. I’m also playing Digimon Survive, games by Spike Chunsoft, & anime VNs (Evangelion, Death Note). PSP & DS era seem to have a lot
Played it for a few hours but got bored very quickly when I didnt know where to go and just ended up running back and forth over the same areas over and over again.
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