My Personal Top 10 Games of 2017
Honestly, 2017 has been a weird year for games we have had one of the best lineup of games, But unfortunately the year has also been riddled with the discussion of pay-to-win, microtransactions and loot boxes. With that being said some of my favorite games came out this year, and others that I enjoyed even if they don’t make any real long lasting effect.
11. Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth By Sleep - A Fragmentary Passage -
Yeah, So I added an eleventh to this list, the real reason for that is, this isn’t really a full game, it’s a part of one, I don’t really want to put remasters/ports on this list,so it’s more of an honorable mention. This is really just a tech demo for Kingdom Hearts 3, but a damn fine one. Playing as Aqua, my personal favorite character, in this really interesting looking world, running fantastically. The game is really just a few areas and a couple boss battles, but it feels as polished as a big AAA JRPG. This is also the first console Kingdom Hearts since 2006’s Kingdom Hearts 2 on PS2. Really this did what it set out to do, it got me excited for Kingdom Hearts 3.
10. Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
A marvelous game that I enjoyed while playing, but that is kind of where it ends. My memories of this game was great, playing through, exploring and completing shrines. But overall this game really disappointed me, it took the things from Zelda games I liked and cut them out, it made combat tedious and frustrating and both story and music was lacking to me. Yet when coming up with this list I had to have it on here. The game has problems, I don’t enjoy this game nearly as much as other people. I hope that the next Zelda is a return to form as I don’t think the Breath of The Wild formula will work a second time.
09. Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
The Kickstarter game that continues to give. After the success of the original Shovel Knight game and the slight update Plague of Shadows campaign, comes a full new campaign featuring a new playable character in brand new levels
This time around I found that the difficulty in the game was reversed from Shovel of Hope, with the levels being harder and the boss fights becoming easier by comparison. Specter Knight’s new air slash ability was fun for me to explore. Specter of Torment brings the polish and design of the original Shovel Knight.
08. Life Is Strange: Before The Storm
This game has been unfairly judged from the start, and sort of rightfully so, a new studio, doing a prequel to a fully contained game, without the character people liked, without the main mechanic and with a returning character without their original voice actress. With that being said, this game is great and all the worries I had went away immediately. The game felt complete, and while being a prequel, I never felt that I knew where it was going or that the characters were just following a path. The game has the same problems as the first, weird lip sync issues and kinda weird character models but overall the feeling I had playing this game hit me hard to the point in which I finished and thought about the ending for days afterwards.
07. Super Mario Odyssey
Not much to say about Super Mario Odyssey, a super fun, bright feel good game. From the beginning the game is a tight 3d platformer that encourages exploring. My only real downside to the game was once the credits rolled I really did not feel like going back to previous worlds and thus stopped playing the game. I know in time I will return to this game but for now i am done with it.
06. Horizon Zero Dawn
A beautiful world, full of mystery and awe. I’m not a person to love western style open world games, the idea of towers, bandit camps etc. bore me most of the time. From the beginning of the game it instilled a sense of mystery, what had happened to the world and who was Aloy? The game slowly unravelled its secrets piece by piece keeping me interested during my time with Horizon Zero Dawn. The combat felt super good and rarely did I struggle in a way that felt unfair to me, the use of the traps, different weapons, skills and slow motion aiming made for satisfying combat against the robots inhabiting the earth. The game was an amazing ride from the start to the end, by a team that had never done something like this before.
05. Tales of Berseria
This was the first Tales game I’ve played outside a few hours of Tales of Abyss for 3DS. Tales of Berseria is a very interesting and wonderful world filled with some underlying sorrow and darkness. The best part of the game was the flipped role where you as the main character is the evil villian, going through towns, setting fires and stealing boats, going against the kingdom that protects the world. While learning that the odds are against you and your team but following through on the story and coming to a satisfying conclusion that pulled at my heartstrings.
The real time-ish combat was new to me and personally my biggest problem with the game. I played through the whole game and at the end, didn’t feel like I had a competent grasp on the system, the Artes system didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference whether I set them manually or let the game set the combos.
Overall I really enjoyed the game and this made me super excited that I had a whole new series of games to explore.
04. Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony
Hands down the weirdest game on my list, a murder mystery featuring a robot, a caveman and a whole bunch of other random anime trope characters. The game is a half visual novel, half point and click adventure game, in the same vein as the Ace Attorney games. The thing that sets these games apart is the characters. They start out as lifeless, flat, and sometimes hateable characters and over time develop into a full and deep character that you hate might die at any moment. The cases themselves are varied and take turns that always leave you wanting to move forward. Overall a great game, the only real flaw is that it follows the Danganronpa formula a little too much, and some things got predictable.
03. Hatsune Miku Project DIVA Future Tone
Not much to say about this one. A very good rhythm game based on Vocaloid music, this one specifically is a mix of the previous games, a large song list of 220 and personally some of my favourite songs. Nothing new here really just a solid, good looking greatest hits of the previous Project Diva games.
02. Nier Automata
Nier Automata is my biggest surprise of the year, and honestly was probably for most people. Between me buying the game and starting to play it, I found myself watching the 2015 Square Enix E3 presentation, where Nier Automata was first announced, as “Nier New Project”, I like many people had no idea about the original on PS3 or even the Drakengard games on PS2.
People talked about how crazy the game was and so I jumped in. The start of the game was me trying to figure out the controls, and feel of the game. The game showed itself real early when I died to the first boss, and the credits scrolled quickly giving me one of the endings. From there I played through, exploring the interesting world, quickly but generally enjoyable characters and of course the beautiful music.
From the outside this is your standard Platinum Games action game akin to something like Bayonetta, but Nier Automata’s beauty comes from the story, I strong and deep look at humanity, conscience and empathy, told through both traditional narrative and gameplay.
All in all this is the game that I woke up in the morning thinking about, the game that I constantly listened to the OST of, but a few things such as overall graphics and the gameplay style is what ultimately made it #2 on my list.
01. Persona 5
A perfect mix of everything you could want. 2017 has been an amazing year for video games, from reintroductions of series’ to refinements of others, and personally I would say Persona 5 is a well-crafted mix of both. Persona 5 keeps all the good things from previous installments such as interesting side characters and a large compendium of possible Personas to summon and fuse together.
From moment one of the game, Persona 5 creates a beautiful and interesting world, full of people dealing with everyday problems in a modern city, characters dealing with dark and mature themes, and dealing with a supernatural world in order to change people’s very personalities. The dungeons in the games and handcrafted to never be boring or “samey”, running around knowing someone has put thought into why something is there as opposed to the previous installments. And obviously the music of the game is top notch and I still find myself wanting to listen to the soundtrack even 9 months later.
All in all this is a game that made me feel something I didn’t feel at any other time this year and thoughts and urges to play Persona 5 came back to me at the most of random times this year. A near perfect JRPG in landscape that has honestly been pretty lacklustre and struggling in recent history.
