Games I beat in 2013 or played enough of to know I didn't want to finish them.
Showing 1-10 of 36 items
This isn't the first game I played in 2013, but it was the first game I finished. Definitely a great way to start the year. After all the hype, I was a little worried that this might derail my 2012 games of the year list a little bit, but there's no risk of that. Frog Fractions is a totally crazy experience that I urge pretty well everyone to check out, especially since it's so short. It constantly surprises, pushes a lot of weird nostalgia buttons, it's free, and you should be able to finish it within an hour or two. There is really no reason to not play Frog Fractions.
Played about 1/3 of the story in January. Dropped due to getting a Vita and starting Persona 4: Golden. Definitely not as difficult as the first game (a very good thing), but I don't think I'll ever finish it. The story is interesting, but I don't think I'll ever like performing and repeating fake operations enough to get to the bottom of it. I may pick this up again later, but it's somewhat doubtful. Glad I picked it up in the bargain bin for $5.
Completed in about 75 hours on Very Easy. I honestly thought I'd never play Persona 4 again. While I enjoyed P4 enough to finish it, and I did enjoy it, the fact that you didn't get to keep your player level on New Game + always irked me. I wanted to do a playthrough focusing on s.links without worrying about dungeon crawling too much, and the Very Easy mode in Golden finally allowed me to do that. I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with a lot of the characters I missed in the original version, and I thought that a lot of the new bonus content was interesting (save for anything involving Marie). Atlus did a great job with this re-release and, despite having to motivate myself to finish a bit before the end, I had a great time with it. It will never, ever live up to Persona 3 for me, however.
Fire Emblem: Awakening is my first foray into the Fire Emblem series. Actually, it's my first foray into strategy RPGs. I've been looking for a way in to strategy RPGs for a long time now, but it's a difficult type of game to broach given that no one makes strategy games for babies and they are always for "hardcore fans of the genre." I was first intrigued by the art style and the production values, but it was Patrick's statements on the Bombcast about stepping outside your gaming comfort zone that really convinced me to try this game. I am very, very glad that I went for it. While the story wasn't particularly interesting, the game play in FE:A is impressive. The battles are fun, challenging and satisfying and the relationship system actually makes grinding pretty amusing. It is, essentially, a strategy game with social links. Sure, some of that content is a little silly, but it's also often quite funny and heartwarming. Add in the awesome art style, decent music, and all around excellent production values and FE:A is something very special. After this introduction, I'm definitely excited to play more SRPGs down the line. Re-played this in September and still love it.
Enjoyed this for something like 10 hours in March, then it hard froze on me and I lost 2 hours of progress. Yes, partly my fault for not saving, but I just did not have the patience to go back and bother replaying those two hours (was in a very bad mood when this happened). I enjoyed the changes they made, but the game runs like crap, which is odd since I don't remember there being any technical issues with Atelier Totori (the last game I played in the Atelier series). I may go back to this some day, but my track record with going back to things I've given up on once is not all that great.
Replayed this after watching the first few episodes of Jason Scott's documentary on BBSes. Brilliant as always, and one of my favourite games of all time.
Interesting visual novel about suffering from depression. As someone who spent several years in a relationship with a man who had depression, I found it to be pretty stunningly accurate. This may not be your cup of tea, but it's a great mental health PSA delivered in a pretty amazing format. Definitely glad I checked this out after hearing about it, and I will probably recommend it to a few of my friends that I think might find it as interesting as I did.
Played the first 5 hours of this game in April. I was never particularly interested in Lost Odyssey, but it was given to me as a gift by a girlfriend who really enjoyed it. While the story seemed interesting to me, I found the battles to be long and boring, the encounter rate so low as to make grinding very tedious when it was necessary (something that totally screwed me over for the first major boss fight), and the voice acting was pretty terrible. I desperately wanted to like Lost Odyssey, but I just couldn't stick with it.
Played 4 character routes (and may finish the rest later) throughout the first half of the year. Probably the best iOS Otome game I've played so far. While the stories are simple, they are far more believable and a little deeper than what you might find in a lot of other Otome games on mobile platforms. Definitely recommended for fans of this genre if you're willing to pay the $3.99 for each character route.
Played about 10 hours of the HD version in April during my "Cathryn drops 'em all" period. In my opinion, Okami (along with Digital: A Love Story) is one of the best cases anyone can make for games being art. The visuals are beautiful and crafted with the kind of care that we just don't see all that often, and the story isn't too shabby either. For me, however, this game just isn't all that fun to play. I couldn't really get in to the combat and while the celestial brush is an interesting idea, I just don't find it works all that well in practice. This is definitely going on my shelf for picking up at a later date, but I can't see myself finishing it any time soon.