Fire Emblem Fates?

Guessed by @Mnementh

I have a real love-hate relationship with this game, but it's just sad, because the only reasons to hate it are technical limitations. Little performance hiccups, massive wait times to get into any game, disconnects and communication errors, or just generally really laggy gameplay. Everything about the online experience is a mess - it genuinely fascinates me how online play keeps getting consistently worse with each Splatoon game - but everything else is just so good. I love the single-player campaign and am looking forward to the new DLC one they're prepping up. I love the crazy fun specials way more than the ones in previous games, I love how aggressive the online matches feel because of the linear maps focused on chokepoints. I love playing with many different kinds of weapons, I like the balancing a lot more in this than in Splatoon 2, I love the soundtrack, I love the whole vibe and Deep Cut. This game absolutely kicks ass, but I've stopped playing it cause the online element seriously held it back. Splatoon 3 deserved a better console.

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Guessed by @Mnementh

No Man's Sky has had a wild ride in these here lists, which makes sense as its development has been a wild ride. The game wasn't very good when it initially launched, and I could barely run it on my old PC, but I still enjoyed it a lot back then, thus it made my 2016 list in at #45. Then it missed out on the list for the next three years, guess I stopped caring once hype season got past me? But I got back into it in 2020, with my new PC allowing me to run it well and experience it in a much better state after all those updates. That year, it made the #50 spot, which I think of as a sort of glorified honorable mention - then it was an honorable mention in 2021, back to #50 last year... and now, well, here it is. I played a crap ton of No Man's Sky this year and loved every second of it, so it's broken into the "here to stay" part of this list. And with a +19, this is probably one of the biggest leaps a game's made here year-on-year, and it's the closest thing I have on this list to a "new" game, cause I feel strongly about it this time.

The picture up there was taken by myself - that's the home I built on my new save, that's my ship on the landing bay, and of course, that's my playable character on the balcony. Yes, I'm a cool-looking Gek! No, I don't defend the First Spawn! Anyways, I've named my home Vojzek Yokor, and here's a little tour video if anyone wants to see it, though there's been some additions since the time of filming this. It really feels like home down there, as long as you're not getting attacked by a T-rex

Even all these years and hundreds of hours on, I've still never gotten to the center of the galaxy, so much for "main quest" objectives, heh. I just love being in this game. It brings me joy and wonder, awe and comfort, and it always brings me back for more after a while. I think it's the end-all be-all of space exploration games, it's at least that much. Nothing beats the feeling of suddenly stumbling into something completely new you had no idea about, 200 hours into a playthrough. No Man's Sky just keeps on giving, it really does. I wonder by how many more hours that playtime number is gonna go up.

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It's a really beautiful base i must say and seeing the photo I instantly wanted to ask if it is one of yours or a stolen photo, but you answered that yourself. Nicely built! I don't have that much aestethic sense, so my bases look very unappealing. But I do enjoy seeing beautiful bases of others.

I recently played a bit again, because I started up Starfield and it instantly reminded me that it is *not* No Man's Sky and I had to play that. It is a bit unfair to Starfield, because the game can stand on it's own, but I inevitably had to compare it to NMS. Anyways, this time around I started the living ship quest, didn't even know that existed. Hello Games also keep updating this game, so I guess I can come back to NMS in 10 and 20 years and discover all the new stuff.

I am not enough of a space nerd that the game makes my list, but it made my honorable mentions before and I clearly understand it's charme. Or it's charmes, as I can see many different reasons to play for very different types of gamers.

30: Tales of Xillia 2

Yep! Easy hint of course but my Tales games usually take a while to get guessed

No, if that fits with this hint then that's a coincidence lol. I should clarify though, with 'series' I mean tv-series. Edited the hint post.

Oh, uhm, interesting. That narros the candidates I guess. Maybe Telltales The Walking Dead?

Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

I didn't play nearly as much of it this year as when it was a newcomer last time out, but this has since become a sort of comfort game. Whenever I'm in a situation where maybe I can't dedicate 100% of my attention to a videogame, but I still want to play something that feels meaningful, as long as I have my Switch around, I have Hades. And it's always fun and exciting to just keep getting through it, over and over, trying out different weapons or different challenge sets, different boons or keepsakes, or even just repeating the same builds over and over, it never feels like a waste of time. I love this game.

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#31

Change YoY: =   My Rating: 9.2 / 10

Seemingly one of the most divisive games of the last several years, The Last of Us Part II had people saying that the game sucks months before it was even released because the leaks revealed that something they didn't like would happen in the story. At that point I basically decided that I wasn't going to put any weight on anybody else's opinion regarding this game, as it was clear that a lot of people had long since made up their minds and were never going to like it no matter what actually took place in it. I also did everything I could to avoid spoilers beforehand, though I did get spoiled about the big early game twist that sets the story in motion. As a result, I thought the game was fantastic overall, with a few notable shortcomings that cannot be overlooked.

I found The Last of us Part II to be a great continuation of Ellie's story, making sure to develop the familiar characters further from where they left off at the end of the first game, while also introducing some very intriguing new ones. At the start of the game you get to see what life for Ellie and Joel could have been like if they had just been left alone, both having grow kinder and softer in the years between the two games. Unfortunately, in the end their actions in the first game come back to haunt them, forcing Ellie back into the world she had effectively left behind, and steering her towards some very dark places in the process. In many ways, this game is a cautionary tale of what happens when a person lets revenge consume their life. Almost none of the main characters come off this one unscathed, with everyone losing something important over the course of the story. In general, The Last of Us Part II is tonally an extremely dark game, with no characters getting a truly happy conclusion to their story.

However, it is that dark tone that can sometimes be a problem as well. While the first game was certainly a melancholic tale as well, it had its significant moments of levity throughout. The Last of Us Part II on the other hand gives the player much fewer of those lighter moments, or at least it feels like that, possibly because the game is also much longer than the first one. This can make the whole experience very harrowing, as often it feels like nothing but bad things are happening on a constant basis. Despite how much I love the game, it's not one I'll be going back to play again any time soon. That might also be why one of the best sections of the game is Joel and Ellie's visit to a museum. The other major issue I thought the game had was its length, as I thought it could have easily been 5 to 10 hours shorter without really losing anything of note. With all that said, this is still an exceptional game, and I'm curious how Ellie's story continues if and when the next game is released.