Five out of five there - great shouts

Assuming 19 is Super Mario Galaxy 2? and 20 is Perfect Dark?

Right on the money!

Let's see if I can do some catch-up here.

#34

Change YoY: -2   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 the game 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. Having done that, I thought the game was fantastic overall, with a few notable shortcomings that do need to be mentioned.

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 grown 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 a path with few if any truly good options available. 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 to everyone involved. 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, which provides some much-needed joy to the game. 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. Finally, there were some side characters that never really felt fully developed or all that interesting. 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.

#33

Change YoY: -2   My Rating: 9.2 / 10

The original Valkyria Chronicles is one of my absolute favourite games of all time, and to my great delight it proved to be an unexpected success back in 2008. I was anticipating another home console sequel to be announced relatively quickly, but then it turned out the next game in the series would be released on the PSP instead. That wasn't a huge issue in the end, as the handheld had enough titles I was interested in to warrant buying one. I liked the sequel a lot, but it was definitely held back by its platform, and failed to sell nearly as much as the first game, especially in the west. Following this, the third game was also a PSP title, but was never even released outside of Japan as the system really wasn't doing very well in the west at that point. As a result, for quite a few years, it felt like the series was effectively dead. In 2017, we got a rather poor spin-off in Valkyria Revolution, but finally, Valkyria Chronicles 4 was announced for home consoles and eventually released in 2018, making this without question one of the longest waits for a game I've ever experienced. Fortunately, it more than lived up to my expectations.

While Valkyria Chronicles 4 is not quite on the level of the first game, mostly because the character and story are just a shade below in quality compared to the first game, this is still an exceptional game overall. On the gameplay side, some great improvements and additions were made to what we had in the earlier games, including a new character class and some more variety and improvements to the existing ones, all of which allowed for some fun new ways to approach combat situations. Visually, Valkyria Chronicles 4 is a beautiful game, the anime-inspired, watercolor-esque style remaining one of the most attractive graphical styles in any video game in my opinion. The score is fantastic as well, composed by the highly talented Hitoshi Sakimoto, who also created the music for the first three titles in the series. This is without question a worthy follow-up to the first game, and hopefully we don't have to wait another ten years for the next title in the series, or if we can't have that then a re-release of the 2nd and 3rd games on modern consoles would be just fine too.

#32

Change YoY: -2   My Rating: 9.2 / 10

Proof positive that open world games don't have to be obscenely massive to be great or memorable. Yakuza 0 presented the player with a much more compact open world compared to most other modern games in the genre, and then simply filled its concise and intricately designed world with a wide variety of different engaging things to do, from absolutely ridiculous side quests to side activities that have no reason to be as deep or elaborate as they are. And yet they are, and the game is all the better for it. It also features two playable protagonists, Kiryu and Majima, who have impressively different gameplay styles, both having multiple unique fighting styles and side quests. Both characters also have their own side business they can run, Kiryu with his real estate company, and Majima running a cabaret club, both of which the player can sink dozens of hours into over the course of the game.

Yakuza 0 balances the ridiculous with the serious amazingly well, as the player might go from a life and death battle with a yakuza boss to a side quest about teaching a dominatrix how to be better at her job. It's quite the balancing act, and the game somehow pulls it off near-perfectly. It's this strange mix of tones that have no problem jumping from one extreme to another with little to no warning that gives the game its unique charm and style. There's just nothing else quite like this series, and I would take Yakuza 0's well-designed, compact world over most of the massive and repetitive open worlds filled with hundreds of indistinct markers denoting another pointless collectible which have crowded much of the video game industry for the last decade and a half. Some do it well, and there are a few examples of that coming up on my list as well, but as Yakuza 0 shows the constant rush by certain developers to create increasingly massive worlds for their otherwise bland settings isn't the only way to do open world games well.