Feature Sub-Page Archives | Page 11 of 14

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best RPG (or Adventure Game) of 2020

Posted by Emony Tjan on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake It’s the game that has redefined the remake. Not content to merely remaster and upscale the existing content, Nomura, Hamaguchi, and Toriyama decided to strip it apart and reconsider what Final Fantasy VII as a whole could mean. While some of their choices have been… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Indie Game

Posted by Alana Hagues on February 11, 2021

Winner: Hades Supergiant Games have already established themselves as premier indie developers, but their work on Hades has ensured they are considered one of the best studios working in the industry today. Hades showcases where the humble developers started and what lessons they’ve learnt from thei… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Ongoing Game

Posted by Wes Iliff on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Much has been said of Final Fantasy XIV and its unique success story. But Shadowbringers, especially in 2020, has taken the already-amazing game and expanded its appeal to every type of MMO and Final Fantasy fan. Story-centric players have enjoyed the full a… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Mobile Game

Posted by Audra Bowling on February 11, 2021

Winner: Genshin Impact Genshin Impact is a fun free-to-play game with large areas to explore and a wealth of things to do while traversing through them. The open-world action RPG is most impressive when played on mobile devices, where some of the graphical hiccups and lag found on other platforms ar… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Unconventional or Hybrid RPG

Posted by Nilson Carroll on February 11, 2021

Winner: Moon Love-de-Lic’s “lost” 1997 PSone classic Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is less of an RPG and more of an adventure-styled puzzle, a series of increasingly poetic Zelda sidequests without combat or weapons. Still, it’s obsessed with the JRPG myth, the Dragon Quest story of “the hero,” the fami… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Remake or Re-Release

Posted by Eva Padilla on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake First, they got playful. It’s just what you wanted. Your high-fidelity bombing mission, your Reno grudge matches, your Buster Sword flexing. They leaned into your dragon-summoning power fantasies, your “heartfelt adoration” of Tifa, all that goodwill and honeyed, lat… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best New IP

Posted by Michael Sollosi on February 11, 2021

Winner: Hades The best new intellectual property of 2020 is, ironically, steeped in one of the oldest collections of folklore to survive antiquity. Hades’ charming characters, tightly designed action, and faithful—even gleeful—interpretation of Greek myth captivated existing lovers of roguelikes and… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best DLC

Posted by Wes Iliff on February 11, 2021

Winner: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Sephiroth & Byleth RPG fans have been spoiled for representation in Super Smash Bros Ultimate. This year, we got two RPG powerhouses: Byleth from the Switch hit Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Sephiroth from the all-time classic Final Fantasy VII. While fans mig… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Combat

Posted by Michael Sollosi on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake When crafting the gameplay of Final Fantasy VII Remake, Square Enix knew that mainstream audiences generally prefer action-oriented combat in modern RPGs, but older fans of Final Fantasy VII would be hesitant to accept something so wildly different to the 1997 combat… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Visuals

Posted by Kaleb Curry on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake There’s this moment in FFVIIR where you board an elevator and slowly descend. As that elevator lurches down, you have nothing to stare at but your own party, and it’s just lovely. The wispy particles around Cloud’s hair. The subtle warping of the metal on Tifa’s gaun… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Music or Sound Design

Posted by Alana Hagues on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake Many remakes have crumbled under the pressure to get the sound right, but Remake set a new bar. With an entirely new cast of voices, from Britt Baron’s Tifa, Briana White’s Aerith, to the members of Avalanche (voiced for the first time), they have breathed new life i… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Story

Posted by Abraham Kobylanski on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake It almost feels like cheating, adapting a small sliver of Final Fantasy VII’s classic story, entrenched in our hearts for 23 years. But for FFVII:R, the writers avoided simply cloning the original tale, offering a nuanced adaptation that took our heroes in new direct… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020: Best Localization

Posted by Nilson Carroll on February 11, 2021

Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake What a tremendously dizzying task it must be to sort out Final Fantasy VII Remake’s massive amounts of texts, spoken dialogue, animated cutscenes, and complex battle lingo, but also to keep in mind fans’ impossibly high expectations and acute understanding of the fra… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Audra Bowling

Posted by Audra Bowling on February 10, 2021

Top 5 RPGs/Visual Novels: 1. Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition DQXI is an excellent title for those looking for a classic, traditional JRPG fix. The gameplay is polished to a fine sheen, the graphics are stunning, and the story manages to have great moments aplenty tha… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Pete Leavitt

Posted by Pete Leavitt on February 10, 2021

As strange as it may sound, I felt I was effectively coping with the many challenges 2020 threw my way on a day-to-day basis. However, upon any degree of reflection during rare quiet moments, I often realized the cumulative personal toll I was paying. Throughout it all, I had to continue working, wh… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Nilson Carroll

Posted by Nilson Carroll on February 10, 2021

Best RPG of 2020: Final Fantasy VII Remake It feels like we’ve been talking about an FFVII remake since 2000. Decades later, and one of Square Enix’s finest games in recent memory falls into our laps: a wild, wholly rambunctious romp through the best cyberpunk city of 2020, Midgar. Every inch of the… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Scott Clay

Posted by Scott Clay on February 10, 2021

Not Just An RPG, An RPG With A Giant Robot Award! If you skipped out on 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim this year, you missed out on one of the best games of the year. Fantastic music, great characters, and amazing storytelling come together to create a masterful game. The super fun combat brings everything… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Greg Delmage

Posted by Greg Delmage on February 10, 2021

Best Discovery: Necrobarista Having stepped into an editing position amongst my duties as Video Manager here, I’ve been privileged to play or see many otherwise unfamiliar titles. When Zach reviewed Necrobarista, I wasn’t sure what to expect from my playthrough for capture, but I in turn was capture… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Wes Iliff

Posted by Wes Iliff on February 10, 2021

I’m a sucker for ambition. Show me one game that reaches for the stars, stumbling every step of the way, and one that knows what it is and executes it to perfection? I’ll pick the former every day of the week. This year, however, in a rare convergence, my top three games and my three favorite narrat… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Jonathan Logan

Posted by Jonathan Logan on February 10, 2021

Best RPG: Yakuza: Like a Dragon In November, the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio team gave 2020 a shot of pure joy in the form of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. A reinvention of the beloved RPG brawler, LAD trades real-time fisticuffs for full-blown turn-based RPG combat while keeping everything else that Yakuza fans… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Tyler Trosper

Posted by Tyler Trosper on February 10, 2021

2020 has been a precarious year. Through all of the trials and tribulations, the one thing I found comfort in this year was playing RPGs. In that regard, 2020 was great! I present to you a list of my favorite games I played throughout this year: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim Never in my whole life have I… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Caitlin Argyros

Posted by Caitlin Argyros on February 10, 2021

2020 has been an…interesting year, at least in terms of gaming. I certainly never expected that I’d ever be able to play or want to play some of the games on this list. But 2020 has been a year for defying expectations, usually for worse but just occasionally for better. With my GOTY picks, I’d sa… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Kaleb Curry

Posted by Kaleb Curry on February 10, 2021

Remake of the Year: Final Fantasy VII Remake I move at mach-speed-molasses when I play games, so I’ve only actually played two RPGs that came out this year: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Trials of Mana. The fun part is they’re both remakes, so let’s pit ’em against each other! These games are largely… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Michael Sollosi

Posted by Michael Sollosi on February 10, 2021

2020 was a disastrous year in many respects, but at least we got some great new video games and ample government-mandated time and opportunity to play them. I ended up knocking out several 2020 releases, at least enough for a ranked top 5. (You probably see where this is going.) Retro Encounter of t… Read More »

RPGFan Games of the Year 2020 ~ Editors’ Awards: Zach Wilkerson

Posted by Zach Wilkerson on February 10, 2021

Retro Encounter Game of the Year: Mother 3 Mother 3 blew me away. After multiple failed attempts to play it, I’m beyond happy our Retro Encounter episodes finally encouraged me to get around to it. Mother 3 is a stone-cold masterpiece and surpasses EarthBound in almost every way. I could go on and o… Read More »

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