(s) Archive
2021-02-11
Welcome to RPGFan’s Games of the Year 2020! First of all, we know we’re releasing these a little later in the year than we have in the past, but with some big titles releasing late in the year, we wanted to be sure we gave our staff the appropriate time to come to a decision… Read More »
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 familiar knight wielding his father’s legendary sword,… Read More »
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 are virtually nonexistent. Combining a… Read More »
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 arc of one of the Final Fantasy series’… Read More »
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 their previous games while also listening to players to create… Read More »
Winner: Wintermoor Tactics Club Wintermoor Tactics Club is a charming and witty strategy RPG with visual novel elements about the adventures of a delightful young lady named Alicia and her tabletop gaming club. Although both strategy RPGs and tabletop games are sometimes seen as cumbersome stat-fests, with esoteric rule-filled tomes that are intimidating for new… Read More »
Winner: 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim 13 Sentinels defies categorization. The moment you think you’ve pinned it, 13 Sentinels upends the board and starts playing a new game. But what makes 13S special is that despite playing with your expectations, mixing a wide variety of influences, and tossing wildly different gameplay styles your way, the game… Read More »
Winner: Final Fantasy VII Remake Fans of the more traditional turn-based combat of Final Fantasies past might have balked when we learned that the hotly anticipated Final Fantasy VII Remake was going to be a multipart series, not to mention an action RPG. Fortunately, Remake is deftly crafted by some of the franchise’s most seasoned… Read More »
Winner: Yakuza: Like a Dragon It all started as an April Fools’ joke. A turn-based Yakuza game? Bwahahaha! How ridiculous! Little did we suspect that the team at Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio were already well into the process of turning everything we knew about Yakuza on its head! By taking the framework of a Yakuza… Read More »
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 even made some roguelike-disdainers into new fans (including yours truly). The residents of the… Read More »
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 might have balked at yet more sword-wielding RPG… Read More »
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 polarizing to players, I’ve fully… Read More »
Winner: Tifa Lockhart (Final Fantasy VII Remake) Tifa was already an iconic character for her martial arts prowess and motherly, caring nature, but Final Fantasy VII Remake has allowed her to flourish. While caring and friendly, she’s also insecure, and this is where her iteration in Remake stands out. Even when she’s unsure about hurting… Read More »
Winner: Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII Remake) Whatever you choose to call him, Sephiroth has been a landmark villain in gaming history. One-Winged Angel, the look, and the pure cruelty toward Cloud make him easy to hate in the most affectionate way possible. Well, if you can see past his murderous tendencies. Anyway, what makes him… Read More »
Winner: Ichiban Kasuga (Yakuza: Like a Dragon) Ichiban Kasuga, the hero of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, isn’t Kazuma Kiryu, the hero of Yakuzas 1 through 6 (and 0). He isn’t a paragon of virtue among gangsters, a stoic samaritan who resolves the Tojo Clan’s crises reluctantly, or a legendary Dragon of Dojima whose sterling reputation… Read More »
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 franchise. To say that the localization team did… Read More »
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 directions while keeping in the same spirit.… Read More »
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, late ’90s nostalgia. It’s a trip down memory lane, to the simpler… Read More »
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 they loved. The solution? Action combat with full… Read More »
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 gauntlets. The woven fibers… Read More »
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 into established characters.… Read More »
2021-02-10
We’re a bit into February, and RPGFan hasn’t posted Games of the Year yet? Wow, it’s almost like we completely changed every underpinning that the site ran on for over 20 years in 2020. Wild. Jokes aside, it’s finally time to celebrate the gaming goodness that an otherwise [choose your adjective] year brought us. As… Read More »
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 that pull on… Read More »
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, which was a… Read More »
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 game drips… Read More »
