Retro Encounter Game of the Year – Drakengard
I played a lot of fun games in my inaugural year as the main host of Retro Encounter, like Final Fantasy IX and Tales of Graces f. I got to revisit some old favorites like Breath of Fire II. I even played some great games for the first time, like Fallout: New Vegas. And the panels on each were a delight.
I’m not sure Drakengard is either fun or great (in fact, I know it’s not), but it is my most memorable game journal experience of the year. It was a blast to dive into the deeply disturbing, sometimes weirdly funny, and often ridiculously monotonous world with the panel. I honestly can’t say I enjoyed it, and I certainly don’t recommend it, but nothing I played for the podcast this year has left an imprint on me quite like this early Yoko Taro jam. That’s something, I guess.
Best Soulslike (and DLC) I played this Year – Lies of P: Overture
FromSoft always kills it with DLCs for their Soulsborne titles, usually eclipsing the base game in level design and boss quality. Lies of P: Overture continues that tradition, improving on basically every element of the base game, with denser areas to explore, a more tightly plotted, emotional story, and especially that absolutely epic final showdown.
Does it reach the heights of something like, say, Old Hunters? No. But Lies of P doesn’t measure up to most of the Soulsborne titles either. While Overture still might not quite measure up to the “real boys” (to steal a delightful turn of phrase from my colleague, Aleks), it comes darn close, and that’s more than enough to be the best DLC I’ve played this year.
Best Octopath Traveler Game I Played this Year – Octopath Traveler 0
Octopath Traveler 0 is a deeply imperfect game. The writing, while it has its moments, often doesn’t land (especially when Rinyuu comes on screen). It also loses something without the series’ standard eight-character-based structure, as wonky as that can be at times. And don’t even get me started on the difficulty—I should not be able to beat the superboss in three turns with minimal setup and no real friction on my first try. Frankly, it doesn’t come close to the heights of Octopath Traveler II.
But man, do I love me some Octopath Traveler. There’s just something to the rhythms of the fights, to the beautiful sound when you break an enemy, to the constant playground where what you can’t buy, you can steal (or “Entreat” this time, I guess), and to the joy of finding another secret hiding around every corner. And man, that music never gets old. Frankly, I think they could just use a phonebook with random gibberish words to write the story and I’d still be there. Well, as long as Yasunori Nishiki is still composing the tunes.
Best Game I Played that Isn’t in Our Coverage – Hollow Knight: Silksong
Hollow Knight: Silksong might hate me. Pharloom might hate Hornet. But oh boy, do I love Silksong. It’s almost inconceivable to me that Silksong is better than Hollow Knight, a game that opened a whole part of my gaming brain that I didn’t know existed, but it is. The combat is fast, frenetic, and fair. Almost every boss is a banger. Movement feels great. The level design is just fabulous. Oh, and you don’t need a Mossbag video to understand the story this time! That’s great, because it explores some rich and important themes both directly and via its deeply unfriendly world design.
Silksong is without a doubt the best Metroidvania I’ve ever played, and it’s one of my favorite games of all time. Almost any other year, it would be my GOTY, but…
Best Game I’ve Ever Played (and it’s in our coverage!): Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
…this came out.
In many ways, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game about stories, about art. About how our art, our story, defines us, and also how we choose to let it define us.
There are tons of stories I could tell about my time with this game. Maybe that I went to grab a PS5 Pro about half an hour after booting up the game; I needed to see that rich artistic design in all its beauty. Or maybe that I watched my wife play through it right after I did, and then I decided to do my own “parry-only” run immediately after watching her, but this time in French. Maybe I could even tell you about how one of the characters helped solidify what my soon-to-be-born daughter’s name will be.
Instead, I’m going to tell a different one: this game convinced me, in its final moments that I struggled to see through teary eyes, that it was time to call my mom. Maybe not right away, but soon. And I did. That might not sound like much, but it had been almost two-and-a-half years since the last time I spoke to her. It helped remind me that family is complicated. Grief is often overwhelming. Response to trauma is varied. There aren’t right answers, even in a sea of the wrong ones. We’re all just trying our best to make our way through, sometimes holding on to things we shouldn’t. Put simply, we continue.
Needless to say, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is an important game to me. In fact, it’s my new favorite, full stop. Not just because it feels like it was created in a lab to appeal to both my Soulsborne and turn-based sensibilities. Not just because its soundtrack hasn’t left my playlist for almost a year. And not just because I had the kind of smile on my face playing a video game that I haven’t in almost 25 years. No, instead, it’s because it made me examine pieces of myself and my own story that I tried to avoid for too long.
I doubt I’ll ever have another experience playing a video game like it, and it deserves all the flowers.
