Games besides 14 u play

[SaitoHikari]

During the three years that I took a break from FFXIV due to my work schedules being rather bad, I bounced across a lot of single player games.

- Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla: Finished Odyssey, found Valhalla to be bad enough that it's one of the only games that I dropped completely without any interest in finishing it, and Origins is a great game that doesn't overstay its welcome in comparison.

- Crystal Project: One of the best turn-based games I've ever played. I wouldn't be surprised if no one here has ever heard of it, as it's a single dev indie project that was released about a year ago. Think FF5 but with a larger focus on exploration rather than an epic story (the game's plot is mostly in the background as you explore). There's platforming elements in the game's exploration, and it features a FF5-style job system and an actual aggro system in its combat, along with letting you see what move enemies will do next. Debuffs actually work as you expect them to. This actually makes the game a lot more tactically-minded than the RNG-fests that most other turn-based games are, and the game's still reasonably difficult because you can't really go into mid/late-game boss fights without a solid plan. Because of the aggro/threat system, tanks are actually very important here, while they're worthless in most other turn-based games. For example, a Reaper/Warrior build in Crystal Project is literally just FFXIV Warrior with the crazy amount of max HP bonuses/life drain effects they have. The creator was a big fan of FFXI, and it shows. (There's a demo on Steam that transfers over to the full game, and said demo is probably about 10+ hours of content on a first playthrough. Super meaty.)

- Chained Echoes: Another great turn-based indie game by another solo dev. Great pacing and isn't bloated to hell like most other JRPGs these days. The plot managed to hold my interest throughout, though the ending might be controversial (though I wouldn't say it's bad or nonsensical). The combat isn't as good as Crystal Project though, but that's a very high bar to clear.

- Yakuza Like a Dragon: Rather hilarious game, with some thoughtful writing. The modern day setting is done refreshingly well. I had no interest in doing the post-game content by the time I finished the main story though.

- Dragon's Dogma: Okay, I played this a long time ago, but OP mentioned this and I am extremely stoked for Dragon's Dogma 2. There still isn't any other game with a class like Magick Archer out there, and the spells do exactly as their animations suggest. Tornadoes that behave like actual tornadoes? There should be more of that in action RPGs.

- Tactics Ogre Reborn: I can see why this is the game that convinced Yoshi-P to join Square Enix. I did get burned out towards the end with the rather confusing and grindy post-game progression though.

- Monster Hunter Rise: I'm sure I don't need to explain this. Great fun all around.

- Genshin Impact: Very interesting exploration, and consistently high quality throughout. Pretty much the only legitimately good gacha game out there, probably because it tries its hardest to hide the fact that it's a gacha to begin with.

Stuff I'm looking forward to this year:

- Arcadian Atlas: Some of you may remember the kickstarter for this game about 7-something years ago. It's a Tactics-style game, and it looks like it's finally going to release this year. It had a demo a long while back and I think it has the potential to be really good. Maybe better than Fell Seal.

- Octopath Traveler 2: I hope it fixes the flaws of the first game.

- FFXVI: Too bad it's PS5 only. I'm going to be part of the 'waiting for a PC port' crowd. Hope the PS4/PS5 crowd in FFXIV doesn't try to spoil this game for the PC players.

- Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster: The Nvidia leaks hinted at the existence of this game. Who knows if it still does, but I hope Matsuno is working on finishing the Delita path that had to get cut out from the original game.

- Dragon's Dogma 2: Probably not releasing this year, but yeah.

- Dragon Age 4: Also probably not releasing this year, but I'm curious to see what it has turned into after it has supposedly been rebooted like twice.