This is the best game I've ever played. I started playing last year but got my 1CC this year. It's exceptional in every department and I cannot give it enough praise - particularly the Deathtiny port, which is loaded with basically all the Ketsui content ever made.

Easily GOTY. Amazing art direction combined with cathartic, if simple gameplay, some great music and a story that really blew all my expectations out of the water. I waited since basically 2014 for this game and it somehow exceeded my expectations.

Fire Emblem's mad king. An extremely messy, janky title that is easily the best in the series, with excellent maps, some very cool unique mechanics, a good story/gameplay integration and a high, but fun level of difficulty.

Probably the best visual novel i've played. Has a bit of a pacing bump at about the 2/3rds point but otherwise is so damn good. Has excellent art and enthralling music as well.

M2's other great port on this list. ESPrade isn't as good as Ketsui, but it's a great game in it's own right and the first time, in my opinion, CAVE produced a truly amazing game, with great direction and presentation courtesy of Junya Inoue. It also has quite possibly the best final boss of any STG.

Nothing makes me feel as warm inside.

Not a perfect conversion, but it's still demons souls and dear lord is it pretty. Demons souls being quite possibly the best looking 3D game available, if only for a short while, is an absolute fever dream.

Probably the prettiest open world ever made, and pretty good videogame comfort food otherwise, with some decent stories interspersed. But it's simply just a pleasure to wander tsushima and roleplay samurai shit occasionally. It's what Assasin's creed wishes it could be.

Probably the best western shmup ever made. Fantastic music and art design to boot.

A real sleeper hit for me, didn't expect to like it that much originally, turns out to be one of my favourite Cave games. It's got a great level of difficulty, tonnes of modes and options, great stage design, and outright is just very fun.

A messy, but exceptional sequel which I would personally argue has a much better narrative overall. Gameplay is also vastly improved. I have a lot of little issues with it, like the pacing, some weird detours the plot goes down that feel kinda tacked on.

Also big props to the accessibility features this game has. I know it doesn't matter to a lot of people but I would argue it's the best thing the game shows, its such a great set of options and if even 10% of them could be standardised it could make a world of difference for people.

Whilst I think Chapter 9 is maybe on the weaker end of the celeste content out there, the whole package is just so good. On equal footing with zeroranger here.

Exceptional music and gameplay/story intergration, with good presentation, whilst being decently fun as a shmup - its too long and has nothing really special gameplay wise. But it's a pretty special experience nontheless.

This does spark joy

Extremely comfy

Turns out xenoblade is still great, who knew. Its only this low down because i think the new story is pretty meh. Torna remains the best xenoblade content, don't at me.

One of the finest action games you can play.

SWERY's best game. I will die on this hill. Absolutely radiates soul even if it doesn't radiate good game design at all times.

Stand in for WORLD EXPLOSION, an excellent expansion which really, really leans into the Crimzon Clover being an exercise in excess and being absolutely ridiculous. Unlimited Arrange mode alone is so stupid, I love it.

Way better than Nioh 1. Good stuff, kinda hard for me to say too much on it because im bad at it.

Not really amazing as a game in itself, but as a vector for arbitrarily accusing your friends of murder for no reason, is very good, has fun art design, and remembers that the game in the social deduction game is just a backdrop accusing Meeg without any evidence for it.

The best contra game in like 25 years.

It's an amazing fighting game. Shame it launched at basically the start of lockdown with online that makes me actively not want to play the game. Could be in the Top 5 if not for that.

Even in the light of it's vastly superior successors, holds up pretty well. Was nicely surprised by this one.

Whilst fairly high on this list, I feel it's actually weaker than the original, with too much of a focus on the silly secrets and stuff rather than, yknow, the amazing platformer spelunky 1 is. Alas, it still has that element.

Probably the second best Samsho. Bad online really hurts it in current year though.

I am putting this above Doom eternal just in case Quil reads this and i can make them mald.

Seriously though, as Gacha goes, as pretty shameless as this is, the gameplay is fun and the character designs, particularly the skins, are extremely good, and the business model is kind enough that you can basically get whatever you really want from it. Comfort food.

Has better turn based combat than like, 99% of JRPGs. And it's pretty funny otherwise. Good shit.

Honestly really not into the aesthetic but it's hard to deny the gameplay chops on this one.

It's pretty good. Multiplayer is still garbage but hey ho.

It's no cave story, but a fun romp with a stonking amount of soul, that feels like a very personal tale from Pixel. Extremely well designed for what it is, just what it is is a bit too simple for my taste.

Soul.mp4

A wonderful slice of mid-2000s cheese. Whilst im not sure quite how hilarious this is all meant to be, that's half the reason its a great time.

A very cool idea, and a fun strategy game, but is really let down by being very, very slow. If this game had a good UX it could easily be in my top 10 this year, but everything taking twice as long as it should just knocks it down a peg.

Very clearly an indie outing, but one with a good chunk of passion behind it. Never should have been released in it's original state though.

Obviously pretty good, but I could never get into it very much. Feels like just a little thing is lacking. Still, de facto the best beat em up of the past like 5 years just by default.

I dont know why, but this never really captured me that much. I have a feeling its a game that could be really great, but for some reason I just wasnt emotionally invested in it all. And aside from that, I think it's good rather than great.

This NEOGEO Pocket Colour game is better than most of the fighting games on the market. And the code mystics port is impeccable.

Mostly pretty good. Excellent adaptations of the characters and I will admit that im kinda glad its dong something different with the story, and the meta narrative elements are pretty ok. Also probably the best fanservice an FF7 fan could ever hope for... but there's a ridiculous overuse of sepiroth and i thnk the ending act is very bad. Honestly I'd probably be kinder on the last act if there wasn't going to be other parts - but it's so easy to see what fuck ups are going to happen from here.

A good shmup, but a bit overly simple and generic.

The concept is just cool enough to carry it, but there's just as much wasted potential here as there is fun to be had.

It's good. In a similar Vein to SOR4 though, I find it kinda uncompelling to play for more than a little bit though. Also, can't get past how much the main character's design is the worst in the entire game by a ridiculous margin. It's a silly source of frustration, but alas, this is my list.

It's fun for a little bit, but the moment I put it down I never had any desire to pick it back up.

No, I dont particularly no why i played this either. The character design and sheer excess of this game is fun enough though, albeit extremely forgettable.

Honestly forgot this came out. Please, can someone shove that new studio at capcom into a trash compactor before they fuck up something else.

I've come to love shmups partially because they greatly respect your time and cram as much cool shit as they can in like 20 minutes of gameplay. And P5R has cool shit as well, but being spread over 100 hours which is 90% retread is just taking the piss.

It's not as good as you remember.

Doesn't really hold up thanks to how sheerly bullshit it is an awful lot of the time, but undoubtedly a classic somehow regardless.

The xbox 360 version of this game has this weird thing where the music from menus will not change track going into gameplay and its bizzarely uncomfortable. Like, it makes the whole thing feel off. It's also a bad Burnout 3.

Extremely buggy, weirdly. Kinda novel to be able to softlock a FMV game. Charming, though.

Cute but thats about it.

Decent aesthetically, but boy does it screw the pooch on the actual gameplay. You'll spend of your time mashing dodgeroll and shooting enemies offscreen rather than doing anything fun. The boss battles are ok i guess?

Kinda liked this game for a bit, but the balance, the patches, what I think is legit trash art direction and the bad bosses put me off just as fast as I got into it. Very much a case of "what could have been" for me.

Boring as shit. Maps the size of the universe with no direction where you then spam cooldown based abilities and weapons at enemies until they fuckin die whilst searching for boring upgrades. Art directions good I guess, but even as a mindless podcast game this fucking blows.

Easily the worst fire emblem. I tried replaying it this year and I almost began to enjoy what absolute madness this is. How did Intelligent Systems make 3 Houses after this wreck?

Codies have had 20 years making formula 1 games, this is their best one, and it's still hot garbage.

I thought I went in biased the first time. The truth is, no, this game really does fucking blow.

Completely boneless, bizzarely buggy and overly saccharine. But unfortunately, mostly just boring.

Nothing has made me feel more like the angry videogame nerd. Every two seconds I want to say "WHO MADE THIS" or "WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING DUDE?". Somehow, this gives it more merit alone than the true bottom of this list.

This game is a wonderful intersection of something no one wanted, and also being a terrible example of that. Making the worst Grid game when Grid 2 already existed is pretty impressive though.

The only good thing about this game is that it might get people to stop pretending the original is good either.

Actually irredeemable. It's almost like they went into writing it trying to make a generic, boring fantasy VN.

This game couldn't be worse if it tried jesus christ. An ungodly mix of the worst aspects of modern AAA gaming shoved into a game that probably wouldnt have been good without them but at least would have had a chance.