I mean, if y’all really insist, I can specify “not AAA games.” That’s the point I was making; this year’s game of the year nominee lists are going to look quite different than usual.

I’ve got 1,000 hours in this one over the years and the PC port is the main reason I’m getting it (eventually). Hoping it’s not too locked-down for mods, FFT’s mod community has been a vibrant one.

In a world where game budgets balloon to over $300m, Hades 2 fits comfortably into the “smaller game” category. As do Blue Prince, Expedition 33, Silksong, and Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, among other top-rated games this year.

Some of these scores haven’t been updated from early access yet, so this number’s probably going to go higher. Might be the top-rated game of the year. I’m sure it’s well-deserved, too. I played the crap out of the EA version when it first dropped.

What a year for smaller game projects.

Again, Sky 3rd is the third game in a continuous series. This is not Ys, which is an entirely different narrative format following a hero in stories specifically designed to be standalone. Ys isn’t even told in chronological order. Ys can absolutely be played in any order without losing anything (other than the second game, which is a direct sequel of the first).

You didn’t make it to the Cold Steel games, so you don’t know what I’m talking about here. Most of Sky 3rd’s throughlines continued in Cold Steel, not the Crossbell games (they even continue into the Daybreak arc). Falcom pivoted during Sky’s development; they initially weren’t going to do games in Crossbell.

Trails is Mass Effect writ large. It’s Game of Thrones. It’s Harry Potter. Yes, one can jump into those properties at any point, but they will be lost at some point–if not immediately–or otherwise missing context critical to their enjoyment of the property. That’s basic fictional media literacy. It’s just highly unusual in video games, so people assume it’s like other series. It’s not. It’s closer to long-running manga, television or novels.

There might be some fringe impacts Trails has had on the industry here and there, but the only big influence it has had is on Honkai: Star Rail’s combat system. And at this point, HSR is so much larger than the Trails series as a whole that it’s going to look like Meucci’s contribution to telephone technology when all is said and done. Expedition 33 already took some of its UI design from HSR.

Even the impact of Trails’s hybrid action/turn-based system is debatable because Trails through Daybreak was in development at the same time as Metaphor: ReFantazio, which uses the same system. Ultimately, the series serves a very specific, small niche within a niche, and it’s never going to be a major trailblazer for the same reason much of Baldur’s Gate 3’s story design won’t be: that kind of narrative structure is not an efficient way to make money. You have to be an auteur or a major risk taker to do software engineering that way.

Meanwhile, Final Fantasy VII’s impacts on the entire industry, let alone the genre, are too numerous to list. The two series are not remotely comparable. OP’s neck-deep in atomistic fallacy here.

Sky 3rd is simply the third game in this continuous series. It’s not a “die-hard fan” thing. It’s the third work, just as much the third season of a TV series or a third novel in a novel series is. Whether or not it’s a good work is a matter of taste. But whether it’s a necessary part of it is not up for debate.

It wraps up the first arc of a major throughline in the series and starts many more.

conventional wisdom does not apply

All the more reason why it’s far too early to draw any conclusions.

It’s too early to draw any conclusions. Take it from Mat Piscatella, who’s forgotten more about video game market research than I ever learned myself.

Hardware launches are not like game releases, anyway. It’s the establishment of a new product market, and early game releases on consoles have an ebb and flow to them that later blockbusters do not. It’s about building growth, not first-week sales.

Ouch. Even selling it to Fandom would have been better than this.

Half-Life 2 always stands out in my mind for this due to it being such a physics playground.

I usually hate water areas in games, though 😂 Especially the Zelda ones.

There’s almost no multiplayer in Honkai Star Rail, though, much less anything approaching what an MMO does. It has asynchronous character sharing and one-to-one chat. That’s literally all the player interaction there is in the core game. Every now and then there’s an event where you can go head-to-head in simple games like match 3.

I tried a bunch of these today and yesterday. EDIT: also tacked on impressions of demos for After Inc: Revival, Kaizen: A Factory Story, and Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.

In the “Shut Up and Take My Money” tier:

• Bits & Bops - Sure, it’s a total Rhythm Heaven clone but, hey, why mess with a winning formula? Still, I worry about devs borrowing this heavily from Nintendo titles these days 😬
• Dispatch - I only needed 10 minutes with this to know I’m sold. The animation is gorgeous and it has a hell of a cast. Between this and Expedition 33, how are new studios getting these people!?
• Mina the Hollower - Shovel Knight’s the best retro game I’ve seen and I didn’t need to see much of Mina to know that Yacht Club delivered again. It’s got a Zelda vibe (the jump especially feels just like it did in Link’s Awakening) along with all that other 8-bit-with-present-day-game-design goodness. I also cut this one short so I can enjoy it in full later. Day 1 for me.

Pretty good but a couple hiccups:

• Forestrike - Hey, PlayStation gamepad glyphs! Always appreciated. Outstanding atmosphere in general. The pixel graphics are interesting; the character design reminds me of old Sierra games. I wonder if at some point during dev they considered just not going roguelite? There’s real storytelling talent here and I think a linear game with increasing complexity might have been even better (and helped to not undercut the narrative as roguelite progression tends to do).
• inKonbini - Very short demo, but the gameplay seems it’d be good and vibe is cozy. Really strange that the written Japanese is gibberish. It seems too elaborate to be placeholder text, so I wonder what the story there is? It takes me out of the life sim aspect of this a bit.
• Kaizen: A Factory Story - I found a lot to like with this. I tend not to like puzzle games, but when I find one that’s interesting, I tend to really like it. The setting is also great. After a very short demo, the only thing I’m not sure on is how long the full game is going to be. I’d like to get this, but the price has to be right.
• MIO: Memories in Orbit - This one was up and down for me across the board: music, gameplay, systems, visuals. The tutorial sections are outstanding work and worth the download for that alone (there’s one right away). While I think the metroidvania design here is good, I wasn’t sold on the graphics. At times it’s difficult to parse out what’s a platform and what’s background, and there are weird blind spots with camera on top of that. I also can’t believe they went with the map system from Hollow Knight, the only real negative of that game.
• Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon - I see this one just went 1.0 after an early access period, and critic reviews have been mixed. Understandable why old Elder Scrolls fans are feeling this is scratching an itch. I think there’s a lot to like here, but I might ultimately skip it. The prevailing thought I kept getting through the demo is that this studio’s next game is going to be great.

Not for me:

• After Inc: Revival - This ended up playing more like a clicker game than I was expecting. This seems not bad, but this isn’t my kind of game.
• BALL X PIT - The gameplay pacing on this is unpleasant, with the roguelite elements stopping the action too much. Kept wanting to get into a flow state and was constantly interrupted.
• Bloodgrounds - All the other demos I played came ready with story and this one feels underbaked in that department. What I played of the demo was almost all gameplay. Didn’t see much that sets it apart from the pack.
• Dice Gambit - I don’t think this strategy game gets the basics down well enough to add on the dice layer. Feels like one move should be guaranteed regardless of rolls (and lack of move undo is unfortunate also). The art style also isn’t for me.

Aphelion: I’ve been kinda out on Don’t Nod but the trailer tells me they at least still know how to pick licensed music.

Beast of Reincarnation: Didn’t know Game Freak had this in them. Still wouldn’t recommend going anywhere near their stuff without seeing reviews first.

The Blood of Dawnwalker: This is my dark horse pick coming out of this week’s showcases. Yeah, it’s a Witcher clone from CD Projekt devs, but it only needs to capture some of the Witcher magic to be great. The publisher is curious, though. This has to be Bamco’s biggest swing with a Western studio yet, right?

Persona 4 Revival: Little more than a title card reveal. Honestly, the timeline for this one works for me. No way it comes out this year, and I’m still relatively fresh off Metaphor. Good name, too. “Revival” is a very TV-coded hype term.

They improved the handcrafted dungeon stuff in P3R, so I think it’ll probably still be better, but definitely not P5 level.

This seems a long way out though.

“Teaser” is certainly accurate. This was little more than a title card. So much for this coming out this year.

I wouldn’t expect dungeon overhauls. It will most likely still be procedurally generated like P3R was.

Would never have guessed Owlcat’s new game would be in The Expanse universe, or that it would be an action RPG, for that matter.

I’m a huge fan of The Expanse so I’m going to check it out regardless, but I don’t know how this is gonna go.

Played through the demo for this and thought it wasn’t bad. The tutorial sections are big highlights, which I think is smart design for a metroidvania. Enjoyed this overall more than Nine Sols, which I didn’t like anywhere near as much as seemingly everyone did.

Biggest negative is that it uses Hollow Knight’s map system, which was easily my least favorite part of that game.

I’m interested and I’ll keep an eye out for gameplay on this, but holy hell is this name bad.