2021 ended up being a tremendous year for games, with five list-worthy entries and many of them near the very top. Writeups in roughly reverse order, as the main list is.
Sometimes a game picks exactly one concept to run with to its utmost limits and it is delightful. The World Is Your Weapon is a comedic RPG set in a small fantasy world (a fantasy island, really) where main character Weaco can pick up just about anything to use as your weapon to accomplish whatever weapon-related goal she has. Swords? You don't even need to ask. Shovels? Slightly more unconventional, but will do. Cliffside? Size is no limitation. Monsters and townsfolk? Of course. The ocean? Hope no one needed that.
So it goes, picking up weapons, bashing unlucky targets with them to identify their properties, clearing dungeons, and selling the bludgeoning instruments you pick up at your sister's weapon shop (to meet the upgrading needs of the weapon shop, of course). The game's strong concept is accompanied with just enough gameplay depth, amusing writing and little surprises that it stays fresh for the entire runtime. You'll eventually come to some sort of ending on the whole silly thing - with 100%ing everything taking around 10 hours, which is exactly at the sweet spot before it can start feeling padded. A real delight for those of us who thought Phantom Brave could have gone deeper.
Giraffe and Annika could be described as many things, but we'll go with "tropical island adventure". Set on the gorgeous fully three-dimensional Spica Island, the titular catgirl Annika walks, runs, hops and swims exploring dungeons, dodging ghosts, collecting cat paintings and engaging in rhythm battles among other things, guided by catboy Giraffe and the rest of the colorful inhabitants of the island. The main quest itself is relaxing and breezy action-adventure fare interspersed with wonderfully illustrated comic strip style plot vignettes.
The true main character of the game is the island itself however. It cannot be overstated how utterly gorgeous the environment is and rewarding of the player's curiosity and attention to boot. Keeping your eyes open and wits about you is the key to a number of secrets and perhaps even the truth about the mysterious Spica Island incident. With a rewarding sense of freedom, a low-key yet maturely told story capable of sustaining a few tone shifts and a soundtrack that elevates and binds it all together, Giraffe and Annika is a slam dunk of an adventure.
The Trails megaseries marches on with Zero following in the implausibly large footsteps left by Sky 3rd. Sure enough this start of a new arc can't quite reach those heights due to a variety of reasons - it's the groundwork installment rather than culmination of a trilogy, and more annoyingly backslides in the combat and quality of life department. Zero has a lot to offer in its own right though. Much like Giraffe and Annika the setting here is an auxiliary main character. A nation the size of Lichtenstein surrounded by major powers in an uneasy peace on both sides, Crossbell showcases its capital to the world as a city of technological marvels, high society entertainment and prosperous people. Yet its underside is full of systemic corruption, organized crime and people being trod underneath.
Our protagonists enter this as the newly founded "Special Support Section" of the Crossbell Police, a role not entirely dissimilar to that of a Bracer, yet distinct enough to have its own flavor and especially manifold implications in Crossbell's mess of a society. Lloyd, Tio, Randy and Elie make for a very good, easily likable dynamic as a unit and have their hands full starting from zero in both approval rating and ability to deal with threats both within and outside the system of law. The main squad aside, there are a great many loud personalities within the citizens of Crossbell that endear themselves to the player throughout the progression of time, as well as a smart selection of cameos from the Sky trilogy - the game is entirely reasonable to play standalone, but context from Sky elevates the emotional impact of many scenes.
As alluded to in true Trails fashion there is a veritable mountain range of worldbuilding and characters living their lives here. Even within the same day as morning turns into afternoon, there will be new dialogue for the curious to devour all over Crossbell. Zero is an enormous game, close to the length of FC and SC put together. But it justifies its slow burn in full, working as a detective story both in the main plot where the attentive observer may figure out the way the wind is blowing, and in many of the requests sent to SSS headquarters that can involve things such as having to correctly identify a contraband smuggler or catch a thief based on eyewitness accounts. Eventually things reach a boiling point and ramp to a truly heated high stakes climax that is thorouhgly satisfying while leaving enough hooks for the sequel to be a must get. Looking forward to what wonders Azure will bring.
Higurashi's an interesting one. A decade ago I watched the anime and it left no great impression on me - a dash of comedy, a splat of horror, a spoonful of bonding, and a tinge of mystery, but overall a forgettable mix. A decade later I decided to try the sound novel on a whim and was instantly hooked. The same elements are still here, but the blend is truly exquisite.
In spite of (or perhaps, because of) lack of voice acting, the moniker sound novel is well earned. With just text on top of simple blurred photographs and crude but expressive sprites, with its outstanding soundscape Higurashi paints its atmosphere in confident, relaxed strokes and vivid colors. While there is a ton of text to read through, Higurashi justifies its runtime by letting each scene soak properly and soon I found that despite my initial intrigue for what I believed to be the central mystery I was equally invested in the characters opening up to each other and the suffocating tension felt when things go off the deep end. Even the gags started landing more as I cared about the characters. By the time the first chapter of eight ended I was impressed by how well it worked as a standalone piece but knew I was going to be in this for the long haul.
The most impressive part is how transformative the sequence of chapters is. Plot twists are a given, recontextualizing characters fairly normal and shift in genres not that rare, but the way Higurashi made me re-examine my thoughts went beyond that - even the same sound effect could evoke an entirely different mood at the beginning and end of the journey. And Higurashi truly felt like a journey that I had gone through by the time I was closing the curtains on the eighth chapter. A wonderful piece with raw but radiant energy that I suspect won't leave my thoughts.
And yet, the year had more to offer. In Shadowverse's case, it finally scratched an itch that I had had for decades of a true premium card game RPG. Shadowverse the card game itself is basically a "we can do Hearthstone, but with rules fixes" which, well, the most readable and playable digital card game is certainly a good place to start. Select one of the seven crafts, build a deck that attempts to enact some sort of plan, slam your cards at the opponent's until one falls. Simple and satisfying to pick up and play but with an abyssally deep pool for tinkering and tactics. Both playing and in a true miracle, deckbuilding are intuitive.
The real magic comes in from the RPG part. This isn't just a card game - this is a card game about card games. Heaven for someone who has followed and wanted to love the genre for years. You begin with crummy starter decks playing against opponents who barely know what their cards do, and as you run into players that knows what a gameplan is start experimenting with your own brews, using whatever cards you've pulled from packs and supplementing your builds with every good pull or perhaps finding an enticing core for a new deck. Go through a few chapters, engage in puzzle quests (PUZZLE QUESTS! <3), win some tournaments, and just as you've gotten a solid collection of the core set hey an expansion was released how sick is that! Pretty sick, as it turns out. Expansion cards provide extra support for some deck types that were lacking critical mass to become real players while a rock solid deck might get left in the dust because it got no love from the expac, or a craft becomes a bit weaker because many of expac cards dedicated to supporting a new archetype that doesn't quite come together (just like what happens in real life I am nerding out as hard as I can). And later on there's a third set that does all of this again, and an illegal underground gambling arena with house rules and oh my god it's so good.
It's not just clinical gameplay, either. The production values on display are real, providing a fully realized gameworld where everything inexplicably revolves the titular cardgame (YES just as it should in a game like this). In battles themselves every card has a beautiful illustration, some fairly good flavor text and unique voicelines for entering, attacking, evolving and dying. The players themselves are a diverse cast of personalities and trash talk a bit as is appropriate too. This is the one area that could have gone a bit further though as no one is quite Seto Kaiba, but perhaps that is too high of a bar to even consider. Overall, Shadowverse: Champion's Battle is the pinnacle of a genre that I never thought would get a game that could be called that. Cheers.
And that is 2021 wrapped up, a few days late but done nonetheless. I hope to be writing again at the turn of the next year.