This is my best of games list from 2020, which is now on this site for archival purposes. It was made as more of a script for a video I did in 2021.
Video version here:
2020 was a difficult year for a lot of reasons and like most people I decided to indulge myself into a hobby like playing video games and in terms of the games I played this year, it was pretty good. This is a hobby I really like and I always love getting to the end of a year and looking back on everything that came out. I also like watching this big show that Geoff Keighley puts on every year and man… Look Geoff I like you and admire your passion for wanting to make this big show but you’re making it really hard for me not to feel cynical for this industry. Doing things like just throwing the best music award into the preshow, not crediting any composers, and not even playing music from the game to giving the award for best direction to a studio that had dozens of complaints of bad crunch and workplace culture. Not to mention the seemingly more obvious bias against Japanese games that seems to waft the industry. So, when an event disappoints you, the best answer might be to just do it yourself.
Top 3 Best Old Games
#3 Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes - One of the things that I decided to do this year was to go through the collective works of Suda51. I went through and played every game that he’s written and directed from his most popular work No More Heroes to the more obscure The Silver Case which was the first game released by his company Grasshopper Manufacture. And all of this culminated in the latest game he wrote and directed, Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.
If for some reason you decided to avoid this game because its not a “real” No More Heroes game then I would HIGHLY suggest going back and taking a look at it. If you’re someone whose ever been creative and tried your hand at making art than you’re someone that could possibly relate to games narrative. Beneath its simple, Hotline Miami inspired gameplay lies a story about the struggle of making art and about being a creator. It’s a story about Suda’s career has a game maker.
Travis and Badman, the father of a boss from the first game, travel into various video games calling back to different gaming eras using a haunted game console. I want to slightly spoil one of the stages. A stage towards the end is an epilogue to Shadows of the Damned, a game Suda wrote. The segment that you do before getting this copy of the game Travis talks to a man, who suspiciously shares a last name with an EA executive who was the head of EA when they published Shadows of the Damned. This game developer talks about how he wanted the person that made this game to change stuff and physically assaulted them in order to get it done. You can read reviews about how Suda was forced to rewrite the script to Shadows five times because it was “too complicated”. Travis Strikes Again feels like a deeply personal game for Suda and is probably my favorite game that he’s written. While I don’t think the gameplay is particularly memorable, I did have some fun with some of the bosses and a stage or two. If you wrote this off, then I’d suggest giving it another chance. It’s a game that deserves way more attention than it ever got.
#2 The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd - A few years ago I decided to dive into a massive story heavy JRPG franchise, Falcom’s Trails series. At the time of making this video there are 10 games that have been released with an 11th on the way and canonically this is the third one coming after Trails in the Sky First and Second Chapter. I really like the first two Sky games; they got memorable characters, great stories, a super in-depth world, and banging soundtracks but I’d be lying if I told you these games are perfect. I love Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, I consider it one of my favorite games of all time, but god does it have some awful pacing in the middle. Now I think some of the final chapters make up for it, there’s some incredibly good character writing there but it’s hard to ignore how slow it gets.
So, imagine my surprise when I get to Trails in the Sky the 3rd and it’s like a condensed version of the first two games. This one is all killer no filler. The 3rd acts as an epilogue six months later where you play as the traveling priest Kevin, a side character introduced in Second Chapter. You go through a weird time vortex space, like I think that’s what you would call it, while collecting characters from the first two games and learning more about Kevin and his childhood friend Ries. Much like the previous two games the story and character writing are incredible, but this time there’s no long stretches of story that feel meandering. There’s the main story where you’re trying to find out what the hells going on and 25 doors to find. Five of the doors are goofy minigames with sections like Estelle entering a fishing competition. Another five of the doors are dedicated to longer side stories while the last 15 doors are smaller ones. I don’t wanna like, spoil the game or anything, but one of these star doors, specifically the 15th, might be the most unsettled I’ve been playing a game in 2020. Trails in the Sky the 3rd is great and is something I recommend if you like story heavy RPGs. But you should play the first two games before hand.
#1 Digital Devil Saga 2 - I often think back to Atlus’ output on the PS2. They released seven total RPGs for the system and in 2020 I played through one of them. Originally, I finished Digital Devil Saga in 2016 and in 2020 I finally finished its sequel, Digital Devil Saga 2. Looking back on this duology as a whole now that I’ve finished it, it’s incredibly obvious that something happened behind the scenes. The first game is fairly sparse of story up until the last handful of hours and then you get to the second game and it’s full of story back to front. Originally it was being written by sci-fi author Yu Godai until she had to leave for personal reasons and Persona 1 and 2 writer Tadashi Satomi had to build off of what she started. Unlike Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei series which mainly leans on Judeo Christian mythology, Digital Devil Saga brings a focus on Hinduism.
Now I don’t know a lot about Hinduism, mainly just the mainstream stuff like Karma and reincarnation, but I found the themes in Digital Devil Saga compelling and the second game is where said themes start. Digital Devil Saga takes these Hinduistic themes, mashes them with a dystopian and cyberpunk-esque setting, and introduces it with a flashy opening covered with J-Pop. Digital Devil Saga uses the superb Press Turn combat system introduced in Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne in which you make risks to increase your turn count. Its music is grimy and guitar filled and fits neatly into its setting like a puzzle piece. I might even go as far to say it’s my favorite collective work by composer Shoji Meguro. And its story is genuinely compelling and well written. I’d go as far to say as this duology are the boldest games Atlus made for the PS2. Digital Devil Saga 2 is a great game and easily the best old game I played in 2020.
Top 3 Most Anticipated Games
Before we look at the present, or I guess you would say immediate past cause the year has already come and gone, let’s look to the future at my top three most anticipated games. These aren’t necessarily coming out this year but at the time of writing this at least two of them are.
#3 Final Fantasy XVI - If you were to ask me to play an Exodia-esque combination of games industry people that could make a next Final Fantasy game “good” I’d probably give you a list that looks sorta similar to the ones working on Final Fantasy XVI. The producer of Final Fantasy XIV and writer of the games Heavensward expansion along with the combat director of Devil May Cry 5 are enough to make me look over at what’s going on over here.
#2 No More Heroes 3 - Like I said earlier in this video a good portion of my game playing in 2020 was dedicated through playing Suda51’s directorial body of work. I’d say that Travis Touchdown is the second most interesting character that he’s ever created right after Sumio from the Sliver Case but that’s another video for another time. No More Heroes introduced Travis Touchdown as a loser otaku with a pension for killing, No More Heroes 2… has that one cutscene where Travis talks about the cycle of violence, and Travis Strikes Again brings a level of nuance to him that I wasn’t expecting. No More Heroes 3 will have him fighting space aliens and turning into a knockoff Kamen Rider. I’m excited to see where this series goes, cause I’m on Suda’s wild ride and don’t wanna get off anytime soon.
#1 Shin Megami Tensei V - Ya know Atlus has this issue where they announce a game really early with like some teaser art or trailer and then don’t talk about it for years. This was the case for Shin Megami Tensei V but in 2020 we got a trailer out of nowhere along with the announcement that it’s getting a simultaneous world-wide release in 2021. That actually might be even more surprising than us even getting a trailer, normally it takes Atlus games several months to get localized and I’m glad this game will be different. So far, the game looks really good, I like the protagonist’s dumb haircut and the music sounds great. Hopefully this game actually runs well on the Switch that’s probably my biggest worry with it so far. So many games on the Switch are having performance issues. Also, in the process of writing this video I ended up finishing Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse and I really ended up liking that game, which was surprising after hearing from a lot of people that the story and characters weren’t good. That was a good game, no idea what people were talking about.
Best Revival of a Dead Franchise
Sakura Wars - Several years ago Sega held a poll to determine which game franchises should come back and the one that won by a landslide was Sakura Wars. Sakura Wars was an incredibly popular SRPG dating sim that was at its height in the mid to late nineties. If you haven’t heard of it then that’s understandable, the only one we ever got localized was the fifth entry in 2010 literally five years after it came out in Japan. No idea why they did that.
In Japan this game is called Shin Sakura Taisen, meaning New Sakura Wars. While in America it’s just called Sakura Wars. I hate it when publishers do this, like look man I’m not gonna call God of War on PS4 just “God of War”, I’m gonna call it God of War (2018) just like how I’m gonna refer to this game Sakura Wars (PS4). So, in Sakura Wars (PS4) you play as Kamiyama a young man assigned to lead a theater troupe who are also in charge of fighting demons. A majority of the game is structured like a dating sim where you interact with the various female cast members. Sakura Wars features a dialogue system in which every choice is times, making no choice is a choice, and sometimes you can choose the intensity of your response. All of the characters are charming and fun in their own way. They were also designed by the manga author of Bleach.
When you’re not wooing the anime girl of your choosing then you’re engaging in some gold old-fashioned demon fighting. Unlike every other game in the series, this one ditches the SRPG combat in favor for an action-based system. I won’t lie, these sections that end every chapter feel like an afterthought. The combat is so basic and easy I started to zone out every time I did them. All of the social stuff was way better, it’s also pretty funny too. A thing that Sakura Wars made me realize is that I really like Koi-Koi. I liked it so much, it’s what made me want to purchase 51 Clubhouse Games. Later in the year when I played Yakuza Kiwami 2 I got unreasonably excited when I found out I could play Koi-Koi. I haven’t played the other games in the series available in English like Sakura Wars for the Sega Saturn or Sakura Wars 5 So Long my Love, but this new game has made me interested in the rest of the series. Probably the best 7/10 I played this year.
Most Surprising Game
Deadly Premonition 2 - Let’s say you had a time machine. You decide to go back in time to 2015 and break into my small shitty apartment. I ask you “How the hell did you get in here?”.
Only one phrase comes out of your mouth. “How would you like a sequel to Deadly Premonition?”. I pause for a second and think to myself. Finally, I say “No thanks, bro”.
Deadly Premonition 2 is my most surprising game this year for three reasons:
- It was announced
- It runs like absolute garbage
- I loved every minute of it
I thought the first game ended perfectly, so I was hesitant about the existence of a sequel. Another worry I had was that the game would devolve into a meme version of itself, leaning way too into its status online. Instead, I got a very well written game that ties us a few loose ends from the first game that I didn’t know I wanted tied up, York is still as lovable as he was in the first, and the story has some legitimately great high moments. Sure, the gameplay is janky, the framerate kind of hurts to look at, and it’s incredibly glitchy, but underneath its rough exterior there’s a lot of heart. All these characters have a goofy charm to them and it’s hard not to crack a smile at them.
The story is also pretty good and while I have some reservations about a plot point at the 75% mark, but there are some real emotional highs by the end. If you’re a fan of the original game I highly recommend checking out Deadly Premonition 2. There’s a lot of good stuff in there and hopefully this gets released on other platforms cause man the performance on Switch if rough. I haven’t played a game that ran this bad since Drakengard 3!
Best Art Direction
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - I debated calling this category “Best Looking” but I ended up settling on “Best Art Direction” cause in the long run I think a game with a better art direction will be more timeless than a game that aims for graphical fidelity it’s one of the reasons why games like Jet Set Radio still look good today. Now I could sit here and write some big prose about how 13 Sentinels looks like a living water color painting, but just look at it. You can even appreciate this games art direction through Youtube’s bad compression. I feel it would be criminal not to put a Vanillaware game in this category. Some people complain about how the tower defense sections look with all of the enemies and characters being small icons, but it’s satisfying seeing all the enemies explode into particles and then towards the end it works when they throw like, a lot of enemies at you.
Best Music
Final Fantasy VII Remake - I was worried that the Final Fantasy VII Remake would go the way of so many big budget AAA “movie” games and have a purely orchestral and subdued soundtrack. But then I get to songs in the game like The Airbuster and every single one of my fears evaporate. The sound track still uses some subdued orchestral pieces, but it’s also filled with rocking guitars and some electro beats. Now you could argue that it isn’t fair because this game is building off the already legendary Final Fantasy VII soundtrack released over 20 years ago, but I would counter that statement by saying that the songs in the remake are built off in different ways that keep them interesting. There’s like several different versions of the main battle theme, including a dance remix. In the second to last chapter there’s a music queue that happens in the third phase of the fight, I won’t spoil what it is but if you know then you know, and this music transition combining the original song and the new version of it is closest I’ve come to having a religious experience in the last 5 years. The original songs in the remake are mostly composed by people that worked on Final Fantasy XIII, the music being arguably the best part of that game, and they fit Final Fantasy VII like a glove. This game even has like, 30 different remixes that exclusively play through jukeboxes. There’s a part of the game where you go up to a guy on the street and he asks, “Hey dude. Do you want a copy of my mixtape?” then you get a copy of it and it’s a shitty dubstep song where he sampled Chocobo noises and it sounds terrible. I love it
Best Narrative
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - Talking about this game and telling you what I loved about the story without spoiling anything can get damn near impossible, but let's try it. 13 Sentinels follows 13 playable characters as their various story lines cross and intersect. It’s a game that calls back to a lot of different classic sci-fi stories and tropes which is fun if you’re a fan of them. Despite there being 13 different main characters and over 13 different storylines that you have to follow, I was able to follow everything without getting too confused.
I think a game deserves some praise on a narrative level if it tells a story in a way that only a game can. The nonlinear nature of the story in 13 Sentinels can lead to everyone having a different experience. Let’s say you decide to focus on one character early on in the game and that leads you to learning some pretty major plot points and twists, so then when you start doing other characters you then have this information that can change the context of a scene. While on the other hand you have a friend that ignores the character you picked first and decides to look at someone different. The way how you and your friend go through the story is different, when they start doing a character story, they might not have learned a plot revelation that you know at this point and vice versa. Everyone can experience the story in slightly different way.
Games That I Would’ve Talked About if I Played Them
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - I am almost caught up to the Yakuza series, right at the butt end of 2020 I finished Yakuza Kiwami 2. Now I just have five and six left because I’m gonna skip three. Decided to skip three because I think going from this good feeling game in Kiwami 2 to the first PS3 game they made would probably lead me to drop it for a year. And a friend said I’m okay in not playing it and I trust his judgment.
Trails of Cold Steel 4 - At the beginning of 2020, some idiot said he was gonna catch up to the Trails series to play Cold Steel 4. That idiot was named Brent, he was me. I don’t know I thought that maybe playing through six big JRPGs was feasible for me but I got distracted and stopped. Which worked out cause the good fan translation for one of them is coming up as I write this video. This is a series I really like so far and I imagine I’ll really like Cold Steel 4. As I’m writing this video I’m playing through Trails from Zero and I’m loving my time with it
Top 5 Games of 2020
#5 Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers (The Patch Content that Came out this Year) - Due to how spoilers can work for live service games I won’t be showing any actual footage of the content so please just enjoy this clip of my character fishing. You can try and tell me that this doesn’t count, but this is also my list and I can do what I want. It is actually an interesting debate on whether or not content for live service games can count on any kind of game of the year list, after all a significant amount of new story, gameplay, music, and visual content was released this year which is why I feel okay including it here but I’ll only have it at #5 because of it.
I started playing Final Fantasy XIV in August of 2020 when patch 5.3 hit along with some improvements to A Realm Reborn’s base story. It took a while, but I got out of A Realm Reborn and into the expansions. Shadowbringers, the games third expansion, came out in 2019 but its main story didn’t finish until August of 2020. After the story content this year it feels weird saying my favorite Final Fantasy story is an expansion for an MMO, but after letting it sit, it’s something I’m comfortable with saying. Because of how live service games work, I don’t want to spoil how anything happens so I’ll just have to speak in broad terms. I mentioned earlier that I think games that tell their story in a way that only a game can and it’s executed well deserve to be highlighted. In both the original expansion content and the new content from this year there are certain themes and plot ideas that only work within the context of an MMO. It’s genuinely well written and has some great characters and the new content from 2020 has some of the highest highs from the game.
Aside from the story and writing, the new gameplay content within the dungeons, bosses, and raids were fantastic. Shadowbringers introduced new raids for Nier Automata written by Yoko Taro himself and I know I’ll sound biased considering I love his games, but this is seriously the best large raid content in the game. The mechanics feel unique and the story is incredibly interesting if you’re a long-time fan of his work. Not to mention the most recent patch finished off the regular Eden Raid series and the gameplay and story were fantastic too. Final Fantasy XIV feels like a celebration of all things Final Fantasy. I don’t like playing multiplayer games, let alone MMO’s. But FFXIV has kept me hooked.
#4 Robotics;Notes - Despite this game coming out in 2012, we didn’t get an english translation until eight years later in 2020 so it comes in by technicality, and also I choose what goes on my list. Robotics;Notes is about a group of highschool students that want to build a giant robot. It’s a part of a larger series called Science Adventure, which you’ve probably heard of because one of the entries, Steins;Gate, has a popular anime adaptation.
One of the things I like about the series is its approach to science fiction is that they’ll bring in real world science and physics to explain real world ideas but then also use them to explain their sci-fi concepts. It’s a story about characters who want to achieve their dreams no matter what stands in their way and I think that’s why I ended up relating to the main character Kaito so much. He doesn’t really have a dream and spends his days in highschool just coasting along, not really wanting to think about the future which mimicked my own highschool experience. This indifference ends up leading him to follow a series of cryptic, conspiracy ridden notes left behind by a dead man and trying to figure out if they hold any truth.
Robotics;Notes is a story about having dreams, overcoming obstacles, and building giant robots. Just because this is a part of a larger series doesn’t mean you need to experience the ones before it because this one is pretty separate, except for some stuff at the end that might come off as a bit confusing. If I had to list any issues with this game, I think the character route structure is a bit weird. The game has an in game social media feature similar to Twitter and you can reply to people that you’re friends with. Each character route in the game is cannon, one route will be the games chapter six and another would be chapter seven and you can view these chapters out of order depending on who you reply to on fake twitter which is something I don’t really like. Definitely a game where I’d recommend following a guide to make sure you don’t view something out of order. Also I think the games ending came a little too quick after the climax but luckily we got its sequel, Robotics;Notes DaSH, on the same day which launched in Japan in 2019. That one is also pretty good if you liked Robotics;Notes then I recommended it. although I’d say you should at least go through Steins;Gate cause one of the side characters is a main character in that one.
#3 Final Fantasy VII Remake - Earlier in 2020, I listened to a spoliercast for the Final Fantasy VII Remake. I won’t say which one because I don’t want them to get any hate, but one of the hosts said “The only reason why people like the original Final Fantasy VII is because of nostalgia. I tried playing that game last year and it was unplayable”. I have like, three problems with this statement:
- I played Final Fantasy VII for the first time in 2019 and loved it. Sure, I had been spoiled on the big twist at the end of disc one, but that acted like a spoiler magnet and kept me away from literally every other plot point in the story. Playing it in 2019, I had a really great experience.
- I know like 2 people who have started and/or played in within the last six months and absolutely loved it.
- I hate it when people describe something they don’t like as un-blank-able. A game isn’t “unplayable” just because you don’t like it.
Now you wanna know a game that is both good and playable? Final Fantasy VII Remake. To quote Tim Rogers in the Action Button review of the Final Fantasy VII Remake, “The Final Fantasy VII Remake is more Final Fantasy VII, than Final Fantasy VII”. The Final Fantasy VII Remake takes elements from the original and puts them under a microscope. There’s a conversation between Tifa and Aerith in the sewers where they talk about how they want to go shopping and they’re gonna make Cloud carry all of their bags. This one conversation gives more depth and characterization to their relationship than the original ever did. Of course, there is a lot of contention regarding the various changes especially the ones for Chapter 18. Right now, I remain optimistic but it’s easily something that could go south depending on execution.
Also, the gameplay in Final Fantasy VII Remake is pretty good. Feels like a nice adaptation of the turn-based elements of the original game. I’m glad all of the weird enemies of the original got in like Hell House who’s just a big boss now. This remake really feels like a celebration of the original in a lot of ways. Definitely one of the best games I’ve played this year and definitely recommended if you liked the original game. I’m just hoping they release a PS5 version at some point and get rid of all the squeeze throughs.
#2 Persona 5 Royal - Here’s a controversial opinion, I think Persona 5 is a good game. Now if you’re sitting there going “Brent what the hell are you talking about” then congratulations you’ve somehow avoided the most annoying parts of dumb video game internet discourse for the last few years. After awhile I started to think maybe I was wrong, maybe it was actually bad. But then I got to replay it through Persona 5 Royal and realized no, Persona 5 is great.
Persona 5 Royal makes a ton of adjustments to the base game that makes it way more fun to play. I won’t sit here and list all of them because it would take forever, but I want to go over some of the highlights. Such as Morgana doesn’t tell you to go to bed anymore so you can raise social stats even after going into a dungeon, baton pass is now given to all party members when they join meaning you can incorporate it into your strategies, a majority of the text around the first two dungeons has been relocalized and the voice acting was rerecorded making it read a lot better, dungeons have been slightly remixed to be shorter and have new collectables. One of the things I want to see move forward in the series is that Personas now have traits, which are passive abilities that help change things up. Also, the new music in this version are all just bangers.
Then there’s the two new confidants and the third semester storyline and Akechi now has a separate confidant, rather than one that levels with the story, that elevates his character from a 4 to a 9, and so much more. It feels weird to say that the new story content in Royal is better written than the main game, but both the stakes and the main villain feel more personal this time around. I don’t want to spoil it at all, but the new story content has elevated Persona 5 for me to maybe be my favorite Persona game. It’s absolutely worth going through the game again to experience what they’ve done. If you’ve been itching for a replay or haven’t played it yet, get Royal. It’s the best version of an already pretty good game.
#1 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim -
THIS GAME IS GOOD (DON’T SPOIL IT)
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