I feel like no words even need to be spoken. In wrestling lingo, this would be the strongest faction of all time. The GOLD NWO. It would be a near impossible task to challenge the quality of this insane lineup. If I put some of my teenage JRPG years and nostalgia aside, this just might be one of the best JRPG years of my gaming life.
1.
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne - This game was just pure bliss. Learning all these new systems/mechanics. This world/atmosphere is my kind of vibe, the high difficulty, I generally hate monster capturing gimmicks in games and was -obsessed- with it here, and how smooth this game runs on the PS2, it was perfection.
2.
Dragon Quest VIII - My DQ journey in recent years has been amazing and this is like the ultimate version of that journey. The classic JRPG formula to perfection. I don't like limited parties, but DQ8 made me love this small cast, zero complaints. Technically one of the most impressive games on the PS2 next to FF12.
3. Phantasy Star IV - can't find a review write up but I talked about it in the Now Playing thread. "God tier game". PSIV will more than likely be one I play again. I can absolutely see how people call this the Genesis Chrono Trigger, or rank it up there or perhaps even over some of the SNES greats. Loved everything.
4.
Front Mission 4 - While I miss the superior music from earlier games, I can't complain with how brutally challenging this SRPG was and the new mechanics making it even more interesting was very much to my liking. I'm not sure if FM4 is my absolute favorite, but the series itself has become my top favorite SRPG franchise.
5.
Dragon Quest VI - Middle tier DQ for me overall but still far better than the norm. I had some nitpicks throughout this one but it was still a blast and mighty impressive for the SNES. Wonderful journey. A shame DQ4 didn't get the SNES remake treatment in the SNES DQ3/DQ6 engine, would have been the best thing ever.
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Even on top of that, I still got a few more RPG's in this year:
- Valkryia Chronicles - Super cool take on the formula, mixing in real time 3rd-person controllable actions and all. Nice anime aesthetic. I'm definitely curious to play the sequels.
- Lighting Returns - Unfinished business. This is somewhere around a 5/10, so it was kind of a spiteful playthrough, but I liked the combat system a lot and love the FF13 OST's.
- Also got over 10 hours into Valkyrie Profile but had to drop it because I played on Hard, which was frustratingly unbalanced. I might give it another look someday. I liked some of it.
Two borderline, but I'll throw them in here as some nice honorable mentions:
- Shadow Tower Abyss - Amazing dungeon crawler on the PS2 and you can absolutely see some of the Demon's Souls roots in this series. Sampled the original game, might give it another shot someday.
- Parasite Eve - Was only a matter of time I'd finally play all of this one. Cozy vibes, loved it.
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I rolled arcade styled credits in 16 fighters during a fighting game Club Retro month we had. It was very cool to finally dig into Virtua Fighter a bit and I really enjoyed VF4:Evo.
After all these years of having some curiosity in the Turrican series, I finally beat the first two Amiga versions on the Turrican Flashback collection. I've now beaten all the Turrican games, in some form.
I'm not sure if I ever beat Altered Beast as a kid. An amusing one to put some closure on.
As a big 2D Sonic fan, finally played through the Sonic Advance trilogy on GBA. Solid stuff.
Hit up Space Megaforce (SNES) and Soldier Blade (PCE) for some great shmups.
I beat a whopping 20 Doom WAD's, put like 100 more hours logged on Steam I think.
Some nice replays this year that were a long time coming, like Blaster Master, Ristar, F-Zero, and giving the GBA version of Donkey Kong Country 3 a run (has a completely different OST). But, this year after 15 years or whatever, we finally got another incredible 2D Metroid game and it really sparked a full replay of the entire saga, including the Prime games. I had more fun with Fusion this time than I normally do. Finally played some good Super Metroid hacks (Ancient Chozo) while doing the original game for a hundredth time. It was really cool to finally replay Prime 2-3 for a second time though, even if Prime 1 still stands tallest among them all, it's fascinating to see how much this trilogy has inspired modern games and was such a good offshoot 3D experiment for Metroid. Also replayed all the Halo's in the Master Chief Collection, pretty fun.
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Honorable Mentions: Tomb Raider II was amazing and to repeat some of the above, Valkyria Chronicles, Shadow Tower Abyss, Parasite Eve, Virtua Fighter 4, and hey Donkey Kong Land was really neat.
Biggest disappointment: Suikoden Tactics. Was quite optimistic I'd like this one and it'd be better than Suikoden IV's bad reputation, but this one sucked too.
Best OST: ... to sum up my 2021 year in retro gaming in one song:
