#I didnt even play the minigames much on yakuza 0 but beating majima is a big motivator

[cyanrendipity]

Just spent several hours playing pocket circuit on Yakuza Kiwami just to defeat Majima.... He better appreciate all the effort I go thru to beat him to the ground 😤

[journaloftomfooleryandjapery]

All the TOP 10 OF THE DECADE posts made me want to make one of my own, so here’s my 10 fave games this decade:

Yakuza 0  Shovel Knight  Nier Automata  Metal Gear Rising  Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX Final Fantasy XV   Scott pilgrim vs the world the game Undertale Persona 5  Doom

Danganronpa 2, New Vegas, Touhou Luna Nights, Katana Zero and Mario Odyssey all only barely missed out, and it was a tough decision not to include them. I loved the shit out of those games but thinking it through I decided they were just slightly less loved by me than the above.

Below the cut are some extended thoughts (of varying length) on the games included:

Just CTRL F if you wanna find a specific one

Yakuza 0

Every Yakuza game is delightful and this is definitely the best one, in my opinion. The Yakuza games appeal to me for a lot of reasons: the combat, the story, the variety of activities, the look of it all and the music. I feel like its a very unique game experience with its blend of weird in-depth side activities, serious crime drama, manly man masculine combat friendship melodrama, metal gear-esque convoluted conspiracies and a surprisingly compassionate view of the world it takes place in. 

The combat is what drew me in initially because it just feels good, the feedback of stomping on a dudes face in yakuza is delivered perfectly, and the attacks are brutal, hard and flashy. Its a very solid and satisfying combat system and in 0 its the best it has ever been. The ability to switch between 3 different and equally fun fighting styles on the fly really lets you mix things up and adapt your approach, every style feels fun and useful. If i had to pick a favorite it would be slugger, but its a tough choice, and they are all very viable and FUN.

Yakuza 0 also gets big points for having the best story in the series. The protagonists feel much more interesting in this era, the fights feel more earned in this game than others, the relationships are incredibly touching (I’m almost mad majima didnt stay with makoto) and the substories (and some parts of the main story) are the funniest they’ve ever been. Stuff like the quasi-stealth mission where you have to make sure women don’t see you buying a porn magazine for a child, and the extended scene of kiryu trying to guess the right business manners for a meeting had me laughing so much i was i was almost in physical pain.

The extensive business and host club substories get you tons of extra game content and are good enough to almost be there own game. The other games in the series have extended side activites of varying quality, but i think 0 had a rare case of all of these being, basically, perfect. The team obviously agrees since host club management came back repeatedly, but never as good as it was here.

Being set in the 80s elevates almost everything in the game because of the outfits, money flying out of every enemy you attack, the classic sega games you can play at the arcade (Outrun is so much fun and I’d have never have given it a proper go otherwise) and the disco minigame everyones made a meme out of (that music is so catchy).

As a final note this game has the best boss fights and music in the series, which is a very high standard to surpass when you look at the rest of the series. The dual final boss fights, the recurring boss for kiryu and almost every majima fight are highlights of the entire series for me. 

0 is going to end up being one of the few games I’ll never sell my copy of because i want it available for me to play forever, its a complete delight.

Shovel Knight

This game has been analysed to hell and back, so i wont have much original to say i suppose. Admittedly i did enjoy the first campaign but it didnt completely win me over, plague knights campaign and beyond was what really made this an all time greats for me. It’s one of very few games that gets the NES+SNES platforming appeal 100% right and essentially surpasses most games of the day, with almost perfect pacing, challenge and level design. IT helps that the whole world and story and look is charming as all hell. It’s an easy game to love and the more you play it the more that feels justified. Being PACKED with great content is also a plus. If you liked the first campaign you can just keep going through a set of campaigns about as good that only really rehash some level assets. I would say its one of the best 2D platformers ever for me, if not quite my true number 1.

ALSO JAKE KAUFMAN KNOCKS IT OUT THE PARK WITH THIS SOUNDTRACK

Since i have little else to add to the shovel knight discussion, here’s my ranking/thoughts on each campaign

Plague of shadows. BEST storyline, great levels with a really cool gameplay gimmick, the characters are all cute and the ending really makes me feel for him. both sorry for him at first and then a very real AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW for LOVE

King of cards. king knight is just fun as hell to play as, he doesnt have that many tools but his movement is just crazy fun and i love the flair in all his animations. also has that rad final boss. joustus is ok i guess.

Shovel of hope. uuuuuuh what can i even say about this. its good, and the melancholy dream bits add a lot to the mood of the story. we’ve already analysed this campaign within an inch of its life i dont think i can say anything new. wish we could fight the battletoads on pc.

Specter of torment. still fun and i appreciate the tone change, but i didnt care as much for the characters and the mega man-esque level select doesnt suit shovel knight imo. specter knight has a lot of fun movement options though. mainly i just love GRINDING and the diagonal slash. i dont give a fuck about reize

Nier Automata

I feel a tiny bit ashamed i have so little to say about this considering it is one of the most emotional experiences i have ever had with a story. If i lsten to the final version of weight of the world i still cry just from remembering this game and how it made me feel. i think its one of the greatest narratives of the century but i can barely get across the appeal to anyone who hasnt already played it. its a story about hope, despair and the nature of the human race that never feels like its preachy or pretensious or taking on more than it can handle. it made me feel all kinds of emotions deeply and intensely, it genuinely made me burst into tears about 10 times, maybe more. even putting aside the ggrand narrative, theres so many cool character moments and bits of world building and visual eements and tragic little side stories that you would need a whole book to talk about them all while doing any real justice to them. i loved it so much that im paying £70 to see an orchestra do the soundtrack live. I want to hug and kiss 2b and 9s better. i just love it deeply and i find it hard to explain why it makes me feel that way, but its a dark beautiful and hopeful story where every moment feels earned. the despair of the story giving way to genuine hope with the rest of the world helping you fight for it is such an intensely emotional moment that you could never replicate outside of this kind of story and medium. how the fuck do i explain that to anyone that doesnt already get it. I’m glad this game exists

Metal Gear Rising 

Well, complete tone shift here. Platinum made a lot of great action games in the last decade that all dig into that same itch for DODGE SLOW MOTION BANG BANG BANG alongside great soundtracks, visuals and awesome set piece moments. Just intense, flashy, awesome combat. Picking a favorite of the decade was the hard part, because a platinum game had to be one of my faves of the decade. The closest was transformers, but mgr has a couple of things about it that put it above the rest of the platinum catalog for me.

The story actually works very well at still being metal gear while in the platinum formula, its about the cycle of violence and FINDING YOUR OWN PURPOSE and it works weirdly well. The strangest part is that it feels like a legitimate sequel to metal gear 4 tonally while still being the crazy action game it is

Raiden is just super fun to play as, while I’ll always miss the DODGE SLOWMO in a platinum game parry and zandatsu give a great flow to fights and there’s real exhilaration to parrying a hard chain of attacks and tearing out a bunch of enemies spines at once every time

raiden is also just  a fun protag, it truly allows me to embrace that kind of stereotypical edgy cool anime swordsman he embodies

BEST PLATINUM SOUNDTRACK DO NOT @ ME

Bosses just rule

one of the best final bosses ever, in my opinion? maybe that’s controversial, but armstrong gets an insane amount of characterization and pure PRESENCE out of such a small amount of screen time and the fact he feels like such a perfect rival to raiden so quickly is kind of nuts to me. within about half an hour you are ready for the ultimate final showdown with everything at stake, and then the gameplay 100% delivers on that with a fight that is challenging as hell and just feels climatic and intimidating. its a little thing, but having this dude just smack you around with his hands and almost no fighting skill after a game filled with crazy flippy cyborg ninjas makes him feel TOUGH and the way you finish him off? it just rocks, plain and simple. I don’t think i need to justify slices a massive dudes chest open and ripping out his giant still beating robot heart as the music climaxes and our cool edgy protag literally says WE’RE DONE HERE. truly, it has to be this way.

Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX 

For fast twitchy 2d platformers this barely beat out Katana Zero and Touhou Luna Nights, but i think its just a little better. The skill ceiling on this game is high as hell and once you really get to grips with it, its an experience you cant find anywhere else. its just satisfying as hell to be able to get through the point where you can ZOOM  through these levels by making use of copen’s dash and lock-on and weapons well enough. once you get good enough to get through a hole level without touching the ground, you just cant go back. I liked this enough to get an S rank on almost every level. this game just rules, man.

story, art and music are all great as well. but they pale in importance next to zippy jetpack zoom zoom fun time.

also great for having a cool twist that i genuinely did not see coming at all

Final Fantasy XV   

For context, my experience of FFXV was not the base game so i cannot personally address the concerns of the version at launch, which i hear from others was a total mess! The game has been updated and changed so much that it is probably almost unrecognizable aside from the absolute base aspects of it. The version i am talking about is, as far as we know, the “final” version released right before Episode Ardyn. There was of course an update after this, but it only added DLC compatibility and a few items, so it means very little in the grand scheme. I also played all of the dlc and watched all the periphery material to get the full, messy disjointed experience. it is also worth noting that the only other FF game i have played is the classic title Mario Hoops 3 on 3 Basketball. I feel it important to tell you this before getting into things so that you can have a full idea of the perspective i come at the game from.

This was chosen over Mario Odyssey and someone will probably kill me for that. I just think its a great emotional story that does a fantastic job of making you care for all the characters, and the world feels massive and full of cool stuff to see. It’s my favorite open world game and i love The Boys.  its not the kind of thing i usually play but i think it genuinely had a great story and its a very fun game to just explore and spend time in. ffxv truly understands the emotional bond between The Lads and it is fun to kill big monsters with your party

(they kinda ruin the last cutscene in english, in japanese he says I LOVE YOU GUYS and it makes me cry but in english he goes U GUYS ARE THE BEST which just isnt the same. a small nitpick though. a lot of this game made me cry regardless, its just great at creating an emotional bond)

I admire the insane level of ambition in the visuals and scope, and i bought every dlc for it because it was just that good. the ifrit boss fight and all the giant monsters are just amazingly epic in scale. the “found a cool rock” post is what i truly admire about this game summed up. 

all the ancillary material for the game is great and worth getting into, with the exception of the Comrades multiplayer expansion. Everything else adds depth to the story and the world without being entirely necessary for you to get through the story. the anime and the dlc all really feel worth getting into without being something you have to see to get The Full Experience

the giant monsters are cool

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game

Being from 2010 this game only just makes it in, but it was my favorite beat em up this decade and a source of great nostalgia for me. It had a pretty big impact on music and art tastes in regards to games, and in retrospect this games existence was very much a dream team scenario. Paul Robertson is a great sprite artist who does a lot of good work, Anamanaguchi have gone on to become one of my favorite bands (another winter is still one of their best tracks imo) and at the time this came out i was obsessed with scott pilgrim. That plus the beat em up gameplay makes this kind of a perfect blending of a lot of my specific tastes. Playing this brings me back to the time in my school life that i played it very distinctly, a more comfortable time in my life for sure, and i think the game still stands up excellently. I hope that someday it will get a rerelease so others can enjoy it. I give this another play through every year or so, but i wish id gotten the dlc while it was still available

Doom

ITS VIOLENT ITS FAST ITS FUN ITS METAL

i like this game because of the intense adrenaline rush and violent catharsis it gives me, essentially a constant dopamine rush

fun game good

Undertale

I’m glad i got to this before the massive wave of spoilers and popularity came about. It’s a great story with some fun gameplay, and i think SANS UNDERTALE was one of the best boss fights this decade. Its a shame that for so many new players this experience is going to be ruined by spoilers

Persona 5 

Danganronpa 2 and fallout new vegas were close contenders for this last spot. I actually made a post about my thoughts on this game before https://journaloftomfooleryandjapery.tumblr.com/post/184341270554/nue-is-great-love-his-goofy-design-when-life-will but essentially 

Essentially, its got a great cast of characters, a cool slick look, great monster designs, a fun gameplay loop of collecting monsters and grinding stats while waiting for the next big event, and a surprisingly good story

No idea if royal is any good, but its on a pretty small list of games that i might actually take the time to replay