Well, 2020 has certainly been… quite a year hasn’t it? I’ve done enough wallowing on the state of the world and the frankly troubling local government response to the pandemic in my country, so I won’t go on about that.
The Big Four:
2020 may have been quite a dreadful year generally speaking, but in terms of video games? It’s been nothing but pure wish fulfillment for me: two of my favorite games of all time were getting revamps (Final Fantasy VII, and Crusader Kings II), and Sucker Punch gave me the open-world game setting I’ve always dreamed of. My “constant” game also had a very strong year as well.
Last year, video games gave us the ability to connect to others despite the physical isolation — whether it’s through being on the same servers and playing the same games together, or having long conversations about them that last long into the night… a much-needed short respite from the chaos of everything going around us.
Here’s a look back at the ones that made the biggest impacts on me in the past year.
Final Fantasy XIV
Where else do I begin but my perennial game? In a year where I’ve not been able to see my friends face-to-face in nine months, where I’ve never been anywhere but home except for the office or the grocery store… through my Warrior of Light, I’ve gone through innumerable adventures, seen new locales, and made so many new connections with people across several different countries.
Eden’s Verse was the first time I stepped into Savage raiding — joining a static group with seven other people with the simple goal of clearing the tier was honestly one of the major things that kept me sane during the earlier, more worry-stricken months of the lockdown. The induced normalcy of having to stick to a schedule, the social interaction with other people while working towards a similar goal, overcoming challenges together… the trials, tribulations, and personal self-doubt I’ve had to face and overcome — it was invigorating, and I made a slew of new friends through it too.
As someone who’s played FFXIV for years but was always too scared to try Savage, I’ll always be thankful for my first static, I would’ve never grown so much as a player without them taking a chance and believing in me.
Patch 5.3 was also a phenomenal end to the Shadowbringers expansion— marking the second time this game has actually reduced me to tears. It hammers home, once again, that FFXIV stands tall in the Final Fantasy pantheon, not in spite of it being an MMO, but because it is an MMO. I played through the patch’s last trial (now my new favorite in the entire game) with a pre-made party of FC-mates, and was honestly overcome with such a wave of thankfulness and a profound feeling of belonging — in an especially isolating year, it was such a strong reminder that I wasn’t alone.
I kept it quiet in the Discord voice chat, but I was already tearing up through the fight.
Aside from all that, FFXIV let me express my creativity through housing builds (I managed to do fifteen different builds throughout the year!), let me hang out in Bozja and work together with a bunch of other people out in the world, attend weddings, parties, go to the beach with some IRL friends, and experience so many other community-driven events.
I don’t think I’ll ever be as thankful for a game as I am for FFXIV — it was exactly the game I needed for a year like 2020.
Ghost of Tsushima
I’ve already said my 4,500+ word-piece on Ghost of Tsushima, my personal 2020 Game of the Year, now also my favorite Sony exclusive, and favorite Open World game… but if I were to condense my thoughts on this game into a couple of paragraphs, it’d be this:
Ghost of Tsushima brought Open World into the next generation before next-gen even got here. It introduces subtle little tweaks to refresh a genre that’s been quite formulaic for a few years now — most notably, scaling down the navigational HUD and using innovative environmental design to augment traversal. If there’s one thing I want with all my heart for other games to follow, it’s doing away with the clunky top-bar compass we’ve been staring at since the Skyrim days.
This game is an amalgamation of everything I’ve ever wanted since I first played the original Assassin’s Creed and got taken on my first Open World adventure. Finally, a game set in Feudal Japan I could actually safely explore without getting killed every five minutes, breathtakingly arresting vistas, a polished and diverse combat system that is both fast-and-fluid yet thoughtful-and-methodical, a soundtrack that’s been stuck in my head since I’ve played the game, impeccable voice acting… and of course, the most nuanced narrative take on filial piety and loyalty and honor I’ve encountered in video games.
Ghost of Tsushima isn’t a perfect game, but it had an almost-uncanny pacing that felt like it was tailor-fit for me personally, and unlike most games of its ilk, doesn’t succumb to Open-World bloat and carries itself with so much polish — I honestly think it’s the pinnacle of the genre.
It has certainly earned its spot as one of my favorite games of all time, and I feel like I’ll be measuring every other game in the genre against it from here on out.
Crusader Kings III
I guess it’s no surprise that the game that dethrones Crusader Kings II as my favorite empire-building strategy game of all-time is its rightful heir: Crusader Kings III.
I’ve lost countless nights of sleep to the various games this genre, but none have held my attention quite as much as the Crusader Kings games, because they’re less of an “omniscient god meticulously overseeing the growth of his empire” and more of “how do I stop my extended relatives from taking over my kingdom and my children from starting civil wars after my death” — Crusader Kings is a dynasty simulator, with all the feasts, tournaments, hunting trips, grand conquests, politicking, scheming, assassinations, cults, and petty squabbling that entails.
The third game in the series improves and innovates from its predecessor, streamlining some of the more esoteric mechanics while introducing new ones into the fray, while staying true to the dynamic, character-centric systems we all know and love.
I’ve lost quite a few nights of sleep building up my perfect dynasty in the Kingdom of Novgorod, or trying to push the systems to its limits to see just how quickly a huge and powerful empire can be brought to its knees by multiple generations of inbreeding, debauchery and dreadful decisions.
CKIII also, thankfully, has a serviceable tutorial and less confounding UI, making it the most approachable game in the series for newcomers. Plus a thriving modding scene that extracts a few more hundred hours of play from an already beefy game.
Final Fantasy VII Remake
There was no other game I was looking forward to more than Final Fantasy VII Remake. The original, of course, was my favorite game of all time, occupying a space in my memories and my heart that no other game will probably ever be able to supplant — not even it’s Remake. I pre-ordered my Collector’s Edition almost a year early, as soon as it was announced for local retailers, and when said retailer confirmed the pandemic would cause my copy to arrive a month late, I’d gone and bought the digital version on PSN so I could play it on release anyway.
That night I experienced the most powerful rush of nostalgia I’d ever experienced in my life, I was almost tearing up at the title screen, with my hands shaking before I pressed the button to start — I knew that moment, this game would change how I, and everyone else, would view FFVII forever. It would no longer be a fine, unchanging crystallized memory, but be suddenly thrust into the zeitgeist once again, and newcomers to the game would only ever know the Remake’s version of events if they don’t go back to play the original.
The majority of the game was everything I could ever want from a Remake — this was the fully-realized Midgar I saw in my mind’s eye when I first played the original when I was fourteen, a beautiful, Mako-drenched city of technological advancement and simultaneous societal decay.
Here was my original Cloud: aloof, overconfident, and snarky, not yet weighed down by the failings of his past. Here was my original Tifa: shy and nurturing, yet badass and strong. Here was my original Aerith: brought to life in all her exhuberant, sassy, glory — not yet relegated to the perfect, demure, angelic plot device. Here was my original Barret: a conflicted leader, passionate and single-minded. These were the characters I knew and loved, the Midgar I knew and loved, all in glorious, wonderful, full-HD detail.
It felt almost like coming home.
Eventually though, the cracks begin to form — from pacing issues, a little too much padding, and the oncoming sense of dread as the Plot Device Dementors start showing up more and more frequently.
I realized, once I got to the Shinra Building, that it wasn’t really “coming home”, it was “visiting an old home after a very long time away” — like how it felt after moving back home after years away in college.
Things feel the same at it’s core, but on the surface, they’ve moved around, changed, and you don’t know where things are kept anymore. Here at the tail-end of the game it became more and more apparent: “Remake” didn’t really mean what we thought it did.
Twelve years was a long time to love a game — and I think I’ve formed too many expectations over what I wanted the Remake to become. And what arrived was so, so close to everything that I wanted that it kind of hurts even more at the end to find out that it… wasn’t.
After finishing the game I honestly couldn’t feel anything but apprehension. Yes, I loved most of it, but the sweeping implications in the closing hours left me feeling conflicted about the Remake as a whole. It felt like having the rug pulled out from under my feet, like maybe everything I loved most about this game — the doubts, and fears, and hard choices Cloud and his companions had to soldier through and keep going against… would be cast aside in favor of a destiny-centric, universe-shattering meta-narrative.
Cloud Strife’s personal Hero’s Journey is the thing I’ve attached myself to the most out of anything in fiction, one of the things that helped me get through some of my worst days. To see implications of that not panning out the way it did… well, I think I still haven’t really made my peace with that, even months later. I’ve mostly just stayed away from the Remake since I first finished it.
Objectively though, without all the strings I’ve ascribed to it aside, FFVII Remake is a good game — the soundtrack is amazing, the battle system is a fun and a great first attempt at hitting the sweet spot between the tactics of turn-based and the frenetic pacing of real-time action, and the characters and places are lovingly brought to life with the capabilities of current technology.
I just wish I wasn’t so fearful of where it looks like it’s headed.
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be proven wrong this much before. I will, of course, still see the game through to the end… I just… I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready to see something I’ve loved for so long be changed forever.
Special Mentions:
Despite spending most of my time in FFXIV and new releases, I was also able to play some games from the backlog, or revisit some games that released some new DLCs, so here are the most notable ones:
Red Dead Redemption 2
I played this behemoth of a game near the tail-end of strict lockdown and work starting back-up, so I was able to sink in and immerse into it during the first few tens of hours, and had to go much more slowly in the later ones, but RDR2 has retroactively become my GOTY for the stellar year of 2018 (supplanting my subjective GOTY, AC: Odyssey, and my objective GOTY, God of War) — RDR2 hits hard both in the gameplay and the feels department, even if Arthur controls like a sack of potatoes, the menus are a slog, the mission structure is so on-rails, and the combat feels more like an obstacle to the narrative than an enhancement… all of the flaws fade away because of how good the characters and some of the side-quests are, and how the world feels so alive.
Arthur Morgan is probably my second favorite videogame character of all time now, and his long redemption arc filled with many small moments, acts of kindness, and tough decisions all lead up to a wonderful crescendo.
Pillars of Eternity & Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
The Pillars of Eternity franchise is a lovingly-crafted homage to the Infinity Engine RPGs of old — sprawling worlds, deep lore, interesting characters, decisions that matter, and a lengthy, compelling adventure. It brings the genre that much closer to the modern mainstream while sticking to its roots just enough to keep things comfortably similar.
It will take quite some getting used to for newcomers to the genre, and a lot of reading, but I greatly enjoyed my 200+ hour romp through the first game and its sequel. I cared about the Eora and its inhabitants, about my decisions and how it would affect them, about my party and my crew… but most of all I’m thankful for Deadfire for daring to take a high-fantasy RPG somewhere that isn’t a vaguely Tolkien-esque Medieval Europe Amalgamation and exploring the themes and struggles of colonialism with some actual nuance.
Total War: Three Kingdoms
I finished campaigns for the Mandate of Heaven and A World Betrayed DLCs in 2020 (haven’t gotten around to doing a Furious Wild one yet unfortunately), but the revamps to old systems were definitely welcome — Sun Ce’s faction mechanics were fun and frenetic, forcing me to make some difficult decisions in desperation to keep him alive, while the rework for the bandit factions made me so intrigued that I restarted my Zheng Jiang campaign again from scratch. Multiple nights of sleep were lost to this game last year, and all of them were well worth it.
I’ll get to a Nanman playthrough soon for sure, after I work through a bit more of my backlog.
Foundation
I often lament how the Strategy/Simulator/City-Builder genre is often bereft of titles from the big developers and publishers, who stick to well-trodden franchises, so I often look to indies to provide the genre some much-needed innovation. Foundation, honestly, is now my second-favorite city-builder.
There’s an ease and calm in this game that makes it feel much more akin to diorama-building and aquascaping than balancing spreadsheets and being an omniscient god. Yes, it’s still about managing resources and conscientious expansion, but Foundation allows for cities to be built free from the constricting grid of most other games in the genre, allowing for your little hamlets to grow into bustling towns organically with your populace free to make their own paths and build their homes on their own, giving you just enough control and allowing for creative freedom to have room alongside the macro-scale medieval life management.
Anno 1800
On the other end of the city-builder spectrum is Anno 1800. I’ve wanted to play this game since it came out, but I didn’t cave into installing a Ubisoft launcher until last year.
Anno 1800 is all about meticulous efficiency and keeping production chains on track. It’s fun in the opposite way Foundation is, less about expression, more about logistics and management. There’s a lot of things to keep track of and the scale and complexity grows as you go through the campaign, but there’s plenty of fun to be had here — and multiplayer quite enjoyable with the right kind of friends along too.
Hitman 2
I’ve always really preferred a stealthy approach to combat encounters, so the Hitman series has always been a gameplay playground for me. Hitman 2 also goes to a lot of locations I wish more games deigned to visit, so it was a pretty solid experience all-in-all. The story’s not exactly very memorable, but the game was quite fun and can be experienced in quick pick-up-and-play sessions, with tons of replayability and room for experimentation. Definitely my go-to franchise for when I get a stealth itch.
Hades
The smash hit from Supergiant is only in “special mentions” because personally, the roguelike/roguelite genre just isn’t for me. The writing in this game is impeccable, the characters are a menagerie of colorful personalities, the soundtrack is heart-pumping, the gameplay is crisp and precise, and the art direction is very strong.
It’s definitely an easy recommend for fans of the genre, but the frantic, mechanical-skill-heavy, “try and try again” design of games in this genre just isn’t for me. Hades was, however, the deepest any game of this kind was able to get its hooks on me.
State of Decay 2
State of Decay 2 is personally my favorite zombie game — sure, it’s light on story, combat is a little clunky, and all the systems could be deeper, but at its core, it’s more a colony-survival game than a typical zombie shooter or horror game. It’s not exactly mind-blowing or very innovative, but it is a better game than it’s predecessor, and was quite fun for the week I got into it.
Hopefully it earns a third game, and the devs can go even deeper into colony simulation systems, improving character AI, and thinking of more interesting scenarios.
Wildermyth
Another indie gem I got into this year was Wildermyth — it’s an isometric, procedurally-generated tactical RPG, with a charming papercraft-ey art style. It definitely scratched the D&D itch I had somewhere in the middle of lockdown. Choices matter, characters age, things change, and there’s enough variety for quite a decent amount of decision outcomes, character builds, and gameplay options.
It’s also less unwieldy than a classic, sprawling 60+ hour RPG, doling out shorter, more varied adventures you can finish in a few hours.
It’s still in early access, but it is really quite promising.
So yeah, 2020 may have been one hell of a year… but at least we did get some stellar games to help us through it.
I make a short rundown of games I enjoy every year, but last year’s games felt more like lifelines than they usually do, and I’m more thankful for them than I’ve ever been.
Thank you, devs, for creating video games. And thank you to everyone that I was able to play a game with last year too. You all made 2020 even a little brighter.
