30. Mega Man Zero (GBA, 2002 (via Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, 2020))
I played all four Zero games this year, and they’ll appear pretty spaced out in this list. Bringing up the rear is the original, which is probably additionally the worst game I’ve played in a while. The seeds of what the series became are here, to be sure, but it’s utterly plagued by technical flaws that make it intermittently miserable and just kinda okay as a playthrough. In particular the uneven difficulty and screen crunch issues are a hard thing to forgive: the bomb disarming mission is something I can’t imagine playing if you didn’t have all the cheats provided by the Legacy Collection (/emulators).
4/10
29. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond (Switch, 2021)
I played a wild amount of Pokemon this year, and this one brings up the rear. Just an utterly uninspiring remake, easily the least interesting or improved they’ve ever done (which is like… five of them!). There’s nothing actually, technically wrong with it even, just… there’s nothing to hang your hat on. There’s just no good reason to play this instead of breaking out Platinum, but it’s also like… not a BAD game so… here we are.
6/10
28. Pokemon Ultra Sun (3DS, 2017)
Revisiting Gen 7 was neat, because I’d forgotten most of it, but also I can’t be sure in some cases what was changed for Ultra and what was native to Gen 7 generally. Truthfully the main thing I actually noticed was that I extremely prioritized multi target moves in this, because holy shit the slowdown that hits when a battle is more than 1v1. Otherwise I know this is missing a few touches that were cool in the original Sun/Moon, which is a shame, but it’s still alright.
6/10
27. Mega Man X (SNES, 1994 (via Mega Man X Legacy Collection, 2018)
What I remember most about MMX is not the opening stage (although yeah, I get it) but more the interesting way the upgrades work. Because I played this after MMZ, I was used to having the dash, but MMX1 (uniquely among MMX) does not start you off with the dash. And it’s interesting because it actually feeds into the narrative of the game too: MMX could be played like a classic Mega Man game, and it’d be balls hard but plausible. But by making that core mechanic an upgrade, they (probably accidentally) instead added a lot to the arc of X being an evolution of the classic bot, someone who starts with the same skills dropped into a more advanced environment, but able to advance himself in order to catch up with, and eventually surpass, his foes. It’s pretty cool.
Game as a whole is… it shows its age, especially playing a bunch of other similar but later made games in the same month or so stretch, but I get why this rocked people’s worlds back in the day too, and why people who know it more intimately can replay it endlessly.
6/10
26. Mega Man Zero 2 (GBA, 2003 (via Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, 2020))
Fundamentally this is an updated MMZ1 that’s figured out how better to color within the GBA’s lines while continuing the story. And really that’s actually the most fascinating bit of MMZ, because it is actually genuinely good at looking at the Mega Man timeline and injecting this corner of it with pathos. Unfortunately there just isn’t that much else going on here, so it’s kinda a bit nothing as a game overall, but you can see the series starting to take shape. But it must have been something else playing this thing on original hardware.
6/10
25. Ys: The Oath in Felghana (PSP, 2010)
Knowing this is a remake, and seemingly a fairly faithful one, makes it interesting to think about. I think the engine they rebuilt it in is a very distinct flavor of action RPG, highly focused on aggro play, but the bosses and power up retain a distinctly Zelda-like feel that require slowing down way more than moment to moment play would lead you to. It’s not a flaw exactly, but it does give the game a weird sense of internal tension, which compounds the fact that one mode of play is a lot more fun than the other to me.
6/10
24. Transformers Devastation (PS4, 2015)
I have to admit I’m not sure what to say about this one. It’s just… y’know it exists. It’s just trying to bring a little Platinum type flair to Transformers and mostly it works. It’s very weirdly structured, like at some point it was a much longer game, but on the other hand I’m not entirely sure it could have sustained a longer campaign really so who knows. But what it goes really, really well is be a great nostalgia bomb, really nailing the vibe of what that era of Transformers could be in little bits once in a while for an entire game.
6/10
23. Mega Man X4 (PS1, 1997 (via Mega Man X Legacy Collection, 2018))
I probably shorted my understanding of the game by only playing Zero’s route, but on the other hand it was kinda wild to play this game with him with the same basic tool assists I played MMZ with and just crushing it. There was nothing left, game melts before the might of those combos. Anyways skipping straight from MMX1 to 4 definitely was a whole thing because yeah, the series really found its own vibe and aesthetic in that interval. But yeah, playing this I definitely get why Zero was the one that got spun off here, he’s fun and he makes for a much more interesting contrast when dumped into a new setting than X would.
6/10
22. Fuga: Melodies of Steel (Switch, 2021)
I feel a little bad about putting Fuga so low actually, it’s very unique and I think most people should give it a shot. But it doesn’t fully click for me. Partly this is just on me, the way it asks you to strategize involves a lot more playing around with the PCs and finding out what the statuses do than I normally indulge in for this kinda game, and partly the game being just kinda flabby in the middle. Where it’s strongest is in the overall tone and aesthetic and the mood it sets, and the extended period in the middle chapters where you fight a Doberman of the week and recruit a new PC just kinda strings that along without really building very well on what came before. Once the plot comes back around I appreciate the twist, even if perhaps it’s laid on a bit thick, but there’s definitely a wait there.
6/10
21. Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky (PS3, 2014)
I have to admit I just don’t remember much of nothing about Escha & Logy all these months later. I remember feeling like the cozy work comedy was a bit at odds with the Dusk setting, and it was sorta funny that Escha’s tail accessory was alive, and that it was really weird the game kinda vaguely shipped Escha and Logy at the end. Yeah. I know this was very typical Atelier which goes roughly here and that’s… about it! Sorry.
6/10
20. Atelier Shallie: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea (PS3, 2015)
Shallie tries to find the tone balance between Ayesha and Escha & Logy and… I guess. The Dusk trilogy overall kinda peaked early, but there’s nothing especially objectionable in Shallie. It just lacks any real hook to call its own. The combat manages a pretty good balance for 95% of the game, only to just turn to bullshit against the final bosses where I don’t *get* what you’re supposed to do to get strong enough to overcome that thing’s regen.
6/10
19. Mega Man Zero 4 (GBA, 2005 (via Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, 2020))
I admit I may have just been a bit burned out from too much Mega Man playing this one, but it is a bit of a step down after 3 which played a part. Z4 is the only of the Z games to really feel like a sequel in terms of introducing new mechanics or changing up the old and fundamentally changing the scenario up somewhat. And in terms of being a good followup to Z3 and making it feel distinct but also feel like a good finale to the series, it does all of that very well. But the new mechanics… exist. I’m also glad I wasn’t playing honestly because engaging properly with the new upgrade system, where you have to farm scrap from enemies and forge the upgrades? Nah. It’s still more refined on a core control and stage design level than the first two, hence its spot here, but it’s overall just kinda a decent, but not amazing, game.
7/10
18. This Way Madness Lies (Steam, 2022)
Shiny new Zeboyd game! So there’s not really as much of a joke underwriting this one as the Cthulhu games, but I do think the banter is a bit better than some other of their games so that’s neat. The gameplay is still iterating on the basic system from Cosmic Star Heroine, which works pretty well overall. I do think the more restrictive party choice and being a bit more on-rails with the dungeons blunts a bit of that system at times, because you don’t really get many opportunities to play around and learn how different PCs synergize together, rather than how to make their skillsets synergize with themselves. Still, overall a pretty good time.
7/10
17. Radical Dreamers (via Chrono Cross Radical Dreamers Edition, Switch, 2022)
Holy shit, guys, CHRONO CROSS MAKES SENSE NOW. It’s all like, quantum, multiple choice past, the present is fixed, the endings are written before the rest of the story, but the past changes based on what is necessary for the next plot beat to play out. Is Gil Magus? Sometimes! Others he’s an agent of death, others he’s Riddel’s childhood crush, others still he’s a comedic prop.
Okay back to this actual video game I actually played. You can tell this is actually a 1995 SNES Satelleview game with some lightly updated fonts and backgrounds, but what’s here works really well within that. You’re meant to download it, blast through an ending or two, then try and collect them all before the game ends its transmission period (whatever that would have been back in the day). You can kinda tell its origins as something the CT team made to blow off steam and let ideas run while and as simple and repetitive as it can be because of that, its willingness to go off the rails is a lot of fun.
It’s not the best game I played this year, as the number up there indicates, but it’s the one that had the most catharsis in a weird way. 7/10
16. Cthulhu Saves Christmas (Steam, 2019)
This might be my favorite Zeboyd game that’s purely theirs. I think having a smaller cast was a boon for the CSH style of abilities, and the much more focused riffing on Persona gives the comedy a lot more structure than the little bit of everything most of their other work goes for. The pun game is also really chef’s kiss here. I have to admit I don’t remember any of the like… bosses or other gameplay specifics at this point, but I so vividly remember just really having a lovely and chuckle-filled afternoon with this that this still feels about right at the middle of the list.
7/10
15. Pokemon Scarlet (Switch, 2022)
It is a crying shame that this game was released 6 months before it was ready because I really like the overall structure, plot, and vibe of this, more than I’ve liked a mainline Gen game since… fuck, at least XY, and that had a different set of issues. But yeah, I could absolutely nitpick about stuff (I wish they’d implemented badge-based level scaling for the gym leaders, the Team Star bases could use some work, I wish there was better mapping for underground regions) but it feels kinda irrelevant because I just love that there’s so much to do and a good variety of stuff going on. Unfortunately as noted any praise for this game really does have to be tempered by the unacceptable state it was in on release: I started this game up when the first patch dropped, and it still has some slowdown in battles if there’s background elements like weather, the way it handles npcs/out of battle pokemon during battles is awkward, and the stop motion animation they used for “background” npcs is just comically overdone, you have to be right up in something’s face for them to animate right. Like I am not one to care about how pretty something is, but… look, when you aren’t trying to run the prettiest game in the room, the reason you do that is because you’re prioritizing performance, as well you should! So to do that and still get just a mess in terms of running smoothly and swiftly, what are we doing here y’all?
But still? 8/10
14. Planescape Torment (Switch, 1999)
This didn’t hit quite like it might have a couple years ago, both because of the fall from grace of its primary creator and because I played it a few months after a game directly inspired by it that smoothed out so many of its rough edges it’s not funny. But on the other hand, I enjoyed it a lot MORE than I would have in 2007 when strangers from the internet shoved a pile of install discs into my hand so who’s to say if my timing is good or bad.
Okay so like… fundamentally this game is not well designed. It has about 100% more combat than it should, there’s just no middle ground between “an interesting build to play the game and get the most out of it” and “enjoyable combat”, you swing wildly from constant deathly struggle to ‘lol cloudkill’. The loss of the entire party for the final segment makes the whole affair a complete slog. There is so much stuff that could smooth out combat a LITTLE that’s just utterly missable.
But when the game DOES work, damn y’all. The world is so willing to just be weird and lovely and to be hostile but only on the surface. Once someone tells you how to play the game right, the capacity to just talk your way out of every problem and charm your across the planes trying to do good is neat. The game is so willing to ask a question and just… let it hang. I do wish it was a little better at drawing your attention to some stuff, because a lot of things are simply described via text and the display for text is tiny, but yeah.
8/10
13. Super Robot Wars X (Switch, 2018)
I watched a whole buncha anime because I’d decided to play this and wanted to prepare, and have a few more on deck because they got nice shiny new releases after that point. I am watching perhaps too much mech anime now, is what I’m saying.
Anyway at some level I find it hard to compare SRW to anything but other SRW. Like… it’s a strategy game, with a little RPG to it, and it hands me giant robots that punch armies to death in a giant chain. X, within that intra-series comparison, has an uncommonly strong Original plot. Good build up, good series choice to compliment it, and a really nicely handled twist with Spero. Still not as good as T which… is kinda becoming my platonic ideal of SRW as I play more of them, but still.
8/10
12. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge (Switch, 2022)
Y’all, this game has such a sublime blend of simplicity and creating the feel that you’re doing something complex. Like I assume I’m bad at the game because I am bad at most video games, but I was still able to play April the whole game and do like a ground to air to ground combo that was satisfying and effective. There’s multiple sets of collectibles, but the way they’re spaced out makes it pretty clear where you missed them so you can easily pick them up. The designs are evocative of the first cartoon but have a lot more personality and manage to make all the characters look like they can fight even if they aren’t the main four. But yeah like… if you have ever at any time had any affection for brawlers I have to recommend this.
8/10
11. Mega Man Zero 3 (GBA, 2004 (via Mega Man Zero/ZX Legacy Collection, 2020))
Mega Man Zero in general has a very consistent tone, vibe, and way of telling its story across the four games, but it’s easiest to talk about that in 3. There is another game after this, but as noted earlier it’s much more of a proper sequel that happens after a pause in the action and a shift in where the story is going. Zero 3 meanwhile is bringing home the plot of the first two, where one scared, determined girl who made an innocent but crucial mistake tries to save people who aren’t even of her race from annihilation by seeking out a legendary hero and miraculously finding him. People often talk about how games of the 16 bit era were good at telling complex stories with a minimum of dialog, but I find that most of the cited examples of this don’t actually deliver. Being made a generation later though, the Zero series really brings it home, and the implications and relationships that are in many ways brought to a conclusion in Zero 3 stuck with me for quite a while after I wrapped it up. And of course, Zero himself really concludes his character arc from the X series here. I honestly kinda wish the last phase of the final boss was its own stage/check point, because it’s clearly an intensely complex fight that I wish I could tackle fresh and really learn its nuances, rather than… y’know burning all my healing elves because I just came off two other bosses, one of which is pretty meaty in its own right.
8/10
10. Meta Gear Rising: Revengeance (PS3, 2013)
The end of this game is so fucking memorable and memeable and just truly a little delight. The parts before that are… there’s good stuff but it’s kinda just there really? But yeah as a video game MGR is pretty good but as an experience there IS a reason the game keeps coming back around every year or three to remind everyone what a prophet Kojima is. I dunno if I have deeper thoughts though oddly, considering how many I burned on Mega Man Plot, but here we are.
8/10
9. Deltarune Chapter 2 (PC, 2021)
Oof, I played Deltarune chapter 2 11 months ago and I’m confident on its placement but not on what happened in it now. Oh, wait, no, now I remember. It taught me that Toby Fox thinks all dinosaurs are gay (he is correct), that Noelle is goals, and that I look forward to just spending more time with the cast more than really seeing how this plot plays out at this point. Suzie goes from a particularly blatant bully to clearly coming around in the first chapter to just starting off as The Best here in chapter 2. And right now, at this early point in the game, that’s the main take away, because so far the chapter ending swerves do kinda feel intended as cliffhangers first and foremost, which… yeah I dunno, I am not truly hooked by that, but since I’m already on board it doesn’t matter much.
8/10
8. Pokémon Legends Arceus (Switch, 2022)
I’m not entirely sure how I ended up playing so much Pokémon this year, aside from the cursed death march that Game Freak has been placed on. But overall this is probably the single best Pokémon game ever released. Still flawed, and I’m not sure a direct followup would be able to address some of the flaws here, but the added dimension that stalking and catching wild ‘mons without having to always resort to battle is something the series has needed for a while. The overall flow of the story and gameplay is really nice, but because of the changes in the battle system fighting other trainers is a bit of a chore. The game is intensely rocket-tag oriented so they tend to turn into a series of revenge kills, which is a bit of a mood killer. The flip side though is against wild Pokémon or the major battles the speed of the system is a big boon, so I’m not sure how entirely to refine this in a potential sequel. Though of course they could add a toned down version of the catching mechanics of course. Actually I’m surprised that Gen 9 didn’t. I’ll blame the death march release schedule.
8/10
7. Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes (Switch, 2022)
I’m pretty sure the writers were following the Twitter discourse for Three Houses very closely, and put a lot of thought into how to best tell all the Edelgard haters they were wrong and state plainly all the things her fans noticed in the margins by digging through supports and question box responses.
Cheek aside I should note that I’ve only played Scarlet Blaze, so the most significant new and different story beats are mostly stuff I didn’t see because it’s in Golden Wildfire. Within what I did play this is still quite a good game. A bit of a repetition of stuff I’d learned from the first, but the new way the story unfolds has some nice parts, and while I’m not sure how much I want to have a bunch of 45 hour musou story routes (hence why I’ve only played one route so far) it’s a breezy enough play. Obviously the biggest draw is Shez, and while their personal plot is kinda… there, they do bring a lot to the table as a different sort of sounding board from Team Therapist Byleth. Like, yeah, this absolute dumbass brings a lot of fun dynamics out of the rest of the cast, and honestly the biggest disappointment is I do feel like Byleth kinda gets left in the cold in the process. Which makes sense from a production standpoint (every Byleth line has to be paid for twice after all) but I do kinda miss their post-teaching personality quirks. But yeah, what’s in the game is all very good, if not quite so good as (and very dependent upon) Three Houses proper.
8/10
6. Disco Elysium: The Final Cut (Switch, 2021)
What to say about Sam Vimes Simulator this time I wonder. At some level this is the one I had the most trouble placing, because I feel like I’m looking more at its overall quality here than how much I, personally, enjoyed playing it. Playing Torment later in the year helped some, because seeing that direct line of inspiration helped make sense of some of its choices in the design. Most choices not being final, being able to play more freely with your skill distribution, seeing what skills you’re rolling for even the most unlikely outcomes so you can decide if it’s worth the risk or perhaps to build up skills and try again later, that stuff all makes perfect sense as a proper evolution of the sort of game those late 90s/early 00s RPGs were doing. And similarly knowing its inspirations, the shift from alignment to ideology having a big impact on what the Detective will and won’t do is a really neat update. I also appreciate a lot how the tone is balanced. Disco Elysium is very melancholic, with a pervasive air of failure over almost everything. Everyone, all of Revachol, has been defeated and has fucked up a lot, the Detective most of all. Maybe fucked up too much to ever truly recover. But despite that, the world is still full of beauty, and connection, and impossible things, so perhaps things needn’t always be so defeated and doomed to fail.
Which does highlight some of the weirder choices in the game. Like, having the option to adopt Fascism makes sense as a counterpart to earlier games letting you be Chaotic Evil, but dedicating real effort to having the Detective adopt Measurehead’s bizarre racism along the way and insult all his closest allies in the process… why spend effort that way. For all the doomed causes you can fight for, why can’t I push back more against the other cops bitching about me letting Klaasje go (read: not getting her killed). It’s not like… a crippling flaw just… it raises the kind of questions that take you out of the experience just a little bit, and that can make you a bit more clinical in assessing a game like this. Everything people say about Disco Elysium is true just… yeah, it’s only pretty good for me.
8/10
5. Get in the Car, Loser! (Steam, 2021)
I got thinking about something the other day and this game is a good opportunity to build on it. Chapter 3 of the game has Sam retreating into her own head, meaning that in between combat everything is her own internal monologue, by which I mean a litany of her anxieties about being a trans woman who feels unworthy of affection and her own femininity, let alone to be included on this world-saving quest. And y’know it hits hard and is real and resonant and it makes sense for Sam to be preoccupied with that sorta thing both in this situation and at this point in the story. Girl is a complete disaster.
But it’s also just… not really what the game is best at and what the story as a whole is about? Get in the Car, Loser! is tremendously focused on fighting the small battles, not leaving people behind because you have to trust in the process and let fate play out. And while I don’t doubt that these are thoughts Love has dealt with in her own life, sitting with it there’s also something… kinda obligatory about it. Can’t have a queer focused game about queer life and queer joy that doesn’t also stop dead to being raw and real and show you how hard it can be to be a queer person doncha know. Like… so much of this game is the cast finding those little reminders of the damage the Machine Devil is doing already, now, before it’s even achieved a fraction of its true strength. It’s why we’ve stolen the sword of legend and gone to fight afterall. But still gotta have a solid chunk of the game that is just the “real” stuff.
But honestly that’s partly just the last 11 months of sitting with it and seeing the world around me discourse and converse about other art entirely. Like, nobody played this and presumably no one will based on my recommendation, but having this game which is so focused on living and joy still have to stop dead because art gotta be painful sometimes? It’s just this nagging thing in a game that’s otherwise really well balanced. And even then… yeah it is still a shot of verisimilitude into the game, I can’t just knock on it entirely.
8/10
4. Tales of Xillia 2 (PS3, 2014)
ToX2 has a pile of structural flaws that mostly stem from what I have to think is insecurity about its status as an asset-reuse based sequel. Well, that and being a Tales game therefor obligated to have a terrible and soul-crushing final dungeon. But everything else really seizes on the chance to build on what ToX had, and across the board there’s just so much to like there. The entire cast benefits from being able to start fresh character arcs, either because their original outings were unimpressive or because the original game didn’t make much space for them and this game, being more character focused, did. But most of all they created a good kid character and did a good job building out the relationship between her and the lead, meaning all the places the story needs you to go later feel natural. Of course Victor does the things he does, and of course the game’s endings are what they are. But most of all I have to praise chapter 12, which is possibly the best depiction of grief I’ve ever seen in a video game, and certainly the best Tales has ever pulled off. Honestly the rest of the game has all the strengths and flaws of any Tales game, but that scene pretty much by itself put it real far up the list.
8/10
3. Live a Live (Switch, 2022)
I have to admit that at some level, what’s doing it for me with Live a Live remake is just… being this Yoko Shimomura soundtrack I’d only ever heard in passing, getting to hear so much mostly-unfamiliar stuff from her in a new context is a big value unto itself. But even without that there’s just… a lot of little moments that come along frequently to always keep you invested and open to new and different emotions. You could probably argue that the individual stories being very of their genre is a knock but… kinda a half-truth I’d say? Like, about half the stories are pretty basic, but the other half have a bit more going on that they strictly had to in order to fit into the genre-based micro-stories. All of which softens you up for the ending, which really just does everything right. They even made a new song! It’s good stuff.
9/10
2. The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero (Switch, 2022)
Zero, much like the previous entry, is very good at maintain a steady stream of emotional beats to keep you in the mindset the game is going for. It has two core advantages, wildly divergent ones funny enough: as part of a long-running series, it can build on previously earned emotional beats, and simultaneously as a more cinematically minded game it can spend a lot more time building up a particular mood when it wants to change gears. Trails from Zero gets to do all kinds of cheating by making Renne a major supporting character, able to expand upon the backstory already laid out for her as well as tying current events and the backgrounds of new characters into it. Which isn’t to diminish those new elements: Tio is great (and also one of the most strongly neuro-divergent coded characters I’ve ever seen, which is cool) and the aspect of the Tragic Backstory she draws from has a lot of different facets from the ones Renne’s does.
Meanwhile the way the game handles the slow burn reveal of how deep the conspiracy goes (not that it actually gets to the bottom! But you wouldn’t know how much deeper it is from the way the ending plays out) then shifts gears to the tension of trying to beat back, escape, then decapitate the forces sent against you is something else. As hinted at, Zero also has the benefit of being a very complete game in itself that just leaves plenty of space to expand, rather than the normal Trails thing of injecting a catastrophic cliffhanger at the very end of part 1 of a set. It’s also a clear jumping on point despite some of its best scenes calling back to older characters, so you can see why this tends to get a lot of added praise in the series rankings. Overall well-deserved too, for whatever that’s worth to people.
9/10
1. NieR Automata (PS4, 2017)
I feel like I’ve told pieces of this story, but not the whole story. This one will get a Content Warning for Suicide, although in fairness so does NieR Automata so y’know.
I actually started playing Automata when it came out, seeing as I’d previously played NieR and Automata by most counts was even better and certainly played even harder into my personal biases. Gimme them robots. But that means I was playing it in mid-2017, and I was severely not okay in mid-2017. Like, okay. I spent most of my adult life with very low key suicidal ideation. Just, y’know, you walk down the street and think how actually, nothing’s really stopping you from stepping out into traffic, and really probably that might be better? But eh, you can’t know for sure, best not to dwell on it. Everyone thinks that way sometimes, surely.
(I would only learn much later they do not. One problem was, every friend I was close enough with to talk to in a serious and emotional manner also dealt with either similar issues to myself, or with cPTSD. Hurray sampling biases!)
The period from mid-2017 to late July 2018 was not that. It was much more in the vein of “I had to stay late at work and spent two hours telling myself I should scope out trees I can crash into on the way home that would do me in”, crossing from what I tend to describe as passive ideation to the planning stage. Or just the random, if deniable, urge to do violence to myself on the spot, usually involving kitchen knives.
Back to this fun video game, the so in mid-2017 I played through the A route of Automata. However, at the tail end of that route the game delves into religiosity and cult behavior (if you just… don’t know anything about NieR Automata, you fight a lot of cute murder robots that are also all trying to crack philosophical concepts, and late in the first route you find the ones that were trying to invent religion). And while plenty of them just try to kill you, the ones that retain their senses instead try to follow through on their cult’s teachings and Become As Gods. They throw themselves into smelters, impale themselves on their swords, they talk to one another about how scared they are of this process in the background.
On sheer momentum I finished this part of the game, because it was the start of a play session and there’s seriously maybe 45 minutes of boss fighting after you get out of that factory. And then I had to STOP. I was NOT OKAY. Now, in part yeah, I knew the game got more personal and kept up similar themes after that, so this was partly precautionary, but… yeah, I just Could Not at that time. So, a year and change after that I did clear that problem right up because turns out most of my depression expression was tied up in Gender stuff and oh, well fuck that got way easier to deal with as Gender was dealt with. But life happens, and then I loaned out my PS4 for a while, and of course the Plague got us all fucked up, so it just sat on a shelf for a few years until I went “y’know what I played like half this game, let’s get it done dangit”.
So I don’t think anything in B route or the endgame hits in quite the same manner as Become as Gods, but in a lot of ways that’s to its benefit. The downbeat portions are more personal and have more texture because they’re tied up in the character drama, and the game is more clearly setting up for its final thesis by then. And even setting aside just… the way bittersweet endings of trying to make a difference, only to have the trauma that inflicted cause the 9S (I mean lots of characters, but let’s be real it’s 9S) to piss on that and instead keep digging further into the hole? NieR Automata in the end is just screaming that in spite of everything, all of this does matter, that there is a way to give yourself a chance, that the impact you have can be reciprocated. I can’t think of many endings of anything I’ve ever seen that hits quite the same way as those opening notes of Weight of the World in Ending E. It’s so rare for endings to be the best part of a video game, because endings are hard, but… here we are.
I wish that someway somehow, that I could save every one of us, but the truth is that I’m only one girl.
9/10
