Mario Odyssey was a treat, and it's the most... ambitious and fresh game to be for Switch. But if it wasn't for its story it honestly felt like one step forward and two steps backwards after Galaxy 1 and 2. There were moons EVERYWHERE, and 999 total. At some point it became such a commodity that any sense of discovery or reward was lost on me. But the story is charming as hell and that's the biggest, ballsiest thing they've done with Mario since Thousand Year Door.
I think my clear favorite must be Three Houses. I've played the 3DS games and I expected that but worse... and at first I did not like how they seemed to have market-researched and directed the game to become more like Persona for its popularity... but in effect it was great. It was especially great because whoever writers were hired into Intelligent Systems or maybe they came from Koei Tecmo (the co-developer), they're fucking great. It's not perfect writing as there are some big questionable moments in every campaign of the story, but it's not the absolute dumpster-fire that the recent new games were (Echoes doesn't count, it's a remake). The story and characterization in both Awakening and Fates (all 3 campaigns) was pathetic, and yet, I found myself guessing along with Three Houses' mystery and rooting for characters I wanted to be good guys and do the right thing, and my friends as I cheered them up in the deepened support scenes.
It was just great, and it was unexpected for something still so formulaic, after all, to turn into such an enjoyable game that marries the best of both worlds, both FE and Persona. And I still can't believe my first campaign took me 80 hours and the 2 I'm missing (technically 3 but who cares) are equally long and at least 50% of them is basically unique content.
You just get an insane value and quality out of Three Houses, and it does my favorite thing a video game can do: It gives me characters I want to see return in new games, doesn't matter what but I cared.
Runner ups:
- Astral Chain: Love its early-game, but at a certain point you realize it's going to not switch things up enough, and that it isn't really following a particularly dramatic storytelling structure.
- Breath of the Wild: I mean, it's kind of a Wii U game anyway, but I'm looking for the next 'Ocarina of Time' and this goes clearly in the other direction. I used to come out of a Zelda talking about the great dungeons and great bosses. Whatever fun I had with the "make your own fun" type open world, it just doesn't even come close to the unique and constantly changing experiences you would've had ina normally structured Zelda title, so after 100 hours I beat Ganon and just said, "it's alright." But it's still 100 hours, it does have enough 'Zelda' to satisfy some of that Zelda itch, but it also felt more like a bigger brother for those DS Zeldas (not ALBW, the DS ones) than a bigger brother to say, Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time. I mostly blame the lack of environmental/enemy variety, and how overworld puzzles all act as introductory puzzles for Shrines. All in all, it's a good game, and gives a ton of value, and replay value, but it's not enough so that it becomes the big favorite.
On hold: Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I'm still torn on whether it's going to be that sense of ever-growing, immersive and pointless but jolly system app, or if at some point I hit some endgame and it gives me a laundry list of materials to grind. The early hours of this particular entry was rough and too demanding, to the point where, at my pace, I did not hear the signature hourly tunes for 2 weeks, but
time is the big factor about Animal Crossing so I cannot say how I really feel yet.
