What was your favorite 'new to you' game of last year?

Alex_Among_Foxes

Alex_Among_Foxes

A lover of Foxes
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    As the title says, I want to know what people's favorite game of last year was that they only first started playing in 2024. To make absolutely sure I'm being fully clear, the game could have been made the same year, in the 90s, heck it could be PONG if you liked it the most. Just as long as you hadn't ever played it yourself any years prior.

    Mine was Mother 3. A series I'd had no real understanding of going into it (beyond the characters in Smash Bros.), but I found myself enjoying pretty much everything about it from the story, to the characters, to the odd way combat was handled. But I think my favorite thing about it by far was the game's story. Which felt even better for me because I was given the option to name every major charactor, something I don't see in games like it too often anymore. It will always hold a special spot in my heart for that...

    Looking forward to seeing what everyone else's game was!
     
    I was never a Tekken person in general, so I did not expect to sink hundreds of hours in Tekken 8 when it came out last year.
    It got to the point where I was able to beat people who have been playing this series their entire life.
     
    It was technically started in the last few days of 2023, but I consider Rebel Galaxy Outlaw a 2024 game because 99% of my playtime was in that year, so it's my pick. If you've ever played Wing Commander: Privateer, it's an amazing spiritual successor to that game.

    I didn't play a lot of new games last year, though. Most of my time was taken up by replaying familiar games.
     
    Stardew Valley. Gave it a shot because of Archipelago. Liked games such as Friends of Mineral Town and Rune Factory 4 Special. Fit the right aesthetic.

    Offered a good amount of depth, thanks to all the years of updates. Typically considers it a good sign when you are thinking about the game and your next steps when not playing. Vaguely remembers planning to do something every day until...Fall?

    Ended up being a good Archipelago game too, if a little long. Solves some of that with settings, however.
     
    [PokeCommunity.com] What was your favorite 'new to you' game of last year?

    I love this idea as a thread! I do this every year, I keep track of everything I play and then pick one game/anime/manga that was my favourite, as long as it's the first time I've ever experienced it. Like a "game of the year" but it doesn't have to just be released in that year.

    My pick for last year's was The Messenger! Sea of Stars was my game of the year for 2023, and The Messenger is a pseudo-sequel made by the same developers. Different genre, but takes place in the same universe several years later. At first it was a lot of fun with how fast and fluid the movement was, and by the end of it I really enjoyed where the twists of the game led me and I didn't expect it to scratch an itch for the kind of game I've wanted for years. It was an extra treat to learn that it had a free DLC episode after the main story as well, and that unlocked a mode where you have triple the health and deal triple the damage, but if you die you go all the way back to the beginning. I think it says a lot about how much I enjoyed it that I wanted to give that a shot, and made it through an entire halfway through the game in one run.

    Like with Devalue I got a lot of appreciation for it because of playing it in Archipelagos, a lot of the levels and the way the game is structured makes it feel perfectly designed even when you're going through entire levels backwards. In an Archipelago setting it's very guilty of having a few specific items that you're depending on for most of your checks, but there were a lot of fun and interesting moments where I worked out more complicated scenarios to get items early without the necessary upgrades, and it never felt like it wasn't intended by the developers, just that they were really hard to accomplish.

    Other honorable mentions included Persona 4 Golden, Astro Bot, Final Fantasy 1, and of course FFXIV Dawntrail, which I felt it'd be cheating to pick, haha.
     
    Granblue Fantasy Relink had to be my game of the year as the only game I started and completed the main campaign, I will continue the post game once I have a working gaming handheld pc. That was a new franchise I never played and it was a blast. As for something else that was a first was playing a Lego Horizons game, one of my fave franchises envisioned in a whole new concept. I forgot most of what I bought the first time last year besides these two. If a similar thread is posted next year, I definitely will have firsts as there are games coming out on pc this year that are brand new games to me.
     
    Of the three JRPGs I started last year, Unicorn Overlord gets my vote for the best of them. Tokyo Xanadu eX comes a close second, but it's an ARPG and the game suffers from too many types of special/super attacks where it's too easy to trigger the wrong one by mistake. Major props for setting it in modern Toyko instead of an ancient/fantasy setting, though.

    Best visual novel/dating sim was the remake of ONE: Kagayaku kisetsu e. I also played White Album, and while it was good, it did have one character who was a major bitch, and a lot of the routes revolved around the MC cheating on his established girlfriend with varying degrees of justifying his betrayal. Whereas ONE didn't have any girls I disliked and only one route might be seen as problematic.

    Gonna also call out Another Code: Recollection as a very good remake of my very first DS game, and a franchise I thought would never get resurrected until it was announced during a 2023 Nintendo Direct.
     
    It took a bit for me to get used to it, but when I got used to it Brutal orchestra had me enraptured so hard. Games like that are why I love Turn Based combat so much!

    Honorable Mention:
    Otostaz | I didn't complete this game it's just too big. But this is some random Asia exlusive PS2 Puzzle game. I saw it's cover art randomly in pintrest and I just KNEW I had to play it. It's sort of a complicated puzzle game but I love discovering weird oddity video games and slowly piecing them together. Maybe if I played longer I could've gotten really good.
     
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    I didn't really play much new games that year, as i haven't really been enjoying things as much, but one of the only games that I enjoyed regardless of everything was undertale yellow! despite being a fangame, it was genuinely an amazing experience, so it's def my 2024 pick!
     
    I think for me it was probably The Case of the Golden Idol. I was playing a bunch of demos I'd downloaded and thought this was one for an upcoming game and then when I finished it, the release date was a year prior so I was like "oh" and anxiously counted the days for a sale so I could get it. If I hadn't played it within a week of the fall sale I'd have run off to buy it on the spot, discount be damned. It's kind of a point and click logic puzzle game where every puzzle is a murder mystery and they're all connected via a magic artifact that you slowly intuit the workings of. It's soooo good.
     
    Ooh man this is a tough one. I'm a pretty avid gamer that likes to rotate a lot between games. It's honestly a bit of a problem.

    Though it wasn't necessarily new to me, I finally finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 after having put it off for years and those last chapters were just chef's kiss amazing. Bawled my eyes out after I slept on it.

    To answer the question, though, I think it undoubtedly was I Was a Teenage Exocolonist. I'd gone into it expecting another cozy farming/dating sim and had everything turned on its head when it turned out to be anything but. The story, the branching dialogue, the deckbuilding gameplay, and the endings that made me want more and to see if I could make things turn out better had me in a chokehold for several days. It's a lovely game, and I intend to go and properly 100% it at some point.
     
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