2020 was a bad year in general, but a great year for gaming. Today I’m focusing on the best games I played that came out in 2020 (which excludes situations like Persona 4 Golden, where I played the Vita version and finished it a few days before the new PC port was announced). So without further ado, here are my top 10 games of 2020!
10. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
I’d never played an Animal Crossing game before 2020, and I went into the year with no intention of doing so because I wasn’t interested in Animal Crossing: New Horizons at all. Enough friends pestered me, however, that I finally gave in and decided to see what it was all about. I was pleasantly surprised to find Animal Crossing: New Horizons not only an enjoyable game, but quite an addicting one. I still haven’t built a single ramp, or a bridge beyond the required one, and my island is in quite a state of disrepair… but 145 hours spread across the year suggests this quieter play-at-your-own-pace sort of game fits into my playstyle after all.
Best Moment: TURNIPS
9. Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen
I’ve heard a lot of great things about the visual novel strategy RPGs Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception and Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth, so I really wanted to play them. However, they are the second and third games of the Utawarerumono series, and the first was exclusive to Japan. With many people saying you want to have the context of the first game before playing Mask of Truth, I’d finally resigned myself to watching the anime adaptation when a remake was announced called Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen. 2020 finally saw an English release of this remake, so I settled in to play it. I found it to be an exciting story that starts out simple but continually raises the stakes, with likeable characters and a mix of both dramatic and funny scenes, and I’m looking forward to finally moving on to those sequels.
Best Moment: The gradual build-up of the stakes
8. Master Magistrate
Did you say samurai detective game? Sign me up! Master Magistrate is pretty much what you’d get if you turned Ace Attorney into more of a traditional visual novel and then set it in the samurai era. You play newly-appointed magistrate Shimei Ooka, whose job is to investigate crimes by gathering evidence, listening to witness testimonies, and uncovering contradictions at the trial. The individual cases have their own smaller stories, but there is also an overarching story for the game filled with twists and turns. Sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was tense, and it really just left me in dire need of a Master Magistrate sequel – because even though the story is wrapped up quite well, I want to see these characters again.
Best Moment: The final case
7. Iwaihime
October brought the release of a new horror visual novel from the creator of the When They Cry series (which I still need to play), Iwaihime. Following a young man named Suzumu who has just begun to attend a new school, Iwaihime alternates between lighthearted slice-of-life scenes and gruesome horror sequences… and you often have no way of knowing when one is about to slip into the other. At first it might seem like the horror scenes exist just for shock value, with no rhyme or reason as to why they occur, but don’t worry. It all comes together eventually into a truly excellent horror story.
Best Moment: Fulfilling an age-old promise
6. Root Double -Before Crime * After Days- Xtend Edition
Yes, I have yet another visual novel on my list. Root Double came to the Switch in 2020, and this is one visual novel fans do not want to miss. The first route is a story of survival and paranoia, as a rescue worker suffering from amnesia searches for a way to escape a research facility that has been closed off due to a nuclear meltdown. The second route feels almost like a slice-of-life story as a teenage boy trapped in the same facility thinks back over the days that led up to the incident. But when the two routes finally converge, that’s when the story really picks up. Root Double isn’t what I expected when I first started it, but it ended up being so much more.
Best Moment: The end of the Before route, when you finally realize how it fits together with the After route
5. Shantae and the Seven Sirens
I love the Shantae series, but I was a bit disappointed with Half-Genie Hero due to its focus on individual levels rather than the interconnected worlds of the previous games. Fortunately, 2020’s Shantae and the Seven Sirens gave me everything I wanted. An interconnected world? Towns? Dungeons? Yes, it has all of these things, together with new powers and an entertaining story surrounding the sudden disappearance of the other half-genies at the Half-Genie Festival. It didn’t top Pirate’s Curse as my favorite game in the series, but my only hope is that the series continues in this direction from now on. If you’ve been wary of the latest entry, don’t be. Shantae and the Seven Sirens is a wonderful return to form.
Best Moment: Risky’s plan
4. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition
I love the Xenoblade series, and the first Xenoblade Chronicles is one of my favorite JRPGs. When the Definitive Edition came out, I was tempted to just play through the new epilogue since I’d already played the original… but I just couldn’t resist the call. After starting a new game to familiarize myself with the combat again before diving into the epilogue, I soon found myself replaying the entire game from start to finish because I just couldn’t stop. You know, when enough time passes after I’ve finished a game, sometimes I know conceptually that I loved it, but I can’t really remember why. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition made sure I remembered with each new area and plot point just why I rank this one so highly. The quality of life improvements make an amazing game even better, and I can’t wait to see what Monolith Soft is working on next. Personally, I hope it’s a Xenoblade Chronicles X sequel, but I’ll be in line for whatever they announce.
Best Moment: Satorl Marsh at night
3. Hades
Much like with Animal Crossing, I had no intention of buying Hades as we approached its release date. The roguelike genre has never appealed to me, so I planned to skip it. Yet amidst all the praise when it came out of Early Access, I kept seeing people say that they disliked roguelikes but loved Hades, with particular emphasis on how it has a strong story. With so many people praising it, I decided to take a chance on what I thought would be a short game. 95 hours later, I still have more story content to see as I finally approach the epilogue. Hades doesn’t just have a strong sense of progression when it comes to gameplay, but also its story. I never felt like I was starting over when I died, because there was always new dialogue, new story progression, new bonds to form. My early fears that I’d run out of dialogue by dying too much turned out to be completely unfounded. It’s not a game I expected to play at all, but it ended up being one of my favorites.
Best Moment: “In the Blood”
2. 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
I’m sensing a bit of a theme this year, because while people spent ages anticipating 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, it wasn’t on my radar at all until it actually came out and I started seeing nonstop praise for the story. I was a little wary of the combat since real-time strategy is not my thing, but after being reassured about the battles and seeing even more praise for the story, I took the plunge and gave it a try. I’m so glad I did. There’s nothing I love more than a twisty, complicated story that keeps me guessing up until the very end, and 13 Sentinels delivers. It is a very story-heavy game with a nonlinear storytelling approach that lets you approach it in all sorts of different ways to still get a satisfying, surprise-filled experience. It also feels a bit like every science fiction story ever all happening at once in a way that somehow works, so if that appeals to you, be sure to check it out.
Best Moment: Still being hit with major plot twists long after I thought I understood what was going on
1. Final Fantasy VII Remake
I’m a huge Final Fantasy fan, and although I can never quite settle on my favorite game in the series, one of the top contenders for me is the original Final Fantasy VII. My feelings toward the remake went from excitement when it was first announced, to disappointment when they revealed the multi-part approach, to wariness when they said the first part would only be Midgar (my least favorite part of the original game), to renewed excitement as they showed more and more of the game. I started playing it immediately when it came out… and I loved it. The world, the characters, the way they fleshed everything out into a satisfying full-length game… Final Fantasy VII Remake stands out all the more to me because I didn’t enjoy Midgar in the original. If they made a game this great out of the part I liked the least, the parts I loved could be fantastic! Of course, there is the ending to consider… and I have mixed feelings about that… but to the ending’s credit, Square Enix found a way to get fans theorizing and speculating about a remake of a 23 year old game, and that’s no small feat.
Best Moment: Climbing all the stairs in the Shinra building
