So I am starting the long process of covering what I finished last year. I'm shamelessly copying Izzy this year and just covering everything I finished - all 20 of them. I go on a 1-5 rating system, because I'm not nuanced enough to score out of 10 let alone 100. So I'll be grouping my games by their rating, not necessarily in any order of preference otherwise (ie, all of the 4-star games are pretty much equal, etc.). I will pick one overall GOTY tho, so I'm not going to cheat my way out of that. So without further ado...I'll list the games that I played that *don't* qualify because I didn't finish them.
Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth - Look, I *love* the LAD games. But they have a LOT of talking. I mean, a LOT. So I really have to be in the mood for a talky game. Add to that I finished the first LAD in early 2024 and then played through the side-story LAD Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. So I've had a lot of Yakuza this year. I got a good ways into Infinite Wealth, and it's fantastic, but I had to take a break. I'll finish it this year, and I'm sure it will rank very high on my next year-end list.
Unicorn Overlord - I love this game. LOVE. I LOVE IT. It's amazing. It should be on this list, and it should be very, very high up. But look, it takes a lot of focus and that's something I just haven't had a ton of especially the second half of last year. So I got sidetracked from it in the spring and just never got back to it. But I will, and it will be glorious. In the meantime, if you like SRPGs, I can go ahead & VERY safely recommend this as a must-play.
Yars Rising - There's some very cool things about this game that are unique and work really well, but there's also some elements that are a little "eh". I do want to get back to it however, and I don't feel like I can pass judgement on it one way or the other yet. I'll *probably* finish it this year sometime, but who knows.
Chasm - I gave this one a really good try. I wanted to push through it, but after a while I just couldn't do it anymore. A sidesplorer should NOT be randomly generated. It adds *nothing* to the game, but it takes away the main draw of the genre - fun exploration. It turns it instead into a bunch of wandering around trying to find the next whatever you need with no real logic to the layouts and no way to look up any help online. Add to that the fact that the gameplay was pretty mediocre anyway and I've already completely forgotten the story, and it was just a bad game. I removed it from my backlog with extreme prejudice (I sold it). Good riddance.
Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission - HOW THE CRAP DO YOU MAKE A LIGHT GUN GAME WITH NO MOTION CONTROL SUPPORT ON THE SWITCH? I sold this one as well - FAIL out of 5.
Lies of P - This was a fun game for what I played of it (maybe a third or so?), and I can see how big soulslike fans would really enjoy it - but I'm not one. So even though I don't have any interest in returning to this one, I don't have anything bad to say about it either. I've learned over the years that I don't need to finish every game I play - sometimes I get the "good" out of them and I'm satisfied. This is one of those times.
Kaze and the Wild Masks - Y'know, I was really enjoying this game, I finished off at least the first couple of worlds with all collectables & the bonus levels, and then I somehow got sidetracked and...just forgot about it. I didn't think about it again until Izzy started playing it later in the year, but I was playing something else at the time so when he finished it I forgot about it again, until I was just looking back over my list of played games for last year. I *need* to get back to this one and finish it, it was a very solid platformer.
