What games did you complete in 2024? (2025)

Didn't play too many this year.

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Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty - dumbed down Nioh from the Nioh devs that I still found quite fun. Even in its dumbed down state the combat is still more interesting than in the majority of action games on the market. Game really suffers from some retarded and baffling design decisions (e.g. morale) that would have made the experience much better if they were simply removed.

Warlords Battlecry 3 (with Protectors mod) - Played both the WBC2 and WBC3 campaigns inside the mod. The mod is very cool, adds a lot of new things, some of which do not work very well but it's a mod after all. Warlords Battlecry itself is an interesting RTS with a very large focus on persistent heroes, lots of factions and some cool ideas. Unfortunately the RTS part of the game is not that good and it's also one of the ugliest RTS games I've ever played.

Dragon's Dogma 2 - despite being disappointing, it's still my favorite 2024 release out of those that I played. I really liked DD1 and DD2 is more of the same with some things improved, but some things made worse and it owes a lot of its good qualities to what already has been done in DD1 years ago. It should have had a lot more new monsters and classes and more and better dungeons and it feels just as unfinished at the end as 1 was . Still, the world itself was very fun to run around and explore and the physics-based combat made for some good times even if the game became way too easy around mid-game. I think Dragon's Dogma games are the only non-Piranha Bytes games that managed to achieve a world design similar to Gothics'.

Etrian Odyssey 3 - semi-yearly EO playthrough. All of these games are very similar to each other, but out of the ones that I played so far, I liked 3 the most because of stuff like multi-classing and equipment enchanting.

Monster Hunter World - my first ever Monster Hunter game and probably my last in a long while. There are a lot of things to like about it, like the combat, creative monsters with interesting behaviors, the crazy weapons, but the almost MMO-like grind really made it difficult for me to enjoy the game. Would have liked the game more if it just gave you a monster's armor set/weapon after you kill it once.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree - It's more Elden Ring, with all the good and the bad parts.

Gothic - believe it or not, I played it for the first time this year. Crazy, I know. Somehow I only ever played Gothic 3 when I was younger and never the 2 games that are considered to be much better. I really liked the setting, story (or rather, the circumstances under which everything was happening) and atmosphere of the game and chapter 1 is excellent with very interesting exploration, character progression and choices. Unfortunately just as chapter 1 ends the game kinda turns into a linear series of dungeon crawls and fetch quest and that's not a good thing to turn into when your combat and controls are terrible.

Gothic 2 - basically Gothic but improved in every way except for the story (I think escaping from a magical prison camp is more interesting and unusual than saving the world from evil forces like what you do in almost every other game ever made). Like Gothic 1, there comes a time when the game starts losing its charm and turning into a chore but that happens much later and when it does happen you're already almost done with it.

Black Myth Wukong - pretty good combat, lots of fun and creative boss fights and very good visuals. However the game has some of the most boring levels I ever had to go through in an action game that challenge only your patience. The more you play the more you realize that whenever you're not fighting a boss your time is being wasted.

Age of Wonders: Planetfall - they really blundered the campaign structure in this. Only 2 missions per faction? Way too little. And the maps are semi-randomly generated which means no real level design. HOWEVER, the missions themselves are still interesting to play through and there are a lot of open-ended ones where there are several ways to complete the main objective and sometimes your choices affect the following missions. I also really like the part of PF's gameplay where you customize your armies and see how they fare against other armies. I would say Planetfall has the best combat out of all the Age of Wonders games.. if not for the stagger mechanic, which causes all battles past the early stages of the game to devolve into both sides trying to stunlock each other.

Shadowrun: Hong Kong - I really like the Shadowrun setting. I wish we had more games in it. As it stands the only thing we get, other than obscure ancient shit, is a trilogy of extremely low budget RPGs that, while having pretty good writing, interesting stories and companions, suck as games, because they just consist of a handful of missions on tiny maps, each with a few interactible points and enemy groups you can fight. Out of the 3, I think HK is the most competent gameplay-wise, but I liked the story in Dragonfall more.

Replays:

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen - I fell in love with this game years ago and it was a lot of fun to replay. It's like Oblivion/Skyrim... but good. No other 3D fantasy RPG lets you do the things this game does - picking people up, throwing random shit on the ground at enemies, throwing enemies at enemies, climbing on monsters, etc. while also having a pretty damn good combat system that controls well. It's the kind of game where you can have lots of cool unscripted moments that in most games would have been cutscenes. It suffers a bit from being unfinished and small variety of content, which unfortunately persists in the sequel.

Starcraft - one of my favorite childhood games. Still looks, plays and sounds very well. My only complaints are the, by now, outdated control scheme with the unnecessary 12 unit selection limit and bad pathfinding which makes controlling larger armies a pain in the ass and most campaign missions being kinda braindead where you just sit at your base until you mass a big army and a-move to win.

Starcraft 2 - over the years my appreciation for SC2 grew and at this point I think it has surpassed the original for me. It plays and controls much better than SC1 and I think it has the best single player campaign in an RTS. It's lengthy, full of varied missions, very challenging on the hardest difficulty and each campaign offers you a different way to customize your army. The only thing that sucks about it is the story. SC1's story wasn't anything special but it was a decent gritty sci-fi story. SC2's story starts okay and in line with SC1's but from the Zerg campaign onwards turns into World of Warcraft in space, featuring chosen heroes, ancient prophecies and evil gods. Other than that, the campaign is a joy to play through and once that's done there is a very good custom game browser that I spent some time fucking around in with friends.