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Tag: visual novel – otome

2018 Gaming Selections

Another year has ended, and with it, another pile of games beaten. My Backloggery breakdown for the previous year once again wound up in the negative, but what else is new? I can’t speak for whether this has been a great year for gaming, as the vast majority of what I played were pre-2018 releases, though I did enjoy myself.

If you’ve read one of my past year in review posts, you know the drill: every game here is one that I’ve beaten or completed in 2018, regardless of release date. This time, in addition to my top ten and five honorable mentions, I’d like to give special shoutouts to two games.

Platforms, Puzzles, Spinoffs, and Samurai

Ever since PAX West, I’ve kept myself busy with everything ranging from personal projects to, of course, video games. I started off September by reaching both endings of Alphadia Genesis, a mediocre indie JRPG, and completing the *Mute route of Hate Plus, the sometimes frustrating sequel to the excellent Analogue: A Hate Story. Instead of going on at length about them here, please refer to my reviews of Alphadia Genesis and Hate Plus on Steam for additional thoughts.

Some of Apotheon's flavor text.A game which I ultimately chose not to write a Steam review for, because my feelings on it are that mixed, is the action platformer Apotheon. One of the top tags on its Steam store page is “Metroidvania”, which is a wildly inaccurate descriptor. As you all probably know, the defining feature of Metroidvanias is areas that can’t be accessed without the right tools, which must be obtained in a certain order. Apotheon does have skills to collect, but most are enhancements at best, and the only real obstacle blocking off areas is the plot. In other words, this game is more Shovel Knight than Axiom Verge.