One sentence about each of the 21 games I finished in 2021

I somehow managed to finish 21 games this year. I say "somehow" here because for all of 2021 it felt like I played fewer games than I did in 2020.

Actually, it's possible I did play fewer games in 2021 than I played in 2020. And I surely spent less time with the games I played in 2021 than I did with the games I played in 2020, as my next post will make clear.

As for this post, it features—as the header above hopefully suggests—one-sentence "reviews" of each of the 21 games I completed this year.

Also, they're organized according to when I completed them. So, Shiren the Wanderer 5+ was the first game I "beat" in 2021, while Umrangi Generation Special Edition was the last.

Shiren the Wanderer 5+ (Switch)

I didn’t realize just how much I’ve always wanted to pillage towers at extreme threat of violence and even death until I dug my teeth into this beautifully complex roguelike.

Captain Toad (Switch)

Captain Toad is a cute and (mostly) chill puzzle-action game that I can honestly say I enjoyed more than I've enjoyed any of the proper Mario titles that have been released over the last few years.

Princess Debut (DS)

A fluffy and rather childish otome game that features a barebones rhythm component—via simple ballroom dance sequences—and attractive, manga-inspired art.

A Kappa’s Trail (DS)

An instant-classic, hidden-gem, touch-controlled, puzzle-action game from some of the same devs who gave the world Mother 3, Magical Starsign, and Fantasy Life.

Pikmin 3 Deluxe (Switch)

Exploring the game’s beautifully realized environments while capturing towering "enemies" and corralling similarly giant pieces of fruit is great fun; doing all of those things while watching a clock tick toward zero is not.

Bravely Default II (Switch)

Yes, it’s yet another RPG about those damned “four heroes of light,” but this one tweaks the formula, gameplay (the battles, especially), and aesthetics just enough to make it all seem fresh and exhilarating.

Gnosia (Switch)

I started this game expecting it to be little more than Raging Loop set in space, but what I got was an addictive Werewolf simulator with a thrilling drip-feed story—the opposite of RL’s, basically—and a swoon-worthy OST.

Poison Control (Switch)

Poison Control is a curious and snappy mashup of a dungeon-crawler, a third-person shooter, and Taito's classic quartermucher Qix, all set to a surprisingly dark assortment of stories and a subtly brilliant soundtrack.

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (Switch)

Come to this dungeon RPG for the 40-member parties (kind of, but kind of not), stay for the in-the-end-touching story and the interesting traversal elements.

Famicom Detective Club: The Missing Heir (Switch)

An attractive and captivating whodunit that occasionally frustrates due in large part to a clunky interface that sticks a little too close to its late-1980s roots.

Famicom Detective Club: The Girl Who Stands Behind (Switch)

Another modern remake of an old adventure game that originally graced the Famicom Disk System, though this one is more suspenseful and has a slightly more appealing setting and story.

Ripened Tingle’s Balloon Trip of Love (DS)

A point-and-click game starring everyone's favorite emotionally stunted oddball, Tingle, and sporting a story that's a silly riff on The Wizard of Oz; believe me, it's every bit as great as it sounds.

Gravity Rush (Vita)

Although its increasingly nonsensical story and always-aggravating combat regularly attempted to take my attention away from it, I don't think I've ever felt more like I'd stepped into the shoes—or spandex jumpsuit—of a superhero than I did while playing this gorgeous "gravity action" game.

Tearaway (Vita)

Tearaway is a breezy, Kirby-esque platformer that makes impressive and creative use of the Vita hardware and, as such, feels more like an amusement-park ride than a video game.

Airship Q (Vita)

Take Terraria, make the protagonist a cat, add a save-your-catnapped-sister story, and toss in a few honest-to-goodness, pull-your-hair-out-by-the-roots moments of jank-prompted frustration, and you have Airship Q.

Deltarune Chapter 1&2 (Switch)

This Undertale follow-up may or may not be a better game than its predecessor, but either way, it's a joy to play thanks to its wall-to-wall witty and silly text and its decision to fully lean into bullet-hell gameplay.

Mon Amour (Switch)

If you've ever wondered what Flappy Bird would look, sound, and play like if the creative geniuses at Onion Games (Black Bird, Dandy Dungeon) had made it, here's your answer.

Dungeon Encounters (Switch)

It's best to ignore how Dungeon Encounters looks, especially before you actually play it; instead, think of it as a minimalistic, top-down Etrian Odyssey that has you solve riddles to find new abilities, party members, treasures—even the final boss.

SaGa Frontier Remastered (Switch)

Although the stories that hold SaGa Frontier together are on the simple side, every other element of this Japanese role-player is out of this world: the eye-popping array of party members, the exotic enemy designs, the extraterrestrial locales, the electrifying battles, and—last, but certainly not least—the extraordinary soundtrack.

Liquid Kids (Switch)

This side-scrolling Bubble Bobble—basically, though the protagonist is a roly-poly platypus rather than lime-green dinosaur—is an arcade game through and through, with cheap deaths around every other corner, but it's also a blast to play thanks to how fun it is to throw "water bombs" everywhere and at everything.

Umurangi Generation Special Edition (Switch)

If Gnosia is a Werewolf simulator, Umurangi Generation is a document-the-end-of-the-world-using-a-DSLR-camera simulator—and a damn good one, at that.

See also: one sentence about each of the 24 games I finished in 2020

My favorite games of 2021

Although I played a lot of games in 2021, only about half of them were actually released this year. And even then, most were far from the AAA efforts that tend to fill similar GOTY write-ups. 

Still, I hope those who read this post will enjoy the thoughts I share below on what I consider to be my favorite games of 2021.

Something to consider as you scroll: I've sadly yet to experience a good handful of 2021 releases that I expect would've made this list had I gotten around to playing them. Among the games in question: Fuga: Melodies of Steel, The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, NEO: The World Ends with You, Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi, and Voice of Cards.

Bravely Default II (PC/Switch)

You're probably already aware that the character models in this Bravely Default sequel are less visually appealing than their counterparts in the original. Bravely Default II's soundtrack doesn't hit the same highs as the previous game's either. 

Even so, I found Bravely Default II to be enormously compelling. The claymation-inspired, diorama-esque world is a joy to race around, and its battles exist somewhere within the same exhilarating realm as those found in the first Bravely Default and the oft-similar Octopath Traveler.

The cherry on top of this sadly divisive RPG: the bonkers story, which becomes more and more compelling--not to mention bizarre--the deeper you delve into it.

Deltarune Chapter 1&2 (PC/PS4/Switch)

I dragged my feet on plunging into the first two chapters of Deltarune until late this year because, frankly, I couldn't fathom how they'd even remotely reach Undertale's splendorous heights. Boy, was I wrong. I don't know that I could declare Deltarune chapters one and two to be better than the whole of Undertale, but I also wouldn't argue with anyone who makes such an assertion.

For me, the main area in which Deltarune bests its precursor is combat. Battles in Deltarune have more depth and are more strategic than those in Undertale. I also found them more fun, truth be told. I can't quite say the same about Deltarune's characters, story, or soundtrack. In particular, Queen and Lancer pale in comparison to their Undertale counterparts, Sans and Papyrus, though the former are by no means duds.

Whatever. All I know is I'm itching--desperately--to play Deltarune's remaining chapters, however many Toby Fox and crew decide to release into the world. For me, that makes the whole "which is better?" discussion moot. At least until the next time I play through Undertale (wink wink).

Dungeon Encounters (PC/PS4/Switch)

Dungeon Encounters offers up a terrible first impression, looking like one of Square Enix's lowest effort titles ever. Give it a whirl, though, and you're sure to realize, as I quickly did, it's a minimalistic Etrian Odyssey viewed from a decidely different perspective.

Even that sells this digital RPG short, though, as I enjoyed playing Dungeon Encounters more than I've enjoyed playing any Etrian Odyssey title to date. I also managed to finish Dungeon Encounters--something I've yet to do with Etrian Odyssey's many releases.

Why? The sense of mystery and exploration is strong in Dungeon Encounters. Not only do you map out floors of a dungeon, but you solve riddles to find new abilities, party members, treasures, and even the final boss. Also, the game practically begs you to break it in various ways. Once you've acquired certain abilities, you can jump around the 99-floor dungeon nearly at will. As you might expect, there's a risk-reward element to this play style, but that's yet another feather in Dungeon Encounters' cap.

All in all, if you're usually an RPG fan and you're up for tackling a tough one (though not unfairly so) that dares to stray from the norm, give serious consideration to Dungeon Encounters in 2022.

Gnosia (Switch)

Raging Loop was among my favorite games of 2020. One of the main reasons I loved Raging Loop so much was that it deftly blended aspects of the social-deduction game, Werewolf, into what is otherwise a spooky visual novel.

Gnosia also incorporates aspects of Werewolf into its gameplay. It's not a VN, though. Rather, it's more of a Werewolf simulator. The end result is every bit as gripping as you might expect if you've ever experienced Werewolf in some form or fashion. If you haven't, the gist here is that you're on a spaceship with a slew of extremely colorful characters (literally and figuratively) and you need to suss out which are Gnosia, alien-like creatures who will, without intervention, kill all humans aboard.

The thing is, you don't play through Gnosia just once. You play through it many, many times. A single loop may take as little as a few minutes or as long as a quarter-hour or more. While working your way through a particular loop, you'll regularly encounter event scenes that expand one or more characters' backstories. Only after you experience all of these scenes can you access Gnosia's true ending.

Really, though, the ending is the icing on this pixelated piece of cake. The real joy comes in the journey to that point--getting to know your crewmates, using what you glean there to your advantage (or their disadvantage), and figuring out what you need to move the overarching story toward its satisfying conclusion.

Mon Amour (PC/Switch)

After I played Onion Games' Mon Amour for the first time following its release, I thought, "this is cute, but I probably won't spend much time with it." I returned to it the next day, mostly to give it a quick second chance before moving on to something more my speed. Instead, I got wrapped up in its silly quest to rescue Princess Mona and her multitude of servants. I intended to only save a few of the latter, but by the time I'd done just that, I was hooked--or at least I was hooked enough to continue on rather than prematurely pull the plug on my Mon Amour adventure.

I'm so glad that happened. Because that's when I discovered there's more to this little gem than its Flappy Bird-ish gameplay, plethora of rescuable "mon-a-girls," and appropriately zany soundtrack. Notably, it's surprisingly strategic once you realize how your actions affect the playfield. With that knowledge in mind, you'll likely have as hard a time as I did putting down Mon Amour until you've saved every citizen, climbed the high-score list to an acceptable degree, or both.

SaGa Frontier Remastered (Mobile/PC/PS4/Switch)

I've been enamored with SaGa Frontier since first laying eyes on Japanese screenshots of it in some old gaming magazine or other in advance of its late-1990s release. For me, it was far closer to what I wanted from Square Enix (then Squaresoft) during the 32-bit era than Final Fantasy VII was.

I'm even more appreciative of what SaGa Frontier brings to the table today, thanks to the fact that it's now portable and sports a cleaned-up--and thus less confusing--localization. As it always was, SaGa Frontier remains thrillingly exotic, with locales, characters and battles that inspire awe while also getting the eyes popping and blood flowing.

True, SaGa Frontier can be brutal, with death lingering around nearly every corner. But even that is a positive, in my mind--considering how common it is for battles in RPGs to feel yawn-inducingly superfluous.

See also: my favorite games of 2020

10 Nintendo Switch games I want to play in 2020

I put time into a whopping 20 Nintendo Switch games in 2019. (Twelve of which are represented in this recent post.)

I'm not sure I'll be able to top, or even match, that number in 2020, but I'm going to give it my best shot--starting with the 10 existing and upcoming Switch titles below.

Alien: Isolation--I don't know if you're aware, but I'm a huge fan of the first two Alien films. For me, they're the movie equivalent of comfort food. That probably seems kind of weird given the content of those flicks and my preference for cute games, but it's true. At any rate, I've wanted to play through Alien: Isolation ever since it first came out for the Xbox 360 back in 2014. Honestly, I'm worried it's going to be too stressful for me, but I'm willing to chance it.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons cover

Animal Crossing: New Horizons--On the one hand, I'm one of those cranky old codgers who thinks the Animal Crossing series peaked with its original release. On the other hand, I put over two hundred hours into my two (or was it three?) copies of Animal Crossing: New Leaf in the year following that title's release. I get the feeling New Horizons will similarly take over my life after I get my grubby hands on it in March--despite my crotchety misgivings about the direction the series has taken since its debut.

Bravely Default II--I'm not sure why the bigwigs at Square Enix decided to call the third game in the Bravely series Bravely Default II, but whatever. All I really care about is a third Bravely game is coming out. And Revo is working on its soundtrack--I couldn't ask for anything more. OK, I guess I could ask for it to be less prone to exposition than its forebearer. But I'll gladly accept a "return to form" in that regard if everything else about Bravely Default II follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, too.

Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories--I haven't played, or even owned, a single Disaster Report game to date, but I hope to change that with the surprising Switch port of the long-running series' fourth and latest entry. To be honest, I have almost no idea what to expect from Disaster Report 4. Still, I'm champing at the bit to sink my teeth into it thanks to the positive word of mouth that surrounds its precursors.

Raging Loop--I eagerly awaited the North American release of this visual novel once I learned it was not only spooky but featured werewolves. I'm still a bit unsure about its art style, but at least it's unique. Plus, I didn't buy a copy of Raging Loop because its visuals wowed me. I bought it because I've heard only good things about its complex story, multitude of endings, and intriguing "revelation mode."

SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions--My original plan as 2019 came to a close was to purchase and play this game at launch and save the Romancing SaGa 3 remake for early 2020. In the end, the opposite happened. Although I enjoyed the 26-plus hours I put into Romancing SaGa 3 well enough, I'm hoping I'll enjoy SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions even more. At the very least, I suspect I'll have a blast with its battles, which sound a lot more exciting than those of Romancing SaGa 3.

Sega Ages: Fantasy Zone--No, your eyes aren't deceiving you here. This most recent port of Sega's 35-year-old cute 'em up really is one of my most-anticipated games of 2020. After stupidly turning up my nose at it for decades, I fell head over heels in love with Fantasy Zone a few years back via the PC Engine port from 1988. This release should be the best version of Sega's seminal shmup, so of course I'll be buying it the second it hits the North American Switch eShop this year.

Spirit Hunter: NG--Although I wouldn't say I adored this game's predecessor, Death Mark, I also wouldn't say I abhorred it. Actually, I had a pretty good time with it when I played through it last year. The macabre mysteries at the heart of that first Spirit Hunter title were a tad urban legend-esque, but it hardly impacted my enjoyment of it. Does the oddly named NG avoid such clichéd storytelling? I have no idea, but I'm willing to give it a try in 2020 anyway.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore cover

Susume!! Mamotte Knight: Hime no Totsugeki Serenade--I always find it kind of strange when I get excited about a sequel to a game I barely played. Well, in the case of Susume!! Mamotte Knight, I barely played two of its prequels--2010's Protect Me Knight for the Xbox 360 and 2016's Gotta Protectors for the 3DS. Still, I experienced enough of both titles to feel completely comfortable buying this latest entry in the Mamotte Knight series as soon as it releases in my neck of the woods--no matter what developer and publisher Ancient decides to call it this time around.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore--Of all the Wii U games I wanted to be ported to the Switch, this is the one I had the least confidence in ever making that leap. My interest in Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a bit peculiar, admittedly. After all, I've never been much of a Fire Emblem fan (gulp!), and my experience with Atlus' Shin Megami Tensei series has been depressingly limited thus far. Still, my gut tells me I'll get a kick out of this enhanced mash-up.

BONUS ROUND: Moon Remix RPG Adventure--I stupidly left this on-the-way port of cult developer Love-de-Lic's PSone classic from 1997 off my original version of this write-up, so I'm adding it in now. Hey, it's my blog and I can do what I want with it! Anyway, so what's the big deal? For starters, Moon has long been hailed as a quirky "anti-RPG" by those who've played it. Sadly, it's never been translated into English--either officially or unofficially. That's changing as we speak, though, and the end product of indie studio Onion Games' hard work should hit Western Switch eShops at some point in 2020. I'll buy this localized Moon the second it does thanks to my positive experiences with a pair of of Onion's previous efforts, 2018's Black Bird and 2019's Dandy Dungeon.

See also: 'Five Nintendo 3DS games I want to play in 2020'