GOTY 2024 // 2024-12-29

Going through the games I played this year and give awards! I had a most anticipated category, but I bought most of the games that were on the list during this winter sale. They won't be included in this GOTY post, but they are in my sidebar if I started them during this year! I'll star them so they can be considered for 2025.

Best Score:

Video games that I actually remember the soundtracks of! I usually listen to youtube videos or twitch while gaming so this is extra impressive.

Hylics 2

A step up from Hylics in almost every way, this game is a well-deserved follow-up that brings more to the table. Free from the chains of RPG-maker this game allows you to fly around to traverse the handcrafted 3D world and encounter friends or foes. Each asset still starts off as a clay creation, and you get to see the literal hands that made the game in combat, Giving this game a personal touch that you don't get in AAA. Combat is still a pretty basic RPG style, but has gotten more difficult. You obtain your companions in reverse order this time, which means you start out with the powerhouse that is Pongorma <3

Most of the music for this site comes from the first game of this series, but with complete honesty, Hylics 2 did show up on my Spotify wrapped. This soundtrack is just a bit more refined, with cleaner guitar riffs and tracks that seamlessly play through your life. I keep catching myself listening to the soundtrack, flowing into the character tracks, and all the way to the musical album. I love the roughness of the original soundtrack, but Hylics 2 captures the spirt of the first and refines it in subtle ways that the casual listener would never notice.

Quick aside, the musical album is going to transition us from Hylics 2 and Hylics 3 and contains an entire character death!!! Please give it a listen if you haven't!

Get In The Car, Loser!

The gameplay is cooldown-based, and your character gets specific abilities based on the items you equip them with. I don't think I quite mastered the strategy of the combat, but I rarely had any problems. Much like Sam, the fight against Deadname had me on the ropes.

The car is the main setting of this game, and the soundtrack embraces that concept. All the music sounds like it's playing over the radio as the characters drive to their next destination, and feels exactly like what our protagonists would switch on. I love a good radio vibe, as you can kinda tell with my neocities #3 playlist (btw, if you have any songs that have radio motifs, feel free to message me).

I can't say I integrated the music into my daily listening, but I think it would be the first thing I would think of when someone asks for good video game soundtracks, for many years.

Unfortunately, I can't really find the soundtrack on any streaming platforms that includes every song.

Bonus Fact: This is the only game I got a screenshot for this year lmao

Persona 5

This game has been well loved since it dropped, so I'll keep it short and sweet. There's a track for everyone!

My two favorites are Layer Cake and Hymm of the Soul!!

Ultrakill

Running around with a shotgun that can launch a chainsaw, I probably shouldn't be paying to the music as much as I do. Ultrakill is the fast-paced style is substance, hack and slash through hell that is hard not to love. I purchased the game after Chat kept recommending it to a streamer I watch, so all I knew was that it was popular with the trans furry community <3. As always, their taste is impeccable. I've gotten into the habit of ripping through the game and uninstalling, so I totally did not root around for every story piece and secret.

The music is a driving metal track that follows you through the depths of hell, through the battles, through the gore. I love how it seems to be playing right from V1 itself! The music muffles as you pull up the menu or even dive through the water. It's game music I would actually listen to while driving down the highway.

Winner is: ULTRAKILL

Best Warriors Game:

Games made by Omega Force and Koei Tecmo in the hack and slash genre. You probably have seen them referred to as Musou games. One of my favorite game formats and I pick them up whenever I get a chance.

Samurai Warriors 5

My first game in the Samurai Warriors series! This entry ties the unique animations to the weapons instead of the characters themselves. I barely noticed because I basically played Hanzo Hattori the entire time. Nobody else really uses his weapon set, so he felt pretty unique and fun. The main story follows the rise and fall of Oda Nobunaga and his unification of Japan. As always, the warriors games aren't substitutes for learning about the actual stories and history, and this Samurai Warriors really is battle → meeting about battling → battle → meeting about battling → battling.

There is a storymode that brings you through the highlights of Nobanaga and Akechi's history. This is the mode I usually play, but there is a castle mode. It's basically a challenge mode that you can play to enjoy your favorite guy even more.

Honestly, after finishing the game, I just come back and occasionally replay a battle in free mode, so I can play Hanzo <3, and then shut the game back off.

Pirate Warriors 4

No musou attacks was a pretty big change for the series, but I found myself not missing them as I kept playing. This game picks up after the One Piece time skip, so there isn't too much backtracking on the beginning of One Piece. This is a very important fact if you've played Pirate Warriors 3 or any other One Piece game, since most give you the beginning over and over. The story mode is an arc broken up into battles to progress through, and they include Alabasta all the way to Wano. To help level up characters or even unlock some characters, you need to play through their adventure mode. You can pick any character and run them through smaller battles that have little setups that flow you through, just like the castle mode of SW5.

Every single character in this game has unique gameplay and animations to them! Which is really impressive in a newer Warriors game, but I don't think a One Piece Warriors could be good without. My go-to characters were Zoro and Odin. Honestly, I loved all the swordsmen. There are people who have rankings of how good the characters are, but I honestly just play whoever I want.

This game had DLC added in the last year even though it is from 2018, and I think that is a testament to how well made it was. I want a new game out of greed, not because I can imagine changes that need to be done to make it more fun.

This got me to read the entirety of One Piece.

Dynasty Warriors 8

Most up-to-date Dynasty Warriors game on the switch. It's got plenty of options and the graphics are solid. Runs okay on the switch, but all the Warriors games struggle with some battles, especially in two-player. Unfortunately, console warriors are famously better than PCs, so I'm stuck with the limitations of what hardware I own.

The gameplay is a bit overcomplicated in this entry. I don't mind the element system, but paired with these games control scheme, I'm a bit overwhelmed when picking it up for the first time in a while. Thinking back on it, I'm tired of sitting in menus comparing options every battle. It really slows down the gameplay, and I'll shut it off if I spend all the time in the menu and didn't like how the random weapon I picked played. Once I'm going through a couple of battles, it's back into the Dynasty Warriors grind set, but those menus slow me down.

Winner is: Pirate Warriors 4

Game of the Year:

The big award! What game is defining 2024 for me!

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I'm guaranteed to play every Dragon Age game they make available to me. I will admit I'm quite precious about my companions, so the Varric Situation tm made me grit my teeth, cry, and almost return the game. Luckily, you recruit very beautiful, charming women immediately, and the combat was engaging. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll be seeing blood magic or shapeshifting ever again.

've been hearing a lot of people not liking the game because of the gender identity struggle that comes with Taash. Honestly, a lot of the complaining is weak shit since they're not backing it up. Taash's gender struggle is honestly pretty quick and painless, and actually the struggle between Qunari and Rivaini is the bulk of their content. Unfortunately, it comes down to two choices, so it comes off as rushed and confused. I supported Taash being Rivani and honoring their mother as a Qunari. It immediately came off as though I had told Taash to go fully Qunari, and I don't feel like we reached a really completed spot for them where they take control of their identity fully and embrace themselves. Basically, instead of their gender identity being the focal point, they explored it using being raised between cultures as more of an allegory to make the exploration more palatable to non-LGBTQ+ people. I love them, but I think they needed a little more editing.

Truly, I adore all the companions, and we get through a fair amount of content with them. In Dragon Age 2, the game is spread across several years and the companions are spread out across the city, but in Veilguard we are working within months and in tight quarters. I honestly can't say Veilguard has less companion content, but it wasn't made in 14 months soooooooo.... We do get to see the companions spending time with each other and offering advice or help to each other where they can. The world is ending, and the lighthouse is full of the people who are kind enough to do something about it, so them making efforts to get along makes sense to me. The approval system is kind of dog shit though.

The combat is truly the highlight of the game because they hand you amazing flexibility in class weapons, adjusting your skills, and adjusting your companions. I never felt locked in to having a bad time. If I realized that I had a necrotic-only party for fighting Darkspawn, I could just adjust Rook for a more elemental build, and it would immediately improve my experience. I usually just picked companions based on how much I wanted to kiss them and what dialogue I wanted to hear.

I see no difference between these two images.

The Great God Grove

From the creators of Smile for Me, Great God Grove is another delightful adventure with a colorful cast of characters. The humor is really well done this time. I don't want to spoil too much since this is a short game with a really solid price point from a smaller studio. Really go play it!!

A few things I adored:

Inspekta

the video segments with the puppets to give the player more information of the plot

speed dating

Cobigale <3

I did end up snagging Yugo Limbo's graphic novels after playing this.

Paranormasight

One of my favorite visual novels I've played this year and maybe ever. I picked it up because it includes ghosts, but I loved the art style and the meta-gameplay elements. You yourself are a character playing, so you don't experience the story completely linearly, and as you play, branches form. By the time you complete the game, you solve quite a few mysteries, but there is one mystery I would be really interested in a sequel to get more info on.

Signalis

Striking visually and a great example of the survival horror genre. We follow Elster (LSTR-512) through a mining facility that appears to have recently experienced something akin to a zombie break out and descend to (by choice sometimes, lol). The further in we get, the more we learn about what happened and where our "friend" might be.

A good chunk of this game is resource management, from your inventory all the way to navigating around the maps. Very similar to Resident Evil, but doesn't have the constantly changing camera angles. The first few levels are pretty easy to navigate and include a map, but as the facility becomes more corrupted, Elster no longer has a map, and you don't always pass through doors on the sides you expect.

Nobody in the game is having a good time in this classic doomed lesbians experiencing the horror of cycles story, 10/10.

Winner is: Dragon Age: The Veilguard

My Game of the Year is Dragon Age Veilguard! Dragon Age games hold onto my life for years at a time, so it's a monumental occasion for me. I think you all should be seeing all the Dragon Age games popping up on my "Games Played 2025" list. Actually, I received some Dragon Age novels I was missing for Christmas, so expect me to be re-reading those too!

Wait... By my own rules I could of made GOTY Dragon Age 2. Ah fuck.