My Favorite Games of 2022 — Dinaburg Writes

In a year where I scraped together 85 hours to toss into Elden Ring, an unexpected theme in my life was resistence to the idea of sitting down and turning on a game when I found myself with the opportunity. The limited length of playtime—out of my control and dependent, mostly, on the whims of my toddler’s sleeping schedule—made deciding to actually boot something up feel arduous, particularly if I suspected I was going to have to turn it off right when it was starting to get interesting. Moment-to-moment accessibility—rather than the grand arc of the game en masse—weighed more heavily on my playing in 2022 than in any year prior.

The stats are skewed to a handful of big games for many, many hours and then a small sampling from a limited buffet of little games. I broke out of FF14 right before 2022 started, and spent my time plugged away at Tales of Arise until Elden Ring wiped everything else off my radar. I think those were the only two games I played until at least June; once I had my fill of Elden Ring, I returned to Arise. I mildly regret do so—it has the worst pacing of any RPG I have ever played, with almost all of the worthwhile stuff in the back ten percent. I don’t think it was actually fun enough to justify another month of my game time. I’ve never so clearly seen pacing in a game as an issue before, but everything else about Arise is fine. As my second ever Tales of game, it has likely pushed me into Tales retirement, for now.

The rest of the mentionables list comes down to aesthetics: I liked Shin Megami Tensei 5 in the same way I do all mainline SMT titles—for about 18 levels. I played SMT5 about 10 hours longer than I wanted to because of a desire to see whatever it wanted to show me—spectacle is a legit motivator, but unfortunately I simply don’t like monster-collecting games. Even the legendary DragonQuest 5 ranks below the PS1 version of DQ7 for me (I loved the glacial pacing of 7, though I understand why the 3DS remake sped it up.). But wow is the imagery in SMT5 phenomenal. Omori has some similar mystique to it, but I’m not sure when I’m going to want it.

The biggest surprise of the year for me was that FF7 remake somehow made Aerith a good character that I liked. I have no affection for her Aeris, her polygonal forebear, whatsoever. I think it would have made it to the fifth spot if the combo run of the sewers and train graveyard didn’t grind everything to a halt for me. Tifa’s combat controls are fire, though.

I found the pick-up/put-down ease of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising relaxing, and its core progression was fun in a mindless way. The best part to come out of that game was seeing interesting characters during chitchat, making my excitement for the spiritual next Suikoden game well-placed. Expect to see it in the 2023 round up.

Onto the list!

5. Unsighted

I did not play through all of Unsighted, but every time I did sit down with it I had a great time. It’s a top-down action adventure that has an always-running internal clock to push you along—for some people that would create an anxiety-hole, but for me it kept me from sinking too far into the “explore every crevice” mindset that link-to-the-past-esque games engender within me.

The developers created an allowance to turn off the clock, which I think is a fine concession, but it seems like it would outright kill the other big tension within the game—the collectables that allow you to create your estus flasks can also be sacrificed to give the various NPCs more time before they go “unsighted,” aka feral, and are lost forever. Do you want to be more effective in combat, or do you want granny gardener to live a bit longer? Do you want to let your little doggie buddy rest so she likes you more at the cost of pushing the clock ahead 8 hours? I’ve been hoarding my bits, adding time to my little companion for nepotism reasons and the blacksmith for selfish ones, eschewing healing items and brute forcing my way through two of the first major dungeons.

Unsighted looks good in motion and controlling it is slick—I don’t think screenshots quite convey what is going on during the game in the same way as my prior action-RPG darling CrossCode. It is 8bit-homage to CrossCode’s 16, an adventure that feels a little more lonely and a lot less chatty. It’s a real blast, and if you have the time to play a dungeon every night for a week or so, I think you’d really enjoy it

4. Triangle Strategy

My hubris within the tactics genre led me to the toughest fight I’ve ever had—I put Triangle Strategy on Hard because I have some warped idea that gameplay difficulty increases the consequence of choice: there’s no teeth to avoiding a fight through the narrative if you can just breeze past it with overpowered units. Triangle Strategy may have had the same idea. When I wouldn’t give up Prince Roland, General Avlora came to siege my town and rolled over my team multiple times. She could have easily just taken him if I didn’t have the magic power of “reload to try it again.” I gave some serious thought to going back and just…letting her have him.

Had the game kept the fail state and taken Roland from me with the added consequence of my own town now being destroyed, Triangle Strategy would have been my number one game of maybe ever. Instead, I had to keep playing over and over until events coincided well enough to catch Avlora in one of the hidden firebombs that torched sections of my citizen’s housing (no “perfect” savior, not on this difficulty) and squeaked out a victory so narrow it barely felt real. Sorry, townsfolk, your material possessions went to protect my friend. And the people definitely weren’t thrilled about the machinations of the aristocracy when I went to talk to them later. I can only assume that had I not had the difficulty cranked up, I could have defeated Avlora handily, without burning half the town to the ground in the process. If the town burns in the narrative regardless of in-battle actions, I do not want to know.

how you could go any other way I do not know

A lot of characters join you throughout the game, and each unit is mechanically very distinct in a fun way. Much like I did with Micaiah in Radiant Dawn/Path of Radiance or Domingo in Shining Force, I chose a favorite unit to baby and try to feed easy experience to, eventually turning them into a powerhouse (with Frederica, it…didn’t quite work that way). Anna became my star and savior—her thiefy moveset actually worked well!—and if she ever voiced a real opinion on what was going on during the narrative, I would have had Serenoa listen to her.

What I liked about Triangle Strategy was how is mostly hid the mechanical plot fulcrums from me. I couldn’t see the clear divergences in storyline that would only impact the plot for a few scenes before inevitably blending back together into the “main” route—instead, each choice seemed to shuffle me further down an bespoke path that wouldn’t have made much sense if I had instead gone another way. I love a game where there seems to be many ways it could have played out—if things always end up in the same basic shape, I won’t know it because I will probably never play it again. A really fun game with a lot of memorable moments, I am mostly surprised Triangle Strategy ended up only ranking fourth in 2022.

3. Elden Ring

It wasn’t until I played Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song late in the year that I realized what was keeping Elden Ring from being my favorite of the Souls series—I understood the underlying mechanics of the world too well. I’d be completely lying if I said I didn’t love Elden Ring, but it didn’t slake my wanderlust or desire for discovery like some of its breathern. Looking through the bare handful of screenshots I carried with me hyped me up to play it again, though, and if I didn’t have a pile of other amazing things to try I could reasonably keep playing Elden Ring, uh, indefinitely.

To be completely fair, being third on the list is most likely the consequence of how it has been ten months since the game came out, and that I haven’t played it more than a handful of times in the last five months. But if recency bias wasn’t a thing or if I had more time to just keep playing Elden Ring whenever I wanted, I’d still have quibbles. I can’t shake off the feeling of completely bewilderment I got in Minstrel Song: perhaps it’s because the storyline is much more—explicit doesn’t seem like the right word, but…—Elden Ring shows you a lot more than prior Souls games. You can’t really avoid learning about the world; the deep lore is still there, and still obscured, and still really cool, but what I loved best about exploring in prior games was not having anything solid beneath my feet. I wasn’t ever sure what impact I was having on the world, or whether my actions, choices, and reactions were making a difference in the plot or in the storylines—was I simply not carrying to right trinket? Did this NPC only come out at night, or when it’s raining? Was I doing a storyline that was obscure or straightforward, in a way that was dumb or in a way that was unintended, or in the only way that is possible to do it?

The threads were too tangible in Elden Ring. Maybe I’ve played too many of these games, but it didn’t hark back to NES black-void backgrounds and instruction manual-only motivations. I didn’t ever feel lost in the world—I felt great exploring it, and I was constantly surprised and delighted at what had been created, but I never had mechanical questions like I did in Darkroot Garden—who are these ghost hunters? How do I join covenants? What does this ring actually do?—everything felt solved, or solvable. Its a weird request to want to not know how things work in a game, but I found no Old Witch’s Ring equivalent, no single weird item that you could choose off the bat and carry around for the whole game not really knowing where or how to use it. It’s an awesome game, but at its heart it’s still just a game. I follow questlines and open up the areas with items I receieve by exploring reasonably and methodically.

i didn’t figure out all the questlines, because who are you two and what do you want me to do?

I am sure Minstrel Song will eventually hit that level for me, where I can see the mechanics and know how to trigger storylines and quests. It’s also possible that because the world is so huge I missed these small chances whenever they came up—how, exactly, will you be sent to the painted world when the map is this massive? But that is its own sort of issue. I’m glad most of the systems in Elden Ring were smoothed out—it is a massive hit, and the world of video games is better for it. But for now, I need to search for my confusing-yet-enthralling fix elsewhere.

2. Tactics Ogre: Reborn

Upon booting up Tactics Ogre: Reborn for the first time, the Overture I heard a thousand times on SNES’ Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen blasted me right in the face. This is palpable nostalgia—I never made it past Map 7 in March of the Black Queen, but I played those first levels incessantly, studied the level-up class change chart obsessively, and learned to love the iconography of tarot through a 16-bit filter. Each time I hear that sound it is a Sunday morning 30 years ago.

Somehow, somehow I missed the PlayStation release of Tactics Ogre 2 in ‘98 (probably too busy trying to get Baldur’s Gate running on my PC) even though I know if I knew it existed I would have found a way to buy it. We were all of us at the whims of magazine coverage and local game store purchase orders.

When and how ever I discovered it, it became a mythological desire: this lost sequel to a game I loved in a genre I internalized after being shunted by the dearth of RPGs available on the Genesis into Shining Force tactical maps. If Final Fantasy Tactics was your most-played PS1 game and Ogre Battle was a theme and world you adored, how could you pass up Tactics Ogre?

Once Reborn was leaked, I knew there was no chance I would miss it this time.

in tactics games I tend to pick a favorite unit and my meddling makes them less useful than some of the ones I care about less (cistina is so much better than cerya in my game, somehow)

The game is massively fun. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have access to it as a teenager with almost unlimited time to play games. The amount of things you get to do—so many units, each with their own gear, taking the field in battles that range in size and scope—is really impressive.

More than halfway through the game I discovered there are things outside of just the tactical map to discover—the first time I stopped simply following the “you haven’t been here yet” red-dot plot battles and read the “talk" section in the menu, I heard that some zombies had been spotted massing near a town that I had already liberated. So I left the golden path and followed up, visiting a small, peaceful town icon across the map. I was startled to be thrust directly into a new and unexpected battle—suddenly, the undead were assaulting a woman with a unique profile picture and voiced dialogue, universal signs that she might be recruitable for my party. As she was about to escape from the fracas via a shiftstone teleportation—like most NPCs who are too important to the plot to let truly die—I figured she would hang out and join me once I cleared the field. But before the stone could safely remove her, she was killed.

Suddenly, my goal was to get across the field and resurrect her before her death timer reached zero! Ah, cool, an extra step in recruiting her, one that integrated battle mechanics. I bet she’s a powerful character! So I did it, destroying all remaining zombies after safely bringing her back to life; as the mission ended and we launched into the post battle wrap-up, I was startled when she succumbed to her grievous wounds and died a cutscene death. My main character subtly chastised me, the player, by lamenting something like, “If only we could have gotten here sooner.” Maybe I needed to find and follow this rumor in an earlier chapter, or on an earlier day in the in-game calendar, or maybe I could never save her and she’s important in a different storyline, or was part of an unfinished quest, or was never intended to be recruited. Who can know for sure without looking it up—and those sort of “what if” threads dangling around are what I love most about video games. Could I have done something better and saved Oelias from zombie death?

Would Cerya not have joined me if her sister wasn’t already part of my team? How’d I get Cistina in the first place, anyway?

Now that I had discovered the rumors, I was soon way out in the corner of the map, being taunted by enemies for “relic hunting” when I should be leading the Resistance. Beyond intrigued by what the Palace of the Dead could possibly be, I found a secret door and what seemed to supply an endless possibility of tough, small battles. Oh, what’s that, now there’s a rumor of a pirate’s graveyard somewhere out beyond the islands far to the south? And this really cool dragon tamer just refused to join me because she still believes that I perpetrated the massacre at Balmamusa—even though I didn’t, but could have chosen to—the lie from the first act of the game?

The battles are smaller and faster than Triangle Strategy, and the story bits—extraneous from the actual battles—feel stuffed with an almost endless amount variety and surprise. If the battles feel too familiar to anyone that has played tactics games in the last three decades, it’s because they are; if Tactics Ogre isn’t quite the the progenitor of it all, it is at the very least one of the true codifying sources. Unmissable.

1. Scarlet Nexus

When I shook off the bewitching power of FF14 right before the first days of 2022—how can anyone make the time for an MMO when they have a child, legit question?—I had two new games for my new PS5 to choose from: Tales of Arise and Scarlet Nexus. I thought they looked similar, and I went with Arise because I tend to like swords more than sci-fi. Boy, did I not expect that choice to represent my most and least favorite games of 2022.

Scarlet Nexus presents you with a choice right off the bat—one of two protagonists that run though the game in parallel. Once you finish the game, you have the possibility of keeping your items and running through the other storyline. I started the second character’s playthrough the day after I finished the first, something I never intended.

Funny when it happened to Sanji, funny when it happened to Kasane (especially if you do her storyline first)

these little guys having tea in the back room of the restaurant

On first blush, Scarlet Nexus has an almost generic anime aesthetic, a lot of cutscenes, pretty linear dungeons, and very little in the way of character customization. And honestly it retains most of those characteristics throughout the game. But it felt so good to play: the combat is smooth; psychic powers and flying objects; fire and lightning and superspeed; all without being overwhelming—and moving around the screen during non-battles, picking up little cubes and orbs while seeing lots of tiny detailing—is very pleasing.

Strength in detailing runs throughout the game: Yuito, the male player character, is kind of a goober. He’s intensely trusting, a little naive, a bit of a goody goody. One of the ways the game shows you his “childlike purity” is that he’s really into “Baki”, these little collectable mascot-blobs, basically the equivalent of Hello, Kitty. At one point he sews a plot-critical item into a Baki keychain and gives it Kasane, the female player character. A relatively major plotpoint from Kasane’s playthrough (I played as Kasane first) is that she can time travel. It is not really a stunning revelation that Kasane time-traveled into the past and saved Yuito from monsters, activating both his desire to join the monster-fighting army and his suspiciously similar-to-hers latent psychic powers. What is kind of neat is a little camera-jiggle when you’re playing through the Yuito storyline as past/child Yuito sees the Baki keychain—that present/adult Yuito gave to Kasane—on his savior’s belt. Yuito’s inexplicable love of these goofy little blobs is more than just arbitrarily filling out his character quirks. He loves Baki because he saw Baki at his moment of greatest need—and loving Baki caused Baki to be there in the first place. Delightful.

That sort of full-circle storytelling can be seen almost everywhere: the initial character select screen shows each protagonist facing toward different representations of their actualized goals, though you don’t know it until the game wraps up. No matter which protagonist you choose, you always end up with the same squad, but the bond events with your teammates highlight different facets of the supporting team members without having them become completely different characters (cough cough Vyce in Tactics Ogre cough cough). Whether you’re playing as Yuito or Kasane, the side characters remain complete and tangible throughout the whole game, but you get to know them in a different way depending on who you play as.

Oh, and I loved the music. So—the game is fun to play, the music is great, the storyline is quirky and richly detailed, and the supporting characters maintain their core essences no matter through whom you’re viewing them. Even with all that, how did it beat out both Tactics Ogre Reborn—which I thought was a shoe-in for my favorite—and Elden Ring—which I had to actively pry myself away from? Sometimes—rarely—when I had free time to play, turning on Tactics Ogre or Elden Ring felt like too much of a commitment. Never, not once, did I have a bad time when Scarlet Nexus was on the screen. That is all I can ever ask from a video game, and that’s what makes it my top game in a really, really, ridiculously stacked year for video games.