I have a lot of these, but The Right Way Around, by Daughter, for Life is Strange: Before the Storm grabbed me the second I launched the game.

A more traditional main menu theme that I love is Ecce valde generous ale from Panzer Dragoon Saga. It’s a brilliant introduction to the game, drawing the player into a mysterious world in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Stardew Valley’s success had more to do with smart marketing than anything. The game has the exact same formula as Story of Seasons and Rune Factory, which are very corporate-run series, just not at AAA scale. The difference was Eric Barone cultivating word-of-mouth marketing via influencers and online communities to reintroduce the genre to the Western market (along with lucking into capitalizing on what was then a more nascent pixel art indie gaming trend).

Undertale’s a good example, though (I’ll still note this particular example is a huge spoiler). I did the thing and it was a very fresh idea, and one of the best hooks I’ve seen in a video game. Thing is though, I doubt even 10% took that route to see it. That’s something the game has in common with Baldur’s Gate 3, which is full of those low-percentage moments. AAA devs don’t like investing a lot of resources into things most people aren’t going to see.

I started Crying Suns and have been very impressed with the art and the story, both the greater narrative and the script. Not sure about the combat just yet, maybe my tactics are just bad.

Overall though, I don’t know how how the hell this one passed me by. Commanding a spaceship and roguelite gameplay, it’s exactly the sort of thing I love.

Or buying a lot of MTX in few games.

I know gaming enthusiasts don’t want to hear it, but a huge chunk of the market is people attached to one or two live service games.

Even though I liked ME2 and 3 a bit more, the series overall still has my favorite Bioware cast by a mile and one of my favorite casts in gaming.

The ironic thing is I actually find the setting kinda hokey, but the moment-to-moment action is fantastic. The exposition dump towards the end of ME1 that sets the stage for the larger conflict was so satisfying. A classic example of solid script writing and characterization elevating overall plot and setting.

Fire Emblem Engage. Only the third FE I’ve tried, I go back and forth on whether this series is for me. At this point, this one might be my favorite out of the ones I’ve played. The cast is really weird overall but I still quite like a few of them. I also like the character advancement and Engage systems. It’s fun to tinker with my party. The battles also seem to have less of the nonsense and more of the kind of strategy I like than in the others.

Classic. Gorgeous soundtrack, too. I remember as a kid (pre-Internet) actually calling up the store because I couldn’t figure out how to save the game 😂

I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed the main story in Starfield. I normally don’t care at all about it in Beth games. Unfortunately, I was too disappointed by all the missed potential to keep up with it after that (which is just weird to type out, I think I went 200 hours in Skyrim before I decided to actually go through the story). The awful framerates I was getting really didn’t help, either.

Oh, and Starfield’s Neon is gonna look real bad side-by-side with Cyberpunk 2077. Oof.

It’s really interesting that one of the reasons Diablo 3 was a step down was the increase in handcrafted story elements that kept interrupting the procgen flow. Some games just do really well with it.

Fire Emblem Engage, having more fun with it than I thought I would. After Three Houses, I’d kinda written off Fire Emblem as not for me but only a couple hours in I’m already having fun messing around with character builds.

I don’t think he’s particularly strident here or anything in Japanese, but the headline here would have been better off sticking with the machine translated “nothing has changed” in the article.

There isn’t any optimism in Matsuno’s words here. I would have added “as always” to “economic disparity remains the same” and “again” to his comments about armed conflicts. He sounds tired of the cycle.

You’re not going to find more text/explicit plot than you have already. That said, there is good environmental storytelling in the last zone of the game. The next zone for you (Wrecked Ship) might have a little more for you to chew on. I’d say get through that zone and then see how you feel about it. If you like it, the ending will probably feel rewarding.