Branching Path: Josh Torres’ Top 10 Games of 2024
While much of 2024’s talk in the gaming industry revolved around being a “slow” year for the AAA space, it quietly became one of my favorite recent years for video games. There were an avalanche of niche games that caught my attention, even though quite a handful of them went under the radar. It was a fantastic year for RPGs as well, which helps this site continue to operate I suppose.
In fact, there were so many games I loved in 2024 that… I happened to end up with nine Honorable Mentions that I really, really wanted to put in my top 10 and it just didn’t sit right with me to not acknowledge them at all.
The Top Nine Games That Didn’t Make the Top Ten (in no order)
- Fate/stay night Remastered - Surreal to see an official western release for this after 20 years. I can’t wait for Fate/hollow ataraxia Remastered.
- Megaton Musashi W: Wired - Criminally overlooked mecha action RPG with one of the most absurd storylines in recent memory. I partially blame Level-5 for doing their best to not market this game in the west at all. Read my review of Megaton Musashi W: Wired to find out why it's awesome.
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 - Solid follow-up to the first Space Marine, despite my gripes with how sluggish it is to navigate its home base menu.
- Unicorn Overlord - Vanillaware reintroduced the modern world to Ogre Battle and while it isn’t perfect, the versatility of its unit management systems made my brain worms happy.
- Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club - I finally sat down and marathoned the two Famicom Detective Club remakes and this brand-new entry in a week. Still torn on how the finale and epilogue were presented, but I admire the audacity to do it in such a fashion.
- Balatro - Clever poker roguelite deckbuilder that proves you only really need One Catchy Track to keep you coming back.
- Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance - An above & beyond expanded release of SMTV that no longer feels like abysmal dogshit to play because it’s on more powerful hardware now & if there was a category for “Best & Most New Music in an Expansion”, this would probably win it.
- Granblue Fantasy: Relink - Stuck in a well-documented hell of development for many years, Granblue Fantasy: Relink captured the RPG world earlier this year briefly and became one of my favorite success stories. It has an incredibly solid foundation and I hope to see a big sequel to it someday that irons out its rough edges.
- Full Metal Daemon: Muramasa - Didn’t release this year, but I finally got around to reading it because I got into a Big Visual Novel Mood that lasted roughly two months. Incredible piece of literature with a unique center-aligned presentation and captivating ensemble wrapped up in some cool mecha fight sequences. Fair warning if you decide to read this - it is not for the weak of heart and contains some especially graphic and brutal scenes.
10) Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-
Back when Witch on the Holy Night announced that its 2022 remaster would be receiving an official English release in the west, I hurriedly expressed my excitement mere hours after it was announced. I dared to dream that perhaps we’d even see a western release of Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- eventually and this year, Type-Moon and Aniplex answered those wishes; hell, they even finally officially released Fate/stay night in the west after two decades, too.
I was so thoroughly engrossed and impressed at the production values of Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- in how much it re-envisioned the Arcueid and Ciel routes (especially Ciel) of the original visual novel. There's certainly still merit in reading the original and I think it’s worth reading both versions.
While I admittedly am a bigger fan of the Far Side routes that have yet to be adapted in the second half of the Tsukihime remake project, what -A piece of blue glass moon- presents has me very eager to see how those turn out. For my full thoughts, read my Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon- review earlier this year.
Once again, I dare to dream even bigger and bolder now… an earnest wish to see a worldwide simultaneous release of Tsukihime -The other side of red garden-.
9) Devil Blade Reboot
Developed across 6.5 years by Vanillaware artist Shigatake, Devil Blade Reboot is a mesmerizing, blood-pumping shmup that perfectly captures the purity of the genre on a systematic and artistic level. Its controls are incredibly responsive and its risk-vs-reward mechanics based on proximity to enemies is very easy to understand, yet hard to master especially on higher difficulties. Shigatake also rebuilt the entire original Devil Blade game that this remake is based off of on Shooting Game Builder and included it in Devil Blade Reboot as an unlockable, so players can see what the original game was like.
Composer hasu did an absolutely stellar job breathing life into Devil Blade Reboot’s OST and it is easily one of my favorite soundtracks in 2024. Even if you’re not planning on buying the game, I heavily recommend checking out the game’s OST at hasu’s Bandcamp page.
8) The Thaumaturge
From Polish developer Fool’s Theory, The Thaumaturge is a dark horse RPG set in an alternate history 1905 Warsaw where its historical context parallels real-world events with a supernatural twist. You play as a detective that can tap into the dark arts to well… call upon what are basically Personas, though they are all derived from popular local folklore and myths. It is one of the most immersive games I’ve played this year that is unlike any other game I’ve played in recent memory when it comes to its setting and atmosphere.
The cast in The Thaumaturge is an interesting bunch that carry the game’s emphasis on character interactions well above their weight. Although it initially didn’t launch with support for Polish voices, Fool’s Theory thankfully patched it in a post-release update and that reason alone warrants a second playthrough from me down the line. More people should play this game; it recently launched on consoles a few weeks ago as of the time of writing and it launched on PC back in March that I reviewed.
7) 1000xResist
A friend gifted me 1000xResist several days after it was released back in May. He told me that I absolutely had to play it and did not elaborate any further. Left befuddled, I skimmed its Steam page and still didn’t have a clear picture of what I was being signed up for. I booted it up, shut it off after about 1-2 hours, and repeated this process over several days.
It was the only game this year that made me feel like I was drowning as I played it - and I didn’t hate it for making me feel like this. In fact, I wrote extensively about why it made me feel this way and what makes this game special to me.
I think my friend recommended it to me because he knew I enjoyed sci-fi games that employ the medium of video games in narratively clever ways - such as 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and Gnosia. 1000xResist isn’t so different from them from that lens, but its approach and the themes it convey are vastly different that make it utterly compelling.
1000xResist constantly made me question the scope of its framework and how it has so much to tell in what seems like a relatively tight, tiny package at first. Plus, it has some of the best natural-sounding voicework in games this year which is a big plus to the kind of narrative it’s presenting. Incredible from top to bottom.
6) Astro Bot
Sure, I won’t deny that a percentage of Astro Bot’s charm is the constant feeling of “holy crap that character showed up” and is the only new game that dares to remember Arc the Lad in the year 2024. Nostalgia is a powerful thing and it’s always going to be difficult to evaluate the value it brings because its worth is always going to be different on an individual basis.
Luckily, Astro Bot is more than just a final resting place of many forgotten characters in gaming; it’s a well-made platformer that had me smiling from start to finish. I appreciate games that let me freely move stuff in them and Astro Bot delivers that in spades with a variety of items - dice, gems, bones, etc. - that let me mess with their physics as dozens of them fly across the screen with every swipe from my cute little robot dude. I still think about that one stage with the day and night cycle toggle because that stage's music was a bop.
5) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a genuinely impressive follow-up to FFVII Remake that somehow manages to fully visualize the entire world of FF7 with seemingly minimal compromises. While it does suffer from some repetitive open-world activities and pockets of horrible segments (you know, the Cait Sith one), it’s hard to refute that video games of FFVII Rebirth’s caliber aren’t really made like this anymore. There’s a fine balance between its vision, its scope, and its ambitions that fully utilize modern technologies to fuel the worlds we imagined in our heads as we witnessed the original iterations of these adventures on earlier hardware.
I don’t know if the final part of this FF7 remake trilogy can surpass the amount of improvements seen from Remake to Rebirth, but I’d love to see them try. I’ve also developed a sincere respect for Hamaguchi-san because he just seems so earnest and enthusiastic when he speaks about his time developing Rebirth with the development team. Hoping he continues to keep up with that energy as he tackles the last part of this enormous project.
4) Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven
When Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven was first announced at that Nintendo Direct, it blindsided me. I didn’t expect this remake at all. After Xeen's work on the solid Trials of Mana remake, the development team went truly above and beyond in making Revenge of the Seven quite possibly one of the best SaGa games ever - one that can be truly enjoyed by both newcomers and veterans alike.
Romancing SaGa 2’s original release felt like a game with limitless potential especially if you went in blind without using any guides; the amount of different scenarios and the unique ways they could resolve themselves from your direct actions were extraordinary for the time. Xeen faithfully recreated all of that in 3D, added even more content, and revamped a lot of the underlying gameplay systems to make it a smoother experience without compromising on the difficulty of the original release. Once Revenge of the Seven clicked with me, it was hard to put it down. When I first went hands-on with it at a preview event, I could already tell it was shaping up to be something special and they did not disappoint me.
3) Metaphor: ReFantazio
If you’ve read my past works for some time now, you know that I’m a huge fan of developers and publishers taking a risk on a brand-new IP - especially one on the scale of Atlus these days. By overly relying on new additions to Persona and Shin Megami Tensei in recent years (let’s not talk about Soul Hackers 2), their output hasn’t really been as diverse as their days on the PS2 and DS.
Metaphor: ReFantazio has been in the works for many, many years and it’s amazing to see it finally pay off in a big way. What caught me off-guard was how much it feels like a celebration title for Atlus as a developer. It amalgamates numerous systems from their other titles in a pretty elegant fashion with a few new bells and whistles thrown into the mix. If you want to know more of what I thought about one of the best RPGs this year, read my Metaphor: ReFantazio review!
Metaphor: ReFantazio is also the secret vessel that the developers used to not-so-subtly convey they want to make a new Etrian Odyssey and if they were relying on metrics to see how much of this game’s playerbase caught on to that, then the chances of a new EO coming anytime soon is not looking too good…
2) Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth
As the second turn-based RPG entry in the mainline Like A Dragon series, it’s astounding how much feedback RGG Studio took to heart for Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth after the Yakuza: Like A Dragon experiment. I was unsure how they’d handle the Ichiban and Kiryu dual protagonist angle, and it really, really worked for me. Hopefully Infinite Wealth is the actual true final game for Kiryu’s time in the spotlight because much of the game revolves around Kiryu’s decaying condition and how he has to cope with his mortality; trying to drag him back for yet another installment would feel like (another) betrayal of that sentiment.
I don’t know if it’s just me, but the talk surrounding this game feels like a gradual downward slope as the year went on. There’s a lot of fixation about the last third of Ichiban’s route and his finale. While I admit its execution isn’t perfect, I believe the ending captures the essence of what makes Ichiban such a worthy individual to carry Kiryu’s torch. There’s an obvious message that Infinite Wealth yells to its players that everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves by the end if we make the effort to extend our hands out; cynicism and pessimism may make it unrealistic to many, but Ichiban is built different. He’s him. I gave Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth a 10 in my review of it all the way back in January and I still stand by it.
1) Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival
I promise you this isn’t a joke. Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival finally escaped Switch exclusivity and released onto other platforms this year. Several years ago, I made an oath to myself that if a Taiko no Tatsujin game ever came to Steam, I would pick it up and get a nice drum controller to learn it properly if it was good.
So here I am at the end of 2024 and I’ve invested a total of ~$278 into the game with zero regrets; $67 for the Setlist Edition of the game, $7 for the 90-day Music Subscription Pass that adds like 800 songs to it plus gradually adds more monthly, and $204 for the TDC10 taiko drum controller. I’ve been playing it almost daily and while I’m not a god at it, I can feel gradual steady improvement and it feels very rewarding. There’s been no other game that I’ve come back to time after time after time after time again and again with a strong desire for self-improvement. My TDC10 drum controller sits right by my PC setup ready to hook up in mere seconds should I get the itch to drum and that itch comes often. I love this game and I’m very happy that this series finally came to Steam. It may have cost me a pretty penny to get everything, but every moment I drum in this game has been worth it.