Branching Path: Josh Tolentino's Top 10 Games of 2024

If 2023 was a weird year for the game industry, 2024 was even weirder. Less kind than ever to the people that make its games, the year was nevertheless packed to the gills with top-tier titles, even while some pundits called it "slow," perhaps speaking more to limitations of perspective than of the actual breadth of choice or options available to folks looking for something new to play.

For me, 2024 was a year for dabbling and snacking most days, but then diving in to feast and feast for weeks on end with headline-grabbing high-end releases. It was also a year to say [X] is so back, with multiple of my favorite titles functioning as signals of a grand and glorious return for one thing or another. There was so much to pick from just this year that not only did I outd my "Top 7" list from last year, but I also found a whole heap of really cool games well worth an honorable mention.

Honorable Mentions, in No Particular Order

This sub-list is where I want to shout out the games I really liked but didn't get enough time with, or otherwise deserved recognition despite not quite making it into my most favorite titles of the year.

• Persona 3 Reload - For as much as old games deserve to be experienced with respect to their real history and context, I can't help but get excited to see an old favorite get a fresh, fancy new coat of paint. Especially something as frankly formative as Persona 3 was for me. Sadly, various obligations and the fact that modern Persona games take a ton of time kept me from getting as far into it as I wanted to, but my time with it rekindled a number of fond memories...and implanted a new version of "Mass Destruction" to start looping in my dreams.

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Continuing the trend of seeing formative favorites revived once more, Stalker 2 (I refuse to type the formal title more than once) carries much of the old magic that Shadow of Chernobyl once cast on an entire generation of players, entrancing them with the bleak majesty of The Zone. The fact that developer GSC Game World even finished it amid the chaos of the war in Ukraine is also the stuff of miracles. That said, the game came in really hot, rife with technical issues and apparently missing some core features that were only restored by a massive update released a couple of weeks ago. As a result, I suddenly feel like restarting, and decided to bump the game off my main list until I've had time to reconnect.

• Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes - In light of how important the Suikoden series is to my gaming history, you'd think I would have enough time to make for Eiyuden Chronicle, but it's a testament to how packed solid 2024 was for me that I never managed to clear it before the year was out. From what I have played, though, Hundred Heroes feels like a spiritual successor to Suikoden in the best senses of the term, featuring much of the same soul that so endeared me to the original series. That probably shouldn't be a surprise, seeing as the game's staff features many of the same creators, including the late, great Yoshitaka Murayama, who sadly didn't live to see Hundred Heroes released.

• Pacific Drive - The pre-release cycle for Pacific Drive was something of a roller-coaster for me. Initial elation at a creepy tour through The Zone as filtered through the American Pacific Northwest was replaced by a mild dismay at the reality that it was going to be a driving-centric roguelike of sorts. Not exactly the combination of genre keywords I find myself champing at the bit to play, I must admit. But I'm glad I gave it a chance, because Pacific Drive does a great deal to make first-person, in-cockpit driving feel awesome. Way too often - especially since VR isn't really that much of a thing for most games - driving a car in games feels like you become some kind of embodied vehicle. Pacific Drive makes you feel like an actual driver of a car, a vulnerable little bag of meat in a motor-powered cage of glass and steel. The car becomes your suit of armor, your home away from garage, and the thin line of defense between you and the horrors outside. It's also got a top-tier diegetic user interface, the kind I haven't seen

• Metaphor: ReFantazio - I'm far from done with Metaphor, which is why it isn't in the main ranking, but so far it's the most satisfying Atlus-produced RPG I've played since Persona 4. This isn't to say that it renders the others lesser, but it's kind of refreshing to see the Persona team at work absent the, for lack of a better word, "baggage" of developing yet another Persona game. The result, at least so far, has been a bold and confident statement of a game that lets the gravity of its interior outweigh the other imperfections that have, over the years, begun to hang like weights around the legs of other works by these same creators.

• 1000xRESIST - A fantastic narrative game, and one I hold in similar regard to my beloved 13 Sentinels , Outer Wilds, and even Ghost Trick. You should play it, but I cannot say anything further about it beyond clarifying that it's not quite the same sort of game as the aforementioned beloved titles. If you're interested in someone more willing and able to hold forth about it, try Josh Torres' writeup of the game here.

• Heaven Burns Red - I was looking forward to seeing this one launch in English because the rumblings I'd heard from the Japanese press and fan scene was effusive with praise since its launch in 2022. Now that it's here, I'm glad to report that they weren't kidding. A social media buddy accurately summed Heaven Burns Red's vibe as "all gas no brakes Jun Maeda with a janky gacha RPG wrapped around it." That honestly doesn't sound like much if you're not familiar with Jun Maeda's work, but those who know will enjoy ugly-crying from the intensity of the drama and nursing their necks from the intensity of the tonal whiplash, loving every moment.

• Stellar Blade - While in my review I found that Stellar Blade didn't quite manage to grow beyond the game that helped inspire it, I'm nevertheless glad that developer Shift Up created a gorgeoous, finely tuned action-RPG with a focuse on world-building and a generous DLC plan, a vision decidedly unlike Shift Up's other game, NIKKE (though I will say that the NIKKE team could teach the Stellar Blade team a few things about having a compelling central plot and able character writing).

• Granblue Fantasy: Relink - You know how a lot of anime that are adaptations of popular long-running series, like One Piece et al, are more often treated like fancy, visually sumptuous companions to the story you're already presumed to be reading along or caught up with? That's Relink, an immensely satisfying representation of Granblue Fantasy, the gacha game that is actually just a website. In a way, that's all a Granblue fan could really have asked for.

• Fate/stay night Remastered - Real talk: You wanna talk about formative media? The only reason I haven't put this at the top of the big list is it would be betraying my personal rule against putting straight remasters in the main ranking. Also, I'm slightly conflicted at the fact that if this game didn't exist, then the world wouldn't have had to suffer the existence of my beloved Fate/Grand Order...

10) Ace Attorney Investigations Collection

Hey, what gives? Didn't I just exclude Fate/stay night remastered from the main ranking for being a remaster? What's this this remastered double-pack of the Ace Attorney Investigations games doing here? That's technically true, but while the Fate/stay night story is fairly well-known from adaptations that were officially localized before the release of Remastered, the second Ace Attorney Investigations game, Prosecutor's Gambit, was all but unplayable outside an emulated 3DS romhack until Capcom put out this edition. And with an appealing art revamp and the narrative benefits being able to binge-play both games in sequence adds, there's plenty to make the bundle feel entirely new, and reaffirm the games as superlative parts of the Ace Attorney canon.

9) Astro Bot

I won't lie: I do have misgivings about calling what is, in essence, a big fat promotion for the PlayStation back catalog a true game of the year. But I'll be damned if Astro Bot isn't one of the best promotions ever made, and an excellent 3D mascot platformer in its own right. Team Asobi really knocked it out of the park, creating a celebration of PlayStation's legacy that's worth acknowledging, regardless of whether Sony as a steward has earned it or not.

8) Helldivers 2

Speaking of less-than-ideal stewardship, Arrowhead developed Helldivers 2 a superlative, world-beating co-op shooter and the best Starship Troopers game anyone could ask for (big praise in a time period that's seen multiple officially licensed contemporaryu Starship Troopers games developed and released), and managed it all in spite of some trully boneheaded missteps, like the attempt to force a mandatory PSN login, only to delist the game in multiple countries (including my own!) after facing backlash. Sony aside, Helldivers has effectively replaced Destiny as my go-to relaxation shooter: The thing you boot up when you've got an hour or so to kill and want to spend it doing some (virtual) killing.

7) Zenless Zone Zero

I'm breaking my personal rule about trying not to include gacha-supported games in the main ranking because, well, I like Zenless Zone Zero that much. While the miHoYo-developed games in general have been the poster children for the kind of production one can wring out of putting top-flight resources and time behind an anime otaku-inspired game, ZZZ puts even its own stablemates Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail to shame, partly by proving the virtue of having a distinct and coherent art style and leting it drive the game's mood and presentation on all the key levels. Zenless' focus on striking designs, a unique urban vibe (right on time to preempt the coming wave of other urban-themed Chinese gacha games), and an cartoon-derived sense of physicality and motion makes it one of the best-looking games of the year, and by my estimation, the best-playing of the many gacha games I've subjected myself to in 2024.

6) Hardcoded

This isn't the first time an RPG Site writer has talked about a game with decidedly R-18 elements. Just think of Demons Roots last year. That said, unlike the occasional visual novel that used to have adult scenes before it went all-ages - like Fate/stay night and various others - Hardcoded is inseparable from the bits that make it hard to recommend in polite company. And yet! Despite all that, despite my definitely not being in the target audience, its freeform, filthy-as-hell, retro-styled tale of a trans girl robot living in the dystopic future is made with such joy and spark that I can't but recommend it to anyone willing to give an adults-only game a try. From sharp characterization to a frankly moving exploration of marginalized folks living and finding home and family outside the bounds of society, Hardcoded's worth the nod.

5) Rise of the Ronin

I get it when most folks compare Rise of the Ronin to Ghost of Tsushima and Assassin's Creed, but to me Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja have infused their Nioh-derived sword-'em-up with the spirit of Way of the Samurai. Like Acquire's seemingly dormant open-world series, Rise of the Ronin expertly conveys a particular impression of Japan at the end of the Shogunate era, allowing players to insert themselves into that well-known (at least in Japan) into the story. Unlike Ghost of Tsushima and Assassin's Creed, though, Rise of the Ronin is properly irreverent, recognizing its place not as a substitute for a good documentary or history book but as a piece of historically-themed entertainment. Which means you can pal around with Commodore Matthew Perry and bring him along on missions with with your drinking buddy Ryoma Sakamoto. In its way, and thanks in part to a production level exceeding what Acquire's currently capable of, Rise of the Ronin cements its place as the best bakumatsu game around.

4) Unicorn Overlord

There'll always be a place for Vanillaware in any ranking of games of the year for me, and while I'll freely admit that Unicorn Overlord doesn't feel quite as...seismic as my beloved 13 Sentinels (at least not narratively), it's easily one of my favorite Vanillaware games to actually play and sink into. A dense and engaging tactical RPG with dozens of gorgeous-looking characters to optimize and kit out, Unicorn Overlord scratches the itch that makes you just wanna command some soldiers to go beat the pants off a bunch of baddies while you look on like a king.

3) Dragon Age: The Veilguard

As I mentioned in the review, Dragon Age: The Veilguard got a pretty raw deal, beginning life as one thing and then turning into another, then another in the intervening years after Dragon Age: Inquisition. And even after the loss of many of the key creatives behind Dragon Age in the first place, the new team did about as well as could be hoped for, turning The Veilguard into a new beginning of sorts for the series. Not a reboot, and not a direct continuation either, but still managing to hit the key beats and character focus that connected me to Dragon Age in the first place. The Veilguard was hardly perfect, but it pulled off the most important job it had to - making me (and perhaps a few others that share my view) that BioWare and the people still in it might have what it takes to keep Dragon Age's fire lit a while longer. I'm straight up excited to see what they might manage next.

2) Tsukihime - A piece of blue glass moon -

Was there ever any doubt? For years it felt like Tsukihime Remake would like much of the Fate series, be yet another legendary visual novel destined for the relative obscurity of fan translations, secondary adaptations, and the Japanese-fluent gaming populace. But it's here and it's as much of a thing as I'd imagined. Now we can all be saved by the moon princess.

1) Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

If you'd told the me of 1998 or so that in 26 years I'd be playing Final Fantasy VII again, except as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, a bigger, prettier, metatextual reckoning of sorts, the younger me would laugh nervously, not having much comprehension of what it even means to have a metatextual reckoning. But it's definitely quite the experience to revisit a game that meant so much to so many and mess around with what it might all mean in the end. Frankly, that might not be what a lot of folks were looking for when the Remake project was first confirmed, but at the same time, I'm confident and, in fact, glad, that they didn't settle on "The Same Game But Prettier," at least, not in some key ways. Square Enix will still have to land that bird with whatever they plan to call the third and final installment, but I'm definitely onboard to see it through, for better and for worse.