Favorite Games of 2019 & Most Anticipated of 2020

[Zevox]

Kind of surprised nobody else made something like this prior to the new year. So everybody, what are your favorite/"Game of the Year" picks from last year, and what are you looking forward to this year?

2019 was a little shorter on great games for me than its predecessor, but boy did it have a couple of stand-outs. My favorite and clear personal "Game of the Year" being Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The story and overall writing quality of that game far surpassed the series' previous standards and my expectations, and the gameplay was even improved in fun and interesting ways, despite some gripes with the difficulty not being very high (at least prior to the release of Lunatic mode, haven't tried that yet). I haven't previously had a single favorite Fire Emblem game, but now that one is clearly head and shoulders of the rest. A strong second was Devil May Cry 5, which is just a superb, extremely fun action game and a great return to form for that franchise after its thankfully-failed reboot attempt. Also, it's the first true DMC game that I beat on Dante Must Die difficulty, which was so satisfying.

For a personal favorite genre of mine, fighting games, it was kind of the year of DLC for me. Oh, there were a few new releases, and I tried a couple of them (Mortal Kombat 11 and Samurai Shodown), but didn't wind up liking them all that much. But the steady stream of DLC for Smash Ultimate and Dragon Ball FighterZ, and the couple of updates for BlazBlue Cross Tag gave me plenty to love anyway. Joker, the DQ Heroes, and the dream-come-true of Banjo in Smash; Videl and Gogeta in DBFZ; and Neo, Adachi, and some very nice balance changes in BB Tag were all much appreciated. BB Tag in particular is honestly one of my favorite fighting games of all time at this point, with so many characters that I just love playing, and fewer online issues than the other two thanks to its great lobby system - plus it just stands out that of every fighting game I play these days, and even compared to many I used to play, it's the one where I have the most fun and get the least frustrated even when I'm losing a lot.

For the coming year, probably the biggest things for me at the moment are a couple of new fighting games: Granblue Fantasy Versus and Guilty Gear Strive. And strangely, I'm more looking forward to Granblue than Guilty Gear, despite Granblue being based on a Japanese mobile game I've never touched while Guilty Gear is a series I've played before. I just found myself enjoying the Granblue beta they held earlier this year quite a bit, and some of the characters that have been revealed since then look quite fun (Percival and Zeta); while in contrast Guilty Gear has the problem that I never did find a character that really meshed with me in its last iteration, and the information we've been getting about how the new one's mechanics differ from the older games concerns me a bit, since it seems to be moving away from the things that previously seemed to define that series, slowing things down and drastically shortening combos in favor of more damaging individual hits. I'm cool with a new game like Granblue being ArcSys' more Street Fighter-esque, "grounded footsies" fighting game, a little less so with the idea that they might move one of their legacy series in that direction, since I tend to prefer the fast-paced craziness and lengthy combos their games otherwise embody, so them moving an existing series away from that is a bit concerning. Still, I've wanted to get into Guilty Gear, and with new characters being added to this one there's hope that I'll find someone I gel with this time. Also, hoping to see some cool additions to Smash and Dragonball continue - and while I'm not expecting it since the big 2.0 update feels like a likely place for them to stop work on that and just move on to the next game, I hold some small hope for additional BB Tag DLC.

Outside of that, the only big-ish one that we know of at the moment (unless I'm forgetting something) is the Final Fantasy 7 Remake (or the first part of it, anyway), which has kind of caught my interest despite me not being a big Final Fantasy fan and having never finished the original FF7. Mostly because the gameplay looks pretty darn good, and a certain big fighting game Youtuber I follow who is a huge fan of the original has been singing the game's praises for how well it's doing representing the original characters and story that he loves. So perhaps this remake will a good way for me to find out what it is that so many people liked so much about the game.

Also, while there's no release date yet, I'm hoping that 2020 will be the year Bayonetta 3 finally sees the light of day, after the past two years of near total silence since it was announced. And there's a couple of expanded re-releases I'll probably grab in the form of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore and Persona 5: The Royal. Beyond that, just crossing my fingers that there's some actually cool stuff for the next-gen consoles when they launch in the Holidays this time, rather than the lackluster starting lineup those have had the past couple of generations.

[Lord Raziere]

My top game of 2019 is Bug Fables, hand down. its a paper-mario like that improves upon the combat and story, with lots of content I'm not even done with yet. any person who played paper mario and/or thousand year door back in the day, you owe to yourself to try Bug Fables.

all the other games I have aren't even a 2019 game, or just aren't noteworthy enough to mention in my eyes.

but DLC yeah, pretty good. I did go back and the Fighter Z DLC a lot, I'm still having trouble figuring out which fighters I'd like main between like: Hit, Goku Black, Jiren, Janemba, Gogeta, DBS Broly, Kid Buu, between my rare bouts of playing Fighter Z I improve by leaps only to not be interested in the game for another few months and I doubt I'll ever really get into it to play well with others online.

did Sekiro come out in 2019? pretty sure it did, man I still haven't finished that, along with Dark Souls Remastered and Code Vein. so many games, not enough time to finish them all, keep getting distracted.

[Aotrs Commander]

Y'know, I'm not even sure I PLAYED any games in 2019 that were released in 2019; while I played plenty of "new-to-me" games, I'm fairly sure they were all games that I'd just been sitting on. (E.g. Pathfinder Kingmaker - which I bkaced on kickstarter - which I'm currently playing) or were already released (Stardew Valley). I am now at a point where I more or less deliberately don't play any game on release and wait patiently for the patches (sometimes all the expansions) before touching it, and/or buying games on sale (as there's no point buying anything on release if I'm not going to play it immediately).

...

I don't think I can think of, currently, and games I'm waiting for, on that will come this year. (X-Com 3, maybe, if that comes out this year (it might well not), but like with the last two, I'll probably hang on until the expansion comes out; going double for Cyberpunk (since I'm not even sure I'm interested, given it's a shooter); and after that, Baldur's Gate 3 and Wrath of the Righteous are the only other games I can even think of that I know about that are coming out eventually.)



No, tell a lie, I think Irony Curtain was released in 2019. So that's, like, the one, probably.

[Dienekes]

I’ve been gaming a lot less. Probably for the better.

The only games I’ve played at all have been Sekiro, Devil May Cry 5, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and Jedi: Fallen Order. Div2 isn’t a 2019 game, and I only just started playing Jedi.

My favorite has been Sekiro. And it’s not even close.

[Morty]

My favorite game of 2019 is probably Disco Elysium, which came out by the end of it. I liked Sekiro as well, but Disco Elysum is just a lot more unique and memorable. I can unironically call it a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, which I don't do often. Or ever, really.

[Zevox]

but DLC yeah, pretty good. I did go back and the Fighter Z DLC a lot, I'm still having trouble figuring out which fighters I'd like main between like: Hit, Goku Black, Jiren, Janemba, Gogeta, DBS Broly, Kid Buu, between my rare bouts of playing Fighter Z I improve by leaps only to not be interested in the game for another few months and I doubt I'll ever really get into it to play well with others online.

I know the feeling on the character decisions. I've moved back and forth between teams using Android 18, SS Vegeta, Freeza, Yamcha, Goku Black, Android 21, Vegito, Cooler, Videl, and Gogeta throughout my time with the game, and tried a little bit to pick up Gotenks and base Vegeta too. Always hard to narrow a team down, and it always feels like there's someone else I want to play. Have that same problem in BB Tag - although there at least I did decide on a main team I'm very happy with recently.

did Sekiro come out in 2019? pretty sure it did, man I still haven't finished that, along with Dark Souls Remastered and Code Vein. so many games, not enough time to finish them all, keep getting distracted.

It (Sekiro at least) did. That's one I actually have, but just haven't played yet. Need to find the time. Same with Jedi: Fallen Order, which I got as a Christmas gift. Still, can't imagine liking either one more than Fire Emblem: Three Houses or Devil May Cry 5, since I'm less of a fan of Dark Souls and its other related titles than I am of those.

[JadedDM]

The only 2019 games I played in 2019 were the Resident Evil 2 remake and The Outer Worlds, and I enjoyed both quite a bit.

As for what I'm looking forward to in 2020: Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Resident Evil 3 remake, The Last of Us 2, Dark Alliance, and Crusader Kings 3. Oh, and if BG3 comes out in 2020, then that, too.

[oxybe]

As much as it saddens me to say this in a year which a mainline Pokemon was released: probably Mario Maker 2.

While multiplayer does suffer the Nintendo curse of lag at times, the singleplayer is absolutely fantastic. Solid platforming, an active subreddit if you want to look for levels without hazarding the random troll or 2% clear rate super-expert, a powerful toolkit to make your own mario levels and they recently added a new powerup that turns Mario Bros 1 Mario into Link, complete with sword thrusts, bomb, bow, shield, charge and downward sword spike for new ways to interact with objects.

SMM2 is a game I just keep coming back to between rounds of Fortnite or mobile games.