I didn’t play as many new games this year as I had hoped to, with the main ones being Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. There is also Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail, which I suppose sort of counts as DLC
Veilguard was something of a let-down, though it is in my mind a solid 7 out of 10. While it has solid action RPG combat, incredible visuals, and a mostly coherent story that I found satisfying if not stellar, its moment to moment writing and roleplaying are some of the weakest Bioware has produced, rivaled only by those in their weakest game, Mass Effect: Andromeda (outside of perhaps Anthem, anyway, which I never played). Where the game truly falters, however, at least relative to Bioware’s other work, is in the shallowness of its companions, which lack the layers and complexities of many of Bioware’s best, and as much as it pains me to say it, even Andromeda’s cast had more going on for them than Veilguard’s does
Dawntrail is a similar story, failing to approach even FFXIV’s weakest expansions in terms of quality, particularly in its poorly-paced, incoherent mess of a Main Scenario. This one is likely to be remembered as a turning point for the game that keeps Square Enix afloat, and whether or not Creative Business Unit 3 can right this ship remains to be seen
And that leaves Rebirth. My time with this one was some of the most joyous gaming I can remember in my life. Some of this joy was fueled no doubt by nostalgia, but even much of what they manage in this space is so immaculate that I can’t exactly see it as a negative. The game exudes a profound love for its source material that rarely shines through in remakes of this nature while also not shying away from bold, new choices, like its controversial ending, which leaves Aerith’s foretold fate a mystery we’ll only fully untangle in the third and final installment of the Remake trilogy
But even outside of its status as a remake a piece of a decades old game, Rebirth stands head and shoulders above many others with its perfectly-tuned combat combined with an open-world structure that is largely driven not by meaningless rewards but by meaningful interaction with the game’s lovingly-rendered and legendary cast. Its writing excels, too, in the way that good JRPGs do, with believably sketched characters that are more than the shallow, one-note companions we find in something like Bioware’s Veilguard or the weak character work found in last year’s Final Fantasy XVI. Surely the game benefits from its retelling of an existing story, but its writers use this foundation to great effect, and I’ll be thinking of this one all the way up until the trilogy’s conclusion
Many other games from this year are “on my radar”, so to speak, but I don’t imagine they would manage to have as much impact on me as *Rebirth" did, since it also reignited my dormant love for JRPGs (and finally got me to play some Fire Emblem!). And, I suppose that makes Final Fantasy VII Rebirth my game of the year!
