Media I Like

What if Among Us or Werewolf was a singleplayer visual novel with a main story? That's Gnosia. The gameplay is so interesting- each character has their own 'quirks' which you pick up on as you go along, hinting at who's Gnosia and who's human. As you loop through different universes, watching your crewmates meet different fates, perhaps even playing as the enemy, you get to enjoy hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking events that bring you ever closer to the truth of it all... and maybe even a way out of the loop you've trapped yourself in. I truly love this game, its well-written characters, and its beautiful artwork, but the gameplay was the most fun.

This game is about five Korean idols and a staff member trapped in a collapsed building with no contact with the outside world... except for a very toxic Twitter feed. I made it sound silly, but it has some of the best character writing in this genre, paired with a fantastic mystery and a scenario that will keep you on your toes. Even if you don't like the idol scene (I don't LOL) you'll appreciate this game's commentary on the entertainment industry and the difference between the faces people show to the world, their true inner selves, and the things their haters say about them on Twitter. Also, the art, music, and presentation is all fantastic.

"Beautiful" is the only correct word for this game. The live-action acting and camerawork is a perfect medium for you, the player, to experience a series of murders spanning a century and the wit of the protagonist who solves them. It's the emotional intensity and the overarching mystery of this game that will really keep you hooked, like a J-Drama with often long and complex gameplay sequences. The final series of twists is going to blow your mind. This game misses nothing, and neither will you if you keep your eyes peeled.

This game is best gone into blind, but I can recommend it to two kinds of people- those who love murder mystery and detective games, and JoJo's Bizzare Adventure fans. (Yes, seriously- if you like JoJo, you will love this game.) It's only a 15 hour game, but the thrills will keep you on your toes for what feels like 60. It's just that well written. It has, bar none, the best written female character I've ever seen one of these games have, and has a beautiful, gritty, washed-out painterly aesthetic to all of its background and character art. It's an honest-to-god work of art, and I'm hoping the writer goes on to make a second one.

I'm still insane about this game. It's been like two years since this game got translated and I'm still completely crazy about how good it is. This game is heavily inspired by Danganronpa, but the many divergences it takes from the usual formula results in a fantastic series of twists. The art style pops, the character designs are cool as hell, and the story will keep you enthralled until the very end. Also, I love how there's just a *teeny tiny bit of visual foreshadowing* that will hit you like a truck after 20 hours. But what's the biggest reason you should play this game? Its incredibly touching and well-crafted ending was written by a writer who knew what they were talking about. Trust me.

The sheer scale of this game's events will boggle your mind. "I want the most convoluted-but-clear, complicated-but-simple science-fiction mystery visual novel that the world has ever seen, and I want it to look like a moving storybook. And have RTS segments for some reason." That's this game, which will start out feeling like a series of disorganized events, but slowly weave together into a gorgeous tapestry of stories and a grand love-letter to science fiction. I may have gotten a bit of secondhand embarrassment at the teenage romance subplots though.

This game blows just about every other game here out of the water in terms of its fantastic cast, character writing, plot, settings, interactions, and aesthetic. I can't wait for the full release! That being said, some of the controls feel a bit janky and I'm not sure if they'll fix that for the full release.

A lot of love went into the character writing especially in the first two chapters, and I love it, but I wanted so much more. This game is Ace Attorney with nonograms, where you interview witnesses, throw strange evidence at people, and try to work out what the name puns are. Also don't play this if you suck at nonograms.

Gorgeous art style, quirky characters, fun gameplay, humor that is still funny even in the 2020s, and putting your engineering brain on for problem solving reasons! A timeless classic that still surprises people with its final twist.

A murder mystery otome gacha game. Wild, right? Just about the only thing I like about it is the way the otome boys help the protagonist out on her investigations by pursuing separate but related lines of inquiry. And also the protag's design, because she is very cute. That's it though.

This game has some of the best character writing in the entire murder mystery visual novel genre, along with gameplay segments that will make you feel forbidden feelings. One of those characters feels engineered to anger me constantly, though.

What this game lacks in good character writing, it makes up with fantastic gameplay, along with a killer soundtrack. Personally I like this one less than AITSF, but it's like a 9/10 vs 8/10. It feels like it should have been a standalone.

Another game that diverged from the DR formula to great effect. You'll have a lot of fun traversing a cyberpunk city while solving serial killings and impossible murders. The final two chapters will rock your world and break your heart.

This game's main strengths are the five character stories that span a variety of genres that overall can appeal to anyone, and the process of unraveling the overarching conspiracy. However, I really didn't like the bonus content.

The protagonist is an asshole and I couldn't enjoy his POV, and the interactions between the different ruling forces don't mesh well here IMO. It's objectively a good game (it's Werewolf the visual novel!), and I do recommend it, but I didn't like it.

This is the ultimate game series if you want logical battles with lots of contradiction-resolving action. While I have my gripes with the later games and Investigations, the OG trilogy is fantastic and TGAA is the series at its finest.

This one gets its own segment. You're going to spend the whole game unraveling a series of conspiracies that will leave you on the edge of your seat. I honestly have no complaints except that they took YEARS to localize it. But trust me, this is one of the best murder mystery games ever, and I hope they make a The Great Ace Attorney 3. Its interpretation of Sherlock Holmes is so good.

For its time it was a unique concept that excited edgy kids, but the humor has aged poorly and the tropes are heavily dated. Still, it's enjoyable for your first dip into some of the more hardcore murder mysteries, as well as a good intro to the rest of the series.

Its humor hasn't aged nearly as poorly, plus it has the best foil character in the series and the plot is super fun. The game's atmosphere is beautiful and the cast is fantastic too.

The best cast of any Danganronpa game, but I'm not as crazy about the plot, plus some of the jokes are outdated. The game's aesthetic falls together perfectly and it's so pretty. The foil is very fun.

As a standalone game, this one is fantastic, providing heart-pounding intensity compounded with a plot that could very well teach you to fall in love with fourth wall breaking stories.

The most emotionally riveting Zero Escape game, along with being the one with the best twists. The character writing is also very touching. The art isn't great, though.

My favorite art style out of the Zero Escape series, but definitely not my favorite game. The new characters were great, but the plot felt the least satisfying.

All is not well in this fantasy world- what can we, the protagonist fated to change the world, do to improve it? The answer that many games have had in the past is to establish a meritocracy. This is an issue that's plagued many stories like the critically acclaimed Persona 5 and is at the heart of some Avatar-renaissance criticism of The Legend of Korra. Frankly, I dislike it. As my own journey has taught me, you can't expect all people to be strong. A meritocracy won't save all of us, especially as fascism is on the rise in the United States. Metaphor ReFantasio challenges this idea while battling the existing harmful forces that be (the church, as is always the case). I love how the game makes it clear that it will take an effort from ALL of us to make the world a better place, and that the lives of the weak are not a good price to pay for a world without prejudice. Politics aside, the characters are wonderful- all of them are good friends to the protagonist, all of them have very interesting stories, and the humor is reminiscent of the laugh-out-loud jokes that still get you from other Atlus games. And that's not even counting the story's deepest twist, which struck a chord with me as a fiction writer. If you loved Persona, you NEED to play this game!

This is kind of like a puzzle game where you have to learn about different civilizations and peoples in a giant tower by deciphering their language. The art style is beautiful, I could never get sick of the shading and aesthetic. I love all of the little details that make this game such a fulfilling experience. Hated the stealth segments. I don't think it's that hard of a game, but people think I'm smart for being able to (mostly) handle it without a guide. Also, definitely worth a replay- there are many little details that you may not catch on a first playthrough!

You need to play this game because it's funny. If you read enough archive entries you'll get rickrolled. There's a reason everyone treats the protagonist like a feral raccoon. But besides the silliness, it's an interstellar fantasy with a cute found family and all of the friends you'll make along the way. The characters are great, the worldbuilding is intense, and you get to swing around a baseball bat. I really enjoyed the Penacony arc in particular (I'm American and the locale just felt like home to me) and I look forward to what the team will put forth next!

If you're going to watch Netflix's Love Death and Robots, skip it and play this game instead. This is the greatest love story I've ever experienced, a sci-fi fantasy about life, death, friendship, self-doubt, love, and giant robots that will break your heart and build it back up again a hundred times. Unfortunately you need to play 1 and 2 in order to enjoy the masterpiece that is 3 and most people I know didn't like one of the two.

If you've ever wanted to play as a group of outcasts and criminals, destroying everything in your path to get revenge on the one who took everything from you, play this game. Not only is the main cast really fun, but the game's story is an adrenaline rush where you're the bad guy and you have lots of feelings about it.

This game is stupid fun. It just is. I guarantee you you've never felt so stylish and smart in your entire life. After the initial wave of hype, people began picking apart the plot and pointing out the issues with it, but that doesn't change the fact that for the time you're playing it, you'll be going beastmode.

I miss that era of hamburger shonen that was designed to sell children toys, but they ended up making an amazing cartoon. That's what Hi-Fi RUSH is to me. It's pure nostalgia for an era where I could just enjoy myself playing a game or watching television. And the gameplay is oh-so-satisfying.

The precursor to one of my favorite Persona-like RPGs. The premise is that you just realized you were trapped in the Matrix and Hatsune Miku is God. The game features fantastic art and an interesting premise, along with a really cool take on turn-based combat. The extra content in the remake is much better than the carried-over content from the original game. While I felt that the game turned on its own premise at some points, certain plot points made no sense, and I didn't like some of the cast members, the overall story is still great. (If you want to experience the story to prep for the sequel, I recommend you watch the anime instead.)

One of my favorite Persona-like RPGs. The premise is that you just realized you were trapped in the Matrix and Emo Hatsune Miku is God. If you want Persona with an adult cast, you need to play this game. The combat is close to Overdose's, but the characters and overall plot are much better. The game suffers from almost none of the plot holes the first one did and had a cast I liked throughout, who get plenty of character development even in the main story. The dungeons are less repetitive, and the world and characters are far more colorful. But you should really play the game for the fantastic character writing, which is full of little moments that mean more upon a second playthrough.

There is so much I love about this game, and so much I don't love at the same time. The combat is fun. The dungeons do something new every single time. The main cast is fantastic. The NPCs love to do therapy speak. The powerscaling is awful. The protagonists are flat as boards. The game tries to be a kind and comforting story without understanding that what makes games like this good was that the world's darkness permeated through everything. The Big Huge Twist Reveal will punch you in the gut and change the way you see everything, and nothing will ever be the same after that point. This last point is why you need to pick it up.

Why did the name have to be so silly when the game itself is so good. This is a really unique and beautifully atmospheric tactics game where you aren't in full control of what happens next- not in your first run, at least. You'll have fun navigating the political intricacies of the plot while you battle against storied heroes and recruit a plethora of different units that all play differently. I'll say that they made some... interesting choices with the character designs. I'm also not immune to hot lady knight.

If you thought the first one was boring, tropey, and predictable, you'll have a blast with the second one, which has much more clever writing. You could not predict half of these plot twists, nor could you predict the final chapter. I love how the merchant is a socialist in a capitalist world, and I love the entire premise of the apothecary's chapter including how completely feral she is.

It's not every day that one of those games that exists solely to market something is made with so much love and care. And that's what Astro Bot, a full-length sequel to Astro's Playroom, is. As many have described it, it's like a PlayStation Mario Galaxy. Have fun exploring beautiful 3D environments using all sorts of power-ups. They may seem simple at first, but you'll be amazed at the game's cleverness, and you'll feel smart yourself for figuring them out! From the minute details to the way the animals in every stage react to your interactions, to the obvious callbacks to other Playstation characters, you'll have a total blast.