It is a good documentation truth here at RPS that I love a good spreadsheet. Specifically, my spreadsheet lists all the lovely games I manage to play each year. I’ve been reviewing that spreadsheet a lot in recent weeks, and I’m pleased to announce that most of my top picks this year have made it onto the charts. RPS Advent Calendar. Of course, there are a lot of things that don’t (pour one out for you, Dorfromantik, Flat eyes, dome keeper and lost in play), but that’s how things go when your current year’s list of completed games is approaching 50.
Not going to lie, I could be here all day if I listed my entire long list of honorable mentions for 2022 (additional thanks to rail, Cursed To Golf, God of War, Strange West, movable jack, West hard 2 and Our children), but for the sake of everyone involved (and Alice Bee’s poor pencil), I’ve narrowed it down to a shortlist of three. (Go ahead and check out those other games, though. They’re all absolutely amazing).
Marvel’s Midnight Sun
Have Marvel’s Midnight Sun Released in October as originally intended, I have no doubt this will be an Advent Calendar candidate right out of the box. Several members of RPS Treehouse haven’t stopped talking about Firaxis’ stellar superhero since I consider it right at the end of November, and if I had been more flexible in my own set of Advent Calendar rules, I might have bent them to hide this under the radar. In the end, however, I decided against it and created the RPS Pick Box instead, so it’s really a win-win for everyone. I could scream at how brilliant the Midnight Suns are, and you have nearly a dozen more personal highlight lists to read over the holidays. You are welcome.
But! Enough behind-the-scenes talk. If you haven’t dipped your toes into this turn-based game yet strategy Marvel’s epic, Midnight Sun is a delightful, contagious delight. I’m no Marvel advocate, but even I was hooked by the witty superhero movie and its endlessly hilarious card battles. I love seeing how far I can last in one turn before calling it a day, twisting its rules to my advantage and reveling in the powerful bumps launched by a trio of lycra friends My radiation brings. There’s a lot of fun in each and every animation, and it really gives off a feeling of being a superhero.
More than that, though, I love that Firaxis was able to do something different with the Midnight Suns, reaching out as storytellers and transforming their traditional XCOM-style strategy meta layer to make them a success. when budding role-playing producers. Your relationship with these characters may not be exactly the same as the one you formed in XCOM, but there’s still a lot to grasp here. Listen, Blade started a book club with the sole purpose of impressing Captain Marvel when you go back to Abbey HQ, Spider-Man and Ghost Rider have their own wacky Shop club but are lost to Iron. Man breaks the door and Doctor Strange allows himself to be referred to as EMO-KID (all caps, very important) as he, Magik, and Nico investigate the Hunter’s supernatural origins and lost memories. It was great fun, and the screenwriters clearly had a great time with it all, to the point where I’m now investing more emotionally in this superhero cast than in the universe. Hollywood’s MCU has taken my breath away for the past 15 years, damn years. I love it little by little, and it’s one of the best games I’ve played all year.
Triangle Strategy
I haven’t been able to play a large number yet Triangle Strategy since it came out in mid-October, but what I’ve managed to get through has hooked me much, much harder than many of Square Enix’s other bedmates. I still find a lot to like about both of them Ogre Reborn Tactics and the Diofield Chronicles (at least when the latter doesn’t) Terrible anti-democracy), for example, but the old Triangle game ended the test of time – or at least the game I most wanted to return to in a year of huge and time-consuming strategy games.
A big part of that, I won’t lie, is how well it plays on my Steam Deck. Tactics Ogre Reborn is a great Steam Deck game for what it’s worth, but it’s how it lets me play and really fits into my life, that’s the real highlight here – because , let’s face it, Triangle Strategy is more than that cutscenes rather than fighting a lot of the time, which I don’t want to be tied to a desk. I’ll be the first to admit that I wish its turn-based strategy battles were more frequent than they really were, but man alive I find myself able to absorb the story of the nations war and its political backstabbing SO. LOTS OF. BETTER when I can leave it running in the background while I’m preparing dinner or doing the laundry. I appreciate not everyone is in the same boat here, but for that it certainly makes it a lot easier to digest.
However, even if you’re chained to the table while playing Triangle Strategy, I think its grid-based battles are more interesting than your Tactical Elves and the like, and that mainly due to a lot of small modernizations that help you read the battlefield and make better, more informed decisions. There’s a lot to learn about its classes, varied terrain and location-based weaknesses (you don’t want to leave yourself open to a major counterattack here, no sir), and the maneuvering your units around each of its tactical chessboards is a real thrill, brain teasing. It’s much more powerful than Tactics Ogre, and I can’t wait to dig into it over the Christmas holidays (and by dig, I mean dig into the box of chocolates left over while I’m placing my order). My deck of air cards on top of my well-stocked turkey belly and the occasional push of the A button when I’m finally treated like a proper keepsake).
forewarned
Another card game with elements of turn-based strategy? No. of course! Yes, 2022 is indeed a year of strategy games for you and I would like to give a final thank you to Alkemi’s forewarneda story-driven deck builder is probably the closest thing we’ve ever had to another Hand of Fate like it.
In case you missed mine review At the start of its year, Foretales is much more of a traditional board game than Marvel’s Midnight Suns and your co-stars, with characters, locations, and puzzle items all rendered in technical hardcover. number. Indeed, it may not be as flashy or visually impressive as the other deck builders out there, but it does a great job at evoking the medieval fantasy world. his weirdness from just a handful of hand-drawn images. The table itself deserves a special mention as it subtly adapts to reflect your current environment with a convincing range of sound and lighting effects.
And the places you’ll go on your adventures with Volepain and his team of versatile anthropomorphic animals. With their world threatened by a series of foretold catastrophes, you’ll need to decide who to help and where to focus your efforts as you choose its branching storyline, and One minute later, you’ll be crawling through the sewers in search of a plague- riding a ne’er-do-well, and the next time you’ll be on the high seas evading pirate ships and searching for a mysterious island. hidden, the mystery will only be revealed when you have exactly the right combination of cards on the table in the correct positions. And when battles do happen, force isn’t always the answer, leading to some insidious mind games that you can play with your enemies to make them run away on their own terms. It’s a brilliantly conceived mini-game (‘small’ I say, it’s really amazingly important) and I can’t recommend it enough.
