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A couple of story heavy games on this year's list that just couldn't meet my lofty expectations.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

There is no way to look at Metaphor: ReFantazio other than as a disappointment. This is from the team that made Persona 5 so the expectations were immense but they just couldn't deliver. I appreciate the risks they took and aspects of the game are fantastic, especially the visuals and music. But unfortunately everything in Metaphor: ReFantazio was done better in Persona 5. The most dismaying part was the story which started out strong but quickly devolved into utter nonsense. The villains are so comically over the top and your party is wearing so much plot armour that effectively nothing ever matters until the very end where inevitably you gotta someone who believes they are a god.

Metaphor: ReFantazio isn't a bad game but unless you're already beaten Persona 5 Royal and Persona 3 Reload you got something better to play.

Unicorn Overlord

Vanillaware's 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim shocked me when I played it in 2022. It was easily one of the most original story's I had ever experienced in an video game and will definitely make my "Games of the Decade: 2020s" list. That is why I was so exited for Vanillaware's next game, Unicorn Overlord, and so disappointed when the story was utter shit.

I pride myself in consuming the story of every video game I play. I honestly cannot remember the last time I ignored it but Unicorn Overlord finally broke me. By the end I was just mashing the A button, skipping through the dialogue as fast as I could to prevent my eyes from bleeding. It is the most tropey retelling of the classic story of an exiled prince reclaiming his kingdom. But I guarantee whatever you are imagining, Unicorn Overlord is even blander than that.

However, the combat in Unicorn Overlord is actually really good. You're equipping a party of up to five characters, putting them in either the front or back row, and then engaging in turn-based combat. But instead of directly controlling each character you're actually programming their AI to determine their actions. It would be like if you programmed a chess robot and then sat back and let it play out a game over 30 seconds. You could see where you went wrong (or what went well) and tweak the AI appropriately. I was genuinely shocked at how quickly this system consumed me and I was looking for all sorts of cool, synergistic actions I could make between my characters various classes.

So yeah Unicorn Overlord is a true Jekyll and Hyde game. If you removed every line of dialogue from it I would probably place it in "The Good" list. But unfortunately it has to sit down here with the honourable mentions until it takes a creative writing class.

Thronefall

Thronefall is a tower defense game where you control a monarch on horseback who builds structures during the day and fights off a wave of enemies at night. You beat a level after defending for a certain number of nights, usually culminating in some sort of "boss wave". Before you start a level you get to chose your monarch's weapon, a limited number of perks to improve your character or buildings, and a unlimited number of mutators that make the game more difficult but also increase the resources you receive.

For each level there are a series of quests that you are encouraged to complete where the first one is always just to survive. Typically speaking you would attempt to complete this quest with no mutators so you have the easiest route to success and can gauge what you'd need to get through the harder quests. I survived every single level in Thronefall and thoroughly enjoyed doing so.

Sadly, attempting to complete the other quests was were Thronefall started to wane because I always seemed to make the "wrong" decisions for my perks and mutators. The issue with this is that I would not figure out I had made bad choices until the last couple of waves which meant I would waste 20-30 minutes on each attempt. So after failing for the sixth straight time and wasting multiple hours of my life with little to show for it, I started to resent the game rather than looking forward to challenge.

All of that being said, this plethora of choices which caused me such pain could easily be the secret sauce that makes someone fall in love with Thronefall and play it for hundreds of hours. That is why I chose to place it in my honourable mentions for 2024.