Kritigri’s Top Played Games of 2021!

Welcome to the yearly blog post where I rate the best games I played this year! Not to be confused with more professional and objective Game of the Year listings, in which only games from 2021 are eligible, this is the blog post where I look back on what I played this year and tell you what the best games were! And, for this year at least, it is mostly 2021 releases. Thank you, Game Pass.

Firstly, some honourable mentions. In list format, so we’re not here forever.

• Psychonauts 2 – Perhaps my biggest sin of the year. It’s a fantastic game, but I’ve really not played enough of it to properly judge it.
• Forza Horizon 3 – I started playing it this year, but let’s keep this list to one game per series.
• Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition – I haven’t played enough of this myself to put it on the list, but I bought it after watching a decent chunk of Chuggaaconroy’s Let’s Play. It’s good stuff! I’m a little full up on extremely lengthy epic stories for the moment, though.
• Runescape – I started an Ironman this year and it saved the game for me. When you can’t trade, you’re also free from microtransactional interference. It’s not a new entry though, so…
• Danganronpa – I haven’t played it, but I watched Game Grumps play it and loved every moment.
• Halo 3, ODST, and 4… and… 5…? – Played through all of these this year, loved (almost) every one. Single entry rule.
• Pokémon: Let’s Go Eevee Edition – This game was 8th in my 2018 GOTY listings, but I played the latter half of it this year and enjoyed it thoroughly.
• Dragon Quest Builders 2 – This game takes Minecraft, and injects it with objective gameplay, story, and all the Dragon Quest charm you can handle. Play it!

#10 – Outriders (Xbox Series S)

The one game I don’t have my own content to show of.

Outriders made it onto this list for two reasons. The first, more universally agreed upon reason is because it’s something new and different; to the best of my knowledge, Outriders is the first game to try adding classes and ability-based combat to a cover shooter. I mean, I guess there’s The Division, but something tells me that in a game that’s grounded somewhat in reality, you don’t go around teleporting behind groups of enemies and slicing them in half with an electric sword.

The other reason it’s on this list is because of the story. A story which I’ve only heard bad things about, yet one which sucked me in and fascinated me. Perhaps it’s because I read all of the lore pickups, but this game really sold me on the idea of exploring this brand new dangerous world, the first world we’ve ever made it to outside of Earth. The fact that the setting is grimdark is tragic, and the stakes which are at play are huge. Now, it’s worth mentioning that I haven’t finished the game. It’s also worth noting that yes, some of the dialogue is a little hammy and some of the voice delivery is subpar. Maybe that’s what people mean when they criticise the story. But it remains true the for me, the driving factor to continue through this game was its narrative.

#9 – Splitgate (Xbox Series S)

Of all the games to make it to my top ten list of 2021 games, I would not have expected a throwaway free-to-play arena shooter that I tried on PC years ago and expected to never think about again. But Splitgate returned in a major way, and I don’t know what they did to it but this time, it almost felt on par with a Halo game. The shooting feels tight and satisfying, the weapons and their pickup locations are familiar but new, and I’ll be damned if I’m not half decent at playing it, too.

What I don’t think gets discussed often enough is how innovative it is with its inclusion of portals. Never before have I played an arena shooter where I’ve been able to instantly portal myself across the map to back-smack the sniper that was firing on me. Not only can you travel through portals, but you can shoot through them too, and the incredible thing about it is that you get used to it fairly quickly. This game had me giggling with glee and recounting plays to my friends about the time I led the entire enemy team on a merry goose chase in oddball by closing portals behind me as I ran, or the time I closed an enemy’s portal the moment before a rocket came through it multiple times in one match. It’s a truly unique arena shooter experience, and I hope it’s not forgotten in the wake of Halo Infinite.

#8 – Mass Effect 1 (Legendary Edition) (Xbox Series S)

The one thing which kept me from diving into the Mass Effect universe all these years has been the gameplay of Mass Effect 1. It didn’t age well. That’s why I was super excited to hear that the Legendary Edition fixed a lot of the original’s issues, and as I’d hoped, it enabled me to finally immerse myself in Shepard’s story and universe. I love everything about what I’ve seen of it so far, from the lore to the planets to the atmospheric music. I’m familiar with the dialogue wheel from what I’ve played of the Dragon Age series and Star Wars: The Old Republic, but its implementation here feels second to none. I’m only halfway through Mass Effect 2, which I need to return to sometime, but I’m glad to finally have the Mass Effect universe added to my collection of known worlds.

#7 – Pokémon Brilliant Diamond (Switch)

I’ve written about this recently and don’t have too much new to say about it, so if it’s okay with everyone I’m going to quote an excerpt from my original blog post for this one:

From my experience playing so far, what’s struck me the most is that no matter how I feel about the nature of these remakes, they’re still remakes of a game which is very near and dear to my heart. Due to the lack of additional save slots, it’s rare to replay a Pokémon adventure when you’re done, and so this is my first time playing through Diamond in over a decade. And yet, I’m surprised by just how much information I’ve retained, from important details such as the gym leader’s team lineup and moves, to smaller ones, like the fact that there’s a hidden item in the grass over there, or that one guy in Oreburgh City who calls you a noob. I may not have asked for a faithful recreation of Sinnoh, but I’ll be damned if I don’t appreciate it now that it’s here. ILCA have really nailed the fine details, from the menu buttons to the 2000s digital wristwatch design of the Pokétch, and the soundtrack does a fantastic job of transporting me back in time.

The remakes aren’t perfect, and they’re not necessarily what I asked for. But they’re good. They are – dare I say – maybe even brilliant. I only have one gym badge to my name [now three], and I’m so excited to continue my journey through Sinnoh, not simply reliving my past but playing through a genuinely solid Pokémon adventure. I suspect that it may end up being the best way to experience Diamond and Pearl, which is the ideal goal of a remake.

I’m so happy to have been wrong about this game.

#6 – The Elder Scrolls Online: Blackwood (Xbox Series S)

ESO’s yearly Chapter schedule makes it a regular haunt of my Game of the Year listings, but this one comes with a few caveats. First of all, it comes with one big criticism: I didn’t love the main storyline of Blackwood. It felt like a damn near repeat of the vanilla storyline, with a Daedric Prince wanting to merge Nirn into his realm of Oblivion, only this time, he’s red instead of blue. To be fair, I’ve not played the second story DLC of the Chapter that would wrap up the story, so there’s room for interesting narrative to emerge, there. All the same, the fact that the storyline of Blackwood alone does nothing new or unexpected is something to be criticised and made clear in this listing. That being said, I greatly enjoy the new Companion system, and the zone of Blackwood itself is no less beautiful and interesting to explore than you’d expect from an ESO Chapter.

You may also have noticed that this is an Xbox Series S entry, and not a PC one. That’s because I made the rather difficult decision to start over on Xbox this year, as it’s able to run the game much better than my PC can, especially since the X/S update. Whereas I play a Dark Elf Magicka Sorcerer on PC, on Xbox I decided to make an Orc Stamina Dragonknight named Brakosh, and I’ve been having the most wonderful time playing him. Not only did I play through Blackwood this year, but I also replayed the entirety of Greymoor, Orsinium, and the vanilla main storyline, as well as all the zone story quests for the Daggerfall Covenant. It’s due to my time playing through all of this content that ESO made it to the list this year; Blackwood alone wouldn’t have been quite enough.

#5 – Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age (Xbox Series S)

For the longest time, it’s felt like I’ve loved the idea of a Dragon Quest game more than I’ve had the actual experience of playing one. I have fond memories of the opening of Dragon Quest IX; I loved the Dragon Quest Your Story movie; I’ve enjoyed Dragon Quest Builders, and the charm that’s injected into those games. Dragon Quest XI S feels like the first mainline entry I’ve truly played, and I can’t be more than thirty hours into it so far. But the story is captivating, the characters are loveable, the gameplay is everything I want out of a JRPG and the Dragon Quest flavour is there in full force.

It’s worth noting that this game pulled me away from my #1 Game of the Year from further down this list. No peeking!

#4 – Hot Wheels Unleashed (Xbox Series S)

I’ll never stop looking for games that remind me of RC Revenge or Circuit Breakers, or any of the many other PS1/PS2 era racing games that are damn near lost to time. The moment I saw footage of Hot Wheels Unleashed, my hopes soared. Here was a toy car racing game with a big budget and a trusted development studio getting marketing from the console publishers themselves. And with every subsequent update they pushed out, the game looked better and better. Multiple environments? Check. Unique and challenging track pieces? Check. A level editor? Check!

And the best part is that the game lived up to each and every promise. Hot Wheels Unleashed is a legitimately thrilling toy car racing game which fulfils every kid’s – or, erm, grown adult’s – fantasy to race their Hot Wheels cars around their bedroom and fling them around corners. The drifting mechanic is tuned to perfection, and the risk-reward factor of it ensures that you’re never coasting through laps too sure of yourself, as one oversteer or greedy powerslide may ruin everything.

Another big green tick from me is that they leaned into the collectability aspect of it! There are tons of cars to unlock through all the fun of fairly-designed loot boxes with none of the monetisation. There’s DLC car packs, so you know exactly what you’re buying, but the base game comes with tons of unlockable cars anyway! Better – they all have their own stats! Better – they’re upgradeable! Better – they’re paintable, and there’s a browsable livery library from other players! Somebody pinch me, I thought they stopped making games like this.

#3 – Forza Horizon 5 (Xbox Series S)

Forza Horizon 5 is every bit as fantastic as I’d expected it to be. It continues the upward climb in quality that every Horizon game has followed so far, and makes a name for itself not just as one of the best racing games ever made, but as one of the best games ever made, period. The racing genre is fairly self-contained as far as gaming goes; people either play racing games, or they don’t. But Forza Horizon is the rare one to break out of that niche with its accessible handling, its generous reward system and its liberating overworld full of enough map markers to entice achievement hunters for weeks on end. It doesn’t compromise on the realism of its cars and racing physics, nor does it simplify itself to appeal to a wider audience. But on the surface, it’s easy to understand and get to grips with, with opportunity for finer tuning and tinkering when you have more time to learn about those things. I, personally, have not.

Mexico is beautiful, and a welcome change from the stunningly well-realised but all-too-real UK, where the fields are always green and the weather is… well, perhaps more often grey than Horizon 4 would have you believe. The cars are gorgeous, obviously, but also enticingly collectible thanks to the new sticker book which rewards you for completing car manufacturer’s pages. Speaking of collectability, the LEGO Brick Challenge system returns in the form of Accolades, rewarding players for all manner of things from collecting XP boards to winning races to taking photos of cars. Somehow, Playground Games managed to cram even more rewarding features to make the tingly parts of your brain light up like a Christmas tree, meaning that before you know it, that “one last thing” you set out to do was seven things ago and it’s gotten dark outside and you’ve nearly forgotten to put the bin out. Oh dear, you should probably go and do that.

#2 – Halo Infinite (Xbox Series S)

It’s wild to think that I began my journey to play through all the Halo games after Halo Infinite was announced. A year and some months later here I am, at the end of the current narrative content, agreeing wholeheartedly with every review hailing this entry as one of the best in the entire series. As far as the campaign goes, additions such as the grappling hook and throwable barrels transform combat whilst fitting in so effortlessly with the gameplay that you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d been there since Halo 1. The open world is a welcome addition, and whilst it’s not as expansive or varied as it perhaps could have been, it does a good job of adding to the Halo formula rather than replacing the old mission structure entirely. The story is refreshingly simple after prior entries, but isn’t afraid to develop Master Chief’s character just a little bit, primarily through strong focus on his relationships with The Weapon and the Pilot.

Multiplayer is exactly what I wanted it to be: My go-to shooter. The gunplay feels snappy, familiar, and yet just different enough to set it apart from older Halo games. The use of equipment as pickups throughout the map feels like a perfection of the concept first introduced in Reach, fitting nicely into the scavenger-hunt style race from spawn that sets Halo apart from other games, where you might begin with a loadout or collect every weapon you can find. There’s some uniquely Halo about discarding a long range weapon to snap up that shotgun and use it as the enemy is charging you down, only to discard that for the energy sword that they never got a chance to use.

Halo Infinite may well end up being my favourite Halo game. It could use more maps, sure, and the challenge system still feels clunky, but they’ve already fixed the playlist and made XP far less of a pain to obtain. Infinite will never replace the older Halo games for me, but booting up the Master Chief Collection feels more like a novelty than a preference from where I’m sitting, and given the troubled development history of the game, that’s one hell of an accomplishment.

#1 – Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn / Heavensward / Stormblood / Shadowbringers (PC)

I’m sorry, you were expecting someone… taller?

I played this game in two stints this year. Firstly in April, after hearing all about the much vaunted free trial (in which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime, no less), I decided to abandon my first ill-fated venture from years past and take advantage of said trial on a brand new character. I enjoyed my time in A Realm Reborn but balked at the amount of patch content between it and the hyped-up Heavensward, nearly giving up until I realised that the patch content had some very important and interesting story beats. Even then, it wasn’t until Heavensward that I truly fell in love with the game, not even realising at the time just how strongly the story and its beautiful soundtrack had me in its grip.

After finishing up Heavensward, however, the change in story direction and tone that came with Stormblood did result in me taking a break from the game until this very December. Little did I know I’d stopped playing moments before the story “got good”, and I’ve pretty much tunnel-visioned the game since then to the point that I’m very nearly at the start point for Endwalker, the expansion which released a few weeks ago. The idea of being caught up with this monolithic story seems impossible to me, and I’m not sure how I’ll cope when I finally get there. The setting and story of Shadowbringers was so fascinating to me that I’m honestly not sure how they could top it, but by all spoiler-free accounts I’ve seen, they’ve done just that.

Let me assure you of something before we go on: This is not recency bias. When drafting my top ten list for this blog post, I placed Final Fantasy XIV in the number one spot based on the strength of the game up to the start of Stormblood alone, for I’d yet to really dive into the game again. In fact, here; to give you some idea of how the story escalates from a high starting point over time, I’ve been comparing it to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A Realm Reborn is Captain America: The First Avenger. It’s an enjoyable movie that you’re going to have a good time with, but it doesn’t really do anything new. You’d watch the sequel, but you’re not raving about it. Following this trajectory, Heavensward is The Avengers. At the time, it’s the culmination of many previous storylines and some of the most exciting superhero cinema you’ve ever seen. And following on from that, Shadowbringers is Infinity War – and I’m assuming that makes Endwalker the equal to Endgame. The stakes are so much higher, the roster of characters that you’re invested in is vast, and your knowledge of the universe and its lore is so much richer than before. Narrative payoffs are compounded by the amount of story it took to get there, and before you know it you’re calling A Realm Reborn “something you have to get through”, completely discounting the fact that Captain America is a solid, enjoyable movie.

But enough about story. This is an MMORPG, so you’ll want to know how it plays outside of cutscenes and dialogue boxes. Here is where the inevitable comparison to World of Warcraft surfaces – and I’d been doing so well. To be clear, I enjoy both games – lingering feelings of disgust regarding the misconduct of members of the original WoW team notwithstanding – and feel that they do different things better. For instance, WoW has more robust classes due to specialisations. FFXIV, though, has more of them, and embraces class fantasy on a scale that WoW only briefly touched during its Legion expansion. Every class – well, job – has its own associated storyline throughout the course of the game. Plus, at higher levels, jobs have multiple rotations feeding off of each other, making the nigh-ancient tab-targeting gameplay feel fresh, busy, and exciting, especially when combined with hectic boss fights. Not only that, but the fact that you can be any and every job on a single character is essentially crack to completionists like me. There’s literally a page on the character interface that shows what level all your jobs are, and I won’t rest until I can swap between every max level job at the simple click of a button.

This is getting lengthy, so let me just list off some of my favourite features rapid-fire. I love that you level up entirely through the main story quest and not a bunch of random sidequests. I love that all prior expansions are required reading, so the story doesn’t need to reset each expansion. I love that dungeons are a required part of the main story, and that the game rewards other players for putting up with a new player’s first time experience in a dungeon. I love the way cutscenes are handled in dungeons. I love how welcoming the community is even at the height of its popularity. I love the aetheryte system which allows you to teleport to any town or city you’ve been to before for a handful of gil. I love how authentically Final Fantasy the world is, and how it encourages me to check out other games in the series by being so. I love how it handles flying. I love Triple Triad. I love that while queuing for a duty as one job I can go and level another. I love that I have a chocobo companion, whom I have named Flutflut. I love Moogles. I love all the good catboys and bungirls that populate the realm. I love that the realm was reborn when a dragon shot a moon at the planet because the 1.0 version of the game was received so terribly. And did I mention the soundtrack?

The game’s not perfect, though. I dislike the glamour system; coming from WoW’s transmog system, ESO’s costume system and Runescape’s cosmetic override system, FFXIV’s glamour dresser feels restrictive, and turns inventory management into a nightmare. The armoury chest is great, but when it fills up and you need to make room, you need to try on every item to make sure you don’t delete something you want, or need as part of a set. And 15 glamour plates is not enough for a game with 20 combat jobs, each with multiple sets of their own. That’s to say nothing of crafting jobs, which – at an early glance – seem like an outright chore without some sort of limitless crafting material bag to fill up over the course of your adventures. And for my final criticism, as amazing as the multi-job system is, I’ve yet to find an alternate job levelling guide which doesn’t stress the importance of juggling five different activities so that XP gain doesn’t come to a grinding halt at higher levels.

Negative paragraph aside – mostly included to counterweigh the stellar praise above – Final Fantasy XIV absolutely deserves its place as my favourite game of 2021. I never thought I’d experience anything like my first time playing World of Warcraft in terms of world discovery, but Final Fantasy XIV has all that and more besides. Given the fantastic length of its main story I’ve yet to reach endgame and start gearing up, joining a free company and delving full-on into the community side of things, but I’ve no doubt that all that wonderful stuff will keep me invested in the game during the long wait for more story. I’m not even finished with the game yet, and I’m convinced that FFXIV will land among my favourite games of all time.

2022

I’ve seen a lot of people lauding next year as a brilliant year for games, citing entries such as Breath of the Wild 2, Elden Ring, Horizon: Forbidden West and more. The simple truth of it is that these games either aren’t on my radar or aren’t on my console. I never finished BOTW1, good as it is, I’ve never been into Soulslike games, and I don’t own a PS5! I ate pretty darned well this year with Halo and Forza, but here’s what’s coming out next year that I’ve got my eye on:

• LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (This time for sure!!)
• Saints Row, I guess? If it’s good?
• Starfield, providing it doesn’t get delayed.
• Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake hasn’t been given a release date yet, but… that?
• Dragon Quest X Offline if by some miracle they decide to localise it.

So there’s some stuff, but it all comes with a lot of caveats. I almost included Pokémon Legends: Arceus, but I’m not entirely sure that game is for me from what I’ve seen so far. Who knows, maybe I’ll pick it up sometime and find myself pleasantly surprised.

I expect the bulk of my gaming in 2022 will come from smaller titles I don’t yet know about that’ll launch onto Game Pass, or older titles on the service I’m yet to get into. Maybe next year I’ll finally finish a playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins, for example, or continue my Mass Effect 2 playthrough. I’ll be playing through Endwalker for sure, but perhaps I’ll give ESO: Deadlands a spin, or fall in love with its next Chapter. Anything’s on the table, and I hope you’ll join me as I discuss my experiences throughout my final year of My Xbox All Access Adventure – and whatever comes after…

The Post With The MMOst

I like jumping from one platform to another as much as the next guy. I enjoy the simple pleasure of arena shooters, finding an odd calm in the rhythm of blowing my enemies to bits. And I’ll quite happily immerse myself in a good, sprawling, open world single player RPG. But if my gaming life had to be defined by any one genre over the years, there’s no question about it: I’m enamoured by the prospect of a good MMO.

Perhaps it’s something about the promise of a “second life” within a living world that draws me to these games. Perhaps it’s the sheer depth of content available, the scope of a massive world with centuries of lore and miles of virtual geography. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that there’s no perfecting games like these, and therefore I don’t have to feel like I’ve left the game unfinished. Or maybe it’s more to do with the fact that these games are constantly updating with new content and story chapters, and thus, I never feel like I’m leaving for good, or done with the game. Whatever the reason, I’m constantly rotating between these living games, often becoming laser-focused on one for months at a time, before becoming glassy-eyed and wandering off to another, mumbling to myself as if I’ve forgotten why I opened the fridge door in the first place. In this blog post, I’ll discuss what it is I love most about each game and what makes it stand out from the others, as briefly as my passionate gushing will allow.

World of Warcraft

My history: Recognising my potential interest in WoW through my love of Runescape, my dad bought me the Burning Crusade battle chest for what must have been my 12th birthday. We couldn’t get it to install on our home computer initially, though. Instead of letting it sit unloved, I read through the accompanying game guides to get a feel for the game, and fell in love with the picture of this online, fantasy-driven second life it had to offer. Some months later I tried to install it again, and this time, it worked. There’s plenty more history to tell from this point onwards, but if you’re interested in that, I’ll direct you towards this prior blog post.

Favourite distinguishing features: As someone who truly began playing during Mists of Pandaria, it’s been a delight to watch the transmogrification system grow in response to player feedback. In Mists of Pandaria (and I believe Cataclysm before), you were able to visit a vendor which would let you make your gear look like another piece of gear you had available with you. After a few expansions of iteration, however, the game has evolved to have an appearances collection tab, which automatically grants you the appearance of a piece of gear as soon as you receive it, including retroactive quest rewards. No longer do you need to keep pieces of gear you want to transmog into, saving much needed bank space. In addition to this, there’s now a list of raid and pvp gear, encouraging completionists like me to solo old raid instances each week to fill out these lists of transmogs. As someone who doesn’t often do current raid content, it’s a delight of experience these raids in this absurdly overpowered kind of a way and have it still be rewarding.

I’m also going for a second choice: the timewalking levelling system introduced in Shadowlands. While I’ve personally not put it to much use yet, I’m a massive “altoholic” who loves exploring other classes, races and specs by creating new characters. I’m also a huge lore enthusiast, and to finally have the ability to go back and play an expansion with its intended pacing, albeit retrofitted to take a character from level 10-50, is a godsend. I have heard some complaints that it isn’t perfectly paced, and some feedback that you’re not getting the full story of more modern expansions without playing through patch content when over-levelled, but as it is, levelling a new character is a far better experience than it used to be.

A gush: While these MMOs are listed in no particular order, there’s no denying that WoW is the MMO for me. I love all the games on this list with a passion, but WoW stands champion above champions in this list. I have sunk literal thousands of hours into this game and know its world inside and out, its lore better than my country’s own history, its characters better than any show or movie’s. It’s no exaggeration to say that I would prefer to play World of Warcraft at its worst – a state that it isn’t a stranger to, let’s be real – than any new and popular AAA title. Hell, there was a time during Warlords of Draenor – lauded as the game’s worst expansion – when I launched another game and realised that I’d forgotten what other games were like.

Long live World of Warcraft. May it continue to persevere in spite of its own best efforts.

A gripe: Activision Blizzard continues to be a problematic company, from laying off hundreds of staff after periods of continued success, to silencing an important voice out of fear that they’d lose Chinese investments. I adore what the creative minds at Blizzard create for their games, and it is absolutely tragic that they are employed by people who work counter to the beliefs and ideals that they strive to embody in their games.

Here’s a playlist of videos I made in the latest expansion.

Runescape

My history: The gateway drug into this wonderful world of worlds came in the form of my friend at school, who begged me to try this game for months. We’d often play Flash games together and talk about them with reverence, so when he told me to try this game on Miniclip I didn’t think it was anything particularly special. In fact, when I did finally try it out I couldn’t figure out how to get through Tutorial Island, and had him log into my account to finish it for me. He then took me on a tour from Lumbridge to Varrock to Al Kharid, where I was killed by a level 3 man who I was convinced was another player. I distinctly remember how massive the world felt to me at the time, and how in awe I was of all these multicoloured knights that were literally clogging the streets as we walked. My friend has long since stopped playing the game, but the longest break I ever took was from 2010-2013. It admittedly felt like longer at the time.

Favourite distinguishing features: Skills. Runescape is the most unique MMO in this list, and the quickest way to understand why is to look at its skilling system. Most MMOs have classes which you level up through questing, but Runescape instead has a multitude of skills, some of which are combat based, others closer to the professions of other games. As far as levelling these skills goes, I don’t know how else to put it other than to say it’s one big grind, successfully disguised by the ever-expanding number of alternative levelling methods. Plus, no skill stands alone; every skill feeds into another, giving your character this feeling of synergy as they level up multiple skills in the game and unlock new areas and content by doing so.

The other? Quests. The fact that questing isn’t directly tied to levelling in this game means it is uniquely qualified to tell stories in creative ways. It turns out that when you’re not templating thousands of quests as a throughline for XP delivery in your game, you can ask players to do more than simply kill eight kobolds and obtain six bear asses. Many quests in Runescape have unique areas designed for them, such as a haunted house or an island which is home to a fierce dragon (see also: technically the lowest level dragon in the game). There’s often combat, but more often you’ll be solving puzzles to work your way through the story. The only catch is that, as the game is now twenty years old, some quests have aged dramatically. But hey, there’s a certain charm in that, as far as I’m concerned.

A gush: Runescape’s Ironman mode has recently reinvigorated my love for the game. With the overzealous nature of microtransactions in the game (see below), I became disenchanted with the level of progress I’d made on my main account, attributing much of my success to my targeted use of (freely acquired) XP boosts during double XP weekends. Ironman accounts, though, have no such access to XP boosts, unless naturally awarded through quests or other gameplay driven activities. On top of that, they’re forbidden from trading with other players, separating them from the microtransaction-affected economy. Most importantly of all, the nature of having to obtain or create everything for yourself compounds the feeling of satisfaction when you reach a personal goal, which is exactly what this game is all about. When I got my first level 99 a few years ago I felt accomplished, but when I finally obtained a nature talisman on my ironman account – an item most regular accounts don’t think twice about – that released some top-tier videogame serotonin.

A gripe: Runescape’s descent into microtransaction hell has been slow but painfully certain over the last near-decade. I actually thought I’d quit the game when I last played my main account in 2019, and I’m a never-say-never kind of a player. The fantastic creative content that comes out for that game is constantly overshadowed by the endless Treasure Hunter promotions that tempt players to spend real money to shorten their in-game journeys. And listen, if you’re one of the people who doesn’t mind or actively enjoys Treasure Hunter, more power to you. I used to really enjoy my free daily Treasure Hunter keys, if I’m honest. But when Jagex added a battle pass on top of loot boxes on top of a subscription game, I finally drew the line. Which my Ironman swiftly erased.

Here’s a playlist of videos I made of my Ironman journey.

The Elder Scrolls Online

My history: A friend bought me Elder Scrolls Online as a Christmas gift when the game was… I want to say around a year old? But although I was super excited to explore more of Tamriel, I had issues with the gameplay. To this day, I still believe that the game would have been served better had it not tried to imitate the style of physical combat from previous Elder Scrolls titles, as sword strikes feel disconnected compared to most other games. But that wasn’t all; the game’s approach to classes and character builds is very unique, and it took several attempts of me returning to the game for me to finally grasp the systems, after which I became very invested. Whenever I recommend this game to someone, it always comes with caveats – it is in many aspects a fantastic Elder Scrolls game, but don’t be surprised if the MMO aspects of it are a little alienating at first.

Favourite distinguishing feature: The amount of care and effort that goes into the storylines. The Main Quest of an expansion doesn’t always hit, but even when it doesn’t you can be sure you’ll find a dozen enthralling vignettes in the zone’s many sidequests. Everything in the game is fully voice acted – from the kings and queens all the way down to the shoe shiner in an alleyway without any quest ties at all – and for the sheer volume of voice work required, I can’t think of a single instance in which it feels half-assed or badly performed. If nothing else, the game is a love letter to storytelling, and the base game alone has countless hours of quests which most players can’t claim to have fully completed to this day, many years after its release.

Besides that, I love how it handles completion nowadays. This wasn’t always the case, but when you visit a zone nowadays there’s a list of objectives besides the map, listing everything from main questlines to sidequests, to waypoints and delves. Even before that, the icons of villages and places of interest on the map would change colour when you completed the story in that area, and the tooltip would provide a neat little summary of what you’d done there. Whereas most MMOs tell their story and then usher you into group content for the end game, ESO stands above the rest in how it puts its story front and centre, not only in the quality of its craft but in the focus of its gameplay, even at the latest levels and the furthest playtime.

A gush: I won’t spoil the quest by mentioning which zone it’s in, but I once completed a series of sidequests which explored the topic of familial reconciliation and gender identity. Not only was it crafted with care, but it was really interesting and it fit right in with the themes of the world in which it took place. It didn’t force the message down your throat but it did allow you to ask questions, should you want to know more. It doesn’t touch on topics which affect me personally, but as someone who cares about trans rights and doesn’t typically find such topics in a fantasy MMO space (although more would certainly be welcome), I found it very touching.

A gripe: I touched on it earlier, but the combat only grows on you to a certain extent. Not only does the basic weapon combat feel muted, but the limitation of six abilities on your bar can stifle creative solutions in combat, and the weapon swapping system feels like more of a nuisance than a solution. At best it’s something you learn to live with as a vehicle to experience the rest of the game through.

Here’s a playlist of videos I made back when I played on PC.

Final Fantasy XIV

My history: I played this game for 25 hours in 2019, thought it was mildly interesting, and decided to return someday when I had more time to explore it. That someday came about a month ago as of the time of writing, and in the last few weeks I’ve blazed through all of A Realm Reborn and half of Heavensward. This is the newest MMO on this list, in terms of my playtime, but it’s got its hooks me in as deeply as WoW ever did when I first started playing that game. I made a new account to take advantage of the generous free trial, which gave me everything I had access to on my original account sans my character, and with the updates to the pacing I soared past my initial stopping point and then some. I did not hesitate to drop £35 on the game to own everything including Shadowbringers, and I do not regret having to pay the monthly sub from here on out.

Favourite distinguishing feature: I’m not sure that you could call it a feature, but I’m going to have to go with its Japanese origins. Every other MMO on this list is Western made, and I believe FFXIV’s Japanese origins are what set it apart from the rest, thematically speaking. Animations are exaggerated, weapons are huge and colourful, battles in raids look like light shows, and everything – just generally speaking – feels over the top, much in the same way that a shounen anime would. The story also evokes the feeling of an ongoing anime, with story arcs and dramatic betrayals and shocking character deaths. The tone is all over the place, too; one minute, you’re witnessing a political plot unfold with all the scope and darkness of a Game of Thrones plot, and the next you’re teaming up with a band of adventures to kill the King of the Moogles, a giant flying cat looking koala thing that’s going to totally take over the world, kupo. You have knights fighting mechs, dragons hatching from moons which fall from the sky, catboys and bungirls enacting Hydaelyn’s will as Warriors of Light, and somehow it all ties together in a way which makes sense and envelops you in its intrigue.

As for an actual, tangible, hard-coded feature that I can point to, it has to be the jobs system. The fact that a single character could feasibly master every class in the game is wild to me, and despite the massive undertaking that would require, I want to do it. I love how easy it is to switch jobs, too – you just change your weapon, and you’re good to go. Even better, create a gear preset for it and use your presets tab as a sort of character select screen, instantaneously swapping from Dark Knight to White Mage to Dragoon to Summoner at the click of a button. Welcome, too, is the “wear whatever’s best for me” button, making updating your presets just a few button presses, although who knows if that functions as seamlessly at endgame as it does when levelling. This game even makes professions jobs, meaning that I also have a set of gear for botany, or for carpentry, as well as 80 levels in each of those jobs with class quests occurring intermittently throughout. Basically, I won’t be able to die happy until I can look at that class screen on my character profile and see an 80 next to every job – yes, even the tanks and healers.

A gush: I’ve never been too interested in Final Fantasy games, because I’ve always had an odd aversion to the idea of mixing fantasy with technology. Not so much fantasy and science fiction, per se – WoW does as much these days – but the idea that industrial technology could fit into a world of magic. Final Fantasy often plays around with these ideas, as I can tell from just looking at games like VII and VIII. But FFXIV tricked me with it. For the first, oh I don’t know, 10 levels, you’re playing a fantasy game, with swords and magic hats and chocobo mounts for expedience. But just when you’re destined to visit another city for the first time, the game takes a hard right into science fiction, introducing you to the Garlean Empire by way of a spaceship-looking aircraft landing at a spaceport-looking base. And I’ve said before that I don’t mind future tech in fantasy, but I mean far-future; Garleans are a little more nitty gritty, employing the use of mechs in combat. But damn it all if I didn’t start to love the idea. And now that my mind is a little more open to mixing magic and technology together, damn it all if I’m not curious to see what the old Final Fantasy games were all about. And damn it all to the seven hells if I’m not going to utilise Game Pass to go back and give them a go.

And before anyone rushes to tell me that WoW mixes fantasy with mech-level technology too – I know. And I hate those gnomes and goblins with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

A gripe: As much as I love the jobs system for letting you do everything on a single character, it does eliminate the need for alts somewhat, which is a shame given that I love to create characters of different races with different backstories. And there’s nothing stopping me from doing that anyway and theming characters around a certain type of job – a magic user, for instance, or a burly tank – but this game’s focus on making jobs single-character friendly has been to the detriment of alt-friendliness. The prospect of tackling the daunting length of the main story quest again, or having to get a mount for the first time again, or unlocking a myriad of other things is honestly offputting. And on a similar note, despite the various methods which exist to level alternate jobs on your main character, none of them are half as interesting as progressing naturally through the main story quest. Dungeons only give decent XP once a day, levequests will drive you mad before you make too much progress in a class, and other avenues feel scattered and varied. Given how much I genuinely enjoy running a new alt through dungeons in WoW, it’s a little sad – but a worthwhile trade-off, all the same.

Here’s a playlist of videos I made in the game, starting with my 2019 escapades.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

My history: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I decided to play through Knights of the Old Republic, and quickly found that the game had aged too much for someone who had never played a game like it in its time. After watching a user-made movie version on Youtube, however, I became hooked on that era of Star Wars, and my thoughts drifted to the probably-long-dead-MMO. Youtube once more came to the rescue, however, with a very helpful and convincing user by the name of Swtorista who convinced me that not only was the game alive and worth playing, I had to play it right now. And after wrapping my head around the admittedly confusing three-tier user sub system, play it I did. It’s the least played MMO on this list, to be honest, but I played through the Jedi Knight campaign and loved every minute, and I fully intend to experience all the class campaigns, so long as the game doesn’t shut down on me before I can.

Favourite distinguishing feature: The class campaigns. Each campaign is a fully choice driven Bioware-style storyline, and as someone who could never get into Dragon Age or Mass Effect, this felt like I was finally getting that experience. Choices affected not only major story beats, but interpersonal relationships and karmic standing. That’s right – you can be a Dark Side Jedi if you wish, or perhaps a Sith with a little bit of Light Side in them. Not that the game restricts you to force wielders; both factions have variations of republic troopers and bounty hunters, too. Each faction has two force classes and two blaster classes, and each of those classes has two subclasses; these are all mirrored in terms of abilities, the intention assumedly being that you don’t have to endure the same gameplay for the faction’s opposing class. As a quick example, the Light Side have the Jedi Knight class, which can split into Guardian (single saber) or Sentinel (dual sabers). The Dark Side equivalent is Sith Warrior, splitting off into Juggernaut (single saber) or Marauder (dual sabers). Since I completed the Jedi Knight storyline with a Sentinel, I’ll approach the Sith Warrior storyline on a Juggernaut, so as to avoid abilities which are the same as my Jedi Knight’s but with Dark Side flavour.

I actually chose to pursue the Sith Inquisitor storyline after Jedi Knight and found that, much like in Elder Scrolls games, it is often far more enjoyable to be evil. Plus, the class divide and specific storyline makes your characters feel unique; Maera Mor, my Sith Inquisitor, is one of my favourite characters I’ve played across any videogame. She is more than a little deranged, and very powerful, and I find myself giggling at the absurd choices she’ll – sorry, I’ll – often pursue.

A gush: On the subject of Maera Mor; I may not have played a large amount of SW:TOR, but I’ve thought about her character a lot, and what kind of origin story could birth her particular aptitude for mirthful cruelty. I’ve yet to crack the egg that is her psyche, and I’ve not put a single word to paper yet, but coming up with all these theories has been a legitimately delightful creative endeavour. I like the idea of her killing her world before departing, similarly to Gul’dan and his village in Warcraft lore, but questions of power momentarily left aside, I can’t decide why she would do it – out of spite, or frustration, or accident? Is this revenge against a nation, a sacrifice for some warped greater good, or a desperate tragedy which shatters her memories? And those aren’t the only challenges; writing madness demands that you don’t stray too far into edginess, nor should you misrepresent people with real mental conditions. Perhaps giving her a real backstory makes her too serious in that sense. Hm. Maybe one day I’ll finally write her.

A gripe: The actual gameplay I found to be a chore more than anything. The combat is good enough, similarly to ESO, but unlike ESO the actual objectives of the quests are very vanilla World of Warcraft in that they’re the same three quests: kill these, collect that, sabotage those. I did find it less tiresome on my Sith Inquisitor than on my Jedi Sentinel, so it could partially be an issue of class choice, but those are my feelings as of now.

Here’s a playlist of the three videos I’ve made in that game so far.

And The Rest

These aren’t the only MMOs I’ve played, however. I played a lot of Destiny 2 between its launch and Shadowkeep. You could make an argument for WoW Classic as a separate listing. I’ve dipped my toe into Everquest 2, plus more than a few free to play MMOs I’ve long since forgotten. And there’s no doubt that I’ll dive into more MMOs in the future; I’m currently eyeing up DC Universe in much the same way that I first grew curious about SW:TOR – an aging franchise-based MMO that fell out of common discussion a decade ago or more, but which potentially still has interesting story to pursue before it’s lost to time.

As for the moment, though, these are the five games which stand as pinnacles of my gaming experiences. It’s very rare that I’m not deeply invested in one of them at any moment in time, and usually the only thing that will pull me away from them is the call from another. As of the time of writing this, I’m deeply invested in levelling through Final Fantasy XIV’s expansions, but a few months ago I was obsessed with my Ironman on Runescape, and a few months before that I replayed the entirety of Greymoor and then the vanilla main story for Elder Scrolls Online on my new Xbox character. So, who knows; by the time this publishes in two weeks, maybe I’ll be raving on Twitter about the Sith Inquisitor story in SW:TOR once again, or maybe the Burning Crusade Classic hype will draw me back to WoW after all. All I know is through MMOs, I’ve shared experiences with friends which we still reminisce on, be they story beats or guild events. It’s through this genre that I’ve met wonderful new people who I’ve only ever known online, brought together by the common interest of the game’s story or world. And while all good things must come to an end and others will surely rise to succeed them, I sincerely hope that this selection of games remains live for a good while to come.