I asked this same question last year and looking back on the list of games I hoped to finish, I actually am surprised I got to quite a few of them. That includes Deadly Premonition, Radiant Historia, Pikmin 3, Link Between Worlds, Trace Memory, and No More Heroes. The link between them all is that they were available on the Switch or DS and I could play them late at night after everyone had gone to sleep as I’ve had almost no free time during the day.
This year, my backlog has gotten even worse and I haven’t even picked up the new generation of consoles. Motivated by a sense of helplessness due to the circumstances of this year, I ended up buying a whole lot of DS/3DS games on EBay. This includes Kid Icarus Uprising, Dragon Quest IX, Shovel Knight, Lunar Knights, Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and more. My list of Switch games I need to get to feels overwhelming as well, with the latest Fire Emblem being at the top of the list, followed by Astral Chain, Octopath Traveller, Worldend Syndrome, and Luigi’s Mansion 3. I didn’t make much progress with my PS4 backlog this year, but I did pick up a whole lot of new games like Resident Evil 3 and the Final Fantasy VII Remake. There are the games that I started, really enjoyed, but had to put on hold for lack of time: Mega Man Legends, Legend of Kage 2, and Shining Force II (which is on my Genesis collection for the Switch). There’s also a lot of classic NES, SNES, and Genesis games I try to revisit, if only to re-experience them again. I usually do an annual play through Castlevania 2-4 and hop through my save files for Final Fantasy IV. I also picked up the DS version of Chrono Trigger since I love finding excuses to travel through time all over again.
I know having a backlog is a good problem to have. When I was a kid, my family could only rarely afford new games, so I ended up having to play my same games over and over until I’d be able to get a new game. I do believe this is where my love for RPGs was born because they gave so much bang for their buck. Nowadays though, not only are there so many amazing games, but so many of them are epic in scope with too many things to do. I have to prioritise my list and hope to get to as many as I can.
So Kotaku, the question today is, what games on your backlog do you most hope to finish in the New Year?
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