Game of year?

[Hadley333]

Tough competition but this is easily one of my fav games this year. Almost 50 hours in and not even half way through original main missions. Battle is fun and results in me not wanting to skip a single sub mission.

Wish it was optimized more though. Received frame drops in couple of levels. Funny thing is when you turn off all bells and whistles still looks close to max settings.

[awanderingswordsman]

It's my game of the year but there was no real competition for me.

[Rogue]

This game keeps pulling me back in even after I gotten all the achievements. Heh.

[Bucky]

yeah its amazing but right behind divinity

[Neckwhiskers]

This, Nier Automata, and Divinity 2 are all great.

[Royta15]

If Yakuza Zero hadn't come out I might've agreed, but that game blew everything out of the water for me to be honest. Though TECHNICALLY it is an older game, so for me then it's still a race between The Evil Within II and Nioh, both of which I just cannot put down.

[Mayonnaise Eater]

Yes. My new favorite game. It took me 88h alone to beat every mission and side mission on NG. (I did some missions multiple times for farming and I also spend some time on way of the demon)

[Lv 20 Bolting Bot]

To me, this lacks the polish to be GOTY material. It's a really enjoyable game, a great one, to be sure, but a good combat system and lots of content are not enough to be a truly special game imo. There's too much rehashing of areas and enemies, and a dependence on pure artificial difficulty which keeps this from being as great as it could have been, although it's still great.

To me, a truly polished ARPG is Bloodborne. Solid combat, but more importantly also great level design, fantastic atmosphere, godlike soundtrack et.c. Just polished overall. Nioh is amazing in some areas (combat/lootfest), then lacking in others.

I haven't really played anything this year that I'd consider worthy of GOTY. But then I haven't played any of the other games mentioned here yet, although I've heard plenty of praise for all of them. From what I've seen, Divinity: OS2 is a likely winner in my book, once I get around to playing it.

[awanderingswordsman]

Game of the year doesn't need to be good, it just needs to be better than all the other games that year.

[Shard of Manus]

While this is a great and fun game, I think it's a far cry from being Game of the Year.

You've got competition such as NieR: Automata and Divinity Original Sin 2 - which I would say compete for the role (and potentially Horizon: Zero Dawn, but I haven't played it and can't say how good it is).

Then you've got the 'preferance' awards, which get Game of the Year just because lots of people like them, such as Middle Earth: Shadow of War, Assassin's Creed: Origins, The Legend of Zelda: BotW... possibly even Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (but certainly not one I'd consider).

For sure Nioh is a great game, but it has some major flaws that detract from its overall value, and like above says, it lacks polish.

While there are a bunch of enemies, the game undeniably lacks variation considering its size - we see too much of the same thing. It boasts artificial difficulty often in place of strategic and intelligent difficulty (while surpassable, doesn't mean it's a good thing) -- admittedly, I don't find Nioh particularly hard - I struggled with some of the boss ganks on my first playthrough, but you learn to cheese them or 'git gud'.

The story isn't particularly engaging. The developers opted for walls of text and lore to force feed us the story of the Sengoku period (particularly the late 16th, early 17th century) of Japan - which is great in itself. It was quite educational and even drove me to do a little research on the characters - but the story given to us in the game itself is quite lacklustre, generic, and dull... while the gameplay is not.

Most of the side quests are silly nonsense if you read the dialogue boxes (walls of text) before and after... it really is. Some of it is just menial nonsense, and the rest are "oh, Yokai have popped up, kill them).

The game boasts some great level design, great enemies (if limited) and good bosses (though I find them to be fairly disappointing admittedly - they either lack difficulty altogether, or their only source of difficulty is one-shotting the player).

The characters, albeit based on real people, aren't all that interesting - there's very little divulgence into exploring them personally, and they're all just part of the war... including the protagonist himself that, beyond being a powerful samurai and hero of the day, has no personality beyond "I must get back Saoirse".

Once again, I direct you to the above comment from Folketale. Bloodborne was a game worthy of Game of the Year. It boasted a great combat system (much like Nioh boasts its own awesome combat), and amazing level design... but it also had a complex and engaging story and lore, lots of enemy variety, amazing music, amazing bosses and such exquisite detail put into every tiny little thing that made it a true masterpiece.

Nioh is a great ARPG, but not game of the year material I think.

[Kalil]

Hidden gem of the year.

[VeeKain]

After sinking more than 50 hours in this guy I can confidently say it's far from being GOTY material. I must have enjoyed at least 10 games more this year. I know damn near every game released will have at least five dedicated fans who swear that their game is GOTY because it's their personal favorite or most played but this is a game I would recommend to a tiny sliver of people and cautiously at best. Something like Mario Odyssey I can safely recommend to everyone I know. And it's the epitome of polish.

[Tintler]

Nioh doesn't deserve it.
A Hat in Time does.

[Hadley333]

Originally posted by Kalil:

Hidden gem of the year.

I like it.

[淵 La+ Darknesss]

Okami might take that for me.

[Thite]

Nioh is definitely a great game but it's far too rough around the edges to be GOTY. PLaying with a i5 6600k and gtx 1070 and still getting frame drops at 1440p, all online functions are utterly terrible and far too many bosses are just too hard, with loads of moves that one shot or stunlock until death, even if you're over the recomended level. I really like this game, but it's given me a lot more anger over ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things like getting oneshot than dark souls has.