If you have not already listened to this category’s podcast, these are the final results, so this will spoil the course of the discussion on that podcast! Be warned!
The Winner
Dynasty Warriors Origins
When Dynasty Warriors Origins got its first, lengthy showing at one of Sony’s “State of Play” streams, I was admittedly skeptical it would be for me. As much as I adore the series, it appeared to be heading in the exact wrong direction: bog-standard “epic” orchestral music played as this utterly generic OC sliced their way through their opponents, the world bathed in a color palette best described as “Hollywood 2010.” Then I heard the OC was going to be the only character you could play (at least for the majority of each skirmish), and my interest took a precipitous nosedive. I knew they needed a clean slate after Dynasty Warriors 9’s open-world was an utter disaster, but in spite of the countless soldiers flying left and right after each attack, it sure looked like they were trading in the series’ giddy, buttrock soul for a safer action film approach.
As it turned out, my disappointment was premature. Dynasty Warriors Origins is a massive shake-up, but it’s a shake-up that knows what’s important to keep. The buttrock is back in full force, with Lu Bu’s iconic theme ringing out as fiercely as ever. It plays as well as it ever has, and the sped-up pace tightens up each skirmish, leading to missions that feel more bombastic than ever before. And even though your bland OC Ziluan takes center stage, the Three Kingdoms’ cast is just as raucous as you’d expect them to be.
Most importantly, for the first time in what feels like ages, Omega Force revisited their venerable plot and seemingly asked themselves “How can we better introduce players to this setting?” Older Dynasty Warriors games felt like a Greatest Hits speedrun of Luo Guanzhong’s timeless epic, skimming through the Why of each major conflict to focus on the How. Even as Dynasty Warriors Origins speeds up the fights themselves, it slows down where it counts, giving newcomers a better look at what brought Ancient China into turmoil in the first place. Characters like Zhang Jiao, once treated like an effete “sorcerer supreme” who tricked peasants into following him, now gets recast as a sympathetic, tragic figure, one who wanted to do the right thing but lost control when it mattered most. This new approach trickles down to the entire cast, leading to a plot where even the frustratingly indecisive Liu Bei has good reasons for his hesitancy.
It is vanishingly rare to play a reboot that feels like it did everything right, but Dynasty Warriors Origins is the closest we’ve come to that elusive goal in some time. I can’t wait to see how Omega Force takes this new approach and runs with it in the future!
-Jennifer
The Runners-Up
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa
There might not be a point to The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa. You play it, things occur, and it ends. During that time, the game doesn’t tell you what to do. To see it through, you can only accept how little guidance or certainty you have that anything you’re doing will be worthwhile.
It’s a game I might have never gotten through without Novel Not New. I tried, to be sure. The aimlessness and uncertainty triggered a clawing anxiety in me- not that dissimilar from real life, I suppose. That the podcast made getting through the game my job meant I committed to getting through it, anxiety or no. And while I knew in advance that the anxiety was the point, what I didn’t anticipate was how the story of Ringo would emerge from this directionless meandering.
The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa strikes you at first as being a game about the meaninglessness of everyday life, but it’s far more pointed than that. It’s not that Ringo thinks life is meaningless overall, it’s trying to capture the empty confusion of the final days of high school: the end of life being on autopilot, and you being given the responsibility to choose the direction of your life. …And about trust, and cowardice, and friends, and priorities.
Ringo isn’t ready to be in charge of his own life, and few high schoolers truly are. The transition to adulthood is a mess. Some people get it right, almost by luck. But the confusion is universal, and no game has captured it better.
-Six
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy
Have you ever really seen the “Hail Mary” work? That’s the idea of it: it is a last ditch effort that you must put everything into that has slim chances of working. Which if it fails? You lose everything. That was the position of TooKyo games releasing The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy to the world, a game with the entire studios future hanging on the success of this game. And if the reaction to it online and sales numbers are to be believed, this part of the story has something resembling a happy ending.
The Hundred Line is a visual novel directed by the people behind the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series, where a group of kids must fight back an invading alien force, where the destruction of their school spells doom for humanity. The story is full of characters not unlike those seen the games mentioned before, but somehow even more extreme and over the top. But instead of solving death games or escape rooms, the core gameplay is a turn based tactics game brimming with style.
The appeal of Hundred Line isn’t so much a single bespoke system or story, however. As you play the first route which can take anywhere from 60 to 80 hours to complete, the story drops a bomb: there are 99 more endings. You have only just begun.
Ok the game does fudge that number a little bit. Many routes are intentional dead ends. But the game is pushing to have it all and then some. The many many many alternate routes can can be read as sequels, deconstructions, or just imaginative what-ifs that speak to what TooKyo put into this release. They have also said there are plans for DLC routes written by other writers, which sounds both incredible and kinda like a threat.
The Hundred Line reminds me why I fell in love with games like Danganronpa and Zero Escape, at the heart of their over the top styles and plots are characters with interiority. They are the kinda characters that are defined enough to be distinct but with enough gaps to inspire decades of fanfic about. This game snapped my gaming funk, and can help but think of it as my game of the year.
-Kyrie
of the Devil Ep.1-2
Well, hot damn. Right as I began to worry (as I often do) that Ace Attorney wouldn’t be coming back any time soon, of the Devil entered my life and gave me a courtroom drama visual novel that escaped from Capcom’s shadow, going toe-to-toe with Shu Takumi’s very best mystery writing.
This episodic adventure from nth Circle takes plenty of inspiration from both Ace Attorney and Danganronpa, but it is so much more than the sum of its parts. Bursting at the seams with incisive cyberpunk writing and starring a defense attorney with more than a few skeletons in her closet, of the Devil is one hell of a roller coaster ride. I found myself grinning like a wolf every time Morgan pulled one of her shockingly cutthroat tricks, and was equally heartbroken whenever she was forced to confront her inability to process emotions like everyone else.
This is a game filled with an equal amount of intelligence and humanity, constructed with such precision that it puts 80% of the AAA space to shame. It’s a reminder that yes, things can be better, that there’s so much untapped potential even in a genre as niche as VN legal mysteries. of the Devil gives me hope for a brighter future in gaming, even as the truisms we once took for granted collapse around us.
-Jen
And that, friends and folks, is the end of the Gimmick Awards 2025. Congratulations to all our winners, runners-up, and nominees, and thank you so much to everyone who listened and read along with us. It’s back to normal business for another year, but I suspect we’ll have another set of Awards for you next year.
Our art is a commission from GOMA on Bluesky.
