It’s always fun to look back at what people who visit DDNet have read – and enjoyed – the most. This year around I figured I’d share the fun around, so without further ado, here are the ten most read articles on DigitallyDownloaded.net from January 1, 2017, to today:
I’ll freely admit we did this one as a bit of clickbait, because firstly who doesn’t enjoy a bit of sexiness in their games (aside from the New Zealand censors), and secondly, I’ll always take the opportunity to stick an image of Marie Rose on DDNet’s front page. So anyway, we actually wrote this article in 2016, but it remains one of the site’s most popular to this day. Mission accomplished.
I guess calling it “the greatest game ever made” probably helped with the traffic, but of all the reviews we wrote at DDNet this year (and there were literally hundreds), NieR: Automata was the one that the most people read. This game took a lot of people by surprise, as a sequel to a game that was anything but a critical darling, but we knew. We always knew that it would be a wildly brilliant game, and our 4,000-word review will tell you exactly why.
Another piece of everlasting content on DDNet, we actually wrote this article way back in 2013… indeed as such it was an article from when DDNet was barely getting started. But the Nintendo DS proved to be such an important console in terms of the JRPG genre that to this day people are going back to it to rediscover games they might have missed and play them on their newer 3DS consoles. I honestly hope that this article has helped them find some favourite games to play.
When we set out on the massive project to list the 100 greatest games ever made, we hoped that the eventual list would prove to be a valuable resource for people for years thereafter, and so far, the hope is panning out. Our list of the 100 games you absolutely must play is a little old now – there’s a good dozen games from 2017 that we probably should edit in there, but as a list from 2016 and earlier, I personally think it’s a remarkable list for anyone looking to discover a truly special game they might not have played before.
This one ended up being controversial because I didn’t give the game 10/10 and there was a real explosion of comments and anger from people who hadn’t even played the game directed at me. Oh well. I thought Horizon was a good game, but not anything special, and I’m still quite certain that while NieR: Automata will be remembered for many, many years yet, Horizon’s days are already numbered. Not that I want to be controversial again. I really did like the game enough for what it was.
I got to be very controversial twice this year to the point that my articles went viral. With Horizon it was because I didn’t like the game as much as some other people. With Valkyria Revolution it was because I liked it too much. I thought this game was clever, deep, and quite powerful, narratively speaking, and I was genuinely shocked to see, after embargo lifted, that I was in the minority there. Meanwhile people have, to this day, linked to this review to prove how “biased” I am towards Japanese games for liking one they didn’t. It’s fun being a game critic.
Another article from the very earliest archives at DDNet, this one was published waaaaaay back in 2012. As far as lists go, though, it was a pretty detailed one, so I can only assume that Sonic fans keep coming across it and, I hope, finding a new game to play from it. I do love that people still dig right into the site’s past for the occasional article. It goes to show that DDNet has been around long enough to have that heritage that does make it useful on an ongoing basis for readers.
We do like to think of ourselves as JRPG specialists at DDNet. It is our first and foremost passion, and we take pride in reviewing almost every single one that comes out in the west. So it’s good to see that there are so many JRPG fans that are clearly reading the website; both the top 10 DS and 3DS lists are in our top 10 articles of 2017, and, again, this one’s been around a while too, since 2016, so clearly it’s of value for some people out there!
The Nintendo Switch was such a hit at launch, and there were so many games that launched on it, that this ended up being one of our most popular articles from 2017. Basically we got four of the “lesser” releases on the console and the rolled reviews of them all into the one article. As we’re Metacritic-listed, each of the reviews got a separate entry on that website, and as a result a lot of new Nintendo Switch fans, looking for games to play, found this single review round-up article. We hope it was helpful!
This one genuinely surprises me. While we are big fans and advocates for JRPGs in general, we’re not the world’s biggest supporters of the Tales series. Not that we don’t like them, of course, just that we tend to care more about other JRPGs. But I did love Tales of Berseria as something particularly special from this long-running series, and I guess it was one that found Namco’s franchise a whole lot of new fans, judging from how many read this review.
And there you have it! The ten most read articles on DDNet for the year. Regardless of which of these you read – or any of the other articles on the site – we’d like to thank you again for taking the time out of your day to spend some time with us. We hope that we’ve been interesting, entertaining and just a little bit informative. And, of course, if you feel like we’ve been doing a good job, please consider backing us on Patreon. There’s a link below, and your support will directly help us continue on for many years into the future.
– Matt S.
Editor-in-Chief
Find me on Twitter: @digitallydownld
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