The 2021 Destructoid Community Game of the Year winners are…

destructoid.com:

Another trip around the sun has been completed and so we conclude our year-end look at the best video games that came out in 2021. While the staff has had their say, we here at Destructoid love to give the community a chance to voice its game of the year opinion as well.

As always, I reached out to various community members and moderators for insight as to how the selected games affected them. It also helps since I apparently was vastly out of touch with the community at large and didn’t touch a single of the games in the top five. So without anymore brouhaha, let’s get into the top five games of 2021 as selected by you, our community!

JRPGs have always had a good home on Nintendo’s systems, all the way back to the golden days of Final Fantasy on NES and SNES. For proof that the Switch is living up to that proud tradition, look no further than Shin Megami Tensei V.

Shin Megami Tensei V quite noticeably decided to put gameplay first, but nevertheless managed to expertly set the post-apocalyptic scene. From the opening cutscene detailing how the Christian God took divinity from all other deities and reduced them to mere demons, all the way to the very end, it’s easy to get sucked into the dark setting filled to the brim with religious commentary.

That said, the real draw of SMT V is the combat system, as well as optimizing your team of increasingly stronger demons. SMT after all, is not unlike Pokémon, if Pokémon had you fighting alongside Loki, Quetzalcoatl, Shiva, and some ridiculously obscure monster from any culture’s folklore you care to name. Also unlike Pokémon, Shin Megami Tensei V forces you to constantly change up and improve your team. Every level-up comes with new opportunities to recruit something stronger,