What were your favourite games of 2023?

I am a basic RPG nerd, so my favorites were:

• Pathfinder: Wraith of the Righteous
• Baldur's Gate 3
• Super Mario RPG
• Sea of Starts

I also really enjoyed Outlanders as a city builder/strategy game.

Played some Morrowind with Tamriel Rebuilt which is like 20 years worth of DLCs for the game. And the writing and environments are top notch and feel very authentic to Morrowind.

Currently playing 40k Rogue Trader which is good.

Most played game is still Eu4 tho

• Disco Elysium 10/10 it's art. Finally got around to playing it and it's a masterpiece.
• Pikmin 4 9/10. Oatchi is a little overpowered but I was addicted to the gameplay loop and dandori.
• Street Fighter 6 9/10. Fighting games are my weakest genre of games and I've avoided learning them until now and I can say I'm more comfortable with them and now know the basics. So I loved that new experience. I main Cammy classic controls.
• Armored Core 6 8.5/10. Really fun blowing up mechs and customizing your mech.
• Judgment, Lost Judgment, Like a Dragon Gaiden all 8/10. Can't get enough of the Yakuza universe.

Boring answer, but I think Baldur's Gate 3 is the only game released this year that I really enjoyed. There are some new games I haven't gotten around to that I might enjoy, like Tears of the Kingdom, but I tend not to play that many games per year and usually let them age a little first for updates.

I think the favourite game I've played this year though was Citizen Sleeper. Technically it came out last year. Gorgeous art style, beautiful soundtrack, a novel central mechanic that reinforces the themes and the writing tugged at my heart strings. It also doesn't overstay it's welcome at all - I've only got 16 hours in it despite multiple playthroughs and all the DLC content.

Baldur's gate 3, Kenshi, Nightmare Reaper

Against the Storm.

Permanently Deleted

Armored Core

My fave games this year would have to be Guilty Gear Strive, Fallout New Vegas, Lunacid, and a game I just picked up last week called Northern Journey

Haven't had much time to play anything new this year. But for the Steam sale I think I'm going to torrent a DODI repack of BG3 and probs a few other big releases. I ain't paying shit for my slop anymore. 🏴‍☠️

Tears of the Kingdom is the only new game I've played this year. It's really entertaining, I love the shrine puzzle design this time around, and I'm actually really pleased by the sense of progression that has happened in the overworld.

digimon world next order

Yakuza:0

Sid Meier's Pirates!

Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal

FTL: Faster Than Light

And of course Civ 4 Ashes of Erebus

I just finished Alan Wake 2 and I honestly can't stop thinking about it. The style, the narrative, how the whole package comes together - I don't usually play horror games, but I'm so glad I did for this

In no particular order

• sea of stars
• boneraisers minions
• mario wonder
• totk
• Stray Gods
• Sable
• replayed Disco Elysium
• coffee talk episode 2
• really enjoyed baldurs gate 3 but I got burned out after act 1, will return to it later
• Pseudoregalia

And I have a bunch of games I'm excited to play:

• journey to the savage planet
• Pony Island
• the messenger
• nobody saves the world
• tinykin
• strayed lights
• spirits abyss (same dev as boneraisers minions)
• Lunistice
• before your eyes
• Venba
• American Arcadia

Side note: Humble Bundle and humble publishing has been absolutely killing it this year.

My most played game this year was Fallout New Vegas (currently going for 2,49€ on Steam). I installed some mods that made the combat realistic and deadly, which was amazing. It was my favourite playthrough yet. I am pretty sure that this is my pick for The Greatest Video Game of All Time.

This year I bought my first gaming PC ever. Up until now I needed to have a laptop for college and work so I was unable to run most of the modern AAA games. The first game I played on it was Jedi Fallen Order (2019). It was really good and I had a great time playing it.

My favourite game that came out this year was Cobalt Core. It's a combination of Slay The Spire and FTL: Faster Than Light. I definitely recommend it to anyone who liked those two games. It has beautiful pixel graphics, great soundtrack, charming characters and very fun gameplay. It's a 10/10 banger in my opinion

Been playing a lot of retro games this year. Had fun with Phantasy Star and the OG 90s Baldurs Gate, revisited the Metal Slug seres and Played all the NES Mega Man games for the first time. Also messed around with a Dreamcast emulator and played Jet Set Radio for the first time. Played Sonic Adventure for the first time in 15 years because I had the sudden urge to check out the Chao garden.

As for games that came out this year, I've only had Super Mario Wonder for two days and it's already a ton of fun. Pikmin 4 was pretty cool too. I've been messing around with Voices of the Void as well and that was neat.

I also want to play Baldurs Gate 3 some time but I'm waiting until I finish 1 and 2 first. Also I bet it runs like shit on my laptop so I dunno...

I feel like there's somethng I'm missing though. I swear I played more modern games this year... weird...

EDIT: PIZZA TOWER! HOW DID I FORGET MY FAVORITE GAME OF THIS YEAR! Easily game of the year for me. Shame the dev is a douche.

Only one of these is from 2023 but here are all the games I played for the first time this year (favorites in bold):

Antichamber
Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive
Hollow Knight
Lost in Vivo
Noita
OneShot
Outer Wilds
Rain World (51% of my gaming time lmao)
Submachine: Legacy
Superfighters Deluxe
World of Horror

GTA San Andrea Multiplayer (SAMP)

It wasnt released this year but im still playing it so it counts because i said so.

Permanently Deleted

The only game released in 2023 that I played is Void Stranger, and it was very good but I didn't like the meta-puzzle part of the game (I am too impulsive / inattentive to catch that stuff) so that soured my experience a bit. The actual sokoban puzzles I liked a lot though, as well as the music and story (the ending was meh though).

Of those that I played this year, my favorite games were:

Planescape Torment

Very good narrative and a unique setting AND the party felt like something out of a JRPG instead of something out of a western game which I really liked

FFXIV: Shadowbringers

The 5.0 MSQ is a good story about overcoming loss and despair, our near future climate change troubles and class consciousness. The dungeons and trials were really good this time. So far the post-launch patches (I have played 5.1-5.3) were a bit redundant / fanservicey but I enjoyed them.

Hollow Knight

Nothing to say that hasn't been said a million times here.

Xanadu Next

Japanese Diablo / Zelda fusion RPG with a good story and a great world which is revealed little-by-little as you progress. This isn't a well known game but I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Astlibra Revision

The dev is very horny and the game features many instances of problematic sexualization but I can't help but adore the game for the batshit insane time-travel story which somehow makes sense and holds up, the unique combat system and the amazing soundtrack compiled from various royalty free tracks (I discovered Shimajiro through it, who is a great artist). Also, I admire the dev's dedication, he worked on the game for 15 years before releasing it.

For multiplayer games, I enjoyed playing Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV with my girlfriend, and also Deep Rock Galactic and the Calamity mod for Terraria. We also tried Rabbit & Steel's demo, which is a co-op bullet hell roguelike with MMO mechanics (similar to FFXIV) and it was pretty good, so I am looking forward to its release in 2024.

Barely played any games this year so Baldur's Gate 3 I guess.

The Elevator Game with Catgirls

It's a VN but mostly puzzles. The art style is kinda cool. And I liked the puzzles. Only had to look up one thing in the steam walk through guide. The atmosphere/setting was really dream like.

I also 100%ed Hatsune Miku Logic Paint S. It was my most played game.

El Paso, Elsewhere - think max payne, but you're hunting down your ex girlfriend, Dracula, before she ends the world. Classic slow mo 3rd person shooter gameplay, interesting story, noir as fuck, and overall really enjoyable. ALSO difficulty sliders. Change damage multipliers to positive or negative, healing multipliers, infinite ammo, all that. Great game. Can't recommend it higher.

BG3 goes without saying.

Alan Wake 2 was weird as fuck and I loved every moment of it. Currently replaying it through "The Final Draft"

HADES

I played a lot of Darkest Dungeon 2. In fact, both DD games made up for over 50% of my time on Steam. I guess DD2 is my favorite. It's a joke in my household that I literally only play Darkest Dungeon and maybe 20 minutes of something else.

Battlebit Remastered is great for a few reasons

• The actual gameplay is a fun Battlefield-adjacent core
• Destruction is meaningfully integrated into almost all maps (except for one where it's disabled)
• Nice variety of gamemodes (if you play on community servers because all public ones vote Invasion 24/7)
• You have to accept an agreement at the start of every match that made a bunch of chuds seethe
• The game very aggressively bans people who violate that (very basic) agreement
• Bans are shown globally to all users in game and a lot of the time people reacting to "User was banned for sexism/racism" end up saying some unhinged shit and then they get to join the banwave

I don't play any new games ever. I played RE2 which was excellent, I played Last of us concurrently with the TV show and now I'm playing Elden ring.

BG3 is probably GOTY, not on its own merits, but because it made for really good conversation with friends.

AC6 slaps and is a close second, though it is definitely marred by balance issues (which have largely since been fixed).

I picked up some vampire survivors ripoffs and Yakuza: Like a Dragon plus some DLC.

BG3, ESO, Going Medieval, Dead by Daylight, and WOW Season of Discovery

i'm not going to pick anything up from the steam sale tbh, everything i want to check out i'll just pirate. games on my list in no particular order are: black geyser, citizen sleeper, crusader kings 3, grounded, little witch in the woods, stoneshard, horizons gate, kenshi, knights of the chalice 2, and ultima 9.

the one game i'll probably pick up is tainted grail the fall of avalon. (there's another tainted grail game by the same dev so beware and don't get confused) seems like a dark ass skyrim and looks cool.

I think the only game I played this year that came out in 2023 was Armored Core 6 but that game rocks

I really liked The Wandering Village, which I think is from this last year. It didnt do anything particularly wow but i lost so many hours to it, its just really fun and sweet.

I really enjoyed Secrets of the Obscure expansion for Guild Wars 2. It's been pretty fun and I'm liking some of the characters in that. Also some of the maps are really nice looking. But it felt like a fresh of breath air? Besides that, Project Zomboid was fun earlier this year with some past friends I had. but my most favorite was probably Signalis, minus the anticommunism. The anticommunism that's present in it is really frustrating. But like I wanted to try it last year but couldn't until this year, and I really enjoyed it, and the game just hits the right notes? also I've also played it in a time where im dealing with my own stuff to like grief, like my mom having passed earlier this year. so like I dunno, I just vibed a lot with that game

Coffin of Andy and Leyley

At least that was the only game released this year that I found interesting, that did something I hadn't seen before. Baldur's Gate 3 is a 10/10 in most categories but the combat system is legit a 1/10. It would've been ass if it had released like this in the 90s and is completely unacceptable in the 2020s.

I effin loved sonic frontiers