Saturday, December 30, 2023

The 2023 Video Game Retrospective

I’m going to be totally straightforward with anyone who might be reading this. I’m depressed as hell. I was really on the fence about doing this retrospective again this year, but I think it’s important (at least for my brain chemistry) to maintain the streak I have going. I’ve done one of these every year since 2014 (sort of), so I don’t want this year to be any different.


Here's a list of all the previous retrospectives:



It’s interesting to note that I completed considerably fewer games this year, not necessarily due to the depression, but from tunnel visioning more on specific games. I would say the average amount of time I spent on any particular game is much higher than in other years. I treated a lot of games as real passion projects, which is definitely not a bad thing. I’d like to think I focused on quality over quantity this year and sought to really engage with difficult games as well. Let’s see if I agree with that assessment as I go through my whole list of 36 games—one game for every year I’ve been on this planet.

Completed January 9th on PC
I definitely recall that at the start of the year, I was interested in playing a lot of shorter games. I get that idea in my head pretty often, but it’s rare that I actually follow through on it—but I do think that’s why I started my year with Cthulhu Saves Christmas, Zeboyd Games’ follow-up to 2010’s Cthulhu Saves the World, which I played back in 2016 back-to-back with another of their early games, Breath of Death VII. These games are always a pleasant diversion, even if I really don’t engage much with the Christmas themes. I’m generally on board for simple turn-based RPG mechanics and the wacky humor, even if the jokes don’t always land. My original goal was to treat this as a stepping stone to their “Shakespearean magical girl RPG” This Way Madness Lies, but that didn’t end up panning out.

Completed January 13 on PC.

Although I was planning on committing to shorter experiences this year, the second game I finished was one of the first examples in 2023 of going down the rabbit hole with a game I became fascinated by. I originally played Into the Breach on Switch back in 2019, but I genuinely didn't engage with it in the way I should have. I remember getting one victory with the first squad they give you and just shelving it at that point—so I really only had a few hours of playtime. When I bought the game on Steam in a sale, I decided to dive in and complete the game for real, taking the time to experiment with every squad and get multiple 2, 3, and 4-star victories with each squad. I was empowered by a friend who was also interested in this game so we were sharing our experiences and strategies with each other. I can't say enough good about this game. Subset Games gets so much done with tiny grid-based battlefields and a squad of three mechs with simple abilities. There's so much elegance in the simplicity of this design and how it creates satisfying depth. Although I only spent a few hours on the Switch version, I clocked about 77 hours on Into the Breach before I gave it a rest.

Completed January 15 on PC.

Back around the time I was blown away by The House in Fata Morgana early in 2022, I acquired quite a few visual novels to dive into, but a lot of them have just been languishing in my library since then, aside from a few that I'll talk about in this entry. First up on the list is 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, a game I've been aware of for years thanks to its original DS release but never tried until this year. It's actually sort of strange that I never played the original since it's totally up my alley. I definitely played a ton of Ace Attorney and Hotel Dusk on the DS, but managed to skip this one. Fortunately, I really loved this game! It's dated in a few key ways, and I don't love how overtly sexual Lotus's design is, but beyond that, I enjoy the art style, I really dig the trippy electronic soundtrack, the twisty mystery narrative is fascinating, and it's very satisfying popping in and out of various parts of the narrative to try new choices to influence the story. You may note that I have not mentioned the game's puzzles, which make up the bulk of the gameplay. I enjoy these puzzles to a point, but because I'm not necessarily a "puzzle guy," the more difficult ones lose me a bit. I'll freely admit that by the time I'd reached the final sections of the game, I was straight up looking up solutions just so I wouldn't be stuck in one room for hours. Ultimately, I just wanted to get to the part I was interested in—the story.

Completed February 14 on PC.

On the other hand, I liked The House in Fata Morgana: A Requiem for Innocence less. This is a sort of prequel or side-story to The House in Fata Morgana, which is just this achingly beautiful piece of art that I find myself thinking of often, not only because of its writing and plot but its heartwrenching soundtrack as well. A Requiem for Innocence is essentially a retread of events you've already read about with some minor expansions and some new characters, but what makes it truly uncomfortable to me is the lengths it goes to humanize and make you relate with a principal character who is primarily defined by having romantic feelings for a child—the titular Morgana herself. The main novel discusses this as well but views this character's motivations very critically. In A Requiem for Innocence, the situation is painted as this cute story that is intended to make us feel worse about the tragedy that we know is coming from the very beginning. It's an unfortunate misstep for me that makes me feel more weird about Fata Morgana in retrospect, which is a real shame because I loved that visual novel to death.

Completed on March 15 on Switch.

The announcement of the release of Theatrhythm Final Bar Line really took me by surprise since the last entry in the series came out way back in 2014! Funnily enough, it made an appearance in the very first retrospective I ever wrote for this blog, so I guess this is something of a full-circle moment. Kind of. I'm a huge fan of rhythm games and I love Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy music, so a game like this is essentially catnip to me. Some adjustments needed to be made to the gameplay since the originals made heavy use of the DS touchscreen for the rhythm elements, but I found that adapting those controls to a Switch controller worked just fine for me. Following the slopes on the "traveling" songs is indeed much less precise than before, but I don't think those sections were ever my favorite in the first place and the new control scheme works just fine. The RPG combat mechanics in this game continue to be completely ignorable, but I've made my peace with that at this point and appreciate it solely for its rhythm game mechanics. I also think playing this game really gave me a hunger for returning to rhythm games in general, which I'll talk about a little later.

Completed on March 23 on PC.
I mentioned earlier that my first rabbit hole of the year was Into the Breach—my second was Dead Cells, yet another game I'd played on console some years back that I decided to purchase again on PC now that it's my primary platform. I had the excuse of revisiting the game due to the new Return to Castlevania DLC, which is a fantastic collaboration with Konami that imports classic Castlevania enemies and areas directly into Dead Cells as new biomes. It really emphasizes just how varied runs of this action roguelike can be. I've always enjoyed the frenetic 2D combat of this game and how many different build options are available, but the addition of the Castlevania levels provides a whole new slew of items and secrets to find and its seamlessly integrated into the game alongside a lot of other content I hadn't yet gotten a chance to experience. I spent a lot of time unlocking as many weapons and relics as I could and conquering bosses I hadn't yet defeated, including Dracula himself. All told, I spent something like 90 hours on this one, eclipsing even the time I spent on Into the Breach earlier in the year.

Completed on March 27 on Switch.
Now, listen, I'm a huge Fire Emblem fan and I really appreciate how much mainstream success Fire Emblem Three Houses brought to the series. I liked the game a lot, myself, even though I felt like the actual combat of the game was a little shallower than I liked. The art and music were great, the plot was pretty good, and the school simulation elements were...a bit tedious if I'm being honest. I definitely like lifestyle simulation elements in games and in fact, I find them extremely enjoyable in Persona, but in Three Houses, I just didn't find myself connecting with those characters as much, perhaps just because there were so many of them and because there's so much recycled and inconsequential dialogue to wade through every time you head back to base. I only offer this long preamble because Three Houses was critically acclaimed and Fire Emblem Engage received a comparatively lukewarm reception due to totally valid complaints about characterization and plot. I find the characters in Engage charming and fun, for the most part, but none of them have any real depth. By the same token, the plot is very by-the-numbers and doesn't do a lot for me, even if I do find it relatively inoffensive.


But here's the thing—I love Fire Emblem Engage. This is the best the gameplay has been in Fire Emblem for quite some time and I feel it's absolutely a step in the right direction after Three Houses, which is why I worry about the critical reception the game received. I can only imagine Intelligent Systems will pivot back to another title like Three Houses, and I can only hope they find some way to marry elements of both games to create a more plot and character-driven game with interesting gameplay too.


Here's the other thing I want to say about Fire Emblem Engage. It was a massive rabbit hole for me. I made the questionable decision to play the game on Maddening difficulty, which has historically only been available after completing any particular game on Hard mode first. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I wasn't prepared for just how hard it was going to be. Every single map from beginning to end required careful planning and multiple attempts. I had to try different load-outs, take advantage of the extremely limited options for grinding, and play maps out in very specific ways to avoid permanent casualties. As a result, I spent a whopping 246 hours on Fire Emblem Engage and was eventually forced to sacrifice crucial characters in the very last mission of the game to persevere. These characters who had managed to survive countless trials along the way across hundreds of hours perished bravely in their final conflict. I can't say I'll play the next Fire Emblem on Maddening difficulty, but I'd definitely say that it turns a game I already enjoyed into an extremely memorable experience that challenged me to devise countless effective strategies over an exhausting, grueling playthrough.

Completed on April 17 on Switch.
Team Asano is responsible for a few of my favorite games in recent years. Their games tend to be throwbacks to classic JRPGs of yesteryear but there are generally always some notable flaws that don't ruin the experience but definitely add an asterisk to what would otherwise be an incredible game. Bravely Default is a game with fantastic gameplay, tedious dialogue, and an inexcusable repetitive final chapter. Triangle Strategy notably has better writing, but it's quite dry and the combat suffers some balance issues, particularly on Hard mode. Octopath Traveler was a wonderful implementation of the classic trope of adventurers that take on various quests separately and team up to work together—to a point. It had a lot of problems, from its rigorously formulaic chapter system in which every character's journey feels too similar, to the fact that the party never really communicates with each other. They're just accompanying each other on their separate stories that rarely if ever interact with each other in meaningful ways.


The more games this team develops, though, the better. Bravely Default II was my favorite Bravely game by a mile, and Octopath Traveler II blows the original out of the water by so much, that it's insane. And I really liked Octopath Traveler. This sequel addresses virtually every criticism one could have of the original game while reinforcing what was already an extremely solid combat system. Every character's story is considerably less formulaic than before. Some characters have branching paths in their second or third chapters, and some have totally different levels at which you're expected to tackle them. Some chapters don't have any combat at all but never feel like filler. Virtually all of these stories have compelling narrative threads that I felt invested in completing. At no point was I going through the motions just to get to more combat, which admittedly does rule. This is all on top of the revamped Path Action system, which is now much more versatile and allows the various characters to perform different actions at day or night, so you always have more options for your party composition based on what you're trying to accomplish in a particular area. It's just a phenomenal game and probably my favorite of 2023—and I spent 126 hours on this one.

Completed on May 4 on PS2.

I've been working my way through the huge back catalog of Super Robot Wars games over the past few years and recently I've started playing the ones that are only available in Japanese. I wrote a little about that earlier this year, but it does remind me that I've really been slacking on my Japanese lately. I'm still doing reviews but I haven't learned anything new in quite some time. At any rate, Super Robot Wars MX isn't the first PlayStation 2 entry I've played, but it is the first non-OG title that actually features characters from various anime. This is one of the few titles that features Gear Fighter Dendoh, which makes it notable, but it's a solid roster overall, with entrants from Evangelion, Metal Armor Dragonar, Martian Successor Nadesico, and RahXephon (which was a new one for me!). I'm also a big fan of the protagonist mech design, piloted by the duo of Hugo Medio and Aqua Centrum. It's a big, bulky super robot that can transform between a melee bruiser sword-wielder piloted by Hugo or a long-range artillery laser-blaster piloted by Aqua. I find this design a lot more interesting than many of the more recent SRW protagonist mechs.

Completed on May 10 on PS1.
I've been experimenting more this year with using the Steam Deck as a platform for emulation. As a general rule, any of the older console games I play are typically going to be played using the Steam Deck, with one notable exception I'll discuss later. I'd been meaning to try out the Armored Core series for years. After all, I'm a fan of mechs and I'm definitely a fan of From Software, so it feels like a natural match. Of course, the From Software of this PS1 era is a considerably different beast, but actually, I did enjoy Armored Core. It's dated and the controls feel sluggish, but it actually kind of works to sell the sheer weight and impact of the armored cores themselves. Much like Front Mission, a pretty considerable amount of the gameplay is in tinkering with your mech and figuring out the perfect loadout. Unlike Front Mission, many of the changes you make to your mech are lateral moves. There are definitely strict upgrades, but you're always going to be making some sort of tradeoff. Maybe you want a more durable piece but you're going to move or turn more slowly. Maybe you want devastating power but you're going to have to deal with hefty ammunition costs. Armored Core is brutal about resource management in that it's not difficult at all to end up coming out of a mission in the red because you simply used too much ammunition and/or took too much damage that needed to be repaired.


Another thing to note about Armored Core is that the final platforming gauntlet is absolutely ridiculous. These mechs do not have the precision necessary to navigate dozens of floating blocks like that and it really puts me in mind of similar platforming challenges in the Souls games that were needlessly frustrating. Even back then, it was clear the developers wanted to make the player suffer. Perhaps I'll play more Armored Core in the future, especially now that Armored Core 6 has been out for some time.

Completed on May 21 on PC.

For whatever reason, it's easy to forget that I played The Last Spell this year, which is interesting because I spent a whopping 210 hours on it. I think a large part of that has to do with the fact that I ended up uninstalling the game out of sheer frustration. First, let's talk about what makes this game great. The Last Spell is a tactical RPG survival roguelike, so it combines elements of tower defense with strategy RPG mechanics, along with persistent upgrades as you complete more and more runs. As you complete the maps in the game, you'll unlock new, harder ones to tackle. I completed the bulk of the game's content but the process of finishing the very last missions was so extraordinarily frustrating that it soured the game as a whole for me. It's actually a real shame because there are many things about this game that I absolutely love. There's a ton of itemization and build choices you can make as you build up your base. You need to manage your 5-6 heroes and their equipment, their perks, and of course, you'll need to make decisions on how you engage the enemy and defend your base. It's a lot of fun and extremely satisfying to put together the perfect turn.


Here's the thing, though—the game is very time-consuming. An individual day (which serves as a wave of enemies) could take something like half an hour on its own depending on the complexity of your party and how long it takes you to decide the appropriate moves. At the beginning of every day, you're going to consider upgrades to your buildings, maybe buy equipment, level up your heroes and update their equipment, and then decide where you're going to place them for defense that night. Then, the combat itself takes a long time because not only do you need to make decisions on how your heroes move and what actions they take, but you're going to have to watch as the horde of enemies takes their turn as well, which includes attacking any obstacles in their way. Even with animations at maximum speed, this takes time.


Imagine for a moment that you've tackled extremely difficult challenge after challenge on the very last map of the game, taking untold hours to get there. You've made it something like 14 days in, but it turns out that last turn is just impossible. It's not going to happen. Maybe you just didn't prepare for every eventuality and you're just not powerful enough. What's your recourse there? Well, you're just going to have to lose. If you want to try it again, you're going to have to start the entire multi-hour journey all over again—and who knows if you're going to end up with heroes with the perks you want or get the weapons you need to be successful. This element of randomness and how time-consuming these final missions can be made me finally realize that I was not making great use of my time, despite how much I enjoyed much of the game up to that point.


Oh, by the way, the soundtrack is incredible. It's like this dark electronic djent stuff that sounds just great. I still listen to that from time to time.

Completed on 5/23/23 on 3DS.
I'd been meaning to play Kirby: Planet Robobot for quite a few years, maybe since about 2016, but never got around to it for one reason or another. I'd always heard this was one of the best Kirby entries and after playing it, I can safely say I agree! Almost any game in this series is super charming, but Robobot has it in spades. All the classic copy mechanics are still here, but many levels allow you to pilot a big mech not only for combat purposes but to solve specific puzzles too. I'm also a big fan of the soundtrack, especially the tune that plays when you hop in the robot itself. It's funny that I've played so many games that involve mechs in some way this year—and this isn't the last one either.

Completed on June 6 on PC.

The first thing I was struck by when starting Virtue's Last Reward is that there was a pretty dramatic shift in art style. Unlike 999's 2D art, the characters in the sequel are rendered in full 3D, which looks... okay, but I can't say it's my preference. I actually had a harder time getting into this second Zero Escape title than 999, which I found immediately interesting. I do think the art style is part of it, but I also had a hard time relating to some of the characters, especially characters like Dio and the guy who is inexplicably wearing a full mechanical exosuit. Having said that, the game really grew on me over time and I ended up enjoying it a lot in the end, especially when it became clearer how the game's plot tied into the overall story and how it related to 999. I'm now having a similar issue getting into Zero Time Dilemma, so let's hope that one pays off in the end too.

Completed on June 29 on PC.
I've talked a lot about rabbit holes in this entry so far, but it's safe to say that the mother of all rabbit holes for me this year is Street Fighter 6. I played through the arcade modes of all the classic Street Fighter games last year mostly as a whim, but it certainly put me in a position to be heavily anticipating the newest entry in the franchise. I'm not sure what I was expecting to happen, but it would have been easy to imagine that I would spend some time in the World Tour mode and then drop the game after that. This, of course, wasn't what happened. After playing nothing but single-player in the previous SF games (aside from a brief attempt at casual matches in Street Fighter V), I wanted to actually do my best to become reasonably competitive in ranked matches. It didn't take long for me to decide on Kimberly as my character of choice, and many hundreds of hours later, she's still my choice. It's difficult for me to even summarize everything I learned about Street Fighter and about fighting games in general over the past several months. I have a whole different vocabulary to describe fighting games now, and although my skill level is nothing special, I'm several orders of magnitude better than I was at first. I made it to Diamond rank and let it rest there, but I know I'm going to be returning to Street Fighter as new characters drop. Even at 368 hours and thousands of matches played, I'm far from done.

Completed on July 19 on PC.
It's staggering to think about how many hours I've spent on the massive interconnected story of the Trails series (111 hours on this one alone) and it's satisfying to feel like a piece of the puzzle is finally in place with the completion of The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure. This is the second half of the Crossbell duology and the last missing piece that had yet to be localized from Falcom's long-running series. This fills in bits of plot and character backstory that was missing from the later Trails of Cold Steel series, but it strikes me that since this is from an earlier era of Falcom development, it still has a lot of the charm that was present in Trails in the Sky that sometimes seems missing from more recent games. I like all of these games, but these earlier entries are just generally tighter and more cohesive. They're from a time before the roster of characters had ballooned to an unbelievable size and as a result, it's a bit easier to relate to the individual characters. On the other hand, this duology did introduce Shirley, whose favorite pastime is sexually assaulting other women, so that's not...great.

Completed on July 28 on PC.
I don't have a ton to say about Halls of Torment beyond the fact that it's another one of those Vampire Survivors-likes that have really cropped up all over Steam. It's a neat take on the genre in that it employs visuals reminiscent of retro CRPGs, and it also has a bit more going on in terms of creating a build, but at its core, it's a game where you run around and watch as enemies die. I had a good time with it, but in retrospect, I'm pretty fatigued with Vampire Survivors and this genre, so I don't see myself returning to it at this point.

Completed on August 2 on 3DS.

I'm starting to see why I didn't complete quite as many games this year. I tried several different cooperative experiments with a friend of mine, including an entire 100+ hour replay of Elden Ring back in March or so that I haven't even included here! On top of that, we did an entire Soul Link run of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, which I'd already played a few years ago. (No one is reading this, but just in case you are, a Soul Link is a permadeath run of a Pokemon game in which each pokemon you have is linked to an encounter of the other player. You're essentially playing two instances of the same game simultaneously, but what happens is that if one pokemon dies, so does the other one. You have to work together to make decisions to make sure you minimize casualties and succeed!) Anyway, we also repeated the same idea with Pokemon Ultra Sun, which I had not played before. It also turned out to be considerably harder, which led to us making some rule concessions so we could actually complete the game. We really got into the weeds on this one. We made spreadsheets not only for our encounters but for our pokemon naming system as well. As you might imagine, this took some time. The Alpha Sapphire took some 119 hours, whereas the Ultra Sun run took about 79, but that was only the successful run. The play time for the unsuccessful one is lost to time, but I'm sure it was quite a few hours as well.

Completed on September 9 on PC.

I had built up quite some anticipation for Baldur's Gate 3, not only because Larian had built an impressive pedigree for themselves with the two Divinity: Original Sin games, but because the original Baldur's Gate games are some of my favorite games of all time. Despite having spent a ludicrous number of hours on our other co-op projects, my usual co-op partner hopped into this one with me as well, and we found ourselves running through the majority of the game with our two characters plus Shadowheart and Karlach, with brief stints of other characters just to try them out. The combat system felt fairly familiar thanks to Original Sin, despite now running entirely on D&D 5th Edition. What's really gotten a dramatic upgrade from the Original Sin games (and especially from DOS1) is the storytelling and characterization. DOS2 had already made great leaps in that area, but BG3 really knocks it out of the park as far as having believable and interesting characters. It's also really lovely to return to a setting that I've cherished since I was a child and I expect I'll definitely be playing this again in the future either after some DLC has been released or just because it sounds like fun!

Completed on September 11 on PC.

Playing Trails to Azure right before Trails into Reverie gave me a good opportunity to compare and contrast Falcom's approach across the present day and their output back in the 2010s. It's difficult for me not to note just how much more sexualized female character designs have become over time, especially when it comes to characters like Rixia and Elie. It's not just about the designs either, because this stuff definitely comes up in dialogue. I'm no prude, but man, it just comes across as lowest common denominator kind of stuff and it's kind of a bummer. On top of that, the overall plot is just not as interesting as it once was, even though I still like a lot of these characters. Two things keep me playing despite all these factors. One is just a sunk cost fallacy because I've poured hundreds of hours into this franchise and I'm still invested in where it goes from here. The other factor is that I genuinely like the combat system—and in fact, that's one area where this era of games has done nothing but improve. With such a huge roster of characters cobbled together from years of Trails games, it's staggering how many options you have to put together party compositions. I find that aspect of the game extremely engaging and almost worth playing the game for by itself. It's why I plan to keep playing games in this series even as characters become increasingly flanderized and fanservice moments outnumber real plot moments. I might be a little too critical of this game because there are interesting plot moments here and there, but it's really just spread too thin. Of course, this game's pretty massive as well—big enough that I spent 122 hours completing it.

Completed on September 23 on PC.

Chained Echoes is really just an exceptional little retro RPG that I found I enjoyed despite one pretty notable flaw. One interesting thing about Chained Echoes is that although it pretty clearly hearkens back to an era of 16-bit RPGs, it doesn't wear the influence of a single game heavily on its sleeve. So many games are very clearly inspired by Earthbound or Chrono Trigger to the point that they use that as a template for what their game is going to be. The influences here are more diffuse and the game is better for it. It also features a really huge roster of playable characters, all of which have distinct playstyles and bring different skill sets to the table. I love that you can essentially field a party of eight when you factor in the ability to swap inactive members into the active lineup at will. It's a very pretty game too, using its simple art style to great effect. On top of all that, it has a really wonderful soundtrack. I can't say enough good about it, but I did mention one notable flaw above. That flaw is in the writing—and I don't mean that the plot is poorly written, either. The plot is actually pretty interesting, but the problem is that the game's creator is very clearly not a native English speaker, and it shows in the writing. It's often very stilted and unnatural sounding, which is a real shame since the game is really exceptional in almost every way. With an editor's assistance, this game could really become close to perfect for what it's trying to accomplish.

Completed on September 23 on PC.

I'm a huge Mega Man fan, which means I haven't necessarily been eating great in recent years. I'd had my eye on 20XX for a long time so I finally pulled the trigger in a sale and had a great time playing through it. This game is a little older now, to the point that all of the comparisons I want to make are of games newer than this title. In short, though, it's a roguelite with all the randomized powerups and persistent upgrades you would expect, but with a Mega Man spin. They managed to get the feel of something on the borderline between Mega Man and Mega Man X that feels quite good. The jumping and dashing feel great. I could definitely see it wearing thin over many, many, runs, but I certainly enjoyed my time with it.

Completed on September 29 on Switch.
Remember when I said I wasn't done with mech-related games? Well, how about Front Mission 1st: Remake? This is literally the third version of this game that I've now played, after having played a fan translation of the SNES version and the DS remake from some years ago. I hear this remake didn't get a great critical reception, but I'm not sure that has much to do with the remake itself, since the gameplay is largely unchanged. To be fair, this series really hit its stride a little later on, particularly with Front Mission 3, but I still find a lot to enjoy about this first entry, even if the combat is remarkably RNG-heavy. Customizing my lineup of wanzers (short for "wanderung panzer," German for "walking tank") is consistently fun. Each of the many pilots in the game have their own aptitudes and what they're good at training in, but it's totally your choice what you ultimately do with them. It's also not an especially long game, so it's a fairly brisk play, unlike most of the other games I played this year.

Completed on September 29 on Switch.
I remember doing a Kirby marathon quite a few years ago and I think my original intention was to do another one this year to catch up on all the games I've missed. I... didn't quite manage that, but at least I finished two of them! I've heard that Kirby Star Allies didn't receive a great critical reception, but I find I enjoyed it just fine. The main gimmick of this particular entry, as one might guess, is to bring along your allies, who are made up of a stable of classic Kirby compatriots (and villains!). You'll use your allies to solve a few simple puzzles, but more importantly, you can combine abilities with them to create several unique effects. It might be as simple as setting your hammer on fire, but you can also do things like flinging your allies around the entire screen. The soundtrack is fantastic as usual and the final encounter is a big spectacle. This was another brisk playthrough but Kirby games always leave me with a smile on my face.

Completed on October 7 on PS5.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty had been sitting on my shelf for quite some time before I finally launched into it in earnest. My initial impression was that it didn't feel quite as satisfying as Nioh 2, but my feelings evolved over time. Despite being broadly similar to their previous games, Wo Long is very different in a lot of key ways. It's actually a bit more simple, despite being built around the core mechanic of parrying. It's essentially about a rhythm of building up a meter by repeatedly parrying enemy attacks and then using that resource to launch attacks of your own that will then put them into a vulnerable state you can capitalize on. I ended up really enjoying the combat, but the story did absolutely nothing for me. It oscillates between dry and serious historical fiction in the vein of Romance of the Three Kingdoms and totally off-the-wall mythological fantasy with really broad and goofy characters. None of it ever really landed for me, but that's definitely not what I was playing it for in the first place.

Completed on October 7 on PC.
When discussing Chained Echoes earlier, I alluded to games that wear a primary influence on their sleeve. Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights is one such example. In this case, that influence is Hollow Knight, for which the influence is painfully clear. I've gotta say, though, there are absolutely worse influences you could choose, and Ender Lilies pulls it off really well while adding a very gothic influence to the mix. Combat is also a bit different, in that all of your attacks are granted by spirits summoned by the titular Lily herself. You'll unlock more of these spirits by defeating bosses and by hunting them down in the various reaches of the massive Metroidvanian labyrinth you find yourself in. The combat feels good, the exploration feels good, the game is lovely to look at, and the music is chilling and beautiful. There's really not much to dislike here, even if it's not the most original game in the world.

Completed on October 13 on PC.
Eight or so years after 20XX was released comes 30XX, a sequel that even more closely resembles Mega Man X and features a more period-appropriate pixelated art style. With the sequel comes more build variety and options for your runs, even as I found that runs that hit the endgame had just about every possible upgrade anyway. I don't have a whole lot more to say here than what I said about 20XX, but I'm glad that there are games out there that still feel a lot like these classics. I know there are some other games with heavy Mega Man influences that I haven't yet played, so maybe I should give those a shot too!

Completed on October 16 on PC.
Although I didn't spend 100 hours on this game like I did with many others this year, Eastward still stands out as one of my absolute favorite games I played. On the surface, it's not necessarily I game I would typically find broadly appealing. The primary gameplay is very similar to something like Link to the Past, except our protagonist, John, is bonking people with a shovel instead. The bombs are still there, though! The gameplay is secondary to the story, though, which I found extremely interesting and evocative. The general conceit is that John is a miner who finds a mysterious girl underground in some sort of cocoon/pod situation and elects to raise her as his own. He calls her Sam. John's a silent protagonist, so Sam does the bulk of the storytelling. It's never clear to me if John is meant as a cipher for the player or if the devs just wanted to give Sam more agency in the story. Either way, it works for me. Like Chained Echoes, I fell in love with the visual style and soundtrack as well, which goes a long way in helping me like a game.


Weirdly enough, though, part of what really solidified my opinion of the game is an optional minigame called Earth Born. Earth Born is basically a sendup of Dragon Quest that serves to add backstory to the game's world, but what's especially fun about it is that you're essentially assuming the role of John and Sam playing the game at little arcade machines scattered around Eastward's various towns. You could technically complete Earth Born at any time, but the task becomes considerably more doable based on the items you've collected, so your progress is soft-capped based on how far into the main story you've reached. The way it works is that you can find these little tokens in treasure chests, from enemies, and just generally strewn about that you can use in a little capsule machine that provides you with Pixballs. Each of these Pixballs is a representation of a monster in the world of Earth Born and adds another item to your roster. They're consumable, but only in the context of a single run. What this means is that if you have three potions, you can use three potions per run, but if you fail, you'll have those three potions again in the next run. I would actually love to play a full-game version of Earth Born because I adore the idea of "roguelite Dragon Quest."

Completed on October 20 on Switch.

It felt pretty awkward going back to Bayonetta 3 after so many years have passed since the second game. The controls felt a bit sluggish and unusual to me after having spent so much time playing nothing but Soulslike action games instead of the more traditional hack-and-slash Devil May Cry approach. I did eventually get the hang of it, but I never felt like I had total mastery of the system, which is not necessarily surprising since the game throws so many different weapons at you, all of which have dozens of combos to memorize. I tried not to resort to button-mashing too much, but given the arsenal at my disposal, I'm sure it happened more often than not. Despite everything, I enjoyed the spectacle of Bayonetta 3 even if the story didn't do a lot for me. I also found the Jeanne missions pretty tedious and never quite got the hang of Viola either. With Hideki Kamiya leaving Platinum, I have to wonder what Bayonetta looks like from here.

Completed on October 27 on PS5.
Judging by The Game Awards and general reception online, Spider-Man 2 didn't make as big of an impact as Insomniac were probably hoping. I'm sure that has much more to do with the slate of other games released this year than the actual quality of this game because it's really a step up from the first title in every way I can think of. Traversal feels better than before and you have more options, combat is more varied, there's less busy work in the various districts, and you get to control two protagonists instead of just one. It's very much a Triple-A-ass video game, but I don't mean that derogatorily in this case. Watching the cutscenes is like watching little mini-movies, but the game in general was never not entertaining. This isn't the kind of game that I lose my life to, but it's a really pleasant time from beginning to end. This is the perfect kind of game to break up a string of epic-length RPGs. Here's hoping that Wolverine game turns out as good!

Completed on October 28 on PC.

I cleared out one more visual novel from my backlog for the year with Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo. This game left an extremely good first impression. I was grinning from the first scene as the game's narrator set up his expectations for me. Essentially, this story follows a group of folks in 1980s Tokyo who find themselves mixed up in the Rite of Resurrection, an ancient tale tied into the titular seven mysteries (of which there are more than seven, ironically). Each of the game's characters has their own potential motivations for why they might want to resurrect a loved one, but it turns out they'll need to make use of curse stones associated with the seven mysteries to collect the necessary resources to use the Rite. This, of course, involves murder. It's a really fun setup for the story and I had a lot of fun reading it. I do think the plot becomes a bit convoluted by the end, but I still walked away with a positive impression.

Completed on November 17 on PS5.
Tales of Arise had been a bugbear in my backlog for quite some time, so as my unfinished games started to dwindle and I completed a couple of other games on PS5, I decided it was finally time to tackle it for real. I've gotta be real about this one—I really just don't like this game very much. Every enemy is a huge damage sponge and very rarely staggers, encounters are everywhere, money is hard to come by in the early- to mid-game, and maybe a lot of this would be fine if the plot and characters were really engaging. Honestly, I think the characters are fine, but fine isn't really enough to buoy up the game for me. Tales characters are generally anywhere from fine to insufferable, and maybe these are closer to fine than usual, but it's just really not enough to get me to a point where I enjoy the game. I keep saying every Tales game is going to be my last, but this one got some good buzz and I kind of fell for it.

Completed on December 1 on PC.
As of this writing, Monster Train is my favorite roguelike deckbuilder, which is why I grinded all the way up to Covenant 25 on Xbox Gamepass some years ago and why I've also done the same thing (and completed runs with every clan combo while I'm at it) on the Steam version. With 190 hours under my belt, I could definitely put this one in the rabbit hole category. There's always a new strategy to experiment with, endless variety, and hey, a fantastic soundtrack too.

Completed on December 3 on Switch.
It's so lovely to see a graphically overhauled but faithful remake of Super Mario RPG, a cherished childhood favorite that I'd say holds up just fine. The newly arranged soundtrack (done by original composer Yoko Shimomura herself!) is fantastic, and the minor tweaks to the gameplay go a long way toward improving the experience. Just the simple addition of being able to switch in party members at will is a huge boon, but the special combo attacks help a lot too. In my eyes, this is the new definitive version of the game.

Completed on December 5 on PC.
I have repeatedly remarked to myself that I have not played a roguelite deckbuilder (of which there are many) that I have not enjoyed. This remains true in the case of Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles. In fact, I think it's fantastic and one of the most clever games I've played in a long time. Although its Slay the Spire influence is clear, it's extremely unique in the sense that it doesn't use cards at all, but rather dice. Every die has six possible outcomes for what it could be, so rerolling your die through various in-game mechanics is important, especially since your dice can have adverse effects as well. A big part of the strategy in the game is balancing your deck's safe, balanced, and risky dice. Risky dice have more powerful effects but more chances to cause adverse effects as well. What makes the game really start to sing, though, is when you start to unlock build options that can help you manipulate some of those adverse effects to your benefit. I could devote a thousand paragraphs just to the mechanics of this game, but suffice it to say, it's a wonderful game once you can wrap your brain around the mechanics, and just writing about it makes me want to go play it some more.

Completed on December 12 on SNES.

Occasionally, I'll decide I just want to play through and finish a game out of sheer stubbornness. Ys V: Lost Kefin, City of Sand is one such game. I've been meaning to play it for years, ever since I finished Ys: Memories of Celceta. That game is a remake of Ys IV. No such remake exists for Ys V, but I still wanted to be able to say that I'd completed a version of it. I'm reminded of several years ago when I played Ys III: Wanderers from Ys in an effort to compare it to Ys: Oath in Felghana, the remake. I actually do think Ys V is probably better than Wanderers, which I actually found pretty dire, but I still didn't enjoy it much. The magic system is slow and tedious and doesn't work against bosses for stupid lore reasons. Hit detection is almost as bad as Ys III, and I didn't find the music as memorable as usual. I also spent a ton of time lost in the city of Kefin itself, so that was a bit annoying. But at least now I'll feel like I'm allowed to play Ys VI someday.

Completed on December 30 on PC.
Last but not least is Crystal Project, yet another retro RPG that wears its primary influence on its sleeve. In its case, that influence would be Final Fantasy V, which is just fine with me since that game rules. Unlike many of the other retro-inspired games I've discussed from this year, I don't particularly care for the art style of this one, at least not for the environments. This is one of the few games I've played that uses a voxel art style, and I just am not the biggest fan. The character sprites all look fine, but the rest is not to my taste. On the other hand, the gameplay is really enjoyable, and as should be expected of a game like this with a robust job system, putting together the perfect party composition is a lot of fun. The theorycrafting is half the enjoyment in a game like this, but Crystal Project sets itself apart by heavily emphasizing platforming and exploration. This is a weird path for a game like this to take, but I can't say I hate it, even though it is frustrating to fall off a pillar for the 90th time because you didn't make a pixel-perfect jump. It also makes the unusual choice to not display a mini-map until you've discovered a physical map item, either by purchasing it or by hunting it down. This is a neat idea, but frequently kind of annoying. Overall, I really enjoyed the game despite some gripes, but I maybe would have preferred not to spend 91 hours on it.


Well, there we go. I completed almost 20 fewer games than last year, but I absolutely spent just as much time playing games, if not even more. I don't care too much about the number at this point, but I'm glad I was able to experience a lot of rad games. In the new year, I'd love if I could continue Yakuza, maybe play some more Ys games, and possibly another Super Robot Wars or two? We'll see! Maybe I'll be smart and actually write little blurbs as I go next time. I say I'm going to do that every year and inevitably don't.

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