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Well it happened, we had a year in games just as good as 2017, if not better! So many games came out this year that were of an extremely high quality, it would be impossible for me to get to them all within the 12 months. I almost wish this year was a little less stacked so I had more time for the smaller games. But let’s not dwell on what I missed and praise what I didn’t. Spoilers throughout!
So here they are, the class of 2023!
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The Awards
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Best Downloadable Content
3 – God of War Ragnarok: Valhalla
2 – Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
1 – Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed
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Best Narratives
3 – Baldur’s Gate III
2 – Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed
1 – Alan Wake II
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Best New Characters
3 – Marisa (Street Fighter VI)
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2 – Astarion (Baldur’s Gate III)
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1 – Clive Rosfield (Final Fantasy XVI)
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Best Story Moments
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Best Gameplay Sequences
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Best Original Soundtracks
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Standout Single Songs
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Best looking Game (Technical)
3 – Resident Evil 4
2 – Final Fantasy XVI
1 – Alan Wake II
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Best looking Game (Styyyyle)
3 – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
2 – Alan Wake II
1 – Super Mario Bros. Wonder
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Game of the Yesteryear
This year was so stacked that I didn’t get time to play many older games, the releases this year came thick and fast, I barely managed to keep up as is. I did make some time for one game though, one with a nice big expansion release that is.
Cyberpunk 2077
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Musical Highlight – Phantom Liberty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u15tEo0wsQI
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The Honoraries
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Did Not Finish
Advance Wars 1+2 Re-boot Camp
Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
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Pile’O Shame
Cassette Beasts
Lies of P
Persona 5 Tactica
Star Ocean – The Second Story R
Metroid Prime Remastered
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Humanity
WarioWare: Move It!
Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
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Didn’t Make it (but wanted to shout out)
Super Mario Bros. Wonder
Fire Emblem Engage
Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line
Armoured Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
We love Katamari
Oxenfree II
F-Zero 99
Spider-Man 2
Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo
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The Top Ten
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10 – Hi-Fi Rush
What an nice early year suprise, mixing a Character Action game and a Rhythm game into a shockingly well put together package. There is a pretty good list of licenced musical tracks in here, but the game also has a stellar original soundtrack made for streaming mode, if you play this game I highly suggest playing in this mode. Combat to the rhythm feels great.
Musical Highlight – Too Big to Fail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vabOAZR-4E0
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9 – Super Mario RPG
A perfect remake, completely faithful to the orginal in every way. I had the same feeling playing this I did Final Fantasy VII Remake for the first time, “a love letter.” Big fan of the Mario RPG’s, they are so comfortable, and a big part of why I love RPG’s as a genre, but more on that when the Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door remake makes it to next years top ten. Big props to the music for this one, like I said ealier I had the same feeling as playing FF7R, the music was such an improvement I didn’t think it possible. Yoko Shimomura has really improved over the last 27 years, I mean she was great before, but wow!
Musical Highlight – Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAuLNoR1xNU
Culex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ng4AGwSGjU
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8 – Street Fighter VI
SF6 has the best use of non traditional fighting game controls in a fighting game, to the point that I think I might prefer them over the classic controls. I like 99% of the new characters added here (I find Lily a little boring), standout being Marisa being a super well executed muscle lady type. The online is fun and plays really well, the lobby system is one of the better implemented ones I have seen. Having a custom character with mix of moves from the main fighters is a genius idea, sadly the story mode they are involved in feels a little undercooked. Same with the music, there are a few great tracks such as the one highlighted below, but I struggle to remember some of the character themes.
Musical Highlight – All Over The World : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1h2suBzzXgg
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7 – Pikmin 4
Plant based real time strategy 4. feat Dogs
Jokes aside, this is a great time and the added dogs make for great gameplay mechanics. Everything from Pikmin’s past is here (par the cast of 3 for some reason), making it a rich deep game when it comes to the types of situations you can get it with all 9 types of Pikmin. The new nighttime tower defence missions are a perfect fit and I’m surprised it took this long for them to get implemented.
Musical Highlight – Groovy Long Legs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nu8S0ufZgf8
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6 – Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
A charming smaller venture into the world of LAD, nice setup for the next big RPG outing ealy next year. This is a much better “sendoff” for Kiryu than Yakuza 6 was, it fixes some of the mistakes that game made. A smaller bite size game fits this series well, sometimes these games can overstay and become a bit of a slog in the back half. Not this one though, in fact it has the best ending of the series, just look at its spot in my “best story moment” award for proof of that. Combat is solid like most action based RGG Studio games, music is a bop and its the best looking of these games. Looking forward to its big boy follow-up Infinite wealth, in January.
Musical Highlight – Psycho’s Anthem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vek6jfKslNM
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5 – Final Fantasy XVI
The numbered Final Fantasy games don’t come around to often, I doubt we will see the next one until 2030 at a guess (I would love to be wrong though). So I savoured every morsel of this, from the gameplay to the Characters to the story until I was 100% done, nothing left on the bone. I echo the sentiment that this has the best performances in an FF game, so shout out to notorious FF8 Fan and Meme man Ben Starr for his amazing performance as Clive.
If I had a complaint its far too easy, I beat the games hard mode with little to no effort, compared to the FF7 Remake hard mode which walled me in a few spots. 16’s first DLC came out while writing this and the Boss at the end of it was a noticeable improvement in difficulty, but still not a wall like Remake’s Hell House was.
Of course this is the best soundtrack of the year, Masayoshi Soken does not miss! I can’t wait to hear more Soken bangers in FFXIV’s Dawntrail expansion next year!
I think the best soundtrack is deserving of two entries on the music highlights section.
Musical Highlight – Away: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUk9ZIV9BNs
Musical Highlight – Ascension: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdDc8z7WkoA
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4 – Resident Evil 4
A phenomenal remake, elevating the original by adding new interesting elements, moving things around when needed for pacing or just straight up more sensible placements. I didn’t think RE4 needed a remake, but after playing the Original again shortly before this came out, I’m very glad it got one. The Separate ways DLC makes the game an even more full package, bringing back the classic Mercenaries mode was a nice bonus too. Just a good time from start to finish and this game makes me hopeful for the inevitable Resident Evil 5 Remake.
Musical Highlight – The Blade/The Bullet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJH-fh07EQw
Bonus – The Drive Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVqlt1DSpN0
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3 – The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Breath of the Wild is the best open world game ever made, it’s a perfect use of a sandbox that isn’t littered with quest objectives, side quests, collectables etc.
Now along comes Tears and takes that perfect open world base and builds on it, I mean quite literally builds on it, doubling the map size in a way that isn’t completely overwhelming. Then you have the big new toy they put in the box, vehicle building. BOTW had players break the game with the tools given to them, so Nintendo took a look at them and said here are some better gamebreaking tools. It feels like magic that all these physics objects work sometimes.
The game has the same downfall as the first, its story. While better overall, it’s too disjointed and takes the wind out of the sails when you get the cutscenes out of order. The games main dungeons are mostly a miss too being really simple and a bit boring compared to the rest of the game. The Boss fights are a big improvment in contrast, with a lot more interesting set piece fights and phenomenal music for some of them.
Musical Highlight – Colgera Battle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFB8UOt01Io
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2 – Alan Wake II
Years later sequels are rarely worth the wait, but in AW2’s case it was worth it. Great writing and direction elevate a really good horror game to one of the all time classics. Meshing many types of horror together should be a mess, but going from “The Woods filled jump scares” to “Silent Hill atmospheric” styles of horror just works somehow.
Great acting in this one too, everyone puts on a great performance. Speaking of performance, the game has the best use of musical talent in a game, and I’m not talking about the actual bloody musical they put in here. The use of music artists to make songs for the game about the story in many different genres is not something I have seen before, maybe there is another game out there that does this, but this is a first for me and I loved it.
Musical Highlight – Wide Awake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLZ7peL-j_U
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1 – Baldur’s Gate III
“Not really my type of game” I said, before I saw the trailer announcing J.K Simmons as one of the main antagonists, once I saw it though it peaked a little bit of interest, I looked into one of this studio’s older titles Divinity Original Sin II, played it for a bit and thought that I might like BG3 with it’s more cinematic presentation, and well… here we are.
Before 2023 I had no contact with D&D at all, but now I have payed a few games, watched the movie and now played the video game representation, and I have to say this is a pretty cool fantasy world, I now see why so many people like it. If I was unaware of this being D&D I would say this is one for the most in depth and well realised fantasy worlds ever created, I mean it still is, but I understand there is a huge history at least.
It’s wild that this game has system upon system that work so well together, the breadth of reactions to anything the player does is almost unfathomable, I was extremely immersed almost entire time playing. There were a few bugs that popped up but luckily nothing too game breaking for me.
Other than the systems, the characters and world were extremely fleshed out. I think some of them were better written and had more complete stories than others at launch but things were added over time, the big “Patch 5” came out while writing this, it was so nice to come back to my save and have a big post game party with the gang.
The multiplayer here is great fun, while I didn’t have time to commit to a full second playthrough after our first second playthrough attempt was abandoned, the stuff we did do up until Act 3 really drove home how much permutation there is.
What a truly magical experience this was, I feel like I’m able to say that about a lot game games these past few years, like we are in a golden age of videogames, I hope it keeps up.
Musical Highlight – Down By The River: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSVRtM1x9wQ
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Wrapping Up
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Last year I ended with a joke that I was going to relax at the start of this year, but the release schedule had other plans with five releases and major FFXIV patch releases in January.
2024 seems to be keeping pace with this as there are three big games in the span of two weeks, of which two are big RPG’s, then there is another big RPG at the end of the February.
There is also going to be another major FFXIV patch mid January, it’s a lot to do in a short span of time. I do hope 2024 slows down with releases a bit, as of right now next year has up until the end of March stacked with releases. There is going to be a FFXIV Expansion in the summer too!
I would love for things to slow down a bit so I have a little more time to play some of my backlog.
So with that said, until next time…
Ryan's Collection of Thoughts! 
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