My Favourite Games of 2023!
Rhianne Ward
Okay, so for reference, my 2021 list contained 7 games I liked enough to talk about in that post. It might not seem like much, but I should stress that those were the games I loved from that year, and there were more which I liked but didn’t make the cut. That number has likely since increased – I would probably add Adios and the Outer Wilds expansion to the roster had I played them at the time – but I did my best to be picky so that I didn’t have too much of a writing workload. This year’s count is higher for what I hope is self-evidently good reason:
And that’s just the games I played! I’m gonna list some of the ones I didn’t get around to this year despite really wanting to, for a variety of reasons. I’m hoping I’ll get to them later and who knows, maybe they’ll get a mention in my non-2024 games list next year! For now, these sexy lil freaks will NOT be on the list because I haven’t played them yet, but I’ll get to I swear:
- Pikmin 4
- Dave the Diver
- Octopath Traveler 2
- Viewfinder
- Amnesia: The Bunker
- Pizza Tower
- Blasphemous 2
- Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical
- El Paso, Elsewhere
- Season: a letter to the future
- Super Mario RPG
Okay, so if you were expecting any of those, that’s why they’re not there. And any that didn’t make either list? Maybe they’re just bad ¯\(ツ)/¯
(just kidding, I probably liked them. I may even do a wee extension post highlighting the games I still liked but didn’t make this particular cut. Stay tuned 😉)
Anyway, to the big one! Here’s the best of 2023, according to my own very subjective and deeply fallible brain!
10. Homebody
Game Grumps /// PS5/4; XBOX Series X/S/One; Nintendo Switch; PC
If you told me one of my favourite games of 2023 would be a survival horror time-loop title from a development team opened in association with a famous let’s play YouTube channel whose only other prior work is a dilf dating simulator, I’d probably believe you because the world is a funny little place like that.
Homebody embodies (hehe) the best that this type of game has to offer for me. That is to say, I’m usually not fond of run-and-hide type horror games. I find them really stressful in a really unfun way, and the inability to fight back makes them quite frustrating too. I understand that to a different person, those are exactly the reason why they like that type of game so much and I guess that’s on me for that type of game simply not vibing with me personally. This makes Homebody sort of an anomaly, because it doesn’t do anything especially different than, say, an Outlast or an Amnesia. What makes the difference is one important factor: context.
In Outlast, the punishment for death is simply reviving at the nearest checkpoint to do it all again. In Homebody, death is a necessary part of the process. As your character is trapped in a time loop, you aren’t expecting to survive the night. Dying, while frustrating in its own way, doesn’t feel like a story-halting impediment, because you’ll just restart at the beginning of the loop, so it wasn’t something I ever particularly dreaded in the same way. In a way, dying almost feels like progress, since the game’s forward momentum isn’t halted at all.
Every loop becomes an exercise in learning as much as possible, memorising what events happen at specific times, and getting a little bit smarter each time. In a way, playing a game like Homebody has made me feel a bit differently about death in games overall, seeing it less as a block and more so a teaching moment. I know a lot of people felt this with stuff like Dark Souls where dying comes as a necessary part of learning how to play the game, but I find in games where accumulation of knowledge is the way to get stronger rather than simple twitch reflexes and pattern recognition, it’s a lot more of a satisfying cycle.
It also helps that every time you die, Homebody often gifts you a snippet of backstory or surreal moments that reveal character details, which makes dying almost an exciting affair. Hades had a similar effect on me, where every death in that game has you return to the House of Hades to continue conversations with NPCs and invest your resources into improving your chances in each run. It’s a really smart method of never letting death become a moment of detachment, and it’s probably the reason why I felt compelled to finish Homebody.
It also helps that the story being told in these in-betweens is legitimately intriguing. The core mystery of what is happening in this house and why you cannot escape it is the focus, but it’s the moments in between contextualising everything that provides the narrative with its flavour. It all ends up tying together in a very satisfying and compelling way, but the journey getting there never feels boring. It’s a relief too that the game comes in at a cool 6-ish hours, never overstaying its welcome.
Homebody rocks. It’s smart, beautifully designed, regularly surprising, and most important of all, actually scary. If you like horror games that don’t treat you like an idiot, this one is time well spent.
9. Alan Wake II
Remedy Entertainment /// PS5; XBOX Series X/S; PC (EGS)
You don’t get a lot of games like Alan Wake 2, for many reasons. The easy explanation is that big budget games necessarily are afraid to take risks, for perhaps understandable reasons given that, in this current game industry landscape, one bad (or simply okay bordering on good) release can result in thousands of layoffs and sometimes even the closure of the company. However, beyond that, Alan Wake 2’s most integral feature – one which many big budget titles often lack – is confidence. Put simply, Remedy doesn’t seem interested in placating its audience. They make the games they want to make, no matter how bizarre and oftentimes messy it gets, and it is all the better for it.
Alan Wake 2 exudes this same boundless creative energy and enthusiasm. To a passing observer, the game is all over the place; survival horror one minute, psychological horror the next, and all of a sudden you’re blowing up baddies with a grenade launcher adjacent flare gun while an honest to God musical number is being blasted on screens all around the player character. It’s chaos, seemingly uncontrolled for much of the runtime, and yet Alan Wake 2 is undoubtedly at its best when you allow yourself to sink into its abyss.
As far as actually playing in that abyss goes, I can take or leave it. Alan Wake 2’s over-the-shoulder combat, while made somewhat unique with its flashlight mechanic which allows you to weaken or stagger enemies with a limited resource, is pretty derivative of its survival horror contemporaries. If you’ve played a Resident Evil remake recently or The Last Of Us, the play experience here will be a familiar one, albeit a bit clumsier in its execution. It is very easy to find yourself outnumbered and trapped in an endless loop of grapples and staggers as your character fumbles around with their gear, until you’re killed while barely knowing what happened. While the game allows for the option of avoiding combat through careful sneaking and selective usage of your light sources, it has a nasty habit of throwing you in a room full of enemies and stunlocking you to death before you even think to escape the situation.
It’s possible that I’m just bad at the game, but in my defense, combat is clearly not among the game’s main priorities. Its story, and especially the ways in which it is told, are of primary importance, and in this it excels. At the heart of the narrative is a mystery, though it is regularly unclear what mystery you’re even trying to solve, or what pieces you’re missing which would pull the whole case together. This is intentional, for the record, and much of the fun of this game is being lost in its bizarre, possibly evil, sauce.
Alan Wake II is intensely strange, and yet so, so confident in its own strangeness that it is scientifically impossible not to love at least a little bit. It has the soul of a champion, and I will never stop loving it.
8. Hi-Fi Rush
Tango Gameworks /// XBOX Series X/S; PC
In the spirit of game genres I typically avoid, character action games are up there. I always enjoy these kinds of game, like DMC or Bayonetta, but the unfortunate truth is I’m kinda just a bit bad at them. I generally don’t find much enjoyment from perfecting levels and increasing my grade or whatever, so I tend to only really stick around for the story, but oftentimes the story is certainly not the focus of these games, so rarely is there much for me here.
Hi-Fi Rush, in many ways, is a similar setup. It’s a game about beating up baddies and looking cool doing it, with a storyline that semi-flimsily ties the whole thing together. The priority is the combat, which is fine, but ordinarily this is when I would check out. However, fortunately Hi-Fi Rush is a bit more experimental than that, because it’s also a rhythm game.
How that manifests is every button input is expected to be in sync with a beat that plays over the course of the entire level. Fighting to the rhythm of the music is the aim here; land attacks in time with the melody and be rewarded with extra damage dealt, and a shinier grading at the end of it all. Such a simple and almost intuitive concept belies an enormous amount of work that clearly went into making all of this work perfectly, and the end result is one of the most satisfying action games I’ve ever played.
I said intuitive earlier and that’s truly how it feels. In the moment, you kinda can’t believe nobody’s tried this before because the idea fits so well. Perhaps the issue was rather than no-one had the courage to do it. Well, I’m counting everyone lucky that Tango were willing to take that risk, because any game that has me tapping a foot or bobbing my head the entire time I’m playing it has to be a masterpiece at least a little bit.
It helps too, of course, that the cast of characters providing the game’s context are absolutely adorable. Set in the maw of a robotics megacorporation, our protagonists represent the various ways in which workers can be exploited, alienated and left behind by their bosses. Chai is a lovable idiot who just wants a cool robot anime but gets equipped with a magnetic garbage disposal hand that fortunately doubles as a guitar weapon generator for reasons known only to the rock and roll gods. Peppermint has close personal ties to the upper brass and wants nothing more than to see the CEO brought down. Macaron and his robot test dummy buddy join the hero ranks as reliable companions, and someone else helps out too, though I don’t wanna spoil who. Rest assured, they’re very nice.
The whole experience leans heavily into cartoon influences, which I love. It avoids settling in today’s irony-poisoned landscape in favour of a narrative that’s so sincere and blindingly earnest that I can’t help but be smitten for it. My only issue is that I feel like the story fails to end on a terribly interesting note, despite its promising setup. It settles on a saved-the-day conclusion but fails to do anything in the way of critiquing the capitalist forces which cause the core cast so much grief throughout the game. I didn’t get the impression that by the end of the game, things are going to get better for many of the funny little robot friends still slaving away at 8-day work weeks The game clearly doesn’t want you to overthink it, but it still felt a little lazy in the end.
Nevertheless, I still love Hi-Fi Rush a whole awful lot. There’s nothing else quite like it, and I hope Tango get to take another stab at the concept because we need more middle-market experimental games like this to even out the triple-AAA slop buffet.
7. Cocoon
Geometric Interactive /// PS5; XBOX Series X/S; Nintendo Switch; PC
Cocoon owns because of the very straightforward reason that it reminds me of Inside and I love Inside more than any number of hypothetical children I may one day have. The comparison isn’t unfounded; the director of Cocoon is Jeppe Carlsen, who previously did lead design work on Limbo and Inside, so this is very much a game within his particular wheelhouse. He and his team bring an expertise to this kind of exploration-centric vibey game which I love so much. It certainly filled a void this year that Playdead’s next title has left in its continued absence.
Of course, were it simply apeing a formula, it wouldn’t be on this list. What sets Cocoon apart from its contemporaries is its puzzle mechanics, which do the cool thing of starting out deceptively simple and broadening in complexity at such a finely paced rate that by the end of the game you feel like an ascended being bearing witness to the foolish game before you. In this case, it is dimension hopping puzzles, which is hard to explain and much easier to understand if you just play it, so do that! Rest assured, it’s very intuitive and creative, and I found myself oddly attached to the worlds I’d venture between.
Even more so, the spheres I carried around which contained the universes I’d hop around in. These little balls evoked a companion cube type of response in my soul where I became emotionally invested in these inanimate objects, mostly because the game gives you very little to attach yourself to at all. You are seemingly the only living thing in this world, so it’s natural to feel like way. My circular friends would give me abilities to use, and in turn I would escort them to their final destination. It’s an almost symbiotic relationship, which is odd to say about orbs cannot think, but it’s the feeling I got nonetheless.
It’s these kinds of unusual emotions I experienced amidst a narrative I never fully understood that makes Cocoon such a unique and special experience. I love it dearly, and it belongs up there among the indie greats.
6. Oxenfree 2: Lost Signals
Night School Studio /// PS5/4; Nintendo Switch; PC; Mobile (Netflix)
Oxenfree is comfortably one of my favourite stories in any game ever. It spins a haunting tale of teenagers stuck on a cursed island, navigating their situation whilst unpacking a variety of teenage relationship drama and the scariness of their lives changing as they exist high school and venture off into the real world. It boasts a small but memorable cast of characters, all performed beautifully by their actors, delivering their many thoughts and feelings to the tune of an absolute all-timer synth soundtrack by musician scntfc. It is a wonderful little game, and one I go back to quite often – maybe once a year. It’s one of those branching-paths storylines that alters depending on your choices, yet I always find myself choosing the same way every time. I can’t help myself; I want my nice friends to get a happy ending.
However, that game happened to end on an ambiguous note, opening the way for a potential sequel, which has now arrived. I wasn’t sure how this team was planning on following up on what I considered a pretty perfect conclusion to their previous title, but I was still very curious what they would cook up given the chance.
They did not disappoint. Oxenfree 2 works extremely well as a sequel and as its own unique story. Rather than acting as a straightforward follow-up with the same cast and circumstances, you play as an all-new protagonist, Riley, as she starts her new job on the island that caused Alex and the gang so much grief all those years ago. The vibe is a little different this time around, playing as someone closer to middle-aged with older person problems. It feels eerily as though the game has aged with me, as I now see more of myself in this new character than I once did with the prior.
I enjoy that this sequel acts as a compelling expansion on the themes and ideas set up in its predecessor. It feels like a story that has, like me, meditating for years on what Oxenfree ultimately meant, and why I felt so affected by it. In doing so, it somehow doesn’t lose its original magic. Oxenfree 2 feels less like it seeks to explain further the events of its prior entry, and rather uses it as a framework to tell its own clever little sci-fi tale.
I realise I’m speaking in very broad strokes, and that’s because these games are best experienced as blind as possible. And please do experience them, because we desperately more voices like Night School Studio in the industry, especially as the mainstream space becomes increasingly homogenised (Alan Wake II notwithstanding). Go get spooked!
5. Street Fighter 6
Capcom /// PS5/4; XBOX Series X/S; PC
I’ve never been much of a fighting games fan but my fascination with the genre definitely started at the end of last year. It began with Persona 4 Arena Ultimax on the Switch, which preyed upon my weakness for any and all Persona media and combined it with a type of game I’d typically avoid. I figured hey, if nothing else, I get to enjoy the pretty pixel art and my Inaba besties in action again. Lucky for me, I loved the game a lot, and found myself becoming a little obsessive about specifically the multiplayer function, something I never do. An issue I encountered was that the only people still playing P4A online by this point were veterans of the game, so I was a fresh faced newbie up against what were basically professional players. Naturally, I got my ass beat over and over again, but every so often, I’d sneak in a win, and that was the drug I got hooked on for some time.
That being said, however, the lack of players online meant I was often up against the same few people time and again, so I wanted to find a game that would scratch that same itch with less waiting in a lobby. I played Guilty Gear Strive for a bit earlier this year after Bridget got put into the roster (what can I say, I am a transgender woman) but I encountered a similar issue. I was having a lot of fun, but the point of entry wasn’t great for someone like me when the continuing player base had mostly been there since day one. It was at that point when I became very excited for the next big thing in the fighting game scene: Street Fighter 6.
What was once a distant thought – anticipating a fighting game release – had pushed its way to the forefront of my brain. I became a little obsessive, watching the reveal trailer many times, lapping up new character info like a wine connoisseur… it got a little weird, to be honest. I was – and still am – in love with the new visual style the series had adopted. It was so colourful, and every impact was met with such a satisfying crunch. It adopted the slow-down effect during tense moments present in Tekken 7, a game I liked a lot but never really got into.
Best of all, Capcom announced that the game was launching with a modern controls mode, which simplified combos for newer players so as not to alienate newcomers. As much as I love GG Strive, the process of learning combos by repeating split-second inputs over and over to the point of aching hands was quite a hurdle to jump. Street Fighter 6 made accessing the game so much more straightforward, and made trying out new characters a much kinder process.
What makes Street Fighter 6 brilliant, and so special to me personally, is the experiences I’ve had in fighting other people. I’m not really one who strives to be the absolute best at any game; I just play games to be engaged and have an interesting experience. I think the thing keeping me away from fighting games was this fear that I didn’t have the competitive edge in me necessary to truly enjoy these titles. This is still true, but Street Fighter 6 taught me that that’s okay too.
The most fun I have with these games is finding someone at a similar skill level to my own and fighting them over and over for sometimes up to an hour. Sometimes I get destroyed, others I destroy them, but that sensation of meeting someone where they’re at and just having a simple fun time learning their ins and outs where they learn mine, and watching as the fights evolve over time, is legitimately a magical experience I can’t honestly compare to anything else I’ve played before. It’s the magic of fighting games and multiplayer games, all wrapped into one beautiful package.
I can see myself coming back to SF6 in the future, and I’m less afraid now to give other fighting games a fighting chance. Also, Lily is my main, and Juri my backup,if you were wondering.
4. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
CD Projekt Red /// PS5; XBOX Series X/S; PC
Confession time: I actually really liked Cyberpunk 2077, even before they did all the updates and re-releases. Despite the more than a dozen crashes, the bare-bones open world, and the plethora of bugs, there was no denying that the game had quite the story to tell. One of mortality; what it means to be human, how we ought to spend our shockingly limited time on this Earth, and the forces which exist to stand between you and living the good life. It’s a tale of people living with their lot in life, coping with their inadequacies wherever they can, and trying to live a life of purpose despite everything. When it wanted to be, Cyberpunk was pretty fucking spectacular.
Unfortunately, it was also plagued by this relentless cynicism about the world and its nature. It didn’t necessarily view people as the problem like some dystopian fiction might; rather, it treated Night City as this unchangeable structure, almost divine in its inflexibility, but in doing so seemed to forget that Night City and its various corporate structures are all manufactured by people, and can just as easily be dismantled by people as well. The game seems content with throwing in the towel at every opportunity for systemic change, throwing in some contrived reason for why Night City will never change and the only way for things to improve is to just escape it. The city as a metaphor for capitalism and the American Dream falls apart when it also wishes to portray its setting as living and breathing and has you interact with hundreds of NPCs, each struggling within its oppressive walls. I never got the sense that most of these people were there to follow a dream of making it big like V. Rather, most of them are born in the city and are trapped there by circumstance. To simply leave them behind in the end felt cruel to me, a person who had single-handed murdered my way through a sizable chunk of the corporate powers that be already.
Phantom Liberty represents Cyberpunk’s writing habits utilised to perfection. Rather than contending with Night City or corporations, you are tasked with either aiding or deceiving the New United States government. In this setting, Cyberpunk’s trademark doomerism works wonders. Where Night City is simply a place where people live, the government is an institution invented for the purpose of justifying a social hierarchy. It is fallible by its very nature, and unlike a city, which is simply a place where people live collectively, an institution is created with a purpose in mind. The expansion’s story interrogates this idea of duty, honour, and to what extent we owe ourselves to something as nebulous as a nation state. The characters you meet and eventually work with exist the show the different levels of commitment to the ideal of patriotism. It depicts the extent to which people will destroy themselves for their country, the ways in which that country fails them, and why they keep coming back regardless.
The expansion demonstrates one of the base game’s greatest talents by delivering one of the most compelling character drama of any other game this year. Everyone has something a little different to say about the situation, and it’s always understandable how they’d get there personally. Also compelling is how their perspectives bounce off one another and cause you to actually interrogate your own beliefs on the matter. It is astonishing how rich the character building is here, which makes the various moral choices you’re forced to choose between even more brutal than they would’ve been anyway.
Phantom Liberty has some of the most gut-wrenching moments in any game this year and it’s all down to the ways in which it humanises everyone you meet just enough to make betraying them sting with grand aplomb. By the end of the story, I was utterly speechless, sat back in my chair, tears in my eyes, a weight on my heart and a pit in my stomach, unsure of what I was feeling in the moment but knowing that the ending I received was the right one. There are scant few true happy endings in Cyberpunk 2077, but there are meaningful ones, and PL’s is likely the most meaningful of all.
3. Starfield
Bethesda Softworks /// XBOX Series X/S; PC
I feel insane for not just liking Starfield but adoring it, primarily because of the backlash it has received online. Once the initial release window honeymoon phase ended, a lot of people turned on the game quite severely, claiming that, among other things, it’s another example of Bethesda treading water rather than truly innovating its formula in ways that count.
To be honest, I don’t think I’m really in a position to disagree, given that I’ve never been much of a Bethesda fan myself. I’ve always liked their work, sometimes a lot! Even this year, I played Skyrim again, this time on Survival Mode, and found myself utterly obsessed for at least a while. Bethesda have this incredible ability to immerse you in their worlds, even when those worlds fall apart a little bit because let’s be honest, Skyrim is a very broken video game. But, as rote as it is to say, it just wouldn’t be a Bethesda game without that all-important jank. It’s basically part of the identity of these games, for better or for worse (though in my opinion, mostly better).
The block I felt with these games often came down to entering them with certain expectations. I didn’t play Skyrim until I’d already ingested everything under the sun about it and heard a million tales of how good it is. Ultimately, when I got to actually play it, it couldn’t help but let me down a little bit. With the benefit of hindsight, I actually appreciate an awful lot about Skyrim, but it can’t help but be soured by that initial experience. Fallout 4 had a different issue where I went into it expecting something closer to New Vegas and got an action game instead. A very cool action game, make no mistake, but not what I was after.
Bethesda games are always plagued by expectation, which isn’t helped by their constant returning to established franchises. Starfield is different because it’s a whole new world – a new universe – to explore. I was excited for it, so much so that I went out and bought an XBOX Series S to play it. Did I get what I anticipated? No. Something better. What I wanted was a galaxy-hopping adventure where I’d visit different planets, meet different people, maybe solve a murder or two, then be comfortably done with it at around the halfway mark. Did it do all that stuff? Yep, but I did stop midway. I finished that bitch, a Bethesda first for me.
What Starfield ended up being was an oddly meditative experience about agency and finding meaning in a meaningless universe. The game is content to slow way down and just let the player soak in the universe it has prepared, and experience it at their own pace. In many ways, Starfield is quite mundane, but there’s a magic to its brand of mundanity. For a lot of people, Starfield commits the worst sin of all: being boring. I can’t say that critique is wrong by any means, but it’s also part of why I love the game.
There’s a point to the game’s empty space. It feels experimental in a lot of ways, pushing its brand of normality to the forefront and letting the conventionally “fun” activities lay by the wayside. It evokes a certain feeling in me I can’t explain. Starfield, more than most of the games on this list, from its jankiness to its beauty, from its successes to its flaws, feels so unbelievably human-made. It has an identity all its own, unhindered by franchise hype or industry trends. It is, despite everything, Starfield. In a game all about discovery, about figuring out the mysteries of the universe, it feels appropriate that sometimes what awaits you on the other side of the curtain is a little disappointing. Life is sometimes a little disappointing. That’s what Starfield is about: life, in all its wonderful mediocrity.
After all, what matters is the journey, not the destination, and my ongoing journey through Starfield means a lot to me in ways I’m still trying to figure out. Maybe I’ll be able to narrow it all down someday, or maybe my feelings will remain unexplainable forever. I’m content with either outcome.
2. Goodbye Volcano High
KO_OP Mode /// PS5/4; PC
There’s not an awful lot I can say about Goodbye Volcano High that I didn’t already say in my review of it. To be honest, it was barely a review and more of an emotional stream of consciousness where I tried to (and I think succeeded in) explaining why it affected me so deeply.
2023 has been a year filled with art exploring the end of the world. Apocalypse stories are nothing new, of course, but this year felt especially interested in the concept of a mundane end of all things. Unlike apocalypse media of the past, where tragedy often strikes without warning, Goodbye Volcano High touches on a situation where the end of the world is coming, it’s inevitable, we all know it’s happening, and we are powerless to stop it. What do we do with the time we have left?
This game means a lot to me for a lot of reasons. My relationship with my mum wasn’t good at the time I played it, because I was trans and she was refusing to accept it. I was feeling such overwhelming hopelessness and guilt about the situation. I felt like I had broken something, and fixing it required asking a lot from the people in my life I love.
The guilt that comes from being trans in a society that often sees our existence as a nuisance isn’t something often talked about in our community, because it’s not particularly glamorous and, to be honest, feels a little pathetic to even bring up. Oh, woe is me, etc etc. It’s a very real feeling though, so when Goodbye Volcano High spends its runtime tackling the subject of parents refusing to accept our non-binary protagonist’s identity, that really stung. It brought in a flood of emotions I wanted to avoid confronting.
The narrative held me in this vice grip where every time characters amended their friendships and stood together, I couldn’t help but think about Fang’s mother. Then, right at the end, of the game and the world, when I was ready to accept this deeply sad reality, it happened. Fang’s mum accepts them, in their totality.
For years, I’ve had this sometimes paralysing fear that something will happen to me or my mum that will leave our relationship eternally unresolved. I can’t even begin to describe how scary that is, to feel like you could have done something, but didn’t. I don’t want my mum to die thinking I hated her, nor do I want her to imagine me feeling that way if she outlives me. To see somebody else, albeit fictional, find peace in that filled me with this overwhelming sense of hope that I can’t even begin to describe.
And then, soon after, my mum got back in contact and we figured it out. I got to spend time with her this Christmas and she’s calling me by my name and making a real, sincere effort. She doesn’t understand it, but she does love me, and I love her, and in the end that’s all we’ve got on this tiny little rock in space.
This one’s for you, Mum. Rwy’n dy garu di ❤
1. BALDUR’S GATE 3
Larian Studios /// PS5; XBOX Series X/S; PC
I mean, what the fuck do I even say? Of course Baldur’s Gate 3 is the game of the year. No shit. Just look at it! If nothing brings you hope anymore, then at least find solace in the fact that human beings are somehow capable of making something as absurdly good as Baldur’s Gate 3. It is ridiculous, quite frankly, and Larian should apologise for setting such an insane standard for everyone else to follow. I shouldn’t even be here right now. I should be playing motherfucking Baldur’s Gate 3!
But since we’re already present and accounted for, let’s talk about it a little. You may have done a little cringe at how over the top I was being just then, and I bet you’re a bit sick of seeing people gush about how good it is (even though it is that good). I’m not going to be the one to convince you into getting it if you haven’t already, so I’ll be selfish instead. Don’t play Baldur’s Gate 3! It’s all mine! Nobody else is allowed! Hehehehehehe!!!
Okay, but honestly? You just need to try it. Larian’s ability to craft not just a single compelling narrative, but an impossible number of narratives based around all of your choices, and have it all tie together by the end in a manner deeply satisfying and, most importantly, true to your experience is unlike anything I’ve played before. Thinking about the journey of Agatha Waterhelm, half-elf bard, Balduran, and hopeless bisexual feels like recounting a tale told throughout generations. Not to spoil what ended up happening to her, but if I had to put a title on her tale, it would certainly be ‘The Tragedy of Agatha the Brave’. It’s a bit generic, perhaps, but I hope the word ‘tragedy’ gets you intrigued at the very least.
Were I to recount her many exploits, I think it would prove to be a genuinely entertaining listen, not just because the game’s main story is great (which it is by the way), but because Agatha’s story feels very specific and personal to me. It makes going back to the game, trying out different characters and roleplaying their exploits feel especially fun. What stories will I uncover next? That’s the magic of RPGs and nothing does it quite as good as Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’m doubtful anything ever really will again, at least not for a while.
That’s why it’s my Game of the Year. Now imagine Astarion wearing a little Burger King crown that doesn’t fit over his perfect curls properly and that’s the post ended. Bye!