I’m posting my GOTY list unfashionably early this year because, looking ahead at the upcoming releases, there’s nothing else this year that I’m looking to buy at launch. As usual, if time and money were no objects, there are other games I would have liked to try, like the Dead Space remake or the recently released Alan Wake II. But any other tentpole 2023 releases are things for which I’m probably going to wait for a 2024 sale.
Anyway, this will be my second year making an end-of-year favorites list. Like last year’s list, I don’t quite have ten games from this year that I feel strongly enough about including—not that these things necessarily need to contain ten games, but hey, tradition, amirite? The seven games I’ve got is pretty close, and I’ve decided to fill out the remaining three spots with games from prior years that I did full replays of in 2023.
Favorite game I played a second time in 2023: God of War Ragnarök
This was my #3 on my list last year, behind only Rogue Legacy 2 and Elden Ring. I replayed it in 2023 for a very specific reason: they patched in NG+ (in early April). I never did the NG+ for the 2018 game, but I wanted to try it for this one.
On the one hand, the new stuff they added for the second playthrough isn’t all that interesting. You can upgrade your equipment more, plus they added a new armor set or two and some new arena battle stuff, but nothing I actually cared about much. On the other hand, I think in some ways I enjoyed the game even more the second time than I did the first, for a couple of reasons.
The first is that, having played it once and knowing the high (and low) points of the story, I was mentally prepared for the more frustrating or tiresome bits from my first play. E.g., I never much enjoyed the playable Atreus sections; they’re fine for story, but I just don’t find his combat nearly as satisfying as Kratos’. Also, that Ironwood section really dragged on the first play. But for this second play, I knew exactly how long Ironwood was going to last and when I would get to control Kratos again, so it didn’t feel so interminable.
The second reason is that the game was just easier. Some small portion of that was me being more familiar with the combat, but you also have access to more of Kratos’ kit earlier, and additionally it was apparent that they’d balanced the game for people who had never fully maxed their equipment from NG, and so the early portions were a relative cakewalk. They also allowed you to upgrade your equipment to the NG+ max fairly early if you had the mats, so for a large portion of the game I felt fairly OP. This was a nice change since I had played NG on the highest difficulty—“Give Me God of War”—mostly because it was the only difficulty setting that you couldn’t switch to mid-game, so I decided to try it and ended up sticking with it. I wouldn’t say I regret that decision, but there’s something to be said for the game being a little less viciously difficult, especially for a second go-around.
Minor quibbles aside—I still think the lock-on camera has its problems in crowds, etc.—the combat in this game remains great, and the world and characters and writing are sublime. I’m the kind of person who, even for a game I’ve never played before, will often skip past vocal performances of lines if I’m reading them faster in the subtitles, etc… which is to say, I’m just generally much more interested in gameplay than in story. But the acting and mo-cap and cinematography in this game are all so top-of-the-line that I wouldn’t want to skip any of it (even if I could… the whole single-shot thing doesn’t actually allow for the kind of granular dialogue skipping that most other games do). I frequently found myself waiting to disembark from a boat or sled just to hear Mimir finish one of his stories, and that’s just not the sort of thing I typically do. God of War Ragnarök remains a tremendous experience, one that I can easily see myself returning to yet again.
Favorite game I played a third time in 2023: Persona 5 Royal
When I first played Persona 5 around launch in 2016, I did quite enjoy it. There were a lot of clear gameplay upgrades from previous entries, and yet it didn’t hit me quite as hard as Persona 3 (I started with FES and later played the Fem MC in Portable), whose characters, setting, and story I found more interesting.
Then, about two years ago, I played Persona 5 Royal for the first time, and I enjoyed it more than I had the OG. Part of that, as I’ve just discussed with God of War Ragnarök, was that I’d made peace with the game’s shortcomings and frustrating bits. But it also just added so much to that base game that made the whole thing so much more engaging—new characters, new locations, showtime attacks, fusion alarms, the grappling hook, the stamp system in Mementos. They added so much that it made the original release seem positively barren by comparison. About the only bit I didn’t like so much was the extra month tacked onto the end, mostly for the way it retconned the original ending and made an already very long game even longer. But on balance, all the stuff they added turned what was already a great game into an all-timer.
Which is how I ended up playing Royal for a second time earlier this year, or my third time playing Persona 5 overall. This seems especially significant for me because JRPGs just aren’t usually the type of games that I find myself replaying often… I am generally much more likely to do that with more action-oriented games like RE4 or the Souls games or Monster Hunter. It was my first time going through a NG+, so I got to do the extra fights against the Twins and Lavenza, etc. And, again like my recent replay of God of War Ragnarök, I found it both easier (of course, with my OP persona compendium) and even more enjoyable still (I really don’t need difficulty from this game). At this point, I think it’s safe to say that it’s surpassed Persona 3 in my eyes… though I’m now extremely interested to see how Persona 3 Reload turns out. If they can tell the Persona 3 story without screwing it up while also adding all the improvements that Persona 5 brought, then boy, that’s really going to be something.
Favorite ongoing game: Crusader Kings III
CK3 was never covered by any GB staff. The closest we got was Rorie trying it and bouncing off, and the Nextlander guys doing one video of it for a Patron’s choice stream. There are also a few forum threads on the site, one of which I started, but that’s it.
So, in case you haven’t noticed: CK3 is really friggin’ good. I’m generally not much for grand strategy games, but Crusader Kings is the exception. I put 800+ hours into CK2 back in the day, and now I’ve put 800+ hours into CK3. There were worries early on that it couldn’t possibly live up to its predecessor at launch, since CK2 got a metric ton of expansions over the years that added a lot to the game (in fact, they added so much that was—taken together—so expensive that they began offering players the ability to pay a $5 monthly fee to access all DLC rather than be faced with shelling out $300 for it). It turns out that those concerns were mostly unfounded, as it was a better game from the start than CK2 had been at its own release.
What really sets the Crusader Kings games apart as grand strategy games is that, for all their complexity and depth, they’re actually social sims in disguise. There are no “win states” or real goals in the game beyond the ones that players set for themselves. I mean, sure, there is an implied goal of taking over the entire map, but there is nothing preventing you from pursuing other things that have little or nothing to do with conquest, even just watching the years go by to see what unfolds without ever fielding a single army in a single battle.
CK3 makes some incredibly smart design decisions that really make it head-and-shoulders better as a social sim than its predecessor. Perhaps the most important one is the stress system. In CK2, characters could have tons of personality traits that did little other than provide stat buffs or debuffs. In CK3, each character generally has only three personality traits, and although they do alter stats a bit, their larger importance is that they give players a gameplay reason to roleplay those traits: making decisions that go against your character’s personality will increase stress, while making decisions that conform to that personality will lower stress. Getting stressed enough will lead to “mental breaks” that force you into developing some sort of coping mechanism… including the classic one of becoming a drunkard! In extreme cases, you can even die from stress.
So, for instance, in CK2 I always liked to have a “Just” character, because that trait gave a boost in vassal opinion. But in CK3, a “Just” character will gain stress if they try to murder people… and I like me some intrigue and skullduggery, so now this is a trait I avoid like the plague (on the other hand, the “Sadistic” trait lets you lose stress for murdering people!). It’s a really elegant way of making the personalities of characters matter.
Beyond that, CK3 is of course more visually appealing than its predecessor, with a nicer-looking, more detailed map, and fully 3D animated characters rather than static 2D portraits. It also removed some of the easy exploits and excesses of CK2, and feels overall more balanced and less easy to cheese—though there’s still some exploits there, if you really look for them. It’s also considerably better tutorialized and has better tooltips, and is overall a bit less obtuse (though, to be fair, I put so much time into the prior game that there’s a lot of knowledge I probably take too much for granted).
Anyway, CK3 recently celebrated its 3rd anniversary, and also put out a big free patch alongside a DLC that added some really robust new elements surrounding traveling and regencies that just add even more depth to both the strategic and social sim elements of the game. While other games come and go, this is one that I just keep coming back to, and once you’ve started a fresh play, it really can be quite hard to put down.
7. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty
And now we get to the first of the 2023 games on my list. It’s another Team Ninja joint, very much in the mould of Nioh, Nioh 2, and Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. If Nioh was Team Ninja’s answer to Dark Souls, then Wo Long is their answer to Sekiro, with a similar focus on parrying.
It is perhaps worth noting that my first GB blog concerned the somewhat bizarre loot system of Nioh. I would contend that the loot systems in all of these games have always been bad, and have always fundamentally misunderstood key elements of what makes a good loot system. Wo Long really isn’t any better than its predecessors in this regard, and in a lot of ways I think it would have been a better game if randomized loot simply wasn’t a part of it (I say this as someone who is typically a sucker for randomized loot systems).
The especially weird part of Wo Long in regards to loot is that there is no longer any level associated with it—meaning that you could pick up a good weapon or piece of armor very near the beginning of the game and not need to change it ever again. And yet the game still throws so much gear at you that you’re frequently forced to deal with it lest your inventory fill up—including checking each piece for good transferrable properties that can be stripped off and added to other pieces of gear. In other words, it’s still needlessly fiddly and time-consuming and just plain unsatisfying.
Beyond that, some of the systems just seem really half-baked. E.g., the “morale” system acts as a sort of in-game character level that appears designed to prevent players from simply running through everything to get to the boss. In practice, it can be gamed by farming a few early-stage enemies and ROFL-stomping the rest of the level, and, more significantly for me, it means that you can make a first attempt at a tough boss, lose, and then be less powerful for your second attempt because your morale has gone down… a thing that can only be remedied by farming before trying again. And who the hell wants to do that?
My feelings about the game overall can best be summed up by this fact. Every one of these Team Ninja Souls-likes—that is, Nioh, Nioh 2, Stranger of Paradise, and Wo Long—has come with three DLC expansions (spaced several months apart) that add stages and also a whole new difficulty tier. For both the Nioh games, I played all of those DLCs at release. For Stranger of Paradise, I only played one before quitting in disgust. For Wo Long, despite the fact that I overall liked it better than Stranger of Paradise, I have not felt moved to play any of the DLC at all even though I paid for the season pass. It just feels like too much grind.
Which is to say, after Nioh and Nioh 2, Team Ninja had become one of those studios for which I basically bought their games on faith. But after a more tepid experience with these last two games, I am going to be more cautious in future. Certainly I will not be purchasing any season passes before I’m sure it’s content I’ll actually want to play. And I suspect I may wait until a sale for Rise of the Rōnin, depending on what it’s looking like closer to release.
Anyway, I realize the above all sounds pretty negative, but really, on balance, I still enjoyed my time with Wo Long. It’s my kind of nonsense, the core combat is good, and it was also neat to see a different take on the Three Kingdoms characters than the Koei Tecmo one, since I’ve been known to like me some Dynasty Warriors now and again. I was happy to play it once, but I feel no pressing need to make a return.
6. Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
I am what you might call an OG From Software fan. I was in love with their games from the time I first played King’s Field 2, the first game they released in the US. In fact, the King’s Field games remain some of my favorite titles ever, to which I return on a nearly annual basis—which, incidentally, led to the delightful situation this year of me helping the Remap Radio guys (Patrick Klepek specifically) to navigate King’s Field 4 on Twitch. I DM'ed Patrick some advice and he ended up basically reading my entire message at the top of the stream, and then I was doing a bit of backseat driving for the rest of it (and the next stream three weeks later).
All of which is to say that I played Armored Core from the very first game (1997), and really enjoyed the hell out of it. It can be easy to forget that this was the series that From was known for prior to the Souls games. But it would also be safe to say that I generally became less and less interested in the series as it went on. It’s not clear to me how much of that was the games actually getting worse, versus me just being tired of the formula, or not seeing it advance/change as much as I was looking for. In the end, while For Answer (2008) did rekindle my interest a bit by doing some genuinely cool new things, it was safe to say that when the series stopped seeing new entries, I wasn’t exactly shedding a lot of tears. I’d had my fun with the giant robots, but was ready to move on.
Still, I was as intrigued as everyone else when it was announced that Armored Core was being resurrected, and was keen to see what kind of changes might be made after a decade of the series laying fallow. My verdict? Boy, it sure is one of those. It felt even more similar to the previous entries than I expected it too. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and they did modernize the controls, but I suppose I was hoping that they would make more of a reach with it.
It even carries forward what seemed to be the same balance issue from a lot of the previous games: the heavy tank builds are really, really powerful. Almost disappointingly so. Once I settled into tank treads with dual gatling guns and dual “Songbird” grenade cannons, I pretty much just steamrolled everything. Any other build felt like I was unnecessarily handicapping myself, and I never really ran into any enemy for which that build didn’t seem like the answer... with the possible exception of the late-game boss IB-01: CEL 240, who seems hard regardless of what your build is. But even for that fight I kept things mostly the same, only switching out my songbirds for stun needle launchers, which it turns out are even better than the songbirds for single targets.
In the end, I accomplished everything that could be accomplished in the game except S-ranking all missions in about five days, and it left me feeling... a little cold? I enjoyed the game well enough, but S-ranking everything just sounds like a slog, nor do I feel any need to keep playing through the story. And I’m not much for competitive multiplayer in games like this. So I’m… probably done with it for good? Not every game needs to be replayed ad nauseam, and it’s very well-crafted, but nonetheless I found myself wanting something more out of it than what From Software provided, even if I can’t really tell you what the “something more” could be.
5. Diablo IV
The Diablo games seem to me like the Platonic form of “podcast games,” something easy and simple and endless that you can log hours into while doing something else and only half paying attention. I didn’t follow too much of the coverage for Diablo IV until the open beta hit in March, at which point I tried it and enjoyed myself, leading me to hope that this was another one I could log hundreds—maybe thousands—of hours into, hitting loot piñatas and watching all the shiny loot fall out.
And, well, I have played a lot of it so far. In fact, I was curious about just how much I’ve played it, so I used some third-party tools to check my hour count, since it seems the game no longer surfaces it for you like D3 did. It turns out that I’ve logged 145 hours with my Druid—the only character I’ve maxed at level 100—another 172 hours between the four other classes—a lv 79 Wizard, lv 56 Necromancer, lv 43 Rogue, and lvl 34 Barbarian. I also played another Druid for Season 1, which I played long enough to complete the Battle Pass and then deleted, so I can’t check my hour count for it. I would guess it was another 40 or 50 hours.
So, what’s the verdict after about 350 hours? Well, I wouldn’t have played it for that long if I didn’t like it, but as seems to be the usual thing for these games, it had its frustrations at release, and overall I have to rate it as an “incomplete.” On the one hand, it isn’t quite the “podcast game” I wanted in the sense that I haven’t found myself firing it up throughout the year, but rather played it intensely in a relatively short period, got fairly burned out on it, and haven’t felt any great urge to go back.
On the other hand, I don’t want to downplay that I did have fun with it. Combat feels satisfying, it looks good (albeit a little drab for my taste), the whole “aspect” system seems fairly well thought-out, and it even had a cinematic or two that were truly epic. Also, D4 launched in probably the best state that any of these games has started at, lest we forget the D3 auction house, a “torment” difficulty that was well-nigh impossible to complete, and disappointing loot. D4 already had better loot and better endgame than launch-D3 did, but it had its own set of unexpected disappointments, the biggest of which for me was just how long it takes to max a character… which in past entries was when the “real game” began. I’d planned going in to play every class to 100, but I had no notion that doing so would take around 150 hours apiece, which is too much even for an obsessive sumbitch like me.
Already Blizzard has set about making some good changes. The mid-October patch that coincided with the start of Season 2 has shortened the time needed to reach level 100 by about 40%, provided more stash space where there used to be quite a squeeze, added more endgame content, and made a number of good QoL changes. I remind myself that D3 really wasn’t much good until it hit “2.0,” and that D4 has plenty of time to get there. Regardless, it will probably be a little while before I pop my head back in to see if it’s been transformed into the game I really want it to be, one I’ll feel like playing for a casual hour or two while listening to a pod or streaming a TV show. Still, it makes it to #5 on my list for the enjoyment that I’ve so far wrung out of it, and for the potential to become something even more compelling in future.
4. Lords of the Fallen
I wrote a fairly lengthy blog on this game only a few weeks before writing this list, so if you want my fuller thoughts, you should read that.
The short version is that Lords of the Fallen looks and feels more like a Dark Souls game than anything any developer outside of From Software has yet managed, which is equal parts compliment and criticism.
The best parts of it are its ingenious dual world design and its interlocking structure—the way that it keeps looping back on itself even more than any of the games it was imitating. Crucially, combat also feels good—emphasizing speed and aggression a bit more than its most obvious inspiration, i.e., a little more Bloodborne than Dark Souls.
On the other hand, in other ways Lords of the Fallen can’t seem to fully free itself from that lineage, carrying forward some fairly baroque design decisions seemingly only because that’s the way From Software has always done it, and some of those decisions feel like it’s holding the game back. Despite being a die-hard fan of From Software, I found myself wishing that this game had done more to evolve the formula—including dispensing with the type of easily fail-able NPC questlines that you could never reasonably figure out without consulting a guide.
Still, this feels like a big swing for a studio that was newly formed to develop this reboot of the 2014 original, and there is certainly evidence of boldness there—not just from that dual world design, the one layered onto the other—but from the ballsy decision to remove bonfires from consecutive plays almost completely, forcing players to rely on their knowledge of the shortcut-rich world to navigate it. I hope that Hexworks will get a chance to make another game like this and go even further in a bold new direction of their own.
3. Resident Evil 4
Push comes to shove, the original RE4 (2005) might very well be my favorite game ever. If it’s not, it’s very close, certainly in my eternal top five. It’s a game I find myself playing again every year or so, despite its age, and despite scores of newer, completely untried games I could be playing instead. So it’s no great wonder that in February 2022, I wrote with enthusiasm about the completion of a fan-made HD remaster that was eight years in the making.
About four months later, the RE4 remake was officially announced. It’s probably natural that I was a little suspicious of a remake of a game that I held in such high esteem; I just wasn’t convinced that the dev team would fully grasp all the elements that made the original such a classic. As more gameplay was shown, I wrote a blog about my objection to the introduction of knife durability as a gameplay mechanic.
Finally the Remake was released in late March, and despite my misgivings, I was determined to give it a fair shake. Upon completion, I wrote a lengthy blog comparing the gameplay of the two RE4s in great detail—which I think came out rather well as a piece of game criticism, and which others seemed to appreciate. If you’ve played the original game—or even if you haven’t, and just want to better understand why it’s not so outdated compared to this remake as you might think—then I’d recommend reading it.
The short version is that, while in my eyes this 2023 remake can never surpass the 2005 original, both are excellent games indeed. My biggest gripes were with its sluggish-feeling movement and the inconsistency of enemy reactions to Leon’s gunplay. But outside of those two big gripes, my other criticisms are ultimately fairly minor, and the remake also made some genuinely good improvements and adaptations, both small and large, including better weapon balance and a much more meaningful and interesting NG+.
Do I see myself playing this remake every year or two for the next eighteen years, the way I did for the 2005 game? Probably not. But I did enjoy my time with it this year about as much as anything else I played, and I can, in fact, see myself at least starting another play sometime in 2024, just to see how it feels after I’ve given it some time to breathe. If Persona 5 Royal and God of War Ragnarök are any indication (see above), my opinion of it may improve!
One other thing I should note. I did end up buying the “Separate Ways” DLC, released in late September for $10. And I have to say, this was a great DLC, especially for the price. For the amount of content and hours of enjoyment on offer, they could have easily charged $20. It’s more fully featured than the original “Separate Ways” ever was, and almost half the length of the main campaign. They even added back some content—and at least one boss—that fans of the original were sad to see cut from Leon’s story. I have no hesitation in recommending it.
2. Remnant 2
I played the ever-loving heck out of Remnant: From the Ashes four years ago, sinking hundreds of hours into multiple characters, co-op and solo, earning the platinum trophy and collecting and fully upgrading every piece of gear there was to find. It was occasionally a mess, particularly with regard to bugs—some of which were not fixed for months and months after release—but the gameplay and exploration were deeply compelling for me.
When Remnant 2 was announced, I was pretty sure I was going to love it… because a sequel with just a little more polish and budget sounded like exactly the kind of nonsense I was looking for. And thankfully, Remnant 2 delivered. It’s about the most unqualified success of a video game I’ve played this year; I honestly can’t think of any major negatives that actually bothered me enough to even bring up. (And incidentally, if you follow the Nextlander guys, then you’ve probably noticed that they’ve been playing it every Monday for the past twelve weeks. They seem to like it, too!)
In truth, Remnant 2 doesn’t do a whole lot that’s drastically different from its predecessor. It’s gotten a new coat of paint, a new dual class system, and more granular procedurally generated map tiles, but the core gameplay and the emphasis on puzzle-solving to find cool unique loot remains the same. Which is fine by me; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, etc. If you like the idea of Dark Souls with guns and three-player co-op, you’re probably going to like this.
What it could most use at this point is another biome or two, along with some sort of survival or endless mode, both of which are things that seem likely to come along eventually with the three planned major DLCs. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Gunfire Games still has in store for us, since they’ve pretty much hit it out of the park so far.
1. Hitman: World of Assassination
My #1 game of the year arguably didn’t come out this year at all. In one sense, it was merely a re-branding that took place on January 26: Hitman 3 became Hitman: World of Assassination. But to me, this was more significant than just a re-brand. To the contrary, I think this is exactly the right time to acknowledge Hitman: World of Assassination as not just a great game, but a friggin’ all-timer.
After the disappointment of 2012’s Hitman: Absolution—which was a decent game on a purely technical level, but missed the essence of the Hitman formula completely—I was really excited to see what IO would do with the 2016 reboot. Even so, I never imagined that it would be as good as it turned out to be, easily surpassing the previous best entry in the series—Hitman: Blood Money (2006)—and winning Giant Bomb’s Game of the Year.
It's no great surprise that Hitman 2 and Hitman 3 received less attention than that first entry, in large part because they amounted to level packs, since you could import stages from previous games into them. But if that first game was worthy of being Game of the Year—and I very much believe it was—then Hitman 3 is all the more worthy, since it’s ultimately the same game, but with some QoL improvements and triple the stages to play. Even if nothing else had been added, that ability to have all those stages available “under the same roof” would have been awesome enough.
But IO didn’t stop there. Coinciding with the re-brand, they added Freelancer mode, and it was exactly what the game needed. For all the hours of enjoyment I’d derived from Hitman’s absurd and wonderful world, there are only so many ways to kill the same targets. I don’t want to take anything away from IO’s work here, because those bespoke targets and all the hilarious ways to off them are truly something. But if you’d maxed your level mastery on every stage like I had, then you were probably looking for something new.
When Freelancer hit, the main campaign instantly felt like a very extended tutorial before taking on the main event. While Freelancer is difficult and can be punishing, time spent on the campaign serves you very well—particularly your knowledge of how to best get around all those stages. It strips the game down to its purest form, sans the more complex and involved “mission stories” associated with the bespoke targets, and adds real stakes and consequences—not unlike the “elusive targets.” Add the ability to upgrade Agent 47’s incredibly nifty safehouse and the constantly shifting optional objectives to keep you on your toes, and you’ve got something really special. It really does feel like a whole new game.
It may be a cliché, but there really is nothing out there quite like Hitman. And it’s not just the brilliant gameplay, but also the tone and writing. Even beyond all the ambient dialogue that’s actually made me laugh out loud, I have never in my life played a game that managed to be both so self-serious and so over-the-top ridiculous at the exact same time. It is a bloody miracle of tone, and I’m still not quite sure how they managed it. Agent 47 is the world’s funniest straight man against all the nonsense going on around him, including exiting levels by alien abduction or floating away on an umbrella like Mary Poppins.
It's not always easy to predict which games will stand the test of time and which ones will mostly fall by the wayside a year or two after their initial release. But I feel pretty confident that Hitman: World of Assassination is a game that I’ll be returning to for a long time. Freelancer mode proved to be the crown jewel of an already near-perfect game, and now this is quite simply one of the greatest video games ever made.
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