Best games I played in 2023

Happy New Year! (￣ω￣)

I am a curious linguist, English and Japanese are my second and third languages respectively.

Ōkami — https://youtu.be/gSf7KtOz9XY

Blogpost — https://shetanislair.com/en/posts/games-of-2023

Timestamps:

0:00 — Intro
1:15 — Celeste
1:53 — LAIKA: Aged Through Blood
3:08 — Ōkami
3:55 — Mass Effect Trilogy
6:13 — Frog Detective: The Complete Case
6:44 — Baldur’s Gate 3
8:58 — Small Saga
9:50 — NUTS
10:41 — Terra Nil
11:45 — Slay the Princess
12:45 — Venba
13:38 — Chicory: A Colorful Tale
14:29 — Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
15:18 — Dave the Diver
17:12 — Lies of P
19:23 — GOTY
22:47 — Conclusion

I know this video comes somewhat late  but I really wanted to finish some   games so they could make it into this  list. I played a lot of games in 2023,   including a couple of really big ones, and  this time I really want to focus on highlights,  

On the games that wowed me in one way or another,  the games I could recommend. I didn’t write any   opinion pieces except for Ōkami last year because  I decided to invest all my time and energy into   finishing the Sekiro project. And I did finish it!  That’s probably my biggest achievement of 2023.

Before we start, let’s go  through some disclaimers: All games I mention in this video were  fully completed, except for the two that   I will mention specifically. I try my best  to never give my opinion on a game that I  

Haven’t fully completed because there are games  that start off great and end up being a mess.  It’s a list of games that I played this year,  they weren’t necessarily released this year.  I don’t think I’ll spoil anything major  about any game but just to be safe check the  

Table of contents and if you don’t want to know  anything about one game or another because you   intend to play it yourself, just skip the section. And the most important thing! Everything in this   video is my personal opinion. We’ll start with two games that  

I dropped halfway through, and then move on  to the games that I wholeheartedly enjoyed. I know people love Celeste and I think this praise  is well-deserved. This game just isn’t for me.   The controls never felt that smooth and it was a  struggle to move forward, especially considering  

That the further you progress the more platforming  you need to do before encountering a character or   a piece of story progression. I played about half  of it and felt that if I moved forward, I would   like Celeste considerably less, so I decided to  stop while I still liked it. On the bright side,  

It helped me realize that precision platformers  are not for me. Otherwise, Celeste is an amazing   game: it has a great story and fantastic music.  Now I totally get why people love it so much. I had a similar case with LAIKA, which would  have ended up being one of the strongest  

Highlights of the year had I completed it.  LAIKA is the newest game from Brainwash Gang,   the devs who made GROTTO that I absolutely adore.  I played LAIKA’s demo before it was released,   and that demo kicked my ass. I couldn’t really  wrap my head around the whole motorvania thing,  

Flipping forward and backward to reload the gun  or reload the dodge, it was really challenging   for me. However, there was no way I could resist  the incredible storytelling, the brutal plot,   and fantastic music so I picked it up on  release. I played a little more than half  

I think and decided to leave LAIKA at the  point where I still loved it. I found that   I could not ensure the mechanical precision  of the motorcycle platforming; too often I   felt like my success depended on chance, rather  than on my reaction speed or my jumping prowess,  

And I didn’t really like that. I still recommend  playing the demo if you want to get the feel of   LAIKA, and even if you are not inclined to play  it, just find the soundtrack and listen to it,  

It’s just that good. I wanted to like LAIKA  more than any other game this year but alas. And now let’s move on to the games that  I enjoyed the most this year listed in no   particular order. We’ll crown this list  with my game of the year so buckle up!

The only opinion piece I wrote this year was on  Ōkami, and I assure you, it is for a reason. The   game originally came out in 2006 and then received  an HD remaster — it looks incredible even today   thanks to its unique artstyle that combines  ink-wash painting, cel-shading and Japanese  

Watercolor. Ōkami is an epic adventure full  of memorable characters, unique brush fights,   Japanese folklore, exploration and heart. It is  well-paced and keeps the adventures fresh until   the very end. Ōkami aged beautifully so if you  have a Nintendo Switch, I’d recommend getting  

The game there and playing in handheld mode  to reap the joy of just drawing on the screen   with your finger, it’s a lot of fun. If you don’t  own a Switch, no worries, Ōkami HD is available  

On other platforms too. I have a no-spoiler  video on it, check it out if you feel like it! I bet you didn’t expect the Mass  Effect Trilogy to show up on this list,   did you now? I played a bit of Mass Effect 1  when it came out, which was a long time ago,  

And I hadn’t really touched the franchise since  then. I am very partial to space operas but living   in 2023 while not having any relationship with  such a classic felt like I skipped elementary   school for gamers. Besides, this is the number  one favorite game of one of my good friends,  

So I felt like I really needed to get  properly acquainted with Mass Effect. I hope I’ll get to release my gigantic opinion  piece on Mass Effect Trilogy but in short — I   quite liked it. Mass Effect 1 was perfect, I love  it to bits. The defining feat of Mass Effect,  

Something that only the first game  could do, is that it does a great job   both explaining the world and the setting  and introducing characters. It juggles the   scale of the Galaxy and your personal story as  commander Shepard astonishingly well. It also  

Shows the tragedy of its antagonists,  which not many games do even nowadays. I hated most of Mass Effect 2, the game, in  my humble opinion, is hot garbage. It almost   convinced me to drop the whole trilogy and forget  about it. After the incredible inspiration that I  

Got from ME, ME2 felt like someone punched me in  the face and broke my nose. I didn’t have any of   my chosen companions from ME1 available, but I  had like 50 other companions, and almost all of   them were super unlikeable. ME2 did improve some  things that needed improvement, like combat and  

Levelling, but I was playing for the story and the  companions, and that part was super disappointing. I debated whether or not I should even start ME3  after ME2 had pulled every last bit of my soul  

From my body but then I thought, ‘Well, I didn’t  like ME2 and I don’t have to play it anymore’. ME3   felt like THE Mass Effect you usually hear about  — epic, heroic, more polished mechanically, where  

Every mission feels like a part of the main quest  (because they all kind of are). I really liked it,   except probably for the ending part but I don’t  bear a grudge, I don’t think I do. And it also   makes Mass Effect 2 much better in retrospect,  which felt good but almost like cheating.

All in all, despite having an issue with Mass  Effect 2, I loved the trilogy. It has some of the   most memorable characters in gaming history, and  a truly legendary protagonist. Even if you’re not   really into space operas, like I am not, give it a  try if you haven’t. It’s a most charming classic.

Frog Detective was an absolute blast. The  gameplay is very simple if not primitive;   each one of the available 3 cases is basically a  prolonged exchange quest where you find a thing,   then exchange it for another thing, then do it  again, until you hit the end of the chain and  

The mystery gets resolved. What makes this game so  stellar though? The absolutely hilarious writing.   It is a short and sweet game with some incredible  jokes sometimes told with a straight face; I’d   recommend playing it with your friends or family,  this experience is even funnier when shared.

I have always had a very difficult  relationship with Larian games;   I believe I’ve played everything or almost  everything they’ve put out and I could never   say that I enjoyed it all that much. Still, there  was no way I’d miss their take on Baldur’s Gate  

Because there was just too much nostalgia for me  in it. I grew up playing classic isometric RPGs,   it is my most favorite genre. I played the  original Baldur’s Gate games a long time ago,   I absolutely adore Neverwinter Nights and  while I haven’t played DnD, I spent all my  

Childhood and adolescence reading Forgotten Realms  books. It felt like a long-awaited homecoming. I hope I’ll be able to write a blogpost or even  make a video on BG3 but in short: I enjoyed it   very much. The RPGs of this kind are few and far  between, they are notoriously expensive to make,  

They take a lot of time, and the audience for  them isn’t all that large. Seeing such an RPG   looking as gorgeous as BG3 literally  brought tears to my eyes. This is what   original Baldur’s Gates and Neverwinter Nights  look like in my head. Voice actors are fire,  

And they mocapped them too which made the most  mundane camp dialogues look like little movie   clips. The writing got much better compared to  Original Sin, and that specific Larian sense of   humor that I can’t stand was thankfully kept in  check and distilled into really good jokes and  

Some hilarious dialogues. It is an adventure of  a truly epic magnitude where all the different   ways you can complete quests — even the tiniest  side quests — are accounted for and end up making   tidal waves later down the line. I think this  was one of the things that I liked the most in  

BG3 — how I kept finding echoes of my previous  decisions, and it all made sense. It warms my   heart to hear how people who usually avoid  this type of games because they seem boring   or complicated get drawn in and invested. I  hope the audience continues to grow and even  

More people discover this incredible genre through  Baldur’s Gate 3 and finally make it super popular. Of course, there were still some  unfortunate bugs and glitches that   prevented me from completing a few Act  3 quests and sabotaged my relationships   with some companions. I hope Larian continue  perfecting the game because a hundred hours  

For a playthrough is kind of a lot, and  if something gets bugged along the way,   the player might not have enough spare  time to replay the whole thing again. Small Saga came out of nowhere for me but ended up  being one of the brightest highlights of my gaming  

Year. It is a turn-based RPG about a tiny mouse  on an epic quest of revenge and self-discovery.   It absolutely blows my mind that for the most part  this game was made by one person. It is a labor of  

Love and passion and believe me when I say that  it shows. Small Saga is brilliantly written,   has a lot of good humor and memorable main  characters, each with established background and   a character arc. Don’t let the premise deceive  you, the game can be very brutal both in its  

Themes and the events unfolding. I recommend this  fantastic game to everyone; even if you are not   exactly inspired by turn-based RPGs, I urge you to  try. There are no random encounters, they are all   very much story-related, and the combat itself  consists of a few solid mechanics so it’s very  

Straightforward while allowing enough freedom to  develop your characters in the way you see fit. NUTS is often compared to Firewatch because of  its story canvas: you are a lone researcher in a   national park studying an endangered species of  squirrels. Your only contact is your supervisor  

Nina to whom you fax your findings after a few  days of tracking squirrels around the park with   3 cameras. During the day you set up the cameras  according to your assignment and then during the   night you watch them to see what the squirrels  are up to. The game’s unique artstyle and sound  

Design create a haunting atmosphere of being  in the deep woods completely alone on a mission   that you don’t quite understand. Then the plot  starts to unravel with each of Nina’s calls,   and your head spins with multiple theories on  what exactly is happening in Melmoth Forest.  

I’d say it is not as well-rounded in terms of  story as Firewatch and many things are open to   interpretation, but I’d lie if I said I wasn’t  thoroughly entertained the evening I played it. I usually stay away from strategy games and city  builders not only because they are exhausting for  

Me to play, but also because I get very anxious  about the simplest things like building placement.   What if I build something and then end up  not liking it? Re-building it will disrupt   processes and cost resources. Well, in Terra Nil  I didn’t have to worry about any of it at all:  

It is a reverse city builder where each map is  a puzzle that you need to solve in order to turn   barren wastelands into an assortment of thriving  biomes. I created riverbeds and coral gardens,   grew massive forests and managed the climate  to get it just right for the rain to fall. The  

Best thing though is that it does not matter at  all if you build your facilities sub-optimally,   asymmetrically or otherwise imperfectly.  As soon as the ecosystem is restored,   your task is to destroy everything you built,   clean up all the rubble and leave for the  next mission so there’s not even a trace  

Of you left. I found this gameplay loop to be  incredibly refreshing so if you too stress too   much while building stuff in games, give  Terra Nil a try. It is a beautiful game. Slay the Princess is a psychological horror  visual novel about you, the Hero, who is tasked  

With slaying her, the Princess. You’re on a path  in the woods, and she is in a little cabin just   up the hill. The Narrator tells you to take the  pristine blade and slay her because otherwise she  

Will destroy the world. What will you do? Will  you talk to her first? Or not? Maybe you don’t   need to take the blade: she is all chained up,  how could she be a danger? Or maybe you will just  

Plunge the blade into her chest and save everyone.  What you do in the cabin determines your path that   can span many chapters. I don’t want to spoil  anything but if you’ve played Stanley Parable,   you’re familiar with the concept. The game has  multiple endings and a lot of different routes,  

All brunching from your decisions when  meeting the Princess for the first time. It   is well-written and fully voiced; some episodes  are hilarious, others — terrifying. Be sure to   check all trigger warnings for visual effects;  you can tweak most of them in the options menu. And remember: this is a love story.

I have to say that Venba had me absolutely fooled:  I expected a short story-driven cooking game that   would allow me to learn more about Indian cuisine  and culture — and it does all that, don’t get me  

Wrong — but it also punched me in the feelings  HARD. Venba tells a story set in the 80s about   an Indian family who immigrated to Canada and is  struggling a lot with fitting into the new society  

And adapting to a new way of life while preserving  their cultural heritage. There’s more to it than   that, I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say  that it touches upon some very complex matters,  

And not in a shallow way, which is no small  feat for a game that is barely 2 hours long.   Venba expertly combines the hardships of immigrant  life and family relationships with vibrant cooking   puzzles that strike a hopeful chord in your heart.  Even if you cannot fully relate to the premise of  

Venba, I can guarantee that in one way or another  you will be touched by this game nonetheless. While we are on the topic of games that hit  me hard this year, we must talk about Chicory:   A Colorful Tale. It is an adventure game about  a wonderful vibrant world that lost its color  

Because Chicory, the wielder of the legendary  Brush, went missing. It is up to you, Chicory’s   janitor, to find her and reunite her with the  Brush. In the meantime, you are the Wielder, and   you can color the whole world however you like!  But finding Chicory is a priority, of course.

This game has everything: puzzles, fights,  exploration, great worldbuilding and dialogues   that made me take a pause and just breathe.  Chicory touches upon themes of anxiety,   depression, dealing with high expectations  and the highs and lows of friendship. This   game really spoke to me in a way  that very few have. Ultimately,  

It is a great adventure full of hope and good  humor, so I strongly recommend it to everyone. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a wild ride  😀 The game is about 3 hours long, but it is   absolutely packed with quirky characters, funny  jokes and emmm tearing important documents to  

Shreds. After one such document turned out to  be your tax form, you end up in a massive debt   to mayor Onion and have to work for him. While  running errands for the vegetable government that  

Might or might not be corrupt to the bone, you  learn a whole lot about the history of the world,   which I didn’t expect at all. Turnip Boy is a  big story masterfully accommodated within a small   timeframe, and it is simply superb. About halfway  through it turns 180 and becomes something else,  

As you unravel the truth about the  seemingly idyllic garden community. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion was a  blast, and I can’t wait for the sequel,   Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, that is set  to come out in a couple of weeks.

I feel like everyone has heard about Dave the  Diver at some point, and for a good reason:   this adventure RPG with roguelite elements is  something of a unique singleplayer experience   among other similar games that deal with gathering  resources and crafting. You play as Dave,  

Who is a diver helping a local sushi restaurant  near the mysterious Blue Hole where all types   of fish and sea creatures can be found. During  the day you catch fish, and in the evening you   run the restaurant, serving fresh sushi  to your customers. Simple, right? Wrong,  

Because Dave the Diver is a cornucopia of game  mechanics, and it doesn’t stop giving you new   things even if you’re already dozens of hours in.  There are various types of upgradable weapons,   many different harpoons, each with its own  minigame, a giant main quest about Sea People,  

Not to mention the restaurant management system,  ratings and reviews you get from customers, the   ingredients you need to gather for more complex  dishes, special events, VIP guests, hiring staff   and dozens upon dozens of other things. It might  seem overwhelming the way I am describing it,  

But the game is hyper aware about how much content  it has, so the new mechanics are introduced to   you in a graceful manner. The tutorials are  basically like “here’s a big new system but   don’t worry about it, for now you just need this  small element of it”, and the rest of the learning  

Comes naturally. However, this approach might lead  to a few tiny but important mechanics being left   unexplained, but really, nothing you can’t figure  out on your own if you’re curious enough. Dave the   Diver masterfully balances the periods of relaxed  exploration with exciting chases and fights,  

Mystery and blood-boiling restaurant shifts  because let me tell you, it’s hard to feed a bunch   of people when you also need to grate wasabi, pour  matcha and wipe the tables. After you finish the   main storyline, you can just continue playing the  game and managing the restaurant. When I finished  

The main quest and watched the credits, the game  didn’t really seem to notice and just continued   to introduce new mechanics, including a big new  chunk of the game, blowing me away once more. One of the biggest releases of this year, Lies  of P took me by surprise. I was interested in  

It mostly because of the setting and combat,  and not really because I wanted to play another   soulslike — to be completely honest with you,  I don’t even know what a “soulslike” game is   supposed to be like, this label gets slapped  on everything nowadays. Despite a few really  

Annoying chunks, Lies of P turned out to be one  of the brightest highlights of my gaming year.   It is very… well-rounded. It feels whole, a  complete well thought-out experience. You play   as a puppet created by a genius engineer Geppetto  on a mission to save the crumbling city of Krat,  

Once a prosperous capital of progress, now —  bathed in blood burning ruins, filled with crazy   puppets. You have a special legion arm that you  can upgrade in many different ways, it’s a little   like Sekiro’s prosthetic that can change the way  you fight in a meaningful way. There is also an  

Awesome system of weapon construction that I found  really refreshing. Basically, you can disassemble   any non-legendary weapon and get a blade part and  a handle part. You can upgrade blades to deal more   damage, and you can change handles to scale with a  different stat. And the greatest part is that you  

Can combine any handle with any blade, and the new  weapon would inherit the damage from the blade,   but the scaling and the moveset from the handle.  Not only can you create a weapon tailored to your   style of play, but you can also have some pretty  hilarious combinations that are just fun to fool  

Around with. The combat is not as tight as I  expected it to be but it’s still pretty good:   you can go with dodging or with perfect  guarding. I went with the latter,   hoping to pull off some Sekiro combat and most  of the time I even succeeded. Recently the  

Developers patched the game to have some basic  mechanics from the start and not as a level up   in the middle of the game so I can only imagine  how much more comfortable it is to play it now. Lies of P weaves brutal punishing combat  with quieter moments of contemplation and  

Melancholy. The soundtrack is simply superb. It  is a dark story inspired by a classic Pinocchio   tale. Remember how Pinocchio was promised  to be turned into a real boy if he is brave,   truthful, and unselfish? But isn’t  lying an inherently human thing?..

And now, after we have discussed  the games I loved playing in 2023,   let’s move on to my game of the year! I am sure it comes as no surprise, but  my game of 2023 is The Legend of Zelda:  

Tears of the Kingdom. Breath of the Wild  was my game of the year when I played it,   and Tears of the Kingdom is everything  I ever wanted the sequel to be,   and even more. I played it day one, and  then for months and months, every single  

Day being blown away by what they did with the  concept I thought myself pretty familiar with.   Breath of the Wild was revolutionary but SOMEHOW  Tears of the Kingdom makes it seem like a demo. I don’t want to spoil it because Nintendo  went out of their way to hide it in the  

Trailers and promo materials, but if  you thought Breath of the Wild was big,   Tears of the Kingdom is much,  MUCH bigger. I’ll say no more. Despite using the same Hyrule map as Breath of the  Wild, Tears of the Kingdom overhauls it in such  

A way that even if you vacuumed every corner  the last time you were here, you’ll discover   that now you have even more exploration  to do. Hyrule has changed significantly:   not only have the islands fallen from the skies,  there are caves now and vast systems of tunnels  

To explore. The kingdom changed because some  time has passed since Breath of the Wild,   and many places just don’t look the same.  Besides, the world is actively responding   to the main events instead of being in a  relative stasis, like in BotW, and that’s  

Probably my favorite thing. You actually feel  the calamity plaguing the land at every step,   you see people of Hyrule struggling and fighting,  and I found it to be incredibly immersive. Tears of the Kingdom has probably the most story  out of all Zelda games I’ve played: there is a  

Whole anime series inside of it, dozens of story  cutscenes, a lot of dialogue, and branching   questlines for all the main characters. In Breath  of the Wild exploration had little to do with the   main plot: the main quests were confined to their  specific locations. In Tears of the Kingdom each  

Main storyline takes you through a whole region  with multiple challenging quests and a good chunk   of story. I’m not gonna lie, it was the hardest  thing for me to adjust to because in BotW I just   explored a region and then went to tackle the  quest, while here it doesn’t make much sense  

To avoid the quest because it will involve a lot  of exploration. It’s probably counter-intuitive   for a game of such massive scale, but I’d  say that it’s probably a better choice to   actually follow the main quest to a point, and  then explore freely whatever is left, because  

Completing the branches of the main quest actually  makes the exploration easier and more exciting. And then there are new mechanics  that are absolutely mindblowing,   especially considering how none of them break  the game although on the first glance they   absolutely should. Link can now Ascend, which is  basically vertical teleport through any terrain,  

You might have seen it in the trailers. You’d  think this ability will be absolutely broken   and you’ll be able to abuse it somehow but in  reality, it is mainly for quickly getting out   from under ground, gaining verticality without  the need to climb a slope for 10 minutes,  

And also for puzzle-solving and strategic  combat. It doesn’t actually break anything.   And I won’t even touch on the engineering  mechanic, I’m sure you’ve seen videos of   people coming up with the craziest stuff  for both traversal and enemy encounters.

I loved every minute of it. You don’t have to play  Breath of the Wild to enjoy Tears of the Kingdom   but having played it and seeing how the places  and characters I loved changed, meeting Hestu   and koroks, meeting Sidon and Riju, walking  up to Dueling Peaks and exploring the Great  

Plateau again was worth everything to me. Tears  of the Kingdom is the best game I played in 2023. This year technical quality and good optimization  were a big point of consideration for me when I   chose games to play. As I grow older, I have  more responsibilities and less free time to  

Invest in gaming, even though it remains my  primary source of quality entertainment and   my biggest passion. Lies! — you might say  — you spent 200 hours playing Tears of the   Kingdom! That’s a lot of free time! And that’s  precisely the point. I chose to play Tears of  

The Kingdom because I trusted Nintendo enough  to test their game well — even a game of such   staggering enormity as Tears of the Kingdom  — and provide me with a top-notch experience   even if I choose to play the game day one.  I played Tears of the Kingdom on release,  

And I had no issues with it. I probably wouldn’t  have liked Lies of P as much as I did had it not   been for its absence of bugs and remarkable  optimization that allowed me to both play   comfortably and also stream it with zero loss of  quality. Even though I don’t really anticipate  

Games most on the time, there are titles I want  to dive in right around their time of release,   and I can’t put into words how disappointed I am  when such a game doesn’t work properly. Happened  

This year multiple times too: I tried to play  a certain game, not even day one, and right at   the start it had that stupid bug where the text  didn’t warp but just went off-screen in one long  

Line. Because it was a game where you’re supposed  to read, I figured it’s not worth playing now   because I can’t read anything. I still have not  returned to it. Maybe I never will. The industry   is so competitive I feel like games don’t really  get second chances. My backlog is huge, and my  

Spare time is limited; I am interested in a lot  of genres, and if a game doesn’t work properly,   I just move on because I have so much choice among  the games that do work. That is why I am always  

Okay with games being delayed; I’d rather the  developers take all the time they need to polish   and optimize than release something that needs to  be patched every two days for the next few months. I had a great gaming year and I hope 2024  will be just as good, if not better. I  

Remain hopeful for the future of this channel  too so please do stick around. And of course,   feel free to share your best — and worse! — gaming  experiences of 2023. I always go through the   comments afterwards and compile a list of games  that you recommend. As usual, it doesn’t matter  

If a game was actually released this year,  it only matters if you played it this year. Thank you very much for your time and I’ll see you  in the next one. And Happy New Year. Take care.