Let me take a look at my Deku Deals collection and see what all I acquired this year:
Fire Emblem Engage: Honestly, probably the GOTY, and it came out in January. A game obviously and proudly made both by and for people who love how Fire Emblem feels to play (both when you're looking at a grid and when you're not), and it shines through at every moment. At the same time, it still innovates in interesting and cool ways and has a vision for the future of the series instead of being purely backwards-looking as was e.g. Awakening. The more recent backlash against the game in FE enthusiast circles is completely baffling to me; it's a wonderful experience unless, apparently, you're a hardcore number-cruncher. A problem that contains within it its own solution. (The DLC sucks though.)
Metroid Prime Remastered: Port/remaster; doesn't count.
Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe: Port/remaster; doesn't count. Probably wouldn't have bought this if not for Nintendo vouchers; not that it's a bad game, but I played it when it was new and never really felt a need to revisit it in the intervening decade.
Octopath Traveler II: Fine. Better than the first one, for sure, but still nothing that really captured my imagination, as evidenced by the fact that I put 50 hours into it and didn't finish it or feel bad about not doing so. The nonlinear nature of these games hurts more than they help, as both the story and the gameplay balance are harmed by the fact that you can potentially be doing it in just about any order.
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Last Demon: Quite charming and with quite a few memorable moments. I got bit by completionist brain here and wasted a lot of time rubbing against walls looking for collectables, but a normal person would have a perfectly nice 10-15 hours with it. You kind of have to wonder who the audience for this was, though. Bayonetta fans were probably not generally in the market for a pastel storybook Zeldalike spinoff, and people who would love a pastel storybook Zeldalike are probably trained to ignore the word Bayonetta.
Resident Evil 4 Remake: Christmas gift; haven't played yet.
Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remasters: Port/remaster; doesn't count. I only played V this year, but I went ahead and bought the whole collection for Switch anyway. Kind of itching to revisit these -- maybe 2024 will be the year of FF.
The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog: An April Fool's joke, and you could tell. Fine for what it was; could have used at least another editing pass.
Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp: A ground-up remake, but one that came out when I was still working my way through Octopath and Bayonetta Origins, so I put it off -- and then Zelda came out. I'll get back to it some day. This apparently flopped, but I did my part.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom: I put 90+ hours into this, so I can't say I didn't get my money's worth, but it also... I don't know, it just didn't grab me like Breath of the Wild did. I knew I was going to have some trouble when they announced the Ultrahand -- I've never been able to get into physics manipulation or build-your-own-fun kind of games, so I knew this was going to be the sort of thing that inspired some amazing YouTube clips but weren't going to be the sort of thing I ever did myself. And, indeed, I interacted with that aspect of the game as little as I could get away with, which wasn't little enough. I didn't like the underground or the sky, I didn't like that the map was reused, I didn't like the new tools as much as the old ones, I just didn't have as good a time. I was starting to get burned out, so I set it aside fully intending to come back it it... and I never did. Unlike Octopath II, I felt bad about never returning, but the prospect of having to transport another damn Korok or slink my way through the underground for a few more fruitless hours always dissuaded me from doing it. A game that's for other people, but not for me.
Street Fighter 6: Speaking of games that are for other people. Every five years or so I'll get the idea that I'm finally going to teach myself to play 2-D fighters and will buy whatever the new hotness is for just that purpose. Capcom did everything they could to draw in people like me, and it worked, but I'm still one of nature's spectators when it comes to fighting games.
Etrian Odyssey Origins Collection: Port/remaster; doesn't count. Man do I hate the button controls for mapping.
Final Fantasy XVI: I bought this at launch fully intending to play it right away, and the disc is literally in my PS5 right now, but I still have not booted it up beyond the demo. Someday! Year of FF, 2024!
Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE: Christmas gift; haven't played yet.
This Way Madness Lies: Bought on sale; haven't played yet.
Baten Kaitos I & II HD Remaster: Port/remaster; doesn't count. I've long been a huge Baten Kaitos fan, so I was happy to see this get a push, and the ports are all right if not ideal. Origins still holds up as one of the great underappreciated RPGs of the aughts. It's a shame they weren't able to include the dub for Origins, though, as it's quite good.
The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails: Port/remaster; doesn't count, and Christmas gift; haven't played yet. Soon, though. I've been interested in this one for close to a decade.
Silent Hope: Loot treadmill from the Rune Factory folks; you know what you're getting. The moment-to-moment gameplay is solid, but the overall game feels fairly slight for something you're intended to do over and over -- each character has a basic attack string, nine special moves, and that's it, and the monster roster is fairly tiny and relies on recolors a lot. I unlocked all the classes and felt done, the hardest difficulty untouched. I bought this because I liked the demo, and had a fun enough time, but I can only recommend it for people who want a brainless grind to occupy their hands while they listen to podcasts or whatever.
Sonic Superstars: Christmas gift; haven't played yet.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder: I devoured this game the weekend it came out and had a grand time. It's wonderful (lol) to see the 2-D Mario games experimenting once again after a decade of radio silence and six years of workmanlike New Super Mario Bros. games before that, but it felt like a lot of the gameplay ideas it was messing with were underdeveloped and I wonder (lol) if it'll hold up to replays after the wow(ie zowie) factor wears off. I've been playing Mario for thirty years, yes, but the only level in this game that challenged me was the final one, and I wasn't stumped by a single secret either. This one begs for an expansion or a sequel, something For Super Players.
Little Goody Two Shoes: Very cute, although it's too big for its britches in some aspects, which expect you to do some action-y things with greater precision than the engine merits. The minigames are a hoot. While reading up on this game after the fact, I discovered it's a prequel to some other game I've never heard of, and I'm trying to decide if I care.
Super Mario RPG: I can't tell you if this game is good; you might as well ask me if breathing is good. The original has been carved on my DNA for literal decades, and every change -- good, bad, or indifferent -- was like a record scratch on my soul. Normal people will have a time with it, and who knows, if enough people buy this and the Thousand-Year Door remake next year we might actually get a real new Mario RPG of some variety. Maybe even one that doesn't suck! Fingers crossed.
Persona 5 Tactica: A very fun gameplay loop marred only slightly by its lack of enemy and stage variety. This is a game that would go from "pretty good time" to "all-time classic" if it just had more Stuff in it. It's also extremely easy; play on Merciless if you've got any experience with tactical games at all. Some people are over the Phantom Thieves by now, but I'll confess to loving this cast; I'm the mark who would have played the Thieves fighting a new target a month until Joker was 40 if they made them. That being said, this is purely spinoff zone; the Thieves are decidedly secondary to the original generation characters in this one, unlike Strikers which is more of a sequel. The DLC is inessential, but it's there if you want more of the game.
Soul of Sovereignty: The first chapter of GGDG's new project came out a few weeks ago, and it's great. It's a pure visual novel -- by its own admission, don't expect Gameplay (TM) -- but if you like their stuff, you'll like this. It almost makes me sad that it'll probably be two years or more before we see any more of it.
I'll Get To It Someday
Sea of Stars
Dave the Diver
30XX
Arcadian Atlas
Jusant
Tchia
It's New To Me
I have owned Valkyria Chronicles for about a decade and have bounced off it every single time I've attempted to play it, but after finishing P5T I was still in the mood for more tactical gun RPG action and booted it up -- and I had a blast. So much so that I still hadn't shaken the urge, and picked up VC4, which I'd owned for years and never played -- and that's been fun too. It's gratifying to finally be able to worm your way into experiencing something you've known all this time you'd like if only your stupid brain would let you enjoy it. Maybe someday the Souls games won't be off the table.
This Year In Hearthstone
How am I still playing this stupid game? This year wasn't as fun as last year, but it's still a damn sight better than 2021, so let's count our blessings here. On balance they've gotten better at card design, but this largely serves to make their huge misses (Thaddius, Monstrosity; Yogg-Saron, Unleashed; Blindeye Sharpshooter) even more egregious and fun-ruining when they do show up, because they're overwhelming everything else you could potentially be doing. Here's hoping their New Year's Resolution is to cut back on the one-card combo engines.
Looking Forward To 2024
Persona 3 Reload
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Unicorn Overlord
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Hades II
Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Remake
Ys X
Metaphor: ReFantazio