Games of 2023 - This year has been insane

This year has had way too many amazing new games coming out and I've been struggling to keep up tbh. 

Fire Emblem Engage. 81 hours. What a start to the year. A new Fire Emblem! Admittedly it wasn't as great as Three Houses, but it was still really, really good. I had an amazing time with this. When's the next one?

Hogwarts Legacy. 87 hours. Easily my game of the year. It doesn't get any better than this. I cried so many times while playing this. Mostly tears of fangirl and happiness. I've wanted an open world Potterverse game for 20 years and they fulfilled my every expectation ♥

Atomic Heart. 20 hours. The overland was annoying and the enemies were repetitive. But story was good and gameplay good and characters memorable. I had fun with this. Might replay it for the DLC, even.

ESO: Necrom. I haven't been this excited about a new chapter since Morrowind released. Archanist was a great class addition and the story was good. I really like Torvesaad, although I'm not sure why. Lore implications of this chapter are massive and I really want a continuation of this story.

Starfield. 175 hours. The most anticipated game of 2023 if I dare say so. The community's expectations were through the roof and unfortunately not many of them were fulfilled. That said I still go that Bethesda feeling from this game and I had a lot of fun with it. My playtime ought to speak for itself.

We Were Here Expeditions. 2½ hours. This game came out of nowhere. It wasn't expected, but it was definitely welcome. We enjoyed the other We Were Here games and had a lot of fun with this one too!

AC: Mirage. So Connect doesn't show the amount of hours played for this, but it does for Valhalla and Odyssey. I dunno what's up. I had a good time with this. They were banking hard on people's nostalgia and pulled out all the stops to make it relatable for people who've been with the series since the beginning. I kept seeing Aladdin while I was playing as Basim running along the rooftops of Baghdad. 

Sons of the Forest. 22 hours (so far). We finished The Forest earlier this fall and started with Sons of the Forest immediately after. We had a blast with the first game and figured this game would be just more of it. Sons of the Forest definitely has its quirks though, and so far it isn't as great as The Forest, but it's also still in Early Access with full release coming in 2024. With the way things are going we may still be playing at that point :D

CP2077: Phantom Liberty. 110 hours. I haven't played Cyberpunk since February 2021, but I decided to replay the entire thing for Phantom Liberty and Update 2.0 and it's been amazing! This game is fantastic, although I did experience more bugs in the game now than I did in 2021, go figure. Phantom Liberty has a great story with so many twists and turns I hardly knew who to trust at the end, which is the entire point. There were a few badass boss battles and a bunch of cool new gigs. It was quite the ride!

ESO: Endless Archive. Why does a MMO need a roguelite mode? I knew this wasn't going to be the regular small zone DLC that they usually do in autumn, but I expected something more than a room of spawning enemies, unfair bosses and effects to add to yourself as you went on. I didn't struggle at all until I ran into Z'Baza. A Sload boss that kept spawning AoEs and adds and never remained in one place, making him hard to actually hit with anything. I'm not too excited about this DLC overall, and I suppose it will be added to the ever-growing list that is Maelstrom Arena and Vateshran Hollows that I never complete. But as always, I'll give it a few more tries.

Baldur's Gate 3. 61 hours (so far). I immediately fell in love with Astarion. I also really like Gale and Karlach, and Wyll grew on me. I played the first game some years ago and it's been really nice seeing references to what happened in that game. Other than that first game I'm generally clueless about The Forgotten Realms. I'm playing a kinda reckless character, making shit up as I go along. At the time of writing this I'm running around the Shadow-Cursed Lands, trying to infiltrate the Moonrise Towers and being constntly encumbered because I pick up everything that isn't nailed down. Will do a proper post once I'm done,  but until then have a screenie of my character sitting on Yurgir's throne:

This post is for games that I played that released in 2023. I started BG3 too late for it to be included and I played Fire Emblem, AC and ESO elsewhere, but here's my Steam Wrapped 2023: