My Top 5 Favorite Games of 2023

[Music] what's going on everybody morm here this time Bringing you five of my favorite games for 2023 which naturally does come with a few caveats probably the biggest simply being that everyone knows my favorite game this year was balers Gate 3 like a great many people as well but I've talked about that many times it's certainly not a surprise so for the sake of this video I thought let's just set that aside for a minute and make this a slightly more interesting watch so yes balers Gate 3 was my favorite and the rest of this video is basically numbers 2 through six because as great as balers Gate 3 was there were a ton of great games released this year that make it somewhat hard to believe that there was a shocking amount of industrywide layoffs it also kind of goes without saying that I'm only talking about games that released this year because while I do play and review older titles all the time the last 6 months or so you would hardly be able to know that because I've done nothing but review new releases because there were so many so while an upcoming video will rank every game I reviewed this year for fun which will include older titles this is just this year's stuff but with no further Ado let's dive into it first and foremost with our last spot we have Jagged Alliance 3 just making it on to the list Jagged Alliance 3 is a combination of crpg and trpg and of course a sequel to A beloved cult classic franchise the jacket Alliance 1 and 2 two more specifically as it was very popular but it was quite old with its initial release being all the way back in 1999 and while they have tried to release other games in the series none of them have been uh well-received let's say until of course Jagged Alliance 3 an interesting series overall though a lot of it kind of leans into the style of' 80s action movies where everything is very overthe toop but this particular title puts us in the role of a mercenary company if you will or at least a single individual who happens to be hiring teams of mercenaries who act as our party members Each of which has their own distinctive personalities and skill sets that you can utilize to help bring peace and stability to Grand Chen a fictional country undergoing a multitude of problems and what's really cool about this game and the reason it made it onto this list is that how you deal with many of those individual problems will affect what happens to the country afterwards so while you can just follow the main objectives and take care of problems chances are the country will still be left in a pretty Terri able state if you ignore all of the other issues at play so there's a surprising amount of choice and consequence in this game at the same time while there were a few nitpicky things here and there such as the ability to cheese a lot of stuff very easily sniper rifles being very overpowered Etc a lot of that isn't really unique to this game many games suffer from similar problems so it didn't really cut into the fun I had with it as a whole but believe it or not there's more to come I believe this game is actually getting a DLC on the 18th of December so I'll probably make a video on that as I did enjoy it quite a bit moving right along to our next spot however we have lies of PE a bit of a sleeper hit Souls like based Loosely on the Fable if you will of Pinocchio where we play a puppet going around the island of crot which is suffering from both a plague and an outbreak of Puppets attacking everyone which we naturally get involved in in typically Souls like combat that is remarkably well done and any ways you could confuse this game with any other from software game which gave the genre its namesake but what I personally enjoyed about it the most was the weapon crafting if you will where you can take any weapon which is divided up into blades and handles and mix and match them to create combinations of weapons and attacks that you might not have thought of while also using a few different items to change the stat scaling of any individual weapon to tailor it to a particular build as well and while the game can run into typical problems of the genre issues with the camera lock on things like that it was otherwise a genuinely great game that I had a ton of fun with even if it was a bit linear all in all they really managed to capture the essence of what made games like Dark Souls what they are with that slow methodical approach if you want or something a little more light and fast so there's a bunch of ways to build a character and move through a bizarre world and if the teaser at the end of the game is anything to go by we might see more of this universe yet which does bring us to our third entry though and this one is aliens Dark Descent a realtime trpg which already makes it a bit of a rarity that I think managed to really capture the stress and anxiety of someone in the situation of having to deal with the aliens of the aliens franchise that the movies especially are so well known for and as you fight off an infestation of these things the game mechanics both in terms of taking care of your Marines who have to actually fight these things dealing with their own psychological traumas on top of of the more oppressive and ever evolving situation in terms of actually fighting them on the ground as in missions the more you engage with them the more you rile up the hive and the more they come after you a bit more aggressively each time puts a lot of pressure on you as a player to accomplish objectives while at the same time trying to minimize your contact with these things which can be done in a variety of ways and it leads to a system that is both unique among its genre while at the same time staying true to the franchise as a whole in a way that I just really wasn't expecting a game like this to be able to do which was probably the most surprising thing about it and in many ways this game I would say accomplishes things that I wanted from the only other really real time with pause trpg of recent note which was the doof field Chronicle and while that's a very different game overall it's real time with pause system and its erpg setting just didn't quite manage to provide a significant amount of challenge Etc so it was nice to see a game actually get that feedback loop just right which is why I liked Dark Descent so much but that brings us to number two with what may be a surprising entry for some people which is Warhammer 40K Rogue Traer if you watch this Channel at all you know I love a good crpg alcat have made one of my favorites as well Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous so another crpg from people who have made one of my favorites seems like a no-brainer and in many ways I think they delivered on that now it does have the typical Hallmark issues I think there's a variety of minor bugs that might bother you but but beyond that if you like Warhammer 40K and you like crpgs I think Rogue Trader is fantastic I also think simply the concept of a rogue Trader in that Universe makes for a really great setup to what a crpg could be about anyway so between all the options for character building the different story paths via your convictions options alongside combat that I think is really enjoyable utilizing a momentum system that I'll can't came up with that I liked quite a bit even if it is a bit slow at times due due to the number of enemies there is a ton about this game to enjoy so what's it doing in the number two spot well if I may offer some speculation and that's what this is speculation I have no idea this is just personal thoughts that I had whilst playing which is that I think Games Workshop may have sort of sandbagged them a little bit with what they were allowed to do here because we see characters like arenta our sister of battle compion that despite it being a crpg you can't romance there's no option to see her go down a dark path and perhaps fall into a different way of being that I think would have made a ton of sense for a crpg and that's just one example of many of those situations and given that when they first started doing the alpha and beta and stuff it did kind of seem like they were headed in that direction where you could at least like romance characters like arenta it did seem like they kind of pulled back from that all of the sudden like a couple months from release but if I had to pinpoint any particular reason I would say this is in the number two spot that would be why which does however bring us to our number one spot which is maybe shockingly for some people actually octopath traveler 2 a jrpg from the beginning of the year roughly and of course a followup to the much beloved octopath traveler I obviously loved the second entry here I thought it was great and I think a lot of that is truth be told a little bit of nostalgia I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this on the channel but many of the first games I ever completed were actually some of the Final Fantasy titles so I've always enjoyed games of that type even if I don't cover them a ton on the channel usually because they don't come to PC which is my platform of preference so I was pretty excited to see this one actually launch on PC and I was not disappointed at all I think octopath traveler 2 in many ways modernizes a lot of those systems that you saw from games like that of yester year that I myself grew up playing quite a few of and combined with a world that's fun to explore combat that is pretty engaging with its lock system system and breaking them down to weaken enemies the very sort of iconic HD 2D graphic setup that they've been pioneering that I think honestly looks great I love a good bit of pixel art and the simple fact that the game ran flawlessly day one which this year is honestly a bit of an underrated feature all make for a game that I really loved from start to finish and while much like any game it's certainly not for everyone I had a blast with it and I think this game deserves infinitely more praise than it wound up getting as it was a tremendous this title really my only complaint personally was that some of the pacing for the story missions could be off a little bit in terms of levels at times but that's going to come down to how you approach and play the game so if you like jrpgs at all you should absolutely play this one which is what it's doing at the top of my list discounting of course bg3 but that is pretty much going to do it for this video so I certainly hope you enjoyed it I know I certainly enjoyed playing these games and reviewing them for you this year and it's always fun to share which ones I enjoy enjoyed the most but with that exact thing in mind do remember that I will be ranking every game I reviewed this year here in probably a week or so which will include everything from new and old which will be a little shy of 60 titles I believe like 57 or 58 I think but in the meantime don't forget to like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz let me know down below how you felt about any of these titles what were your favorite games of this year as it was a tremendous year for game releases but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing [Music] day

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 93,509

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, 2023 game awards, best games of 2023, best game, best game awards, baldurs gate 3, bg3, phantom liberty, cyberpunk, aliens dark descent, sea of stars, lies of p, game award nominees, the game awards 2023, best games on PC, PC gaming, octopath traveller 2, jagged alliance 3

Id: UVITOSeNoiU

Length: 10min 48sec (648 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 12 2023