Ashley’s top 5 Games of 2023
Welcome, one and all, to my second annual Top Five games of the year post! This year I’m going to be talking about some of the most innovative indie roguelikes of 2019 as well as the world’s favourite new RPG and one of my favourite games to come out in over a decade. This was an excellent year for games: Tears of the Kingdom, Pikmin 4, Alan Wake 2, the Cyberpunk: 2077 DLC, Dave the Diver, Rogue Legacy 2, and Insomniac’s Spiderman 2 all released this year, which was good for me since I spent most of my time between sporadic composing gigs and my part-time job playing video games (and going to DnD nights at a local pub). As usual, I’m several years behind the curve so I haven’t played any of the titles listed above: there’s only one new release on the following list. I’m aiming to play as many games as possible in the first half of 2024 before I begin my doctorate, so hopefully I’ll hit at least a few of these titles.
5. Pokemon: Violet and Scarlet
I hadn’t played a pokemon game for almost three years when a friend recommended the latest generation to me, and I must confess I had a lot of fun with Violet. It’s a buggy, poorly optimized mess that runs and looks worse than an amateur DS port, but it lets you run around and catch little pokemon in a large, open environment with some cool traversal options. Hewing much closer to the traditional Pokemon formula than its predecessor Pokemon: Legends Arceus, SV keeps the latter’s open world and limited traversal to great effect, giving you a sick-ass motorcycle pokemon that’s a blast to ride around on. Game Freak have also added a ton of quality- of-life improvements, so training a pokemon up to level 100 and giving it optimized stats is much less of a pain in the ass than it had been previously. SV also has probably the best story out of any Pokemon game to date: it’s nothing impressive, but effort has been made to actually give the game a plot and characters. I can’t recommend this game to anyone in good conscience – in my opinion, it’s not worth the 80 dollars – but I had fun revisiting the franchise that got me into video games, and it narrowly edges out Starfield by virtue of being actually enjoyable and having meaningful objectives.
4. Cyberpunk: 2077
Rare is the open-world shooter RPG where I pay more attention to the cutscenes than the gameplay. I first played Cyberpunk in the spring of this year, after it had been mostly patched to completion but prior to the release of its 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty DLC. The character animations in Cyberpunk are some of the best in the business, with many characters giving nuanced gestures that actually make you feel like you’re speaking to a real person. Keanu Reeves’ performance as Johnny Silverhand is fantastic, and Jason Hightower’s portrayal of Jackie is so convincing that his death at the beginning of the first act feels genuinely devastating. The quality of Cyberpunk’s writing and acting are so far above that of its other elements that to even speak of them risks detracting from what is, I feel, an excellent game, but I would be remiss as a critic if I didn’t do so. Outside of its story, Cyberpunk is a decent Grand Theft Auto reskin with clunky shooting, movement, and driving. All of the worst aspects of The Witcher 3 – the copy-and-paste quests, the stiff controls, the arcane yet unsatisfying progression systems – are present here, and they do the good parts of the game no favours. Even worse, the recent 2.0 update and accompanying DLC made the baffling decision to tie gun accuracy to stamina, rendering what is ostensibly supposed to be a high-octane action shooter a total slog. I found myself avoiding combat in this version of Cyberpunk as much as possible just so that I wouldn’t have to spend another five minutes awkwardly managing my gun’s recoil and stamina consumption. The fact that these elements can be mitigated later on through perks and higher-quality gear does the game no favours: I shouldn’t have to spend dozens of hours leveling my character just to have fun in a video game.
Overall, Cyberpunk: 2077 is one of the few games of its type where I recommend playing on the easiest difficulty to skip as much of the gameplay as possible to get to the good parts where you watch another character speak. It’s one of the better collections of movies I’ve seen this year, and CD Projekt Red’s dedication to making it functional has assured it a spot on this list.
3. Risk of Rain 2
I got deep into roguelikes this year, having picked up Inscryption, Slay the Spire, Gunfire: Reborn, and, yes, Risk of Rain 2. This game represents the purest form of video game in which you control a little guy who runs around shooting aliens. The gameplay is well-tuned and appropriately challenging, the playable characters are each unique, and the music is phenomenal. Things get more intense the further you are into a run, with repeated loops through the game’s cyclical progression ascending from Space Invaders in 3D to a CPU-melting phantasmagoria in which your hyper-powered little fella dodges and weaves among swathes of enemy creatures. It’s punishing, fast-paced, eminently replayable, and easily the best action experience I’ve had all year. My only gripe with this game is that sometimes I can’t find the portal to exit the level because my eyes are going bad from playing computer games all the time, but I highly recommend Risk of Rain 2 to any fellow geezers who like to run around and fight aliens.
2. Monster Hunter: Rise
It’s got big swords; it’s got big monsters; it’s got big monsters that you hit with swords; it’s got cute cats and dogs; it’s got high fashion. Monster Hunter: Rise truly has it all. I’m a newcomer to the Monster Hunter franchise, having only played Monster Hunter 3 on the Wii for about twenty minutes before bouncing off, but I became totally addicted to Rise’s fluid combat and emphasis on movement and quality of life. The plodding and methodical mechanics that threw me off previous games are smoothed over quite dramatically, and the addition of new movement options makes the fights incredibly dynamic. Months after having last played Rise, I still remember the satisfaction of evading a monster’s attacks by dodging or grappling away, and of landing a hit on a Nargacuga’s noggin after perfectly executing a combo from one of the game’s thirteen weapons. The monsters themselves are numerous and varied enough to stay fresh for hundreds of hours, and there’s no feeling like that of mastering each new monster fight the game throws at you. I only got tired of this game after about two hundred hours, when the DLC turns into a grind that all but the most hardcore fans can stomach, but the sheer variety and dynamism of the game up to that point is exceptional.
I can’t talk about Rise without mentioning the cute pets. You can hire cats and dogs as companions for your adventures, each with deep customization options and branching progression systems. One of the best things about fighting a new monster is looking at all the new outfits you can put on your companions – once you get the ability to wear cosmetic armor over your utility pieces, the game becomes a spectacular fashion show. There’s a vague gesture in the direction of a story and a horde mode that I mostly avoided, but the core of this game – whacking monsters with a big sword, jumping around and navigating each weapon’s deep combo system, learning the quirks and attack patterns of dozens of different monsters – makes Monster Hunter: Rise easily my favourite entry in the series.
1. Baldur’s Gate 3
I must confess that I’m somewhat unsettled by the success of Baldur’s Gate 3. I already had a love-hate relationship with Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns all my hobbies, and making a mega-budget video game to BG3’s level of popular and critical acclaim bodes poorly for indie studios who will inevitably be left to scrabble over the resources left after everything else is sucked up by these massive games. Moreover, Baldur’s Gate 3’s advanced hardware requirements herald a continued push towards greater graphical fidelity and massive, hyper-detailed worlds at the expense of the consumer, and I don’t think it’s good for gaming, people who make games, or our planet for AAA titles to push the limits of casual computing to this extreme. Overall, my love for this game exists in tension with my awareness of the cynicism of those who are ultimately responsible for it: executives at Hasbro who will certainly take advantage of its success and shovel out tons more games based on their properties, not all of which will be good.
It is with some trepidation, then, that I announce Baldur’s Gate 3 as my top game of 2023. No game has made this profound an impact on me since Mass Effect 2, and I can confidently assert that BG3 honours the legacy of its predecessors as well as computer RPGs in general. The gameplay is masterfully adapted from the Fifth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons, with several good changes and a few brilliant ones which make the . Each combat encounter in BG3 is skilfully crafted: the fights are weighty and challenging, often presenting myriad tactical options through clever level design and the game’s extremely flexible mechanics. Movement and positioning are as crucial to success as hitting things with swords, and the enemy AI can be truly wily in its best moments. The static shin-kicking that often occurs in D&D has been combined with Larian’s secret sauce for an outstanding gameplay experience which rivals that of the best CRPGs out there. BG3 also presents a masterfully realized world crammed with detail. Exploration always yields useful items, story beats, hidden passages, or all three – even after four hundred hours and nearly a dozen playthroughs, I still discover something new every time I play.
Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t all swords and spells, though. There are hundreds of hours of cutscenes and dialogue in this game, most of which is solid and some of which is truly excellent. Some of BG3’s best moments arise from tense negotiations between various competing factions: I will never forget my first time visiting the Githyanki stronghold and needing to decide between appeasing Lae’zel, one of the game’s ten recruitable companions, and keeping my hands on an artefact crucial to my survival. Some dialogue choices can well and truly kill you on the spot in what feels like a nod to choose-your-own-adventure novels, Fallout 1 and 2, or, well, a D&D campaign. Where BG3’s story truly shines, though, is in the companions. Wyll, Gale, Karlach, Lae’zel, Shadowheart, and Astarion each have thoughtfully written branching subplots, and while each of these has its highlights, there are a few standouts. Helping Karlach come to terms with her impending death, helping Lae’zel free her oppressed people and seeing her learn to be emotionally vulnerable, and Astarion’s revenge quest-cum-trauma healing journey were my personal favourites. The voice acting is easily one of the game’s strongest aspects, with each line of dialogue among thousands passionately realized. Amelia Tyler is a phenomenal narrator, voicing the game’s intangible dungeon master with nuance and flair, and while each of the main cast have done admirable work inhabiting their characters, Neil Newbon’s performance as Astarion is outstanding. The foppish vampire elf is portrayed with incredible sensitivity, evoking seething rage against his abuser as well as his guilt for his role in the abuse of others.
BG3 is, at its core, a game about trauma and abuse, about what happens to us when the people who purport to love us intentionally hurt us in lasting ways. It’s about finding ways to overcome whatever aspects of that trauma we can, and about making peace with the parts of us that are irrevocably changed by the hurt inflicted upon us. It’s about learning to trust a friendly face again, about the ways our defenses honed through a lifetime of pain prevent us from connecting with one another. It’s about the temptation of power – how the relentless pursuit of power consumes us and twists us into monstrous forms, how it renders us of the same stuff as that which oppresses and traumatizes us, and how bonds of friendship and love are not just useful but necessary in overcoming that evil. It’s a grand adventure, at home among the most epic tabletop campaigns. It’s a lovingly rendered, intricately detailed world which yields new surprises after hundreds of hours of play. It's a fantastic translation of a beloved RPG system in video game form. And, best of all, it’s a deeply enjoyable and intensely satisfying experience which I hope to revisit many times over.
Onward and Upward
2023 was a rough year for me. It contained a lot of post-grad-school angst and recovery from burnout, much of which involved getting treatment for my various mental illnesses. The fact that I made it through is a testament to the support of my family and friends, and the stories which I latched onto to process my various difficulties. One activity that’s been an enormous help to me has been making up RPG characters for play in my local D&D Adventurer’s League: I’ve found the process of sectioning off aspects of my damage into separate personalities, characters who learn and grow, to be immensely cathartic in a way that only my brief forays into family systems therapy can match. One thing that I’ve been seeing repeated by fans of Baldur’s Gate 3 on the internet is that, through the game, they’ve partaken in this act of storymaking as well. It brings me immense joy to know that a mere video game could elicit such a human reaction as making up stories to explain why and how we are.
The games that most impressed me this year were, first and foremost, stories: the story of reckoning with impending death in Night City, of journeying through wilderness and peril in search of a cure for a mind flayer tadpole, of mastering the art of monster hunting, of becoming skilled and powerful after being abandoned on a distant planet. Story is, to me, the most compelling part of any video game, whether it’s told through ludic interaction or a nuanced vocal performance. Story binds us together, unites us in communion with a shared past, present, and future; it allows for what could be instead of yielding to what is. In this aspect, video games become a vector of meaning-making, and I can’t say that I haven’t benefited from engaging with them as such. I’ve made great memories playing games alone and with friends, and I can’t wait to continue to do so in the coming year.