Between Baldur's Gate 3's reception deservedly snowballing into an award-sweeping phenomenon and Phantom Liberty bringing a fresh dose of sci-fi spying to Cyberpunk 2077, one of the oldest and often the very nerdiest gaming genres has had a truly impressive year. Whether your personal preference leans more towards swords and sorcery or hot hacking action, both games somehow make marrying immersive narratives with tech-pushing graphical splendour look easy. Either one could easily devour every last minute of someone's free time all by themselves…
Which is a bit of a problem, as even away from the triple-A spotlight RPGs have been having one of their best years ever.
2023 has seen the genre generously throw out delicious stat-filled treats in every obscure niche, while reminding us that great RPGs don't necessarily need to be industrial strength budget-busting attention hoovers to be worth dedicating our evenings and weekends to. There just aren't enough hours in the day to play them all.
It's odd that one of the big publishers of not-so-big RPGs this year was Square Enix, a company that's long made a habit of throwing Bahamut-sized bags of money at its flagship RPGs. Although us PC gamers may still be twiddling our thumbs and wondering where the heck Final Fantasy 16 is, the Japanese publisher has still given us a great range of smaller—but definitely not lesser—games to keep ourselves busy with. This year's selection actually reminded me of its unstoppable PlayStation days, back when for every chart-topping Final Fantasy there seemed to be something a little more unusual and interesting launching at the same time.
Between Octopath Traveller 2, Star Ocean Second Story R, and Live A Live, we've gotten three different modern takes on roleplaying's past, the first trying to bring an idealised slice of the '90s into the 21st century and the latter two bringing actual '90s games up to 2023 standards. They're all delivered via charming pixel art / 3D hybrid styles that evoke the days of battery saves and chunky cartridges without forgetting that those days happened almost three decades ago (I'm sorry for scaring you like that, fellow millennials).
