Favorite and least favorite games you bought this year?

[Lizuka #BLM]

My favorites are quite handily Super Mario RPG and Resident Evil 4, both being remakes of games I've absolutely loved for years that each do well by the original, RE4 by taking it in a new direction that feels very fresh and distinctly its own thing while clearly having a ton of respect for the original and SMRPG being a nostalgia-laden loving recreation of a game that's barely been acknowledged since its original release. Very different approaches to remakes but I think both knocked it out of the park in terms of what they were trying to do.

Shout out also to Process of Elimination, which I really dug after buying it pretty much on a whim despite the fact I found the actual gameplay parts of it rather annoying, especially in chapter 4 when they have you having to stealth around invisible enemies. Did an excellent job of scratching the Danganronpa itch that Rain Code really didn't (though I did on the whole like Rain Code) while also clearly being its own thing, really dug it.

Also it's only kinda-sorta its own game but nod to Future Redeemed too. I had a lot of hesitation about the idea of doing a prequel to 3 and really did not give a shit at all about the backstory of the city or the Founders (and indeed I'm actually like really sick of OMGBUTTHELORE storytelling, move your damn plots forward), but I think it does a great job of telling a solid story in its own right and despite being a prequel feeling like it ultimately gives 3 a much more conclusive and satisfying ending than the more open-ended and unsatisfying one of the main game. If I have any real complaints they're just that the game hits its climax very abruptly and compared to the other protagonists in this series Nikol and Glimmer feel pretty half-baked and uninteresting, but I still really dug it a lot on the whole.

Least favorites... I do think of the 2023 releases I bought quite plainly the worst game of the lot was AEW: Fight Forever, but I also essentially got it on a whim and while I regret wasting the money I didn't have super high expectations of it to begin with. Given that I kind of have more distaste for Fire Emblem Engage and Tears of the Kingdom, both of which I could have seen myself liking a lot despite some trepidation over the preview materials only for both to end up being massively underwhelming for me to where I eventually just decided to slam on the gas to the end to get them over with. I can't really think of any single thing I think either of them does better than the game before them so they're both kind of sore spots for me, though of the two I think I miiiight be able to warm more up to TotK if I revisit it, since it'd only been a couple of months since I'd played BotW and that probably didn't help with fatigue setting in while Engage I just can't escape the feeling of, "This is Fates but way worse," when I already like Fates a lot less than Awakening and Three Houses to begin with. Soooo glad I decided to wait to buy Engage's DLC because it would have been a waste of money, at a point I stopped even bothering with doing sidequests, watching supports, or particularly paying attention to cutscenes.

[Powerline]

To be honest most of what I played was on Game Pass until I took a long hiatus and ended up recently selling my Series X for a Steam Deck OLED (arriving tomorrow). So keep that in mind as I write this.

Pizza Tower for me was my GotY. It took me a few tries to "get" into the groove of it and I had to change a couple things (specifically, having a button for the charge jump; for me holding down mid-spring wasn't reliable as I'd just "drop" my charge half the time). But once it sticks, even if it's a small combo or a flawed one, it's addictive. It's the most fun I've had in a 2D platformer since I can't even remember.

I didn't purchase any game I'd consider truly "bad", but being a gigantic Advance Wars fan, the Re-Boot Camp was a little too rough for me to truly fall for it like I expected. I bought that thinking I'd binge that so hard I'd still be putting hours into it before Tears of the Kingdom dropped a couple weeks later. Within 3-4 days I was practically BEGGING for TotK to come out (which, side note, was great too but not my GotY and I would definitely not put it over BotW). It felt like a 3DS version of the GBA games and was just missing a ton of the style to it. I know it was kept in the freezer due to the Ukraine/Russia conflict, but it's clear they went into it with a "just to do one" mentality. Nintendo keeps getting disappointed by the sales of the AW games, but this felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy of them half-assing a remake (not a "re-boot" or remaster, new content is almost nil aside from a very tacked-on online mode) and then being disappointed when the numbers follow suit. If you can get it for a discount, by all means. Advance Wars is a fun franchise, but $60 for what this ended up being was a major letdown.

[Cyno]

The only released-in-2023 games I played this year as far as I remember were Honkai Star Rail and Theatrhythm Final Bar Line: a Final Fantasy rhythm action game with an absurdly big song list. FBL is a simple but really fun game. And HSR is really good.

[Soultastic]

Not new games but my favorite game that I bought this year has to be One Piece Pirate Warriors 4. I skipped the first three and I'm glad because this one kicks ass.

Least favorite has to be the Switch port of Jedi Academy. Holy shit do the controls not translate well.

[Mozenrath]

I got both Shredder's Revenge and the Scott Pilgrim game this year.

Like, look, the Scott Pilgrim game can be a fun time, I enjoyed it back in the day, but this was the least charitable thing I could ever do to it, playing it around the same time as Shredder's Revenge. It made Scott's already long levels and relatively slow beat 'em up gameplay seem absolutely glacial and basic.

I got it on sale, so I am not too upset, but it's a bit sad.

[EvenBaldobombHasAJob]

Octopath Traveller 2 and Blasphemous 2. The Last Faith gets an honourable mention.

[Denny Zen is Cooking™]

I really enjoyed Tactics Ogre: Reborn on Switch, which wound up being my most played game of the year. I agree with the OP, and thought that the Super Mario RPG remake was outstanding as well. Although I felt like its launch was bungled pretty badly, and I probably overpaid for it, I ended up really enjoying and playing a lot of Super Mega Baseball 4 after the kinks were worked out, too. 

The most disappointing game for me, by an order of magnitude, was Sea of Stars. I was extremely excited for that game as an old school RPG fan, and my hype was amplified by all of the positive reviews it was getting. Then I played it and it was just...extremely boring and had a bland plot that never really clicked with me. I ended up not finishing it. I know both games get compared to one another a lot, and both have their ardent supporters and detractors, but I really preferred Chained Echoes. 

(Dis)honorable mention to Aspyr's Switch port of KOTOR 2. I really loved the Switch port of the original KOTOR and was pretty excited for KOTOR 2, then Aspyr just completely bungled the launch and never made the cut content DLC available, which was one of the major draws of buying a 20-year-old PC game with a robust modding scene on console at all. It's still pretty decently fun to play on the go, I guess, but I was really disappointed by the DLC debacle. 

[schizo]

Mario RPG remake, Mortal Kombat 1, Mario Wonder, and RE4. All fantastic games imo

[Celexa Bliss 54]

I bought two games this year, Super Mario Wonder and AEW Fight Forever. I hate to say it, but Fight Forever is pretty bad. Wonder, however, is a (pun intended) wonderful gaming experience. This is the first game I've played in a while where as I was playing it, I was looking at the level designs and thinking, "this is fun". Like, by nature, games are supposed to be fun, but this was a different experience than I'm used to. It's just an absolute joy and a very creative game.

[The Ichi]

Best - Tears of the Kingdom
Worst - AEW Fight Forever

[Duke Cameron]

I’ve enjoyed pretty much every game I’ve played this year. Disney Dreamlight Valley, Marvel's Midnight Suns, Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Venba, etc.

[EvenBaldobombHasAJob]

late addition to my earlier list, Street Fighter 6 kicks all kinds of ass.

[The Summer of Muskrat XVII]

Might have to give the title of "Favourite" to Super Mario Wonder over Tears of the Kingdom. TotK is the better overall game, but Mario Wonder managed to capture a sense of (no pun intended) wonder and joy that I haven't felt in video games in quite awhile. I really, really love that game. I generally flip flop between SMB 3 and SMW being my favourite Mario game, so you can definitely see why Wonder really hit it out of the park with me.

Least favourite? Probably AEW. I didn't buy a tonne of games this year, and off the top of my head AEW Fight Forever was the least favourite of what I bought. If the career mode hadn't been such a slog to get through, this would've appealed way more to me. The actual in ring game play I found really satisfying, but I generally play by myself so basically everything else was very "Meh" to me. If the career mode had been really fun and engaging, I'd have probably spent more time with the game but I played it through once, and that was about it. I still haven't used any of the Season 1 DLC I bought, haven't played Stadium Stampede mode, I just lost interest in the game. Too bad, because the framework was there for a good game.

[chronocross]

Favorite: Super Mario RPG Remake
Least Favorite: Final Fantasy 16, just couldn't get into it.

[doomish]

My favorites were Super Mario Wonder, Super Mario RPG Remake, and Star Ocean: The Second Story R.

Least favorites were Final Fantasy 16, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, AEW: Fight Forever, and Spider-Man 2.

[Raskovnik]

Favorite: Either Phantom Liberty or RE4. Absolutely love both. Paranormasight is also a game I want to give a special shoutout to, was so pleasantly surprised by it despite it having such a godawful title that I think it hamstrung the game's chances of being successful. Also, not exactly a 2023 release, but I had the time of my life with Nioh 2. I also really enjoyed Super Mario Wonder but it didn't quite feel like a Mario game and, for me at least, doesn't really have the replayability that a lot of Mario games tend to. I got a lot of WarioWare vibes from it more than anything, which isn't a bad thing. Tons of moments where you have to figure out what the gimmick is on the fly, and the levels are (perhaps a little too) bite-sized.

Least favorite: Tears of the Kingdom. Different strokes for different folks, and the game sold a gorillion copies and got 10/10 reviews so my 2 cents isn't worth much, just thought the game was shockingly empty, ran poorly, and was deeply uninterested in basically every facet of the game. Combat means nothing and is literally exactly what it was in 2017, exploration means nothing because there's nothing to find besides like fruit and shit. One of those games where I think it's being carried by the franchise's legacy, and being the biggest exclusive on a console that's on its way out. Just my opinion but I have a pet theory that the game wouldn't really set the world on fire if hypothetically the exact same game was a multiplatform release with a title like "Bobby's Grand Adventure 2." I was actually kind of looking forward to it because it spent so long in the oven and they had the audacity to charge $70 for it for...reasons, so I thought maybe something was up and they had something really special up their sleeve, but nah, I just kinda got bamboozled. Also agreed with OP on Fire Emblem Engage on literally every count. Just f***ing dire.

Honorable mention: Just for fun I've been taking the thread title seriously and only included titles that I myself purchased, but a friend got me Baldur's Gate 3 as a "get well soon" gift after I dislocated my knee leaving my completely laid up, and that was my constant companion as I learned how to walk properly again, so that was cool. Also kind of funny that it was a $60 release compared to some games but what can you do!

[Hurbster]

Most of my stuff is on Game Pass but of what I bought it has to be Baldurs Gate 3, with Alan Wake 2 just behind. I have not bought anything I didn't like.

[ace]

I loved the Robocop game and I don’t care who knows it

[Dr. T is an alien]

I didn’t buy a lot of games this year, but I’ve enjoyed the ones I did buy. I guess Dragonball Fighters is fairly mundane though.

[Giul T.]

For 2023 I think I must have bought like 4 new games and a but-ton of retro games, so in saying that

Least Favorite game I bought was Phix the Adventure for PS1, I love looking for underlooked retro games but there was a reason this was not featured as much, a 3D platform with a broken magnetization gimmick that gives Bubsy 3D a run for worst 3D platformer

Most disappointing is definitely Fight Forever, but I enjoyed what little time I did spend on it so I can't give it worst/least Favorite.

Favorite game, I think I'll split between my retro favorite, being Ape Escape, because wow, you can see why that became a franchise, and Peglin, which is really damn good mix of Peggle and RPG. Shout out to F-Zero 99 which was free but also my jam as well.