Anson Chan's Top 5 Games of 2023

Between the many releases on Xbox Game Pass and the naturally crowded holiday season, 2023 proved to be a very good year for games. Recency bias aside, it certainly felt like there were way too many games to play. Of course, a few stood out more than others, and for good reason.

Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name

Like a Dragon Gaiden is unquestionably one of my favorite games of the year. It can easily serve as a grand finale to Kiryu's storyline, combining all the best features of previous Yakuza games. An emotional story, tons of side content, fun combat mechanics, Like a Dragon Gaiden has it all.

Appropriately enough, not-Kiryu lives up to his legendary status in gameplay. The developers evidently wanted you to feel strong from the get-go, so your two fighting styles are incredibly satisfying to use.

The starting Agent style is particularly powerful against groups of weak enemies thanks to all the gadgets you get. While Agent might not be the most broken fighting style in the whole franchise, it'll definitely be the most memorable. The rocket shoes alone are a hilarious opening move to basically every fight.

There's a lot of side activities too, including Pocket Circuit, a coliseum with a mini-clan recruitment feature, half a dozen gambling minigames, and a typical array of side quests. Frankly, this makes it almost excessively easy to get sidetracked from the main story. Great if you like games that have a lot of variety, not so great if you're a bit of a completionist.

Honkai: Star Rail

It's easy to see why Honkai: Star Rail took a well-deserved win in the mobile game of the year category at The Game Awards. The game is packed with so much stuff to do, mobile game or otherwise. The gameplay mechanics are reasonably deep as well, in spite of the limitations imposed by mobile devices. 

For starters, the playable characters may only have access to a small set of fixed skills, but there's a lot of characters and most of them have their niche. Even the free characters are reasonably competitive in endgame content.

It doesn't hurt that there's a lot of narrative content and most characters get to have their moment in the spotlight. Main story, side quests, companion quests, major update events, all of these do a fairly decent job at building up the world and the characters. 

You can't ignore the soundtrack or visuals either. What really steals the show is the world design. Depending on the area you're in, there's clear elements of high fantasy, standard sci-fi, even steampunk mixed together. 

My personal favorite aspect of Star Rail though has to be the decent balance of storytelling elements. As one would expect, the main story is mostly serious in nature. However, there's no particular feeling of urgency in the overarching narrative.

It helps the story feel like a bunch of friends going on an adventure (while coincidentally rescuing a couple of planets). Meanwhile, the side content helps with character development and world building, usually in a more lighthearted manner.

Lies of P

Lies of P is hands down one of the best Soulslike games available. That's not to say that other Soulslike don't have their own standout elements. Lies of P just happens to have a very good balance of every element that makes Soulslike games so fun. 

The difficulty is generally fair and the mechanics allow for some reasonably responsive parrying (albeit with a large learning curve). Naturally, no one would say that that is the most noteworthy mechanic in the game. It's just something that has to feel right.

What really elevates Lies of P over its competitors is the ability to make your own custom weapon. It opens up so many gameplay options beyond simply min-maxing a build for the highest possible damage on a spreadsheet. 

The normal enemy and boss designs are also very creative, though it sometimes begs the question of what totally normal society would insist on making some of these robots.

Reverse: 1999

While I can't say that I'm the biggest fan of gacha games, I'm willing to give Reverse: 1999 a pass because the game is just so pretty. The character designs are especially interesting as they tend to stay away from the typical tropes.

As an example, the chivalric knight character is apparently a possessed pair of gauntlets and a sword that floats around. Two characters are inspired by the Sputnik and Voyager space probes, the latter of which communicates almost exclusively via violin. Then there's a floating gentlemanly apple.

In addition, every character is fully voiced with lines in their native language or with accented English. Of course, the vast majority of the dialogue is in English, but it's a nice touch of authenticity. The player character is fully voiced too, so there's no emotionless self-insert protagonist that awkwardly shuffles from one plot point to another.

The story is fairly captivating as well. The premise is that there's a periodic natural disaster of sorts that basically reverses a point in time. This phenomenon essentially erases people from existence while causing all kinds of psychological effects.

Furthermore, magic and magic usage is a somewhat normal part of society, although magic users are a minority and seemingly discriminated against. Together, these two plot points drive a lot of the conflict in Reverse: 1999.

Hi-Fi Rush

It's probably not a controversial opinion to say that Hi-Fi Rush was among the most unique games of the year. Everything about Hi-Fi Rush felt fresh and exciting, as if someone had discovered a brand-new art form.

The concept of a rhythm-based beat 'em up was enough to catch my interest. That the developers managed to follow through on the concept so perfectly is nothing short of commendable. 

There are two aspects of Hi-Fi Rush that I particularly enjoyed. The first is the art direction. To say that Hi-Fi Rush was simply colorful is an understatement. Comparisons to comic books or cartoons are not enough to do it justice. Most importantly, the game was colorful without crossing the line into being overwhelming. 

The second noteworthy aspect was the sound design. This should sound like a no-brainer since Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm-based game, but the way the developers integrated the soundtrack into literally every aspect of the game is nothing short of amazing. Everything followed the beat, from the background to the UI to the QTEs, and it was all executed so beautifully.