Games I'm Looking Forward to in 2023

This is a big damn year for games! Too many to write about so there's barely an intro, let's talk about the excitement!

One other note: every game here has a confirmed release date or is releasing before "Q4" which can lead into 2024. So no FF7R Part 2 and stuff like that.

Okay here we go!

Fire Emblem Engage

There's no dating, Lyn is in it, it's very colorful looking, Lyn is in it, the strategic aspects look to be improved from Three Houses, Lyn is in it, oh and also Lyn is in it.

I will suffer through the protagonist's hideous design for Lyn, that is how much I stan her.

For real though I hope this game is at least mechanically good because Three Houses really disappointed me, lol.

Forspoken

I don't care what anyone says. I think this game will be a heck of a lot of fun. People act like most dialogue and plot in 90% of video games isn't already hot trash. If I wanted to be emotionally moved I'd turn to a book or movie or an album before a video game. A good plot has always been the cherry on top.

For me gameplay is king. And Forspoken is the Infamous 3 (yes, 3, we don't count Second Son) that i've wanted for years now. The demo was enough to convince me that it'll at least be worth trying out. Movement and combat were fun as hell, and there aren't enough mage protagonists in games.

Disgaea 7

Not much to say here. Disgaea 6 sucked but I'm hoping it was the move to a new engine holding it back. 7 already seems to be rectifying a lot of my issues, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Not gonna grab it day 1 but it'll be on my radar later into the year.

Theatrhythm: Final Bar Line

Also not much to say here, other than that I'm happy that Theatrhythm is back, so I don't have to drive 45 minutes to the nearest Round1 to play its arcade cabinet. I'm buying everything - the game, the DLC packs, whatever. Regardless of my feelings on the company nowadays, the music from SQEX games is formative for me in a way that's hard to put into words. I will, in fact, press buttons to the beat of them.

Wild Hearts

I hate "Monster Hunter-killer" talk. It's as dumb as the "WoW-killer" stuff was back in the day. That's not what interests me about this game.

What does interest me is that Koei Tecmo is working on it, and those mfers know how to make a game feel good (see: below). And with no new Monster Hunter on the horizon (at least, that we know of), and the fact that I want more co-op games to play with the homies, I'm hoping to give this one a shot with them.

Like a Dragon: Ishin!

I honestly never thought we'd get this, so I'm very happy that we did. Yakuza is finally getting its flowers, y'all! Yeah!

From everything I heard, Ishin is a fantastic entry in the series, so I'm legit super excited. I've barely looked at gameplay - just put it in my hands now.

Octopath Traveler II

People were disappointed in the original. I'm not one of them, to be honest! It had a bunch of mechanical depth that I really enjoyed. That said, if it can fix the issues that people had with its predecessor, then I think this could be one of the best JRPGs of the year.

If nothing else, we're definitely getting another banger of an OST.

Dungeons of Aether

Dan "Totally Not a Furry" Fornace and the teams he's worked with have put out some bangers. Dungeons of Aether seems to continue that trend, a gorgeous looking exploration-based rogue-like with a narrative by Ian Flynn? Dice are involved? Sign me up folks.

Wanted: Dead

Wanted: Dead - Official Holiday Gameplay Trailer

I'm very happy that games seem to be taking a page from Yakuza as inspiration now. This has the same weird-ass vibes. It's def gonna be jank. It looks weird. Hopefully it's good, but if nothing else, it certainly looks interesting, so I'll take it.

The game explicitly positions itself as "a love letter to the 6th generation of games," so it knows exactly what it's doing, lol.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

I really liked the first game, so if this is more of that but better, then I'll take it. Respawn has never missed, so I'm hoping they're building on the foundations of the last game for something with more depth.

Still not happy about playing as a factory default white guy, but whatevs.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

YEAHHHHHH. YEAHHHHHH. LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO. YEAH YEA HYEA YEA YEAH YEAH YEAHHHHH

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

This game comes out in like 5 months and we've seen like, 3 minutes of gameplay. Despite that, it's one of my most anticipated games of the year. Zelda games always match the hype, regardless of their increasingly long development cycles. I don't think Tears of the Kingdom is gonna break that streak.

Street Fighter 6

After the beta, I'm extremely excited for SF6. It just feels fun, and mechanically has been the quickest I've ever gelled with a Street Fighter. Seeing as I pretty much exclusively stream Fighting Games, you'll be seeing me play a ton of this game when it officially releases.

Sea of Stars

If you told me the creators of The Messanger were going to make a Chrono Trigger-inspired JRPG a few years ago, I probably would have been like "oh...huh. Alright."

Now that I've seen it though, I don't want Sabotage to be making anything else. This game looks like it's the closest to recapturing the magic of CT than anything else in a long time (barring Chained Echoes, which came out of nowhere for me). In a year literally stuffed to the brim with big releases, SoS is definitely standing out.

Okay phew! That's everything on my list. What are you excited for this year? Let me know!