Context: I beat Final Fantasy II tonight.

Now if only I could find a new job… Or consistent commissions, haha

I am not sure who they were responding to originally, so if the OP said that, then yes, that's a bad take. I was responding solely to Cat's point where that detail was missing. But yes, it has been a fantastic year. Something for everyone. Arguably too many somethings... XD But it's a good problem!

Thanks for the recommendations! I'd love to get to all of them eventually for sure. There's more games than I have time for, but it's a good problem to have, so hopefully I find the time sooner rather than later. :)

To clarify: It's still melancholic, but like... I guess you could call it a whimsical melancholy. Anyways, I really appreciated the pace of it and the general vibe. Characters were really charming too! And I'm someone who's never really "got" the cozy game thing, so this felt like an a-ha moment.

I pre-ordered Ryza DX. :) So it's more complicated than "my first Atelier," but that is true. I got it because @gene.meme (just realized I need to follow here!) compared to Xenoblade. It was just the right type of cozy to counter the melancholy I typically go for. Perfect morning coffee game!

For me, it's a toss up between Silksong and Atelier Yumia not because of some illusory objective measure, but because both games provided an experience that taught me something about myself and why I enjoy games. Maybe Oblivion did that for the person who said it was their GotY...

Everybody has different opinions. That's the beauty of being individuals. If that is this person's game of the year, who cares? It doesn't make your life worse in any meaningful way, nor does it invalidate your opinion on what your favourite game was this year. Live and let live.

Jokes aside, I might actually say PS3 if I was being pragmatic. I think the poly counts allowed by the HD era allowing for more detailed meshes is nice. The problem is corpos became too fixated on graphics. You can make the case they've stagnated since 2013 or so. It's been diminishing returns since

Ha, ha. I'm not saying I don't enjoy nice graphics. I just dislike the cost of them (in terms of resource allocation). Most (but not all) of my favourite games are not the most graphically impressive games. But they don't need to be when they have such strong art direction and atmosphere.

One thing I dislike is how much of the focus tends to be on body part fetishes. I recognize that I'm to blame for this with how I chose to draw the characters, or what niches I chose to appeal to. But the issue, as with everything in this thread, is that it runs counter to what I want to focus on.

Where does this leave Babs and her crew? I don't know. Maybe I get bored of this exploration and go back to them. But while designing those characters/expressions is fun, world-building feels like work. I should be the project's biggest fan, but my overall feelings about it are lukewarm.