I would say that you are free to do what fits you the best. Most people use a dedicated post to keep track of all the games they finished this year and then make new posts specific to what they have been currently playing.

If you want you can reserve a post for your full listing and I will link it on the main page so you can always find it back and edit it later.

Just beat Samorost 1 for the second time in my life because it's finally found its way onto Steam, remastered and for free. At this point it's nothing to write home about, also due to its microscopic length (about 20 minutes at best) but hey, it's where this beautiful series started and its fans owe it to themselves to beat this one at least once.

I noticed I had not beaten a game in a while (been busy with other things and been reading books more the past couple months) so I booted up Daemon X Machina. That was mostly because I played the Scarlet Nexus demo and the visuals and audio reminded me of Daemon. So, my brother and I have this phenomenon we call Final Dungeon syndrome. It can also be called Last World/Final Boss/Final Level Paralysis. The point is you get to the end of a game, usually a final dungeon in an RPG and for whatever reason you cannot go on. Normally it's unexplainable, maybe you just tired of the game or felt the need to put it down for the time being and forgot to pick it up or whatever, another way it manifests is you get sick of the game's guts at the end. This game has an infamously stupidly hard boss that is not really so hard as it is frustrating how quickly things go south on you. It was so bad it was just about literally a year ago when I put this game down after playing it nearly nonstop for a week or more.

I love this game and yet that final level is so stupidly frustrating and emphasizes all of the game's shortcomings so thoroughly that it is impossible not to just hate on the game. After finally beating the big bad I feel a lot better about the game as a whole and while the last level is still a craterous low point the rest of the game is well worth playing. In addition, I beat literally every mission possible except the last boss and the stupid escort mission until earlier today. That was also a poorly designed mission. For the most part the missions are at least a little fair but many of them can be maddening, but almost in a good way. The Panzer Crown ambush on your convoy was just barely not as frustrating as the final gauntlet, for instance.

Enough of the bad, onto the good. This game is probably one of the best mecha games I have ever had the pleasure to play, mostly. Armored Core can be too slow and clunky with less great level design, Chrome Hounds is great but a little slow (and not back compat), and I have trouble getting into Another Century's Episode. That was all from From Software, a developer I actually don't like very much and who are overrated but this game shared some staff I understand with Armored Core. I love Gun Griffon and wish I could get Gun Griffon 2 to work and loved Mech Assault and would really like to play the second game some day. The Dreamcast 3D Gundam game is very interesting but odd to play. This is just my way of saying that this game is the most refined and fun mecha action game I ever played. The mechs are fast and highly mobile and pack can be equipped with a wide variety of bullet, laser, sword, beam, rocket, missile, and special weapons. Some of these suck really bad but others are great, the Reaper machine gun is a nice standard assault rifle to equip.

A really common complaint for this game is that the story is stupid or bad. I wish the last level was not so frustrating because then it would have been a more cohesive experience for me to recall. That said, it's one of the main things I like about it. I actually like how vague and bizarre it is. That's how it should be, lots of the better mecha anime have nonsense plots and this game is no exception to that and the reveal at the end of the game was really neat to me.

The sound track was great, I love the Hangar, Arms of Immortal, Overkill, Panzer Crown, Open Fire, Ice Cream (as well as the Ice Cream shop itself), and Battle Dance. It's all the good about Japanese made game soundtracks from the previous game wrapped into one and I listen to the tracks a good bit.

If you like any of the other games I mentioned (possibly more if you wanted something between Armored Core and Gun Griffon) then this would be a great one to add to the library. Then again, I'm pretty late to this party in spite of having pre-ordered it. I didn't get to it last year for no reason in particular but didn't finish it until today because of the final level.

I should probably say how I did it. I used healing extensively. I used a missile launcher, a Reaper assault rifle and the Habakiri sword. Using the sword was far and away the most effective while the guns were not very, also dashing was very necessary (once again, did not use it throughout the rest of the game). The canisters at the bottom of the level are way too cumbersome and slow to use to actually bother with so don't. Heal by landing in those little building like alcoves on the edges of the map but try not to have to heal if he is below half his health. I went all in with the sword at about half of his health and eventually did him in.
(Full disclosure, there is one free mission left but since it's a free mission I don't think it counts. I probably will do it before long anyway.)
(The above edit is no longer necessary, just beat the final free mission.)

I guess i should write reviews like everyone else... Of course, all these games are DRM-free.

Echida Wars DX

Weird entry into the beat'em-up genre, where the majority of enemy attacks are grapples, and dodging is primarily by jumping and crouching, rather than sidestepping. You can stun enemies, but there is a thing to prevent stun-locking by spamming attacks. The game is unfortunatley short with only 3 levels (2 stages + boss in each). Second stage in the second level needs massive amounts of optimization. I'm not really sure what's going on, there. Final boss is counter intuitive: almost all enemies in the game are way easier if you rush them and bail out right before an attack, but the final boss is far, far easier to kite. There's a nice littler free-play mode, as well, where you can add a large number of any combination of enemies in the game, except the 3 bosses. There's a unique "struggle" mechanic that isn't present in most games in that struggling doesn't necesarily free you, but merely changes the... uh... animation...

ミリア戦記

A pre-quel to Echidna Wars DX, and it's not as good. It's way shorter, and the main differences are found in the... uh.. animations... Unlike the other, this one is only available in Japanese.

SiNiSister

This one's hard to find if you don't know what you're looking for. Game is available DRM-free on dlsite and is indeed in english, there. I've not played dark souls, but the way people describe it, it seems like this game is a fair mix of Dark Souls with a strong Castlevania influence. You play as a warrior nun. You have limited arrows (until post-game), and you always attack with a sword. Most bosses can only be beaten with the arrows, however they're fairly easy to recover during boss battles. The arrow aiming mechanic is about timing and the arrows are affected by distance and gravity, making some situations particularly frustrating. There are alot of insta-kill mechanics, and it's largely grapling style attacks, here, as well. Your health meter doesn't exist, but isntead various degrees of your clothing falling off determines your health. Deaths are all pretty gruesome (nothing worse than Corpse Party) and usually put you back at the beginning of the current screen of the current map (this is a godsend, given the game's difficulty even on easy). The final area or 2 have some strange mechanics regarding how they handle you being captured, as the dungeon changes almost every time that happens (and hell if i know what the hell is going on), which is really, really counter-intuitive, and the inability to look this game up on google makes things worse.

海鮮わかさぎ丼

This is just a game where there are enemies covering a picture and you click adjacent colors of the same type at the same time to acrue power to whack a specific enemy. I'm still not sure how the mechanics on the right work, seeing as i accidentally skipped the tutorial. Easy game, though, and it's OK for a 1-dollar game. You don't need an english translation, given i just told you how to beat the game. It has a nice little timer, though to keep you moving.

天空の魔神とはじまりの聖女

This is a metroidvania, and it's only real selling point is it's adult content, and even that's not all that good or interesting. I kept going thinking there was alot to this game, but, unfortunately, it's really, really short. It's also available only ine Japanese.

Jet Set Radio. I came to this as one of those people who played the sequel first. There's a perspective that JSRF dumbed down certain things about the game, particularly the graffiti mechanics and the lack of a time limit, but I disagree. I think the sequel basically improved on the best parts of the first game and minimized its flaws. What I like about the games is the sense of speed and flow you get when you know the level well and are hopping from one rail to another very smoothly. Although you can definitely do that in this game, I had some trouble getting used to the controls and often managed to just barely miss a rail or not build enough speed for a sufficient jump.

I also wasn't crazy about the structure, how you might clear a level and then get challenged by a new character for a race or something, because the challenge levels are mandatory and they're literally making you do them right up until just before the final stage.

Like a lot of Sega games, particularly from this era, there's an emphasis on the game being relatively short and emphasizing replaying and mastering levels to improve your score/rating. I'm pretty lazy and just wanted to finish it, though. Beating levels often demands that you learn where things are and what might the best sequence for tagging. I did well on some levels and got some very mediocre scores on others, but I beat the final boss on my first try.

This probably sounds more negative than intended. I think it's a good game and has a great sense of style, with an original concept. I just think it's a bit rough around the edges.

Elex

Maybe a small hint for Gothic Veterans who still want to play Elex first... unlike in Gothic/Risen you want to join a faction asap, I had to learn this the hard way.

Story is okay. Won't win awards, but kept me going and was better than in Gothic 2 or Risen, didn't fell of at the end of the game either.

Character system is unfortunately rather weak. It has an interesting idea - instead of a Karma system like in other games that judges your actions by "good" and "bad" Elex has a coldness level - how far you are between a very cold machine and an emotional human being, not judging you by your morales but by your ability to have feelings. As you are playing a formerly elex-consuming Alb - the eponymous material gives its consumers fantastic powers but makes it to cold inhuman machines - you can consume elex drink to get your attributes to levels you couldn't reach otherwise (simply because at some point the cost for increasing attributes become insanely high) in exchange for humanity as those drinks raise you cold level; in reality the disadvantages of consuming elex drinks is so small that it's just the decision whether you want to exploit a half-baked game mechanic and just "buy" your attributes and skill points or not.

Like many games nowadays Elex has lots of different skills which I am not a fan of - usually the more skills there are the less they work together and in Elex it is the same, a lot of skills are just plain useless and - even worse - the ingame description of those is often plain wrong so you have to check a guide in the net before to learn what the skills actually do. This is completely unacceptable. The teacher system is a bit inferior to the teacher system in the Gothic games as well - while in Gothic there were specialized trainers and for a example a hunting trainer could teach only the aspects of hunting he truly mastered, a trainer in Elex can teach you all skills of his subject equally well, resulting in a loss of personality - at some point there is no point in having trainers anymore and one could just assign their skills via a menu. It's a minor point but one of the examples where PB failed to fully recreate the gothic "soul".

Game world is very good, exploring is a lot of fun and the jetpack adds to it. The world is not as good as the Gothic worlds, it's a bit too big and there could be a bit more to explore off the beaten path, but I had a lot of fun just walking around and exploring.

Fighting is not as bad as some reviews say, but it's not very good either. I'm not a fan of those stamina systems so I went ranged. However the game lacks interesting monsters, even late game monsters add not much interesting mechanisms but just more hp/armour/power etc.

Quests are another strong point of the game, while there are a few fetch quests there are also many great quests with interesting decisions and twists. A few quests seem unfinished to me - not exactly bland but at the end I had the impression that the end of some quests was half-baked or even just a placeholder.

Just like in Gothic there are various factions but unlike Gothic I never had the impression that those really matter. The factions system and their rivalities is just underdeveloped.

Overall I had a lot of fun despite the many weaknesses Elex has, it has a good atmosphere and is fun to explore and none of the weaknesses were a dealbraker for me, but it has lots of wasted potential due to some dubios design decisions and (I guess) lack of manpower and time. 3.5* I'd rank it behind Gothic 1/2, but it is better than Risen or Gothic 3 (which I admittedly could only stand for 15-20 minutes).

Carto

It was quite alright. I don't know, I guess I wanted to love it more than I actually did. The graphics are cute, the mostly silent heroine in particular is too, music and sound design are nice, the mechanics are original, but while the game tries to mix things up a little and come up with new puzzles - and it definitely has some great ideas and cool moments -, I still feel like it doesn't fully realize the potential of these mechanics, especially compared to its length (6-7 hours). Most puzzles are rather simple and when they become a little more complicated, figuring them out and executing the solution wasn't that much fun to me. What I liked least of all was returning to previous areas; I was more motivated to figure out new ones than to try and see what had changed in the old ones. That always come with the risk of overlooking things due to repetition, the fatigue of deja vu, and then it can get a bit frustrating for a short time, when you don't really understand what is expected of you, and you don't know which person you forgot to talk to a second time or so.

The game is also very linear and focused on (somewhat episodic) story-telling, but the story, while nice enough, didn't have much of an impact on me and won't leave a lasting impression, I fear. I often played one chapter per evening and although chapters are quite short, it always made me kind of sleepy. The last few chapters I played in one sitting, and that probably wasn't such a good idea, it's best played in sessions. I thought I was close to the ending and wanted to finish it and it made me feel like that game overstayed its welcome. I had bought the game also because I was thinking about showing it to the children, but I think they would have been bored by all the talking and what is being said. Don't get me wrong, story and writing aren't bad at all, but also not particularly exciting for kids, I think (and neither for most adults). Apart from that, despite the cute appearances, there were some scenes that I know the kids wouldn't have liked, like the heroine having to roast a live bird for dinner (it's all pretty cartoony, but still clashes a bit with the "aww, cute animals" vibe, especially for sensitive animal loving and vegetarian kids).

That being said, it's still a quite good and creative game. I just think it could have been better still. Maybe something more open and Zelda-like would have worked better for me, instead of a linear story-telling game. Or at least a more impactful and exciting story, instead of just a nice but ultimately forgettable one.

Kingdom Rush Origins

Great tower defense game, just like its two predecessors. Some of the post campaign elite levels felt a little weak (i.e. 2 of the 3 felt a bit rushed, but the other one which is a series of 3 levels is excellent), but the main campaign is of a very similar quality to that of the 1st two games. The addition of deployable hero powers is a very cool new addition, which will make it difficult to return to the earlier games. But even so, I'd still rate the 2nd game, Frontiers, as the best of the trilogy up to this point.
Now for a bit of a break, and then perhaps later in the year I'll check out the fourth game, Vengeance.

Bud Spencer & Terence Hill in Slaps and Beans. A pretty simple beat-em-up in which you control Hill and Spencer (both characters are always on-screen together and you can switch between them if you're doing single player) and brawl your way through various levels that strongly resemble some of their old hits. You start out in an Old West level inspired by the Trinity movies, then it's revealed that this was a movie set so you can transition to levels based on their modern-set movies like Watch Out, We're Mad!

I mostly had more fun controlling Bud because I felt like I had a better handle on how to discover his moves, but the combat is mostly easygoing and usually won't punish you for just button-mashing. It's a goofy game that wants you to laugh while you punch through hordes of goons rather than making you rage in frustration until you git gud. Even if you're having trouble, enemies frequently drop mugs of beer or pans full of beans that fully restore your health (and can then be used as weapons).

The pixel art is excellent - it's very "fine grained" and captures the characters well. They were trying to make the game look like the movies rather than going with something cartoony or abstract and succeeded. The sounds and music are basically taken directly from the films. There are unfortunately some bugs, mostly in cutscenes not triggering, which caused me to have to replay a couple of levels, which was frustrating but at least they worked the next time around. The game seems to have been abandoned by the developers, at least on PC (I think I read they just ported it to the Switch), so probably not much hope for it being further refined.

Damn, I am slipping. Since my last post I finished following games:

Control: Ultimate Edition
Great game with amazing audiovisual presentation. I enjoyed the gameplay a lot and the abilities were nice to use and looked just great. I had some issues with crashes and I found most of the mods you find uninspiring with boring % increases.
Overal 8,5/10

Mega Man 10
Old gameplay refined to its best. It was well-balanced and rarely was unfair. I think I liked it most of the whole series.
7/10

Project Snowblind
Very mediocre shooter. Nothing too off-putting but also no reason to pick it among all other games there are.
4,5/10

Painkiller: Black Edition
Quite decent FPS. It drags too much in some instances and there is nothing else to it than shooting things in arenas. Enemies varies a lot level to level and they are quite inbalanced. Mostly because the areas vary greatly and so it also offers very varied enemies. I barely got through some level only to brezze through following one as suddenly there was no hit-scan enemies anymore.
6/10

Legacy of Dorn: Herald of Oblivion
Warhmmer 40k CHYOA game. It is decent but without it’s theme I wouldn’t even look its way. Story is quite alright but the combat is not the best to say it politely. The choices in the game are not about finding th best solution with your gear and skills but most of them is either very bad one or the correct one and it is all about picking the right one to get forward. Still, it’s W40k. The game isn’t on sale anywhere anymore.
5,5/10

TRON 2.0
I knew very little about this game before I started to play it and it surprised as it was not bad at all. The visuals are unique and quite appealing but understandably bit monotonous and don’t make for various environment too much. Still I enjoyed them to decent degree. It has few weapons and yet one can easily beat the whole game with only 2 of them and of those the disc is clearly superior. It is quite fun and useful weapon, unless it decides to fly kilometeres away and not return. The game drags a little at some parts but nothing too substantial. Overall quite fun game and don’t regret playing it. Ending was bit silly though.
6,5/10

Turok
I did not like this one. Sure, it has cyborg dinosaurs with guns but that’s about it. It is for some reaosn focused heavily on precise platforming and I still hate it for it. Why, in FPS of this kind would they ever focus it on precise platforming? It is made even worse by the saving system (save only at designated places, about 2 per level) and was likely even worse in original version (I played the Night Dive re-release) with the very low view distance. There is a lot of weapons, but I would say too much of them as I ever got to use soem of them. Then there is ultimate weapon, one has to piece togetehr by finding secret in every single level and it is very powerful but it also holds only 3 shots and is obtained before very last combat so one doesn’t even get to use it. Also, the way it moves was making me almost nauseous. I was glad it is not that long and I could be done with it fairly quickly. It was still too long.
I don't hold the Night Dive re-release in high regard but I wouldn't ever get past level 1 if it wasn't for it as they added targeting reticle. Yes, this game, FPS that doesn't allow looking down the sights, didn't have any crosshair before and I saw people online defending it. Crazy.
3/10

Far Cry
Still decent. Not great but it was quite entertaining to play. It still doesn’t look halfway bad but it certainly shows its age by now. I was not fan of the saving systém again (no saves, only checkpoints) and about th fact they broke AI in latest patch and made sneaking almost useless as enemies could see through stuff like grass. The shootouts are qutie fun with this one but I was miffled with how they limited movement speed with many weapons, even with things like shotgun. The movement speed is quite low even without this limitation and this makes it chore. I think the movement speed is done to mask that most levels are quite small and this makes them feel bigger, but it got tiresome after some time. Personally I think the game could do without mutants and it would be better with only human enemies. Also with less indoors maps and more open ones like the radio tower one.
6/10

Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood
It’s not proper sequel. It’s virtually the same game as Road to the Hill 30. There are no visual improvements, no changes in gameplay, no new mechanics. Simply different, rehased, story offering little new. It played mostly same but some places were weird and little off. Like I get to the top of hill and kill enemies there and then nothing. No comments from anyone, no updated task, no way out. Nothing. So after scouring the area I go back and find enemies waiting there. Fine but it felt like there was something missing there. Or places where trying to find best ways to attack enemies, mostly tanks, I managed to sneak past next checkpoint and upon reload it teleported my squad there and enemies behind us disappeared. Quite weird for game that wants to be as realstic as possible. Also I felt like in mayn instances I had to solo things as it wasn’t viable to utilize my squad in useful way. Still decent shooter.
5,5/10

Full list

I thought GOG added some fan patch to the game; otherwise there is a must have patch that I even uploaded as a fake picture in the subforum here years ago or you could have used the previous version of the game as the last patch was for multi-player only I think. Oh well, you already finished it.

You completed more games this year than I in past 5 years....

I do waste too much time on YouTube tough

Yakuza 4 (XSX Game Pass)

Another one just like the other ones. Although they did mix it up a bit this time by having you play 4 different characters that all come together in the end like in a Tarantino movie. It was pretty good actually. It's always a bit of a cop out to say this, but if you're this far into the series and you like it, then you will also like number 4. apart from having four playable character, the rest is all par for the series. It's good to know that poor old Kiryu isn't the only person that gets jumped every 50m by thugs, it happens to all the other player characters as well. I did always wonder if Kiryu just had one of those faces that says "hit me".

Can't go straight to parts 5 and 6 without breaks in between. But I'm hoping to get the series finished before Like a Dragon comes to Game Pass (likely before the end of the year).

What can I say, I game a lot.
Overall but this year I am on the roll so far. It helps I play a lot of shorter games currently. Not many long RPGs there to steal my gaming time for themselves.

I have old retail version I bought back in the time and never finished, not the GOG one. I downloaded some patch from moddb.com, but it didn't seem like it helped at all. At least I could quick save, though.
It was not that bad because after some time I learned to just ignore stealth and go everywhere gun-blazing and it actually imporoved my experience and made it easier than trying to sneak past some idiot over and over again only to get spotted by someone on the other side of camp.