I mostly played the Yakuza games on GOG in 2023, but I only got through the first two (Yakuza 0 and Kiwami 1), because I leveled up all of my skills to the maximum, and collected most of the weapons and armors and accessories, and I did all of the side quests (except for ones that are locked behind minigames that I cannot beat) and most of the other side content including most of the minigames (up until the point where going further with the minigames would have required me to endure colossal grinding and aggravation, and also trying to succeed at minigames that I vehemently hate doing and that I am also not good at and unlikely ever to beat, such as the awful Disco minigame in Yakuza 0).

Even though I didn't fully grind out all of the minigames (I think my completion rate of minigames is something like 50% for Yakuza 0 and 70% for Kiwami 1), doing all of those things still required me to engage in massive grinding anyway.

And after having done those two massive grinds in those two games, now I am feeling burned out about the thought of restarting the next massive grind with the next Yakuza game, even though I am interested in seeing how the story plays out.

But I also don't want just to do the story content only, because I'm a completionist.

So that dilemma leaves me procrastinating about when to start the next Yakuza game.

I'm also very angry that GOG removed minigame content and related items from Yakuza: Like a Dragon even though there was no legitimate reason for GOG to have done so, and even though this appears to have been a misunderstanding caused by GOG not understanding what the content of the removed minigame actually entails. GOG can and should fix this problem, and make sure that minigame content becomes restored in the GOG version; but realistically, GOG will continue to ignore this mistake on their part forever, and thus leave the GOG version of the game forever & needlessly butchered.

For that reason, it's the only Yakuza game on GOG that I've never bought. But if GOG doesn't fix that problem by the time I get to that game (after I beat the other Yakuza games first), then I will probably switch, and instead of buying that game - and also all future Yakuza games - on GOG, I will instead rent them on Steam.

Because at least the Steam versions are not butchered. I'd rather rent a complete, fully intact game from Steam than to buy a butchered game from GOG.

Towards the end of the year, I also started playing Yuan-Xuan Sword VII which has been in my backlog (along with tons of other games).

I figured that I could start with the hardest difficulty on the basis that I thought the game was easier than Dark Souls, and I've played Dark Souls games before and did pretty well at them.

But only after playing Yuan-Xuan on the hardest difficulty, did I then learn that the "hardest" difficultly in that game is not "hard" in a fair or legitimate way which gives the player a fair test of his skill.

Rather, it is "hard" only in the sense that the hardest difficulty reduces the player character's statistics, to a ludicrous extent, so that he is unable to perform combat in a competent manner, especially versus bosses. I.e. your stamina runs out after only a few attacks and/or dodges, and then your character becomes staggered & paralyzed and thus dies a few seconds later, with no possible counter play.

So to remedy that, I had to over-level my character through massive grinding, and also to grind out crafting materials to upgrade all of my gear as much as possible, and money to buy stat-boosting potions, and to grind out all of my martial arts skills so that I earn the special attack for that stance, etc.

I haven't played that game for a few weeks, because all of the grinding I had to do, and also the unfair, not-legitimate "hardness" of the difficulty is causing me to lose interest. I'm not sure how far into the game I am, but I'm past the first mission in which you acquire your second NPC party member. And the gameplay I've performed up until that point consisted mostly of grinding.

I also played some HOMM 3, which I've had for many years, and played off and on. I did most of the campaigns, with only a few more to go, but I keep getting stuck on the Yog campaign where the character can't use any magic at all. That campaign is so annoying and unfair and it makes me ragequit and not want to restart. Then sometimes I restart that campagin and then stop playing before I get to the point where I've lost, and I don't start the game again just because I don't want to experience that frustration again.

And I'm also frustrated that the game frequently pulls the unskippable intro bug on me, and the only "solution" to that given by GOG users on the board forum doesn't actually solve the problem, because they say to edit the Reg Key to stop the unskippable intro from playing...but that "solution" only works for a month or two, and then the game automatically resets the Reg Key on its own, and undoes the change, and thus causes the unskippable intro bug to happen again.

And when I point out these facts and insist that the GOG devs need finally to fix this problem once and for all by way of patching out this unskippable intro bug with a new patch for the game, then I become gaslighted with other GOG customers telling me untrue things such as that the game is fine and there is no unskippable intro bug and there is no problem that the GOG devs need to solve with the game, even though actually and in fact there really is.

Moving on to other matters, I'm very disappointed that GOG never bothered to leverage their relationship with SEGA in order to get the Persona games released on GOG. What's the point of GOG having a relationship with SEGA if GOG cannot even convince SEGA to release all of their good stuff here?

I was also very disappointed that Detroit: Become Human wasn't released on GOG in 2023 when the other, not-as-good games from Quantic Dream were released on GOG a few months ago.

For me that was the last straw that made me become beyond very fed up with waiting for a GOG release, so I chose to rent the game on Steam for a discounted price that is probably cheaper than what the "launch price" on GOG will be for that game if & when it ever releases on GOG, many years into the future.