Xenoblade Chronicles 3 it is. Yet another giant JRPG with an engaging world and all its gameplay systems.
Runner-up is Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. A great Warriors game that is totally underappreciated, first and foremost due to people's own ignorance, such as VGC's own review.
Third place goes to Triangle Strategy. While its story is at times to heavy-handed, its gameplay is addictive.
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The biggest disappointments this year were two ports of highly regarded former PlayStation games. Nier Automata takes the cake with its bland world and boring gameplay progression/structure. I needed quite a few sessions to see the credits the first time, and that's saying a lot for a game that is so short.
Persona 5 Royal is extremely overrated for a merely decent JRPG. I got the impression that most people didn't realize how lacking it was until they started their second playthrough and quit early. A common opinion is that the first dungeon is the best one, but I suppose people only say that because the pacing between gameplay and story is only bearable during the early hours of Persona 5, then they realize just how much time gets wasted with all the dialogue activities and constant forgettable phone messages that keep interrupting the flow. Thankfully I didn't go in with as high expectations as for Nier Automata, so the level of disappointment got contained. I've begun a second playthrough of P5R and am halfway through, but the non-gameplay portions are insanely long even with the usage of the fast-forward function.
I've had a much better time with Ni No Kuni 2 which I bought this spring, although it came out in 2021. This game gets hardly ever mentioned by the PS crowd. Bad taste, I guess.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
