Bringing a fresh dose of sci-fi spying to Cyberpunk 2077, one of the oldest and often the very nerdiest gaming genres has had a truly impressive year. Whether your personal preference leans more towards swords and sorcery or hot hacking action, both games somehow make marrying immersive narratives with tech-pushing graphical splendour look easy.
Either one could easily devour every last minute of someone's free time all by themselves… Which is a bit of a problem, as even away from the triple-A spotlight RPGs have been having one of their best years ever. 2023 has seen the genre generously throw out delicious stat-filled treats in every obscure niche, while reminding us that great RPGs don't necessarily need to be industrial strength budget-busting attention hoovers to be worth dedicating our evenings and weekends to. There just aren't enough hours in the day to play them all. It's odd that one of the big publishers of not-so-big RPGs this year was Square Enix, a company that's long made a habit of throwing Bahamut-sized bags of money at its flagship RPG