It’s been a while since I wrote here about gaming goals, gaming in general and well… you know. It’s not been a quiet year for me in 2023. I’ve played through a few games, both long and short. I added to my backlog, I raided in Final Fantasy XIV and cleared P12S and I had a few weeks of complete gaming burnout where I didn’t want to touch any of my consoles or my PC at all.
As far as 2023 goes, my game of the year definitely was Final Fantasy XVI. I played through it at launch and I had a blast doing so. As usual Square Enix tugged majorly on my heartstrings with that game and maybe I’ll go back and finish it on Final Fantasy mode to get the platinum trophy. For now though I will tackle the first DLC this month and go back to the world I loved playing through so much in June.

Looking ahead to 2024 I really want to make a serious dent in my backlog. I’m not making any new game purchases this year with the exception of the new Final Fantasy XIV expansion in the summer. Otherwise no new games will get added to my backlog. I’m going to resist all the sales, even if they’re amazing. This year is the year of finishing games, not buying more that just sit there to collect dust.

Speaking of which, I can knock the first game off my backlog for this new year. I saw a discord member in one of the streamer discords I’m in streaming Final Fantasy 7 Remake and it made me remember that I never finished that game. I got to chapter 8 back in 2020 and then put the game down and never picked it back up, which is a huge shame because the game is absolutely amazing. As of writing this blog post I’m in the final chapter (18) of the game and I’m on the final bossfights. I will be doing these fights tomorrow after work and then it’s just the DLC left, which I bought on sale, and I can shelf the game and mark it as finished. This also means I’m very ready for the next part to come out, but I won’t be buying it immediatly because 1. it’s very expensive and 2. my resolution is to not add to the backlog so I’m not going to, even with Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth around the corner.
I’m pretty happy to be able to cross this game off the list though, it’s a great game with a great story and it boosts my motivation to be able to take a game off my backlog within the first week of January.

As for writing about games well. I want to use Wednesdays for that, to keep you guys updated on what I’ve been up to, what games I may have taken off the backlog, what I though about them and what the next week will probably look like.

So in summary my two major goals in gaming for 2024 are:

• Make a signifcant dent in my backlog, this means about 10% of my total played
• Write about this, and other gaming shenanigans every Wednesday
  

Let’s make 2024 count!