Super Mario RPG. A relatively short JRPG based on Super Mario, which is an interesting concept since it involves taking the dreamlike delirium of the Mario games and trying to impose enough internal consistency on it to create a coherent setting and storyline. It's quite successful in that aspect.

The gameplay is normal turn-based JRPG stuff with the addition of allowing well-timed button presses to improve attacks or defense. Being a Mario game, there is a little bit of platforming but I wasn't too fond of those sections because it doesn't feel as natural in the game's isometric perspective.

Although I enjoyed the game well enough, I'm glad it's so short by JRPG standards because it's very much a "baby's first RPG" sort of thing and there's very little challenge or serious strategy to it. I didn't come even close to a single "game over" until I fought the final boss. I already mostly play JRPGs when I'm feeling tired and want to play something that doesn't require a lot of brainpower beyond hitting "attack" or "heal" and this game comes in well below most other games in the genre from that perspective.

SAINTS ROW 2

Banished

Clicker/resource management games got me hankering to go back and finally figure out how to play this game, which IIRC mrkgnao donated to me some big GoG sale of yore.

While the mechanics, on the surface, seem simple, they're fairly complicated. The tutorial will give you the basics, but you're likely going to mess up tremendously for your first 5-10-umpteen maps because it's pretty short, and really doesn't explain the things that are likely to confound you for hours.

I definitely still haven't mastered the game by any stretch of the imagination - some of that I blame on the controls/UI not being entirely intuitive.

For example, how to get citizens to change jobs? If I make this pen 10x9 how many animals can I raise in that space? How about 12x8? 40x6? How many workers does an orchard take?

This sort of ambiguity does, to an extent, invite experimentation, but without spamming save/load games, it's not actually very functional. There's no way to tell what some of these things will do without either trying them, or pausing the game and going online to see what theorycraft is out there about the ideal size and staffing for a farm or orchard.

I found a comment thread where someone put it quite eloquently - Banished is not a "game" as much as it is a "toy." While it does follow some internal logic, there's no particular goal, and if you're going to find joy in it, it's going to come from your own imagination and trying to make it do what you want - and occasionally, failing and trying to figure out why.

That said, I still think the game could benefit from a bit more information. In one game I somehow apparently split up a couple into different houses early in the game. There was no notification that they'd divorced, or anything. Just a weird highlight then a boop and mom had moved out. And for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get her to move out.

On the whole, there is much to like about it - it's a pretty well designed sandbox game on the whole, and the art is nice, and some of the maps are blazingly hard, even on easier settings. Having to spend earlier resources on bridges, and perhaps more importantly the construction time and the longer commutes back and forth for warmth and food and etc., really raise the degree of challenge.

I suspect it's a game I'll come back to repeatedly. Mostly it just made me want to play a city builder that is a bit more on the 'game' side of the ledger, but still, I enjoyed the additional 10-12 hours I put into it this time becoming less of a total noob and almost semi-competent. You do learn something in this game from (nearly) every failure.

This is not exactly something I keep close records of but at some point this year there was...

The Park
Obduction
Rine
No One Lives Forever
Pillars Of Eternity
Stardew Valley
Baldur's Gate
Divinity Original Sin
Fallout 3
Rollercoaster Tycoon 3
Torchlight 2

There are others I don't remember and I spent a lot of time in Secret World Legends, Guild Wars 2, and World Of Warcraft.

I threw in the towel on Saints Row 2 for control issues and Drakensang: River of Time because the ending is a boring 14 round boss fight.

Just finished darkness 2.It's an amazing shootng game.

Knock-Knock

Mixed feelings, once again. It's simple and rather short indie game. Some kind of platformer with non-obvious rules and creepy setting. I consider it finished, however I've got only "fatal ending" with the protagonist becoming insane. I didn't realize that the style I've played the last few levels leads me to the dead-end storyline and I just don't want to replay half of the levels.

What I liked:
■ nice graphics and sound (except Lodger's voice perhaps)
■ nice idea of unknown rules - to be discovered during the game
■ well balanced gameplay - hard enough to be scared and easy enough to prevent frustration

What I didn't like:
■ almost no music, as far as I remember
■ revealing some rules after you've finished the game is shitty
■ the whole writing - I thing I've understood the whole idea, but I just don't like it; it would be nice to get some decent story instead of that murky diary pages
■ some main story events of unknown meaning (what the hell do they mean?)
■ walking through forest, which brings no challenge and are just boring

List of all games completed in 2017

Finished A Golden Wake the weakest Wadget Eye game I played in a long time. Story was not really interesting and the salesman-related puzzles were quite badly designed. Otherwise, puzzles were mostly logical.

Full list here.

Can you say how much time it took for you to play through it?

It was about 2,5h. But I've never replayed a level, unless I failed totally and was forced to.

Beware!
Later, using some internet guides, I found out that it was the reason of bad ending. If you are caught once or twice, you can continue a level, but it seems that you should not, it should be replayed, because there is some global time limit for second part of the game (that lighting bolt on top of the screen).

Unfortunately, once you've finished the game, you cannot go back to earlier stages; can only replay the last level - in my case it's not enough to change my ending and I don't want to replay the whole game :|

The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm's Revenge (Book Three) - 1/5

Ouch, that was some real whiplash after playing the second game...

Almost everything about this game felt objectionable. There were some interesting ideas - such as multiple ways of achieving goals and a scoring system. But for the most part, the game was just a nonsensical, hideous-looking, tedious pile of garbage. Even with heavy use of a walkthrough/UHS, Kyrandia 3 was still incredibly tiresome.

If you're thinking about playing the Kyrandia series, I'd strongly recommend stopping at the second game. Sure, the first two games still have their annoying issues, but this one is just an unfun slog.

Heh, I ended up doing exactly this last year when I decided to play this series. I played through Books I and II without much trouble, but I got completely stuck in Book III pretty early on. I didn't want to start using a walkthrough just yet, but I wasn't that eager to keep playing the game either... Until one day I realized I hadn't touched it for months, so I happily deleted it from my hard drive and forgot about it again. :P

Ok, thanks! But I suppose the bad ending is just a cutscene or something like that and you could just watch the good ending on YouTube instead of replaying, without losing much?

Aah, right, but it's not the same. If it was, there would be no reason to buy and play games at all ;)

Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration; I didn't propose to watch the game played on YouTube, just a single cutscene. Personally, I don't necessarily play games to win them, but for the experience, exploration, story. Once I've seen everything there is to be seen except for a single cutscene at the ending, I don't mind whether I watch it in-game or on YouTube. I'll still try to get the good ending by following your advice though (thanks again!) - and then I'll watch the bad ending on YouTube. ;)

Gardens Inc. From Rakes to Riches

Finished it a while ago. Nice time management game.