What was your favorite game played in 2022?

There's still 8.5% of the year left. I cannot yet answer.

Vagrant Story, an amazing game that I should've played back in the day. I remember someone recommending it to me, but I kind of forgot it. I guess I was too busy playing MGS, FFVIII, GT2, CSOTN and SFA3 at the time. Well, better late than never! In my opinion, VS is a classic that I happened to play 22 years after its release.

I always have trouble picking a favorite. But I had several:

Psychonauts 2
The Excavation of Hob's Barrow
Supraland: Crash
Supraland: Six Inches Under
Wildermyth
Solasta: Crown of the Magister
Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden
The Wild at Heart
Enderal (once again)
Hands of Necromancy

Elden effin' Ring. Which I'm still playing right now and that I will continue to play for years, probably....

Cat Quest is the most purrfect game ever and has everything that I could want in a game - cats, cats with swords, cats doing magic, Kitsmas (that's Christmas for cats), Santa Paws & Santa Claws.

Thief?

If we're just counting games I played for the first time, maybe go with Amid Evil.

I am going to try and limit this to games I either finished for the first time this year or games I started for the first time this year, otherwise it would probably be Medieval II or Rome: Total War.

Couple games I finished, but started previously:
Rune Factory (DS)
First got this game in 2009, did not beat it until this year. Really enjoyed it, it's got a certain janky charm to it that later games sorta lack. Can't really describe it. I actually like the character designs in this one the best, the characters look less juvenile if you ask me.

Dragon Quest IX (DS)
I got to the last third or so of this game over the course of two weeks and it took me almost a year to get through the rest of it. Not sure why it took me so long, I really enjoyed it. Then again, I stubbornly insisted on not re-classing anyone, so that's probably why.

First Time played:
Max Payne 3
Enjoyed this game much more than I expected. Of the three games in the series, this was the one I found most fun. Very nice gritty, violent time.

Harvestella
Have not beaten as of yet, am in the third chapter still and taking my time. Did pay full price but honestly I think it was worthwhile even at that. Pretty fun Rune Factory-like game with a heavy Final Fantasy element. About as good as I thought Final Fantasy Explorers was, which is to say very.

Diablo II
Played this game for the first time this year. Have played several games that copied this game before it. It is really kind of surprising just how directly it was copied by so many others.

If I had to just choose one as a favorite, I'd probably say Max Payne 3.

Probably SWAT 4. It was the one game that made me want to beat it and its expansion this year as opposed to simply getting through it or shelving it. I still boot it up now and then to play quick missions. Although Crysis is a close second.

I think Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel III

Both high on my list to play soon. What did you enjoy in them? Max Payne 3 is one of my favorite games of all time. IMO brilliant game. Thought of playing that for awhile. Definitely looks beautiful... but... I've fallen out of love (a bit) with Souls games. Was obsessed Demon's Souls to Dark Souls 3, but after that...

... have been more in the mood for traditional RPGs / CRPGs. Still, I think about getting Elden Ring from time-to-time.

Syberia: The World Before, if you are referring to games that came out this year.
It was delightful:)

My favorites were Daggerfall, Skyrim, and Chasm: The Rift, but the other games I played this year and really enjoyed were the following:
Superhero League of Hoboken
Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown
EPIC
Primordia
Broken Reality
Miasmata
Drox Operative 2
Machiavelli the Prince
Rise of the Third Power
9th Dawn III
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

In Solasta mostly the tactical turn-based combat. Story and character customization options weren't all that great, but the combat was addictive. The RNG felt a bit odd at first, since low dice rolls seemed pretty common (never seen as many 1's rolled in a D&D campaign), but I can't say whether it's actually flawed or whether that's just confirmation bias or something (my suspicion is the rolls might be fine on average but oddly distributed, causing streaks of good or bad rolls, but no idea). All I know is that it became more fun after I customized the rules, for which there are plenty of options. The combat includes some opportunities to use the terrain to your advantage, e.g. you can let boulders fall onto enemies or push them over the edge, but they are rather rare und unreliable compared to the D:OS games. Sneak attacks and some of the spell effect were pretty cool though (spells I didn't know from prior D&D editions).

Something that's also particular to Solasta and the new D&D edition is the importance of light. You get advantages (better one of two rolls) and disadvantages (worse one of two rolls) depending on various things, and one of them is light. Creatures in the dark are harder to hit than those in the light, so you need to be prepared to shine a light on them first, with spells or light sources (e.g. shooting fire arrows at unlit totches etc.). Food consumption while traveling is also a thing in Solasta, but you can customize the rules for it, and resting is different from older D&D editions, too (it's split in short and long rests, short rest are more frequent and you only gain part of your hp and spells back, IIRC, but it doesn't really make the game more difficult, it just makes the whole resting thing a bit more tactical, to decide when to rest and what to gain back). It was definitely interesting in that it was D&D, but a little different from how I knew it before, equally exciting and frustrating, but it was a good challenge to adapt to it. Once you do, the game is not very hard, but fun. (Random encounters on the travel map can be brutal at times though, so save often). Solasta does have one element that connects it to Wildermyth, and that's how different character traits and backgrounds will influence the characters' dialogues (you don't roleplay your characters yourself, most of the times; instead they act according to the character traits you gave them).

In Wildermyth the tactical combat was equally fun, if a bit simple and easy most of the times, but also addicting, with interesting options. The game's main draw is the way characters are handled though. You don't just pick a party and then play through the whole game with it. Instead characters keep coming and going. They will grow older over time and eventually retire at the height of their career, settle down and possibly have kids and you will be tasked with taking care of the next generation of lower level characters. And you usually can't share equipment between characters; once you've decided who gets what, they keep it, even when they retire. So the new characters can't just leech off the older one's accomplishments but have to earn their own career and power (retiring characters can pass on a little to others in the form of lessons though).

Anyway, while this constant rotation keeps the balance in check, the more interesting aspect is the storytelling part of it, and by storytelling I don't mean the game's storytelling itself but the story you create yourself, how you get attached to the characters, how you will be a little sad to see the old ones go but remember all the things you went through with them, how they evolved, what adventures they had, and then keep adding to the "family" until you have a vast hero roster / hall of fame, each with their own stories. Retired characters can also make a comeback and join younger ones in future campaigns (though they will be younger and less powerful again), and it doesn't always make sense story-wise, but I think that's the whole idea behind the "myth" part in the title. Was the legendary hero of this story also be present in that story? How is that possible? Which one is true, are any? etc.

The writing in Wildermyth is quite particular. Some really love the poetic style, personally I found it a bit convoluted, more complicated and flowery than necessary, and sometimes a bit exhausting to follow as a non-native speaker even with good language skills. Part of the storytelling is random, too, e.g. your characters have various traits and they define how the characters will comment on events in the comic strips between overland exploration and tactical turn-based combat (sometimes this flows well, sometimes each character says their lines whether they fit together or not, and that can add to the feeling of the writing being a little odd sometimes). What stories and setting there was I found interesting, different from typical fantasy fare as that of Solasta.

You get quite a lot of content with Wildermyth. There are several story campaigns (I don't quite remember, but at least 5, I think), and after that you can still play customized campaigns consisting of random (story & encounter) events only. The campaigns are split into chapters, and in each chapter you explore an overland map in strategy game fashion, sending parties to scout new territories, search them for loot, built stuff or engage enemies, and it all costs time. Each party can consist of up to five characters, but you can have a lot more in your roster, so you can command several parties and send them into different territories at the same time. The forces of your enemies will grow stronger each time after a certain amount of days has passed (e.g. new or stronger enemies are added to their pool, or their numbers in combat will increase) and there will also be an incursion after a given amount of days, meaning a raiding party will march through several territories on the map and destroy what you've built if you don't stop it. This "strategy" part felt a bit intimidating to me at first, but in truth it's very basic and not that scary at all. In the end, I mostly just did what I wanted and ignored the time limits. Apart from this, you will trigger random or campaign related events on exploring new lands, and they each come in the form of a storyteling comic strip and combat, sometimes also offering you choices on how to approach a situation or what risks to take with hopes of rewards. My personal experience was that this felt great for the first two campaigns, and then at a certain point in the second or third campaign the random events started repeating enough that I already knew them in and out and thought the game was lacking in random encounters a bit, because this shouldn't happen in the third of at least five campaigns already. But it got better afterwards, the next campaign became more interesting again. And if you truly feel there aren't enough random events, you can also add custom ones made by other players.

Both games come with editors. I already told you about the one in Solasta, it's mostly for creating dungeons and encounters, its shortcomings from what I've seen are storytelling options and the lack of mod integration. Wildermyth's editor on the other hand is mostly for creating new random events in the form of comic strips and encounters. I believe you do so by scripting characters to be inserted into the strips in various poses, writing various dialogue lines depending on character traits etc. I haven't really tried to work with either editor, but at least the one of Wildermyth seems pretty involved if you're a noob at scripting. Contrary to Solasta, Wildermyth is open to modding, and you can add a whole lot of new faces, hairstyles, custom events and abilities etc. What I can't tell you though is how much of Wildermyth's mods and Solasta's custom campaigns are avilable to owner's of the GOG versions, as both make heavy use of the Workshop in their Steam versions. I guess you have to rely on modders not to forget about Nexus, and I'd assume that not all content from the Workshop is available without Steam. :/