Backlog 2024

[Kikki]

Welcome to a new Backlog thread! We've completed 6 years of backlog threads so far...this one is the beginning of our 7th.

If you're new here (or a long-time lurker but haven't joined in before), the yearly Backlog thread is mostly a place where we chat about the games we are currently playing, and to some extent, stuff we're considering buying. It started out as a thread meant to help people reduce their backlogs, but it quickly turned into general gaming chatter, whether we're doing great with it, or in some kind of funk. But...we still all have our ways of paring games off our backlog, so if you need help with yours, let us know. We all have methods (such as the Backlog Blitz method) and backlog-managing resources (like game-tracking sites such as Backloggery or Grouvee) and can share them.

~

It can be fortifying to state any goals or desires you have out loud where other people can hear (read) them, so if you have any gaming goals for 2024 (eliminate your backlog, get better at platformers, spend less money, spend more/less time gaming, be more social in your gaming...etc) feel free to state them here to start your year off.

You can also start off by listing your backlog, if you want to. You can put it behind a spoiler cut, if it's really long. (Though you don't have to.) I'm an ardent list-maker, personally...they help me get my thoughts in order. I also like to organize both the games on my backlog and the games on my wishlist by priority to give myself a firmer sense of direction.

And feel free to list the games you're really looking forward to in 2024! We all always forget a few so it helps to have reminders from others on the good stuff headed our way.

~

What this thread is not for: pages of discussion on the same game. Say a new Pokemon game releases. It should have its own thread, so that no one has to wade through the monster that the Backlog thread always becomes, just to find information on where best to find a shiny whosamajiggit. Of course you can mention your progress on that new Pokemon game here if you happen to be playing it, but the Backlog thread is not the place for lengthy Q&A about a newly released game. If it generates enough back-and-forth to amply fill its own thread, then it should have its own thread.

If you should need to see them, here are previous year's Backlog threads (it can be pretty interesting seeing your first post of the year in any of these threads):

2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018

[Bluie]

Hoo boy, here we go again, eh? Well, my backlog is certainly not clear for 2024, but I am steadily working on it. I'm definitely more of a mood based gamer now than in previous years, but I can brute force something if I know I can/want finish it. My biggest game I took on 2023 that I'm still chipping away at is Baldur's Gate 3. I had a ton of games I bought on sale or with full intention to play asap that took priority. With most of them out of the way, I'm hyperfocusing on it on my days off while my work days are dedicated to games that have daily/weekly cycles (Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe). But with all that said, I do still have a pile of games to wade through, and they are as follows;

PS5
Baldur's Gate 3
Atelier Marie
Monochrome Mobius

Switch
Harvestella
Silent Hope
Cattails: Wildwood Story

PC
Final Fantasy XI
Honkai Impact 3rd
Muv Luv Trilogy

If there's one thing I've gotten better about in my game purchasing is forcing myself to either wait for sales or for my schedule to lighten a bit before taking on more games. Some of these in my backlog are very, VERY long commitments that I have no idea when I'll get to, but eventually, I will. I find myself less interested in a lot of new offerings as the years go on. My wishlists are smaller than they've ever been. Whether it's my tastes changing or my patience with certain genres wanning, I see it as a win. I only have so much time, so I'd prefer to use it on things I know I'll enjoy.

One thing I do want to get better at this year is to stop listening to the masses rave about indies I know I wont like, but buy them anyways because I want to see what the fuss is about. On occasion something resonates with me regardless, but I've been burned so many times that I have just got to stop blindly buying them and hoping they click. I'm hoping I've learned my lesson.

[Kikki]

As for me, I've already set my 2024 gaming budget at half of what I set my 2023 budget. I put last year to the price of one AAA game per month. (Which was $80 CAD, pre-tax.) So this (coming...one more day!) year it's the price of one AAA game every TWO months. Which means a total of $480 CAD for the entire year. Gaming is an expensive hobby, so that's quite low, but it'll make me very choosy...a good thing!...and though I got almost EVERYTHING on large sales in 2023 already (I've spent well under budget), it should make that even more necessary in 2024.

In the last year I've mostly stopped paying attention to games I think I SHOULD like and buy only the ones I know I will, as I've 37 years of experience as a multi-platform gamer now and I've already given just about everything a fair shot. I've got nothing left to prove. On the other hand, I'd like to try a little bit more that's out of my comfort zone since my brain needs a good strong jiggling, but when I've already tried as much as I have, I'm not sure where to go with that. Explore multiplayer games, maybe. Or maybe my brain should be jiggled via some other avenue than gaming. But it's a thought, anyway!

I'd always like to completely eliminate my backlog again, but I'm also not fussed, it's more important to just have fun and I turn tasks like that into a source of stress too easily.

~

I have 11 games on Switch that I need to complete, and 13 additional Switch games that I abandoned in years past, but can't remember precisely WHY I abandoned them so I feel like I should try them again at least briefly to remind myself and see if they really were only good for the junk pile. I also have SIXTEEN demos I need to complete on Switch, lol. So many! I really should make myself complete demos within a week of downloading them. But to motivate myself a little, I plan to count 3 demos completed as one full game completion. Perhaps I will also count every 4 abandoned games retried as one completion, too. Not sure about that one!

I still need to make a list of my Steam games to get through, too...any ones I actually care about still, since my Steam account is more than 10 years old...but I'm not worried about them at the moment.

~

Games I'm looking forward to this year: mostly just Fantasy Life i, at the moment. I'm also looking forward to FFVII Rebirth, but since it's PS5 exclusive on launch, I may not get to it in 2024. Or EVER, if it isn't Steam Deck compatible. Unless someday I get a PS5, which I currently have no plans for. It's not a system I'll buy for a single game.

2024 is looking like a good year for lots of comforting replays of old favourites and picking up missed games from past years that have been on my wishlist long enough to be eligible for some good sales. I'm not sure what I'll do if Switch 2 really does come out in 2024 and a load of fresh new AAA games with it, lol. Might have to reorganize my priorities if that happens!

[cinnamon_yuki]

Here we go again.

Last year, I only finished two games: Hogwarts Legacy and Our Life Beginning and Always specifically Baxter DLC! It was a good year for gaming for sure! Mostly a quiet year for me. I am mostly PC gaming now. I'm not sure if I will play my backlogs on my Switch games right now.

Going to finish in 2024:
- Baldur's Gate 3 (I might do another playthrough though)
- My Time at Sandrock
- Cyberpunk 2077 plus Phantom Liberty

Waiting for more content/release:
- Dragon Age Dreadworlf (Waiting for Gameplay and Official Trailer on Summer 2024)
- Coral Island
- Our Life Now and Forever
- Persona 3 Reload. I will not buy it on release. I am hoping that Atlus will release a DLC or expansion with Female MC.

My budget next is mainly saving to upgrade my PC to 1440p. Mainly saving for a 1440p Monitor, a new PSU and a 1440p capable GPU (either Rx 7700xt or Rx 7800xt or RTX 4070). I am excited to play my current games on 1440p, most especially Baldur's Gate 3.

[fuulatatata]

sweeps away the swathes of webs and dust bunnies. hi hello there, i hope everyone won't mind the sudden pop up of a seemingly new face in this thread. the last time i tried to actively participate in the annual backlog thread was an epic failure but i'm swearing myself to at least writing once a month on here for posterity's sake. without any further ado:

at the time i'm writing and thinking on this, i believe the only game i almost beat to completion this year was octopath traveler 2, i say almost because even though i obtained most of the overpowered weapons, explored possibly everything on the world map and did all the sidequests, i died to the infamous post-game boss within the first 5 minutes of the fight. i have no plans on returning to it anytime soon

my only gaming goal for '24 is finshing at least one SMT mainline game that hasn't been ported to the Switch yet. i feel like i've cursed myself to hell for mainly just focusing on maligned rpg's from the ps2/psp era

games i picked up this year, and i'm prioritizng in 2024:
- shin megami tensei: iv
- 13 sentinels: aegis rim
- suikoden iii
- trio of towns (making use of the online features for trading purposes bc nintendo loves to ruin fun)
- persona 3: portable (new game+)

other games i hope to pick up, whether new or abandonded:
- shin megami tensei: digital devil saga
- persona 2 duology
- trails in the sky

anticipated games, announcements or releases, no guarantee on getting it on launch:
- saga emerald beyond
- unicorn overlord
- team asano's next project
- monolith soft's unnamed action rpg that's been in dev hell since '17... iykyk
- i dunno, perhaps any crumb of news on project dragon or runefa6

[Mikodesu]

We're between guests right now so I've got a few minutes to knock this out. I've got a pretty long backlog, including my bundle-bought games. I'm considering 2024 a big backlog year (backlog and replays), since I've got nothing I'm really looking forward to. Nothing I want has a solid release date, and I try my best not to worry about it until then. The older I get the more precious my time gets. I still feel bad about not finishing games, but I won't let myself waste time anymore... If it's not for me, it's not for me.

So! Ongoing games:

- My Time at Sandrock
- Genshin Impact [live service]
- Honkai Star Rail [live service]


Backlog (oops all PC)

Spoiler:

Overland
Minit
Stillness of the Wind
Golf Peaks
Cloud Gardens
Crosscode
Kingdom Two Crowns
Lucifer Within Us
Metro Exodus
Townscaper
Art Sqool
Dear Esther
Fallout 1 & 2
Prey
DUSK
Outer Wilds DLC
Thief
Ni no Kuni 2
Baba is You [unfinished puzzle game]
Stephen's Sausage Roll [unfinished puzzle game]

So long as I get to a few of my bundle-bought collection of STUFF I'll be happy. Playing games is my stress relief, but it's good for your brain to try things you wouldn't normally, sometimes things that make you stressed rather than relieve it, so I've got a bunch of things I wouldn't normally touch and...I'd like to try.


Last night I did play quite a bit of Sandrock. Had a CSS course I just got myself on sale playing in the background while I was gaming, which worked out. Got to another weird 'most people haven't played this far' milestone last night in the story. (60 hours to get this far, okay, sure.) Although the Steam achievement stat makes the state of the Sandrock Wiki all the funnier...

Spoiler:

Did the 'rescue Miranda from Logan' quest last night, and 5% of players have gotten that far in the story. Was legit expecting this to be the one that we FINALLY pin him down and have the...if we would just speak words at each other we would stop fighting moment, but nope. Connection to the Wiki being that Logan is still the most searched page on the Wiki. For a long time...Haru? Is that his name? Was second most searched, but he's fallen off. I assume people are checking if they're romanceable, which I find hilarious that the majority of people doing this haven't even gotten far enough in the story to even MEET the character.

People are so goofy.

[Kikki]

Yaaaay! I killed a gleeok.

Spoiler:

I didn't want to go anywhere NEAR a gleeok with my incredibly slow response time, but in the last few days I ventured back into TotK and got myself 5 new battery cells (started on the blue cells since I had completed all the green ones before pursuing the story ending). Then I picked up the last of the mystic armor, cuz it's so pretty and potentially useful since I have a fair few rupees. I already had the first two pieces, but needed about 14 more bubble gums for Kilton to give me the final piece. (I also got some cool powerful monster bits, which was nice. But nothing beats the lynel mace horn I got early on, though, not even the gleeok bits.)

Anyway, got the last of that, and then noticed some of my side quests. Saw I needed to beat up a Flux for a monster hunting quest. I love fighting Fluxes, and it was a piddly level one (I hit it's glowing cube ONCE and it died, guys. ONCE. Little bird boy also hit it once with an arrow. That was a let down. I wanted to fight it for longer. I dressed up nice for it and everything!) Then I saw that one more of the monster quests was to get a Frox, a low-level one. So I did. It died right away, too. Then I saw that the last quest I had left in that line was for a gleeok.

Didn't wanna. But I too, for a fair while now, have been looking for more sources of stress or challenge for my stupid brain, all the more when it is so deadened in winter. That's why I wanted a fish, partly, though our water PH wasn't hospitable, so that didn't work out. I want manageable stress or challenge that can't get too out-of-control, since too much stress of any one kind is just as bad for you as no stress. (If your brain is never challenged in any way, it'll degrade just like your muscles. Wish that wasn't true!)

So I figured I should stop avoiding gleeoks and just finish the quest line. PLUS...TotK, like BotW, is beautifully customizable in terms of difficulty. If you use your armor and food/potion effects wisely, as well as make use of enemy weaknesses, you can really brutalize them while minimizing risk to Link. Swapped around between flamebreaker, desert voe, zonaite and mystic armours for their effects, and took a triple-defence up food (by accident...I meant to take an attack-up, but it works as well, just differently.) and made sure I had enough ice keese eyes as well as my demon king bow with 60 attack power.

Well one of those ice keese eyes on that high-powered bow one-shot a head each time it renewed itself. So only three arrows necessary to collapse the beastie so I could whack it. I didn't have a good enough weapon because the master sword with the mace horn on pooped out on me after only a few hits, but I made the other stuff work. When the gleeok shot off its total immolation attack, I switched to the mystic armor to take minimal damage for the cost of just 350 rupees.

In other words, just as with the final battle, I didn't bother to 'git gud', since that would take me years (or forever) But I didn't even break any of my equipment and only used up my ice keese eyeballs, and never had to heal during the battle, and it died while Link did not, so: win.

Though this is the way I always do things if I have to engage in a difficult battle, so perhaps it wasn't much of a challenge. But I also need a few more forays outside of my comfort zone. Even if it's just the nudge of a toenail, it's better than nothing.

Still, I need to play stuff that's a little more difficult for me, even if I don't want to. Or I have to approach this outside of gaming, of course. That's probably the more sensible way to go. Make my head learn something useful, even if it's thicker than a brick sandwich right now. Well, I do have my needle felting kit. And resin supplies. And my steel drum. I may even have enough acrylic to attempt a pour. They're all immediate options: just gotta stop being asleep all the time (even when I'm awake) and get to it.

Oh...I got the amiibo sword skins via battle in XC3, too, and tackled some superbosses. Went fine. Xenoblade battles don't require fast reflexes, just knowledge of the system.

I am so, so tired. Lol. Stupid dark Canadian winters. I would like to wake up now, please.

[greensara]

Happy 2024 all!!

Congrats on the Gleeok! I've always avoided those things like the plague. Lynels too. Maybe I will feel like doing a brave Zelda run some day, but it is not this day.

I am looking forward to gaming and digging out of my backlog this year and/or adding to it as usual, lol. My primary goal is the same as the last couple years: play or clear more than I buy. This year I am also going to have to not only budget costs for gaming, but time as well with stuff I have going on or coming up in life. So I probably won't get as much play time as 2023, but I look forward to getting back to work at the greenhouse (yay!), growing my garden again (potentially with other people's stuff on consignment), having fun with the kids gaming or otherwise, and even getting back to hitting the books myself come fall.

Another gaming goal besides working on my backlog is that I would like to see if I can stick with and "beat" Ringfit. I certainly need to keep at trying to better my health, which is especially hard in the winter, so I think this unrealistic goal may help.

We haven't finished Miitopia yet, but we are getting close. Next I am hoping to do an imperfect HM64 run for the experience. After that maybe I will feel like picking Harvestella back up or something else.

[iLoveSprites75]

One of my new year's resolutions is to play at least an hour of a backlog game on whatever given day I'm gaming... Please stand by for potential progress

[midnighttherabbit]

Wow, Happy New Year everyone!

My backlog has gotten unmanageable again and I've gotten back into the habit of picking up and dropping games without finishing them. Currently, I'm playing a game on every platform lol:

• Switch: Persona 3

• Mobile: Final Fantasy VI

• PC: Fallout: New Vegas

I mostly play FF when I'm bored and only have my phone so I'm making slow progress on that, Persona 3 is also slow going because it can get repetitive if I play it too much. FNV is technically a replay but the first time I played I ignored most sidequests so I'm having fun with it.

If I had to make a list of 5 games (not replays) to prioritise over the next few months then I'd say:

• Pentiment

• Planescape Torment

• Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines

• Daggerfall

• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (I've technically played this before but never finished it.)

I don't really have any games I want to buy, I'd like to try out Fear and Hunger at some point but I don't do well with horror so I'm kind of unsure. My goal for this year is to buy as few games as possible, anyway.

[Mabbie]

I just got PowerWash Simulator and I must admit I'm having lots of fun cleaning houses. lol

[Code_Name_Geek]

Well I was thinking of making list of games to prioritize this year as my gaming goal, and when I went back to my first post in last year's thread I found out I did that exact same thing last year! Unfortunately I didn't write it down anywhere else and totally forgot about it, so consider that a lesson learned. Despite that, I did end up starting and completing 5 out of the 28 games on last year's list, which really isn't bad considering I had forgotten all about it. I also did manage to finish 5/9 of the games on the "already started but want to finish" list, which is pretty decent as well. I haven't made a list yet for this year but I'm going to review last year's list and see if there are any I want to carry forward. I also did really well with last year's main goal of starting more games, so I'd like to continue that into this year.

As for games that I'm carrying forward into 2024, I am currently playing House Flipper (PC), Fire Emblem Awakening (3DS), and Harvest Moon SNES (NSO), and I'd definitely like to finish all three of those. I also want to pick SoS:AWL up again, since I still want to finally see the ending of that game (I'm in Winter of Year 2, so I still have a fair bit left to play). The beginning of the new year is also making me antsy to start something new, so maybe it would be a good time to tackle one of the shorter games I have piling up on PC.

[Kikki]

Thanks greensara! I should tackle the lynel gauntlet next to get all those bits and Majora's mask...but I'd just use the chest cheat to win that anyway, lol. (Lynels always roar to bust up any nearby construction with a sonic wave before doing anything else, but chests cannot be destroyed, so if you connect two chests and place them in front of the lynel, all he'll do is roar over and over, trying to destroy your chests construction, mostly ignoring you, even as you whack away at him. As long as you don't get closer to him than the chests are, anyway. Doesn't work on 1.2 though...but I kept 1.1.1.)

~

I love lists. Did I recently make this ridiculous ode to lists? But whatever: I do. Lists are like a reinforcing net that holds my pudding of a brain together. And when I make lists, I like to prioritize them so that I know the top contenders for what is to be played next. Nice that I'm not the only one who needs to deliberately prioritize their games to get themselves in order!

I also have to write my lists down physically in an accessible place or I forget what was on the list. When the Backlog thread is still tiny like it is now, it's easy to search it for your lists, but in a month or so, it'll already be big enough to be a pain to look through for that info. So to remove one more roadblock, I keep my lists nearby IRL so that I can glance at them any time. I think I mentioned that not too long ago in the Backlog 2023 thread...cuz I have a list right here in my organizer, of 10 Switch games I have not completed or abandoned. So let's prioritize them. (For now I'm not going to consider the 13 abandoned games on my Switch that I'm considering re-trying.)

High Priority:

• Lego Bricktales (So much more boring than it should be, but I can get through it, I'm already done one section.)
• Garden Buddies This game is awful; the controls are too obviously for a mouse, which means they are awkward on Switch, and seems like it was made for 5-year-olds, but it's short...must try to force myself through it. I like her more than most gamer content creators, but even so, this will forever be the grain of salt with which I take Eeowna's game recommendations. But it's VERY short, so will power through.)
• Trails to Azure (Complete through Intermission...half of game remaining. Even if I rush, it'll take me 20 more hours.)
• Graveyard Keeper (Cuz I wanna)
• No Man's Sky (Cuz I wanna)

Medium Priority:

• Constructor Plus (Haven't played a tycoon-type in a long time, not sure about this one.)
• Staxel (Could also play this on Steam, as I got it in a bundle there, too.)
• Garden Paws (Same deal as Staxel, and it probably plays better on Steam.)
• Torchlight III (I liked the Torchlight II on Switch, so why not?)

Low Priority:

• The Last Campfire (Why do I even own this? What is it? Doesn't look like something I'd be interested in. But if it's really short and I'm rolling with the quick completions, might bump this way up.)

I made a Steam list of 12 games (also low/medium/high priority, 4 of each) but I don't feel like putting it down right now. Also have my list of 16 demos and don't want to prioritize it yet, either, though I'm considering blitzing through all the demos before anything else. I just want to complete a whole bunch of things FAST, so it might be a good idea.

BIG EDIT: So ALL trials are soloable in FFXIV, now? Including those 8-people ones? HMM. Thing is, I've forgotten everything I already played! And FFXIV totally eats your life when you start playing it. But maybe I'll start a new character to remember what the heck this world/story is about. I stopped playing after the un-soloable 8-person trials came up. Did one of them with Bluie (cuz she killed everything by herself) but never went on to the trial after that. I stopped when I had to do the Whorleater trial. But I don't remember the story at all.

Good option, though, if I ever have no reason to exist in the real world any longer, lol.

[Daikon boy]

My backlog is (as always) pretty big. I'm currently playing persona 3 fes but would like to play reload when it drops down to 20-30$ same with granblue fantasy (unless I can grab a limited edition for any of those) and I'd like to play metaphor refantazio on release and anything else that comes out in the future like a new pokemon game.

I purchased chaos head/chaos child for the switch for the steelbook this black Friday, so I'd like to read through that and finish live a live (I only have two character stories to finish up I've been putting off since I want to read a guide for those two before I start them, and then I can go and finish the game. I have some postgame stuff in a couple games (gates to infinity, for example) that I'd like to try and finish. I want to try and play some more rune factory 3 and finish one or two of the tales of games I have sitting around (berseria/vesperia/zesteria/abyss/and Symphonia on a laptop) and clear some more of my 3ds games off my list since some 3ds games started failing recently. And finish getting caught up on the trails series.

[Kikki]

I want to concentrate on life stuff more, but I am cleaning up bits of gaming in all the cracks. (There are lots of cracks! My life is probably mostly cracks, lol...the proverbial one through which so many things mysteriously slip.) Organized a bit of craft stuff and got some of my gear ready for use. Was dying to go back to bed at 8AM this morning, lol. Still am! I feel like I'm being pulled down into the earth by gloom hands. But flopping along inch-by-inch, anyway.

Restarted FFXIV as an Arcanist. I do NOT like Limsa Lominsa. At all. Definitely won't be joining the yellow jackets! (Ul'dah's okay, but I'd rather be in the forest, so it's Gridania for me. New or Old, I don't remember. Ugly name, but then, FFXIV pretty much only does ugly, cloddish, misshapen names, for place and characters, all.) Not happy that you get stuck with a hometown you don't like in order to choose the class you want. And I've totally forgotten how to play or what any of the controls are.

Oddly, something I never figured out when I played before...I managed to make the system font nice and big while NOT having all the UI stuff taking up the entire screen. Still struggling to make this game auto-select the nearest enemy in battle. It's sort of working now (I had to manually select an enemy entirely on my own before, even if something was right in my face and attacking me) but it doesn't work every time, so I don't really get it. I have it set to auto-target the nearest enemy, and sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't, and I don't know why. It's a huge hassle in battle when I'm the type who can't remember more than one type of control at once.

Stopped playing after a bit though because TOO TIRED. Also I have to use these tiny dregs of energy for other things. But will piddle about at it. Still don't remember the story, tbh, even now that I've gone through the first bit of the start. I remember the 'light bearers/warriors of light' thing in a vague way, but nothing about what the problems of this world are or why people can't remember who the warriors of light were. I remember some class quests better than anything about the main story, tbh. I liked the Archer and Dragoon quests. So far the Arcanist quests are boring.

Or maybe I'm just too tired. When you're too tired to play, you're too tired to have fun, so everything you do just feels exhausting rather than in any way good, lol. So maybe it's me that's boring, rather than Limsa Lominsa or the Arcanist class.

I'm at my limit on function. Must go scrape some up from somewhere... time for a life quest to find some energy and/or mental clarity. Either one would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Garden Stories...the huge frog says "Sorry, but I've been going through some stuff and I didn't even know it was you or Lady..."

Rock says, "You swallowed me and my wife."

Apple says, "Yay we solved a problem! Let's all live together in this garden!"

Rock says, "Well that's a nice offer, it is a nice garden, hmm we'll think about it."

Apple says "Yay more problems solved!!"

This is not exact, but it's legitimately close to the actual text in this game after Bufford and Rocky arrive.

How is this reasonable dialogue?