In 2022 I played Ara Fell. A surprising gem made originally with the RPG Maker 2003 and then remade with Unity to give it steam achievements and enhanced combat a bit and other goodies. It has a surprising level of polish and was made by One programmer supported by an army of people doing other things. part of the reason I played it is I'm working on finish my own game with Anton and it is using the same engine so this gave me a lot of ideas for what it can do and what I polished game could look like. I can tell this game has been polished for years. The play balance, the challenging boss fights, they story polish, its all there, better than many final fantasy games really. They have an army of people making them but are not always so polished with love and dedication. In that regard it sort of reminded me of Stardew Valley, also made by one (over?) dedicated guy.
Other things I really enjoyed about this game was how delicately and more realistically it portrayed the heroine and her romance with the main character guy and how funny it was. It didn't try to do too much. It developed the four main characters and kept revealing secrets about them so that you really cared about finding out what happened next.
In 2023 (this year) I played Moonlighter as well as Gloomhaven some and other things. I just finished Moonlighter and I have to say I'm impressed at how it captures the fun of old Zelda 1 or 3 but with a new twist of grinding money and running a shop. The running a shop part isn't that amazing but its a good counter point to relax after a stressful life threatening dungeon run so it works pretty well actually. The only qualm I'd say I have is the bosses are a little under powered except the third and last one, once you grind up the gear. And the mini bosses you just steamroller once you have the right gear. They are a joke. And there are Easter eggs like rooms with infinite spawn or a monster who chases you if you run out of time but they often take a bit too long to find and most people probably finish the game and cease caring before they find many of these things. Still I think it was put together pretty well. My only real ask is for more dungeons and tools like in Zelda to make things a little more interesting but it did quite well for only having block, roll, shoot arrows, and slash.
