The map aside, this is yet another great title in the Atelier series. The stakes are high, the characters are likeable, and the gameplay is as good as it’s ever been. Every year I approach the newest Atelier game with a little trepidation – will this be the year they screw it up? Will the streak finally end? But for at least one more year, the answer is no. Gust has again delivered another fantastic JRPG that does the series proud.

Solo is quiet and playful, with bright colors and a soft art style designed to charm the player into a sense of security so that they’re more willing to divulge their true feelings. It doesn’t offer the deepest or most revelatory personality analysis, but as a tool to make players stop and consider the value they place on romantic relationships in their lives, Solo is a stunning success.

Death Road to Canada has eaten up all of my free time — my lunch breaks and evenings have been dedicated to playing just a little more and going on just one more run. While I can understand that the pixel-art style may not be eye-catching and not everyone is a fan of the roguelike genre, it’s such a strong experience that I’d recommend people even vaguely interested get past their first impressions and jump in — that car to Canada isn’t going to drive itself.

While the action can be lackluster and story events can come out of left field, there’s just something about 3030 Deathwar Redux – A Space Odyssey that triggers that just one more mission feeling while exuding an effortless charm which often makes up for its flaws.

The Way of Life tries to present a large number of situations where choices matter, but most of them fail to deliver any meaning at all.

After equipping a few blessings, the playing field becomes a bit more level, but having the option to turn City of Brass into a slightly less frustrating experience isn’t enough to redeem it. A lot of roguelikes could stand to learn something about difficulty from the concept of the blessings and burdens system, but as for me, all I managed to dig out of the game’s mountains of gold and sand was that artificial fairness and difficulty can’t hold a candle to genuine polish and balance.

Code Mirai may have a lot of rough edges, but it has a heart big enough to power even the most outrageously-oversized mecha battlesuit.

In its current state, Survive! Mr. Cube doesn’t have enough juice to be a solid recommendation to roguelike fans. More than anything, it feels like a beta that still needs six more months. I don’t want to sound too harsh, though – this small team of devs is 100% on the right track, and with more resources, more polish and a little more depth, I could easily see this one becoming a favorite. I hope they keep at it.

It seems some additional work has gone into the translations and the game is better for it. Between those improvements and two intriguing plots worth following, this is certainly the definitive version of Beholder.

Seven Deadly Sins: Knights of Britannia is a perfectly functional game, but those unfamiliar with the IP should probably watch or read the series instead — the lack of depth and content makes it hard to recommend to anyone except perhaps for the most hardcore of fans.

Guilty Gear Rev 2 is a fine update to Revelator that takes an already superb base game, adds some great characters into the mix and refines the fighting engine even further. It still has certain accessibility issues that any game this complex is bound to have , but there’s still nothing quite like Guilty Gear on the market when it comes to delivering high speed battles mixed with awesome visuals and great music.

It’s ironic that a story about the value of discipline and restraint would feel like it needs more time in the editing room, but that’s the new God of War – promising but aimless. I like the new Kratos, but I hope his next adventure is more focused than this, and I pray that it actually gives him something interesting to do.

I appreciated that Penny-Punching Princess brought some new spins to the action-RPG genre and using money as a tool to fight is a fairly novel idea that could be explored more. The calculator is also a thematically brilliant idea in a game about capitalism and debt. However, the combat mechanics are problematic and play falls prey to unnecessary frustration and repetition.

Rogue Aces is a true accomplishment, a game that updates a formula from the very earliest days of home computing and makes it feel vital and engaging. While it may not be easy, it’s accessible to all levels of players, and goes to prove that there’s seemingly no classic genre of videogame that a few roguelike elements can’t improve.

Light Tracer is cute and clever, challenging and frustrating, and ends up as a platformer that fully exploits VR’s ability to draw players into its cheerily devilish world. I’ve previously given Oasis Games a hard time for the mediocre quality of their releases, but I’ve got to give it to them – they’ve finally hit on a winner with Light Tracer. It’s as good as any platformer on the system, and once again proves that there aren’t many genres that won’t work perfectly well in VR.

Sadly, while I enjoyed coming back to Raiders, checking out the new character and playing through the new levels once, my original assessment still stands — the multiplayer/replay premise of the game doesn’t make a lot of sense, and I can’t help but feel that the IP would be better served by recycling the assets into a different project. People who’ve put the time in, know what to expect and want more content will get it with Hades Betrayal, but it’s tough to recommend it to anyone.

Even if Extinction had released as a ten or fifteen dollar digital download, I still wouldn’t recommend it to anyone – life’s too short and filled with genuinely great games to waste on terrible experiences like this one. Given that it released at full price, however, it almost feels like a deliberate and calculated insult towards any game that ever earned its price tag. It is an aggressively terrible game that should be avoided at all costs.

While Time Carnage has little in the way of innovation or originality, it nails the fundamentals so well that it’s a pleasure to jump in. There are plenty of other games that let players grab a couple of guns and blast away at zombies, robots, and dinosaurs, but the ones that manage all three and do it in this kind of style are few and far between.

Five years from now, I’m not sure how much I’ll remember about The Adventure Pals. The quirky main characters will probably come to mind, but not much else. Platorming fans won’t go wrong checking it out, but it’s solidly in the middle of the spectrum — not great, not awful — and as such, it’s smack-dab in the middle of that good category that vanishes from memory.

By the time Masters of Anima was over, the repeated battlefields were as tired as its cliche story, and I had spawned and relocated countless units in battle. Thankfully, the minor changes from level to level, were just enough to keep the campaign from overstaying its welcome. Playing commander was engaging for a while, but I don’t see myself returning to explore Spark any time soon.

Minor quibbles aside, Epistory is a solid typing adventure. The story mode is around five hours long, and a leaderboard offers plenty of opportunities to test typing skills against the rest of the world. While the plot never builds to the kind of interesting levels that the introduction suggests (in fact, an end-game twist is something of a headscratcher) the gameplay is so well-made that it’s hard to fault the rest.

I’m hesitant to call Burly Men At Sea an example of ‘style over substance’ because it’s all style, but one’s opinion will ultimately boil down to how one feels about the type of game it is. While not a blockbuster that everyone will enjoy, it’s a neat little project that works well enough on the Switch and kept a smile on my face throughout.

Ultimately, there’s no argument that this is the best game adaptation the franchise has seen, and it’s an undeniable improvement over its predecessor. However, the amount of rehashed material might be galling to players who want new content — those who’ll be happy with simply killing titans in a more polished fashion are the ideal audience here.

It’s hard to say whether Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth is better than Mask of Deception since they’re essentially one story split into two halves, but I found the entire tale thought-provoking and its characters lovable and (mostly) funny. It’s a visual novel worth playing, and now that I’ve reached its end, I’m a little sad saying goodbye.

Hardcore baseball fans will probably buy The Show 18 just for updated rosters (what other choice is there?) and those addicted to Diamond Dynasty have plenty to dive into here. It may not be surprising or greatly changed over last year’s version, but it’s still a solid game with plenty of content — I just can’t get over the removal of Season mode, though. Solo players — heads up.

Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet is a perfect game for anyone looking to get a taste of what MMOs feel like without wanting to dedicate hundreds of hours of their lives to the experience, and perhaps more importantly, it has an ending.

Starpoint Gemini Warlords is an impressive effort by Little Green Men, especially in light of its crowdfunded origins and community-driven design. That they’ve managed to expand the scope and scale of their game to encompass a whole other genre outweighs the concerns raised by poor balancing and a less-than-smooth final result. All the same, those concerns remain, so those who are willing to put up with the rough edges are the ones who’ll find themselves most satisfied.

Supposedly Wonderful Future is all about looking at a complicated what-if scenario, seeing how every new invention has the possibility to both help and hinder humanity, and then coming to a decision that everyone can live with. Then, it’s suddenly about a man offering truly idiotic reasons for wanting to kill himself before watching him do it. It’s a terrible ending to an otherwise fascinating, thought-provoking experience.