And without giving anything away, Live A Live culminates towards a powerful conclusion that will have its time-spanning heroes living on in your memory long after its credits roll…for the ninth time.

I took so many screenshots playing Shadows because I kept being stunned by how much color and variety its world contains. A valley during the winter might feel cold, miserable, and icy, but later during the fall it becomes a breathtaking collage of orange, brown, and yellow as the wind whips thousands of leaves around. It’s almost like Ubisoft has built four different, massive open-world maps and each one is a visual treat.

If you’re a Monster Hunter fan of any stripe, you should give Monster Hunter Stories 3 a try. I think RPG players who aren’t Monster Hunter fans should play it, too. The Monster Hunter universe is fascinating, rich, and well-suited for turn-based mechanics. Monster Hunter Stories 3 is its own animal, and that’s all it needs to be.

Bugs, performance problems, a less-than-memorable villain, and a grindy endgame are disappointing for sure, but what Gearbox has put together is still a mostly fun, action-packed, and hand-crafted looter shooter that proves once again that this studio is still the best at making these kinds of over-the-top FPS RPGs.

There are so many people, so many places, so many things, that Fortnite risks veering off into meaninglessness, into the same cacophony that fills my headphones as I play or the same confusion I felt when Paul sent me the picture of that sweatshirt. But Fortnite wouldn’t be Fortnite without it.

From start to finish, Echoes presents a grueling experience. Its war is a brutal grind of bodies and mud. If you can endure the challenge, you’ll find a satisfying mixture of tactics and story. Just don’t be surprised if you’re left with a few nasty scars in the process.

Deck Nine got a chance to prove itself with Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, but if there were any lingering doubts about where the developer can take the franchise, they’re surely cleared away with True Colors.

Her Majesty isn’t one of those stories about women that’s meant to empower them by showing a rise out of adversity. It’s more a fun friend, laughing with you about all the irritating little things that happen to you when you’re a woman that other people sometimes don’t believe.

There’s just something about these games—the logical threads, the ridiculous courtroom antics, the outlandish plot twists—that makes me really happy. Spirit of Justice is no exception. I hope Capcom never stops making these things.

While the lowered difficulty might be a positive for series newcomers, the ways Persona Q2 falls short makes me reluctant to recommend it as a gateway. There’s real fun to be had in Q2, but there are better ways to get your feet wet.

I don’t know how Final Fantasy XV will be remembered when held up to the rest of the Final Fantasy pantheon. But I do know that it’s got everything I want from a Final Fantasy game. I know that it’ll be yet another snapshot in a life filled with Final Fantasy. Another grand adventure, another gang of worthy heroes; another tale of crystals and magic and betrayal and love, all beautiful melodies and lush scenery and the finely honed complexity of carefully choreographed combat. Onward to secrets beyond the horizon, and don’t forget the Phoenix Down. If that’s not Final Fantasy, I don’t know what is.

A few late-game difficulty spikes, some heavy-handed story elements, and a few lackluster weapons hold back Mouse: PI For Hire a bit, but it’s still an incredibly creative, inventive, unique, and action-packed FPS that mixes classic cartoon animation, noir cliches, and satisfying gunplay into something that is unlike any shooter I’ve played before.

Ni no Kuni II is a very good role-playing game, one full of satisfying mechanics and fun battles. It’s also got quotes like that. Even for a fairy tale, this game is naive to the point of parody. Every challenge in the game can be overcome with sheer willpower. Every villain can be convinced to see the light. Everybody wants to serve Evan the boy-king, and all of his decisions are good and pure. But the game is just so charming, so fun, and so delightful to play, that it’s easy to get over that. It’s easy to get sucked in.

Arranger is a brisk adventure, but it’s filled with so many clever, perfectly executed ideas that by the time it was over, I was just left wanting more. Jemma’s story might be over by the end, but I’d love to see Furniture & Mattress add new puzzles in future updates because the team has such an immaculate, clever eye for what makes puzzle games so satisfying. Now I’m just waiting for my memory of the game to fade so I can go back and try to solve those puzzles with fresh eyes once more.

Assassin’s Creed Origins is ungainly and uneven, beautiful and frustrating, expansive and unexpectedly conservative. It won’t challenge the palate; rather, it is a prime example of video-game comfort food. It’s here to be slowly enjoyed, offering a seemingly endless supply of gorgeous locales and steadily-filling progress bars. If Ubisoft is a digital travel agency, Origins provides one of the most sweeping, enveloping destinations they’ve yet offered. Come for the beautiful recreation of ancient Egypt, stay for the beautiful recreation of ancient Egypt.

The Outer Worlds 2 promises flexibility in storytelling, but when that flexibility comes from interacting with one-dimensional characters who inhabit such an unconvincing world, there isn’t much of a point to it.

The sandbox mode is a thing of wonder, and the animals and crowds both add immensely to the cheery atmosphere...Management mode is again a disappointment.

The game’s missions flow together organically and let you shift from capturing a cult outpost using an array of explosives and guns to scaling cliffs in search of hidden caches of equipment and lore-filled collectibles. It fails, however, to meaningfully move beyond the rest of the series in merging the violence and chaos these experiments produce with the community of people scattered throughout its world.

Realistically, after playing Danganronpa 2, it feels less like two games and more like two parts of the same game. Like when Kill Bill Vol 1 came out, then Vol 2 came out a little while later. But we’ll get to that a bit more later. For now... well, want to describe just what Danganronpa is?

It may have taken 17 years and one disappointing sequel along the way, but Relic are to be commended here for somehow managing to take tactical perfection and redefining it not just for old veterans, but for a whole new generation of armchair generals as well.

Despite all this, I still had a great time with Stellar Blade. It’s a game of dichotomies, one that’s both fun and frustrating, but in this sort of middle rut it finds a way to tell a captivating story about transhumanism at the end of the world and how even robots feel things. The platforming might suck and Eve might be unwieldy to control at times, but the stylish action makes up for the more tedious elements. It isn’t perfect, but in its best moments, Stellar Blade is still pretty stellar.

Ultimately, Death of the Outsider is just more Dishonored. Dishonored excels at being a blank slate for players’ creativity, and while Death of the Outsider doesn’t do anything to change that, it doesn’t ruin a good thing.

In the hundreds of battles I’ve had in SteamWorld Quest, no turn in any of them was ever the same. Even now there are strategies and builds I still want to go back and try, despite having already exhausted most of the dungeons. I only wish there were hundreds of new battles I had yet to fight.

It slumps in the middle but rebounds with a soaring finale. Breath of the Wild’s latest adventure is well worth the time and effort, ending on on a triumphant high.

Black Myth: Wukong is a game trying to please two very specific crowds. Both will end up doing extra homework to get to the goods in Black Myth: Wukong at every turn, and the game is doing itself no favors by leaving pages out of the textbook. It’s left being big and ostentatious for bigness and ostentatiousness’ sake, when the most exquisite things in it are small, quiet, thoughtful and dream-like. It’s a game whose art is at war with itself, which is awful ironic since Sun Wukong’s whole arc in Journey to the West involves letting go of delusions of grandeur beyond his reach, and living a life of service, meaning, and ego-less contemplation. But, again, there’s not much we can say about how the game handles that. It’s a damn shame. There’s not nearly as much worth saying otherwise. But, so be it. Black Myth: Wukong can just be another forgettable also-ran in a crowded genre. There is nothing else gamers need to hear.

Newcomers should have fun from the start of Box Boy + Box Girl. Old-timers will have to dig a little more. Everyone who plays will likely finish feeling at least a shade more clever. That’s always a nice feeling to get from a game.

Battle Chef Brigade delivered exactly what I wanted out of it: an engaging, but light game between visual novel segments with eccentric fantasy chefs. It’s a delightful way to while away subway rides when, at home, mountains of heavy-lift AAA games are piling up.

Senua’s enduring compassion and dedication through a rage-inducing journey of pain left a significant impression on me. Despite dealing with a fantastical world, Hellblade II is often, hauntingly, all too real.