Solo Leveling Arise is a game that has the potential to be a good one, but suffers from a lack of optimizations and a business model that will try to make you pull out the blue card in order to save a few options and time. Despite this, it does have a good combat system, pretty good graphics, a fairly high quality soundtrack and plenty of content, but it's a shame that this is spoiled by a few immediate details. However, if you really want to try it out since it's free, we advise you to turn to the PC version, in the hope that the problems will be rectified fairly quickly.

Nintendo continues to play it cool on the Switch's end-of-life, offering a solid remake of a Paper Mario episode considered one of the saga's best. A game that is bound to resonate in the hearts of many Gamecube gamers, thanks to its impeccable graphical restoration and welcome comfort options. The Thousand Year Door, however, retains the shortcomings of the original, with incessant back-and-forth that highlights the weaknesses of the level-design (excluding dungeons) and chapters that are often too long.

As a singular, contemplative experience, Hellblade 2 perfectly fulfills its contract: visually dazzling, Ninja Theory's title can only be fully experienced with a good pair of headphones screwed on your ears. As a "video game", on the other hand, it's immediately more complicated: between repetitive combat from the second encounter and poorly calibrated, uninteresting puzzles, Senua's Saga is easy to follow but never enthralling. There are a few intense scenes, but they don't make up for a conclusion that comes as a bolt from the blue.

Stellar Blade is a great success, with some serious arguments to give you good reasons to play it. It's beautiful, with top-quality production on every level, and the highly satisfying combat is at the heart of the gameplay. The confrontations are as numerous as they are demanding, and players looking for a challenge should only be disappointed by the somewhat limited number of bosses. The world is also interesting to explore, and lasts a long time. In the end, it's the small hiccups, particularly in the story, that break the immersion.

Princess Peach Showtime! is a real show designed to have fun from start to finish. By playing all the main roles, young and old will find their account without getting bored even if the Switch exclusivity suffers from some latencies, a little long loading time and not very interesting boss fights. All in all, this new Mario will convince you if you need a light, colorful and entertaining adventure to consume in a few hours. The variety of levels is a real plus since each room offers a unique decor and as many treasures to find.

Rise of the Ronin is certainly Team Ninja's best project to date. A complete game full of good ideas, it could have been rated even higher if it hadn't been so graphically poor - a frustrating flaw, given the game's maximum potential, which makes it hard to justify the price tag. Nonetheless, it remains a good experience, with its qualities and faults, well worth exploring, in a captivating universe faithful to 19th-century Japan, as well as a rather qualitative gameplay that may not suit everyone.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is a game of contrasts, excelling in certain areas such as combat and exploration, while blatantly neglecting other aspects usually found in modern games, such as playability and narrative. It offers a grand adventure rich in epic confrontations, but in the old-fashioned, no-frills way, with all the satisfaction and frustration that can entail. It's definitely not for everyone, but that's probably just as well.

This reboot of Alone in the Dark is mainly driven by its characters and its story, whose particularly meticulous narrative resources immerse us in an intriguing atmosphere and scenario. Fighting and puzzles are unfortunately disappointing, with only a handful of memorable confrontations and a few (too few) devious puzzles. This 2024 version of Alone in the Dark won't become a genre staple, but it will keep survival-horror fans busy until the release of the Silent Hill 2 remake.

It's been a long time since we've been treated to a tactical RPG with such original, well-thought-out combat mechanisms. It's a breath of fresh air. Although very classic, the main story also innovates in its own way, letting us tackle its content with great freedom, via the open-world map. Add to this a large cast of colorful characters, with pleasing art direction, and you've got a memorable time in Unicorn Overlord.

There are plenty of things to criticize, from its dated technology to its dungeons with wearying mechanics, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth manages to hit the nail right on the head. Beyond its fantastic battles and its ever-crazy reinterpretations of scenes from the 1997 game, it's the feeling of having accomplished a great and beautiful journey in the company of an unforgettable group of characters that prevails once the credits have been reached.

Last Epoch is the perfect game for you if Diablo 4 has disappointed you and you're wisely waiting for PoE 2. After 4 years of early access and listening to the community, Eleventh Hour Games has succeeded in creating another great Hack'n'Slash, a perfect blend of the genre's ARPGs, Lost Ark and Dr.Strange. A well-stocked endgame content and thousands of items to farm follow an interesting but not memorable campaign. The game will easily hold you hostage for dozens of hours and more if you're a fan of the genre, and will suit veterans and neophytes alike, even without being as accessible as a D4.

Skull and Bones isn't incredible, but neither is it a nameless wreck. For those who didn't play Black Flag back in the day, it's still a good experience to have as a pirate, with then some pretty memorable battles and also the pleasure of customizing your ship and equipping it with the best weapons. But if you've ever had an experience with the opus released in 2013, it's clear that this title will certainly leave a bitter taste in your mouth. While the sea battles are a real highlight, the rest of the game seems bland, with redundant missions and a feeling of limited exploration. Despite this, the whole game remains pleasant to play, with a campaign lasting between 25 and 30 hours.

Overall, Mario vs Donkey Kong is good, even very good. The remastering work is clearly perceptible, and it's a real pleasure to (re)play these levels, which have been redesigned to suit the videogame standards of modern Mario games. Unfortunately, we can only regret that this overall success has been sabotaged by some really annoying flaws, giving the impression that we're being wasted. Mario vs Donkey Kong is therefore, in our opinion, a good game to play from time to time to relax, provided you're not too much of a stickler for detail. A good game for the young, the very young or video game neophytes, who won't pay too much attention to the small details we've pointed out, and who will especially frustrate regular players accustomed to more accomplished optimization.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden really could have been a great game that could have made its mark on the narrative RPG genre. With an innovative concept, a poignant story and choices that make the player think and affect, there was enough to satisfy, not to mention some sumptuous landscapes, successful immersion and a well-thought-out combat system that could have been developed further. All these good ideas are ravaged by poor technique, NPCs from another decade, boringly repetitive gameplay and exploration, and uninvolving combat that deserved better. The whole RPG aspect of the game is unfortunately far too superficial and obsolete, and we're simply content to move forward in the story to find out what's good about it.

If you take away the game's classy art direction and particularly well embodied main characters, there's not much left for Suicide Squad to convince. Its service-oriented looter-shooter mechanics break the rhythm into a thousand pieces, and the shameful repetitiveness of the mission objectives (5 different types over 10 hours of play) undermines what little motivation there is left to dig deeper into its botched endgame. It's just a decent, pretty romp to be enjoyed with friends, but certainly not at full price.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink is the A-JRPG that many gamers have been waiting for, and which will delight fans of Monster Hunter, Tales of, Kingdom Hearts or Genshin Impact with its depth of content that can keep you playing for hundreds of hours if need be. With addictive gameplay, an interesting cast of characters, a satisfying story mode and an endgame that holds you hostage for long hours, alone or with others, Cygames' game is one of the pleasant surprises of the new year. Despite its frustrating shortcomings, which we hope will soon be rectified.

Persona 3 Reload makes all the changes and improvements you'd expect a worthy remake of a cult title. The original is vastly improved in almost every respect, with far more satisfying and dynamic gameplay, richer social and relatively modern graphics. This almost perfect if a massive amount of content hadn't been left out. been left out. The lifespan remains massive, and it's an excellent way of discovering or rediscovering Persona 3, but it's far far from being the complete version of the game we've been dreaming of for years.

After spending a hundred hours at the side of Ichiban Kasuga and Kazuma Kiryu, the verdict is clear: Infinite Wealth is one of the most solid episodes in the saga that began some 18 years ago. Well-paced and better constructed than its predecessor, this new Like A Dragon engraves its turn-based gameplay in the marble of the series, thanks to some excellent ideas that allow it to assert its own identity against other JRPG greats. With its concrete narrative and gargantuan content, it manages to be interesting from start to finish, before stumbling at the end with a conclusion that is likely to be debated and a new game plus at $14.99.

Tekken 8 is a more than generous game, and a wonderful love letter to lovers of the license. It's a shame that its story mode is too redundant in terms of gameplay, and that its solo modes are a little less interesting than those of some of its rivals, because it would otherwise have been the best fighting game released recently without any possible dispute. The heart of the game will really be to fight with other players, the other modes being rather limited and relatively short. If the balancing follows, Tekken 8 will also be very interesting on a competitive level, even more so than Tekken 7.

Prince of Persia The Lost Crown is a pleasant surprise at the start of the year, with a satisfying gameplay offering everything that's best in the Metroidvania genre, without forgetting to innovate. The cartoonish art direction, clichéd story and extravagant action scenes may be a quality or a flaw depending on your sensibilities, but that shouldn't discourage you from playing it, as it's so much fun to explore, fight and perform incredible acrobatics with disconcerting ease.

Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising is an excellent surprise. The game features an original combat system, has a cast rich enough for everyone to find something to their liking, and boasts an excellent online mode. Comparisons with the previous opus are inevitable, but the recycling seems to have been done intelligently: we keep what's good and improve the rest while adding things on top. The game is well worth the price for a new one, even if Versus players may be left a little hungry, with few additions to the single-player section (and not the best part either). In fact, it's this lack of single-player content that prevents us from considering it a must-have, unless you're a real fighting game enthusiast or a fan of the license.

Dragon Quest Monsters Le Prince des Ombres will bring back memories for fans of Dragon Quest IV, and will be convincing for fans of the license or of J-RPGs. However, it may also hold back the arrival of new players, as its technical aspects may pose a problem, despite a really advanced synthesis system, an excellent soundtrack and good ideas such as the season system. In the end, the best way to find out whether it's for you or not is to play the demo.

Rogue Trader delivers everything you'd expect from an RPG set in the vast Warhammer 40,000 universe. A dark atmosphere, numerous cruel choices, excellent companions, exploration of the galaxy and its dangers, good tactical combat and even some rather successful space battles. Realization is also quite good for a game of this genre, but it's far from mainstream, with a lot of text to read on the one hand and daunting character progression on the other. Our biggest regret is that, like many other games, Rogue Trader will probably come out full of bugs that will take a while to resolve.

Avatar Frontiers of Pandora is a well-made licensed product. Without ever making a fuss, Lightstorm's title immerses us in the universe imagined by James Cameron thanks to a visually superb open world, but whose recipe has been around for a long time. Far Cry's skeleton is no longer solid-boned, and while it's more than enough to keep you going for 20 to 25 hours, it's unlikely that you'll retain anything from the experience, unless you're a hardcore fan of the license it's based on.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar Realms of Ruin has a lot going for it, including high-quality production, numerous game modes and a variety of factions, but it suffers from one of the worst flaws of any video game: it's not very interesting or fun. Managing your army is unsatisfying, lacking control and options on the one hand, and on the other, the game is slow, cumbersome and punishing. It takes a lot of effort to get used to its particular gameplay, and is likely to put off many players.

Persona 5 Tactical is a good little tactical game that should please fans of the licence, as well as gamers looking for original gameplay. It could also appeal to those who regret that Mario + The Raving Rabbids is exclusive to the Switch. Some of Persona 5's strengths, such as its music and cast, can be found here, although the Chibi design, linear progression structure and lack of ambition in the story greatly limit its potential. Waiting for a promotion to get your hands on it seems to us to be the wisest option.

Like A Dragon Gaiden plays out like the filler season of a good anime: we meet up with characters we love around an adventure that has no significant impact on the story, with the exception of two or three elements distilled along the way. This is a title that retains the usual qualities of the series, which is enough to make it a very good game, but it is unfortunately marred by haphazard combat collisions and a story that is too long for its own good.

Despite its substantial content and solid gameplay, Warcraft Rumble is not a game that players will be unanimous about. It suffers from a number of shortcomings, such as the fact that free-to-play progression is slowed down, that load times can be a little long, that there's no fun to be had, and that it can be frustrating. However, it will also find its target audience, who will love the universe and be able to enjoy it even if they don't spend much time on it each day.