Trails in the Sky: First Chapter is a worthy remake of a niche JRPG. Fans of the genre shouldn’t miss it.

There aren't any major graphical improvements that would justify the $30 price tag. But Outlaws is a fantastic shooter, and I highly recommend giving it a try in any form.

If you're really craving a new global RTS and you're a big fan of the Victoria series, you can give Europa Universalis V a try right now. But it's better to wait: it won't reach its full potential for at least a few years.

In 25 years, System Shock 2 has hardly aged, and thanks to Nightdive's efforts, it has become much more convenient to play on modern systems.

Stellar Blade is not as stylish and intriguing as Nier: Automata, but the result is still impressive — especially when compared to Shift Up's previous projects.

Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition is a worthy remaster that expands on the classic castle-building strategy game. However, most of the new features are designed for experienced players.

Simon the Sorcerer Origins is a nostalgic adventure set in a vibrant fantasy world filled with jokes. Visually, the game ranges from “acceptable” to “excellent”.

Broken Arrow is a strong debut from Steel Balalaika Studio and one of the most compelling real-time tactics in recent years, equally engaging in single-player and online modes.

Syberia - Remastered is more like a remake. Despite this, the developers managed to preserve the style and atmosphere of the original.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is better than the first installment in terms of gameplay and narrative. But unfortunately, developers have created primarily a linear game. The open world and all related things are rather attached as an extra.

Old Skies by Wadjet Eye Games is an inventive, very varied, and wildly entertaining classic adventure.

Suikoden I & II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars has some downsides, but they pale against the interesting story and unusual gameplay.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Souls-inspired, turn-based combat system can ruin your mood. If you can handle it, you'll discover a rich, surreal world with an interesting story full of emotion.

MechWarrior 5: Clans feels more arcade than MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. For example, the AI of opponents is primitive. But more or less serious games about giant walking robots are rare these days, so I played MW 5: Clans in one breath.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is sometimes clumsy, just like Indiana Jones himself. But once you start this game, it's impossible to stop playing.

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 1 and 2 Remastered has enough small improvements and nice bonuses for fans. It's the best way to experience the Soul Reaver sub-series.

Silent Hill 2 Remake is a bit like Alan Wake 2 – also a very ambitious horror game with a lot of flaws. However, I give credit to Bloober Team: I think Bloober Team did their job better than Remedy Entertainment.

In Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the developers went a little overboard with bold ideas. And yet the story of Miquella is smoothly integrated into the monumental epic of Elden Ring.

Still Wakes the Deep is a great horror game with an intriguing story, good acting, and intense chase sequences. I recommend it to all fans of the horror genre.

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is one of the most exciting detective adventure games. And the new remaster titled Reforged is a great gift for series fans and newcomers alike.

This is a solid remaster of a classic of the action-adventure genre. Even today Tomb Raider 1, 2 & 3 are fun to play.

Persona 3 Reload is a fourth version of Persona 3. No version of the game can be called ultimate, but Reload deserves that title more than any other.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the first game in the series in a long time that I enjoyed. It expands the classic JRPG and FF VII Remake. And there is no doubt that Square Enix saved all the most interesting and exciting things for the final part of the trilogy.

The Thaumaturge is a supernatural detective with good dialogs, strong characters, and a fun battle system.

Millennia is the most serious competitor of the Civilization series since 1991.

Tekken 8 is a solid fighting. It has a lot of game modes, and it is fun to play even for a newcomer.

Colony Ship is a true spiritual successor to The Age of Decadence.

This game is a strong anti-war statement.

This is a solid and filled with new content remaster of one of the most popular and technologically advanced first-person shooters of the 1990s.

There's a lot of flaws in space in Starfield. But that does not prevent me from exploring our galaxy again and again.

You can easily spend ten hours on Trine 5. Then, unfortunately, you'll forget everything about this game except gorgeous graphics and fun co-op.

We could only dream of a game like RoboCop: Rogue City in the 1990s. Now it is just a good shooter for a few evenings.

Lies of P is a stylish game with clever ideas and original solutions. It lacks words at times, but this is not a big problem for an action/RPG.

Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a great game. It is a sloppy sketch of a great game.

Resident Evil 4 is a good remake. It is not as creative as RE 2 reincarnation, and it follows the original too diligently, but it still looks very decent.

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a good remaster. It can give you a dozen hours of a solid thriller about a terrible disease, scary rituals and haunted houses.

It's hard to stop playing this game. Finally the day has come, when I can say that about Jagged Alliance 3.

This is the most exciting Star Wars action game since Jedi Academy.

Age of Wonders 4 didn't overwhelm my expectations. But even now, without all planned DLC, you can easily spend dozens of hours on this game.

Mount & Blade 2 transports us into an endless chaotic world full of events, battles and amazing adventures. At times it feels like a victim of its own complexity — some of the game's intricate systems don’t mesh together or never work as advertised, the economy is flawed, there’s a frightening dearth of conventions… Yet this elaborate medieval world will eat up at least a hundred hours out of your life.

"It’s yet another game with huge pixels and a mouthful of a name,” I had thought upon hearing the announcement a few years ago, and I am so glad that I was proven wrong. If not for Wadjet Eye Games, I would have missed this excellent adventure with delightfully crafted suspense and brilliant dialogue.

The queen is back and she is here to impress. Bayonetta 3 is flawed, but these flaws are easy to overlook when you’re having so much fun.

Requiem is trying its best to make everything even more beautiful, impressive and varied, yet it is still just a decent sequel to a good game. The overall impression is let down by the muddled third act, rudimentary stealth mechanics and forced combat sequences.

Squad management, vigorous combat and expanding Camelot combine into a compelling dark adventure, which forces you to live with the consequences of your missteps (especially when manual saving is turned off). Weak story is an obvious letdown, but don’t let it turn you away.

This massive Star Wars amusement park spanning nine movies is a perfect way to spend 20-30 minutes before going to bed.

At times, The World Before failed to impress some of its important plots upon me. The narrative is so rife with small inconsistencies that you can't help but notice them, and character models look so poor against those luscious backgrounds. But the more you get engaged with this seemingly simple story, the more you want to find out how it ends.

Elden Ring is massive, sometimes to its detriment. A thorough walkthrough might take up more than 100 hours to complete, and at some point it becomes clear that From Software did not have enough manpower to produce that much unique content. Still, it remains incredibly addictive even after those 100 hours pass…

Conway feels like a detective thriller that doesn't question the mental abilities of its players.

A bit more polish on the story, better attention to technical details and improved camera/editing would have turned it into a masterpiece. Still, this solid interactive thriller is absolutely worth one full playthrough.

Guardians of Galaxy makes you laugh out loud, and that’s a rare feat. The story and production are so good that they offset its flawed gameplay, especially combat.

The sheer scale of "cosmetic surgery" in Resurrected is mind-boggling, and that’s exactly what we’ve been promised. At the same time, 20-year old gameplay tropes raise quite a few questions, especially if you’re used to the conveniences of modern action/RPGs.

Trudograd is not as varied and expansive as I expected, but, all in all, it’s a very decent role-playing game and a notable improvement over the original Atom RPG.

Inscryption does a lot of things right. At the same time, the abundance of superfluous elements upsets the internal harmony of this game.

Too much hand-holding, some glaring omissions in the narrative and its somewhat weak AI do let Deathloop down, but still, it’s a rare and exciting game made for both fans of Corvo Attano and those who never set foot in the Empire of the Isles before.

Modern Storyteller did right by rewriting its popular mod for a new world. Aside from some rookie mistakes and an apparent lack of budget, the story is exciting and memorable, and I really did not want to leave this cursed city. I definitely wouldn’t mind a few additional quests.

A swarm of bugs is the only serious flaw of Wrath of the Righteous. While the developers managed to avoid a Kingmaker-level catastrophe, please do save this game for the upcoming holidays, or maybe even take a vacation — it’s worth it.

The official description of Road 96 promises “thousands of roads across the authoritarian nation of Petria.” One might think that this is a truly non-linear game with a highly replayable campaign, but in reality you’ll get one full playthrough, with maybe a smidge more. Still, this playthrough, despite some flaws in logic and overall simplicity of the game, will bring you joy and a dozen awesome songs for your playlist.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition is good enough to be considered a decent collection for fans of this universe or anyone who has never played as Captain Shepard before. If you wished for more substantial improvements, changes, revelations or any supplemental content, you’re in for a disappointment.

Thanks to the extensive remaster, this extraordinary, albeit quirky game is now accessible for a wider audience. Nier: Replicant belongs to a rare breed of RPGs that grip you to the very end.

ICBM is not made for long gameplay sessions, but planning sneaky nuclear strikes is a thrilling way to while away a few evenings.

Suzerain has problems with how it presents information as well as some logical holes, yet its non-linear narrative, moody atmosphere, the tingling feeling that everything will end badly, awesome soundtrack, and a well-developed world are all valid reasons to veto any criticisms and return to Sordland for more socio political experiments.

The sequel is mostly an expanded and improved Nioh, with more complex combat mechanics and new challenges for the veterans, yet it's surprisingly accessible to casual players. Yet it fails to correct past mistakes, and you would be hard pressed to see any transformative changes in the game’s formula.

IO Interactive finished its trilogy with a great finale, and this episode is the best of three, tying up the epic World of Assassination series in a beautiful bow.

Art of Rally is an opposite of a hardcore rally sim; it requires very little effort and revels in its meditative approach. Drive, listen to pleasant electronic tunes, enjoy the scenery. But I wish there was something more besides career mode, because when it’s over 20 hours later, you’re done.

Ghostrunner, with all its pretty neon lights, persistent rain and moody darksynth music, looks deceptively simple, but those expecting an easy adventure, will tap out after a couple of levels. But if you like to plan your moves one step ahead and are willing to git good, you will spend hours beating your own records.

This is a full-fledged, honest to God remake. Some changes to the story will upset hardcore fans, but I think this approach is absolutely justified. Even though this remake is not as amazing as new versions of Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy 7, it’s still a worthy update.

At the heart of Valhalla is a surprisingly smart, cynical story about overly ambitious leaders, big hopes and soul-crushing disappointments. There are cool twists, nail-biting dilemmas and some very bitter consequences for you. The world of Valhalla is huge, but don’t be afraid to dive in.

Cyberpunk 2077 tells a story of a dark future, while stumbling over technical problems and some weird design choices, but even with all these flaws, you‘ll want to finish this story.

Hades is so captivating that you can easily spend days trying to escape the realm of the dead.

Paradox Interactive will be growing Crusader Kings 3 for years to come, but don’t be afraid — this is not an early access release, but a full-fledged game that often makes you stay “just for one more turn.”

Even though Pendragon’s short roguelike format doesn’t allow for sprawling sagas, as all stories are quite abridged and simplistic, this game is absolutely engrossing, and there is enough excellent content to last you for several years.

An excellent follow-up to Wasteland 2. You want to finish it as soon as possible just to start the campaign all over again and take different decisions.

Othercide is low-key but stylish, smart, exciting, even though it doesn't have the budget and technologies of Gears Tactics. It does fall into the same gameplay cracks sometimes, yet, unlike GT, it always keeps you engaged and invested in the fate of your team.

Carrion has a handful of annoying shortcomings, but it perfectly depicts everyday life of a scary alien creature from a horror movie, and that’s a monumental achievement by itself.

Aftermath marks the passing of the MK X/11 era and cleans the stage for the next game in the series. Good multiplayer, robust framerate, deep tutorial, exciting story and gameplay… MK 12 will have to aim very high to clear that bar.

A good remake of the introductory part of the cult-favorite Final Fantasy VII. It improves on the original game in almost all aspects, yet lacks in scale and drops the ball at the very end.

If you manage to power through the dull first third of the game and let some of the design limitations slide, Beautiful Desolation will reward you with one of the best post-apocalyptic worlds ever created.

Fans of the Desperados franchise can crank up the difficulty and bring out a stopwatch to time their actions. Newcomers will enjoy the game even if they have no idea of who John Cooper is and what he did before. Either way, you’re in for 20 glorious hours.

SMB 3 pretty much cancels its two predecessors by improving even the smallest details — now that’s an evolving franchise!

Some of Cloudpunk's ancillary gameplay elements feel underdeveloped, but the neon lights of a cruel futuristic metropolis and a collection of amazing stories will make it worth your while.

While Darkest Dungeon has more layers of complexity, turn-based combat in Iratus is just as compelling. You have to pay attention to negative effects, preempt potential threats, exploit loopholes in the game’s sophisticated rulebook and build effective combos.

Like Jason Statham’s character in Crank, Doom Eternal needs adrenaline every waking second. So long as you drown hordes of demons in their own blood, it feels like a perfect GOTY contender, but during quiet moments, Doom Eternal withers and forces you to ponder unpleasant questions. id Software needs to course-correct, otherwise we’ll be playing Super Doom Slayer’s Bros in a few years.

This simple story about the importance of family ties will definitely tug at your heartstrings — if not with words, then at least with beautiful pixel-perfect dungeons.

If the original dilogy is Iliad, Shenmue 3 is Odyssey, a sequel that even exceeds expectations in some regards.

You could, if you wanted, berate ZA/UM for having loading screens between tiny rooms, minor bugs or their numerous love letters to Black Isle Studios, but nitpicking Disco Elysium is just… pointless. It's a one-of-a-kind game that channels the wildest ambitions of their creators and defies isometric classics instead of blindly imitating them.

It's a short, but very intense adventure, with brief cinematics, compact maps without padding or copy/pasted elements. It brings a lot of variety into the world teeming with bland "sandboxes".

It feels as if Frozenbyte created this colorful, riveting platformer to prove to us and themselves that this series is far from over. The fate of Trine does seem bright, but the developers should really stop reusing their past ideas.

Modern Warfare is not a stellar game, but decent first-person shooters about modern conflicts are so few and far between that it’s surprisingly satisfying.

If you’re tired of waiting for new single-player adventures in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, head to the distant colonies — they have everything you wish for.

NBA 2K20 makes a few missteps in several modes and the gameplay is pretty much the same as before, but it’s still a reigning champion in its genre.

This is an intense blockbuster which delivers its brutal action just as advertised.

The world of Ancestors is an intricate system with its own rules generating exciting events and stories. That is why it’s so fun to explore.

Yoshi’s Crafted World doesn’t bring anything new to the formula — everything is lifted from other arcade games and previous Yoshi’s adventures. Still, it never gets boring.

This mortal combat is still tons of fun. Realistic graphics, top-notch body and facial animations, extremely inventive violence and perfect sound effects. Ed Boon and Co. still make the best fighting games in town.

For the first time in its long existence, Frogwares created a mature, multilayered, intense adventure that will keep you in its tentacled grip until the very last second.

Story-wise, Judgment is a compelling mix of Chinatown and the first season of True Detective. Impressive direction and believable characters in unexpected situations is the last thing that I expected from an action game based on the Yakuza engine.

It’s evolution, not revolution. By building upon a mass of ideas accumulated since Rome 2, Total War: Three Kingdoms creates the most compelling strategic mode in years. All that’s left to do now is fix battles…

It's an amazing journey — clever, spectacular and exciting. Fire up your furnaces, ladies and gentlemen, but don't forget how treacherous those twinkling stars can be.