In terms of living up to lofty promises based on Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Warhorse Studios absolutely nailed it for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. The bonkers story, fantastic characters, and the right improvements to combat carry the day, but the more mundane tasks like smithing and alchemy make for an impressive and fascinating representation of what daily life may have been like during a specific point in history. There are endless adventures here to dig into, and even though it requires a significant investment of time, for those bold enough to brave it, it’s time well spent. Long live Warhorse Studios!

Stardew Valley is without a doubt the best game in the Harvest Moon genre in many years. It has a subtle message about what it means to live a good life and to flourish through a combination of hard work and human connection. The Harvest Moon games all basically boil down to managing a mix of time, tasks, and metrics, and recent entries in the series have relied heavily on exploiting a new gameplay gimmick with each iteration: in one it's crafting structures for the town, in another it's trading with foreign economies. The problem with this approach is that once these gimmicks are exhausted — all the houses built or all the goods traded — the games feel hollow. Stardew Valley succeeds by delivering a robust experience that does not merely rely on watching a meter go up. It has something to say and says it well, while never abandoning the core gameplay that attracted players in the first place.

With tons of difficulty options and a wonderful mod community, XCOM 2 War of the Chosen is the perfect game for just about any ambitious armchair general. You can tough it out in a super calculated ironman campaign on legendary or, should you choose, tone down the difficulty a bit and save scum as you learn the ebb and flow of war. XCOM 2 may have gotten off to a rough start back in 2016, but between Firaxis' dedication and this amazing expansion we now have one of the best strategy RPGs around.

Ultimately, I can only review what’s in front of me, and as it stands, this game shows promise that isn’t fully realized yet. Given the strength of its foundation, I’m excited to see where it’s headed in two years. If Capcom delivers, the expansion could very well be the best Monster Hunter yet.

Mewgenics is best enjoyed as a marathon, not a sprint. Due to the sheer volume of content—with no clear end in sight aside from “collect all the achievements” and unlock all the stuff—Mewgenics can feel overwhelming right out of the gate. Despite how incredible the game design, balance, and mechanics are, the lack of any real story makes getting attached to a team or battle impossible. This is a “wow, that’s so weird and cool” sort of game that you move on from every once in a while until you want to hop back in so that it all feels fresh and new...Make no mistake: I love this game, and I’m almost definitely going to 100% it, but there’s no telling when that’s going to happen.

NieR: Automata is everything I could have wanted from a sequel to NieR, to the point that I almost feel spoiled here. It keeps the same off-the-wall plot and well-written characters from the original while discarding the clunky combat and movement for a system that has the sheen of any one of Platinum's greatest titles. It really is the best of both worlds. If you've been a fan of NieR since day one, but have been burnt by its clumsiness before, you're in for a fantastic treat. And if you're new to the craziness that is a Yoko Taro game, know that this is the absolute best time to jump in.

Playing 80 Days is strongly reminiscent of the Choose Your Own Adventure books I read as a kid (albeit without the ability to stick my finger in a page if I made a bad choice).

Maybe I’m just a sucker for games in which time passes, giving a sense that this is a real place with people we grow with. Rather than concluding a game and finding out the fate of everyone through expository text, we get to see it and be a part of it. Our decisions shape their lives, and this is why games are such a fantastic storytelling medium. I, too, have to live with the consequences, not just Andreas. Pentiment achieves this experience with an expertise we’ve come to expect from Obsidian, even if the game is bogged down with some fixable game design decisions.

What it comes down to is that The Secret of Monkey Island is one of the great games in the adventure genre: like Maniac Mansion, King's Quest, or Sam and Max Hit the Road. With LucasArts providing this remake for a mere ten dollars, there is no excuse for any gamer not to have this in their library.

I could complain about how The Ivalice Chronicles doesn’t have a revamped soundtrack like we got with the Pixel Remasters, that the PSP content wasn’t included, or that it didn’t have new cinematics, but you know what? This is an outstanding remaster with a subtle touch to rebalancing that fans—and newcomers—will clamor for. Having Final Fantasy Tactics accessible on modern hardware with all the furnishings Square Enix was kind enough to bestow upon us—all I can say is “thank you.” In truth, while an updated soundtrack would have been my biggest ask, I still cannot believe how good this voice acting is. The localization team and actors have absolutely done us a service with this masterpiece, treating this title with the respect it deserves. This epic fantasy that tonally draws from different styles into one coherent, beautiful voice is available to all of us, and if communication from its creators is to be believed, we might see more of this world if we support Ivalice Chronicles. Do yourself a favor and enjoy what is, without question, one of the greatest tales ever told. One of the greatest RPGs ever created.

My final thought on The World Ends With You is that it's a grower. I was not initially sold on the game, but as I sunk more time into it, the more it grew on me.

All this is a long winded way of saying I loved Torchlight II, and I think you will too. But if you don't, at least you'll only be out $20.

Brings the incredibly fun PC-style RPG experience to your console: co-op, physics, and bugs intact.

The time I’ve spent with Horizon Forbidden West has been an absolute blast. I’ve gawked at beautiful landscapes, engaged in frantic fracases with machines, delved into ancient ruins, laughed at snarky dialogue, triumphed in an arena, gotten my butt handed to me in a board game, and much more. I still haven’t seen everything Forbidden West has in store for me, but I’ve seen enough to know it is special, just like its predecessor. This is one of those sequels where the developers have really upped their game in just about every way, and I can’t wait to play more of it!

Vanillaware takes many risks with 13 Sentinels, and nearly all of them pay off — few titles can boast a story as strong, a cast as memorable, or a world as stylish as this one. My time with 13 Sentinels was nothing short of magnificent, even though its combat felt undercooked and its narrative was daunting to follow. Its refreshing handling of queer issues alone ensures its mark in genre history. 13 Sentinels is a love letter to storytelling no one should miss, and it’s one I’m anxiously hoping Vanillaware follows up on sooner rather than later.

The Crimson Diamond is a remarkable game, not just in terms of the experience it offers, but in the fact that it exists at all. The game not only successfully evokes text parser adventure games of decades past but improves on them in dozens of little ways. Julia Minamata deserves a massive amount of credit for evoking the feel, look, and style of the era in a way that doesn’t feel dated or like a relic of a forgotten past. Whether her next project is a text parser game, a verb-wheel-based point-and-click, or a completely different genre, I expect she will make it with the same level of care and imagination that she shows here. The Crimson Diamond is clearly a labor of love, and I loved it just as much in return!

With vibrant visuals, excellent music and voice acting, a deep and complex gameplay system, and one of the best storylines ever to grace a RPG, Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is one of the few must-have titles on the PSP, not only for the RPG aficionado, but for any gamer in general.

RPG fans who liked the open-ended gameplay and freedom of the first game will want to take a return trip-the two expansions with over 100 hours of new adventures coupled with the $30 price tag make this game one of the steals of the year.

With Pokémon X and Y, Nintendo may have become their worst enemy; they've outdone themselves so much that it's difficult to see how the series could get any better.

Regardless of the game's quality when put side-by-side with its PC incarnation, however, The Witcher 2 on the 360 is definitely an incredibly well crafted and polished game with a few flaws that only rarely hinder the overall experience and prevent it from achieving perfection.

On the surface, The Stanley Parable can be enjoyed for its personality, jokes, and references. If this rambling review has whetted your interest, then this brief game is worth the experience, but not at full price.

Monster Hunter Rise features the most advanced, deep, and experimental gameplay in the series. It has something for everyone, and it will serve as not only the best entry point to the series, but one of the best entries in the series. It’s innovative, fun, complex, charming, and it’s a fantastic way to lose a couple hundred hours of your life.

From showtime ‘til curtain call, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an unpredictable adventure that kept me hooked. If you’ve been interested in trying this game like I was, you’re probably not going to be disappointed. Wrinkles like the excessive backtracking and restrictive partner swapping in combat hold back the game from its true potential, but its witty writing and arresting art direction make this a singular entry in Nintendo’s RPG lineup. Hopefully, Nintendo’s taking note and course corrects for their next Paper Mario entry.

The game is fantastically playable, and utterly addictive.

There is so much meat in Dave the Diver that no number of shark bites can truly size it down. Even when the button prompts fail to properly load during a cooking competition, said competition is followed by a scene providing additional character lore and growth, ensuring you don’t stay disappointed for long. It’s very, very hard to overlook such a major, literally gamebreaking factor as crashes, but there’s just so much more to see instead: a music concert mini-game in a literal fever dream; minor characters with major emotional beats in their sidequests; plentiful boss battles against epic deep sea creatures; and still so much more. Just as we haven’t mapped even a fourth of the earth’s seafloor, there is so much more to Dave the Diver than first meets the eye. It’s surprising, it’s expansive, and each of its many segments is equally memorable. Dave the Diver is a game that shines brilliantly, even brighter than the most elusive pearls.

Following a god-statue just doesn't inspire me the way being hit in the face with an ever-present catastrophe that devastates families did. Yes, Deadfire has fascinating themes of imperialism, cultural preservation, and politics, but those are secondary to the godly pursuit the Watcher and friends engage in. Despite this weakness and the relatively lackluster combat, Obsidian's writers showcase why they're the best in the industry and help lift Deadfire above its lesser qualities.

While a sorrowful game like What Remains of Edith Finch chooses to end on more of a “life is short, but beautiful” angle, the opposite can be said here: Mouthwashing waits until the last minute to deliver its final, devastating punchline. Even if the gameplay here isn’t revolutionary, it’s hard not to be drawn by the gravity of games that “go big on story” (like how Yoko Taro games tend to revel in delightfully twisted storytelling). After a certain point, you simply can’t look back and need to see how this ends, even if it’s all in tears. But the best parts of Mouthwashing have sat in my mind for a while now, and Wrong Organ has quickly established itself as a developer worth keeping a creepy, unblinking eye on.

This remains a game that everyone who loves RPGs should play, and I'm pleased to say that the iPad version is as good a platform as any to experience it.