Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is incredibly impressive when viewed as the first game project developed and released by Leenzee. It’s ambitiously put together when it comes to the marriage of its various flexible gameplay systems and a game world that’s constructed seamlessly. Its depiction of the late Ming dynasty is fascinating because it isn’t afraid to show the brutal circumstances that loomed over this time period, even when separated from all of the dark fantasy elements that provide flavor to it. I enjoyed my time a lot with Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, but its horrid performance and optimization on PC unfortunately damaged my overall enjoyment.

All in all, the game is serviceable for what it is, but the tone of the game throws me for a loop, and the dungeon-crawling aspects aren't that interesting to warrant bouncing back and forth from dungeon to school and back again for multiple sessions. While the game is retailing at $50, I still feel that this game is a little too expensive for what it offers. This feels like the perfect game to grab on sale, rather than rushing out to the store and getting it immediately on launch. That said, there's still enough here to satisfy people with a deep urge for dungeon crawling or anime slapstick, I suppose.

It might seem like I’m harsh on this spin-off, but I think I’ve grown more fond of the title the longer it sat with me. To get the most out of No Sleep For Kaname Date, you need to align your expectations in advance. The story isn’t devoid of emotional pay-offs, but it’s hardly going to hit things out of the park as hard as the previous games did. What it sacrifices in the typical mind-bending mystery, it makes up for with excellent comedy writing. This game knows it can’t meaningfully advance the plot of the main series, and it blatantly doesn’t try to. It wants you to have another go with characters you grew fond of throughout two really special games. It wants to make you laugh over the most ridiculous jokes, and applaud as Date powers up with his signature porno mags. As an AI fan who didn't need this to be the next big thing, I can’t help but appreciate what this offers.

While the multiplayer is nice to have back, and the controller support is solid overall, I was otherwise left uninspired. I will always appreciate games becoming easier for new people to experience or getting a console port, but between the harmless-but-still-annoying bugs, the bland menus, and the lack of meaningful quality-of-life updates, I don’t feel like this release lives up to the “enhanced” moniker it's given itself. The package feels like a missed opportunity. Enhanced Edition is okay. It didn’t crash on me (I’m not faulting this game for crashing due to a mod that wasn’t designed for it), so that’s always good, but that’s a pretty low standard to hold. If you want to play Neverwinter Nights 2 with your friends without installing a mod, or on a console/with a controller, sure, pick up the Enhanced Edition. If not, then there is really no reason to buy this version over the Complete Edition that is readily available and at a lower price.

Yakuza 0 Director's Cut is a fantastic package for newcomers, and I'm very happy that the licensed music is finally available in the West. However, the baffling new cut-scenes and pointless new raid mode make this feel like Sega taking the series a few steps forward and a few steps back in different ways. For those who haven't played it before in any form and only own a Switch 2, I'm glad Yakuza 0 is finally on a Nintendo platform and with a better conversion than Yakuza Kiwami had on Switch, but it is a shame that there are caveats to what should've been the easiest win for Sega given how amazing Yakuza 0 was all those years ago.

Overall, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, has the framework necessary to be an excellent game, and provides a sort of different flavor of fantasy setting than a lot of its contemporaries. For those willing and able to put up with rough spots and a general feeling of unfinishedness, there are still 50+ hours of an enjoyable RPG experience here. It just might take some additional time and tweaking in order to fully deliver on its potential.

Is this the worst remake out there? No. The core game is still great, if this is the only way you are able to play it. But this version needed more than a fresh coat of paint and a shrug. Imagine if this series, or even just the original standout third entry, had been given that Star Ocean 2 Remaster level of quality and attention. I’d be fawning over a loving recreation of a PlayStation game that could galvanize a legion of new followers into this heady mecha series. Instead, we got a half-baked museum exhibit.

Raidou Remastered has undoubtedly improved a flawed game, but there’s only so much it could do in keeping to its mission statement to recreate the content of the original title. I respect the lengths Atlus went to provide a largely faithful, yet polished, version of Raidou's debut. It's a fascinating way to revisit that era of games, and in a way, I’m glad Atlus didn’t simpy outright scrap tedious aspects of the original. Raidou Kuzunoha is a tried and true Devil Summoner entry in every way, and I’m glad ATLUS is still willing to revisit this scrappy series.

I'm of the opinion that the best expansions are ones that don't just offer a new slice of a game you already love to play, but enhance what was already there. Lies of P: Overture isn't just great in its own right, but it showcases the growth that Round8 has seen over the course of developing the game. Lies of P was already great, and well worth your attention. What Overture succeeds most at isn't just offering more of what players already loved, but perhaps giving us a sneak peek at what players can expect from the studio in the future. Lies of P: Overture feels like a bold, yet simple, statement; we're only just getting started with Lies of P. I can't wait to see what the team has in store for us next.

Fantasy Life i feels like meeting a friend after a decade and experiencing firsthand how they've grown and flourished in life after some ups and downs. I don't know how Level-5 managed to do it, but Fantasy Life i might just be one of my favorite games of all time, and one I can always count on to improve my mood. It perfectly captures what made the original great, builds on it, and delivers a gigantic RPG that oozes charm in every facet.

Fuga 3 is still a great game, but it's hard not to wonder exactly what the point of it all was. Fuga was a daring and highly focused release, and at the time Fuga 2 felt like a similarly tight experience relying on the knowledge that players had already grown accustomed to the gameplay. Yet Fuga 3, in it's attempts to expand its scope feels like it just misses the mark. What should have been a satisfying conclusion to a trilogy feels like a coda to a performance whose curtains had already fallen years ago.

I thought about giving Guardians of Azuma a 7, because what game is here isn't strictly terrible, but unfortunately it is extremely disappointing on a wider scale. Boring dungeons, bland combat, lackluster progression, and thin customization are propped up by a fun cast of characters, pretty good voice acting, and pretty good village editing tools — but it's not enough to make the game fun to play. If you only care about the character interactions and marrying the love of your Azuma life, then the combat and village management is a tedious means towards that end, and if you're looking for engaging progression systems, you'll have to look elsewhere, I'm afraid.

During my time with Elden Ring Nightreign, I was waiting for something to jump out and amaze me like the original game and Erdtree had, but that sensation never came. Nightreign delivers glimpses of what I love about the previous games, but the jump to this new format just never quite landed as well as I had hoped. When I played with my friends or when I finally tackled that Nightlord I had been stuck on, it hit with that same exhilarating sense of accomplishment that I love, but so much else left me wanting. With so many reused enemies and guest bosses, Nightreign feels more like an impressive expansion than a whole new release, and perhaps that is a better way to look at it: an experiment in something new. This first drop into the roguelike genre with the Souls series is intriguing enough to make me consider exploring future explorations into it, but beyond that, I will happily stick with my exploration-heavy and deep character customization options instead.

All told, Blades of Fire is a mixed bag. I by and large enjoyed my time with it, warts and all - but I'd be hard-pressed to recommend the game in its current state. Worse, without some heavy retooling of the map I don't know if I ever could recommend the game at all without significant caveats. On the bright side, the game's PC port is rather good with a notably good HDR implementation. It's even playable on Steam Deck, if you can bother to get the Epic Games Store running on yours. I definitely appreciate any game that doesn't have traversal or shader compilation stutters these days, and from a technical standpoint MercurySteam has delivered a very good experience.

It’s a bummer that Yasha: Legends of the Demon Blade just feels sparse overall. While I enjoyed my time experimenting with each of the three protagonists’ different weapon synergies, the identical progression of every single run gets old very fast. Seeing the same stage layouts, same enemy spawns, same boss patterns, and same… everything every time was disheartening. Even when Yasha tries to punch above its weight narratively through some of its cutscenes, the whole experience of playing it is mind-numbingly repetitive. I wish I liked it more, but what it offers feels so little compared to many, many other games competing in the same Hades-like space.

I struggle to pinpoint any particular facet of Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree that is exceptional. The combat is serviceable, the narrative is adequate, and the exploration is fine. There's some comfort in navigating the map & finding new secrets in a way that search action games tend to be comfortable, and there's some satisfaction in the gameplay in which soulslike games tend to be satisfying, but I'm mostly left with indifference.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 may not be a ‘perfect’ game, but it was the ‘perfect’ game for me. It’s a game that left me awestruck with its unique setting and melodies, enthralled with its characters and world, hooked and held me with its gameplay, and has left me eagerly anticipating news of when I can return. This game is a celebration of the RPG genre made by a team whose heart and soul were poured into every aspect of the game. While some design decisions may not resonate with all players, Sandfall Interactive should be incredibly proud of their creation.

These games are great, breezy, and iconic representations of anime-styled fantasy JRPGs in the 1990s. To that end, this is a great compilation, and I am grateful to finally have Eternal Blue released from its prison. However, the lack of options included in the iOS version of Silver Star Story holds this collection back, even if slightly. That said, the love for the series is evident by the care taken to preserve them with these slight updates that still hew to the memory of the PSX classics.

AI Limit is a good game — I love futuristic post-apocalypse settings, I love the aesthetic of the game, and I love how it feels in both navigation and combat. But it is a safe game — it paints very cleanly and neatly within the Dark Souls lines, and it does not try anything new or attempt to separate from the crowd at all. For some, like myself, that's perfectly fine, but for others, it's nothing you haven't seen before. Whether that's worth the price of admission (admittedly, pretty good at $35 USD as of this writing) is up to you, but just don't go in expecting to have your mind blown.

I'd wager that while I had fun with the game overall, part of what I'd hoped the game offered at the beginning was a mechanically-dense resource management sim where I have to carefully plan out my actions step-by-step, and while that's certainly how it looks like things will head at the start, in the end the game's actual gameplay mechanics feel like set dressing. It's essentially an excuse to get you out and about driving a Kei truck through a fictional Japanese town. There's nothing wrong with that, and we do cover games that veer towards narrative experiences, but I can't shake the feeling that Promise Mascot Agency wasn't quite what I'd signed up for - even if the end result was an enjoyable romp about reviving a town in its twilight years.

Even though Atomfall didn’t fully click for me, I believe its unique approach to the survival genre will attract a passionate community. I applaud Rebellion for its extensive accessibility settings and innovative “Lead” system, which I hope they refine in future games. However, for every aspect I enjoyed, there were two or three strange omissions or design choices that held the game back. I hope Rebellion revisits this IP in the future, but next time, I’d like to see Atomfall feel more cohesive and fully realized.

The First Berserker: Khazan is a typical Soulslike-inspired action RPG that takes a lot of inspiration from Nioh, and offers nothing new that separates itself from the dozens of others out there. Even in the many aspects it takes from Nioh, it often does them worse. Its beautiful art direction is largely held back by a deliberately dull color palette. Additionally, its combat has some great animations, yet overall feels sluggish because of how restrictive its stamina system is. I was prepared to have a great time with The First Berserker: Khazan, but there’s so little that I enjoyed because it always took two steps back in every step it took forward.

There’s also a lot to be said about how impressive it is to play such a sprawling and complex open-world game on what is essentially a portable device. This feels like the Switch’s swan song as Nintendo prepares to enter their next era. It’s hard to not wish there was just a bit more new content here, but in all fairness the base game is overflowing with things to do. Despite some gripes, Definitive Edition was a great way to play one of my new favorite open world games. I’m excited to dive in to clean my plate of all the remaining side content out there, and even play the multiplayer when it unlocks. There is truly no game like Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Ultimately, Atelier Yumia is a great game with a combat system that leaves a lot to be desired. While the exploration is a highlight, with the game drawing clear inspiration from modern open-world games, those familiar with the open-world genre might not find much innovation here. Despite that, Atelier Yumia is a fantastic starting point for newcomers to the Atelier franchise.

The effort put forth by Konami pays off in dividends. The end result is a project that, like another Pixel Remaster project before it, has the best of both worlds. These are games that play and look just like you remembered them, but somehow even a bit better. Slight QOL changes complement, rather than complicate, the gameplay. Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars might be a mouthful of a title, but it’s one that reaches for the stars - and knocks it out of the park.

If you’re wondering if Everhood 2 is for you, there is a demo that gives you a bit of an idea of what to expect. If after playing you’re still unsure, I don’t know if there’s something I can say to give you an accurate idea. Everhood 2 is at times wacky, poignant, frustrating, confusing, high-brow, low-brow, and everything in between. It truly is unlike any game I’ve ever played, and it’s a game that will stick with me forever. But whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I don’t really know. I keep wondering that if I were more learned, or perhaps more studied in the topics this game is attempting to engage me with, I’d have more thoroughly enjoyed it, but that isn’t the case.

Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero is a solid game, but the Switch performance really detracts from the overall experience. If you have the ability to grab this on another platform, you should do so. This is otherwise a very enjoyable game with a decent amount of depth if a bit lacking in difficulty due to poor enemy pathing. If you're into SRPGs, it's worth a look into if you have the time.

Monster Hunter Wilds may very well end up the best game in the franchise once all is said and done, and I definitely hope that ends up being the case. For now, however, Monster Hunter Wilds is merely a solid entry in the series that will only grow better over time. Exactly how far it will grow is anyone's guess; but I wouldn't dream of discounting how Capcom can take the game from here.