Reading about Koira doesn't convey just how well-designed it is. It's a rare case where every piece of it, from the visual direction to the smallest part of audio design, exists in exquisite harmony. Sure, it still relies heavily on a specific kind of emotional appeal to pull you in, but when everything beyond that is this good, it's easy to overlook.

South of Midnight is an impressive narrative feat from Compulsion Games. It’s a well-paced adventure that goes big on characters and story, though combat and platforming feel a bit uniform. I hope it’s not the last we’ve seen of this world and these characters.

Bleach Rebirth of Souls makes an excellent first impression, with cool, loud menu UI, amped-up music, and in-game action that looks fast and furious from a distance. But when you actually dive in to learn the game and experience all of its parts, the cracks show rather quickly. The mechanics feel unrefined and poorly balanced, and the story mode has a low budget vibe that betrays the new anime’s energy. Aside from impressive animations and a few distinct ideas, this isn’t the comeback Bleach fans have been hoping for over the last decade.

I have for years held the opinion that MLB The Show is the best of the annualized sport sim franchises. While it’s not without its faults, it’s pound-for-pound the best simulation of its real-life counterpart, while hosting a bevy of modes that feel thoroughly fleshed out and supported. It’s the most hours I’ve sunk into a new MLB The Show game in years, and it’ll probably be my go-to sports game for many months to come.

It's easy to write Khazan off as just another Soulslike at a glance, and it would be refreshing to see Neople create its own style and structure instead of just imitating a popular convention. However, Neople went further than most Soulslikes and actually innovated with its take on the genre's combat. That's a big positive, seeing as there's not much else to Khazan outside of battle, but at least all the time spent in combat is enjoyable.

As a Metroidvania-enjoyer, I largely had a good time with Inayah - Life After Gods. There’s a creative world to explore, some truly impressive art and animation, and the weapons doubling as your door keys and fake sequence-breaking gadgets was awesome. Combat was a real downer, though, and the awkward map and enormous rooms made for some unpleasant backtracking. Even if you don’t end up in a goofy situation like I did, you’ll feel the pace dragging down. It’s probably a good idea to start with the sword.

I see and respect what Bubble Ghost Remake attempted here. Take an obscure game, reimagine it, make it big and beautiful, and offer something fresh to puzzle fans. But as it turns out, “bigger” was a crucial mistake. Not everyone will see this and seek out the original, but if they do, they’ll plainly observe how a smaller, stage-based challenge structure turns something kind of wonky and frustrating into a true hidden gem. And considering how my biggest takeaway is how grateful I am to have Game Boy Bubble Ghost in my rotation now, I suggest anyone and everyone do just that.

When I saw that Coulombe was involved in the cult classic, Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, I knew I was in for a ride simply by association. But I wasn’t fully prepared for the depths of creative madness I was gazing into with Look Outside. Each step was full of dread and morbid glee, as I never knew what to expect, was terrified of what could happen, but absolutely refused to miss a thing. I would’ve liked a little more balance when it came to getting mauled by random enemy encounters, and controller support was a little weird, but any frustration I felt from a momentum-halting game over melted away when the next stop on this roller coaster of suffering came into view. Frankly, I was bummed to get off when the ride was over.

Your goal in Atomfall is to escape, but the reality is this world is far too interesting to want to leave. I cared very little about finding this Interchange at first, and instead preferred to hunt for buried caches, find recipes, read notes, and uncover secrets. I killed characters just to see what was in their pockets, but not before I heard what interesting things they had to say. It wasn’t personal on my end, but those three bullets and the key to the secret room behind them was far more valuable to me than their life. If that seems harsh, no problem, because you’re free to play the complete opposite of me, and I promise it will be just as entertaining.

Series fans will find a lot to love here, even if Shadows doesn’t quite take the step of truly challenging itself to be more than what we might have expected it to be. The moment-to-moment gameplay is fun, Naoe and Yasuke are both compelling in their own way, and the backdrop of Japan really does make for a beautiful stage on which everything plays out.

If you can get past its tedious organization and swaths of overleveled monsters in your way, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is incredible. This was a game that eluded many fans back in 2015. Now, it has a fresh chance to shine and do so with a new coat of paint and some thoughtful QoL changes. It doesn’t always hit the bullseye, and some 2015 issues went unaddressed. That said, if you let yourself get lost in the wilds of Mira, it’s more than easy to overlook the few things that drag the fun down. Whether you missed Xenoblade Chronicles X the first time or are revisiting Mira, there’s a lot to love and appreciate for fans and newcomers alike.

FragPunk is launching in a strange, unbalanced state where it actively undermines its best features and doesn't quite know how to build on its own strong foundation. It's still fun, a more casual alternative to something like Valorant, but there's a definite sense that FragPunk isn't living up to its full potential. Hopefully, NetEase can work out a way to sharpen its focus in future updates and clean up the awful menus.

Just like its impressively long and unwieldy title, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land is a messy game. But it’s a messy game with lofty ambitions and a lot to like, even if which pieces you end up liking are not the pieces you expected or wanted to like, especially if you’re a returning Atelier fan. It’s also hard to recommend Yumia as a starting point despite its apparent interest in being one, when I can point to Ryza as a strong foundation that manages to justify itself as a three-part arc that never overstays its welcome. What we have here is an RPG that casts too wide a net for its own good, but has a lot of cool ideas and hits enough different notes in different ways that still make it worth playing. For folks willing to engage with a flawed experience in good faith and put up with some janky bloat, Atelier Yumia has a lot going for it. But those looking for a more realized vision that cleanly hits its targets will likely lose patience.

The Hungry Lamb: Traveling in the Late Ming Dynasty is a fascinating, challenging, and compelling story that uses its form as a visual novel to tell a story about normal, flawed, and vulnerable people. These people are dealt horrible hands outside of their control, and through a historical lens, we as the audience are shown choices that believably could have been made in real life during the depicted period. It can be ugly, but it can also be full of life, with tragedy and violence punctuated by characters bonding over shadow puppets or a meal. There’s a darkness to this story that could justifiably turn people away, but I never got a sense of titillation or glee on the creative side, but rather an interest in showing the reader a difficult piece of human history. The prose can be a bit dry at times on top of that, but otherwise in a space that’s full of anime-style fantasy and action, it was refreshing to find something more grounded in reality.

Wanderstop is like Spiritfarer for burnout sufferers and overachievers. The central focus is meaningful and expertly executed in its own right. However, it's the attention to detail in every other area that makes Wanderstop feel special, to the point where anything, even just planting flowers, enriches everything else. Ivy Road just gets it.

WWE 2K25 is a banner year for the franchise. It’s easily the most refined entry yet, bursting with ways to play and the series’ largest roster to date, which is sure to please virtually everyone no matter which era of wrestling you prefer. (And if your favorite character is missing, you’ll be able to expand the roster once fans start uploading their custom creations.) The Island is hit or miss, but the rest of the package is sure to tide wrestling fans over until 2026.

I want to be clear: despite all of the technical issues Slime Heroes has, I think it’s a good game if you’re playing alone. I have high hopes for the co-op once it’s fixed. It’s charming and cute and playing with the spell system is a good time, and it has the ebb and flow of combat that makes Souls-likes fun. If you’re looking for a kinder, gentler Souls-like, Slime Heroes is the game for you. It just feels unfinished. I hope Pancake Games gets to fix it, because this is a hero’s journey you should be able to take together because… y’know, that’s kind of the point. Nobody saves the world alone.

Carmen Sandiego is a fun romp through a genre that I had figured was lost to mobile marketplaces and predatory YouTube channels. If I was a kid, I bet I would absolutely love it. It’s not much of a challenge in terms of knowing things, but it does use historical and geographical education as a backdrop for a fun mystery-solving loop that tests your deduction skills just as much as your ability to soak up facts. I do wish there was a little more friction when it came to identifying the criminals, and the loop itself does run out of ideas pretty quickly. The minigames don’t add a whole lot aside from vibes, but the writing itself is often a hoot. At the end of the day, I really enjoyed this unexpected blast from the past, and appreciated how committed to the originals it ended up being. If you’re a parent looking for something of substance for your kid for a real video game machine that isn’t some app trying to needle your wallet in exchange for low-rent Sesame Street lessons, Carmen Sandiego might just be the ticket.

I really like what Hazelight Studios has done with their handle on co-op gaming in Split Fiction. It doesn’t necessarily feel like a drastic evolution from It Takes Two the way that game was from A Way Out, but it refines what Hazelight does best and straps it to an interesting duo of characters with wide imaginations that create equally compelling worlds for us to explore.

Like Fights before it, Knights in Tight Spaces is the kind of game where it's easy to lose track of time. The story will have you reaching for the Skip button by the time you go on your 10th or 20th run, but there's nothing repetitive about the formula, especially as battles get more intense with tougher foes. It turns out that even when the clock is dialed back a few dozen centuries, close quarters fighting is still a grand old time.

PGA Tour 2K25 places plenty of pressure on EA Sports PGA Tour to step up its game. The two-year hiatus has given 2K’s latest effort, with its solid gameplay and improved graphics, a slight edge over its rival. It’s disappointing that a couple of the new mechanics in MyCareer don’t go far enough, and the microtransaction shenanigans with the equipment and locked skill trees have been shoehorned in unnecessarily. Still, the game is sitting at the top of the leaderboard when it comes to golf sims and is looking back at EA to see if it can catch up or be left in the sand trap.

If it wasn’t for the tortuous combat I probably would’ve loved Omega 6: The Triangle Stars. It’s weird, it’s funny as heck, and it has ample Nintendo charm despite not being a Nintendo game. It almost feels like the team at WarioWare, Inc. made a whole game instead of a sketchy microgame. But for as much as I enjoyed exploring the world, meeting the goofy characters, and solving puzzles while uncovering the story, the overbearing presence of the worst rock, paper, scissors gauntlet ever made clouded the whole thing. I figured combat would be a silly minigame I’d run into on occasion, but instead it was a massive, unavoidable part of the equation. If Omega 6 was a pure visual novel I would’ve loved it. It’s still neat, but now I just want to read the manga when it comes out in English later this year and never look back.

Two Point Museum is, for me, the best amalgam of Two Point Studios' business management and mechanics yet. The road to five-star museums is paved with fun challenges and customization that will likely have empty spaces looking like your personal dream attraction hours in. Even when I reached one-star at Wailon Lodge, I was so proud of the haunted house maze of supernatural fascinations that I couldn’t help but stare at my work for a while before moving to the next thing. This game may have a few frustrations in waiting and free design, but it’s also full of warm moments to be proud of what you put together as the visitors enjoy your assembly, and that’s exactly what I want out of a Two Point game.

Monster Hunter Wilds moves the franchise forward from previous games, yet it tends to step into some of the same traps that both World and Rise did. Those issues, however, are dwarfed by an addictive gameplay loop that will keep players engaged for hundreds of hours. When you factor in the game-changing Seikret, and the ease of which players can launch into hunts, Monster Hunter Wilds is a must-play for series fans.

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a remarkable tribute to PC-98 visual novels and hard sci-fi anime of a specific vintage. The visuals are pitch-perfect with multiple settings that offer different vibes, and the soundtrack is a complex beast of speaker-straining chiptunes that enhances the mood even further. But this is a severe case of style over substance, and the storytelling does not deliver on the promises being made by Gun-Dog’s immaculate presentation. I had a decent time but walked away massively disappointed, feeling like I had been tricked into watching a Disney Star Wars spinoff by someone promising the next Armored Trooper VOTOMS. I’d be totally willing to check out what’s next from this team, but with massively tempered expectations.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii won’t take up as much of your time as Yakuza 6 or Infinite Wealth, but it’s most certainly a fun and exciting way to pass the time with our favorite Mad Dog of Shimano while we wait for RGG’s next big thing.

If anything these minor glitches are a testament to this game’s release being something of a minor miracle. Without going too much into the details, Aftterlove’s creative director, Mohammad Fahmi, tragically passed away in 2022. It is thanks to the teams at Pikselnesia and Fellow Traveller that the game was seen through to release. I can’t imagine a more beautiful tribute to a developer who is only ever spoken of in the highest terms by his peers than Afterlove EP — a game that understands that even if things will never be ok again, we can still keep living.

Avowed delivers where it matters: an interesting world with memorable companions and a rich combat system that rewards experimentation. Pillars of Eternity fans will feast on the various nods and references to the beloved CRPGs, but newcomers to Eora will still find plenty to enjoy with Obsidian Entertainment’s latest RPG.