An action role-playing game that does a lot of things well, such as the deep battle system, exploration, and setting. At the same time, none of these are truly original, preventing it from being truly great. Still, those who love action RPGs from the 90s will find plenty to like in the game since Shiness is quite fun for the whole duration of the adventure, despite its predictable story, lackluster writing and somewhat wonky battle controls.

Morphite is impossible to play without thinking about No Man's Sky, but it is by no means a mere imitation. Morphite has its own ideas and despite some minor faults, executes them very well.

Super Lucky's Tale is a simple yet engaging platform game that players of all ages can enjoy thanks to its pick-up-and-play experience. The game, however, may be too simple for some, and the easy and short experience may be a turn off for others, especially for those who have experienced other excellent platform games this year such as A Hat in Time and Super Mario Odyssey.

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius - Relics of War is a quite enjoyable 4X strategy game set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, featuring four unique factions, each with its unique campaign, randomly generated maps and an engaging multiplayer mode. With an experience that's focused on war, however, the game can get a bit repetitive after a while, as diplomatic options might have made both single and multiplayer more varied.

Orcs Must Die 3 is a captivating, funny, and varied tower defense/action game hybrid best suited to those that don't want to just be armchair generals. But with a massive difficulty spike halfway through the campaign, it doesn't quite find the perfect balance.

More in line with From Software's Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice than a traditional Soulslike, Mortal Shell offers a short and sweet take on the hardcore action RPG formula by focusing the player to harden up and push the offensive in order to create the perfect defense.

While Life is Strange: Double Exposure was a lot of fun and had a lot of great moments between using her powers to swap between timelines to be a murder-mystery detective, conversations dragged on and significant choices being made didn't feel consequential at all. It's a great experience, with a lot of twists, but some of it feels a bit too drawn out at times.

Encased: A Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic RPG is a worthy purchase for all fans of classic Fallout games, thanks to a well-crafted post-apocalyptic setting, great worldbuilding, reactive world, and solid overall gameplay. The clunky interface, basic combat, verbose writing, and overwhelming amount of status conditions to keep track of damage the experience a bit, however, making Encased a game that only the most die-hard RPG fans will enjoy right from the start.

Onimusha: Warlords is a game from another era and the remaster, despite its many enhancements, sadly highlights how the experience hasn't aged too well. This doesn't mean that the game isn't good, as many of its ideas, such as combat, leveling system and puzzles, only required a few small tweaks to be truly excellent. The fact that it's a game from 2001 is clear when playing the game, but Onimusha: Warlords can still provide a sweet, albeit short, experience.

Ashen is a very good action-adventure game sporting interesting lore, good character development, and solid gameplay features like combat and exploration. Unfortunately, the game does almost nothing to separate its gameplay loop from the one seen in the Dark Souls series and therefore ultimately feels like a lite version of the series developed by From Software. The well-made overall experience does make it easy to look past this issue, but if you're looking for something innovative, you won't find it here.

Tyranny: Bastard's Wound builds upon the excellent world-building and writing of the main game to offer a compelling side-story filled with engaging characters and twists where players choices matter as much as ever before. With the lack of any significant new mechanic, however, those who expected more than just a new story may be slightly disappointed.

Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today's emphasis on horror and trauma will stick with players long after the (abrupt) end.

Vaporum offers a very engaging blend of dungeon crawling, RPG and survival games that it's hard to put down until the end of the campaign. While the mechanics may not be all that original, the customization possibilities, exploration, and puzzles make it so that players won't be troubled by the relative lack of innovation.

With its interesting setting that combines the Old West with supernatural and occult elements and solid tactical turn-based combat with excellent pacing, Hard West 2 is a worthy purchase for fans of the genre. However, balancing issues, limited character customization, which force players to play in specific ways, and a general streamlining of the tactical combat experience make the game more shallow than expected, inevitably turning off some veterans of the genre.

Destiny 2: Beyond Light is a negative net sum, with so much content vaulted in favor of a meager campaign set in Europa. So much is teased and promised to bring the original Destiny vision together with Destiny 2 that we can't hope but be excited to see what Bungie is promising in seasons to come. However, what's available right now is less than the exotic content that players might've hyped themselves up for.

Earth Defense Force: Iron Rain is certainly the prettiest insect-splatting simulation to grace the PlayStation 4 and there are a number of innovations to appeal to a Western audience, but Iron Rain still falls into that campy B-movie aesthetic.

Dead in Vinland is a Viking game in the style of Darkest Dungeon. It's fun, well paced and slightly overcomplicated, but ultimately worth it.

Jeff Minter's latest interpretation of this arcade classic still holds up as one of the best versions of Tempest to date, although the price and lack of changes from TxK both make it a difficult purchase to recommend at $30.

Ghostbusters by name, Ghostbusters by nature. Spirits Unleashed is true to its iconic roots, and everything from the brand translates smoothly into a frantic asymmetric experience, albeit a bit too complicated for its own good.

It's cute, it's colorful, it's Chocobo and you've probably already played Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon if you've owned a Wii in the past decade.

With its focus on being true to the motocross sport, MXGP3 offers a surprising amount of depth to its control and riding finesse. While it may not have much to offer to bring in new fans, those that enjoy riding a 250cc bike in the mud will certainly appreciate the best entry in the series to date.

Godfall: Ultimate Edition addresses many of the shortcomings of the original release by bringing in a greater focus on Endgame content and reducing much of the grind it takes to get there.

Minecraft Dungeons is a bright and colourful dungeon crawler, with interesting enemies and fast, frantic combat. It doesn't bring anything new to the genre, and takes away quite a lot of its complexities, leaving us with a simple, accessible, unremarkable yet still fun game.

Smart, simple and loads of fun - there's plenty to enjoy about Planet Robobot, though many gamers will be deterred by the lack of any real challenge.

Born of experimentation and a combat system quite unlike anything else from its time, The Last Remnant Remastered takes all of the PC enhancements and balance changes that were never previously available on console and adds in a few graphical filters to appeal to another generation of console players.

DOOM on Nintendo Switch runs a fantastically fun, playable version of our favorite console shooter, but it can’t be denied that optimizations and the lower framerate make for a less pretty, slightly rougher version of the game. Despite that, if you want a handheld version of DOOM, I still can’t help but recommend it. It plays well for the most part and is still loads of fun and a refreshing experience, even a year and a half later.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep pulled me back in after two years away from my guardian with the promise of ever-evolving seasons and new content to play once more. The initial offering was very light on story and loot but I can only hope to see more content come in subsequent Shadowkeep seasons.

I AM Setsuna is a fine short little experience that brings back nostalgic feelings for the 16-bit era of role playing games, but doesn't do much to explore the twenty years of depth since then.