Samantha Nelson
Persona 5 Strikers delivers the meaningful story, relateable characters, and complex mechanics fans expect from mainline games but switches the gameplay up to focus on action over time management.
A seamless blend of genres and high replayability make Empire of Sin and excellent choice for strategy gaming fans.
The controls are smoother on the PC, but the new version offers everything you could want from a Pathfinder video game.
In World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth the pending apocalypse may not be canceled, but it's temporarily tabled
While driven by nostalgia, the visuals make it feel new.
Persona 4 Golden isn't a perfect port and it isn't coming to the system most fans were asking for. But if you never had the chance to play a Persona title before, this is definitely worth a shot. The visuals and some of the story might be dated but the characters are so charming that it's easy to lose track of time both in and out of character when hanging out with them. Get to know them all and use your friendship as a strength in the game's sprawling procedurally generated dungeons.
Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance is a decent brawler if you're looking for casual fun while chatting with your friends on Discord. If you're expecting much depth from the plot or combat mechanics, you'll likely be disappointed.
Torchlight III is a lighthearted, simple co-op ARPG that might provide some fun to casual ARPG players or serious fans of the series, but doesn't do much else to justify its existence.
Eden Industries leaned on excessive fights the way movie writers too often lean on their own tired tropes, and the result leaves us waiting on the punchlines for too long.
There's bound to be some disconnect with the mortal world when you live forever, but I could have used a reminder why this war is worth spending 300 years to win.
Ten years after its launch, Blizzard wants to reassure potential adventurers that they don't have to have been a part of World Of Warcraft's past to join the fight to save its future.
Once I settled into The Sims 4, I discovered that I didn't want to go back to The Sims 3. This is definitely an upgrade, but with the small towns, loading screens, and all the missing content, it doesn't feel quite finished—it's like moving into a fixer-upper. After a bit of construction you might actually have your perfect house, but it's going to take some time and will likely be quite expensive.
Yes, plenty of compromises were made to create this hybrid of a traditional Elder Scrolls game and a traditional MMO. Those compromises will leave purists on both sides disappointed, but this is an ambitious and exciting epic that promises to only grow with time. It's a sandbox worth sharing, provided everyone is willing to play nicely with others and Bethesda keeps it clean.
The developers have already shown they're willing to listen to player complaints and have rolled out some fixes and announced a steady stream of new content, including plots that sync with recently released D&D campaigns. D&D has evolved and improved significantly since it was first released, and it's possible that Sword Coast Legends will, too, if players are willing to stick around after its rough launch. I'm hopeful the game will because it's probably going to be a while before Wizards is willing to lend its tools to anyone else.
A good trilogy is a hard thing to pull off. Far more common than success stories like Return Of The King are third installments like The Dark Knight Rises or The Godfather Part III, where the series ends with a fizzle rather than a bang. Legacy Of The Void rises to this trilogy-concluding challenge. It closes the door on a story that started 17 years ago but opens new ones of its own with a multiplayer mode that has the promise to live on for years to come.
The Deadly Tower Of Monsters has all the manic glee of a B-movie marathon
Fire Emblem Fates has all the plot elements you'd expect from an entry in Nintendo's fantasy warfare series. There's a chosen one, a war between two kingdoms that represent the light and dark, magic swords, prophecies, and dragons. But at the core is the profound dilemma of nature versus nurture: Will you define yourself by your biological family or the one that raised you?
Frustrating fights spoil the wacky premise of Nintendo's Code Name S.T.E.A.M.
Fire Emblem Fates has all the plot elements you'd expect from an entry in Nintendo's fantasy warfare series. There's a chosen one, a war between two kingdoms that represent the light and dark, magic swords, prophecies, and dragons. But at the core is the profound dilemma of nature versus nurture: Will you define yourself by your biological family or the one that raised you?
By piling complexity on atop the simplicity of a tried-and-true formula, Square Enix has produced a worthy successor to Bravely Default. I'm sure the developers are already thinking about what it would mean to "Bravely Third" in battle.