Onimusha: Warlords is exactly how you remember it, and in 2019, that's not necessarily a good thing.
NHL 19 proves you can have your cake and eat it, too. It has a complex, sim-heavy Franchise mode, fun, fast, ridiculous arcade modes, and everything in between. There's a style of play here for anyone, from the absolute rookie to someone who lives and breathes hockey. The action on the ice feels excellent and there's just so much to do in NHL 19 that I was able to find a game mode to match any kind of mood I was in at the time. We don't need to ask “where did all the arcade-style sports games go?” anymore, because NHL 19 folded them all into a fantastic, robust package oozing with pure fun. What's most amazing is how the modes are so different in tone, but maintain excellence throughout.
Octopath Traveler is a JRPG dream come true.
Runner 3 is a fun, challenging experience with a weird, charming aesthetic brought down by out-of-date graphics.
Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze's addition of Funky Mode makes it more accessible without reducing the formidable platforming difficulty to a walk in the park. There's still a lot of challenge, even with the extra help Donkey's Funky uncle affords. But the Switch version manages to take just enough of an edge off a punishing game to let the fun platforming outshine its difficulty.
NBA 2K18 is the gold standard for sports simulations, but this year's entry is overloaded with microtransactions.
There are already so many different ways to play Minecraft, and the 3DS version fails to live up to the standards set by the other versions. It's not a bad slice of pizza, but there are so many better choices.
EA Sports NHL 18 is quite possibly the most accessible sports game on the market, as well as being a load of fun.
I found myself thinking about my daily farming routine in Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns even when I wasn't playing it. Since there's never any feeling of the grim spectre of Father Time looming large and there are enough random events to shake up the daily routine, doing my virtual chores in these charming and beautiful towns and unlocking a steady stream of rewards is relaxing, despite some annoyances with unnecessary travel and unskippable animations. And since the only requirement of Trio of Towns is to prove that farm life is a noble life, the pressure to succeed is never daunting.
NHL 16 brings the series back up to speed with some great modes and features, but you can't count on its online modes.
Kerbal Space Program is a deep, funny, and detailed physics sim that never takes itself too seriously.