Phantom Brigade is great fun, but not for the length of time you're expected to be playing it. Any long-term engagement is hampered by a lack of variety.
Company of Heroes 3 retains the gameplay of the predecessors while disappointing with the bizarre campaign decisions and lack of polish.
Second Front is not literally a PC adaptation of ASL, but it is as much we could hope for under these socioeconomical conditions.
Warlander will cost you nothing to try out and see if its high-paced arcade-y combat overcomes the the tedious visuals and audio.
Aquatico is a city-builder that barely tries to innovate anything, and anything new is immediately overshadowed by how bland and mediocre the rest of it is.
Unity of Command II: Desert Fox DLC gives the glory and the grime of Western Desert campaign as well as plenty of what-if scenarios.
Knights of Honor II: Sovereign does quite a few things right, though it could use more polish for many aspects of the game, starting with the voice lines that generals get.
Flashpoint Campaigns: Southern Storm is the best Cold War game of 2022. Beautiful and detailed, it deserves your attention.
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord comes back with improvements to everything we liked about the previous games and some new systems as well. However, it's not a perfectly polished game, so you'll have to navigate a few edges on your path to restore/destroy the Empire.
Jackbox Party Pack 9 delivers the most powerful single entry since... I don't even know when! With one updated classic and four new games, it's a blast through and through.
Scorn really brings the art that inspired to 3D life, meshes it with good music, and presents it on a stable platform. But the mundane puzzles and poor combat drag it down.
Isonzo changes the formula of the WW1 game series -- and it's all for the better.
Regiments puts some interesting spins on the Cold War RTS formula, but its sustainability and longevity are hampered by the lack of MP and multiplayer.
Starship Troopers: Terran Command does a lot of interesting things with the material from the movie franchise, but that creativity does not extend to mission objectives.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a fun romp as long as the ships you're gutting are new and fresh, but it can lose some charm when the plot thins and boats repeat.
Chorus is a game that works in the sense that it doesn't crash your desktop, but it's just an ambulatory shell with mere vestiges of soul left in it.
My heart really wants to give War Mongrels a higher score for the love that went into the visual aspect and the bravery to tackle one of the lesser remembered parts of the Word War 2, but the bugs and some really bad dialogue stayed my hand.
Tails of Iron could go deeper on the story and lighter on the backtracking, but if it ever gets a sequel I hope it maintains obvious love seen in the art direction and design.
Some jank does not stop Encased from being one of the most ambitious and greatest CRPGs in years.
HighFleet is hard, but here's a good reason for it. Once you really get into the atmosphere, you'll stop caring about that.