Death's Door is a game that you can see is crafted with love and purpose. Nothing seems to be done in order to add pointless game time.
Freshly Frosted is a fantastic puzzle game worth the price. It delivers some good challenging puzzles and makes you want to eat donuts.
Digimon Survive is a masterclass Visual Novel that hooks its teeth into you and doesn't pull out until you hit the credits screen. That is if you are a fan of Visual Novel games that attract through Japanese voice acting and only a little Tactical RPG battles to set the mood. Music, atmosphere and story is top tier and makes you feel like you are literally inside the anime, if the anime had more death looming over your every decision.
Lunistice is a 3D platformer giving us the best elements of 3D Sonic the Hedgehog and Crash Bandicoot. Short enough that it won't take up your week but addictive enough that you may want it to.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is the peak of storytelling, character writing, and worldbuilding. With enhanced visuals and solid dungeon design this game is an absolute must play for anyone who wants to see video games as a medium of narratives.
Sabotage Studio creates another masterpiece with Sea of Stars. With great gameplay mechanics, a thrilling narrative, and stunning visuals, there isn’t anything I would change about this game. Perfection is a word that comes to mind.
Monark is a solid start to a promising aspect of JRPG games filled with horror elements. It tackles heavy issues with its characters. Monark is a solid blend of Tactical RPG with JRPG leveling mechanics. It is an enjoyable game with difficult rewarding battles.
Character depth and a plot that stands the test of time. .Hack//G.U. Last Recode on the Switch is a masterfully ported game that will be sure to engage you for hours on end. You will wish you were in "The World" for real. The Switch does have some hiccups here and there from frame stutters to wonky aspect ratio messing up the mini map.
Stray is an adorable game that has you playing as a cat that fetches things for robots in order to get outside of a large underground shelter. You run away from Zurks and security droids as the villains in this game with very smooth controls other than it not having a dedicated jump button.
Soul Hackers 2 is a masterpiece done by Atlus in Character development, musical score, plot twists, and overall story beats. A few technical hiccups and weird camera choice make this game not have a perfect score.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero is a solid entry into the Legend of Heroes series. It has superb sound design, art, and storytelling. It has a really good detective oriented main character that pays off quite well in the end.
Chained Echoes is a 16-bit-era JRPG that lends itself well to the genre. A definite pickup if you are wanting to do a run of more SNES-era games but still have some quality-of-life adjustments of the modern era.
Crisis Core – Final Fantasy VII Reunion is a masterclass on how to remaster a game. It has revamped graphics, combat, and voice acting. However, the PSP core is still inside the pretty graphics. Still gotta deal with bite-size levels, poor lip flaps, upscaled grainy cinematics, and random encounters. Overall it is still a fantastic game.
One Piece Odyssey is a solid JRPG experience with great animations, characterizations and story beats. It lets you relive some of the best moments of the series in bite size chunks. The ease of difficulty can feel boring to fans of the genre but overall a great experience.
Hogwarts Legacy is an absolute monster of passion and creativity in a world that is all about creativity. Great combat mechanics and a unique open world with many interesting secrets hidden around makes playing this game an absolute treasure.
GrimGrimoire OnceMore is a display of passion from the art to the character designs. It has a fun loop and is a very unique experience. The only negative comes with the shortness of the main game and the maps mainly go up and down.
Atelier Ryza 3: The Alchemist of the End & The Secret Key is the culmination of the entirety of Atelier Ryza. It is a fantastic conclusion and adds a lot of QoL mechanics that make it a great experience.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie is everything I wanted from the Trails series. We get a huge cast of playable characters, a ton of emotional beats and world building, and finally some great turn based gameplay. The three routes do tend to slow down the pace of the overall narrative but overall it is still extremely well written and executed.
Final Fantasy XVI is a new change to the highs of the Final Fantasy series with fleshed-out characters and fantastic set pieces. It can get bogged down due to its linearity and being unable to go back to certain locations but overall it is a masterpiece.
Dokapon Kingdom: Connect is a blast to play with friends. It may cause some arguments among friends, but it is an overall enjoyable experience. There are some frustrating things, like the mandatory space movements and being unable to combine the local lobbies and online lobbies, but I recommend it as a party game.