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SHINONOME ABYSS The Maiden Exorcist perfectly fuses the world of survival horror with the surprise and punishing difficulty of the roguelike, especially in the randomly generated mode. It’s held me captive much longer than I anticipated. That said, it is a slow and punishing game, so you’re either going to fall in love with it or it might just not click if that’s not your cup of tea. The puzzle aspects may throw people off, too. But for me, it’s been a genuine sleeper hit for 2026, and I would love to see how far this unique formula can be taken.
It’s impressive to think just how far the Legacy Collection branch of Mega Man has come since that original package with the first six Classic Mega Man games. What were once competent, if somewhat safe and boring, compilations now feel like proper celebrations of Mega Man’s diversity and rich history. Mega Man Star Force Legacy Collection, to my delight and surprise, is perhaps the collection that best exemplifies this. Even despite the series being more lowkey and less popular than its big brother on GBA, Capcom still saw fit to give it the royalty treatment. While it’s certainly debatable whether it’s the best collection in terms of the actual games on offer, I would go to bat and say this is the best collection they’ve ever done in terms of tender loving care. The improvements to presentation, including sound and drawing quality, makes each game feel like it jumped a generation ahead. Considered gameplay tweaks that were thankfully made optional helps to also smooth over frustrations of the original games, especially in Star Force 2’s case. A suite of artwork, online features, and bonuses all around makes this the best way to experience these games, even accounting for changes made to accommodate the transition to one screen. It helps that these games are, foundationally, all a lot of fun in their own ways and feature writing that far surpasses the Battle Network series in terms of character writing, meaningful theming, and a grander sense of emotion. Star Force 3 in particular is one of the very best games in the entire Mega Man franchise, being the peak of the series’ gameplay while also offering a very strong narrative conclusion to the whole package. If this is the quality Capcom will be moving forward with in their Mega Man collections, then the Legends series is in great hands.
The routes in Making*Lovers: First Blush vary from a comforting experience with low-stakes domesticity to high-energy comedic antics, with varying levels of plot-importance depending on the route. This variety ensures that each route feels distinct, but it does lead to what feels like an inconsistency in the quality of routes. Tedium started to creep in as I read some routes where the slice-of-life moments and comedy didn’t entertain as much, while others were a lot more engaging. Still, as long as you enjoy more character-driven romance visual novels with a focus on those comedic slice-of-life moments, you should find something to enjoy here. Even if they vary slightly in style at times, SMEE titles are always good for humor, and this is no exception.
Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection is a good game that I’m ultimately left conflicted on. While it’s the biggest, most polished, and most mechanically thoughtful a Stories title has ever been, it’s also at the cost of what I feel was the series’ unique personality. While the series has been aging with its audience ever since the previous game, Stories 2 struck a much more resonant emotional balance, embracing something more somber and thoughtful while still respecting the oftentimes silly and satirical nature of the original Stories game. Stories 3, in its push to appear as more grown up, abandons a lot of that in favor of an okay but more generic narrative that doesn’t manage to leverage what makes the Monster Hunter series tonally unique. On the gameplay side of things, Stories 3 is broadly a success. Changes to combat keep its simplicity, while the more punishing boss battles still push it towards being something where you really have to think more than before. It’s also perhaps the most beautiful Monster Hunter game ever made, with tasteful watercolor visuals applied to superb modeling and animations. There is plenty of good here, despite my prior complaints. That said, Stories 3 only feels like half a victory, where it has its own accomplishments but feels dragged down by some of the same things currently plaguing the mainline games. It doesn’t feel finished, performance is wonky, and despite the want for a more involved narrative, in the end it misplaces what made Monster Hunter really work in the first place.
Machine Child is a raising sim visual novel that features a cast of cute daughters that readers are given the opportunity to dote on as they accompany them through a critical year of personal growth. The game, through its simplistic gameplay and easy-to-understand mechanics, offers a relaxing time should you give it a try. Although I find the narrative too segmented to properly appreciate its implied continuity, the mini-episodes that lead to any of the heroine’s seven possible endings were concise and weirdly emotional despite the very limited format in which the text is implemented. But for most of the game, the text feels too shallow in its progression that it’s a little bit hard to enjoy, despite the relatively interesting social dynamics it tries to discuss. When it comes to visual presentation, however, the game is well supplied with beautiful art from Ooyari Ashito housed within an adorable UI layout that just oozes cute. There’s also a healthy mix of fashionable and skimpy outfits for each heroine that are exciting yet equally frustrating to try to collect until completion. This pretty image does come at a cost, however, as many of the cute screen transitions related to the gameplay loop do artificially increase the length of every playthrough. It makes it a little bit unappealing to continuously replay, especially considering that missing items might be gated behind unpredictable RNG mechanics. If you like grindy raising sims that mainly revolve around cute girls doing cute things regardless of whether or not there’s an overarching storyline, then Machine Child might be a game for you. The in-game achievement list and available outfits make for a good challenge, whether it be to figure out the most efficient way to unlock everything or simply help you to stay sane as a minor mistake costs you your entire run. Just be careful about its lack of a save system; it’s pretty easy to lose hours of progress by misclicking important buttons. Not all button prompts are created equal, after all!
I fell in love almost instantly with Damon and Baby. It was a complete surprise, and I think Arc System Works has hit it out of the park, despite being known more for their fighting game entries. It shows they aren’t a one-trick pony, with ArcSys’s arc as a developer perfectly emulated in Damon and Baby as the game too constantly evolves throughout its somewhat poor pacing, both in the gameplay and the story. The game is a jack of all trades, and while it doesn’t master any, Damon and Baby makes for a rather entertaining time. It once again shows that developers don’t always need the biggest budgets and all the AAA bells and whistles to create an endearing and fun title.
Eve of the 12 Months is an adult romance visual novel that features themes of resilience, growth, and denial of fate. Through its use of a deliberately slow-paced plot progression and a usually non-confrontational cast, it allows the reader to simmer in their own thoughts as they are presented with sensitive topics that are unique to this game’s experience. Unfortunately, due to the lacking characterization that specific members of the cast have and how awkwardly the dialogue sometimes flows, the overall impact of important scenes feel diminished as actions and stakes lack solid foundations. Despite that, with how beautiful the visuals are and how well the soundtrack fits into the game’s various scenarios, it remains a complete package of a visual novel that’s sure to tug well at your heartstrings if you give it the chance.
Super Mario Bros. Wonder is a pretty darn good 2D platformer that demonstrates the old plumber can still hang with the best of the modern 2D gaming world. While it leans more on gimmicks than radical departures from series conventions, it still has immense charm, strong level design, and spectacular game feel. It’s chock full of stuff to do and ways to get enjoyment out of the experience, with levels having considerable replay value thanks to the many discoveries there are to find, keeping the game in line with 2D Mario at its peak. There are a lot of great experiences starring Mario on the Nintendo Switch, but Wonder is definitely one worth fitting in your library. The additions found in Super Mario Bros. Wonder – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park are nice bonuses to add to an already loaded package. However, unless you expect to get a lot of mileage out of Attraction Central with your friends or family, I don’t quite think the additional £17 GBP/ $20 USD price tag makes the upgrade a must for Switch 2 owners, especially given it raises the full price of the game up to £67 GBP/$80 USD.
When I started up Project Songbird, I had to sit through quite a bit of dialogue from the creator trying to justify the game’s existence. Whenever I would load the game up, I’d be asked to rate it or have an aspect explained. I was enjoying the slow build before the “Otherworld” sections, but something just wasn’t quite sitting well with me. I feel that Project Songbird would have been a much stronger title if the creators of the game had more faith in their original design and choices. Instead, it feels like the developer is pleading with you to accept where they had to renege on their original vision, almost mirroring the narrative of the game. Frankly, it just weakens the title even further, a title that could have been something special if you look at its stronger points alone. Between spotty performance, disjointed gameplay, and apologetic dialogue, I couldn’t recommend Project Songbird. It had everything in place to be a hit indie horror title. Instead, it feels like outside factors may have ruined the original vision, which is bleeding through from the second you boot the game up.
Karigurashi Ren’ai: Living on Borrowed Love is full of comedic situations and amusing bickering between the cast. While the jokes don’t always land, it’s certainly plenty of laughs overall. The home rotation premise was used particularly well to keep things constantly changing throughout.
Resident Evil Village Gold Edition is another fantastic package for fans of the franchise and newcomers on the Nintendo Switch 2. It has the “Winters Expansion” from the jump, which contains a compelling and highly replayable Mercenaries mode, as well as a fairly lengthy post-game DLC. This gives you the most bang for your buck when it comes to Resident Evil Village. While in my opinion it’s one of the weaker entries in the franchise, I still believe Resident Evil Village is well worth playing, and I did really enjoy coming back to the game after a couple of years. I would steer away from the third-person mode, though. Performance isn’t quite perfect, but it’s still a great performing title on the Nintendo Switch 2.
Utawarerumono: ZAN 2, as a spin-off to Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth, manages to capitalize on what its preceding game did well and introduce improvements for replayability. It manages to be a relatively strong Musou-style title despite its obvious dependence on the Utawarerumono IP, providing fun and interesting gameplay while satisfying fan demand for new content. While the newly introduced progression system isn’t exactly free of flaws, the decision to introduce new concepts to the existing Utawarerumono RPG style makes for a refreshingly new experience for the game's main target audience, which are players that were already fans of the series beforehand.
Etrange Overlord is an interesting idea, essentially telling a light novel villainess story through the medium of a game. However, it doesn’t really deliver its message, in part due to the short playtime, minimal story scenes, and the use of some of its time on skits and silly moments, which could’ve been better used to develop its themes. However, the humor and Étrange as a character do somewhat save it. The gameplay is also simple and lacks overall difficulty, but it is action-packed and genuinely fun for what it is. Dashing about the various level mechanics and grabbing items from the conveyor belt makes for a great time, and the levels are short enough to never overstay their welcome.
As a simulation game and as a sandbox game, Pokémon Pokopia does a lot of things very well. Time just melts away as you get immersed in doing all sorts of tasks and hanging out in this world of Pokémon. It uses the Pokémon very IP well in how it uses theming in its aesthetic and gameplay to create a world that is both familiar yet quite unlike anything I’ve seen thus far in the franchise. Its story hits in a way I never saw coming, in a way this series has only ever once done before for me. In all, it's one of the first true "must own" games for the relatively nascent Nintendo Switch 2's library. Pokémon Pokopia reminded me just how much love I have had for Pokémon across my life. I’ve never had a game confront me on what it means to be a fan of it quite like this one did. And for all the fun I had playing the game, I think that’s going to stick with me more out of anything.
Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen are clean-cut distillations of why the series has endured in the eyes of millions. The tried-and-true gameplay loop of exploring, catching, and battling is in a beautifully simplistic form here. With little written narrative and simplified visuals, my mind is allowed to wander and craft a story of its own. It makes for an especially striking contrast and compliment to Switch titles like Legends: Z-A or Scarlet/Violet. While it’s hard not to argue that these Switch conversions are a little too no-frills for their own good, you’re ultimately still left with a Pokémon game that’s extremely fun to revisit again and again thanks to its open-ended world and the broadly engaging layout of Kanto. Full stop, these are deeply charming and easy recommendations.
I want to like Homura Hime a lot more than I actually do. It doesn’t have the type of patently obvious mistakes that the bad sorts of action games have, and I can tell the creators were genuinely trying to make a game that can stand next to the greats of the character action subgenre. It gets a lot of the important macro details right with its presentation and overall feel. It just misses on a lot of the finer and subtler elements that take enough away from the game to make it harder to recommend. The platforming doesn’t do enough to keep the repetitious enemy mob encounters from feeling stagnant, and the misused parry system dampens the impact of what should have made for significantly more fun bosses. The story never really elevates the game due to direction and writing choices that don’t really stick the landing on the game’s twists or emotional components. There’s a modest amount of enjoyment to be had with this game, and it’s certainly competent, but it never quite graduates from adequate into the realm of standout.
FATAL FRAME II: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE has gone the route of the more successful remakes: it keeps everything that made the original game so memorable while adding extra content, changes the visuals, and makes it a little more unique rather than just improving the graphics and calling it a day. It does a great job of not outright replacing the original but offering a new version of it for fans and newcomers alike, alongside a new level of challenge. This is an absolutely phenomenal jumping-in point for people who may have been curious about the series before, but were intimidated by starting with the fourth or fifth entry. It’s still not going to be for everyone, but in this day and age where the survival horror is pulling quite the comeback, FATAL FRAME II: Crimson Butterfly REMAKE is going to once again prove the rule of two remains untouchable.
I’ll be completely transparent with you, dear reader: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard is my favourite Resident Evil title post original Resident Evil 3. To have the complete package, playable in handheld and looking and handling the way that it does, is like a fever dream for me. While I wish Capcom had addressed some minor issues with the game in terms of skippable cutscenes and the like, and maybe offered a cheeky little bonus like the Mercenary mode from a few of the other games, the fact this port gives the full experience with nothing removed in a form I can just pick up and play is already far too enticing an offer for me to do anything other than recommend this game to everyone who will listen. As a game and a port, this version of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard Gold Edition is basically perfect as is. It’s the survival horror that I had been missing since the series took a more action approach, and this port is a solid reminder that 7 still remains undefeated within the franchise as the perfect modern horror.
Resident Evil Requiem is a great game that almost hits the heights of being one of the best in the franchise. Unfortunately, the pacing gets a little too unruly in the latter half of the game, and creates a divide between the two characters and the feelings associated with them. While Grace’s sections encapsulate the true Survival Horror, it only remains grounded as Leon until you reach the Raccoon City section of the game, where all of the horror is stripped away completely, and you don’t get back to Grace for a good few hours. By then, you’ve become numb to the game's horrors and are just fully focused on dishing out pain. I loved Requiem, but I feel it should have been two separate games. Initially, I looked forward to the brief Leon sections, which felt like a nice palette cleanser and broke up the tension nicely, but when the game switches to have more of a Leon focus, it felt a little too close to the uninteresting Resident Evil 6 for me to truly love the game. Requiem is still an amazing experience and highly recommended, but at times feels like there were a few too many cooks in the kitchen for this one.
The Demon Queen’s Dire Dilemma is a rather short and amusing OELVN. It’s lighthearted, has a fun premise, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. The dynamic between the “failgirl demon queen” and princess-turned-maid makes for an entertaining time reading this title.