Still Wakes the Deep's nearly on-rails structure and ineffective scares undersell its otherwise fantastic setting.
Manor Lords is a gorgeous medieval city-builder that kept me occupied for hours building my perfect, cozy hamlets, but it definitely feels very early in its Early Access development.
Millennia focuses too much on the ways it wants to mix up the Civilization formula without building the base of a strong Civ-like first.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is an ultra crunchy, 130-hour space epic with excellent writing and combat, but unfortunately, also a lot of bugs.
Persona 5 Tactica is a big bag of bite-sized Phantom Thieves adventures that keeps the spirit of the series alive and shows that it can work great with a grid-based battle system.
Cities: Skylines 2 is an ambitious sequel that might have bitten off more than it can chew – be prepared to do a lot of terraforming if you don't want your metropolis to look like a nightmare.
Total War: Pharaoh's interesting battles complement an impressively rich campaign centered on the Late Bronze Age Collapse.
Dune: Spice Wars is a clever, multilayered, challenging RTS that skillfully translates so much of what is cool about Frank Herbert's universe in its interesting mechanics.
With crunchy, tactical RPG combat, a memorable story with complex characters, highly polished cinematic presentation, and a world that always rewards exploration and creativity, Baldur's Gate 3 is the new high-water mark for CRPGs.
Jagged Alliance 3 is a flexible, challenging, approachable throwback turn-based tactics game in which the only thing that feels truly dated is the humor.
Aliens: Dark Descent is a fascinating, tense, inspired survival horror RTS with a few too many technical bugs to recommend it without caveats.
Amnesia: The Bunker is a smaller, more self-contained episode in the groundbreaking horror franchise that shows Frictional still has some chilling, new tricks up their sleeves.
A roguelite sequel that takes a few steps forward and one or two back from the original, but keeps the gloomy but intense spirit alive.
Age of Wonders 4 is a dizzyingly customizable fantasy 4X made mightier by a legacy that follows you across multiple campaigns.
The Great War: Western Front is a deep RTS that shows a lot of attention to historical authenticity, though that can certainly bog things down.
Have a Nice Death is a punishing but satisfying roguelike with some extremely tough boss fights, but it could be a bit less stingy with long-term progression.
Even in early access, Sons of the Forest is already a strong survival crafter sequel that takes all the things The Forest did so well and does them a little bit better.
Blood Bowl 3 is a sloppy, muddy, buggy rehash of a better game.
A rousing mystery brought to life by a great voice cast and nuanced character writing can't really save Deliver Us Mars from its shortcomings.
Dragonflight is a sharply-written and breathtaking experience for the first few dozen hours, but suffers from somewhat threadbare endgame options.