The visuals are a standout in this regard too. For one, the graphic a friend makes in honor of a “date” you went on with a new classmate is so overblown (complete with doves) that it would look right at home memorializing someone’s tragically premature death. These jokes are funny, but they’re also emblematic of the way in which these kids—all of whom have their own deeply felt emotional baggage—ultimately lift each other up. It reflects a genuine and kind-hearted rejection of the kind of cynicism that’s far too often romanticized in other teen dramas.
Despite its litany of tricks, though, Animal Well is a relatively simple game at its core, with little in the way of an overarching mystery or narrative to push you along. And while the lack of long-term hooks sometimes makes the game feel a bit slight, the single-minded attention to the in-the-moment pleasure of the gameplay creates a focus that is meditative rather than expansive. Animal Well isn’t some grand adventure or sweeping artistic statement. It’s just a boatload of tiny interconnected puzzles, woven together to form an almost unimaginably intricate web.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is such a profoundly strange and inventive game at so many turns that its occasional stumbles are largely forgivable. For one, there are a few too many side quests that leave you stuck in town, some of which lean on woefully underbaked stealth sequences. The technical performance is also far from perfect, with unsteady framerates and clear graphical errors popping up frequently. In total, though, these come across as the drawbacks of a game whose reach exceeds its grasp, which is better by far than a game with no reach at all.
The story might initially come off as a letdown too, with its pedestrian fantasy setting and mostly ordinary character arcs. But sometimes stories in games simply serve to set the mood, as a kind of backdrop against which you experience the main event—the play itself. Few complain, for instance, that Mario games aren’t surprising enough in their narratives. In much the same way, Unicorn Overlord’s predictable plot beats hang out in the background, unoppressive, so that you’re free to let the rush of its expertly crafted systems wash over you unimpeded.
But as engaging as Bahnsen Knights’s atmosphere may be, the process of navigating it isn’t as consistently engrossing. The similarities to Choose Your Own Adventure-style storytelling work both in the game’s favor and against it. On one hand, there’s freedom to how you approach many situations, and there’s some excitement to knowing that the game holds more mysteries than you’ll uncover on first playthrough. On the other, there are quite a few fail states that feel arbitrary or unfair, and reloading a dialogue sequence several times in quick succession only serves to break the mood that the game otherwise works so hard to maintain.
It would be easy, and in some ways fair, to complain that this remake is a slightly disappointing half-measure—just a bit of new paint applied to a game that’s almost 30 years old. In many ways, though, the light touch taken with this updated version just serves to showcase how vibrant the original Super Mario RPG has always been. And in a year that brought no shortage of sprawling RPG behemoths, from Starfield to Baldur’s Gate 3 to Octopath Traveler II, this one’s spryness and wit stand in sharp, refreshing contrast.
Hellboy Web of Wyrd's sharp art direction, warm voice performances, and goofy if basic combat struggle to shine through in a roguelike that is otherwise too messy in too many ways.
On the other hand, Lies of P’s refusal to dish out any significant discomfort lowers the stakes considerably, so that you’re never pushed to engage with the game’s mechanical limits. As a result, everything from its level layouts to its boss fights to its jump scares don’t get seared into your brain out of repetition or necessity. It’s why, unlike Dark Souls, Lies of P is so easy to stick with. But it’s also why, unlike Dark Souls, you might forget it in a year.
The result is an interesting and impressive game that ultimately feels more than a bit academic, where solving intricate puzzles to uncover the hidden inner workings of a strange world mostly feels like an interactive and particularly creative linguistic anthropology lesson. Which is to say, Chants of Sennaar ought to be an exciting game for fans of, well, linguistic anthropology. But if you aren’t one already, chances are that it isn’t likely to make a fan out of you.
En Garde is a tantalizing first outing from new studio Fireplace Games, thanks to its slick combat and wonderful sense of humor. It's in some ways so strong that it leaves you wondering what this team could do with more time and money behind them.
If the Pikmin series has one thing that it wants you to take away from each game, it’s to see the world with the same naïve wonder as its various exploring protagonists. Before now, this message felt somewhat distant, like something you could miss if you didn’t reach out and grab it. But this series’s commitment to realism is better served on the Switch, and its message—that you should approach your surroundings with the intentionality, curiosity, and joy of someone seeing them for the first time—punches you straight in the gut whether you want it to or not.
It’s tempting to call it a shame—a waste, even—that a game that looks so unlike any other doesn’t have much going for it in the way of dialogue or character study. But, then, stories aren’t just limited to the things people say. And, of course, a story centered on the tenuous nature of human memory would be messier than that—rendered in imprecise arrays, interrupted by blank space, and framed in rough edges. Which is to say, a bit like watercolor.
While Darkest Dungeon II’s emphasis on the interpersonal is apt for a game that’s more road trip than dungeon crawl, it also makes it a decidedly more hopeful experience than the first game, as it leaves the door open for your adventuring party to face seemingly insurmountable odds and come out the other side stronger. There’s also more comedy and just plain joy in knowing that as intimidating as all those monsters may seem, your biggest challenge is getting your ragtag band of rascals to stop bickering and get along.
It’s indicative of just how important a game’s moment-to-moment hooks are that even with its shortcomings, Dredge is by and large an enjoyable experience. There are games with bigger problems, but for Dredge, a few missteps and an eldritch twist that never goes anywhere make a solid foundation feel a little like a wasted opportunity.