It’s impossible to not describe as Animal Crossing meets Rust, but I think that’s exactly what they’re going for. It’ll be super cool once enough content is in, but it’s already worth a quick look.

Brimming with the passion of people who clearly love this genre, and made for the people who are underwhelmed by lack of depth in its contemporaries. A bit too intimidating for me, but I respect it.

An often misunderstood game and a remarkable achievement from a tiny team led by someone with an uncompromising vision. The world does not care about you and you are not special. Sublime.

It’s Skyrim. For its time, raised the bar for the genre. I have many, many fond memories of the hundreds of hours lost to this game. Hugely influential for better or worse.

A lot of the magic of the first one is gone and unfortunately it’s just kind of… uninspiring. For everything it does well, there are two things it doesn’t. Worth a look on sale.

A beautiful love letter to oldschool Zelda et al. Starts off slowish and somewhat opaque (by design), but if you stick with it, the pay-off is pretty good. A wonderful little puzzlebox of a game.

Basically Genshin but sci-fi instead of fantasy, and turn-based instead of realtime combat. The intro tutorial is painful, but push through and it becomes pretty fun. Lock up your wallet.

Tone, visuals, atmosphere and music are back to Diablo’s dark roots. Unfortunately the pacing, activities and uneven design quality (not to mention monetisation) become old pretty quickly. Feels more like a checklist than an epic journey, but it’ll probably be a good game in a year or two.

Bafflingly, just like with BOTW, I have no idea how Nintendo pulled this off. The mechanical additions are creative and wildly impressive. Somehow though, as a sequel, it never quite hit me as hard. I was constantly amazed, but sometimes struggled to find or maintain the fun.

Impossibly good looking, creative worldbuilding & visual design, considering its a studio debut. Combat is cool, exploration is OK, puzzles are varied and good. English VA is intolerable. Pretty cool.