Sultan’s Game defies comparison. In 2025, that’s like striking gold. What’s more, the innovation pairs beautifully with a wealth of quality content that’ll give the literarily inclined much to chew on. Mind, this tabletop-meets-roguelike game isn’t a tome of writing, but every event and action tends to include a couple short paragraphs of description. Get ready to set your morals and sensibilities aside, because it’s time to play a ruthless game at the hands of a bored and psychopathic sultan.

The tutorial’s delivered straight, as if implying how the whole game will be played. We witness the origins of the sultan’s game; a leader of an empire who has grown tired of the lavish rule he enjoys, the sultan meets a mysterious magician who offers him a game in which the sinful card the player draws determines what they must do to continue the game—and continue living. Pulled an extravagance card? Prepare to spend that ill-gotten coin. Bloodshed or carnality card? Well, you see where this is going.

After completing the well-constructed tutorial, we meet our hero: us! The protagonist we play is one of many nobles who have been pulled into the sultan’s game, with failure resulting in an untimely demise. In seven days, we must not only satisfy the type of card we pull, but also match the gravity with its tier (stone, bronze, silver, gold). Naturally, carrying on like this comes with consequences, but even traditionally illegal acts—murder, for starters—are allowed for the sake of the sultan’s game. In fact, Sultan’s Game goes to some harrowing places, with players forced to make decisions that may make them uncomfortable. The opening of the game even comes with a warning about this. Rest assured, the writing maintains a modicum of tact and never goes to extremes in terms of description, even if the act itself is reprehensible.

That’s part of the beauty of Sultan’s Game: the writing. It’s tight and impactful, making me buy into this fictitious world and develop an addiction for every new event—at least for the thirty hours or so the main game offers. Even if characters reside on a flat piece of cardstock, I grew attached to them and enjoyed unraveling their stories. Script aside, I attributed a connection with them through gameplay alone. I saw how the character’s attributes—such as a “book lover”—contributed to their development and value as a member of my entourage over time. Certain kinds of events played to specific characters’ strengths, and that alone builds their identity.

So you gotta be asking at this point how this allegedly unique game plays. Sultan’s Game offers a swathe of potential events on a map that players can click on. The resulting pop-up includes a description of what the titled event entails, followed by empty card slots—some necessary, most not. In addition, we see relevant stats for the event that’ll guide our character placement. Most events only factor in one or two stats, and depending on how many fifty-fifty chance successes we roll, we can earn a reward or meet defeat.

Once the character or characters are confirmed for the event, we can click on other nodes and insert additional characters. Sometimes, no character is necessary and we can use accrued items, but most of the time, people lead the charge. Once all characters have been expended, we end the day and see how everything plays out. Various tools in the game allow us to re-roll or add a success, but the bulk of the game lies in character placement, how we outfit them, and, most importantly, resource management.

Initially simple, Sultan’s Game quickly spiders out into a whole web of choices, characters to manage with their own goals and desires, and mysterious treasures we’ve earned through sometimes odd means. For the most part, this isn’t a game in which you go to a bar and try to win a drinking game with four successes. No, the events range from the nefarious to the otherworldly. Prepare to read descriptions thorough enough to whet your curiosity, yet vague enough to instill curiosity; the outcomes sometimes only fan that mystique.

I won’t get into all of the bells and whistles of Sultan’s Game, but rest assured that its options are wonderfully overwhelming as we have to prioritize our life-or-death tasks, with satisfying the sultan’s card always being the chief priority: remember, that card’s mission must be completed in seven days or less. Intuitively, one might figure that building resources for six days and completing the task on the seventh day is the most efficient way to play the game—and you’d be right—but also note that spontaneity and untimely events may trigger on the final day and upend your plans.

Some events are time-sensitive, meaning they will disappear after a day or three, while maladies may crop up that bar our protagonist from acting. Since he is the one playing the sultan’s game, he typically has to be the one completing sultan cards. This can feel unfair and unnecessarily random to some extent, though the game also forecasts that some hardship weighs on the protagonist’s mind, which may inconveniently pre-occupy him at just the right moment. Or an untreated injury may flare up. All this to say that maybe a greedy approach isn’t always the best way.

On the other hand, failure and an early death may be what you need. With two hundred possible endings, death may be just as entertaining as the nihilistic struggle of life. Also, Sultan’s Game boasts an in-game achievement system in which players earn points for meeting certain milestones. These points can be spent for minor or major permanent perks in between games. The cheapest options offer a couple permanent stat buffs on our hero at the start, while the much more expensive choices grant us a whole extra character to play with. Some even do some more oddball things that you can discover for yourself.

Sultan’s Game has been out for a few months at this point, but part of the impetus for this review is the most recent major update that boasts ten new cards—equipment, for the most part. Some even have their own questlines. Although these ten new add-ons certainly expand on the significant volume of content, know that Sultan’s Game is so brimming with imaginative writing and scenarios that this feels like a drop in the bucket. I’ve put in over thirty hours, and I have only recently begun to feel like I’m spinning my wheels a bit. While I’ve technically “beaten the game,” I have a couple specific goals and hard-to-reach feats to meet, because why should I do what this lunatic on the throne wants, anyway?

Although Sultan’s Game is primarily played on a map and box of text, these are pretty maps and boxes of text! The music and visuals are Arabic in nature—even if the world is a fictitious blend of cultures—which is yet another refreshing departure in the gaming landscape. Most titles seem to fall into the Western world or East Asia, so having a taste of the Middle East feels like finding an oasis in a desert. The music also consistently and capably contributes to the atmosphere, with some events having their own unique tracks to accentuate the brief tale told. Similarly, if one isn’t looking closely enough, the illustrations enjoy layered, sometimes strange coloring that are likely best taken in passively. Rather than artwork that is to be stared at and admired—and one could easily do that here—Sultan’s Game’s flair lies in its framing and subtle touches that bring the story to life, even if unconsciously.

Strategic yet led by its narrative and decision-making, Sultan’s Game sinks its venomous fangs in, forcing addled players to say: just one more turn. I had several instances in which I wanted to set up my team’s positions so that I didn’t forget what I wanted to do before I quit for the day, but I was so curious about the outcomes that I clicked to end the day and see the events play out, telling myself that I’d save right after the stories finished. Then the next in-game day rolled around and four new events popped up with their dazzling clinging sounds. I hovered my cursor over just to see the titles. That title! I just had to see what that title meant for the event. Before I knew it, I was placing characters into a whole new set of events. That’s the kind of game this is. Of course, like any venom, a little bit over time builds a tolerance, and while the content in Sultan’s Game may feel endless, there is, indeed, an end. Two-hundred, in fact.

Quartet is the latest RPG from Something Classic Games, the studio behind Shadows of Adam. A former colleague penned a lovely editorial about how Shadows of Adam is more than its classic-inspired veneer would suggest. Quartet is an even more ambitious title that shoots for the moon and makes it.

Quartet starts out akin to Wild ARMs, in that players choose one of four protagonists: disillusioned army sergeant Nikolai Proch, disgruntled restaurant cook Ben Balani, dedicated law school graduate Cordelia Helmont, and Alexandra Hin, a teenage shopkeeper desperately trying to keep her life from falling apart. After each of their two-to-three hour-long introductory chapters, Quartet’s middle chapters bring these characters and their traveling companions together into an eight-member fellowship for the final chapters. Every character is compelling and sure to be some RPG fan’s favorite. I only wish all eight received introductory chapters.

Quartet’s common thread is that magic is a powerful commodity everyone vies for. There are also several competing ideologies regarding magic, seeing it as both a resource and a religion—two entities that universally spark sociopolitical unrest and war. Through Quartet’s diverse protagonists, players see war affect everyone from front-line soldiers to civilians who believe themselves too far removed from it. Quartet’s story touches upon serious themes, but also has moments of levity and even some subtle comic relief. I particularly appreciated the small non-sequitur referencing Roald Dahl’s short story “Lamb to the Slaughter.”

The well-written dialogue offers insightful worldbuilding without ever going into “expository info-dump” territory. The most entertaining writing lies in the smatterings of character banter. Unfortunately, because the characters are immediately thrust into dire circumstances once they unite into a fellowship, there is not enough time for more frequent and extensive banter. For example, I wanted more than just one “cooking with Ben and Nikolai” moment, especially since Nikolai’s dad is a baker and Ben is a professional cook.

A plethora of optional late-game sidequests flesh out the characters, all of whom have unfinished business. Some of that unfinished business even uncovers new complications. Quartet also has some hidden places only found and accessed via astute airship exploration. I highly recommend exploring Quartet’s side content. Not only does it enhance character development and worldbuilding, but it can better prepare players for the final boss.

Quartet’s combat consists of traditional turn-based battles with intuitive mechanics. When the eight characters come together, four fight at one time and the other four (on standby) can be swapped in without turn penalties, while characters on standby slowly recover. Everyone earns EXP after battle, meaning nobody falls behind. Dungeons are neither too lengthy nor too brief—the only hiccup is that some open paths are obscured by tall or overhanging structures.

Some dungeons contain puzzles or mini-games to spice things up. One I distinctly remember is running through a gauntlet while avoiding gunfire, figuring out when to take cover and when to run for it. These fun little distractions are implemented well and never stopped me in my tracks. The most challenging puzzles exist in optional dungeons.

Speaking of mini-games, Quartet even has a card game called Oracle, which plays like Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad. Players select five cards (each of which has numbers on all four sides) and take turns placing them on a 3×3 grid. If player 1’s card has a higher number than player 2’s card adjacent to it, that card is flipped to player 1’s color. Once the grid is filled, the player with more cards in their color wins. Quartet does not have as many card players in its world as Final Fantasy VIII does, but it’s fun to seek them out.

Quartet only has one difficulty level, best described as fun-challenging. The default hack-and-heal battle strategy longtime RPG fans utilize does not work here. Figuring out enemy weaknesses and utilizing status ailment skills (they work on bosses, too), as in Shin Megami Tensei games, is the best approach for Quartet.

Quality-of-life features, such as adjustable difficulty parameters or the option to skip puzzle sequences, are absent in Quartet. I can live without those, but the feature I truly felt the absence of is auto-save. Recovery points do not occur often in Quartet, so reminders to manually save (which can be done anywhere outside of battle) are few and far between. In addition, there were times I was going along at a great clip, too engrossed to remember to manually save, until enemy encounters party-wiped me. 

Enemy encounters are visible in dungeons, occur infrequently, and do not respawn unless the party exits to the overworld. Fighting every enemy encounter ensures adequate leveling for boss battles. Do note that leveling up does not replenish HP and AP (Quartet’s equivalent of MP). In addition, the low encounter rate means that money is often tight for equipment and healing items. Ergo, resource management is important, especially during lengthy sections when characters cannot access shops to replenish healing supplies.  

Quartet’s music may not impress right away, but over time its brilliance shines through. The narrative’s myriad layers peel back like an onion and the music follows suit. Hearing different styles and genres of music when visiting new locations makes them feel like unique places and not copy-paste towns. For example, the lively city of Seren has fun New Orleans-style jazz music, the hard scrapple city of Luskiya has brassy Eastern European music in a minor key, rugged frontier settlements have music befitting televised westerns, and the list goes on. Interestingly, battle and boss themes lack the punch of proverbial combat themes, but they grew on me over time, and now I cannot imagine Quartet with anything different.     

Similarly to the music, Quartet’s visuals grow more attractive over time. First impressions show a vibrantly colored 2D “sprite and tile” game inspired by 16-bit classics, but the game’s real beauty lies in the small details. Sundry architectural details and thoughtful layouts make each town feel unique and as diverse as the real-world places that inspired them.

The distinctive playable character sprites stylistically represent the regions they hail from and have wonderful animations. The painstaking care put into the sprites’ various facial expressions is quite evident. The sprites themselves have that classic squat “super deformed” look on both the field and in battle. This makes the bosses loom larger and more impressively, but I would have liked to see larger or more proportional versions of the hero sprites in battle. Speaking of battles, the vivid battle backgrounds look great. A few backgrounds even animate, such as the battles that take place atop a moving train. The Chrono Trigger-style overworld has the least impressive graphics, but it looks fine and evokes the nostalgia of something classic.

My only caveat with Quartet’s visuals is that the default pixilated default font is straining to read. There are options to switch to narrow or HD fonts for better readability. I chose the HD font, which dramatically improves readability. Even the smaller text in the battle menus pop thanks to the HD font’s clarity. The menus themselves, be they field menus or battle menus, are intuitive to use and do everything an RPG fan needs them to.

Quartet not only excels with its fantastic ensemble cast, eclectic music, colorful visuals, engaging gameplay, and engrossing story, but its intangible “x factor” made my twenty-eight-hour or so jaunt a special experience. I would love to see character-centric post-ending DLC in the future, because Quartet’s cast is too cool not to revisit. I have nothing negative to say about Quartet beyond its lack of an auto-save. If this review does not put Quartet on RPG fans’ radars, then perhaps the notion of adventuring with Juna—a sage, sassy, and supportive talking hippo—will. 

DISCLAIMER/NOTE: In the spirit of transparency, please note that an RPGFan staff member created this lovely art piece used on Quartet’s official site, Steam page, and social media pages. This has no bearing on the review as none of that art was used in the game.

For many years, System Shock 2 was one of gaming’s white whales, at least where digital distribution was concerned. A combination of rights issues and a hunt for the source code spearheaded by dedicated fans meant that the game would not see an official release, digital or otherwise, until 2013. At this time, Stephen Kick of Nightdive Studios acquired the rights for it and negotiated to get the game put onto GOG, a store that is famously the home of older, previously forgotten classic PC titles.

Since then, Nightdive went on to release an ‘Enhanced Edition’ of the original System Shock, followed some years later by a full-on Unreal Engine 4 remake, to moderate critical and commercial success. Meanwhile, fans of the second game eagerly waited to see it get a similar treatment, as Nightdive promised in 2019. Though it took a couple more years to finally come to fruition, the System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster (technically 26th, but who’s counting?) has landed!

So, is it the best version of this game? Well, it certainly seems that way! Truth be told, System Shock 2 has been my personal gaming white whale as well. I bought and played the re-release on GOG as a teen, way back when it came out, but I was a little too overwhelmed by the game’s systems and gameplay to fully engage with it properly. I put it on the back burner for many years.

Cut to now, and having just completed my first ever playthrough, I can safely say that System Shock 2 holds up in 2025, and then some. What’s more, Nightdive’s 25th Anniversary Remaster does a (re)masterful job of preserving the original look and experience while adding more than a few little touch-ups here and there.

System Shock 2 takes place 42 years after the events of System Shock, with the destruction of Citadel Station and the supposed defeat of the rogue AI, SHODAN. While on its maiden voyage, the starship Von Braun, accompanied by a UNN military vessel, the Rickenbacker, responds to a distress signal on the planet Tau Ceti V. There, they encounter a parasitic alien collective who call themselves “The Many.” The Many then proceeds to infect almost the entire crew of both ships, even the Von Braun’s onboard AI, Xerxes.

You play as an unnamed soldier, whose training and assignment(s) you choose during the game’s opening act. As one of the last remaining people on the ship unmolested by The Many, the Von Braun’s lead scientist, Dr. Janice Polito, tasks you to excise this threat before it has a chance of using the ship as a conduit to infect nearby human settlements.

As you journey through the ship’s many steel corridors and weave through sections of dangerous machinery and scattered debris, all the while fighting or fleeing from the mutated hordes, you hear the stories of the ship’s once-human crew before, during, and after the discovery on Tau Ceti V.

These audio logs are, for the most part, well told and well delivered, with a few sketchy performances here and there. You may get attached to certain crew members and their stories, and can potentially even find them (or what remains of them anyway) during your travels across the ship, which makes the logs all the more captivating to hunt down, floor by floor.

There is, however, one especially notable point, besides the fact that the Von Braun is an excellent setting to inhabit. It is, after all, one of the most, if not the most, famous things about System Shock 2, so much so that I was already aware of it before playing. That is, of course, the story’s big twist.

As it turns out, Dr. Janice Polito, the woman who has been guiding you and chaperoning you throughout the Von Braun, has been dead the whole time. The voice on the other end of the comms belongs to none other than SHODAN, the rogue AI that terrorised Citadel Station in the first System Shock and who was presumed destroyed.

It truly speaks to the quality of System Shock 2‘s narrative that, despite being aware of that twist ahead of time, it didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the story, nor the impact of that reveal. If anything, it only highlights how cleverly and sneakily they hide it from the player, leading up to that moment. Since you’re hearing audio logs from the ship’s crew, that also includes Janice herself. You start to notice that her voice on the tapes sounds starkly different to the voice that is guiding you over your comms, which may well clue you in ahead of time, or just slip by you and make the reveal hit harder.

There are a lot of systems and mechanics at play in System Shock 2, a fact that initially intimidated me and prevented me from playing it for many years. Now, with more RPG and immersive sim experience under my belt, especially having just played the remake of the first game, I came to see that, while playing System Shock 2 may seem like jumping into the deepest end of a freezing cold pool, once you adapt to how it feels, you’d be surprised at how quickly you become acclimated to it.

The opening hour of the game is tutorials and building your character in a very immersive, diegetic way. Since you’re a soldier stationed on the Von Braun, you’re taken through several training courses, easing you through the three main pillars of gameplay: Weapons, Technical, and Psi Skills.

The first is your standard first-person shooter crash course, acclimating you to the game’s arsenal, how weapon skills feed into your proficiencies with them, and explaining functions of the different types of weapons you may find throughout the Von Braun (Standard, Energy, Heavy, and Exotic). The second is a crash course in hacking, which allows you to bypass keypads and access locked rooms, hack vending machines to give you discounts and/or more items, and let you break into locked chests to (very occasionally) get lucrative loot.

The third and final training is a crash course in Psi abilities, which are new to the sequel. Using a strange metallic orb that’s hooked right into your arm, you can use psionic abilities like telekinesis, or you can conjure an energy shield around you for temporary protection. Psi skills are quite the investment, with a very involved, multi-tiered skill tree attached to it, so it’s generally recommended you either specialise in armaments or abilities for maximum enjoyment. You can, of course, mix and match, but you may have more fun going all-in ahead of time.

At least, that’s what I did. I played just under two hours of the game at first, specialising in Psi skills, before starting over and changing gears to weaponry. Not that the Psi skills didn’t seem fun to play with, far from it. It just seemed to me like more of a second-playthrough investment, and I was seeking more of a basic boots-on-the-ground gunplay experience for my first run.

Right after getting acclimated to the game’s systems and mechanics, you have the choice of which branch of the military you’d like your character to be a part of: Marines, Navy, or O.S.A. (Orbital Systems Agency). To put it plainly, they break down into gunplay, hacking, or psionics, respectively, as to what your character will get a head start in. Outside of the initial gameplay elements, it’s a largely arbitrary decision, serving mostly to fuel further roleplaying for the protagonist, if that’s your jam.

I initially chose the Marines, but changed to the Navy after realizing that hacking was much more my speed and seemed lucrative, aligning with the immersive sim experience I preferred to achieve in System Shock 2.

I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about what is perhaps my favorite, and the most consistently high-quality, part of System Shock 2: the atmosphere. If we’re talking about immersive settings in video games, where everything comes together in such a way that you cannot tear your eyes away from the screen for a single second because you’re so captivated by what’s fed to you, then the Von Braun in System Shock 2 would be near the top of that list, and I say so boldly, proudly, and with no hyperbole.

The sound design in this game is immaculate, from the terrifying screeches and groans that the mutant cyborg enemies in this game make as they come charging towards you to the unnerving creaks, bumps, and eerie ambient humming that the ship makes as you navigate its corridors, unsure of what horrors await you around every corner. This is further enhanced by Xerxes’ occasional announcements over the ship’s intercom, either eerily reading off bulletins as if nothing’s going on, or pleading with remaining crew to join The Many and become part of their hive.

Top it off with a toe-tapping, pulsating techno-synth-drum & bass score that matches the intensity of the game’s look and gameplay, composed by Eric Brosius, Josh Randall, and none other than Ramin Djawadi (who would go on to craft the iconic scores for Game of Thrones, Westworld and the Fallout TV series), and it becomes all too clear why System Shock 2 has been revered over the 26 years since its release, and why it’s re-release was the subject of such high demand and fervor once upon a time on the internet.

With all of these intertwining gameplay elements combining, it might surprise you that this remaster is compatible with controllers, which is how I played it. Yet, full credit to Nightdive here—despite a few hiccups along the way, they do manage to make it mostly work. There are quite a few UI elements to keep track of in System Shock 2, and it can be a chore to cycle through to the one you want, especially in tense situations. However, I still enjoyed their translation of the original’s mouse-and-keyboard experience to the controller experience.

The game’s crummy weapon degradation system highlights the mild frustrations. It still feels like a chore, even if you’re maxed out in the maintenance skill. It’s not exactly game-breaking by any means, but it can be irritating to constantly re-up your weapons’ condition, especially since they don’t last quite as long as you’d like them to last at full condition.

Visually, it still looks like a game from 1999, but in the best way. I wouldn’t have complained if it were a straight port and it looked exactly the same, but it seems Nightdive spent a lot of time and energy making System Shock 2 look fresh and crisp, while still unmistakably like a first-person RPG from the turn of the century. As I understand it, they even incorporated fan-favourite mods of the original game into the remaster to help achieve this nouveau-retro look, which is a decision that I’m always a huge fan of (provided there is respect to and permission from the original mod authors).

It’s truly a wonderful feeling when you get around to a game that you’ve put off for so long, especially one as revered as this, and come to find that it is every bit as incredible as you’d been promised for all these years.

Cheers to you, System Shock 2, for living up to your own hype. And cheers to you especially, Nightdive Studios, for bringing it back in such a loving, passionate way so that others may experience such a titan of gaming once again, or for the first time.

After 15 years in the making, Freehold Games’ Caves of Qud finally left Early Access in December 2024. After half a year of playing, I finally finished the campaign and feel qualified to review it. Many reviews I’ve seen of Caves of Qud begin similarly: the writer tells a fun anecdote particular to their playthrough. Such stories help highlight the game’s complex emergent and procedural systems, the breadth of gameplay possibilities it offers, and the variety of original experiences that can stem from that.

Caves of Qud is not the only game to captivate players in this way. Some obvious comparisons include titles like Kenshi, Noita, and of course Dwarf Fortress—games that a player might have barely scratched the surface of after fifty-plus hours of investment, but seem to become “Overwhelmingly Positive” (in Steam parlance) for those able to break past the enormous and intimidating tip of the iceberg.

I have a complex relationship with games like these. When I read anecdotes like the ones I mentioned, or see how people create full-fledged fiction based on Dwarf Fortress instances, I want nothing more than to experience that appeal for myself. Then I try the game. I get overwhelmed by the sheer number of immediate options, lose motivation from the lack of direction and necessary time commitment, or even struggle to figure out how to interact with the damn software. “Maybe I’m an idiot,” I think. But then I remind myself that not all games are for all people, and that it’s no sin not to gel with ones that require extensive research just to get started.

Word on the digital streets was that Caves of Qud is different. More accessible. Could be enjoyed simply as an RPG. I wanted to believe this, and I’m delighted to report that this is a (mostly) fair assessment. After getting used to the wacky control scheme—whether playing on keyboard or with the arguably superior(?!) gamepad controls—you can quickly get going on seeing what the richly imaginative yet apocalyptically hostile world of Qud has to offer. Like the original Ultima games, game objects move and react in tandem with your actions. You melee attack by bumping into enemies and can mix in skills or ranged attacks. The basics are simple enough. Thing is, you have a lot to learn beyond the basics, and you will do so by dying.

In its default setting, Caves of Qud is a roguelike. I imagine this is the default because the developers want players to treat death as a beautiful oops. For example, if you receive a message that an enemy on the screen has started “sundering your mind” and you do not immediately rush to kill it, your head will explode. Oops!

Death is a way to gain knowledge of Qud’s fascinating alien logic. It’s also an opportunity to try something new through the phenomenal character builder. In terms of vast and tangible variety, Caves of Qud is a contender for the best character-building I’ve seen. Beginners can try out the many thoughtfully crafted presets while veterans can get as weird as they want with it.

Alongside weapon specializations and the potential of non-weapon skills like Tinkering and Cooking, the key element of most character builds is their mutations. Mutations can involve anything from extra limbs (with equippable slots), status-inducing excretions, teleportation, mole-like digging claws, and about 70 other wildly creative perks. Say you want to play a gunslinger: how about one holding pistols in each of their four arms with the ability to unload full clips in tandem through a forcefield? Or an axe-wielder that shoots a freezing ray, rushes in for close-quarter combat, and starts savagely dismembering your enemy’s limbs? Every character I tried in Caves of Qud felt distinct and playable, although some builds were certainly easier to get started with than others.

You can get new mutations as you level, but RNG will decide the limited selections to prevent players from reusing the exact same busted build they discover every time. This also helps ensure every run and character you play with feels uniquely memorable. There’s also a second character type, True Kins, who have compelling lore and gameplay differences from Mutants. Instead of mutations, you build your True Kin by finding cybernetic implants that you can modify yourself with. It’s a cool, alternative playstyle, but I wouldn’t recommend starting with it.

I know there are RPG fans out there who get more out of frequently restarting a game with a new build over focusing on completing a campaign. Caves of Qud is built with them in mind. And yet, as someone who falls into the completion camp, I never felt like I was playing the wrong way by opting for the alternative Roleplaying mode. This setting is exactly what it sounds like: playing the game as a more conventional RPG.

Instead of starting anew when you die, in Roleplaying mode you end up back in the last settlement you visited. This helps immensely if you want to prioritize getting through the game’s difficult main questline. Yet there’s still enough punishment for death to make every step you take (“every move you make~”) a thrilling, involving affair. While the world of Qud features virtually endless explorable dungeons underlying its surface, each main quest features unique challenges that test your knowledge of the game’s logic and systems. The deaths you face when first confronting these challenges will sometimes feel cheap. However, persevering through them with creative workarounds provides a novel sense of reward.  

But Caves of Qud isn’t all about the creativity and variety of the gameplay. It won this year’s IGF award for Excellence in Narrative against some worthy nominees, and I can understand why. Behind the labyrinth of space, systems, and procedurality is a carefully crafted main story, set characters, and expansive lore. A salt-and-chrome-drenched world where rare fresh water is both a necessity for survival and the main currency. A world where species of humanoids, robots, plants, animals, and everything in between have their own sense of cultural identity and make up factions you can win the favor of or become despised by. It doesn’t feel quite like any fantasy or sci-fi world I’ve engaged with before, and that’s a remarkable achievement.

Visually, the world of Qud feels Ultima-like in its minimalist graphics, Night Mode aesthetics, and grid-based layout. Even with these graphical constraints, though, the atmosphere oozes character and arcane intrigue. It helps when the writing is so original and evocative. NPCs and lore texts will describe aspects of the world to you with word combinations that are based more on stimulating your imagination than logical exposition. And yet these descriptions don’t feel completely illogical either. There is tangible worldbuilding here, don’t get me wrong. It’s just based far more on vibes than the plainspoken (and often boring) writing you’ll find in so many other RPGs.

Another contributor to the dense atmosphere is the bonkers OST. It’s like the composer learned about music composition by listening to nothing but the original Fallout soundtrack on repeat until they spiritually transcended. The soundscapes range from the psychically violent to the anxiously serene. Alongside the writing, the OST does some heavy lifting in providing the world its aesthetic flair to compensate for the necessarily simple graphical style. I only wish there were more tracks, considering how much game is here.

These stable narrative elements join the developer’s innovative approach to proceduralizing history. Freehold Games invented code to modify the descriptive text of certain bits of the world of Qud’s history every playthrough. For example, there are always five sultans that are foundational figures in Qud’s past, but their names and historical achievements are malleable. Conflicting accounts can also exist across sources—lending an aura of historical mystery and authenticity. Each run therefore results in a new gameplay and narrative experience. This system leads to discovering evocative and amusing flavor text like, “The villagers of Damor laid offering at the feet of Batul, legendary feral dog, in exchange for wisdom about finding the ideal place for hissing under the Beetle Moon.” The developers have essentially executed the peak creative function of GenAI for videogame storytelling without even using GenAI.   

Despite the degree of care that went into the main story progression, some unavoidable truths come to light when looking at the Steam achievements. Less than 20% of players completed the first main questline. The second main questline? Less than 10%. And less than 2% have earned the achievement for completing the game. Granted, much of the community likely got sidetracked having the kinds of experiences covered across the other 140 achievements—like “Wear your own severed face on your face,” or “Project your mind into a goat’s body.” Fair enough. But it highlights what is simultaneously the game’s greatest strength and weakness: there’s a lot to take in. 

Of course, an essential part of the appeal here is that each player, and each playthrough, really will result in unique stories to tell. You don’t have to dig deep on the net to see a community full of fans excitedly narrating a unique, amusing, and/or tragic experience that Caves of Qud’s deep simulation allowed to happen. This procedural brilliance, combined with the lovingly vibes-based worldbuilding, leaves the door open for endless possibilities of emergent gameplay moments and narrative interpretation alike. Caves of Qud understands and confidently leverages the unique strengths of this medium towards its own ends.

As someone generally more motivated to complete a playthrough than get caught up in a cycle of experimenting and restarting, I’m not sure I’m the main audience for Caves of Qud. This makes me even more impressed by what a good time I had with it. Whether you’re signing up for one playthrough or one hundred, it’s hard not to be captivated by its depth and imagination once you get a sense of how the world works. And if I were the type of player who liked to invest the bulk of my gaming time in one single-player experience, this would be a rabbit hole worth falling into.

Sometimes, a name hides far more than it suggests. Dice Gambit sounds like a modest, digital board game built around simple bets. So imagine my surprise when close inspection uncovered a cleverly designed tactical RPG packed with interlocking dice-based mechanics, sharp class-based combat, and nuanced visual flair. Though the game offers a limited variation in level scenarios and a fairly basic story, Dice Gambit brims with dense decision-making that encourages experimentation with strategies and combinations, accompanied by the satisfying clack-click of virtual dice. Ready your bones—this gambit is well worth the risk.

Dice Gambit unfolds in the Italian-esque city of Neo-Talis, where three ruling families each control a different aspect of urban life. You play as a custom-created scion serving as an Inquisitor: a member of the city’s security force tasked with clearing out Chromatics. These mischievous, amorphous blobs of color wreak havoc among the city’s residents whenever they spawn. Most of the narrative centers around running missions for each faction as they gradually pull the Inquisitors into their political schemes and personal agendas. The story holds together well, written with a comic, tongue-in-cheek tone that keeps things brisk. While family members can die permanently, individual losses carry little dramatic weight, akin to a rogue-lite. Narrative certainly is not the highlight of Dice Gambit although the level of customization (including different positive and negative traits) for each family member is impressive, as is the dynamic portrait art.

The Inquisitor’s home base functions as a hub for selecting quests and managing character progression. From there, you use the city map to choose missions aimed at clearing Neo-Talis of its chromatic infestations. Most missions unfold in the three main factions’ territory, ranging from bustling docklands and gritty city streets to sleek corporate high-rises. Dice Gambit shines with a distinctive art style that favors bright colors and exaggerated character expressions, giving each faction a unique visual identity through their livery and trim. Combat maps follow a painterly aesthetic, reinforcing each faction’s theme with similar, cohesive color palettes. The soundtrack mixes perky R&B, lite techno, and synthwave to keep the energy levels light, while scattered voiceover work adds some character.

All of this serves as flavorful side dressing—the Dice Gambit main course is the class and combat systems, which fully capitalize on a smooth, satisfying dice-rolling mechanic. Missions play out on hex-based grid maps, with characters and enemies acting in turn order based on initiative. To take any action, you roll dice to generate icons: Movement, Defense, Attack, Chroma, or Signature. Your available actions depend entirely on the results. Rolled a bunch of Movement and Defense? Maybe it’s time to reposition and play it safe. Movement and Chroma? That’s your cue to either dive into the fray or hold off—Chroma can substitute for any icon, but comes at a cost. It gradually empowers enemies. Bad roll? Use one of your limited rerolls to shift the odds. The system is fast, intuitive, and surprisingly deep. Even in its simplest moments, the decision-making feels empowering, and the complexity that unfolds only makes it more rewarding.

This core system ties seamlessly into character progression, where active and passive abilities unlock over time to use in battle. Each character has a set of stats to upgrade, directly influencing dice outcomes and ability effectiveness. For instance, Dice Power determines how many dice a character rolls per turn, and reaching each multiple of ten adds an extra die. Attack Power and Buff Power increase the potency of offensive and support abilities through a percentage of their value. In addition to a class-defined Signature ability (more on that shortly), characters can learn up to three active abilities and a variety of passives, assuming they survive. Active abilities require specific dice combinations to trigger. The devastating Lethal Strike, for example, demands four Attack icons, while the armor-boosting Inspire needs just a Movement and Signature die. It’s a smooth, elegant extension of the core dice mechanic, and one that enriches strategy without adding friction.

Stamina works differently from other stats and can’t increase in the same way. It measures a character’s level of exhaustion, and all stats take a percentage-based penalty as it drops. Overusing the same characters significantly lowers their combat effectiveness, making frequent rotation essential. Regaining Stamina also costs more than restoring Health, so swapping characters strategically becomes key to their survival and effectiveness. That said, the Stamina loss mechanic can feel overly punishing, even with a decent-sized roster. Don’t be surprised if the developers adjust it in the first few weeks or months post-launch.

Things get even juicier when you start combining interlocking abilities. Some attacks ignite the terrain or stack damage based on how far an enemy moves. Pair that with a character who can forcibly reposition enemies, and you can rack up serious damage, during and outside of their turns. Another strategy involves stacking armor buffs from one character onto another who deals damage every time they receive armor. Once again, damage can be outside the usual turn order. And that’s just a glimpse of the many combinations you can create.

Each family member’s ability and class progression depends on their core character class. You unlock these classes by raising reputation with different factions, so your choice of missions directly affects which classes become available and when. Early classes focus on simpler roles. The Berzerker excels at dealing heavy damage to multiple enemies and can restore health through active and passive abilities. The Vanguard specializes in defense, with smart ability synergies that reward stacking Armor. Later classes introduce more tactical depth. The Sniper deals high damage from long range, but often at the cost of movement or a wait time to the trigger, while the Translocationalist thrives on mass mobility. From the mid-point of the game, matching the right class to the right mission becomes essential. Once a character maxes out their first class, they can take on a new one. With careful planning, you can create hybrid builds like a glass-cannon Sniper who later pivots into a more defensive Vanguard.

Missions in Dice Gambit unfold as branching encounter points once you select them and choose the team. Each mission map is procedurally generated, giving the experience a rogue-lite feel. You encounter a mix of combat nodes, health recovery points, wealth nodes, and map-reveal nodes along the route. On larger maps, planning becomes increasingly important, since your party has a limited amount of Energy to move before reaching the final encounter. While some nodes can replenish Energy, finding them depends on the path you choose. Unfortunately, running out of Energy starts means losing character Stamina in order to move, or potentially leaving the mission early and wasting a week of time.

Chromatics make up most of the enemies in the game, appearing in mission types like clearouts, escort runs, and timed “grab-the-macguffin” objectives. Since the original demo, the developers have introduced a variety of new opponents. Now, you face chromatics that summon swarms of smaller units to overwhelm you, mobs that retaliate against melee attacks, and others that boost their allies’ armor. While the tactical variety keeps combat engaging, many enemies and maps start to blur together and lose their distinctiveness by the second act. This is partly due to their design—amorphous, chromatic blobs don’t naturally lend themselves to highly unique or visually striking appearances, but identifying their type is difficult on a busy battlefield. Would a little more distinctiveness hurt?

Dice Gambit deserves significant credit for its difficulty options, especially in supporting the game’s relatively short campaign and encouraging multiple playthroughs. While default settings exist, the developers built a nuanced system of customizable modifiers to allow players to fine-tune the challenge. These settings contribute to an overall difficulty rating and let players tweak specific aspects, such as increasing XP gain, weakening enemies, adding more dice, or boosting the number of rerolls. Players can activate any combination of these and the dozen or so further options, offering many permutations. Easier settings make it much simpler to build and maintain a consistent core family team. In contrast, higher difficulties require careful management of the family bloodline and a strong grasp of class synergies to succeed.

There’s much more worth a quick shoutout: the faction relationship awards to unlock classes and boost new character development; the way chromatics mutate with each Act, ramping up the difficulty as the story moves forward; and the terrain effects that can either teleport you across the battlefield or grant extra dice if you land on them. Once again, everything feeds smoothly into the core mechanics—it never feels like something thrown in just for the sake of complexity. And like the rest of the game, these elements roll out gradually, giving you time to adapt your strategy and learn each new twist as it comes.

A few criticisms arise from Dice Gambit’s ambition and complexity. While the tutorial covers the basics, it doesn’t offer much guidance on family or stat development. It’s easy to overextend by recruiting too many scions or, conversely, over-invest in just a few while still learning the systems. Mission crew requirements only appear once the missions show up on the map, so early runs can leave you over- or under-prepared without realizing it. Another issue is the environments. By Act Two, the same office floors, Renaissance-style streets, and docklands start to blur together. They look great, but the repetition makes them forgettable. More variety in map design or art assets would go a long way, in the same manner as the Chromatic enemy design. The randomization system is a barrier in this, but greater terrain variation would really help. Finally, I ran into the occasional soft-lock during turns, usually after alt-tabbing. These weren’t frequent, but when they happened, I had to restart the encounter from the beginning.

Honestly, these areas aside, Dice Gambit is a near-jackpot for me. With its combination of rich character and ability design and the smooth way it integrates rolling and manipulating dice, it’s proven an addictive presence. The original Italian Renaissance art style is the finishing touch that drives home Dice Gambit’s unique style and approach, even if it does outstay its welcome. Excited as I am to see where the developers and the game go next, I’m off to try a new run where, whenever dice are spent, all remaining dice are rerolled. Crazy! But hey, this is the way Lady Luck dances; let’s roll the bones.

OFF is one of the preeminent forbears of today’s wide variety of narratively off-kilter, classic JRPG-inspired indies. The original game, made in RPG Maker 2003 and released in 2008, ignited a creative spark whose radical flame burns in many hits to follow: from Space Funeral to LISA: The Painful to Undertale to Omori and countless lesser known passion projects. A lot of time has passed since then, and RPG Maker games and their spiritual kin have produced some of the most personal and thematically coherent RPGs of the last 15 years. As a newcomer to OFF, I was most curious whether this remaster still feels as fresh and impactful in retrospect as it must have been upon release.

I won’t beat around the switch. OFF doesn’t quite reach the heights of its most significant descendants, but it is fascinating to finally play one of their most blatant inspirations. It inducts the player into the story as Undertale does. It imports hand-drawn and other real-world assets into its aesthetics, like Omori. And, together with its spiritual cousin Yume Nikki, uses horror and the grotesque in a way that now feels signature to the RPG Maker canon yet wasn’t when it first released. Playing OFF for the first time in 2025 feels most rewarding as a history lesson full of “aha!” moments of creative recognition.

The game’s rich history is also important context for this rerelease. The original OFF was created primarily by Belgian solo developer Martin Georis (who goes by “Mortis Ghost”), with assistance from a few friends and the crucial work of composer Alias Conrad Coldwood. For Mortis Ghost, who aspired to be a comic book creator, it was just a freeware side project. In the following years, OFF earned itself a cult following with fans completing an unofficial English translation in 2011, as the original script was in French. It then proliferated on forums like Tumblr, where it captured the imagination of many young RPG fans (and future developers) ready for something so different and weird in the genre.

And weird it is. OFF’s story focuses far more on atmosphere and abstract expression than a coherent plot and characters to invest yourself in. You (the named player) are thrown into the cleats of The Batter. The Batter is an enigmatic and stoic protagonist who doesn’t offer much characterization beyond instinctively bashing every obstacle in his path and rehearsing plainspoken lines about how he must “purify” the world. Bit of a red flag, if you ask me. However, this world is frankly a mess, so maybe he has a point?

OFF’s fractured world is divided into levels simply named Zone 1, Zone 2, etc., that you progress through linearly. A tyrannical Guardian rules each one, deceiving and exploiting the Elsen, NPCs that work for them. Every Elsen has the same dead-inside salaryman appearance and doesn’t show any sense of individuality. There are Spectres causing havoc in the zones, who are depicted as hand-drawn assets in the game’s random encounters and can be impressively unsettling in their visual appearance. The Batter and Elsen believe that purging these Spectres will fix things. As the player, you quickly get the sense that something feels off about all this.

And now, you can experience The Batter’s journey in repackaged Unity form for $15 USD! Aside from the obvious appeal of playing an indie RPG on Switch, you may be wondering if anything else about the package warrants not downloading the totally free original from its wiki. Between an official English translation, revamped combat mechanics and balancing, nibbles of new content including secret bosses, and a redone OST, I’d say Mortis Ghost and publisher Fangamer have done enough to ask for some money—even if they could have swung higher.

Nevertheless, I don’t begrudge the decision to focus on preserving OFF while touching up its gameplay for a wider audience. Combat is quick, snappy, and demands a light yet satisfying degree of strategy throughout most of the game. The game adapts Final Fantasy’s ATB system, with visible bars for allies and enemies filling to determine turn order. Unlike the original release, time now pauses once any of your party members’ command menus pop up. There was also an effort to fine-tune the health and damage numbers. They also added a fun extra mechanic where your bar sometimes turns yellow, charging faster and signifying an upcoming critical. From what I’ve seen of the original game, combat is straight-up improved here. Are the mechanics overly familiar? Sure. But they’re executed well.

When you’re not “purifying” Spectres, you’re solving puzzles in the overworld. Pushing boulders, memorizing and inputting numbers, inserting lost pages into books: you know the drill. A few puzzles stuck out as particularly inspired, while some others were plain tedious. They work best as minor challenges that effectively add flavor to the exploration and background of each zone.

Aside from the remaster’s fresh coat of polish, the new content advertised here amounts to a slightly expanded endgame with secret bosses. The bosses themselves are a welcome inclusion that provides more narrative clues (though certainly not answers) and dramatic tone-setting before the finale. I only wish that Mortis Ghost used this as an opportunity to revise and/or expand the endgame further, as it ultimately feels underdeveloped and unrewarding.

The endgame involves backtracking through each of the game’s main zones. The zones are now streamlined, emptied, and full of encounters with only one enemy type each that you inexplicably are not allowed to escape from. As a result, what could have been a seamless and fleshed-out buildup to the game’s climax becomes a tedious, repetitive sequence.

This portion even fails to provide the usual dopamine draw of a good endgame. The equipment I found off the beaten path was usually worse than what my team was already using, so my only reward was more random encounters. And the boss fights, while cool, did not provide any truly demanding superboss thrills or unlock a new ending path. I’m usually the guy who’s willing to excuse this kind of thing if there’s a narrative justification—and I suppose there is—but as the venue for this release’s new content, I hoped for more.

The most significant, and potentially divisive, creative difference between the original version of OFF and the remaster is an entirely new soundtrack. I imagine existing fans will feel attached to Alias Conrad Coldwood’s OST, which I’ve gone back to listen to in context. There’s no denying Coldwood’s OST suits the game. Its homegrown mixing, contemporary lo-fi stylings, and haunting soundscapes feel perfect for a freeware solo dev indie project. A curious Redditor reached out to Coldwood seeking answers regarding why their original OST wasn’t used. Apparently, it came down to not owning the license to the samples they used (which is problematic for a commercial release as opposed to a free one) and being generally distrustful of these kinds of contracts (fair enough).

With that said, the new OST—courtesy of Toby Fox, Morusque, and a few other contributors—was one of the highlights of my playthrough. The tone may not feel as consistently coherent as Coldwood’s work, but the songs hit harder. As examples, here’s the original battle theme versus the new one, and the original Zone 1 music versus the remaster’s interpretation. For me, the new OST is generally more robust and enjoyable, while the original excelled with its uniquely twisted ambiance. There’s no easy either/or pick here. Fortunately, Coldwood’s vision will always remain available in the game’s freeware version.

I already touched on OFF’s story a bit, but I want to circle back to it. After all, the reason people like me gravitate towards a game like OFF isn’t for the joy of playing yet another traditional, mechanically indistinct turn-based RPG. It’s to see what the developer thought to do with that framework to provide a unique narrative experience. It’s to find out that the four elements of this world aren’t Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water; rather, they are Metal, Smoke, Meat, and Plastic. Or that recovery items have names like Luck Ticket, Silver Flesh, and Moloch’s Meat. I love that.

Why are those the four elements here? Why is our angel-of-death protagonist decked out in baseball gear? What are we accomplishing by purifying the Spectres? Why did the developer decide to make our party members simple circles named after letters of the Greek alphabet? If you want to think about these questions without having any of them lucidly answered, OFF is the game for you! I’m not even throwing any shade. While I was sometimes skeptical of the story’s stubborn obtuseness, it won me over within a day of finishing it.

OFF‘s writing is near average, other games have far surpassed its fourth-wall knocking, and the characters are barely developed. Despite all this, OFF’s story ultimately has enough going on to linger in the mind like a benign tumor. Everything from The Batter’s goals to those of his adversaries remains barely intelligible. Maybe the story is metaphorical; maybe it’s literal. Beneath all the subverted RPG trappings, there seems to be some sort of familial psychodrama informing OFF’s world. If you ask the creator, many of these details are arbitrary. The important thing is it doesn’t feel that way, though. Like a classic surrealist film, I found OFF’s greatest strength to be that I spent time wondering what all this could mean after having soaked it all in.

OFF deserves a lot of credit for its creative accomplishments. I’m pleased that this remaster gives us the opportunity to pay it its dues while acknowledging the ways it has been artistically surpassed. It’s the type of creative project that lights a torch for others to carry into even more daring places. Still, with its arthouse stylings that resist easy interpretation, OFF retains its own identity enough to make it well worth recommending to this day. Whether you’re more interested in the game out of historical curiosity or to bask in the dread oozing from its presentation, OFF still has a lot to (don’t do it man, don’t do it)… offer. 

Persona 5 certainly has an impressive list of titles under its umbrella, with both the original “vanilla” version of the traditional RPG and its upgraded Royal counterpart co-existing alongside numerous genre spin-offs, including Strikers, Tactica, and Dancing in Starlight. By this point, it only makes sense for a free-to-play mobile game based on P5 to enter the fray. But is the alternate universe gacha title Persona 5: The Phantom X simply a pale imitation of the original, or does it manage to carry a hidden spark? The answer lies somewhere in between. I found The Phantom X has a solid enough foundation to be a relatively decent standalone Persona spin-off. Still, its gacha roots hold it back, especially if you’re attempting to play without putting any actual money into it.

Persona 5: The Phantom X starts, much like the original P5, in modern-day Tokyo, only instead of focusing on the protagonist Joker and his crew of The Phantom Thieves of Hearts, a new main character and his allies take center stage. Code-named Wonder, our hero is a high school student living his life while a strange sickness spreads throughout the city, taking away people’s desires and hopes. It isn’t long into the game before Wonder uncovers a secret world of demons and shadows just beneath the surface. Together with an enigmatic talking owl named Lufel and others who become aware of Tokyo’s dangerous situation, Wonder forms a group of Phantom Thieves wielding powerful Persona in battle to steal back everyone’s hope. Is this a heist they can pull off, or are these other Phantom Thieves doomed for obscurity?

Narratively, a lot is going on in Persona 5: The Phantom X. The plot presents itself in a manner that immediately brings to mind the original P5, with a storyline conveying thoughtful social commentary and comprising a surprisingly memorable cast of characters. While the first Palace dungeon villain and his motivation are arguably the weakest of P5 thus far, even the Subway Slammer has roots in a very real and somewhat troubling issue in Japan. Fortunately, if you have the patience to advance it, The Phantom X‘s plot does improve.

Which brings me to a big caveat of Persona 5: The Phantom X. Patience plays a key role, especially if you intend to play for free like me. While the story is meaty and extensive, be prepared to hit that all-too-familiar “gacha wall” every time you advance. You gain Persona to use in battle and party members to fill out your roster by progressing in the story, and you’ll occasionally receive special tickets that allow you to try and pull for specific characters. But like with traditional Persona titles, you’ll want an assortment of party members with various elemental affinities to help you advance through the game’s dungeons—elemental weakness exploitation is often a crucial key to victory during its turn-based fights lest you face a prolonged and uphill battle. As you advance, your progress will also freeze at fights where certain character levels are required or recommended to safely proceed.

Leveling up can be tricky, as Wonder is the only character who gains experience points through certain fights, advancing through the story, or dungeons. Other party members gain experience through the use of special items procured while playing, but only up until they reach Wonder’s current level cap. There are also items for strengthening Persona abilities and a robust skill tree for Wonder to help reinforce his versatile stats. If you happen to run out of the items needed to level up characters, you’ll be left waiting for the next game day so they can replenish somewhat before beginning the cycle again.

These instances of having to wait around also bleed into the everyday activities side of things, as The Phantom X only gives you so many activity points to spend around the city in your free time from dungeon exploring and fighting. Activities encompass studying, working various jobs, and hanging out with friends, along with additional social stat meters to contend with in terms of initial gate-keeping for higher-level activities. Once you exhaust the activity points for a given game day, you have to wait once more for them to replenish.

Playing the game entirely for free simply means having to wait once you hit the “gacha wall” before you can successfully advance the story. It’s a shame that it has to be so slow-going, as the narrative itself is more interesting the further along you go. The bonding events Wonder can engage in are reminiscent of Social Links in the original P5, helping to flesh out the characters and their dynamics. You can also raise Synergy levels for certain story characters that raise various abilities and stats. Persona acquiring and strengthening, alongside the always helpful Fusion option, is certainly fitting for a Persona game. It’s disheartening that the blending of all of these gameplay mechanics and storylines behind the telltale “gacha wall.”

Visually, Persona 5: The Phantom X utilizes the visual presentation and UI of the original P5 to significant effect. This title truly feels like a spin-off in a graphics and artistic sense. The character designs are detailed and expressive, and I also enjoyed the anime cutscenes spliced throughout the game, including the fantastic opening animation. Sound-wise, the Japanese voice acting is top-notch and highly emotive, and the script’s English localization is phenomenal. I love the soundtrack, which has that distinct and bopping P5 vibe. Besides the “gacha-ness” of it, my biggest other complaint with the game is the wonky control schematics when playing on a PC, as I found myself constantly switching between a gamepad controller and mouse to access specific menus.

Persona 5: The Phantom X is a free-to-play traditional RPG Persona 5 spin-off boasting a surprising amount of depth in terms of gameplay, storyline, and characters. Besides some wonky PC controls, the “gacha wall” you inevitably run up against if you’re trying to play it for completely free is the only thing truly holding the game back. Nonetheless, in a lot of respects, it’s a strong Persona title and one of the better free-to-play RPGs I’ve tried out. I enjoyed my time with the game, and can see myself playing it for a while into the future too. For me, that speaks volumes as to how decent a game Persona 5: The Phantom X can be.

Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers for the base game of Chained Echoes.

Chained Echoes felt like a game creator Matthias Linda needed to make. Without a doubt, Linda knows and loves the classics, but Chained Echoes’ cohesion and vision make it stand out from the “retro-inspired” pack. It juggles tons of systems to create a fresh, tight, near-perfectly calibrated gameplay experience that rewards exploration and experimentation all the way to the end of the game. It has a story that, while sometimes clumsy, has something big, important, and personal to say. Chained Echoes feels urgent, feels whole, and it’s special.

Ashes of Elrant, Chained Echoes’ new DLC, doesn’t grab me by the throat and shake me like the base game. To be clear, much of what I love about Chained Echoes is still here—it’s still a lot of fun—but the gameplay adjustments make the systems fit together a little more awkwardly, and the story lacks the philosophical and emotional weight of the base game.

This isn’t to say that Linda doesn’t dip into some big ideas narratively, but since Ashes of Elrant takes place right before the final dungeon with the same party, there are only so many places the story can go. A group of scientists approachs the Crimson Wings to help clear out the remnants of Fredrick’s loyalists in a small town. The party soon learns this is a trap and is sucked into another space and time. Lenne quickly realizes that this is Elrant, an ancient city that began the fight against the Harbinger and where she began her journey many lifetimes ago. The party tries to find and discuss the situation with the mysterious leader of Elrant, the “White Wolf,” and discovers not all is as it seems along the way.

It’s hard to say anything beyond that without spoilers, but as you can tell, the story has potential. Elrant is ripe for exploring Linda’s philosophy. But like much of Ashes of Elrant, the narrative feels like a collection of good but half-baked ideas. The villains could be interesting, but all we get is evil cackling. The people of Elrant struggle, with good reason, but outside of a single solid side quest, they’re mostly treated like an odd collection of gags. 

Linda wants to focus more on the characters and humor this time around, but the stilted writing (Chained Echoes‘ key weakness) becomes even more of a sore spot. Interestingly, the “White Wolf” is easily the best character Linda has written, and the NPCs around Elrant are often quite amusing, but it’s not enough. Ultimately, none of this would bother me much if it were a quick three-to-four hour side quest, but it takes twice that long, even if you’re beelining Ashes of Elrant, and it falls a little flat.

Of course, I didn’t storm through Ashes of Elrant; only a monster could do that. While I am a big fan of Chained Echoes‘ story, what I truly loved was filling out that sweet, sweet Reward Board by poking around every corner and tinkering with my combat builds. Luckily, you get a brand new Reward Board with multiple full areas to explore. And these new zones are interconnected in clever ways and absurdly packed with secrets, puzzles, and superbosses. You can even find new “Power Pools” to increase your stats, sort of like Scadutree Fragments in Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. Honestly, exploration is one way Ashes of Elrant is even better than the base game, and the satisfaction of finding that last item to fill out that spot on my reward board is unlikely to be matched in 2025.

Even with the Reward Board, some cracks start to show. You still get rewards, but they’re not nearly as useful as in the base game—you can purchase almost any crafting material in a shop long before you unlock it on the board. The other currency you get from each unlock is “PP,” which is a new party-wide currency that lets you power up the party by unlocking fishing, increasing a party member’s stats, or even widening the green section of the Overdrive bar in combat. I ended up with more than twice as many points as I needed to unlock every skill, but some of the “rewards” took some strategy out of the game. Starting out a fight in Overdrive makes the bar far less interesting to manage, and other rewards make Sky Armor combat a total joke, even against superbosses. The adjustments are fine on paper, but Linda needed to overhaul some of his systems to compensate for less friction in combat, and he doesn’t, so it’s not as tight or satisfying.

Other changes in Ashes of Elrant range from the inoffensive to the maddening. As an avowed hater of all things angling in video games, the new fishing minigame is fine. The crystal system is significantly simplified from the base game. Now, you only get one power level, removing some of the grind for materials, which is nice, but there’s a little less build variety. 

The absolute worst adjustment, though, is to Class Emblems. I always looked forward to the challenging minibosses and the absolutely rocking track that accompanied those fights. This time? You have to do a terrible timed digging minigame that involves sonar (I think? It never worked for me) or, if you’re like me, digging randomly around in a circle. Depending on the RNG, it can take almost 20 minutes to find that Emblem. The fact that they’re much more powerful than any base game Emblems means you need to put on your excavation hat, tedium be damned. 

It all adds up to an odd, slightly askew collection of gameplay systems. Consequently, it feels like Linda didn’t know exactly how to make some things work, how to recapture that beautiful sense of progression that was so carefully calibrated in the base game. Instead, we get a collection of disparate solutions to problems that cropped up during development that ultimately seem a bit haphazard. 

Chained Echoes felt like an obsession, a product of many, many years of careful labor and planning. Ashes of Elrant feels like a set of solutions to problems. It comes across as something Linda wanted to make, but didn’t have to make. After spending 18 hours uncovering every little secret and poking around in every corner, some of the sloppiness wore on me. 

Don’t get me wrong: there’s still more than enough of the base game’s DNA here to have a great time. Exploration is still a blast, it still looks good, and it sounds incredible, accompanied by some beautiful new tracks from composer Eddie Marianukroh that fit right into the already stellar OST. But, like the new Reward Board, Chained Echoes: Ashes of Elrant looks the same and often feels the same, but the payoff just isn’t as strong.