Crusader Kings III
It’s hard to find a universal opinion in gaming, but here’s one that’s about as close to unanimous as you can get: Crusader Kings III is better than Crusader Kings II in basically every way. It’s grander in scope but slighter in bloat and busywork. It’s easier to pick up (just ask any newcomer) and harder to put down (ask any longtime fan). It has a cleaner interface, sharper character models, and it’s also tremendously beautiful. Starting in the 9th century, you shepherd a dynastic line up and through the 15th century. To pinpoint Crusader Kings III as a strategy game wouldn’t be incorrect, but it’s also reductive: Yes, it’s a strategy game, but it’s also part management sim, part visual novel, and part role-player. Added all together, you get one whole awesome.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone looking for a breezy tutorial; though easier to pick up than its predecessor, Crusader Kings II is still more complex than most games.
Read our review.
Study our tips for the game.
Purchase from: Steam | Paradox | Green Man Gaming
Hades
Supergiant’s Greek mythology-themed Hades was forged in the hellfire of roguelikes. That means, like many other genre standouts, you’ll die (a lot) as you repeatedly run through a tiered dungeon full of randomized enemies, slowly accruing level-ups and making incremental progress with each round. But Hades puts a spin on a time-tested formula by betting big on narrative. You play as Prince Zagreus, the son of the god of the dead. Your goal, ostensibly, is to escape the underworld—and your father’s cruel, iron-fisted reign. On your quest, in classic Homerian fashion, you’re assisted by the Olympian gods (Zeus, Athena, Dionysus, and the like). As you play you get to better know these deities and other members of the Greek mytheme. Every character has a believable, fleshed-out relationship with Zagreus, one that pushes forward with every run. In Hades, playing doesn’t just earn you more skill points or better weapons. You also earn a really, really great story.
A Good Match For: Fans of roguelikes, action games, isometric RPGs, dating sims, Greek mythology, and any prior games in Supergiant’s oeuvre.
Not A Good Match For: The easily frustrated. Those who don’t like frenetic, fast-paced action games. Sisyphus.
Read our review, and our piece about why everyone’s so freakin’ hot.
Study our tips for the game, and the post-game.
Purchase from: Epic Games Store | Steam
Cities: Skylines
Cities: Skylines first launched in 2015 as a terrific if slightly wonky city-builder. Sure, the traffic mechanic might’ve been busted, but it captured the minutiae of urban planning—zoning districts, plotting plumbing, building bike lanes, fine-tuning tax policy—unlike anything else. In the years since, Skylines has become the best city-building game around. Patches ironed out many of the kinks. Expansions introduced winter weather, night-and-day transitions (complete with glorious sunsets), and enough public transit options to make any progressive urbanist weep in joy. But the real evolution came from the mod community. Enterprising modders built on and improved nearly every facet of Skylines. You can download graphical update mods, custom buildings, expanded maps, and tweaked and streamlined game systems. There’s even one that automatically bulldozes abandoned buildings, effectively removing the most tedious part of the game. The result is a city-building game that also gives you a taste of playing god.
A Good Match For: NUMTOTS, urbanists, city planners, and fans of SimCity (not the 2013 debacle).
Not A Good Match For: Minimalists—this is one complex, intricate game.
Read our review, and our retrospective.
Watch it in action.
Study our list of essential mods.
Purchase from: Steam | The Humble Store | Green Man Gaming | Amazon
The Sims 4
What more is there to say? It’s The Sims! The fourth installment of Maxis’s long-running life simulator came out in 2014 and, through a seemingly nonstop string of updates and patches, has only improved with every passing year. Last year’s collegiate expansion, in particular, captures how and why this entry continually resonates: This is life. It’s messy and unpredictable, and you have no idea how your Sims might react in various situations. But in that too-real approximation of life exists limitless potential. In all of video games, few character creators are more in-depth. You can direct your characters how you want (mostly), and shape their surrounding environment how you please (mostly). And in a marked improvement over previous entries—one that further captures the whims of real life—your Sims can both multitask and feel emotion.
A Good Match For: Wannabe gods.
Not A Good Match For: Impatient players: The Sims 4 is slow-moving, but once you get in the groove, it’s near-impossible to put down.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Study our tips for the game.
Purchase from: EA | Amazon | Green Man Gaming | Best Buy
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
There’s no shortage of ambition in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Geralt of Rivia’s latest adventure is massive, a world you can get lost in for hours and still have plenty to do. There’s a ton for die-hard Witcher fans to enjoy, but you don’t need to have played a Witcher game to enjoy the heck out of this one. While many games these days have sprawling landscapes, The Witcher 3 is utterly dense. Every nook and cranny is filled with memorable characters, clever writing, and rewards for curious players. The main story is as thrilling as it is emotionally draining, and the side quests are actually worth doing. Since its release in 2015, The Witcher 3 has gotten a ton of free updates and improvements along with two terrific paid expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. The full experience is now even bigger, richer, and better than ever.
A Good Match For: Open-world fans, especially those who enjoyed Skyrim but were disappointed by the combat. In The Witcher 3, fighting is nearly as enjoyable as exploration.
Not a Good Match For: People who value their time and social life, anyone who wants a game they can finish in a handful of hours.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Study our tips for the game, and catch up on The Witcher lore.
Purchase From: Steam | GOG | Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop
Civilization VI
In the six years since Civilization V came out, we managed to review it not once but twice. That’s how much these games lend themselves to playing and replaying, and Civ VI is no different. The latest entry adds a lot of new ideas to the Firaxis’s tried-and-true formula, and while some new ideas work better than others, the whole is as usual more than the sum of its parts. The mechanical tweaks and refinements are wrapped up in a subtle, board-game-like aesthetic that is as pleasing on your twentieth hour as it was on your tenth. We’ll be playing this game for years.
A Good Match For: Civ fans, people who have never played a Civ game, basically anyone who doesn’t actively hate Civ.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone who actively hates Civ.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Study our tips for the game.
Purchase From: Steam | Amazon | Wal-Mart | Best Buy | Gamestop
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
In 2010, Square Enix launched Final Fantasy XIV Online, and it was just the worst—buggy, over-complicated, unfinished; a mess. The developers spent three years rebuilding the game from the ground up, and the end result is one of the finest massively multiplayer online role-playing games ever made. It’s everything fans love about Final Fantasy—lush artwork, strong story, gorgeous music—only bigger, all wrapped around a traditional MMO framework. It’s that Square Enix polish that sets it apart from its competitors, earning it a spot in this list.
A Good Match For: Fans of fantasy role-playing video games looking to take the massively multiplayer plunge. The original Final Fantasy XIV was a tangled mess of conflicting ideas, when all players wanted was a standard MMO game with the familiar features of a Final Fantasy game. That’s exactly what A Realm Reborn is.
Not a Good Match For: Folks afraid of monthly subscriptions. Despite the MMORPG genere as a whole moving towards free-to-play payment models, Final Fantasy XIV stands firm by its monthly subscription plan.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Hitman 2
Hitman 2 takes everything that was great about 2016’s Hitman and improves and expands on all of it. Really, the new game functions like a second “season” for its episodic predecessor, just with all the missions delivered at once. All the things that worked so well about the 2016 game are here: the meticulous planning, the memorization and mastery, the pitch-perfect dark humor. Not only that, but if you own the earlier game, you can play through all of the levels without leaving the sequel. That makes Hitman 2 live up to its billing as “the ultimate Hitman experience,” as well as one of the smartest and most richly entertaining games you can play.
A Good Match For: Fans of classic spy movies, people who like playing dress-up, anyone who liked 2016’s Hitman.
Not A Good Match For: People hoping for a straight-up action or stealth game, those who didn’t care for 2016’s Hitman.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Purchase From: Steam
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is a supremely entertaining and consistently surprising role-playing game, one that expands and improves upon almost everything about its already fantastic predecessor. It may appear to be just another rote fantasy world at first blush, but the more you explore, the more interesting it becomes. Between the complex and rewarding turn-based combat and the branching, open-ended quests and side-stories, Original Sin 2 gives players an uncommon level of freedom to tell their own stories. And that’s not to mention the elaborate Game Master mode, which lets you write and build campaigns for your friends to work through together. Time and again you’ll find yourself trying outlandish things just to see if they’ll work. Most of the time, they will.
A Good Match For: Anyone who liked the first game, fans of the Ultima series and other similar CRPGs from which Divinity draws inspiration.
Not A Good Match For: Anyone hoping for a more action-packed RPG, those who don’t like complicated or challenging games.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Kentucky Route Zero
Just a man and a dog, looking to make a delivery. That’s how it all begins, anyway. But Kentucky Route Zero quickly becomes a mystical adventure through a land left behind by time, an odyssey in magical realism that feels grand and mysterious in a way that very, very few modern video games can muster. What started episodically is now, as of earlier this year, officially complete. Unlike the tapestry of roads that connect our cities and coasts, Kentucky Route Zero doesn’t always tell you where it’s taking you. The narrative is really about the journey, not the destination. It’s not like anything you’ve ever played. For that alone, you should try it.
A Good Match For: Anyone looking for something different. Those who still believe there’s magic hidden somewhere off the interstate.
Not A Good Match For: Those looking for a bunch of complex game mechanics—Kentucky Route Zero is a point-and-click adventure game, and a fairly simple one at that.
Read our review.
Watch a video about why the game is great.
Purchase From: Amazon | Steam | Humble
Undertale
Undertale might look like a retro-style JRPG, but it’s unusually forward-thinking. As a human stuck in a world of monsters, you decide whether you want to win encounters with wanton violence or clever context-based interactions (talking, joking, petting, etc). Undertale keeps track of everything you do; it’s paying very close attention, and will often express that attention in surprising ways. Every life you take ultimately has consequences. Despite those grim trappings, Undertale can be an incredibly warm, fuzzy, and funny game. Whether you slaughter or befriend everyone (or walk a middle path), the writing in this game is top-tier, the soundtrack is second-to-none, and the plot hides a treasure trove of secrets that players still haven’t fully uncovered.
A Good Match For: Lovers of smart video game stories, fans of games that subvert expectations, people who’ve ever felt even a single pang of loneliness.
Not A Good Match For: People who hate shoot-’em-ups and tough boss battles (Undertale’s combat system has elements of both), those who aren’t fond of reading dialogue, haters of lo-fi pixel art.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Purchase From: Steam | GOG | Developer’s Site
Outer Wilds
“Be curious on your journey!” proclaims one of the characters in Outer Wilds. No line could sum it up better. At the onset, your silent alien hero is given a rickety spaceship and sent off to explore the universe with a single goal: Go on an adventure. Roughly 20 minutes later, the universe explodes, and you wake up on your home planet as if nothing ever happened. Soon you’ll find yourself ticking off goals and jotting down questions: Why is the universe exploding? How did that ancient alien race go extinct? What’s up with that planet that keeps disappearing when you try to land on it? And is it possible to save the universe? Outer Wilds mixes the exploration of Metroid with the time loop of Majora’s Mask to brilliant effect, and it culminates in one of the most satisfying endings we’ve ever seen in a video game.
A Good Match For: Curious gamers, anyone who loves the idea of getting into a space ship and exploring the cosmos.
Not a Good Match For: Impatient people, people who need combat in their games, people who hate finicky controls.
Read our review.
Watch it in action.
Listen to our podcast discussing tips for starting the game.
Purchase From: Epic Store