Here you’ll find remakes of some of our staff’s all-time favorite games, a number of new entries in long-running series (including a newly announced bonus game), and plenty of others!
Persona 3 Reload
Persona 3 marked a new style for the venerable series, opening the more niche title to a broader audience. Persona 3 Reload aims to do something similar for the game in the modern day. With a litany of additions and improvements, Reload aims to make Persona 5 fans more comfortable in a game that’s over 15 years old.
Take your pick of improvements, because there are plenty. The most obvious is a total overhaul of the visuals, matching the more realistic proportions of modern Persona. The world is also packed with new stuff to do! The dorms are home to many of the amenities you’d see in later Persona games. Tartarus maintains its structure, but comes packed with more stage gimmicks and environmental interaction to spice up what was previously a relatively dull experience. The list goes on, but what’s important is that there’s plenty to look forward to for both old and new fans next year!
Writeup by Wes Iliff
SaGa Emerald Beyond
SaGa Emerald Beyond seeks to build on the foundation set by 2019’s SaGa Scarlet Grace by massively expanding the scope, offering 17 different worlds for players to explore, with a setting as heavily influenced by science fiction as fantasy. Players can choose from five different origin characters, all of whom are interesting in their own way. There is a young hero who can control sentient puppets, a witch who disguises herself as a Japanese schoolgirl, a mechanical idol who has lost her original body, a vampire king, and a sapphic pair of police officers hunting down a suspected assassin.
One of SaGa’s defining features is its nonlinearity, and with so many more worlds to explore, I can see myself getting lost for many hours with Emerald Beyond. It’s really cool to see the series return to heavy sci-fi influences. If you have yet to try a SaGa game, Square Enix claims this is the best place to jump in, so don’t let a lack of franchise familiarity deter you from what is shaping up to be one of 2024’s best RPGs.
Writeup by Ben Love
Sand Land
The demon prince Beelzebub has returned to save a dried-up Sand Land from his greedy father. To bring water back to his people, Beelzebub steals a tank from his father’s army and mobilizes against his forces.
Based on the 2000 manga series of the same name, fans of Akira Toriyama will recognize his style throughout Sand Land, as it is a defining feature in all his games, ranging from the Dragon Quest series to Dragonball games to Chrono Trigger. Thankfully, his gorgeous stylistic DNA is spread all over Sand Land’s environments, characters, and iconically chunky machinery. Clever cel-shading makes characters and assets pop in the dusty, rocky environments, and dynamic particle effects make the action look persistently exciting.
If a gorgeous aesthetic isn’t enough, Sand Land promises an unexpected and highly compelling premise: it combines frenetic tank shooter action with RPG elements. I admit I never thought this combo would exist, but now that it does, I am thirsty for it. Hopefully, Sand Land will quench me very soon — if not next year, I at least have the English dub of the movie to look forward to.
Writeup by Noah Leiter
Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island
A new Shiren the Wanderer game is a long time coming. The last new entry in the series on Western shores was 2015’s Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate for PS Vita (and its upgraded 2020 version), which was already a port of the Japanese-only DS original from 2010. I love Shiren 5, but after nearly a decade of playing each and every re-release of the game, I’ve been dying for a new adventure with my favorite red-haired wanderer and his plucky weasel companion. Thankfully, Spike Chunsoft felt the same, and on February 27th, 2024, they are finally giving Shiren a much-needed stretch of the legs.
Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island sees samurai companion Asuka make her return, and the game features a 3D polygonal art style that strikes a balance between the chibi character designs of Shiren 2 on N64 and the more realistically proportioned Shiren 3 designs on the Wii. Some exciting new features include Behemoth Gates, which produce giant versions of monsters called Behemoths, and the inclusion of Sacred Items, which are rare versions of equipment with enhanced statistics. The introduction of a new cast of pirate and ninja characters promises an exciting narrative backdrop for all of the dungeon crawling goodness.
Writeup by Ben Love
Stray Children
Yoshiro Kimura’s team at Onion Games has been hard at work the last few years on a wide variety of games, mostly arcade and mobile-focused titles that have that Love-de-Lic charm but in a more bite-sized, pick-up-and-play format. Since 2021’s port to Switch and subsequent localization of cult classic anti-RPG moon: Remix RPG Adventure, fans have wondered if the small studio would start work on another RPG. As luck would have it, Stray Children was announced in the September Japanese Nintendo Direct, with a confirmation of localization from Onion Games.
Stray Children stars a young boy sucked into the world contained within his TV set and has a more modern setting than moon, but filled with similarly quirky and oddball characters. Stray Children has combat encounters that appear to feature action commands and a conversation system during battles. Details about the game in English are scarce, but the crunchy art style and trippy scenarios in the trailer promise a unique experience. moon has inspired incredible games like Undertale and 24 Killers, so I’m confident that Kimura and his team will deliver another delightfully weird experience.
Writeup by Ben Love
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster
I’m a little disappointed to be writing about Suikoden I & II HD Remaster, to be honest. I was expecting a 2023 release for this compilation of the first two Suikoden games, but I understand the developers need more polish time. Diehard fans will agree that the original games were marred by shoddy localization work and sometimes game-breaking glitches. It’d be a pretty major bag fumble if the remasters came out similarly undercooked, though I guess it’d also be on-brand for the series and Konami.
That Suikoden and Suikoden II still have the reputation they do simply speaks to their quality. The two games are widely held to be among the greatest RPGs ever made because of their heart-stirring stories, peerless worldbuilding, and more. The prospect of experiencing the journeys of Tir McDohl and Riou in (ostensibly) the definitive way should excite any fan of the genre.
Writeup by Gio Castillo
Unicorn Overlord
Vanillaware is a developer who can generate excitement just by being attached to a new release. Their next opus, Unicorn Overlord, looks to operate at a broader scale than the studio has done before. Unicorn Overlord is a tactical RPG featuring a freely explorable world map and nonlinear progression as you tackle both optional and required quests at your own pace. The ambitious battles are rendered in Vanillaware’s signature 2D art style, promising a visual feast (and, thankfully, a few actual feasts. Who doesn’t love Vanillaware food?).
If you could compare Unicorn Overlord to anything, it’d be Ogre Battle, and I know that several readers perked up at the mere mention. It’s a series that hasn’t seen many imitators (or any entries) in a long, long while. Real-time action on the world map leads to turn-based battles when enemy units engage, and there’s plenty to do besides roaming around and getting into fights. Really, what more could you want?
Writeup by Wes Iliff
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
It’s hard to stay optimistic about a video game that’s undergone as much development turmoil as Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, a longed-for sequel to the blood-fuelled Troika cult classic. Publisher Paradox Interactive excised original developer Hardsuit Labs, which included one of the narrative leads of the first game, Brian Mitsoda. All ties to the original developer team have thereby been severed. Development is now in the hands of walking sim pros, The Chinese Room, who made their name with the groundbreaking Dear Esther.
I played through the original VtM: Bloodlines earlier this year and really dug its small yet aesthetically focused scope as a first-person Western RPG. My remaining hopes for this sequel rest in the pedigree of The Chinese Room and my impression that VtM: Bloodlines was at its best when it honed in on ambient worldbuilding and non-violent interactivity. If The Chinese Room got the same impression and aren’t pressured to roleplay as Bethesda, then I think they can do something compelling with this monster mash of a world.
Writeup by Aleks Franiczek
The Wolf Among Us 2
Traditionally, vampires are the classic monster that rises from the dead. But this time, it’s a wolf! And a studio!
2013’s The Wolf Among Us was an adaptation of Bill Willingham’s popular comic book series, Fables, and it delivered a wonderful noir-inspired mystery crossed with the world of fairytales. Its developer, Telltale Games, greenlit The Wolf Among Us 2 way back in 2017, but development stalled after the studio (mostly) went under in late 2018. However, after Telltale’s unlikely resurrection in 2019, we got confirmation that the title was back under development! And, despite layoffs at Telltale in September 2023, the game is reportedly still in production.
With luck, the new Telltale team will deliver a worthy follow-up that delves even deeper into the murky world of Fabletown, the secret neighborhood where fairytale characters live hidden from the wider world. And with recent trailers showcasing a return to the striking, comic book-inspired visuals of the original game, we hope this big bad wolf will blow us all down in 2024!
Writeup by Jonathan Logan
Ys X: Nordics
Do you like action RPGs, huge video game worlds to explore, and pirate adventures? Well, have I got the game for you! Ys X: Nordics is the tenth game detailing the life and times of the adventurer Adol Christin (and the eleventh Ys game, counting the Adol-less Ys Origin), but Adol is the youngest he’s been in decades.
Taking place just after Ys II, Ys X has a teenage Adol accompanying Norman pirate raiders in a fictionalized version of the North Sea. Adol has a chance encounter with the Norman pirate princess Karja, and they eventually team up to map out the local archipelago and defeat the Griegers, mysterious immortal monsters threatening the residents of Obelia Bay.
Ys X has a host of gameplay theaters in addition to Adol and Karja’s tandem battling on foot, including ship battles, Grieger fortress raids, and multiple types of fishing. All, of course, set to Nihon Falcom Sound Team soaring rock and roll.
Writeup by Michael Sollosi
Bonus! Visions of Mana
After 15 years of waiting for the next main series Mana title, Square Enix announced Visions of Mana during the 2023 Game Awards. Although the trailer was brief, we were treated to a lush, colorful world with vastly different biomes and expansive fields to explore. Combat is action-based and seems to take a few cues from the Trials of Mana remake. New to the series are elemental magic abilities that can be used for combat as well as exploration. While it remains to be seen if Visions will be fully open-world, there appears to be a larger focus on exploration and movement mechanics than in past titles.
The eye-catching character designs were created by artist HACCAN, who worked on the previous Mana series remakes. Mana series producer Masaru Oyamada confirmed that series composers Hiroki Kikuta, Tsuyoshi Sekito, and Ryo Yamazaki will all be returning for the game’s musical score. I’m so excited to see the Mana series finally break out of the cycle of remasters and remakes and receive the recognition and resources it deserves.
Writeup by Ben Love
