The Steam Next Fest demo for Echoes of Aincrad, an upcoming action RPG based on massive anime and light novel series Sword Art Online, takes me right back to the days when I was 19 and SAO was the coolest thing in the world. Given that it's the third-ranked demo for the whole Steam event, I'd say I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The presentation is spot-on. So far, Echoes of Aincrad is a convincing portrayal of an RPG styled after an imagined MMO – and not just any MMO, as the series hook goes, but a "full-dive" game where you are cybernetically transported to a digital world while physically controlling your character's body as if it were your own. Bandai Namco has fortunately seen fit to exclude the feature that fries your real brain upon death.

But just as rewatching Sword Art Online as an adult affirmed for me that the main series falls apart outside a very limited collection of inspired scenes (and has bad narrative habits that frequently dip into the disgusting), the moment Echoes of Aincrad has to walk the walk, cracks appear. I genuinely have a lot of appreciation for Sword Art, and the prospect of dropping a custom avatar into the anime and watching them kick butt is an appealing one, but nostalgia is not making this combat any smoother or this world any richer.

The demo presents a serviceable mix of light and heavy attacks, blocks and parries, special and counterattacks, and some light NPC coordination for your small party. These things feel fine in isolation, and the parry actually feels pretty good, but as soon as I try to string them together or seriously engage with enemies, it all goes to hell.

Attacks feel oddly staccato – extremely stop-and-start, with no flow or combos to speak of. Enemies are as dumb as the rocks they stand on in the opening level – a cave temple stuffed with humanoid beasts called kobolds – and about as agile. Perhaps a higher difficulty setting inaccessible in the demo would help, to say nothing of more complex encounters, but even bosses feel trivial and lack presence.

I love janky anime action RPGs. But like a dolphin choir stricken with sore throats, this one is not clicking. My hope is that full progression and customization, with access to more weapons and skills, can shore up the combat, but the core actions just don't have that razzmatazz right now.

It was after I cleared the opening level that my worries really set in. I can only glean so much from a limited vertical slice of Echoes of Aincrad, and perhaps this demo shows a very old version of the full game, but its vaunted world, meant to fill gaps in the first arc of the Sword Art story by exploring levels of the titular game, feels sterile. Landscapes too big for their own good are sparsely dotted with largely dull enemies, and environments lack the charm of the game's fantastic character models. I say that, yet in towns and conversations, your main character is less emotive than a Scrub Daddy brush.

Echoes of Aincrad nails the look, but I'm shaky on the feel. All the menus, animations, and graphical effects that I'd expect from an SAO game are here. This is by far the most impressive visual recreation of the full-dive MMO every viewer has fantasized about, even if it is a single-player game. I'm sure character creator access would liven things up further. But once I rip off the incredible wrapper, I find an action RPG that I probably wouldn't give a second glance were it not for the IP. The full game has its work cut out for it. I don't think watching a custom avatar pal around is going to be enough for me.

The most popular Soulslike in Steam Next Fest makes a very powerful argument for adding a shotgun to Dark Souls.

The Tamagotchi was one of the best toys from the '90s. That's not just the nostalgia in me talking as 30 years later, Bandai is still dishing out versions of the iconic digital pet. You can pick up everything from officially licensed versions featuring characters like Star Wars' Grogu to the newer Tamagotchi Paradise, which includes a full-color display, and now, there's an official smartphone collab out there to collect too.

Bandai Namco teamed up with phone accessories brand Casetify to launch a new Tamagotchi range of products, which includes vivid and nostalgia-fueled Y2K-themed phone cases, phone straps, and even collector cards. But most importantly, this collab, which launched on May 29, includes a bona fide limited edition Casetify Tamagotchi, that's exclusive to the brand.

Casetify's accessories are known for not being on the cheap side, and that includes its new Limited Edition Tamagotchi. It's £43 (Casetify), which is more than double the typical £20 MSRP you can expect to pay for a version of the toy based on the original 1996 design. However, it does include a matching translucent blue plastic protective case, which you won't get if you pick up one of the cheaper retro-inspired toys off the supermarket shelf - much to my chagrin.

You're also paying more for the "limited" aspect of it all. The digital pet is decked out in Casetify branding that you can only pick up as part of this collab. Thankfully, that added bit of branding doesn't affect its design too much, as Casetify thought cleverly to change up their logo to make it better tie in with the tiny versions of characters Mametchi (yes, the Tamagotchi pets have names), Ginjirotchi, and Kuchipatchi dotted alongside it and the tiny LCD display.

Sadly, by the time the Casetify Tamagotchi arrived at my door, and I had some time to see how it matched up to the rest of my digital pet collection, it has since sold out. It was available to pick up separately, and as part of two accessory bundles, including a Tamagotchi UFO Bundle Set for £118 (Casetify) and a Tamagotchi Collector Bundle Set for a whopping £703 (Casetify), but as of typing you cannot add it to your online shopping basket.

Which is a shame, because as someone who has amassed a small collection of digital friends, this is one of the best looking I own so far. Its translucent plastic chassis and "whimsical sticker-style design" feels like a design I would have seen lining up the toy shelves back in my late 1990 childhood, and it plays exactly as the toy did then.

You can select from the options to feed, play with, bathe and discipline your egg-pet, and everything from the three-button layout to the handy dandy reset button at the back are all present. The toy will also scream at you in an entirely authentic way, though you can set sounds off if you want a bit of freedom from your nostalgic parental duties.

While that's disappointing that it's sold out, there is more to this collab than just a toy. There's a range of Tamagotchi-themed phone cases, which feature the original '90s characters and even art of the digital pet itself. My favorite add-on from the lot is undoubtedly the Mametchi Phone Strap, which includes a tiny plush version of the pet that you can dangle from your phone, and the Mametchi Plush Earbuds Pouch available for £33 at Casetify, which looks ideal to store a pair of SteelSeries Arctis Game Buds.

The phone cases and accessories are available for a wide variety of gaming phones, including the Samsung Galaxy line, and start from £33 at Casetify. Sure, if you're reading this from a toy-collector standpoint they mustn't sound as exciting, but when you order a case, for example, you can not only pick your phone of choice, but even customize the design. The Egg Phone Case allows you to select from your choice of sprite art to feature on the printed image of the Tamagotchi, which is a unique gimmick that I can't help but appreciate as a '90s toy fan.

Check out the best Nintendo gifts and best Lego sets for more nostalgia-fueled toys and collectibles.

Longtime Tekken director Kouhei Ikeda has announced his departure from Bandai Namco after 20 years at the company.

Tekken hasn't exactly been at its best over the last year or so, with a disastrous Tekken 8 Season 2 launch, followed by an also disastrous Tekken 8 Season 3 launch. On top of that, the development team has seen several departures.

Last September, Tekken 8 producer Yohei Shimbori left Bandai Namco Studios, then at the end of the year, longtime series producer Katsuhiro Harada – who many associate with the series more than series creator Seiichi Ishii – left Bandai Namco after 31 years to open VS Studio at SNK. Now, half a year later, Tekken 8 director Ikeda has announced he has left the company.

Ikeda – who worked on Soul Calibur 4 before moving onto Tekken Tag Tournament 2 as a designer and directing Tekken 7 and 8 – posted an announcement on Twitter, saying "I have officially left Bandai Namco Entertainment after many years with the company." He continues, "I am deeply proud that I had the opportunity to create games alongside such incredible people who poured their hearts into this work. While my role leading the team as game director is coming to a close, the values that both I personally and the Tekken project have always cherished – staying close to the fans and the community and building the game together with everyone – will never change.

"I have entrusted those values, and that baton, to the incredible team that will continue to shape the future of Tekken," he adds, saying, "As I look forward to the future of Tekken and the FGC, I will also continue taking on new challenges as a game developer. I hope our paths cross again someday."

Naturally, some are already speculating that he'll be joining Harada at SNK. While nothing has been announced, Harada has often said that he wants more 3D fighting games on the market to compete with Tekken, so working on a new one with Tekken 7's director could be a no-brainer. And of course, change is scary, so some are already worried that without Harada and Ikeda, Tekken is as good as dead, which I doubt will be the case given it's one of Bandai Namco's biggest series.

At the very least, Tekken fans seem to be a bit more excited about the game, as the post-launch updates for Season 3 have been received far better, and the announcement that the next DLC character will be Baki the Grappler villain Yujiro Hanma is so out there that people are hyped for another silly crossover after Negan showed up in Tekken 7.

Final Fantasy 7 icon Tifa is rumored to join the Street Fighter 6 roster, stealing Tekken fans' most-requested guest fighter away from the already miserable fanbase

FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa has just released new financial results revealing the Dark Souls developer is committing to more self-publishing and self-funding while it works on converting video game IP to big deal movies like Elden Ring's.

The Elden Ring movie is already in production under A24 and 28 Days Later writer Alex Garland, who is serving as both its scriptwriter and director, and it's due to release on March 3, 2028. But 2028 feels so far away when Kadokawa predicts 2026 profits will drop something like 40.3％ "due largely to ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN main game and DLC," the company exclaims in its financial report. So, since FromSoftware's catalogue is getting stale, Kadokawa wants another round of everything – more game IP, more film adaptations – as it relies on the Dark Souls developer for business.

"FromSoftware will steadily advance initiatives aimed at maximizing earnings by developing titles using its own capital and optimizing the business scheme including its publishing structure," says Kadokawa. "We are making steady progress in strengthening the ability to develop IP in games and the cultivation of human resources."

On that last point, Kadokawa later explains in its report that it's beginning to roll out a "special early-retirement program" for employees aged 45 and older.

It seems the aim of this program, which will begin on July 31, 2026, is to cull staff numbers, but in a nicer way. Anyone who meets the age and job rank requirements, and has been with Kadokawa for at least five years, will, seemingly, be helped to retire extra early.

"This initiative is expected to optimize fixed costs and improve productivity, directly contributing to improved profitability," says Kadokawa. The company doesn't explicitly state if the program is exclusive to parent company employees, or if it will extend to properties like FromSoftware, too.

Kadokawa is clear, however, in saying it wants FromSoftware to "make further advances in the development of the media mix, including adaptation into videos." Several projects have already been announced in pursuit of this goal: in addition to the Elden Ring film, FromSoftware has a Sekiro anime coming to Crunchyroll this year, and there's an R-rated Bloodborne animated movie in the works.

Side note: I consider myself a Tier 1,000 Bloodborne fan, and even so I'm skeptical when I say fellow superfan and YouTuber JackSepticEye is producing the movie. I'm curious about why Sony prefers a, however well-meaning, gaming personality to manhandle its beloved IP rather than another studio. But, you know. At least we're getting more Bloodborne.

A strong message throughout Kadokawa's report is, go big and FromSoftware. The parent is eager to "further expand the fan base globally," it says, while "FromSoftware is making steady progress in revamping its business model to maximize earnings."

The developer, an expert in punishing dark fantasies, is a strange cash cow with weird lumps and boils. But Kadokawa is clearly hoping that's what game and film audiences want – and, based on all the hours of the day I've lost to Yharnam, I'm inclined to agree.

They can never compete with Elden Ring, but FromSoftware owner says Nightreign "performed strongly" and The Duskbloods is still coming in 2026.

Bandai Namco has confirmed the new Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero DLC will be titled Super Limit-Breaking NEO, and it'll add over 30 characters and fix the biggest problem with the original roster in the process.

The main event of Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour 2026 was the confirmation that Dragon Ball Project Age 1000 will in-fact be Xenoverse 3, but for me, the best news was Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero having its expansion announced, after being teased earlier this year alongside Age 1000.

Bandai Namco confirms the Super Limit-Breaking NEO DLC, which is set to include some wild omissions from the original stage roster like Kame House and Kami's Palace, and what looks like an RPG-lite mode where you level up your character through miscellaneous events. It doesn't look quite as interesting as Budokai 3's RPG-style story mode, but it evokes the same feeling.

Best of all, the expansion will see the game add 30 new characters to the roster, and we're finally getting original Dragon Ball characters like Mercenary Tao, Grandpa Gohan, Nam, and Demon King Piccolo, as well as some unexpected additions like Mighty Mask, Cheelai, and Jaco to round things out. Oh, and there's a lot of love shown to GT too, with Vegeta and Trunks getting their GT versions added to the game, for you sickos out there.

My biggest issues with the original game were the complete lack of Dragon Ball additions, and not enough absolute jobbers, so I'm very glad Bandai Namco heard me giving out about not being able to play as Android 8 this whole time.

Super Limit-Breaking NEO is set to launch this summer, alongside a free update with a new battle system, featuring gameplay changes which steer the fighting "toward fiercer, more intense battles."

If you want to catch up before Xenoverse 3 releases, here's how to watch Dragon Ball in order.

As speculated by fans, Bandai Namco finally confirmed that the previously announced Dragon Ball Project Age 1000 was actually Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 all along.

Earlier this year, at the series' 40th anniversary event, a new Dragon Ball game was announced with the catchy title, "New Game Project Age 1000," with a new character designed by series creator Akira Toriyama, who passed away in 2024. Due to the "Age 1000" subtitle being near the timeframe the Dragon Ball Xenoverse series takes place – and Bandai Namco Southeast Asia later including it in a playlist titled "Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3" – many had figured it to be a new entry in the series. And, would you look at that, it's Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3.

Announced at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour 2026, the game was revealed with a short animated trailer. A character (presumably the player-created one) answers a call from Bulma about an incoming threat, with a squad donning the Great Saiyaman logo – including Dragon Ball Super Hero's Gamma 1 – implying there's some form of Capsule Corp-funded superhero team leading the charge instead of the Time Patrol from previous entries.

Unfortunately, there was no gameplay shown, with only a couple of in-engine cutscenes appearing in the trailer, although I'd imagine it's going to be taking on a similar gameplay style to previous entries. Given, the game isn't set to release until 2027 (on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC), it may still be a while before we see it.

Frankly, I'm more interested in this Great Saiyaman superhero team idea than I ever was at the prospect of Xenoverse 3 in the first place. Xenoverse 2 is almost 10 years old at this point and is still getting DLC to this day, so I feel like the Time Patrol arc has been well and truly rinsed at this point. Not that the story is ever the best thing about these games, but a change of pace is very much appreciated.

If you want to catch up before Xenoverse 3 releases, here's how to watch Dragon Ball in order.

It's been back-to-back disappointments for Tales fans. Bandai Namco, publisher of the long-running JRPG series, broke hearts last month when a teaser for an anime-style RPG turned out to be a Sword Art Online game, and now a hyped announcement for Tales' 30th anniversary has offered similarly disappointing results.

This 30th anniversary Tales announcement was first teased back in February by anime studio Ufotable. The fact that this teaser was coming from an anime company rather than Bandai Namco itself meant that it was always unlikely to be a new game announcement, but Ufotable has created cutscenes for numerous Tales games, and has even worked on a few smaller animated Tales projects. Something like, say, a full anime adaptation of one of the Tales games wasn't out of the question.

Instead, after more than a month of anticipation, Ufotable announced 188 anime-style Tales illustrations and a concert to be held in Japan in May. In isolation, those would both be nice enough announcements for series fans. But as it often does, hype had already boiled over, and Tales fanatics were largely left cold by the news.

"The way they hype things up is just terrible," as one Japanese fan lamented in a tweet translated by Automaton. That person concludes, "the Tales series itself has fallen so far out of favor that the fans’ frustration is at an alarming level… "

Another says, "If they hadn’t done an announcement of an announcement for this and just shadow dropped it instead, everyone would have been thrilled by this."

You'll see similar sentiments from fans in the West on places like Reddit, where the series' 30th anniversary is being lamented as "a disaster."

It's closing in on five years since the launch of Tales of Arise, the most recent entry in the series, and with no new entry yet announced, we're likely about to see the largest gap between new Tales games since the franchise launched in the '90s. It's possible a new game may get announced as part of Summer Game Fest in June, but I don't blame anybody for not wanting to hold their breath after getting burned multiple times over.

Here are the best JRPGs you can play today.

The game Bandai Namco was teasing earlier this week has been revealed: It's a new Sword Art Online action RPG called Echoes of Aincrad, billed as an exploration of the darker side of the anime it's based on. And while what little combat we've seen largely involves huge dark fantasy creatures with big weapons and a player character keen on dodge-rolling and parrying, the developers insist this game is "not a Soulslike."

Talking to Japanese publication Denfaminicogamer (translation via Automaton), SAO series producer Yosuke Futami and Echoes of Aincrad head of production Yasuhiro Yahata made a few points of clarification about what the game is and isn't.

The devs admit it will be "very easy to die" in Echoes of Aincrad, with Yahata adding, "I can’t say there aren't any unfair enemies, especially for those who are playing for the first time."

Meanwhile, Futami notes that there are "a great variety of bosses" and that "playing for the first time is probably going to be the most fun and thrilling, and the shock you get while facing them is huge."

In case you aren't an SAO fan, the premise of the original series is simple: Main characters Kirito and Asuna are living inside an MMO via a futuristic device called a NerveGear that simulates all human senses and makes it look and feel like they're actually in the game world, meanwhile their bodies are in a coma-like state being kept alive through IV drips. What they don't realize until they're partying it up in-game is that, if they die in the game, they die in real life, too.

I've always wondered why, with so many SAO games out there, none of them implement the high stakes inherent to the anime's admittedly brilliant (if not derivative) hook, but Echoes of Aincrad is doing just that with its "Death" game mode. This optional mode will delete your entire save file if you die just once. I'm not sure if there's anything differentiating this from a typical hardcore, honor, or permadeath mode, but it's even more apt in an SAO game for obvious narrative reasons. I dig it.

Echoes of Aincrad puts you in the shoes of an anime character you get to create, instead of Kirito as usual. You'll level up, unlock new gear and abilities, and "build synergy" with a partner character of your choice to take down "foes stronger than you imagined," per the game's Steam description. It's out on PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on July 10.

Here are the best anime games you can play right now.

Bandai Namco is teasing a "new RPG reveal" for later this week, and I'm going to let the FromSoftware fans down right now: this is almost certainly not Elden Ring 2, or any other follow-up to the open-world RPG, no matter how much you might want that to be the case. There are a few other possibilities for the game's identity, but none more likely than the long-awaited next entry in the Tales series.

"A serenity soon to be disturbed," reads a blurb accompanying the teaser. A follow-up tweet promises that this is "a new RPG from Bandai Namco Entertainment," to be revealed on YouTube at 3pm PT / 6pm ET / 11pm GMT on March 5.

If you just see the text showing the dates and times, with an ornate golden font on a black background, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is something related to Elden Ring or another FromSoftware game, and you'll see more than a few hopefuls in various comment sections jumping to that conclusion. After all, while FromSoftware now fully owns the Elden Ring trademark, it maintains a close relationship with Bandai Namco, to the extent that company published Elden Ring Nightreign last year.

But if you take a look at the brief teaser video, any thought that this could be a FromSoftware title will quickly evaporate from your mind. Rather than dark fantasy misery, we see a brilliantly green landscape and a brief glimpse of an anime-style character wearing a bold, heroic sword and shield on their back.

Bandai Namco has a roster of about a billion different anime-style IPs it could be developing a new RPG for, but none more likely than the Tales series. The aesthetic matches, and so does the timeline – it's been five years since the launch of Tales of Arise, exactly the same gap that existed between that game and its own predecessor.

It's also possible that this could be a new IP, or an entry in some other franchise – Sword Art Online fans are keen to point out how familiar that big pillar in the background of the teaser looks. But a new Sword Art Online game, as many fans as the anime has, doesn't feel like the kind of announcement that'd be big enough to warrant this kind of build-up.

Tales, though? That's the kind of game – not quite Elden Ring-sized, but with a big fanbase – you can count on making headlines for a special debut on a random Thursday. There's also a larger Tales 30th anniversary broadcast coming on April 3, and I could easily see a new entry debuting here ahead of a more detailed presentation at that event. We'll know for sure what Bandai Namco has in store later this week.

These are the best JRPGs you can play today.

Dragon Ball Age 1000's debut trailer was posted in a playlist called Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3 by Bandai Namco Southeast Asia, pre-emptively spoiling the not-so-surprising surprise.

Last month at Dragon Ball Genkidamatsuri – the series' 40th anniversary event – it was revealed that series creator Akira Toriyama, who passed away in 2024, had created a new character for an upcoming game, which was revealed as "Dragon Ball New Game Project Age 1000." However, its true identity has seemingly been revealed a bit earlier than expected.

But someone didn't get the memo that it was meant to be a surprise, as last weekend, the Bandai Namco Southeast Asia account placed the trailer into a new playlist titled Dragon Ball Xenoverse 3. The playlist has since been removed, but not before it was spotted by fans online (via Wario64).

Given that Age 1000 in the series' lore is when the Dragon Ball Online MMO takes place, and the Xenoverse series takes a lot from the MMO, many assumed this could be Xenoverse 3, with the promise of more news released at Dragon Ball Games Battle Hour 2026 this April.

Given that Xenoverse 2 was still doing well enough to be getting DLC as late as last October – nine years after it launched – it's not shocking the game would eventually receive a follow-up, although it's a bit weird to not just outright announce it.

And, of course, there's always the chance that this is a bit of a miscommunication and Age 1000 turns out to be something completely different, so maybe hold off until April to get on the Xenoverse hype train.

If you want to catch up before Age 1000 releases, here's how to watch Dragon Ball in order.

A good few years have passed now since Bandai Namco launched its own Dark Souls-esque action RPG, the original Code Vein – but reviews for its sequel, Code Vein 2, are a mixed bag so far so far.

If you've played the first Code Vein, then you likely remember it for its unique anime-aligned aesthetic and action-packed combat – two things its follow-up certainly boasts. The newer game isn't impressing on all ends, however, it seems. Eager fans who pre-purchased it and have 72-hour early access have been posting their thoughts on Steam, where reviews now sit with a "Mixed" rating overall.

"One of the most unoptimized games I have ever played," reads one of the recent reviews, "which is a real shame because it otherwise seems really cool."

Another player writes, "For now, it feels like wasted money for early access. The game performs like shit."

They aren't the only person to think so, either. "This game, for about the one hour that I played, felt like a spit in the face to fans of the first game," as somebody else puts it.

The "Mixed" rating doesn't imply negative reviews across the board, though – and there are plenty of players who appear to be enjoying their time with Code Vein 2.

"Code Vein was one of my favourite Souls titles, and this is already one of the most enjoyable games I've played in the past year," one positive review explains.

Another player adds that they've personally not "had one issue" performance-wise, despite various complaints from other fans.

Current Code Vein 2 reviews undeniably harbor quite an assortment of opinions, unlike the first game, which sits comfortably with a "Very Positive" rating overall on Steam. Amusingly enough, the most recent review for Bandai's OG action RPG takes a little jab at the sequel while hyping up its predecessor: "Better than Code Vein 2." Whether or not that's an objective fact remains to be seen – after all, the official release is on January 29.

Looking for something else to wishlist? Be sure to browse our roundup of the best new games coming this year and beyond for even more to anticipate.

Code Vein 2 is the dullest game about time-traveling vampires I've ever played. A decent Soulslike has been stretched far too thin, resulting in a repetitive and bland open world adventure that severely lacks what made its stylish predecessor special.

For the uninitiated, Code Vein was essentially an anime take on Dark Souls, both in its art style and love of wailing melodrama. Beneath all the cartoon theatrics was a solid Soulslike and that continues in this sequel. Combat is all about dodge-rolling and well-timed strikes, if you die you lose all your leveling up currency and have once chance to get it back, and bosses are brutal brick walls that you'll spend hours smashing your head against. If you've played a Soulslike before, you've played this.

The main characters are 'revenants', immortal bloodsuckers who are vampires in all but name. They don't physically age, which makes them an odd choice for a time travel story. There's an upcoming apocalypse, you see, and the only way to stop it is to crack open the spherical tombs of five legendary heroes and slay them (well, obviously). But to break open those spheres, you'll first have to bond with the heroes a hundred years in the past. Then hop back into the present and finish them off.

So the plot is absolutely bananas. But that didn't put me off because I love time travel in games. The promise of getting to explore two distinct time periods is a great hook. Sadly, it's almost completely wasted. So little changes that I often had to check on the pause screen to see which time period I was in (again, they're meant to be a century apart). Scenery is mostly identical, and even the enemies are often standing in the exact same spots. Points for commitment, I suppose? A few key locations change for story beats but this feels like a massive missed opportunity.

A-poor-calypse

It's an ugly world to explore in either century. This is a dramatically worse-looking game than the original Code Vein, a generic ruined city with little of the first game's inspired art direction. Broken down buildings and abandoned cars don't have to be dull – The Last of Us 2 is one of the most beautiful games ever made – but this world is the wrong kind of lifeless. The most striking visual novelty here is often the amount of pop-in in the PS5 version.

But the biggest flaw has to be the dungeons. Code Vein 2 has you exploring water treatment plants, substations, and other tedious real-world locations I try so hard to avoid in real life. These are so similar to each other that I often got lost purely because I was mixing them up in my memory. Where's the supernatural twist on these locations? I replayed the first couple of dungeons in Code Vein, and they were both more interesting visually and mechanically than the majority of what you get in 2.

There's too much dull commuting (between this and Metroid Prime 4, being given a motorbike in an open world game is becoming a real red flag). But at least the rewards for exploring are worth it. Essential, really, if you want enough health upgrades to best its nastiest bosses. The map is just opaque enough that figuring out how to reach certain parts of it is a fun puzzle in itself. But something's gone seriously wrong with your dungeon crawler when I can enjoy tracking down a dungeon, then immediately wish I didn't have to go through the tedium of exploring that dungeon.

Even the most diligent eco-warrior would think this game recycles too much. The same enemies reappear constantly. Bosses aren't immune from this either, and they should be the main events in a Soulslike. Think back to all the times you walked through the fog gate in Dark Souls, excited to see what incredible new boss you were about to face. Now imagine how deflating it is to see an enemy you've fought a dozen times already, only now with a bigger health bar. The first time I fought a golden mech with a cat figurine living inside it was a surreal treat. Not so much a dozen battles with it later.

What saves this from being a complete disaster is the combat. You always have an NPC companion fighting with you. Handy for helping you take down enemies, even handier for being used as bait while you sneak up behind said enemy for a cheeky backstab. But in Code Vein these NPCs could die, leaving you to struggle against the encounters alone. Code Vein 2 wisely just makes your companion invincible, but not so powerful that they'll beat the bosses for you.

Resurrection has also been overhauled for the better. Die in combat and your companion will revive you, but temporarily disappear in the process. Die before they return and you perish properly. Oh and each time you die, the health you're resurrected with gets smaller and the wait for your companion to return gets much longer.

It encourages you to take risks and makes throwing yourself at a boss for a hail mary attack a valid strategy. I had some wonderfully tense moments where I was desperately dodge-rolling around the boss arena, begging my companion to come back and take this pummelling for me.

Each weapon can be assigned a selection of special attacks and some of these are absolutely game-changing. Like the one which lets you lob your weapon and have it spin in place like an extra-sharp death tornado. Or my personal favorite, that sends two swords orbiting your opponent, occasionally taking breaks from spinning around them to stab them in the face. Lovely.

Bloody Clever

Naturally, such over-the-top treats don't come free. To regenerate the currency for using them, you'll have to steal blood from your foe. You have a secondary attack, called a 'jail', which saps blood out of enemies. With each hit you're inflicting more wounds on their body, and the more wounds you've inflicted first, the more blood a successful jail strike will withdraw.

It gives combat a furious momentum where you're often rewarded for being constantly on the attack. Hanging back is an option, of course, but you'll only be able to lob so many cheap fireball strikes or sword tornados from afar before you have no choice but to get up close and personal so you bag yourself some blood.

Against the faster enemies this can be an absolute nightmare, but that's not a complaint. I enjoyed swapping out jails between boss attempts, trying to find the best fit. A set of spikes that I can make shoot out of the floor from afar, or a twin-headed wolf whose ferocious jaws rip blood out of bodies? Decisions, decisions…

There's a decent variety of jails and tons of special attacks to be discovered if you do commit to exploring. The problem is that you'll almost definitely get tired of fighting Code Vein 2's repetitive bestiary with them. If you want fresh challenges to face, you'll have to go off the critical path.

There's lots of side content and extra missions to get alternate endings. I've been playing for fifty hours and still haven't covered all of it. But it rations out the good stuff, like new bosses and plot revelations, behind yet more egregious padding. One side quest has a fun story pay off, but not fun enough for that quest to justify fighting the exact same boss four times in a row. Code Vein 2 ends up being a cautionary tale about the consequences of going open world and losing too much of what made your game enjoyable in the process.

Code Vein 2 was reviewed on PS5, with a code provided by the publisher.

Looking for more action? Our games like Dark Souls list should help!

The Blood of Dawnwalker, the ambitious upcoming vampire RPG from the team of former CD Projekt Red leads at Rebel Wolves, will definitely let you romance characters, the game's creative director has confirmed.

Rebel Wolves creative director Mateusz Tomaskiewicz, who was lead quest designer on The Witcher 3, was asked by streamer Luality during the New Game + Expo (via PC Gamer) if he could please, for the sake of everyone eagerly awaiting this game, confirm for sure that those hot vampires aren't just there for show (my words, not Luality's). "Yes, of course," Tomaskiewicz replied to the sound of sighs of relief the world over. Unfortunately he didn't get into the details, but reiterated:

"There are romance options, yes. We didn't delve deep into with whom yet, and I'll leave that for the future to talk about. However, yes, you can expect to build relationships with characters."

Of course, romancing characters is one of the hallmarks of a CDPR RPG, and this being a game from former CDPR leads, it would be a massive disappointment if it didn't have any romance options.

That said, you probably don't want to spend too much time horsing around with Dawnwalker's romance system. The game uses time as a literal resource, like money, and Rebel Wolves has previously said there will be "consequences" for wasting time in the game.

The Blood of Dawnwalker devs "were afraid that people wouldn't want to play as human Coen" so it set out to create "a combat system that can set a new standard for RPGs"

The Blood of Dawnwalker isn't all that interested in tradition. The extent to which developer Rebel Wolves is willing to play with convention extends well beyond its unique approach to RPG design, where every action taken in service of saving your family quite literally costs time – it's the scarcest resource in Vale Sangora, a kingdom ravaged by famine, plague, war, and an undead insurgency. It's also reflected in the characters, story, and the studio's approach to vampire legends too.

Take Brencis, hailing from ancient Rome, and his three powerful vampire allies who have seized control of the open world – sealing it from outside forces as control is exerted over a desperate population. The vampires walking this cursed earth have a maw of needle-like fangs protruding from their mouths rather than two sharp ones; the older these creatures become, the more fangs they are able to grow. A helpful trait, given that humans aren't turned through bites but rather a needle being ripped from the jaw and plunged into the heart of a victim.

"We want to tell a story with vampires, not a story about vampires only," says game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. "Our vampires are different. They are more wild and they have these small cliques, and sometimes those cliques fight with one another. Our vampires come from many regions of the world; we tell different stories throughout the game to show you their origins and why they are doing what they are doing. There are interesting stories to be told in the bond between them and how their relationships have changed over time."

He adds: "We have some traditional vampire themes, but aspects like silver, sunlight, and garlic work in different ways." Silver is a great example, as the element helps protagonist Coen to transform into the titular Dawnwalker – a human by day, vampire by night.

Coen suffers from argyria, a silver poisoning that he received from working in mines. This condition weakens his human form, but ultimately protects him from fully transforming into a vampire – giving him the presence of mind to set out on a journey to topple four vampire leaders. "It's another twist on the vampire fantasy."

Coen existing between two worlds will provide an interesting wrinkle to The Blood of Dawnwalker. His two forms not only impact the story – where you'll have the freedom to embark on a quest to save your family, swear revenge on your sire and burn his burgeoning empire to the ground, or something in between across the narrative sandbox – but the way this RPG plays too.

"We needed to create two distinct gameplay loops," says Tomaszkiewicz. "While playing as a human, we wanted to give you the feeling that you're weaker, but you'll have different toys to play with to compensate," he says, teasing out the blades and ritualistic magics that Coen is able to wield by day. "When you're a vampire, you are not only stronger but able to wield vampyric capabilities to reach your goals. With every story, every quest line that we design, we have had to think about these two ways to play."

Almost every quest in The Blood of Dawnwalker can be approached from day or night, or a combination of the two, greatly changing the composition of the experience. A small example of this could be Coen wielding a Hex spell during the day called Compel Soul, which allows the Dawnwalker to communicate directly with the dead to find new paths ahead. At night, Coen could instead choose to wield a vampyric ability like Shadow Step, allowing him to scale buildings and look for alternative routes through quests while weaving around weekly blood mass rituals forced upon the populace.

The problem with the former is that the dead speak in riddles, potentially leading a human Coen into battle with powerful undead threats in ancient catacombs that litter the 14th-century sandbox. And with the latter, any nighttime activity sees you contend with Blood Hunger, an affliction where, should Coen's lust for blood go unsatisfied, he may devour a friendly or key NPC to feed. The Blood of Dawnwalker is packed with these sorts of micro-decisions that play with traditional vampire fantasies, but then nobody said that being caught between two worlds would be easy...

Learn more about The Blood of Dawnwalker as part of our Big in 2026 Spotlight series. Every day this week we are diving deeper into Rebel Wolves' narrative sandbox. We're exploring the the studio's open-ended approach to quest design, how combat leverages Coen's human and vampire natures, and going into more depth on the time resource system which draws all of these ideas together.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is one of the most anticipated upcoming RPGs of 2026 for good reason. It's a dark fantasy adventure that'll thrust you into a lush 14th century open-world ruled by ancient vampires, where every action (and inaction) shapes the fate of the land and the characters who inhabit it.

"I believe that RPGs should be about choice," says Rebel Wolves CEO Konrad Tomaszkiewicz. "My vision for Rebel Wolves is to get a few steps closer to pen-and-paper RPGs. Where there is a gamemaster who can evolve the story and your experience in different ways once you start taking action, but always to the same goal. That's why we are building this narrative sandbox, and why we want players to have the freedom to shape their own way of playing in the world we are creating."

You have just 30 days and 30 nights to save your family from the clutches of a centuries-old clan of vampires; the gothic kingdom of Vale Sangora isolated, its citizens enslaved into ritualistic servitude. This world waits for no one. Every quest you accept, and major action you take to complete them, moves time itself forward – you can't do everything or save everyone. "Once you leave the prologue area, there are absolutely no handrails, no invisible walls. You know what your goal is – but how (or even if) you reach it is up to you," says narrative director Jakub Szamałek.

The Blood of Dawnwalker matches this concept with incredible pedigree in the RPG space. Rebel Wolves is staffed by a mixture of fresh blood and CD Projekt RED veterans, including the game director, lead quest designer, and a senior writer of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. "It's taken a lot of hard work to get to where we are right now," says Tomaszkiewicz. "When we started Rebel Wolves in 2022, there were just 15 of us."

Three years on, Rebel Wolves has over 150 developers working to deliver The Blood of Dawnwalker. "The team is not huge, but it's not that small either," considers Tomaszkiewicz. "When we worked with our colleagues on The Witcher 3, the average headcount during production was 160 and by the end I think it was 205, so there isn't a huge gap."

Scaling so quickly was necessary, because time isn't the only complicating factor in The Blood of Dawnwalker's design. The ability to take on any quest, in any order, with time slipping away as you work towards your ultimate objective is complicated by Coen – the protagonist who is human by day, vampire by night. "Each form offers distinct skills and abilities," says creative director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, "and most quests can be approached differently during either day or night."

The Blood of Dawnwalker is promising a staggering degree of depth in its narrative sandbox, propagating the sort of freedom and flexibility seldom seen in modern RPGs. Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, who also serves as game director, says that he never feared chasing something so ambitious for Rebel Wolves' debut project.

"I know how to make AAA games, and my experience is in creating story-driven RPGs set in an open world. We wanted to take what we know and evolve the genre. It feels like my dreams are being fulfilled right now, and I'm so happy that we can pursue innovations with total freedom," he tells me. "We knew where we were going from the start. We didn't need to fight anybody to achieve what we wanted to achieve. If you want to do something new, something crazy, going independent is the best way to do it."

"I'm really happy with where the game is today. I'm also really happy that we have the team that we have. That we have created this world together. That there's a great atmosphere without crunch. We've just been so inspired to fight for AAA quality and find creative solutions to new problems," says Tomaszkiewicz. "The Blood of Dawnwalker is going to be really fun – which is important to say, because having fun is the most important thing!"

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve has set its sights on presenting an unfathomably wide horizon. 10,000 square kilometers of open skies, a landscape populated by dense layers of photorealistic clouds and trailing exhaust plumes from larger fighter squadrons than the series has ever dared to attempt. Developer Project Aces has big ambitions, and achieving them has a price.

"We did consider a VR mode for Ace Combat 8, but after much consideration we decided not to pursue it," says Kazutoki Kono, Ace Combat's brand director. "The VR mode in Ace Combat 7 is something we are greatly proud of, but after completing that process we realized that a great flat-monitor screen game and a great VR game are separate entities. We would have needed to develop two different games for Ace Combat 8 in order for us to provide a successful VR mode."

Reaching New Heights

Virtual reality is the first confirmed kill for Project Aces as it prepares Wings of Theve to take flight in 2026. The focus is on blistering aerial action at nothing less than 60fps; built to a grandeur scale, and embracing bolder speeds, than anything attempted in Ace Combat's 30 years of flight time. This team wouldn't deliver anything less, mind – 2019's Ace Combat 7 registering a franchise-record of seven million sales.

"The success of Ace Combat 7 was phenomenal," says producer Manabu Shimomoto, "and we do feel pressure to deliver for our fans again. We are mindful of the success of Ace Combat 7 and aware of the anticipation it has created for our next game." Shimomoto tells me that this has created a focus across the studio to "bring forward and really prioritize the evolution of the franchise's core concepts."

What we're talking about here are intense dogfights across dynamic cloudscapes, a living sky that transforms as the rush of fast-paced arcade-style action meets best-in-class visual fidelity. Kono says it was important to marry "functionality and beautiful visuals" into a cohesive package. Project Aces is embracing Unreal Engine 5 for Ace Combat 8, as well as a new proprietary technology base called Cloudly, to help realize its ambitions.

"Cloudly allows us to create multi-layered clouds which actually let the player assess their own elevation while flying," Kono continues. "The space is also littered with contrails, which have a function within the game as well. Once the player spots a contrail they are able to follow it to determine where an enemy pilot is. We want players to be able to experience a multi-sensory journey, from discovering enemy fighters to the physical sensation of engaging in combat, to create a more highly-elevated experience."

With such a wide playspace to populate, Ace Combat 8 is operating at a larger scale than ever before too. "Up until Ace Combat 7, we were creating everything in a 10th of an object's original size. So, if a real life aircraft was 20 meters, it would be defined as two meters in the game world. But in Ace Combat 8 we have changed our strategy so that everything is designed in real size and scale."

Kono stresses this design decision in an attempt to help us understand the lengths Project Aces is going in order to deliver a more realistic sense of speed and momentum within its flight patterns and combat models. "What's important is the comparative speed feel. It's harder to experience the actual speed you're flying by yourself, it's always felt alongside something else. Whether it's a jet that you are pursuing, moving closer to the ground, whooshing alongside buildings, or flying along the edges of clouds – these highlight the sensation of flying at high speeds."

"We have put a lot of effort into leading players naturally into experiencing these scenarios," Kono continues. "Obviously, players can choose where they fly – we aren't forcing anyone onto a set route as it were – but I like to use the term 'naturally leading' to describe it. We want to try and encourage players to experience new sensations in Ace Combat 8."

Bandai Namco has developer FromSoftware's Elden Ring and Dark Souls franchises under its wing, but that hasn't stopped the publisher from pursuing other takes on the Souls experience. The upcoming Code Vein 2 is Bandai Namco's second go-around with this particularly unique spin on the Soulslike, building off the original Code Vein's twist of an anime-inspired dark fantasy where players and their chosen partner braved treacherous dungeons in style.

The sequel focuses even more on building its cast of characters and giving a greater reason to feel invested in a world that will be shaped by your actions across two time periods. Picture an anime-style Dark Souls by way of Back to the Future. I recently had some hands-on time with Code Vein 2, learning more about the mix of sci-fi and dark fantasy and how the developers want to build on the original's character-first action-RPG stylings.

Two timelines, one big quest

Much like its predecessor, Code Vein 2 asks players to build up their custom protagonist's abilities and arsenals to defeat bosses and complete quests in a sprawling world. The sequel carries many concepts and familiar lore from the original, such as vampire-like characters known as Revenants who wield powerful abilities. However, the second game is a standalone follow-up that builds up a story focusing on building a better future by setting things right in the past.

Playing as a hunter of rogue revenants, you're tasked with saving the world following a cataclysmic event known as the Resurgence. After forming a bond with a mysterious ally named Lou, the protagonist gains the ability to travel between two time periods 100 years apart to reverse anomalies in the past, in turn improving life in the present day – but some changes may lead to some unexpected consequences that could put the future in peril.

"The core concepts of Code Vein that I believe define it in the landscape of Soulslike games are really that character drama – the charm that you get from interacting with your partner and overcoming these tough encounters, dungeons, and challenging enemies with your partner," explains producer Keita Iizuka during the extended preview.

There's a keen focus on reshaping the world around you. The time-travel element adds a cool wrinkle to the world, as you restore areas of the present to unlock new zones and side quests. These can also reveal hidden objectives and opportunities to discover, which is an intriguing evolution from the original's more rigid structure.

Seeing the game world shift between two different eras, with the protagonist teaming up with allies from the past and then seeing their impact in the future, is a cool concept for a soulslike. The main quest we focus on during the preview sees the protagonist paired with Josee, a plucky mercenary from the past who seeks to purify a water source within the Sunken Pylon, which is heavily polluted in the present era.

This sequence presents an intriguing setup for one of the early time-travel escapades. As one of the core objectives is to uncover the root causes of the Resurgence, this entails connecting with characters from the past who will eventually become corrupted, monstrous versions of themselves in the present era. In essence, Code Vein 2 actually has you bond and partner up with likeable human versions of Souls-style bosses before they become corrupted. Bonding with Josee during the dungeon crawl before seeing their eventual corruption offers a bit of context that you normally don't get prior to facing off against a boss in a Souls-game, and the inevitable battle against Josee's corrupt form is an unexpectedly tragic boss battle to cap off the quest.

I'm intrigued by the broader scope of Code Vein 2's main story, which feels more conscious of the world and the characters within it, but it also ties into the game's larger world to explore. Tying together the main dungeons and key points of interest are the large open zones to explore filled monsters, hidden quests, and other side-tasks to uncover. It's not on the level of Elden Ring's open world, but it's certainly more expansive than the original Code Vein's structure.

What I did find interesting about Code Vein 2's setting is seeing the larger world slowly healing after completing different milestones. After defeating the Metagen Remnant, which poisoned the water in the past, the next major zone set in the massive city opened up, giving the impression that nature is healing and that your actions are slowly but surely building a better future.

Embracing 'anime Dark Souls'

Despite the larger scope, the dungeon crawls and focused combat encounters are still very much in play in Code Vein 2. The Sunken Pylon hits all the beats of a classic Souls-style dungeon – trapped in a flooded area, I had to defend myself against spiked monsters darting through the area, barely making it out alive with the treasure hidden inside. This area really got me up to speed on Code Vein 2's improved combat. It carries the fundamentals of the original but with a far better flow that feels much more responsive and satisfying than the previous game.

According to the developers, this was a particular area they wanted to improve upon from the original. "We got some not-so-good feedback in terms of the quality of the encounters from the previous game, the action in battles, and the way we adjusted the difficulty compared to other Soulslike games," says game producer Keita Iizuka. "There was certainly room for improvement. So, including upgrading the partner system, we really want to lean into our strengths [of style] and improve some of the areas that need improvement, and to really make battles feel more threatening and keep players on the edge of their seat."

The second game largely sticks with the original's approach to character building and power progression, emphasizing selecting builds and weapon styles and using your partner's skills rather than tinkering with stats. Code Vein kept the familiar combat flow and style of many Soulslikes; but what truly set it apart from other games was its offering of more opportunities to experiment with class archetypes called Blood Codes. Instead of allocating points to individual stats, level-ups are all pre-defined stat buffs, letting players focus more on selecting playstyles and skills to use.

Combat in Code Vein 2 feels far more punchy and precise. I really take to its flow, landing my weapon strikes and combat arts, entering into a third-person aiming mode for my ranged weapon, and utilizing finisher attacks against stunned enemies. In a way, Code Vein 2's flashy, stylized action leans further into the concept of the series being the so-called 'anime-Dark Souls' – the Souls community's endearing way to describe its look and tone. Even though I have a lot of options in fights, I still feel the tension of that underlying Soulslike experience.

I develop a particular fondness for the twin swords and polearm weapons, with each having its own combat arts to utilize. But what really impresses me is the expanded partner system, which is more versatile and helpful this go around. In addition to gaining stats and ability buffs from your chosen partner, who does a solid job of holding their own in a fight, they're also able to revive you if you get knocked out by an enemy – at the cost of their own life, before they revive on cooldown. This 'extra life' of sorts comes in clutch during the more challenging boss battles, giving me a much-needed second wind to power through corrupted Josee.

You can also assimilate your partner, giving the protagonist heightened attack and defensive abilities. It's an exciting option to have – especially for players who feel more comfortable playing solo. I generally kept my partner by my side, but in some of the more challenging battles, I find the assimilate option to be helpful in a pinch, especially while whittling down the last slivers of Metagen Remnant's health bar to close out the Sunken Pylon dungeon.

Upping the stakes

Soulslikes tend to be very isolating by design, so it's neat to see Code Vein 2 lean into its partner system to make those dungeon crawls and boss battles more of a bonding experience with supporting characters. Playing Code Vein 2 already makes me feel more engaged with its setting, much more than the original game. I get the sense that the stakes of the adventure are much greater – a time-travel story that focuses on cause and effect is a fascinating concept for a Soulslike.

While Code Vein 2 hits many of the standard beats of the genre, the sequel is so far building further upon the original's character-focused Soulslike spectacle in an interesting way. Even with Bandai Namco being the core publisher of FromSoftware's Elden Ring, Code Vein 2 makes the case for more story-driven takes on the formula that move away from isolation and more towards bonding with allies. Hopefully, this sequel will stick the landing and embrace its oddities for the larger adventure ahead.

We can all agree the squirrels in Larian Studios games are amazing, right? All of us except Swen Vincke, studio founder and recurring game director, who hated one of the cute critters in Divinity: Original Sin 2 so much he ran a one-person campaign to get it deleted and failed.

He spoke about this to Mein-MMO, where he explained his disdain for the adorable pet. "It's funny that you like Sir Lora. I hate him. If there is one thing I regret about Original Sin 2, it's bringing Sir Lora into the game," he says. "I really tried to get rid of him."

He's not necessarily alone in this view, as Sir Lora was a late addition necessitated by Bandai Namco, who published the RPG on consoles. They wanted free DLC, and the woodland companion became the solution, a "joke that doesn’t really add anything" to the Original Sin follow-up.

"We regretted bringing Sir Lora in because it only happened due to publisher pressure," he adds. "And now we just want to get rid of him. But it's okay; it makes me happy that you enjoy him. There are people who put a lot of effort into creating him."

For this year's Switch 2. PS5 and Xbox Series X release, Vincke tried to right this publisher-led wrong by taking Sir Lora out, but he was told by the QA it was "too late" because of unforeseen structural issues.

"We couldn't figure out why. Sir Lora just wouldn't die. We lost several days debugging to find an answer to that. Now it's too late, so we have to keep him," Vincke states. The efforts would take Sir Lora out of one place, but he'd continue to pop up in others, and there was only so much time and resource available for the port.

The re-release of Divinity: Original Sin 2 is available now, providing you with ample time to enjoy Sir Lora before the new Divinity arrives.

Larian lead says RAM shortage is affecting Divinity's development, calling for "a lot of optimization work in early access that we didn't necessarily want to do"

Bandai Namco was at The Game Awards 2025 to reveal Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. This is set to be the first new video game in the long-running series since Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown took flight – the 2019 release still stands as a revolutionary instalment, shifting a franchise-record seven million sales.

What of the sequel, then? Bandai went all out for the Ace Combat 8 reveal, presenting an in-game trailer demonstrating its commitment to single-player storytelling for the upcoming arcade combat flight action game – and what appears to be photorealistic skies to explore.

The debut Ace Combat 8 trailer only teased the story you can expect for this return to the Strangereal universe, but it appears that high-octane, high-flying action will be paired up with more grounded interactions with a vibrant crew on a built-to-scale aircraft carrier. The trailer points to you rising up to become the Ace of Aces, a legendary fighter pilot who can inspire the masses under a mysterious 'Wings of Theve' moniker.

But if all you're here for is the flying, then Ace Combat 8 certainly looks stunning – fast and frantic from the first, brief look at combat gameplay. This is the first game in the series built on Unreal Engine 5, and the team from Bandai Namco Aces is clearly using it to go all-out with new degrees of speed and visual fidelity. All told, the Ace Combat 8 reveal seems like a great way to cap off Ace Combat's 30th anniversary celebrations.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is due to launch in 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X.

Longtime Tekken series producer Katsuhiro Harada is leaving Bandai Namco at the end of 2025 after a 31-year stint at the company.

Harada, who has been with the series since the beginning and directed Tekken 3, Tag Tournament, 4, 5, and 7 – and produced a number of Bandai Namco titles – announced his departure on Twitter, saying, "With the Tekken series reaching its 30th anniversary – an important milestone for a project I've devoted much of my life to – I felt this was the most fitting moment to bring one chapter to a close."

Harada explains, "In recent years, I experienced the loss of several close friends in my personal life, and in my professional life I witnessed the retirement or passing of many senior colleagues whom I deeply respect. Those accumulated events made me reflect on the 'time I have left as a creator.'" He adds that he sought advice from original PlayStation lead Ken Kutaragi, whose words "quietly supported me in making this decision."

The Tekken team also shares a statement on Twitter, saying, "Rest assured that we are fully committed to the future development and content plans for Tekken 8. We will continue to take community feedback on the game and its content to heart to ensure that we uphold the vision and spirit built by Harada-san, dedicating our utmost efforts to ensure the legacy of the Tekken series continues as a fighting game franchise beloved worldwide."

Harada doesn't say what the future holds for him but adds, "For 30 years I kept saying, 'I’ll do it someday,' and never once performed as a DJ at a tournament event. So instead, I will be releasing – for the first and last time – a 60-minute Tekken DJ-style nonstop mix (DJ mix), personally edited by myself, together with this announcement." So perhaps a DJ career is next.

That being said, a major change isn't always the worst news for a series. Harada's influence may have helped shape Tekken's identity over the years, but he explains, "Over the past four to five years, I've gradually handed over all of my responsibilities, as well as the stories and worldbuilding I oversaw, to the team, bringing me to the present day."

First-time director Takayuki Nakayama absolutely killed it with Street Fighter 6, and considering Tekken 8 is having a turbulent time akin to Street Fighter 5, perhaps a new generation could result in a similar revival. It just means we won't be able to ask Harada "for shit" anymore.

Now that Kirby Air Riders is out, everyone is making the same joke about Nintendo immediately asking Masahiro Sakurai to work on Super Smash Bros 6: "Alright. We let you make Air Riders. You know what comes next…"

The first story DLC for Digimon Story: Time Stranger arrives in just a matter of days, and it's a doozy. Taking place in a bizarre dimension that exists outside time and space, the new chapter brings in a powerful digital monster fans have been hoping to see for years, and some other 'mon besides.

The setting for Alternate Dimension, as the chapter is known, is called Akashic Backdoor, and it's described as an "extradimensional space." Essentially, it's an area between realities where you can safely take on the threat, the mysterious and incredibly strong Parallelmon.

Not only has this creature created this little pocket universe, but it's kidnapped a number of your allies as well, spurring you to be sent to take it on. Unless you're a scholar of the Digimon franchise – and there'd be plenty more of us if there were any justice in this godforsaken world – you probably don't recognize this villain, but Parallelmon goes way back.

It debuted back in the Digimon Adventure V-Tamer manga, by Hiroshi Izawa, the source material for the anime and resulting franchise. Sadly, over the years it became relegated to those pages, never making the leap onto our screens in any capacity. There's been some buzz among fans, though, as a cut line in the Chosen Children costume pack hinted at the monster.

Kyoko Kuremi, from Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth, makes an appearance here, alongside her father, Kodai. Omnimon Alter-B, Omnimon Zwart Defeat, BlitzGreymon, CresGarurumon, and Omnimon Alter-C make up the five monstrous additions to your roster with the DLC.

Digimon Story Time Stranger Episode Pack 1: Alternate Dimension comes out December 8. It's the first part of the season pass, with two more chapters to come.

"Digimon and Pokemon are fundamentally different" according to Digimon Story: Time Stranger producer, who hopes the new RPG will "serve as an opportunity" for the franchise to distinguish itself.

FromSoftware has encountered the worst boss of all with the Forsaken Hollows DLC for Elden Ring Nightreign: unhappy players. The roguelike spin-off's first content pack is getting blasted on Steam for not being up to snuff with the rest of the developer's post-launch additions, to the point it's setting a record low, ratings wise.

Yes, as at time of writing, The Forsaken Hollows is FromSoftware's worst rated release on Steam. This is per SteamDB, where the 47.7% user rating places the DLC at the very bottom, almost 10% below Ashes of Ariandel in Dark Souls 3. That's rough going, and further backed up by reviews posted directly to Steam

The reviews themselves are Mixed at the minute, with only 46% positive, and some common threads emerging. "This is just a bit of a joke. How are there no new weapons besides the two signature weapons the new characters come with? And those are just a reskin of a basic hammer and a basic thrusting sword," writes one reviewer.

"Why didn't they add the ER DLC weapons, Ashes of War, or spells? That feels like a MASSIVE mistake, and I am genuinely heartbroken that we can't get those items in this game," says another. Even those who're happier with what's there aren't exactly brimming with praise.

"I like the new content, but it's not up to the standards I have begun to expect from FromSoftware," reads a review. "My complaint isn't only that it's an asset flip with a few extra things, it’s that even that asset flip can be done with better balance and quality."

The Forsaken Hollows adds two new playable characters, the Scholar and the Undertaker (sadly not the pro wrestling icon), a new map, and a pair of bosses. While having fresh builds to play around with, and newer encounters to defeat, it appears players were hoping to have more to dive into some six months removed from Nightreign's launch, especially when paying almost half of what the base game costs.

FromSoftware owns up to its swamp addiction as Elden Ring Nightreign adds yet another, director insists it just kind of happens: "It's just sort of taken a life of its own."

There are a few things you can count on in a FromSoftware game: inscrutable lore, lots of dying, and a swamp. There's always a swamp, and though late to the party, Elden Ring Nightreign is no exception. New DLC The Forsaken Hollows has brought on some swampy marshland, and even the devs are in the joke at this point.

Wandering around Limveld post-The Forsaken Hollows, you'll notice some muddy, toxic areas that'll poison you or inflict several other status ailments. These parts of the map are as tricksy as Blighttown or Valley of Defilement, and should be treated with caution. The team is conscious of FromSoft's reputation here, but it really is just a quirk of how they design games.

"We're definitely aware of the [swamp] meme," Junya Ishizaki, Nightreign's director, tells GameSpot. "It's not like there's a rule or any sort of policy here where it's like we have to have a swamp in there, but it always seems to be [that before you realize] someone's come up with the idea, it's already sort of in there, and it's just sort of taken a life of its own."

To be fair, these toxified marshes do tend to be quite different from one another. The Ashina Depths in Sekiro are a separate mutation to BloodBorne's Nightmare Frontier, and they're a contrast again to Farron Keep in Dark Souls 3. There are tropes - frustrating enemies and some truly annoying heath-draining side-effects - but they do feel distinct from one another.

"The main game for Nightreign did not have a swamp, so I do see what you mean now, having it added after the fact with the DLC," Ishiazaki adds. "But yeah, it's definitely one of those things that [it] always just seems like [our game] ends up with a swamp. Even if there's not a specific rule like, 'Oh yeah, we have to put that in there,' [that's] just always how it kind of ends up."

The Forsaken Hollows comes out December 4, bringing two new Nightfarers with which to trudge through Limveld's newfound murky depths.

Elden Ring Nightreign stats reveal FromSoftware survivorship bias, suggesting its "most deadly" world bosses had their numbers padded by bruised loot goblins

Nintendo has announced its planned acquisition of shares in Bandai Namco Studios Singapore, with it set to become a subsidiary of Nintendo.

Weeks ago, Nintendo confirmed to shareholders that it was interested in "acquisition of developers as subsidiaries" as part of ongoing expansion efforts as it shifts its primary focus to Nintendo Switch 2. And based on Nintendo's previous acquisitions – with Retro Studios, Next Level Games, and Brownie Brown all working with Nintendo for years before becoming subsidiaries – I figured it was likely going to be reserved to studios Nintendo has worked with in the past as opposed to Microsoft-style industry-shifting publisher buyouts.

And less than a month later, Nintendo has confirmed that it has entered into an agreement with Bandai Namco to acquire shares in Bandai Namco Studios Singapore. Nintendo plans to have acquired 80% of the studio's shares by April 2026 (with the remainder to "be acquired after a certain period, once the subsidiary’s operations have stabilized"). And as a result of this, the studio will now become a Nintendo subsidiary and be renamed Nintendo Studios Singapore.

Per the studio's website it previously worked on art, characters, animation, and environments for Splatoon 3, while MobyGames notes its credits on Bandai Namco Studios-developed games like Mario Sports Superstars and New Pokemon Snap. Notably the studio was heavily rumoured to be the developer of Metroid Prime 4 before it restarted development under Retro Studios in 2019, although Nintendo never confirmed this detail officially. Meanwhile, the studio's CEO Makoto Ishii was recently credited in Kirby Air Riders, with a "Special Thanks" credit in Mario Kart World. Super Smash Bros. for 3DS / WiiU and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

After 18 years, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is a surprisingly magical return to Nintendo's legendary series, and I'm all in on psychic abilities and the power of friendship

Digimon Story: Time Stranger producer Ryosuke Hara says he hopes the new entry in the series shows players that it and Pokemon are very different beasts.

From perhaps the moment Digimon arrived on the scene, it was faced with comments about it trying to ride the coattails of Pokemon. Even though Digimon initially had more in common with its fellow Bandai toy line Tamagotchi, the brand debuted a year after Pokemon did, and the anime series debuted shortly after the Pokemon anime started airing – around a year later for the English release – so it's not a shocker that comparisons were made that still persist to this day.

Speaking with MCV/Develop magazine (and reported on by VGC), Hara is asked how he feels about the comparisons and if he wishes they would go away. The producer responds: "There are certainly similarities when it comes to the monster collection aspect, and it's true that many players enjoy both franchises. So in that sense, comparisons are understandable and even expected."

However, despite being unphased by the comparison, Hara explains, "Digimon and Pokemon are fundamentally different in their core concepts and appeal. Each has its own unique strengths." With Digimon Story: Time Stranger, he adds, "we believe that these differences will naturally become apparent as players experience this title," and "our hope is that this game serves as an opportunity for more people to discover and appreciate what makes Digimon distinct."

If anything, modern Digimon games have more in common with the likes of Shin Megami Tensei than Pokemon, if you ask me. But it's good to know that after almost 30 years, the Digimon team isn't struggling with the Pokemon comparison.

Digimon Story Time Stranger launches to bigger player counts than any Persona or single-player Final Fantasy JRPG in Steam history

Disruption is afoot for Elden Ring Nightreign. A new class has been revealed for the soulsborne boss rush, the Scholar, who provides support from further back in the play area, something that should be useful indeed.

As the moniker implies, the build is centred on someone who's studied Limveld. They've looked at the plants, investigated the ruins, and you better believe they've read all the lore – exhaustively so, by the looks of things. Through all this carnal knowledge, they wield abilities that can weaken enemies and provide hearty buff to their allies.

The trailer includes examples of both, as the character utilizes a projectile spell to stop a heinous Nightlord and their minions from moving forward. This then allows two Nightfarers to gain the advantage in the encounter, taking on a gigantic monster each and doing well for themselves.

Next up is the more exciting part, with the Scholar taking on the infamous Libra. Through their spells, gleamed from a tome they carry into the arena, because of course they do, their allies get some form of advantage that seems to make Libra's spawn considerably easier. Scholars have a cane for close combat, too, but since it gets shattered in one swing from a big sword in a clip, I wouldn't count on it beyond emergencies.

As is typical of FromSoftware, we just have what's in this video for details right now. But there isn't long to wait before we can start creating builds based on the Scholar and see what they’re made of. It arrives, alongside another class, the Undertaker, with the Elden Ring Nightreign The Forsaken Hollows DLC on December 4.

Elden Ring Nightreign's The Forsaken Hollows DLC teases a boss fight against 7 enemies, and the community is living in fear: "This fight is either gonna be one of the best, or one of the worst"

Upcoming RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker has a lot going for it, what with it being directed by Konrad Tomaskiewicz, the man who led development on The Witcher 3. Besides studio Rebel Wolves boasting some game dev pedigree, the project holds a distinct selling point of having no central questline for players to follow.

Or, as Tomaskiewicz put it to Eurogamer: "There's no main quest." He continues at length: "You build your experience from the quests you encounter. You know where your [enemy is]. You can attack this place anytime you want to. It's up to you if you want to do it by yourself, or if you want to build yourself, find the powerful items, develop your character, or do some quests and find allies to help you do it."

The idea, in his mind, is to "bring video games closer to pen-and-paper RPGs and give you the freedom to experience what you want to experience." Taking place in the 1300s in part of the Carpathian Mountains, a large mountain range located mostly in Romania but which touches on several countries, The Blood of Dawnwalker has you play as a half-vampire, half-human named Coen, who's racing against time to save his family.

Games have been incorporating elements of tabletop role-play for decades now, and Tomaskiewicz harkens back to a particular benchmark for such things. "Our game is more similar in this area to the old Fallout, the first and second [games], where you have a clear goal and everything is optional - you decide. You travel the world, you decide what you want to do," he says.

Of course, Geralt of Rivia's shadow looms too. "We're taking from our previous experience [The Witcher 3], the things we feel that makes the quest cool - how to build the storytelling in a way that you are engaged and you are immersed, but giving you more freedom," Tomaskiewicz states.

With the likes of Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, The Blood of Dawnwalker has an uphill battle to stand out. But then, that's the kind of situation any Witcher thrives in.

GTA 6 might be the "massive game with massive marketing," but The Witcher 3 director doesn't mind launching his next RPG The Blood of Dawnwalker at the same time: "I'm fine with it"

The Japanese organization Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) – on behalf of member companies like Studio Ghibli and Square Enix creating anime and video games – has formally requested OpenAI avoid unauthorized use of its IP in the Sora 2 AI video generator.

In a written request CODA sent to OpenAI on October 27 and publicly announced on October 28 (noticed by Automaton), the organization says it "considers that the act of replication during the machine learning process may constitute copyright infringement."

Writing on behalf of 36 major Japanese companies, including entertainment behemoths like Aniplex, Toei, and Universal Music, CODA explains "that a large portion of content produced by Sora 2 closely resembles Japanese content or images" as "the result of using Japanese content as machine learning data."

Japan's copyright system requires those looking to use copyrighted material request it ahead of time, in contrast to Sora 2's current system that asks companies to opt-out certain characters' likeness sort of halfway through their usage. CODA warns OpenAI of this fact, noting that "there is no system allowing one to avoid liability for infringement through subsequent objections."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman indirectly addresses this concern about Sora 2's unpopular opt-out policy in an October 3 blog, writing that Sora 2 will eventually "give rightsholders more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls."

"In particular," he continues, "we'd like to acknowledge the remarkable creative output of Japan – we are struck by how deep the connection between users and Japanese content is!" Altman then claims, "We are going to try sharing some of this revenue with rightsholders who want their characters generated by users."

Not good enough, CODA suggests. The organization makes two formal requests of OpenAI: "that its members' content is not used for machine learning without their permission; and, OpenAI responds sincerely to claims and inquiries from CODA member companies regarding copyright infringement related to Sora 2's outputs."

"Respond sincerely," CODA reiterates, "such that both the healthy development of AI technology and the protection of rightsholders and creators' rights are ensured."

Take-Two CEO says AI is "going to be really, really bad" at making video games and probably couldn't even come up with the GTA 6 marketing plan.

Once Upon a Katamari keeps the series' ball rolling – literally. Arcadey, the concept of Katamari revolves around the Prince of Cosmos rolling up all manner of objects, snowball-like into progressively bigger balls by sticking them to his titular katamari ball. Yet, with the early games already seeing you go from tiny housebound spheres to earth-shattering balls of chaos – the question for later sequels has always been, fittingly, how do you go bigger? Once Upon a Katamari's answer is to, instead, go a little deeper.

Katamari has gotten us used to rolling through charming lo-fi dioramas, learning how to use both analog sticks to push the ball through all the usual houses, gardens, towns, and cities. Once Upon a Katamari instead uses a time travel conceit to send us rolling through history – a perfect excuse to majorly shake up the types of objects we roll from era to era (each has its own set of levels), the locations we do it in, and even why we roll. Some of Once Upon a Katamari's best moments use each period setting to deliver set piece style missions. It's an incredibly smart way to give us more katamari on a scale that feels fittingly big, while giving each rolling adventure a different feeling and focus.

Kat' at it again

The core of the Prince's rolling throughout Once Upon a Katamari is much the same as ever – using the analog sticks you must manoeuvre the ball through a stage under time pressure (ranging from around five minutes to twice that and beyond), usually to reach a certain size goal. Simply touching another object of roughly the same size as your katamari sticks it to it, affecting the rolling physics for a period of time until it flattens out.

The quickfire arcadey genius of Katamari is instinctively weighing up a horde of vibrant, charming, low-polygon objects to identify which ones you can safely scoop up, and which you'll just bash into, losing precious time. The two-hand style steering adds a wrinkle as well, combined with lightweight momentum, which means it can be a genuine challenge to thread the needle on adding bigger and bigger objects to your katamari. Then, once you've sufficiently increased in size, doubling back to nab objects you were too small to before, and deciding when to – in most levels – break out of your confines and roll through new areas with even bigger objects before the timer hits zero and the King of Cosmos sassingly judges your prowess.

Once Upon a Katamari is at its best when it's really that simple. You can press a dash button for a quick boost that takes away control briefly, or flip over your katamari by clicking in the buttons to do a u-turn, but for the most part there's nothing particularly fancy to it – just good old fashioned ball rolling of the sort series fans will be more than familiar with. New powerups add some new considerations, and I was worried the likes of a magnet ability would make the rolling action too easy – but they're all brief enough to feel fine if not especially revolutionary.

Once Upon a Katamari really shines through its settings. Earlier games already had a diorama-like feel as you rolled through little events throughout town, and something about traveling between historical periods really enhances that. It almost has a Where's Waldo-like quality to it when you're rolling big enough to get a sense of these spaces. There's a banquet in the shogun's castle in Edo Japan, a cowboy gold rush, an Ancient Egyptian tomb… all full of delightfully posed little jokes and characters (and charming anachronisms) before you roll them up.

As with recent predecessors, missions that de-emphasize rolling your katamari as big as possible can feel out of step. Thankfully, though, they're mostly confined to optional side missions – some of which do need to be completed to earn enough crowns to progress through the story, but that's never very many. Some might focus on, say, collecting only money, or collecting every object of a certain size, or scooping up roses to create a bouquet – a fine enough challenge, but when I literally can't roll up other objects beyond that to get bigger, it feels antithetical to the katamari challenge to me. Katamari should be a devastating force of nature, not something that will arbitrarily decide to only roll up certain objects. Thankfully though, these moments are sparse.

For every mission that's a misstep, Once Upon a Katamari uses its historical settings to come up with even more inventive set piece missions that better vibe with having restrictions. One series of Edo Japan missions (the era which, understandably, seems to have the most levels) has you rolling a small noble boy around a feast to gobble up enough delicious food to fit into a prized piece of armor, going from rolling like a big bit of dry spaghetti to smoother and ball-like the further you get in.

There's always something new and joyous to experience. Another level begins on a pirate ship, but, as you keep rolling, becomes a whole ship battle with a kraken that ends up with you rolling somewhere completely different to where you began. An Ancient Greece level tasks you with headhunting specific famous philosophers for a big debate, having to grow big enough to stick them to you in the process. There's even a whole level that plays on the folkloric hyakki yako, a demon parade. Once Upon a Katamari has rolled up so many ideas that it just feels exciting to take part, all while sowing ball-rolling chaos.

Once Upon a Katamari is immaculately presented as well. Its lo-fi models still work well, offering striking designs for everything from mahjong pieces and sweets to yeti and dinosaurs – everything reacting to being stuck up into the ball wonderfully (there's plenty of overly dramatic yelling as you roll through a street festival). The bopping soundtrack features incredible music to roll to as well, including returning and iconic motifs. Katamari is incredible for a reason, but the kind of game that got it so right on early attempts that it's really been a struggle to justify new releases. Once Upon a Katamari's time travel solution is genius, and just goes to show the series is on a roll.

Once Upon a Katamari was reviewed on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.

Check out our new games list for what to add to your calendar next!

When it was announced that Supermassive Games was stepping in for Tarsier Studios to make Little Nightmares 3, I was conflicted. On one hand, Supermassive made Until Dawn, one of my favorite horror games ever. On the other, that's a high bar to clear, and this horror platformer is a different kind of beast entirely. Sadly, Little Nightmares 3 not only fails to reach the highs of Until Dawn – it falls short of its predecessors, too, carrying over wrinkles I was hoping to see ironed out and underutilizing new features that could've otherwise taken the series into exciting new directions.

Little Nightmares has always been a series that makes up for its clunky controls and shallow gameplay with meticulously crafted vibes: the imposing sense of scale, the wonderfully macabre creatures, and the delicately conveyed lore behind it all. This series is perfect for October, and whether I'm compelled by jumping from platform to platform in-between chase sequences and tedious puzzles doesn't matter. I play these games for the vibes. But with Little Nightmares 3, I was hoping innovations like co-op, a gliding umbrella, and bow-and-arrow would give me something more than just vibes to huff on, but after rolling credits, I'm not sure it even gave me that.

New kids, same chores

The one big highlight in Little Nightmares 3, the ace up its sleeve single-handedly carrying the three stars I'm awarding the game here, is The Carnevale, a lot of which was previously already seen in gameplay trailers. When I emerge from one of Little Nightmares 3's uniformly dour environments into this comparatively vibrant, colorful playground, it's like a breath of fresh air. So much of this game feels like trudging through the same claustrophobic pipes, sneaking past the same twitchy mannequins, and running away from generic arachnid humanoids, and well, The Carnevale at least looks different. You're still just wandering around, occasionally crouch-walking past enemies that, when triggered, rush toward and eat you, and solving uninteresting puzzles, but at least you have something different to look at.

And that, right there, is where the true nightmare lies: the tedium. Little Nightmares 3 is a chore to play. The umbrella? You might think you could ride upward drafts around obstacles or glide haphazardly above a pool of clawing, murderous hands. Gliding mechanics are platforming gold, even when lazily implemented, but nope, in Little Nightmares 3, the umbrella just carries you upwind to higher platforms. And it goes away entirely about halfway through the game.

But the bow-and-arrow and wrench thing! Surely, new protagonists Low and Alone bring something new to the table, gameplay-wise, right? Technically, yes, Low has a bow, and Alone has a wrench. But the limits of the tools' functionality is insultingly simplistic. The bow shoots things, and the wrench whacks things, and that's it. The worst part: many of the game's puzzles are based around these mechanics. Don't know where to go? See a weak point in a wall? Hit it with your wrench. Can't reach a high-up platform? Shoot the string suspending the crate hanging from the ceiling with Low's ranged attack.

Better together. Or not

Co-op is probably the biggest disappointment of Little Nightmares 3. The decision to leave out couch co-op is a baffling misstep. The series has always seemed primed for a second player, but specifically someone in the same room as you. Unfortunately, even if the game offered split-screen, I'm not sure the experience would be any less monotonous.

If anything, the co-op option, which doesn't support drop-in multiplayer and must be committed to from the beginning of each playthrough, just gets in the way of solo play. I can't count the amount of times I died simply because Low, my companion, failed to play her part in time. Otherwise, again, it's just, shoot string, bash object, and far too often, pry something open together, jump in tandem to break through the floor, or move a heavy crate around.

Now do that again, and again, and again, until you're chased by something. The chase scenes are intense, and by far the scariest parts of the game, but they're also the most frustrating. A lot of these encounters feel like 'gotcha' moments where you can't know what the game wants you to do until you're dead.

For example, oftentimes you're running away from a monster, and you slide through a small opening into a new room, and even at full sprint, you're inevitably caught and killed. But if you somehow spot the little box off to the left, obscured by low light, of course, you'll know you're supposed to veer off and hide until the creature goes away. The thing is, when you're being chased by a giant spider lady, the last thing you're paying attention to is a box in the corner of the room, distilling otherwise thrilling games of cat-and-mouse into experiments of trial and error.

The game definitely picks up considerably in its second half, starting with the carnival level. I won't spoil anything, but there were times in the final two chapters where I had to briefly put the controller down to give myself a break from the tension. But again, it's a grating variety of tension that's as much the result of questionable design as intentionally nerve-racking scenarios. There's a lot of stealth action in these parts, burdened by the same monotony of learning enemy behavior through failure that often seems unavoidable, turning them into a guessing game that quickly grows tiring instead of frightening. Still, I was relieved that the frankly boring first half transforms into a fairly stirring, fast-paced, even experimental conclusion where you play with physical light and non-linear exploration in some really fun ways, particularly when you equip an item that blurs the line between nightmare and reality.

'Til death do us part

For better or worse, Little Nightmares 3 definitely feels like a Little Nightmares game. Set pieces, even those that appear monotone in retrospect, are spectacular. There's a playful, mischievous, but ultimately oppressive mood so unique to the series Tarsier created that I'm delighted to find intact, but there are also rough edges still to be sanded down. The distanced perspective and dim lighting characterizing the franchise makes it hard to nail down where to approach a platform from a ledge, again leading to death that frequently feels unwarranted. There are spatial platforming puzzles, absent of environmental or narrative relevance, testing the limits of your patience for rearranging vertical stacks of platforms until precisely positioned. In other parts of the game, I put down the controller to take a breather from the anxiety. In these parts, I put it down because I worried the handles would crack under my aggravated grip.

I don't hate Little Nightmares 3; I only hate that it falls short of my expectations. There's a lot of heart to the story that I can't touch upon, but I applaud Supermassive for its earnest and largely successful attempt to balance foreboding, harrowing themes with childlike, lovelorn characters. While I wished for more variety, what's on display stands tall with the best environmental designs of the series, and particularly in the back half, it's a scarier game than you might expect. There are flashes of brilliance reflected in Supermassive's worldbuilding and emotionally resonant, cinematic storytelling, but in every other regard Little Nightmares 3 is an overly safe, half-baked follow-up where co-op is a hindrance instead of the evolution it should've been.

Little Nightmares 3 was reviewed on PS5, with a code provided by the publisher.

Need to catch up? Take a look at our complete Little Nightmares timeline and story recap ahead of Little Nightmares 3.

Digimon Story: Time Stranger is a welcome return to the series' more standard mechanics after the long-awaited Digimon Survive back in 2022 was a bit of a miss. Time Stranger focuses on developing the already strong monster-raising and battling mechanics of its predecessors, but while telling a new standalone story that doesn't tie into the Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth games with which this shares half a title. It feels like a big leap forward, especially in how Time Stranger can feel quite close to the anime series – something Pokemon often struggles with. It might end up uneven, but this is a promising evolution for Digimon.

You play as an agent of ADAMAS, an organization who investigate strange happenings such as cryptid sightings. While following up leads in one such case, you discover an influx of phase electron lifeforms (Digimon) appearing throughout Tokyo and get caught up in a terrifying, destructive mess of events that threatens to bring about the end of the world. It's a high stakes anime-style plot that appeals to fans of the series like me, and may be one reason Digimon Story: Time Stranger player counts have already blasted past the likes of Persona and Final Fantasy on PC.

Conveniently, you slip through a gap in time and gain another 8 years to figure out just what caused the Shinjuku Inferno and, most importantly, prevent it. Of the two avatar characters you're offered at the beginning, the one you don't choose becomes your Operator, a fellow Agent who phones you up across the timelines to give you mission briefings, chat over what's going on, and consistently remind you that back in the year you came from things are not so good. Because being 8 years ago doesn't negate your work commitments.

Digimon are the champions

As well as sending you years into the past, Time Stranger sees you investigating two realms at once – both the Human World and the Digital World of Iliad. It's fun to run around the Digital World itself, and captures the magical feelings from the anime. Little nods to the series, like finding a group of Digimon hanging out who are all the rookie companions from Digimon Adventure 02 just puts a smile on my face.

Time Stranger's mechanics largely focus on an attribute-based strengths and weaknesses style of combat and building up a strong team with a variety of Digimon so you always have the right one for the job. It's a lot like Persona 5, except my nostalgic attachment to Digimon makes me care about my monster collecting a whole lot more.

Every Digimon's evolutions, skills, and even base stats can be influenced in myriad ways. For this, the Personality system is at the core of everything you do. Your Digimon have a personality that loves to shift around on a big old alignment chart, with quadrants for Valor, Amicability, Philanthropy, and Wisdom. Whereabouts a Digimon's personality sits on this chart will influence which stats they're more likely to improve through levelling up, which Personality Skills they're likely to learn, and some other cool quirks too.

A Digimon's personality changes based on how you respond to questions they ask you. A downfall of this is that many questions don't give you an answer for all categories. Depending on which you get, this does leave you just having to be a bit mean if you don't want all of your party to skew towards the trait they keep offering you. But, an amount of this is also based on where their Personality already lies, and whether they're Vaccine, Data, or Virus type. If all else fails, that's where items come in. Perfecting builds through this system really provides a wealth of customization for you to sink your teeth into.

Who's that Digimon?

To Digivolve into new forms, your Digimon must meet certain criteria such as their own stat levels in say speed or health, or even your own Agent Rank. You can see options on the tree if you've encountered them before, but, with over 450 Digimon in the game, you'll usually have some unknowns before you. Slowly uncovering mystery options from the Digivolution tree is a lot of fun, especially when you find yourself trying to guess who it might be based on silhouette.

It's easy to get caught up trying to unlock new entries and faffing about with a handful of microchips to steer towards evolving how you want. It will take a long time to get all of them, but with the ability to De-Digivolve as well, you have a lot of opportunities to take a Digimon in a different direction and carve out some more levels to make them stronger through the prestige-like process De-Digivolving brings. I think I'm finally understanding the hype of all that Pokedex business. The fate of the world can wait, I need to get a Wizardmon!

On that note, there's also the Convert mechanic. When you fight a Digimon, you gather data that builds up to let you summon one of your own. It seems to take a lot more encounters to get enough data the higher rank the Digimon is, so it can be easier to Convert a Baby Digimon and train them from the ground up. While it doesn't take many levels for them to be able to Digivolve, this also gives you the ability to max level them at each life stage for a super strong Digimon later on.

Taking a few cues from recent Pokemon titles has done some good in keeping Time Stranger up to speed. I particularly love the DigiFarm. Digimon on the DigiFarm won't be available in battle, but they can get a lot done while you're not looking. What's more, the loads of strange items sparkling on the map my magpie eye had me collecting turned out to be for getting Zudomon to build items for the DigiFarm. All that scavenging of Gray Textures was worthwhile!

You can build Training Sets to put a Digimon's growth on a particular path, but also create little decorative items so the place is all nice and pretty. And when you use the Training Sets, you actually get to see them in action. Seeing my Gotsumon hanging out in a tea room surrounded by cute buildings and windmills? It's basically only a couple of steps away from a Digimon cozy game that would own my soul.

The Digital World: Iliad gameplay sections may feel like stepping into the anime, but the dungeons get longer and slower. Thankfully, enemies are visible on the map, so you can try to avoid them or even wipe them out pre-emptively with a DigiAttack when it's time to hustle. Although it does drag the dungeons on a bit, it's a nice touch to include using some NPC Digimon's abilities to help you progress too.

Ironically, considering its title, the actual narrative of Digimon Story: Time Stranger takes a bit of backseat to its wonderful gameplay. It's got just the right amount of cheesy fun and surprisingly emotional moments I've come to expect from Digimon, but the pacing can be a little slow. There's nothing at all wrong with it, and it's a solid accompaniment to the compelling mechanics, but the anime-style story can get a bit lost when you're focused on raising the perfect new monster pal.

Digimon Story: Time Stranger was reviewed on PC, with a code provided by the publisher.

Take a look at our best JRPGs ranking for your next adventure! Or read our list of the best Digimon games.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero launched with an absolutely massive roster, and it's only gotten bigger with DLC. We're up to 208 characters in total, and somehow Bandai Namco isn't done yet. The developers say even more character add-ons are in the pipeline, but at this point I'm struggling to think of what they could even add.

In a new "over 200 characters" trailer – I'm sure Bandai Namco is eagerly awaiting the day it can do the "over 9,000 characters" version – we get a brief rundown of every single character in the game, from Goku (Z-Early) to Goku (Daima) Super Saiyan 4 and every other fighter, Goku or otherwise, in between.

"Enjoy this character showcase as we celebrate the game’s first anniversary," the trailer description reads. "But it's not over yet. The next DLC is already in the pipeline, bringing new characters and more. More info coming January 2026!"

I'm struggling to think of what additional characters the devs could add, but you'll certainly find more hardcore Dragon Ball fans than me offering suggestions – Super 17 from Dragon Ball GT is a popular choice, but personally, I'm holding out for the farmer with the shotgun from the first arc of classic DBZ.

But what I really want to know is just how many more Gokus can be squeezed into the roster. There are somewhere between nine and 39.375 Gokus on the roster depending on how you do the math, but surely the protagonist of a series that's been running this long has a few more variants to be thrown in.

These are the best fighting games available today.

For anyone like me, who could spend hours inside a character creator just determining which set of 20 eyelashes are the most elegantly arranged, stand back. Keep your guard up, find a shield…or just clear your calendar. Once Code Vein 2 comes out on January 30th, 2026, a monstrous new character creator will be unleashed according to a new gameplay presentation from Bandai Namco.

I know I shouldn't be so eager to hand over even more afternoons of my life to yet another pretty lady machine, but I can't help myself. The PlayStation State of Play September 2025 yesterday showed how luxuriously gothic Code Vein 2 looks in a release date trailer, and I got to see even more of its vampiric world up-close at this year's Summer Game Fest, so can you blame a girl for being excited?

"I think there's something that really attracts us to this idea of a vampire as a motif or backdrop for character and storytelling," series producer Keita Iizuka told me through an interpreter at Summer Game Fest, "because they're extremely powerful and very strong. Yet, they have very clear weaknesses. I think everyone kind of universally understands they're not invincible."

It's fitting, then, that Bandai Namco's video shows off character creator presets that look rigorously ill, but also deadly. Bandai consumer insights analyst Dan Tack demonstrates how you can choose any one of these pale, siren-eyed templates or dive into an ocean of fiddly edits.

"You can create your character down to the last detail," Tack says. "Eyes, hair, scars – all kinds of different things that you can tweak and design to your exact specifications." There's a range of skin tones from the iciest white to the most velvety brown. There's a slider for where a curl begins in your hair. There's even an advanced editing option for the glossiness of your eyeballs, God help us.

Flanked by The Duskbloods and The Blood of Dawnwalker, Code Vein 2 swoops into the vampire game renaissance by "improving" the lovably janky Soulslike RPG we got 6 years ago.

Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have been hard at work improving their new multiplayer roguelike spin on Elden Ring, the long-awaited Nightreign, since its release in May – and a new patch following the Deep of Night launch proves that work isn't over.

The Deep of Night was added earlier this month after Nightreign's biggest patch ever as a "high-difficulty" mode with enhanced enemies and a challenging Nightlord whose identity isn't revealed until the expedition begins. It's brutal – so brutal, in fact, that FromSoftware basically decided to add its first-ever easy button to the game with this latest update, allowing players to voluntarily demote themselves and make it easier. That wasn't enough, though, it seems.

New Elden Ring Nightreign patch 1.02.3 has now finally arrived, as detailed on the official Bandai Namco website, and it doesn't just add "a feature to decrease your Deep of Night Depth level by one level" – it also boasts various "balance adjustments," with nerfs for Elden Ring Nightreign bosses and various buffs for the roguelike action RPG's players. The first one increases both "attack power and stagger damage" for the strong and dash attacks of most weapon types.

The second boosts "the stagger damage for dual-wielding jump attacks for Thrusting Swords" – but the buffs don't end there. Another increases "the potency of the 'Improved Skill Attack Power (+1, +2)' passive effects," while other tweaks target healing and more. One that has personally caught my eye (I struggle to keep my health up, OK?) is an adjustment to the Gradual Restoration Flask, allowing it to "provide a small instant heal upon use."

It's not all about buffs, though – and trust me, there are many – as FromSoftware has brought a plethora of nerfs to make expeditions a bit smoother in light of recent difficulty complaints. "Reduced the HP of the night boss version of Ancient Dragon, The Duke's Dear Freja, Tibia Mariner, and Great Wyrm," as reads the first of the so-called "combat and enemies balance adjustments." The next makes Valiant Gargoyle "easier to stagger and reduces its HP."

Patch 1.02.3 also reduces "the HP and attack power of 'Maris, Fathom of Night' during an Everdark Sovereign 'Augur' Expedition in the Deep of Night mode." There's plenty of other helpful changes, and if you're a struggling Nightfarer yourself (as I am), the full notes from Bandai Namco are worth a read – I'm just hopeful they don't spark some of the typical "git gud" discussions such updates on Soulslike games usually do.

It seems like much of the community agrees that the Deep of Night mode is indeed quite challenging, however, judging by discussions online – so who knows, perhaps a majority might agree that the patch 1.02.3 adjustments are much-needed.

Bloodborne remake hopefuls, brace yourselves: Insider says "nothing is happening with Bloodborne, so don't expect that"

Bandai Namco has registered a trademark that has a suspiciously similar name to a forgotten Smash Bros. wannabe.

Bandai Namco is no stranger to the crossover fighting game, with countless Shonen Jump games coming out over the years – most recently 2019's stinker Jump Force, and Tekken and Soul Calibur have both featured crossover fighters. But most notably, Bandai Namco Studios is co-developer of Super Smash Bros. for 3DS, for Wii U, and Ultimate.

As noticed by Gematsu Bandai Namco has filed a trademark for "World Fighters" in Japan. And given that Bandai Namco has quite a few fighting game franchises under its belt, this has the gears turning in people's heads. The GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit is speculating that this could be some form of crossover fighter, whether that be a Bandai Namco-wide crossover game or a new version of the Jump Stars/Jump Force list of crossover anime fighting games. Or, it could be as simple as something like a subtitle for a One Piece or Dragon Ball game.

However, interestingly, the name World Fighters has been used for a crossover fighting game before – that being 2003's forgotten Japan-only Smash Bros-like fighter DreamMix TV World Fighters from Hudson. This saw Hudson, Konami, and Takara team up for a fighting game roster that featured the likes of Metal Gear's Solid Snake, Castlevania's Simon Belmont, Bomberman, and Optimus Prime (three of which featured in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, we're through the looking glass here people).

"Finally the sequel to DreamMix TV World Fighters for PS2," one Reddit user speculates, responding to the new trademark news, as another adds: "Optimus Prime is gonna throw hands with Bomberman again."

Now, granted, it is extremely unlikely that Bandai Namco is working on a new DreamMix TV World Fighters game for a number of reasons, first of all being the game was published by Hudson which was absorbed by Konami. But on the off chance that the two publishers are teaming up on a new crossover fighting game revival (they aren't), I want to be the first to say I called it.

If you play a pirated Super Smash Bros exactly 69 times on N64, Nintendo's "sneaky" anti-piracy measure will "lull the illegitimate user into a false sense of security" and trap you as Mario forever.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has always aimed to be the ultimate Dragon Ball fighter, and as the roster expands and the Goku count grows ever higher through DLC, it's laying a strong claim to that title. Another Goku – or, perhaps, two more Gokus – are hitting the game as part of the upcoming DLC 3 release on September 24, and at this point I'm starting to worry Bandai Namco might be running out of new Gokus to add.

A fresh trailer for DLC 3 shows off a new round of Daima characters with battles based on the anime's final fight – spoiler warning, by the way. The six additional characters are Goku (Mini) Super Saiyan 4, Goku (Daima) Super Saiyan 4, Vegeta (Daima) Super Saiyan 3, Majin Duu, Third Eye Gomah, and Giant Gomah.

Naturally, we here at the GamesRadar+ offices soon started trying to count Gokus, and we keep coming up with different answers because few of us agree on what constitutes an entire Goku. My colleague Scott argues that transformations and other alternate forms do not count as full Gokus, and thus this DLC would bring us to a Goku count of nine.

1. Goku (Z-Early)
2. Goku (Z-Mid)
3. Goku (Z-End)
4. Goku (Super)
5. Goku Black
6. Goku (GT)
7. Goku (Teen)
8. Goku (Mini)
9. Goku (Daima)

I think this count is needlessly reductive. Both myself and US managing editor Rollin agree that Super Saiyans and other similar transformations do count as full Gokus. After all, even this DLC pack is billing Goku (Mini) Super Saiyan 4 as a whole new character, setting the precedent that another transformation increases the Goku count. This count would take us to 24 total Gokus.

1. Goku (Z-Early)
2. Goku (Z-Mid)
3. Goku (Z-Mid) Super Saiyan
4. Goku (Z-End)
5. Goku (Z-End) Super Saiyan
6. Goku (Z-End) Super Saiyan 2
7. Goku (Z-End) Super Saiyan 3
8. Goku (Super)
9. Goku (Super) Super Saiyan
10. Goku (Super) Super Saiyan God
11. Goku (Super) Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan
12. Goku (Super) Ultra Instinct
13. Goku Black
14. Goku (Super) Ultra Instinct -Sign–
15. Goku Black Super Saiyan Rosé
16. Goku (GT)
17. Goku (GT) Super Saiyan
18. Goku (GT) Super Saiyan 3
19. Goku (GT) Super Saiyan 4
20. Goku (Teen)
21. Goku (Mini)
22. Goku (Mini) Super Saiyan
23. Goku (Mini) Super Saiyan 4
24. Goku (Daima) Super Saiyan 4

While I would stop the count here, I do have to acknowledge that some might reasonably argue that fusions – where Goku joins with another character to become something else – should each count as one-half Goku. I think this gets away a bit from the spirit of what a Goku truly is, but I can respect the idea. If we count the various versions of Gogeta, Vegito, and Fused Zamasu as each being 0.5 Gokus, our Goku count reaches 29.

But I'm not the first to do research in this area. Last year, Aftermath did a thorough Goku count to try and estimate exactly how many Gokus were in Sparking Zero. Their count included transformations and fusions, but they also added one more argument: since Cell is partially made up out of Goku's cells, each version of Cell should count as one-fifth of a Goku. This idea would take the Goku count to 30.

However, I would argue that if you're counting a character made up of Goku's cells as a partial Goku, I think any character sharing Goku's genetic material should count here. Yes, that means we need to be counting Goku's children as partial Gokus. If I'm counting correctly, and we assume a child equals one-half of each parent, there are 14 Gohans – equalling seven Gokus – and two Gotens – equalling one Goku.

We've been counting fusions this entire time, so the three Gotenks included in Sparking Zero would give us another three-quarters of a Goku, and Super Buu's absorption of Gohan should probably bring us another quarter-Goku. We've also got Super Buu's absorption of Gotenks, which gives us .125 Gokus, and we can't forget about Goku's grandchildren, as Pan would give us another quarter-Goku.

I think that takes us 39.375 Gokus, but I'm starting to feel a bit like Scott Steiner here. In this instance, the numbers might lie, but they're only spelling disaster for anybody trying to do a thorough Goku audit of Sparking Zero.

These are the best fighting games you can play today.

On the heels of the biggest Elden Ring Nightreign patch yet, developer FromSoftware and publisher Bandai Namco released a new trailer for the action RPG's incoming Deep of Night mode, which will bring new challenges, gear, and multi-day sagas.

Deep of Night is coming to Elden Ring Nightreign today, September 10, at 6:30pm PT / 9:30pm ET / 2:30am BT (September 11). This "high-difficulty" mode sees players cleave through day after day of bosses and enhanced enemies to delve deeper into the night, with Depth 4 being some sort of finale that leads into an "endless battle for those seeking even greater thrills."

"We encourage you to try and see if you can surpass Depth 3," Bandai previously teased.

Today's trailer goes into much more, er, depth. Deep of Night modifies the normal gameplay loop with a new tier of gear, special weapon affixes, and three extra slots for relics with their own unique affixes.

"Depth Relics" are only active in Deep of Night, and since you get three extra slots for a total of six, they won't derail your normal builds.

These relics can roll new and stronger effects, as well as detrimental effects to counterbalance them. It looks like every roll can have a downside, so you'll have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages against each other for your build.

Here are some of the new negative relic effects shown in the trailer:

• Reduced Vigor and Arcane
• Reduced Dexterity and Faith
• Reduced Intelligence and Dexterity
• Taking damage causes Madness buildup
• Taking damage causes Poison buildup
• Taking damage causes Blood Loss buildup
• Reduce damage negation for flask usages
• Lower attack when below max HP
• Poison buildup when below max HP
• Rot buildup when below max HP
• Near death reduces max HP

Some weapons will also spawn with multiple affixes – some positive, some negative. In the trailer footage, there's a recurring theme of negative affixes punishing you for being below full health, but there's a greater variety of effects beyond that. You can also roll multiple positive affixes on one weapon, it seems.

Red-grade weapons, which share the level 7 wield requirement of purple-rarity weapons, feature unique new bonuses. We saw a Jar Cannon that summons lightning on precision shots, and a Blade of Calling that triggers Holy shockwaves on charged attacks.

Even normal enemies will be stronger in this mode, and super-buffed red-tinged variants will also appear. Terrifyingly, this includes a red version of the Bell Bearing Hunter, an enemy so tanky and lethal even in normal Nightreign that most players avoid it entirely. As you might expect, these variants drop those fancy red weapons. Red-eyed, red-tinged BBH, here we come.

"In Deep of Night, the target Nightlord will not be revealed until the battle begins, and ongoing Shifting Earth at the Roundtable Hold will not be reflected," the trailer narrator explains.

"It is advisable to prepare relic presets in advance to be ready for each Nightlord fight."

The deeper you go, the stronger enemies become. You'll also run into special modifiers, including a nasty one that conceals points of interest on the map and another that completely hides the target Nightlord. Additionally, Everdark Nightlords can randomly appear.

With Everdark versions of all the non-final Nightlord bosses already available, Deep of Night feels like the next step in the Nightreign arms race as we wait on that DLC. The fact that it has a true endless mode feels like FromSoftware saying, "Here you go, sickos, knock yourselves out." And as a sicko who was just getting tired of Nightreign, yeah, I'm thinkin' I'm back.

I love Elden Ring Nightreign but I'm not sure if it's good for my mental health.

Elden Ring Nightreign patch 1.02.2 is rolling out on all platforms, and it's by far the largest update to ever come to FromSoftware's oddball PvE action RPG. It's also among the most player-friendly updates in the developer's modern history, drowning fans in so many buffs and boss nerfs that we're practically playing a different game.

Publisher Bandai Namco has the lengthy patch notes posted here. For starters, every single Nightfarer has been buffed. Here are the key points:

• Wylder's skill got minor boosts for poise and stamina damage, but his special relic effects for added fire damage got significant buffs.
• Guardian gains more strength and dexterity when leveling, deals more damage with halberd guard counters, has greater "angle range" on his Steel Guard passive, and his ultimate art's weapon portion has a wider range.
• Duchess now gains more dexterity when leveling, deals more damage with some dagger attacks, and her ultimate art's invisibility lasts longer.
• Raider deals more stagger damage with greataxes and great hammers, and his skill has longer range. (Relatedly, dual-wield jump attacks for "some large weapons" now deal reduced stagger damage.)
• Revenant's spirits have "adjusted" transparency, and you can now pass right through the spirits Helen and Frederick.
• Recluse deals more damage with the offensive Magic Cocktail, and this will cast spells more quickly. The relic effect that boosts her max HP after her ultimate has increased potency and now "persists until an attack is received, even after the art's duration ends."
• Executor has higher attack power with his Cursed Sword, which is higher still when it's in its unleashed state, and some of his beast-form attacks will deal more damage.
• Ironeye didn't receive character buffs, presumably because he's already one of the best Nightfarers in the game, but his "extends duration of weak point" relic now extends the duration even more.

Several neutral relic affixes have also been enhanced, including continuous HP recovery, HP and FP restoration from specific weapon attacks, runes earned from critical hits (this was previously a pathetic flat amount), and HP restored from using items like healing boluses.

There are a few player nerfs slipped in here. Two legendary weapons, the Grafted Blade Greatsword and Marais Executioner's Sword, got some adjustments, and it sure sounds like a nerf. Their passive effects now have a cap, reining in the infinitely stackable stat boosts, but their effects have also had their potency adjusted "accordingly," so maybe we'll gain more power more quickly. I don't think FromSoft wanted us to have 10,000 HP or one-hit bosses, though.

One popular relic, which improves poise and damage negation when knocked back by an attack, has had its duration reduced, seemingly to weaken the functional invincibility that can be attained by stacking low-HP and knockback effects.

Some nerfs work in our favor. As expected, the notoriously difficult Everdark Sovereign Equilibrious Beast has been adjusted.

The summoned condemned Guardian now has reduced attack power, re-summoning condemned no longer increases their damage negation, and various condemned behavior – like reaction to ranged attacks, or target priority "under specific combat rules" – was tweaked. The light dropped by defeated condemned Nightfarers will also grant "increased" enhancement.

Other bosses have been buffed. Everdark Fulghor deals more damage with "some attacks" and – here comes the FromSoftware-mandated Guardian downer – greater HP and stamina damage through guard. Everdark Sentient Pest also deals more guard damage, but the stagger duration of some of its attacks has been reduced (hopefully reducing the stunlock AoE combos).

Two other points stand out to me. Firstly, the Night's Tide will now deal more damage after you beat the second night boss, further limiting farming strategies.

Secondly, FromSoftware has "adjusted the design of the Holy attribute icon," which was famously hard to distinguish from the Lightning icon. The Holy icon now has a noticeable dark orange tint to it. It is a glorious day.

Elden Ring Nightreign answers your unholy prayers with extreme "Deep of the Night" challenge mode, and it even has an endless option.

Are you a FromSoftware sicko who loves doing challenge runs to make these tough games even more difficult? If you said "yes," you're in luck, because Elden Ring Nightreign is getting a new difficulty mode: Deep of Night.

Starting September 11, you'll be able to try out this "high-difficulty challenge mode designed for seasoned players who have navigated through the Night many times." But what's actually harder about it?

First of all, and probably most obviously, the enemies you face will be stronger. You also won't be able to choose which Nightlord to face, so you'll have to prepare for them all.

Some new items called Depth Relics, which can only be found doing the Deep of Night challenge mode, will be available to find. I don't know what they do, I just know that I want them. Additionally, there will be weapons with more effects on them, but some of these will be detrimental to you.

Like Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons, the difficulty of the Deep of Night challenge will increase the deeper you descend. Bandai Namco states, "the ratings will fluctuate based on wins and losses, affecting the 'depth,'" and encourages you to try and get past Depth 3.

If you do, Depths 4 and 5 will have an endless battle, so you can really test your mettle and see how long you can survive. You can read Bandai Namco's full explanation of the new feature right here.

Over on ResetEra, fans are joking about FromSoftware finally adding a difficulty option. "Monkey paw. From adds difficulty settings — it's hard mode," reads one comment.

While you wait, check out the best online games you can play with friends right now.

The release date of Hollow Knight: Silksong was finally announced last week, not at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2025, but in the game's own special presentation a couple of days after. It'll be in your hands September 4, and many indie games have decided to push back their own launches for fear of competing with this long-awaited sequel. But one game remains undeterred: Hirogami.

Hirogami is a 3D platformer coming to PC and PS5 just one day before Silksong arrives, September 3. Set in an origami world, you play as Hiro, capable of taking on animal forms and wielding a giant fan and folding powers.

"Back in June, we announced Hirogami's launch date as September 3, 2025," reads a statement from publisher Kakehashi Games on Bluesky. "Today, we're letting you know that Hirogami's launch date is staying exactly where it is." Brave. Very brave.

The statement continues, noting that everyone is happy for Team Cherry, and excited for Silksong – Kakehashi Games is also "deeply honored to be handling the Japanese localization." But, despite the newfound competition, "for just this once, we refuse to fold." What an excellent pun.

But other games have decided not to push their luck and have instead moved their launch dates back. 2D Metroidvania Stomp and the Sword of Miracles is going to wait for the Silksong hype to die down before releasing its demo, which is smart considering the genre similarity.

RPG Demonschool has gone from September 3 to November 19, so you'll have a solid month and a half to get through Silksong before it demands any of your time. That's one game out of Hirogami's way on the September 3, though, so maybe it sticking to its guns is the right play.

While you wait, check out our list of the best indies of 2024. Make sure you catch up before Silksong takes over your life.

Just days after what seemed to be an accidental leak from Bandai Namco of a potential Tales of Xillia remake, the developer has posted a link for a video airing tomorrow – one that's set to confirm what the new remaster really is.

Nearly a year ago, Bandai Namco unveiled that Tales of Graces f Remastered was in the works and set to launch in January. The studio also hinted toward more remakes in the future, and now that the Tales of Graces f Remastered release has long passed, it's unsurprising that fans are wondering what's next from Bandai. Last week's supposed leak of a Tales of Xillia remaster – a video thumbnail featuring the game's main cast – only furthered expectations.

Although there's still no telling whether or not a Tales of Xillia remake is truly underway just yet, the JRPG community will likely find out tomorrow as a new placeholder on YouTube implies that the next Bandai Namco remaster is going to be revealed. The video, which will premiere around 7am PDT / 2pm UTC / 3pm BST / 4pm CEST, is titled "Next Tales of Remastered is...?"

Fans are, of course, already theorizing ahead of its debut.

Comments on a new online post from Bandai Namco regarding the upcoming reveal show as much, highlighting people's thoughts. "LET IT BE XILLA," exclaims one especially enthusiastic fan.

Another person counters this, saying, "Tales of Destiny, please!"

Elsewhere, someone argues it's "most likely" Xilia, as the game is "the easiest to port to PC and next gen systems." As a Tales stan myself, I do wonder what it'll actually end up being.

If it's truly a Tales of Xillia remaster, will Bandai Namco remake both the first and second parts of the beloved duology? If so, will they release it as one ultimate revamp? Alternatively, do devs have something entirely different up their sleeve? Only time will tell.

Need something to tide you over? Here are the best JRPGs to play right now, and some of the most exciting new games underway.

Hawk-eyed fans caught Bandai Namco Europe posting and hastily deleting a YouTube placeholder for an August 18 announcement video starring much of the main cast of Tales of Xillia and teasing "Tales of Series News," all but confirming that the 2013 JRPG is next in line for a remaster.

The thumbnail for the scheduled video post, per SkyDragonOfThebes on the dedicated Tales Reddit community, features female lead Milla Maxwell and companions Alvin, Leia Rolando, Rowen J. Ilbert, and Elize Lutus (with her doll Teepo). The only one missing from this particular screenshot is male lead Jude Mathis, though it's likely he'll appear elsewhere in the full video once it's released.

This sort of announcement video is Bandai-standard for new Tales releases. Assuming Bandai Namco sticks to this timeline, a Tales of Xillia remaster could well be announced as early as Monday, August 18, some 12 years after the game's global release and nearly 14 after its Japanese launch.

Earlier this year, we got the well-received multiplatform release of Tales of Graces f Remastered, which revitalized 2012's Tales of Graces f, originally released as just Tales of Graces for the Wii in Japan in 2009. If we're lucky, the next remaster will also be available for all platforms, including PC and, now, perhaps Switch 2.

Tales of Xillia would be next in line for a remaster, and Bandai said last August, and reiterated last December, that there's more where that came from and it was positioning itself to release such remasters "fairly consistently."

A Tales of Xillia remaster is particularly exciting to me, not just because the game is still one of my top three favorite Tales installments, but also because it was my introduction to the series. I have fond memories of spending hours upon hours chilling out and practicing combos for Milla and Jude.

To this day, Tales of Xillia has one of the best and most fluid combat systems in Tales and ranks among the best in action JRPGs altogether, especially if you like juggling enemies for an unreasonably long time. Its skill tree, which sees you obtain new abilities by unlocking squares of nodes on a spiderweb-like grid, is another standout system. It did a good job balancing base stats and bespoke upgrades, and the way it presented progression was pretty novel for the time.

A sequel, Tales of Xillia 2, was released globally in 2014, but like some people I found it to be a startlingly similar, slightly worse version of the original game. I wouldn't complain if Xillia 2 also got a remaster, in part because I didn't particularly like the next standalone installment in the series, Tales of Zestiria, but I'm much more interested in the return of the first game. For now, we've got to wait until August 18.

Elden Ring does it again: Bandai Namco lights a cigar with digital profits up ¥7 billion partly thanks to 5 million+ Nightreign players, and doubles down on Sony collaboration

Elden Ring Nightreign recently released the Everdark version of what's widely regarded as its most boring boss fight, Augur, and as many players had feared, the beefed-up version has made a long, floaty boss fight even longer and floatier.

Augur is basically a giant floating wisp that occasionally deigns to attack the player with magic and sleep spells. Everdark Augur is a massive floating wisp that unleashes sleep carpet bombs and constantly flies across the entire, gigantic boss arena. The kicker is that, after dealing with the normal, puny first phase, you get a special magic weapon that you can use to regenerate FP and launch projectile attacks at Everdark Augur, whittling away its chunky health bar.

The thing is, those special projectiles are about the only meaningful way to damage Everdark Augur. Even ranged characters like Ironeye and Recluse will struggle to hit the boss with arrows or spells due to how high it floats and how much it moves, and other attacks probably wouldn't deal much damage anyway.

This means that all the gear you pick up on the way to the final boss is mostly irrelevant, because you're going to be pigeonholed into spamming projectiles no matter what. As a result, buildcrafting for an Everdark Augur run boils down to maximizing stats like magic or weapon skill damage, healing, stamina recovery, FP recovery, and universal bonuses like that.

It's not that Everdark Augur is hard or brutal. The boss genuinely isn't very threatening. Its attacks are pretty easily avoided or blocked, and since the charged projectiles on the special weapons have more range than an anti-tank rifle, you can kind of ignore any concept of spacing or proactivity. But would you believe that a monotonous, pigeonholed, tedious boss fight has not gone down well with a lot of FromSoftware fans.

"'I love the Augur fight so much, I wish it was longer and he traveled a full zip code away with every attack' - No one ever," writes Reddit user CtrlAltDoom, summing up much of the response to Everdark Augur.

SynthLup questioned the bizarre decision to force players to use custom magic weapons against a boss that has high magic resistance. (It is weird.) "Honestly impressed how Everdark Augur made Base Augur look fun," chimed in No-One-9424.

I would actually disagree there. With a buddy, enjoying Nightreign's new duo expeditions, I died to and then beat Everdark Augur last night, and I would argue that at least the music and visuals are good. That said, it is very underwhelming compared to the other Everdark bosses, but I suppose this was expected given how dull Augur is as a baseline.

The special weapons feel like a solution to a problem that didn't really need to exist, but I suppose it is at least different, and arguably interesting, to buildcraft for one specific strategy that's unique to this boss fight. It is kind of lame how multiple classes are just inherently unfavored in the matchup, though. All characters have their bad matchups, but nothing else quite like this, I would say. But this fight does get some brownie points for reminding me of the Storm Ruler boss in Demon's Souls, which is still one of my favorite FromSoftware games.

The good news is that there are a few ways to make Everdark Augur very manageable, if not particularly electrifying. Your_Pal_Kailum has a pretty good writeup that includes many of the strategies my friend and I incorporated in our successful fun. The tragic irony is that this actually makes this boss exceedingly farmable, as it can be difficult to fail once you know what you're doing. Here's a shortlist:

• Stay far away from your teammates (unless you need to revive them) to reduce AoE overlap
• Make an empty spot in your main hand weapons to instantly equip the special weapon when you acquire it
• Focus on transferable stat bonuses when drafting rewards and gear throughout the run
• Take any form of sleep resistance you can get
• If the lock-on will cooperate, focus on Augur's energy orbs when they appear to stun the boss
• Use your weapon's fully charged projectile attack when the boss is extremely far away, as it seems to have functionally infinite range
• Try to find a Sacred Seal with a healing spell on it, because you'll have infinite mana, and therefore infinite healing, thanks to the custom weapon's FP regeneration

FromSoftware had one big problem turning an old Dark Souls 3 boss into an Elden Ring Nightreign boss, and apparently it solved it by yeeting him into the sky.

We live in an era of nonstop remasters, remakes, and re-releases for stone-cold classics, but the true greats make up a pretty small section of gaming history. What of our nostalgia for those 7/10 PS2 platformers we played through on lazy weekend rentals? Well, Bandai Namco had a treat for us during today's Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase with the reveal of Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac.

Yes, Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac is a remake – and yes, the devs are quite particular about this being a ground-up rebuild – of the 2002 original. It's got full voice acting across the cast, a landing target to help you aim your jumps, a seemingly Mario Odyssey-inspired co-op mode where player two controls a helpful drone, and optional mission objectives that'll reward you with items to customize your look.

It seems to be a very full-featured remake for a game that might well have been confined to the bargain bin of history. The original was broadly regarded as a decent if fairly unremarkable platformer whose PS2 edition earned a 73 Metacritic. That's a better score than many of the dozens upon dozens of platformers released in the era got, but this is still more Billy Hatcher than Jak and Daxter.

And yet there's something nice about a game like this getting the full remake treatment. In the wake of games like Glover, Croc, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, and yes, the first Pac-Man World getting their moment in an arguably undeserved spotlight, I'm just happy that old platformers like Pac-Man World 2 are still getting to shine. (Even if I'd probably prefer to dig up a $10 copy of the PS2 original over this $30 remake.)

Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac launches across PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, Switch 1, and PC via Steam on September 26.

Sometimes, a much lesser game still scratches an itch that the best Mario games can't satisfy.

Bandai Namco and FromSoftware have been hard at work improving their new multiplayer roguelike spin on Elden Ring, the long-awaited Elden Ring Nightreign – but they've had to postpone a hotly anticipated update due to severe weather warnings following an earthquake.

At the tail end of last week, developers lifted the veil on an update Nightreign fans requested before the game even launched – one adding duos, or a two-player mode, to the game. Patch 1.02, which was set to bring duos and some "quality-of-life UI improvements, including more Relics filtering options," to Nightreign, was scheduled to release today. As FromSoftware reveals in a new online post, however, the patch is no longer coming on July 30.

Instead, it should drop tomorrow, on July 31. "Due to the tsunami warning following the earthquake near the Kamchatka Peninsula," explain the devs, "we have decided to postpone the distribution of the Elden Ring Nightreign Patch 1.02, which was scheduled for today, to tomorrow, July 31 (Thursday) after 10:00 CEST | 1:00 PDT." The studio adds that the new Everdark cycle, which was supposed to come after 1.02 and add beefed-up versions of more Nightlords, is also arriving late.

"Additionally, the second cycle of Everdark Sovereign, which was scheduled to start at 03:00 CEST | 18:00 PDT (7/30) tomorrow, will also be delayed until after the update file has been distributed," writes FromSoftware. "Thank you for your understanding."

The news regarding Patch 1.02 and the second cycle comes from the devs following a devastating 8.8 magnitude earthquake just off Russia's coast and subsequent tsunami warnings in Japan.

Although the situation itself is anything but heartwarming, fans are gathering in the replies to wish devs and fellow players alike well. "Stay safe, everyone," comments one. Another says the call to postpone was a "great decision," while "wishing everyone's safety."

After reading our Elden Ring Nightreign review, check out our Elden Ring Nightreign tips to help you beat the Nightlords.

Everyone's favorite voiceless FromSoftware extraordinaire, Zulie the Witch, has uncovered how one boss fight in Elden Ring Nightreign needed to be changed to work around a visual detail previously obscured by a cutscene.

FromSoftware developers are the masters of asset reuse, and Nightreign shows off the studio's prowess perfectly. Plenty of bosses from older games make an appearance, and some are changed. As Zullie the Witch notes, this is necessary when bringing them from one game to another, as their old gimmicks may not work in Nightreign.

Zullie highlights one subtle change that has been made to Nameless King to make his fight more suitable for this multiplayer experience. An optional boss in Dark Souls 3, he rides a Stormdrake in the first phase of the fight, before dismounting and absorbing its soul in an ode to Ornstein and Smough from Dark Souls 1.

In Dark Souls 3, the cutscene allows the devs to swap the Nameless King model for one that's about 35% smaller, Zullie claims. However, in Nightreign, there's no cutscene, so how does FromSoftware make the change without us noticing?

Now, in Nightreign, he simply rockets himself upwards before coming back to land slightly smaller than he was before. In the chaos of battle you may not even notice it. Zullie says he disappears about 105 meters up, near the doors of the Spirit Shelter, and then the smaller model appears and is what comes down.

I love how much smoke and mirrors there are in video games. They're all an absolute miracle.

While you're here, check out our Elden Ring Nightreign review, as well as our Elden Ring Nightreign tips to help you beat the Nightlords.

Signing on to a brand-new "strategic partnership," Sony has acquired 16 million shares of Elden Ring publisher Bandai Namco for 68 billion yen – approximately $464 million.

The two companies reveal as much in a new statement via Sony's official website, outlining the deal made and what it might mean for future Bandai Namco releases. Following the acquisition of approximately 2.5% of the latter brand's total issued shares, Sony states that the companies will begin to "focus on expanding the fan community for IP such as anime and manga around the world and strengthening engagement."

This plan rings true, particularly in the anime field where rapid market growth is anticipated, while merging their strengths to create new and emotionally moving experiences for fans, and as a result of these efforts, maximize the value of IP."

The announcement also describes how the two "intend to implement initiatives including the expansion of works as well as products and services based on IP developed by Bandai Namco."

On the new partnership, Bandai Namco executive vice president Nobuhiko Momoi says the company is "filled with excitement about the potential to create new entertainment by combining Sony Group's strengths and technological capabilities across various entertainment fields with Bandai Namco's IP axis strategy."

Sony chief strategy officer and representative corporate executive officer Toshimoto Mitomo shares similar words.

"Through this partnership, we aim to co-create an array of content and experiences that exceed expectations and deliver Kando (emotion) to even more fans," writes Mitomo.

The future certainly looks bright for the two – and judging by Bandai Namco's past anime-aligned releases, like Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, and its future launches, including Code Vein 2, Sony couldn't have picked a better partner for its plans.

Here's hoping that, together, Bandai Namco and Sony can add to the ever-growing list of best anime games – I know I'll personally be looking forward to more.

Here are some of the most exciting new games this year and beyond that you should keep an eye on.

Of all the best retro remakes and reboots of old games, Shadow Labyrinth might very well end up as one of the strangest. A dark and gritty sci-fi game about cruel enemies, all the while being empowered by the dark, eldritch horror known as… er, Pac-Man? Yes, Shadow Labyrinth is a reboot of the Pac-Man franchise that seems to be inspired by games like Hollow Knight, Metroid and Inside, among other things, and certainly one of the more unique new games to come out in recent memory. I can't say anybody saw it coming, but I suppose you should credit developer Bandai Namco with not being too obvious and wanting to keep things fresh. Personally, I can't wait for the boss battle with a giant cherry.

But Shadow Labyrinth is only the latest in a grand history of retro reboots that went out to reinvent the games they were building on. Some of these stumbled hard, like Metroid: Other M falling short of the best Metroid games, or the 2002 Space Invaders remake "Space Raiders" best being forgotten. But there are some success stories! In fact, some of the best games in recent memory have been new takes on the supposedly "untouchable" classics.

With that in mind, I've been going back through my library of games to enjoy all the great reworkings and modern twists on old classics out there, the 5 best retro remakes and reboots, or at least those sequels that found new angles on what came before. Though for the sake of this list, I'll be considering "retro" as anything that came out 20 years ago or more. If that slaps you in the face with the cruel reality of the merciless passage of time, so be it.

5. Tetris 99

Developer: Arika
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch

It shouldn't work. It couldn't work. "What if Tetris was a Battle Royale Game" sounds like some silly meme, and yet the end result is undeniably entertaining. With nearly a hundred players all furiously building walls at each other like competitive bricklayers, there's something completely absorbing about the sheer frenzy of it all.

If you've got a Switch online subscription, you can get this one for free, and it's definitely worth a try on that basis alone. That being said, maybe brace yourself for a brutally tough playerbase – after having been out for several years at time of writing, those remaining are likely to be some very stiff competition.

4. Wolfenstein: The New Order

Developer: MachineGames
Platform(s): PC, Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3

The Wolfenstein franchise has had multiple reboots and remakes to various degrees of success, but it's the New Order that easily takes the gold. Focusing on a whole new alt-history continuity where the Nazis win WWII with space-age tech, hero B.J. Blazkowicz becomes head of the resistance and begins fighting back in colorful locations all across the world – and even beyond it.

Yes, the New Order is a gleefully fun and ridiculous game – to the extent that one mission has you fighting fascists on the moon while dual-wielding shotguns – and yet it's really well-written in a way that can be incredibly affecting, with character development being a high point in our Wolfenstein: The New Order review. Despite his capacity for extreme violence, Blazkowicz is a soft-spoken protagonist who seems permanently (and understandably) exhausted by his exploits, and the supporting cast is all robustly written too. Not to mention that you can actually play part of the original Wolfenstein in a hidden easter egg!

3. Pokemon Heart Gold and Pokemon Soul Silver

Developer: Game Freak
Platform(s): Nintendo 3DS

Let's get this out of the way: Pokemon Gold, Silver and Crystal, the second generation, are the best Pokemon games in the core franchise… Or at least they were, until Heart Gold and Soul Silver basically just improved over them in every way possible. This is arguably the only regular remake on this list, rather than a full reboot, but to be honest, HG/SS builds so expansively on what came before that they feel like a bona fide elevation.

As games go, these are complete fan-pleasers. You want quality of life improvements that don't compromise the core experience? You want your Pokemon to follow you around like they did in Pokemon Yellow? How about having your Pokemon follow you around in real life, with the attached Pokewalker device? I tell you, if Game Freak wants to win people over, just port these to Nintendo Switch 2 – it'll be the easiest fortune they ever made.

2. Doom (2016)

Developer: iD Software
Platform(s): PC, Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch

The 2010s were just a really good time for reimaginings of classic FPS shooters, perhaps none greater than Doom (2016), a game so good it launched a new era for Doom games that's still ongoing today, and arguably helped to inspire the bouncier, faster-paced era of shooters that supplanted the heavier, more realistic military ones before it.

Doom (2016) is a game so cut down to basics that it's both deeply refreshing and completely hilarious. The Doom Slayer is basically the Tasmanian Devil, a vortex of endless violence who wakes up, starts murdering demons, and does nothing else for the next fifteen hours. Fighting first across a Martian space base before venturing into hell itself, there's never a moment where you doubt that you're the most dangerous thing on the battlefield, submitting anything the slightest bit infernal to atrocities that even they would probably consider a bit much. Still, that's part of its charm, and one of the reasons that our Doom review gave it full marks.

1. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Developer: Ubisoft Montreal
Platform(s): PC, PS2, GameCube, Xbox

Did you forget that this one wasn't the first? The original Prince of Persia was a supremely retro step-platformer that came out in 1989, for the Apple II computer! The legendary 2003 reboot for the franchise immediately became a contender for one of the greatest games ever made, and Sands of Time has managed to hold onto that crown and stay in those discussions ever since.

A fluid and wonderfully charismatic game with a great gimmick, Sands of Time blends parkour, combat, and the ability to play with time seamlessly together, while also featuring a great story and developing romance behind it all. A highly anticipated remake has been in development hell for years, but if you can find a copy for PC or an old PS2 to play it on, you'll still have a great time with it even now.

Feeling old-school in your tastes? You can check out the best PS2 games right here, or go even further back with the best retro games!

So, the good news is that you should feel some level of familiarity with Elden Ring Nightreign's next round of boosted Everdark Sovereign bosses, because they're the same creatures from FromSoftware's debut of the limited-time challenges. The bad news is, this time, they're returning as rotating "pairs" to make a given week more difficult, and to make you pee your pants.

"From the Night, familiar terrors rise anew," developer FromSoftware announces in a July 8 post on Twitter. "The Everdark Sovereigns Gaping Jaw, Sentient Pest, and Darkdrift Knight Nightlords will come back in pairs over the next three weeks."

This is what the schedule looks like at the moment:

• July 10 to July 17 - Gaping Jaw and Darkdrift Knight
• July 17 to July 24 - Sentient Pest and Darkdrift Knight
• July 24 to July 31 - Gaping Jaw and Sentient Pest

"May shadows writhe beneath your strikes," FromSoftware continues on Twitter. Sure, or may the already repulsively violent Gaping Jaw keep its mouth shut for once.

"Gaping Jaw twice?" concurs FromSoftware enthusiast SweetPeachGames. "Fuck my life."

"Time to delete Nightreign and move on to better things," says another reply.

If you really must abandon Limveld out of fear, it probably is best you do it now. In a subsequent tweet, FromSoftware says solemnly that "the Night grows deeper still. The Everdark Sovereigns Tricephalos, Augur, Equilibrious Beast, and Fissure in the Fog will be the next abominations to lay waste to Limveld." These creatures don't yet have arrival dates, though, for some FromSoftware sickos, the dread that comes with that sort of mystery is the point of playing.

I hope you're not squeamish, because Elden Ring Nightreign lets you find and loot your own corpse to steal back your best gear on your next run: "I couldn't have even imagined that was possible."

Let Me Solo Her, the Elden Ring legend who helped countless players defeat Malenia, the hardest boss in the game, has just reached 700,000 subscribers on YouTube. In a celebratory Q&A, he shares his thoughts on Elden Ring Nightreign and upcoming Switch 2 exclusive The Duskbloods.

"So far, Nightreign has been an absolute blast to play and I'm already 155 hours in," he says. "I think that's a record for the amount of hours that I've put in [in] such a short time."

The live-service and roguelite elements of Nightreign make it very moreish, so I'm not surprised this is the fastest Let Me Solo Her has racked up that number of hours.

"And with the way the enhanced bosses have been coming out, I really like the direction they're going with this. I'm hoping for new maps and new characters now for Nightreign."

The first of the enhanced, limited time bosses, known as Everdark Sovereigns, was Adel, Baron of the Night – a juiced-up version of the Gaping Jaw Nightlord that was a real tough nut to crack. The second, Fulghor, Champion of Nightglow, was considered relatively easy by the community, and the third one is a now a trio boss, so good luck.

As for The Duskbloods, Let Me Solo Her still isn't sure about it, mostly because he'd need to buy a Nintendo Switch 2 specifically for that one game, and "I don't really play other Nintendo games as of right now."

Despite spending so much time on Nightreign, "I actually still do help people in Elden Ring, although it is significantly fewer." He now looks for people asking for help in the game's Discord server.

And his exploits are so legendary that they even get recognized in other games. He shares a screenshot of a chat log in Helldivers 2, where one player asks: "Is that the real Let me solo her?" To this, he replies patriotically: "Focus on the mission at hand, Helldiver."

While you're here, make sure to check out our Elden Ring Nightreign review, as well as our top Elden Ring Nightreign tips so you don't need Let Me Solo Her's help.