Best Stylish Action RPG/Gambling Simulator: Wuthering Waves
Punishing: Gray Raven is easily one of my favorite mobile games, so I was over the moon when an official PC client released. Once developer Kuro Games announced their follow-up to PGR and revealed it to be an open-world action RPG, I was initially underwhelmed. Everything looked like a Genshin Impact clone and lacked any of the character, style, or sleek high-octane combat that PGR delivered years prior. Yet, after a few rocky betas and a deluge of feedback, Kuro Games locked in and transformed Wuthering Waves into a wondrous, stylish, and incredibly rewarding experience that earned the right to compete with anomalous juggernaut Genshin Impact.
As Wuthering Waves focuses on a post-apocalyptic world where society managed to hang on by a thread, the game is much more sci-fi than expected and feels right at home alongside PGR. Although the initial chapters are less than stellar on the writing front due to an overcorrection on received feedback, the narrative quickly finds its footing and goes from a decently written story to an expertly crafted tale that mixes in numerous sci-fi and fantasy concepts while touching on mental and emotional nuance one might expect from the deepest visual novels. With fantastic writing, a gorgeous world with eye-catching vistas and dramatic setpieces, loveable and inspiring characters, and some of the best stylish character action combat there is, Wuthering Waves is at the top of my list for 2024’s game of the year.
Best NieR-enough of the Year: Stellar Blade
At some point in the future, Yoko Taro will break out of whatever jail Square Enix put him in, pull up in his clown car, and tell us, “Get in, losers. We’re going trauma shopping.” Until that fateful day, we’ll look forward to the next entry in the NieR franchise. For now, we’re entering a golden age of games about sad robots asking existential questions, and Stellar Blade is at the top as far as showcasing a handful of NieR: Automata’s best qualities: dramatic setpieces in a dying world and pristine combat mixed with the year’s best soundtrack. It’s abundantly clear that NieR: Automata was the primary inspiration for Stellar Blade alongside a healthy dose of Devil May Cry and a touch of Dark Souls, but it does its best to create its own identity as a very stylish character action RPG.
While Stellar Blade’s gameplay is nigh mechanical perfection, the story left something to be desired. It was missing that magical touch of madness borne from a man wearing a mask rolling around on the floor and shouting profanity at his employer. That said, Stellar Blade’s presentation, combat, exploration, and genre shifts ensure that it’s one of the best action RPG experiences this year and deservingly gets the nod from Yoko Taro himself. With a PC version dropping in 2025, more people will get to experience the flashy, stylish, and incredibly satisfying game that lived up to the hype. Stellar Blade is easily one of my favorite games this year despite a few rough edges, and I’m eagerly awaiting news of a sequel with a more serious, snarky, and tired Eve.
Best Broken Timeloop of the Year: Granblue Fantasy: Relink
When we started writing our Most Anticipated Games of 2025, I immediately began writing about Granblue Fantasy: Relink as if I were trapped in a time loop. It took a moment to realize that not only had the game actually released, it was also incredible. For good reason, Granblue Fantasy: Relink appeared on our Most Anticipated Games of 2020, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The oft-delayed action RPG from Cygames was dripping with style and flair while making promise after promise that seemed impossible to uphold. Yet finally, in 2024, it saw the light of day, and it’s safe to say it was well worth the wait.
Granblue Fantasy: Relink exceeded my expectations in every way. It felt as if the developers traveled forward in time and played Final Fantasy XVI over and over and decided, “we can do it better” when it comes to setpieces, combat, and spectacle. Not only was the single-player campaign perfectly paced with the right amount of challenge, the multiplayer aspect kept me coming back for hundreds of hours. My one lament about Granblue Fantasy: Relink is that the developers didn’t make it a live service game, opting to release a few updates and DLCs rather than keep a constant cycle of new characters, bosses, maps, and modes. I can only hope this is due to development moving along for an eventual sequel—one I pray won’t take another seven years to release.
Best Surprise of the Year: Girls Frontline 2: Exilium
I wasn’t expecting to have a Girls Frontline game at the top of my list this year, but here we are. Girls Frontline 2: Exilium is a tactical RPG that revolves around a collection of androids (known as Dolls) who were essentially mass-produced weapons. While they were named after the guns they wielded in an effort to keep them dehumanized and expendable, a singularity occurred that granted them a sense of sentience and a touch of humanity. With their newfound freedom, they’re free to shirk their old gun names and pick their own, ensuring they’re seen as living beings rather than weapons. In a largely post-apocalyptic world, the Dolls are making lives for themselves by working as mercenaries, rescuers, mechanics, and more.
With a cover system akin to XCOM and an array of RPG mechanics, the more difficult encounters are incredibly fun when trying to strategize and synergize what units work best against the gigantic monstrosity ahead. As someone who enjoys conditional effects in RPGs (e.g., do more damage if enemy suffers burn, deal hydro damage if under two or more buffs, apply debuff if attacked, etc.), the amount of variety in each character’s kit gives me the same satisfaction when building characters in a Trails game or creating an over-the-top item or piece of gear in an Atelier game. Yet, the most striking part of GFL2 is the writing. The characters are endearing, and their personal stories are a mix of tragedy and humor with an air of positivity gracing a grim and dark world.
Who knew a sequel to a game about gun gijinkas (personification of inanimate objects) would be such a fantastic tactical RPG with a mature cast and very well-written story? Gacha trappings aside, it’s a fun little gem, and I’m quite certain I’ll stick with it, given it created such a fun and positive first impression.
Non-RPG of the Year / Best Addiction: Balatro
While it’s not an RPG by any metric, the roguelike poker game Balatro gives the same fuzzy feelings when overcoming a difficult boss or creating a perfectly broken build in an RPG. For the uninitiated, Balatro is essentially a five-card stud poker game where the player must obtain a certain number of chips each round. The standard poker rules apply, yet there’s a fun twist with Balatro: cheating is highly encouraged via a multitude of joker cards, tarot cards, planet cards, and a bevy of enhanced playing cards with fun little tricks.
How about playing a hand with five aces? Skipping over numbers to create a straight with 2, 4, 5, 7, 9? Using only four cards for a flush? Every card counts as a face card, and all face cards are played twice and turned into gold? Upgrading hands and changing cards into other cards? The funnest part of Balatro is seeing just what absurdity a pile of jokers can create, and there is a sense of immense satisfaction watching numbers multiply upon themselves to create a score so large the game gives up trying to calculate it. There is a certain joy in cheating so hard in poker that it breaks the concept of poker itself, and that is why Balatro is one of the best and most addictive games this year.
