If you've kept up with Fire Emblem over the past decade, you're probably familiar with the tale of its downfall and rebirth, or at least one version of it. Intelligent Systems and Nintendo decided North American consumers were finally capable of purchasing strategy games and published the seventh Fire Emblem game, The Blazing Blade, called simply Fire Emblem for international audiences in 2003. Thus began a roller coaster of successes and failures. In 2012, as the series was on the brink of collapse, Fire Emblem Awakening launched with a cast of marriage candidates and countless permutations of their playable, genetically modified children as a last-ditch attempt to save the series. It worked! It was a miracle! Or a shameful concession to the popularity of games like Persona, depending on who's talking. It was neither, though. Intelligent Systems and Nintendo already paved the road to salvation 30 years previously with Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War.

Each April marks the annual anniversary of William Shakespeare's birthday. The famous playwright would've been a ripe old 462 this year, had he not died and if it were possible for anyone to live that long. Rather than marking the occasion by watching Hamnet again, I did the next most logical thing: pondering what video games Shakespeare would've enjoyed.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's final act and ending ruffled some feathers. Developer Sandfall Interactive did a bit of a bait-and-switch, subverting player expectations with some big reveals at the end of the second act. And the ending decisions were controversial, since there was no "good" ending. Someone was miserable in some capacity, and it was impossible to save everyone. It wasn't what people wanted. But such an outcome was the only possible type of ending for the story Sandfall told up to that point. It was an unflinching look at the tragedy of family relationships that we rarely see in video games, and it's why Expedition 33 made such an impact on people who played it.

Part of Psychonauts 2's charm is how it tackles serious mental health topics without getting too depressing or losing its meaning in comedy. It's a mark of thoughtful storytelling, the kind that keeps stories with something to say from venturing into preachy territory. And one of the best examples of this is near the end, during the PSI-King Sensorium level. On the surface, it's a silly, hippy-inspired tale of an old man with regrets. But one line near the end — "Memories, my boy. Just a show we put on inside our heads." — captures the spirit of the game and turns the whole thing into something much deeper.

It's impossible to play a 10-year-old game and be online without spoilers, so I thought I knew what to expect about Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward's big death long before I experienced it. It would be sad, I thought, but surely not as meaningful as folks made it out to be. After all, character deaths aren't a big deal for me in most stories. I often find them annoying — shallow emotional ploys that work too hard to make you feel A Thing without providing much reason for why you should feel it. A single death couldn’t elevate Final Fantasy XIV’s story that much, right? How wrong I was.

I like the trash Pokémon. Not the dippy grinning ice cream cone or the Bread Dog. I mean the actual trash Pokémon, the ones made of sludge and refuse and municipal negligence. They fascinated me when I first encountered them and were a big reason why Pokémon captured my imagination. Most Pokémon fall neatly into the animal, vegetable, or mineral category. A small subset doesn't, the weird humanoid-ish critters like Mewtwo and the Hitmon family of… whatever they are.

Final Fantasy 13 launched worldwide 13 years ago, and, since then, it’s developed a bit of a dodgy reputation. Environments that amounted to little more than bland hallways, a convoluted plot with a penchant for proper nouns, yet more changes to the battle system, and a dudebro hero whose heart of gold can’t mask his innate annoyingness came to define this awkward entry in the storied series. However valid some of these criticisms might be, they overshadow one of the more complex and important s

Elden Ring seems like your average RPG on the surface. It’s got all the usual components; a magical world of fantasy, political intrigue, impossibly large weapons, and the promise of a fight against a god at the end. It even turns out you fight more than just one god before the credits roll – and that’s the least of the game’s deceptions. Elden Ring is built on deception. It lies to you. Not just once, but for the entire game, turning you into an unwitting champion for a cycle of abuse and oppr