The Best Games Of 2023 (So Far) [Updates]

The first Octopath Traveler stunned players with Square Enix’s new-look “HD-2D” graphics. The turn-based combat and pixel art hit many right in the nostalgia, spurring memories of SNES classics. However, it was held back by a pretty weak story, repetitive combat, and a lack of cohesion between party members.

Square Enix heard all these complaints and perfected its Octopath formula with the sequel. All eight travelers have stellar stories that slowly begin to intertwine. The voice acting took a huge jump in quality, particularly with Alejandro Saab as the tortured Osvald. The combat retains the turn-based random encounters, but with added flare and power-ups to make strategies far more unique. Side-quests are rewarding, detailed, and provide some of the most pleasing moments in the game.

Read more: 15 Hours With Octopath Traveler II: Good But Disjointed Stories (So Far)

Octopath Traveler II improves on every shortcoming of its predecessor, while adding new dynamics that make the game shine from front to back. Pair that with its still-gorgeous graphics and you’ve got yourself an instant JRPG classic. Yet another example of sequels running away as the best games of 2023. — Jeb Biggart

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch

Rough Average Playtime: 61 hours

The Resident Evil 4 remake was not only a beautiful example of what a remake should be—that is, a thoughtful consideration of its audience balanced with dedication to the original game, aided by the gorgeous graphics that passing years allow—but also a reminder of how timeless Resident Evil 4 itself is.

Endearingly goofy dialogue and entertaining but complex relationships between protagonist Leon S. Kennedy and the lucky ladies in his life still resonate after nearly two decades. Who can forget the highly capable Ada Wong, or the (against all odds) hopeful Ashley Graham? The unbridled strength of the game’s mutant enemies, who encapsulate how grotesquely selfish human greed can be when left unchecked, continue to terrify, too. Not many games feel so fresh after 20 years, but Resident Evil 4 does, and so it’s a rare classic that continues to work for its widespread respect. — Ashley Bardhan

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 16 hours

Diablo IV has a stellar gameplay loop that’s both engrossing and rewarding. Sure, it’s simple: Load into Sanctuary, kill Hellspawn, get loot, and repeat. But the cycle is so effortless and structured that you can’t help but lose time slaying hordes of demons on your quest to stop Succubus Queen Lilith from overthrowing the game’s world. Diablo IV also serves up a compelling narrative about generational destinies and control as a form of healing that makes the elementary cycle all the more captivating. Diablo IV is a must-play for action-RPG fans this summer, the perfect podcast game to check out while dodging the heat outside. — Levi Winslow

Read more: Diablo IV’s Best Class Just Got Even Better

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 18 hours

For as niche a genre as fighting games tend to be, Street Fighter 6 has a lot of people by the throat right now. It’s one of the best iterations of Capcom’s long-running fighting series. With stylish aesthetics, meaningful reworks of old fighters, and impactful new additions, Street Fighter 6 is a shot in the arm for a series that stumbled onto several rakes throughout the troubled lifespan of Street Fighter V.

Read more: Street Fighter 6: The Kotaku Review

On top of a pitch-perfect fighting game experience, Street Fighter 6 has a silly and fun RPG mode in the form of World Tour mode, which includes a ridiculously deep character-creation suite, letting you customize your own fighter’s appearance and fighting style. Street Fighter 6 is filled to the brim with depth, one of the most all-around robust fighting games in recent memory. — Kenneth Shepard

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 16.5 hours

Tears of the Kingdom faced an insurmountable task: following up on what is widely considered to be one of the defining games of the open-world genre. The wild thing is that it succeeded. From clear improvements over Breath of the Wild’s shortcomings to buck-wild building and physics mechanics and a seamless map spanning the sky, land, and underground. Even on the Switch, the game is incredibly impressive, to the point where I’m sometimes baffled it’s running on the hardware it is.

Read more: 15 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom

The game has also become a memetic touchstone of 2023, with players building and discovering new things alongside one another and sharing stories online. Everyone’s experience with Tears of the Kingdom is different, but it’s become a shared experience for all of us to play together. Breath of the Wild set the series on a new path, and Tears of the Kingdom masterfully builds vehicles for fans to ride down it. — Kenneth Shepard

Playable On: Switch

Rough Average Playtime: 55 hours

Bayonetta fans may have felt a little burned by Bayonetta 3, but Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon, a prequel spin-off that married the titular hero’s magical origins with a gorgeous storybook look, felt like a bit of an apology to those who took issue with the third game’s conclusion. It isn’t quite the character-action bonanza of the mainline series, but Bayonetta Origins has a fresh premise, using the Joy-Con controllers to move both the young version of the heroine and her demon companion Cheshire to fight monsters and solve puzzles. A fun detour for a series that seemed like it had run out of steam. — Kenneth Shepard

Playable On: Switch

Rough Average Playtime: 15 hours

2019’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order was an excellent, if occasionally awkward, fusing of design sensibilities lifted from games ranging from Uncharted to Dark Souls, all wrapped up in a compelling, distinctly Star Wars-y story of found family and political persecution.

But boy, does its sequel, Jedi: Survivor, take the series to impressive new heights. The combat’s been significantly improved and expanded with all kinds of new lightsaber stances and Force powers. The world feels much more alive and responsive to your progress, thanks in part to a cantina that serves as your home base and becomes increasingly filled with galactic outcasts over the course of your adventure. Hero Cal Kestis’ appearance can be customized in all kinds of ways, enabling you to make him a solemn Jedi, a dashing rogue, or all manner of other Star Wars archetypes, each distinguished by your own personal flair.

Read more: I’m A Certified Star Wars Hater, But Jedi: Survivor Whips

Best of all, though, playing Survivor just feels fantastic. Cal’s agility makes him as responsive as the best platformer protagonists, and your steady acquisition of new abilities gives exploring the world a level of satisfaction that rivals Super Metroid. Like its predecessor, this may be a game that wears its influences on its sleeve, but it combines them to create something fresh, stirring, and exceptional. — Carolyn Petit

Playable On: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 19 hours

Humanity is a simple concept with unexpected consequences. You play as a dog-shaped ray of light guiding hordes of faceless people toward a tube of light that will help them ascend to the next level. It sounds simple, and it is indeed easy enough at first. But eventually, the Lemmings-like conceit of corralling bodies with directional arrows and prompts to jump across chasms leads to deceptively more complex patterns, teaching you a series of hidden rules you didn’t even know you were learning. The puzzles are meditative and the soundtrack is mesmerizing. Humanity is heady and almost spiritual without ever trying too hard. — Ethan Gach

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 11.5 hours

Planet of Lana takes some of my favorite games—Out of this World, Ico, Inside—and elegantly reconfigures them into something that feels familiar but fresh. You play as a young kid whose planet gets invaded by strange robotic aliens. Solving puzzles and searching for answers with the help of a small dark cat-like companion, Planet of Lana’s short four-hour runtime is just enough to fall in love with its evocative, hand-crafted world. It’s not quite as revelatory as its clear influences, but does a brilliant job of keeping you engaged through a mix of wonder and dread as you explore its mysterious world and uncover its unusual secrets. — Ethan Gach

Playable On: Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 4.5 hours

Honkai Star Rail rides the line of being a perfect introduction to Hoyoverse games with easy-to-follow and oh-so-stylish turned-based action, while also delivering an infectious gremlin anime protagonist energy with its colorful cast of characters. As a former Kotaku writer (and current writer for Genshin Impact) once told me, “Hoyo’s strength is that they are weebs who understand what other weebs like.”

Like seriously, if you can conjure up a specific anime character archetype, HSR likely has a character that fits the bill with flying colors. Do you like the doting relationship between the Fate/Stay Night anime’s Illya and Berserker? Here, have HSR’s adorable daughter-robo-father duo, Clara and Svarog. Enjoy mysterious characters like Chainsaw Man’s Makima (that’re probably detrimental to your health)? Look no further than HSR’s Kafka. And so it goes on.

By far my favorite feature in Honkai is that it lets me send and receive texts with the characters. Aside from adding an extra layer of characterization to personalities I might otherwise not choose to include in my party, HSR’s texting feature also breaks RPG conventions of protags being dry and one dimensional by letting me send brutally honest messages back and forth with characters about how mundane a fetch quest mission feels to play or how I find characters’ hobbies, like Welt’s affinity for tokusatsu shows, to be rad as fuck. — Isaiah Colbert

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Mobile

Rough Average Playtime: 18.5 hours

The original Company of Heroes, with its World War II setting and gritty, grounded RTS gameplay, felt like a revelation when it landed in 2006. Its sequel, though, left some wondering if the series could ever reclaim its former glory. Thankfully, Company of Heroes 3 preserves what worked so well about the first game, elevating it not with tweaks to its excellent fundamentals but with inspired changes like a shift to a wonderful new setting.

Read More: Company Of Heroes 3: The Kotaku Review

Your skirmishes in Italy emphasize what always made CoH so great, presenting you with complex and immensely satisfying tactical challenges in which every decision matters, as you often have to overcome an enemy who both easily outdoes you in sheer firepower and who is dug into an extremely advantageous position. It may not be the most innovative RTS of all time, but it doesn’t need to be. As Luke Plunkett put it in his review, “On the battlefield itself this is still Company of Heroes, as good as it ever was and in some ways, even better.” — Carolyn Petit

Playable On: Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 15.5 hours

Most city-builder or strategy games ask you to create big urban cities or task you with fighting a destructive war. That’s not the case with Terra Nil. Instead, you have to clean up the Earth after humanity screwed it all up. It’s a unique concept that hooked me hard.

Not only is this satisfying as hell, but it also feels hopeful. Watching a huge field of green trees pop up out of a dead wasteland—after mixing the right amount of water, dirt, ash, and sun—always made me feel good. It also made me hope that one day, probably far from now, humanity will be able to clean up the planet as well as I have in Terra Nil. Also, I hope they are better at creating beaches than I am in this game. — Zack Zweizen

Read more: Terra Nil: The Kotaku Review

Playable On: Windows, Mobile

Rough Average Playtime: 4.5 hours

Looking Glass’s 1994 System Shock is a wonderful, massively influential game that is unfortunately challenging for some of today’s players to engage with. Enter Nightdive Studios’ uh... Well, first it was pitched as a remaster. Then a remake. Then a reboot. But after years of development hell, what finally popped out was a slick modern reimagining of the game that helped spark the immersive sim genre. And against all odds, it was actually worth the wait.

The new System Shock is a study in contrasts. It’s both reverent to its unusual source material but unafraid to innovate when 1994-era design no longer cuts it. It looks great and exceedingly modern, but with vibrant retro colors and thoughtfully intentional pixelation. It brings almost all of what made System Shock memorable into the present, but adds its own spin in the process. Nightdrive performed an incredible balancing act here, and the positive reviews speak for themselves.

Sure, I miss the original’s iconic music too, but that everything else is so on point here is just unbelievable. Has there ever been a more troubled remake that turned out so great? — Alexandra Hall

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Windows, macOS, Linux

Rough Average Playtime: 14 hours

It’s been a minute since players got to step into the stomping shoes of Isaac Clarke, but Motive Studio’s Dead Space remake is hopefully a sign that the series will be coming back in a meaningful way. While much of the game is faithful to the 2008 original, there’s some significant changes made to the story’s structure to make decent use of the once-silent and unseenIsaac’s voice and face, as well as alterations to mechanics like zero gravity movement to be more in line with the sequels, and a top-to-bottom visual overhaul to really make the most of its claustrophobic derelict-spaceship setting. While the future of the series is unclear at the moment, the Dead Space remake is a sign that there’s still life in the franchise long after original developer Visceral Games’ closure.

Playable On: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 12 hours

Knowing A Space for the Unbound was developed under some tenuous circumstances at the hands of former publisher PQube makes the fact that the game is as good as it is all the more bittersweet, as the publisher’s alleged withholding of funds put the game in limbo for five months. Mojiken Studio’s adventure game follows teenagers Atma and Raya, the latter of whom can manipulate reality at the expense of her health. The supernatural is juxtaposed with the game’s decidedly small town vibe, which carries touchstones of the studio’s Indonesian culture throughout its runtime. It’s cozy, unapologetic in its depiction of Indonesian culture, and unravels a supernatural mystery grounded in human connection.

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 11 hours

The latest entry in the Fire Emblem series has been a little divisive compared to other entries in Nintendo’s tactical RPG franchise. Though Fire Emblem Engage is a solid game of anime chess, the writing and character design don’t hit quite as hard as they did in 2019’s landmark entry Three Houses. It’s a litmus test for what you want most out of the series in a post-Three Houses world. If you want the series’ tactical combat at its most streamlined and efficient, Engage is here for you. But if you’re looking for a story with the same meaningful intricacies and character development as Three Houses, it’s just not here. All that being said, it’s still one of the better games we’ve gotten in these first few weeks of 2023, but we’ll see how people feel about it ten months from now when the GOTY ballots are rolling out.

Playable On: Switch

Rough Average Playtime: 40 hours

Tango Gameworks surprised everyone by breaking away from its horror roots and releasing Hi-Fi Rush, a rhythm-based action game that combines the vibes of Scott Pilgrim and the structure of Devil May Cry. Hi-Fi Rush is a stellar example of how you should never put a developer in a box, because I can’t think of something more diametrically opposed to The Evil Within than a bopping, tongue-in-cheek hack n’ slash with a banger soundtrack and some genuinely lovable characters. It’s joy distilled into your Game Pass subscription.

Playable On: Xbox Series X/S, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 11 hours

Scavengers Studio’s take on the apocalypse is a little different from other games, as it’s less about the survival of people than it is about survival of culture. Season: A Letter to the Future follows a young woman named Estelle as she leaves her village to document people’s lived experiences before a cataclysmic event comes to wipe it all away. Its depiction of memories of what came before as both a blessing and a burden is introspective and earnest. Though it doesn’t resonate with everyone, you may find yourself among those who love this gorgeous and distinctive narrative adventure game.

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 5 hours

Fans are still enduring the painful wait for Metroid Prime 4, but Nintendo and Retro did provide a small morsel to tide them over in the form of a remaster of the original GameCube game on Switch. While the updated port includes some notable quality-of-life changes like alternate control schemes and accessibility options, the remaster ultimately proves just how timeless the original game was when it launched over 20 years ago. Hopefully this means remasters of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption are in the works, too, because it would be great to see Samus’ first-person adventure subseries make its way to a modern platform.

Playable On: Switch

Rough Average Playtime: 13 hours

Speaking of old classics making their way to modern video game hardware, Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden are on pretty much everything now, having launched on Switch, PS4, PC, and Xbox in January. While Persona 5 has blown up in a big way, Persona 3 and 4 are the framework for the series’ shift into dungeon crawling and social links. Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden are the definitive (or, the closest thing to one, in Persona 3’s case) versions of the RPGs that helped elevate Persona to a household name. If you’ve only played Persona 5, it may take some adjustments to go back, but these are still two really captivating RPGs and social sims, with incredible soundtracks, complex but approachable battle systems, and two of the best JRPG casts of the time. Just know there’s some extremely clumsy and dated writing surrounding some social issues that the series is still struggling with to this day.

Playable On: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 65 hours / 68 hours

Lone Ruin is a great encapsulation of “short, sweet, and to the point.” The roguelike takes clear inspiration from games like Hades, and delivers an action-packed isometric experience drenched in a gorgeous neon blue and pink color palette. The tight, refined action is just as much a joy to watch as it is to play, and the game doesn’t overstay its welcome. However, given the immense replayability of the genre, Lone Ruin inherently gives you plenty to do, and its pitch-perfect execution of its fast-paced action gives you plenty of reason to come back again and again.

Playable On: Switch, Windows

Rough Average Playtime: 2 hours