Destructoid

Donut County is as charming and funny as it is inventive and beautiful. It excels at what it sets out to do --there's never been a better hole simulator in video game history. But underneath its colorful scenery and intuitive gameplay is an experience that feels like its inches away from true greatness.

By taking a genre that thrives on its deep mechanics and attempting to streamline it into something anyone can pick up and play, we’re left with an experience that doesn’t wholly appeal to anybody. It sucks because there was so much potential here, and it ends up shooting itself in the foot before it really has the chance to bear fruit.

The Messenger is without a doubt one of the best indies available on the Switch right now. It has a lot of competition with the sudden sea of metroidvania games available, but its stunning look, fantastic soundtrack, and clever writing coupled with the amazing gameplay put it a step above the rest. When I walk away from a game every night only wanting to play more, there's little to complain about.

Fire Pro Wrestling World is the best wrestling game on the market. FPW provides wannabe McMahons with a vast toolkit to build the wrestlers, promotions and matches of their dreams, while keeping the action tight, exciting and, most importantly, fun. FPW's simplistic visuals and learning curve may discourage some, who demand more flash for their cash, but those who take the time to unlock its potential may find it hard to step in the ring with another wrestling title ever again.

Enix, and by proxy Square, have found myriad ways to repackage the journey of Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age proves that they haven't run out of ideas yet. It's one of the easier modern Dragon Quests to get into precisely because it gets back to basics. If you've been pining for an older-school character-focused RPG instead of the player-created party focus of IX and the MMO aspect of X, the wait has ended.

In the end, Death's Gambit resonates as a flawed gem, one I'm happy to have played. It's an uneven experience bogged down by technical woes and stilted combat, but if you can enjoy less-than-pristine games in spite of rough spots, it's worth taking a chance on. Just hold out for a few patches first.

It doesn’t make the games feel modern, but that likely isn’t the point. This HD remaster is mainly here to provide fans with a new way to play some of their favorite games. I can’t fault Sega too much for wanting to stick true to the original vision of Shenmue. If you were worried about compatibility issues or crashing, then you can rest easy. These ports are fine.

The Boomsday Project managed to fix some of the problems I had with ranked play by shifting the metagame away from plodding, delay-heavy decks, but the single-player content is a bit of a letdown after the excellent modes included in Kobolds and Catacombs and The Witchwood. It's hard to complain about new free stuff in a game I still enjoy, but I'm hopeful the last expansion for the Year of the Raven will have a better single-player mode.

The darkness is an adequate-enough threat. Everything else -- the bugs, the XP system, the tower defense -- is a misplaced attempt to make this more of a game and it's executed poorly.There's a cute little story about rewriting the past at the heart of Tyler: Model 005. It's a shame those robots can't revise history and trim this game's excess so that it can focus on what's important.

Overall, I think my feelings on Kiwami 2 are held back by the game that Yakuza 2 is. Maybe I did a disservice by playing all of the later entries first, but Yakuza 2 feels like a relic from a bygone era. Being rebuilt on an engine that isn't being fully exploited doesn't help make this the best remake, either. If you can look past some flaws, though, you'll find a Yakuza experience that fans are sure to love.