The Wanderer reading room

Game Reviews

Idle RPGs, MMOs, browser games and mobile RPGs, taken apart properly. Every review carries a score out of 10, what the game does well, what it does badly, and the kind of player it is actually for.

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Co-op SurvivalWindows PCLinux

MISERY

A chaotic, genuinely addictive co-op survival game set in a STALKER-flavoured nuclear exclusion zone, praised by players for its dark comedy and bunker-crawling tension even as a substantial share of the same review sample argues its "1.0" label is misleading for content this thin — and whose launch was briefly overshadowed by a real, well-documented DMCA dispute with STALKER 2 developer GSC Game World and an admitted offensive Discord incident from a member of the small development team.

7 / 10

Reviewed

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Monster-Taming JRPGWindows PC

Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection

A genuinely well-written, beautifully presented monster-taming JRPG that sits at Mostly Positive on Steam — noticeably lower than the other entries in Capcom's extraordinary 2025-2026 run — because of two real, well-documented problems even its fans agree on: severe launch-window crashing that Capcom itself has confirmed and investigated, and a genuine feature regression from its predecessor, stripping out multiplayer and meaningful endgame content.

7 / 10

Reviewed

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Roguelike DeckbuilderWindows PC

Monster Train 2

A bigger, more mechanically ambitious sequel to one of the deckbuilding roguelike genre's most respected entries, landing at 95% positive on Steam even as a genuinely coherent chorus of the original's most devoted fans argue this expansion came at the cost of what made Monster Train click in the first place.

8 / 10

Reviewed

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Action RPG SoulslikeWindows PC

Mortal Shell

A budget soulslike built around a genuinely inventive hook — inhabit the bodies of dead warriors rather than levelling a character of your own — that's spent five years since launch as a genuinely divisive game, with real, still-current complaints about content thinness and unfixed bugs sitting alongside a devoted fanbase, just days ahead of a sequel's official release.

7 / 10

Reviewed

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Roguelike DeckbuilderWindows PC

NET.CRAWL

A hex-grid roguelike that swaps a conventional deck for a board you draft and build tile by tile, from the maker of the well-regarded mobile hit Cards of Terra — hitting 1.0 to a small but completely unanimous chorus of praise after what several reviewers admit was months of criminally low visibility.

8 / 10

Reviewed

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Action Hack-and-SlashWindows PC

NINJA GAIDEN 4

A genuine revival of one of action gaming's most demanding franchises, co-developed by PlatinumGames and Team Ninja, launching to widespread praise for its combat within days of the death of series creator Tomonobu Itagaki — undercut by a real, consistently repeated identity debate among longtime fans over how much of the game feels like Platinum's own house style rather than classic Ninja Gaiden.

7.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Souls-like Action RPGWindows PC

Nioh 3

A refined, widely praised evolution of Team Ninja's demanding samurai action RPG combat system, undercut by a severe and still-unresolved PC performance crisis — VRAM leaks, poor frame rates even on top-tier hardware, and stuttering that a genuine, sustained patch effort has not fully fixed as of five months after launch — that a large share of the negative review sample cites as the sole reason for an otherwise-loved game earning a thumbs down.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Idle RPGWindows PC

Nomad Idle

An idle horde-survival RPG with a genuinely distinctive structure — a defined ending rather than an endless grind — undercut for a meaningful share of players by scripted, low-choice progression, a "no offline progress" design that sits oddly for an idle game, and a pattern of developer replies to negative reviews that multiple players independently describe as combative.

6 / 10

Reviewed

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Roguelite / Arcade ShooterWindows PCmacOS

Nova Drift

An ARPG's worth of build synergy packed into an Asteroids cabinet, at thirteen dollars and 96% positive. The one thing standing between it and everybody is the control scheme — and that's a deliberate choice the game is literally named after.

8 / 10

Reviewed

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Surreal RPGWindows PCmacOSLinux

OFF

The long-awaited official Steam release of one of indie RPG history's most influential cult classics — a surreal, unsettling 2008 RPG Maker game credited as a direct inspiration for Undertale, Deltarune, Omori and OneShot — undercut for longtime fans by a completely replaced soundtrack, a change with a specific, well-documented and genuinely sympathetic reason behind it.

7.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Space Sim / Sandbox RPGWindows PC

Ostranauts

Six years in Early Access, and the 1.0 landed this week. You play a broke shipbreaker with a loan and a flying coffin, building a ship out of salvage one bolt at a time. Nothing else does what it does — and its own most devoted players think it needed another year.

7.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Roguelike / Twin-stick ShooterWindows PCmacOSLinux

Pathogenic

A hundred thousand copies in its first week, and deservedly — you play a single parasite tearing organelles out of immune cells and grafting them onto your own body. The best twin-stick roguelite of the year so far, with one genuinely misleading line on its store page.

8.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Psychological Horror RPGWindows PC

Pathologic 3

A bold, deliberately alienating reinvention of Ice-Pick Lodge's cult plague-town saga — swapping the survival-sim hunger and infection management longtime fans loved for a time-looping detective mystery — that landed Very Positive on Steam even as a genuine, detailed split opened up among the series' own most devoted players.

7 / 10

Reviewed

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Co-op Survival ClimbingWindows PC

PEAK

A breakout co-op climbing hit from a small Landfall-affiliated team, selling millions of copies for NZ$11.99 and earning genuine, chaotic devotion from its players — briefly overshadowed by a real, well-documented EULA controversy the developers reversed within days, and by two specific, widely repeated complaints (no save option, a punishing difficulty spike) that a remarkably attentive year of patches has since substantively addressed.

8.5 / 10

Reviewed

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CRPGWindows PCmacOSLinux

Pillars of Eternity

The game that brought the isometric party RPG back from the dead, and spent a decade being judged against a memory of Baldur's Gate rather than on its own terms. Fewer than half its buyers finish Act I — but the ones who push through average eighty hours.

8 / 10

Reviewed

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Construction and Management SimulationWindows PC

Planet Coaster 2

Frontier Developments' theme-park sequel launched into a genuinely well-documented content and feature regression from its predecessor — Steam Workshop removed, core PC1 content resold as DLC, a console-first UI — sitting Mostly Positive across more than 14,000 Steam reviews; this review can confirm, via a sustained year-and-a-half patch cadence through mid-2026, that Frontier did not abandon the game afterward, with a real, credited player-reported turnaround distinct from its rocky launch reputation.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Sci-Fi Action AdventureWindows PC

PRAGMATA

A genuinely fresh, emotionally resonant sci-fi shoot-and-hack adventure from Capcom, six years after its original 2020 announcement, praised near-universally for its unusual father-daughter bond and inventive combat — undercut for a real, consistently repeated share of the sample by a combat loop that grows repetitive in its back half, and by genuine, well-documented Denuvo DRM access problems affecting even paying, non-piloting players.

8 / 10

Reviewed

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Immersive SimWindows PC

Prey

Arkane Austin's 2017 immersive sim remains Very Positive across more than 54,000 Steam reviews, widely regarded as one of the genre's finest achievements — a reputation this review can confirm survived the closure of the very studio that made it, when Arkane Austin was shut down entirely by Microsoft in 2024, and a real controversy over the game's own title, which this review can confirm Bethesda forced onto an unrelated story over the objections of Arkane's own founder.

8 / 10

Reviewed

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Survival HorrorWindows PC

Resident Evil Requiem

A survival-horror triumph in its first half and a widely-debated tonal collapse in its second, wrapped around Capcom's biggest launch of the year — Overwhelmingly Positive across more than 100,000 Steam reviews and 8 million copies sold, while a large, detailed share of that same sample argues the game falls apart exactly when it should be building toward its climax.

8 / 10

Reviewed

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