The best video games of 2023 so far on Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox, and more

A bizarre incident in space-time continuum led to us stepping out of 2022 into the early aughts. Everyone is currently playing Metroid Prime. Leon S. Kennedy is a celebrity that the internet loves. Even Isaac Clarke is back, fully voiced and ready to express the thoughts he’s been keeping to himself since 2008.

These remakes from Retro Studios, Capcom, and Motive Studio serve as a reminder that everything — even in video games — is cyclical. Even though some of these ideas were ahead of technology, they can be resurrected with better pixels and more skilled developers. Action-oriented survival horror plays like a dream in 2023, and the Switch has proven to be a more than suitable home for Samus Aran’s exploration-based adventure.

Even Octopath Traveler 2, Company of Heroes 3And Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty It is amazing how an entire team of designers can enhance their ideas. We’re only three months into the year, but we’ve already seen remakes and sequels that show a deep understanding of their source material and prequelsAnd a willingness to question what came before in service of making the next great game.

It’s easy to point to remakes, sequels, and spiritual successors as evidence that we’re in a stagnant period — but so far, three months into 2023, the game release schedule has been anything but. Patch Quest, Phantom Brigade, and Season: A letter to the future, among others, have emerged from “under the radar” to make a name for themselves in their own right. It’s already been an exciting year for video games (which year in recent memory hasn’t been, by this point?) For original games, brave sequels, or bold remakes. Here’s a list of the top titles so far. —Mike Mahardy

Resident Evil 4 Remake

Capcom Image

Capcom seems to be good at making games new again.

The original Resident Evil The 2002 remake set the standard for the format. It featured sleeker controls and more subtle graphical details. You can find the following: Resident Evil 2 The remake changed everything about the source material, without changing the main focus of horror and survival. Resident Evil 3’s remake, as forgettable as it was, still brought the design conceits of the original game, warts and all, to a modern audience. We now have Resident Evil 4 — aIt is a complete remake.

In this reimagined version of the 2005 action-survival-horror game, Capcom has managed to erase many of the blemishes on one of the most beloved games in the series, if not all time. It is more of an interpretation than a remake, with many new details and flourishes in all three areas. It has also managed to add even more survival elements to the original’s action-centric combat, without sacrificing the camp and cheese that have made it such an enduring presence throughout the years. In the presence of this intimidating source material, a lesser game would not have survived., However, Resident Evil 4 Remake achieved this balancing act with flying colors. —Mike Mahardy

Resident Evil 4 Available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Windows PC), and Xbox Series X from March 24,

Tchia

Image: Awaceb/Kepler Interactive

Tchia, from developer Awaceb, is an open-world adventure game set in a fictional version of island nation New Caledonia — inspired by Awaceb’s co-founder’s childhood in the country.

Everything is filtered through the titular main character Tchia’s eyes, eyes with a special power that allows her to transform into any animals or objects in her environment. Birds, dolphins, a camera, or rocks… It’s all an option for Tchia.

While the game is clearly inspired, it’s still quite enjoyable. The Legend of Zelda – Breath of the WildThe innovative shapeshifting mechanisms allow it to stand alone. Tchia isn’t as technically polished as a Nintendo title with hundreds of developers; Awaceb has a team of roughly a dozen. Still, it’s hard to innovate in such a ubiquitous genre, yet Awaceb has managed to do just that with TchiaIt’s one of the top games in this year’s calendar. —Nicole Carpenter

Tchia It is compatible with PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC.

Patch Quest

Photo: Lychee Game Labs/Curve Games by Polygon

Lions and tigers and… hat-wearing armadillos? My.

Patch QuestAlthough I was initially attracted to its cute creatures, I stayed for the expert mix of genres. It borrows elements from Pokémon, Castlevania, The Binding of IsaacAnd Go to the GungeonYou can create an original monster-taming Roguelike with your animal partners in which you work together to assemble the world piece by piece. You can tame cute creatures, discover the labyrinthine streets of Patchlantis and kill anyone in your path with a fruit-ammo shake. Lychee Game Labs, a single-person group that developed the game Lychee Game Labs, stitched multiple pieces of cloth together in order to create the “Devil” character. Patch QuestThe resultant quilt is an unforgettable experience. —Johnny Yu

Patch Quest It is also available for Windows PC.

The Seven Mysteries of Honjo — Paranormasight

Square Enix

Square Enix owns a lot of mega-franchises that will fill its time and its bankroll. We have new Octopath Traveler entries and Final Fantasy entries this year. In the near future, there will be new Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest games. Dayenu!

And yet, the publisher can’t help itself from bombarding us with surprising, interesting, sometimes great, often good-enough experiments. We got the English-language remake in 2022 of a lost gemLive Every DayThe surprisingly fun tactical RPG DioField Chronicle, a bonkers Final Fantasy spinoff featuring the musical stylings of Limp Bizkit, and a pair of oddball card games lathered in lore from gaming’s best weirdo. We have this year the Avengers of rhythm gaming. Theatrhythm Final Bar LineAnd The Seven Mysteries of Honjo: Paranormasight, an excellent riff on the visual novel penned by a beloved storyteller — whose best series has never appeared in the U.S.

How should you be familiar with Paranormasight prior to you begin playing? Ideally, nothing. If I didn’t, why would I eat up all my words?

But if you insist: It’s a mystery — and a horror mystery at that. Travel to 1980s Japan and specifically to the Tokyo neighbourhood of Honjo. This is just a short distance from the Tokyo Skytree. It’s hard to imagine that modern landmark ever towering alongside these streets, which are filled with shadows and lethal curses.

If you have even a passing interest in urban legends, spooky folklore, cults, and deadly rituals, or you’ve enjoyed series like Zero Escape and Danganronpa, ParanormasightIt’s an easy recommendation. And if you just enjoy a good yarn and have access to basically any screen and $15, then you’re a perfect mark too. It runs as well on console and PC as it does on iOS and Android, so don’t fret about where you play, just do so and soon! Square Enix must continue investing in such oddities. —Chris Plante

The Seven Mysteries of Honjo: Paranormasight It is compatible with Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch.

Phantom Brigade

Image: Brace Yourself Games

Phantom Brigade’s unique “turn-based real-time” battles feel like a revelation in the mecha genre. The most apt comparison is a video editor’s timeline, only instead of scrolling through a movie you’ve already made, you can effortlessly turn the tide of battle with a few smart moves. Once you’ve set up your five frenetic seconds of action, you get to sit back and watch it all play out in glorious slo-mo.

For mecha fans, it’ll be quickly apparent how deeply the developers revere giant robots. You can customize your mecha from their generator to how often they fire their weapons. Speaking of, the game’s arsenal is both beautiful and brutal: frightfully devastating shotguns, graceful energy swords, and missile barrages that fire in a perfect Itano circus. Even though the game is played from a bird’s-eye view, your mechs feel big and weighty, stomping through the game world as they knock down buildings and shove tanks aside like toys. Even peering five seconds into the future to see your enemies’ movements feels like a reference to the ESP common in mecha anime.

This is not to mention the minimalist but evocative narratives you’ll get to enjoy on your campaign. While sometimes drawn with broad strokes, these stories are an important reminder that however cool your mechs may be, it’s the pilots inside who really count. —Clayton Ashley

Phantom Brigade It is also available for Windows PC.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Image: Team Ninja/Koei Tecmo via Polygon

Perhaps none of the other developers who borrow heavily from FromSoftware’s games is more clever than Team Ninja. It would be great if Nioh And Nioh 2Were Dark Souls seen through Japanese myth? Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty It is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice And a little bit more BloodborneIt was established in Three Kingdoms-era China. It rules.

It’s not just about the “look”. Wo Lang deftly maneuver between awe-inspiring boss fights, spell-slinging brawls, and a litany of intricate areas across rural China — it also encourages exploration in a way that even some FromSoftware games haven’t. Wo Lang’s morale system (which rewards you for building up your character’s confidence, so to speak, against hordes of lesser enemies before tackling a boss) ensures that no challenge is insurmountable. It’s the rare game that can both brutalize you and root for you every step of the way. Wo Lang This is one example of such a game. —Mike Mahardy

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty It is compatible with PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC.

Company of Heroes 3

Image by Relic Entertainment/Sega

2006. Company of Heroes With bravado and style, he walked into the real-time strategic scene. Its focus on squad-based tactics, as opposed to the movements of hordes of individual soldiers, set it cleanly apart from Starcraft, Warcraft, and Command & Conquer, and the ensuing spectacle was more than a little reminiscent of the choreographed World War II battles of The Private Ryan Savings And Band of Brothers.

However, things have changed. RTS games have lost their position at the top of the strategy game market due to 4X, grand strategies, and turn-based techniques. Relic Entertainment was forced to change despite the success of its 2006 original and its 2013 sequel.

And it was. Company of Heroes 3 makes real-time strategy more approachable than ever, with a “tactical pause” option that allows you to stop time and issue orders to your troops in hectic moments. It also introduces a Total War-esque turn-based overworld map, allowing you to maneuver armies, capture key installations, and provide a bevy of support bonuses to the real-time battles, away from the firm guidance of the team’s (still excellent) linear campaign writers. —Mike Mahardy

Company of Heroes 3 It is also available for Windows PC.

Octopath Traveler 2

Image: Acquire, Square Enix/Square Enix via Polygon

The first Octopath Traveler This was one those games that you can enjoy as much as it hurts. It kicked so many people’s asses, and it made it painful by dragging down the good aspects. In other words, it stood on the precipice of excellence, but couldn’t quite cross the line.

Octopath Traveler 2 This is where the sequel leapt over that line. In place of the original game’s repetitive level design, monotonous narrative structure, and sometimes awkward characterization, the sequel demonstrates an expert ability to challenge your expectations at every turn. The general objective is to recruit eight different characters and then to follow the individual plot threads until they reach their conclusions. Along the way, you will be participating in turn-based battles as well side quests. These plots are very different from character-to-character. You can also see the plots of a few characters before you recruit the rest. Octopath Traveler 2 The fine line is drawn between comfort food-esque repetitiveness of JRPGs best and subversive genre storytelling. —Mike Mahardy

Octopath Traveler 2 It is now available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as well as Windows PC.

Metroid Prime Remastered

Image: Nintendo

Only a few 2002 games are still as popular today. Metroid Prime, and the remastered version of the game — which was surprise-dropped during February’s Nintendo Direct — proves that Samus Aran’s first-person adventure is still worth experiencing, whether it’s for the first time or (in my case) the fourth.

Retro Studios’ take on one of sci-fi’s most famous intergalactic bounty hunters controversially took her out of the 2D puzzle-platformer realm that made her famous (although Metroid Fusion also came out in 2002 — a gift for the 2D Metroid purists — which may also be why Fusion joined Nintendo Switch Online’s catalog shortly after Prime RemasteredReleased. By placing the player inside Samus’ helmet, Metroid Prime recontextualized the bounty hunter’s relationship with the hostile planets around her.

As we donned Samus’ suit and explored strange planets, aggressive alien lifeforms could now get right in our faces, forcing us to dodge, strafe, and roll (in morph ball form, naturally) using all three dimensions. No longer would we sit back and watch as Samus dipped her toe into a pool of lava; in first-person, as molten fire spread over our visor, we’d really feel the pressure to find that Varia Suit upgrade. And perhaps most importantly, from behind Samus’ visor, we gained the ability to scan our enemies and environment, collecting and translating logs from the long-dead Chozo aliens who once inhabited these now-hostile places.

The World of Prime This is hard and relentless. There will be times when save points are quite distant from one another. But it’s worth buckling down and pushing through the pain points to discover this world’s secrets. —Maddy Myers

Metroid Prime Remastered Available on Switch

Dead Space

Image: Motive Studio/Electronic Arts

With Last of Us HBO. Resident Evil 4 back in the conversation, it’s already a banner year for survival horror. Motive Studio’s Dead Space Remake is not an exception. Following in the footsteps of Capcom’s aforementioned title, the original Dead Space The third-person action focus was brought to the forefront of Resident Evil 4’s formula to a deteriorating ship in outer space. The spirit of Event Horizon, SunshineAnd Alien, Dead Space The film was the epitome of horror sci-fi in a small and cramped setting. Its remake has brought that same vision to gorgeous new life, bringing quality-of-life changes and underappreciated updates (it has made several previously useless weapons into viable tools in protagonist Isaac Clarke’s arsenal), making it hard to imagine ever going back to Visceral Games’ phenomenal original. —Mike Mahardy

Dead Space It is compatible with Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC.

Season: A letter to the future

Scavengers Studio, via Polygon

Everyone you meet in SeasonIs already dead. In a far future world similar to ours, the story begins. An historian examines the travel journal of a young woman, which documents her end of an era.

You will be required to create a travel journal, which documents the death of a country and its inhabitants.

It’s not always sad to be happy. The world isn’t drab or apocalyptic. In fact, you wouldn’t know change waits at the door of this epoch if not for the prologue. Sky and oceans have rich complementary colors. Animals live their lives without any concern, just grazing wheat or tweeting among the trees. You will be surprised at how few people react to this mysteriously prophesied sea shift.

SeasonFiction for those who believe the end of our society is certain. Perhaps in our lifetime or maybe even a century later. The planet will see rising waters, collapsed governments, and corporations grabbing every resource. But also, alongside that terror, there’s also a peace to be found in visualizing a life beyond.

Dark! What else can you expect of a game that has you as the documentary for a world you already know is over?

That there’s so much beauty in the world of SeasonIt makes historic curation more complicated. Photographs, sounds can be recorded and sketches, as well as bits and pieces of text, can all be included in your historical curation diary. Even though space is very limited, You won’t fit in most of your photos and notes, let alone the entire experience of this world. Do future generations need to know the details of the personal, small dramas from this time? Do you want to pass on lessons from past eras, as a way to transfer knowledge from one generation to another? Should you keep the book mostly empty and allow this culture some cosmic privacy? —Chris Plante

Season: A letter to the future It is compatible with PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC.

Feuer Emblem Engagement

Image: Intelligent Systems/Nintendo

Feuer Emblem Engagement This book was made for one type of sicko. He or she is not interested in the history of the horde or politics at a bourgeoise school or which kind of tea teachers prefer, but rather, he or she is obsessed with all the details of team composition, combat stats and weapon loadouts. This is because I’m one of these sickos.

If you’ve read any of my reviews or essays on Polygon, then you know I prefer strategy games that can get out of their own way. More precisely, I love when strategy developers can put their pens down, throw their hands up, and admit that the stories unfolding in the player’s head will almost Always be more powerful than what they can write. Feuer Emblem Engagement One of the most prominent proponents is this idea. You are able to see character interactions and write fanfiction by simply looking at the battle scenes, weapons and other stat-boosting capabilities. You can skip every cutscene, but the script itself is full of JRPG tropes that aren’t very clear. But if you’re looking for an excellent turn-based tactics game that gets out of the player’s way, you can do a Complete Much worse than Feuer Emblem Engagement. —Mike Mahardy

Feuer Emblem Engagement Available on Switch

Marvel’s Midnight Suns

Image: Firaxis Games/2K

[Ed. note: Marvel’s Midnight Suns was released in 2022, but it just barely missed the cutoff for our best video games of 2022 list, so it’s eligible for our 2023 awards.]

I know what you’re thinking: Another licensed Marvel game? You’re right, but? Listen, I’m serious. But I was there. Marvel’s Avengers, too, and this isn’t that. It might seem like it’s going to be at first, because Midnight SunsIt makes the terrible mistake of using Iron Man and Doctor Strange to be its tutorial characters. These two characters might end up being the most annoying characters in all the video games. (I’ve beaten this game so it is okay to call. Keep pressing on, and you must give. Midnight SunsTime to make you fall in love. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much it offers beyond what you may see in just a few hours.

Think of the joy and laughter that comes from Fire Emblem: Three HomesCombining this with the tactical high-stakes battles of XCOM 2 — that’s what Midnight SunsIn its middle-game or endgame, it becomes. It’s a card-based strategy game, and each hero has their own customizable deck. While I was initially drawn to Captain Marvel and Magik for their funny dialogue, I realized there is something to be gained from every character. Over 100 hours later, I’ve leveled up every single character and played all the main story missions and an unknowable number of optional missions, and I’m still not sick of this combat… or the kooky cast of characters that grows all the time (shoutout to the Deadpool DLC).

Give, regardless of how tired you may be. Midnight SunsIts clever combat might just win you over. And once you’ve gotten hooked, you might find yourself sticking around to chuckle at Wolverine attending Blade’s book club (yes, that’s a storyline in this game). It’s worth your time, and you can take that from me, a person who — again — spent over 100 hours on it. —Maddy Myers

Marvel’s Midnight Suns It is also available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 as well as Windows PCs, Xbox One and Xbox Series X.