Some of the games coming this year for which I’m just as excited as everyone else.

2023 has been amazing so far, and of course, we’re all hyped for the obvious choice like Starfield, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Redfall, Street Fighter 6, and some even for the STONKS-9800: Stock Market Simulator. While I’ve already talked about the Top 10 New Open-World Games 2023 & 2024, today I’m going to dig into some of the other games coming this year for which I’m just as excited as everyone else. You’ve probably heard of some you haven’t, so let’s get into them.

ARC Raiders

ARC Raiders was revealed a while ago. It’s a co-op focused shooter RPG that is supposed to be coming out later this year. But the team is also working on a game called The Finals which is more PVP focused and might come out first. But Arc Raiders looks to me like it’s going to play like a sci-fi monster hunter with guns focused on battling large-scale machines.

Blasting off different parts from these things likely affects the drops you receive; maybe the gear you can craft might also affect the attacks those machines can do. That’s all speculation, but that’s what it looks like to me, monster hunter robots, and I’m totally into that. This is going to be free-to-play, apparently. So, I hope they balance it fair and respect the player base.

Atlas Fallen

Next up, the developer Deck13 has dramatically improved every new game they’ve made. I liked The Surge 2, and they’re creating another brand-new action RPG Atlas Fallen. There’s not a ton of raw gameplay yet, but I’m into the fantasy in the desert things it has going on. Atlas Fallen has a pretty good style set and possibly a fun traversal mechanic with these sand-sliding things. And Deck13 already knows how to handle a deep combat system, so it will probably be solid.

Remnant 2

Then we have Remnant 2 from gunfire games, which is the sequel to 2019’s Remnant From the Ashes. The original game had a solid shooter RPG meets souls-like foundation with the hook that everyone’s first playthrough would likely have an entirely different sequence of bosses from everyone else’s. Bump up the difficulty for better loot and replay the campaign or start a new save, and the level layouts were entirely different, and you would see a few new bosses.

The first game I mainly played was in co-op, but its sequel can be played either way with people or entirely solo. With the team’s extra time into the second game, it should be one of the better shooter RPGs from this year.

Pragmata

Next is Pragmata, which got pushed into this year, and its odd setting has me curious. Like death stranding before it in a single trailer, you’re left with an awkwardly high number of questions, and that’s what I like about it. The hologram cat skeleton bot thing is instantly memorable. There’s not much known about what Pranmata actually is, but it’s said to be an action-adventure game. So Pragmata remains mysterious, but something special about it attracts me.

Sea of Stars

Sea of Stars is another retro-inspired turn-based RPG but with the skill set applied to it from the studio that made 2018’s hit the messenger. The only real way to stand out in this nostalgic JRPG genre nowadays is to push the production values, which this seems to be doing with incredibly detailed art with great-looking locations, and even a guest composer that worked on Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Last year chained Echoes showed us that old-school JRPG-inspired games can still be as good if not better than big AAA RPGs, and Sea of Starts might pull that off as well in 2023.

Streets of Rogue 2

If you have played the unassumingly deep Street of Rogue, you already know why Streets of Rogue 2 is such a big deal. This sequel is going open-world style, and when you combine that with the nearly infinite ways you could tackle situations from the first game, you have a pretty open-ended sandbox of mayhem. There’s no gameplay footage out other than this random clip of a truck crashing through a house, but Streets of Rogue 2 is one that really perks our interest.

Exoprimal

This list I’ve compiled is only some of what I’m excited about this year, but I will close this out with Exoprimal. If you combine Earth Defense Force with Destiny’s PVE meets PVP gambit mode, you will have a general idea of what this is. Your team has to try to kill swarms of enemies and complete objectives faster than the opposing team as you send over big dino invaders from your team’s side to mess up and ruin the other team’s progress. The concept is intriguing to me, and I appreciate tooling around with the concept of what online PVP could be.

So, this is only a brief look at some of the other games I also want to check out this year and hopefully be able to cover here at GamesCreed, but there’s just so much scheduled for 2023.