In the never ending pursuit to make a rogue-like out of everything you can think of, here is Balatro which has turned Poker (kind of) into one. The basic premise is, each round you draw a pool of 8 cards and you have (typically) 4 hands and 3 discards to make as many high-scoring Poker hands as you can and reach the Blind value. Each hand has an associated point value and multiplier, and each card that contributes to the hand also adds its own card value to the points. Once you defeat the current blind, you go to a shop where you can use your hard-earned cash to buy various upgrades.

Celestial cards upgrade the value of a particular hand, spectral and arcana cards have various abilities to manipulate your deck by adding, removing, or modifying cards, and then there are Jokers. Jokers are where the real meat of the game comes from, as their varying abilities and large selection allow you to build out your strategy. You can really stack your multipliers into insane values, and as you climb through the increasing antes (and boss antes with often annoying effects), you try to ultimately defeat Ante level 8 for a "completed" run (although there is an endless option after you make it there).

There's a handful of decks as well to choose from with their own unique effects, and as you beat the game with each one you can choose to increase the difficulty with that respective deck for more and more challenge. All that is to say, I really don't have much else to say about Balatro other than it is damn addicting. Easy to pick up and play a few hands, try out different combos, and build out your collection as the game keeps track of which cards you've picked up before. Definitely recommend if you want a nice, chill time-killer that you will also slowly grow to hate.

In a similar vein to Lethal Company, you and up to three friends journey into a washed-out, dark facility. The gimmick here though is instead of scrounging for loot while avoiding monsters, you have a camera and have to record up to 90 seconds of footage of things you see or do down there, and then haul ass back to the pod. If you manage to bring back the footage, you will upload it to Spooktube to try and reach viewer milestones every 3 days. Views lead to cash to buy items, and better items lead to better views.

You also can save the footage to your desktop if you like what you've recorded. It's a decent gameplay loop and makes for some good laughs, just a bit lacking in environment variety as it is not randomly generated like Lethal Company. Still, it was good fun for a few hours so I would recommend trying it at least once if you can grab it for cheap (or did when it was free!).

You wouldn't think it, but there are a surprising number of conventions and tropes in the Monster Hunter franchise that fit well in a turn-based RPG, especially when you include monster catching/training. While I mostly enjoyed my time with Stories 2, the game often felt like it was having an identity crisis and was doing things that it felt like it had to do because that's how Monster Hunter does it, even when it did not make a modicum of sense.

To start off with, the plot is solid (especially for one rooted in the MH universe). You journey across several different major areas with your newly hatched Rathalos (who may never leave the party, this is Capcom's Charizard after all) in hopes of learning more about the prophecy that ruin will be brought to the land. Each new zone you journey to partners you up with a new buddy character, and you hear their Stories as you progress that arc in the plot with them. It gets a little formulaic, but all of the buddy characters are lovely and have compelling motivations. There is but one truly poor character in the game, and unfortunately it is Navirou; the Palico-turned-Funko-Pop who serves as the silent protagonist's mouthpiece for the duration of the story. He is genuinely grating and I don't even think I would mind so much if his design wasn't so out of place (just have him look like a normal palico!).

The combat system however, is quite good. You sort of have a layered RPS system where different monsters will either be focused on Power, Speed, or Technical attacks and you'll want to align both yours and your monster partner to use the attacks that beat it. You'll also want to pick the right type of weapon (Slash, Pierce, or Strike) that is strong against the part of the Monster you want to break. Each of the 6 available weapon types have their own quirks, and as you win more head-to-heads and occasional QTE sequences, you will build up your kinship gauge allowing you to get on your monster and unleash flashy, powerful attacks. While monster parts you've hit in the past will display their weaknesses in battle, the type of attacks the enemy monster has an affinity for will not. This turns it into purely a game of memory, especially when monsters enrage and switch up their tactics. It reminded me a lot of Fate/Extra in this way and is maybe one of my favourite parts about playing the game. There's a surprising amount of depth and nuance if you really want to dig into it.

Sadly, exploring the open world is sadly what drives me up the wall the most about the game. In the main Monster Hunter series, you set off on missions that are usually anywhere from 8 minutes to 40 minutes. All is quiet as you track your target, and when the battle begins is when the music flares up and really enhances the whole experience. For some insane reason, Capcom has decided that the open world in Stories 2 must also be silent at all times outside of battle. It is especially baffling when most of the music in the game is fantastic, but you just don't get to hear any of it for more than 50% of your time in the main story. There are lots of little caves and paths to explore and retrieve eggs to hatch into new Monsties to join you, but it is all silent during this time unless you get in a fight.

There's a pretty large selection of monsters in the game locking in at a little over 120, most of which are hatchable and can join your party, although they are spread out rather strangely and many of them are bizarrely absent for most of the game when there was plenty of room to introduce them sooner. As you might expect from a Monster Hunter title, this is because the game has a pretty sizable and in-depth High Rank post-game, but after 60 hours to get through the main story I really do not feel all that motivated to re-fight and catch all those Monsties again just to see a handful of new ones.

Despite all my gripes, I did genuinely enjoy much of my time with Stories 2. You can really see the potential for this series as a companion to the mainline action games, and I think if they made a Stories 3 after Wilds comes out, they could really have a banger. But for now Stories 2 is awkward, if not earnest, in its attempt to blend the popular action series with a turn-based RPG.