Whether you've rattled off the Hollow Knight Silksong 100% and are still finding excuses to explore Team Cherry's masterpiece (guilty as charged), or bounced off its demanding action and hostile world, you're probably looking for your next Metroidvania. You could opt for a newcomer like MIO: Memories in Orbit, or established staples such as Bloodstained, Rain World, or Nine Sols. But I'm going to recommend Ultros, which handles the genre in a unique manner that took me a little while to warm to, only to grow into an experience I'll treasure for many years to come.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Overlooked Metroidvania Ultros is the anti-Silksong, which makes it the perfect follow-up to Team Cherry's epic

The Runescape Road to Restoration continues, and Jagex is once again proving that it's willing to make dramatic changes in service of improving the longstanding MMORPG. It stripped out the controversial Treasure Hunter system after enough players voted in favor of the move, and it's continuing to work through its long list of features and determine what has to go in the name of "integrity and game health". Next on the chopping block? Auras. The time-gated buffs are being removed entirely, with the "most meaningful" effects to be preserved through other items and rewards, providing this doesn't lead to power creep or more micromanagement.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Runescape is ditching Auras so you can "play on your own terms" without suffering the weight of cooldown anxiety

Over the past few weeks, I've finally been playing Wild Hearts. Built by Koei Tecmo's Omega Force (the team behind the Warriors series) and published by EA, it showed a lot of promise as a contender to the might of Monster Hunter. Its launch in February 2023, however, was plagued with performance woes eclipsing even the early problems faced by Monster Hunter Wilds. Three years on, I'm giving it a proper chance, and while I would recommend it to hunting enthusiasts, the whole experience has only made me more sad about the way it was seemingly left adrift.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Monster Hunter rival Wild Hearts might have been left to die, yet I can't help but love it

Fellowship Season 2 is here, and I'm breathing a gentle sigh of relief seeing the playerbase return to action. The dungeon-driven RPG, which takes the broad World of Warcraft experience and distills it down to the singular focus of multiplayer combat encounters and gearing, had fallen tremendously quiet while developer Chief Rebel worked on its first big seasonal overhaul. That wasn't entirely unexpected given that it's explicitly not trying to be the forever game that WoW is often seen as, but I'd begun to fear that people simply wouldn't come back, and I'm glad to see those worries quashed.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Fellowship's time-friendly, hypercharged take on World of Warcraft dungeons springs back to life as tens of thousands of players return

Last Epoch has been a personal favorite of mine in the ongoing ARPG wars. Diablo 4, Path of Exile, and PoE 2 remain the dominant forces in the space, and D2 Resurrected has sprung back up with the introduction of the Warlock in its first new expansion in decades. I love them all, but I have a particular affinity for EHG's action RPG, which hits that Goldilocks sweet spot of being the 'just right' midpoint between the approachability of Diablo and the depth of Path of Exile. The road to Last Epoch Season 4 has just begun, and I'm pleased that the developer has dodged the biggest landmine, one it's repeatedly run into in recent years: calendar clashes.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Last Epoch makes its smartest decision yet by stepping clear of the Path of Exile and Diablo minefields

Hytale early access is humming along tremendously well, and I find myself frequently pulled back in to toy around with the new sandbox game born of Minecraft modders, despite fully intending to save my playtime for its 1.0 release. Hypixel founder Simon Collins-Laflamme and his team have been pumping out regular updates with a wealth of improvements one after another, including plenty of welcome quality-of-life changes. However, the Hytale boss warns that some of these additions are designed to act as quick, temporary fixes, and that you shouldn't get too comfortable with the likes of infinite water when it arrives.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Don't get too used to all of Hytale's helpful changes: "The way you play today is going to look very different a year from now"

The developer duo behind million-seller Mewgenics are already cooking up the plans for its first DLC. Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel's new strategy roguelike is the talk of the town, delivering a deep and replayable test of tactics layered with a bizarre menagerie of feisty felines. But as the pair drop a new set of Mewgenics patch notes and begin work towards the first proper expansion, Glaiel says they are being "pretty careful" about how they respond to community calls for more clarity and detail in its menus.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: The first Mewgenics DLC is already in the works, but its devs are being "pretty careful" about overcomplicating things

Blizzard is buffing survivability for some of the most fragile classes in its next World of Warcraft Midnight update, but it's got more bad news for Unholy Death Knights. The latest round of class tuning for the MMORPG has just been detailed, with Mages, Monks, and Priests all seeing some additional protection. The full release of WoW Midnight creeps ever closer, and a smaller round of changes compared to last week's overhaul suggests the developer is feeling more confident in how its beta balance is stacking up right now.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: A new World of Warcraft Midnight update buffs survivability for squishies, but nerfs Death Knights again

New Borderlands 4 DLC Legend of the Stone Demon is coming in less than a week, and it's the springboard I've been wanting ahead of its upcoming story expansion. Gearbox has just unveiled the full details for Borderlands 4 Bounty Pack 2, which is set to arrive on Thursday February 26 alongside the long-awaited addition of Pearlescent loot drops. With Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned, which introduces fifth Vault Hunter C4SH, set for March, the next month is positioned to become a defining moment in how the looter-shooter is remembered.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: New Borderlands 4 DLC Legend of the Stone Demon is the springboard the looter shooter needs into its first expansion

The new head of Xbox has aimed to squash fears that her arrival could spearhead a rise in the use of generative AI among its games, offering a promise to "not chase short-term efficiency". Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma, who steps into the role following the departure of longtime boss Phil Spencer, comes directly from the company's CoreAI team, leading to immediate concerns that her appointment signals the future direction of games developed and published by Xbox.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: New Xbox boss Asha Sharma promises not to flood its games with "soulless AI slop"

I'm desperate to get my hands on Crimson Desert. The new open-world game is looking absolutely packed, bringing together dynamic, flowing combat that has exhilarated me in multiple previews and a vast land filled with an impressive array of activities and pursuits. But is it an RPG? Developer Pearl Abyss doesn't think so, and is careful not to call it one, although director of marketing Will Powers acknowledges that there are certainly reasons why you might.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Pearl Abyss doesn't think of Crimson Desert as an RPG, but it understands why you might

Crusader Kings 3 developer Paradox Black is in the midst of working on a big 'spring cleaning' update, and it's turned to modders for some assistance. Riad Deneche, QA manager at the Crusader Kings 3 studio, explains that the focus of its upcoming patch is "tackling bugs that have been haunting our backlog, and introducing a set of changes and smaller features that we believe will meaningfully enhance the CK3 experience." In service of this, it's calling upon one mysterious, upstanding member of the community to help - and Deneche says the team was "genuinely shocked" by their list of proposed fixes.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Paradox recruits a mystery modder to improve Crusader Kings 3, and is "genuinely shocked" by how big their wishlist is

Godot developer Rémi Verschelde says a rise in AI-generated code is weighing down on the resources of its dedicated maintenance team. The open-source game engine has been around since 2014, but has gained increasing relevancy in recent years as an alternative to the likes of Unity, with Mega Crit switching to Godot for the development of Slay the Spire 2 as just one example. That growing popularity has been reflected in increasing submissions from budding contributors, but Verschelde cautions that an abundance of "AI slop" code is becoming overwhelming.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: A recent rise in "AI slop" code submissions is "draining and demoralizing" the team behind open-source game engine Godot

If this is Capcom's final big Monster Hunter Wilds update, it picked the right one to go out on. The new patch is the last bullet point on the Wilds roadmap, and introduces the ultimate showdown with its flagship monster, Arkveld, along with a bonus quest that feels very much like the end of the road. The new update also adds a Monster Hunter Stories 3 collaboration, lets you head out on a mission with MH4U's Nadia, and lifts the challenge with the inclusion of ten-star fights. Plus there's even some more PC performance tweaks, putting the RPG in the best position possible to prepare for its upcoming DLC after a rollercoaster year.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: New Monster Hunter Wilds update delivers the explosive finale I was hoping for, and boosts PC performance again for good measure

Code Vein 2 is right around the corner, and it's poised to deliver both a mechanical evolution and a narrative reset for the anime RPG. Bandai Namco's latest keeps the fundamentals that made its predecessor a cult favorite, and transports them into a completely new world and story. Ahead of its release, I sat down with Code Vein 2 producer Keita Iizuka to discuss the new game's approach, why the developer is staying clear of gen-AI tools, and placing a greater focus on up-front story and characters, rather than leaning purely on the challenge of combat.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Code Vein 2 doesn't use generative AI because its dev values "art style" and the "cohesiveness" of its world

If you took the intense, brutal conflicts of Battlefield 1 and fused them into the combat simulation of TABS, you'd probably end up with something a lot like Rising Front. The sandbox war game is primarily focused on World War I, but also features scenarios for the American Revolutionary War and the Franco-Prussian War to mix up your play. It lets you simulate massive battles featuring all manner of infantry, ground vehicles, and planes, allowing you to command your army from an aerial strategic view or drop into the action to take control in first-person. And now it's finally out of early access, complete with a huge upgrade.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: Blending Battlefield and TABS, WW1 sandbox Rising Front just hit version 1.0 with the addition of playable tanks and cavalry

The Destiny 2 Portal was one of Bungie's biggest recent gambles, and so far it's largely been a pretty disappointing one. Introduced as an overhaul to the iconic 'Director,' it aimed to wrestle the FPS game's increasingly cluttered and unwieldy map of destinations into a more streamlined progression system. The pitch was to offer "quick and clean access to a wider offering of activities with updated rewards," and while it does do that to some extent, it feels like it's lost a lot of its soul. Now, players are pointing back to an old Bungie GDC presentation that suggests the team had already considered something similar back during the early days of development, only to write it off.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: The Destiny 2 Portal is a disaster, and a 2016 GDC talk shows that Bungie already wrote off a similar idea a decade ago

When it comes to the best games like Diablo, there are plenty of real heavy hitters. While Path of Exile is still held up as the gold standard by most, I'll always make time for a new Torchlight Infinite season. XD's free-to-play ARPG is probably the fastest-moving around, and it packs so many additions into each major update that it rivals even the busiest patches Grinding Gear Games has to offer. The new Torchlight Infinite 'Vorax' update has just been revealed, and community manager Andre calls it "one of the most extensive" yet.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: New Torchlight Infinite update adds its fastest hero ever, and a crafting system that totally breaks the Diablo rival's build restrictions

The end of this week spells the final gasp for BioWare's Anthem. I suspect most people won't think too much about it - that's why, almost seven years after it first launched and five since EA pulled the plug on development, the Anthem servers are due to be shut off on Monday January 12. But I can't help feeling a real pang of sadness; Anthem as it launched wasn't the game it needed to be, and ultimately it never got there. But for me, it was so close that I could taste it - and now all that's left are the bitter memories of my favorite mech RPG that never quite was.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: As Anthem breathes its last, I still find myself mourning just how close it came to being the BioWare game of my dreams

The Final Fantasy 14 team at Square Enix has just done the smartest thing possible right now by capitalizing on the hugely positive response to patch 7.4 with the return of the FF14 free login campaign. The special event allows lapsed players to come back and check out the latest additions, from the new story content to the final act of Dawntrail's Arcadion raid series, along with all of the quality-of-life tools that have just been rolled out. With player sentiment at its highest since Endwalker wrapped up, it's a good time to find out why.

Read the full story on PCGamesN: The FF14 free login campaign is back, right as Square Enix finds the spark it was missing