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478 Action games reviewed and scored, best first.
478 reviews
A stylish "brain punk" action RPG from Bandai Namco with two playable protagonists and genuinely striking presentation -- Very Positive on Steam, though a large share of even its own positive reviews describe a game that runs out of ideas well before the credits, and a cloud-save bug that reviewers say has gone unfixed for years.
7 / 10
The closing chapter of the rebooted Survivor trilogy swapped Crystal Dynamics for Eidos-Montreal and gunfights for stealth and puzzles -- a deliberate pivot that split reviewers in 2018 and, eight years and a Definitive Edition later, is still what most players argue about, alongside a specific progress-blocking puzzle bug that outlived several rounds of patches.
7 / 10
A sci-fi skating-platformer from Heart Machine, the studio behind Hyper Light Drifter -- Very Positive on Steam and genuinely loved for its movement and art, but shadowed across years of reviews by a consistent verdict that it never quite lives up to the pedigree that sold it.
7 / 10
Sonic's first open-world entry, warmly received for boss fights and writing that reviewers say the series hasn't matched in years -- while a growing, high-vote complaint about Denuvo's always-online requirement has nothing to do with hedgehogs at all.
7 / 10
A content-dense, genuinely fun bullet-heaven roguelite with 22-plus characters and hundreds of skills, praised for its scope and exceptionally responsive small developer team — undercut by a real, consistently repeated complaint spanning both its fans and critics: despite the huge nominal variety, most builds converge on the same handful of optimal choices, and the endgame settles into what reviewers repeatedly, vividly call a "dodging simulator."
7 / 10
Shift Up's PS5-exclusive-turned-PC-port lands with genuinely praised combat, striking visuals and one of the strongest PC ports of its console-exclusive generation, undercut by a real, widely repeated "style over substance" complaint about shallow side content and a thin story — one this review can confirm the game's own director has publicly, directly admitted was underdeveloped.
7 / 10
A gorgeous HD-2D homage to Zelda-style action-adventure from the Octopath Traveler and Bravely Default team, undercut by a chatty fairy companion, a single overworld recycled across four time periods, and a full price that a meaningful share of its own reviewers say the content doesn't earn.
7 / 10
Read review of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales
A stylish, well-regarded action RPG whose attractive presentation and witty writing draw consistent early praise, undercut by a recurring complaint that difficulty and balance sour partway through the campaign, compounded by real, recurring bugs and crashes reported across a full decade.
7 / 10
A shield-surfing, Jak-and-Daxter-flavoured open-world action-adventure whose movement, art and award-winning soundtrack draw the kind of praise that gets a game called "the PS2 game we never got," undercut by year-long unfixed performance stutter and a combat system a large share of its own reviewers call the weakest part of the package.
7 / 10
An action RPG that layers levelling on top of levelling — your character, your skills, your weapons and your items all grow independently — and earns real comparisons to Diablo and Last Epoch for its first ten hours, before a near-universally hated grind wall right before the final boss undoes a lot of that goodwill.
7 / 10
A genuinely promising return for a cult-favourite action RPG series, currently sold at full future price for a slice of content that doesn't yet match the ambition of its class system.
7 / 10
A full 3D remake of a 1995 Super Famicom classic that never got an official English release until this and a retro re-issue arrived together in 2019-2020 — faithful to the original's charm and class-change system, but missing the SNES version's local co-op and carrying writing a meaningful share of its own Steam reviews call dated.
7 / 10
A debut Metroidvania that wears its Salt and Sanctuary and Bloodborne influences openly — critically well-received and Very Positive on Steam for its gothic art and boss fights, held back by confusing itemization, quest-breaking progression traps and a map screen players report as unusably broken years after launch.
7 / 10
A widely loved Left 4 Dead-style co-op action RPG whose own longtime fans describe a recurring pattern of the developer breaking what worked — most seriously with a kernel-level anti-cheat system reviewers say has issued false-positive bans in a purely cooperative game.
7 / 10
A character-based co-op action RPG that launched into Early Access on 17 August 2023 to what reviewers called one of the worst MMO launches in gaming history — hour-long server queues, a punitive premium-currency cash shop — then, after its original publisher's games division shut down months later, was rebuilt by its developer into a one-time purchase with microtransactions removed entirely.
7 / 10
An isometric immersive sim from Dishonored and Prey veterans that delivers on emergent, reactive storytelling almost every reviewer singles out for praise, wrapped around combat, companion AI and interface decisions that a large and articulate share of its own players call the weakest part of the experience.
7 / 10
A creature-collecting twist on the Vampire Survivors-style bullet-heaven that spent seven months in Early Access absorbing genuinely substantial content updates before reaching 1.0 — most of its harshest criticism predates that work and describes a build that no longer exists, though a real, smaller cluster of post-1.0 complaints, including one raised inside a positive review, says its opening 30 minutes still aren't fixed.
7 / 10
Contingent99's Kickstarter-funded elemental combo roguelite is Very Positive on Steam eight years on, but the single most consistent complaint in its review history -- getting stunlocked by chains of hits with no invincibility frames on the dash -- is exactly the same complaint it launched with in 2018.
7 / 10
MachineGames' 2014 reboot remains Very Positive across more than 61,000 Steam reviews a decade later, widely credited with successfully reviving a dormant franchise through genuinely strong gunplay and an unexpectedly earnest story — undercut for AMD graphics card owners by a severe, reproducible technical incompatibility this review can confirm has gone unresolved in the developer's own communications for well over a decade.
7 / 10
A beloved, free five-minute novelty where you spend humanity's last minute kissing or punching your way through a comic-strip apocalypse — overwhelmingly loved for exactly what it is, with its small negative minority mostly wishing there were simply more of it.
6.8 / 10
A solo German developer's Diablo-flavoured dwarf brawler — six to nine hours of hammer combos and procedurally reshuffled dungeons for about the price of a coffee, with no co-op and a combat system that occasionally fights the player as hard as the monsters do.
6.8 / 10
A hand-drawn, ambitiously huge metroidvania set in a ruined fantasy world -- reviewers are close to unanimous that the art is gorgeous, but well over half the negative reviews sampled for this piece raise the same specific complaint: a map so large and under-signposted that players spend hours lost rather than exploring.
6.5 / 10
A charming, expanded sequel to the cult indie roguelike platformer Angvik that keeps its predecessor's build variety and humour while dropping much of its difficulty, leaving several reviewers wishing for a harder mode to match the challenge fans of the first game remember.
6.5 / 10
Ubisoft's feudal Japan entry delivers genuinely beautiful visuals and a widely loved shinobi protagonist, undercut by a real, consistently repeated "formula fatigue" complaint — towers, icons, repetition — a verified gap between Ubisoft's public promise of full offline play and what reviewers report experiencing in practice, and a heavily monetised in-game store layered on top of a full NZ$109.95 purchase.
6.5 / 10
