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73 games released in 2019 and reviewed here, best first.
73 reviews
A detective RPG with no combat, twenty-four skills that argue with you inside your own head, and writing that has no real rival in the medium. Its negative reviews are almost entirely from people who call it a masterpiece and ask you not to buy it.
9.5 / 10
The version of Persona 5 that's actually for sale everywhere now, and the one worth reviewing on its own mechanical terms — a turn-based JRPG whose real engine isn't the combat or the style, it's a calendar that turns every evening into a resource-allocation decision with consequences that outlast the day.
9 / 10
FromSoftware throws out the build variety and co-op that define its other games and replaces them with a single unbreakable rule — get better at deflecting, or don't get past this boss — and turns that gamble into one of the sharpest action games ever made.
9 / 10
The game that invented the deckbuilding roguelike as a genre in its own right, still sitting at 97% positive on Steam seven years on, and still worth the asking price even with a sequel already in Early Access.
9 / 10
A tower-defense puzzle wearing gacha-RPG clothes, where the placement grid matters more than the banner history — and where the sanity bar, not the wallet, is the thing actually managing your time.
8.5 / 10
The Paper Mario game a huge share of its own reviewers say Nintendo stopped making — turn-based RPG combat, real puzzle-solving abilities, genuine charm — built by a small independent team instead, and rarely called out for anything beyond a handful of specific, old-school JRPG design choices.
8.5 / 10
Capcom's confident return to its own franchise after 2013's divisive DmC reboot, splitting combat across three wildly different playable characters -- Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam seven years on at 96% of over 169,000 reviews, with a scattered but real minority complaint about DLC nickel-and-diming, a stale PC port (still no ultrawide or DLSS support), and a story some players find thinner than the combat around it.
8.5 / 10
Widely regarded as one of the best-written RPGs ever made — reviewed against the backdrop of a well-documented ownership dispute in which the game's original creators were pushed out of ZA/UM, a fact a large share of this game's own reviewers raise before they say anything else.
8.5 / 10
The Definitive Edition of Dragon Quest XI doesn't reinvent the turn-based JRPG, and that's the point — an orchestral score, a full second 2D presentation of the same 100-hour campaign, and combat that trusts the format instead of subverting it.
8.5 / 10
Read review of Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age — Definitive Edition
A solo developer's six-year passion project about a one-hit-kill assassin who can foresee his own fights -- Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam seven years on, still one of the best-reviewed action games of its era, but famous now for a very specific ongoing story: a free story-continuing DLC promised since shortly after launch that, as of this review, still hasn't shipped.
8.5 / 10
A free browser idler that grew into one of Steam's most respected incrementals by refusing to explain itself, stacking rebirth systems on rebirth systems until a wiki tab stops being optional and starts being furniture.
8.5 / 10
A space-colony simulation where the number that scales isn't a character level — it's the tangle of pipes, wires and thermal gradients you're personally responsible for keeping alive, and the game never once lets physics take a day off.
8.5 / 10
A four-person Melbourne studio's stealth-comedy about being a horrible goose became a genuine 2019 cultural phenomenon and a Game of the Year award-sweeper -- seven years on it's still Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam, with the same specific, consistent friction reviewers named at launch: deliberately awkward controls and a very short runtime for the asking price.
8.5 / 10
A frenetic, jazz-scored smash-'em-up about a captive gorilla tearing through procedurally shuffled levels — Overwhelmingly Positive at 95%, with a small but pointed negative corpus arguing the same randomisation that makes each run fresh also makes it impossible to practice or master a level, on a game most reviewers, positive and negative alike, finish in under two hours.
8 / 10
A well-regarded, atmospheric post-apocalyptic shooter whose reputation was genuinely damaged by a real 2019 Epic Games Store exclusivity controversy and a cluster of specific, long-unfixed bugs — but whose negative reviews have declined sharply since, consistent with a history that's now largely settled rather than an ongoing problem.
8 / 10
A factory game where your conveyor belts double as your ammo supply, so a bottleneck in copper isn't a spreadsheet problem, it's a hole in your wall. Free and open source on Android and itch.io, a paid one-off on Steam, and one of the most distinctive marriages of automation and tower defence around.
8 / 10
A ragdoll physics sandbox at 98.7% positive with a Workshop full of community mods — and a February 2026 incident where one of those mods spread itself across the Workshop and had to be shut down.
8 / 10
An emotionally overwhelming, near-universally acclaimed western epic — undermined for over six straight years by a mandatory launcher that reviewers say can prevent you from playing even the offline single-player campaign, and a 2024 "Labor of Love" award many felt the game's own neglect made absurd.
8 / 10
A quarter-century-old RTS landmark, still played and beloved by a genuinely intergenerational audience — and, since early 2025, at the center of a real controversy among its own most dedicated veterans over new Three Kingdoms civilizations they say abandon the series' historical design philosophy.
7.5 / 10
A beloved co-op space-building sandbox with three distinct eras in its review history — an adored Early Access, a 1.0 launch derailed by an EULA backlash that had nothing to do with the game, and a 2025 wave of long-term fans warning newcomers about DLC and premium currency arriving after a "strategic acquisition."
7.5 / 10
A colony sim that turns its whole progression system into a programming lesson — you don't unlock better robots, you unlock better scripts, and the game lives or dies on whether that scripting language can keep up with the colony you build with it.
7.5 / 10
A Seville studio's Kickstarter-funded Metroidvania built from Spanish Holy Week processions and Goya paintings -- still Very Positive on Steam seven years and three free expansions later, with the exact same critic-and-player split that greeted it at launch: some of the best pixel art and atmosphere in the genre, wrapped around movement and combat feel a real share of players never warm to.
7.5 / 10
Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter-funded spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night is still a deep, generously-supported Metroidvania seven years on -- but a December 2025 switch to requiring Epic Online Services has visibly dragged its recent review score down from Very Positive to Mostly Positive.
7.5 / 10
A 2019 Steam idle-RPG where the class you pick isn't a build for life — it's a costume you're expected to change every run, and the game is built to make that swapping the whole point.
7.5 / 10
