Arco

Play it on: PC, Switch

Current goal: Get red on the Red Company gang

Arco looks like an unassuming pixel art adventure but it doesn’t take much time playing to discover how much really cool stuff it has going on. Aside from the neat aesthetic and good music, there’s a meaty tactical-RPG here powered by a moving and morally charged tale of pain, identity, and revenge. I’m only a couple of hours into the roughly 10-hour-long game and already find myself satisfyingly under its spell.

There are two sides to Arco. In the first you explore small 2D zones, talk to people, choose how to respond, and occasionally suffer pangs of guilt when doing something you know you shouldn’t. In the other, you engage in what are essentially turn-based battles with a neat twist. You move around a battlefield and select when to wait, dodge, or attack with the vector of consequence for each action telegraphed via blue and red trajectories. Enemies signal when they’re about to attack and you try to respond accordingly by getting out of the way, killing them first, or setting up a special combo that saves the day.

You use items to heal and spend XP on learning new abilities and upgrading old ones. It has all the familiar trappings of an action-RPG with a layer of XCOM-lite strategy on top, but done in a way that feels fresh and befitting the broader story and how it’s being presented. It’s a perfect fit so far for handheld. — Ethan Gach