- Fire Emblem Three Houses: 11/10 hype. Most exciting release of the year to me, although we'll see if Intelligent Systems can marry good gameplay with good story this time. Really hoping we get Echoes-style 3D dungeon exploration in this, which seems plausible with the monastery being explorable. God, I can't wait — Fire Emblem releases are always so special to me.
- DQXI S: 10/10 hype. It was difficult biding my time for the Switch release as a huge JRPG fan, but portability is the only way I can play nowadays. Planning to really savor the game with Harder Enemies enabled.
- Astral Chain: 9/10 hype. Looks awesome so far — totally unexpected.
- Cadence of Hyrule: 8/10. Just gotten into the Mystery Dungeon / roguelike genre(s), so this is a very pleasant surprise. And playable Zelda! Unf, so good. Haven't played Necrodancer, so my only slight apprehension is how the rhythm aspect feels.
- Pokemon Sword & Shield: 8/10. Pokemon coming to more powerful hardware is exciting, although the trailer made the games seem a bit too safe. Visible overworld/following Pokemon seemingly being absent is very disappointing; while I dig random encounters, the Pokemon world could be enlivened so much seeing Pokemon in their habitats ala Snap.
- Link's Awakening: 5/10. Never played the original, so this should be pretty fun.
- Daemon X Machina: ??/10. I'm not normally huge into mech stuff, but if they fix the performance and controls from the demo, this could be something special. The art style was striking in trailers.
Town's another thing I'm really curious and optimistic about, but obviously it isn't first party. Looked really cute back at its reveal. Hope it releases sooner than later.
