Single-player, story-based DLC that gives me an excuse to return to an impeccable single-player, story-based adventure that I adored the first time around? Unlike an out-of-his-depth Marcus Brody, MachineGames really knows how to speak my language. The Order of Giants is a roughly four-hour side quest for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle that’s heavy on puzzles and features a string of tremendously atmospheric caves, catacombs, and canals to explore through the belly of Rome. After not having visited The Great Circle for many months, I was quickly hooked all over again. Even if it’s just for an afternoon, The Order of Giants is an effective refresher on most of the things I love about MachineGames’ take on the finest fascist-hater to ever find himself under a fedora. However, I have to concede that its presentation as a belated quest from early in The Great Circle’s story does make it feel noticeably less special and crucial to play than a more overtly separate adventure could have been, and the final fight falls a little flat.

Slipping The Order of Giants directly into what’s basically the first act of The Great Circle’s story obviously spoke to the MachineGames team in an irresistible way and, to a degree, I can see the elegance of blending it into the existing game in this fashion. Accessing the mission actually happens from within the Vatican level itself – it isn’t an individual mode or level you can directly hop into via the main menu. It’s an interesting approach, since it makes The Order of Giants feel like a segment that was left on the cutting room floor. If you’re playing for the first time it’ll just be there from the outset, and for returning players it’s a little like watching a familiar film with a lengthy deleted scene re-inserted. It’s a neat and tidy solution, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of making the DLC feel a little inessential overall. That is, it wasn’t here initially, and it doesn’t change anything now that it is – whether you play it or not.

While The Order of Giants kicks off within the existing Vatican level, the mission quickly distinguishes itself by placing Indy into a previously unseen interior – and subsequently whisking him out of the Vatican entirely, and into Rome. Troy Baker’s performance as Indy remains hard to fault, and the music is again outstandingly faithful to the films. There are some really stunning underground locations throughout The Order of Giants, and I regularly found myself poring over the details of its crusty catacombs.

The action, meanwhile, is typical of The Great Circle itself: a mix of light first-person platforming, some puzzle solving, and some scattered stealth and brawling against Italian soldiers and a group of mysterious and violent red-robed cult members. This isn’t the sort of DLC that adds a radically different new layer of combat, so don’t expect them to display any new tricks.

The puzzles, though, are absolutely the highlight. I liked two of them in particular more than any in The Great Circle itself. One is a well-crafted water puzzle, and the other is essentially a giant marble maze you need to solve without losing your flaming ball and starting over. There is one particular text-based brainteaser where the link to the physical puzzle pieces seemed a little obtuse initially, but shortly afterwards made me feel like a mild idiot for not figuring it out sooner. Sometimes that’s the best kind of puzzle.

There aren’t any dramatic action sequences in The Order of Giants akin to the fighter plane skyjack in The Great Circle – or tobogganing down the Himalayas on a huge, Nazi battleship. It’s a slower-paced affair overall, but I don’t mind this since it’s seemed to have resulted in a pumped-up amount of puzzles to mull over. It does crescendo to a slightly unexpected miniboss fight in a very neat location, but it’s not a particularly inventive battle – it’s just run, ranged attack, run, ranged attack, run, etcetera. It probably went on a little long considering how repetitive it ended up being, wrapping up just as I’d started wondering whether what I was doing was even the right thing.

Square Enix has announced Octopath Traveler 0 will have town building placement limitations for some consoles when it launches for PC, Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S this December.

Details about hardware restrictions were revealed alongside full platform specifications for the Octopath Traveler prequel. It comes with information about what resolution and FPS PC and consoles can achieve, while warning players with older hardware that their HD-2D RPG experience may come with a few noticeable differences.

PS5, Xbox Series X | S, and up-to-date PCs will support a maximum Town Building Placement Limit of 500. Those who play on Switch 2 and PS4, however, will see that building placement decreased to 400.

Town sizes in Octopath Traveler 0 shrink even more if you play on the original Switch, with Square Enix sharing that Nintendo’s first hybrid console will feature a maximum of just 250. That’s just half of what players on PS5 and Xbox Series X | S will see. It’s unclear how noticeable these town size differences will be for players when they play for themselves.

Octopath Traveler 0 platform specs pic.twitter.com/2jhpK7osy6

— Wario64 (@Wario64) September 5, 2025

In terms of resolution and FPS, PS5 and Xbox Series X, of course, lead the pack with support for up to 3840 x 2160 and 120 FPS, with PC players able to select their preferred performance settings depending on their setup. Xbox Series S supports 120 FPS at 1920 x 1080, with PS4 and Switch 2 both featuring up to 1920 x 1080 at 60 FPS. Finally, Octopath Traveler 0 played on the original Switch will have a maximum resolution of 1280 x 720 with support of up to 30 FPS.

While Switch 2 players will have the option to play the Octopath Traveler prequel on the go, they should know Square Enix recently revealed the physical version of the experience will only be available as a Game-Key Card. Switch 1 owners, on the other hand, can pick up an actual physical card but will not have an option to upgrade to a Switch 2 version.

Octopath Traveler 0 was announced for Switch and Switch 2 in July and will launch for all platforms December 4, 2025. For more on Square Enix’s latest, you can see what is included in its Standard, Deluxe, and Collector’s Editions.

Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Amazon outlet Woot is offering a bunch of video games on sale right now, with some of 2025’s biggest releases on sale.

Arguably, the biggest is Monster Hunter Wilds, which sees more than half of its MSRP sliced off with an Insect Glaive, bringing Capcom’s creature-slaying title down to just $29.99 on Xbox Series X.

This Woot Deal Is Great for 2025 Game Releases

Aside from a confused, misguided mish-mash of different and poorly executed ideas that take turns setting up rakes for itself to step on, Lost Soul Aside is an enjoyable character action game. I’ve had a blast in battles and boss fights, but too often in between them I had to slog through a repetitive story plagued with unmemorable characters, levels peppered with awkward platforming, and puzzles that would make the shape-matching challenges you’d give to a toddler look like rocket science, all disguised in a deceptively flashy package.

Originality is fleeting in games, a medium where ideas and innovations blur the line between craft, technology, business, and art. That’s especially true in the ever-wider tent of high-budget fantasy action games with flashy combos and light RPG elements. And normally, that’s not an issue; even a competent take on a character action game inspired by the likes of Bayonetta or Devil May Cry is probably going to provide some fluffy, inoffensive fun – and to its credit, Lost Soul Aside is more than competent as an action game. But in clearly borrowing and worsening ideas from multiple recent Final Fantasy games in particular, it’s not attempting an idea of its own that didn’t work out; it’s doing something badly that begs comparison to games that got the same ideas right, some of them nearly a decade ago.

That’s what drove me up the wall during my playthrough. I feel like I’ve been playing the product of boardroom meetings held a week after Final Fantasy XV or VII Remake came out where the discussion was on how to capitalize on their success, rather than a passion project made by a team paying homage to those games. From a we-have-Noctis-at-home main character (named Kaser), to the story’s setup feeling awfully familiar, to the structure and scale of each level resembling a pared-down Final Fantasy VII Remake, with all of it peppered with uninteresting extra puzzles and platforming challenges, I found something new to sigh at around every corner – and trust me, that’s not because I was swooning over the bad-boy protagonist.

Set in a sci-fi/fantasy world where a mysterious alien energy has been harnessed to fuel an all-powerful empire, Lost Soul Aside opens with a premonition that humanity is soon to face its darkest days and that a savior will rise to the occasion. Then, you’re thrust into an opening segment where you’re introduced to an underground resistance organization run from a poor neighborhood in the capital city as they carry out an open act of defiance against the empire – sound familiar? If it doesn’t you should play Final Fantasy 7 instead, because it’s done better there and this retelling doesn’t do anything interesting or original with it.

Doled out through occasionally dazzling, action-packed cutscenes but mostly in significantly less impressive, awkward dialogue sequences, the story is highly repetitive. Every opportunity for a twist or tonal shift is squandered in favor of a straightforward, black-and-white tale that doesn’t feel like it’s about anything other than wanting to be like other RPGs. Lost Soul Aside doesn’t use its roughly 16-hour runtime efficiently enough for any characters to grow. Instead, it flings proper noun after proper noun at you, hoping that one of its many side characters will make an impression. But this story’s rhythm moves too quickly for anybody to exist beyond cartoonish caricature at best. Being generous, maybe their memorable characteristics were lost in the English translation, but maybe they were never there to begin with.

Its individual story moments come in a similarly offbeat meter, with awkward animations and mostly flat voice acting filling in its hours’ worth of basic, over-the-shoulder dialogue segments. All of it is delivered by characters who often fall into unflattering RPG cliches (like a scantily clad woman who looks and acts like a teenager but is actually hundreds of years old or a gruff, emo protagonist who’d fit in with a boyband and has a mysterious backstory and a penchant for kicking ass) without playing with or evolving these ideas in any discernible way.

With a better localization, more lively voice direction, or a stronger commitment to the bit, Lost Soul Aside could perhaps have nailed the same B-movie-like campy charm worn so well by the action games that so clearly inspired its better parts. Instead, it’s somehow both half-hearted and overserious. Kaser and his dragon-like sidekick Lord Arena eventually share a few moments that bent the edges of my lips into a smirk, but it takes so long for the pair to hit their stride that I was mostly checked out from the story and there only for the action by the time their dynamic clicked.

Combat in Lost Soul Aside acts as a palette cleanser for the uninteresting story. Kaser hacks and slashes through enemies with stylish flair, using the genre-standard light and heavy attack buttons. Mixing the two together with different timing and order will open up new combos, and you can unlock even more using skill points to fill out branches on a skill tree. With a choice between four different weapons – sword, greatsword, poleblade, and scythe – each has its own skill path and playstyle. And switching them on the fly mid-combo opens up an expressive, varied tree of attacks catered to a range of playstyles. The polearm, for example, works well at long range, where the greatsword is best for dealing satisfying, heavy blows. My favorite was the standard sword, though; an all-around, quick, agile weapon with solid ranged and melee attacks, it’s remained my go-to for cutting up legions of invading Voidrax beings during the duration of my playthrough.

Supplemented by additional mechanics like the combo-extending Burst Pursuit that allows you to throw out big finishers after a combo or the Witch Time-like perfect dodge that nets you a different, powerful attack for each weapon, requisite – though cleverly restrained – parry, and the Arena powers that let you throw out big, area-of-effect attacks that work well for resetting the battlefield, Lost Soul Aside’s combat system is the star of the show. Even against largely unmemorable enemies, I’m really enjoying experimenting with new combinations and powers as Kaser and Arena’s flashy animations dazzled during longer sequences.

The boss fights that cap off parts of each level make for even more stylish encounters. While bigger opponents play with scale, throwing out massive, arena-sweeping attacks, others are more nimble duels to the finish against human-sized opponents. Nearly every fight culminates in an exciting finale. Dosed with just the right amount of toothy challenge, each battle provided the right kind of brain-tickling, thrilling showdown as I dodged and weaved between attacks before wailing on their stagger meter to deal a special Sync Finisher on my dazed opponent.

I did find an odd pain point in some of these fights, though: There’s not enough feedback when Kaser takes damage from some smaller swings. So as I’m wailing away at a bad guy seemingly doing well, I’ll glance down at my health bar and it’s significantly lower than I thought it would be because I didn’t know that I’d taken any damage in the first place. Thankfully, Kaser and Arena are talky enough that you’ll hear about it once your health is really low, and those barks stand out against the otherwise-repetitive battle chatter.

Unfortunately, Lost Soul Aside isn’t a pure boss-rush combat gauntlet, and the rest of the gameplay between each fight isn’t nearly as compelling. Most of the levels are made up of a linear, boring series of corridors with occasional “open” areas that add an extra platforming “challenge” or two to the mix. Sure, there might be a basic puzzle or treasure chest around a corner (though I used almost none of the crafting materials accumulated during my playthrough because the rewards didn’t improve my stats enough to bother with), but nothing I’ve seen so far has really come close to justifying its existence beyond drab padding between battles. Its high-fidelity, visually detailed spaces mask simple, homogenous non-combat challenges and empty chambers that toss a few unrewarding pickups your way, seemingly just to break things up.

That makes sense, considering most of the level progression and exploration is marked by boring and simple paths where you mostly just walk forward until the next fight, broken up with a simple puzzle here or there. It was nothing offensive…. until the platforming reared its ugly head. At multiple points during Lost Soul Aside I found myself jumping through platforming segments that could make even the Plinko and Chuckster levels that make up the dregs of Super Mario Sunshine look like a blast. Plagued with imprecise running and walking, floaty jumps with laggy-feeling animations, poor feedback, a claustrophobic field of view, and a barely visible shadow, I am truly shocked at the low-quality platforming I endured to get from fight to fight. Some of it was optional, but I still had to do a lot to complete any given level. Thankfully, I could find ways to cheese certain annoying segments, but don’t expect to see anyone at GDQ showing off Lost Soul Aside speedrunning techniques; these are tourniquets used to slow fatal bleeding, not expressive tools indicative of a mechanically deep platformer.

It’s another week, and that means it’s time to take a look at the Magic: The Gathering Crashers and Climbers as we close in on the release of Spider-Man less than two months since Edge of Eternities.

This time around, our climbers are a nice eclectic mix of cards from sets from 2024 and 2025, as well as a rapidly climbing space dragon. Intrigued? You should be. Let’s go!

Climbing

Let’s start with the space dragon, then, with Nova Hellkite available for just a few cents the other day and now reaching almost $3 in market value in climbing.