Here at GateCrashers, we’re big fans of finding the latest and greatest in video games. It only makes sense to share that love and hop on the Wishlist Wednesday train to bring you our recs for upcoming titles to add to your list of games-to-get-hype-for. Don’t forget to share your own awaited games in the comments!

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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R – September 2nd

Hirohiko Araki’s masterpiece, brought to life as a fighting game! Battle with 50 colorful characters, wielding Stands, Hamon, and more! See how characters who could never meet in the story interact when they come face to face!

I’ll be honest: I wrote this Wishlist Wednesday last second…Well, that and I initially had no desire to get Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R. I actually played the quick demo a few months back and barely did a match before deciding against it. However, I am a HUGE Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure fan, like so big sometimes it controls my life decisions. I didn’t give the demo a fair shake because I despised fighting games just a few months ago. Why did I have such a hatred of this beloved genre? I sucked at it. I horribly, terribly, sucked at fighting games. So what changed?

Guilty Gear Strive.

After Bridget from Guilty Gear Strive took over Twitter, I checked the game out, and something in it just clicked, and now it’s all I play. As someone who never played fighting games before, it’s all I want to do now, especially with the Qanba Arcade (Drone model) Stick I bought. Every time I play, I feel myself getting better, which is what I enjoy seeing. I mean, it’s much easier than training my real body. Nonetheless, back to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle R.

Why do I want this game? Because it’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and my latest addiction, fighting games. September 2nd can’t get here soon enough!

– Jason Jeffords Jr. (@JJRwrites)

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Ashes of Creation – TBA

Ashes of Creation is a unique take on the MMORPG experience. Our world structure is dynamic, and built to react to your actions. Cities will rise and fall as you shape the world of Verra. Quests and secrets will unlock as populations gather and their needs grow. As the orld’s NPC structure is established in real-time, you will have the ability to destroy what’s been created, paving the way for new developments, populations, and change. Political strife and intrigue will play a very real role in the structure of your experience. Gone are the days of static worlds; change is here to stay!

I’m a very self-contradicting person when it comes to games. I love big open-world games in which I can always find new things to do and experience. However, it’s also extremely hard for me to get hooked, and even when I do, it’s likely I’ll get bored by the inevitable monotony down the line. This leads to me usually playing smaller, shorter games, which I also love, but for completely different reasons.

This happens to me with MMOs as well. I adore the idea of immersing myself inside a new, massive world that actually feels deep and real. Nevertheless, I tend to disappoint myself when I actually try to play MMOs; there is joy I can get out of them, maybe with some mechanics I dig or a world I’m attracted by such as Lord of the Rings Online. But they never quite fills the fantasy I’m looking for.

What I look for in an MMO goes beyond endless content. I want to be able to exist in the world I’m inserted in in an organic way. More than combat, stealth or fetch quests, I want the freedom to just be a tavern owner, or maybe a lumberjack, a farmer, a bandit or a pirate. I want to interact with the world in ways that matter, with an ever-changing environment and ecosystem. Of course, this doesn’t happen because creating such thing is understandably difficult; creating your usual MMO is already a daring task that can take close to a decade of development on its own. But I may have finally found what I’m looking for.

Ashes of Creation is my pick for this Wishlist Wednesday. This fantasy MMOPRG developed by Intrepid Games, now on development for five years, might be the most ambitious MMORPG of all time. That is a lot.

The game has such an insane amount of features that it just wouldn’t be enough for me to write about it in this article. So I’ll concentrate on the features that are most attractive for me and link this video that I found and has a lot more information in case you want to hear further.

For starters, the main mechanic that will set Ashes of Creation apart will probably be its Node System. With over a hundred nodes in the world of every server, they develop in four types: Militaristic, scientific, divine or economic. The citizens will be able to choose a player as mayor in different ways, depending which type of node you inhabit, whether that be democratically by the scientific type, or selling the title in the economic node.

You can also develop different professions with which you can take an active role in this community, like alchemy, blacksmiths, carpentry, cooking, or animal husbandry. If you’re like me, you will also take joy in knowing you can be a bandit: when players take caravans with resources from one node to another to sell, the caravan becomes a moving PvP ground which you can attack and steal. Let’s hope this also translates into the naval gameplay, as there’s nothing I’d love more than to be able to become a pirate.

In addition, you have your usual PvP, PvE, mounts, races and classes, and a huge world to explore, with the added bonus that are seasons: Every two or three weeks, the seasons will change and so will do the way you have to traverse and interact with the map.

The only downside I’m aware of is that the game has an exclusively binary set of genders for the characters, which is a bummer for non-binary folks like me. But not surprising, as many little RPGs actually let you be non-binary. It does allow for same-gender relationships and no feature, customization or otherwise, is gender-locked, so that’s nice.

MMORPG fans have a history of hyping up games that end up disappointments, and I may be doing that in this Wishlist Wednesday. But can you blame me? It all sounds so amazing. And fortunately, the game has continued to have constantly update its playerbase with almost every feature shown in livestreams. There is no release date yet for Ashes of Creation, but I will wait and try it out happily once it’s out.