The Lords’ Most Anticipated Games: January 2024

A new year brings a new batch of games to be excited about. While January 2024 isn’t the most exciting month for gaming, a handful of potential gems are on the horizon. Let’s look at what January game releases the contributors to Lords of Gaming are excited about!

CUnit aka Chris Jones, Community Manager & Senior Writer

So starting the year after a great 2024, we have some good games releasing this month. As for the one I’m most looking forward to, I’d say it’s Dynasty Warriors: Origins. I’ve been playing those styles of games since they were essentially Kessen back in the day.

I even reviewed Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires myself. I’ve always loved how cool the characters and stories in all the games are each time a new one is released. And Dynasty Warriors: Origins seems even to kick it up a notch. The visuals look amazing and you know I’ll be diving in and hopefully playing Zhuge Liang cause he’s the best character from the series. These games look to carry the series forward in a great direction and I’m super stoked!

Subeg Dhaliwal, Writer

January brings a good assortment of titles but the one that catches my eye is Freedom Wars Remastered. I am actually super hyped to see Freedom Wars come back because it was very experimental as a handheld title offering co-op Monster Hunter-like action but in a cool dystopian world.

The premise is also very unique. In Freedom Wars you play as a criminal and completing missions slowly reduces their prison sentence. The gameplay offers a nuanced mix of variety, offering 3rd person shooting, melee combat, and a grappling hook-like ability to fight the Abductors. The grapple hook also is used to traverse the levels.

The remaster seems to be a facelift of the original PS Vita title, giving it higher resolutions and better framerates. Quality-of-life features will be added such as simplified upgrading/weapon crafting and options for English and Japanese voice acting. The remaster looks to be very true to its Vita roots but the exciting thing is if this remaster does well commercially, then we may see a sequel which could then blossom into a franchise.

Sadly though Freedom Wars Remastered is skipping the Xbox platform but the game will launch on Playstation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, and PC on January 10th, 2025

Robert Kellett aka Lord Sonic, Assistant Editor

One of the many games I played during my time at Anime Expo NYC in 2024, was the exciting Hyper Light Breaker. Taking pages from games like Breath of the Wild, building on the work established with the fantastic Solar Ash, and honoring the spirit of its predecessor Hyper Light Drifter, this is set for release on Early Access on January 14th for Steam.

Playing the demo at the Expo, I loved how smooth the platforming and combat felt while appreciating the striking art direction and how open everything felt. Talking to the person at the station, I got further excited seeing how passionate the entire team expressed about the project and how they want to give back to the community that supported them over the years, both on this latest project and their prior release with Hyper Light Drifter.

In a month that is pretty light with releases and multiple ports on other platforms, such as Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Spider-Man 2 on PC, an exciting new indie release such as this easily piques my interest.

Mahmood Ghaffar, Editor-in-Chief

Undoubtedly, my most anticipated game for January 2025 is actually a game from early 2024. That’s right, my most anticipated game is the release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PC. I was a big fan of FF7 from the 1990s (though I’ll admit I have a slightly more favorable bias for FF8 – gun blade is a GOAT weapon, but I digress), and I played the first FF7 remake on PC and thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. Now, almost a year later, I’ll get to continue that famed story again on the PC platform. Another cherry on top is that Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is releasing with a pre-purchase discount. I just hope that Square Enix learns from their first experience with FF7 Remake and properly optimizes the port for PC this time. 

Happy New Year!

Let’s all look forward to the new year and please let us know what games you are most excited about playing this month!