Steam Tokyo Game Show sale: the Japanese games worth buying

Tokyo Game Show opened at Makuhari Messe on 17 September, and its organisers are billing this one as the first ever five-day edition and the show's 30th anniversary. None of which matters much outside Chiba — but the storefront that shadows the show does. The Steam Tokyo Game Show sale is live, and Steam's own event listing puts its end at 22 September, giving you five days to decide whether any of it is worth your money.

Most coverage of an event sale is a list of percentages. Percentages are the least useful thing you can be told, because they are measured against a sticker price the publisher chose and can be reversed tomorrow. What follows is the opposite: which of these games are genuinely at the bottom of their price record right now, which are merely cheap, and which are cheap for a reason.

What the Steam Tokyo Game Show sale is actually good for

This is a Japanese-catalogue event, and that shapes the value on offer. Japanese publishers — Koei Tecmo, Capcom, Bandai Namco, Square Enix — discount on a slower, shallower cycle than Western ones. A Ubisoft game reaches its floor within a year and stays near it. A Team Ninja game takes three years, and its deepest cuts cluster around events like this one.

That means a TGS discount on a two-to-four-year-old Japanese action game is far more likely to be a genuine record low than an equally large percentage in a Steam seasonal sale. It also means the newest titles here are mostly noise.

Wo Long's deflect timing is tighter than Sekiro's and its Morale system punishes skipping side objectives — this is the least forgiving of Team Ninja's modern games. (Official Steam screenshot)

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is the clearest buy of the sale

Two things happened this week and they point the same way. Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja confirmed on their own newsroom that Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember arrives on 4 March 2027 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, Xbox on PC and Steam, and that it will be "available from day one with XBOX Game Pass". A time-limited Alpha Demo went live on 16 September and is playable until 30 September on Xbox, PS5, Xbox on PC and Steam.

At the same time, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty hit the lowest price in our entire record for it, as of today, 17 September 2026. Sequels almost never drag the previous game back down this far once the marketing cycle starts; they drag it up. Buying the first game during the window where the publisher wants you caught up is the cheapest this will be for a long time.

Wo Long is set in a demon-haunted Later Han dynasty; the sequel picks up in 208 AD with Cao Cao marching on Jing Province. You do not need the first to follow the second, but the combat system is the whole point and it does not explain itself twice.

The release-date trailer for Wo Long 2, as posted on PlayStation's channel rather than Koei Tecmo's own.

Nioh: the cheap entry point, and the better game

Both Nioh games are in the sale and they are not interchangeable. Nioh: Complete Edition is the older, harder, more obtuse one, and it is trading for the price of a coffee. Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition is the better game by a clear margin — more build variety, a far kinder difficulty curve, a character creator — and it reached the lowest point in our record yesterday.

If you are picking one, pick the second. Nioh 2 is a prequel, so you lose nothing in story terms, and the first game's worst habits (repeated maps, a loot system that buries you) were fixed rather than iterated on. Buy the original only if you finish the sequel and want more.

Nioh 2's Yokai Shift turns the difficulty spikes into something you can plan around — the single biggest reason it is the better starting point. (Official Steam screenshot)

Anyone arriving here from FromSoftware's catalogue should know these are not open-world games. They are mission-based, with stages you replay. Our guide to soulslikes on PC sorts the subgenre by what you actually liked about Elden Ring, which is the more useful filter.

Rise of the Ronin: good game, wrong price

Rise of the Ronin is the same studio's open-world Bakumatsu game, and its PC port arrived long after the PS5 original. It is discounted here, and it is not at its floor — our record has it lower earlier this month than it is today.

That is worth stating plainly because it is the most common way an event sale takes money off people: a real discount that is nonetheless worse than the one two weeks ago. If you want it, the price is fine. If you were waiting for the bottom, this is not it. Watch the game page instead.

Koei Tecmo America's own launch trailer for the Steam version, which added ultrawide support and uncapped framerates over the PS5 release.

The non-action picks worth a look

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy is the outlier in a sale otherwise dominated by people hitting each other with swords, and it is the best value per hour on this list: three full courtroom adventures and dozens of hours for less than the cost of a single evening out. It is also not quite at its floor today — close, but our record has it lower earlier this month.

The Trilogy collects the three Game Boy Advance and DS originals with redrawn art. It is a reading game with occasional shouting. (Official Steam screenshot)

Two to be careful with

Monster Hunter Wilds is discounted, and it is the newest big-budget title in the event, which is exactly why the discount is shallow relative to where it will eventually land. It is also the most demanding game here by a distance — check the system requirements properly, not optimistically.

PRAGMATA is Capcom's long-delayed sci-fi action game and the discount on it is modest. New releases behave predictably: the first year is when you pay the most for the least patched version. We laid out what the data says about that in our piece on pre-ordering, and the same logic applies to buying inside a launch window.

Wilds' seamless map is the technical reason it is so hardware-hungry; there are no loading screens between zones to hide behind. (Official Steam screenshot)

How this fits the rest of the calendar

TGS lands in the quiet stretch between the Steam Summer Sale and the autumn events, which is precisely why it is useful — Japanese publishers use it as their deep-discount moment and Western ones largely sit it out. If nothing here appeals, the next meaningful window is some weeks away; our Steam sales calendar has the shape of the year.

And if you have been burned by a "lowest ever" badge before, the reason is almost always a short price record rather than a lie — the mechanics are in what a historical low actually means. For a broader Japanese-publisher event with a different catalogue, our write-up of the recent Capcom sale covers the Resident Evil and Monster Hunter back catalogue in more depth than this piece does.

The bottom line

Buy Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. It is at the lowest point we have ever recorded for it, the sequel is five months out with a demo running right now, and this is the last cheap window before the marketing machine turns. If you want one game from the Steam Tokyo Game Show sale and you have any tolerance for difficulty, that is the one.

After that, Nioh 2 at a record low is the better long-term purchase, and the Ace Attorney Trilogy is the safest buy for anyone who does not want to be punished. Skip Rise of the Ronin and PRAGMATA this round — both will be cheaper, and neither is at its floor today. Check every live price on the game pages linked above before you buy; the sale ends 22 September.