The Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Characters of 2022

Every character in the main crew of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is excellent, either standing alone or voltron’d into one of the strongest JRPG parties in decades, but a particular highlight in its incredibly likeable cast is the rough-and-ready Eunie. Initially one of the team’s healers, the fact that she has a penchant for either wanting to take the piss out of, or bite the head off of, anyone who comes near her is hilarious, but as you get to sit with her more, and as she navigates the trauma of everything she thought she knew about her and her friends’ lives as the cogs of an endless war between two nations, she blossoms into a compellingly sensitive figure. One that also remains bitingly hilarious, her curse-laden dialogue delivered by Kitty Archer in a fantastically cheesy and endearing approximation of a London cockney accent—the last thing you’d expect to hear out of most RPG heroes, let alone a petite girl with wings growing out of her head. – James Whitbrook

Every character in the main crew of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is excellent, either standing alone or voltron’d into one of the strongest JRPG parties in decades, but a particular highlight in its incredibly likeable cast is the rough-and-ready Eunie. Initially one of the team’s healers, the fact that she has a penchant for either wanting to take the piss out of, or bite the head off of, anyone who comes near her is hilarious, but as you get to sit with her more, and as she navigates the trauma of everything she thought she knew about her and her friends’ lives as the cogs of an endless war between two nations, she blossoms into a compellingly sensitive figure. One that also remains bitingly hilarious, her curse-laden dialogue delivered by Kitty Archer in a fantastically cheesy and endearing approximation of a London cockney accent—the last thing you’d expect to hear out of most RPG heroes, let alone a petite girl with wings growing out of her head. – James Whitbrook