Games I Played in 2024

Originally I had some stupid paragraph written here about this list existing as a way to tackle my backlog. Hell, thats what its always been, go back to the post from 2022 and you’ll see. But even with it being an explicit excuse to “defeat my backlog”, that wasn’t happening. It wasn’t until I saw this that recontextualized my view on this whole thing. If you don’t have the time to watch it, go make some time its a fantastic video. If you still can’t, the point of the video is that the existence of a backlog makes gaming an obligation when it should be something done out of desire. There is a lot more from that video that is highly informative and thought provoking, but ultimately it helped redefine my approach to gaming this year. I still think I could have challenged myself more to take it from a less “reviewer” approach and a more “this is what the game made me think/feel” but despite all that I’m still happy with how it turned out. Next year I’ll keep it more informal and more fun.

Games I Beat

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (2022)

I think I finally get Xenoblade. If you read my games post from last year, you’ll see that I wasn’t a huge fan of 2 and couldn’t even get into X. Hell, even when I played 1 I rushed through it because something about it didn’t quite click with me. But after playing and completing 3, I think my stance on the series has finally changed. Don’t get me wrong, I still think 2 is bad and X flawed, but I’m willing (and planning) on replaying them to re-evaluate them as there was something about Xenoblade 3 that just had me hooked.

To me, Xenoblade 3 presents the most interesting world of the entire trilogy. Its these two countries, locked in an eternal war with each other. From birth, their citizens are conscripted into the army and dedicate their entire lives to the battle field. There is no time for relaxation or culture, the entirety of each nation is dedicated to this war. For what reason? Each and every person’s life is linked to a flame clock, a constantly ticking timer to their death. The only way to make it go backwards is to kill, and even then, this isn’t enough. After only ten short years, a person is forced to move on from the world, so they have to make their time count, else they let down their friends and their country.

But there is more to this world. Early on, the protagonists end up meeting someone from a rebel faction. They don’t belong to either country, and even weirder, they’re visibly old in a world where people die before that can happen. This is a bizarre occurrence that leaves the cast baffled, and whats more is that in the same scene they get interrupted by a member of a fourth faction, Moebius. This already interesting world suddenly has a lot more to uncover, and you’re stuck right in the middle of it.

I think the whole appeal of this is how real everything feels. Talking to NPCs and all the party interactions give so much credibility to the world. The problems you solve in the quests and side quests all tie into the world building that was set up. People worry about fighting, loosing friends, getting supplies, and coming home alive. The quests are never generic, they’re full of people trying to grapple with the world around them, and in some cases, question and defy the systems in place. It was exceptional, I wanted to go around and help everyone out. Everyone had such unique issues and interesting stories, I was never told to kill X monsters or collect X items, there was always some greater reason behind it that tied into the lore of the world. Spending time in this environment was phenomenal.

And the environment itself was phenomenal. Running around and exploring is actually worth your time. There are tons of side quests that can be found by just exploring, but even more than that its worth running around to find all the containers of loot and unique enemies. All of these are well worth your time to seek out, as they will aid in boosting your progress throughout this game. Even then, just running around to see all the vistas this world has to offer is worth your time. People always complain about the switch graphics, but when developers know what they’re doing, they produce some amazing things, and Monolith Soft does not disappoint. When I first got the game, I just ran around getting screenshots to show to some of my friends. These graphics seriously impressed me (especially when compared to Pokemon’s entries on the console). It wasn’t infrequent that I would stop to soak in the sights and sounds of a new area, it always made finding a new place such a joy.

This game has the best characters of the whole series. Everyone from the main cast gets plenty of time in the spotlight. Everyone has some interesting backstory. Everyone grows and develops in some way. The entire main cast was extremely likable, which is something I can’t say for the other games in the series. On top of that, there is a massive extended cast that gets treated with a high level of respect. Side characters get their time in the spotlight, with detailed side stories. I enjoyed these because they really give a lot of credibility to the world. Of course there are tons of interesting and important people out there, getting to know them and their position in the world was always such a joy.

I will admit, I wasn’t too big on the combat system compared to the other entries in the series. Its good, great even, it just has some flaws. The system revolves around entering an Ouroboros form with a partner, basically a mech. In this form you have access to powerful attacks and invincibility, however the duration is limited. Its pretty interesting, because you can not only use it offensively, but defensively because of the invincibility it grants. There is also a risk reward system of sorts, as prolonging the activation can lead to it building up to higher levels, which increase the damage output. It quickly becomes an incredibly strong option. The other part of the combat is the class system, and its fine. Its nothing special, but it also doesn’t excite me too much. I have two issues with this: characters don’t feel distinct and gaining classes is awkward. To address the first: everyone in the party has roughly the same base stats. There are some differences, but its never to the point where one character is clearly suited for one role over another. To some, this means you can build whoever however. Sure, this allows for a lot of player control and expression, but to me it misses out on an opportunity to reinforce the characters qualities via how they individually play. Take Xenoblade 1 for example: Shulk is fiercely motivated, so it makes sense he plays a primary attacking role. Reyn is a bit of a meathead who wants to do good, so it makes sense he plays a tank-y protective role. Xenoblade 3 misses this opportunity to flesh out its characters in this way. It still gives them plenty of development, I find it just a bit disappointing to see them miss out on this opportunity. The other issue has to do with the class distribution. The game doesn’t give you all the classes right at once, which is fine, but it also doesn’t give them at a consistent rate. You end up getting a handful at the start, then its a bit of a trickle, and then in the last parts of the story you get a ton. This lead to me running around with completely maxed classes during the entire mid-game, and then in the end it was a mess of trying new classes while trying to level them on each party member. And if you just had to get them once, it would be less of an issue, but things couldn’t be easy. Each class also has an ascension to it, you can level them up to even higher levels after completing a quest. The main issue with this is you don’t get a majority of those quests until the last few parts of the story. So you can unlock them, but you have little time to gain the benefits of the increased levels before the end unless you go out of your way to grind them up. These are just some baffling choices. Still not as bad as adding gatcha like they did in Xenoblade 2, but my complaints are ultimately minor.

Fans of the series will quickly notice some direct references to Xenoblade 1 and 2 in the game. I noticed these right away, it ends up being pretty easy to draw some comparisons to the previous entries. This wasn’t present in Xenoblade 2, so this was raising some alarms in my mind when I started playing. I wrote down some preliminary notes and theories on the topic, but the story does end up revealing its reasoning for why in one big lore dump that doesn’t fully make sense unless you’ve played the other two entries. I won’t spoil it, but I think its a little lame if you only take 3 into account. Thinking about it in context of the Xenoblade series as a whole is interesting, even more so if you consider it part of a larger Xeno meta series, but for the individual game I could do without. However, it does allow for some interesting foreshadowing if you’re familiar with elements from the previous entries, so keep an eye out during your play through.

This seriously ended up being a pretty amazing games. Sure, there were some questionable decisions made, but those are relatively minor (unlike 2). It quickly became my favorite game in the series, even more so than 1. While 1 still holds a special place in my heart for what it is, I cannot deny that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is better. I can’t wait to see what the series has in store going forward. Probably not a remake of Xenoblade Chronicles X though.

9 / 10

2023-12-26 to 2024-01-21

Pokemon Gaia (2018)

I kinda hate when people use the term “soul” to describe video games. It seems like a cop out. What does it mean to have “soul”? Do you mean its objectively good? Does it have several qualities you enjoy? Is it the sound track, the graphics, the gameplay, or something else? Its just presented as this mythical, subjective thing that elevates a game, no matter its quality. I don’t like it, but I’ll be damned if Pokemon Gaia doesn’t have soul.

Again, in my quest to replace the disappointment of modern Pokemon games, I turn to fan projects. And this one, it delivers. If you told me this was a generation 3.5 or a game from an alternate universe where FRLG were turned into something unique, I would believe you 100%. Gaia delivers a wholly new story and gameplay experience that is reminiscent of what is actually produced. There is no doubt in my mind that this game is on par with the best games in the main series.

I need to justify my gushing. Gaia starts out a bit simplistic. It heavily reuses FRLG assets, not the best first impression for a game aiming to bring something unique. The starting areas are simplistic and plain, the routes feel more like twisted lines than real places, there is little in place of interesting events and more focus on battling. Its not terrible, it just feels like a first pass. But push through and the game starts to show off what it has in store. As you go on, events become increasingly elaborate. The locales you visit deviate more and more. No longer does it look like a remixed Kanto, but something new and unique. Routes open up, with side areas full of loot, optional battles, and interesting paths. And it just keeps getting better the further on you get. Its a little sad, seeing how good the late game is compared to starting out, but the beginning is still a bit above average.

Another thing I loved was the plot. A lot, and I mean a lot, of fan games love to try to make their plots more dark/serious/edgy. I feel like this plagued so many fan projects in the 2010s, and even now to some extent, but Gaia keeps it simple. Its your simple plot to stop the bad guys from using the box legendary to be evil. Its nothing groundbreaking, but its done so well. The evil team isn’t cartoonishly evil, but they don’t exist for no reason. There was a lot of effort put into the world building to make everything they do seem reasonable. Its insane to say, but this simple plot was so much more effective and engaging than a lot of other fan games that try a more complex plot.

I think this game does fan service right. None of it is this in-your-face kinda thing. No legendaries plastered everywhere, no real memes or references, nothing cringe. Its this more subtle thing. A lot of the dialogue is almost self aware. It knows its in a parody of sorts. Gaia is very much trying to be an official game and a love letter to the series at the same time. It stays within these strict guidelines for what you would expect from a real game, but it has so much fun with it. Your rival has this incredible arc. He starts out as you would expect, but loss after loss really transforms him into something else. Every battle with him was such a joy, it really took me back to my first time playing through the Johto games and seeing how that rival grew and changed. In fact, a lot of this game made me feel like I was going back in time and sinking my teeth into a Pokemon game for the first time. It is just incredible.

But, it still is flawed. I think if you play this game you will notice one thing, it has some major difficulty spikes. Boss battles are several levels above other trainers, often leading to them walling you. And then after you beat them, the rest of the trainers are back to normal. I get RPGs often have a boss that is above the average level for the area, only to have you come out stronger, but they also increase the difficulty a bit for the area after the boss. Its a bit confusing that Gaia doesn’t do that. I personally didn’t find it too difficult to overcome, but sometimes I had to stop and grind a bit before continuing because my levels were not keeping up. I don’t have too much of an issue with it, but it still is an issue.

Another pain point has to do with some of the design decisions. The initial forum post was made in 2014, with the latest version coming out in 2018 (More on that later). It exists in this rather transitional time for the Pokemon series, moving into a more modern era with a more streamlined design. Gaia has some of these more modern features, while also keeping a lot of the subpar parts of the old games. Yeah, HMs are back, and frankly they aren’t very nice. We’ve really been spoiled by the removal of them, it SUCKS when you only have one Pokemon that needs to learn all three of the HMs for water based traversal. I want to be able to have good moves on my Pokemon, especially with some of the battles the game throws at you. It stinks that instead they get clogged up with some less than useful moves.

The last thing I want to bring up is less of a complaint, but is still worth bringing up. Gaia is both complete and incomplete. You can go through 100% of the main story, start to league, no problem. Its a wonderful time, but if you compare it to other highly rated fan projects, it seems a bit bare bones. Take Unbound for example, that game is bursting at the seams with content. You can easily sink 100+ hours in that game with everything it has to offer. Gaia, on the other hand, only has a few minor side activities. Its pretty much the main story, straight through. Even the official games had more content than this. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Gaia is still a game developed primarily by one person in their free time. The fact that they were able to make anything of this quality and publish it in a “finished” state in incredible. For their effort alone they should be commended, but Gaia isn’t complete. At the time of writing, I played through v3.2. And even though its been 6 years since that release, the creator has intended to release a major update sometime this year (archived). Now I know I put these out at the end of the year, so maybe it’ll already be released. I can’t really say if it will fix all my issues, but from some of the teasers they’ve put out, it seems promising.

Pokemon Gaia is everything a Pokemon game should be. Its fun, its unique, and it doesn’t try to be something its not. If you enjoy Pokemon this game is worth your time. Sure, its not currently “complete”, but whats currently out there is good enough. I know I’m probably gonna end up replaying it when v4 releases, it was that good.

7 / 10

2024-01-08 to 2024-02-08

Chained Echoes (2022)

I’ve been putting off writing my thoughts on this game. Why? I’m afraid I won’t do it justice. This game is truly a modern classic. It sucked me in and didn’t spit me out until I was 100% done with it, and even then it did so hesitantly. If you like JRPGs, especially the SNES/PSX era, stop reading this and go play this game now.

For the rest of us, you get to see me struggle to articulate what I liked so much about this game. The combat alone makes it worth while. It uses what appears to be a typical turn based system. If its your turn, you pick your attack. If its the enemy’s turn, they pick theirs. But what makes it interesting is the overdrive system. During battle you have to manage an overdrive gauge. If its too low, you don’t get any bonuses. If its too high, you get penalized. But keep it in the right spot and you deal extra damage and skills cost less to use. Managing it makes battling so much more engaging. Most actions will increase it, and inversely very few decrease it. However, there is a constantly rotating skill type that when used will decrease the gauge by a good chunk. So it then becomes a question of risk vs reward. Play it safe and use a less effective skill to keep overdrive in check, or use something more effective and take the penalty? The system becomes even more dynamic when you take into account your party can swap members pretty freely during combat. You get four on the field and four in reserve, each with their own skill sets and abilities. There is a lot to consider in battle with just this alone, and almost every fight demands you use and master this system.

But there isn’t one strategy that wins always. The game has a large cast, and each party member that joins you feels very distinct in both characterization and gameplay. You get the flexibility to customize your party with your favorite characters and favorite play style. But characters can be customized even further. Leveling works in a non traditional way. Usually after most major boss fights, every character gets awarded with a point to spend. These points get spent on unlocking new passive or active abilities. You still get general stat buffs whenever you hit some amount of points gained, but the core improvement comes from gaining new abilities and using them effectively. But you end up gaining so many that there is no one best set for a given character, and then if you start considering how they interact with other characters it creates this complex web that dictates how the entire party is built. In addition, gems are collected throughout the world, and these gems can be applied to weapons and armors, providing buffs in very specific things. This means you really have the chance to fine tune your party just the way you prefer, and you’re going to need it. The game fully heals you after every battle, meaning it can crank up the difficulty on even regular encounters. This isn’t a game where you can mash through and win, rather you need to carefully consider your options and approach. Its so much fun using what you have to create the best strategy, and even if it doesn’t work, the game lets you quickly change your team so it never feels like you’re locked in to any one build or setup. It never got boring.

I don’t typically comment on graphics, but this game just looks so good. It captures that retro aesthetic while still being expressive. It doesn’t force itself to fit into the graphical constraints of old consoles to achieve that, and yet it wouldn’t look out of place on those systems. I do have one gripe with it though, there was some issues with the sprites not being accurate to a pixel grid sometimes. I don’t know if that was a scaling issue or something weird with the Switch port, but just felt like an oversight in a well polished game. The soundtrack is also fantastic. Every song just works, with nothing feeling out of place. I personally didn’t find it super memorable, but there are still a few standout tracks in my mind.

But the story? And the world building? Both are fantastic. The world is huge and vast, both in gameplay and lore, and it feels like we only see a fraction of it. It has a detailed history that just makes it feel alive. Everything has a reason for why its like the way it is, no detail is overlooked. And this really helps with all the characters, they feel so much more believable because the world and its rules are so believable. I liked every character, they all had good arcs and believable growth, its hard to pick a favorite. And don’t even get me started on the story. Its fantastic. What starts as a political drama escalates into something so much more. And sure, its a JRPG, of course you kill god at the end, but it doesn’t feel forced or contrived or awkward. It makes sense given everything we know about the story. We learn so much, and we get tons of answers, but not everything is answered, and I kinda love that. You get to come up with your own theories from what you know about the world, and it gives you enough evidence that whatever you come up with feels satisfactory, but not satisfactory enough that you don’t end up wanting to know the actual answer.

In short, this is truly one of the best games I’ve played all year, hell, best game I’ve played since I played Disco Elysium a few years ago. Go play this game, you won’t regret it.

9 / 10

2024-02-04 to 2024-03-19

Pokemon Orange (2022)

When I got into Pokemon it was with Johto. The games, the anime, that kinda stuff. That is what hooked me, and I’ve followed along ever since, but it leaves a bit of a gap with the whole Kanto thing. Of course, I’ve played the remakes, but that leaves a bit of a gap in my Pokemon knowledge, the Orange Islands arc from the anime. While I certainly don’t have any, it was still interesting to play a game that attempts to capture that nostalgia people have for it. In fact, Pokemon Orange was directly created to make the best version of an Orange Islands adaptation. I just want to clarify to give some context behind my thoughts.

This game is weird. You know how people dislike the Hoenn games because of “too much water”? Image that as every route of the game. Faithful? Yes. Fun? Not really. I know the Orange Islands are an archipelago, but literally every route is a water route. It leads to a lack of diversity in Pokemon and boring routes to explore. Sure, its somewhat made up for with tiny islands offering a small bit of exploration and grass patches, but its frankly not enough. Team building becomes awkward, the routes feel identical, and it just generally negatively impacts the game by trying too hard to be faithful.

The game also lacks a general story. I don’t know much about what happens with the Orange Islands arc in the anime. From what I gathered from the game, it makes a few references to things from the anime, but it more so plays as a very straight forward “become the champion” affair. I can’t comment on the quality of these call backs, but it doesn’t feel like enough to make up for a lack of dedicated story. It ends up feeling much more gameplay first, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it ends up being less appealing if you don’t have any nostalgia for the Orange Islands arc.

However, the gameplay is pretty solid. A lot of modern features are brought into an upgraded Crystal engine. Fairy type, newer Pokemon, moves, items, and much more. Its still doesn’t have abilities or double battles as you would expect from a modification of Crystal. Orange also goes out of its way to add new HMs. Yeah, it still has HMs, which I dislike, but the new HMs do make the world feel a lot more interesting to explore, especially with the opportunity to make backtracking a bit more interesting. I just wish there was more reason to do so. Its also a bit strange that the game doesn’t have many dungeons in the game, and the ones that exist are often very short. Except for Victory Road. Its this strange, super long gauntlet that feels out of place with the rest of the game. Its not bad, I actually enjoyed getting presented with this challenge, but it feels out of place given the rest of the game. Its actually a good way to summarize it, the gameplay is good, but at times feels a bit scattered at times. At least it has a skateboard, which is cool as heck.

Orange is solid, thats the only way I can really describe it. Its not bad, but its not amazing. Considering it was made by a fan of the Orange Islands arc, it might be of more value to someone who is also a fan. The developer has stated they’re going to go back and remake it from the ground up, so maybe we’ll see it become a bit more approachable for people who had never seen the Orange Islands arc. If you think it sounds interesting, give it a go. Otherwise, you probably aren’t missing out on anything if you pass up on it.

5 / 10

2024-02-16 to 2024-02-27

Pokemon Light Platinum (2008)

Years ago, a younger me was browsing around the internet looking at Pokemon things. I recall reading something online about a game called “Flora Sky”, but I couldn’t find anything about this game on the major Pokemon wikis. And yet, there were countless stories and screenshots and videos detailing this game. With a little more digging, I found out about the world of fan games, and at that time the latest and greatest was a certain Light Platinum. It looked so cool, it had everything I wanted from a game: tons of Pokemon, every legendary, all the major trainers, two massive regions to explore. It looked so cool, but younger me didn’t really understand things like “emulation” and “applying game patches”, so eventually the idea of playing it got set aside for more attainable things. However, I know how to do these things now, so I’ve given the game a go after all this time, and it was a basically a waste of time.

Okay, that came of as harsh, but Light Platinum has a large number of flaws in it. I think the opening hour or two details this best. The game starts with a series of cut scenes, cool for the time, but they really feel like the drag. Characters move slowly and there is a noticeable pause between every action. Its a bit frustrating, because this glacial pace continues in every other cut scene in the game. But its not just the slow speed, but the contents of the cut scenes are poor. The dialogue is simple, the characters receive minimal characterization, and a lot of the appeal comes from seeing preexisting characters used. Why is Ash Ketchum in this game? A poor attempt at fan service, thats why. The actual story contents in the aren’t much better. Not that it matters with the story being a bunch of poorly explained reasons to shoe horn more legendaries into the plot.

But that can be somewhat excused if the gameplay is good, right? Well, the gameplay isn’t good. One of your first battles after you get your starter is with a trainer with 5 Pokemon. You only have one. In fact, most early game trainers have more Pokemon on their teams than the average mid/late game trainer. Even most boss fights have less Pokemon on their teams than the first trainer you encounter. Why this was decided is beyond me. And this wouldn’t be bad, if it wasn’t for the fact that the game gives you basically no money at this point. No money means no balls. No balls means no team members. Its baffling, especially when the safari zone is in the second town. The game practically gives you a great chance to build a diverse team early on, and then squanders it by not letting you capture anything. And by the time you gain a decent chunk of cash, everything appealing will be greatly under leveled.

The whole game is designed in a sort of backwards way. Its not just bad fan service and weird trainer battles, so much more of the game is just a slog. The actual routes between towns are little more than bendy lines. They look nice and even have the occasional off shoot, but there is absolutely no reward for going off the main path. No bonus areas, no extra items, no nothing. In fact, I don’t think I found a single hidden item throughout my entire time with the game. And I get that if you take a more utilitarian approach, routes are little more than places to shove battles, but the fact is the game doesn’t even do that well. The trainer battles are already baffling as is, as I’ve already covered the early game trainers have a ridiculous number of Pokemon, but it doesn’t improve as the game goes on. They somehow get worse, with horrible move sets and terrible team compositions. Tell me why in victory road there were multiple trainers with Pokemon that weren’t fully evolved? Its not a challenge, its just boring, and it doesn’t help that the routes just get longer the further you get into the game. So you end up being forced through so many simplistic battles that provide no challenge or stimulation.

I think the worst sin of this game is that it has to be designed around speeding up your emulator. Its the only logical explanation I can figure out for some of the things in this game. Slow cut scenes? Improve the pace by using speedup. Gym puzzles that punish players for running into walls? Only makes sense when using speedup. Difficulty created by massive level spikes instead of interesting team planning? The player better use speedup to make grinding take less time. Using this explanation makes everything make much more sense, and I don’t think its good design to do that. Light Platinum takes an existing Pokemon game as its base, meaning its working within the limitations the game sets. The developer, instead of working within those limitations, took shortcuts and forces the player to use external tools to make the game reasonable. It should not be the responsibility of the player to modify the game to make it more enjoyable for them. Its ridiculous and seriously ruined my enjoyment of this otherwise mediocre game.

But I can’t call it completely horrible. This was someone’s passion project, and the fact that they saw it to completion is incredible. Its just, so rough around the edges. It feels like almost everything was a first draft and never got iterated upon. Its a shame, because I found a lot of the unique content to this game interesting and charming. It has some good ideas, it just needed more time to fully develop. And funnily enough, there is one in the works! Kinda. In 2015, Mikelan98 published a demo for his NDS remake of Light Platinum. I haven’t personally checked it out, but given what I’ve seen about it online, it seems to have made changes to help fix some of the shortcomings of the originals. While its been a long while since then, Mike still posts small progress updates on it every now and then. It really is shaping up to be something interesting, and will probably be worth playing over the original.

This game really only interested me because of its legacy. It was one of the only fully featured complete overhaul fan games at the time,

3 / 10

2024-03-01 to 2024-03-12

Metal: Hellsinger (2022)

I like rhythm games. I also used to be pretty into FPS games. Metal: Hellsinger combines the two. You do everything to the beat of the sound track: shooting, jumping, dodging, reloading, everything. The more in sync you are, the more the music ramps up, and the more damage you do. It creates a fun gameplay loop, as all the systems give feedback that encourages the player to play their best, and when they do it feels incredible. I can’t lie, I had a blast just getting into a flow state, letting the fantastic sound track blast through my speakers and I run around hell shooting things. I won’t lie, this isn’t a game you play for the story. I sure as heck didn’t give it any attention. But its a game you play because its fun, and because its so fun, its so replayable. Trying different builds, chasing high scores, completing challenges, there are tons of reasons to keep playing after beating the story.

I don’t really have a whole lot to say. Its just a good time, and its hard to say its anything else. Good music and good gameplay. If you think it looks interesting, you’re probably gonna like it.

6 / 10

2024-03-22 to 2024-03-24

Final Fantasy I: Dawn of Souls (2004)

Ah yes, Final Fantasy. I’d say that this is the JRPG series in the west, but with the recent rise of Persona I feel less confident saying that. If you recall, last year I started getting into the series by playing IV and VIII. Originally I wanted to start with the first and go through the series in order, but ended up deciding against it. But with the new year bringing in a new beginning, I figured why not go play the series beginning?

The game starts with you building your team. You have four heroes, so give them names and assign them classes. Interesting on paper, but if you go into it blind, there is ZERO explanation as to what each class does. Sure, the fighter, well, fights, but tell me: whats the difference between the thief and monk? The game doesn’t explain, and as you’ll find out later, I’m not entirely sure there is one. I ended up going with fighter, thief, white mage, black mage. A fairly standard build.

After a bit about how the world is on the decline, you get dumped into the world, with no directions. Well, not necessarily none, given you’re right next to a town. Head on over and find out the princess was kidnapped and the king wants you to save her. After quickly gearing up, its a short trek to save the princess. After returning, the king builds a bridge and the world opens up, letting you continue your journey. I cannot deny, its a good opening. It lets the player get comfortable without allowing them to get in any dangerous situations or lost. You can easily get a taste for the game and really understand what its all about.

And it doesn’t get any better. Really, I’m not joking. The game is very hands off. Being hands off isn’t a bad thing, but here I think it is. All you know is you need to restore all four elements. How? Where? Stop asking questions, you won’t get answers. This just leads to a lot of walking around and being lost. If you can’t find the one thing that will help you progress, you’re just stuck. You have to check every nook and cranny, and talk to everyone. NPCs will give you hints on how to progress, and they’re actually not bad, but if you go to the towns out of intended order or can’t find one, you’re out of luck. Its frustrating, and it doesn’t help that the game doesn’t provide a map. So I hope you enjoy walking around a relatively boring over world, because you’ll be doing a lot of that. But I can’t say I didn’t have fun with that. Most of the time, I was able to find where I needed to go. It was fun, in this simplistic sort of way.

If you had to break down how you spent time in this game, half would go to aimlessly wandering around, and the other half would go to being in battle. The game has a fairly high encounter rate, but that can at least be excused because the battles are engaging, right? You may have heard of the stereotype that “All JRPGs are is just mashing A through battles”, and I have too, but what I didn’t know is that it must have come from this game. All physical characters can really do is attack, and magic characters can’t really use magic given how limited it is. So you just end up mashing A to get through battles. Even when you do use magic, it boils down to: heal party or buff party. Bosses are unaffected by debuffs, so don’t bother with that, and your mages will contribute more as support rather than offense. Why? Because buffs stack for some bizarre reason. I understand that this is an early JRPG, the genre and its tropes were still being figured out. But it makes actually going back and replaying the game, extremely boring.

Originally, I tried playing the NES version. I figured that I’ve played a NES RPG before, it won’t be that bad. But its is, it is that bad. Its tedious, boring, grindy, buggy, and lacks a lot of sensibilities of a modern RPG. So I ended up switching to the GBA version to get something a bit more, modern. And its much nicer, things in the game work as intended, a lot of tedious things (namely the ineffective attack system) were removed, the game is overall easier, and the spell charge system was removed. To simplify, this means in the GBA version you get tons of money, thus tons of items (both HP and MP restoration), and you don’t have to worry at all about managing health and magic. This is a huge contrast from the NES version, where HP restoration is hard to come by, every spell has a limited number of casts and cannot be restored while out in the field, and the game generally just being much more punishing.

Normally, I avoid looking at content about games while playing them. Maybe I’ll reference a guide, but I want to try to form my own opinions, so I avoid others to remove that influence. But as I was in the process of writing up my thoughts, I ended up listening to a podcast episode about Final Fantasy I. It was quite interesting, getting to hear about people’s experiences with the NES version, and how innovative it was at the time. But, I found it more interesting to hear about the more modern versions of the game. The NES original is this brutal game all about managing resources, but when you tweak the balance and add new content and changes to bring it inline with other games in the series, it looses all sense of identity. To bring in a quote from the podcast:

Final Fantasy I is very much, all right, load up, set out, go on this adventure, go into this dungeon, get as far as you comfortably can before you’re starting to limp, then limp all the way back, rest, resupply, go back in… And that pixel remaster just takes that right out. And so then you just left with the most boring experience you can possibly have playing a video game. There is nothing in the Pixel Remaster of Final Fantasy I that is compelling.

While I didn’t play the Pixel Remaster, I still completely agree with with this opinion. I played through the GBA version, which was incredibly easy and pretty boring. And if you look at how various releases of the game have changed it, you either get stuck with something that is incredibly difficult or is incredibly easy. And the thing is, I don’t think either are good, because you get a tedious and frustrating game if you pick the difficult one, or you get a boring and unengaging game if you pick the easy one. Frankly, you should pick neither, because neither the gameplay or non-gameplay related things are worth your time. The story is boring and put into a large text dump near the end of the game. If the only thing I can say that wasn’t bad is the music, just go listen to the soundtrack online instead of playing the game.

Final Fantasy I is a foundational game, I cannot deny this. A lot of what this game does gets carried on to future entries in the series. There is a lost of historical value, and Final Fantasy fans might really enjoy experiencing it first hand. But that doesn’t make it a good game. For most people, its not worth your time. Its a simplistic game that is either boring or tedious.

3 / 10

2024-03-13 to 2024-03-26

Final Fantasy II: Dawn of Souls (2004)

Final Fantasy II suffers from its own ambition. People say its one of the worst in the series, and I’m somewhat inclined to agree, however I don’t think it was as bad as people say it is. I want to give it credit for what it does right. It actually tells a story, unlike the first game. You have defined characters with their own motivations and reasons for doing things. There are reoccurring characters that have actual importance. There are actual stakes and tension that you get to experience throughout the game. Its not just the chosen ones save the day, its a struggle against an evil ruler to regain your freedom. Its still limited by the NES, FFII isn’t text heavy by any means, so a lot of the story is told through short exchanges and the general vibes the game sets up, but its a massive step up from the previous game. If compared to modern games, the story is terrible. Characters will join, have a few lines of dialogue, and then die after a dungeon or two without any proper development or arc. Hell, one of the party members is best known for speaking beaver. I know there are limitations on the NES that make telling a more comprehensive story difficult, but I appreciate the step up from the first.

I think another good part of the story is the keyword system. FFII will often prompt the player to either say a keyword or use an item at the end of some dialogue exchanges. These let the player ask more about things in the game world and allows them to gain more information. Its quite interesting, because often times you don’t need to ask about things to progress the story, but doing so will provide good advice for whatever is coming up next. Be it directions or combat warnings, its useful and keeps the player engaged. Having that level of interactivity with the world creates a sense of immersion you wouldn’t have gotten if some character just said it outright. I really enjoyed this system and the agency it gave me as a player. Some people complain about having to spam every keyword or item to figure out what works and what does, but its fairly straightforward to determine what you need to use and what you don’t. Often times the most recently learned words are what you need to say, and often times words are used for a quest line and then lose any story relevance afterwards. Its not a bad system by any means, but its not some groundbreaking thing.

But the most controversial thing has to be the games combat system. And you know what, it is bad. I don’t like it, but I do think there are some good ideas behind it. FFII takes a non-traditional approach to leveling; XP doesn’t exist in any traditional sense. Stats only increase as they’re used. On paper, this sounds like a cool mechanic. If you use swords a lot, your character gets better with them. If you cast magic a lot, you can cast more and more powerful spells. But in practice, it doesn’t work out very well. Why? Because once you stop looking at weapons it falls apart. Your stats increase in the same way, you either use them or they don’t level. But the issue is, for things like HP and MP, the stat increase is determined by the difference between the start and end of battle. In short you only get credit towards an increase if you end battle with much less than you started with. If you heal during battle? No credit. Didn’t lose enough points? No credit. Won before the enemy could even act? No credit. Its bad, characters end up becoming glass cannons. You quickly end up being able to defeat random encounters in a turn or two, which means attacks level up with no chance for anything else to along side it because you end the battle before you can even hit the threshold for credit in a stat up. Magic is probably the worst offender, purely because of how much it sucks in this game. Characters start out with a pitiful MP pool, barely any to work with. But you can only gain more by using it, so you try to use it. Except the rest of your party is also involved in battle, meaning as a whole you end up defeating the enemy before being able to gain credit. But lets say you do gain credit, because you practically have to constantly spam spells, you run out of MP so much quicker than HP, meaning you can still stick around when out in the field without needing to run back to town. that leads to more time spent leveling other stuff, which means magic is getting left behind. It just feels like such a waste to level it, but then you look at the white magic in this game and its even worse. White magic can be used outside of battle, which is great and all, until you realize MP only increases from things in battle. The developers were at least kind enough to have to it level outside of battle, but its a cruel joke. Healing during battle is discouraged because it prevents you from gaining HP, but if you heal outside of battle you loose out on MP. And this might be an interesting trade off, if it wasn’t for the fact that leveling magic sucks. Its much easier (and better) to just ignore it for the most part. And the real worst part about white magic is the status healing spells. Those can only cure certain status effects at certain levels, meaning unless you’ve been spamming it the entire game, it will be low level and useless for end game debuffs.

This whole system is so interesting on paper, it gives you so much freedom with how you build characters and they should grow in a natural way. But it falls so short in execution. What really interests me though is the battle designer for this game, Akitoshi Kawazu, went on to create the SaGa series. If you compare the SaGa series and FFII, you come to realize how similar they are. They both have these open worlds with some non-linearity to them. They both abandon the traditional leveling system in favor of one based on actions preformed. And the thing is, SaGa is still ongoing. There is clearly some appeal in the systems of FFII, but the issue is with how horribly it is done in this game.

There are a few other things I want to squeeze in about this game. The music is great, it really captures the vibe of the story and feels very unique, even today. The evil emperor that has taken over the world doesn’t feel too big of a threat, probably because he isn’t often directly involved. You hear a lot about him and see a lot of what his army does, but he has such little direct presence it ends up feeling underwhelming. The worst sin this game commits is its dungeon design. Its relatively inoffensive, except for the trap rooms. A good 95% of all doors in dungeons lead to rooms with insanely high encounter rates. This wouldn’t be bad if it wasn’t for the fact that every room is a square and you always get placed in the center of it upon entry. Its annoying and tedious, and you loose all incentive to check them considering that a vast majority of doors in dungeons lead to these trap rooms. Its just terrible.

And I think that kinda summarizes my thoughts on FFII. There are a lot of good ideas; the game iterates a lot on the previous entry and establishes a lot of common tropes in a Final Fantasy game. But the execution just kills it. You have a a story with an interesting facade but no depth along side a gameplay system that fails to play good, even after revisions in re-releases. It is undeniably a pivotal game in the series history, but it just sucks so much to play that I can’t recommend. You would get just as much value skimming the plot summary and trivia section about this game on a wiki than you would get from playing it.

3 / 10

2024-03-27 to 2024-04-11

Pokemon Saiph (2019)

I don’t really know how to sum up my thoughts on this game. On one hand, its a semi-competent fan game that delivers a new experience in a new region. But on the other, its a short game with a subpar level curve and a lot of graphical bugs.

What I do like about this game is what it tries to do. It is a continuation of one of the ranger games. Now, I’ve never played that series, but I think this is an interesting concept for a fan game. However, the story doesn’t really seem to tie back into it in any very meaningful way. The villains are painfully generic, and I doubt having played any of the ranger games would have helped. I mean it didn’t feel like anything horrific, but it wasn’t anything to write home about.

And the reason I bring that up is because the rest of the game isn’t too interesting. The route designs are incredibly basic. Trainers don’t have interesting teams. The lack of interesting content also means its incredibly short. You’ll easily complete the game without breaking level 50, and the game doesn’t leave any meaningful impression during that time. And while the game does look and sound good, its pretty much all graphics and songs ported from gen 4/5 games. It ends up removing any potential identity the game could have when everything is reused or recolored from another game.

And its impossible to ignore all the graphical issues. Some of the font is corrupted, menu graphics don’t work, and the summary screen didn’t work at all for me. I’ve seen reports of it working for other people, but I don’t know why it wouldn’t actually render any details on the summary screen, which is a pain for learning moves. I also encountered a glitch that corrupted my entire party data after viewing the stats screen during a battle. Its fine for the most part, but its lacks polish. Its true for the entire game, it lacks a degree of polish. That might be a symptom of the short development cycle and small team, but it results in a game that lacks any real appeal. Its not bad, its just so painfully generic its probably not worth your time.

3 / 10

2024-04-12 to 2024-04-27

Pokemon Sors (2021)

This is a sequel to Saiph, but it isn’t Saiph 2. That comes later. This one is actually a completely independent story that takes place in the same universe, although all the cross over stuff is minor and only plays a role in the end. This is to say the game can be fully enjoyed start to finish without playing Saiph, which is good. Because Saiph was bad, but also because Sors is kinda good.

Anyone coming into Sors after playing Saiph will note how much more polish this game has received. Everything feels more, complete. The graphics are great, the sound is fantastic, and everything feels cohesive. Sors also takes much more of an effort to put its story front and center, with many well done cut scenes and a large focus on characters. It leads to a much more interesting game to play, especially with all the engine updates. It plays much closer to a release from around 2021, with the selection of Pokemon available and all the updated moves and abilities. The game feels great to play, especially coming from Saiph.

I think its also structured in a pretty interesting way. Sors forgoes the traditional gym system, instead having a large central tournament split into several rounds. You get time between rounds to explore the region, train, and progress the story. Its a unique approach that sounds interesting, but it doesn’t quite work. I feel this way because it ends up being implemented in a really unbalanced way. The game then gets split into these really explicit chunks, where something story related happens, then that wraps up conveniently for you to go slip away to the tournament. Which even if it didn’t result in tonal whiplash, the game ends up just teleporting the player all over the place to avoid backtracking. Which sounds nice, but I ended up feeling lost whenever it teleported me somewhere when I didn’t expect it. Its frustrating.

And while the game played nice and looked to be quality, the plot was less so. It was not very good, bad even. But it wasn’t good bad like some other fan games I’ve played. None of the characters feel very likable or interesting. They’re all very generic and static. Good guys are good, bad guys are bad. No real nuance. I think the worst part is the character writing. Its clear one person wrote all the dialogue. It really does feel like they all speak the same, which makes it hard to care about anything that is going on when everyone feels the same. And the thing is, the story is front and center the whole time, so it can’t just be ignored. Its really a shame.

Honestly, thats how this game feels: disappointing. It looks fantastic and plays great, but its dragged down by a bad story and horrible trainer sets. I didn’t mention this before, but the trainers often run stall sets. Especially in early game when you have limited resources to deal with that kinda stuff. Its not a fun time. I think if you’re looking for a mostly competent game, its worth your time, but if you want something that is fun or interesting to play through, this isn’t the game for you.

4 / 10

2024-04-29 to 2024-05-16

Citizen Sleeper (2022)

Ever since I played Disco Elysium, I’ve been searching for a game to scratch a similar itch. Something with a narrative focus with incredibly well developed and fleshed out characters. Citizen Sleeper is not quite that, but it is an incredible experience worthy of your time.

In Citizen Sleeper, you play as a “sleeper”, a robot emulating a human mind, who has escaped onto a space station and is looking for a way out. However, the company that owns you isn’t quite so happy about losing you and is working to get you back. As such, the gameplay focuses on you picking and choosing what to do during your day on the space station. Each day starts with you being given a number of dice, and most actions you do require the usage of one or more of these dice. As such, you must carefully consider what actions you do each day while managing your resources like health, money, and hunger. But be careful, you often only have a limited number of days to achieve some goal, so take care to complete what you can before the opportunity slips away forever.

However, this would be pointless if there was no good story to go along with it. As I mentioned earlier, you exist in a sort of legal limbo, not exactly having the freedoms of a real person, yet still being able to think and feel like one. Effectively, you’re a refugee on this station fighting for survival, but so are many others in the cast. The people you meet and help out are just as real as you are. They’re working hand to achieve their dreams, helping others to make up for past transgressions, jaded by a harsh reality, rebelling against the system that oppresses them, or just trying to make a better life of their family. A lot of the appeal of this game comes from getting to know and interact with these characters, and honestly one of my biggest complaints is that there isn’t enough of them. Everyone is so well written and likable in some way, its a shame that when you reach the end of a quest line with them, its the last you see of them. I know I can’t expect their stories to go on forever, but seeing them fall into the background after getting to know them intimately kinda sucks.

Really, that is my biggest complaint with the game. There isn’t enough of it. What is there is incredible, its this engaging, immersive world that really feels like a fight for survival, but as you get established it fades away. No longer are you as concerned about survival. No longer do you have meaningful interactions with characters you like. No longer does it have that same initial charm. Still, I cannot stress this enough, its a damn good game, even in the back half when things cool off, I’m just disappointed that it presents its strongest hand right away. I still think this game is incredible and 100% worth your time, so please, give it a go. And hopefully the sequel will be just as good, if not better.

7 / 10

2024-05-22 to 2024-05-24

Final Fantasy VII (1998)

I did not care for Final Fantasy VII.

Before everyone comes out to defend FF7, I’m not saying it was a bad game. Far from it, its actually fairly well made and does some interesting things. Its just that, when people talk about this game online, they speak as if it is a gift from god, the second coming of Christ, the best game of all time. And its not that, it is very much not that. Sure, I could sit here and nitpick it for the subpar translation, the inconsistencies with the FMVs, how I found the materia system to be limiting without a guide, or how I found a lot of the characters to be simply annoying, but those feel relatively minor when compared to my key issue: it just doesn’t live up to the hype.

I really have no other way of putting it. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the game, its a competent PS1 era RPG, I just don’t understand how it gained the following it has. The only explanation I can think of is nostalgia. The people who grew up with it are the ones who have been vocal about it online, which is why the general consensus has it in such high regard. I’m incredibly biased towards the games I grew up with. Pokemon will always be one of my favorite game series, but the games (even the ones from my childhood) are often only mediocre at best.

I guess my point here is to say, maybe the reputation of a game isn’t a good way to measure its quality. Or rather, games don’t have to be masterpieces for you to enjoy them. I mean, if you spend any amount of time looking online for games that have a general consensus of being a near 10/10, you’ll find 100s of them, and you could probably spend the rest of your life playing these neat 10/10 games. I probably could, and yet, if you look at what I actually play, its a lot more mediocre games. And thats okay because when I pick a game to play, its because I have some sort of interest in it, and getting to sate that interest is much more meaningful to me than playing something that I force myself to enjoy because someone said its a 10/10.

4 / 10

2024-06-09 to 2024-06-28

A Dance of Fire and Ice (2019)

Ever since I picked up Rhythm Heaven for the GBA years ago, I’ve been a fan of rhythm games. However, it seems as of late I only play one type of rhythm game, vertical scrolling ones. And I’m not saying there is something wrong with that, far from it. But rather, its always nice to enjoy a different approach. A Dance of Fire and Ice is a breath of fresh air in a genre dominated by vertical scrollers. The game focuses on a player swapping between two orbiting balls as they navigate down a track to the rhythm of a song. While little more than tapping along to a song, a surprising amount of complexity emerges from a simple concept.

What I really like about this game is how approachable it is. Like I explained earlier, the idea of just tapping along to a song is easily understood, but the game goes to even greater lengths to make sure players fully understand whats asked of them. Every song starts with a few short tutorial levels to introduce you to the new patterns you’ll see in each song. It gives a simple and controlled environment for players to practice and get comfortable, and it also ensures that players won’t be caught off guard by anything unusual in the main level. It is legitimately helpful and helps make the levels feel completed, no matter how hard they seem.

ADOFAI was truly a refreshing experience. It presents a good amount of content in an approachable and friendly package. That’s part of why I brought up Rhythm Heaven, ADOFAI presents itself in a less mechanical way than other rhythm games, while still making effort to have charming and appealing graphics on screen. Its simple and fun, regardless of skill level. In addition, the game has a wealth of custom content to enjoy, so if it really resonates with you, there is so much to enjoy. For me, I had my fun with it. I personally find other rhythm games more enjoyable to play long term, this was still more than worthwhile to play.

7 / 10

2024-07-10 to 2024-07-13

Final Fantasy XIII (2009)

Online, its generally considered that 2, 8, and 13 are the worst Final Fantasy games. I’ve sought them out, I wanted to see if they’re as bad as people say they are for myself, not wanting to leave them for last. But having beaten 13, its, well, really interesting. But I mean that more neutrally.

I want to say, somehow this game had some of the worst gameplay and the best gameplay I’ve experienced this year. The reputation online would make you think this game is just hallway and cut scene simulator, and that is not too far off. The first 20-25 hours of the game are spent going through linear hallways while only fighting basic fodder enemies that do not require you to engage with battle mechanics and watching cut scene after cut scene as the story progresses. But there is so much more, because once the game does open up the game play becomes incredibly enjoyable. The battle system is very good. It ditches the traditional micro management of JRPGs for a much more involved and reactive battle system. 13’s paradigm system sees the player clicking “auto battle” for most of their turns, the actual focus is on dynamically switching the roles of your party members mid-battle instead of picking individual actions. This creates a system were battles have a natural flow to them. It isn’t just constantly do damage and heal when needed, you have to pay attention to how enemies react, what moves they use, how they change their strategy. This is also complemented by the chain meter. Attacking will raise it and increase your damage bonus, but stay on the defensive for too long and you lose that bonus. Some attacks make it raise quicker, while others reduce the speed at which it drains. It forces players to walk a fine line, they cant be too aggressive, but they cant be too defensive, and they have to maintain that balance while enemies constantly change what they expect the player to handle. When done right, this system is oh so good. Its just that the first 30 hours only have basic enemies and simple, which gives the impression that little more is needed than going full offense and only shifting paradigms when needed. This false impression really goes on the harm the later game because the player is then ill equipped to handle more demanding battles. That’s not to mention all the other little idiosyncrasies the game fails to explain to the player that makes the combat more engaging and rewarding for those who often switch paradigms. Its just so frustrating to see such a good combat system ruined by having over half the game give a horrible impression of it.

But the story? Is that any good? Everyone online says its just full of confusing terms that never get explained and everything is just shoved into some datalog for the player to read at their own leisure instead of learning through natural means. This is correct, to an extent. First of all, 13 does actually explain everything you need to know via the main story cut scenes. You get a lot more from reading the more important datalogs and maybe even learn a few things before its explicitly told to you. Its not required, but I can say it really did increase my enjoyment for the narrative. And its a simple narrative, not really worth explaining if you get past the made up fantasy terms they use, but the story is heavily character driven. The main cast has to grapple with so many trials and tribulations, both individually and as a group. Seeing them all develop and mature was such a treat, even Hope, this unlikable annoying bratty kid became someone I enjoyed having around by the end of the game. Well, this is true for everyone except Snow. Somehow despite having presence throughout the majority of the game, he remains stagnant and becomes unlikable, especially at then end when everyone but him has seemingly matured. I do think it falls a bit apart at the end when the story shifts focus to Vanille and Fang, characters who have a relatively unexplored background when that background plays a key role in the story. Without spoiling anything, it makes their actions in the final arc seem a bit more vague and less impact without having a solid grasp on their past. Admittedly, I also fell off reading all the datalogs at that point, but if not including that information in the main story has that big of an impact, it is a valid complaint to say it should have been included in the main story and not put off to the side.

One thing I can’t complain about is the presentation. The music and visuals are incredible. There are still major titles coming out today that fail to reach the standards set by this two generation old game from 2009. Part of the reason I kept going through the rather poor first chunk was that the presentation was so good. Sure, the gameplay stunk, but at least I’m liking what I’m seeing. Admittedly, that makes me question if you could have a more enjoyable experience just watching the cut scenes that cover the first 20 hours or so, then have a comprehensive combat tutorial, and just pick up a save where the game actually opens up.

Looking back on 13, I see why it has the hate it does. And to an extent, I think it deserves that hate. It does a lot wrong. From obscuring lore that should have been directly stated and having boring gameplay, you would assume the entire thing is terrible. But if you just keep pushing through it, 13 ends up being quite a wonderful experience. I just have to question if its worth recommending others force themselves through the bad parts, or if its more worthwhile to wait for the rumored remake.

6 / 10

2024-08-13 to 2024-09-14

Pokemon Prism (2016)

2016 was a weird time to be a Pokemon fan. Pokemon GO was sweeping the entire world, Sun and Moon were controversial, and fan games kept getting taken down. Pokemon Prism was sadly caught in the crossfire. But through a series of fortunate events, the game was picked up and finished by another team. And I’m glad it was, because this was such a fantastic experience.

Imagine a fan game with almost everything you could want. Multiple regions? Prism has 5. Updated game mechanics? You bet. Player customization? Its there. Following Pokemon? How about playing as them. New story? Yup, and its not some overly edgy mess. If any of that sounds interesting, go play it. Its so good.

Now, I will admit, I kinda exaggerated a bit there. Prism sees you getting lost while camping and ended up in the Naljo region. After stumbling out of a cave with a Larvitar in tow, you set off to find your way home. You soon find out that your stay will be prolonged thanks to an evil organization trying to reawaken the guardians of Naljo to return it to its historic state. Its fairly simplistic, but frankly that is all it needs.

As you journey across Naljo, each town reveals something new and interesting. Casinos with tons of new games, items to train player skills with, a pachisi hall, and even a bingo board to clear based on in game progress. The game also presents quite a few interesting locales: tunnels, forests, caves, catacombs, parks, prisons, and ancient temples. There is so much to see and explore, with every place feeling unique and memorable. There is a ton to see and do while in Naljo, but after beating it you get to explore more. You head over to the neighboring region of Rijon. You know, Rijon, from Pokemon Brown, the game this is a sequel to. And the post game sees you going around and doing a victory lap beating all the gyms in Rijon. 16 total, but what about those other 3 regions I alluded to earlier? Well, its more like you get to visit a town or two from each of the regions. A bit sad, but given the limitations of the game its more than welcomed. Travel to Kanto, Johto, and even Tunod. Thats right, Tunod from Pokemon Glazed. I know its kinda silly, but seeing this crossover was so cool.

Honestly, I’m kinda struggling to write about this game. Its just good, there isn’t anything wrong with it and I struggle how to quantify what makes it so good. I loved exploring the world, fighting battles, taking in the sights and sounds. And its crazy to me that its gotten so much love poured into it, even years after release. The latest update to the game was only a last year, and given that the team has been putting their efforts into a 20th anniversary edition for Brown. The team doesn’t seem to be slowing down their efforts, and I can’t wait to see how they end up finalizing this game thats already in such a finished state. If you like Pokemon, you really do owe it to yourself to play this game.

7 / 10

2024-08-16 to 2024-09-05

Rhythm Doctor (2021)

Can you count to 7? Because after playing this, I don’t think I can as well as I thought. The whole concept of Rhythm Doctor is to hit your space bar on the 7th beat. Simple, yes, but the game quickly adds so much to make it more interesting. Silent beats, swing beats, holds, delays, and even multiple rhythms to keep track of. They manage to do so much with so little, and there is an incredible amount of stuff they can still do with it. The amount (and quality) of custom levels just goes to prove this. Its simply incredible to play.

But the gameplay is really only half of the game. I think the reason why its so wonderful has to do with its cast and world. It takes place in a hospital full of people facing all kinds of issues. While some of them may be physical, there is always some sort of emotional thing going on underneath it. These characters face relatable struggles, and you accompany them on their journey as they over come it. Its great, and the choice of music and graphics fit in so well. I know some people think pixel art is relatively boring, but Rhythm Doctor pushes the boundaries of what you can do. Literally, there are levels that see the game window flying around your desktop as you try to keep up with the song and visuals. Its so pleasant and charming, its impossible to hate.

I love this game so much. And I know, the store page says its still in early access, but there is more than enough for the price they are asking. Its a fantastic game, and if you have any interest in rhythm games, please play it.

8 / 10

2024-09-06 to 2024-09-09

Special Episode 0: In A Dark Past (2024)

I’ve know about Pokemon Mystery Dungeon fan games for a while now (this is one of those if you didn’t know). The tools have been out for a while, but I haven’t really paid attention to anything coming out of it. However, one recently did cross my path and I decided it was time to give some of these fan games a look.

Bring in Special Episode 0, a prequel story to the Explorers games. It explores the background of some beloved characters from that game, and its, err, well I didn’t exactly agree with all the choices made during the story. It really felt like a fan work, which isn’t always a bad thing, but the discrepancy between the presentation and the content was a off putting for me. It presents itself as the same as an official game, offering something that should be in the same cannon as the main game. However, it does so many things that would not be present in an official game. Characters don’t behave the same way as they do in the official game, they use a lot of phrases that are only present in fan works (think “Thank Arceus”), real animals get referenced, and the game just has so much overt violence. None of it wrong per say, I just found it to really hamper my enjoyment of the game.

I do think its still worth playing, especially if you’re a fan of the Explorers games. I still had a good time with it, despite the faults I had with it. I think if you’re more open to seeing another fans interpretation of these characters, I think its more than worthwhile. You just have to over look some things that don’t fit in with the cannon.

6 / 10

2024-09-09 to 2024-09-22

Portal Stories: Mel (2015)

I really don’t have much to say about this one. Somehow for all the years I’ve owned Portal, I’ve never gotten around to playing this mod. I’ve played other mods, I know this one has also been held in high regard, but I just never booted it up. So finally I get around to it, and, yeah, its pretty much what you would expect. More Portal presented in a nice way. Good puzzles, okay story, and doesn’t take too long to beat. Its the kinda thing you know you’ll like, I don’t have much to add other than I enjoyed my time with it.

6 / 10

2024-09-15

Balatro (2024)

This game was so good I had to uninstall it. Like, seriously, I spent my entire weekend playing it, ignoring all my other responsibilities. Its too good.

If you don’t know, Balatro is a poker rougelike. If that doesn’t make sense, it basically sees you playing poker to try to hit high scores. However, after hitting a target score, the game lets you augment your deck, either by changing the cards in it or giving you buffs to your score. Its super simple in concept, but its just flawlessly executed. The core loop is so simple, but playing hands and upgrading your deck is so satisfying. Working on creating the perfect build and setting increasingly higher scores is just so rewarding. And the simplicity of the game makes it so easy to get into and play. Like, you really just have to trust me on this one, give it a go and you’ll quickly see why its so good.

9 / 10

2024-10-18 to 2024-10-23

Pokemon Saiph 2 (2021)

Finally, Saiph 2. I’ll keep it short, its just like Sors. It has a lot of great ideas, its very technically competent, but it has a horrendous story. Seriously, good graphics and good music, the battle engine is updated and plays like a modern game, allowing for some interesting stuff to happen, but holy cow, the plot is kinda bad.

Let me give it props where it deserves, Pokemon games don’t need the best story, and Saiph 2 has some great ideas. I like the idea of the protagonist being from the previous game, stuck and stranded from everything you once had. It would have been so cool to go around exploring a new land you know you shouldn’t be in while trying to get back to your status quo. Maybe you even get to save the day along the way. It would have been pretty cool.

Instead, we got something that reads like an attempt to write some generic shounen anime by someone who doesn’t have much experience writing. The overall story follows the generic idea of you being the chosen one who saves the day along with help of friends, except there is no nuance or depth or any sort of interesting twist on the formula. Characters either fall into the most generic anime tropes for how they act, or they fall into this generic homogeneous text dump where they all feel the same and seemingly only exist to say something to move the plot forward. Frankly, even characters that start out in some trope end up becoming that exposition dump. Its just so boring and makes it so hard to care about any of whats going on because nothing has any sort of depth. The characters are so unmemorable, the only real difference is their hair.

Like, the actual story is about the bad guy trying to take over the world using Darkrai (like he did in the first game). He goes around the region, collecting things from ancient ruins collecting artifacts and lore in order to accomplish his goal. But man, I can’t tell you anything else meaningful. Characters switch sides throughout the story for some reasons that don’t make any sense. Why? Probably because the creator thought it would be cool or interesting, except the characters have no depth or complexity so its just vapid. I know its cynical, but I legit can’t find any reasons for the characters to act they way they do other than its like the creator thought it was cool like whatever generic anime is mega popular. It just ends up becoming more of a disappointment as you realize how much wasted potential there was.

As much as I hate on it, I still have to give the creator some credit. Bringing any project to fruition is a lot of work, and that effort should be commended. Its just that, there are some decisions made that could have had some more time to finalize. I’m sure there is a large group of people who like this series, its just that I think these games could achieve a much higher standard of quality in the story telling aspect.

3 / 10

2024-10-28 to 2024-11-09

Final Fantasy V (1992)

When some people think about Final Fantasy, they think about the job system. And according to popular opinion online, this game is the one that perfected the job system. My opinion? Its alright.

The job system is pretty interesting. Every job comes with perks and abilities, however, as you level up that job you can start applying those benefits to other jobs. This allows you to create great flexibility in your builds. A warrior that can cast black magic? Sure! A white mage that can wear heavy armor? Of course! A ninja that can use summons? Why not! While it is a bit limiting only being able to pick one command or ability to use with another class, careful selection can create some interesting builds and help create counters for challenging fights. I had a ton of fun trying a boss, failing, then rearranging what jobs and abilities I had selected to counter. It grants a lot of flexibility, and that makes it so much fun to try out different combinations.

However, these interesting battles are few and far between. So much of the game falls back to what a lot of the games at the time were about: resource management. And frankly, that leads to a lot more boring party compositions. Sure, creating these weird unbalanced parties is a ton of fun for taking on stronger encounters, but just running around dungeons and trekking through the over world is where your less traditional parties tend to fail. So you just end up having a lot more boring and dull encounters for most of the time. Which isn’t horrible, but when contrasted to how interesting the game can be during boss encounters? The rest of the game ends up feeling like more of a slog than it really is.

And I hate to call it that when most other things are just okay. The game shares a lot of DNA with its predecessor, and if you need to know anything about my opinion on Final Fantasy IV its that it lacks the ability to properly present anything remotely serious. Luckily, FFV doesn’t take itself seriously. Its story is mostly a wacky adventure trying to stop an evil tree from destroying the world. It has a few more serious moments, but its mostly casual from start to finish, which is good because the game doesn’t have the technology to really tell any more serious story. It really ends up being nothing special to talk about.

So basically its a middle of the road game that doesn’t really play to its strengths.

4 / 10

2024-12-02 to 2024-12-20

Games I Tried

Hardspace Shipbreaker (2022)

Something I like about fiction is learning about all the little mundane things, especially in fantasy or sci-fi settings. Hardspace Shipbreaker fulfills this need. In it, you are in charge of dismantling decommissioned space ships, effectively working in a scrap yard in the far future. The tasks end up playing much more like puzzles, with you trying to find out the best way to dismantle a ship while getting as much value out of it as possible. It ends up resulting in you carefully examining the ship, planning your cuts, and bringing each material to the correct spot, all while navigating the challenges of zero gravity.

There are two things about this game that just don’t work for me. The first is its a game about doing labor, which means what you do is less of a game and more of a job. It has the same appeal of PowerWash Simulator (or at I assume so, I’ve never played it). Its more about the mastery and sanctification of completing a job as perfectly as you can, because the moment to moment game play is tedious and demands your attention. For me, not super appealing, but others might enjoy this. The other thing I don’t like is the games story. Its not bad, rather, I think its actually very important. Its about the struggle of people fighting to live under a corporation that practically owns their entire life. Its about workers rights in a corrupt world and fighting for what you deserve. The messaging is good, and they do a fantastic job of connecting the story to the gameplay. I just feel that this connection negatively impacts the game. Because you play as a worker in a workplace that doesn’t care about you, you’re subject to strict time limits while working in dangerous environments. It ends up taking a game that could be fairly relaxing into something stressful where you constantly have to stress about navigation, safety, and hitting your quota. It was just too much for me.

2024-03-26 to 2024-03-29

Dark Deity (2021)

Dark Deity tries so hard to be like Fire Emblem, it ends up failing to be unique enough to be anything but incredibly derivative. I only ended up playing it for 2-3 hours before putting it down. And its a bit of a shame, because the game isn’t bad, but rather, its just so bland and generic. If you don’t know what Dark Deity is, its a lot like Fire Emblem. And if you don’t know what Fire Emblem is, its fantasy anime chess. Dark Deity isn’t a one to one clone of Fire Emblem though. While it still maintains the typical grid based movement and strategic gameplay, it doesn’t copy everything one to one. The combat is noticeably different, with every character having four different weapons to chose from, each impacting the outcome out an engagement. But it also bleeds into the enemy turn, as that weapon stats will be used to calculate the outcome of the enemy turn. You have to more closely consider your attacks. Do you use a more powerful weapon to take out an enemy unit right away, or do you switch to something more defensive to protect yourself on enemy phase? Fire Emblem still has the potential for this type of decision making, but here its thrust into the spotlight of your decision making.

But the gameplay is where my praise ends. Once you even take the smallest step outside of it, things fall apart. The controls are very awkward to use, regardless of if you play with keyboard and mouse or just a controller. Nothing is wrong per se, but nothing feels quite right. It doesn’t help when other things don’t contribute to any sense of cohesion. Turning battle animations off has the enemy turn pass in a flash, often leaving no time for the player to react or process what has happened in game. The graphical style is super inconsistent, having jarring differences between the game world, the UI, and the battle animations. Music just starts and stops abruptly, leading most things to feel abrupt. Taking another step back reveals a lackluster story with boring characters. Looking past the things related to game feel, I did enjoy my short time with the game. However, its impossible to ignore those game feel things, and it just made me want to stop playing every time I encountered something like that. Maybe you can look past those things and enjoy it, but I can’t, so I simply stopped, despite thinking the game wasn’t half bad.

2024-04-28 to 2024-04-30

The Big Catch: Tacklebox (2024)

Schmovement. Its a stupid word, I’ll admit, but it does describe something that I have a ‘hard time describing. Its game feel, specifically in platforms. Its that feeling of responsiveness, of flexibility, and of coolness. Its having your character move adeptly and swiftly though the game world. You can have a good game without it, but schmovement just takes it up to the next level.

Why do I bring all this up? Well, I’ve been following this game, The Big Catch, for a while and recently they put out their demo, and even though this demo is not much more than a handful of places to run and jump about, its so good I’m almost upset I didn’t have to pay for it. The demo, Tacklebox, is basically just one big area for players to explore and navigate. No real story or goals, just raw gameplay. Or should I say, just raw schmovement. Its a bit embarrassing to see the amount of time I’ve spent just playing the demo. Less so when you realize the demo has a wealth of content to it, but the game is so incredibly fun in even a barebones state I enjoyed just running around and redoing platformer sections I’ve already done. Even writing about this just makes me want to go back and run around the game world. I’m really looking forward to the full release, this demo has really excited me for the game and what future platforming ideas the team has. If you take anything away from this, just know that this demo is worth trying, 100%.

2024-06-07 to 2024-06-10

Cross Code (2019)

When the Steam Summer Sale rolled around this year, I picked up a handful of games. Maybe more than I should have given I was trying to complete my backlog this year, but my poor financial decisions are not up for scrutiny here. One of the games I grabbed was Cross Code. I had recently heard a lot of good things about it, actually a lot of really good things. People love this game, and it looked interesting enough.

And my first impressions were pretty much in line with everyone’s opinion. Gorgeous visuals, great music, intriguing story, great gameplay. The game feels shockingly similar to a classic 2D Zelda game. Not in the sense that it feels and plays identical to something like A Link to the Past, but rather the vibe is the same. Exploring the overworld, doing quests, conquering dungeons, gaining power ups. That moment to moment is incredibly satisfying and solid. One of my favorite mechanics was the battle chaining one. If the player manages to defeat enemies within a certain amount of time of each other, it will create and maintain a chain. The higher the chain, the better odds at rare drops you have. Backtracking doesn’t become a slog, but rather a challenge to see if you can maintain the chain the whole time. It keeps things engaging, but its also not mandatory, removing a lot of the pressure to try and maintain it while exploring and searching for secrets. The dungeon design is also pretty good. Its a good mix of puzzles and combat, and each one introduces some new item to utilize in your endeavors. Its very much in line from any sort of quality Zelda dungeon experience, except much longer. Dungeons were often borderline a slog given how long they could take from start to finish.

Where I take issue is the story. Now I know, people love this story. It focuses on a more internal conflict with the main character. Lea, the protagonist, doesn’t have any memories, and she must embark on a journey to attempt to recover them by playing the fictional MMO Cross Worlds. That’s right, a game within a game. Really though, it serves as more of a plot device to bring in and explain away a lot of “video gamey” things. Its interesting from a world building perspective, but the plot doesn’t seem to utilize it well, or at least from what I’ve seen. Remember, I ended up dropping this game, and frankly its because of the plot. The very beginning is super engaging and really gets you invested, primarily because its more so about the world outside of the game and Lea’s lack of memories. However, it soon comes to a screeching halt to build and explore the story line inside the game, the one for Cross Worlds. And I’m sorry, but Cross Worlds is boring and engaging. Its the pretty typical RPG trope of you being the chosen one and needing to go collect the four elemental things to save the day. Its so boring and the game doesn’t even pretend to try to make it engaging. And this is what killed it for me, the game took all the interesting story stuff and hid it from the player. Sure, the gameplay was still great, but when you start out with two good things (gameplay and story) and the remove one of them, I feel like I have a lesser game (despite still being good). The lack of the actual story became such a glaring omission to me that I lost all motivation to keep playing. I didn’t want to play Cross Worlds, I wanted to play Cross Code.

In all honestly, if those opening hours were better, I probably would have played this game to completion. Its still a fantastic game, and even from just the little bit I played I can see why people think so highly of it. I just don’t think its something I’ll come back to in the future because of my own personal issues with it.

2024-07-16 to 2024-07-25

Mother Encore DEMO (2023)

A long time ago, well over half a decade at this point, I was a staunch believer that Mother 1 was the best game in the trilogy. Better than Earthbound, better than Mother 3. In the time since, I’ve come around on that opinion, but Mother 1 still holds a special place in my heart. However, Mother 1 also sucks to play. I’ve played several different versions several different times, and none of them deliver a satisfactory experience. Even fan attempts fail to deliver a perfect version of the game. Don’t get me wrong, most are still better than playing the relatively unbalanced base version of the game, but there is a fundamental resistance to playing a JRPG from the 80s, even with tweaks to make it more modern.

Thats where Mother Encore comes in. Its is a complete reimagining of the game made in a modern engine. Its not a mod to the NES original or GBA rerelease, its 100% home grown custom code. And it shows. Its able to shove aside the limitations of the NES hardware and create something incredible. I’m not saying the NES one looks or sounds bad (by NES standards at least), I’m saying when you have complete control of the code on modern hardware you can do infinetly more than an NES. And thats where the decisive part comes in. Even in the rather lengthy demo, Mother Encore deviates from the original. It adds new mechanics, new places, and redesigns things. And none of it is bad. The team was still very much able to capture the vibe and style of the series, none of it feels jarring. Heck, some of it even is an improvement over the originals. One of the major changes is the addition of abilities to use outside of battle. It allows for more interesting environments to explore, with more paths and secrets added.

This demo wow’ed me. It shows massive potential for bringing the 1989 original to the modern age. It rivals the quality of modern games and finally shows this game the respect it deserves. I wish we had the full game already so I could tell you to go play one of the best RPGs, but the demo will have to suffice as a teaser for whats to come.

2024-08-10

Eastward (2021)

I can’t remember where I heard about this game. I original thought it was in a Mother Direct, as they showcase fan games inspired by the Mother series, but no, this wasn’t shown there. Wherever it was, I clearly came into it knowing it was heavily inspired by Mother, and after playing it some, its kinda clear to me that is a large portion of its identity. The art style and writing are very reminiscent of that series. Not to say its a bad thing, but with Eastward it feels very surface level. Characters exist in the world just to say something weird and quirky, just like how characters say weird and quirky things in Mother games. Eastward has themes of nature vs technology, just like how Mother 3 was heavily themed around that. Eastward has you saving at the unexpected refrigerator, just like how the Mother series has you save at a phone booth or frog. You see all these references and homages to the Mother games, but it feels like they just wanted to go “Hey look! We’re just like that quirky and beloved Mother 3! Isn’t that cool?”. And I don’t think its wrong to reuse the good elements of other games, especially if it helps make a game better, but Eastward just takes the ideas and concepts without implementing them in a way that improves the game. Characters say the quirky things, but most of the time the dialogue doesn’t do anything to further the plot. Hell, the game even makes a habit of temporarily introducing characters, giving them minor development, and then throwing them away when its time to move to the next town. It just makes everything feel surface level. There isn’t any real commitment to anything too original, so everything just comes off as that basic reference to the Mother series.

I still don’t think this game was bad. The Mother series is one of my favorites, and I’m glad to see that its inspiring people to make games. The Mother games are all JRPGs, while Eastward is much more of an action game. Its still its own thing, even if it heavily pulls from Mother. And what it does is not bad. Its a very good action game. Combat is good, especially when you get to more dynamic battles that require you to swap between characters. Dungeons are fun to explore with plenty of secrets to find. Its not a bad game, it just felt so uninspired to me.

2024-09-15 to 2024-09-21

The Witness (2016)

I like puzzle games. I did not like The Witness. The Witness is a puzzle game that sees the player solve those line puzzles. The one where you have to draw a line through a maze to get to the end. Its not that simple, it adds plenty of twists. It doesn’t let things become boring, or at least it tries. The game has zero dialogue. No text, no pop ups, no nothing. It completely relies on environmental cues and the player to teach themselves how to solve puzzles. This can be rewarding, when you see those environmental cues. Unfortunately, during my time with it, I managed to miss several subtle cues that resulted in me spending more time brute forcing puzzles than actually figuring it out. Its frankly, horrible. And even then, the game will send you on longer strings of puzzles to solve, but these all tend to be super drawn out. By the halfway point in these puzzle gauntlets, you’ve already explored about 90% of what you can do with whatever gimmick or challenge it throws at you, and you have slog through the rest, not being challenged by any new mechanics or difficulty ideas.

It just became this frustrating play experience. Its absolute refusal to guide the player in any meaningful way makes it feel so pretentious. The lack of any meaningful innovation in the gameplay reinforces that idea as it presents itself in such a prestigious manner. Don’t waste your time with this, go play The Looker instead.

2024-09-26

Breath of Fire IV (2000)

This game was just so… milquetoast. To be fair, I really hadn’t heard a whole ton about the game, or the series for that matter. I’ve heard that the people who’ve played it have enjoyed it, but like, its not talked about like its some hidden gem or something. I really don’t know why, but my expectations were probably higher than they should have been going into this.

The game felt, kinda boring? Don’t get me wrong, from what I played there were parts I enjoyed. The setting was quite interesting. Starting out in more of a desert environment felt really interesting. The bit about a war and conflict between nations was cool, but I found a lot of the other stuff to be lacking. The actual story is rather lame. The main motivation at the start of the game is trying to find one of your party member’s sister. Except we really don’t know much about the sister or her relationship with the party member or anything like that, so as I player I lack incentive or motivation to really purse it as a goal. The combat was the other thing I found bad. Its your standard turn based JRPG affair, you know the drill, except basically everyone is a blue mage. Its a cool idea on paper, each character’s move set is limited, but you can expand and customize it by learning spells and attacks from enemies. Except, there isn’t a “learn” command or something similar. You have to sit in battle, basically doing nothing except tanking hits just to hope one of your characters might learn the spell you want. It reminds me a lot of Final Fantasy 8’s draw command and how that ruined the pacing of battles. Who knew that having to sit in battle and spam commands that don’t have any meaningful impact on progressing the battle wasn’t fun?

I think my main decision with dropping this game was primarily from the battle system. Sure, I wasn’t having issues with combat despite not learning monster’s spells where I was in the game, but that would undeniably change later on. So I decided to just cut my losses and drop it. The combat wouldn’t be enjoyable to me, and the story so far didn’t really give me any motivation to keep going. I’m not writing off this series completely, but I’ll have to take a closer look at the other games before I consider playing them.

2024-09-29 to 2024-10-10

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (2019)

I bought this game a few years back on my Switch. Mostly because it looked interesting and I heard some online discussion about it, but it was also a bit impulsive given it had a decent sale price. It wasn’t until I was talking with someone about my backlog that I remembered I had it. They said that they played it and thought I might enjoy it. So I picked it up and gave it a go.

I think the first thing everyone talks about this game is how it looks like a Ghibli film. Partly because Studio Ghibli did 2D animation for some of the cut scenes. The 3D environments try to recreate that feeling, but end up looking uncanny with some basic scrutiny. Its not off putting, its just jarring seeing them switch between the two. It happens a lot at the beginning. But visuals aside, the game does a great job of capturing that Ghibli aesthetic. It has that whimsical and fun vibe you’d expect.

However, I can’t describe the gameplay in the same way. Ni No Kuni tries to stand out. It has this weird battle system. You control these summons and issue commands to them. Your basic attacking, defending, magic, that kinda thing. You can also control the positioning of them too. I think where it fails though is that is just so boring. In what I played, there were next to no battles that took advantage of any interesting aspects of the combat system. It was pretty much just mash the attack command as soon as it refreshed and maybe heal when low or defend when the enemy was telegraphing a powerful attack. I know I might be oversimplifying it a bit, but there wasn’t much else to do in the battles. It was just so god damn boring.

Thats the thing; the game couldn’t carry itself on vibes alone. Especially when those vibes kept being interrupted by the most boring combat system I’ve had to play this year. And thats considering I’ve played Final Fantasty XIII, a game known online for basically playing itself. And honestly, its a bit disappointing it wasn’t better. Why? Because Akihiro Hino worked as a designer on this game. He’s done tons of work on great games like Professor Layton, Dragon Quest VIII, and Jeanne d’Arc among others previous to this game. And while you can see some of that influence from his previous works (especially Dragon Quest), some how none of the good gameplay from those previous games managed to transfer over to this one.

I think this is a good game, as long as you like the game play. Its honestly a make or break kinda situation, and I just could not stand it. There clearly is a lot to like with this game, and I would have liked to enjoy it, but as I said, the game was just so god damn boring to actually play. The second game in the series takes a more action oriented approach from what I’ve heard, so I’m still open to checking it out. After all, I still do thing everything else about the game was pretty good.

2024-11-26 to 2024-12-01

Games I Replayed

Terraria

I’ll never be able to be finished with this game, mostly because the developers will seemingly never be done with this game. At the time of writing this, 1.4.5 has still yet to release, but the developers keep teasing more and more content for it, one of them being a skyblock seed. However, my friends and I got a little impatient waiting and decided to try our own attempt at doing a skyblock play though.

Turns out, skyblock isn’t too interesting beyond the early game. Working with such a limited set of items and slowly grinding to expand it into something so much more is quite interesting. Especially with something like shimmer having been added in 1.4.4. However, once we got to around Plantera the excitement died out. Why? Mostly because everything left was just building, which isn’t the most exciting thing in Terraria. Don’t get me wrong, building actual things in game is fun, but when its just placing blocks to have an arena and spawning spaces and biomes, its incredibly boring. World generation normally takes care of that task, so being without it sucked. At least by that point, we had overcame the vast majority of challenges skyblock posed, so we were okay with calling it complete there.

Old School Runescape

I’ll never be able to be finished with this game, mostly because the developers designed it that way. Runescape is undeniably a time sink, but I kinda like it for that reason. Its kinda nice to have it on the side while watching a show or movie. You can give it a little bit of attention and before you know it, small number has turned large.

I initially set out to complete all hard achievement diaries. First that meant cleaning up the medium ones, then I wanted to get the more important hard diaries (Varrok, Lumby, Ardy) done first. Well, achieving those wasnt’t an issue, the issue was all the skilling I needed to do for the rest of the hard diaries.

I actually enjoy a lot of the skilling in this game, its just that my two least favorite skills in the game are thieving and slayer, and both of them I needed to get into the 70s. Needless to say, I decided to mix things up by not doing that. Instead I pivoted to getting some 99s. First was 99 crafting. I always liked that skill, it was simple yet enjoyable. It also has a great perk of a free bank teleport on the crafting cape, so it was a no brainer to go for. Then I went for firemaking, not for any real reason. I was starting from 92 again, so I already was able to do everything with it, it was more so just to get that sweet 99. My membership had run out at this point, and instead of going back to do Wintertodt, I just ended up doing bonfires with maple logs to 99. This was incredibly cheap, but the XP rates were 1/3 of what I could be getting just normally burning them. But I didn’t care about speed, I just wanted something AFK. So it worked out for me. The last thing I went to do was wood cutting. I spent a long time at the Edgeville yews. Like, nearly 250 hours long. In all honesty, the only reason I ended up stopping was because I had something that kept me from playing for a bit, and once it was resolved I had just fallen out of the habit of playing the game when I wasn’t doing much.

vivid/stasis

I really like this game. Its part rhythm game, part visual novel, and part alternate reality game. Somehow, every part manages to be fantastic. Its really something you have to experience for yourself, and luckily the game is free, so go play it!

Why I came back to it this year was because of the two major content drops. Chapter 3 dropped early March and added some fantastic new story content. It ended up being one of those “this changes everything” moments. Then getting Chapter 4 in June? Crazy stuff. The story in this game has not disappointed me one bit, and I won’t lie, I was a bit sad when the final part got pushed back. Originally it was going to release this December but ended up getting delayed. I’ll wait patiently though, I’d much rather see a good ending over a rushed ending.

That being said, as the game has been developed, its introduced a lot of new features to gate progression. At the start of this year, it was just a simple song shop, but now there are several different ways to unlock songs, each with their own unique unlocks too. Its not the end of the world, but I still found it annoying as it ended up locking away a bunch of songs that used to be unlocked by default. As a long time player, this sucks. Having to grind to unlock stuff I used to have? Not the funnest thing to do. Luckily the gameplay is still pretty good, so not a huge downer that I have an excuse to keep playing.

Pump It Up

Pump It Up is a game I’ve come to realize I enjoy more so from a casual perspective. Unlike most other rhythm games I enjoy, I don’t feel some drive to continuously improve. Its simply fun enough for me to hop on and just play whatever within my skill level, although I can think of a few reasons why I might be avoiding higher level play. First is that the game is physically demanding, incredibly so. With traditional button based games, its easy to see charts and do them. After all, you just move your hands and fingers to hit buttons. But with Pump? Its a whole body experience. Even when playing “easier” stuff, I find myself sweating from the intensity required. Its not a bad thing, it just can be awkward to get all sweaty in such a social setting as an arcade. Its just a thing preventing me from trying harder content because I know it will just be worse in terms of sweat.

The other thing is that the game is surprisingly complex! Of course, harder content is going to be, harder, but there is something about it I just have so much trouble learning. The game requires a lot of “cross overs”, or moving one foot to the opposite side of the pad to hit a note. Usually this requires twisting your body or doing some similar motion. To me, this feels incredibly unnatural. It doesn’t help that I also have difficulty reading some of these patterns. So I often get lost and end up mashing a little to try to pass these sections. Not the funnest of times.

Its a bit of a shame when a lot of the new content the game has been getting this year has been geared towards more experienced players. It feels like I’m missing out on a lot of stuff that all the other players at my arcade get to enjoy. Sure, I could do things like study and practice at home, but unlike other games it just simply isn’t fun doing that or I don’t have the same motivation or whatever. So for the moment, I’m content with my skill level and giving it a go whenever I feel like getting sweaty at the arcade.

IIDX

For the longest time, I thought this game was not worth the time. It looked incredibly hard and intentionally difficult. I didn’t see the appeal in it. However, I would soon become enlightened to the joys of Beatmania IIDX. It happened when I was talking with some regulars at my arcade. Turns out, almost all the regulars are way into IIDX. So it was unavoidable that they would push me to try it. And I did a few times, but it wasn’t until someone said something to me that made it click: “IIDX is the same kind of game as Dark Souls, incredibly punishing, yet incredibly rewarding” (or something along those lines). And that, that is what made it click for me. I will tell you, the first 10-20 credits will probably suck a lot. IIDX is absolutely brutal, it demands only the best from its players, and it will let you know this. But once you start getting good, you get a chance to show your skills, and its incredibly rewarding.

I really started playing around the end of May, barely being able to clear 3s. By August, I had cleared 2nd Kyu (5s and 6s). The game was really starting to open up for me as I kept improving more and more. It was kinda crazy, because as the charts got harder harder the game got funner and funner. I don’t really know how to explain it, but pushing for better scores is super rewarding in this game. Its incredibly difficult, I still have yet to achieve an “AA” rank on any song, much less an “AAA”, but for me, getting an “A” feels incredible because achieving even such a simple feat is a monumental task in this game. And it feels incredible when you can do it.

So October rolls around and the latest version comes out, Pinky Crush. Getting to be in the arcade around launch was a great experience. Players of all skill levels were checking it out, enjoying the new songs and theme. It was a great time getting to discover things with the local player base, and it was even nicer to meet a lot more of the local community. This really helped motivate me to keep pushing, and by the start of November I cleared 1st Dan (6s and 7s)!

I haven’t quit, every time I’m at the arcade I’ll go play a few times. The soundtrack is incredibly good, like the vast majority of songs are bangers. And on top of that, so much of the content is a blast to play. The initial learning curve for this game is incredibly rough, but sticking through it, I found one of the most rewarding games I’ve played in recent memory. Planning to stick with this one!

Sound Voltex

Despite me just heavily praising IIDX, SDVX is still my go to when I’m at the arcade. Its just such a dynamic game, its hard to not have fun while your rapidly moving your hands all across the controls. There’s just something about it I can’t quite describe that makes me want to keep playing.

I made a lot of progress this year. I started the year off in 6th Dan (~14s). This is right around the time the game really starts throwing more difficult stuff at you. No longer are your hands expected to stay in more static positions, the charts demand you use your left hand to hit right buttons and vice versa. This is such a major shift, but its so essential to the core identity of the game. Its where it really starts to show a lot of its personality and what it has to offer.

So I keep pushing myself into the harder content because it is so much more enjoyable. At the end of may, I get 8th Dan (15~16s). And right around there is when the game really started to become a bit of a slog. Part of that was definitely because I would go to the arcade and basically exclusively play SDVX for my entire trip, but the other part was that the content was definitely becoming more of a wall. The difficulty scale from 1 to 20 is not linear, its exponential. And right around 16s is when you really start facing how big the jump from one level to the next could be. And while I did hit 9th Dan (16s~17s) in July, I also fell off the game a lot in favor of others for a while.

Taking a break and playing other games was the right call for me. If I had kept going and grinding for the next Dan badge like I wanted to, I would have really burnt out and probably even given up on the game. Its really easy to get into this mindset with these arcade games. Going to the arcade is an expensive task, both in the monetary sense and the temporal sense. It can feel like a waste to play bad or stagnate in whatever game you’re playing because its easy to see it as a waste of time and money. But taking time away from it, meeting other players, enjoying other games, it made me realize that the arcade wasn’t just the spot to grind, the arcade is a place to socialize, to relax, to have fun.

However, I didn’t get back. What got me back into the game was finally getting a controller for home play. I caught a sale for a Faucetwo and honestly it was worth every penny. While it isn’t arcade perfect, its about 90% of the way there and is leagues better than trying to play on a keyboard or mini controller. It has a great build and if you play any decent amount, you will end up saving money compared to spending money on gas and plays at the arcade. Being able to play in an environment where you don’t have to stress about waste made it so much easier to be okay with failing. And being okay with failing helped me actually start enjoying the game again.

I got my Faucetwo in early October, and by the end of the month I had already gotten 10th Dan (17s). Playing in the arcade was fun once again, and I also ended up playing less while I was there. A bit weird, but playing at home made it easy to set and practice for goals to achieve while at the arcade, and once I was satisfied with whatever goals I was going for, it didn’t feel like a waste to pull myself from the machine and go try other games. Its simple, yes, but its made playing so much more fun and rewarding.

Coming into December, reaching 11th Dan (18s) felt like an achievable goal. And with some practice, I soon found it to be more likely than I thought. I was able to get good runs on each individual song in the course, and I even had a few good attempts reaching 97-98% completion. I knew in theory that it was 100% achievable. But it didn’t end up happening. Why? I ended up having a mind block on the songs in the course, unable to properly score and clear on them. Endlessly throwing myself at them and the course didn’t help, and constantly trying and failing my goal made me feel like a failure. I was incredibly demotivated, so I just stopped trying towards the end of the month. It was another situation where I was going to burn out, and so I stopped grinding and just focused on having fun with the game. I still have part of me wishing I pushed for 11th, but it ended up being so much more healthy for me to stop pushing and enjoy the game.

Disco Elysium

In an effort to find something to do with the limbo period between Christmas and New Years, I decided to fire up Disco Elysium. Partly out of curiosity; my first play though of the game two years ago was incomplete, in a sense. But it was partly out of desire to consume something with good writing.

This game effectively consumed me. Its incredibly difficult for me to put into words. In my process of writing this article, my yearly game review, I’ve realized I’m poor at describing stories and their emotional impacts. Probably just as poor at writing the other bits too, but this game is by far one of the best pieces of fiction I have had the pleasure to consume. I struggle to say anything more because I feel as if nothing compares to its narrative abilities. And when the narrative is at the forefront of the game, thats a fantastic sign for the game.

Maybe I just haven’t given it the time to sink in. After all, when I rolled credits, I just spent a while staring at the title screen. Thinking. Processing. Debating. Part of me wanted to fire the game back up. Start over again. Partly to try things differently, see how things could turn out differently, but more so as an excuse not to leave. To be able to spend more time and immerse myself in the world created.

There is something truly special about a game like that.

Concluding Thoughts

I think if you’re going to take anything away from this, its that you should watch this video. Its the same one at the start of this post, so watch it if you haven’t already. Gaming should be fun. And honestly, I had fun. I can’t say there were any games that I completely hated, even among the ones I dropped. And my backlog is no more. I still have some pile of games I’ve purchased or obtained in some capacity with the intent of playing them, but that doesn’t mean I have a backlog. Rather, its a collection; a group of things I own simply because I like having them. It acts as something that reflects me and my tastes, even if its just theoretical. Its purpose isn’t necessarily to be played, but rather to exist, and I’m fine with that.

So yeah, I had a good year gaming, and I look forward to another one next year.