Happy new year everyone!!!!!!!

Well, I intended to make 2025 a year where I'd be able to spread my wings and fly around the current state of games media, but between an awful incident in my personal life, complete creative lock-ups aside from the Shenmue piece, a contact for a job that went nowhere and a general sense of my life going wrong on all possible angles, I couldn't really muster the will nor want to write longform critique again. To be honest, I don't really think I still can right now.

But I also don't want to stand around and do nothing of myself. One year was enough, and while it allowed me to pierce through 53 full fuckin' games off of my backlog (!!!) it also felt really empty to not have a way to express these feelings outside of disparate discord servers and DMs. So as a way to kick off the new year and make a use of this new and nifty blog I built (shoutouts to Strawberry Starter, this whole place is soooo much easier to work on now) I wanna go back and talk about some of my favorite things from 2025. I don't want this to be like the other round-ups where I got ahead of myself and wrote too much for 'em (also cuz I wrote those while in the middle of work tehe) so I'll try to keep these short and sweet.

Games

Honkai: Star Rail (up to midway through 3.0)

I don't like this game at all. I find its story really boring, the characters incomprehensible, the flowery language unbearable and the general user experience as a live service game to be annoying to play through. I like some of the designs and found parts of Penacony to be soooorta interesting, but Amphoreus, even the fuckin start of it, was so mindnumbing that I couldn't get back into it. I logged back in to get my wife Saber and that free Archer and haven't booted it up since. Not a fan.

Castlevania - Symphony of the Night

Igarashi nailed the formula on the first try and but no modern Metroidvania wants to admit that half the fun of the namesake genre is in the RPG lying underneath the exploration. It's a really fun ARPG with great music and a fantastic sense of progression and discovery. The only issue is, as many have said already, that the inverted castle really kills the pace as you're forced to explore the exact level you've been in but upside down. A bit of annoying but nothing like, super bad. Good stuff.

Ninja Gaiden (1 Sigma and 2 Black)

RIP Itagaki. He made (or well I guess he didn't make these two) a really fun, unique way of approaching action games by basing it off entirely on positioning ala old beat 'em ups. NG1S has fantastic level design and really fun set pieces even if the bosses are horrendous. 2 Black is really pretty, but lacks a lot of the fun of the interconnected level design of 1 and feels more like a chore to go through. Worth playing though.

South Park - The Stick of Truth

Delightful JRPG. It has really witty humor and is very fun to play through. I'll never forget the broken bottle strategy I beat the game with. Highly recommend.

Tony Hawk's Underground

Yadda yadda Eric Sparrow rules. The levels are great, the progression is super tight. It's probably Tony Hawk's at its best. The final challenge was really good.

Death Stranding

There really is just no experience like reconstructing infrastructure by hauling materials from warehouse to warehouse, hauling ass because of bad weather, sneaking around ghosts and spending a dozen hours just making it more convenient to drive around. For what purpose? I don't really know. But it's really fun to just do and I think that's DS's greatest strength. You can call it a loop if you wanna, but I think the core mechanical throughline is to make you play-pretend logistics and no other game really does this, not even Euro Truck Simulator 2 since that focuses more on just getting from point A to B within a "realistic" framework (real roads, real traffic laws, real radio if you feel like it). DS likes to play it more abstractly and it works for the better. I will defo play DS2 later on (maybe this year).

Shinobi III (on 3ds)

Guys this game fuckin rocks. Fuck that new Shinobi game, play this instead.

Dragon Quest II (SNES)

Playing Dragon Quest I is like witnessing history before your eyes. Playing Dragon Quest II is like seeing the foundation of the future be set in stone. Jackson Tyler has already written a great article on the experience of playing DQ2 as it compares to its predecessor but I think Dragon Quest II has a lot of elements that feel a lot more resonant than I as they expand on how I worked. There's this concept in Japanese called 謎解き (Nazo Toki/riddle solving) where the basis of a puzzle will be structured so that the player has to figure out the clues by talking to NPCs and discovering the world to solve it, and this game plays into that very hard for good and for ill. I respect the search for the medallions, but it's also very bullshit to have two of them just, on the floor, without any indication (afaik anyway). I still really enjoyed the game though, in spite of its awful difficulty spike at the very last area of the game. Maybe play the new remake if you wanna see it modernized, but I also recommend the SNES or GBC versions.

Ace Combat 04

I really just don't have the words to describe how good Ace Combat 04 is. AC5 has better setpieces, AC2 basically perfected the formula on PS1, but there's something about AC04 to me that speaks to me. Maybe it's the really cool plot presentation with the dual POVs between Mobius 1 and the kid in the city, or the amount of bangers in its OST, or the simple fun of "hearing FOX 2 FOX 2" on the radio while dodging missiles left and right. I ended up replaying it on Hard the moment I beat it, which I couldn't do for 5 or 2 (haven't beaten 0 yet though). Either way, it rules.

F-Zero GX

They will never make another one like this and that's the biggest crime of all. One of the greatest ever.

R4 Ridge Racer Type-4

I almost wrote an essay on the appeal of kinesthetics as it related back to this one. The beautiful graphic design that permeates not just the experience of selecting things off of a menu, but the races themselves. The sense of melancholy as every story grapples with what the new millennium will bring to them, as the start of something new. The greatest OST ever composed by a human being. It doesn't just feel like a game, but an aesthetic statement. A hope for a future based on the promise of technology, something that we really want to reappropriate nowadays with LLMs but cannot. It really is a beautiful work of art.

Blue Prince

I'm actually not really a hater of most things. If I write something it's usually because I liked it to one degree or another. Either I found something interesting in its play or themes, or I just wanna gush about how it made me feel. Blue Prince is one of the only games I rolled credits on (the first credits) and felt nothing but sheer annoyance at its existence. I hate the way it mixes deckbuilding and puzzle-solving. I hate the way it wastes my time due to RNG, even when I understand or want to try out a solution for a puzzle. I hate how SLOW it is to play on a movement level. I hate it.

Shenmue

Read my article about it lol it's right there. One of the greatest games ever made.

Deltarune Ch 1 through Ch 4

It's hard to talk about Deltarune because, like most serialized fiction, a lot of the interpretation and experience of play comes from how you think it'll continue. I have my thoughts on that too, but playing gacha games for long enough has taught me that it's better to wait until it's all done to give full thoughts on a project like it. As for the individual chapters, I'll break my rule and give a 1-line review:

Ch 1: Still funny. Third best OST.

Ch 2: The funniest one. Best OST.

Ch 3: Inventive structure, fun villain, incredible secret boss. Weakest OST.

Ch 4: Cool aesthetics, made me cry during the secret boss, when I realized the point of the heart and its meta layer I clapped hard. Second best OST if only for the sanctuary themes.

Cairn (demo)

This is probably gonna be my GOTY for 2026.

Exapunks

I'm tsundere for this game. I love it and then I hate it and then I love it again. Someday I'll beat it.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

Mid but I think the sequel is gonna fix all my gameplay issues so whatever. If you don't like the Agua song or the OST in general you have objectively awful taste.

Lost Judgement

It's good but I hate the conspiracy angle; it would have been better with the main antagonist alone. Still worth playing but not as good as the first one.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby

I love it. I love the gameplay, I love the characters, I love the idol concerts, I love the historical philosophy it has. I love it all. I am an idolbuta without any shame. I've been an Uma fan since 2021 but it feels SO good to see it blow up and see people fall in love with it as their idol franchise of choice. I believe we all love idols, we just have to find the groups or franchises that speak to our hearts.

Mahou Tsukai no Yoru (Witch on the Holy Night)

I really don't think I can fully encapsulate how much I love Mahoyo in a round-up like this. Frankly I don't think I could do it justice as a full blog post. It's a very difficult game to put into words, as you can focus on a myriad of things about it, from its character work to presentation and how it operates around Nasu's general oeuvre of work. I love it though, and if you ever wanna talk about it with me please DM me on Bsky.

Pikmin

CHILDHOOD AVENGED. I was so scared of this game as a kid and beating it felt so good. It's a lovely experiment with good music and strategy layers, though I think it only really comes into its own with 2 characters like in its sequel.

Mother

Anyone who says this is skippable over Earthbound is a liar and has no sense of taste of charm or how to have FUN with old games. It's silly, super charming and goes by faster than you'd think, even without the EXP boosting items from the English patch release. Worth every single second.

House of Necrosis

This game made me understand the core fun of mystery dungeon games and for that I think it deserves all the praise it can get. Please play it.

Cyberpunk 2077 (and Phantom Liberty)

Vanilla is like, a really really good exploration of the types of freedoms we lose and gain within a rotten society and economy. It's great, it's defo worth playing by itself.

Phantom Liberty is a feat of narrative design. Every sidequest, conversation, dialog choice and event reinforces the theme of "true" agency in narrative. It's one of the most impressive things I've played in years. The way the four endings play out is a prime example on how choices in games should feel to the player; shitty, awful, and full of regret, but worth sticking through for what you believe will get you at the very end. I love it.

Final Fantasy XIII

Yo all the haters are fucking liars bro this is the best combat system Square has ever put together. The story is really disparate but its saved by the incredible (JAPANESE) script. Maybe I'll write about it.

Gnosia

Really cool premise and I respect how its systems interact with one another to try and make Mafia work single player but it's awful how it degenerates into flag hunting by the midgame. Probably watch the (currently airing) anime if you want a better experience of the plot.

Ninja Gaiden 3 Razor's Edge

dogshit

Final Fantasy XVI

Boring and annoying.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Better and worse than most people give it credit for. It works well when it does but the act 2 twist, while cool and "works" for what the game tries to say, ruins a good part of the story in such a way where it's basically indefensible to choose the M-ending. Maybe that's the mark of a good narrative though, the fact it can inspire discussion like this. Gameplay's good too until it also degenerates into nuking enemies because you don't want to engage with the parrying anymore. Still fun though!

Fate/Grand Order - Cosmos in the Lostbelt

God, the fact I can just say "FGO is over" feels bizarre to say. Obviously the gacha game FGO is still alive, and it'll probably continue on for a couple more years with no issue, but FGO as the narrative game I've been playing since 2017 being "over" and done fills me with...a weird feeling. It's good and it's bad. I wish the final chapter did stuff differently with regards to its real main heroine, but I respect Nasu's commitment to do that ending and leave it to players to try and sort how they feel about it. It's ballsy, at the very least. I do wanna write something about it though, maybe at the end of the month once I can sort my feelings out. Either way, it's been a ride. Thanks for the memories.

My god that actually was way longer than I thought it was gonna be. I might post a different one about the movies, books and anime I watched as well later on. Honestly I think my intent for this is to try and make a monthly round-up of the things I finished in any given month to get stuff out, but I'll figure out if I wanna keep it in this subfeed or put it in the main one later.

Either way, if you're reading this, thanks for checking me out. I don't really write for clicks or fame, but if you wanna talk to me and check my thoughts on things as I finish them, you can check my Bluesky, and my Backloggd here as well.

Have a wonderful 2026, and I hope we see each other soon!.