2025 Year in Review

This is it, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. At least, this is the moment I’ve really been looking forward to and one of the main reasons why I started this blog in the first place. My goal was to see how much money I spend on games, how many games I get for that amount of money, and how many hours I sink into my gaming hobby. I’ve been meticulously tracking all of this in a spreadsheet (and my HowLongToBeat profile of course) and will share all of that below. This post will start with my acquisitions, game recaps, and TV/Movie recaps as usual. Afterwards, I will post all the graphs showing my playtime and money spent, just like my quarterly posts. Then, I will list my top 10 games I completed in 2025 with my reviews of each. Lastly, I will wrap up with the conclusion and what’s next for me on my gaming journey. Strap in, this is gonna be a long one!

Game Acquisitions

Holy moly, that is a lot of games. I knew I got a lot of games every year but seeing it in one picture like this is just staggering. I must’ve spent a fortune to get all of these, right? Surprisingly, these hundreds of games only cost the equivalent of about five full-price AAA titles. Between the numerous bundles, giveaways, freebies, and Steam family purchases, I saved a ton of money. Of course, I could’ve not bought anything and still had a large enough backlog to cover my gaming needs for several years, but where’s the fun in that? I like to think that most of these games will be at least somewhat enjoyable and this is likely one of if not the best prices they’ll be offered at. It’s going to be tough to go through this entire list and pick out some highlights that I’m particularly excited about. I’ll just skim through and pick out ones that look familiar that stand out to me as something I’m looking forward to:

# of Games: 616

Total Money Spent: $333.58

Price/Game: $0.54

Game Recaps

It looks like four long RPGs made up over 80% of my 396 hours and nine minutes of playtime for the year, with a sprinkling of smaller titles to round it out. There were a couple of stinkers in here with Lunar Axe and Slayers X, but for the most part, I enjoyed everything here. I still need to get back to Torment: Tides of Numenera at some point. Metaphor: ReFantazio was completed with only 45 minutes left in the year and made up 30% of my total playtime, which is especially impressive considering I beat it in only a month and a half. I don’t want to get any more detailed on my thoughts for each game, that’s what the top 10 below is for! Here are playlists of every game I played and recorded if you want to check them out:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched last year:

·       American Dad Season 21 Episodes 10-22 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       FLCL Season 1 Episode 1-Season 5 Episode 3 (complete)

·       Firefly Season 1 Episode 1-11 (complete)

·       Helluva Boss Season 2 Episodes 12-13 (still watching, show ongoing)

·       Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (complete)

·       Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online Season 2 Episodes 1-12 (complete?)

·       Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (complete?)

·       Skull Island Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (complete)

·       Cowboy Bebop Season 1 Episodes 1-26 (complete)

·       Family Guy Season 23 Episodes 1-18 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Snowpiercer Season 1 Episode 1-Season 4 Episode 10 (complete)

·       Shadow and Bone Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 8 (complete)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 2 Episode 1-Season 4 Episode 4 (complete)

·       Black Mirror Season 7 Episodes 1-6 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Arcane Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 9 (complete)

·       Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix Season 1 Episodes 1-6 (complete)

·       Star Wars: Andor Season 2 Episodes 1-12 (complete)

·       The Last of Us Season 2 Episodes 1-7 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 Episodes 1-9 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Tales from the Loop Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (complete)

·       Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 26 (complete)

·       Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 12 (complete)

·       Ironheart Season 1 Episodes 1-6 (complete)

·       Eyes of Wakanda Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld Season 1 Episodes 1-6 (complete)

·       Raised by Wolves Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 8 (complete)

·       Pokémon Concierge Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (complete)

·       LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy – Pieces of the Past Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Marvel Zombies Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (complete?)

·       Alien: Earth Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Futurama Season 10 Episodes 1-10 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Splinter Cell: Deathwatch Season 1 Episodes 1-8 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Gen V Season 2 Episodes 1-8 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Tales of Phantasia: The Animation Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Berserk 1997 Season 1 Episodes 1-25 (complete)

·       Berserk: The Golden Age Arc – Memorial Edition Season 1 Episodes 1-13 (complete)

·       Berserk 2016 Season 1 Episode 1-Season 2 Episode 12 (complete)

·       Star Wars: Visions Season 3 Episodes 1-9 (complete)

·       Blue Submarine No. 6 Season 1 Episodes 1-4 (complete)

·       Record of Lodoss War Season 1 Episodes 1-13 (complete)

·       Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight Season 1 Episodes 1-27

·       Barton Fink

·       Rushmore

·       Barefoot Gen 1-2

·       Serenity

·       The Boy and the Heron

·       Stardust

·       Cowboy Bebop: The Movie

·       The Fifth Element

·       Dark City

·       Close Encounters of the Third Kind

·       Trainspotting 1-2

·       Moana 1-2

·       Sonic the Hedgehog 3

·       Red vs. Blue: Restoration

·       Planet of the Apes

·       Rise of the Planet of the Apes

·       Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

·       War for the Planet of the Apes

·       Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

·       Dog Man

·       Mickey 17

·       The Boondock Saints

·       11:14

·       Ghost in the Shell

·       Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence

·       Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Solid State Society

·       Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Borders 1-5

·       Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie

·       Harry Potter 1-7

·       Jurassic World Rebirth

·       Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

·       Happy Gilmore 1-2

·       Pitch Black

·       The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury

·       The Chronicles of Riddick

·       Riddick

·       28 Years Later

·       Barbarian

·       Demolition Man

·       Ballerina

·       Nobody 2

·       The Accountant 1-2

·       The Truman Show

·       King Kong

·       Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

This looks absolutely absurd when written out like this. It seems I watched a lot of movies and TV shows last year, way more than games played. That’s not TOO surprising though, games are a much bigger time commitment. There was a lot of sci-fi and anime here which came as no surprise. I’ve already written my thoughts on everything here, so I don’t want to overshadow the gaming portion of my gaming blog by reiterating them here. Picking a favorite TV show out of this huge list is difficult, but I think I might give it to Arcane. It’s crazy to think that I was planning on skipping it since I never played the League of Legends game it’s based on. I’m glad I didn’t though, it’s definitely not necessary to be familiar with the source material before diving in. The animation, writing, and characters are top-notch. I hope the creators can tell more stories in this universe. Picking a favorite movie is even more difficult since I don’t exactly remember a lot of them and some of them tend to blend together. The Boy and the Heron, Stardust, Moana, Planet of the Apes, Dog Man, Harry Potter, Demolition Man, Ballerina, The Accountant, The Truman Show, and Mission: Impossible were all enjoyable.

Stats

Individually, the acquisitions and game recap sections above showed the numbers I was curious about when starting the blog. Let’s break the data down even further by week and month, starting with money spent and games acquired:

I was curious to see if the amount of money I spent correlated with how many games I got and the answer is…kind of but not really. This makes sense since there were some bundles that gave me a ton of games for a low price, some games I got for free, and others I paid a lot more for a single game. You can really see this reflected in March when I got a ton of games for relatively little and August where I got a decent number of games, but they were all free. It’s satisfying seeing how close the two graphs get though in January, May, July, October, and December though. It’s like the data was trying really hard to line up and just couldn’t do it. Next up, let’s look at my hours played:

I love how you can easily see what months I’m subscribed to Game Pass in these graphs. The year started off OK with me getting my footing with writing and playing at the same time. Then I had a two-week trial of Game Pass in May which caused my playtime to surge as I tried to get as much playtime in as possible. After that, I decided I wanted to go back and play older games that I missed growing up when I wasn’t allowed to play video games. That’s when I really dove deep into learning about emulation and cataloging all the retro games I wanted to play. This caused my playtime to bottom out June-September with only the occasional co-op session to keep the gaming going. Then I discovered Microsoft Rewards which allows me to extend my subscription indefinitely for free (for now) and jumped right back into gaming again. I love how I’m able to maintain 70+ hours/month while also writing for the blog and editing for the YouTube channel. It makes me wonder if I’d be able to hit 100 hours in a month if I wasn’t doing all that stuff. I wish I had detailed stats to compare from previous years, but I imagine my playtime was much reduced in 2025. I’ll continue tracking my playtime though so I should have better comparisons next year!

Top 10

If you keep up with my top 10 collection on HLTB, none of this will be news to you. I decided to keep my top 10 games collections updated as I completed games as well as wrote reviews for games I just finished before moving on to the next game. That, combined with the drastically lower number of completions this year, will make writing this section much easier than it was in previous years. So, without further ado, here are my top 10 games I completed in 2025:

10. Little Kitty, Big City (Main+Extras 4h:43m) – 7/10

Little Kitty, Big City is a short and sweet open world adventure game about a cat that falls off their favorite sleeping spot on a high-rise balcony to the streets below and has to find their way back up. Along the way, they meet various other animals they can talk to through text bubbles that can either help the cat on their journey or ask for help with their own problems. The gameplay consists of wandering around the city by climbing and jumping on stuff, talking to animals for some side quests, and collecting fish to increase your stamina to climb even higher so you can get back home. The game is very short and simple and there is no combat to speak of. The money you get in the form of shinies is only used for the first stamina upgrade and optional hats with no gameplay benefits, so it can largely be ignored.

What this game lacks in gameplay and story, it makes up for in charm. It’s just a really cute game, and the animals you meet along the way have their own fun personality quirks and activities to do. You meet a tanuki that unlocks the “Petwork” fast travel system, a dog who has misplaced his favorite tennis balls, and a daddy duck who seems to have misplaced his children…again. Most of the interactions are optional, but then you’re missing the point of the game by not engaging with them. My other complaint besides the simplicity was using the map to find collectibles. Again, this is totally optional, but I spent way too much time trying to find some collectibles that appeared to be right next to me on the map but ended up being way above me on a rooftop or tucked behind a fence I couldn’t figure out how to get through. Still, if you like cats and don’t mind a short game without a lot of meat on its bones, you probably can’t go wrong with this one.

9. Road 96 (Completionist 8h:28m) – 7/10

Road 96 is a story-driven adventure game about a group of kids attempting to flee their country that is ruled by a tyrannical government. The gameplay consists almost entirely of walking through a handful of ~15 minute scenarios where you talk to people, pick some dialogue choices to affect the ending you get, then choose how much stamina you want to spend by picking a mode of transportation to get to the next scenario. You can gamble and hope that you get enough money or find enough food to keep your stamina up to keep going. The dialogue choices are mainly split between just wanting to flee the country with minimal conflict, encouraging voting for the opposition leader in the upcoming election, or starting a revolution. After a handful of these scenarios, you arrive at the border, pick how you want to try to escape, then start over with a new character. After six of these runs (or more if you fail to many times from what I’ve read), you then make the ultimate choice of fleeing or staying to fight and watch how that plays out with the ending you worked towards through various conversations.

There are a handful of characters you meet on each run, and you can see what percentage of their scenarios you’ve encountered after each level. You can’t see every scenario in one playthrough so if you want to see everything, you’ll have to play multiple times and hope for the best. Some of these characters are more interesting than others. You have Zoe, the stereotypical rebellious teenager of a higher up political figure who’s also trying to escape. It may seem cliché, but I found her to be surprisingly endearing and well-written with a pretty good vocal performance. On the other hand, you have Stan and Mitch who are two goofy robbers that are obsessed with Sonya, the talk show host of the government’s propaganda machine. They were much less interesting in my opinion.

A game like this hinges almost entirely on its story, characters, and presentation, and I don’t think it fully pulled it off. The graphics aren’t the best, which is fine. It went for a more cartoony art style despite the darker subject matter which looked OK. Some of the vocal performances were just bad though, like Jarod the murderous taxi driver with anger management issues. The animations were just OK, and every run ended with the same two scenarios with only slight changes which led to repetition. This is definitely not as well-written or character focused as something like Life is Strange despite seemingly wanting to be, but I still enjoyed it enough to get all the achievements which is worth something. If you’re looking for a simple walking simulator with a politics-heavy story and can get over some of the mediocre writing and voice acting, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here.

8. Fall of Porcupine (Main+Extras 14h:41m) – 7/10

Fall of Porcupine is a story-driven game starring Finley, a bird who has just moved to a new town to work at the hospital as a junior doctor. The gameplay consists of talking to other anthropomorphic animals at the hospital and around town as well as little mini-games when treating patients at the hospital. It is a very simple gameplay loop. There’s a setting to make the mini-games even easier but considering that how well you do at them doesn’t seem to affect the story, I’m not sure it matters.

I thought the story in this game was just OK. It starts off fairly strong as you meet all the characters and explore the town, but it doesn’t really expand beyond that. There’s a turn-based bar fight as well as a festival partway through where you can talk to people in a certain order to get a special item which mixes things up a little bit. It also escalates at the end, but then just abruptly ends with little resolution.

The gameplay is about as simple as it gets. Anyone looking for a game that’s mechanically engaging should look elsewhere; this is definitely story-driven first and everything else second. Technically speaking, there was a minor bug with the phone where when you tried to scroll up to read the latest text message, it would jump to the bottom making it nearly impossible to select it. The text messages are very few and far between though, so this did not really affect the game.

I played this one with a friend who works in healthcare, and we voiced the characters. I felt that this escalated my experience of the game over if I had just played it by myself. I likely would have been pretty bored by the end if this was a solo experience. Still, if you’re looking for a story-based game with some heavy themes mixed with light-hearted humor and simple gameplay, give this one a shot.

7. Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (Completionist 7h:22m) – 7.5/10

The follow-up to Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion, Turnip Boy Robs a Bank decided to switch it up a bit by turning the action-adventure game into a roguelite with an emphasis on guns and bullet hell boss fights. Does the genre pivot work? I’d say for the most part it does, although it’s not one I would’ve preferred and it runs into the same pitfalls as other roguelike/roguelite games. After the revelation about his family history in the first game, Turnip Boy is recruited by the mob to break into the bank and make off with a rival mob boss’ money. There are two areas in this game: the bank itself which you have limited time to explore each run and the mob HQ you go to between runs to buy upgrades, unlock weapons, and talk to your companions for small story tidbits. The main floor of the bank is broken off into sections behind locked doors that you need various keycards to unlock. Each boss drops a keycard that unlocks the next area of the bank. There are also randomized elevators in various spots of the bank that lead to different rooms such as offices with vaults to break into, a sad muffin that wants to complete his rock collection, and even Hell itself ruled by a familiar face from the first game.

As you can see by my completion time, the developer’s succeeded in extending the runtime of this game through the various unlocks and randomized rooms. I would say that while the game didn’t overstay its welcome, the runs did start getting pretty repetitive which is the major roguelite pitfall I alluded to earlier. After a while, I felt that I was just going through the motions run to run hoping to encounter the right elevator I needed to complete one of the many side quests this game offers. There’s a certain story point about 75% of the way through that makes money totally meaningless going forward so subsequent runs were all about hoping to get the right elevators and taking down the four main bosses. I enjoyed the game, but it didn’t feel as tight knit as the first with a story that wasn’t as interesting. The developer has announced the third game in the series, which is pivoting to an endless runner, so they aren’t shying away from yet another genre shift so if you’re looking to get into the series, don’t expect every game to feel the same. There’s also an easy mode which should help with the bosses so don’t be put off by the bullet hell mechanics.

6. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Completionist 2h:56m) – 8/10

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a silly and short action-adventure game starring the titular Turnip Boy as he runs around town doing errands for Mayor Onion to make up for not paying property taxes on his home. The premise is just as silly as it sounds. The game consists of talking to the other sentient plants, solving some light puzzles, and engaging in surprisingly competent combat. The game is on the easy side for the most part, although I struggled a bit with the boss fight in the bunker. The story takes a surprisingly dark twist near the end, much more than I was expecting given the goofy tone up to that point. Nothing that would make it inappropriate for children, just a little more interesting than I was anticipating. There is a sort of roguelite mode on board an endless train that you get access to after beating the main game, but it felt very tacked on and unnecessary. The collectibles were mostly easy to find. I only had to look up a guide for a couple to get the true ending. I did beat the game in one sitting so it was very short, but I had a blast pretty much the whole time. Pick this up if you're looking for a goofy and colorful game that still manages to have decent combat and story elements.

5. Tales of Phantasia (Main+Extras 58h:24m) – 8/10

Tales of Phantasia is the first game in a long running series of JRPGs published by Bandai Namco. It follows a group of young heroes whose world is threatened by a powerful being known as Dhaos. After losing their first battle against him, the main character Cless is sent back to the past before Dhaos was considered all-powerful to recruit the aforementioned heroes and learn the magic needed to stop him once and for all.

In contrast to most RPGs of the time (the original game came out on the SNES in 1995, although I played the PS1 remake released in 1998), the combat is played out in real-time instead of being turn-based. I’m normally more of a turn-based fan so I was initially hesitant about the combat system, but I quickly found that my fears were unfounded. Combat feels very good in this game, especially with a co-op partner to help out instead of relying exclusively on the AI. Every character has a basic slash and thrust attack, as well as being able to assign four spells or abilities known in this series as artes. These can range wildly from a simple upward sword thrust to summoning a fire spirit to a devastating meteor storm. For the AI party members, you can deselect artes you don’t want them to use as well as alter their behavior to be more aggressive, defensive, or focus on support or healing. You can also pause the battle to select specific artes you want them to perform or use items. It was all very intimidating at first, but you really get in the groove with it after a while. After defeating the first boss at the end of the first dungeon in the jail cells, I felt more confident in my ability to make it through the game.

Besides the real-time combat, the rest of the game has all the standard RPG tropes that were long established before even this came out. You wander from town to town fighting monsters along the way, buy items and equipment from various shops, talk to NPCs to get quests, then fight through a dungeon to get something needed to advance the story and repeat. This might sound like I’m knocking on the game, but this flow is one of the things I like most about RPGs. The story is serviceable, and the villain is pretty one note until the very end. The characters are a highlight though, and the skits you can watch with them after every story beat were always enjoyable.

My biggest problems with this game probably just come down to age. There were many modern conveniences that are missing which is understandable since it’s a game from the 90s. There is no quest log, so good luck trying to remember everything every NPC told you unless you want to write it down. There is a world map that marks your location and the major towns, which is nice, but there is no indication of where you’re supposed to go on it. There is no minimap and it’s very easy to get lost in the many dungeons in the game. A lot of the puzzles or paths forward were very unclear, and I found myself multiple times having to look up what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go next. The graphics are mostly 2D sprite work with a 3D overworld and some spell effects. The overworld looked pretty bland which makes sense given the hardware it had to work with, but everything else looked pretty good. The game also started feeling like it was dragging towards the end, but that’s pretty typical for games of this length that don’t stray from the formula too much.

In the grand scheme of things, these are nitpicks in an overall great JRPG of the era. It was made even more fun with the addition of a co-op partner. I imagine the game would’ve been somewhat less enjoyable without voicing all the characters together and having to micromanage the party members in combat. If you’re interested in JRPGs and are not intimidated by the age or real-time combat, I would say this game still holds up today and is an easy recommendation. Just try to play the PS1 version with the fan translation patch as it is superior to the SNES and GBA versions.

4. Mullet Madjack (Main+Extras 5h:29m) – 8.5/10

Mullet Madjack is a super-fast paced FPS with some roguelite elements and looks straight out of an 80s anime. The game takes place in a dystopian future where robot billionaires have taken over the world and the primary form of entertainment is watching streamers literally put their lives on the line by hooking engagement directly into their bloodstream and dying if they aren’t putting on a good show. That’s all just interesting worldbuilding to explain how the health system works which I’ll get to later. The main plot is that the most popular streamer has been kidnapped by one of the robot billionaires so one of the employees at the streaming company is tasked with finding someone who looks capable and entertaining enough to save her. She finds the titular Mullet Madjack, a muscular dude with cool shades and an even cooler car for the job and recruits him. After a brief video call where she explains basically everything I just did, he arrives at the skyscraper the streamer is being held hostage at and has to fight through 82 floors to save her.

The health system in this game is one of its more unique aspects. Instead of a health bar, you have a timer that is always held in your left hand that is constantly counting down from 10 seconds. Every time you get damaged, the timer goes down faster. However, if you pull off some sweet kills, the timer goes back up. If the timer reaches zero, you die and have to start over from the floor right after the last boss. The bosses are typically spaced on every 10th floor so if you die on floor 36, you have to start back at floor 31 and lose every temporary upgrade you unlocked along the way. The upgrades are where the roguelite aspect comes in. Every floor you beat unlocks an upgrade such as a new weapon, increased movement speed, or reduced boss health. Every time you beat a boss, you unlock a permanent upgrade like a new tier of weapons or more upgrade choices per floor.

Now that the story and gameplay mechanics have been explained, I can finally say what I thought about the game overall. I absolutely loved this game, for the most part. The developer NAILED the look here. The cinematics made me think I was watching an old anime but with crisp 4K graphics. The writing was funny, the music and sound effects fit the tone perfectly, the gunplay was pretty good from what little I engaged with it, and the animations were fluid. The reason I say I didn’t engage with the gunplay much was because I couldn’t seem to aim good enough and fast enough to clear the levels. Luckily, you can unlock a katana as one of your weapons, so I played through almost the entire game with it. A couple of the bosses proved to be difficult with a melee weapon, so I had to switch back to a gun for those. Speaking of difficulty, I played on what is labeled as the “intended” difficulty of Challenge Mode and it definitely lived up to the name. This game was very challenging, but there are plenty of difficulty options if you’re looking for a more casual experience.

The reasons I didn’t rate this game higher come down to the aforementioned difficulty, the length, and the typical downfalls of the roguelite genre. The difficulty is completely on me; I could’ve changed the difficulty at any time but I’m stubborn. After I got the hang of things, the game wasn’t too bad save for the penultimate boss on floor 70. It took me six attempts to beat that boss, and I had to fight through ten floors between each attempt which became a drag. If you’re an epic gamer or don’t mind lowering the difficulty of games when you’re struggling, this won’t be an issue for you. My second criticism is game length. Depending on your skill level and the difficulty you play on, you can beat this game in under five hours which some people would see as a turnoff with the $20 price tag. I wasn’t too bothered by this since I played the game for free through Game Pass but it’s worth mentioning. My last gripe is with the roguelite elements, which is basically the same issue I have with all roguelike/roguelite games. After you play the game enough, you start to notice the same room layouts and see the same upgrades over and over again. This leads to repetition which can be a death sentence for some games, but this game requires enough focus and provides enough adrenaline from the fast-paced nature to help mitigate the issue. They also add additional hazards to the rooms as the game goes on such as tougher enemies, lasers, and pits to keep you on your toes. There are also only four permanent upgrades in the whole game with three tiers each and I only cared about two of them so there wasn’t much to look forward to there. Still, these are fairly minor criticisms of any otherwise great game, and I encourage anyone who likes FPS games to consider playing this at some point.

🥉Final Profit: A Shop RPG (Completionist 59h:54m) – 8.5/10

As the name suggests, Final Profit is a shop management game with RPG elements. It is built in the RPG Maker engine which will surely get some groans from those who are familiar. Rest assured though, this is a high-quality game and was clearly made with a lot of effort and dedication. It is definitely among my favorite RPG Maker games I’ve played. You play Biz, an elf queen who is exiled from her town of Faeona and usurped by her daughter after the council has a disagreement over how to handle the evil Bureau of Business. Her plan is to become a successful businesswoman herself and rise up the ranks of the Bureau to destroy it from within. The council is hesitant that this will corrupt her and she’ll just become another Bureau puppet.

It's clear from the opening cutscene that this isn’t just another RPG Maker game or just another shop management sim. There’s a ton of side stuff to do, places to explore, people to meet, and upgrades to purchase. Story driven is an apt descriptor here too, it’s not just a mindless game where you run around buying and selling things for no reason. You’re slowly advancing the story by raising the money necessary to buy the next upgrade and level up which triggers the next story bit. The most satisfying part of this game is gradually automating everything until the shops almost run themselves and watching your coin balance go up faster and faster. If the thought of watching numbers go up is satisfying to you, you’ll definitely like this game.

As an RPG Maker game, the graphics are good. It has the typical pixel art graphics that the engine allows, and the tile sets aren’t too obvious. Most of the character portraits are OK and don’t seem to be default portraits I’ve seen in other RPG Maker games. The music is fun to listen to as well. I never got tired of hearing the unique music in each area so it must be doing something right. There’s no combat in this game, which is unusual for the engine, but it doesn’t detract from experience at all.

If anything detracted from the experience, it would be the obtuseness of some of the mechanics and the repetition. For the first point, when you unlock the second shop in Enterpriston, a lot starts getting thrown at you and not all of it is explained well. When I was going through all the upgrade requirements, I had to consult a guide to figure out some of them. There’s also no quest log so you kind of just have to remember everything you need to do which can be overwhelming. Once you’ve figured everything out, repetition can set in where you’re just going through the motions of running the shop and going out to buy the ingredients to make the commodities when you run low. It’s broken up somewhat by side quests that trigger when you sell a certain amount of a particular item which is nice, but those eventually stop coming too. Thankfully, when you get to the endgame and make more money than God, running the shop becomes less important and you can just bulk purchase everything you need.

If the thought of playing a shop management game in RPG Maker with no combat intrigues you, you owe it to yourself to try this game. The story is great, the characters are fun, exploration and graphics are satisfactory, and the cycle of buying upgrades to make more and more money faster and faster is SO SATISFYING! Just don’t be afraid to look up guides for some of the more obscure mechanics or collectibles.

🥈Metaphor: ReFantazio (Main+Sides 122h:37m) – 9/10

This is a turn-based RPG by long-time developer Atlus set in a fantasy world. That marks a departure from the norm for Atlus whose games typically take place on Earth either in a post-apocalyptic setting (Shin Megami Tensei) or modern day (Persona). Seeing as how this is my first Atlus experience, I won’t be able to make comparisons to their other franchises. This fantasy world is inhabited by nine intelligent tribes that all appear humanlike in nature (save for one) with one major change. For example, the Ishkia appear human but have an inoperable set of wings, or the Clemar who have a pair of small horns on their head. Some tribes are held in higher regard than others and thus typically hold positions of power in society. The protagonist is part of the Elda tribe, the only tribe who appears entirely human and are considered the lowest tribe. The world is also home to many ordinary and fantastical animals, as well as horrible monstrosities that everyone refers to as humans. These “humans” usually have a vaguely human-like face while everything else is horrifically distorted like a giant sea monster or sandworm.

The game starts with the main antagonist Louis murdering the king in secret which starts a search for a successor to the throne. The prince, a childhood friend of the protagonist, was afflicted with a terrible curse years before and rushed into hiding. The world presumes he is dead, but the protagonist knows the truth and is on a secret mission to break the curse and restore his rightful place on the throne. He travels to the capital to join the army to be sent to a fort nearby to investigate a human threat. There, he meets up with the first of seven additional playable party members Strohl. Strohl and the protagonist make it to the fort and confirm the human presence when its revealed that the protagonist is actually there to meet up with his contact Grius to deliver a message. The three make it to the top of the fort and run into a human who is way stronger than they can handle. Just as all hope seems lost, the protagonist transforms into what the game refers to as Archetypes, which look kind of like large humanoid robots and act as the different classes. With this newfound power, the three defeat the human and devise a plan to murder Louis to break the curse and install the prince on the throne. I won’t get into any more story details to avoid spoilers.

The combat system in this game is an interesting one. You can have up to four members in your active party at a time, with the option to swap one party member for another by spending an action. The number of actions you can take on your turn is dictated by what are called turn icons. On your turn, you can do a normal attack, guard, pass, use an item, or transform into your currently selected Archetype and either use one of their skills or a synthesis skill which requires the help of another active party member with a specific Archetypes. These synthesis skills are usually more powerful and use multiple turn icons to execute. If you pass or hit an enemy’s weakness (either physical or elemental), only half of a turn icon is consumed. You are then free to execute any action to consume the other half without having to worry about hitting an enemy weakness to do so. There are three physical types (slash, pierce, and bash) and seven elemental types (Fire, Ice, Wind, Electric, Light, Dark, and Almighty). Most enemies and all Archetypes have resistances and weaknesses to some of these damage types. When you use up all your turn icons, regardless of whoever in your party performed an action (or even multiple actions!), it becomes the enemy’s turn who have their own set of turn icons. There are also skills available that give you more turn icons or deplete an enemy’s icons when certain conditions are met.

Every playable character you meet starts with their own Archetype, but you’re free to assign any Archetype to any character. As you level up each Archetype on a character, you gain new skills up to level 20. Once you hit level 20, you get a small permanent stat bonus and can then spend MAG to unlock the next tier in the same lineage. For example, once you hit level 20 of the Thief Archetype, you can unlock the Assassin which is considered a heroic Archetype and has more powerful skills. Once you hit level 20 Assassin and level 10 Sniper from the Gunner lineage, you can then unlock the Ninja which is the Elite Archetype of the Thief lineage. Additionally, each character can inherit 1-4 skills they’ve learned from any of their other Archetypes to their current one. As you can see, the combat can be very robust, and party synergy is important as you need certain Archetype combinations to perform certain synthesis skills, and it’s helpful to have broad damage type coverage so you can always hit weaknesses to extend your turn.

Like other Atlus RPGs, you can also level up bonds with your followers. Each party member is a follower, but there are also other characters you meet that you can bon with as well. Leveling up your bonds with your followers unlocks new Archetypes, more skill inheritance slots, and a passive ability like having a chance to receive money at the beginning of the day or being able to cook without having to spend the day to do so. Speaking of, the game implements a calendar system that helps guide the story forward. Major story events are marked on the calendar and you can only perform two activities per day. Traveling to some locations can take multiple days and dungeons take the full day every time you enter them. Otherwise, you are free to choose one activity to do during the day such as talk to a fellow citizen to level up one of your royal virtues required to advance certain bonds (courage, wisdom, tolerance, eloquence, and imagination) and then take on a fight at the coliseum at night before moving on to the next day. This system requires you to carefully plan out what you want to do every day so you don’t waste too much time doing one thing and then missing out on certain quests or bonds before major story events.

This is unfortunately one of my biggest complaints about this game. If you don’t know what you should or shouldn’t do day by day, it’s possible to miss certain quests or be unable to max out your bond with every follower. In my playthrough, the first small town I came across sold items that said they raised the protagonist’s agility stat 2 every time it’s used. It sounded like a good deal to me so I bought all 20 they had on hand. I didn’t find out until later that you can’t just use them all whenever you want, you can only use them one at a time, can only use them at night while on your main mode of transportation the gauntlet runner, and it spends the night to do so. In another instance, I excitedly traveled to a new location the map as soon as it became available. It took three whole days to get there only to find out that the weather was bad which causes enemies to be stronger and prevents you from being able to spend only half of a turn icon when hitting their weakness. On top of that, I was way underleveled for the area which I couldn’t’ve known because there are no level requirements listed anywhere. After fighting through to the top of the spire, I was unable to defeat the final boss and had to turn around and go home. This was a massive waste of time that could’ve been avoided if I was aware of how strong enemies were in the area and of certain unlocks later in the game that made the area and travel in general easier (trying to avoid spoilers). These uncertainties piled on which ultimately led to me not being able to max out all of my bonds which also meant I couldn’t complete all of their quests and unlock all of their Archetypes which was a huge bummer. I take issue with MP being such a precious resource until the late game. This initially forced me to use Archetypes I wouldn’t normally use which was interesting, but it led to me having to avoid skills in combat, take multiple days to clear a dungeon since I had to leave to recuperate, and eventually avoid enemy encounters entirely. That’s no fun, and there was one especially egregious dungeon where there were entire areas I just couldn’t explore because I didn’t have the mana required to investigate.

I also have another handful of complaints that are minor but when added up caused me to slightly lower the score for this game. The graphics are nothing to write home about when compared to other games released at the time. The 2D character portraits and cutscenes look great, but the 3D portions leave a lot to be desired with low resolution textures everywhere. The animations are repetitive, and I quickly noticed every character only has a few that they cycle through which took me out of the experience for a lot of dialog heavy scenes. That wasn’t helped by the mediocre lip-syncing either, whenever they bothered to voice their lines at all instead of just showing text. Likewise, the music selection is limited, with most battles playing just a single song. In a game that takes over 100 hours to finish, hearing the same two or three songs over and over can get grating. I also felt that the story really started to drag towards the end, a common complaint with most games of this length. Once I learned all the major story revelations (some of which I figured out really early on), it felt like the game just kept padding itself instead of letting me resolve the multitude of threads. As much as I enjoyed the game, I was ready for it to be over.

I listed a lot of negatives in the last two paragraphs, but I still really enjoyed myself. The characters are all likable (or unlikable if they’re supposed to be), most of the story is entertaining, the monster designs were somewhat creative, and the combat was engaging if not somewhat repetitive once you had all your Archetypes and skills locked in. I would recommend it to anyone familiar with turn-based RPGs who wouldn’t be put off by the length or anime aesthetic. It got me more excited to get into the Persona series someday, and I hope Atlus continues to explore alternative settings in their future titles.

🥇Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Completionist 95h:45m) – 10/10

This game is a turn-based RPG with real-time shooting, dodging, and parrying elements by French developer Sandfall Interactive. I point out that the developer is French for two reasons. One, I wanted to call the game a JRPG because it shares a lot of the same tropes as other games of the genre. However, since it wasn’t developed by a Japanese studio, some might say that automatically disqualifies it. I don’t really care about labels that much and won’t go into my thoughts on whether it qualifies. The second and much more important reason is because the game is heavily influenced by French culture. The opening city of Lumière is based off Paris, you fight mimes, you can unlock silly outfits with baguettes and berets, and people occasionally throw out French words in otherwise English conversations. It’s all very delightful, and not something I’ve seen in a lot of games.

The premise for the world is that every year, there’s a giant lady way off in the distance known as the Paintress who paints a number on a monolith. The number goes down by one every year and when the new number is painted, everyone older than that number dies (known as the Gommage, which is French for erased). There is a festival at this time to say goodbye to loved ones gommaging and set out the next day on expeditions. The goal of these expeditions is to make it to the Paintress and kill her to stop the Gommage from happening ever again. You see, there was an event called the Fracture that happened 67 years before the start of the game that broke Lumière off from the rest of the Continent, made physics go all wonky, introduced monsters known as nevrons, and started the Gommage in the first place starting at year 100.

The game starts with a very sad scene showing the number 33 being painted on the monolith and the subsequent gommage of the ex-girlfriend of one of the party members Gustave. They broke up sometime before the events of the game but clearly still have feelings for each other that Gustave finally expresses moments before she dies. This sets the tone for most of the game which is just emotional gut punch after gut punch. There are humorous moments, but for the most part, the game is a tragedy. After the Gommage, Gustave’s sister gives a rousing speech about how important the expeditions are and even if you don’t make it back, you’ll blaze a trail “for those who come after” and so on and so forth. Then the titular Expedition 33 sets sail for the Continent to finally take down the Paintress once and for all!

Here's the thing though. No expedition has ever made it back, and the Gommage is still happening every year. Deep down, everyone knows it’s a suicide mission. Some people decide they want to go anyway, either out of perseverance, misplaced confidence, curiosity, dedication, or just because they feel there’s nothing left for them in Lumière. They’d rather explore the world than wait around to die. That’s the case for Gustave’s adopted sister Maelle, who decides she wants to go with her brother on the expedition despite being way younger than the other expeditions and thus having many good years left. She insists, and he begrudgingly allows her to go. This might prove to be a mistake since as soon as they land on the Continent, they’re greeted by an old man who somehow survived the Gommage who just starts massacring them. Gustave is knocked unconscious during the battle and comes to the next day where he sets off to the planned rendezvous point only to be met with a massive pile of bodies from past expeditioners. Overcome with loss and hopelessness, he sits down against the pile of bodies to kill himself, only to be talked out of it by fellow expeditioner Lune with the oft-quoted phrase “when one falls, we continue.”

This all happens within the first hour or two of the game! I won’t go into the story anymore for risk of spoilers, but it is very well-written, told, and presented. Speaking of presentation, the graphics are some of the best I’ve ever seen. It runs on Unreal Engine 5, and before you raise your pitchforks, it seems Sandfall utilized the engine well. I didn’t experience any shader compilation, stuttering, or poor performance that seems to be prevalent in other games using the engine. I do admittedly have a high-end PC so I’m not the best judge for performance, but it ran well for me. The music is another standout, and you can listen to the whole OST on YouTube!

Finally, on to the gameplay itself. As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s a turn-based RPG with real-time elements. You can pick three out of a possible five total party members to go into battle with, with the other two serving as backup if the first team goes down. There is a turn order on the top-left of the screen that determines who goes and when. When it is one of your party member’s turns, you can choose one of six skills to use out of the 20-30 available for each character depending on what you want to accomplish and how many action points or AP you have. It could be something simple like a lightning damage skill against an enemy weak to that element or something more complicated like firing some free-aim shots to mark an enemy, then using a skill to apply the defenseless status effect so the next character will do a lot more damage on their turn. Each party member plays completely differently and has their own mechanics to learn which makes combat more exciting and opens the door to some amazing party synergies. Each character can also equip three pictos which provide one ability such as dealing more damage to burning enemies as well as one or two passive stat increases like 500 more health or 30% higher critical hit rate. When you’ve won four battles with a pictos equipped, you can spend lumina points to have any character benefit from the ability it offers without the stat increase that goes with it. You can also use one of three items in combat to heal, revive, or replenish AP or use one of three levels of gradient attacks which are basically unique supers that each character has that don’t use up your turn. You build up gradient charges primarily by doing damage but also by parrying attacks. Speaking of, on the enemy turn, you can learn enemy attack patterns to time button presses to dodge or parry their hits. Doing either one negates damage, but they each have an advantage and disadvantage. Dodging has a bigger timing window so it’s easier to execute. On the other hand, parrying every attack on an enemy turn provokes a counterattack that allows you to do massive damage. All these systems mesh together along with the enemy variety to keep combat fresh and engaging throughout the entire playtime.

When outside of combat, you can explore out in the overworld and in designated zones to find collectibles, talk to NPCs, buy new pictos and equipment, fight monsters, complete side quests, or further the main story. Anytime in the overworld, you can set up camp to talk to party members to advance relationships with them and unlock new abilities. There is also a merchant at camp to upgrade items and equipment as well as increase the number of lumina points available for each character. You’ll spend a decent amount of time at camp as the game likes sending you back there at many major story beats. The camp looks exactly the same no matter where you set it up, which could be a bit of a bummer for some, but at least it allows you to learn where everything is to get in and out relatively quickly.

I’ve been praising this game heavily this whole time, but it wouldn’t be a review if I didn’t point out the flaws I came across. Some are minor, some are subjective, and there’s at least one that could potentially be a major issue. One minor issue that comes up a lot is that there are invisible walls EVERYWHERE when you’re exploring in the different areas. This usually bothers me more in other games and takes me out of the experience, but it becomes easier to spot where you can and can’t go to stick to the paths. Some people will find the optional platforming sections frustrating and out of place, but I didn’t really have an issue with them. Some areas can also be a real maze to navigate, and there’s no map outside of the overworld which can make the navigation confusing. There’s a story moment that comes up at the end of Act II that recontextualizes the whole game, and as a result, Act III can feel more open-ended and directionless. If someone wasn’t totally enamored with the game up to that point like I was, I can see them rushing to the final boss shortly after Act III starts just to get it over and done with. I would obviously advise against that as there’s tons of stuff to do, but the central plot device up to that point is no longer a motivating factor which can cause some people to fall off. It’s very hard to avoid spoilers here, I’m trying the best I can! The one major issue I ran into, and this is impossible for me to ignore, is that I experienced regular game crashes starting in Act II. The crashes would come almost like clockwork after 2-3 hours of play. There are frequent saves, so I never lost any meaningful progress from them, but it was annoying and I found myself anxiously looking at the time every time I had sessions longer than two hours just bracing for the inevitable. It could just be a problem with my PC setup, but it made some longer boss fights or cutscenes more nerve-wracking than they should’ve been. Your mileage may vary on that, and console players probably don’t have anything to worry about.

So that’s my rundown of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This is by far the longest review I’ve written to date, but I had a lot to say about this title. I loved it to bits, and I would wholeheartedly recommend it to all RPG fans out there. The fact that this was the debut title for an indie studio is mind-blowing to me. I sincerely hope that other studios are taking notes to improve their future games. The story, music, graphics, characters, and gameplay are all top-notch. No game is perfect, nor do I think perfection is possible. I pointed out the issues I had in the last paragraph. But a game doesn’t have to be perfect to be a masterpiece, and this game absolutely deserves the title. I await with bated breath for Sandfall’s next title, they knocked it out of the park here.

Conclusion/Upcoming

So, there you have it, my year in review for 2025. This was quite the undertaking. Tracking every game acquired, every dollar spent, and every hour played is a very meticulous process. Adding on top of that posting every week (sometimes twice a week), editing every gameplay recording, making thumbnails for every game, and uploading every gameplay session to YouTube and it starts to feel like I’ve turned my hobby into a job. I don’t even want to imagine how many hours I spent on all of the above that I could’ve spent actually playing video games. As such, I will be stepping back from the weekly posts to focus on what I really care about. I’m planning to keep up with the blog on a monthly basis, but weekly is way too much work. The YouTube videos are also taking up a lot of time, but I don’t know what I want to do about that yet. I found my groove with the editing process and can usually knock out my hour-long videos in a few minutes. They barely get any views though, so it once again feels like a lot of work for nothing. I’m going back and forth on starting to stream, but I’m not sure my gameplay style and general demeanor lend themselves well to entertainment. I’ll have to think about all of this some more. In any case, I want to thank everyone who read my blog or watched my videos sometime in the past year. I appreciate the few of you who took time out of your day to express interest in this silly little hobby of mine. Even if I don’t end up keeping up with the blog or YouTube, I will continue to write reviews and will have a top 10 post of 2026 this time next year. Thanks everyone, until next time!

Backlog total: 3,805 (+801)