Monthly Update #19: July 2026

Holy moly, July certainly was Final Fantasy month. Dimensions was way longer than I was expecting, and I decided to jump into VI immediately afterward. I’m almost done with the 2D Final Fantasy era! On another note, I think I hit the perfect balance of low spending and high game time. If only every month could be like this one.

Game Acquisitions

A ton of bundles released last month as usual, but none of them really appealed to me enough to make a purchase. I did buy a super cheap 5/$3 bundle from Fanatical at the beginning of the month but that’s the only one. I also made the rare single game purchase with Octopath Traveler. I figured since I got the sequel in Humble Choice, I’d add the original to my wishlist and it went on sale for its historical low almost immediately. Everything else was freebies. Octopath Traveler is probably the one I’m looking forward to the most, but Echo Generation is up there too.

# of Games: 30

Total Money Spent: $17.80

Price/Game: $0.59

# of Games YTD: 548

Total Money Spent YTD: $385.95

Price/Game: $0.70

Game Recaps

As you can see, Final Fantasy made up the vast majority of my playtime for July. I started Dimensions in June, but most of my time with it was last month. I played it almost everyday from July 4^th to the 23^rd so it must’ve been compelling enough to keep coming back to. I also had a couple surprise completions with Cadash and Dispatch. Cadash was a rare example of testing out one of my emulated games and it being short enough to beat in one sitting. It also marks my first TurboGrafx-16 completion so that’s exciting! The second surprise was Dispatch which subsequently marks my first completion through the Amazon Luna streaming service. I wasn’t planning on playing anything through streaming, but it was available for free through the service and I was interested in the game already, so I thought why not. The experience was definitely subpar compared to native as I suspected it would be, but the nature of the game as mostly a visual novel made that less of an issue. I had another co-op session in Tales of Destiny as well. It’s gonna take us forever to get through this game if we only play once a month. We made it through the hardest fight of the game so far with the Cave Queen. It ended up being a matter of taking out its parts with magic, then attacking the main body with physical attacks. It was straightforward enough, but it did show that my buddy still isn’t vibing with the combat system. Trying to use an arte when your CC isn’t high enough just results in moving in the direction you pressed instead which was frustrating for him. I like the idea of not having to worry about mana, but not being able to use artes whenever you want might not be worth the tradeoff. In any case, we persevered and ended our session at Moreau. Lastly, I spent the last week of the month playing Final Fantasy VI. I wasn’t vibing with it at first, but after the Opera scene and the introduction of espers (summons) as actual characters as well as combat mechanics, now I’m invested. I’m excited to see where it goes. I just got the airship in the World of Ruin and starting my quest to reunite with all my friends. Please see all my let’s plays below for anything I either played or released in July. Some of these videos have a delay before they go public. Cadash will be up August 5th, Final Fantasy Dimensions August 21st, and Final Fantasy VI waaaaay later on December 25th. The reason for that being so late is because I didn’t want to start uploading videos from VI until Dimensions finished since they’re the same series. That shouldn’t be a problem for other games. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game Reviews

Cadash

Cadash is a platformer with RPG elements from the early 90s. The story is about your basic save the princess from the evil wizard trope and nothing to write home about. You have four classes to choose from including the fighter, mage, priestess, and ninja. I played the fighter but briefly tried out the other classes after beating the game and was surprised at how different they all felt. There is also a two-player option that I imagine could be fun with a patient friend, but I used rewind extensively in my playthrough due to the high difficulty that was common back then which wouldn’t work in a co-op scenario.

As my first completion of a TurboGrafx-16 (aka PC Engine) game, I was impressed with Cadash. It’s still basic by today’s standards, but having four unique classes, a story, NPCs to talk to, small towns littered throughout the dungeon, weapons/armor/items to buy in shops, and a leveling system I feel would escalate it above other platformers at the time. There was even a twist final boss after the supposed final boss and a brief cutscene which was a satisfying end to the game. The different environments were nice to look at too. Besides the difficulty, the other main complaint I have is how shallow the RPG elements felt. Maybe it was because I played the most basic class, but I never really felt different when I leveled up. I think your health and damage go up slightly but that’s it. You can buy healing items and antidotes in the shops, but there’s no inventory to view so you have no idea how many you have. Your appearance did change as you bought better weapons and armor though which I thought was a nice touch. There’s no save system, so you either have to make use of save states or beat the whole thing in one sitting like I did. Overall, I recommend Cadash to any retro platformer fans that never got around to it. I specify retro fans because I imagine the trappings of retro games such as the basic story/gameplay and high difficulty will turn off more casual players.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 1h:48m
Rating – 6.5/10

Dispatch

Dispatch is an interactive movie/visual novel with the occasional management sim and hacking minigame thrown in for good measure. You play Robert Robertson, a former superhero down on his luck after his mech suit (the only “power” he has) is destroyed in the intro. You’re recruited by Blonde Blazer, a superhero and manager at the Superhero Dispatch Network (or SDN) to work as a hero dispatcher. They agree to fix your suit so you can be a superhero again which is a proposition Robert can’t pass up. You meet a colorful cast of characters with distinct personalities and get into all kinds of wacky workplace scenarios mixed in with emotional moments and a couple romance options if you want to pursue that.

Dispatch can be broken down into three gameplay styles. The first and most prominent is the visual novel style popularized by studios such as Telltale. If you enjoyed the decision making and QTEs from Telltale games such as The Wolf Among Us or Tales from the Borderlands, you’ll likely enjoy this. One major difference is that there are no 3D environments to walk around and explore, everything plays out like a movie. The second is the hero management through your role as a dispatcher. This plays somewhat similar to games like 911 Operator, although the individual heroes have their own strengths, weaknesses, and abilities that make some heroes better suited to some calls than others. They each have their own starting stats, but you can build them out however you want throughout the game. There are even synergies between certain characters so if you send them out together, they have a better chance of succeeding on the call. The third style is the hacking minigame that you occasionally enter to help out on calls during the hero management. The gameplay here reminds me of a game called Midnight Protocol. You move a ball around cyberspace to activate nodes, avoid antiviruses, and solve puzzles. It wasn’t as in-depth as Midnight Protocol, but that didn’t make me any better at it 😜 All three styles were enjoyable and worked well together to break up the monotony while still keeping the story moving.

As with most visual novels, the story and characters are the most important aspect, and I think Dispatch nailed this. The story didn’t have amazing highs and lows or world-shattering stakes, but it balanced comedy and tragedy well. I’m not totally happy with the ambiguous, darker fate of one of the main characters, but that’s a consequence of the choices I made and not the story itself, so I’ll let it slide. The characters were the main highlight for me. I loved their personalities and the way they played off each other. The banter between might be some of the most realistic and funny I’ve seen in a game. This is helped by wonderful acting from a talented cast such as Aaron Paul, Matt Mercer, and Jeffrey Wright. I would absolutely be interested in a season 2 if AdHoc Studio decides to go for it. I should note that there is a lot of blood, swearing, and nudity in this game, although there are censorship options available to mitigate that if it’s not something you’re into. If you’re looking for a good, character-driven story, don’t have superhero fatigue, and aren’t too concerned by the minimal gameplay on offer, Dispatch is an easy recommendation from me.

Time to beat (Main) - 8h:8m
Rating – 8.5/10

FINAL FANTASY DIMENSIONS

I decided to play Final Fantasy Dimensions right after V because I heard it takes heavy inspiration from that entry in the series with the job system. Now having played through both games, I can confirm that is the case, although I don’t think it quite lives up to it. It’s still a great game though, especially for a mobile title.

As I just mentioned, the job system from Final Fantasy V makes a return here. Each of the eight (!) playable characters have a set of basic jobs they can learn such as warrior or black mage, but then there are a handful of specialized jobs that only one team can learn like the paladin for the Warriors of Light or the ninja for the Warriors of Darkness. As you level up each job, you unlock abilities specific to that job that can then be carried over to other jobs to make a character that feels uniquely suited to your playstyle. This was my favorite aspect of V but unfortunately, it doesn’t feel as well executed here. One problem I have is that most of the abilities I unlocked weren’t very exciting. They usually amount to basic stat increases like strength +20% with only the occasional ability that felt truly game-changing. The other major problem I had was the implementation of job points. Every job you unlock can be freely leveled up to level three, but then you would have to spend job points to level them up any further. You only get a handful of points at major story beats throughout the game, so they feel limited until the very end. I felt that this actively discouraged the use of mixing and matching jobs and instead railroaded each character into the choices you made at the beginning of the game whether they were good or not. That defeats the whole purpose of the job system! As you near the end of the game, you get enough points to start experimenting with other jobs, but at that point, grinding to level up those jobs becomes tedious with the high level enemies you’re facing and no longer feels worth it.

Another new wrinkle introduced in this game that sounds cool on paper are the fusion abilities. These are combinations of two abilities, usually by two different jobs, that have a chance of being unlocked when you use one ability while having the other ability equipped. For example, at level 13, the monk learns an ability called chakra which heals a small amount of health and cures one ally of some basic status effects like confusion. At level six, the dragoon learns an ability called healing breath that heals all party members for a moderate amount of health. If a character has leveled up both jobs to their respective levels, equips one of those jobs, and has the other job in their ability slot, when they use chakra as a monk or healing breath as a dragoon, there’s a chance they’ll learn a fusion ability called white wind. White wind will heal the entire party for the current health of the caster which makes it extremely powerful if put on a character with a lot of health. The fusion ability is then tied to that character, and they can use it whenever they want regardless of the jobs or abilities they have equipped. There are dozens of fusion abilities in the game, and they make up some of the most powerful abilities you can use. The problem is that there’s no way you’ll unlock any of the actually useful abilities by just experimenting like the game wants you to do, partly due to the job points limiting which jobs you’re willing to let your characters work through. No casual player is just going to happen to level one character to bard level 20 and paladin level 17, have the abilities of both jobs equipped, and get lucky enough to cast dire dirge or wide slash enough times for shock to be unlocked. The job points, grinding, and sheer luck required for that to happen are astronomically low. I only unlocked a small handful of low level fusion abilities naturally in my playthrough and had to look up a guide to unlock anything remotely useful for the endgame.

I unfortunately have a few other problems I want to bring up with this game. One is partially my fault with the order I’m playing the series in, but it’s the lack of quality of life features the pixel remasters brought. I missed being able to save whenever I want, turning off encounters on a whim, and viewing dungeon maps. These were invaluable tools that gave me more freedom to look around and grab any chests I may have missed without fear of being worn down by constant battles. The encounter rate in Final Fantasy Dimensions felt extremely high, and without a map to guide me, I eventually lost patience trying to explore every path in the ridiculously long dungeons and started beelining for the exit. I probably missed some good loot that way, but it was necessary for me to keep my sanity. Another problem I had was also partially my fault due to playing on an emulator, but it was the controls. I was playing a touchscreen game on my computer, and while I was able to map a joystick to move around the overworld, it still felt weird having to switch over to a mouse whenever I entered combat or browsed a menu. The last problem I had was how constricted the exploration felt for most of the game. This was also probably a limitation of being a mobile game, but for most of my playthrough, I felt like I was being strictly led from town to dungeon to town through very small open areas clearly marked on a minimap with little opportunity to veer off course. It wasn’t until the very end of the game that I was finally given an airship and a WORLD MAP to go wherever I wanted. That’s right, the game didn’t even give me a map to help traverse until like 50 hours in which was insane.

This review sounds like one big rant, and I actually decided to lower my score by half a point as a result of writing it, but you know what they say: fans make the harshest critics. Despite everything I said above, I still really liked this game. Some of the characters are genuinely enjoyable. I especially loved Alba and her increasingly ridiculous ways she praised herself as well as Argy, the kind-hearted if not socially awkward amnesiac robot. The story structure was also unique and well-done. The party was split between the Warriors of Light and the Warriors of Darkness in their respective worlds and you would switch between those worlds throughout the game before finally reuniting in the last chapter. Each sub-chapter introduced a new job by having a new character join the party who was already fluent with that job so you could see what it was capable of to decide if you wanted to invest job points into learning it on one of your permanent characters. This also led to most of the combat being carried out in a party of five which had only been done up to this point in Final Fantasy IV, which was a fun twist. I think I can finally say I have a grip on the ATB system introduced in that game. One of my favorite parts of long RPGs is towards the end when I feel super powerful after mastering the combat system and leveling up all the characters and this game nailed that feeling. If you aren’t put off by old-school Final Fantasy design or touchscreen controls, I wholeheartedly recommend all JRPG fans at least try this game out. It is an underrated game in the series in my opinion.

Time to beat (Main) - 72h:31m
Rating – 7.5/10

Stats

Final Fantasy Dimensions has shot up to my most played game this year, blowing Death Howl completely out of the water. I’m surprised it took this long for an RPG to take the top spot. This may end up being the longest game I play this year since I think Final Fantasy VI is a shorter experience. Moving on to purchases, you can clearly see the low activity compared to previous months. Just to reiterate, I think this is the ideal scenario. I don’t need more games, I just find it hard to ignore good bundle deals when I see them. Lastly, July marked the third straight month of gametime increase. It still didn’t quite reach the height of February, but it’s pretty darn close and is still a lot of time to spend gaming. More months like this, please!

Conclusion/Upcoming

A month with high gametime and low acquisitions is an ideal month in my book. I paused my Game Pass subscription for most of the month since Final Fantasy Dimensions isn’t part of the service, but I restarted it again towards the end to start VI. After VI, I’m going to take a break from Final Fantasy for a while. I still have plans to playthrough the series, just not anytime soon. I’ll continue playing through Game Pass games for the foreseeable future. My goal for August is to finish up Final Fantasy VI which is very doable. If a short enough game is announced to leave Game Pass in August, I’ll prioritize that. Otherwise, I think I’ll continue my Balatro playthrough and see how far I can get there. It’s been a while since I’ve played it, so I’ll be a little rusty. Once I get my fill of that game, I’ll move on to Minishoot' Adventures and then Little Rocket Lab. There will probably be another session or two of Tales of Destiny as well. Anyway, that’s all from me. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 4,443 (+70)

Monthly Update #18: June 2026

We’ve officially hit summer now, my least favorite season. It’s so hot 🥵 I know, I’ll stay inside and play video games!

Game Acquisitions

Yet another month with a ton of game bundle purchases. I guess I won’t be slowing down on that front after all. I even redeemed the June Humble Choice, my first Choice redemption since last October. Octopath Traveler II was too good to pass up, and Life is Strange was in my wishlist. There’s a lot of variety in my acquisitions this month. Octopath Traveler II is probably the highest profile game here and the one I’m looking forward to the most.

# of Games: 89

Total Money Spent: $93.50

Price/Game: $1.05

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

# of Games YTD: 518

Total Money Spent YTD: $368.15

Price/Game: $0.71

Game Recaps

The first couple weeks of the month were dedicated to finishing up Final Fantasy V. It’s the longest game in the series so far, and my favorite by far. I’ve heard great things about VI though so maybe it will be dethroned quickly. Before that though, my next game in the series I decided to play is Final Fantasy Dimensions, a mobile spinoff inspired by V. I’ve heard it’s a long one but worth playing. I’m not too far in yet so I don’t want to form a definitive opinion. It’s OK so far, but it controls weird due to playing on an Android emulator on PC and I’m sorely missing the quality of life features from the Pixel Remasters like quick save, dungeon maps, and being able to turn off encounters. I’m also not a fan of having to spend job points to continue leveling up jobs. I’m worried I’ll pick the wrong jobs and end up wasting a bunch of points and making the game harder than it needs to be. Hopefully that won’t be the case and I’m able to get through it. I just made it to the World of Darkness in Chapter 2 so I’m still pretty early.

I had a couple co-op gaming sessions of Tales of Destiny: Director’s Cut as well. We finally have a full party! Fuller than full actually, since there’s one person on the sidelines providing passive perks which is an interesting mechanic. I practiced a little bit with one of the new characters since he unlocked a more powerful heal arte and I’ve been mostly playing as a healer. The arte is really expensive and time-consuming to cast in the heat of battle due to the CC combat system so it’s really hard to pull off which severely limits his ability to heal. My co-op partner instantly latched on to the latest party member though due to him being used to playing a magic user in Tales of Phantasia. I’m proud of him being flexible like that due to this game being harder than most he’s played since he isn’t much of a gamer. In the story, we just made it to the desert continent and met the corrupt bishop Greybum who stole a powerful magical artifact. We’re about 10 hours in so still pretty early here too.

After beating Final Fantasy V, I decided I was going to let my Game Pass subscription lapse since Dimensions isn’t on the service, so I didn’t want to have it active if I wasn’t using it. Before it ran out, I got a couple sessions of Balatro in. It was fun enough, and I managed to complete White Stake difficulty for the first three decks. Anyone in the know would say I’ve barely even scratched the surface, so I’ll probably get back to it at some point after beating Final Fantasy Dimensions and VI. Before I could start my third session of the game though, Microsoft announced the games leaving Game Pass at the end of the month and Volcano Princess was on the list. That one was pretty high up on my list of Game Pass games to play so I played through it right away. I didn’t record my gameplay for that since it played mostly like a visual novel which probably wouldn’t be very exciting to watch.

Lastly, I played a handful of shorter games that I wasn’t expecting to play. These were emulated games that I’m continuing to slowly test and add to my backlog but ended up playing a little more than I meant to. The first of these emulated games was Dungeon Clawler, which you may have noticed was one of the games I just acquired. Android was having a sale for a bunch of games for 10 cents, and I have tons of Google Play credit to spend so they’re basically free (the other two purchases being Hitman: Sniper and SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated). It’s a roguelite somewhat similar to Slay the Spire except with much less depth and a unique combat mechanic where you use a claw machine to pull the items out the inflict damage or boost defense and hope for the best. It seems OK so far, I ended up playing one run which took almost two hours, and I failed around 70% of the way to the final boss. Since I meant to just be testing the game instead of playing it, I’ll get back to it at a (much later) date. The other two emulated games I unexpectedly played (and beat!) were the Bust a Groove games for the PS1. Like the other emulated games, I meant to just play one level to make sure it works before moving on, but it turns out the whole campaign per character has to be beaten in one sitting with no saves so that’s what I ended up doing. I played through both games as Kelly on normal difficulty. I was originally planning on keeping them in the backlog to play as other characters, but I decided that the gameplay was barebones enough that I didn’t feel like playing it over and over again. Here are links to every game I played and recorded or uploaded to my YouTube channel in June. Please note that the first part of Tales of Destiny is going live on July 7^th, Balatro on July 31^st, and Final Fantasy Dimensions on August 21^st so there will be a bit of a wait for those.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game Reviews

FINAL FANTASY V

It seems that the jump in quality I was expecting from the NES to SNES transition came one title later than expected. While I’ve enjoyed each game in the Final Fantasy series a little more than the previous, and that continues to hold true with this entry, I didn’t like Final Fantasy IV as much as I thought I would. It was still a good game, just not the generational leap I thought it would be. The ATB system did fundamentally change how combat works, but I struggled with it and didn’t see much merit over the traditional turn-based system of the previous games. Final Fantasy V, however, combined the ATB system from IV with the job system from III to change things up. While I didn’t care for either system on their own, combining them together somehow elevated both to create the most fun I’ve had playing Final Fantasy by far.

While Final Fantasy III technically introduced the job system to the series, V is often the one credited with turning it into something special. Now that I’ve played both, I can see why. In simple terms, jobs in Final Fantasy are like classes in other games. You have basic melee units like the knight, basic magic units like the white and black mages, and more specialized units with unique abilities like the dragoon or geomancer. The job system in III was extremely underbaked in my opinion, which is understandable since it was on the NES and the first game in the series to have it. There were a lot of jobs in that game, but I felt that they were either completely useless, designed for one extremely specific scenario (i.e. use it for one boss and then never again), or replaced by a job introduced later that was better in every way. V fixed all these issues by making every job viable as well as unlocking new abilities for every job as you levelled them up and transferring those abilities to other jobs, so everyone was essentially dual-class. It was so fun unlocking new abilities in one job and using those abilities to enhance other jobs. I felt like I was able to spec everyone out to my specific playstyle which helped me feel closer to the characters oddly enough. On top of that, when some harder late-game bosses demanded a different strategy to defeat them, I didn’t feel like I was being punished for only playing a certain way up to that point. I could assign a job to a character who has never used that job before and still reap most of the benefits from doing so while also keeping the ability of one of their other jobs they were working on, so I didn’t feel like I was starting from scratch.

The depth of the job system was the main driving factor for my enjoyment of the game, but that’s only one side of the coin. The characters were another highlight. They each have their own personalities and desires, and I think the smaller cast helped put each one into the spotlight a bit more. The story was classic Final Fantasy and nothing too special. The crystals that were protecting the world have been destroyed (the crystal shards actually represent the different jobs which is fun) and it’s up to the warriors of light to band together to stop the bad guy from engulfing the world in darkness. Individual character moments were good (Gilgamesh in particular was a joy), but the overall conflict was pretty meh. There were still a couple moments where I couldn’t figure out where to go, but for the most part the game directs you pretty well. The final dungeon dragged on for too long, and that unfortunately seems to be consistent for the series so far. It wasn’t as egregious as previous entries though, and the ability to turn off encounters and quick save that the Pixel Remasters introduced made it less annoying than it could’ve been. Overall, having now played I-V, I can confidently say that V is by far my favorite Final Fantasy game, and I highly recommend any JRPG fan who hasn’t played it yet to give it a shot.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 36h:33m
Rating – 8.5/10

Volcano Princess

Volcano Princess is a self-described “parenting-simulator-RPG adventure” where you are tasked with raising a daughter in a medieval fantasy town from infancy to 18, although most of the game takes place in her teenage years. I put the descriptor in quotes because I don’t fully agree with it; the gameplay is mostly in a visual novel format. The general gameplay loop consists of walking around town talking to people to raise your relationship level with them and participating in various side activities to raise your stats and make money like horse racing, cooking, and working a job. If you’ve played other life simulators like Growing Up, you’ll know the gist of what you’re getting into here.

I found the gameplay of Volcano Princess to be extremely repetitive. Everyday plays out in almost the exact same way: wake up, greet any visitors, talk to your daughter, send her on her way to talk to everyone in town, complete a couple side activities, go home, schedule classes, go to bed, repeat. There’s hardly ever anything thrown in to break up the monotony and even then, it takes the form of more reading and a couple different side activities. On top of that, the English translation leaves a lot to be desired. It’s legible most of the time, but sometimes I had to look up a guide just to understand what the game was trying to tell me.

You would think a visual novel with a lot of repetition and a mediocre translation would be a dealbreaker, and it might be for some people. Despite those issues, I couldn’t help but grow attached to a couple of the characters. I was interested in seeing how some of their stories played out. Some of the side activities level up the more you do them and I was just intrigued enough to see what the late game versions of those looked like (spoiler alert: they were mostly disappointing). I think the most impressive part of this game though is the artwork. The character designs all looked good, but the CGs looked phenomenal. I wish more of the game could’ve been presented in that style. It’s clear the game is meant to be played through multiple times because there are almost 100 endings and you can carry over some stats into new game plus to keep going. I can’t imagine wanting to go through the game more than once though, the repetition for one playthrough was more than enough. I’m probably scoring this higher than I should, but there were just enough positive aspects to warrant placing it slightly higher than the standard 7/10 “good” game. If you already know you enjoy life sims and anime art, you’ll probably like this and it’s an easier recommendation. If you aren’t, Volcano Princess likely won’t change your mind.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 20h:40m
Rating – 7.5/10

Bust a Groove

Bust a Groove is a PS1-era rhythm game with the core premise of the campaign being 1v1 dance battles. The gameplay consists of hitting a series of directions to the beat of the music and finishing with pressing square or circle on the fourth beat. Hitting multiple sets of notes in a row increases your combo which is necessary to score high enough to beat your opponent. Unlike scrolling music games like Guitar Hero or DDR, there’s not really any timing involved in hitting the directions and long as you get them all in before hitting the button on the fourth beat. As a result, it doesn’t feel much like the gameplay matches up with the music very well. Even worse, gameplay never evolves past this core concept which leads to a high degree of repetition despite the short runtime. There is a gameplay mechanic where you can press a different button on the fourth beat to dodge an attack from your opponent, but that mechanic is neither explained in the game nor necessary to beat the game on normal, so I did not engage with it.

On the plus side, the music is usually catchy, the environments and camera work can be fun, and the short CGI cutscenes for each character upon beating their campaigns are kinda fun to watch. I only beat the game with one character, but I looked up the other endings because there wasn’t enough variety in the gameplay to warrant playing the campaign over and over again. I wouldn’t recommend spending much money on this game if you plan on only playing it through once like I did. However, if the idea of playing over and over again with different characters and honing your skills through higher difficulties sounds appealing, I can see this being a more worthwhile purchase. Just know going in that there isn’t going to be a lot of depth.

Time to beat (Main) - 1h:1m
Rating – 6/10

Bust a Groove 2

Bust a Groove 2 is a PS1-era rhythm game that plays similarly to the first game. So much so, you can read through my review of that one and get the gist of what this game is about. There are a handful of differences between them though. In addition to dodging attacks by hitting a different button on the fourth beat, you also have two charges per dance battle to attack your opponent by hitting yet another button. Unlike the first game, I found it necessary to engage with these mechanics to beat the last few battles of the campaign on normal, despite the fact that they are still not explained in game. This added slightly more depth to the gameplay, but not enough to stave off the repetition. Second, as I was playing through the campaign, I noticed there were branching paths. I assume your performance dictates which path you take, but since I only played through once, it still felt just as linear as the first game. I was placed in the top path which allowed me to battle the secret boss at the end. The third major difference, and the biggest disappointment, is that the special character endings from the first game are completely removed. After I beat the game, it cut straight to credits and then back to the main menu. This would’ve been my main motivator to play through multiple times with different characters, so it’s a shame they’re gone. I found out after the fact that there are individualized character endings in the form of a TV show host spouting tasteless jokes and going over the character’s backstories in the original Japanese release, but they were all removed when the game was ported over to North America which is a shame.

This was a long-winded way of saying that both games in the Bust a Groove series are very similar. I played them both in one sitting a day apart and if I didn’t know any better, I could mistake them for being the same game. The music is still catchy, and the environments and camera work continue to be engaging, but the gameplay doesn’t evolve and the main incentive to play through the campaign multiple times with each character was completely stripped out. Even the final boss is the same in both games if you don’t count the secret boss. As such, my score and recommendation for this game is the same as the first one. If you only plan to play through it once to reach credits, don’t bother spending money on it. However, if you plan to hone your skills by playing on higher difficulties and want to see the different routes for each character, you might get more out of it. Just make sure to play the Japanese version of the game (which has an English dub) to see the original endings.

Time to beat (Main) - 1h:3m
Rating – 6/10

Stats

Final Fantasy V has catapulted itself to my second most played game so far this year. I suspect Final Fantasy Dimensions may be my most played game by the time I beat it, but it’s still too early to tell. My game spending continues to be elevated but averaging just over $1 per game shows that I’m still getting a lot of bang for my buck in my opinion. My gaming time for June continued to be on the higher end of average for me, which is nice, even if a lot of it was still spent on games that aren’t even in my backlog thanks to Game Pass. Unlike my spending, I hope this trend continues.

Conclusion/Upcoming

I can’t believe 2026 is already halfway done. Where is the time going? It’s been a somewhat productive gaming year for me as I’ve already beaten almost twice as many games as I did last year. Game Pass continues to be worth the $0 I’m spending on it since it’s allowing me to play higher quality games I wouldn’t’ve tried otherwise, even if I’m neglecting games in my backlog as a result. My plans for July will likely consist mostly of playing Final Fantasy Dimensions as I imagine it will take up most of my time. Since Game Pass is on hold, I’m not sure when I’ll resubscribe to it and if there will be a good enough game announced to be leaving the service that will cause me to resubscribe earlier than expected. That’s the nature of subscriptions though unfortunately. My current plan is to beat Final Fantasy Dimensions, then resubscribe and play any games announced to be leaving the service, then start on Final Fantasy VI. I have high hopes for that one, and it will be the last Final Fantasy game I play for quite some time, so I hope it’s as special as people say it is. That’s all for now, thanks for reading everyone!

Backlog total: 4,373 (+102)

Monthly Update #17: May 2026

I want to start this update by pointing out a milestone I reached on the HLTB site. I mentioned this briefly in the previous update and I thought it would take some more time and many more emulated games under my belt, but it happened way sooner than expected. I have officially entered the top 50 most backlogs of any user on the site. This is not a milestone I planned or expected to hit, but it looks like my cataloging and purchases have caught up to me. I’ll definitely get through these someday, right? Anyway…

PC Game Pass continues to be worth the $0 I’m spending on it. And the new Xbox CEO actually lowered the price in a surprising move so Microsoft Rewards will continue to be enough to pay for it for the foreseeable future. I still think I’m in for a reckoning by the time Project Helix comes out since it’ll play PC games too. They’re gonna have to combine PC and Ultimate tiers at some point and raise the price. I’ll continue to focus on Game Pass games while I still can, and I feel like I’ve barely made a dent in my list. In other news, I’ve finally started the next Tales game! I was gonna go with Eternia next, but with the rumored remaster on the horizon, I’ve decided to skip ahead to Tales of Destiny: Director’s Cut, a Japanese-exclusive PS2 remake of the second game in the series. Of course, I am playing it in co-op with my friend too just like Phantasia. More on that in the game recap section.

Game Acquisitions

Holy consumerism Batman! I spent way more than I thought I did. There were so many good bundles last month that I just couldn’t resist. My spending continues to trend upwards. At least my Steam family expressed excitement at some of these. A lot of deckbuilders too, or would dicebuilders be a more accurate descriptor? This might partially be because I enjoyed Inscryption so much and am trying to chase that high. There were a good number of freebies too from Epic, Amazon, and itch.io. Going back to the topic of deckbuilders for a second, I think the game I’m most looking forward to from this month is Wildfrost. It looks super polished and has great reviews.

# of Games: 97

Total Money Spent: $98.57

Price/Game: $1.02

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

# of Games YTD: 429

Total Money Spent YTD: $274.65

Price/Game: $0.64

Game Recaps

May started with my playthrough of Inscryption, which was everything I hoped it would be. I had one session of Tales of Destiny with my friend too. We fought our way through the snowy forest, reached the first town, met up with new party members to explore a hidden temple, and were about to head to the next town when we called it for the day. The combat is taking a lot of getting used to with the CC (Chain Capacity) system. Instead of having a fixed TP pool to cast artes, you have a counter that cycles between your minimum and maximum CC (say 2-5) as you perform actions. A basic attack will use one CC, base artes use two CC, and stronger artes consume more. This encourages faster combat and lets you use artes much more regularly and apply pressure on enemies. It all sounds good in theory as I felt in Phantasia that I shouldn’t use artes at all as Cless since my friend played Arche and needed all the TP we had to cast spells. I tend to play games more defensively and slower paced though and this system actively discourages that. We’re still early in the game though and practicing our skills. I’m just worried about the pace of combat outstripping my friend’s ability to play it. Here’s hoping we find our groove!

Next on the list are a few smaller indie games that left Game Pass in May: Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo, Go Mecha Ball, and Crypt Custodian. I wasn’t planning on playing them so soon, but that’s the nature of games leaving the subscription service which forces me to reprioritize my upcoming games. Kulebra was a fantastic adventure game, maybe the best I’ve ever played in a genre I’m admittedly not too familiar with. Go Mecha Ball was an OK twin-stick roguelite, nothing too special. Crypt Custodian was a solid metroidvania, niggling navigation issues aside. It was mercifully easy compared to Nine Sols. I don’t know if I would be able to handle another game of that difficulty anytime soon. I played an idle game in the background at work called Universal Paperclips as well. Play might be a strong word as I only occasionally interacted with it, but there was an ending so I guess I'm counting it. And last but not least, I of course had to continue my Final Fantasy journey with V. I just got the airship and I think I'm about to fly up to a floating city to protect the earth crystal. As always, here are links to playlists of any let’s plays for games played or uploaded last month. Expedition 33 is finally done uploading! About time, I finished that game forever ago. I made the decision a while ago that I didn’t want to move around all my uploads whenever I start recording a new game because it was a huge hassle, so a lot of these aren’t public yet. More specifically, Final Fantasy V will be out June 16^th, Inscryption June 19^th, Tales of Destiny July 7^th, Kulebra July 11^th, Go Mecha Ball July 13^th, and Crypt Custodian July 20^th. I swear I am still slowly catching up with my upload schedule now that I’m not limiting myself to one hour per video, especially now that Expedition 33 is done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game Reviews

Inscryption

Inscryption is a roguelite deckbuilder with escape room elements and a whole meta-narrative filmed in live action about a content creator who finds the game itself on a floppy disk buried in the woods and records himself playing it. That’s as much of the story as I’m willing to give away as I believe it’s best experienced first-hand. Rest assured that it is a good story worth experiencing, even if the acting in the live action segments is somewhat cheesy. The escape room elements can mostly be ignored if that’s not your thing, although you do uncover fun bits of lore and some cards you can use. The meat of Inscryption is the deckbuilder, and it is probably the best deckbuilder I’ve ever played.

If you’ve played any roguelite deckbuilders, none of this is new information. You start with a small number of cards with various stats and abilities. The card will show you how much health it has, how much damage it does, the requirements needed to play it, and any special abilities it has which the game refers to as sigils. There are a large variety of sigils like making the card fly so you attack your opponent directly and automatically moving the card to an empty space to block a hit that would’ve hit you. You progress along a map that occasionally forks which allows you to decide if you want to collect new cards, modify existing cards, pick up items, craft totems which affect all cards of a certain type, and so on. The health and sacrifice systems are unique. Unlike many other deckbuilders, you don’t have a pool of health that stays between encounters. Instead, there is a balance scale off to the side that starts in the neutral position. The goal is to tip the scale to the opponent’s side by five notches to win. That means it’s possible to take out or be taken out by one powerful attack if you aren’t able to block it. A card can block the full brunt of an attack at least once no matter how much health it has left which allows you to throw out weak cards to block powerful attacks while you hope to draw a better card to counterattack.

Each turn, you have two piles of cards to pick from: your regular deck or squirrel cards. A squirrel is free to play, has no attack value, and one health. They can be used as a last ditch effort to block an attack as mentioned earlier, but their main purpose is to be placed and immediately sacrificed to play a more powerful card. Sacrifices come in the form of either bones or blood. Whenever a creature dies by any means, you get one bone token (or more if their sigil is a pile of bones). The bone tokens can be used at anytime to play a card that requires them. Blood on the other hand must come from living creatures that are actively on the field and can only be obtained by sacrificing them and immediately playing the card that needs the sacrifice. As expected, more powerful cards require greater sacrifices. There are four spaces you can play a card on, so the most powerful cards require four blood to play. Another interesting wrinkle is that while the opponent also has four spaces to play cards, they have another row where the place cards they want to play next. This lets you plan out how you want to tackle the next turn, and you can even affect these cards that aren’t technically in play yet. If you card damages an opponent card enough to kill it, any overflow damage can also target the card waiting to be played which allows you to take out both in one powerful swing. Another strategy I came across was seeing a powerful card being queued up behind a much weaker card. Instead of killing the weak card like I normally would, I could keep it in place to do chip damage to me while allow me to focus on other lanes to hopefully do more damage to them and keep their powerful card at bay. If you are defeated, you get to craft a new card by mixing and matching stats, sigils, and sacrifices from other cards which can lead to some extremely overpowered combinations. This is where the roguelite aspect comes in. As you can see, there’s a ton of strategy involved, as well as some luck of the draw and what cards you have in your deck.

While I maintain that this game is extremely good and everyone who likes deckbuilders should play it, it still isn’t perfect. As with any roguelike or roguelite, there are some runs where you just don’t get the cards you need and lose through no fault of your own. The optional Kaycee’s Mod, which is a pure roguelike challenge mode unlocked by beating the game, was way too difficult for me to beat even level one with the luck I was having. There was also no roguelite element to it, so I wasn’t getting more powerful over time and kept running into the same brick wall over and over. While I beat the main game in 15 hours, I spent another seven hours on Kaycee’s Mod just because I was having so much fun and that still wasn’t enough to beat it once. The most egregious negative that I have for this game though, and this is partially a sign of how good it is, is that the ending feels rushed. Without going into spoiler territory too much, the game hints that there are four opponents you must defeat to win the game. Each opponent has different mechanics introduced that added fun new ways to play. Most of the focus is on the first opponent, but a good amount of time is spent with the second as well. Then you fight the third and fourth opponents one time each and the game just ends. I almost felt like I played half the game the developers wanted to make before they ran out of time or money. The combat mechanics seemed completely fleshed out for these opponents too, you just spend so little time with them that it felt like a waste. I would love to see a sequel that either lets you fight them properly or introduces new enemies to face. Even though it felt like I played half a game, that half was very enjoyable and I look forward to Daniel Mullins’ next project.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 14h:59m
Rating – 9/10

Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo

Kulebra is an adventure game about helping souls find peace so they can move on to what’s next. The game starts with you waking up in Limbo as a skeletal snake and immediately coming across a mysterious old lady tied to a rock who asks you to free her. After a super simple tutorial on inventory and exploration, you free her and the two of you walk down a long dark corridor as she explains how you’re a special soul and you need to help the other souls. When you enter a clearing and see the outside world for the first time, the old lady vanishes and you’re greeted by a friendly crow named…well, Krow…who lays out your basic objectives, provides a notebook guide, and explains that time slowly passes and certain events can only be completed at certain times of the day. You’re then free to explore, talk to people, and solve puzzles. I felt that this was a great introduction to the game. The bright colors as you exit the corridor and humorous dialog from Krow conveyed a lighthearted tone, while the rambling from the old lady just prior hinted at a darker mystery under the surface to unravel.

The gameplay is standard for anyone familiar with adventure games. You walk around environments picking up anything you can squeeze in your inventory, talking to NPCs to get hints of what to do next, and solving puzzles by using and combining the items in your inventory. This is normally where adventure games lose me because most of the puzzles in these types of games are extremely convoluted and impossible for me to solve without having a guide open the whole time. Thankfully, I didn’t have that problem in this game and almost everything was easy to figure out. I’m not sure if that will turn more hardcore adventure game fans away, but it went a long way to pull me in. When you solve the conflict in the first area, you unlock the second one, meet all the new characters and solve their conflicts, then unlock the third and final hub area. Along the way you can find hidden collectibles, solve hidden temple puzzles, and complete side quests by doing favors for optional NPCs.

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows in the world of Limbo. The puzzle selection is rather limited, and the gameplay doesn’t evolve much over the course of the game as a result. The boss battles at the end of each chapter are mostly just quizzes about what’s happened up to that point which was kinda lame. The number of areas to explore is rather limited. While there are five chapters to the game (plus an epilogue and conclusion which are somehow different things), there are only three major areas. The first area encompasses chapter one, the second area chapter two, and the third area chapter three. I assumed that the fourth chapter would lead me to a new area but nope, it was just the third area again just slightly different. Chapter 5 at least introduces what is essentially a haunted mansion at the end, but the large maze-like layout was frustrating to navigate. The mansion also exacerbated these issues by just recycling the puzzles from previous chapters, having multiple quiz boss battles, and making you navigate the entire mansion again while being chased by several monsters. As you can see, I had many gripes with the final area, and if the game had ended there, I may not have been as positive about it as I am.

Luckily, a large update titled Closure added several hours of content that I enjoyed. It introduced slightly harder puzzle challenges that while they were still mostly variations of puzzles in the base game, they provided enough mental stimulation to keep me engaged. More importantly though, it also wrapped up the fantastic story in a much more satisfying way. You finally get to the bottom of the darker mystery hinted at in the beginning. More story threads are tied up, although perhaps in a lengthier way than what I felt was necessary (looking at you Plaza hotel). Characters you’ve grown close to are set up to continue their work helping people in the world of Limbo. I didn’t touch on the story too much, but that’s because I feel it’s best experienced first-hand. It was my favorite part of the game and what pulled me through. There are plenty of laughs and more than a fair share of tearjerker moments. I think the Pixar movie Coco is the closest comparison to Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo. If you enjoyed the themes in that movie, I think you will enjoy this game too. Just make sure to stick with it through the Closure Edition content to see the true ending!

Time to beat (Completionist) - 15h:3m
Rating – 8/10

Go Mecha Ball

Go Mecha Ball is a twin-stick shooter roguelite. It starts with a short motion comic showing anthropomorphized adolescent cats playing when they’re interrupted by a giant portal opening and robots spilling out to wreak havoc. The cats create mechsuits and fly through the portal to take out the robots and save their world. After this intro, there is no more story in the game so you can safely ignore all of that. If you’re looking for any kind of narrative thread to pull on, you won’t find it here. However, if you’re looking for fast-paced, pinball inspired shooting action, read on.

The structure of the game is simple. There are four worlds with a boss fight at the end of each. Each world is divided into three stages, and each stage has three waves of enemies you must defeat to progress. There are four classes available, although you only start with the first one unlocked. Each class has slightly different stats and a starting weapon. I only played with the first class so can’t comment on the others, although the weapons seem to be the most important thing and every class can equip any weapon. The two ways of attacking enemies are either by shooting them (duh) with one of the two weapons you can have equipped or by ramming into them while in ball form. This is the one thing about this game that I felt was unique. You are heavily encouraged to make use of the environment and your abilities to zoom around the map and slam into enemies to do damage or knock them off the map. Even if you completely run out of ammo, you still have a way of doing damage. The movement is the one thing I felt that this game absolutely nailed. Zooming around the map slamming into bad guys always felt satisfying, and I never experienced any slowdown no matter how fast I was moving or how many enemies and projectiles were on screen.

Anyone who knows roguelites will be familiar with the gameplay loop. After each stage, you can pick one of three powerups like more collision damage or getting a special ability. Before every boss, you stop by a shop to spend coins you’ve collected to buy up to three randomized items like a health refill or gun. You can also choose to put extra money into unlocking another character. After that, you fight the boss and move on to the next world. If you lose a run, you can spend a different currency at gacha machines to unlock more guns, abilities, or powerups to find in your next run. Unfortunately, that’s the extent of the game as it is extremely basic outside the movement. All the runs felt the same since the world order is unchanged, levels felt samey, and you only encountered the same four bosses in the same order every time. Most abilities I came across didn’t seem super useful, and only the starting machine guns felt like viable weapons. I never unlocked anything that felt like a gamechanger and ended up beating the same on my third or fourth attempt. I spent the currency I accumulated afterwards to unlock more stuff at the gacha machines but none of it felt like something that would provide a fundamentally different experience. There is an option to increase the difficulty but after the first run, I didn’t feel the need to continue. I would only recommend this on a deep sale if the pinball movement sounds appealing to you, otherwise there are way better roguelikes/roguelites out there to sink your teeth into. There is not a lot of depth here.

Time to beat (Main) - 3h:1m
Rating – 6.5/10

Crypt Custodian

Crypt Custodian is a metroidvania where you play as Pluto, a cat who has just died and sent to what is essentially the pearly gates to decide his fate. Kendra, the frog in charge, appears receptive to letting Pluto into the fabled Palace until she accuses him of smashing her statues on his way there. She then sentences him to be a janitor cleaning up garbage outside the Palace forever. From the moment you enter the Inn and speak to the people inside, you suspect that maybe Kendra is hiding something. You meet up with ten other ghostly animal friends throughout your journey and conspire to break into the Palace and steal the Crystal Mirror, an artifact that lets your soul travel back to Earth to feel the presence of those you left behind. That’s basically the entire story, there’s not really much intrigue here and the story is presented in a funny, simple, and lighthearted way despite the heavy focus on death.

Gameplay is your standard metroidvania fare. There is a large, interconnected world map you can freely traverse with some areas gated off until you unlock certain abilities. You fight enemies with your trusty broom while making use of a slam attack, a special ability, jumping, and dashing. Defeating enemies or cleaning garbage provides currency which you can use to buy powerups or hints to collectibles and the next major story beat. Combat is fairly simple due to the limited moveset; there isn’t even a charged attack, and you can only equip one ability at a time. Despite some light bullet hell moments, especially in the boss fights, the ability to dash or jump over every attack meant it was simply a matter of learning patterns and wailing on them until they die. There’s always a checkpoint right before a boss too so you can try again quickly without the pain of having to get back. I remember the first time I died; I checked the map to find my death marker which wasn’t there and my first thought was “Wow, that’s brutal. Now I have to try to remember where I died so I can get my currency back.” I quickly found out though that you don’t lose anything on death and thus it has no consequences. This was a relief to me, and a realization that perhaps I’ve been playing too many soulslikes lately and forgot how normal action games used to operate. I don’t really view any of this as a negative per se, although hardcore players probably won’t find enough challenge here to keep them engaged.

My biggest complaint about this game is the navigation. There’s a lot of little things about using the map that bothered me. The world map has two levels of detail: a zoomed out view that removes most details and shows every room as a plain rectangle and a more zoomed in view that shows everything as it actually is. There’s also an optional minimap you can enable (which I did) that always sits at the corner of the screen and shows a small section of the zoomed out view from the main map. In the zoomed out view, the exits to other rooms are shown, but they aren’t always to scale with the actual room layout. For example, it might show an exit in the bottom center of the screen when it’s actually more to the left. This is exacerbated on the minimap by your player icon not always lining up with where you are in the room, which made it almost useless. Additionally, there’s not enough detail on the zoomed out map in my opinion. Nothing is labeled, although you can hover over the fast travel points to get the name of the area they’re in. The areas are color coded but there’s no legend anywhere so you kind of just have to memorize where everything is to get around. In the zoomed in view, while the accurate room layouts are shown, that’s the only new detail you get from it. Looking for areas you haven’t been to yet, NPCs you’ve met, special locations, or items are nowhere to be found. On top of that, when you’re in the zoomed in view, panning around is extremely slow and there’s no diagram of the zoomed out map to show where you are in relation to anything else. There are up to 50 markers with a few different shapes you can pick from to mark important points on the map, but you can’t see them if they’re in an area you haven’t been to yet and there’s no way to label them. If you die, you aren’t automatically sent to the last shrine you visited. I found that it would send me to the one before that so I would always have to open the map and teleport to the place I was just at manually. Lastly, if you pan to an area on the map you want to go to in one view and then switch to the other view, the cursor resets to your current location for no reason. These are all little things I feel should have been caught in testing and patched out, but either these problems are unique to me or nobody found them annoying enough to address.

I know I went on a huge rant in the last paragraph, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy my time with Crypt Custodian. Despite the simple story, lack of serious challenge, and annoying navigation, it’s still a solid metroidvania. The combat is enjoyable, the characters all have unique personalities, and I was interested enough in the elusive Palace to press on. If you’re in the mood for a metroidvania and don’t want your brain or reflexes tested too much, I can recommend this one. And if you finish this and want to graduate to a more sophisticated metroidvania with challenging combat, better quality control, higher production values, and a less predictable, mature story while still playing as an anthropomorphic cat, check out Nine Sols. Kinda weird that both games came out within three months of each other, right?

Time to beat (Completionist) - 12h:58m
Rating – 8/10

Universal Paperclips

I wasn't planning on adding this one to my completions as I mostly had it running in the background at work. I don't have much to say about this, it's an idle game that runs in your browser about making and selling paperclips as fast as possible. New mechanics are introduced as the game progresses but they all basically boil down to new ways to make money and are pretty hands-off. There is a twist right when you think the game is over that takes the game in a new direction that's kinda cool. The ending was neat, but a couple late-game mechanics leading there were confusing and I had to look up a guide to finish it. Overall, an OK way to waste time while you're doing other stuff.

Time to beat (Main) - ???
Rating – 5.5/10

Stats

No huge heavy-hitters on the long game front last month. Inscryption just eked into the top five most played of the year at 22 hours. I suspect Final Fantasy V will shoot into the top three by the time I’m done with it, I think it’s a pretty long game. You can see the insane jump in spending last month, with a modest jump in games acquired to go with it. The first half of the month especially had a lot of bundles I didn’t want to pass up as mentioned earlier. Who knows if the summer will slow down but probably not? I imagine there will be a few bundles launched to coincide with Summer Game Fest and all the new announcements coming out of that. My gametime took a dip after I unexpectedly didn’t play anything over Memorial Day weekend. Too busy with other stuff, I guess. Maybe summer will give me some time to get more gaming in.

Conclusion/Upcoming

I didn’t think this update would be so long, but my Word document is 11 pages. That’s crazy! It must be all the YouTube links and game reviews. If only I dedicated the time spent on those things to playing more games I might actually make some progress.

In other news, I’m looking forward to Summer Game Fest this week, although I find it difficult to be excited for new games when I know it’ll be years before I buy any of them while I wait for sales and many more years after that to play them due to the size of my backlog. I’ve been feeling this way for a while now and wasn’t sure how to bring it up. There are so many good games coming out this year that I want to play (Pragmata and 007: First Light being recent examples) but I haven’t even added them to my wishlist because I’m getting to the point where I don’t know if I’ll ever get to them. Something’s gotta give at some point, and I’m guessing my content creation will be on the chopping block. Still thinking about it though, nothing is set in stone yet.

For June, my plan is to finish Final Fantasy V and start the next game in the series (which won’t be VI!) I’ll also keep an eye on the games leaving Game Pass to see if there are other unexpected games I need to move to the top of my upcoming games list. I didn’t expect to play Inscryption, Kulebra, and Crypt Custodian so soon but I’m glad I did because they were all great games. Inscryption is even in my #1 spot for the year so far! Will it be dethroned? I guess we’ll all find out. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 4,271 (+120)