Weekly Update #28: Finally Gamed a Little

July 6-12, 2025

As the title says, I finally got to play a little more Tales of Phantasia this week. It had been over three weeks since I played anything 😭 I also had a decent acquisition week, and more emulation cataloging as usual.

Game Acquisitions

As I alluded to in my last post, I finally sprang for the July Humble Choice, mainly for Rogue Trader and Cat Quest III. Rogue Trader looks like a great XCOM-like which I’m a sucker for. I also already had the first two Cat Quest games so I figured I might as well complete the trilogy. I was able to trade a couple of the games from Choice away on Reddit for Astral Ascent and Miasma Chronicles, not a bad trade. I also ALSO bought the Fanatical Platinum Collection bundle for July. I was going to get five games for $15, but after securing Astral Ascent in the Reddit trade, I lowered it down to the three for $10 tier. Athenian Rhapsody and Terra Memoria look so good!

# of Games: 13

Total Money Spent: $10.04

Price/Game: $0.77

Game Recaps

It’s not a ton of time spent, but at least it’s something. We officially fought in the Valhalla War this time, and it was not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. We breezed through it pretty quick and took out the general leading the attack. There was even a couple animated cutscenes sprinkled in there! Afterwards, we made our way to Dhaos’ castle to face the big bad guy himself which is where we left off. Not bad for less than three hours! You can see my let’s play of it here: 

 

 

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex Season 1 Episodes 7-14 (still watching, show ended)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 3 Episode 1 (still watching, show ended)

·       Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Ghost in the Shell continues to be a pretty good anime. It’s not as incredible as I imagined it was going to be in my head, but I had unrealistic expectations. I just feel like it’s been a while since I watched anime, so I was really looking forward to this. It’s still good though, and I recommend it to anime fans. My friend and I also continued our My Little Pony watch. Only one episode this time, but I still enjoyed it. And I’m going to finally be watching all the Harry Potter movies over the next couple months. I’ve only seen the first three and never read any of the books so I definitely wouldn’t call myself a fan. I’m more curious than anything, especially since my sister is a huge fan herself. I’m looking forward to it!

Conclusion/Upcoming

Not a bad little week if I do say so myself. It’s been a little while since I was able to have decent game acquisition and recap sections. I’m still enjoying Tales of Phantasia quite a bit. It helps that we’re probably overleveled and steamrolling everything. I’m nervous about the Dhaos fight though, I heard it’s one of the hardest fights in the game. It’ll definitely be a test of our skills!

On the emulation front, I can officially say that I’ve now cataloged everything I plan to play on Nintendo consoles! That’s a pretty big milestone if I do say so myself. I decided I wanted to finally play real Pokémon games instead of just Pokémon Go, Snap, and Stadium. I’ve made a play order collection for those if you want to check it out. I also finished up the 3DO and TurboGrafx systems as well, and surprisingly even managed to add quite a few of those to my list. I never even really heard of these systems so I figured the whole thing would be a wash. I should’ve known better after I cataloged the N-Gage though. Now I only have Sega consoles left! Another hole in my gaming history, I’ve never even touched a Sega console. My brother had a Game Gear for a short time, but I never played anything on it.

As for my plans for this week, it’s not going to be much. There won’t be any gaming, I’m going to be going over to my friend’s house this time. I’ll be watching more Ghost in the Shell and continuing my Harry Potter “marathon” with Chamber of Secrets. Besides that, I’ll just keep plugging away at the emulation cataloging as usual. The only consoles I have left are the Sega Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, CD, and Dreamcast. I say only, but it’s probably gonna take all month to get through them 😅 I’ll finish this eventually, I swear! Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read all of this if you did. See you next week!

Backlog total: 3,321 (+13)