December 2025
Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a good Christmas who celebrated and is looking forward to what 2026 will bring. This update will be formatted slightly differently from my other quarterly updates. Since the 2025 year in review will be coming out right after this, I figured I wouldn’t include my YTD gametime and purchasing stats here. Thus, this will be just a standard monthly update. The annual update should be out in the next couple of days. Let’s get started with my acquisitions for the month.
Game Acquisitions
An interesting mix of games on display here, including my first VR bundle purchase in quite a while. I purchased a few bundles last month for a good price. I finally got some games I’ve had my eye on for a while too like A Space for the Unbound, Bramble: The Mountain King, Dead Cells, Hogwarts Legacy, RUINSMAGUS, and The Medium. I’m excited to get into these…eventually. Fanatical also had to swoop in last minute with a New Year’s bundle. I hadn’t purchased anything since the 13th which I didn’t even realize, but nothing lasts forever. Can’t complain about a 3/$5 deal though.
# of Games: 62
Total Money Spent: $41.68
Price/Game: $0.67
Game Recaps
This was my most productive gaming month this year! Metaphor: ReFantazio dominated my playtime in December of course, although I had a decent amount of other games played. I had more playtime in Metaphor alone than I did total playtime on every game combined in previous months! Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp is the game I’m playing with my usual co-op partner so it had a little more time than the others, but I also had a birthday filled with gaming with my brother as well which was awesome. Monster Prom 2 probably still has a few more sessions left in it as my friend is still really enjoying it. The others may or may not be returned to at a later date. I managed to complete Metaphor with 45 minutes left in the year, which means I can include it in my 2025 top 10! It almost wouldn’t feel fair having like 5 hours of a 120 hour game played in 2026 and immediately making it my top game of the year so I’m glad I managed to finish it in time. I managed to complete all the Dragon trials, but I was two short on maxing out all the social links 😔 I’m really bummed about that, I wish I knew what I needed to prioritize to be able to pull that off when I started. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since this is my first Atlus game, so I was unfamiliar with how they work. I should have a better understanding now for when I go through the Persona series. At least I finally took down Louis once and for all. He had so many forms in the final battle, it was ridiculous. As always, here are links to my playthroughs if you want to catch up on everything:
Game Reviews
Metaphor: ReFantazio
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.
Time to beat
(Main+Sides) - 122h:37m
Rating – 9/10
TV/Movie Recaps
Here is everything I watched last month:
· 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 (complete)
· Stranger Things Season 1 Episode 1
· The Accountant 2
· The Truman Show
· King Kong
· Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
Almost every show I watched last month was an anime. I didn’t even mean to do that! None of these were bad, but there weren’t a lot of standouts either. Some of Star Wars Visions was good, but I didn’t click with every episode. Blue Submarine No. 6 had was seemed like an interesting start to a show, but four episodes was way too few for more to start caring about anything. Chronicles of the Heroic Knight ended up being better than the original show so I can’t complain. It does get me more excited to try out the games whenever I get around to them. On the flip side, the movies were all solid. The Accountant 2 wasn’t as good as the first one and King Kong wasn’t as good as the Monsterverse Kong movies, but they were enjoyable enough in their own way. I can see why The Truman Show is considered a classic. This is some of Jim Carrey’s best work. Even without remembering any of the previous movies, I still enjoyed Mission: Impossible for what it was. Very high production values.
Conclusion/Upcoming
December was a very good month for gaming. I’m glad I got to end the year on a high note. If I was able to play as much every month as I did here, my backlog might actually go down sometimes. I guess it doesn’t help when I play longer RPGs 😅 I’m curious to see how many games I beat in one month when I move to shorter titles. For next month, my plan is to finish the shows Stranger Things and watch through The Sandman, its spinoff Dead Boy Detectives, and Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. After that, I’m not sure what TV shows I’ll watch next. Fallout, One Punch Man, and Silo won’t finish their next seasons for over a month so I may need something to tide me over until then. I did add a bunch of shows to my backlog recently including Harley Quinn, City: The Animation, BoJack Horseman, Long Story Short, an Pluribus so maybe I’ll watch one of them. The movies I’ve got coming up are the last Mission: Impossible movie, the Knives Out trilogy (haven’t seen any of them yet), and Sinners.
On the gaming front, I want to go back to Expedition 33 to see what all was added in Verso’s drafts. I know new challenges were added to Endless Tower as well but defeating Simon almost broke me the first time, I don’t know if I want to try an even harder version after several weeks away. I got the full completion my first go around, I have nothing to prove by beating my head against a wall. That’s what I’m trying to tell myself anyway. After that, I’m going down my Game Pass priority games starting with Little Rocket Lab. It’ll be nice stepping away from RPGs a little bit even if they are among my favorite genres. Maybe I’ll get sucked into this one too!
Lastly, I should probably talk about the future of this blog going into 2026. The annual year in review should be up in the next couple days featuring my top 10 games I beat in 2025! After that, I’m not sure what happens next. I’ve decided to end my weekly updates. It was too much work maintaining that schedule, but I did manage it. I was hoping that keeping a consistent schedule would bring in readers, but that didn’t seem to happen. As a result, I’m thinking of cutting back to a monthly schedule. I initially planned on quitting the blog altogether and just going back to my top 10 posts once a year, but I do like seeing my gaming stats along the way and don’t want to lose that. This won’t be the last you see of me. Thank you to everyone who reads these posts, and I hope you all have a gaming filled 2026. Until next time!
Backlog total: 3,805 (+64)
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