Weekly Update #23: A Little Phantasia

June 1-7, 2025

I almost missed out on gaming again this week, but thankfully my friend and I got another Tales of Phantasia session in. On another note, I decided that I wanted to revisit my emulation plans and expand the list of games I’m interested in playing from older consoles. I’ve been doing a lot of research from “top console exclusives” lists and compiling more games to add to my emulation library. It’s turning out to be quite an endeavor which is yet another reason gaming is going to be on the lighter side for a while. I’m excited though, there’s already so many good games I’ve added that I’ve heard really good things about, and others I’ve never heard of but everyone describes as hidden gems. I’m planning on doing a mass add to backlog once my research is done so be prepared for that backlog total to shoot up. Speaking of…

Game Acquisitions

Another Humble Choice redemption, that’s two months in a row! Haven’t had that in a while. I bought yet another bundle too, Fanatical’s Build your own Triple Pack (Summer 2025). Three games for $3, not bad. Between Amazon Prime giveaways and this month’s Choice, I now have every Legacy of Kain game in the series free of charge. That should be a fun deep dive when the time comes.

# of Games: 19

Total Money Spent: $3

Price/Game: $0.16

Game Recaps

A much more reasonable two-hour session of Phantasia this week compared to the six hours a couple weeks ago. It was still productive though! We took on the Spirits of Earth and Water, and even the leader of the Four Great Spirits himself! Check out our playthrough here. These videos will be going up June 28-29 as I continue my daily uploads throughout the month. TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Star Wars: Andor Season 2 Episodes 11-12 (complete)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 2 Episodes 5-6 (still watching, show ended)

·       The Last of Us Season 2 Episodes 1-2 (still watching, show ongoing)

·       Mickey 17

I felt that Andor ended with a bit of a thud. It was still good, but years were literally flying by in the show and it ended abruptly with the expectation that you would watch Rogue One afterwards. I didn’t feel like watching that movie yet again, so I decided to leave it there. I still recommend it to all Star Wars fans though. My Little Pony continues to be a good enough time. I’m still at the beginning of Last of Us Season 2 but I can already tell it’s gonna be another depressing season. I have played both games so I already know the general story beats, unless they change something drastically. I decided to swap out Ghost in the Shell for Mickey 17. It was OK, I felt like they could’ve used less flashbacks and expanded on the whole cloning thing but not bad overall.

Conclusion/Upcoming

My friend and I are still really enjoying Tales of Phantasia, which is very exciting to me. I hope we get to experience the whole series together. Between our sessions, I’m still gonna be working on emulation stuff like I mentioned earlier. Random fun fact: the HowLongToBeat website has a stats page where you can see the top 50 users for most backlogs, most completions, most retires, and most forum posts. After I add all the emulated games I’m interested in, I think I’ll be very close to hitting the top 50 on backlogs. Maybe not the best thing to be proud of since it implies I keep getting more games instead of playing the ones I already have. It would still be cool to see my name on there. I did recently crack the top 50 forum posts though! I’m officially HLTB famous or something 😛

There’s a good chance I don’t get any gaming time this week, it all depends on if my friend and I have a chance to hang out. Their work schedule has been weird the last few weeks so it could go either way. In the meantime, I’ll continue my console exclusive game research. I’m going to be spending all week watching The Last of Us season 2, which probably won’t take the whole time. I’ll likely start Daredevil Born Again next. I’ve postponed Ghost in the Shell by a couple weeks and am going to watch Boondock Saints instead. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,289 (+22)

Weekly Update #22: Back to No Gaming

May 25-31, 2025

After a crazy few weeks, I’m back to getting no gaming time in. I’ve now officially made a blog post everyday for seven days straight in order to catch up from my missing weeks. So much writing! That and video editing really did sap up all my free time. Now I can get back to focusing on Playnite setup for more gaming. After I get even more games, of course.

Game Acquisitions

Bought another bundle this week, the Build Your Own Indie Treasures Bundle. This is Fanatical’s cheapest pricing tier though at only 5/$3 or 10/$5. Lately the games in this tier don’t look very good but I actually managed to grab a full 10 this time around! I can’t be too upset if a game ends up not jiving well with me when I only spent 50 cents on it.

# of Games: 14

Total Money Spent: $5.01

Price/Game: $0.36

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

·       Star Wars: Andor Season 2 Episodes 3-10 (still watching, show ended)

·       Family Guy Season 23 Episode 14 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       Dog Man

As I just said in my monthly post, season 2 of Andor is very good after the slow start. The finale is coming up so I’m curious to see if they pull off the ending and how it ties into Rogue One. Dog Man was better than expected and I recommend it to anyone with kids or not put off by a silly 90-minute animated movie with a simple premise and dumb jokes. Looks like not a lot watched this week.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Now that I’m finally caught up with my blogs, I can take a moment to chill and appreciate just how much work I accomplished. And it was a ton of work. I don’t know how bloggers or YouTubers do this, I’ve had very little free time since I started. I know bigger YouTubers have dedicated editors so they can just focus on their craft but still. I’ve stuck with it so far though. As for my plans this week, I’m going to dedicate all my time to The Last of Us season 2. I’m interested to see how it differs from the game. Why not watching two shows with heavy themes back-to-back, right? If I have any time left, I’ll probably knock out Star Wars Tales of the Underworld which should be a quick watch. My Ghost in the Shell journey officially starts on Friday with the original movie from 1996. Can’t wait! No gaming planned unless my friend comes over for more Tales of Phantasia, we’ll see. We did get a ton accomplished last time we played which was awesome. Thank you with sticking with me through these daily posts while I get all caught up again. Falling behind is brutal, hopefully that doesn’t happen again. Thanks for reading everyone!

Backlog total: 3,267

Monthly Update #5: So Much Gaming!

May 2025

This was likely the most productive month of gaming I’ll have this year. Over 38 hours! This was due to me putting everything else aside and taking as much advantage of my two-week Game Pass trial as possible. In the end, six games were beaten in that timeframe which was nuts. I had a healthy dose of game acquisitions too, and a similarly sized dent in my wallet to show for it.

Game Acquisitions

A lot of gaming and a lot of game buying too. Can’t have one without the other apparently. This is the reason I’ll never get through my backlog no matter how much time I spend playing. At least I don’t have to worry about running out. Most of these games seem like they’ll be pretty cool, and even the smaller indie stuff looks interesting if nothing else.

# of Games: 68

Total Money Spent: $45.09

Price/Game: $0.66

Game Recaps

It’s beautiful, so many games! I love the variety here. I really thought my marathon session of Tales of Phantasia would’ve put that game in the lead, but Road 96 just barely eked out a win. I guess slow and steady really does win the race. Also, I think this is the first time I’ve seen the word eked written out before. It looks wrong somehow, but Google says it’s spelled right so whatever. Anyway, here are playlists for every game I played in May. The videos are coming out every day throughout most of June so be patient if you don’t see all of them right away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TV/Movie Recaps 

Here is everything I watched last month:

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

·       Family Guy Season 23 Episodes 11-14 (all caught up, show ongoing)

·       My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Season 2 Episode 4 (still watching, show ended)

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

·       Star Wars: Andor Season 2 Episodes 1-10 (still watching, show ended)

·       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

I wrote my thoughts in previous posts, but everyone go watch Arcane. It’s a masterpiece. My Little Pony and Captain Laserhawk were OK. Andor is very good, although it had a pretty slow first half in my opinion. I still need to watch the finale to get the full picture but it’s one of the best Star Wars shows for sure. I liked all of the Planet of the Apes movies and am interested to see what direction they take for the new trilogy. It was weird watching a movie that was not part of the franchise after seeing so many in a row. Speaking of, Dog Man was better than I expected for a kid’s movie. I was a fan of Captain Underpants as a kid and it’s from the same creator. I was disappointed by the Captain Underpants movie, but I actually enjoyed this one. Kudos!

Conclusion/Upcoming

And that’s a wrap on my best month to date. I had a blast playing most of these games. If I ever get Game Pass again, I wanna try some longer games instead of sticking to <10-hour ones to get as many in as possible. My biggest plan for June is to dive deep into the Ghost in the Shell franchise. I’m planning to watch the first two movies in my usual Friday slots then go straight into all the various anime that’s available. I’ve got it all mapped out too, I’m excited! That’ll be mainly the second half of the month. I still need to watch Daredevil Born Again, Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld, and The Last of Us season 2 so hopefully I can get those in. If I have any time left over which I doubt, I also have Raised by Wolves and Tales from the Loop on the backburner. Gaming will be at a minimum; it’ll probably just be Tales of Phantasia if my friend and I get some more time in it. The rest of my free time will be dedicated to Playnite setup. I’ll get back to gaming on a regular basis eventually, I promise. My weekly post should be out tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,267 <-It’s back! And so much higher than my last update of 3,196 😭