I usually write a bit about games I played during the year and post it on Medium, but Medium sucks and Cohost is right here, so this is where I'm doing it now. I didn't play as many Video Games as usual because I'm cursed to waste most of my energy on game dev until I finish Project RyME. I usually list these in rough order of how much I like them but I'm just doing chronological order this year because I don't want to think so much.

This is gonna be a long one

Trails of Cold Steel 4

My 700 hour foray into the Trails series continued with the final entry in the Cold Steel series. I enjoyed Cold Steel 1 and 2 well enough, even if they weren't up to the quality of the previous games. Cold Steel 3 was an over-long slog that only exacerbated the issues with the writing and characters that I had with 1 and 2. Cold Steel 4 continued the trend, making it by far my least favorite Trails games.

The series has a reputation for very long story cutscenes (even the games before Cold Steel) and I don't mind that at all - I'm into that shit. CS4 takes it to another level though with MULTIPLE minimally interactive segments that stretch out to as long as THREE HOURS. If it was all good and interesting content, I wouldn't have as much of a problem, but these scenes are almost all padding. The number of characters in the later scenes is absolutely comical and every single one has to say their piece whenever something sufficiently dramatic happens.

CS4 feels like they wanted to make an All-Stars Trails game with how many characters they decided to pull in. They pulled characters from every other game in the series, regardless of whether they make sense being involved. As a result, the vast majority of them get almost no characterization and previous games' characters who were well established are mostly reduced to hollow caricatures.

I could go on for a few thousand words about my gripes with the game, like how every female character in the game is required to accuse Rean of being a sex pest for no reason, or how the giant robot battles are ungodly boring (I'm not sure how they managed that...), but let's try to be positive. For one, the battle system is still kinda fun. It's mostly the same as CS3, so I guess don't fix what's not broken.

Anyway, my sunk cost for this series is way too big now, so I guess I'm gonna play the next game, Trails into Reverie at some point. I've heard it's got many of the same problems as CS4, so yeah, can't wait.

Metroid Prime Remastered

Imagine 500 words of incoherent and emotional rambling about how much I fucking love Metroid Prime. The remaster is the best looking game on the switch. It's so fucking GOOD.

Zelda Tears of the Kingdom

I don't care for the open world Zeldas as much the traditional format but I have to give TotK credit for going as hard as it could with the format. The sky, depths and caves were all very fun to explore. I don't think I'll soon forget my time in the depths riding a minecart around the twisting tracks of a huge structure, all in pitch blackness broken only by the small light I added to the cart myself.

My biggest disappointment with Breath of the Wild was the "dungeons". They were very short and simple with underwhelming bosses. TotK is a big improvement in that department, with some feeling like traditional Zelda dungeons. The fire dungeon, for example, required some really interesting spacial reasoning and familiarity with the layout. That's the kind of shit I want in my Zelda dungeons. That said, they were still smaller and simpler that I would've preferred.

I immensely enjoyed my time with the game, but I hope they rework the format for the next game. I just want some meaningful form of progression and meaty dungeons again.

Honkai Star Rail

Honky Star Rail is Genshin Impact with turn-based combat and a sci-fi veneer. The characters, interface, gacha tactics, etc are so similar that it can be hard to know which game you're looking at if you're not very familiar with them both. It's a predatory gacha game which drops it to the Shit tier by default. That's not to say there's nothing to like about it though. Most notably is that the writing is much more interesting than I expected. Especially early on, it's got a quirky charm to it that I can't bring myself to hate.

The battle system is what really makes or breaks a game like this though. Compared to most other turn-based RPGs it's extremely simple. Each character has at most 3 actions: a basic attack, a skill and an ultimate that can only be used once charged. Individual characters may mix the when/how/where of these three, but those are the only 3 verbs. The most interesting part is something it stole from the Trails series: a timeline-based turn order that can be interrupted by charged ultimates at almost any time. This does add some depth, but the main source of complexity is in building a team that manages offense, defense, healing and support. Of course most of the team building is done through gacha so into the garbage it goes.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed

After Xenoblade Future Connection disappointed, I was a bit skeptical about Future Redeemed. Thankfully the two main characters, A and Matthew immediately stole the show with their fun dynamic. Matthew just likes to punch things and A tries to keep him from punching the wrong thing. A, the genderless monado wielder, quickly became one of my favorite Xenoblade 3 character. Interestingly, not once does the game use any sort of third person singular pronoun for A. I absolutely appreciate A's "Do not refer to me" attitude. I love A's design as well. Okay, enough about A.

For Future Redeemed, Monolith took a look at base Xenoblade 3 being a love letter to the entire series and said "What if we did that but more. And less subtle." It's really blatant with bringing back fan favorites like Rex and Shulk, but in their older, Daddy forms, who they made way too hot.

The story follows A and Matthew as they search for Matthew's sister, Na'el. It expands on the story of the city as well as moebius and shows off some fan favorite locations from earlier games. It even establishes an explicit link to the Xenosaga series - something that's been elusive, since Monolith doesn't control Xenogears and Xenosaga.

As usual for a Xenoblade expansion, it iterates on the battle system as well, and I think it's for the better. It simplifies things a bit while adding some interesting new mechanics, which is perfect for a shorter adventure like this.Really solid Xenoblade game. Pound for pound it's probably better than base Xenoblade 3, but I still prefer Torna slightly.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

The best part of FF7R is that Square Enix made Barret into an even more radical and sympathetic ecoterrorist while becoming more Shinra-like themselves with all their blockchain and NFT horseshit.

The game is fine, I guess? Looking back, I really don't have that much to say about it. Pretty enjoyable for the majority of it. The Midgar slums setting, where the majority of the game takes place, got old pretty fast though. Running through dilapidated shanty towns for 15 hours is a little much.

The mix of real time and turn based battle system was interesting and I appreciate that it exists but it never really sparked joy. At least some of the bosses were cool?The ending is where things really took a nose dive. It got really weird about Sephiroth and went it a completely batshit insane direction that I still can't begin to comprehend. It smacks of "We need a big, climactic sequence that won't actually interfere with the overall story" and it felt really awkward.

I'll still probably play the next game, in like 3 years when it's available on PC.

Firmament

Firmament is a game I've heard very few people talk about. It's the newest game from Cyan, the guys that made the Myst series, and Firmament is very much a Myst-like. I donated to the kickstarter for the game, so I had been following the development for a while. The main focus was supposed to be on a VR experience, but they thankfully made it playable normally as well.Firmament uses a very similar format to Myst, with a collection of beautiful and unique worlds containing some really obtuse puzzles. Everything is tied together with a story incorporating a curious blend of magic and technology. The worlds are quite a bit more expansive than most other Cyan games. Aesthetically and thematically they're wonderful, but learning how some puzzle elements work may require moving across the map quite a few times. Combined with your relatively slow walking speed, it can be very tedious to get around.

All I can say about the puzzles is that they're very Myst-like, though an element of player progression with the tool you use to interact with the world is a welcome change. The progression adds some spice, but it also exacerbates the long treks around the worlds as you figure out where your new upgrade can be used.

The conclusion to the story is pretty neat too, with a fun twist. Solid Myst-like.

The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails

Don't let the name Trails fool you. There's nothing in Nayuta that connects to the rest of the Trails series beyond a few names and terms.

Nayuta is a plucky teen living on a remote, tropical island who gets involved with a fairy from another world. They go on adventures across season-themed continents to find the truth about the mysterious girl and the evil wizard. The story is pretty slow to get started, but once it gets going, it goes to some interesting places.

Gameplay is pretty simple and Ys-y (pun intended), but still pretty fun. There are some light RPG elements with a few equipment and magic spell slots too. Like most Falcom action games, it's quite fun and satisfying. Level repetition is my main complaint though. Most of the levels need to be played multiple time, even moreso if you want to get all of the stars in each level. Stars give important skill and equipment rewards, so there's a strong incentive to do so. In addition to playing the same levels multiple time, most levels have slight variations, which also probably need to be played multiple times. It's a bit much.

If you're looking at Nayuta just because you like the Trails RPG series, you can pass on this. If you're a fan of earlier 3D Ys games, or basically any of Falcom's action games, this is probably worth the time.

Super Mario Bros Wonder

Super fucking mario!!!!

Probably the best 2D Mario game since Yoshi's Island. For the longest time Nintendo has been extremely strict, even internally, with the Mario IP leading to some very severe stagnation. Characters has very strict roles they were allow to fill and ways they could be presented. Mario Wonder shows a willingness to try something new and it's very refreshing. Characters have a new expressive and cartoony art style that's a joy to see in motion.

The level design is on point as well, with a plethora of new and interesting mechanics, made even more impressive by the wonder effects. They throw every sense of logic out the window and create some truly bizarre and unique experiences. It feels like Nintendo is trying to make up for the decade of stagnation all at once. I even found myself wishing the game was longer. Shit's fun as hell.

The Talos Principle 2

The first Talos Principle was my favorite puzzle game. It had some really fun puzzle mechanics and utilized them well, while somehow being incredibly well written and thought provoking. The sequel improves on the aesthetics and puzzles significantly.

Every new area slowly introduces a cool new puzzle mechanic and iterates on it in interesting ways. Teleporters and alternate bodies are just two of many elements that got a "oh, that's so cool" from me. A big change from the first game is the types of mechanics they use. Gone are the machine guns and exploding sentries, now every puzzle element is safe. I'm a big fan of it since, even though it was in a simulation, hostile elements always felt out of place.

The writing, however, is weaker in 2. The most interesting writing in 1 came from the Milton Library Assistant as it tried to analyze and criticize your philosophy and provides a almost cynical angle on the nature of humanity. It did a good job of challenging you philosophically in interesting ways. Talos 2 is less about the individual and more of the nature and purpose of civilization. A large part of the writing is presented through interactions with many different characters. Most of the main characters are decently insightful and intelligent, but the majority of the side characters are just absurd caraicatures of certain philosophies. I'm not even particularly well versed in philosophy and even I couldn't take half of this seriously.

In short: puzzles are a big improvement, writing doesn't hit quite as hard.

Void Stranger

Goddamn this game is hard to talk about without spoiling it, but I REALLY want to. On the surface it's a simple gameboy-style sokoban game, and the sokoban part of it is very well made with plenty of interesting puzzles and mechanics, but there is SO MUCH MORE to this game. It has consumed my thoughts for more than a month. At the time of this writing I've finished the main game, but there's still a mountain of other stuff that I have yet to uncover. This is the type of game where you want to have a notebook on hand to record your findings - you'll need it. If that's at all intriguing to you, you absolutely need to play Void Stranger. Also holy fuck the soundtrack is cool as hell. It's been playing non-stop in my head for weeks.