Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Beat it! Kind of a silly and confusing ending, though it still had heart. I like how it played with expectations and was able to make something that felt new with them, instead of a rerun of the original game. Overall I feel like the people that don’t feel this trilogy have valid points, but those that just wanted a straight remake of the original game are a bit too anchored in the past. We’re in the 2020’s, and games are just different now, both from a development perspective and also from a business perspective. As much as there is a want for something more true to the original, this adaptation of the original is true to this strange decade. We should all be happy that this isn’t a more financialized product, which is what is happening to so much of games today.

I’ve enjoyed Remake and Rebirth, and I think I’ll be happy playing Revelations when it comes out next year. And also, let me just say that somehow Tetsuya Nomrua has become such a leading figure for game design for these games, and it’s surprised me. His KH-style take on this Remake trilogy is amazing.

Star Wars Outlaws

Picking this back up to beat it, and started a new save. It’s fun! I can understand why this game didn’t score well, but I’ve always thought it was successful. It does feel authentic to what an Outlaw would be in Star Wars, as the game prioritizes you rolling with the punches and moving ahead vs. a more MGS-style stealth experience.

It also looks good, plays well, and the UI is really well designed. I think it will fare better as time passes from it’s release.

I beat it, and while the ending isn’t amazing, the whole package of the game is worth it. Very happy with this one.

Victoria II

I played a game of this as Japan, and it’s still a fun time. Playing it again for the first time in probably 7 years, I can definitely understand why Paradox went in the directions they did with Vicky 3, namely their bigger focus on pops. Vicky 2 will always be the most arcadey of their offerings, and so if you want to play a Paradox game but not spend 40 hours on a run, this is your game.

It’s also worth noting how ambitious Paradox has gotten over time. Vicky 2, along with EU3, are a decent simulations, and in their time were a breath of fresh air. No one had seen a game like them back around 2010. Now, Paradox’s games are deeply intertiwned and complex simulations of many different parts of statecraft. It makes them amazing triumphs of game design, though I wonder if it’s always in the service of fun gameplay (looking at you EU5!).

Final Fantasy 7

Still playing the original. Beat Disk 1 and am most of the way through disk 2! I think I’ll pause here and wait for a bit until we’re closer to FF7 Revelation’s release.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

Mainlining this right now, it’s really fun though quite the endurance test. It’s so big - almost too big, but I can understand why it was designed like that. It’s made to be something to play until the next game comes out, which means it’s broad, replayable, and it’s hitting really hard.

Going deep with this one - trying to finish all the world intel and do as much side content as I can before finishing it. I’m not really sure why beyond it being fun! Like I can see how people don’t like this, and ofc the reactionaries will never be happy with anything, but this is a really well constructed game. A well constructed game for sickos, but still - well constructed. It’s also what you would want a AAA game to look like in the mid-2020’s as well - think of the pressure from fall guys, fortnite, and plenty of other games that all have smaller modes inside them.

Pokemon Gen 1 Recomp

Playing Pokemon Red through this project, and I’m almost done with it! What a triumph this project is - with mod support and better integrated QoL features, this is what these games need to bring their legacy forward. I’ve been waiting for something like this for a while, I’ve realized, and I couldn’t be happier playing these classics again.

Gonna beat Gen 1 and then take a break before diving into Gen 2.

Beat it! Rolled credits with a team in the mid-40’s. Nice. I beat it with:

• Mageneton
• Vaporeon
• Venusaur
• Sandslash
• Alakazam
• Magmar

FFXIV

Playing on my PS4. It’s actually a great time from the PS4, and I’m enjoying myself. Weirdly, I’ve never felt like I’ve gotten enough out of my PS4 in the eight years I’ve had it (YIKES). It’s mostly sat there for Bloodborne and some other smaller games. It does have FFXII The Zodiac Age on it, though. That might be where I play that game.

Starting in 2023? 2024?, I started using my summers to play through a series of games. Typically, I’m busy in the spring and fall and don’t have time to indulge in hobbies. While I have a bit more time over the winter, it’s not really the best time for playing through a series for me - don’t know why! So summer it is. Something about chilling out in A/C playing through a series is very relaxing to me.

Everyone should do this, it’s fun!

Series Played

• 2022: Sonic 1, 2, 3+K, Mania
• 2023:
  • Halo
• 2024:
  • Half Life (+ eps) and Portal 1.
  • Final Fantasy 1 - 3
• 2025:
  • Crysis
• 2026:
  • Final Fantasy 7 (+Remake +Rebirth)

Final Fantasy 7

Still playing the original. Almost got to the Ancient Temple before the end of the month.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Beat it this month! It’s one of the best games I’ve played in a long while, and I’m really energized about the whole rebuild project that Square Enix is involved with now! Like, this game really hooked me, as any game made with the DNA of Kingdom Hearts would. Just such an achivement!

Final Fantasy 7

Started platying the original, my second playthrough. My first was in 2010, so this has been a fun replay. I’m working through it slowly, because it’s a beast of a game!

Fantasy 7 Remake

Also playing the remake! This is a weird thing - it’s structured like a PS3 game (it released in 2020), is uneven in how it presents Midgar and the larger world, and the characters have a lot of moments together but say little. The battle system is fun though, and on balance it’s interesting enough to stay with.

Rimworld

Back at this. I have a really successful colony set up but I am really struggling going past this step. I think I’ll step away from the game for a while to think about and research how to do better on expeditions and stuff before going back in.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

Fun! I’m about halfway done with this and hope to complete it before the end of the year!

Marathon

Still going with this! It’s fun!

Caesar 3

Using Augustus to run it natively on a Mac, really cool that you can do that! I’ll have more to say about this type of city builder in the future, I’d expect.

Cult of the Lamb

Beat this one. It’s a fun Actraiser-like with awesome theming. The later parts of the game do tend to drag since your base is humming along and it beomces more about grinding through the dungeons instead of that satisfying mix of dungeon and base building. Woolhaven content will be there when I want to return, but for now I’m satisfied with my time.

OpenRTC2

I played around with it this month, and beat the first couple of scenarios. I want to slowly build to 100% completion!

Here’s a view of the games I’ve been playing recently… ish. Lots happened these several months so I haven’t had the time to write down what games I was playing because…

WoW Classic

Got bit by the bug, and I want to do a larger writeup on my journey to 60 in TBC Anniversary. It was fun! A lot of fun. But also strange. It’s hard to write my feelings for this game - it’s very complicated.

WoW Retail

Midnight is kinda cool, but it’s hard for any modern game to catch me, there’s just too much overstimulation in a live environment.

Cult of the Lamb

Most of the way through the base game, and I really want to get into Woolhaven content. I like it! It’s cute, the base buildnig stuff is cozy, and you don’t really need to go crazy deep into it to get some satisfaction out of it.

Marathon

I continue to be the easiest mark for Cyberpunk content. However, this game is goooood. Put this on the shelf of “hits the cyberpunk mark” with Citizen Sleeper and Neuromancer pls.

Looking Ahead

Some more gaming, yeah. But the future is murky, muddy. Hard to see.

It’s fun to think about which experiences you would rank highest in a given year. I tend to play a decent amount of games, so finding which one is best in a given year is also a great way to cement what I was thinking and doing and working through that year.

In previous years I’ve had two GOTY picks:

• One for best game that came out this year
• One for best game I’ve played this year (no matter when it came out.)

For this year, there’s some context logged in page for some games that I played in like Jan - March this year.

Best Game of 2025

Below are the games I’ve shortlisted from what I’ve played this year.

• Caves of Qud
• Citizen Sleeper 2
• Fantasy Life
• BF6
• EU5

Best Game from any year

Here’s the highlights from this year:

• Ascension
• Bloons TD6
• Rimworld
• BF2042
• Citizen Sleeper
• Death Stranding
• Brotato
• XCOM 2
• OpenFront.io
• KOTOR
• KOTOR 2

Crysis Series Playthrough

Starting in 2022, I decided to focus on some series that have always interested me. I’ll play through most, if not all, of the games I can get easily and rate / score them as I go.

This year I played the Crysis series - 1, 2, and 3.

• Crysis 1 is a great time, and it’s short length is to it’s benefit. It does the gunplay and sandbox-lite elements really well, and I can see it being a Halo 1 clone if it was released before Halo 2 came out. It’s not that insane of a graphical lift these days, and I think it’s a must play for any shooter-head.

• I had played Crysis 2 before, when it came to the X360 in like 2010 or 11. It’s so agressively mid-tier and of it’s time that it can be charming at times, but ultimtely it’s a chore. Like if 1 was inspired by Halo, 2 is inspired by Modern Warfare 2, down to the shlocky and overwrought story and voice clips.

• Crysis 3 is the most forgettable game of the series. It looks good, and was a great posterchild for the early 2010’s “bows are cool” fad, but otherwise it doesn’t really do anything that 2 doesn’t. It’s overwraught, annoying, and forgettable. I can see why Crysis fell off after 3, there was nothing left in the tank.

OpenTTD “Series” Playthroughs

OpenTTD has spawned so many copycats. When I first got into OpenTTD in late 2024, I gave a lot of these other games a new look. This year, I played:

• Transport Fever: I only dabbled with this one, and then moved over to 2.
• Transport Fever 2: really good, but a huge time sink. I don’t really have the time to devote to building up a network right now.
• Simutrans: Free, and not very good :(

KOTOR Series Playthru

I ended up accidentally playing through these games as I wanted to play through them with AMCA’s coverage of them.

• KOTOR 1: This game kinda sucks, compared to where BioWare would go in the future. I have a soft spot for Mass Effect, so seeing this made me just want to dip back in to ME. And, it has too many rough edges and difficulty spikes that can only be fixed by re-rolling your character. That’s cool in a D&D game where I have the docs open, but not in a Star Wars game.
  • UPDATE! Played through this game again in December, and it was really fun! The D20 system makes a ton of sense when you get into it, and party management / use is deeper than Mass Effect. Updating my options here to: KOTOR is good, actually.
• KOTOR2: A much better game! Sure the difficulty isn’t there quite so much, but it really lives up to what Star Wars could be. It’s deep, decently well written, and though a mess in terms of development it really shines. This is really what KOTOR1 should have been. Not to mention, it does replayability really well!

Game of the Year

• 2025:
  • EU5 - mostly because other games just did’t hit this year.
• Any year:
  • Rimworld - has to be. This was such a huge part of this year for me, and though other games have shined since then, this can’t be ignored.

Looking Ahead

Need to rethink this page. Maybe a job for 2026?

Here’s a view of the games I’ve been playing recently.

KOTOR 2

I mainlined this game in early december. Beat it in a week. It’s a weird, broken thing - but fun! Playing it again.

KOTOR 1

After failing to get into it in 2024, I’ve become addicted this month. Playing on Switch. Beat it before the end of the month, and boy does the light side ending just not hit right. That whole game is/can be deeper than it lets on.

Stonks 9800

Got really into this, and now I’m very rich in game! But now it’s the ’90s and the economy sucks, so I tihnk I’ll stop playing until 1.0 hits.

Mars Horizon 1

Kinda turn based, space agency style game - fun. Want to put more time into it.

Nuclear Throne???

The GOAT has returned, and more powerful than ever. Nuclear Throne is such an iconic 2010’s indie game, glad it got update 100 and there is a bit more buzz around it.

Battlefront Classic Collection

Flawed but playing on Switch. Kinda cool to be playing these games on a console again, they work much better with a controller. I’ll futz with it for a while, I’m sure.

Fishing games appear to have moved past their prime. In the below graph (from rawg api data) you can see that 2021 and 2022 were the clear highs for this type of game.

What you can also see is that very few, if any, of these games have garnered any attention. Maybe 5% of a given year’s games are played enough for the RAWG community to review.

Further, the clear king of fishing games, Dredge, was released in the later half of 2023, well beyond the end of the boom.

So what happened in 2013 or 2016 that led to such a boom? I have some thoughs below.

2013: Apps

2013 is about when mobile gaming is really breaking through. More people have phones that can play games, and app stores have made it trivially easy to try games out.

This effect started in 2010, but started picking up in 2013. But by 2016, something else happened in gaming that, along with mobile phone adoption, made fishing an attractive feature in games.

2016: Stardew Valley

Certainly some of the increase in fishing games are due to Stardew Valley, which was a real paradigm shift for indie games. From my perspective, indies moved from Fez to something less rareified, more authentic, and more free. Stardew Valley helped to popularize a movement and cement indies as a powerful new stream in gaming. And you see that, post 2016. There have been few AA+ releases that are focused on or adjacent to fishing… it’s all indies!

So… what happened?

Maybe there’s an issue with this data. It’s strange that in 2024 and 2025 there are no mobile games included, so perhaps there’s a data issue. More analysis of this data source will be needed, in future posts.

Here’s a view of the games I’ve been playing recently.

Europa Universalis V

They finally made a decent followup to Vicky 2, and put it in a nearly over-designed game. Love it, love playing it, love not know what the heck is going on, and love that these are the early days and more content is coming. This is a wonderful game on it’s own, and a fantastic foundation for future content.

It’s also worth noting that they answered the question of “What could you possibly do after 12 years of EU4 and it’s updates” with a pretty amazing response - take the bones of EU4 but make it a deeper simulation, and in so doing add mechanics and features that alow the game to grow laterally. Pretty clever stuff. BUT - I wonder how much longer Paradox can keep this up?

I’ve been exploring the game with these nations:

• Holland
• Livonian Order
• Egypt

One of the strengths of EU5 is that it takes the flavor and interesting mechanics/elements that you can find not playing in Europe from EU4 - this is a huge change from when EU4 went live and Europe was the focus.

Another strength is that playing a small nation is fun! You can literally build it up from scratch!

Wall World 2

Games like this are awesome to find. You need to play so many subpar or just ok games to find the indie game like this that really hits in a unique way.

On it’s surface, it’s a dome keeper clone, but that comparison only goes so far. There’s a story, there’s story missions, and a more meaningful upgrade path than dome keeper has. This is yet another hit for the “games with yellow as an accent color” category in 2025 (after Citizen Sleeper 2).

Coal LLC

What if indie games were just flash games???

OpenTTD

I’ve been fooling around with different scenarios and ideas, but nothing has really caught me at this point.

OpenFront.io

In my mind this is a flash game, even though it really isn’t. This is a flash game take on Risk, it’s fun and arcadey and hits a weird “““strategy””” game itch that you need sometimes. Sometime you just need a trashy game to spend time with, and this has been that.

Battlefield 6

Been playing this on and off, but it can be hard to find time to devote to this with so much other good stuff out there

Here’s a view of the games I’ve been playing recently.

Battlefield 6

I try to dip into this when I can. While I’m not happy with the state of AAA games, my one exception is the Battlefield series. I’ve been hooked since I played 3 back in 2013 and though I haven’t played all since that released, I’ve tried to dip in when I can. I think 2042 ended up in a cool place when I re-visited it this year, and 6 is legitimately good. Excited to play more.

Ascension Deckbuilding Game

Ascension used to be me and my friend’s go-to game back in College. Now, I’m having a ton of fun playing it digitally. While I want to play with other people, I haven’t really found a group that wants to play it as much as I do. For now, this version of it is enough.

OpenTTD

I’m back on it again. I feel like when I finally got into this game late last year some unholy seal had been breached and my life would never be the same again. Like when you play Minecraft for the first time. I’m high on the scenarios this time - playing a Middle Earth one (very cool) and one based on MA (even cooler) and I’m having a blast.

Dipping into

1. Mars Logisitcs - this is a fun lego-type game that I need to put more time into
2. Anno 1800 - What a beautiful, overwrought thing they created here. I need to simultaneously play Victoria 3 and sip London Fog tea.

Looking ahead

1. EU5…