Games Beaten 2025

[SyedDanishAnwar]

Final Fantasy VII for me was one of the best games I had ever played. I played this game on my PS in 1998 when I was just 15 years old.
I found the story so much engaging and the gameplay fun that I beat this game dozens of time.

The best part about the game is that it ties the story emotionally narrating the hardships and pain followed by each member of the team. The game taught me about resilience, patience, and sticking to one's goal despite hardships with hope for the good to prevail in the end. This game was a masterpiece that only intellectually inclined gamers (known as nerds by most) enjoy. This is not a cup of tea for the average gamer who plays just for entertainment.

While FFVII Remake and Rebirth were also good games, I didn't find them as much entertaining as the original. I did love the fact that I got to see my favorite gangs in all their 4K glory. Still, I found that the emotional element and the camaraderie that was present in the original was absent in the remakes.

[SyedDanishAnwar]

Games Beaten in 2025 - 1


January (Nothing)

February (Nothing)

March (Nothing)

April (1 Game Beaten)

Sekiro

I found Sekiro one of the most enjoyable games I have ever played. The game has one of the best and most satisfying combat. Also, I found the scenery of medieval Japan in the game a treat to the eyes. I replayed this game three times as I found it so much satisfying and fun.

Recommendation: I highly recommend this game to those who like a bit of challenge in games and can dedicate time to learn the game mechanics. However, if you play just for fun, or don't have time to spend dozens of hours in mastering the game techniques (mostly parry and dodge), then don't torture yourself, and stay away from this game as this is definitely not your 'cup of tea'.

May (Nothing)

June (Nothing)

July (Nothing)

August (Nothing)

At the moment, I am playing Death Stranding Director's Cut on PC. Although, it's a bit bland as there isn't as much excitement as in games like Elden Ring, or Sekiro, I am still playing it as the gameplay is unique and innovative. I am about 40 hours in the game and just completed 2 chapters. The reason it's taking so long is that I just can't deny any request for delivery until fully exhausted and this is taking a lot of time. I'll post my review once I have completed the game, which I think will take a lot of time.

Also, I am playing Expedition 33 on my PS5. This game is a lot more fun as compared to Death Stranding. I am amazed how an indie game dev can come up with such a good game that checks all the marks that I like in a game 0 Gorgeous 3d graphics 0 Good storyline 0 Fun gameplay. I am at the level where the expedition has just started on a disastrous step.

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

1. Tomb Raider II Remastered - PC
2. Tomb Raider III Remastered - PC
3. Blade Chimera - Switch
4. Cyber Shadow - Switch
5. Signalis - Switch
6. Ender Magnolia - Switch
7. SimCity 2000 Special Edition - PC
8. Ghost Song - Switch
9. Citizen Sleeper 2 - Switch
10. Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider - Switch
11. The Last Faith - Switch
12. Anger Foot - PC
13. Avowed - PC
14. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Classic Mode - Switch
15. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Classic II: Dominque's Curse - Switch
16. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II - PS5
17. Pacific Drive - PC
18. Mekkablood: Quarry Assault - PC
19. Tempest Rising - PC
20. Astalon: Tears of the Earth - Switch
21. Voidwrought - Switch
22. Death's Gambit: Afterlife - Switch
23. Mechwarrior 5: Ghost Bear: Flash Storm - PC
24. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - PS5
25. Doom: The Dark Ages - PC
26. Haiku the Robot - Switch
27. Alwa's Awakening - Switch
28. Warhammer 40000: Boltgun: Words of Vengeance - PC
29. Alwa's Legacy - Switch
30. Wizordum - PC
31. Project Warlock II - PC
32. Exophobia - PC
33. Haunted Castle Revisited - Switch
34. Mario Kart World - Switch 2
35. Rebel Transmute - Switch
36. Guns of Fury - Switch
37. Street Fighter Alpha 3 - Dreamcast
38. Street Fighter III 3rd Strike - Dreamcast
39. Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service - Dreamcast
40. Record of Lodoss War - Dreamcast
41. Skald: Against the Black Priory - PC
42. Between the Stars - PC
43. Evoland - Switch
44. Donkey Kong Bananza - Switch 2
45. Evoland 2 - Switch
46. Shadow Labyrinth - Switch
47. Warhammer 40000: Boltgun: Forges of Corruption - PC
48. Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur - PC

Vestiges of Grandeur is the new episode added to Hexen alongside the remaster that Nightdive just put out, as has become tradition with their remasters of id engine games. This episode consists of a single hub with four primary sublevels to explore, but all of them are quite large. The intro map gives you your blue and green weapons, and you'll find the pieces of your ultimate weapon amongst the sublevels. The layout of these levels is closer to base Hexen, rather than Deathkings, but it isn't nearly as obtuse. First, you go through a portion of each one to get an item, then after placing those all in the hub you'll unlock access to your first key. You'll then go back through the sublevels getting keys and key items, criss crossing between them. Your goal is to get four hearts, one from each stage, so you can unlock the final boss level. To unlock the path to these hearts, you will need to fight a Heresiarch. Three of the hearts are guarded by the three character class bosses. The final heart is guarded by a pack of death wyverns. As a result, you will have fought every boss monster in the base game by the time you're done. The final boss level is a bit of a puzzle level; after an initial fight with Korax, he teleports away and you need to open the path to him. You fight through a bunch of enemies and need to figure out the correct switches to hit in each room; hitting the wrong switch spawns more enemies and randomizes the switch in that room. Once you hit them all you can finally take down Korax once and for all.

All in all, it's a solid distillation of the Hexen experience.

[Ack]

1. Growing My Grandpa! (Point-and-Click Adventure)(PC)
2. The Black Masses (Action RPG)(PC)
3. Dead Estate (Action)(PC)
4. Call of Cthulhu (Horror RPG)(PC)
5. 100 Asian Cats (Puzzle)(PC)
6. Blade Chimera (Action)(PC)
7. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Action)(PC)
8. 7 Days to Die (Action)(PC)
9. An Arcade Full of Cats (Puzzle)(PC)
10. Excive A-1000 (FPS)(PC)
11. Only Lead Can Stop Them (FPS)(PC)
12. Home Safety Hotline (Horror)(PC)
13. Viewfinder (Puzzle)(PC)
14. Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered (FPS)(PC)
15. Wanted: Dead (Action)(PC)
16. Crime Scene Cleaner (Action)(PC)
17. Beyond Citadel (FPS)(PC)
18. Turbo Overkill (FPS)(PC)
19. Project Warlock 2 (FPS)(PC)
20. Saints Row: The Third (Action)(PC)
21. Saints Row: The Third - GenkiBowl VII (Action)(PC)
22. Saints Row: The Third - Gangstas in Space (Action)(PC)
23. Saints Row: The Third - The Trouble with Clones (Action)(PC)
24. Ultra Cop (Action)(PC)
25. The Land of Pain (Horror)(PC)
26. HROT (FPS)(PC)
27. RFA Station (FPS)(PC)
28. Ultimate Zombie Defense (Top-Down Shooter)(PC)
29. Nightmare Reaper (FPS)(PC)
30. Abiotic Factor (Survival)(PC)
31. Doom (FPS)(PC)
32. Doom II (FPS)(PC)
33. Master Levels of Doom II (FPS)(PC)
34. Doom: TNT - Evilution (FPS)(PC)
35. Doom: The Plutonia Experiment (FPS)(PC)
36. Doom: No Rest for the Living (FPS)(PC)
37. Doom: Sigil (FPS)(PC)
38. Doom: Sigil II (FPS)(PC)
39. Doom: Legacy of Rust (FPS)(PC)
40. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders (FPS)(PC)

Since Nightdive just did the remaster of Heretic and Hexen, I figured it was a great time to revisit Heretic, Raven Software's fantasy take on Doom that integrated new verticality, an inventory system, and better city level designs than Doom II (yeah, I said it). You play an elf named Corvus, whose people have been declared heretics by the evil Serpent Riders. As your homeland is overrun, you decide the best thing to do is to take a magic wand and go blast the crap out of all manner of demons, wizards, golems, and other creatures, eventually leading you on a crazy quest through a series of magic portals, assassinating one of the Serpent Riders, and eventually assaulting his homeland to crush the last remnants of his empire.

Of course, it is the weakest of the Serpent Riders, but that's ok. Your arsenal ain't exactly the best either. Like, Nightdive actually nerfed the game's shotgun-equivalent, the Ethereal Crossbow, to make you have to use the other weapons. Yeah, it's like that. You have many Doom-inspired equivalents, such as the Dragon Orb standing in for a chain gun, the Phoenix Rod for a rocket launcher, but that Ethereal Crossbow? It's probably gonna end up the workhorse of your arsenal. Even with some of the offensive items powering up your weapons and changing how they function, you're still using the Crossbow. Don't even ask me about the mace that shoots ball bearings. Only Painkiller has done ball bearings right.

Anyway, yes, the item system provides some interesting options, both for the offensive and defensive. As a result, the devs were way less shy at throwing nasty hordes at you and some of their most powerful forces in tight corridors, because you probably have a Mystic Urn to bring yourself back up to full health tucked away in there. Balance becomes a problem, because with the right gear, challenges are trivialized or a hard kick to the gut, it all depends on what you've got in your back pocket. And while some foes are absurdly spongey, some just randomly feel spongey based on unseen damage calculations.

Yet for all this, I love Heretic. Why? Because it lets me turn foes into chicken.

Ok, that's only part of the reason. What I really love about Heretic is the level design, particularly in the first episode. Levels feel like you are battling your way through medieval towns, gothic cathedrals, and dockside arenas. Later episodes lose a lot of this, but by the time you're in episode 5, you're swimming through rapids and taking down fortresses, and it's an absolute dream come true. Yes, it's the Doom formula of grabbing three keys, and always in a particular order, but it's beautiful to look at! Of course I want to put magic bolts through barred openings while running past massive stain glass windows. Doom II's house to house fighting in levels like Downtown just don't hold a candle to the medieval villages of Heretic, because despite being high fantasy, the world is put together in a way that feels lived in and believable. Sure, the game does get away from that for episodes 2, 3, and 4, but episode 3 instead incorporates tile motifs and murals that feel like something between a magnificent temple and a bathhouse, and even that is pretty incredible, because I like shooting the monsters in these locales. Episode 2 is a bit too into "the floor is lava", and episode 4 is...bland, but it's supposed to be a wrecked world anyway; each episode feels thematically right.

But that's all I need for a good time. Your mileage may vary. I've been into Heretic since it first came out in 1994, so make of that what you will.

[Markies]

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2025!
***Denotes Replay For Completion***

1. Muramasa: The Demon Blade (Wii)
2. Mario Party 4 (GCN)
***3. The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (PS2)***
***4. Pokemon Snap (N64)***
***5. Dead Or Alive (PS1)***
6. Rogue Galaxy (PS2)
7. Pokemon Blue (GBC)
8. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
***9. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (NSW)***
***10. Sonic The Hedgehog (GEN)***
***11. The New Tetris (N64)***
12. Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls (GBA)
13. Yoshi (NES)
***14. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)***
15. L.A. Noire - The Complete Edition (PS3)
16. Batman: The Video Game (GBC)
17. Splatoon 2 (NSW)
18. The Punisher (GEN)
***19. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time / Master Quest (GCN)***
***20. ChuChu Rocket! (SDC)***
21. Advance Wars (GBA)
22. Shadow of the Ninja (NES)
23. Tecmo Super Bowl (SNES)
24. Child of Eden (PS3)
***25. Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth Of Destiny (PS2)***
***26. DuckTales: Remastered (WiiU)***
***27. The Bard's Tale (XBOX)***



I completed The Bard's Tale on the Microsoft XBOX this evening!

Back in 2021, I beat the Bard's Tale as it was my second to last game I beat for the XBOX before I beat my Backlog. It wasn't a perfect game, but it was still one that I enjoyed. It had some great comedy and one that I got introduced to by a friend of mine. Well, that friend now has the power to choose a game for me to replay to completion and he chose The Bard's Tale. It was incredibly ironic since it was the next game that I would be playing anyway, so I just decided that now was the best time. There was an ending I hadn't seen along with some sidequests I had missed along with some items. Since the game only took a total of 25 hours, it wasn't too bad to go through again.

I know nothing about the original PC games from back in the 80's. I had heard of them, but that was about it. That was a great starting point as the game had little to do with it. Instead, the game is a top down action RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate or Champions of Norrath. You can summon magical creatures to aid you in battle as you go through dungeons and defeat monsters all in the hope of rescuing a Princess at the top of a tower. It is by the number RPG affair, but almost the entire game is voice acted. The bard is completely voiced, by Cary Elwes and there is a Narrator cracking jokes at the Bard throughout the entire game. Also, there are creatures that come sing a little ditty throughout the game that was probably the best part. They were catchy and the funniest part of the game.

Honestly, the game is mostly good, but there are a few hiccups. The combat is engaging, but it gets a little repetitive in the 25 hours I played the game. There is no target button, so it is easy to miss your attacks and your summons can be idiots at times. Also, there are battles where the enemy would chew me up and then I'd do it again in the same layout and just demolish them, so the RNG was all over the place. I liked the dialogue and the narrator most of the time, but at the end, it became a bit much and the joke cracking at the Bard's expense grew stale as well.

Overall, I still really enjoyed The Bard's Tale. I've never played Baldur's Gate or Champions of Norrath or the 3D Gauntlet games, but this feels like a lesser version of those games. But, the writing and songs were still funny and the gameplay was still fun. So, if any of those games excite you, give the Bard's Tale a whirl as well!

[MrPopo]

Previous Years: 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

1. Tomb Raider II Remastered - PC
2. Tomb Raider III Remastered - PC
3. Blade Chimera - Switch
4. Cyber Shadow - Switch
5. Signalis - Switch
6. Ender Magnolia - Switch
7. SimCity 2000 Special Edition - PC
8. Ghost Song - Switch
9. Citizen Sleeper 2 - Switch
10. Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider - Switch
11. The Last Faith - Switch
12. Anger Foot - PC
13. Avowed - PC
14. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Classic Mode - Switch
15. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: Classic II: Dominque's Curse - Switch
16. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II - PS5
17. Pacific Drive - PC
18. Mekkablood: Quarry Assault - PC
19. Tempest Rising - PC
20. Astalon: Tears of the Earth - Switch
21. Voidwrought - Switch
22. Death's Gambit: Afterlife - Switch
23. Mechwarrior 5: Ghost Bear: Flash Storm - PC
24. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - PS5
25. Doom: The Dark Ages - PC
26. Haiku the Robot - Switch
27. Alwa's Awakening - Switch
28. Warhammer 40000: Boltgun: Words of Vengeance - PC
29. Alwa's Legacy - Switch
30. Wizordum - PC
31. Project Warlock II - PC
32. Exophobia - PC
33. Haunted Castle Revisited - Switch
34. Mario Kart World - Switch 2
35. Rebel Transmute - Switch
36. Guns of Fury - Switch
37. Street Fighter Alpha 3 - Dreamcast
38. Street Fighter III 3rd Strike - Dreamcast
39. Vampire Chronicle for Matching Service - Dreamcast
40. Record of Lodoss War - Dreamcast
41. Skald: Against the Black Priory - PC
42. Between the Stars - PC
43. Evoland - Switch
44. Donkey Kong Bananza - Switch 2
45. Evoland 2 - Switch
46. Shadow Labyrinth - Switch
47. Warhammer 40000: Boltgun: Forges of Corruption - PC
48. Hexen: Vestiges of Grandeur - PC
49. Heretic: Faith Renewed - PC

Faith Renewed is the new campaign episode for the Heretic remaster. It adds a couple new monsters, a new weapon, and the concept of a difficulty curve, which the extra episodes from the original release were unfamiliar with. The first new enemy is a repurposing of an unused mummy sprite; this one shoots non-homing shots and provides another ranged enemy with less health than the existing ones, so they can use them more liberally. The second is an unused troll enemy that is a melee only guy, but he's got the maulataur's charge and can do some serious damage in your face. They also ported the green serpent monsters from Hexen (which D'Sparil starts his fight riding) and made them a heavy enemy, so that's half a new enemy. On the weapon end, there's a new version of the wand that uses more ammo but shoots chain lightning. It gives you a reason to use wand ammo again, which is nice. What's not so nice is the fact that you can only get it in the secret level and you only have two more levels after that (and one is the boss fight which doesn't have a lot of enemies). Still, it's nice to have the option. The levels are a good mix of locales, and they all are really nice to explore and really sell that medieval theme. The secret level is quite nasty, though; it's a wide open slaughter map with waved enemy spawns, so you need to manage your resources (especially those Tombs of Power) and do a lot of good dodging to make it through.

[REPO Man]

Just beat Wario Land 3 for GBC via the GameBoy app on the Switch.

[PartridgeSenpai]

Partridge Senpai's 2025 Beaten Games:
Previously: 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024
* indicates a repeat

1~50

1. Arc Rise Fantasia (Wii)
2. Return of the Obra Dinn (PC)
3. Battlefield: Hardline (PS3)
4. Call of Duty: Black Ops (PS3)
5. Call of Duty: Black Ops II (PS3)
6. Dead Nation (PS3)
7. Kileak, The Blood 2: Reason in Madness (PS1)
8. Paro Wars (PS1)
9. in Stars and Time (Steam)
10. Tetris Battle Gaiden (SFC)
11. Super Tetris 3 (SFC)
12. Battlefield 4 (PS3)
13. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (PS3)
14. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (PS3)
15. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (PS4)
16. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (PS4)
17. Call of Duty: WWII (PS4)
18. Resistance 3 (PS3)
19. Tearaway: Unfolded (PS4)
20. Grow Home (PS4)
21. Grow Up (PS4)
22. Ratchet & Clank (2016) (PS4)
23. Dark Sector (Steam)
24. Nagano Winter Olympics '98 (N64)
25. Multi-Racing Championship (N64)
26. Super Smash Bros. (N64)
27. Puyo Puyo Sun 64 (N64)
28. Shin Nippon Pro Wrestling: Toukon Road - Brave Spirits (N64)
29. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 6 (N64)
30. Let's Smash (N64)
31. Mario Tennis 64 (N64)
32. Ucchannanchan no Honō no Challenger: Denryū Iraira Bō (N64)
33. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 4 (N64)
34. FIFA: Road to the World Cup 98 (N64)
35. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 2000 (N64)
36. Jikkyou Pawafuru Puroyakyuu 5 (N64)
37. Time and Eternity (PS3)
38. Pokemon Red (GB)
39. Dr. Mario 64 (N64)
40. Shining Force Neo (PS2)
41. Chou Kuukan Nighter: King of Pro Baseball (N64)
42. Tales of Destiny 2 (PS2)
43. Star Wars: Episode I - Racer (N64)
44. ChoroQ 64 (N64)
45. F-Zero X (N64)
46. Homefront (PS3)
47. Ape Escape: Pumped & Primed (PS2)
48. F-Zero (SNES)
49. Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (PS2)
50. Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (PS2)

51. Wave Race 64 (N64)
52. Bakushou Jinsei 64: Mezase! Resort-ou (N64)
53. Mother (Famicom)
54. Famista 64 (N64)
55. Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening (PC)
56. Kirby and the Rainbow Curse (Wii U)
57. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)
58. Wario Land: Shake it! (Wii) *
59. Mario Party 8 (Wii) *
60. Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure (Wii)
61. SimCity 2000 (N64)
62. Prototype (PS3)
63. Prototype 2 (PS3)
64. Final Fantasy X (PS2) *
65. Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2)
66. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS2)
67. Crackdown (Xbox 360)
68. Crackdown 2 (Xbox 360)
69. Alan Wake (Xbox 360) *
70. Dead to Rights (Xbox)
71. Medal of Honor (PS3)
72. Mario Kart 8 (Wii U)
73. Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) *
74. Mario Party 9 (Wii) *
75. Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 (PS2)
76. Splashdown (PS2)
77. R4 Ridge Racer Type 4 (PS1)
78. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii) *
79. Star Fox (SNES)
80. Kamen Rider: Battride War (PS3)
81. Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GC) *
82. Final Fantasy VII: International Edition (PS1)

83. Final Fantasy VIII (PS1)

This was a game I’d heard countless horror stories about over the years about just how bad it is to play. I’d heard from a friend or two that they really liked the writing, but the overwhelming word of mouth consensus that I’d heard about was that FFVIII’s gameplay and story were a pile of confused messes that weren’t worth engaging with at all. I had more or less totally written off ever actually getting around to it, but after finishing FF7 a couple weeks ago, something in me made me far too curious about FFVIII to not hop into it right after I’d finished FF7. Much like with FFX-2 earlier in the year, I figured I may as well strike while the iron was hot instead of hoping that I’d at some point in the future manage to want to play this again XD. It ultimately took me around 59 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game on my original PS1. (Just as a heads up, this is another review that I’m going to get pretty firmly into spoiler territory for my discussion of its narrative, as I couldn’t possibly get my feelings about this game across adequately if I didn’t).

Final Fantasy VIII is the story of Squall Leonheart. A student at the military academy Balamb Garden, he’s a dour, serious student who isn’t particularly close to anyone. He’s got his hyperactive friend Zell, his teacher Quistis who can’t help but dote on him as much as she pokes fun at him, and his eternal rival Seifer, but he mostly keeps to himself as he coasts his way through life. However, that changes once he actually graduates and becomes a SeeD (the mercenary force that Balamb Garden is purpose built to train its students to enter). His first assignment as a SeeD sees him joining up with a foreign resistance movement headed by the energetic and optimistic Rinoa Heartilly. Though she couldn’t be more different than Squall in many ways, their meeting will bring them all through a journey of self-discovery and world saving that blew me and my expectations away in more ways than one.

There were a few things I knew about FFVIII that made me very curious about seeing its narrative for myself. The first thing was hearing for years that, although the reputation of the story and Squall in particular were fairly negative in English, a lot of that was down to how the game was localized. I’d heard that the localizers flattened out Squall’s character significantly, so I was very curious to see how I’d feel about him in the game’s original language. The second main factor that made me morbidly curious about this game was that it was the first game that Kazushige Nojima was the sole main writer on for SquareSoft. Nojima is a writer whose body of work has left me with a roundly negative opinion of. He’s the one responsible for so a large amount of the weak connective tissue that plagues FF7’s story, he’s the main writer behind FFX’s thematically tangled and unsatisfying mess of a story, and while he’s also the writer behind the actually well written FFX-2, he’s also reportedly not the main reason that game’s writing isn’t just as much as a mess as FFX’s was (as the game’s actually most important narrative beats were allegedly insisted upon by the rest of the staff to his dismay). In short, while I had a lot of reasons to be curious about this game’s story, the lion’s share of it was all bracing for impact because of just how little faith I had in the guy in the writer’s seat.

Despite all those grim portents, I don’t think I’ve ever been this pleasantly surprised by a story. Especially for a PS1 game (a console generation with a lot of “close but no cigar” narratives, in my experience), Final Fantasy VIII’s writing is, in a word: phenomenal. Between his relationships with his friends and his internal monologues, Squall is brought to life in a way I’d find very impressive for even a PS2 or PS3-era game, let alone one from early 1999. This is a story centered largely around the masks we wear in order to feel comfortable interacting with other people, and Squall’s mask is made of indifference. He pushes people away while focusing on his schooling and then his SeeD missions because focusing entirely on what other people materially expect from him allows him to ignore his own feelings about anything.

Through being eventually put in charge of SeeD itself (so he has to care about other people in a broader sense) and then the relationships he has with his friends and especially Rinoa (where he has to care about people in a genuine personal sense), the transformation he undergoes from one end of the story to the other brought me to tears countless times. We even get larger reasons for why Squall and his friends are like this in the first place. Being a part of the Gardens and the Guardian Force project as a whole, which is to say being brought up in not just a conflict but the cult of the military industrial complex in general from a very young age, has literally robbed them of their memories of childhood leaving only a vague emotional shell in its wake. Being forced to come of age in such an alienating and depersonalizing environment has meant that they need to do a lot of hard work to not just get those relationships back, but to also have the capacity for emotional intimacy in the first place.

I absolutely loved how Squall’s friends as well as Rinoa were used to this effect. Throughout the story, we see all of these examples of how Squall is given responsibility for either a mission or someone else and tries his best to meet their expectations. However, even when he does, he can’t help but be mired in his own insecurities and anxieties because of how firmly these experiences push against this mask of indifference he’s grown so accustomed to. At this point, it's not even appropriate to call it a mask so much as it is to call it who he is as a person. Squall is someone who genuinely doesn’t understand the value of intimacy or understanding with other people.

It’s not that he thinks it’s worthless, but that he genuinely doesn’t understand it. The people around him slowly pushing and prodding him, either on purpose or by chance as they work through their own issues which he’s forced to help with, eventually finally allow Squall to start being honest with his feelings and acting upon them. Finally having something he earnestly wants, and for another person no less, allows him to ultimately grow to the point where, when it’s Rinoa and not him facing an emotional crisis of alienation, he’s able to read the situation and respond accordingly in accordance with her feelings. Squall and Rinoa’s relationship and just how sincere and believable it’s portrayed made me absolutely fall in love with this game, but that’s only one piece of this larger story that made me love it so much.

Squall’s friends and the vignettes we see centered around them slowly let us in to how they really feel and are underneath the performances they put on for others (such as Irvine’s playboy routine or Selphie’s “team cheerleader” persona). However, my favorite parallels between Squall and others are definitely between him and the other characters who share his most general qualities. One of these characters is Seifer, his rival. Where Squall is introspective, insecure, and anxious with his feelings, Seifer is loud, boastful, and self-important. Squall has friends who care about him, and while he may not always enjoy or appreciate their attempts to help him when he’s in trouble, he nevertheless accepts their help, and it’s a huge reason he’s able to mature as a person.

Seifer, on the other hand, refuses to accept the validity or value of the care of others around him. He’s someone so obsessed with winning and being the best, with looking down on others, that it leads him to completely lose the ability to act or think for himself. Even once he’s become a part of someone else’s plot to the point that his closest friends and allies (even a woman who deeply cares for him, Rinoa) are pleading with him to stop, the only response he has is to tell them it’s simply too late for him. Seifer is certainly shown to be a bad, selfish person, but that never makes him unsaveable or irredeemable, and the sincerity with which he is implicitly treated as a victim of the system he was forced to grow up in, someone with value outside of that system and someone worth saving, is a touch quieter than Squall and Rinoa’s relationship but still a vital part of what makes this story so brilliant.

I could go on for ages about things like how the game’s Witches symbolize the arbitrary cruelty of the world and how rarely we actually have any agency in the trauma or power the world inflicts on us, but I’ll wrap up specific analyses by talking about the third point on the triangle that Squall and Seifer occupy: Laguna. Laguna is a soldier in the Witch Wars that took place nearly two decades ago (the conflict that made war orphans out of Squall & Co). He, much like Squall and Seifer, is someone largely concerned with his own issues and pals around with his comrades in arms, but the main thing that sets him apart from those two is how unafraid he is to fail. Even after gaining a bigger appreciation for people and things outside of himself after he falls in love after the war, Laguna’s ability to confidently (even foolishly) look a challenge in the eye and charge into it head-on is repeatedly shown to be the thing that makes him strongest. This is also a game about how you can learn from the past but never change it, but Laguna’s constant pace of both moving forward while not losing sight of what’s really important creates a really cool parallel between him and the other two most important male leads of the story.

I had absolutely zero faith in this story actually coming together in the end. After being blindsided earlier in the year by how badly Final Fantasy X falls apart in its last act, I was constantly on my toes for not “if” but “*when*” FFVIII would completely trip over itself and make me hate everything about it, but that moment miraculously never came. While there are a couple of aspects where the plot takes turns that seem odd at first (the memory loss one in particular seeming to be one that the English localization bungles badly compared to the original game, at least talking to my friends about it), it is a carefully and delicately crafted story that I absolutely fell in love with.

To paraphrase my wife’s thoughts from a few days back, what I care about in a story isn’t so much what is literally happening so much as *why* it’s happening and what the characters in that story feel about it. I was thoroughly convinced that Nojima simply could not write a good story, and I am nothing short of shocked that he had already written something of this caliber before he ever wrote FFX (even if a lot of aspects of this game’s writing shed a lot of light as to why FFX misses the mark so badly). FFVIII does a truly remarkable job at, no matter how odd its story gets, bringing characters to life in a way that makes them feel amazingly real, and I only hope the words that I’ve put down here can help communicate just how deftly that’s accomplished in the original Japanese. While this may not be my new favorite game ever, FFVIII has unquestionably worked its way into my hall of favorite RPGs and is definitely one of my new all-time favorite PS1 games.

And that’s all in spite of how the game plays, because with all the rough stuff I’d heard about the game’s mechanics and writing over the years, the mechanics deserved it far more than the game’s writing ever did. There are a lot of factors that make the actual playing of FFVIII such a mess (which I’ll get into, don’t you worry), but to put it succinctly, the game’s systems simply don’t work together well enough to actually provide a sensible gameplay loop. I don’t think they make the game unplayable or awful by any means, but the overall experience is certainly unintuitive enough that it makes the game far harder to recommend than I’d like it to be (even if it’s mercifully abandoned all of the painfully tedious mini-games that haunt FFVII’s playtime).

FFVIII is a turn-based RPG centered around the Active Time Battle (ATB) system much like the previous several Final Fantasy games were, but this game is far less straightforward than any previous ATB-focused game. For starters, even though you do have a character level that is raised by getting EXP by killing enemies, this level is generally very poorly reflective of your actual power level. Including that EXP level, I’d say the game has about 4 different main power-granting systems. The first of these are those EXP character levels. EXP character levels don’t raise any of your stats other than your max HP. That doesn’t sound like much to care about, but it does matter a lot when you take into account how the game’s difficulty scaling works. In a very uncommon move for an old game and an RPG in general, FFVIII uses the average level of the player’s party to calculate both what random encounters you’ll have in an area as well as general enemy and boss strength. The level, max HP, stats, and spells of enemies and bosses are directly related to how high your character EXP levels are, so it’s very easy to make life VERY difficult for yourself if you don’t realize this correlation (and why would you? It’s not like the game explicitly tells you or anything).

The second and very related major system are the EXP levels of your Guardian Forces (GFs). GFs are pretty much the main mechanic of this game, and it’s the form that summons take in FFVIII. This game functionally has no armor or equipment mechanics outside of a primary weapon for each character that can be upgraded with found (very difficultly found at that) crafting materials in certain shops, but those don’t ultimately matter very much compared to other systems we’ll get to later. For now, I’ll simply finish explaining that GFs have EXP levels just like your main characters do, and just like the main characters, a higher level on your GF just means that they have a higher HP total. This may sound weird for a summon, but when you’re summoning a GF, their HP value actually covers your own. Take too much damage, and you’ll be unable to summon that GF until they’re revived. It’s a neat take on summon magic, even if they generally take too long to summon and their effects aren’t really strong enough to ever really bother with summoning after very long.

The third and fourth systems are also related to GFs, but it’s not related at all to their EXP levels. The act of equipping a character with a GF is referred to as “junctioning”, and this larger junction system is *the* power affecting mechanic of FFVIII. You can be all the way up at level 99, but if you aren’t junctioning, then you may as well be level 1. Firstly, there’s AP. In addition to EXP, all enemies give AP when defeated (save for bosses who actually *only* give AP when defeated, curiously enough). Very similarly to how FFX-2’s job abilities would eventually be learned, GFs have a variety of skills that they can learn once enough AP is gained, and you can specify which skill you want each one to focus on at any given time. These skills give you a large variety of benefits because of how you can customize each character.

Each character’s abilities, both passive *and* active, can be highly customized based on which GFs they have junctioned. By default, the only command each character has is the basic attack command. If you want them to have any others (even the basic ones like summon, draw magic, use item, or cast spells), then you’ll need to pick your favorite 3 active abilities and assign them when junctioning in the pause menu. The active abilities you have available are dictated by their respectively GFs, and various GFs have special active abilities such as Heal or Darkness which are exclusive to that GF. GFs also have various passive abilities that a character can equip that can do anything from grant percentage stat multipliers to broader, more specific things like turning off random encounters or allowing you to steal from enemies.

That’s a lot to take in all at once (and the game does a fairly rough job of explaining it all, frankly), but you probably noticed a term I’ve not used yet in there. The fourth and most important combat system and the most important part of junctioning is the junctioning of spells, and that is facilitated by drawing magic. FFVIII has no MP or mana system. Instead, spells are acquired like items and can be stacked up to 100 by each character. The final ability that GFs grant is allowing spells to be respectively junctioned to different stats, and *that* is effectively the sole way of actually raising your stats and making yourself stronger. This requires a lot of drawing magic, however, which can be a massive pain. If you find a cool new spell or two on some enemy or boss, that generally is then followed by stalling everything and drawing as much as you can from them, which generally means 100 for each of the 3 characters you have out. Thankfully you never actually need to have more than 1 active party, so you only need 3 character’s worth of magic and fairly divided GFs, but that’s still a lot of effort, especially in the early game.

You can get menu abilities from various GFs which allow you to turn things into other things. Items can be turned into spells, most importantly, and some very easily acquired items can be turned into some extremely nice spells, meaning you can get pretty grossly powerful quite fast if you know what you’re doing. That said, even if the hours you’ll ultimately spend grinding out spells draws are more heavily weighted towards the start of the game than the middle or end, this still leaves us with a few fundamental problems with the game’s design.

You ultimately have very little incentive, damn near none some could argue, to actually kill normal enemies because all raising your level does is raise the power of your enemies rather than make you any better at killing them. It’s not even a question of having to kill enemies to gain AP to unlock new vital GF abilities even if it raises your EXP levels because of an active ability you can unlock very quickly on the first GF you get: Card. This is basically the equivalent of the Morph materia in FFVII, where if you lower an enemy’s HP enough, you can turn them into something. In this case, it’s a card.

Those cards can be used for the in-game card game Triple Triad. I’m not a huge card game fan, so I admittedly never actually tried out Triple Triad, but you don’t have to play it to get the benefits of cards. There’s also a menu ability that that same GF unlocks which allows you to turn cards into respective items, and there are some incredibly powerful spells and crafting materials that can be gotten this way (especially if you’re willing to get really crazy with winning cards off of opponents in Triple Triad). Even still, the main benefit here even for non-card maniacs is that turning enemies into cards grants AP at the end of a battle while getting you no EXP, which is an awfully powerful incentive for a game where raising your level with EXP only really makes the game harder. This was what I did for my run of the game, staying as low level as possible by card-ing as many enemies as I could (my ending average level was like 12), and while it’s a perfectly valid way to play through the game, I’d hesitate to call it the most likely intended gameplay loop by the designers.

The only issue there is that I frankly have no idea what that intended gameplay loop was. It’s eminently possible to make some bosses or rare enemy encounters horrifyingly deadly by leveling up too much. It’s perfectly possible to play the game without doing this, as the incentive for finding higher level monsters would be that they have higher level spells you can steal to then power yourself up (which would be the justification for a high-level run rather than a low-level one like I did), but even still, I’m not sure how the game is exactly meant to guide you towards that conclusion rather than you just stumbling across it on your own.

This is all complicated even further by FFVIII’s approach to FFVII’s limit break system. FFVIII’s core mechanical design is (I would argue) an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to wed FFVI and FFVII’s magecite and materia systems into one larger whole, and that’s most evident with the special attack system that limit breaks now take. Rather than filling up a bar over the course of battle(s) that then unleashes your big powerful limit break attack, they now activate much more like FFVI’s desperation attack system did. When the crisis level of a character is high enough (an invisible number dictated by the relative lowness of their current HP and what status effects they have), they have a chance for their normal attack to be used as one of these special attacks instead. These special attacks are extremely powerful and (generally speaking) only get more so as you go through the game, so they’re a very easy thing to rely on to carry you through tougher encounters.

However, it’s actually extremely trivial to spam *only* special attacks, and it’s far from difficult to stumble on to that solution yourself. You can press triangle to swap between party members who have their turns active, but you can try to swap even when no one else has their turn ready. The chance for a special attack to be possible is gauged every time your character is selected rather than once just as your next turn has come up. This means that as long as you’re willing to risk getting killed by a big boss attack, you can just mash triangle when at low health and reliably spam out as many special attacks as you want. I nearly never played the game like that myself (the risk of death was too high for my nerves <w>;; ), but it’s hard to really blame people for playing this way given how the rest of the game’s systems play out.

Ultimately, the way to play through the game’s fights is either relying a ton on drawing a lot of magic, relying on spamming tons of special attacks, or some combination of the two. They’re both perfectly valid ways of playing through the game, and playing my way of not relying on just spamming special attacks, I still found the boss fights interesting and challenging in a way I enjoyed. Even still, spamming special attacks constantly is a really boring an samey way to play an RPG of this length, and it’s not like drawing magic for 30+ minutes at a time isn’t tedious either. The game’s systems simply don’t compliment one another nearly well enough to actually be anywhere near as enjoyable as they should be. If your EXP levels buffed your main stats even a *bit* and junctioning magic onto them was just a bonus on top of that, I think things would’ve been meaningfully better, but we can theory craft all day about how to make the system better: It still won’t change the rough-as-heck game we still have here to play.

FFVIII is a game I absolutely recommend using a best practices guide (such as the low level strategy I describe here) to play if you’re going to play it yourself. Mind you, that’s not *optimal* play, but simply best practices to get you closest to understanding the systems in a way that allow you to have fun and figure out your own solutions now that you have a much better grip on the gameplay than the game naturally leads you towards. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Plenty of games I like quite a lot (such as FFX-2 or Romancing SaGa 1) are games I’d describe similarly. Obtuse gameplay systems by no means equate to unenjoyable ones, and I ultimately did come to enjoy my time playing FFVIII just as I did with those other games once I’d gotten comfortable with the gameplay loop.

The difference between FFVIII and those other games, however, is that those other games’ respective best practices are mostly just there to get you a good enough understanding of the game’s intended gameplay loop so you can start having fun with it without a bunch of experimentation and failure. FFVIII’s systems are so messy that I can barely imagine what the intended gameplay loop for players to come into was even originally meant to be, and that makes the game that much harder to recommend. Jumping into FFVIII’s systems totally blind is a great way to make the game a lot harder than it needs to be, but it’s also just tedious no matter which way you slice it. While the narrative is undoubtedly one of the best I’ve seen, the gameplay is definitely one of the messiest and least polished, which is all the more disappointing when coming from a development studio as experienced as SquareSoft was at the time.

The presentation, thankfully, is very well befitting to the quality of the narrative and the pedigree of the development studio. In just a little over two years since the last roman numeral Final Fantasy game, SquareSoft have managed something amazing with just what a visual upgrade FFVIII has gotten compared to its predecessor. Characters no longer have any sort of super-deformed or chibi art styles, and they have the normal proportions of people that we’d come to see a lot more of in the next console generation (like in FFX). It’s hardly photo-realism, of course, but the sheer ability of characters to emote with their bodies and expressions compared to earlier games is really impressive alongside the beautifully designed prerendered backgrounds they adventure through. The CGI cutscenes have gotten a really impressive bump too, with animation being only a little bit mechanical but otherwise really nice looking and woven into the normal gameplay as seamlessly as ever. The music is also incredible as always. I’ve heard from some music-loving friends that FFVIII has some of Uematsu’s best music in the franchise, and it’s pretty hard to argue with that (Man With a Machine Gun ftw!).

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Even with all the clunky and boring aspects to the gameplay, I cannot help but love this game to death. It’s one of my favorite games I’ve played all year, and it’s a new one of my favorite narratives in a game. If you’re willing to follow a best practices guide like I’ve outlined here, and especially if you’re okay playing the remaster which does things like increase the amount of magic per draw as well as add a speed up button for battle animations, then this is an absolute must-play if you’re someone who loves depth in their video game narratives. While it certainly won’t be winning any retrospective awards for its gameplay, FFVIII is a game that deserves to be better known for just how fantastically written a game it is given the general standard of the industry when it came out, because this is frankly a bar of quality that most RPGs in the PS2 generation and beyond struggle to reach (at least in the Japanese original), and that’s praise I don’t give lightly.

(spoiler'd only for the sheer length of the review so it takes up less default space on the page ^^; )

[Ack]

1. Growing My Grandpa! (Point-and-Click Adventure)(PC)
2. The Black Masses (Action RPG)(PC)
3. Dead Estate (Action)(PC)
4. Call of Cthulhu (Horror RPG)(PC)
5. 100 Asian Cats (Puzzle)(PC)
6. Blade Chimera (Action)(PC)
7. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Action)(PC)
8. 7 Days to Die (Action)(PC)
9. An Arcade Full of Cats (Puzzle)(PC)
10. Excive A-1000 (FPS)(PC)
11. Only Lead Can Stop Them (FPS)(PC)
12. Home Safety Hotline (Horror)(PC)
13. Viewfinder (Puzzle)(PC)
14. Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered (FPS)(PC)
15. Wanted: Dead (Action)(PC)
16. Crime Scene Cleaner (Action)(PC)
17. Beyond Citadel (FPS)(PC)
18. Turbo Overkill (FPS)(PC)
19. Project Warlock 2 (FPS)(PC)
20. Saints Row: The Third (Action)(PC)
21. Saints Row: The Third - GenkiBowl VII (Action)(PC)
22. Saints Row: The Third - Gangstas in Space (Action)(PC)
23. Saints Row: The Third - The Trouble with Clones (Action)(PC)
24. Ultra Cop (Action)(PC)
25. The Land of Pain (Horror)(PC)
26. HROT (FPS)(PC)
27. RFA Station (FPS)(PC)
28. Ultimate Zombie Defense (Top-Down Shooter)(PC)
29. Nightmare Reaper (FPS)(PC)
30. Abiotic Factor (Survival)(PC)
31. Doom (FPS)(PC)
32. Doom II (FPS)(PC)
33. Master Levels of Doom II (FPS)(PC)
34. Doom: TNT - Evilution (FPS)(PC)
35. Doom: The Plutonia Experiment (FPS)(PC)
36. Doom: No Rest for the Living (FPS)(PC)
37. Doom: Sigil (FPS)(PC)
38. Doom: Sigil II (FPS)(PC)
39. Doom: Legacy of Rust (FPS)(PC)
40. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders (FPS)(PC)
41. Heretic: Faith Renewed (FPS)(PC)

To celebrate the recent remastered version of Heretic, a brand new episode was released alongside it: Faith Renewed. It features one new weapon (only found in the episode's secret level), a handful of old repurposed sprites to create new enemies, and more of the level design I find so good in Heretic.

Once again, you play the heretic elf, Corvus, who is struggling after having taken down one of the three Serpent Riders and is trapped seemingly going from portal to portal, world to world, fighting the Serpent Riders' minions. It's a thankless task. To make Corvus feel better, you have to resort to the one measure you can guarantee works and go on a murderous rampage of classic and new Heretic enemies. No, this is not a commentary on society. But it is a great run through some fascinating and challenging level design.

Faith Renewed understands the importance of steadily ramping up in difficulty. Unlike the original Heretic, which admittedly does go too hard on relying on items, FR builds the challenge, but it also limits the important Bag of Holding item that doubles your max ammo. Many Heretic episodes give this in the first or second level, but I didn't find one in FR until level 4 or 5, meaning ammo management was vital. I may have missed an earlier one in a secret area, though FR also does a great job mixing up types of secrets, so there were a few I never found.

Overall, it makes for a worthy continuation of Heretic. Faith Renewed got the assignment right, providing a good challenge without going into excess and serving as a love letter to the base game it came from. I highly recommend checking it out if you enjoy Heretic and have already played through all of Shadow of the Serpent Riders.

[MrPopo]

Nope, you didn't miss any. The first Bag of Holding is in a secret in level 5.