Games Beaten 2025

Post by **REPO Man** » Fri Sep 12, 2025 9:56 am

There was also an arcade game that I found to be pretty fun. As for the movie, it's free on Youtube.

Fri Sep 12, 2025 4:10 pm

Metroid Fusion is a solid game, but without sequence breaking, it just doesn't come close to Super, Zero, or AM2R.

Fri Sep 12, 2025 4:43 pm

53. Baldur's Gate 3

Almost immediately after Dungeons & Dragons was printed, attempts have been made to encapsulate its experience in digital form. Here we see this attempt reach its latest zenith, and what a doozy it is! Sheer ambition drives every aspect of this game forward, most notably in the portrayal of its characters. The voice acting is superb, the backstories intriguing, their development commendable, and not only can you pet a dog, cat, and owlbear, you can even hug your companions. Combat-wise, its best comparison is (obviously) Divinity Original Sin, but this time there's less focus on elemental damage. While still important, there's also has a staggering amount of options, from spells to potions to special attacks to extra companions to almost anything you can think of.
There are still times you'll lament the limits of video game D&D. For example, you can't warn NPCs there will soon be a fight, or apologize for an honest mistake. And yet, the dialogue options match any other RPG. Don't expect the intellectual panache of Planescape or Disco. But do expect every character arch to be genuinely moving and logically fit the circumstances, no matter how extreme you play your characters.
Occasionally, aiming and moving can seem buggy. Fights can drag on. You'll spend too much time rummaging through barrels. Perhaps you'll feel overwhelmed by all the side missions (despite them all being interesting). There's a lot of game here, and its amazing amount of depth and urgency demands a slow pace. Savior every step, though, as this is legendary stuff. Then play it again with (a) different character and marvel at how well the designers anticipated different playstyles.

9/10

Post by **TheSSNintendo** » Sun Sep 14, 2025 3:12 pm

Wild Arms (PSOne)

Post by **Markies** » Sun Sep 14, 2025 8:31 pm

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)***
28. Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)
29. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GB)
***30. Threads of Fate (PS1)***
31. Metroid Fusion (GBA)
***32. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES)***

I completed Castlevania II: Simon's Quest on the Nintendo Entertainment System this afternoon!

Way back in 2014, I beat Castlevania II just a few days before Halloween. It was the first and only time that I had beaten the game, so since it can be quite confusing, it took me quite a while to beat it. I found out that I got the worst ending because it had taken so long and I had too many deaths. Since then, the game has been sitting on my Beats List and my desire to replay grew each year. With Spooky season drawing near and wanting to finally mark it off my list, I finally decided to sit down and replay Castlevania II. After watching a full playthrough and slowly remembering my own memories from way long ago, I knew the game more and I was finally able to beat the game with the best ending. Dracula is now fully vanquished.

To this day, my favorite NES Castlevania game is the original one. Castlevania III was way too hard for me and the stairs are an absolute bear throughout the game, so I don't have fond memories of that game. Stuck in between the two is Castlevania II, but I think it ends closer to the original compared to Castlevania III. I liked that they tried something different with the game style. I really enjoyed exploring the areas and having an almost Zelda like feel for the game. For one, it made it so much easier and not as punishing especially the platforming. Also, the different items and collecting pieces of Dracula was a very fun touch as well. Add in some of the best music in the series and you have a wonderful package that is just very enjoyable to play.

My two complaints about the game is just echoing what everyone has said about the game. Both times I played through Castlevania II, I was following a guide because those hints made absolutely no sense. I know there is a re-translation out there and it is much better, but I would understand anybody not liking the game if they only played it blind. Finally, those day and night transitions can be really rough. You have to stop and wait for it to happen and it can also happen at the most inopportune times.

Overall, I still really love Castlevania II. I still have fond nostalgia for the original, but I think Castlevania II is a nice diversion and a great game as well. It makes me want to play those Metroidvania Castlevania games even more because of how good the foundation is. Bring a guide and enjoy the experience!

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Tue Sep 16, 2025 3:28 am

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

1~50

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)
84. Final Fantasy IX (PS1) *
85. Pac-Man World (PS1)
86. Super Ghouls'n Ghosts (SFC)
87. Disney's Aladdin (SNES)
88. Mega Man: Wily Wars (MD)
89. The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (SNES)
90. The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey & Minnie (SNES)
91. Mickey to Donald Magical Adventure 3 (SFC)
92. Disney's The Little Mermaid (NES)
93. Little Nemo: The Dream Master (NES)

94. Gunman's Proof (SFC)

I’d heard of this game absolutely ages ago, and nearly actually bought it back then riiiight when I was starting to import games from Japan (and I really wish I had given the price of it then vs. the price of it now <w>;; ). Regardless, it’s always been one somewhere on my list of things to get to. “Link to the Past but cowboys” is a strange but incredibly enticing proposition, and after recently replaying through LTTP, my desire for more 2D Zelda-y goodness was just too great to hold off playing this any longer X3. It took me just around 4 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game without using any guides.

Gunman’s Proof is a deeply silly game with a suitably silly premise. Back in the late 1800’s, two meteors suddenly crashed down to Earth in rural North America. However, in the game’s own words, people were simpler back then, and generally content to just let stuff be unless it was directly a problem XD. Things quickly become a problem though! These meteors in fact carried a great terror, the Demiseed, and it begins to wreak havoc all over Strange Island, its landing place, and ruining the quiet, cowboy-tastic life of the people living there. However, another meteor soon follows, and a young boy goes out to investigate it. He finds two aliens and their spacecraft. These interstellar visitors say their names are Goro and Zero, and they’re Space Sheriffs here on the trail of the vile Demiseed! They want to try and catch him, that is, but they actually can’t exist in Earth’s air for very long without a native host. Wanting to help out however he can, the young boy offers himself as Zero’s host, and that’s where our story begins!

Like a lot of 16-bit action adventure games, the story is fairly heavy at the start but then thins out quite a lot until the very end. Even still, the story had me in stitches, because not only is this a very tongue-in-cheek story in the first place, but despite the cowboy setting, it’s PACKED with tokusatsu jokes XD. From the Space Sheriffs (hearkening to the various Metal Heroes series of the same name) to even the base premise of aliens taking a human host (which is nigh identical to the premise of Ultraman), there were so many great gags throughout this game that I’m honestly glad that I waited this long to play it, since younger me never would’ve been able to appreciate any of it X3

*That said*, being a cowboy setting, it has some predictable issues regarding depictions of indigenous peoples and their culture, and I’m not about to try and defend of that no matter how good the game was at making me laugh. Despite that heavy warning, it’s honestly not even close to the worst game of this era that I’ve seen in appropriating that particular topic. While it’s hardly a way I’d recommend as some progressive manifesto, it’s at least not *that* bad, and I found it pretty ignorable overall. That isn’t to try and excuse any of it, but I do think they end up being relatively unproblematic despite the setting because they’re focusing more on ninja cowboys and tokusatsu jokes than actually trying to replicate a wild west setting in any meaningful way outside of simply having cowboys XD. Overall, there’s just enough character and heart here alongside all the jokes that I enjoyed the writing pretty darn well. It’s ultimately aiming for a pretty specific demographic with its comedy, but if you’re a part of that demographic, then there’s a lot of fun and laughs to be had with this one~.

The gameplay of this game had always been described to me as “Link to the Past but cowboys”, but I’d say that that’s more so with the aesthetics than the gameplay, which I’d say is ultimately closer to something like the original Legend of Zelda in many ways. The game has a singular main town in the overworld and 8 dungeons you’ll need to get through to save the world from the Demiseed. You’ll have little side quests to do to access each new dungeon, and this often involves getting some new item or combo move, but this game lacks anything you’d compare to something like LTTP’s sub-weapons or items. Instead, along with your pistol of infinite ammo and punches of slightly stronger power but more limited range, you’ve got an arsenal of weapon powerups that drop from enemies, and that arsenal will slowly expand as you beat more dungeons and learn about more weapons from the weapon shop guy.

The dungeon design is also very simple. You won’t see anything in the designs of these dungeons as impressive as the gimmick in even the simplest LTTP dungeon. These dungeons are more glorified hallways mazes and most barely even have one thing you could describe as a puzzle. It’s worth checking around them for more treasure (which is just more points), because sometimes you won’t find just points treasure but instead permanent upgrades to your base attacks or new heart containers, but other than that, dungeons are incredibly simple. The boss designs are great fun though. They’re quite well designed and pretty darn challenging too. The bosses are full of character too, and it’s always fun to see what weirdo you’ll be up against next X3

The game has a life system where you’ll just get back up when your health runs out as long as you have lives remaining, but I honestly don’t know what happens if you run out (as I never did). I never actually managed to find a save point either, and I ended up having to beat the game in one sitting as a result XD. I think some people might struggle a fair bit with the difficulty as a result, but the combat is ultimately pretty fun even if it is also very simple. While you can duck under incoming bullets to dodge them as a neat control gimmick, the extra weapons end up being a pretty underwhelming addition to combat. The main weakness of your ammo-using power up weapons is that you have to stand in place while you use them, but you can move and shoot with your normal pistol. Bosses hit *so* hard and are often quite mobile, so ignoring weapon powerups going into boss fights is generally the strategy I found worked best. The whole thing may be quite simple, but it’s also paced well enough that it never outstays its welcome either. Gunman’s Proof ended up being a breezy but challenging adventure that was just what I was looking for at the time, and it’s honestly easily one of the best Zelda clones of the time that I’ve played.

The gameplay may be closer to earlier Zelda games than 16-bit ones, but holy crap are the aesthetics shameless XD. The music is pretty good and not terribly Zelda-y, but this game is astounding in just how much it takes graphically from the Zelda series. The dungeon map screen design is nigh exactly the same. The way the UI showing your items and such pops up from off-screen incredibly similarly. Even the push-able blocks in dungeons are nearly identical and the way you animate up stairs is also hilariously similar to LTTP X3. Even weirder from a modern perspective, the color palette is really washed out, which ends up making it look far more like a GBA game (and therefore like a Minish Cap clone rather than a LTTP clone) as a result. However, comically derivative as they are, they’re still good! Bosses and NPCs have lots of fun and impressive designs, and character animations for cutscenes are great too (especially for the main character’s pantomime talking to people).

Verdict: Recommended. It’s gonna have a hard time giving most proper Zelda games a run for their money, but I think Gunman’s Proof can nonetheless stand tall and proud among 2D Zelda wannabees! It’s challenging but not unfair, it’s signposted very well for the time (with a very good overworld map for navigation), and the story is very funny and entertaining too. If you’re a 2D Zelda fan and don’t mind something on the shorter side, then this is definitely one to check out (even if it’s probably not one you’ll wanna break the bank to pick up physically XP).

----

95. Blaze & Blade: Busters (PS1)

My partner loves watching TV a lot more than I do, but it’s super fun to hop in call and watch old sitcoms with her. I’d been playing a lot of text-heavy RPGs recently, which made it pretty hard to pay any attention to what we were watching. As a result, I was on the lookout for something on the longer side but also simple enough that I could just hack away at it without needing to take reading breaks very often, and that’s where this game enters the picture. I’d only ever heard of these by just catching them out of the corner of my eye at Book Off from time to time, but I’d only ever seen the first game. It was on the more expensive end of my usual game budget (1000 yen), and the first game’s box art pictures always made it look like a strategy RPG. However, upon finding this game, the second one, I realized upon the box’s boasting of “more 4-player action” that this was no strategy game at all but an action RPG! I actually originally intended to pick up the first game instead of this one, as I thought it’d be funnier to pick up the seemingly worse game, but when I finally made it out to Book Off to buy it, this was all they had left XD. It took a lot of searching for guides online (and confirming that this game even had an end-state at all in the first place), but I eventually bested my original expectations and beat this game! It took me around 21.5 hours to do it combining the play times of my first and second characters.

The Blaze & Blade games are action RPGs very light on story. They’re so light on story that they even boast about it on the back of the box, mentioning how you can approach the world at your own pace because there’s no main story to be locked into. Kind of a weird flex, in my experience, but it’s certainly not untrue! XD. This is a sequel to the first game, Blaze & Blade: The Eternal Quest, in that it takes place like 20 years later and there are a few winks and nods to the first game’s characters and villains, but other than that, there’s barely any story at all. Based at a bar, you make an adventuring party of 1~4 people, and there are 8 scenarios that you can tackle as you adventure through the land. After you complete all 8, you’ll just have a new option in the bar for “ending”, where you hop on a ship and go off to a new land and new adventures now that this area’s questing is all finished. The scenarios themselves are centered around simple little stories, with some being a bit more character-/text-heavy than others, but it’s ultimately a very superficial thing that you don’t need to pay much attention to if you don’t want to. They’re entertaining enough for the trope-laden stories that they are, but they’re far from the main appeal of the game by any means.

The main appeal, I’d say, is the gameplay, which is really a “what you see is what you get” sorta thing. BBB sacrifices a lot of potential mechanical depth for the ability to have 4 players at once. With the aid of a multitap, you can adventure with up to 4 people at once, though I admittedly never tried out either the multiplayer or even having AI-controlled members of the party (though I understand the AI ones to hardly be terribly smart allies). My character, Dafuhnee the elf, may’ve completed the quest on her own, but the big aid to having more party members, even simple-minded CPUs, is that you can actually swap between who your lead character is at any time. This means you can have a bit more flexibility against tougher foes and longer dungeons rather than needing to be a jack of all trades that can take anything on by yourself (though that option is remarkably possible, I was delighted to experience).

Character creation is both relatively simple but also very bizarre, and I can’t really say I’ve ever seen another game of the era like it. Like a lot of Japanese RPGs of the time, there’s a lot of inspiration taken from *first* edition Dungeons & Dragons, and you can see it the usual places (like how we have “thief” as a class instead of “rogue”) but unusual places too (like “elf”, “dwarf”, and “fairy” being classes, not races). You can’t customize your character’s appearance, but you can pick one of 8 different ways for them to talk (from arrogant to nearly silent), so they’ll have a little bit more personality during dialogue scenes. A really cool touch that I like a lot is that the game also has specific male and female speaking styles *as an option* regardless of the sex of your character. If you want your big dwarven man to talk like an old woman or your tall gaunt elf lady to talk like a hot-blooded teenage boy, you can do that! It’s a small thing ultimately, but it’s still an aspect of character creation you still only see quite rarely, so I wanted to make sure to praise it here while I could~.

You’ve also got 7 different stats which surprisingly end up nearly all being useful for every class. You’ve got obvious ones like strength just doing physical attack damage, but with caster-only classes functionally not existing with the way this game’s magic system works, everyone being able to clout things on the head really hard is a very valuable skill to have. Outside of that, you’ve got Mind and Agility which do impact defense but also respectively guard against different types of status debuffs (which are VERY dangerous especially doing a solo-run, so neglect them at your own peril). Similarly, you’ve got constitution and intelligence which impact your physical and magic defenses respectively, and with how easily each of those can hurt in this game, that’s two more stats to neglect at your own peril. Even as someone familiar with older versions of D&D and a lot of old RPGs, I’m not very used to anything but newer RPGs making just about every stat valuable for every class instead of making min/max-ing the obvious strategy, so that was another cool touch to get used to with this game.

The actual game itself is a 4-button game. Square is your melee attack, X is jump, triangle is the quick menu, and O is your class-specific skill. The game’s 8 classes’ class-specific skills have a lot of overlap, with most of them either being simply casting spells or using your shield (which actually blocks *all* incoming physical damage from the direction you’re facing). This is one of the many sacrifices for the game being multiplayer. Heck, even that quick menu for useable items and swapping spells is done Secret of Mana-style, as you actually can’t even *use* items in the larger pause menu (though you can mercifully change spells from there, thankfully). You’ll have to change the camera angle a lot as you play to navigate around the various areas you’ll be adventuring through, and I have to imagine that the leader having main camera control can make trolling your buddies really easy in some of the more cramped areas, but it all works together fairly well for a single-player run, at least X3

If I had to give a main complaint with the game, it’d be that there’s a lot of possible gear to find and level ups to get (your stats stop actually raising around level 250!), but your ultimate success is generally determined by the luck of the gear you’ve managed to find. My original fighter character (whom I put about 9 hours of gameplay into) could cut through lots of bosses like butter, but the lack of ever finding useful armor made him a paper tiger whenever he went up against anything with even a little bit of magic damage. My elf had a lot of stat advantages on him in terms of her better mind & agility stats meaning she died to bad status effects a lot less, but her biggest improvement over the fighter was just getting far luckier gear for her class. I also really wish that you went back to the inn at a game over instead of losing all your progress and having to reload your save, but that’s an issue common with so many games of this era that it’s hard to get too upset at it.

At the end of the day, though, if you’re just looking for a simple action game to play alone or with your buddies, I think BBB fits that bill pretty darn well. Granted, I do understand this game to be a meaningful upgrade over its predecessor, but I still can’t blame people for hardly being impressed with the PC version of the first game when it launched in English in 2000, because this is hardly anything to care about compared to something like Diablo 2. On the PlayStation, however, I think this better put together game gives a much better value proposition. If you’re like I was and in the mood for a more general adventure without the frills of a big important story or deep mechanical systems to learn, then this game fits that bill fantastically. I certainly wish it had the option for dualshock control (I actually ended up buying a PS1 arcade stick specifically to play this game with because I was starting to get strain on my hand from hammering that awful PS1 D-pad so much XD), but while it won’t be winning any awards for innovative design anytime soon, it still does a more than satisfactory job of providing fun scenarios and rewarding challenges to overcome without the need to grind forever for rare upgrade items (though you *can* do that if you want to! X3).

Aesthetically, the game is perfectly adequate. The characters and enemies have fairly simple animations (sometimes quite amusingly simple), but their cutesy anime designs are brought to life very entertainingly so with their big polygonal models and bright colors. It even mostly manages to run without slowdown too, which is a big help during the game’s infrequent and not too difficult but certainly existent platforming sections. The music is also perfectly fine. It’s not anything to really write home about, but they’re a lot of songs that are suitably “adventure!”-coded, and they fit the generic fantasy vibe perfectly fine.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This game is simple enough and shallow enough that I think most people are understandably going to have a hard time finding much interest in it in the current year, but be that as it may, I still think it does a perfectly satisfactory job for being a game in this genre on the PS1. This was a game I wasn’t particularly expecting to either enjoy or even beat, and it thankfully proved me very wrong on both counts. I’ll be the first to admit that it regardless still doesn’t have much to offer a prospective player, but I can certainly say that the simplicity and snappiness of the action gameplay here certainly gave me a much more enjoyable time than something like Shining Force Neo earlier in the year (despite that game ostensibly having a lot more to offer over this one). As long as you’re willing to approach the game for what it is rather than judge it for what it isn’t, I think this can be a perfectly fun little action game to lose yourself in for a weekend or two, especially if you’ve got a buddy to go adventuring alongside with~

Post by **PartridgeSenpai** » Wed Sep 17, 2025 3:28 am

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

1~50

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)
84. Final Fantasy IX (PS1) *
85. Pac-Man World (PS1)
86. Super Ghouls'n Ghosts (SFC)
87. Disney's Aladdin (SNES)
88. Mega Man: Wily Wars (MD)
89. The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (SNES)
90. The Great Circus Mystery Starring Mickey & Minnie (SNES)
91. Mickey to Donald Magical Adventure 3 (SFC)
92. Disney's The Little Mermaid (NES)
93. Little Nemo: The Dream Master (NES)
94. Gunman's Proof (SFC)
95. Blaze & Blade: Busters (PS1)

96. Void Stranger (Steam)

The first time I heard about this game, it was my older brother ranting about how much he was loving it over a year ago. I quite like the Adventures of Lolo games, and this being a Lolo-like as well, I decided to throw it on my wishlist on Steam. I probably never would’ve gotten around to getting it, but my lovely partner (who it turns out also loves this game) bought it for me out of the blue a month or two ago, and it’s been on my list to get to ever since. Being in the mood for something a little different after so many action games recently, a brain-bending puzzle game like this was just what the doctor ordered. It overall took me about 7 hours to get the first, normal ending of the game and see the credits playing the English version of the game with my Xbox One controller. (This review is going to get fairly spoilery too, at least up through the parts I played).

The story of Void Stranger is one that I can honestly barely describe the start of without feeling like I’m back-filling far too much. The game opens with a weird shot of the Earth, and then it flashes to a mysterious cloaked figure as she enters a strange square hole in the ground. That’s where our game begins. There’s barely any more story in the actual game unless you choose to watch flashbacks by resting at trees that you’ll periodically find on your quest. We learn that our main character is Lady Grey, and she’s here in The Void trying to find the person most important to her, Princess Lily, who sacrificed herself so that Grey could live. Cutting to the chase, while I found the dialogue writing fairly fun, I found it pretty hard to care about the story for this game.

A lot of aspects of this game feel incredibly smug and full of itself in terms of how engaging they think their gameplay and narrative are simply by the nature of how obtuse they are to experience. I’ll get to how that manifests in the gameplay later, but for the plot, there is SO much hidden behind very unintuitive Fez-like meta puzzles that you’ll be lucky to even find a lot of the greater narrative. What is available to you straightforwardly is even a pain to experience because it’s only after resting at those trees. What I didn’t mention earlier is that every time you rest at a tree, the game crashes to desktop, so you’ve gotta boot the game back up for the cutscene to start, and that’s a massive pain in the butt when you’re trying to stream the game to friends online, lemee tell ya. That’s the kind of trick that’d be fun and clever if done once or twice appropriately, but doing it to view nigh any cutscene in the game makes it feel like the developers just enjoy wasting my time simply because they can.

The overall construction of the story is nothing terribly original or special (I laughed out loud at just how straightforward a particular homage to Berserk is), and a lot of what makes me say that is just how little of it we get. If this were a game that actually lent itself to displaying its story more organically in between periods of gameplay instead of optionally giving you flashbacks of the most important past events, maybe I’d be a bit more forgiving, but as things are, I just can’t help but feel that this is a lot of stuff I’ve seen before and presented in a rather shallow fashion. The little bits of story we do get, by necessity of their scarcity and brevity, *need* to focus on giving us plot details above all else, so there’s precious little time left for giving depth to our small cast or trying to construct larger themes. By the time you get to the end of it all and the game effectively just looks at the camera and says “The theme of the game is devotion!”, it didn’t feel like anything but a cheap twist to me.

As much as I understand that there are more endings beyond what I saw, the rest of the ending and the epilogue felt completely out of nowhere just for the sake of getting you to hop back in and play the hard mode and go for other endings. There’s no explicable reason given to that point of why Grey would make the weirdly pro-life choice to save the up until now totally unknown to anyone fetus inside Lily, but she does, and that’s how it ends. That’s just one more way the game feels so self-satisfied with how clever it is by how they deny you information, and they simply expect you to find things inherently interesting so you’ll keep going regardless of how nonsensical everything is. The actual gameplay is so intensely divorced from any of the larger story beyond arcane lore stuff that I couldn’t help but feel “why was this game even made this way?”. The characters are fun and the dialogue writing is really solid too, and I couldn’t help but feel some other medium (even a visual-novel type adventure game) might’ve benefited the quality with which the story is told quite a bit.

The gameplay itself is rather fun, but it’s also a big victim of that smug kind of game design that plagues the story so much. It’s a Sokoban-type game (or Lolo-like, as I like to call them) where you move around on a grid trying to get to the stairs and complete the level. There are monsters to avoid, blocks to push, and buttons to weigh down, but the big gimmick with Void Stranger is your magic staff you get at the start of the game. With your staff, you can’t attack enemies, but you *can* pick up any block and put it down in an available spot where there’s a hole in the floor. You can only hold one block at a time, though, so exactly how you’ll make it to the exit requires very efficient use of your blocks, because there are a lot of really cleverly conceived puzzles in this game with a lot of engaging gimmicks.

I just wish the game didn’t seem to enjoy denying the player meaningful engagement with these puzzles so much. For some inexplicable reason, this game has decided to merge Sokoban gameplay with Fez-style super cryptic meta-puzzles and Dark Souls-style choice permanence. This game has a ton of puzzles you’ll likely never even realize are there, and if you happen to mess up any of them (whether you realize it or not), it’s nearly impossible to undo that mistake without a full reset of the game. In fact, the UI and general player experience is SO dedicated to diegesis, they don’t even explicitly tell you how to reset the game from the start, because it needs to be done with a game mechanic they only vaguely imply to you most of the way through the game. I’m all for games being experimental with their presentation and UI, but this game making the ability to start again so not obvious that most players will logically think the only recourse they have is to reinstall the game and play from a fresh save file is one I have a very hard time getting behind.

For a deeper example of the way the permanence drove me crazy, this game actually has limited lives in the form of golden locusts you find in the labyrinth. Many levels have a chest you can try and get and opening it will get you another extra life. Running out of extra lives, however, won’t get you a game over. Instead, you’ll simply become one with the Void itself. This doesn’t actually mean much in the immediate sense, but it changes the gameplay in two very important ways. One is that the special crystals hidden in many stages are now gone, meaning that some of the most challenging (and fun) puzzles are now impossible to even try until you restart the game from the beginning (and if you mess up too many times trying to do one, you’ll just lose your chance to attempt it at all until you work your way down to that point again). This ends up making a ton of puzzles really trivial since that optional objective is what provides a lot of the real challenge in this game, and making the player waste SO much time to attempt them again is a choice I have no explanation for outside of the developers trying to test your “devotion” to actually playing the puzzle game you bought (just like they’re testing your devotion to see the story at all every time they make you close the game and reopen it).

The other way that it changes the game is that it makes it impossible to complete. This game has over 200 stages, and getting to the bottom of the labyrinth while Void denies you the end of the game and sends you back to the start of the labyrinth. You’re un-voided, at least, but now you just need to play all the way back to where you were all over again. The levels between you and where you were are identical to what they were, so there’s no variance in the experience outside of that you know how to beat the puzzles this time around, so it’s much more boring than the first time. This isn’t even like an infamously punishing game like Super Ghouls’n Ghosts, because at least with that game, it’s a challenge of skill to go through the game again once you reach the end the first time, and being an action game, you can optimize your gameplay in the real time gameplay.

Void Stranger’s decision to punish you so viciously with the extra life mechanic is something I really cannot see the reason behind outside of that attempt to link “devotion” to finish the game, to push through that repetitive tedium, to the theme of devotion they tell you the story is about. I have a lot of trouble respecting that creative decision, however. The big first reason is that I have a lot of trouble empathizing with abject wastes of my time. As described earlier, the game isn’t actually any different looping through it again, so this is just the game testing whether your patience or boredom will win out in the end. I’ll admit, my partner was very sweet in telling me about the existence of the meta-puzzles in each section of the labyrinth that hold special items that make the game easier. That made my second time around a lot more fun and interesting, but I never would’ve even known those things were there had I not been told because of how well these darn things are hidden.

The second and far more important reason I cannot agree with the strength of this creative decision is for a very similar reason I disliked In Stars and Time earlier this year. Because the game hides its narrative themes from the player all the way until the end, we’re not privy to why our main character is doing what she’s doing. She has her *own* sources of passion and devotion that she’s dedicating to this quest because she knows who Lily is, has a strong connection with her, and finds her an important person worth saving because of it. We get so little time with Lily (or anyone else) throughout what this game calls a narrative that I would have a very hard time saying that, at least for myself, we get an adequate enough amount of time to build a personal bond with whom we’re trying to save like that (never mind that we don’t even know why Grey is here until we’ve already beaten the game once in the first place, making that unity of character and player goals impossible in the first place for anyone not possessing advanced knowledge of the story). The only “devotion” really possible for a player just trying to see the end of the game the first time is a devotion to see the credits and not let the game’s player-hostile punishment mechanics beat them. There is a fundamental disconnect between the devotion present in the narrative and the devotion we compel the player to feel with our gameplay, and it makes that larger theme even weaker than it already was as a result.

This is a game where there were plenty of times where I was really enjoying the puzzle design, but the game itself seemed to be ceaselessly persistent in dragging down that enjoyment with its constant punishment mechanics. For more than half of my first time going down the labyrinth, this dark cloud of disappointment hung over the experience because I’d lost all my lives and gone Void. I noticed that the fun challenge crystals had stopped appearing, and I (correctly) assumed that going Void was to blame, meaning all of these really easy puzzle rooms were likely (and indeed actually were) more complicated puzzles that had been robbed of their challenge due to the game’s arbitrary punishments. I’m not one to generally want to play a game with a guide constantly by my side in the first place, but that goes even more so for a puzzle game. As a result, I have a very hard time seeing this game’s approach to limited lives as anything but a needlessly punishing, player-hostile decision simply because the devs think their story and puzzles are that valuable that it’s just worth the player’s repeated traveling through lengthy identical content just to have a *chance* at seeing a bit more of it. There is a fundamental failure to make the various aspects of this game’s narrative and mechanics work in a cohesive manner, and I place a lot of the blame for that failure on the developers’ obsession with these player-hostile punishment mechanics.

The aesthetics are kind of a mixed bag for me. First of all, the music is phenomenal. The whole OST is non-stop bangers, and it fits the mood of puzzle solving amazingly. The graphics are also very nice and make a very cool monochrome style, *but* there’s a bit too much dissonance between the game’s various parts for my personal tastes. It’s a really subjective thing, and it’s very well done pixel art by any measure, but the sheer degree to which the highly detailed cutscenes and character art (especially the animated closeups) differ to the “barely better than the original GameBoy” style of the normal gameplay was just too much for me. It only amplified those feelings that the game felt like a clever solution to combine unrelated ideas the developers had for a story and gameplay despite there just not really being much connective tissue at all for the gameplay to actually adequately communicate that story.

Verdict: Not Recommended. I have a good few friends who really loved this game, how it did its gameplay & puzzles and how it told its story, but I also have a good few friends who dropped it after begrudgingly getting to the first ending just like I did. It all comes back to that fundamental failure to build cohesion between the game’s various aspects, from the narrative to the gameplay and how the two relate to one another. The game feels too self-satisfied with the novelty of its design to actually remember to provide an experience that is enjoyable or intuitive to interact with, and unless you happen to find the story totally captivating, I don’t think this game is going to do anything but leave you frustrated and wanting something more. I absolutely don’t fault anyone who fell in love with this game for feeling that way, because there certainly *are* things to enjoy here, but I think the game does its better aspects a grave disservice by making them so purposefully difficult to engage with in the first place, and most players are very reasonably going to feel like their time was unjustifiably disrespected along their journey to the end of the Void.

Post by **Markies** » Wed Sep 17, 2025 10:10 pm

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)***
28. Xenoblade Chronicles (Wii)
29. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GB)
***30. Threads of Fate (PS1)***
31. Metroid Fusion (GBA)
***32. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES)***
***33. Super Baseball Simulator 1,000 (SNES)***

I completed Super Baseball Simulator 1,000 on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System this evening!

The original Baseball Simulator 1,000 was one of my childhood games growing up. My brothers and I used to love playing the NES baseball games and I always gravitated towards that one. Obviously, I loved the super powers of the game, but that just added to a fantastic playing baseball game. So, when Drumble put the game up during one of the Backloggery Marathons, I decided to take it as a Prize. I played through it in 2020, but I never played as the Super Teams. Tonight, I finally decided to fix that problem and play through a short season with the overpowered teams.

There is very little difference between the NES and SNES version. Some teams are changed around, but they didn't drastically add new features. The ability to go faster through the season made the purchase worthwhile. In the NES version, simulating a game between two computer teams took at least 10 minutes. In the SNES version, that was cut down to about 5 seconds. Unfortunately, any new additions to the game brought the NES version down a bit. Besides one stadium, they basically all look the same. I loved playing in Space or hitting the ball into the water in Harbor. The hitting is so much harder compared to the NES version. So many pitches would go past me even though I perfectly swung to hit the ball. Also, the super teams regular powers made hitting a bit more difficult. It's hard to prepare for a pitch when a pitch can throw as slow as 58 or as fast as 118. It's a bit crazy. Thankfully, with the better statistics, the hitting is a lot more even. Some players would hit like Babe Ruth, but at least you would get on base or score runs more frequently. Unlike NES Baseball games which has like 10 or so great ones, SNES baseball games are hard to find outside of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. So, this is a nice diversion and nice to play a SNES baseball game.

Overall, I will always have a fondness for NES Baseball games. The ones that I like, I really like and there are so many that I like. If I had a choice, I'd play the NES version any day of the week. It just feels better. I just wish they would have fixed the sim aspect or made that run a little bit faster. With less features than other games, it makes it hard to go back to for more than a game. It was nice to play an enhanced version of that game, but I think I will always go back to the original.

Post by **MrPopo** » Thu Sep 18, 2025 12:32 am

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

First 50:

51. Galactic Civilizations II - PC
52. Alan Wake 2: The Lake House - PC
53. Rogue Flight - Switch
54. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 - Gamecube
55. System Shock 2 Remastered - PC
56. Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries: Shadow of Kerensky - PC
57. Hollow Knight: Silksong - Switch

Silksong was originally going to be DLC for Hollow Knight. Then the devs kept adding more and more, and eventually decided they should just spin it off as its own game. Many years later it finally came out, instantly destroying every other indie game that launched on the same day due to how anticipated it was. Does it live up to the hype? Well, nothing can, but it comes as close as can be reasonably expected.

The game begins with Hornet, a prominent NPC from the first game, having been captured by a group of mysterious bugs. Midway through whatever journey they've taken her on something triggers her silk powers to bust her out of the cage. Reasoning that they'll just keep pursuing her, she elects to make her way to the top of the nearby citadel that seemed to be her destination, so she can question the big boss about why she was so desired. As you might notice, the game already has far more of a motive for the main character compared to Hollow Knight's "go explore this creepy series of tunnels". Since Hornet is a speaking protagonist, you end up with a more fleshed out story. Also setting this game apart from Hollow Knight is the overall feel. Hollow Knight's world was dying, with a general "after the disaster" feel. Silksong's world has seen better days, but there is still much life in it. It keeps the environments from feeling like a retread.

Mechanically, the game will be extremely familiar to players of the first game, but with their own twists. It's a melee-based Metroidvania with notable knockback to the player character on hits, which is useful when you want to pogo off of enemies (and you absolutely will). You have a mana meter (represented as silk) that recharges as you hit enemies and can be spent to heal or to use special skills. This is the first noticeable difference; healing takes longer and restores three health; it also requires a full bar of meter (before you start expanding it). As you collect the various mobility upgrades you'll encounter the second difference: Hornet is inherently more mobile than the Knight from Hollow Knight. When you have your full kit, you will notice just how smooth movement is as you chain abilities. One completely new feature for Hornet is that you can equip various crests and tools. Crests will change the behavior of your primary attack and your heal and are the general basis of your build. Each crest has a number of slots for equipping tools, which replace badges. The tools come in three types, and the slots are restricted to a given type. One type is for buffs to your exploration capabilities, one is for defensive and utility buffs, and one is for active attacking tools: effectively subweapons. This provides another mechanism for dealing with the enemies you encounter, and finding the right set for your playstyle makes a huge difference.

Now, on the enemy side, you will notice that enemies are overall more aggressive and have a wider range of attack patterns. Here is where the legacy of it originally being DLC really shows itself. The game assumes you are a veteran of the original game, and while that's appropriate for DLC, it stands out more in a stand-alone title. Of particular note are the flying enemies; they are extremely evasive and move erratically. They ended up being the biggest source of enemy damage outside of bosses. The game overall is just tuned to be harder than Hollow Knight, and while you have more tools available to overcome it, the game is aware of it, and the kid gloves come off extremely fast.

One final note is that the game is absolutely massive. I saw someone do some sleuthing using comparative sprites to scale the two world maps against each other, and Silksong is easily 50% larger. Additionally, because Hornet is more of a character, the game has a series of sidequests, some interesting, some banal, which will increase playtime. I ended up spending 3x the playtime in Silksong compared to Hollow Knight. And while there were moments that I saw some disappointing design decisions, overall, it is an extremely fun experience for folks who enjoy hard games. And given the price point the value can't be beat.

Post by **prfsnl_gmr** » Thu Sep 18, 2025 10:49 am

Great review. I’m still in the thick of it, and I LOVE this game. It’s an unbelievable value for $20, and I can’t wait to get home and play it some more.

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