Games Beaten 2025

[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

Ghost Song is a Metroidvania that mostly pulls from the Metroid end of the spectrum, with a touch of Souls influence in the currency being used for items and leveling and you dropping it on death in a recoverable spot. It's also a game that does a lot wrong at the same time it does some stuff right.

The game begins with a power suit called the Deadsuit waking up on an alien planet. There is apparently some sort of inhabitant of this suit, and she begins to explore. Before long she meets a human whose ship crashed and stranded him and his partners on this planet. The Deadsuit decides to help him by finding the five components needed to repair the ship and shut down the static field that caused it to crash in the first place.

Now, I'll start with what I think the game does right. The game has a marvelous atmosphere, and it really recaptures those feelings of playing the original Metroid when you're a young child and creeped out by the environment. There are various moments where you aren't sure if you're supposed to be in an area yet, and the sound design really ups the nervousness and feeling of isolation. The graphics are also quite well done, though occasionally a decorative foreground element will obscure a platform you can jump on.

But with that goodwill out of the way, let's talk all the game's problems. Being Metroid-inspired, your primary attack is a ranged arm cannon. The game supports free aiming with the analog stick if you hold a button to hold your ground (a la Metroid Prime), but this never feels quite right. The aim is a bit loosey goosey, while aerial enemies have very erratic patterns. Super Metroid only allows eight way aiming and has flying enemies on nice, predictable paths so they aren't too frustrating to attack. Here, you're going to miss the flying enemies time and time again. The game has a series of sub weapons you can find and toggle between, and they make use of a slowly regenerating resource. And I do mean slowly regenerating; you can drop the bar in eight shots but it takes what feels like 20 seconds to refill. And taking damage appears to pause the refill. Finally, you have a series of melee weapons available, with different damages and ranges. Most of them aren't worth using, as there is no enemy hitstun or knockback with melee, so enemies tend to just body you when you try to melee them. The one exception I found was a spinning disk you throw; this also happened to deal damage extremely fast, so it was the best for multiple reasons.

But the really frustrating part about the combat is the overheat system. Whenever you fire your primary or secondary weapons you build heat. When the heat caps out your fire rate is cut in half. The one benefit is that your melee weapon now does significant extra damage, but as I mentioned before melee is usually a fool's errand. The game is trying to go for some sort of risk/reward system, but the gameplay just doesn't quite allow it properly due to how things control. Similarly, your primary weapon does increased damage the closer you get to enemies, and extra damage hitting a weakpoint (such as a head on a humanoid enemy). But the aiming system makes it hard to hit weakpoints reliably, and getting close tends to get you bodied. And finally, every enemy is shockingly spongey. As in, overheat just killing one enemy spongey (to say nothing of bosses). It makes the combat a real slog. Not helping things is there are no health drops in the game; occasionally there are preplaced minor health restores and you find a series of one shot heals that refill at save points.

The map design is frankly not too great. It's definitely on the open end of things, but it serves to show why modern Metroidvanias are designed to funnel you where to go without feeling linear. You'll encounter lots of temporary dead ends after traversing several rooms, whereas Super Metroid would instead have a block right on the path and have you go another way immediately, so you know this a place to revisit without wasting your time. Compounding the issue is the very low number of fast travel points. Now, Super Metroid didn't have fast travel points, but it also was designed such that you were always going through something useful as you traversed. Here it's a lot of backtracking that feels padded. And that padding really sticks out when you discover that every time you collect a ship part you have to take it back to the ship (you can't collect a second while carrying one) and cannot use the fast travel points. It's as if you had to go to the Golden Four statue in Super Metroid after each boss, with the boss rooms being locked until you do. That said, the first runback ended up being the longest, with subsequent ones being much shorter, both due to you getting better mobility abilities and just having a shorter physical distance.

There's lots of little jank as well. It's a 2D game made on Unity, and there's some signs of the inexperience doing 2D on a 3D engine. Some small platforms are surprisingly slippery, without any sort of edge gravity. Sometimes if you're next to a wall and jump to get over it you'll find yourself bonking on the lip because it had a slight artistic curve. And most hilariously in my playthrough, after dying to the final boss and going to refight him I found the fight start trigger didn't take effect and the boss arena didn't lock. I was able to just walk past him when he was still a background object and trigger the end game cutscene.

Overall, I found the game to be a slog to get through and overall a disappointment. I can't claim the ideas are bad, but the execution definitely falls flat. I'd give this one a pass.

[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

Citizen Sleeper 2 is the follow up to the indie RPG from 2022 that provides a new story, an iteration on the mechanics, and a proper ending. It once again follows a Sleeper on the run from pursuers, though this time it's a criminal syndicate, rather than a corporate overlord.

The game begins with the Sleeper waking up midway through a process to remove their dependence on the drug Stabilizer. The dependence was successfully removed, but because the process was interrupted their memory is gone. And the reason they were woken up is the crime boss who had them in servitude has caught up with them. You and your partner hijack a ship and escape into the wider asteroid belt, trying to avoid the crime boss and handle the complications from the interrupted process.

Like the first game, the base mechanic is that at the beginning of a day you roll up to five d6s and store the results, which can then be used for skill tests in various areas. A 6 is an auto success, with every lower number having some percentage of positive, neutral, or negative result. There are five skills, and each class learns four of them, with the ability to rank them up enough to get up to a +2 bonus to your die number (and consequently better possible results). This game removes the feat system of the first in favor of a new push system that can be ranked up, more on that in a bit. Now that you have access to a space ship you're no longer restricted to a single station, but travelling requires a resource. Some quests will require you to travel from station to station, and some will be locked off by you needing to get a key item to navigate debris. The addition of the ship also introduces a new mechanic: contracts, which act like dungeons.

Contracts is where the replacement for condition comes in. In the first game you had a slowly degrading condition that would slowly eat up your dice. In this game we have stress. Stress builds on certain failures, as well as when you activate the push mechanic. At various points on the stress meter you will start causing damage to your dice when they are rolled. Initially, it's if a 1 is rolled the die takes a damage (all dice have 3 health). At higher stress, more die rolls will take damage. When a die loses all health you lose it until repaired, which can't be done during a contract. Contracts involve you needing to accomplish several goals in a row utilizing different skills. You can pass a day to regenerate your dice, but this uses up a supply consumable; if you lack one you instead gain a point of stress. You also can bring two crew members, who bring two dice a day and either are proficient in two skills (no bonus) or skilled in one skill (+1 to the die). They have their own stress meters, and when those stress meters are filled you lose them for the rest of the contract. Some contracts also have a doom meter, where failure results (and sometimes just every day) will tick a meter up to a contract failure point. You'll want to bring crew who can make up for weaknesses in your skill layout, as every contract tends to involve almost every skill at some point.

Citizen Sleeper 2's plot is definitely more traditional of an RPG narrative; there's a primary plot and a bunch of side quests, rather than the first game's just series of sidequests with various points that you could pull the brake and trigger an ending. Citizen Sleeper 2 has a definite ending after you resolve your primary problems, and it even includes some aftermath sidequests to resolve some of the lingering fallout of solving the main quest. As a result, I found the whole thing a bit more satisfying than the original. My understanding is this is the last entry in the series; the dev is moving to turning it into a tabletop RPG system, which is unsurprising given how much the game plays as a tabletop RPG session.

[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

Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is a throwback platformer that harkens back to the 16-bit era and games like Hagane. It's got a lot of little touches that evoke the era, like the slight stiffness of the controls (but never to the point of controlling badly), the slightly too big player sprite, and the text boxes having awkward timing and dropping duplicate consonant misspellings to fit in the allotted space of the original Japanese version of a game. It's even got a couple of Mode 7-esque motorcycle sequences.

You are Moonrider, one of eight robotic guardians who were commissioned by the council that runs the city/world (the game is vague on that point). You apparently rebelled against needing to kill civilians, and while undergoing reprogramming you bust out and seek revenge. You proceed through a Mega Man-esque set of stages that you can choose in any order and upon defeating the boss you gain their weapon.

Moonrider has a basic attack with a three hit combo, a dash that goes into an attack with big damage, a wall jump, and starts with a spear subweapon. Subweapon energy is shared across all weapons, with different ones using different amounts. Heatlh and energy pickups are at fixed points in the stage, rather than from enemies. However, hidden in the stages are various enhancement chips, of which you can have two equipped at any time. While a couple are joke items (turns on one hit kills for you, lets you change your color palette), the majority improve your abilities, such as giving a double jump or letting you regenerate health from killing enemies. It certainly behooves you to find them to make things easier on yourself. Stages are divided into two parts, with a full heal after the first part. Each stage has one or more minibosses and ends with a fight against an enemy guardian. These guardians have two phases, with the transition giving them a period of invulnerability. This setup is familiar to fans of any recent platformer that was made after Azure Striker Gunvolt came out.

Now, one thing worth pointing out is that compared to the games it takes inspiration from, this game actually has a good difficulty curve. Enemy bosses are not overly health spongey; they lack i-frames and a good selection of subweapon can let you take them down very quickly, even skipping their second phase transition if they're in mid attack when you do some big damage. At the same time, if you don't take them seriously they can deal damage to you faster than you deal it to them. There was only one sub boss where I felt the mechanics just kind of sucked if you didn't know a specific way to handle it (and it requires you to have done a particular stage before it to get the necessary subweapon). The game is fairly short, but as a result it isn't overly frustrating. If you like those sorts of retro platformers I'd add this to the list.

[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)***



I completed Dead or Alive on the Playstation 1 this afternoon!

I was first introduced to the Dead or Alive series from Dead or Alive 2 on the PS2 through my friend and his brother. I have fond memories of doing random 5 Vs. 5 Team Battles. Eventually, my friend would soundly destroy me, one time winning 12 Team Battles in a row, but I still enjoyed my time playing through it. After getting a copy of the PS2 game and playing through it, I was naturally interested in exploring more of the series. So, I found and played through a copy of the first Dead or Alive game. This was way back in 2014, but I remember enjoying the experience. I played through the game with each character, but I had so much more to unlock. Well, in 2025, the Backloggery Roulette decided now would be the time for me to unlock everything and I finally finished doing all that today.

It is easy for Dead or Alive to be dismissed by the buxom ladies, but the combat system has this amazing flow in it. With an easy to do counter system, you can't go all out attacking or you will lose quite easily. But, you also can't counter all the time or people can easily throw you. So, there is this wonderful dance that you do with the human or AI opponent that turns into many games of Paper-Rock-Scissors. It is more refined and better implemented in the later versions, but it does still exist in the first one. Add on top the different characters and it is a great fighting game.

However, I must have been playing on Easy when I played through the game the first time. To unlock all costumes, you have to play through on Medium and that became one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in recent memory. When you know the system from all angels, but it still takes almost 40 tries to beat the game then you feel like it is cheating. I would throw one counter and the AI would throw me. I would receive combos or throws that would do between 50 & 75% of my health. It felt like the only time I would win is when the AI allowed it to happen. It was brutal, painful as it hurt my thumbs and hard to get the desire to play through it.

Overall, I really began to dislike my experience with Dead or Alive by the end. I think the game has a good foundation and still fun to play. However, my recommendation is to only dip your toe into the game. If you want to collect everything, then your opinion of the game, like mine, would change dramatically to the negative. Just play it for fun.

[marurun]

Dead or Alive is a very interesting 3D fighter in that it is very directly inspired by Virtua Fighter, and it's original arcade incarnation was on the Sega Model 2 hardware, same as Virtua Fighter 2. The first home port was also a Saturn port. But later they released an arcade version called Dead or Alive ++ on Sony's ZN-1 arcade platform, which is a souped-up Playstation-based board. The ZN-1 version was paired with a Playstation port of Dead or Alive. While the Model 2 board is more powerful than the Sony ZN-1, the ZN-1 has more special effects (like transparency) and it managed a pretty good 60 FPS fighter with a couple extra characters. The Playstation port was only 30 FPS and in 480i, vs the Saturn's higher-res 60 FPS version. That counter/reversal system definitely makes the game flow much different from VF, however, especially when it comes to CPU difficulty.

[REPO Man]

The only DoA game I have any real experience with is the third one on the original Xbox. Especially as Jann Lee, especially to watch his ending, particularly at the 22 second mark.

[Raging Justice]

The Simpsons Arcade - Japanese version

This is now the only way I will ever play this game going forward. It's so much better than the international versions. It actually doesn't feel like a quarter muncher

In a similar vein, I've beaten a romhack of Ninja Gaiden III that makes it play like the Japanese version and once again, that version of the game is just better balanced and less frustrating than it's US counterpart. I am discovering that a lot of games in the late 80s and 90s were made unnecessarily harder when making the trip overseas. One notorious example is Streets of Rage 3, and Contra Hard Corps is another one. I've even hard that the Japanese NES version of Battletoads is not as infamously difficult as its US counterpart.

Some other great arcade games I finished besides The Simpsons Arcade Japan edition are Cowboys of Moo Mesa and Metamorphic Force, both excellent games. Konami at its absolute peak. Forget trash like X-Men Arcade, these games are where it's at.

Also finished King of Demons on the SNES. Awesome game.

Evil Dead Regeneration I finished on the PS2. It's pretty good and should satisfy Evil Dead fans.

[PartridgeSenpai]

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

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)

This was a game that my lovely partner got for me at the start of the year. Much like the last few games she’s gotten me, this is a favorite of hers that she really thought I’d love too, so I wasted no time in getting right to it. Just to not bury the lead, I definitely didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as she did, but I’m still glad that I played this, as it was a very interesting time. It took me around 23 hours to finish the English version of the game on Steam playing with my Xbone controller.

in Stars and Time is the story of Siffrin, an adventurer at the end of their kingdom saving quest along with their friends Mirabelle, Bonny, Isabeau, and Odile. It’s been a long and difficult road to get to the House where the evil King lives, but they’re here at last, and it’s time to free the land from the King’s time freezing powers! However, our hero meets a problem very shortly into the final dungeon: a giant boulder crushes them and kills them instantly. However, thanks to some mysterious and fortuitous magic, they simply wake up in the field outside town the previous day, exactly as they had been. With these strange and often confounding time rewinding powers in tow, it’s up to Sif (and friends) to save the kingdom! (No matter how many rewinds it takes <w>).

While I certainly don’t hate it, I have a lot of lengthy and complicated feelings about the narrative in this game that are roundly un-positive in nature (so there are gonna be some relatively significant spoilers here, needless to say). A lot of it simply comes down to me not being sold on the idea of a time loop-focused turn-based RPG being not a terribly great idea, but we’ll get to more of that later. The game has some serious peaks and valleys in its design. When it’s good, it’s heckin’ awesome, and there were a good few moments (including the climax) that had me nearly in tears because they were just so touching. However, when it’s bad, it’s *miserable*, and those miserable sections significantly crowd out the excellent sections.

You need to beat the King for the first time before the story really starts getting into anything serious or engaging about the characters, but that’s like 7+ hours into the game (roughly a third of the way in). For the first seven hours, you’ve got nothing but very shallow (and very dialogue-heavy) banter between your party and exposition about the setting to tide you over before we start engaging with any of the larger themes this story is about. While I certainly know some who didn’t find this quite so grindingly dull, that was absolutely not the case for me. I remain thoroughly unconvinced that the start of the narrative needed to be so incredibly long in getting to the actual point of the story, and I think the first leg of the story would’ve been significantly improved by having more foreshadowing of what was to come, or at least a bit less exposition and a bit more intrigue or conflict between our party.

No small amount of my issues around this point revolve around our main character Siffrin. Yes, I very well understand that the whole point of their character is that they’re reserved and have trouble speaking their mind. I also understand the parallels the game is trying to draw between him and the King in how they’re each going about trying to keep the good times of the present from escaping them. What I really do not understand is why we needed to have a story with these kinds of themes told *this* way. Sure, it’s a neat gimmick for the gameplay loop, but, and I repeat myself here purposefully, I remain thoroughly unconvinced that a story exploring these themes needed to take the form of a time looping turn-based RPG.

The narrative is far too slow and Siffrin is simply too reserved a character to carry this story for a length of 20+ hours. Even with all of the insight into their internal monologue, the moments that were meant to be heaviest ended up either feeling a bit too silly or a bit too tactless to ever really have much weight for me. While I would never go as far as to assume that the author just doesn’t have enough experience with this kind of mental illness to properly write about it, I’m fairly comfortable in saying that they certainly need more practice if they’re going to write about it effectively. Sif being *so* reserved means that the character-building moments/breaking points we do get with them very often feel like they’re coming out of nowhere because the shift is so sudden. It makes for a story that’s very difficult to care about because it’s so hard to tell where the emotional core, that thing we’re meant to care about, is actually meant to be.

I absolutely understand that, to a degree, the game is meant to be tedious to go through because it’s trying to get us into Sif’s mental state. They’re going crazy from the time loop’s repetition just like we are. This is the intention, anyhow, as I found this to just not work the way they wanted it to either. Time loops in real life aren’t real. While that doesn’t need to be a deal-breaker, the main thing the time loops do to Sif is push them to the mental breaking point that they’re finally able to communicate with their friends (their found-family) about what’s been bothering them so badly all this time. What’s missing here are any other sources of confrontation between Sif and his friends. Sif has no abrasive parts of their personality to misinterpret one way or the other as to how his friends feel about him.

The only thing that drives a wedge between them is how Sif is the only one stuck with the time loop problem and no one else is ever privy to that information. I certainly sympathize with what an awful time Sif is going through, but it is lost to me how I’m meant to sympathize with being under an affliction so distant from any possible human reality. Sif has a lesson to learn about his behavior, sure, but the interpersonal conflicts that come from that are borne entirely by the contrivance of the narrative rather than anything we, the audience, can relate to. To paraphrase their own words, they’re sick of being stuck with what are action-repeating dolls that look like their friends rather than the friends they spent this entire adventure with. That’s all well and good, but we, the audience, *only* know the friends from this time loop.

The only tedium we’re experiencing is having to repeat the same boring dungeon crawl and simple random encounters over and over again. We don’t have any relationship that’s been stolen from us because the whole conceit of the game is that we’re only here for the time loop. I really did grow to love the characters in this story, but more than anything I just wished they were in a better told narrative. If we wanted to explore the themes of Siffrin (and the others) being unable to communicate their feelings properly (due to various reasons I won’t waste any more ink detailing here), I fail to understand how just showing us the entirety of their adventure in a traditional, linear story would’ve not been a better way to show that. It really feels like the main creative forces behind this game were so in love with the idea of a time loop story that they never really considered the actual practical constraints that that puts upon the storytelling, and the whole product suffers dearly for it.

I really, really wanted to enjoy the story that iSaT presents, but it just isn’t put together well enough that I could ever get there. It feels like unless you can just project your own experiences with these struggles onto Siffrin and use that to empathize with him, the game really never communicates the main meat of the story well enough to get you to that point properly. I’m very interested to see what this author’s next game will be, as the excellent parts of this story really are something great (and I love the queer representation too, of course), but as is, I have a really hard time recommending you go through this particular story with all of the various narrative issues it has.

And that’s just the narrative! ^^;. Mechanically, this is a turn-based RPG made in RPG Maker, and while it’s aesthetically based on rock-paper-scissors, the actual way that plays out mechanically is just a 1>2>3>1 (like with Pokemon’s grass, fire, and water) three-element weakness triangle system. It’s simple, but it works well enough to get you from point A to point B, and it’s got some clever twists. The boss battles are quite well put together, and the way your cooldowns on your respective abilities between characters function is a very fun and clever way to give the player a collection of spells to use without burdening them with a mana point system of some kind.

While I don’t have any really big issues with the mechanics in a vacuum, the fact of the matter is that this is a time loop turn-based RPG, and much like with the narrative, this begins presenting problems due to the very conceit of our adventure. While I found the mechanics fun and interesting enough for the first run through of the dungeon, they simply do not have the legs to carry a 20+ hour adventure. Needing to run through the same sections of dungeon over and over is tedious in a way that dreadfully outstays its welcome (and not in a way that actually benefits the narrative, as I explained earlier). Sure, there *is* an item you can equip that makes the wandering enemies run away from you rather than towards you, but it’s an entirely optional item. I didn’t even find it until nearly the very end of the game, and I really fail to see any reason why it’s not an unmissable item given to you much earlier.

Frankly, on the whole, I really fail to see why the game needed to be a turn-based RPG at all. There are a small handful of equippable weapons and armors to find, but they’re rarely anything but side-grades, and they’re so few in number that they could easily just not exist at all and the game would be no worse for it outside of just having a few less bits of side content. Same goes for the equippable “memories” that doing certain main or side quests can give you. It’s a neat idea, but it really doesn’t justify how bad everything else is. Sif keeps their memories, so they don’t lose stats between time loops, but your party *do* lose stats between time loops.
You’ve got to go through the entire final dungeon (which took me about an hour and a half on successive tries) from the start at least once after that first time clearing it, and if you’re unlucky like me, it’ll be more than once more (as I’m still not completely sure why the first time didn’t trigger properly).

Sif may be tough, but bosses are simply too strong to just not level up your party on those successive runs, so you *must* grind against those wandering enemies to get them strong enough no matter how strong Siffrin is. You also can’t replay sections further ahead in time (something you need to do very frequently, especially once we get to the large section of the game where you’re wandering around playing detective for what’s causing the time loops) without spending a currency only gained by fighting random encounters. You get an equippable memory later on that increases the amount of this currency you receive, but again, I ask why even have this burden at all if you’re just going to give the player so many tools to make it slightly less tedious? That is far from the only boost the game gives you to make life less tedious, so I can only conclude that the developers knew very well just how tedious this all was, so why even have it here at all if it does so little?

Even if the game had no combat at all, going all over the final dungeon and town would be a huge scavenger hunt-ing pain in the game’s second half, so it’s not like removing the combat would make the game un-tedious if that tedium was as intentional for the sake of the narrative as it seems. I’m very strongly of the opinion that iSaT would’ve been a much stronger experience had they just made it an adventure game with no combat at all (beyond maybe a few story encounters that are little more than glorified cutscenes). As poorly engaging and plodding as I found the narrative to be, a huge factor in just how bad that was is just how badly the mechanics double-down on the tedium of the play experience.

I wasn’t sold on the idea of a time loop-based turn-based RPG when Radiant Historia did it 15 years ago, and I’m certainly not sold on it now. Sure, having no combat sure would’ve made the game shorter, but frankly I think this story could’ve well done with being like 10+ hours shorter, because it would’ve made the pacing and impact of the narrative far stronger. Should this team make another turn-based RPG, I seriously hope that they better consider how their mechanics and narrative work in tandem with one another, because the failure to do so here really seriously harms the experience.

Aesthetically, at least, in Stars and Time is pretty much just straightforwardly excellent in a way I cannot criticize. Character designs are super distinct and interesting, and the loads of different portraits used for their faces brings that to life excellently. Monster designs are cool (even if the game struggles with enemy variety), and the environmental designs do a lot despite being so simple. While a game entirely in monochrome may sound like it’d struggle to have a strong art style, in Stars and Time handily disproves that, and the music is pretty darn good too~.

Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. As much as I’ve complained about this game in great detail, I by no means hate it entirely or anything like that. Did I frequently feel like my time was being disrespected in a way I found contemptuous? Yeah, it’s hard to deny that I did indeed feel that way. However, this game’s strong points are still *so* strong that I think it’s worth checking it out regardless. Even beyond how I feel, the number of friends/partners whom I’ve talked to at this length about the game who had a response amounting to “yeah, I really can’t disagree with any of your issues with the game. I just didn’t dislike my time with it as much as you seem to” makes me that much more confident that my level of disdain for this kind of game design is far from universal. Even if I think that iSaT is a *very* flawed experience, it’s still one with some very brightly shining spots of brilliance that people seem to really love, and you very well might do as well.

----

10. Tetris Battle Gaiden (SFC)

I’m not particularly into competitive games, and I’m certainly not very into competitive puzzle games. However, watching some oooold Giant Bomb videos where they played this together just made it look so interesting and fun that I just had to try it out myself. It was a little more annoying to find than I would’ve liked it to be, but once I got a way to play it, I was off to the races. I ended up playing through the story mode twice, once on easy with the Ninja, and then on normal with the Shaman. I actually didn’t even realize the game defaulted to easy mode until I got to the end of the credits and saw “try normal mode!” presented to me XD. My two playthroughs took me 1 and 3 hours respectively, but frankly normal mode was so hard that I don’t dare try hard mode (let alone the even more difficult expert mode <w>;; ).

Tetris Battle Gaiden *does* have a narrative of sorts to its single player mode. You pick one of the game’s eight characters, and you get a little splash screen telling you about why they’re embarking on a quest to face this dragon. However, in order to face the dragon, they’ll need to defeat the other seven rivals looking for it too! It’s a collection of very silly premises, and they fit the silly tone of the game very well (even if a fair few of them like Aladdin or Shaman are hardly politically correct character designs ^^; ).

This is a 16-bit puzzle game, though. Story don’t particularly matter in these, and especially not for a block dropping game like Tetris. Battle Tetris Gaiden, however, is no typical competitive Tetris, and that’s what makes it so fun~. For starters, rather than totally normal tetronimos, every however many pieces (you can change how often in the options menu) you get a piece with a bit of magic in it. Plonking the magic-having piece into your board and clearing it in a line will bank it for use in your magic bar, and each of the eight characters has four different spells they can cast for the increasing amounts of magic (and how much magic you’ll need can also be adjusted in the options menu).

Each character has four completely different spells to the others, however, and while the game may not be the most thoroughly balanced product in the world, there’s a good mix of power between the characters that lead them to be best played in different ways and different ways of aggression. Shaman, for example, my favorite one to play against the AI, has no level 4 spell of his own and simply casts a random other character’s level 4 spell (which is very rarely useful). Instead, the best path forward is confusing your opponent by casting the level 2 spell, which makes their pieces spin uncontrollably, and then go for a killing blow with his level 3 curse spell which makes trash lines come up on the bottom of their board extra fast. Looking for the character that fits your playstyle the best is great fun just like it is in any fighting game, and with spells range from completely copying your opponent’s board to blasting away 3 adjacent vertical lines of your own board with a giant laser, finding the character that fits you the best is all part of the fun here too x3

Those magic spells seem pretty great right? Maybe even overpowered? That’s the beauty of the last clever twist that Battle Gaiden adds to the competitive Tetris formula. Rather than each player having their own respective next piece coming to their board, the two of you *share* a conveyor belt of incoming pieces. Because you’re both drawing from this same pool (and can’t save pieces for emergencies either) where you can see 3 pieces ahead of where you are now, this becomes a game all about multitasking your opponent to death. You’re looking for the best places to put your next piece on your board, the best chance to use your next magic between both boards, and you’re trying to deny your opponent as much magic as possible in the meanwhile. It makes for great, frantic fun that’s a really unmatched experience as far as competitive puzzle games go.

The aesthetics of the game are super fun and charming too. Music isn’t my favorite Tetris music ever, but the various characters all have fun themes which you can pick which one in particular you’d like to have playing all the time via the options menu (which I bring up a lot because it’s really good for a game of this era, puzzle game or no!). Characters are silly and expressive in their animations, and the playing field is always very clear as to what’s going on, so there’s no experimentation or guesswork needed beyond just confirming what each player’s magic powers do.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. It’s a real shame that this game never left Japan back in the day, because it’s easily one of the best Tetris games ever released. Even in the modern days of super fun Puyo Puyo Tetris and scads of other falling block competitive puzzle games, nothing can really compare to just how well put together the easy to learn, tough to master experience of Tetris Battle Gaiden is. If you’re a fan of puzzle games, especially competitive ones, at all, then you’re doing yourself a huge disservice by sleeping on this one!

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11. Super Tetris 3 (SFC)

Wanting some normal Tetris to unwind and destress from the high-octane adrenaline rush of Tetris Battle Gaiden, I ended up picking up this version of Tetris too at the recommendation of a friend. All I really wanted was just some normal Tetris on my Super Famicom, so I was surprised and intrigued by the two other modes, Macialiss and Sparkliss. It’s kinda hard to call a Tetris game that’s primarily single player “beaten”, but Sparkliss does have a 100 stage puzzle mode that I finished, so I figured I may as well call it beaten and write a review for it even if my days of puttering about and spending time with the normal Tetris mode are far from over. It took me about 8 or so hours to complete Sparkliss’s puzzle mode (I managed to do 95 of them myself while looking up the last 5 <w> ), and then I spent another handful of hours messing around with the other two modes.

Even in the very fun puzzle mode, there’s no story to speak of in a Tetris game like this, so I’ll just get straight to the gameplay parts~. First, there’s normal old Tetris. There’s an endless mode along with a “standard” mode of a good few dozen stages where you’re fighting to make 25 lines in each level while also not getting doomed by the slowly increasing speed or the slowly increasing amounts of trash at the bottom of the screen. Very similarly, you’ve got Magicaliss, which is much like the normal Tetris mode but with a twist. Each rotation of the tetronimo changes its color between red, green, and blue, and making a complete line of one color removes all pieces of that color. Additionally, you’ll also get neutral black blocks falling too, and they’ll only be made colorful by being adjacent to a matched colorful line (they also might not even be tetronimos!). Magicaliss is a neat idea, but it didn’t super grab me, and it’s easily the mode I played the least of.

The Sparkliss mode that has the puzzles is a very interesting and different experience from the other two modes, however. In Sparkliss, just matching a line of blocks doesn’t actually clear anything. Instead, your pieces will very frequently have bombs in them, and what completing a line actually does is send a circuit through it that’ll detonate any bombs in that line. These explosions are then made even more powerful by any other simultaneously completed lines (even already completed lines of neutral blocks further below) or chains created by explosions. Much like the Rensa mode that some Tetris games (like Tetris Battle Gaiden) have, any blocks above an explosion will fall with gravity, so really whacky and powerful chains are possible if you’re crafty enough.

The normal mode for Sparkliss did my head in a bit too much with just how different it was, but the puzzle mode is what got me super hooked x3. In the puzzle mode, there are 100 stages of preset boards, and you have a certain number of particular pieces to use to completely clear the board by the time you’ve set the last piece. It’s simple enough once you get a handle on the rules, but a lot of these puzzles are truly devious, and there were one or two I don’t think I ever would’ve gotten without looking up no matter how long I attempted them <w>;;. It really scratched my retro puzzle game itch, though, so I had a ton of fun with it! So much fun that I played it for 8 hours straight until I was finished! XD

The aesthetics of the game are nice, but it is just Tetris at the end of the day. The different backgrounds, colors, and songs for each mode are neat, but there’s really only so much you can talk about the visuals for in a Tetris game. The music, at least, may not be my favorite in terms of tracks to Tetris to, but it’s certainly varied enough that I’ll still find myself humming it after a play session x3

Verdict: Recommended. While there’s nothing that’ll blow your socks off like a Tetris Battle Gaiden would, this is still a really cool and clever version of Tetris that’s well worth looking into if you’re a fan of falling block puzzle games. If you’re a big puzzle game fan like me, the Sparkliss mode is loads of fun, but if you’re just looking for something a bit more simple to pass the time, then you can’t go wrong with a solidly built and well varied version of Tetris like this~.

[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)



I beat Rogue Galaxy on the Sony Playstation 2 this evening!

I first learned about Rogue Galaxy from a friend of mine as he played it many years ago. I remember him talking about the game and it got me interested in wanting to play it myself. The game was always in the background, but I never felt the need to jump at it. My PS2 backlog was always insanely high, so I just kept passing it up for other games. In 2023, with my Backlog beaten and wanting to do some game shopping, I went my local retro game store with the same friend and found a copy. Obviously, I couldn't pass it up and after Backlog Roulette said I should play it this here, I finally sat down and played through it all.

Rogue Galaxy is a very long and can be a very difficult Action RPG. It has a Star Wars influence as you are an orphan on a desert planet that eventually saves the entire Galaxy. You meet up with several different characters and traverse many long dungeons. Ironically, my favorite part about the game is outside of the battle. You learn skills by placing items in a FFXII License Grid style and did that ever become addicting fast. Getting rare drops from monsters or chests and unlocking new skills was so satisfying. It made items the most important aspect of the game. Aesthetically, the game has a cell shaded look that is timeless and beautiful. It has not aged a day at all. Along with some lovely music and a lot of fantastic voice work, the game is very appealing to the eyes and ears. The characters are all unique and I love their dialogues together.

I just wish the battle system was as good. You get little armor in the game and nobody heals, so to win, you have to be 100% offensive. You go through items all the time and attacks do a quarter of your health throughout the entire game. This is fine later on, but its hard at the beginning when you are dirt poor and very low on items. So, the trick is to use hit all attacks, but then the game throws in enemies that have different shields or you need to jump and attack them. It can get really annoying after a while.

Overall, despite the battle system, I still really enjoyed Rogue Galaxy. The game reminds me very much of Radiata Stories. They both can be very funny in their dialogue. But, both games have a battle system that is very frustrating while having some of the most amazing parts outside of it. Despite that, I would still recommend Rogue Galaxy, especially if you love PS2 era RPG's!

[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)

I haven't kept up with this thread as well as I should. That's on me. Oh well, got some games to share that I have beaten in the last few weeks.


Call of Cthulhu

This is the 2018 game that is listed on Wikipedia as a "role playing survival horror" title because it is based on the tabletop Call of Cthulhu game. You play an alcoholic (or not) detective who is tasked with traveling to a mysterious island off the coast of New England to investigate what really happened during a fire that maybe killed a wealthy patriarch's beloved artistic daughter. Or not. You know how these crazy Cthulhu cults are. The game does a good job of generally providing you a handful of ways to get through any situation, so there is a lot of replayability, as well as a handful of endings. While there is no New Game + option, you can try different stat loadouts along the way to see how events play out if you had the option of B instead of A, though all roads ultimately lead to the same intersecting points. Apparently one particular run actually gives you the option of all four endings, decided at the end by the player's whim.

There are some clunky stealth sections and one area of gunfights, though most of the game consists of investigation and looking at things you really shouldn't be looking at. Odds are, you'll be insane by the end, which is pretty normal for a Call of Cthulhu game.


100 Asian Cats

This is a short free puzzle game on Steam, one of a series of nearly identical titles. It's an object finding game, where you have to find 100 cats in a drawing. Click the cat, and it colors it in so you no longer have to concern yourself with it. I was having my house reroofed at the time, so I wanted something soothing and simple, and this fit the bill.


Blade Chimera

This is a Metroidvania title from the same developer as Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. I really enjoyed that game, so when I found out this one had been released, I jumped at the chance to pick it up. The story focuses on a scientist who has been woken from a cryogenic slumber and discovered the world overrun by monsters, so he now works as a super soldier for the religious government to take them down. Only things aren't as they appear, a new monster has imprinted itself upon him as a floating sword, and his past is about to catch up with him. It's not exactly high art literature, but the story works well enough and keeps things moving. And it's supported by some absolutely gorgeous spritework and background design, with challenging bosses and a well designed mix of weapons and abilities.

There are a couple of problems, the first being the controls. There are a lot of things going on, and even at the end of the game, I still found I was having to think about which button did what whenever I'd start up the game for a minute before things clicked back into place. Your melee, gun, demon sword, and demon sword abilities are all different buttons and require aiming, and while the game does a decent enough job of feeding them to you in an order where you get used to it, it still took me more time than I like to admit to really feel comfortable. The other problem is that the game lets you teleport almost everywhere you have been immediately, making backtracking almost nonexistent. This is great, but it spoiled me. It spoiled me hard. Still, this caveat aside, I'd recommend this title to anyone who likes Metroidvanias.


Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

And because I was in the mode for more Metroidvanias, and this has spent years languishing on my GOG account, I thought it best to finally get around to it. Yes, I backed this game, and yes, I have already played the first of the Curse of the Moon games and absolutely loved it. So much, in fact, that I opted to wait on playing this for years because I didn't want to taint it with comparisons. I'm glad I did. Unfortunately, Blade Chimera's lack of backtracking did spoil some of this, but...ah well, the backtracking wasn't that bad.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a spiritual successor to Castlevania from Koji Igarashi, the series' producer for a decade who left Konami because Konami is Konami. So he created a modern take on what the likes of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night could be, and it largely works and wears its influence on its sleeve. The story involves alchemists summoning demons, and people who can use demon power from crystals implanted in their body and...you know what, Blade Chimera's story is looking better. But more importantly, you get powers from killing enemies, who can randomly generate a shard that you use for magic spells or status upgrades. And these can be made more powerful by leveling them up and gathering more of the same shard. Then you have your equipment, which can be crafted, bought, or found. And then you have the food items, which give permanent buffs the first time you eat them. And then there's a library, where you can check out stat-boosting books...by the end of this game, you're a total beast, and you can build out your character to focus on the weapon type you want with a wide-ranging array of playstyles depending on what you want. In fact, some of the shards give you shortcuts to enable fast swapping between varied loadouts, so you can easily set yourself up for success depending on whatever part of the castle you're in.

There are some downsides. For one, there is a lot of backtracking. Ritual of the Night doesn't always signpost well, and there is one particular point that is absolutely awful where you have to brute force your way through a bunch of spikes or find the hidden suit of armor that makes you immune to them. I haven't got the armor. I know where it is, but I don't know how to get there, because of a different problem I have with the game: it mixed 2D and 3D. It's not so bad normally, when you have 3D backgrounds giving depth to rooms. But there are certain areas where the section warps around you, and it's represented as a 2D plain on the map. My mind struggles to figure out how any of this is laid out. It just...it's not working for me. The instances are few where it's problematic, but when it is, it really is.

There is also a lot of time spent on quests requiring you know where certain items drop and going back to farm enemies. Sure, farming item drops is a pretty common occurrence in this genre, but it feels like it happens a LOT in Ritual of the Night. But considering all the various systems, I suppose it makes sense to make the player work for the power you know you can get. Because again, you can become absurdly overpowered. And that's a good thing.