General RPG Theory: Developer Large Battleship Studios's Games as a Collective Meta-Story

Major spoilers for Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle and Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA in this rant, and I’ll also be speaking with the assumption of knowledge of Quantum Entanglement and A Dragon’s ReQuest, so, y’know, be warned.  You should probably play the games before reading this.  On the other hand, reading this rant might pique your interest in them, and they're tragically deprived of attention and recognition, so hell, if it means the possibility of more people checking Large Battleship Studios's works out, maybe the price of a few spoilers isn't too high.  I'll leave the choice to you, I suppose.

Also, thank you to Saint Bomber for letting me question him about the following observations and theories I've made, and for permission to share this rant that may (or may not; I'm no stranger to my ideas being totally off) be somewhat personal.



Back when I was in high school, my English teacher had my class read J.D. Salinger’s 9 Stories, a collection whose last story (Teddy) incorporates concepts from Hinduism like enlightenment and reincarnation, which, having only just read Hesse’s Siddhartha the previous year, I latched onto with fascination.  We were, of course, eventually tested on our 9 Stories unit, and I remember that I was in the middle of the essay component when a stroke of insight hit me--it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps all of the 9 Stories were also tied to the same Hinduist concepts that Teddy more overtly displayed, and that the collection as a whole actually represented a single soul’s journey across lives to reach the enlightenment that would allow it to escape the cycle of reincarnation, with each life being more self-actualized and closer to true understanding until it finally achieved enlightenment with Teddy.

How valid an interpretation of the collection this may be, I couldn’t say--although my teacher really liked it, and I’ve heard that Teddy was chosen as the end of the collection specifically to balance out the brutal and hopeless A Perfect Day for Bananafish that begins the collection, so there may be something to it.  But what mattered to me was that it was a genuinely marvelous moment in which a new level of understanding and capacity for me clicked into place, and I suddenly comprehended an entirely new level of meaning that stories could hold.  A story could be more than the sum of its parts, could exist on a level beyond a self-contained universe of plot and purpose--it could also be a part of a greater whole of its fellows, a cog in a grander machine.  A tale formed only when stringing smaller stories together by their greatest themes and concepts; a universe that could only come into clarity by the joint light of smaller universes in sequence.

Yes: I had had my eyes opened to the fact that individual narrative entities can transcendently amalgamate, and achieve a Yo Dawg of storytelling.

What’s the point of all this jawing and patting myself on the back for getting a good grade on an essay over 20 years ago, you ask?  Well, to entertain myself, for starters, but more importantly, to establish the concept that sometimes a creators’ works, taken together, can tell their own collaborative story above their confines rather than within them.  And also to establish that I really, really like the idea and am always eager to find examples of a meta-level story of this sort.  And we’ve done all this preamble to establish this, because I think I may have recognized something of this sort in the works to date of Large Battleship Studios.

I’ve yapped about LBS and its titles several times now, but as a quick refresher, Large Battleship Studios is an extremely obscure RPG developer headed up mostly by 1 fellow, who goes by Saint Bomber.  Its games are generally very indulgent, but highly intelligent and emotionally complex RPGs, and while each is very much its own entity, they all share some significant commonalities.  You can depend on an LBS title to be packed with amusing banter and referential humor, and a huge focus on romance, nearly always between women--they’re made for huge yuri fans by a huge yuri fan.  Their lore is intricate and unfolds with the elegance of a well-written mystery, the casts are ferociously well- and constantly-developed, and each narrative masterfully knows when to use comedy to lower your guard for an emotionally killing blow, then use comedy again to help you recover from what it just did to you.

But 1 of the most noteworthy and standout shared traits of the LBS canon is a very significant, recurring theme and examination of trauma.  Lingering trauma from the past, trauma created by the events in-game, PTSD, emotional wounds that still weep, the trauma of loss, of rejection, of suffering, of imprisonment, of despair, of terror; coping mechanisms, those who have found ways to live with the scars in their hearts, those who can’t...the enduring pain that shapes us, and whether we carry it or it carries us, is an ever-present and huge part of Large Battleship Studios titles, perhaps to a greater degree than any other RPG can equal.  These are the stories of a creator who has gone through hurt and carried it with him, and channeled it into art and creation, while observing the similar anguishes of others and incorporating them into his stories, as well.

And that’s interesting, and valuable to analyze and comprehend, with each story that Saint Bomber creates.  As I’ve mentioned each time, I have an enormous fascination with and respect for every RPG that Large Battleship Studios releases, and this relentless exploration of trauma within its casts and stories is a major part of that.  But as I was playing the newest LBS release, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and experiencing the ways that trauma is portrayed through its protagonist Simone and her fellow cast members, the ways in which lasting damage is made evident, explored, and handled in AAAVXA made me look back at how the previous LBS titles approached this major theme, and I realized something:

Saint Bomber’s games don’t just individually tell stories about trauma.  Each one’s approach and use of it also, when all taken together in sequence, represent a progressing path to recovery from it.  The games are not just by themselves about the battle to overcome trauma, they are collectively showing that journey, too.

It starts with Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle.  This RPG represents the first step to healing one’s heart and mind, and that is the realization that one is affected by trauma to begin with, that it has a hold over one.  Duchess Catherine comports herself for much of the game quite lightly, and without seeming to think overmuch on the darker things within her and her past, and while after a point it's an unavoidable conclusion that she's carrying a lot of pain and brokenness, it's something she can't seem to touch yet without it overwhelming her.  To let herself really square up to it reduces her to the helpless child she was while going through her torment.  The game involves a discovery (if only for the player) of this hurt, but it's too raw to directly confront or put names to--it can only be salved, with what joys of love her life can be filled with. Catherine is, in the real world, still trapped and unable to escape from that which is hurting and breaking her.

But the game also contains the earliest hope for someone who is harmed and trapped: that there's at least the possibility that life will be able to be good and fulfilling someday. There is the hope that this situation is something that can one day be in the past, rather than the present (as evidenced by the fact that the entire fulfilling and joyous potential life that the game displays is actually a prophecy Catherine has dreamt for herself).  Before any action to bring resolution can be taken, the first step to healing is to know that there is something to heal from, and to believe that recovery is possible.  With its light but insistently assessing touch at Catherine’s still-tender psyche, and the game’s nature as a promise to herself of what can someday be, Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle represents this first step aptly.

The journey continues with Quantum Entanglement.  A survival-horror in which protagonist Marine and her girlfriend Gabby rely on one another not only to survive, but to hold themselves together and keep going in the face of extreme fear, stress, and horror over the death they’re constantly confronted with along the way, QE is a confrontation of trauma by (re)living it in real time.  As such, it represents an advancement from Catherine’s situation of only being able to very slightly touch the wound in her psyche before recoiling in pain--the terror and revulsion are here, unavoidably acknowledged and struggled with, and thus in QE trauma is defined, which allows one the courage and fortitude to fight it.

Additionally, methods for responding to and handling emotional injury now make their first real appearance in LBS titles.  Marine and Gabby, and ODSA, are a warring dichotomy between facing the trauma for what it is, and defense mechanisms that bury or otherwise avoid it in some way--memory wipes, branching timelines more like the end of a frayed rope than an expanding tree, different and sometimes mentally concurrent selves, these are good analogies for things like repression and compartmentalization. Up to this point in Marine and Gabby's life, the procedures (akin to avoidance strategies) of ODSA have been working, but now the traumatic situation will be avoided no longer, and they have to confront it, accept what it’s doing to them, and fight through it.

As terrible and overwhelming as the disaster that Marine and Gabby must survive is, nothing can be handled and defeated before it is known, and both the mental tools which begin the process of dealing with trauma, and the unavoidable necessity of undergoing that process, make themselves known.  The deep-rooted pain that was recognized in Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is now defined in Quantum Entanglement, and the process to reach the dreamt-of point beyond it has now begun.

The game that follows is A Dragon’s ReQuest.  Although they're painful and she doesn't often, protagonist Hinoki seems far more able to acknowledge the agonizing incidents in her past in more frank and whole detail than Catherine was, and not just understand that they do affect her in the present, but also consciously recognize at least some of how they do so. She represents having progressed, through Quantum Entanglement's frank facing of the darkness and fear, to the point that one can carry the weight of one's damage--even as it still harms!--and still accomplish great things in spite of its hold. Her trauma still colors her ability to see and process the world and other people, like how she almost spontaneously grasped at the straw of Payola perhaps secretly being her mother.  It’s an impulse thought of want and pain that comes to her seemingly out of nowhere in the conversation which shows that her traumas are still influencing her, but ultimately, Hinoki can function in her life, and even function well enough to do great things (in this case, undertake a world-saving RPG quest).  Great a heroine though Marine really is, what she accomplished in Quantum Entanglement was all in reaction to, and triumphing against, the traumatic incident thrust upon her.  And being able to fight back against one’s trauma, and see landmarks of victory in their quest to overcome it, is important.  Hinoki’s achievements and triumphs, on the other hand, are outwards; she works toward and achieves goals unrelated to the burdens of her own pains.  She is living a functional life that, if still colored by her trauma, is not defined or halted by it.

As such, A Dragon’s ReQuest represents a stage in the ongoing voyage of recovery at which one has progressed enough to be able to look at, and contemplate, one’s trauma without having it overtake one, and while it still weighs upon the sufferer in inescapable ways which may, unwanted, make themselves known, it no longer defines all that one is and does.  It’s an important milestone in the journey of healing that ADRQ displays, to be at a point where one knows that one can live a functional life and accomplish goals that exist independent of the scars within one.

Finally, we arrive at Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA.  Although there are moments when they overcome her, Simone not only knows about many of her points of trauma and their triggers, she can openly address them and relay them to others, and speak of trauma as a subject with some knowledge and candor. Simone has accepted that she carries lasting pain, and that that's not going to change, but she's also taking steps to not just live with it, but to move forward with her life in ways that don't need to specifically account for it.  Her living a late adolescence now, for example, is a way of building psychological foundations that she didn't have a chance to do back during that actual period.

If A Dragon’s ReQuest showed us a point in the journey of recovery in which one functions and succeeds in spite of their trauma, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA strides forward still to display a moment at which one is beginning to function and succeed simply on one’s own terms, without the trauma always having its hand upon one’s life.  In ADRQ, Hinoki managed to function and achieve while she carried the weight of her damage on her back, but in AAAVXA, Simone is at a point in which her harm and hurt are forced to walk on their own--still there, sometimes even getting in her way, but the rest of the time forced to merely stand beside or even behind her as she lives her life.  It’s a point in which the effort, time, and work that have gone into the healing process are demonstrable--even if there are still some parts of it that are blackouts for her, Simone knows her trauma in the qualified way that comes with things like research, therapy, social support structures, etc.  The tools and methods she’s using to deal with her pain are not just basic coping mechanisms, they’re ones specifically suited to her.

The journey to healing is not over by the time we reach Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA--it may, in fact, never truly be finished--but this game does show us a healthier, more positive place on that journey in which real progress has been made and one has been armed with tools and knowledge that allow one to meaningfully handle one’s trauma.  The creation of a true and free Alouette in the game is a symbol of a renewal of the self and a real step forward in which the past is finally just that: an element that happened, that will never not be a relevant part of one, but doesn't have to be something that derails the present and future.

It may even, in fact, be that the game is meant at times to look at the person who comes out of a bad experience and rebuilds herself as potentially greater than she could otherwise have been.  Saint Bomber posed a question to me after reading my initial rant on AAAVXA of whether the game was, as I said, a celebration of anime and an exploration of trauma, or whether it might instead be a celebration of trauma and an exploration of anime?  Which of course could just be him yanking my easily distracted chain, but as I'm loathe to disregard any bone he tosses my way about his intentions or thoughts in making these games, I've reflected and come up with multiple instances in AAAVXA in which Simone is better suited to be a heroine and a healer because of her traumatic past than she possibly could have been otherwise.  So while I don't know whether the game as a whole truly represents a celebration of trauma per say, there's definitely a case to be made that AAAVXA is, in addition to a reassuring triumph that there can be a time when the past is truly the past, a dipping of toes into the idea that there can be genuine good that comes of it, and celebrating that fact.

And that’s it, for the moment.  There’s more to come from Large Battleship Studios, but for now, this is the general impression I’ve gotten of a gradual journey of recovery that Saint Bomber’s titles could describe when taken as a collective whole.  I’ll be interested to see what the next title’s overall nature will contribute to this meta-story!

General RPG Lists: Greatest Betrayals

Welcome back, everyone!  I've no doubt that it was a long and stressful year without these charming and sophisticated rants to soak up your free time that they so definitely and completely deserve...but at long last, we are BACK IN BUSINESS!

Uh, sort of.

Okay, so like, as I sort of mentioned in the last rant, while I did manage to build a bit of a backlog cushion during my sabbatical, it wasn't so sizable and my writing output isn't so prolific that I can really maintain the same schedule I've always kept before.  So...we're gonna try doing a rant on every other 8.  Basically, I post a rant on the 8th, then the next one's on the 28th, then the following rant's on the 18th of the next month, then it's the 8th of the month after that, and so on.

We'll see how it goes.  Hopefully this isn't too great a disappointment for my readers (at least, those of you who aren't just fucking AI being trained on my posts without my permission; don't think I didn't notice the huge jump in page views that began right around the same time that started occurring, you amoral tech industry asswipes!).  But if my readership does feel misused, lied to, and deceived by this decision, then good news!  You're totally thematically on-point for today's rant!



Betrayal!  Fiction in all forms is rife with traitors and backstabbers and fair-weather friends, and for that matter, they’re far from unknown in the history and present of the real world, too.  RPGs are predictably no different, and you’ll find pivotal moments of betrayal dotting the landscape of RPG plots like thumbtacks on a conspiracy theorist’s bulletin board.  Party members, love interests, secondary characters, tertiary characters, outright NPCs, dudes you haven’t even seen before, even occasionally an outright established villain that was somehow taken into confidence just long enough to remind one that they shouldn’t be, everyone gets in on the betrayal game sooner or later in the wide and wacky world of RPGs.

So which of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of betrayals that this genre has played host to, were the very best?  That’s what we’re here today to find out!

...Well, no, actually, that sentence was kind of misleading.  This isn’t a collaborative “us” effort.  I’m kinda just gonna tell it to you.  Sorry.

As always for my lists, though, I’ve got some ground rules to lay down first, because no rant is so boring that it can’t be made just a bit duller.  First of all, we’re only counting cases in which good guys (or innocent enough neutral parties) are betrayed; turning against the bad guys to join the heroes doesn’t qualify.  You won’t see the defeated imperial generals of Suikoden 1, or Final Fantasy 6’s Celes here, for example.

Betraying a cause or a memory doesn’t count.  Fallout 4’s Maxson may be an absolute disgrace to everything the Brotherhood of Steel was meant to stand for and a soulless traitor to the great Owen and Sarah Lyons who raised him, but he’s still not gonna be on this list.  Betrayal, in my opinion, is truest when it’s personal.  Though I’d still spit in Maxson’s face in disgust if he were a real guy and within hockin’ range, of course.

A character turning against the protagonist when the player’s made a choice that obviously goes against everything that the character stands for doesn’t count.  If Zevran in Dragon Age 1 has a low approval rating of the Grey Warden, then there’s no trust to be broken when he rejoins the Crows.  Only a fool would be surprised that Wrex would attack Shepard in Mass Effect 3 if the player forced Shepard into making the dumbass decision not to cure the genophage.  It’s only natural that the party would fight back for survival’s sake when you opt to have Ryu join Fou-Lu at the end of Breath of Fire 4, or have Nanashi actually buy into Dagda’s hypocritical bullshit in Shin Megami Tensei 4-2.

Relatedly, we’re not going to count acts of betrayal that are instigated by the player.  This is a list of scripted betrayals as occur within the course of telling a game’s story, and frankly, there’s a lot about choose-your-own-betrayal in RPGs that feels more like perverse shock value than anything of substance.  Siding with Morinth over Samara in Mass Effect 2, mind-controlling Minsc to murder Jaheira in Baldur’s Gate 3, having the Light Prism go back to its abuser in Steven Universe: Save the Light, selling your companions to cannibals as meat in Fallout: New Vegas, selling your companions into slavery in Fallout 2...there’s plenty of fucked-up betrayals you can choose to engage in within RPGs involving player choice, but few have any noteworthy weight beyond their extreme cruelty, in my opinion.

Finally, to count, the betrayal must be something negative.  Which seems like it goes without saying, but there are a good number of cases in RPGs in which what seems like a betrayal was actually something done specifically to help the heroes’ cause.  Specifically and successfully, I should clarify--a betrayal done out of good but misguided intentions that is ultimately harmful does still count.  It’s only cases like the faux-betrayals seen in games like Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, Knights of the Old Republic 2, Wild Arms 2, and Makai Kingdom, ones that are shams performed only to help the good guys, that are disqualified.  Mind you, a well-meaning betrayal has to actually work as intended not to count; selling out the heroes’ cause in an attempt to keep them safe and then gasping in shock as the villain you made a deal with doesn’t follow through does make you eligible for a spot here, albeit less likely to place than a betrayal of genuine malice.

Alright, enough stupid rules and preamble.  Let’s do this: the 15 Greatest Betrayals in RPGs!

NOTE: As with my Greatest Deaths list, the game is listed and the traitor must be highlighted to be seen, to avoid potential spoilers.



15. PATHFINDER: KINGMAKER
Nyrissa tries to euthanize her Hound

Whether or not it’s seen coming, this is a good, basic plot twist betrayal as the quest-giving plant damsel you’ve been helping and, let’s not kid ourselves, probably simping for reveals that she’s been playing you against your adversary this whole time, and it turns out you’re just the most recent sap in a long, long line of dominoes that she’s been setting up and knocking down.  More than its face value, though, this is a good betrayal for the fact that it sets the stage for understanding the truth of Nyrissa and what was stolen from her, and a great one for being an elegant approximation of her own fall at the hands of an unfair higher being, a case of her suffering begetting that of others.  And the fact that you survive this betrayal is the igniting spark of Nyrissa’s potential redemption, as the first instance that shows her it’s possible to overcome such treacheries, as well as, should you choose it, a hopeful first step to restoring her love through your own as you later show her its power to forgive.  Nyrissa’s betrayal’s finest qualities are the long term ways it coalesces in the plot and themes, and forms the basis of redemption and love.


14. SOUTH PARK: THE FRACTURED BUT WHOLE
Cartman does what Cartman always does

Most of the time, a great betrayal relies pretty strongly on being unanticipated to at least a reasonable degree, but when your shining virtue is humor, that necessity flies out the window--I mean, how hard was Seth telegraphing that there was something off about him in Phantasy Star 4?  Hard enough that I’m not even spoiler-redacting that one; it’s just damned funny that Chaz actually fell for fucking Hugh Mann.  So yeah, is it surprising in any capacity at all that Cartman, one of the most selfish, narcissistic, sociopathic, and, most notably, reliably treacherous little assholes ever written, betrays his friends and fellow make-believe heroes?  Not in the slightest; it was only a matter of when his ego would demand it.  But is it still great?

Yup!

Because Cartman actually expects the New Kid and the rest of the friends he’s betraying to buy his bullshit.  Instead of just owning up to his selfish aim to keep himself in the spotlight, Cartman resurrects a gimmick of South Parks’ past, draws a face on his left hand, then “talks” through it as a different personality named Mitch Conner, and he sincerely thinks that no one will see through this deception, acting the whole time like he himself is a separate and innocent entity from the evil mastermind crudely painted onto his hand.  The delusional audacity, the fact that you KNOW some stupid treachery is coming, the earnestness of his performance, it all comes together in the revelation of Cartman (through proxy of Mitch Conner) as a traitor to be one of the funniest, most amusingly and masterfully stupid moments in a game already full to bursting with masterfully stupid humor.


13. SUIKODEN 2
Jowy kills Annabelle

In a game rich with overwhelming emotion and meaning, the scene of Riou, Pilika, and Nanami waiting in vulnerable hope at the entrance to Muse for Jowy to return to them is 1 of the most poignant in Suikoden 2, and the relief and joy at seeing their hope rewarded, in knowing that he made it back from the clutches of the enemy camp, is so powerful that even the player feels it...enough that we may not even think to wonder how Jowy did accomplish his return.  To realize that it was bought with a terrible, treasonous bargain.  When you start to feel that something is wrong with Jowy...when you see him come into Annabelle’s room, and realize what he’s about to do, your heart drops into your stomach, and you race to get Riou and Nanami there in time to stop him, only for it to be too late, and the terrible scene is laid out before their uncomprehending eyes.  Jowy’s betrayal breaks their family apart, pits him against them in a war that he thought he was ending before it could ruin more lives, and sends Nanami and presumably Riou reeling.  Jowy’s betrayal is high-level political-military maneuvering, and yet also so very personal even though the people it emotionally hurts most weren’t even present to witness it, and its gravity earns its spot here.


12. FINAL FANTASY 7
Yuffie steals your materia*

Oh you absolute bitch, GET BACK HERE WITH MY MATERIA!

This is such a unique and iconic RPG betrayal.  On a story level, it’s interesting because it holds almost no emotional weight whatsoever--the party doesn’t especially trust Yuffie and they barely even seem to like her (and honestly, she’d made little particular impression on me, too).  But that’s the thing--this isn’t just a betrayal on the story level.  It’s notable because Yuffie is betraying you, the player.  Like her or hate her, she’s a party member, and while you might expect the occasional backstabber in the main cast to keep the story moving, what you don’t expect is for one of them to, in the process, also rob you of 90% of your gameplay agency in combat, messing up your own forward momentum just as much as it hinders the party’s in-game.

And credit also has to be given for how well it’s done, too.  It’s totally unexpected--while Yuffie’s been sketchy from the start, the actual moment when she makes her move is truly out of the blue, with the scene simply occurring while you happen to be exploring a newly accessible (and totally optional) part of the world map, with no warning whatsoever to prepare you.  The gamer is essentially taken as much by surprise by the betrayal as in-game characters typically are, more than them, in this case!  Furthermore, the actual revelation of just what Yuffie’s done to us is cleverly revealed through a battle with some Shinra flunkies, in which you suddenly realize you don’t have any combat options related to your materia--it’s spelled out afterwards that she’s stolen the party’s materia and hightailed it, but you’ve already discovered her treachery firsthand.  And then there’s the fact that this stops we, the players, in our tracks just as much as it does the games’ heroes, because on both levels, we can’t reasonably continue our journey without the magic crystals that we’ve come to rely on for our power.  Yuffie’s betrayal puts all other plans on hold, as any good betrayal does (just usually within the confines of the plot), and forces us to engage in the long and frustrating Wutai sidequest immediately.

And as a final insult, when Yuffie DOES eventually give the materia back, she completely messes up who’s got what.  All that work you’ve done up until now to customize your party’s loadout, and not only is it removed unceremoniously, but it’s then replaced so sloppily that you’ve got to redo it from the ground up.

So yeah, Yuffie’s act of treachery is a great one, a rare but effective example of a game’s story and character acting in a way that reaches past their own level and affects the player him/herself.  It’s easily the most aggravating sequence in the entire game, and I hate it, and that’s what makes it such a great betrayal.


11. BATEN KAITOS 2
Verus unveils his machinations

Pretending not to be a douchebag for long enough to win the trust of the good guys is a trial for any villain, of course, but some baddies are definitely spending a lot more effort on keeping up their appearances than others.  You can’t say that Tales of Symphonia’s Mithos, for example, grappled with nearly as difficult a task of gaining the heroes’ confidence when he halfheartedly channeled that wishy-washy false smile of a former personality of his for a few hours as, say,  Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5’s Akechi underwent as he spent 2/3rds of a school year pretending to be polite, intelligent, and not a complete narcissistic murderous psychopath.  Some heel-turns took a lot more effort and patience to get to than others, and what a relief it must be for a baddie who’s been playing his good guy part to finally let his silver bishounen hair down and go wild.

And lemme tell you, nobody’s been villain-edging as long and as hard as Verus from Baten Kaitos 2.  This is a megalomaniac who’s not only been convincingly playing the part of an upstanding, conscientious, and dignified statesman for years in-universe and something like 30 hours in-game, he’s also managed to saddle himself with the added affectation of a cane and a limp, AND keeping up the pretense that he has an otherworldly spirit of good guiding his actions that he hears and communicates with.  This guy, who for context has this for a Resting Kill Your Family Face, has been going around for his entire political career pretending to be a champion of righteous nobility who regularly and publicly communes with a saintly voice only he hears while getting around with a cane, when all he wants to do, if you somehow couldn’t tell just by looking at that natural repose I just shared, is violently seize power and order artillery strikes on hospitals that cater exclusively to kittens.

So it’s no surprise that when Verus finally has the opportunity to drop his pretenses and spread his wings,** he villain-nuts hard.  This man isn’t satisfied with just telling the heroes he manipulated them into defeating his main rival, and then seizing power.  Oh, no.  His betrayal also involves killing Millie’s father in front of her.  Along with revealing that Verus was actually the one who had the wings of Sagi’s mom cruelly and painfully ripped off in a public spectacle.  Plus calling said mother a whore.  Additionally, informing Sagi that Verus had him experimented on as a baby and implanted with a piece of the soul of a cursed world-ending god-monster.  Did I mention the face?  Cuz that’s there, too.  And just for good measure, he also breaks up with his boytoy Geldoblame by telling Geldoblame that he used to be hot but now he’s an old uggo, giving the guy some complexes that Geldy’s just gonna make everyone’s problem in the next game.  Like, damn, boy, leave some villain juice in the tank for later!


10. BRAVELY DEFAULT 1
Airy’s role is revealed

The pivotal twist of the game may or may not take you by surprise, depending on how long you let this traitor lead you on before breaking the cycle, but it’s an epic, shocking betrayal all the same, so monumental to the plot and ideas of the game that it reshapes the title screen itself, as the name of the game is revealed to have had the answer all along.  That revelation is really cool, and Airy’s malevolent glee and disgust with Agnes are wonderfully at odds with all we’ve seen of her so far, turning the innocuously cute and opinionated mascot into a vile and remorseless monster.  The shock of the party at the revelation, the dismay of Agnes at learning that a genuine friend hated her all along, and the chilling knowledge that not only have they been dooming worlds thanks to her, but that they’re not even the first versions of themselves to do this and that Airy has murdered their predecessors, makes this a betrayal for the books.


9. UNDERTALE
Flowey takes advantage of your naivete

I made a fairly sizable rant that mostly covers why this one is so remarkable, so if you’d like the details, feel free to check it out!  Suffice to say, this betrayal cuts to the core of the audience because, as with the Final Fantasy 7 traitor, it’s a betrayal of the player her/himself, shattering the security we have through our distance from the game’s stage.  The fact that we’ve only known Flowey for moments doesn’t matter, because we’ve trusted the conventions that he takes advantage of for years, and this treachery plants a seed of distrust within our heart for a long time to come in this game, which only all the more advances Undertale’s fascinating ideas and themes.  Strikingly excellent stuff, perfectly orchestrated for maximum power over us.


8. BATEN KAITOS 1
Kalas double-crosses the party

In terms of motivation, character development, and general narrative strength, this betrayal is fine, but nothing to write home about.  But come on, you just can’t deny the fact that the game’s own protagonist was a traitor all along is an awesome twist!  And it IS a twist; no one saw this coming--you’d have sooner expected Chrono Trigger to kill its protagonist off than for Baten Kaitos 1 to have its main character turn out to be working against the party the whole time!

And what makes this even better is that it’s not just a great, creative plot twist in its own right--as with FF7’s and Undertale’s notable traitors before, this is a case of you, the player, yourself being taken unawares and transgressed against!  BK1 actually incorporates the player into its main story, with she or he taking on the role of a spirit summoned from another plane of existence intended to empower, guide, and generally assist its charge in his/her endeavors--so the fact that Kalas turns on his friends and cause without ever giving away his intentions to you, taking you as much by surprise as everyone else on his team, makes this another case of a betrayal directly against the players themselves.  Kalas even makes mention of how inconvenient you’ve been for him, an unknowing watchdog with your benevolent eye upon him even in his most private moments.  By merit of what a great twist it is as it takes advantage of Baten Kaitos’s unprecedented player involvement in the story, Kalas’s is an all-time great of RPG betrayals.


7. FINAL FANTASY TACTICS
Zalbag gives the order

In spite of his having been revealed recently to be a classist jerk, the sudden, casual, and indifferent brutality of seeing Algus lift his crossbow and murder Teta as she stands a helpless hostage is a shocking punch to the gut.  Bigoted noble or not, Algus was only just recently an ally fighting alongside Ramza and Delita, and to see him murder the innocent without a care because she’s inconvenient and because her life has no value thanks to the circumstances of her birth...

But Zalbag!  Algus the aristocratic goon who had an opportunity to learn class empathy handed to his fallen noble house and squandered it is one thing, but Zalbag is Ramza’s brother!  With Ramza viewing Delita like a sibling and Alma seeming to do the same with Teta, with Dycedarg’s assurance that he’d never let harm come to Teta and that she’s like a sister to him...the moment that Zalbag gives the order almost feels unreal, that he can so casually throw away the life of someone who’s been a sister to his family (who was only made a target for capture because of that association!) without hesitation, not for the sake of saving others, not because he or his soldiers are in danger, but simply to make a statement to his enemies...it’s a brutal bucket of water to the face, a shocking confirmation that everything both Wiegraf and Algus said was true.

The consequences of this heinous treachery extend their reach far into Ivalice’s future history, too.  From this murder, this betrayal of his trust and love and view of the world, stems every single dirty deed, every deal struck and cheated, every man and woman cut down, every back stabbed, by Delita through the rest of the game.  Delita is one of the most infamously deadly double-dealers in RPG history, and every single one of his own considerable ethically complex but undeniably violent and self-serving betrayals stem from this one committed against him.


6. QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT
Claudine takes what she wants

It’s shocking, it’s evil, it’s underscored by some of the most perfect music for terror and tension I’ve heard, and it ends in horrible, upsetting brutality.  And most of all...in its swiftness and its ugly turn, in the helplessness you feel with Marine both in the moment and retroactively at knowing that someone trusted has used their position of power for their own sick ends, it’s terrifying.  This isn’t some bad guy revealing their intentions for grandiose villainy on a global scale, it’s personal.  This is the chill of knowing that someone you trusted to have power over you, emotional and systemic, was a predator all along.  Claudine’s sudden (yet also extended) betrayal is a critical moment of emotional and life-or-death shock in an already tense game, and while I give full credit to the Undertale betrayer for the lingering trauma-like effect he has upon the player’s mindset, it’s Claudine alone on this list whose betrayal actually shook me into genuine fear as it went down.


5. JADE EMPIRE
Master Li demonstrates that he taught you all you know, but not all that he knows

When it comes to the classic, bread-and-butter moment of RPG betrayal of the leader/mentor figure you thought was in your corner turning out to be the evil mastermind behind all the world’s ills, Master Li’s sudden treachery is pretty much the best there is.  I defy anyone to claim that they saw it coming; Li somehow manages to hit a perfect spot in the middle of a Venn diagram of benevolent teacher, expectant quest-giver, fair but not coddling parental figure, wisdom-sharing elder, and exposition machine that never strays far enough into any of the roles to so much as spark a stray thought of suspicion in the player, and the story itself gives no reasonably discernible hint that there’s any greater scheme at play than the already fully-involved quest to save the empire from a dictator tearing the natural order apart.  This is just the quintessential specimen of the betrayal that you never saw coming.

And the execution is flawless, timed exquisitely for the maximum narrative shock.  I was an RPG veteran many times over when I played Jade Empire, and yet somehow Li taking the crystal plot MacGuffin in his hand slowly and turning back to address the protagonist was done with such carefully natural rhythm that it didn’t put up any warning flag for me, even though I’ve seen such a moment play out multiple times before in other games (and other media) and known at that second that a betrayal is coming.  By far the greatest part, though, is the timing of Li speaking to the protagonist, congratulating her/him on having achieved so much and expressing pride that she/he did so while still sticking to the fundamentals of Li’s training...

“Even the flaws!”

What a hell of an other shoe to drop.  Of all of the great moments of betrayal in this list, Master Li’s is the only one so succinctly powerful that I remember the experience of it in a single line, every ounce of its weight and shock in a penetrating mere 3 words.  Few are the betrayals that can rival Li’s in his field!


4. FALLOUT 1
The Overseer evicts the Vaultdweller

Not every iconic betrayal is malicious, not every traitor a villain.  Sometimes, the rug can be pulled out from under you for well-meaning reasons by a man who must weigh the reward that the few have earned against the good of the many...

...in his own cowardly, xenophobic, small-minded way.

The sheer, overwhelming unfairness of the situation of Fallout 1’s ending is powerful.  The Vaultdweller has traversed an extraordinarily hostile, dangerous, radioactive postapocalyptic wasteland on what’s almost a fool’s errand looking for a single, rare piece of electronics hidden within a world of marauders and mutants, in order to save his home and its people.  Then, after surviving for the months necessary to scour the wastes and find the water chip, the Vaultdweller is sent out immediately again to achieve an even more impossible goal of ending the threat of an army of super mutants that intends to overrun all of humanity, an insane charge to lay upon any single person--but this, too, he manages.

And then, after achieving impossible victories, living in the wilds of a nuclear wasteland, seeing the ugly realities of the terrible world that history’s follies has created from the worst traits of man...after all that he has gone through to save his home, all that the Vaultdweller has done merely to earn his chance to return to the life he had been living before this crisis...the door is shut in his face.  The Overseer tells the Vaultdweller with a heavy heart that he’s been out there too long, represents too much of a symbol of the very chaos and instability that he fought to eliminate, that others will admire him, want to follow his example, leave the Vault, and jeopardize its community in doing so.  You really can’t go home again.

It’s an iconic rug-pull, and it’s great for its symbolism of lost innocence and growing past security into selfhood, for the sudden ugly light it sheds on even the most positive conceptual view of the Vaults that will be echoed again and again throughout the Fallout series, and for the final, iconic, bittersweet scene it sets of the Vaultdweller walking, a lonely man with his dog, away from his home and past.  Struck down in his moment of victory and return by the leader of those he’d saved, in a cruelly unfair move, but one so small-minded that, in a way, it proves itself right simply by happening--the Vaultdweller has outgrown his home, for it to be represented by such a myopic leader.  What a great moment of betrayal this was.


3. PATHFINDER: WRATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS
Staunton Vhane does what he was driven to

In a sharp contrast to most cases, what makes this betrayal so noteworthy and excellent isn’t that you can’t see it coming--on the contrary, it’s the sad lack of surprise as Vhane once again throws his lot in with Minagho that gives his treachery its weight.  This moment in which Vhane turns against his cause to defend the demon who led him on and destroyed his life is one of many pivotal steps in the tragedy of Staunton Vhane’s fall, a tragedy so grandly theatrical and sympathetic that it’s more than reasonable to even call it Shakespearian--Vhane and Minagho bear, in multiple ways, resemblance to MacBeth and his Lady, in fact.

And that’s what makes this such a great betrayal: it’s tragic because it was so avoidable.  After the catastrophe of Staunton’s having fallen to Minagho’s wiles the first time, he’s worked tirelessly for 70 years to make up for his great failure that lost a city and cost so many lives within, throwing himself into the fight against the demons and putting his life on the line over what amounts to a lifetime for a human being...and the entire time, his peers have only ever treated him as a pariah for his mistake.  Staunton was allowed to live and fight the demon armies for redemption for his sins, but no matter what he’s done, how faithful to the cause, how much pain he’s suffered and blood he’s shed for his fellows, all that’s ever seen of him is a traitor.  Imagine living with the hatred of all those around you, those you fight to protect, for not months, not years, but decades, and never, ever making any headway to earning their forgiveness for a moment of weakness you experienced before many of your detractors were even born.

The chance to regain his honor through service to his cause was meant to be a mercy, but if it’s clear that he’ll never be allowed that redemption, that mercy becomes only an eternal, miserable sentence of degradation and isolation.

Small wonder we bear witness to Staunton snapping and returning to Minagho’s side.  It’s still a crime he should and will have to answer for, but can you truly blame him?  After hostile isolation from everyone around him, knowing nothing but scorn from those for whom he daily suffers and risks himself, for thousands and thousands of days, hundreds and hundreds of months, tens and tens of years, realizing and despairing more and more fully as the years roll by that the good he can do will never be allowed to outweigh the crime of his past...of course there would finally come a moment in which he broke for a second and final time, and returned to the side of the only person who’s treated him well in over half a century.  Better even the empty but pleasant manipulative love of a demon than the uncaring spite of his so-called comrades.  He’s a villain, but one of the world’s making, not his own, and though treachery is usually known for evoking indignance and hate, this turncoat I can only feel a grim sympathy towards.


2. LIVE-A-LIVE
Streighbough gives Oersted the worst day ever

Has there ever been a more devastating, cruel, infuriatingly petty and disproportionate double-cross than Streighbough’s?  This narcissistic psychopath ruined his best friend’s life beyond recognition and killed his king (the father of Streighbough’s supposed beloved, no less!) in a single stroke for the sake of his own worthless ego, and in so doing, doomed his world and nearly doomed many more.  Out of some callow feeling of inadequacy, Streighbough commits the most overpoweringly heinous and extreme betrayal in RPG history (yes, more powerful in its sin and intensity even than the one below!), and the scene in which he reveals his treason, and what follows, is a moment of jaw-dropping hateful tragedy as Streighbough robs Oersted of the only things he had left--hope, love, and the ability to trust anything he knew before this most terrible day.  The final contender below earns its position by many virtues of art, elegance, and power, but in terms of sheer potency, Streighbough’s is the top betrayal.


1. TALES OF BERSERIA
Laphicet sacrifices his life to save the world

The grand, thematic, masterful excellence and poetry of this greatest of betrayals is one which would take an entire enthusiastic, rambling rant to really describe adequately.  Which, like, I totally did already.  Yeah, I know it’s cheap and annoying to just assign you an entire other rant as reading homework just to finish this one, but there’s just too much to the craftsmanship of Laphicet’s betrayal to merely summarize here and call it adequate.  It’s just an absolutely beautiful piece of work.


Honorable Mention: FINAL FANTASY 4
Kain attacks Cecil

No list of RPG betrayals would be complete without Kain, the iconic Benedict Arnold of Final Fantasy and one of the first, most memorable traitors of the genre.  It may not have quite the gravitas, elegance, or uniqueness to make it onto the list proper, but Kain’s 2-faced turnabout is still a solid go-to of the classic best friend and/or party member betrayal, and more than 1 of the terrific traitors we’ve listed above can trace at least some of their roots back to good old Kain.



This was fun!  Hope y’all enjoyed this trip down Memory Lane--or maybe the Backstab Back-Alley would be more accurate.  If you did, then stay tuned, because I originally wanted to do a joint list of both the best AND crappiest RPG betrayals, but since this part has already turned out to be rather long, I’m gonna separate them into 2 proper, separate lists, so the rundown of the worst betrayals is forthcoming!














* All credit to Ecclesiastes on this one; I was so focused on the big story-redefining traitors for this rant that Yuffie’s betrayal of ‘mere’ sidequest theft completely flew under my radar, but she inarguably deserves her spot of honor here!


** HA HA WINGS, see cuz it’s Baten Kaitos, oh man am I ever fucking funny amirite

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Annual Summary 2025

What a year.  Like, Jesus Christ.  Even 2020 wasn't this bad.  God damn.

Well.  Here are the RPGs that I played this year.


Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA
Bravely Default 2
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Dragon Quest 2
Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2
Hades 2
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1
Metal Max 1
An NPC's Odyssey
Pokemon Legends: Arceus


Yup.  That's right.  That's all.  I took the damn year off from ranting, freed up a bunch of spare time in doing so, and that's still all I have to show for it.  10 RPGs.  The smallest number I've ever played in the course of a year since hitting adulthood.  That's not even a single game per month, for fuck's sake!

I don't know what excuse I could have for this.  I mean, okay, sure, most of those games are really fucking big ones.  Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 is like 100 hours just on its own!  To say nothing of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2, and Pokemon Legends: Arceus.  And Hades 2 and Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA are the kind of games that are deceptively drawn out, where it feels like you're making quick progress through a moderately sized venture, and then somewhere along the line you realize you've hit 30 hours and you're relatively sure you're still only in the mid-to-late game.

But I always have some titanically sized RPGs on my plate each year, and I still manage better than this.  And that's when I'm taking the time to pump out a ton of rants on the side!  I dunno, man, I think I've just fully lost my touch for powering through RPGs.  At this point, I'm barely even holding steady to the number of games I get gifted each year for holidays and birthdays and whatnot.  It's annoying.

At any rate, here were the usual factors of time loss this year:



Anime: Anime barely even registers in my distractions this year, really.  I only watched 2!  I failed anime like I failed RPGs in 2025.  What I did watch were good ones, at least.  The first was Dungeon Meshi (its first season, at least, as the second has not yet arrived), and while I think that its loudly positive reception in the anime world might be a little more than it really warrants, it's definitely a fun, solid anime that I enjoyed.  And I definitely appreciate its message of the importance of self-care and the fact that pushing yourself to your limits constantly ultimately accomplishes less than going at a pace that allows you to stay at your best.  It's a message that we badly need to internalize, and Japan even more so.  With this and the confrontational approach to certain unhealthy attitudes toward sexuality found in I'm in Love with the Villainess and Gushing Over Magical Girls, and of course the aggressive critique of collectivism and several specific societal failings found in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 (granted, it's an older game by now, but through rereleases and sequels it's managed to maintain a relevant presence nonetheless), I continue to see promising indications that the creative minds of Japan are struggling more and more directly to effect a positive change in the country's populace, and it makes me pleased.

The other anime I watched was Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, and it's pretty great.  I was legitimately not expecting an anime that both paid skillful homage early on to personal favorite Revolutionary Girl Utena, and then launched into being an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest!  Like, that they managed to make a war-themed giant mecha anime work as an adaptation of a Shakespeare play is awesome to begin with, and the fact that they did so for one of his comedies just makes it all the better.  I mean, think about it--Shakespeare's works get adapted fairly often, but how many times have you seen something made of his comedies that wasn't just a direct retelling?  Cases where the beats and ideas of his plays are adapted to new and individual stories almost always seem to draw from Shakespeare's tragedies, stuff like Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet, or sometimes some of the historical dramas; I don't think I've ever seen a sincere effort to make an adaptation of his comedies before, just the occasional retellings.  And GTWfM's ability to transform the concept of The Tempest into something very serious, dramatic, and at times violently dark just makes the whole venture all the more laudably interesting.  Not to mention, the anime is very good simply in its own right, too.  Really, really cool.


Books: Didn't get to many books this year, either.  What I did get to included The Well of Loneliness, by Radclyffe Hall, which was an interesting and foundational work of LGBTQ culture and rights, but more drawn out than I might have wanted it to be—and it had such a downer of an ending, although of course it realistically had to, given the time period in which it was written.  Still, good to have experienced it.

I also did a bit of nostalgic reading of some books I enjoyed as a kid with Mother West Wind's Neighbors, by Thornton Burgess, which was fine enough, and My Father's Dragon, by Ruth Stiles Gannett, which was a clever, fun classic that I enjoyed re-experiencing after over 30 years.  Man, time really is crazy.  Finally, I returned to a couple of favorite authors, as well, with A Caribbean Mystery, by Agatha Christie, which was...sadly pretty mediocre, but then, with a repugnant Mary Sue like Miss Marple in its starring role, that's about all one could hope for.  With how often Miss Marple's materialized in my reading of the past few years, I'm becoming concerned that all that's left of Christie's canon that I haven't already read is the Marple stuff.  Here's hoping I've just been getting a sampling of the stinkers by chance.  Finally, the other favorite author that I revisited was Suzanne Collins, with her most recent offering, Sunrise Over the Reaping, and it was great!  Not as much as the rest of the Hunger Games series, I have to say, certain parts of the ending are too contrived and/or too prequel-y and overt, but great all the same, and a treat to read through.


Non-RPG Video Games: I got an itch this year for something of the cyberpunk genre, and as a result found myself playing Invisible, Inc., which is a pretty well-made and fun stealth game that I'd recommend, as long as a disappointing ending isn't a dealbreaker for you.  I also checked out Danganronpa 3, which is somehow both the stupidest of the trilogy, and also the only one that's actually profound.  Lastly, as a chaser to my experience with the Ancient Greek pantheon in Hades 2, I played Atone: Heart of the Elder Tree, a pretty decent game that's rooted in classic Norse mythology.  Overall, decent year in non-RPG titles.


Streaming and the Like: Man, I fell way behind even just on watching cartoons and junk.  All I did this whole damn year was to finally finish DC Legends of Tomorrow, which for all its schlock still was pretty amusing guilty pleasure content right to its end, and DC Superhero Girls, which was so damn much fun and so damn clever and I just love it to death.  Oh, and I finally, after many years, picked up Bravest Warriors again and watched it to its completion, which...WOW did that show fall off fast and hard after its original 2 seasons.  Like, more than The Flash did, even.  There were still a few episodes in seasons 3 and 4 that were bizarrely fun and creative like the way the show started, but as a whole, what happened to that show?


Other Crap: I dunno, guys.  I mean, I worked at my job, I hung out a bit with friends, I spent time with family, I periodically explored new recipes, I cared for my pet...a lot of time went into this real-life type shit, but not significantly more than in previous years.  I guess I have spent a lot more time keeping up with current events than I used to, but it's hard to imagine that I've done that to such an extreme degree that it can explain the drastic drop in RPGs, animes, books, cartoons, and all the rest of my traditional pastimes.  I honestly have to wonder if maybe I'm depressed?  It's not exactly a crazy idea, given what's happened in the USA this past year, and the genuinely awful, relentless, and inescapable campaign to force widely unwanted and vastly worthless AI slop upon us all that's accompanied all the rest of 2025's vile happenings.  Maybe I'm just losing my appetite for the things I enjoy out of a psychological imbalance.  I dunno.  Probably something I should look into.  But anyways, yeah, normal stuff happened and took up some of my time and there's nothing especially interesting to report in that department, either.



Well that was fun!  And pathetic, and a completely inappropriate place for me to suddenly come to the realization that I might want to look into some hot single mental health professionals in my area.  Meh, whatever, I've made this rant super awkward now so it can really only get better from here, right?  Let's move on to the RPG content!



RPG Moments of Interest in 2025

1. Metal Max is well-named, because it's like if Mad Max was Metal Slug.  Well, actually, it's like if Mad Max was Metal Slug, except also they were both Fallout, and none of the enemies could decide whether they wanted to be in Mega Man X or Power Rangers, but Metallout Man Max Rangers isn't quite as catchy.

2. Wow.  Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 actually looked at Wild Arms 3's Gimel Coins and said, "Oh, this doesn't even come close to living up to its potential as a terrible idea!  Let me show you how awful game design is DONE, amateur: behold, Savior Schnapps!"

3. It's not exactly a surprise that Dragon Quest 2 wound up doing very little for me, lifeless and stale as its story and cast are even in an early enough time that the DQ approach wasn't willfully archaic and lazy yet.  But I will admit that having experienced it and DQ1 has given me a little contextual perspective on A Dragon's ReQuest, and that, at least, has some value to me.  So even if it's not really by any merit of its own conscious doing, I at least can regard DQ2 slightly more fondly than I do most of the rest of its series.  I think that's progress?

4. Speaking of Large Battleship Studios titles, its 4th creation, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, wound up being the 444th RPG I've played.  Neat coincidence!  And a great game to celebrate my single-digit palindromic quadracentennial RPG!

5. So when rampaging Pokemon burned his hometown to ashes, Pokemon Legends: Arceus's Kamado made a vow to create a community where people could live without fear.  And to do that, he...founded a village in an entirely new and essentially unsettled region filled to the brim with untamed, violently temperamental Pokemon.

Genius.

6. Remember that year where I coincidentally just happened to play 2 entirely separate RPGs that featured Grigori Rasputin as a major character?  Got another coincidence like that this year, only even more strikingly bizarre.  Prior to 2025, I had never, in my over 40 years of life on this planet, heard of the word or concept of Petanque before.  Not once.  And then suddenly, not just 1, but 2 RPGs, completely unrelated to each other, release in the same year that involve the word petanque.  Like, it was crazy enough to play 2 games that happened to include Rasputin as a cast member in the same year, but they were at least released at different times and I just happened to play them in close proximity.  Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, however, were both released during this same year, less than a month apart!  That is the kind of coincidence that'd be downright spooky if it weren't so benignly pointless.

7. Speaking of the game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the first ultra-hyped RPG that I don't think is overrated.  Yeah, Final Fantasy 7, The Witcher 3, Baldur's Gate 3, they're all absolutely great RPGs, and FF7 even made it to my list of the Greatest RPGs ever, but as excellent as they all were, none of them were the pinnacle of perfection that the general popular consensus perpetually seemed to tout them as (and I haven't played Elden Ring yet, so I can't comment on that one, but I have my doubts).

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, though?  It's pretty much as amazing as it's purported to be by the major gaming populace.  It's actually a really fun feeling to be able to just completely agree, no caveat, with the majority consensus for once.



Quote of the Year
Runners-Up
"Hrm.  Yeah, I guess I did get my head cut off.  Maybe I should take the rest of the day off."
  --Simone, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA

"Men trip not on mountains, but they stumble on stones."
  --Esquie, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

"Out of the question.  I will never join you again."
"There will be a lot of fighting though."
"Oh yeah, that's true."
"Yeah, it's true."
"There will be a lot of fighting."
"Exactly."
"Count me in then."
  --Monoco and Verso, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

...You know what? On second thought, just count, like, 70% of the scripts of both Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, as the runners-up of the best quotes of the year.  Because seriously, pick a good 3 random lines of dialogue from either game, and you've more than likely got some quotes that are absolutely shining examples of witty comedy or eloquent profoundness, possibly both, that'll beat anything else you hear or read this year.

Winner
"I worry that your cat is going to be a bad influence on that impressionable vampire."
  --Lasca, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA


Best Prequel/Sequel of 2025
Winner: Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA

Aside from just being a genuinely excellent next part of Large Battleship Studios's expansive series of related stories in its own right, AAAVXA is great as a sequel not just for building on and incorporating the lore, ideas, and events of previous games, but for retroactively lending useful context to its predecessors.  It's fun that it incorporates characters and events from Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle, Quantum Entanglement, and A Dragon's ReQuest (often in very pleasantly unexpected ways; I was floored when I realized the origins that connected Knaves and Tuppi to previous games!), but it's really awesome that it also revisits its predecessors in such a way that improves them and ties up loose ends in the process.  There's a whole sidequest in AAAVXA, for example, that establishes where Chelisera was during the whole fiasco of 1 of the bad endings to ADRQ, and even resolves that ending in a manner that transforms it into a legitimate timeline, while also paying off the implications of Hinoki Jr.'s role in the LBS multiverse that were only established at the final moments of A Dragon's ReQuest.  Saint Bomber is not just a creator always adding to his palace of canon, but carefully rebuilding the existing elements of that palace to be strengthened and expanded by each new piece they connect to.  It's impressive and very cool.

Runners-Up: Bravely Default 2; Dragon Quest 2; Hades 2
I wouldn't say that either Hades 2 or Bravely Default 2 is as good as its predecessor, but BD2 is nonetheless a fine enough RPG that at least doesn't detract from the greatness of the first Bravely Default by association, and Hades 2 is, even if not as thoughtful or meaningful as its forebear, a solidly good RPG that incorporates the events and cast of Hades 1 well while very strictly maintaining its own identity.  Neither stands out as a sequel, but they do alright.

You might be surprised to see Dragon Quest 2 here, but even if I think it's pretty bad in its own right, there's no denying that the scope of its story and the effort put into its cast (even if still woefully inadequate) is a huge step up from Dragon Quest 1.  It builds itself off the lore and events of the previous title, expands them with its new adventure, and generally improves upon the foundations it's adopting--all the hallmarks of what a sequel should be doing.


Biggest Disappointment of 2025
Loser: Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2
For pretty much the entirety of the first Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and also this continuation, I found myself waffling back and forth on whether they were a net positive or a negative.  For every negative addition that the games made to the story of Final Fantasy 7, every botched or careless piece of writing or bit of forced unfunny humor or example of crappy pacing just to draw things out longer than they had to be or unwelcome addition of spinoff lore elements, every extra tiresome bit added of Sephiroth or the Turks or that idiot motorcycle SOLDIER guy, there seemed to be at least a good counterweight of an addition to the plot and cast that was unequivocally positive, be it the expansion of the characters of Wedge, Biggs, and especially Jessie (hell, Biggs's alternate-universe role in FF7R2 is some of my favorite content from any iteration of FF7!), the pitch-perfect portrayal of Aeris and the terrific extra time that characters like Barret, Tifa, and Red XIII have had to better shine within, additional elements of the world and its history being added that made sense and enriched FF7 as a whole, the drastic improvement of Cait Sith's personability, or so many more positive elements.  Hell, even some of the annoying new crap in the remake series has its positives to go with the negatives--for example, sure, Yuffie's bean gag is possibly the cringiest thing I've ever seen in my entire life and whoever decided that THAT was going be her comic thing should be savagely beaten in an alleyway, but on the other hand, Yuffie's way, way more appealing overall now while seeming completely true to the character she was always meant to be.  Hell, she's legitimately cute sometimes; her bored song to the chocobo tune is downright charming.  Similarly, even though the constant need to make every low-life villain encounter into some kind of comedy skit is tiresome, every now and then it DOES actually work, like with that 1 guy in the desert whose flunky won't stop making little side-hype comments the whole time he's speaking.  Basically, for the entirety of FF7R1 and most of FF7R2, I was torn about whether or not this remake series was ultimately a positive or negative for FF7, and honestly, there's a timeline out there where a perfect version of Final Fantasy 7 exists that's a combination of the original game, and quite a lot of the remakes' elements.

But by the time Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2 was over with, I finally had my answer.  It's bad.  The scales have been tipped too far, the stakes of the franchise cheapened too much, by this multiversal Sephiroth Lifestream bullshit to recover from, short of some very unanticipated miracle.  And worse than the disappointment of a remake of such an excellent game being unworthy of it, is the disappointment of that remake coming so close in so many ways to being a genuine article of its pedigree.  A lot of work, a lot of care, a lot of effort, all went into treating the cast and story of Final Fantasy 7 with dignity and sincerity in Final Fantasy 7 Remake 1 and 2, enough that it made a strong show of balancing out the idiotic George Lucas-esque narrative instincts of SquareEnix that kept dragging it down, and it's a real shame that it's now wasted on a remake that's gotten too caught up in its own extraneous, over-complicated silly nonsense to be especially good as a story.  Disappointing.

Almost as Bad: Bravely Default 2; Hades 2; An NPC's Odyssey
Like I said, Bravely Default 2 is alright--there're even a few parts of the game, such as the situation with the Leaps of Faith, that are earnestly quite good!--but it's simply not as good as its predecessor, and it kind of just overstays its own story by the end.  Not a bad game, but Bravely Default 1 was great, and Bravely Second was pretty solidly good, so it's still a step down.  Similar with Hades 2--it's a strong RPG as a whole, with likeable characters and a passable story that shines in how intelligently and cleverly it uses Ancient Greek mythology, but it can't seem to pull its ideas and themes together with the same succinct, warming, profound talent that Hades 1 had with its perspective and messages on family.  As for An NPC's Odyssey, there's nothing wrong with it, it's a silly, lighthearted comedy that I enjoyed even with its rough translation...it's just that it's really quite short, and I was having such a good time chuckling at it that I was sorry to see it end so abruptly.


Best Finale of 2025
Winner: Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA
Yeah, I know, it's crazy that the heavy, moving, philosophically complex endings of COE33 didn't make it to the top here along with the heroic final push that precedes them, but...for all its nuanced, intellectual value, the finale of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doesn't satisfy as wholly as Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA does with its conclusion, and the desperation and Homura-esque relentless attempts to finesse the timeline to find a happy ending for all those who deserve it and justice for the cruel manipulator playing this con make for a more compelling and suspenseful lead-up to the true ending, to me.  Also, AAAVXA's best ending is one which retroactively enriches the story and approach of the game to anime and audience, and transforms the story of the game into not just an adventure, but the origin of a creation given life for all she's done for those who she's touched.  AAAVXA's true ending left me feeling not just satisfied and fulfilled at the way it finished its story, but also encouraged, celebrated for being the audience for and by whom ideas and passion are brought to life.  Too many RPGs try in their final moments to flip their paradigm on its head and fail completely in a way that worsens all that came before them--looking at you, Mass Effect 3, looking at you again, always, forever--but every now and then, you come across an author who really can re-contextualize everything that came before in a new light, genuinely for the better, with an unexpected twist or direction in an ending, and AAAVXA's finale and true ending is 1 such rarity.

Runners-Up: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33; Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1; Metal Max 1
COE33's finale is the heavy, artful, frightfully intelligent one that you would expect from this magnificent work of art, and I expect players will be passionately divided on the choice it offers for decades to come.  Metal Max 1's finale is a classic case of a hero saving the world (to the degree that a postapocalypse can be) and returning home to his humble beginnings, and while it's nothing special, it's comfortable and it feels right.  As for KCD1, the battle to retake the fortress is exciting and action-packed, the chase that follows and the showdown that concludes that chase are engaging, and finishing the game with Henry riding off to continue his journey for justice in this politically tumultuous age alongside his boy(friend, someday!) Hans Capon is great, and makes you ready to drop another 80 hours minimum on his continuing adventures.  Seriously, I was honestly sick to death of the actual act of playing KCD1 even if I was enjoying its story, but seeing that ending had me half ready to jump straight into the brand new sequel.  It's the kind of finale that's simple, but great.


Worst RPG of 2025
Loser: Dragon Quest 2
Look, the plot barely exists and what's there is generic and boring, and when I say that, I mean it's generic and boring even by 8-bit standards.  This guileless uninspired by-the-numbers stiff save-the-world story came out in the same age as Final Fantasy 1 and Phantasy Star 1; there was never a time in the history of console RPGs in which some nuance and creativity in story direction simply weren't known of and DQ2 just doesn't have an excuse for what it is.  The main cast barely speak, and what dialogue's there has no art or life to it.  All you can give DQ2, really, is that there's a little bit of lightheartedness to a fair few of its NPCs; beyond that, it has as little personality or value as any other member of its dry, witless family.  Early game or not, more could and should have been expected from Dragon Quest 2.

Runners-Up: Bravely Default 2; Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2; Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Again, BD2 isn't a bad game.  It's just an okay one.  And while that's no sin, with as few games I played this year, there's really no worse game to take the last spot in this category.  And I mean, in fairness, even if it's no worse than okay, there's something negative to be said for being wholly forgettable--I genuinely don't even remember the names of any of the main characters a mere 4 months after playing it, for Alephan's sake.  It's the kind of RPG that you go along with well enough while you're playing it, but put out of your mind forever once it's over, incapable of making a mark upon you.

As I mentioned earlier, the problems with FF7R2 finally stacked up, by its ending, to outweigh its positive elements, and once they did, the frustrations I've had with the remakes became all the more grating.  Just...too much self-important nonsensical bullshit piled on top of itself, too much adoration for annoying and shitty edgelord villains, too much of an overdose of the fucking Turks, and just trying too hard to make an already great and meaningful story into some overblown, grand multiversal conflict that winds up cheapening everything by inflating itself to be bigger than it's meant to be.

As for Pokemon Legends: Arceus, it's...well, it's just a Pokemon game.  I'd heard that it was supposed to be heavier on the story, and I guess that WAS a slightly more present factor in its sequence of events, but it still just didn't say or accomplish anything notable.  The feud between tribes that you solve by just sort of being there never seemed especially vitriolic or problematic, the whole resolving-the-magical-space-time-conflict thing is just some stuff happening that you eventually catch or defeat enough Pokemon to stop, and the secret villain is boring and, like everything else, just kind of there.  It doesn't seem like anyone was trying any harder on this Pokemon title than the typical main series ones, and they tend to be pretty bland.


Most Creative of 2025
Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
This game is art, art that has not been seen before and like as not shan't be seen again, art that stands out and art that embraces all that it has built itself atop of.  From premise to story to its truth to its characters, COE33 is creativity in some of its highest form.

Runners-Up: Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA; Kingdom Come Deliverance 1; Metal Max 1
Honestly, Metal Max 1 was kind of robbed of the win, here.  I mean, a post-apoclyptic RPG based on tank combat and customization, with wacky and bizarre weapon-beast hybrids infesting the world and an out-of-control genocidal super computer tied to environmental concerns gone too far?  An open-world RPG, on the SNES?  That is insanely creative and ahead of its time!  In the same year that Cecil was plodding dutifully from 1 plot point to the next in Final Fantasy 4, Metal Max 1 was telling a loose but functional non-linear story with events and explorations that were pursuable largely at the player's discretion of order.  Fallout, 7 years before Fallout!  If COE33 was anything less than a paradigm-changing work of genuine art that will be remembered in the same reverent breaths as Nier: Automata, Disco Elysium, and Planescape: Torment, Metal Max 1 would absolutely have been the most creative RPG I played this year, no question.

A magical girl RPG is by itself a pretty neat and novel idea, and Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA leans into its premise, and the premise of anime in general, as it adapts the format of its storytelling and the content of its world and plot to pay homage to anime from the classic age of the 80s through the early 2000s.  But it's not just a by-the-numbers tribute to the medium; AAAVXA cleverly incorporates the mechanics of its homage into its lore and story in creative and at times shocking ways.  Additionally, it's chock full of inventive, unique misadventures, ideas, and characters; in no other RPG will you find a cocktail of pure-hearted Clerks homages, batteries with survivor's guilt, the Akashic Records, frog racism, a discussion of the ethics of rigged ojou-sama laugh competitions, a man who married Science, the genuine tragedy of slut-shaming, the most maliciously incompetent sign-writer ever, the proposal that our bulwark against nihilism is the person making your coffee, too many googly-eyes, a heart attack at a mime convention, potshots at gacha games, and just a whole heckin' lot of elongated vowels--and trust me, that's really only scratching the surface of all the weird, interesting, amusing, and/or profound directions that AAAVXA unexpectedly heads in from moment to moment.  And in terms of the main plot, well, there's a lot of heavy-hitting twists to Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and the truth of its real villain and conflict are not at all what you could expect; it somehow walks a tightrope between joyful embracing of its genre like Sailor Moon, bitter deconstruction like Madoka, and turning away to tell a different story altogether like Gushing Over Magical Girls.  While being very much what you might expect from its developer, AAAVXA is also uniquely its own beast, and just wildly creative all around.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 is notable for its dedication to portraying the medieval setting like no RPG I've encountered before--it's determined not to simply use the medieval setting for the fun and draw of it, but rather to celebrate the reality of medieval times, for which its story of war and heroism is simply a tool rather than the purpose.  It's also neat and different for just how personable it feels overall; Henry and the people around him seem far more like real, everyday individuals with significantly human personalities and traits than you might expect.  While not being distractingly different, KCD1 is far more creative with its approach and its humanity than I had expected.


Best Romance of 2025
Winner: Miriam x Simone (Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA)
Beautifully developed, genuine romances are Saint Bomber's specialty, and he's contributed far more than any single developer's share of the greatest love stories to be found in the RPG genre.  Even by his standards, though, I think that the connection between Miriam and Simone is touching, compelling, and a truly lovely meeting of hearts and souls.  There's so much time and care put into developing and deepening their relationship with chemistry that you can see advance and grow, containing such support and affirmation of affection both gentle and fierce...Miriam and Simone have such magnificent devotion to one another, as they're there with and for each other through both their lowest moments and the truly good times.  Love as it is when shared between Simone and Miriam is sweet, and genuine.  Each makes it possible for the other to be the best self of a person she hadn't even known she would become.  It's absolutely great, some of the best work in Saint Bomber's considerable portfolio of love stories.

Runners-Up: Debbie x Felicity (Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA); Mille x Simone (Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA); Nina x Red Wolf (Metal Max 1)
If I have 1 complaint about Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, it--no, hang it, there's that other thing I'm gonna be making a whole rant to complain about.  Okay, if I have 2 complaints about AAAVXA, the second is that the way its narrative unfolds just doesn't make enough time for Mille and Simone's love to truly hold its own alongside the romance between Simone and Miriam--and the events of both the early and late game throw up too many obstacles against really showing and selling their love story.  Heck, the fact that even though canonically Simone, Miriam, and Mille are all, by the finale of the game, in a relatively mutual three-way relationship, I've nonetheless separated that triangle's halves for this category, should tell you just how inequal it is.  And that's a damn shame, because I really, really like Mille, and I was pulling for her as a love interest more than Miriam all the way.

With that said, Mille and Simone still have a great, believable, and often heartwarming romantic connection, and even though a lot of it happens off-screen, the way Mille's feelings for Simone develop to become something far more than they started as is 1 of my favorite parts of AAAVXA's many arcs of relationships and perspectives on love.  Mille and Simone also share the most engaging and easy chemistry as people who like each other, not just romantically but just genuinely as human beings, in the entire cast--you definitely can understand why Miriam herself ships them even as she's dating one and gently wooing the other.  I love me some sweet, fun, can-do romance, and that's Mille and Simone all the way.

Debbie and Felicity is a side-story romance, but their dramatic shared history, the events and the outpouring of Felicity's heart that brings them together, and the natural and positive glimpses we get of them in their life as a couple make them the equal of, or even superior to, most RPGs' main character couplings.  Almost more than the main love stories of the game, seeing Felicity refuse to put aside what they could and should have, and Debbie finally accept something good for her and someone good to her into her existence is therapeutically satisfying and warming.

And lastly, keeping AAAVXA from a hat trick in this category, we have the poignant case of Nina and Red Wolf.  It's simple, but it's compelling, and heartwrenching, to see the devotion this starcrossed couple has to one another--a love stronger than death itself, yet tragically unable to surmount the sins of their ruined, rotten world.  Simple tragedy, but in its simplicity, powerful.


Best Voice Acting of 2025
Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Expedition 33's voice acting is top-notch, and more than that, its direction and arrangement is distinctively, singularly real and vivid.  Lines don't just go back-and-forth, they interrupt, they speak in conjunction, they make the next response possible, they convey the nature of characters' relationships by virtue of timing and tone, and it all adds up to a script that's brought alive as a living, breathing conversation like few other works can boast.  The interactions in COE33 often have more realistic fluidity than even live action media; even actors actually facing each other, directly speaking to and responding to one another, don't often reach the level of cooperative engagement that Verso and Monoco achieve multiple times in this game.  Like all else in COE33, it's really something else to witness.

Runners-Up: Bravely Default 2; Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2; Hades 2
Not every single performance or conversation is especially great or noteworthy in FF7R2, but as a whole, it's a darned solid example of voice acting--major characters sound right, and often even go above and beyond to make sure their inflection and approach helps a joke or charming moment land just right.  Considering that SquareEnix has had a tradition for over 20 years of always being at least 2 steps behind the rest of the gaming industry when it comes to voice work, it's nice to finally see them consistently display competence in this field.

Hades 2 is exactly what you'd expect from Supergiant Games in terms of voice acting: pure excellence.  We're a long ways past the days when they just patted Logan Cunningham on the back, told him "Go do your thing, Chief," and let him carry the game's entire script solely on his more than capable vocal shoulders, but somehow Supergiant Games always manages to get a great and memorable performance out of every artist that so much as slightly grazes their games.  Hades 2 is great talents doing some of their better work, and if Expedition 33 wasn't essentially the discovery of a whole new tier of vocal performance, Hades 2 would've topped this category, easy.

Bravely Default 2's voice acting is generally pretty good, but rarely anything to write home about.  But I have a weakness for the voices of garrulous Scotsmen, and also I do dearly love Martha and that sweetly cheerful Welsh (I think?) voice is definitely a part of that, so BD2's definitely getting its spot here.


Funniest of 2025
Winner: Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA
As ever, the same engaging wit, love for turns of phrase and puns, and clever approach to poking fun at the tropes and mechanics of a beloved genre and/or artistic medium that defines Large Battleship Studios's comedy is at work in this newest title, and it's as smile- and chuckle-inducing as ever.  The same humor that made Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle and A Dragon's ReQuest so damn funny, and gave us the contrast that both drew us further into and helped us cope with the tension of Quantum Entanglement, makes AAAVXA hilarious, too.

Runners-Up: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1; An NPC's Odyssey
I genuinely did not expect a lighthearted tone to be so significant a part of KCD1; I thought the game would simply play it as straight as any other open-world medieval RPG would.  But even if it's ultimately an expectedly dramatic venture, KCD1 always seems ready to let a bit of levity in when there's an opportunity for it, just enough to qualify it for this category, and surprisingly enough, it actually really works for the game as a whole.  The shenanigans with Hans Capon, delivering a sermon for Father Godwin in the middle of the hangover from Hell, Henry's frequent good-natured quips and sarcasm...the comedy of KCD1 doesn't just perform the usual duty of juxtaposition to its drama as the humorous moments of most dramatic works do, it also lends a distinct and pleasing personality to Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and also makes it feel more real, more human, to the player--and for a game with a major goal of accurately bringing the past to life once more, that's actually a pretty significant virtue.

As for An NPC's Odyssey, well, even if it does suffer from a shaky translation, you know how much I love humor that specifically pokes fun at RPGs and their conventions, and that's Job 1 for this game all about the journey of an NPC frustrated by heroes' callous disregard and the special treatment that the universe awards them.  It's silly, it's weird, it's clever and dumb at the same time, the main characters are appealing freaks...and I honestly love it all.  I still frequently mourn the fact that You Are Not the Hero never did come to fruition, but I feel a little more at peace with that loss now that I've played An NPC's Odyssey; it feels a bit like a glimpse into what YANtH could have been.  Honestly, if this game wasn't so damn short--it up and ends right while you think you're still in the thick of the adventure!--then it might actually have won this category.  As it is, though, it's still a fine, funny time!


Best Villain of 2025
Winner: Renoir (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33)
Renoir's an excellently written antagonist with depth and purpose to his actions and mindset, whose role and character can be dissected, discussed, and debated in indefinite detail along with the rest of the game.  He's an artful adversary and entity with the narrative weight to carry him through his part in his majestically thoughtful game, and the fact that you can hotly debate whether he even is a villain gives him all the more weight as a great one.

Almost as Bad: Mercy (Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA); The Sorceress (Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA); Toth (Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1)
Mercy came really close to winning this one.  Like, I actually want to say that she's the Best Villain of 2025.  Honestly, Renoir's edging her out is more on principle than anything else, as I generally believe that the best character and villain is the one with the most depth, nuance, development, and so on, and Renoir's the more layered, fascinating individual of the 2.  But man, Mercy is a far more loathsome entity, and the shape that her villainy takes is much more personally, penetratingly harmful to her victims than the theoretically well-intentioned desperation of a grieving father that Renoir perpetrates.  Mercy is selfish and pettily uncaring, an apathetic, simple, greedy 2-bit con in spite of all her grandstanding as something greater--and God, isn't that an exhausting and familiar monster to us all now?  I hate Mercy in a way I couldn't hate her as a grandiose RPG supervillain; she's lousy and evil and petty and vicious in her apathy and it all makes her a great villain whose like bleeds from fiction into reality and back again.

The Sorceress is another solid villain from AAAVXA, one whose personality is established very well with lots of development, and whose motivations are interesting and imbalanced.  Mostly, though, she's an awesome villain for her truly calamitous origin story, a disaster and twist that honestly just kind of floored me when it was revealed and laid out.  As for Toth, he's just 1 of those bad guys who's the exact right amount of spiteful and evil that he just really works in his role and gets the player to fully understand why the hero's so driven to bring him to justice, a memorable baddie by villainous virtue of personality alone.


Best Character of 2025
Winner: The Entire Main Cast of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
It's a cop-out and I don't care.  If we took them individually, as personalities and layered creations and intentions and conceptual/philosophical icons, the major figures of COE33 would dominate this category, and trying to sort them out to determine who's the best-written of all would be too damn difficult.  So we're keeping it simple: the strikingly, magnificently written cast of COE33 as a whole wins top accolades this year.

Runners-Up: Biggs (Final Fantasy 7 Remake 2); Mille (Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA); Miriam (Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA)
As with all Large Battleship Studios titles to date, the cast as a whole is where AAAVXA most greatly shines, chock-full of prominent, singular, engaging personalities at every level of its cast, and of them, I think Mille and especially Miriam are the ones who receive the most care and development, "most" in both quantity and quality.  The transformation of Miriam over the course of the game is both striking and subtle, a major shift in her perspectives on the world and particularly on herself that nonetheless is so naturally effected and carefully paced that at no time does she feel like a different person or personality, simply an ever-better version of herself thanks to the positive influence of the woman she loves.  Mille, meanwhile, has a course of development less overtly seen, but meaningful and intriguing all the same, and if she can't quite match the narrative devotion to Miriam, she's still a terrific character, and makes up some of that gap with, I would argue, the most assertively interesting personality in the game. 

Biggs was a really surprising, terrifically positive addition to the retelling of Final Fantasy 7's mid-game, and I found his combination of survivor's guilt, existential quandary, and determination to still try to make a difference in a doomed world to be a really compelling, skillfully-crafted personal arc.  Even though he's sort of meant to just be an accessory to Zack's own personal story (which, I should mention, was also actually quite good), Biggs's questioning, difficult story had the most life out of all the subplots in FF7R2.  The moment that Zack catches up to him at the reactor, and Biggs is just sitting there, eating chips because the truth of the end of it all is staring him in the face now and he's accepted it...great moment.  For a guy who was a minor side-character in the first few hours of the original game and basically only there to provide motivation for the main heroes with his death, and for a guy whose transformation in the Remake was basically just to do the same thing but also be a weird and distracting reference to a couple of 90s parody movies, Biggs really managed to become someone profound in this second installment of FF7 Remake.


Best RPG of 2025
Winner: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Sometimes an RPG comes along that pushes the boundaries of what we believe games can be, exploring a new tract of artistic and/or philosophical territory that redefines what we believed the medium of video game could convey and embody.  There are RPGs that have such significance that they can, should, and likely will be milestones of human thought and expression reviewed far into the future with the same reverence and academic fascination as classic literature is today.  And I strongly believe that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will be joining the same worthy ranks as Nier: Automata, Planescape: Torment, Disco Elysium, and a few others in forming the backbone of this emerging genre of lasting, thought-provoking interactive classics.  COE33 is a magnificent and heavy RPG, and playing it is almost sure to be a formative event for anyone.  2025 as a year doesn't exactly have a lot going for it, and I doubt many of us are going to be able to look back fondly upon it, but COE33 is certainly 1 shining light that the year can cling to as proof that 2025 still had its virtues.

Runners-Up: Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA; Hades 2; Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1
One of these years, it's going to be Large Battleship Studios's year.  Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA is the fourth time now that Saint Bomber's put out a wonderful, excellently emotional and fascinating RPG that's been well worthy of earning the top spot of RPGs I've played that year, only to just barely be edged out by another.  Hell, it wasn't even right that Quantum Entanglement didn't take the win in 2021--I gave it to Horizon 0 Dawn that year, but when I recently revised my Greatest RPG List again and looked back on them, it was QE that made it onto the list and not H0D, so I guess logically that means that Quantum Entanglement was the real greatest RPG I played that year, and I made a stupid mistake.

Now granted, I'm pretty confident that this time around, retrospect will still favor Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as the greatest game of this year, but the fact remains that AAAVXA is a truly excellent title that more than merits best-of-the-year status.  Inventive, passionate, filled with clever and quirky writing that forms a palatable coating to the harsh and difficult pain and trauma within its core, boasting an interesting, unexpected, and well-developed plot with a backbone of unique and excellently crafted characters, pleasing with its wonderful romance and eager, amusing humor even as it refuses to shy away from dramatic pain and darkness, AAAVXA is very much another iteration of Saint Bomber's great gift for poignant, affecting games, and it, like all his previous creations, is highly recommended.

In all honesty, Hades 2 is not Supergiant Games's best work--it just doesn't have the cohesive thematic strength that Hades 1 did, even with its recently improved additional finale content, and it certainly doesn't measure up to Transistor or Pyre, either.  But there's really no shame in being in the lower half of the Supergiant Games canon--even at their earliest and least capable, SG was still making high-quality content that garnered wide acclaim and helped lay the foundations for an age of Indie gaming that continues to grow today.  Hades 2 is still fun, wildly creative with and knowledgeable about ancient Greek mythology, and highly engaging with its story and cast.

I'm always very happy when a game I helped crowdfund turns out to be as good as promised, but I admit that I'm still pleasantly mystified by the level to which Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 exceeded what I thought it would be.  I had hoped and expected a reasonably sincere, decently written open-world adventure that better captured the realities of the medieval life and times than most, and to be sure, KCD1 does a damn respectable job of that.  But I was not expecting it to be so personable.  The characters and goings-on of KCD1 feel uncannily human and realistic, less a story played out through the efforts of actors and more a genuine snapshot of the human beings involved in the life, politics, and warfare of early 1400s Bohemia--and just as real as the drama and determination of Henry and the people he encounters are their everyday attitudes, their occasional flippant perspectives, the ways they interact, and their understandings of their lives and world.  When Warhorse Studios set out to convey the medieval age in complete accuracy, they made sure that a part of that was to convey the human beings of that age, too, and it's the realism of Henry as a person, and of his allies and of the many people he interacts with in his journey, that makes Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 a really good RPG just as much as its solid story, concept, and narrative construction do.  



List Changes
Funniest RPGs: Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA and An NPC's Odyssey have been added; no games have been removed--A Dragon's ReQuest, Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA, and Embric of Wulfhammer's Castle have been condensed into a single spot (since, while all distinct and worthwhile games, the humor in all is the same recognizable brand, and relatively equally great).
Greatest Deaths: [REDACTED] from Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been added; [REDACTED] from Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume has been removed.  Sorry, you [SPOILERS] parent who put himself in protagonist's place for pain and pleas for him to put away his persisting profane pique.
Greatest Examples of Battle Systems: Not a major change exactly, but the slot for the greatest Action RPG is now shared between Hades 1 and 2, since the games share the same overall impeccable mechanical virtues.
Greatest Romances: Miriam and Simone are definitely getting added to this list, but since I wholeheartedly refuse to have a version of this list that doesn't include Arueshelae and the Protagonist of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, I'm gonna just be doing a full-on update to it sometime next year.
Greatest RPGs: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been added; Final Fantasy 10 has been removed.  Sorry, you stirring story of sweet sentiments and selfless sacrifice.
Weirdest Characters: No change to this one yet, but as with the Romances list, I think it's high time I expanded this a few places, because when Sammy the Renaissance Somnambulist from An NPC's Odyssey isn't quite bizarre enough to make it to a list of the biggest weirdos in RPGs, something is clearly wrong.  COE33's Monoco should have a fighting chance at it, too, for that matter.


Music Additions
Note: Bolded songs were rated an A+.

Them's Fightin' Chords
Baldur's Gate 3 Final Battle
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Epic Battle
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Francois
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Spring Meadows Battle
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Tutorial Battle
Super Lesbian Animal RPG Boss Battle

Hither, Thither, and Song
Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA Abyss
Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA Final Dungeon
Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA Sewers
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Boat Graveyard
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Coastal Cave
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Stone Wave Cliffs
Bravely Default 2 Forest
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 Town
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Arena

Chime Really Feeling It!
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 [REDACTED]'s Funeral
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Sad Memories

See You Bass Cowboy
Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA Worst Timeline
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Monoco

All That and a Bag of Chiptunes
Chrono Trigger Lab 16 Ruins Remix
Super Mario RPG Remachination Remix

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is now the third best RPG soundtrack I've heard!  And if they haul Lorien Testard back into the recording studio for some new material in the inevitable DLC, it might just wind up supplanting Undertale at second--or even start gunning for Chrono Trigger's top spot!


And that's it for 2025!  And good fucking riddance to it, at that.  I mean, yeah, okay, great year for gaming as a whole with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Silksong and Chrono Gear: Warden of Time and Angelic Acceptor Alouette: VXA and Split Fiction and a ton of other titles treading new ground of excellence across multiple facets of the gaming landscape.  But outside the bubble of great games and Indie developers really cementing a foothold as full-on competitors to the lackluster so-called AAA publishers, the year was not good to us all.  Not that I expect 2026 to be a substantial improvement, honestly, but perhaps, having taken the blitzkrieg of beatings that the greedy and vain scum of the political, economic, and tech worlds began raining down on us all this past year, we'll fully rally ourselves to make 2026 the year we push back against fascism, egregious wealth disparity, AI pressure, and so on hard enough to actually beat them back a bit..

And who knows, maybe I'll actually somehow rally myself and play a respectable number of RPGs for someone who has the audacity to assert that he is a Genius at them.  I mean, I've already given up on hitting 20 or more like the good old days, but surely my goal I mentioned last year of 15-ish is still attainable?  At the very least, I've got a couple I'm aiming to play that'll almost certainly be pretty great, chief among them Metaphor: ReFantazio, and I think Large Battleship Studios's next venture, which will doubtless be awesome, might be planned for a 2026 release, too.  Who knows, maybe I can restore my yearly RPG experience of quality AND quantity come 2026.  Crazier things have happened!  Someone made a good Superman movie recently, and it was good even though Guy Gardner was the Green Lantern they chose, and somehow he was even part of what made it good--fucking anything is possible!

Anyway, enough of all this yapping.  Once again, I'd like to express my sincerest and warmest thanks to my friend Ecclesiastes, and my sister, for continuing to be my sounding board and test audience for these rants.  The lighter load this year doubtless gave them cause for a sigh of relief, but they weren't fully off the hook, and the fact that they've just always been fully willing to let me yammer at them about all this stupid inconsequential nerd shit without even the hint of complaint continues to fill me with utterly mystified gratitude.  A hearty thanks to my friend Angel Adonis, too, who's generous enough to do the same with a few rants now and then on the games that he's familiar with.  All y'all are great.

And of course, a further, humble bow of gratitude is given to Ecclesiastes for continuing to be my Patron.  The man must surely have some deep, dark secret sin that he's trying to work off through the penance of allowing me to sling the thoughts in my head at him in their least refined state and then rewarding me for doing so with a monthly gift of cold, hard gil, and Orsa bless the man, I selfishly hope he never finishes this road to redemption in which I play the part of the rocks in his boots.  As ever, sir, thank you.

And lastly but never leastly, I say thanks to all of you who read these rants (at least, those of you who aren't just AI models sabotaging themselves by training themselves on my offerings).  I know you had lean pickings this year, but for those whose morbid curiosity was tenacious enough to stay with me through it, I promise to be back to at least some relatively decent rant schedule next year.  I'm not decided on what it will look like--even with a year to build up some rant reserves, I don't think I can keep up my traditional thrice-a-month schedule--but we will be properly back come 2026.  Until then, happy holidays, take care of yourselves, and never give Ubisoft money.  See you in a few weeks!