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!

Annual Summary 2024

I tried, okay?

I tried really, really hard this year to bring about a return to the golden days when I’d be crushing well over 20 RPGs each year.  I gave it my all, dammit!  But all my best efforts could manage in 2024 was a mere 15:



A Dragon’s ReQuest
Baldur’s Gate 3
Child of Light
Cris Tales
CrossCode
Dragon Quest 1
Mr. Saitou
Odessa
Pokemon Generation 9
Shadows Over Loathing
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5
Smoke and Sacrifice
Super Lesbian Animal RPG
Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion



I mean, it’s better than the last few years, I suppose, but it still falls really short of what I wanted to accomplish this year.  Damn Baldur’s Gate 3 being so long it took me actual MONTHS to finish!  Seriously, I was actually pretty much on schedule until August, and then I decided to stop putting it off and conquer the most famous and lauded RPG of the last 5 years, and...yeah, here I am, in the middle of November as I write this, only having JUST finished the damn thing.  It was a good run, don’t get me wrong, but goddamn the size of that game!

Worst thing is, I’m pretty sure I’m not even gonna get all that much rant mileage out of it.  At least with other recent free-time Galactuses like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and SMT Persona 5, I got a decent handful of rants out of them (especially the latter; are you guys completely sick of me talking about Persona 5 yet?), but I think I really only have a single rant idea for BG3, and it’s gonna be on something everyone already complains about anyway.  Ah, well.

Anyway, Baldur’s Gate 3 might have devoured a truly outrageous amount of my time, and the other games on that list up there certainly consumed their own share (or more than their share; I think we should get rid of the mirror test and instead judge the intelligence of a life form by how quickly they abandon a playthrough of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE), but there was certainly plenty of other stuff I did this year, too.  And because I just can’t write one of these Annual Summary rants without making that fact your problem, here’s what else I got up to this year!


Anime: I actually watched some new and current anime this year.  Usually I’m years behind on practically every piece of media I consume, but this year I feel remarkably contemporary!  Of them, the most widely known is Dungeon Meshi, which I liked and especially appreciated for its underlying messages about self-care and respecting ecosystems.  I even more enjoyed Tis Time for Torture, Princess, which is way, way more of a fun and feel-good title than you’d think a story about the forces of hell torturing a woman would be.  And I also checked out I’m in Love With the Villainess, because, if it hasn’t become apparent at some point in the past 20 years, I’m an incurable yuri romantic, and it was...likable?  Mostly?  I mean, I have some definite issues with it, mostly regarding the way that the protagonist woos the girl she’s into, because it’s dipping way too deeply into established and terrible tropes of anime and sitcoms that are basically just sexual harassment.  But at the same time, the characters are likable, the foundations the show’s laying for the romances do seem otherwise genuine, and the story and world are interesting and have unexpected depth and twists for what seems like a simplistic premise.  There are also moments in the show of frankness about the state of Japan’s perceptions of same-sex relationships that cut through decades of intentionally damaging cutesy yuri tropes that delegitimize female homosexuality, and I greatly respect these moments.  So yeah, it holds itself back at times in frustratingly classic and problematic ways, but I do like I’m in Love With the Villainess, and hope it gets to continue in a second season.

But not as much as I hope Tis Time for Torture, Princess gets renewed.  That’s still the winner for me of this year’s new animes.

...Oh, yeah, I did actually watch 1 other brand new anime this year.  And you know what?  I’m not gonna pretend otherwise or make excuses: I actually, sincerely liked Gushing Over Magical Girls.  Call me degenerate or worse, but I’m standing by this show, even if it is basically porn that happens to skirt around the definition as such by only strict technicalities.  Underneath all the gratuitousness and indulgence, there’s a story about embracing one’s sexuality and encouraging others to be similarly true to themselves that I think is not only compelling, but genuinely healthy.  I’m definitely not into all of its facets (some cases’ potential issues of consent are only barely and retroactively dodged, and I’m really not thrilled with Alice’s presence), but...ultimately, the show seems to be as much about frankly and earnestly encouraging its audience not to suppress or hate themselves over sexuality, and reassuring the watcher of the normalcy of having kinks, as it is about just gratification.  And I can respect that and the need for it, particularly in as repressive a culture as Japan is toward the unusual (the fact that I played Persona 5 earlier this year has probably heightened my ability to appreciate this sort of thing, too).

Then again, I might just be a gooner fumbling for ways to fool himself into some feeling of legitimacy.  Who knows.

Lastly, I rewatched Cowboy Bebop again as I showed it to my dad, and Non Non Biyori again as I showed it to my sister.  Both were pretty much as excellent as I remembered, although NNB seems somehow to only have gotten better with time.  It really is such a lovely, simple, heartfelt work.


Books: I didn’t get as much reading done this year as in the last few, but I did still manage to keep up with it.  This year I revisited an old childhood favorite series with a few installments of The Time Warp Trio (by John Scieszka) that I’d never gotten around to before: Hey Kid, Want to Buy a Bridge, Sam Samurai, and Viking It and Liking It.  Viking It and Liking It was nostalgically entertaining, but I didn’t think Sam Samurai was as enjoyable as I remember The Time Warp Trio usually being, and honestly, Hey Kid, Want to Buy a Bridge was surprisingly subpar.  I wonder if I’ve perhaps simply outgrown 1 of my youth’s diversions?

...Nah, this blog’s existence is pretty strong proof that that’s not possible.

Actually, disappointments from authors who should be sure wins was a bit of a theme for my literary experience in 2024.  Ray Bradbury’s The Toybee Convector collection of short stories was a remarkable letdown; I think there was a total of 2 or maybe 3 offerings in the whole compilation that I found any value in reading at all, and only its namesake especially impressed me.  When Bradbury hits, he nails it, but when the man misses, it’s by a country mile, and it seems like it’s 50-50 on which it’s gonna be.  Relatedly, Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie was meandering, disappointingly uninvolving for the reader, had characters that fell flat, shoved some Since We’re Not Related It’ll Be Okay in there without any need for it, felt needlessly critical and ignorant towards adoption at times, and betrayed a laughably biased perspective toward Nature vs. Nurture.  I mean, there have been some bad Agatha Christie works (most of the time they involve her simping for her own Mary Sue, Miss Marple), but Ordeal by Innocence almost doesn’t even read like she wrote it, rather seeming more often than not to just be your regular subpar mystery story of the same time period.

Still, it wasn’t all disappointment.  Sy Montgomery’s Of Time and Turtles was a solid work, and a reread of Westmark reminded me yet again of just why I love Lloyd Alexander so greatly.  And while I’m not a poetry person by any means, I found Celtic Nan, by John Hopkins, to be quite engrossing and powerful, a telling and very personal glimpse into the life of an educated everyman that’s both intelligent and accessible.  Definitely recommended for any poetry fan, or possibly even for those who don’t care for the stuff, like me.


Non-RPG Video Games: I actually played quite a lot of games besides RPGs this year, which...might account somewhat for my total of RPGs being lower than it should be.  But that’s sort of not my fault!  I thought that Inkulinatie, Itorah, My Big Sister, and To the Moon were all RPGs when I went into them, and it was only partway through each of them that I realized that I really couldn’t count each as such.  I don’t regret playing them, though; Itorah and My Big Sister are decent, To the Moon deserves its strong critical praise, and Inkulinati is stylish and fun.  I also played the new Princess Peach Showtime, because it looked fun, and it most certainly was.

My sister also had me play Broken Age, which was very clever, inventive, and neat, a great example of the classic point-and-click adventure like Full Throttle and Monkey Island, complete with their requisite personality and offbeat humor.  Had an awesome plot twist, too; I genuinely was floored by it.  Finally, I replayed Slay the Princess again as I showed it to my sister, which was a great experience, because Slay the Princess is, as I noted last year, just an absolutely brilliant, inspiring experience that’ll stick with you probably forever.  


Streaming and the Like: Watch Batman: Caped Crusader.  Like, right now.  Forget this stupid rant, ignore your hobbies and responsibilities, and go watch it.  Batman: Caped Crusader is basically Bruce Timm telling his past self to hold his beer.  I love it and if it doesn’t get as many seasons as Batman: The Animated Series did, it’ll be a damn crime.

Actually, this was a fantastic year for superhero cartoons on several points, not just for Batman.  Over on the other side of DC, My Adventures With Superman might actually be the best Superman cartoon created--it does a wonderful job with his character and with establishing its own spot in the DC multiverse with its interpretations of classic cast members (this might be my favorite Supergirl) and even some new ones.  It’s artistically simple but pleasing, energetic but not overbearing, it’s got action and drama and reflection in all the right ratios, and maybe most startlingly excellent, Lois Lane is sharing equal billing with Superman as the show’s protagonist--and it’s created a version of Lois that makes this idea work.  I mean, I guess it’s been tried before to at least middling success with the 90s’ Lois and Clark, but My Adventures With Superman manages to create a show just as much about Lois as Superman that doesn’t have to retreat back to the territory of a romantic drama: MAWS is a legitimately engaging, exciting, excellent superhero show, using the setting and cast and concepts to their fullest intended purpose.  And make no mistake, that doesn’t mean the show is at all lacking in the human drama department, either--in fact, this is easily the most believable, engaging, sweet, and compelling depiction of Lois Lane and Superman’s love story I’ve yet seen.  It’s great stuff and so, so pleasing to see, and I’m giddy to see where it goes next.

And goddamn, X-Men ‘97.  Just.  Wow.  Trying to successfully revive and continue something as timelessly and uniquely excellent as X-Men: The Animated Series, a show which also is steeped in the unreasonable rose-tinted light of nostalgia, is normally just outright impossible--something like that was only ever going to happen once, and even if its exact quality could be replicated, surely it still wouldn’t live up to the irrationally inflated expectations of nostalgia.  And yet, somehow, beyond pragmatic expectation and traipsing wildly into the realms of hope and divine intervention, X-Men ‘97 is exactly as purely awesome as it should be.  The show is something akin to a miracle, honestly, and I can’t wait to see Season 2.

Since we’re still talking cartoons, I also saw the second season of The Ghost and Molly McGee this year, which was a lot of fun and shockingly emotional in its conclusion.  Admittedly, pretty much everything involving the Chens was intrusive and subpar--I’d hazard a guess that they’re the result of corporate meddling as some braindead execs decided they couldn’t take any chance of another Owl House non-straight protagonist situation--but as a whole, Season 2 is more of the fun wholesomeness that preceded it.  Hilda’s final season was also great, as one would expect from the quietly artistic work.  And lastly, not all of my superhero cartoons this year came from the traditional DC/Marvel arena--Kid Cosmic is a refreshing, fun, and pleasingly stylized superhero show that, like nearly all their ventures, showcases the ferocious creativity, passion, and talent of both Lauren Faust and Craig McCracken.  In fact, I’m gonna commit some heavy heresy here and now: I think Kid Cosmic is Craig McCracken’s best work to date!

There was also some non-animated stuff I watched this year, too, if you can believe that.  As the CW DC universe always is, DC Legends of Tomorrow continues to be a fun and very guilty pleasure of mine through its second, third, and fourth seasons...although I will say, I think that DCLoT manages to come through in ways that The Flash never could, because, as the show carries on and moves away from its (admittedly kinda cool) first season war with Vandal Savage, it’s better able to embrace the lightheartedness and silliness of its premise of B-squad superheroes doing a Doctor Who thing.  With the limitations that budget and live action impose, and the difficulties of maintaining the same level of stakes and drama over successive seasonal arcs, DC Legends of Tomorrow does far better with going in a more “let’s just have fun with this” direction than The Flash trying to earnestly maintain its gravity and drama.

I also watched the new Fallout show, which was surprisingly great--after the debacle of Fallout 76 and finding out that that smug nitwit Todd Howard had attached himself like a barnacle to this project, I didn’t expect much, but the Fallout show was clearly made by people who understand and respect Fallout, from its first game on (hell, they even kept the acknowledgement of 76 to a minimum; that’s how you know they’re legit).  I mean, I have a few issues with the show and goddamn does my heart weep at the fate of Shady Sands, but...yeah, this was an authentic Fallout product.  

Lastly, my sister had me watch It’s Okay to Not Be Okay.  I’m really not the K-drama type, honestly, and I’ll admit, while I didn’t mind watching it, most of my experience with It’s Okay to Not Be Okay didn’t really impress me.  It had some definite good qualities and moments!  Just wasn’t my kind of thing.

...Until the end of the show, when...I dunno, it all just suddenly came together into something really elegant, interesting, intelligent, and moving.  The ending of It’s Okay to Not Be Okay is so deftly executed, so carefully constructed, that it was like watching a landscape as the sun rose, and seeing that what had seemed unremarkable in the dark was suddenly striking and pleasing to behold.  The show’s conclusion, to me, puts all that comes before it into an elegant lens, and leaves you feeling genuinely good, a satisfaction like finally closing the book on a period of your life and moving forward into the next.  It made me think of the feeling one might have at finally hitting a landmark in therapy and moving forward in a more self-actualized way, which might be exactly as the creators intended their ending to feel, as the show is partly about trauma, neurological conditions, and psychiatric help.  I dunno, I think I’m probably overselling it--but it was still an interesting and pleasing experience to have an ending to a show so positively change the way I viewed all that came before it.  Very neat.


Other Crap: Jesus Christ are we already on Page 6 of this stupid rant and I haven’t even gotten to the damn RPGs yet?  Ugh, let’s run through the rest fast: still working, still caring for an adorable and very sweet leopard gecko, still cooking new things now and then, still having to do a lot of real-life stuff, and now I’ve added to it all some time spent each week on selling stuff on Mercari and eBay for myself and my mother.

There.  Let’s hurry up and get to the actual subject of the rant, already!

(RPGs, in case you’ve forgotten, which after 6 pages of hearing me fall all over Fallout and exclaim about X-Men and gush over Gushing Over Magical Girls, who could blame you?)



RPG Moments of Interest in 2024

1. I actually do like the fact that they made a sprite for the Dragon Quest 1 hero carrying the princess in his arms bridal-style.  It’s a cute touch.

2. Uhh...is it just me, or is Pokemon Generation 9’s Penny just (a less nuanced) Futaba from Persona 5?  Like, it practically feels like plagiarism.

3. A random encounter in which an old man walks up to you, shoves money in your mouth, and starts screaming into your ear for an operator to put his son on the line, having mistaken you for a payphone, is a perfect example of why I just absolutely cherish the Loathing games.  Seriously, Asymmetric Publications, how do you come up with absurdist hilarity like this?  Consistently, for decades!?

4. You guys know the Chrono Compendium?  The undisputed most comprehensive site on the web regarding Chrono Trigger, and longtime staunch and thankless apologist for Chrono Cross, which tirelessly attempted to do SquareEnix’s job for it in finding a way to justify and reconcile Chrono Chross being canonically tied to Chrono Trigger? Yeah, well, right before I put out last year’s Annual Summary, the Chrono Compendium finally threw in the towel on finding a way that CC can not only make any sense on its own terms, but actually fit into the canon and thematic purpose of CT.  The straw that broke the Compendium’s back was when 1 final interview with Cross’s creators made it clear beyond any doubt or defense that they never knew nor cared what they were doing.  Why, after all, should ZeaLity and other fans drive themselves mad trying to make Chrono Cross minimally functional as a sequel or as a story in its own right for free, when the ones who were paid to do so couldn’t be bothered?

Well, whether it’s 20 seconds or 20 years after beating it, there’s certainly no wrong time to start hating Chrono Cross.  Welcome aboard, Chrono Compendium!  And thanks for the article; you’ve managed to find a couple things seriously wrong with this shitty game that even I somehow hadn’t realized in all these decades!

5. Cris Tales’s final boss is a cheap-shotting little fuck.

6. Scams and organized crime, sexual harassment/predators, abusive teachers, corruption, refusal to view women as human beings in their own right, predatory host clubs, the 99% conviction rate, employee abuse, bullying and the must-win mentality, those who abuse the power of shame and regret and honor, a fickle and short-attentioned public, those who need counseling not getting it, suppression of journalism, and good old repressive collectivism as a whole...Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 is DONE with anime and video games playing around and being vague about challenging Japan’s societal problems.  Where those that came before it contented themselves with metaphors and light suggestions on how to do better, SMTP5 goes straight for its culture’s throat, and I strongly approve.

7. Between a Loathing game balancing out its signature humor with some genuinely unsettling moments of otherworldly horror, Super Lesbian Animal RPG turning out to have a lot of genuine drama and an earnest save-the-world plot that takes itself seriously, and Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion having a hell of a tonal shift when you start getting into its world’s history, I have been surprised again and again this year by the depths and facets of RPGs whose surface level would suggest simple fun only.  I mean, I expect the signature good-natured wit and charm of a Large Battleship Studios title like A Dragon’s ReQuest to come with a side of life-changing pathos, but it seemed like everywhere I looked this year, the cutesy Indie RPGs were jumping up to flex their dramatic muscle.

8. Look, I don’t want to discount the tremendous power of Nurture to overcome one’s Nature, and of course I subscribe to the belief that we choose our own path in life.  With that said, though, all bets are off the moment your parents name you fucking Gharnef.  You are destined to be the main villain of an RPG and there is simply no getting around that fact.

9. Lost my Switch and had to replace it this year, losing all my save data for every game I’ve played on it in the last 7 years in the process, as well as the game that was in it at the time.  This seemed like a horrible accident at first, but I’ve since come to realize that misplacing my Switch may have been a willful act of my subconscious to save me from continuing to experience Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, at any cost.  But apparently my subconscious didn’t know about Youtube Let’s Play channels!  Nice try, idiot!

10. Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days was sweating bullets this year, let me tell you.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE wanted that trash can lid crown for Stupidest RPG Title Ever real bad.  KH3Whatever still pulled through in the end and remains the dumbest, but it was definitely a close call.

11. Bravely Default 2’s B’n’D is the true successor to Triple Triad’s legacy.  You can keep your Gwent, and your Queen’s Gambit, and all that other noise, it’s B’n’D that I’ve loved enough to sink hours into truly mastering!

By which I mean that I learned at some point to use Martha on the first round and just let her win the game for me.  Because Bravely Default 2 knows damn well that Martha is Best Girl, no matter what context.

12. To most staunch, lifelong players of video games, fall damage is a fiendish and hated villain, an eternal curse upon any game that implements it.  And yet, in what may truly be the most astounding feat of all from the game, Baldur’s Gate 3 inverts it, and turns fall damage into a fucking hero.

Is that a gang of thieves moving in for the attack on raised wooden platforms?  Minsc could you be a dear and hurl them off those platforms 1 at a time like you’re on a yeet assembly line?  Oh, what’s that?  A grotesque monstrosity made of gold just initiated combat while standing on her balcony?  Well gee I do wonder if the truly colossal weight of being a golem made out of a precious metal would escalate the damage from a 3-story drop to truly gargantuan levels?

Goodbye, Gortash, and do be sure to ring the bell on your way down to let the previous floor know you’re about to visit, would you?

13. Forget Tav, forget the Blade of Frontiers, even forget Minsc and Boo, if you can stomach the blasphemy.  To me, the quiet, earnest kindness of Spatula Farggo makes him the biggest hero of Faerun.



Quote of the Year
Runners-Up

"Grrr...Well, at any rate, we’ve determined that hamburgers are incapable of conveying the majesty of space.”
  --Caroline, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5

“Magic sure is weird.”
  --Cloud, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

“Pauline, please!  This isn’t right!  This isn’t you!”
“You’re not wrong, dearie.  I’m not at all dressed for a funeral.”
  --Crisbell and Pauline, Cris Tales

Winner
Just Literally Everything That Minsc Says
  --Minsc, Baldur’s Gate 3

...But if you just want a single winner for our quote of the year, then I suppose we can settle for:

“I...I can touch you...
I can’t believe this!  I can touch you, big brother!”
  --Tiki, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

I didn’t add the text color there, by the way.  That’s color-emphasized in the game.

Just...good God, Fire Emblem, we all know what you’re about, but could you at least try to play a little coy, at least?



Best Prequel/Sequel of 2024
Winner: Baldur’s Gate 3
While very much its own adventure with its own identity, BG3 builds itself very artfully upon the saga that preceded it, directly relying upon the events of BG1 and 2 to form parts of its history in ways that longtime players will recognize and most often appreciate.  That it brings Jaheira, Minsc, and Boo back is good, but the fact that it manages to do so while giving Jaheira some great new character development and escalating Minsc and Boo to new heights of their signature heart and hilarity is a real feather in BG3’s cap.  Now I’ll be the first to say that the game’s not a perfect sequel, because they did Sarevok dirty and they did Viconia filthy--and you can expect that grievance to be showing up in rant form at some point in the future--but it’s a damned good successor to the heart, soul, and history of Baldur’s Gate nonetheless, and what failings it has as such are partly assuaged by BG3 also connecting itself lightly to the events and lore of other D+D titles of old like Neverwinter Nights and Planescape: Torment.  I mean, hell, you could even argue that BG3’s a truer entry in the franchise than Baldur’s Gate 2 was--at least this one’s actually about Baldur’s Gate.

Runners-Up: Mr. Saitou; Shadows Over Loathing; Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5
I’ll admit, I hoped for a more heavy and dramatic follow-up to Rakuen than Mr. Saitou is, but it’s still got poignant heart to it, and uses the ideas and lore of Rakuen to tell another story of connections and empathy that’s definitely of the same vibe as those that characterize Rakuen, so it’s a solid sequel.  Shadows Over Loathing is more of the same signature, off-kilter and friendly humor that so greatly endear Kingdom of Loathing and West of Loathing to me, and it manages to actually up the ante a little by delivering on its occult horror theme with some bits that are kind of unnerving and alien--it’s a sequel that recaptures the greatness of its forebears, and finds a way to add to it, and it was strong competition to BG3 for winner here.  And lastly, Persona 5 is a fantastic game that once more examines and exalts the spirit of youth on the cusp of adulthood that SMT Persona games embody and explore, to even greater, edgier, more stylized fanfare than before.  It’s more of the same in a great way, while deliciously different and all the greater for it.


Biggest Disappointment of 2024
Loser: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
Anyone familiar with Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE knows that it is a beautiful convalescence of disappointment, a perfect amalgamation of failed expectations from so many different directions that its existence might actually be the miracle that proves that God exists, and that He hates us so very much.  I’m going to keep it light here because I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing a number of rants on this shitty game in the future, and 1 of them is almost surely going to be examining the myriad ways it disappoints, but to briefly outline it: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is a crossover between Shin Megami Tensei and Fire Emblem that has no connection to SMT and barely any connection to FE (and what connection it has, it undercuts by hitting its pre-established FE characters with amnesia), its writing is terrible, its main characters are shallow surface-level OCs, it’s more about the Japanese entertainment industry than about any kind of adventure, and that focus on the entertainment industry is shockingly superficial and unrealistic.

If you played it because you like Shin Megami Tensei, you’re disappointed.  If you played it because you like Fire Emblem, you’re disappointed.  If you played it because you like RPGs, you’re disappointed.  Hell, if you played it because you have an interest in entertainment or the idol industry, you’re still disappointed.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE fails basic, reasonable expectations on every level.

Almost as Bad: Cris Tales
Cris Tales is one of those cases where the game’s actually fairly good, it just still disappoints because it doesn’t live up to its promise.  For a tale about a woman able to hop between past and future in every location and in battle itself to save her planet from an Ultimecia-like threat that comes from another time, CT is remarkably low-key and relaxed in its general presentation and the way it executes its major events, and there are moments, particularly toward the end (as is usually the case), where it’s clear the developer had to cut planned content and rush things along.  Cris Tales IS good and I did like it, it just wasn’t all that it could and should have been.


Best Finale of 2024
Winner: A Dragon’s ReQuest
Assuming that the finale is the events preceding and including the best ending, that is--most of the “normal” endings to the game are interesting (and even important to see for better understanding of Aurelia’s character, as well as some context to Hinoki Jr.’s for later), but it’s the ultimate ending that best represents a conclusion to this grand adventure.  The finale to ADRQ is epic and at times even awing as Hinoki steps foot within the still-raging calamity that broke and made her world, faces and understands the origins of her adversaries, reaches out to connect to and be saved by the incredible legacy she’s created, and finally steps forth to keep living her life beside the women she so dearly loves.  It’s an atypical but gripping and wholly satisfying conclusion to an epic tale of love, trauma, and adventure, and a great promise that even greater things are yet to come for all.

Runners-Up: Baldur’s Gate 3; Child of Light; Super Lesbian Animal RPG
Honestly, the endings for each of these games are exactly what they should be.  BG3 concludes itself with a massive, epic struggle of the ages that represents a culmination of all facets of the adventure that came before it, and shows how the choices and events of each party member have played out for them.  Child of Light ends with a great struggle against its antagonist as Aurora fully grows into her role, all to the lovely, melancholic fairytale mood that CoL revels in, and Super Lesbian Animal RPG wraps itself up as a story of love, empathy, and healthy conflict resolution...while still providing some satisfying just deserts for a certain unrepentant Earthbound-knockoff jerk, of course.  Each game’s finale is very in line with its style and direction, and all are great, satisfying conclusions.

...Well, depending on your decisions in BG3, I suppose.  There’s plenty of shit that can happen in that ending which really sucks, but you have only yourself to blame for it.  Next time, ask yourself what Boo would do!


Worst RPG of 2024
Loser: Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE
This game is a useless, soulless, generic, vapid sack of turds that accomplishes, says, and gives absolutely nothing.  Nigh every member of the cast is either annoying, generic, or both, it makes no attempt to satisfyingly utilize either of the 2 franchises it’s supposedly combining, its narration reads like an AI wrote it, and its grasp of the entertainment industry--the ONLY thing the game is interested in showing; every adventure aspect of the plot is clearly just included out of obligation--is naively (even unhealthily) ignorant and repetitively halfhearted.  The story stumbles along, animated by one tired cliche after another, barely held together by lurching momentum and cared about by absolutely no one, least of all those who created it.  Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is an embarrassment to the franchises that it crosses over, and when it’s not disappointing fans of both, it’s blundering its way through a crappy, pointless story that betrays a pedestrian’s understanding (at best) of the industry it claims to be showcasing.  It’s populated by forgettable, dime-a-dozen cliches, and throughout its entirety it is fucking DUMB to an actually insulting degree.  This is genuinely 1 of the worst RPGs I’ve ever played.

Almost as Bad: Dragon Quest 1; Odessa; Smoke and Sacrifice
Odessa is not all that bad, really, it’s just not all that good, either.  Kind of just par for the course with many Aldorlea Games: it’s got some good points, some bad qualities, and it often feels just a little off overall.  Certainly not an outright bad game, but at the bottom of the titles I played this year.  Similar case with Smoke and Sacrifice--it’s a little bad, in that it’s a halfway decent story that might have fit appropriately into 2 hours but was stretched out into something like 12, but not awful or anything.  Once again, it’s just a case of it not being better than any of the other RPGs I played this year.

Dragon Quest 1, on the other hand, IS kind of bad.  I don’t care about nostalgia goggles and “for its time” only allows it so much when Phantasy Star 1, Final Fantasy 1, and The Magic of Scheherazade all came out only the next year.  I don’t recall having heard about the art of telling a halfway interesting story only being invented in 1987, and the hardware was the same, so Dragon Quest 1 doesn’t get a free pass for having a plot with all the nuance of Super Mario Brothers 1.  I genuinely can’t believe that this boring nothingburger is the golden standard that practically every subsequent entry in the series refuses to significantly evolve past.


Most Creative of 2024
Winner: Child of Light
It’s crazy to think of “creativity” and the title of an Ubisoft game in the same sentence, but there’s no denying that Child of Light is a wonderfully endearing, melancholic, and hopeful fairy tale RPG that walks an eloquent line between whimsy and the sadness of displacement, loss, and growing up.  It’s got memorably interesting characters, a classic but individual lore and world, and an engaging approach all its own.  I mean, heck, just the fact that it can manage to maintain an entire script from start to finish (with 1 notable exception) in pleasing rhyme is a point of notable creativity in itself!

Runners-Up: A Dragon’s ReQuest; Shadows Over Loathing; Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5
Honestly, anyone could make a great argument for any of these titles being the most creative of the ones I played this year.  In many ways, A Dragon’s ReQuest’s way of applying Saint Bomber’s approach to characters and storytelling to a traditionally long RPG, along with its interesting way of incorporating a deconstruction of the nature of RPGs and their evolution over time since the early 8-bit days, tops Child of Light for creativity, and Shadows Over Loathing’s singular, endlessly engaging and bizarrely witty humor combined with an occult adventure and an old-timey 1910s - 30s theme could definitely be seen to do the same.  And the premise, execution, twists, and relentless critique of the flaws of Japanese culture of Persona 5 are ferociously creative, too.  I did give the win to Child of Light, because the others DO still have the formulas of predecessors to build upon, where CoL is a new entity from the ground up, but it’s still a close call with such great, interesting, innovative works to choose from.


Best Romance of 2024
Winner: Argon x Aurellia x Fluorine x Garnet x Hinoki (with a possible side order of Chelisera) (A Dragon’s ReQuest)
Really shouldn’t be a shock to anyone who’s heard me speak before about Saint Bomber’s capacity for writing characters and romance.  The love story of Hinoki and her companions is a long, engaged, and determined one that elegantly links the women in her life to her in genuinely touching scenes and dialogues that emotionally develop these superlative characters and their bonds with one another, while displaying each’s individual and nuanced social psyche.  The love stories that entwine in this polyamorous tapestry highlight and are born from shared histories, deeply rooted wants and insecurities, tender gestures of caring and understanding, personal traumas, moments of great internal courage and adventurousness, and undeniable chemistry.

Making it even better is the fact that this isn’t just a harem-esque polyamory centered around a single figure that all the others love (not that I don’t adore much of Duchess Catherine’s love life in Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, mind)--it starts that way, with Hinoki as all the other women’s central figure of affection, but A Dragon’s ReQuest carefully, expertly brings Hinoki’s paramours together with their own moments and connections of love as time goes on, with each new couple in this love polyhedron discovering ardor for one another in their own, unique terms.  And no lack of effort or conviction is given to these “side” romances, either--Fluorine and Garnet’s feelings for each other are treated with the same respect and importance to them as people and as a couple with which each’s romance with Hinoki is treated, for example.  Honestly, one of most poignant scenes in the game (and one of my many favorites) is that in which Fluorine and Aurellia allow physicality to finally find a way to connect them and foray into new emotional territory together.  It’s lovely.  The whole game-spanning multifaceted love story of the main characters is lovely.

Runners-Up: Allison x Melody (Super Lesbian Animal RPG); Astarion x Tav (Baldur’s Gate 3); Karlach x Tav (Baldur’s Gate 3)
I had a lot of good options to choose from for love stories this year, and narrowing it down to these couples was a tough process.  Honestly, it kills me that Larceny x Rowdy from A Dragon’s ReQuest didn’t make it here, just about all the main romantic options in Baldur’s Gate 3 were compelling (Shadowheart was really close to ousting Astarion here), not to mention even a couple of the NPC couples encountered along the adventure, and there were some other good contenders from Super Lesbian Animal RPG, Shadows Over Loathing...hell, even Odessa’s “Taken but it’s his fiancee instead of his daughter” schtick had a decently compelling earnestness to it.

Still, I’ll stand by these.  Karlach’s earnestness, eagerness to give and receive affection, and the way that the complications of loving her intermingle with her personal character arcs, all make romancing her feel the most genuine and good of the many options in BG3, I think.  Astarion’s not far behind, either; his own personal story as a damaged, hurting slave grasping for freedom and revenge in need of help to separate his real desires from the ones his fear forces upon him coalesces marvelously with his finding someone to love earnestly in spite of his initial instinct to merely use that love as a form of security.

And as might be expected of an RPG with a highlight of identity, love, and queer culture, the love story of Super Lesbian Animal RPG’s main couple is well-written, genuine, and touching.  I’m also particularly fond of Allison and Melody’s romance because it’s a great example to writers that it’s quite possible to have a dynamic, engaging, and heartfelt love story AFTER the couple in question actually get together--their relationship is already established and in progress by the time the game starts, a narrative rarity that writers seem to retreat from like vampires from garlic, or Nijisanji from any decision that isn’t pure evil.  And I don’t know why that is, because if Allison and Melody’s tale is anything to go by, there’s no shortage of opportunities for an in-progress romantic relationship for sweet displays, conflicts born of bad communication or projected insecurities, and the combining of both personal and shared growth as they work through their obstacles as a couple and help each other work through their issues as people.


Best Voice Acting of 2024
Winner: Baldur’s Gate 3
BG3’s voice acting is diverse, engaging, emphatic, memorable, and pretty much always on point.  Whether it’s Jaheira’s dryly, bitterly, but undeniably passionate entreaties, Gale’s affable know-it-all charm, Astarion’s expressive smarm and annoyance, Lae’zel’s grumbles and hisses, or one of the many great side performances like those of Withers, the Owlbear Cub, Hope, or Raphael, the game’s always got a well-acted line from a singular vocal character for you from one moment to the next.

I mean, honestly, was there even a chance that Baldur’s Gate 3 wasn’t going to be the winner when it’s got the best, most robust vocal performance yet for Minsc?  I think not.

Runners-Up: Cris Tales; Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5
Surprisingly few of the RPGs I played this year were voiced, actually, but that doesn’t diminish the vocal work of Cris Tales (Lizzie Freeman in particular does a good job at keeping up with Zas’s Pinkie-Pie-esque energy), nor the fine job that SMT Persona 5’s actors turned in.  Good work, folks!


Funniest of 2024
Winner: Shadows Over Loathing
It’s a Loathing game, and somehow, even after having been at it for more than half of my lifetime, Asymmetric Publications manages to still find fresh, witty, high- and lowbrow comedy avenues just as hilarious as ever.  Between glockenspiel war music, windmills who are mortally invested in snobbery over poets, and discussing the place of evolution in vampire hierarchy, Shadows Over Loathing brings the same fantastic humor that West of Loathing did and Kingdom of Loathing perfected, with a delightful early 20th century theme.  You had me at the “TRY COFFEE: You’ll like it eventually” sign, SoL.

Runners-Up: A Dragon’s ReQuest; Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
The name should probably be your first giveaway that Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion’s going to be a largely silly venture, and it lives up to its promise with gentle, random humor throughout its course.  Meanwhile, A Dragon’s ReQuest, though as emotionally and deadly serious as often and as deeply as it desires, immerses itself in the fun, oft referential, eternally clever banter and observations that make Saint Bomber’s works so much genuine fun to go through (and increase the stories’ emotional power through skillful contrast) --and this latest title probably contains the most jokes specifically about RPGs, which, as you know, is a major bonus where I’m concerned!


Best Villain of 2024
Winner: Shido (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5)
Shido’s a great villain on multiple levels--he’s genuinely despicable, he’s a decent mirror to the hero of the story and negatively connected to his past, he’s introduced with gradual foreboding before he stands in the villain’s limelight, he’s both grandiose and petty as a scummy little low-tier jerk with ambition and a weapon that happened to fall into his lap who begins making aristocratic airs, and as a 2-faced politician who sells himself through a cult of personality, deception, and underhanded tactics rather than qualification with every intention to serve only himself and his fellow elites at the detriment of the common man, he’s...certainly a believable and familiar villain to us.  Shido’s a great antagonist matched to a great game, and the best I saw this year.

Almost as Bad: Madarame (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5); Malphon (A Dragon’s ReQuest); Verena (Super Lesbian Animal RPG)
Like what I did there?  The runners-up for the villain category are now “almost as bad” like I usually describe the follow-ups for negative categories.  Cuz, y’know.  Bad guys.  Ha ha.

...Moving on.

As I said in 1 of my previous rants on the game, Madarame, in spite of being pretty small potatoes in the overall scheme of things, is shockingly vile when you really consider him--Shido may be more diabolical and of course his machinations reach and harm incalculably more people, but there’s a special, chillingly personal kind of evil to a man who would simply stand back and watch a woman die when he could have saved her, just so that he could take her greatest work--a painting expressing her new wonder and joy at being a mother--and deface it, then claim it as his own.  An evil compounded by his then adopting her infant son, the one that had inspired her masterpiece that he has defiled and disguised as his own, in the hopes that the child might have inherited her talents, talents that he might one day be able to steal and warp to his purposes all over again.  Just...holy shit, dude, I know he’s not financially ruining families or destroying the quality of life for countless workers or ordering silent assassinations in an attempt to pull a country-devastating coup, but somehow Madarame seems the most outright nasty villain in the entire game.  I gotta applaud SMTP5’s writers, because you wouldn’t think that you could ever find a way to make a plagiarist stand shoulder-to-shoulder with tyrants and CEOs and rapists, but they damn well found a way.

Verena as an antagonist is decently layered and sympathetic, and while it may seem crazy to place her above the entire rogues’ gallery of Baldur’s Gate 3, her intentions and character simply seem far more real and compelling.  Malphon’s got great energy as an antagonist, both amusingly fun, and genuinely malevolent, whose levity can be replaced in moments with deadly gravity that can seem unnerving even to the player.  Her back story’s cool and interesting to learn, and an example of how you do certain elements of a villain’s postmortem character revelations well--by making sure there’s still some time for them to sink in, by not trying to play sympathetic histories or intentions as more important than the wrongdoing they caused, and by fitting it into the game’s grander story and lore naturally and significantly, rather than just shoving new information in out of nowhere.  For these reasons, Malphon succeeds as a villain who we only get a clear picture of after the fact, where Tales of Phantasia’s Dhaos, a man whose villainy basically just amounts to “I have to go now.  My planet needs me,” utterly failed.

And I know that’s kinda neither here nor there, really, but a successful version of this kind of villain writing is so rare, and I bring up ToP’s gross failure in creating a decent villain often enough, that I really do feel it’s important to specifically point out an occasion where it DOES work when it comes about.


Best Character of 2024
Winner: Shadowheart (Baldur’s Gate 3)
Well-written and appealing, Shadowheart’s dynamic character undergoes a compelling crisis of faith when the inherent decency that simply couldn’t be beaten out of her clashes with the toxic demands of perhaps the pettiest god of the Dungeons and Dragons pantheon (which is saying something, considering D+D also includes those petulant losers Myrkul and Bhaal), at which point she hits her stride as a person and her journey becomes one of affirming herself and rising above the propaganda and abuse Shar failed to break her with.  It is (or at least, it can be, if you follow it through to the right conclusion) a bolstering tale of a woman rising to become more than the sum of her faith to shame a goddess by showing that she can live with and past loss, where Shar could only be so broken by it that her pain had to spill out into all that surrounded her.  There’s a lot of good character arcs in BG3 (Astarion’s pursuit of freedom from both his enslavement and from his fear of it is great, for example, and Karlach’s got some powerful moments of grappling with mortality when revenge fails to salve her hurt) and memorable personalities to go with them (Jaheira and Gale are honestly pretty great), but I think Shadowheart stands above the rest.

Runners-Up: Aurellia (A Dragon’s ReQuest); Fluorine (A Dragon’s ReQuest); Garnet (A Dragon’s ReQuest)
Garnet, Fluorine, and Aurellia are multifaceted, deep, and emotionally complex human beings constantly being developed, both subtly and in pivotal scenes, in their own rights and hand-in-hand with one another and their fellow party members, and through it all, they’re remarkably and approachably human and interesting.  And while there are a myriad of ways that these 3 (and make no mistake, Argon and Hinoki are solid, too, I just only fill 3 spaces in this category) are characters with meaningful foundations, dynamic development, and excellent writing throughout, what definitively puts them ahead of all competitors from other games I played this year is probably the fact that they aren’t just limited to 1 major story and arc of development, but rather struggle with multiple major points of growth and conflict over the course of their adventure.

Aurellia, for example, is majorly characterized by the suffering and fury that lurks beneath her austere surface as a result of the tortures she underwent as her family, life, and legacy were maliciously destroyed before her, and the struggle to come to terms with what that did to her heart and the hatred it instilled in her, the potential seed it planted in her heart to become a world-ender should she lose herself to it.  But much of this trauma just coalesced with natural impulses of frustration and difficulties in finding herself emotionally that already existed, and another major story of Aurellia’s character is her struggle to find ways to open up to and connect earnestly with her companions.  And that hardship in getting in touch with herself was largely caused by a demanding, restrictive upbringing and role, which in turn means that another major part of Aurellia’s development centers around her resentment for her position, her kingdom, and her life, even as she strives to be their perfect champion and mourns what she’s lost.  These and several more points of who Aurellia is are all coinciding, usually connected, yet individual major arcs of development that this single character engages in, painting the picture of a real, multifaceted human being rather than just a specifically designed character limited to 1 or 2 major personal story beats.

Now granted, Aurellia is probably the most nuanced and interesting of ADRQ’s cast--hell, I think she’s the best character I’ve yet seen Saint Bomber write altogether--but Fluorine and Garnet aren’t far behind her.  Hell, to be totally blunt, A Dragon’s ReQuest nearly swept this whole category; I’m honestly not sure at all that Aurellia shouldn’t be sitting in the winner’s spot here, in spite of how great Shadowheart’s story is.  ADRQ really is just that good with its character writing.

Okay Cool But We All Know the Real Winner Is: Minsc (Baldur’s Gate 3)
Yeah actually screw all that high-falutin’ critical analysis mumbo-jumbo, keep your Shadowhearts and Aurellias and all the rest, all I really want out of my cast is a hilarious lunatic hollering about his hamster.


Best RPG of 2024
Winner: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5
SMT Persona 5 is an engaging, fun, earnest, passionate game with great ambitions, sharp writing, memorable characters with good dynamics, realistically loathsome villains, and a creative, well-plotted, and excellent story.  It tells a rich and rewarding tale, represents the well-meaning rebellion of the adolescent beautifully, and takes a direct, uncompromising stance against the ills and unhealthy attitudes of its culture in an adamant defense of the different and indictment of collectivism, while never erring from a clear and present celebration of Tokyo and its people.  It’s flashy, it’s fun, and it’s intelligent and passionate in equal measure.  Fantastic RPG!

Runners-Up: A Dragon’s ReQuest; Baldur’s Gate 3; Shadows Over Loathing
Shadows Over Loathing may be a comedy RPG, but it’s a hell of a funny comedy RPG, and the addition of an involved plot, more party members with some better-defined development, and a surprisingly effective capacity to lean into the occult theme enough to be genuinely unnerving, have elevated SOL even higher than West of Loathing was.

Not to shortchange Baldur’s Gate 3, but I don’t think I need to go over why it’s here, really.  Not only have I sang many of its praises in this rant already, but it absolutely swept a real awards show back in 2023, and it’s been consistently held up as a new standard for quality gaming since the moment it released.  It’s basically the next Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy 7--very over-hyped, but genuinely excellent nonetheless.

As for A Dragon’s ReQuest...well.  You think my placing SMT Persona 5 above Baldur’s Gate 3 is a hot take?  Friend, if I hadn’t played Persona 5 this year, I’d be courting divine retribution right now, because as far as I’m concerned, A Dragon’s ReQuest is an even better RPG than Baldur’s Gate 3.



List Changes
Funniest RPGs: A Dragon’s ReQuest and Shadows Over Loathing have been added; no games have been removed--Kingdom of Loathing, Shadows Over Loathing, and West of Loathing have all been condensed into a single spot (since, while distinct and worthwhile individual games, you have to admit that the humor in all is of the same recognizable brand).
Greatest Romances: Argon, Aurellia, Fluorine, Garnet, and Hinoki (A Dragon’s ReQuest) have been added; Beast and Belle (Kingdom Hearts Series) have been removed.  Sorry, you classic couple whose care crossed kinds of chronicles from cartoon to Kingdom Hearts.
Greatest RPGs: I haven’t made any changes to this yet, but my plan is for my next rant to be an update and expansion of this list, as it’s been some time, and at that time, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 5 will be added to it (and possibly A Dragon’s ReQuest, though I’m not sure on that point--Quantum Entanglement would certainly be ahead in the running as far as Large Battleship Studios games go, but it might happen).
Most Annoying Characters: Barry (Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE) has been added; Navi (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time) has been removed.  Congrats, you flighty, frustrating fairy.
Most Overpowered Characters: Gen (Child of Light) has been added; George (Suikoden 5) has been removed.  Sorry, you 1-eyed 1-shotting wonder warrior.
Pokemon: Ogerpon has been added to Best Pokemon; Wooloo has been removed.  Sorry, you soft, silly spherical sheep simulacrum.
Worst RPGs: I legitimately cannot believe that Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE cannot quite manage to get onto this list.  That’s how obscenely awful the list’s gatekeeper Conception 2 really is.  I think it may be past time to expand this one out a bit further.
I did move Chrono Cross several spots higher on the list, though, thanks to the Chrono Compendium article I mentioned much earlier opening my eyes to the fact that Chrono Cross is, beyond all rational expectation, actually worse than I thought.


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

Them’s Fightin’ Chords
A Dragon’s ReQuest Boss Battle (Boss Battle)
Pokemon Generation 9 Kieran and Terapagos Battle (Event Boss Battle

Hither, Thither, and Song
A Dragon’s ReQuest Great Disaster (Final Dungeon)
A Dragon’s ReQuest Ruins (Dungeon)
A Dragon’s ReQuest: Vintervault (Cold)
Cris Tales Rainbow Lake (Freshwater)

Chime Really Feeling It!
A Dragon’s ReQuest Emotional Difficulty (Reflection/Remembrance)
A Dragon’s ReQuest Sad (Sad)

See You Bass Cowboy
A Dragon’s ReQuest Argon (Character)
Child of Light Aurora Grows Up (Miscellaneous)
CrossCode Jet (Character)

All That and a Bag of Chiptunes
CrossCode Temple of Thunder Remix (General Remixes)
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Skipper’s Retreat Shack Low Whistle/Oboe Remix (General Remixes)
Pokemon Generation 9 Champion Nemona Battle (Fan Originals)
A Dragon’s ReQuest is now my eight favorite soundtrack!



And that’s it, that’s all for 2024!  Certainly a full and eventful year, if not a productive one for me on the RPG front.  But I have a good feeling about 2025!  For sure!  Really!

...Ah, screw it, let’s face it, I’m never playing more than 15 RPGs in a year again at this point.  Free time doesn’t get less precious as life progresses, only all the more rare.  Well, hopefully I can at least keep playing gems with what time I do have for it.  Another Large Battleship Studios game is mostly complete, as I understand it, Hades 2 is much the same I’m told, and I’ve avoided Cyberpunk 2077 for long enough, I reckon, so 2025 ought to have some great moments awaiting me!  And hell, it’s at least not statistically likely that anything’s gonna be as awful as Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE, so there’s that, at least.

As ever, sincere, warm, and effusive gratitude must go to my friend Ecclesiastes, as well as my sister, who both continue, against all logical recourse, to let me blather on to them about my every whimsical musing regarding RPGs, as I use them as unpaid and greatly put-upon editors and soundboards.  I certainly don’t know what they’re getting out of being the first line of defense against typos and poorly phrased sentences and outright bad ideas altogether, but I’m damned grateful to them for it.

And likewise as always, I’m also incredibly flattered and grateful to Ecclesiastes for also being my Patron.  In 1 of the most unfair twists of sick cosmic humor, HE’S paying ME for listening to my dumb ideas and arguing me out of embarrassing myself with bad takes, and helping me sort out the best phrasing for RPG Valentines, the latter duty probably qualifying as an actual crime to inflict on another human being.  Seriously, with all grateful gravity, thank you, sir.  You’re a damned fine friend.

And thanks to all the rest of you guys who read these stupid rants.  It never ceases to please and amaze me every time I realize that there are actually people out there who read what I write and (presumably) give it some thought.  Hell, even if you don’t, it’s still majorly cool that you’re willing to take time out of a finite existence even just to scorn me.  Sincerely, thanks for reading in 2024!  Happy holidays, and I’ll see you again in the new year!