Not as long of a blog this time, sadly! Turns out the end of 2024 got rather busy for me, with my lovely boyfriend moving in with me on the thirtieth of December, and it also happens I left quite a lot of entries unwritten until basically the last second... So most of these I'm writing right around the Christmas period, which is as we know a period in which we reflect upon the games we played and the shows and movies we watched. Forget about merriment and family, that's what Christmas is REALLY all about.
Animal Well
This is a game I had been anticipating before its release, it's the first game published by Bigmode Games, a new publisher that promises to only publish high-quality games. A premise that sounds endearingly simple, but which they have so far accomplished with Animal Well.
Animal Well describes itself better than I could: "Explore a dense, interconnected labyrinth, and unravel its many
secrets. Collect items to manipulate your environment in surprising and
meaningful ways. Encounter beautiful and unsettling creatures, as you
attempt to survive what lurks in the dark. There is more than what you
see."
So from the onset it definitely gives vibes similar to TUNIC, which I played last year. I've seen people call this genre of games "Metroidbrainias", Metroidvania games with a big emphasis on puzzles and secrets, oftentimes with multiple layers of increasingly obscure content. A game that looks deceptively simple at first, but is actually dense and complicated, a big puzzle to unravel. I left TUNIC with decidedly mixed feelings, and some bits in Animal Well gave me those same vibes, but overall I'd say I enjoyed Animal Well a lot more.
What immediately struck me with Animal Well was its very appealing audiovisual presentation. There's plenty of pixel art games out there, but something about the way the game implemented scanlines did really manage to remind me of how games looked back on those old handhelds I'd played. The game also just has richly detailed environments, smoothly animated flora and fauna, well-executed liquid and gas effects, effective ambient background noise and music, good sound effects, it all just blends together really well. And it somehow all fits into a little 34MB game that has basically no load times for anything, making for a very smooth play experience to fit with how smooth the game in general feels.
That feeling of wow did a lot to carry my goodwill for the game throughout its runtime, exploring the dense world just feels good, and it's also helped by how cleverly the map is designed, every little nook and cranny being used and the map frequently contorting in on itself with little secret alcoves and paths to discover and unlock. It was a joy to explore and open up the whole of the map, it really does feel like going through an intricate puzzle box in that sense, with every corner of the map having its own focus and frequently introducing unique game elements or animals to interact with.
As you explore the world, you gradually find some items that give you new abilities. You start out only able to jump, but you quickly find firecrackers, consumable throwables that are the closest the game has to a weapon, and every item from there on has a variety of different uses, some obvious and others unconventional. It's up to the player to figure these out for themself, I for example quickly figured out I could use the Bubble Wand to do some pretty ludicrous platforming feats, something that the game never requires but opens up a lot of secret passageways.
The game's puzzles can be divided up into four layers. The first is finding the four flames the game focuses on in its intro, they are found in four corners of the map and require facing a recurring animal boss each. This is the layer I think anyone should be able to solve, you only need the game's basic items to do it and it doesn't require any secret knowledge or such. It took me about 8 hours to finish this part of the game, which I quite enjoyed. There were a few bits that I wasn't a fan of, the Chameleon boss felt lame and the final boss battle rather annoyed me, but it doesn't change how fun exploring the world was.
The second layer is finding the game's 64 eggs, locked away in chests scattered all around the titular well. These are more difficult to find, requiring solving optional puzzles, doing difficult feats of platforming, finding hidden nooks and crannies and generally necessitating more out of the box thinking and system mastery. In the end I was able to find 52 eggs by myself and was able to figure out how to get most of the others by just looking up what room they could be found in, some of those were just eggs I'd already found but didn't have the proper tools for. There's about 6 or so eggs that I did need more guidance for since they required some rather poorly explained steps to be taken, like having to play the flute in some area to notice it makes something happen, or the seemingly useless basketball being able to destroy coloured block like in a game of Breakout... I wasn't a fan of those puzzles, they just seemed like the sort of "try everything everywhere" design I don't like. The world is too big for that sort of gameplay, I'm not made of time exactly. Still, with some guidance I was able to finish this layer after 12 hours, I'd already gotten nearly 40 eggs by the time I hit the first ending.
Then there's the third and fourth layers, which are stupid dumb nonsense obscure bullshit and I didn't do them!! I'm very thankful the game was smart enough to not implement any of that stuff in the second layer as I felt TUNIC did near its end, so I could just look this stuff up online and think "Wow, that's dumb" and not engage with any of it. I did regardless stumble upon a few things in that layer because I'm just that much of an Elite Gamer, but in the end I knew I'd just get frustrated if I tried this, so I didn't.
So, overall I would say I greatly enjoyed the game, bar some hiccups where I got frustrated at how certain things were designed. I don't think the game is the world's most darn cleverest most wonderfully funny little brainteaser ever, but I did find it a charming puzzle platformer with a damn good presentation and deceptively simple tools that prove to be more useful than expected. I could see myself giving the game another run down the line and enjoying a more streamlined experience.
Pokémon Inclement Emerald
I'd already played this one before, doing a Flying monotype run back in December of 2021. I'll just copy my description from back then: "As the name implies, it's a gen 3 hack, and wow, it's extensive! It has a
truckload of features. It's impressive how big it is really, it has all
Pokémon and moves and items and abilities and such up to gen 7, with
gen 8 also planned. It has a ton of quality of life features, and you'll
need them too, since the opponents won't screw around."
The game still didn't get the content update that was being teased, alas! But I was hankering to play a Pokémon game, and nothing else came to mind. Emerald is a fun base game to work with, after all. I was wondering what type to run though, I pondered Ghost, Electric and Rock before settling on the rather unassuming Fighting type. Not a very popular type, I assume, due to the rather overwhelming degree of anthropomorphism of Fighting types, they are possibly the most human-like of all types on average.
Anyway, the run went well! Few trainers really actively counter Fighting types in this game luckily, and my team also just had a lot of bases covered. Its biggest lack is that it didn't cover some specific types and lacked any sort of special moves and in general was low on status moves, but it was a fast and powerful team. Sometimes being fast and powerful is all you need.
As for the ROMhack itself, it holds up well! Hoenn is smack full of trainers, both regular battles as well as boss fights and two whole evil teams, wowie! It's a region I always look forward to returning to, and I also find the focus on gens 1~7 to hit that sweet spot of having a wide diversity of Pokémon without it feeling too stuffed or full. It also helps that it excludes gen 8, which is easily my least favourite generation in terms of designs, followed by 4 and 9.
Now I do really need Aurora Crystal to come out some time soon...
(Addendum: No Aurora Crystal yet, wah! But we ARE getting Volt White/Blaze Black 2 Redux Redux, which is also quite exciting and looks to be the most fully features gen 5 game to this day! Very ambitious!)
Pokémon Ultra Quartz
I suppose I wasn't rid of my Pokémon hankering after finishing a second run of Inclement Emerald, because some sort of brainworm made me play Pokémon Ultra Quartz: Let's Go Blobbos Edition soon after finishing Inclement Emerald. Pokémon Quartz is a somewhat infamous Pokémon Ruby ROMhack that was made back in 2006 by Spanish developer Baro. This ROMhack stands out for its writing, its monster designs and for being a rare instance of a ROMhack with a significant amount of custom assets back in its day, being set in a repainted version of Hoenn called Corna.
That's not to say it stood out for its quality, the writing is a mixture of bizarre, profane and downright incomprehensible. There's also random bouts of Spanish and developer in-jokes strewn throughout that make the plot even more bewildering. Adding to that is that all 386 Pokémon at the time got design overhauls, many of which are downright memetically ugly or just bizarre. Still, it is a feature complete ROMhack that can be played from start to finish, which is no small feat in and of itself.
The version I played, Pokémon Ultra Quartz: Let's Go Blobbos Edition, was released in 2018 and is a major polishing update to the original Quartz. The original story, writing and designs are kept intact, but the update completely overhauls every Pokémon's base stats and movepools to properly account for their new designs. It turns out the original game was very haphazard with actually adjusting base stats and movepools to account for the new typings and designs of the Pokémon in the regional dex, so many of them were identical to the vanilla Ruby, even though it made no sense...
The update also revamps encounter tables and enemy teams, so you can find almost all 386 Pokémon inside the game proper, rather than just the 251 Pokémon in the "Corna Dex". Overall the difficulty is somewhat of a step up from the original Ruby, but it's not a difficulty ROMhack by any means. It's quite balanced overall.
The update also adds some new content, much of it re-implementing vanilla content that wasn't in the original Quartz like contests, the Game Corner and the Battle Tower. The game also adds a new mandatory quest early in the game where you have to fight against the Deadly Seven, a group of characters from another infamous ROMhack called Snakewood. That whole sequence was honestly a big chore, that sequence definitely should have been optional content, perhaps saved for the postgame...
Anyway, the game is very much a mix of so bad it's good with the writing and designs and surprisingly decent gameplay considering it's based on the third generation of Pokémon. It doesn't have any of the new features of new generations, but it's also nice to go back to an early generation for once and not have it have every single (QOL) feature the series has added since. It's nostalgic in a weird way.
One thing that was disappointing however is that the original developer clearly put much less effort into the game's water routes than the land routes. While the land routes have all been redesigned from the ground up, many of the game's water routes are just 1:1 copy-pasted from the originals, often without any adjustments to the trainers either. A lot of the charm of the game's lost when some routes are just carbon copies of Hoenn areas, and a lot of the optional sea routes after the fifth gym are exactly just that.
As for the team I used, it actually turned out to be a Dragon monotype team, which is rather silly since they all look extremely derpy in this game. It was an overall solid team that did share a glaring common weakness to Ice types, but also had a variety of good resistances that made a lot of matchups surprisingly smooth. Overall the boss that gave me the most issues was the final boss, the Champion. Quite fitting, I suppose.
Echo
One of the big classic furry visual novels, up there with Morenatsu and Nekojishi! My boyfriend and I tore our way through the entirety of Echo, side stories and Route 65 included, during my four weeks of vacation around August and September.
And boy, Echo was an experience and a half. At this point I'm writing these entries in December, but suffice to say that I could write a whole Pokémon Reborn-length blog about all the great bullshit that happens in this game. And I never will, so this shorter one will have to suffice.
Echo on the surface looks like your typical gay furry romantic visual novel. You're an otter who's headed back to the decaying and dying town that he and his friend group grew up in for a childhood friends reunion and to work on a journalism project. Among these friends are hot wolfman furrybait ex-boyfriend Leo Alvarez, stoner and rich heir bighorn ram Carl Hendricks, Christian sporty & sensitive lynx TJ, abrasive and alluring gila monster Flynn. Oh, and there's Jenna Begay, who is a woman. She also wound up being potentially my favourite of the cast, probably sharing the spot with Carl. Carl is more fun, but Jenna is just super interesting. Props to the writing for Jenna's route in particular, whenever it puts the focus on Jenna it's absolute peak.
When tensions really flare up between the group over some past unsettled business concerning a friend of theirs who mysteriously died at the lake, the plot diverges into one of five routes. These routes all turn out to have their own particular flavour of horror.
Because Echo is actually more of a horror VN than a romantic VN. It's kind of like Doki Doki Literature Club, but better because it's more well-written and has gay furries instead of anime schoolgirls, and it's not really self-aware of being a visual novel game.
I could write a ton about how every route goes, but I'll instead just give my rankings for how much I liked all routes:
Jenna > Flynn > Leo = TJ > Carl
This is basically the inverse of the order I played the routes in. I did like all of the main cast though, or at least find them lovably despicable as often wound up being the case with some of them. My only real downside for much of the game is that TJ never really feels like a real person. Maybe that's just because I've never had a Christian softboi nattering at me not to swear, and if I did I would tell them to fuck off... That might have happened on the BROK server, actually. Fucking shit.
Anyway, what stuck out to me the most in the game was how well it evokes this sense of horror that comes from this dying hick town being an absolute hotbed for all kinds of horrific shit, both ordinary and clearly paranormal. That and because the characters for the most part feel pretty real, and the game's writing overall is just evocative and gripping. It was good food for me and my boyfriend to talk about all sorts of things.
Overall I can see why this game launched a whole host of other furry visual novels under the Echo Project moniker, but to mixed results it would appear. I'll continue to appreciate the time I spend with Echo though, despite its many flaws.
Arches
Another gay furry visual novel, and a sequel to Echo. This time the protagonists are already a committed gay couple by the time the game begins, a coyote and a bear. Very cute stuff! I really loved the art in this one, it was a big step up from Echo's art being clearly an inconsistent amalgam of many different contributors.
Anyhow, Arches is a lot more focused and clear in its vision than Echo was, the core theme clearly being substance abuse and the haunting effects it has on the coyote's life. It still has both the rural and supernatural horror that Echo did, some bits directly being from Echo, but having a different duo of protagonists makes it all feel very different.
I'd say it's a good little sequel side story to Echo that also works on its own merits. I did find that the degree of bad choices that led to the moment where things REALLY go south kind of dragged on, but when things go south they start going hard. What I really liked was how much time was spent on the fallout of all that happened, the game spends a lot of time going over just what that harrowing experience would do to a couple.
I can't honestly say I've really seem many works portray a gay couple like this game does, where there's clearly issues and problems and frictions, but it's also clear beyond a doubt that the two do genuinely love each other and aren't *just* bad for each other. Good stuff.
Ace Attorney Investigations Duology
Now this one was somewhat of a surprise. Following the release of The Great Ace Attorney, the Investigations duology were the only games that hadn't made it to the HD era yet, nor gotten translated in all languages. There was a feeling that we might get them, but no certainty. I'm glad that after over a decade, we did in fact finally get an official translation for the second Investigations game!
As good a time as any to also give the first one a whirl, since it's often regarded as among the weakest entries in the Ace Attorney series. I myself didn't care much for it when I played it. Was that deserved?
As it turns out... Yeah, kinda. AAI just doesn't have any standout good cases. Case 1 is a very middle of the road, playing-it-safe starter case. Case 2 has some genuinely good character stuff and has a surprisingly good culprit, no notes there. Case 3 is where we finally meet the game's new exclusive characters, and is among the worst cases in the series. It contains pointless cameos and utterly fails to create an investment in its case-exclusive cast. Just an all-around mess of a case with the lamest culprit in the series and the most undercooked I-don't-give-a-shit drama ever. Case 4 is a return to form, but does too much whitewashing for past Edgeworth for my tastes, and the final confrontation just goes by way too easily, after a middle sequence that really dragged on. Case 5 is the controversial one, we all know about EXTRATERRITORIAL RIGHTS, but honestly I found that whole sequence the BEST part of the case. I'd say the only part that felt undercooked here was the resolution of the Yatagarasu plotline, because the culprit of that part of the case just folds way too easily.
AAI2 meanwhile is a darling, widely beloved. Is that deserved? Well, yes, it turns out that is is. And that the new translation really makes shine why this is just such a well-written story. It's easily my favourite Ace Attorney game made with Yamazaki at the helm, and you can tell just how much better the translation is compared to AAI1 when playing both after each other. The translation is just much fresher, less rote and dull than AAI1's.
AAI2 is in the running for having the best case 1 in the series, I'd put it up there with AA4 and TGAA2 in that regard. Case 2 is quite long and meandering, but is a genuinely perplexing and well-constructed mystery, I just think it needed to be shorter during the middle stages. Case 3 is peak from start to finish, my only note on it is that Verity was kinda annoying in this case. Case 4 got the biggest glow-up with the new translation, I love what they did with the culprit in this one. Case 5 has moments where it drags, and some of the conclusion wasn't entirely satisfying to me, but it also just brings EVERYTHING together and so much of the last portions of this case are just some of Ace Attorney's finest stuff.
So yeah, I had a good time with the Duology. AAI1 is still a bottom-tier AA game for me, while AAI2 is a top-tier AA game, replaying these games reinforced what I thought, but I also did come out of it with a bigger appreciation for both games.
And no, we are never ever EVER getting the Layton crossover.
My Familiar Demo
I got into this game when I saw some gifs of the gameplay from the game's social media account. It had highly animated and colourful pixel art and the player character seemed to be some sort of scrunkly ratty batty goblin creature. Seemed up my alley, so I tried the demo.
I quite liked it! The art is as crispy as I expected it to be, though since it was basically the tutorial area the combat was all rather easy. That is one thing that I often get with these turn-based RPGs, they can have fulfilling narratives and great art and sound direction, but it isn't always supported with proper gameplay. I'll have to see if it the full game keeps the gameplay engrossing all the way through.
I am curious where exactly the story is headed, the game is set on a weird island inhabited by oddball monsters and it's all rather contemporary, but the protagonist is actually a human in the real world, so I'm wondering how the real world stuff factors into things. I'm excited to see where this one goes, give the trailer a look, it's very stylish!
Pro Philosopher 2: Governments and Grievances
An unexpected sequel to 2013's Socrates Jones: Pro Philosopher. This Ace Attorney-like takes the AA series's testimony/cross-examination gameplay and makes it its core gameplay while enhancing on the gameplay loop of those sequences. Philosophers will make their case, and it's up to you to use three different forms of questions (clarification, backing and relevance) to dig through the core of their arguments and then use their own arguments against them to expose the weak points in their presented rationales.
While the first game focused on moral philosophies, the second game puts the focus on political philosophy. The question is not what makes the perfect moral code, but the ideal system of governance. A very contentious and prickly topic, and the game can't just re-use the same final conclusion that the first game used.
The game overall feels matured from its predecessor. Ariadne Jones is a less bumbling protagonist than Socrates was, the philosophers this time cover not just ancient and historical philosophers, but also more contemporary ones up to the late 20th century. The writing overall feels more pointed and grounded in reality, despite the game using and even leaning more on its rather bizarre core premise as for how and why you are arguing with these dead philosophers.
The gloves really come off from the fourth philosopher onward, and I especially liked the fifth and sixth sets of arguments and discussions. The game also comes to I think a more ambitious and well-executed conclusion than the first game's final argument, which felt oddly easy to pick apart. But I'd be lying if I said that the political realities of the real world that happened not long after the game's release made any sense of optimism in the game feel rather limp. The game is good at pointing out the problems inherent in our systems, but it just cannot come to some easy solution for them because there just isn't one. But I am glad that in doing so, it mostly avoids leaping headfirst into through-terminating cliches. But then it does do well only to end on a vague notion that proper education can solve things, which just doesn't really satisfy me. It's like, yeah, it could, if we could implement such an educational revolution despite the existing power hierarchies led by horrible oligarchs having zero benefit for allowing that to happen. But that part of the question isn't really addressed.
In the end the game can argue against political doomerism, but just one glance at a news feed will bring that feeling right back. In that sense this game just picked a really bad time to come out.
Spirit & Mouse
Discard political despair, become mouse. I guess.
Spirit & Mouse is a 3D collectathon where you play as a little mouse who was blessed by a spirit of electricity with some supernatural powers. You use these powers to explore a quaint little French town, help the people there out with their problems and collect light-bulbs and such along the way. It's very much a typical 3D platformer. It's neat, it's cute, it's competent. It's all it really tries to be, which is enough for me. I beat it in a few sessions and 100%ed it, it's short and sweet like that. I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it, though. A good example of the type of game where you can say it all with few words. Try it if it sounds up your alley.
Sam & Max Season 3
The conclusion to the Telltale Sam & Max HD Remasters, Sam & Max's third season was one I was eagerly anticipating as I felt that the third season was both their most ambitious but also their most flawed, with many of the flaws feeling entirely fixable in a remaster like this.
Well, my thoughts turned out to be right! A lot of the issues I had with the graphics and controls of the original feel like much less of an issue in this remaster, the graphics especially. The narrative, humour and overall plot also felt a lot more cohesive on this replay, which is something I felt during all my replays. These sorts of point and click adventure games generally play better on a repeat where you're less likely to get stuck on things.
The humour's good as always, the season is a fresh departure from the formula that season 2 had entrenched further than season 1, there's both returning and fresh new characters with the old cast being mostly cycled out but with references here and there.
Overall I'd say that my opinions of each chapter went up. The first chapter was my least favourite in the original, but I liked it a lot more on this replay. The second chapter definitely has the weakest start, but once things start coming together then things do get really good. The third chapter was my favourite originally and probably still is, this one has three different banger sequences. The fourth chapter is probably the one that least sticks to my mind, but no complaint stood out to me. The Samulacra invasion is a fun concept. The fifth chapter has the best narrative conclusion of any, but I did find the gameplay in it to be oddly easy and contained.
Would I say that this made season 3 my favourite of them all? Honestly, it's hard to say. I definitely do not rank it as my least favourite season anymore though, and I think it now really stands as a proper conclusion, rather than a flawed but earnest conclusion.
POOLS
And now a sudden change of pace, POOLS is an atmospheric horror game where you play as someone going through an increasingly convoluted, bizarre and liminal public pool area. There is no spooky monster here or any jumpscares at all, it's just you and the crushing sense of being alone in a place just just feels off. It's neat, it's effective. It starts off pretty conventional, but as you get through more stages the level design becomes more ambitious and unhinged. The last two stages in particular do start to stray from even being in a pool at times, but never too long because before too much exploration happens it's back to the poolzone.
I liked my time with the game. It had an option to turn on barefoot mode, where all the footstep sounds are replaced by barefoot footstep sounds, which is of course extremely based.
BROK - Natal Tail, A New Christmas
Ever wished BROK the Investigator had a Christmas special?! I sure didn't, because it'd probably be bad. Big shock, though, we got one anyway! And it's bad!
This game clearly was just something that was written in a mad dash to have something to release for the big release of the BROK visual novel engine, and it just happens to be December, so it becomes a Christmas special. But pretty much everything in this game would've worked as well or better if it wasn't a Christmas special. The long-winded lore about the ancient and the modern versions of Furry Christmas are a mess, and not a remotely creative or inspired one either, being an exact 1:1 replica of Christmas, despite the drastically different setting. Just about everything about the Christmas angle is clearly just bullshit made up for the sake of this dumb special with no bearing on the actual setting, it's as non-canon as it gets.
It's also clear a lot of writing choices here were made just to have some characters appear on the screen, sometimes to address criticisms in a pretty blatant way, like having the Director randomly force Klay to take antidepressants because the main game was terrible at showing off her bad parenting. Very little really worked here, the only bits I liked was when Ott and Bolt were working together and the credits scene in the Drums lab. The scene with Brok and Shay was fine, too. The stupid fucking school exercise and the incredibly nonsensical and forced third act drama between Graff and Ott was some real bottom of the barrel writing.
Clearly there's more underway for this visual novel engine, and I hope the next thing isn't another mess like this one. Can't say I have high hopes though, I'm starting to suspect BROK itself was a fluke. It's been a while, but I wonder when we'll even get the sequel, because right now we're squarely still in the DLC/spinoffs phase for the first game.
I want my conclusion, damnit, because the first game certainly lacked a proper conclusion.
The Binding of Isaac
I suppose I've been playing quite a bit of Isaac recently, both because I got into doing more modded runs some months ago, and then the release of Repentance + in December that got me doing quite some online runs with a friend. I also played quite a bit of co-op with my BF when he was over during the summer.
Isaac's one of those games that I can just get back to every now and then, it's really something you can just play whenever to pass some time. Usually picking Isaac or Cain because they're simple and uncomplicated characters that just feel good to play.
I do wonder whether Rep+ will really finally be the final official release for TBoI, but honestly this game feels like it might never truly die. It probably won't so long as it has an active modding community, which it certainly has!
Pokémon Unbound
It wouldn't be a Mania blog if it didn't somehow have way too fucking many Pokémon ROMhacks in it.
Unbound is a FR/LG total conversion hack, a full decompilation that features all Pokémon up to gen 7, mechanics and moves up to gen 9, a whole new region, cast and story and a wholly original soundtrack. In short, it is massively ambitious, perhaps up there with Reborn in some sense, especially considering this is NOT an Essentials game and can run on a common actual GBA.
But is it any good? Well, I'd say it does a good job of being good overall. The OST I think definitely is a strong point, and I have no notes on the game's overall aesthetics as both the map and character designs feel quite well-realised.
But something felt off about the game. The game has four different difficulty options, vanilla, difficult, expert and insane. And the gaps between them all seem quite massive, whilst mostly only affecting boss battles. I started on expert, but when down to difficult when the second gym seemed unsurmountable. The reason for that might've been because I decided to do a Rock monotype run.
Rock types suuuuuuuuck. They suck so much, oh my god. Things only got good for my run when I used the Battle Frontier demo to basically just generate an EV/IV trained optimised team, which I'd rather not have done but the game really just lacked a proper degree of quality of life for that sort of thing that I'd grown used to from Inclement Emerald. The game often feels too constrained by wanting to feel like an official GAME FREAK game in that sense. I probably would've had a better time if I'd just started the game with a fully genned team, and hadn't decided to do a Rock mono run.
Seriously, Rock is ROUGH.
Uh, anyway, it's still a very ambitious game! It also tonally feels mostly in line with the main games, though it does feel edgier than the main game at times, and it does a pretty poor job of explaining why the villain's driven to do the things he does. The game's currently also not finished quite yet, there's still some postgame content unfinished, but I sort of quit soon after I beat the League. Rock types just aren't fun to play with it feels like.
I overall just wish this game had pushed harder on the QoL angle, but maybe I should've just put it on Vanilla or something. Or not used Rock types. Oh well.
Edain Mod
It was quite some years ago that I made a blog talking about playing Edain Mod, or "The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II: The Rise of the Witch-King: Edain Mod Patch 4.2: nathla elvellon" as I called the blog. That is a good blog title.
The game's on version 4.7.2 now, with 4.8 right around the corner! Lots of new features and factions have been added since then, alongside a bevy of gameplay and visual tweaks. I remember the installation back in 2015 being a harrowing process, but I got it all done in about an hour this time, perhaps I've just grown that much smarter in the almost a decade since then. Jeez, I've really had this blog for almost an actual decade now haven't I? Wild.
Anyway, I've just been doing Skirmish matches and have been enjoying it. There's plenty of factions to pick from, and they all play distinctly in their own ways. But the best faction is obviously Gondor, because you can recruit Denethor as a hero and he's possibly the actual best hero for countering AI siege spam, which was always the bane of my life in Edain Mod.
YOUKNOWNOTHINGOFTHISMATTER
Enough About Video Games
So this is the part of the blog where I talk about things other than video games. Yup.
Smiling Friends (Season 2)
Smiling Friends was quite the internet darling when its first season released back in 2022, and the big question was whether it could maintain its comedic frenetic energy going into season 2. The answer is... Yes! It could.
If you liked season 1 of Smiling Friends, odds are you'll like season 2. I watched most of the episodes as they were coming out, but watched the last three all in one sitting after it somehow fell off my radar. The season has some absolute bangers, the Gwimbly, UFO and Spamtopia episodes were all highlights. The energy seemed lower on the elections and mad scientist episodes, but overall I'd say the show's definitely still got it.
Apparently it's been greenlit for season 3, too, which felt like a given. I look forward to seeing what's next in store for Charlie and Pim. Probably hot, sloppy gay kissing scenes, if my Twitter feed is to be trusted. Good.
Delicious in Dungeon Meshi
The funny dungeoneering anime about eating dungeon food. I was sort of wary of this one due to lingering resentment over Goblin Slayer and in general fantasy anime seeming like absolute garbage weebslop, but Delicious in Dungeon was apparently actually good. So I gave it a shot and watched it with my boyfriend.
And it was good! It's a good show, based on a good manga. It has an interesting premise and it's clear that the author put a lot of thought and care into making her setting and making a compelling cast of characters. I'd say my favourites are Laois, Senshi and Marcille, but it'd be easier to say it's all main characters. Except Chilchuck. Poor Chucklecuck.
Apparently there's also a second season on its way, which I am looking forward to quite a bit. I just want these goobers to be happy, or to suffer. A mix of both, I suppose. Ohyes.
Kiteman Hell Yeah
Remember the Harley Quinn TV show? Its fourth season aired last year and while the wait for the fifth season continues, its spinoff focusing on Kiteman aired its own first season. The show mainly focuses on the titular Kiteman, an unusually kind man for a supposed supervillain, and his girlfriend Golden Glider, who's a lot more assertive and has a tendency to annihilate all life around her when she gets too upset. There's also various other prominent characters, some recurring from the Harley Quinn show, most prominently the much-beloved Bane, while others are classic Batman characters first seen in this show and some wholly new characters too. The villain role overall is shared between Lex Luthor, Darkseid and show-original Helen Villigan, owner of multinational villain-themed conglomerate.
The most pressing questions are:
1. Is the show as good as Harley Quinn?
2. Is the show worth watching?
And I'd say the answers are... No, and yeah. I don't think the core cast of Kiteman is as strong as any of the core casts that the Harley Quinn show cycled through, the whole conflict of the season basically revolves around keeping the core cast's bar afloat before segueing into an all-out battle for ownership of an all-powerful McGuffin. It lacks a certain spark that I felt the Harley Quinn show always just had, probably because Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are just conceptually more rich characters than Kiteman and Golden Glider, who just don't have nearly as much going on. There is some focus on the relationship of the leading duo, who have daddy and mommy issues respectively that get in their way, but it never really got my as invested as much as Harley Quinn did.
That said, a fan of the Harley Quinn show will probably still like this spinoff just fine. People who didn't like the show need not apply though.
When the second season comes out I'll watch it, but it's not quite a "hell yeah", more just a "yeah".
(We've actually gotten the 5th season trailer for Harley Quinn now, and it very much looks like a return to form for that show. Exciting, possibly!)
Dune
I remember playing the Dune 2000 Real-Time Strategy game as a child, I was always bad at it though... So I had some basic familiarity with the Dune franchise. So I watched the Dune movies with my boyfriend, the two that had come out by now anyway.
And it was REALLY good! Like, wow, this feels like it's up there with Lord of the Rings as one of those epic film franchises that just feels phenomenal in every sense. Acting, score, the visuals, just everything about it feels grand and very well-realised. It's also just an interesting story. I'm quite wondering where the third movie will go from there. I'll be sure to watch it!
My favourite performance might have to go to Jessica Atreides, her development over the course of the second movie is a sight to behold. But she's but one stellar performance and character arc in a duology full of many, and it really does make me wonder just what the third movie will do to succeed this one.
Fantastic Mr. Fox
I watched this movie in Amsterdam in the hotel me and my boyfriend were staying at during the evening, the night before he boarded the flight back to the US. Not the usual way I watch movies!
This was a nice self-contained stop-motion animated movie about a fox who tried to stop being a little shit, but just really wants to be a little shit, so he chooses to be a little shit. Hijinx ensue! What really struck me with this movie was the director's style, everything in this movie seems to have deliberate jank to it, from the stop motion models to the animation and even the acting, a lot of it feels very intentionally stilted and awkward, which gives everything this sort of weird energy in a good way. I quite liked it, it just always had this good sense of humour, it kept me sensibly chuckling throughout basically the whole movie.
It wasn't an especially deep movie or anything, but it was just a fun romp.
Isle of Dogs
We watched this one not long after Fantastic Mr. Fox. It has a similar overall style to Mr. Fox, but the premise and tone of this one are really different. Maybe it's because the premise is that Japan decided to quarantine all of its dogs to some horrible island where they struggle to survive.
That sounds really depressing, huh? The movie does get some mileage out of its rather dark premise, but it is also still a comedy movie at heart, and it does have a happy ending as you'd expect. I liked this movie just like I liked the Fantastic Fox one, perhaps more even because this movie certainly felt ambitious. It did make some weird choices though, like how much of the protagonist group are basically not really protagonists and become irrelevant for most of the movie, or the American girl character. Oh well, still a good movie overall! And very stylish! Perhaps not quite as outright amusing as the prior movie, but it makes up for it with all the feelings and emotions it evokes.
Zootopia
One of many Furry Genesis Events. But is it good?! I rewatched the movie to find out.
As it turns out, the movie is good when you don't have someone shouting into your ear the whole movie that it is a bad racial prejudice allegory and that it is copaganda and that Judy Hopps is literally a War Criminal and whatnot. Then it's actually just an enjoyable cop/crook buddy movie, which also has a lot of furry people. Ohyes.
Not to say that it isn't all those things people criticise it for, cuz it is and Judy should appear in the Hague's ICC, but it's a fun movie if you sorta just set that aside for a moment. Nick is still my favourite character though, rather than Judy, but it's not that I dislike Judy or anything. Really the only part that stood out as weak while I was watching the movie was the villain, the twist villain in this one is just incredibly limp and weak, appearing in the role of a villain for one short scene before a rather unceremonious defeat, well below par for Disney villain standards. Still good enough to get into Lorcana though, so you can make your Race War Turbo deck I guess.
Anyway Chief Bogo and Clawhauser should have an extended cuddling and smooching and handholding and belly rubbing scene in the sequel, I think. That would make the movie really peak.
Or maybe Judy Hopps gets an abortion, that would be good too.
The Wild Robot
I really loved Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, so I was wondering if that would be a new standard that Dreamworks' new output would be able to stand up to. It's a high bar, one that few animated movies could hope to cross, but in some ways I'd say The Wild Robot comes very close, and in others it actually exceeds The Last Wish.
The movie's about a robot that washes up on a deserted island, deserted by humans that is. When she awakens and looks for the human she's meant to serve, all she finds are animals. Wackiness ensues, and she winds up being stuck between wanting to light a beacon to be retrieved by society and fulfilling a new purpose of being a mother to a young little bird. Also there's a gay-ass fucking fox there, I guess. Furbait going to furbait, can't say he does a bad job of it.
The most striking part of the movie is probably the overall presentation. The visuals are in the same lovely visual style that The Last Wish had, perhaps even more refined, and the movie also just has a wonderful performance by the lead actress. The movie also has good emotional beats and has stellar overall comedy, it really feels up to par with The Last Wish in that regard, but for the fact that I think the movie doesn't carry its quality all the way through the movie.
It's all really good up to the migration, and the stuff after that is good too, but things suddenly take a quick turn when the movie's villain appears. I honestly was starting to think the movie just wouldn't have a villain and would've been fine with it, when one appears for the final act, has a few scenes of GLADOS-ing it up and then gets defeated pretty succinctly.
I dunno, it just feels like if the movie wanted so badly to have a villain but lacked the screentime to actually properly have one, the villain should either get sufficient breathing room by being built up to sooner, or just let the movie not have a clear singular character as *the* villain. It was definitely a deliberate choice to let the antagonistic force have a clear central figure who would be the main villain who has to be defeated, one that I felt didn't really work out that well.
Still a really good movie, a great one even perhaps! But also a movie that felt like it clearly had a sequence that just needed to be better. The Last Wish is so good because just everything in it gels so well together, The Wild Robot is just held back by some sequences that needed to be better to be up to that same level.
Guardians of the Galaxy
I never really got into the Marvel and DC animated universes, but a combination of factors got me to try out the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. For one, I'd heard already that these movies are really good, standouts that work just fine on themselves despite being part of a bigger whole. And secondly because my boyfriend really liked them and wanted to watch them together. And thirdly, it has a bunch of scrunkles in them. Goodness, a perfect trifecta.
Long story short, I fucking love this trilogy. All peak movies on their own rights, and somehow every movie blew me away again and again just with how effective they are.
The movies follow a ragtag group of misfits from all corners of the galaxy, with a variety ranging from human to humanoid to funny talking animal to outright tree person, and follows their misadventures as they grow into a tightly-knit found family and deal with some really nasty villains along the way.
These movies really stood out to me in many fronts. The characters are really good, the humour is on point, the emotional beats really hit, the setpieces and overall visual effects are great, and the movies make really good use of their licensed music, integrating them into the narrative or just making them thematically fit right into the movie. It never really feels forced, everything just all slots in really nicely.
The first movie is immediately off to a good start, the guardians start off hostile to each other, but learn to work together by necessity when they get imprisoned for their antics. We learn what makes them tick and see them grow from a bunch of crooks and rogues into a bunch of crooks and rogues who are also the Guardians of the Galaxy. Good stuff, and a very compelling set-up to a bunch of plotlines that the later films would expand upon. My only real complaint with this one is that the villain feels rather plain, a complaint that only stands out in comparison to the stellar villains of the next two movies, and which is not so big of a deal when the movie's focus is clearly on establishing the group of heroes primarily.
The second movie follows the Guardians after they have turned into more conventional heroes, though still with their personal foibles and all that. This one dives more deeply into the personal motivations of part of its cast, both its protagonists and some of the returning cast of the first movie. I really loved this one, it was a surprisingly emotional movie, and like I said the emotional beats just fucking hit. Also a very good performance by the villain in this one, this one seemed so charming but you can always tell there's something sinister bubbling beneath that kindly and fatherly exterior.
Oh, and then between the second and third movies there's actually a Christmas Special!! It's a neat little thing which focuses on a part of the cast from the second movie, and overall it was just hilarious, while also pulling a really nice feelgood ending at the end of it. An example of how you can do a Christmas Special no matter how absurd the premise is, if you just get down to the real emotional core of what makes Christmas tick.
The third movie then blew my expectations by somehow still being even better than what came before. This might be the most personal and emotional the movies have gotten, and it has the cast at their most evolved and mature. Everyone is just on point here, even the characters who I felt were treated somewhat like jokes in the second movie are in full force in this one, all getting neat bowties to their character arcs at the end. You can really sense everyone has grown, and that these characters get a respectable and respectful sendoff in the end. And my god, the emotions in this one hit even harder than before, I didn't expect to get so emotional over a talking raccoon but I did. Fitting that it then also features the most revoltingly vile and deliciously hammy villain of the bunch too, I adore the scenery-chewing performance the villain got in this one, really just peak "I fucking hate you, you utter bastard" energy where I want to see more of them.
I don't normally get invested in particular directors, but Sean Gunn really got into my sights with these movies. Apparently he's in charge of DC now and directing the upcoming Superman movie, so I'll have to give that one a shot. I should also try his Suicide Squad movie, I suppose it DOES have Harley Quinn after all.
Avengers Infinity War & Endgame
Oh, I suppose we watched these two movies too, since the Guardians ARE in fact in them. Not a great deal though, the focus is mostly on the Avengers, but enough to be worth watching, especially considering it factors into the third GotG movie.
I can tell these are really massive crossovers, but it was rather funny seeing them basically just for the Guardians. I would say the Guardians all felt quite in-character for these movies, nothing really felt off for them.
As movies in their own right they were quite fine, but it's to be expected that much of it didn't really make much sense or land for me the way it was meant to, considering I was simply not familiar with a ton of things a viewer should be familiar with going into these movies. It was still a fun time, anyway.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
This one snuck in just before the year's end, literally watched this on December 31st. A typical fantasy move that blends adventure, action and comedy. This one sounds like it has plenty of potential to be bad, the 2000s D&D movies seem rather infamous for how inaccurate they were, but this movie turned out to just be a fun romp! good action, good adventure, good comedy. It feels enough like a casual campaign, with plot hooks, mishaps happening, contrived coincidences and some nice character beats.
Overall not a very memorable movie, but a mostly solid movie that just functions. By D&D movie standards, it's basically all it should have been: Only some winks and nudges to all the official lore, but actually focused on doing its own thing, like any GM would when hosting a TTRPG. It's basically about this group of friends going on an adventure, that's all it needed to be, and it does it well.
The Future
I'm sure there's plenty more I could write about, like the effort I've been putting into the MARDEK Nineveh Mod, the goings-on with the YuGiOh Progression Series I'm doing and the tabletop RPG I'm participating in, but I just don't have quite so much time for it.
2024 in general has been a year in which I got a surprising amount of things done. I moved out into my own place, which I've not been living in for a generous eight months. Then right before the year's end my boyfriend will be finally moving in with me, and we already got a lot of things preplanned for once he does move on. It was just two years ago that we first started talking back in 2022, then in early 2023 I applied for my current job, which I've had for a year and a half now.
It's interesting to see how quick things started going once I got the ball rolling, these last two years might've been the most eventful and impactful of my life. It's so different from how things were. There's been ups and downs, but I hope to see more and more ups these coming years. That might be a good goal to set for 2025, cultivate what I already have. And maybe lose some weight, too.
What 2025 holds for this blog remains to be seen. Ideally next year I could better keep up with keeping the blog up to date whenever I finish something so that I needn't rush it at the year's end like I did with much of this one this time. I doubt I'll get images back in though, those just seem to make the blog editor freak out.
Regardless, an exciting end to an exciting year! Let's make the next one even better!
