# games

game: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
platform: DS [EMU]
dateBegin: 2025-07-10
dateEnd: 2025-07-13
totalTime: 12h 33m
notes:
[Dominus Collection]
9h 15m ingame
Ending A - 5h 07m
Ending B - 11h 07m
1000% Map Rate
100% Enemies
59'24% Items
70'37% Skills
75'67% Quests


game: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia
platform: DS [EMU]
dateBegin: 2025-07-14
dateEnd: 2025-07-19
totalTime: 15h 17m
notes:
[Dominus Collection]
10h 20m ingame
Beaten in 14h 17m
All Villager Quests
100% Map Rate
100% Enemies
55'64% Items
89'04% Glyphs (89'99% XY, 86'94% RB)


game: Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-07-29
dateEnd: 2025-08-10
totalTime: 25h 30m
notes:
21h 04m ingame beat (22h 30m real time)
All Adventurers except Arma
Merchant Level 26, Day 47
Final Time 24h 06m ingame (25h 30m real time)


game: Trails from Zero
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-08-14
dateEnd: 2025-09-04
totalTime: 56h 54m
notes: 54h 53m ingame
commentary:
Lloyd is a downgrade from Estelle as a protagonist, being as interesting as white bread. That said, I greatly enjoyed the SSS as an unit -- their banter throught the game was really nice! -- though Randy and Tio take the spotlight if we are talking about individual characters, at least I think they're way more fun.

In usual Kiseki fashion there's a bunch of threads that are left open for the next game (namely Randy's past, Guy's assassin, KeA's whole ordeal, something to do with the temple bells, etc.) which I'm fine with.

I've read about people disliking the pacing of its first half compared with with how much happens in the second but I had absolutely no issues with it, fooling around the country solving small cases is one the reasons I fell in love with Sora FC. It lets us get to know and love our protagonists before the Real Shit:tm: begins.

I loved how the game dealt with Renne's whole arc and I'm glad they left it how they did, and though I wish we got a bit more of Estelle, Joshua and her throught the game I understand why we didn't. On the topic of kids that deserve all the love in the world, I adore KeA and Shizuku and if anything bad happens to them I will kill everyone.

Also, I can't believe they got me hook, line and sinker with the SECOND quirky middle-aged researcher dude turned comically evil, fucking Joachim, man.

Closing notes: loved the game, it's secondary characters (Cecile, Grace, Illya and Rixia/Yin, Wady & Wald, etc.) and Crossbell as a whole and I can't wait to tackle Azure.


game: Hollow Knight: Silksong
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-09-04
dateEnd: 2025-09-14
totalTime: 53h 06m
notes: 100%, 46h 52m ingame
commentary:
Fun movement and engaging difficulty throughout. 

Making Hornet a talkative protagonist is such an upgrade from the Knight, seeing her warming up to Pharloom and its people was something a really enjoyed, plus it makes it feel like that much more of a personal journey than it ever did in HK. 

Straight upgrade from Hollow Knight in most everything. The game shows how much they've learnt and improved since finishing up Godmaster, in pacing, world building (both literally and lore & character-wise, in my opinion) and movement/combat tech. The one complain I have is that contact damage in late-game enemies should still be 1 heart.

All in all fantastic game, also one of the hardest modern "mainstream" games out there, probably. It certainly is filtering a TON of people.


game: Chrono Gear
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-09-16
dateEnd: 2025-09-22
totalTime: 08h 24m
notes: 80% CDs, everything else 100%
commentary:
It is clear to me that the game was made with an immense amount of love for not only Kronii but Holo as a whole and, if I'm being honest, that may also be a reason why I've had more fun with it than I would've otherwise.

The spritework, enemy design, game borders and music remixes were really really nice! As were some mechanics and sparse levels here and there but it all amounts to, at the very most, an OK experience.

The level design was quite barebones in general and in bigger maps it was usually confusing (to sort of patch this they have an NPC, Friend, show light rays in the directions where the next objective/s are). There's ledge grabs in the game but I found them to be incredibly inconsistent, usually ending up in just falling in a pit. There's some level gimmicks that I think are fun and work quite well but all of them are really explored in the last world of the game, the rest of them are just speed boosts/flight with different coats of paint.

It's precisely in the last world where those level gimmicks really shine, the Chrono Gear (lets you stop time) and the Space Harrier-like segments (which got extremely little screen time, for some reason) are the most notable ones.

Combat is puddle deep, not that it's bad necesarilly, but you're gonna be spamming X or RL in the air for 7-8 hours and that's it. There's a bullet parry mechaninc that you're constantly using throughout the game due to the spamming thing, only really requiring some thought in the second to last boss (Alter La+, before the level-boss that is Boros).

Writing, again, is ok at most. It smells of amateurish fanfic writing that isn't really confident with itself and feels the need to throw in an awfully unfunny line every 5 secods because of it. There's a few times where I felt like the characterization of the cast was really well executed (one or two shipping scenes, the end of the game. All of it barring the "funny" lines) but other than that the entire game feels like reading one person's dialoge with interchanging sprites. And mind you, it's not beacuse it's corny -which it is-, I'm a fan of corny stories and dialoge! But it's just not very good here, in general.

Other than that, a couple of miscellaneous notes. Having a dialoge log is really nice but I putting it Last to First is a baffling desition, having to scroll ALL the way down to see what you just missed is horrible. Sort of the same problem with the codex, there's not way to jump around "files" and the scrolling doesn't get faster at any point, making a chore of wanting to see specific enemy/holo girl designs.

TL;DR: Ok game that _has_ to hinge on its dear life to the fact that you like Holo, because if you don't its facade fades and you're left with a middling platformer, at best.


game: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-09-23
dateEnd: 2025-10-11
totalTime: 54h 48m
notes: 54h 15m ingame
commentary:
Essentially a 1:1 remake, barring a small few mission to begin fleshign out some characters that will be more prominent in SC.

Great visuals in general, the characters look superb and Liberl feels fantastic to explore. Insane attention to detail and love poured to every little nook and cranny, you can really tell the wanted to out-do everything they'd made before with this game. Super expresive animations and camera movements, intricate cutscenes that were just regular conversations before (Madrigal of the White Magnolia is a 20 minute cutscene!!), lovely stuff.

The changes to combat feel very welcome, what with the action RPG start to battles before going turn-based, the stagger and combo mechanics (from what I assume later entries in the series? U-materials were there and they're from Crosbell) though I do love the original, too. None of them are terribly difficult to figure out, that said.

The one complaint I have --and it's not the game's fault-- is the translation team not bringing back some terms from the old translation. Like the Towers (Jade and Azure just don't hit as much as Esmelas and Sapphirl, to name two of them), the Sky Pirates instead of Bandits and some small stuff here and there. Very nitpicky but I liked the old ones better!!


game: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-10-12
dateEnd: 2025-10-15
totalTime: 13h 00m
notes: Beat in 12h 18m
commentary:
Super fun all around!! Quirky and lovable setting and characters, outlandish from the beggining which sets the tone really well. You can really tell it's written and directed by Shu Takumi (from Ace Attourney fame).

I was having so much fun with it that I beat it in 3 sessions. The game is not long mind you, but i hover over 2-3 hour sessions normally and the third session was only the Final Chapter (and the extras).

Though I figured out the answer to the main question Sissel has "Who am I?" within the first Chapter there was so much else going on with everyone else that I didn't really mind. Lynne trying to break Jowd out of prison before he gets executed for a crime he didn't commit, Cabanela behind that too (tiptoeing around appearing evil and the greatest guy until his inflection point in the story), WHO was my body really? (Yomiel!) And why did "I" make a deal with the foreign nation? Really cool stuff. 

Kamila is also really cute and Missile is just fantastic, all of the side characters are so fun (The minister and his family, the prison guards, the assassins and spies from the foreign nation, etc).

Yomiel's existence tiptoeing between life and death for a decade, falling "in an endlessly deep ocean" of hate and rage against those who were "involved" in what were the last moments of his life, thus beggining the plan to destroy their lives is a surprisingly dark backstory for such an upbeat game but it worked perfectly well, in my opinion.

Gameplay was fun, light puzzly Rube-Goldberg machines, the only skill required being ever so slight precision with timing. Nothing difficult at any point in the story, really.

The game is outlandish from the getgo so you just roll with the story, but the one and only thing that I immediately thought was juuust a teeny tiny bit too much was the GPS bullet with pocket watch, I did not have a problem with anything else! Really specific but it jumps to mind.


game: An Untitled Story
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-10-16
dateEnd: 2025-10-18
totalTime: 9h 29m
notes:
7h 23m ingame
Difficulty: Regular
Complete: 82%
Abilities: 24/24
Gold: 10/10
Bosses: 17/17
Hearts: 69/95
Deaths: 73 (Less than what it should be probably because I reset before dying a good bunch of times)
Saves: 352
Damage: 61982

Used a guide to find StrangeCastle, Library and the Tomb, also for the Ghost Flowers.

commentary:
Tight controlls, incredibly well done open ended world design and fun straight-forward bosses. Genuinely one of the best metroidvanias I've played.

Played on Regular and it was only very ocasionally difficult, could have done Hard, probably. Beat the End Boss on my first try!

Music is rough in a couple of the early areas, though. But not like I'm gonna complain about it in a furige from 2007 that is otherwise a fantastic experience.


game: Digimon Story: Time Stranger
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-10-19
dateEnd: 2025-11-17
totalTime: 59h 36m
notes:
Beat in 59h (57h 11m ingame )
429/451 Discovered, 403 Registered when beat for the first time
Rank 10, all sidequests done

commentary:
Terribly slow start, but after you spend 8-10h talking to people in suits that look the same and going into tight sewers you get into the Digital World and the suddently becomes 10 times better.
[WIP]


game: Picross e3
platform: 3DS
dateBegin: 2025-10-03
dateEnd: 2025-10-06
totalTime: 12h 02m
commentary:
Really well designed picross puzzles all around, as I've come to expect. Definely some spicier ones (good) in the Extra category, which is always welcomed!

The gimmick in this game was Mega Picross, which are numbers that span two lines instead of the usual one. Seems like an easy enough concept to grasp but they end up being way harder just because of there being double the possibilities for one number. I feel like they're manageable up to 10x10, 15x15 felt like there was way too much uncertainty, personally.


game: Sylvie RPG: 7 Elf Apocalypse
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-11-20
dateEnd: 2025-11-20
totalTime: 3h 47m
commentary:
Always cool to see bump combat done well, wish it was a bit more challenging as I only really had a bit of trouble with the last boss of the game.

I really liked trying to find out how to open the secret rooms in each screen, and even though I didn't find every single one, I think I did get most of them!

Good Sylvieゲ all around.


game: The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories
platform: PC
dateBegin: 2025-11-22
dateEnd: 2025-11-23
totalTime: 5h 16m
commentary:
This game has SUCH janky and frustrating controls and mechanics, it's wild. Slow and sloggy movement, puzzles that bug out, thus making you restart the section from the beggining (the legs in the corpse assembly puzzle just flew out on me never to come back, the same happened with one of the electricity cables throughout the game), it feels like it doesn't want you to experience the story it wants to tell you.

Which is this game's saving grace, JJ's story is just so nice and it's told in such an interesting manner that you just have to continue until the end. Reading through the conversations with Emily, JJ's mom, her classmates and professor gives you so much insight into her as a person, what she's going through and how she dealing with it. 

I find the message of the game, "Be yourself, live, don't care about what anyone thinks of you" to be told in a really caring way, as in, this is a message that really does come from the heart of SWERY and his team. Though there is just a little something that doesn't really sit right with me -and I don't think that they meant to do this willingly, but still- the fact that it feels like someone HAS to suffer for them to have their trans experience validated (with JJ's mom's call at the of the game, for example) is something I find really harmful. Again, don't think they really thougth about it this way at all, and it doesn't really make me love the story any less, but, hm.

Knowing SWERY's path in the gaming world I really feel like he lucked out with both Deadly Premonition and this game, because not a single of his games has ever held up gameplay-wise, and only these two feel like they have an actual compelling narrative.

Addendum: WHO thought it was a good idea to make the JJ voiceline button and the Interact button the same one?? This game is a "whoohoo", "Who's there?", "Is anyone there?", "Emily, where are you?" simulator.


