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Since I've done this for 2022 and 2023 but forgot to do it for 2024 (instead relegating it to a post in the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread), here's a year-in-review thread for 2025.

I didn't get as much gaming done as I'd have hoped. Lots of other things happening in my life, including an entire month on a trip. I also started visiting the library more often, partly to get things I needed to get done done, and partly to get myself more interested in reading, which I did, albeit just a few books. Home life continues to be something of a pain for getting gaming (or various other things) done.

And I did spend a bunch of time on the tabletop RPG Pathfinder (2nd edition). I had heard about "organized play" -- basically an officially-sanctioned version of the game where you can take your character between different sessions with different GMs running them. I finally got into that. I made several characters, and played three of them so far (all in online sessions, because there's no Pathfinder Society events near me geographically). Had lots of fun looking through character options and stuff. Also spent some money on this lol -- like, multiple Humble Bundles worth.

Videogames I've played:
* Alwa's Awakening, a metroidvania with NES-style graphics. So NES that there exists an NES ROM release for this. (No, I didn't play the NES version yet.) I also wrote about the massive sequence-breaking opportunities, or more accurately, sequence freedom, in the game's design. I haven't dived into that either, but it's nice to know it exists (and is even acknowledged via achievements).
* Runes Magica, an action game where you go through randomly selected levels. You're a girl who's using magical powers as her offensive abilities. I wrote about combining them to make homing lightning bolts that were basically the best spell in the game. Some of the features were buggy for me. I made it to the final boss but never actually beat it. I might revisit it later to see if it's still buggy but I didn't really enjoy it enough, sorry.
* Alwa's Legacy, the sequel to Alwa's Awakening, but with more 16-bit-ish or 32-bit-ish graphics. It adds more gameplay features, and even more potential for sequence-breaking, though the game itself was enough of an adventure for me for now.
* Relayer Advanced, a strategy RPG in a sci-fi setting. Given its nice anime art, it goes with a visual-novel-like interface for its storytelling, as many games do these days. I didn't get far into this game, though. The 3D made my computer run hot, and I wasn't really expecting to keep going with it anyway, since there were other things I wanted to play.
* Ys Origin - I finally finished my Hugo playthrough of this action JRPG. There's one story path left, that of the hidden third character, who ironically has the actually canon story. In the original release, you'd have had to finish Yunica and Hugo playthroughs to get to him, but in the XSEED PC release nowadays you only need to finish one to unlock him. He is a very important character, and Falcom cares a lot about series lore. (Also, this route has some extra story significance for my favorite non-playable character in the game -- Reah.)
* Alba: A Wildlife Adventure - this third-person 3D nature-exploring adventure (which plays kinda like a videogame version of iNaturalist) is nice, though playing it gives me a little 3D game nausea for some reason, which some 3D games do. Still, I was interested enough to keep going, but I ran into another problem -- a bug that seemed to prevent me from completing one of the sidequests. The game autosaved so I didn't know what to do with it so I dropped it. Later in the year, I noticed that the game did get some updates -- so maybe I'll try it again later.
* Roguelight - an action platformer whose main feature is that you're venturing into a very dark dungeon where your light source is most of the time gonna be your fiery arrows. But you have a very limited amount of them. The areas are procedurally generated, as the name suggests, and if you can survive all the way to the bottom, there's a final boss for you to defeat. It's relatively short and I was able to beat it on a multi-leg journey between flights and airports, but despite it's length I'd say it's still a compelling game.
* During that same journey, I also got through the first episode of LiEat, a story-focused trilogy of RPG-Maker-ish games about a dragon who eats lies. I actually miswrote when I mentioned it earlier -- the actual game engine is not RPG Maker but Wolf RPG Editor. The first episode is called LiEat: the Lie-Eating Dragon and the Vermillion Vampire. It's finishable within a couple hours of gaming, and I expect the other two episodes to be of similar or maybe slightly longer length, though unfortunately I didn't get around to them before the end of the year (though they weren't really at the top of my to-play list either).
* Around Halloween I started playing Ara Fell. This is a turn-based JRPG made by western devs. The graphics and music and storytelling are gorgeous. I think I'm like two chapters (out of five?) into the game, and I've been meaning to continue, but I've just been busy with too many other things in the last few months.
* I got annoyed with not playing anything so around early December I started playing Vernal Edge. It registered in my head as a metroidvania so I was hoping this might be a quick finish, but I still didn't get far with it. This is a non-linear exploration platformer where you also get an overworld where you can fly around to different floating islands on your airship. It seems pretty neat, but like I said, busy with stuff. I finished the opening stage (which doubles as a tutorial), and even got a silly achievement (and a feature unlock) along the way (or rather, right at the beginning, read the below spoiler if you wanna find out what it is). I was expecting a different kind of protag and story vibe (I think I was expecting a more stoic protag?), but the game does nevertheless seem quite interesting, with lots of places to explore. The setting vibe gives me some Owlboy vibes with the floating islands, albeit with a very different story vibe compared to Owlboy's poetic beauty.

(spoiler for the achievement)

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

You start the game near a training dummy. The game teaches you the basic mechanics, and you can use them to attack the training dummy. I noticed that the training dummy's HP meter actually depleted, but very slowly. I then kept attacking it, partly because I was trying out different control schemes, and partly because I wanted to see what would happen if I beat it up all the way. The result was that the training dummy did in fact "die" and I got an achievement telling me that there was more to see in the actual game. It also unlocked what seems like a hard mode option.

My highlights of this year are probably my getting through the Alwa duology and Hugo's route in Ys Origin. I was hoping to get through a long-form RPG (hence my playing Ara Fell, albeit after wasting some time to settle on choosing it in the first place), but still didn't get around to it.

Well, there's always the new year. I've got myself a Linux machine now. I spent a good deal of time exploring what I can do with it and getting used to the new system. There's no GOG Galaxy for Linux, but I've heard that Heroic Games Launcher is cross-compatible with its cloud saves, playtime tracking, and achievements. I'll likely be looking into making various Windows-based games work on Linux, and/or doing some emulation -- I know I have a couple Zelda ALTTP and Super Metroid randomizers on tap. Also I have a friend who keeps bugging me to stream some more Shantae, ever since I finished streaming the first game...

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 1st January 2026 18:39

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Part of me thinks you post these topics just to brag about how many (often more obscure) games you've played, haha. I'm up for it, though!

Nier Automata: Yep, a playthrough I started back in '22. Finally finished it earlier last year. Something I do a lot, especially with games I expect to take a long time to finish, is give 'em a break to play something else that catches my interest. Kinda surprising, though, that I went back to this game after so long, but I really wanted to experience the rest of the story, and the action RPG gameplay ain't bad, either.

Speaking of games I took a break from in '25...

Disgaea 1: To be honest, I'm not sure why I decided to play this game when I had already played it once before many years ago. I did do some different things with this playthrough, and it is a fun game. Otherwise, I wouldn't have put another 230 hrs into it.

Rance Quest Magnum: Hoo boy, this game. Entertaining enough, but damn it's got a ton of material to get through; 340 hrs in and I think there's still plenty left there. It doesn't help that the character development involved here makes a certain amount of grind necessary.

Baldur's Gate 3: Good game so far, and I can think of few other developers more passionate about making fun games these days than Larian Studios. That said, a part of me would rather Larian have spent that time developing their own IP, rather than being limited by an IP managed by, imo, one of the worst gaming companies out there (Wizards of the Coast). Also, it's hard to see BG3 as much more than just Larian's Divinity Original Sin with a coat of DnD paint. I really liked DOS, though, and I guess it was best for Larian to stick to what they're good at as much as possible. But after 124 hrs, I had to give this one a break, too.

Ender Lilies: This one I actually managed to play all the way through. Of course, being a metroidvania, it was bound to be much shorter than the above RPGs. As I mentioned in another thread, it's fairly similar in story and gameplay to Hollow Knight, but I feel it had enough of its own character that I was hooked all the way through.

Witchspring R: I had played through the main story the previous year, but KIWIWALKS decided to release a free dlc, The Follower's Fall, last year seemingly to tie up some loose ends, particularly with the main antagonist of the game. And it was quite convenient that I still had the game installed on my PC, so once the dlc went online, I was able to just jump right in!

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