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Jan - Aug 2025 Media Post
Finally decided I wanted to write one of these things. Most of the things I talk about are video games because I never watch anything unless I forcibly kidnap someone to watch with me. And I guess I should read more... Dang. I hardly ever read actual books anymore lmfao
That being said:
Anime:
Ave Mujica: The Die is Cast
I was waiting eagerly for this anime to come out since I watched MyGO!!!!! the year before, and boy was it worth the wait. Watching this weekly was a wild ride for sure. I enjoyed it a lot, they tackled issues that I never expected Bandori to delve into. While MyGO!!!!! focused on the more mundane, everyday struggles you'd expect from girls this age, Ave Mujica's were a great deal more fantastical and not as relatable to the average person. I feel like the ways they handled certain topics were well done, but as I am in no place of authority to truly comment on them, there's not much more I can say.
I do have some minor gripes though, namely how little screen time certain characterscough Umiri and Uika cough got compared to others. Nyamu didn't get a lot either, but she was like, the inciting force that knocked over the first domino of problems the band experienced and I feel like what screen time she had was utilized well to give us a good idea of her character. Sakiko is the heart of the band and the one who makes or breaks its existence, so her screen time made sense too. However, as much as I love Mutsumi and how they portrayed her arc, I feel like it dragged on a touch too long. Or maybe I'm just ever so slightly biased, because Uika is like one of my fav Ave Mujica characters, if not my absolute favourite (she was the whole reason why I was so excited for this anime).
I rewatched every episode at least 3 times each week, I've watched the live concerts (absolutely LOVED seeing the girls perform), I lived and breathed Ave Mujica the entire time it was airing. It was my personality for a solid 3 months or so. So you know, overall I'd say it's a good anime. Can't wait for the next seasonplease give Uika and Umiri the screen time they deserve
Dandadan
Mainly something I'm watching with some irl friends as a way to keep in touch and hang out since we don't live in the same country anymore. I've heard high praise for this show, as well as some online discourse, but eh, that's par for the course of any major airing shonen anime.
I'm not a big shonen anime fan, but I thought it was fun from what I've watched. It has a lot of shout outs to popular Japanese tokusatsu/sci-fi shows that I probably would have missed if one of the friends I was watching with didn't happen to be a huge fan of that stuff. The characters are pretty adorable, and I would say that the show seems very unique except I don't watch enough shonen to know for sure. Also, we keep putting off finishing the first season because of schedules etc, but what I've seen so far has been good. The animation is very fluid and dynamic and one of the episodes was absolutely beautiful, the animators put their whole soul into that ep (too lazy to look up what ep it was but iykyk).
Video Games:
I've played a LOT of games this year and I kind of want to retroactively go back and talk about previous games I've finished in 2024. But I feel like that'd take forever, so maybe another day. Even with this, I think I'll just talk about the stuff that actually left an Impression on me.
Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader
First of all, I just wanna say that I've tried to play BG3 like THREE times at this point and always ended up stopping pretty early in. Several months would pass and I'd start the game again with a new character only to fall off playing, and at this point I'm kind of sick of going through the opening LMAO
But holy shit I got absolutely HOOKED on this game. Why did I bring up BG3? Well, the two of them have their similarities, being adaptations of tabletop games, both story-driven, with turn-based gameplay. Yes, BG3 definitely has the bigger budget and is more polished, but THIS is the CRPG that managed to get me instead.
I've already spent over 200 hours on my first playthrough and I'm still not quite finished because I don't want it to end. I guess it kinda helped that I stopped myself from playing for a month or so because they were very close to releasing new DLC for it, and Owlcat games' DLC is so seamlessly blended into their main games that I wanted to experience it all at once.
Now, how do I even begin to describe this game. I guess one thing that drew me in was the setting, which I was already kind of interested in before. Granted, I've never played any of the other WH40K video games (though I'm eyeing some of them now) or the tabletop game (which I will never play because those tabletop figurines are EXPENSIVE). Most lore I've read is whatever is available on the internet, but I know they have a lot of published books.
I don't want to give a whole rundown of the lore because its a Lot; you can boil it down to grimdark sci-fi, except not really. It takes place 40 something thousand years in the future and yes, there's space travel but technology has actually gone backwards because Reasons. Pretty much everyone is miserable in some way or other, everything and everyone's out to kill you, Chaos gods are lurking in every corner of the universe, and if the Chaos cultists don't get you, you'll be suffering instead because of the aliens or the religious zealots that make up the Imperium of Man. All-in-all, an absolutely terrible place to live.
The game gives you three options - you can throw your lot in with Chaos (treating people terribly), do your best to uphold your Duty to the Imperium (also treating people terribly but in the name of RELIGION), or be an actual decent human being, baffling everyone in the process.
It's a power fantasy through and through and maybe that's why its been so addicting. There's some absolutely broken builds in this game and its fun to to see your party wreak havoc on the battlefield in increasingly ridiculous ways. Choices have Weight; the decisions your character makes have Long-lasting Consequences, where you can improve lives or utterly ruin them with a snap of your fingers. There were some moments that had me staring at the screen for a long time before I could finally bring myself to click something so I could proceed with the game.
The writing is amazing; it can go from horrifying (pos) to heartwarming to heart-wrenching in the blink of an eye. The party members are all unique and colourful personalities, each with their own goals and philosophies that clash with each other. Some of them are one order away from killing each other. And while some party members warm up to each other over time, others never do. Definitely not a found family here, but more like a group of colleagues that must remain professional til one coworker goes a bit too far and steals someone's lunch from the office fridge.
I've rambled on and on about this game and now I don't know how to end this. IDK it's probably a hard sell if you're not into either the gameplay or having to read a lot, and even the setting itself can be pretty off-putting to some. However, I can confidently say that its up there with Disco Elysium for me, which is impressive considering that's one of my favourite games of all time.
But yeah! More DLC for this game is coming out next year, along with Dark Heresy (their new game), so I have that to look forward to. I have another Owlcat game in my library that I'm eager to continue playing once I'm finished with this (Wrath of the Righteous). I feel like my current BG3 run is already doomed to failure though, since I'm playing with my brother and he's skipping every cutscene and attempting to rob everyone. We shall see.
Cult of the Lamb
I did not think I'd get THAT into this game but holy shit. After installing it on a whim from my brother's Steam library, I started playing, blacked out, and finished pretty much everything in 2 days.
There's just something about the gameplay loop. Alternating between building your cult and making your way through the dungeons was a lot of fun. It always felt like I had something to work towards, which is probably why I couldn't put it down once I started.
Though it felt less like I was running a cult and more like I was running some kind of daycare/nursery. Until I managed to get some stuff automated, my poor lamb was cooking for everyone, cleaning up poop from the ground, and breaking up fights. Sometimes things got stressful, like everyone coming down with the plague or running out of food, so I don't know why anyone would call this a cozy game.
The dungeon segments were great. I liked trying the different weapons available and adjusting my playstyle accordingly. I do think the final boss had a major jump in difficulty til I got rec'd online about what type of weapon to use (do NOT use a hammer), but in general, it provided a fair challenge. I might replay the game on a higher difficulty some day.
Cult of the Lamb is ALSO getting a new major DLC update soon so I have that to look forward to as well, yay.
My Time at Sandrock
I bought it on sale on a whim since it was so cheap and had raving reviews, but I've been having trouble getting into it. I think the main reason why is because it gives me horrible motion sickness and I need to chew on ginger candy every time I open it up. Maybe it'd be better if I played it on Switch?
Unlike the thousands of farming game clones out there, Sandrock is definitely more about crafting/gathering. Which is probably not a groundbreaking genre either, but at least it looks very pretty. There's also an overarching story and romanceable characters, which also helps it stick out.
I don't think I've gotten to the interesting parts of the main story yet, so I'll probably have to come back to this later? I heard the story gets Good, but it IS taking me a while to get there.
Super charming!! I love this game. Using contextual clues and logic, you have to decode four different in-game languages to solve puzzles and proceed. The graphics are great, I really enjoyed the gameplay, and I love the underlying message. I think its probably something people should experience for themselves, so I don't really have much more to add? But highly recommended, especially if you like puzzles.
TOEM: A Photo Adventure
Absolutely adorable. Very chill. Just as the name suggests, its a photo adventure and your character travels to different places and goes around taking pictures to fulfill different tasks. The whole world is black and white but still manages to exude so much personality. The premise is simple, but the presentation is wonderful.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
I've been looking forward to this game since it was announced (because I absolutely love Rune Factory games), and while I did enjoy it, I guess it didn't quite meet my expectations? Because the reason why I bought it was because its a Rune Factory game, but it doesn't really play or feel like one. To be fair, it's advertised as a spinoff so I should have expected it to be different.
There's also little changes they made from the mainline games that I ended up missing a lot. For one, you can't go into villagers houses, which kind of made each village feel less... lived in? Logically, it makes sense that you can't just randomly barge into someone's house, but that's such a staple of SOS/RF games that when they took that away, I really felt its absence. I also missed having portraits, the 3d models were fine but :( the portraits :(
GoA also swapped farming mechanics for town building mechanics. The town building mechanics are fine, and I actually did enjoy building things even though I'm normally awful at planning layouts (I get too overwhelmed). Farming is still in the game, but its vastly simplified and there's no crafting at all. Instead, there's quite a bit more fighting and open world exploration a la Genshin Impact, to give a comparison.
Overall, I didn't end up liking it as much as I expected to, but again, that's a result of those personal expectations I've built up for the game not being met. It's a good game and definitely more polished than RF5, but I still prefer RF5, buggy mess and all.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar
Funny enough, compared to GoA, I had very little expectations for Grand Bazaar and now that I've played it, I absolutely love it. They really hit it out of the park with this remaster. Even though I preordered the game, I wasn't expecting to like it THAT much, mainly because I wasn't a fan of the art style change. But after seeing how well made the 3d models are (rare, because I vastly prefer portraits to 3d models, as seen above), my opinion completely changed.
They've added so much and I love how fast-paced it is. They really made the most of the unique "gimmick" of this game, the bazaar itself. You earn almost nothing during the week and go all in on the weekend bazaar, so you spend the whole week preparing for that one day. My farmer is literally always moving because time moves so fast and there is always something to do. The game throws so much at you all at once but still lets you play at your own pace. I also love how they fleshed out the characters from Grand Bazaar, adding new random events and dialogue. The new request system is also nice and I'm glad they added it, but I wish the characters wouldn't ask you EVERY SINGLE TIME if you've gotten them the items they wanted yet (Stop guilt tripping me. I'll get you your 30 jars of pickled walnuts when I get to it).
But yeah! Probably the best Story of Seasons remaster they've made yet. I've always found the original DS game charming, so I'm glad it got such a good remaster.
Aaaand that's pretty much it for now.
That being said:
Anime:
Ave Mujica: The Die is Cast
I was waiting eagerly for this anime to come out since I watched MyGO!!!!! the year before, and boy was it worth the wait. Watching this weekly was a wild ride for sure. I enjoyed it a lot, they tackled issues that I never expected Bandori to delve into. While MyGO!!!!! focused on the more mundane, everyday struggles you'd expect from girls this age, Ave Mujica's were a great deal more fantastical and not as relatable to the average person. I feel like the ways they handled certain topics were well done, but as I am in no place of authority to truly comment on them, there's not much more I can say.
I do have some minor gripes though, namely how little screen time certain characters
I rewatched every episode at least 3 times each week, I've watched the live concerts (absolutely LOVED seeing the girls perform), I lived and breathed Ave Mujica the entire time it was airing. It was my personality for a solid 3 months or so. So you know, overall I'd say it's a good anime. Can't wait for the next season
Dandadan
Mainly something I'm watching with some irl friends as a way to keep in touch and hang out since we don't live in the same country anymore. I've heard high praise for this show, as well as some online discourse, but eh, that's par for the course of any major airing shonen anime.
I'm not a big shonen anime fan, but I thought it was fun from what I've watched. It has a lot of shout outs to popular Japanese tokusatsu/sci-fi shows that I probably would have missed if one of the friends I was watching with didn't happen to be a huge fan of that stuff. The characters are pretty adorable, and I would say that the show seems very unique except I don't watch enough shonen to know for sure. Also, we keep putting off finishing the first season because of schedules etc, but what I've seen so far has been good. The animation is very fluid and dynamic and one of the episodes was absolutely beautiful, the animators put their whole soul into that ep (too lazy to look up what ep it was but iykyk).
Video Games:
I've played a LOT of games this year and I kind of want to retroactively go back and talk about previous games I've finished in 2024. But I feel like that'd take forever, so maybe another day. Even with this, I think I'll just talk about the stuff that actually left an Impression on me.
Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader
First of all, I just wanna say that I've tried to play BG3 like THREE times at this point and always ended up stopping pretty early in. Several months would pass and I'd start the game again with a new character only to fall off playing, and at this point I'm kind of sick of going through the opening LMAO
But holy shit I got absolutely HOOKED on this game. Why did I bring up BG3? Well, the two of them have their similarities, being adaptations of tabletop games, both story-driven, with turn-based gameplay. Yes, BG3 definitely has the bigger budget and is more polished, but THIS is the CRPG that managed to get me instead.
I've already spent over 200 hours on my first playthrough and I'm still not quite finished because I don't want it to end. I guess it kinda helped that I stopped myself from playing for a month or so because they were very close to releasing new DLC for it, and Owlcat games' DLC is so seamlessly blended into their main games that I wanted to experience it all at once.
Now, how do I even begin to describe this game. I guess one thing that drew me in was the setting, which I was already kind of interested in before. Granted, I've never played any of the other WH40K video games (though I'm eyeing some of them now) or the tabletop game (which I will never play because those tabletop figurines are EXPENSIVE). Most lore I've read is whatever is available on the internet, but I know they have a lot of published books.
I don't want to give a whole rundown of the lore because its a Lot; you can boil it down to grimdark sci-fi, except not really. It takes place 40 something thousand years in the future and yes, there's space travel but technology has actually gone backwards because Reasons. Pretty much everyone is miserable in some way or other, everything and everyone's out to kill you, Chaos gods are lurking in every corner of the universe, and if the Chaos cultists don't get you, you'll be suffering instead because of the aliens or the religious zealots that make up the Imperium of Man. All-in-all, an absolutely terrible place to live.
The game gives you three options - you can throw your lot in with Chaos (treating people terribly), do your best to uphold your Duty to the Imperium (also treating people terribly but in the name of RELIGION), or be an actual decent human being, baffling everyone in the process.
It's a power fantasy through and through and maybe that's why its been so addicting. There's some absolutely broken builds in this game and its fun to to see your party wreak havoc on the battlefield in increasingly ridiculous ways. Choices have Weight; the decisions your character makes have Long-lasting Consequences, where you can improve lives or utterly ruin them with a snap of your fingers. There were some moments that had me staring at the screen for a long time before I could finally bring myself to click something so I could proceed with the game.
The writing is amazing; it can go from horrifying (pos) to heartwarming to heart-wrenching in the blink of an eye. The party members are all unique and colourful personalities, each with their own goals and philosophies that clash with each other. Some of them are one order away from killing each other. And while some party members warm up to each other over time, others never do. Definitely not a found family here, but more like a group of colleagues that must remain professional til one coworker goes a bit too far and steals someone's lunch from the office fridge.
I've rambled on and on about this game and now I don't know how to end this. IDK it's probably a hard sell if you're not into either the gameplay or having to read a lot, and even the setting itself can be pretty off-putting to some. However, I can confidently say that its up there with Disco Elysium for me, which is impressive considering that's one of my favourite games of all time.
But yeah! More DLC for this game is coming out next year, along with Dark Heresy (their new game), so I have that to look forward to. I have another Owlcat game in my library that I'm eager to continue playing once I'm finished with this (Wrath of the Righteous). I feel like my current BG3 run is already doomed to failure though, since I'm playing with my brother and he's skipping every cutscene and attempting to rob everyone. We shall see.
Cult of the Lamb
I did not think I'd get THAT into this game but holy shit. After installing it on a whim from my brother's Steam library, I started playing, blacked out, and finished pretty much everything in 2 days.
There's just something about the gameplay loop. Alternating between building your cult and making your way through the dungeons was a lot of fun. It always felt like I had something to work towards, which is probably why I couldn't put it down once I started.
Though it felt less like I was running a cult and more like I was running some kind of daycare/nursery. Until I managed to get some stuff automated, my poor lamb was cooking for everyone, cleaning up poop from the ground, and breaking up fights. Sometimes things got stressful, like everyone coming down with the plague or running out of food, so I don't know why anyone would call this a cozy game.
The dungeon segments were great. I liked trying the different weapons available and adjusting my playstyle accordingly. I do think the final boss had a major jump in difficulty til I got rec'd online about what type of weapon to use (do NOT use a hammer), but in general, it provided a fair challenge. I might replay the game on a higher difficulty some day.
Cult of the Lamb is ALSO getting a new major DLC update soon so I have that to look forward to as well, yay.
My Time at Sandrock
I bought it on sale on a whim since it was so cheap and had raving reviews, but I've been having trouble getting into it. I think the main reason why is because it gives me horrible motion sickness and I need to chew on ginger candy every time I open it up. Maybe it'd be better if I played it on Switch?
Unlike the thousands of farming game clones out there, Sandrock is definitely more about crafting/gathering. Which is probably not a groundbreaking genre either, but at least it looks very pretty. There's also an overarching story and romanceable characters, which also helps it stick out.
I don't think I've gotten to the interesting parts of the main story yet, so I'll probably have to come back to this later? I heard the story gets Good, but it IS taking me a while to get there.
Murders on the Yangtze River
This is me getting my Ace Attorney fix without actually playing an Ace Attorney game (I have like, 3 games in that series that I haven't even touched yet, but anyway).
The game advertises itself as "Ace Attorney, but in 20th Century China," which is a pretty apt description. It does play similarly to Ace Attorney in some ways, but there's a few differences and some aspects they've simplified. One thing I loved about the game is how much I actually ended up learning about that time period while playing. They have a whole glossary of terms and provide little historical facts to give you context on what things were like back then.
One looming specter that haunts the whole game is the opium trade and how it affected the lives of the Chinese back then. That's another way that this game is similar to Ace Attorney; each case either contributes to this overarching story or it provides some context on the world.
The main character, John Shen, is a very charismatic character. I enjoyed playing as him a lot. He's competent, well-read, and keeps calm under pressure, all the marks of a good detective. There was a personal tragedy in his life that gradually gets uncovered as you play, and by the end, I got teary-eyed at the conclusion of his tale.
I'd definitely recommend this game if you're an Ace Attorney fan! It's only $20 too, which is an absolute steal for everything they managed to pack in there.
Super charming!! I love this game. Using contextual clues and logic, you have to decode four different in-game languages to solve puzzles and proceed. The graphics are great, I really enjoyed the gameplay, and I love the underlying message. I think its probably something people should experience for themselves, so I don't really have much more to add? But highly recommended, especially if you like puzzles.
TOEM: A Photo Adventure
Absolutely adorable. Very chill. Just as the name suggests, its a photo adventure and your character travels to different places and goes around taking pictures to fulfill different tasks. The whole world is black and white but still manages to exude so much personality. The premise is simple, but the presentation is wonderful.
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma
I've been looking forward to this game since it was announced (because I absolutely love Rune Factory games), and while I did enjoy it, I guess it didn't quite meet my expectations? Because the reason why I bought it was because its a Rune Factory game, but it doesn't really play or feel like one. To be fair, it's advertised as a spinoff so I should have expected it to be different.
There's also little changes they made from the mainline games that I ended up missing a lot. For one, you can't go into villagers houses, which kind of made each village feel less... lived in? Logically, it makes sense that you can't just randomly barge into someone's house, but that's such a staple of SOS/RF games that when they took that away, I really felt its absence. I also missed having portraits, the 3d models were fine but :( the portraits :(
GoA also swapped farming mechanics for town building mechanics. The town building mechanics are fine, and I actually did enjoy building things even though I'm normally awful at planning layouts (I get too overwhelmed). Farming is still in the game, but its vastly simplified and there's no crafting at all. Instead, there's quite a bit more fighting and open world exploration a la Genshin Impact, to give a comparison.
Overall, I didn't end up liking it as much as I expected to, but again, that's a result of those personal expectations I've built up for the game not being met. It's a good game and definitely more polished than RF5, but I still prefer RF5, buggy mess and all.
Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar
Funny enough, compared to GoA, I had very little expectations for Grand Bazaar and now that I've played it, I absolutely love it. They really hit it out of the park with this remaster. Even though I preordered the game, I wasn't expecting to like it THAT much, mainly because I wasn't a fan of the art style change. But after seeing how well made the 3d models are (rare, because I vastly prefer portraits to 3d models, as seen above), my opinion completely changed.
They've added so much and I love how fast-paced it is. They really made the most of the unique "gimmick" of this game, the bazaar itself. You earn almost nothing during the week and go all in on the weekend bazaar, so you spend the whole week preparing for that one day. My farmer is literally always moving because time moves so fast and there is always something to do. The game throws so much at you all at once but still lets you play at your own pace. I also love how they fleshed out the characters from Grand Bazaar, adding new random events and dialogue. The new request system is also nice and I'm glad they added it, but I wish the characters wouldn't ask you EVERY SINGLE TIME if you've gotten them the items they wanted yet (Stop guilt tripping me. I'll get you your 30 jars of pickled walnuts when I get to it).
But yeah! Probably the best Story of Seasons remaster they've made yet. I've always found the original DS game charming, so I'm glad it got such a good remaster.
Aaaand that's pretty much it for now.