Final Fantasy X on The Afterimage

May 2026 Roundup

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Cover photo from Mixtape.

Whew. Well this one’s coming in a little hot and a little late because the end of May has been… eventful. We lost our sweet elderly cat Savannah (who I wrote a short eulogy for) last week; between that and general craziness at work, our brand-new niece making her worldly debut early, and various other smaller preoccupations it’s been hard to focus lately. Apologies in advance if this one feels a bit more disjointed than usual, I’m basically running on fumes at the moment.

Not only has it been tough to focus on writing, it’s been tough to focus on playing any one game, period. I’ve always tried to limit myself to only playing one or two games at a time, because if I don’t I’m cursed to never finish any of them. “Blame it on the A.D.D.,” as that one song goes. I finished the four games in this article in May, but also started playing Mina the Hollower, Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D Remake, 007 First Light (which I’m playing with my partner), Luna Abyss, Titanium Court, and a distressingly small amount of Esoteric Ebb. Hopefully I’ll get it together enough to finish at least a few of those titles once life feels more normal again.

I’m also currently working on the second half of my Top 20 of the Decade list (part 1 can be found here), which I hope to have out sometime in June. Depending on how long some of these essays get, I may further split that top 10 in half. Some of these games affected me deeply in various ways and I can’t wait to heap praise on them and tell you why I found them so meaningful. I guess that’s enough stalling — here’s what I dove into during the month of May.

Just a binder full of CD-Rs and a dream

Mixtape

Excellent

★ ★

Highly Recommended

If you pay any attention to games media, the conversation around Mixtape has been, well, kind of annoying. IGN rated this game a 10/10 alongside a plethora of other outlets also giving it glowing reviews, which was always inevitably going to attract basic contrarians and cheap ragebait content. Putting all of that aside, I figured this is the kind of game I could definitely enjoy, so I decided to go into it with an open mind and see how it landed for me.

Mixtape is a story about three friends on the cusp of the next big chapter of their lives. The gang includes main character Stacey Rockford, a headphone-clad music geek and creator of the titular mixtape that you listen to throughout the game, her childhood best friend Van Slater, a budding musician and good-natured stoner type, and the newest addition to the group, Cassandra Morino, rebellious daughter of a local cop who has imminent plans to leave for college. This ends up being the source of some friction within the trio; all three were supposed to roadtrip to Los Angeles together to get Cass settled for college but Stacey (who just prefers to go by just “Rockford”) decided to bail in favor of flying to New York in an effort to connect with a famous music supervisor. Rockford has designs on going into the same career and she’s mapped out exactly how this will go in her head: she’ll essentially stalk this individual and get her to listen to her own personal mixtape, and she’s convinced that she’ll be so impressed by it that she’ll agree to take Rockford under her wing as a protégé.

A lot of the complaints I’ve seen around this game center around Rockford being kind of insufferable; she has the utmost confidence in her ability to pick the perfect soundtrack for the events of her own life and by extension any piece of media that she works on. She’ll frequently break the fourth wall to speak directly to the player about the song they are about to hear and what led her, ever the the song sommelier, to pick this for her mix. She painstakingly crafts her mixtapes with the expectation that she knows exactly how events will unfold (or alternatively deludes herself into thinking she can bend them to her will). I think we’ve all known someone like Stacey Rockford, the snob who sees themselves as above-it-all, the ultimate arbiter of quality, and yeah… I do understand why some people find it a bit grating.

But the way I see it, that’s an intended part of the whole point of this narrative. Let’s face it, teenagers just kind of suck. You sucked when you were that age, I sure did, we all did. We had grand designs for our lives and thought we could chart out the exact path we’d be walking, that is until life punched most of us straight in the mouth and humbled us, telling us that no, we didn’t know what we were doing and in fact knew almost nothing about how the world actually works. Being a teenager is a state of being messy and wrong about a lot of things, but of course there’s also a definite upside of being this age. Every experience and emotion felt is supercharged, meaning that while minor setbacks can feel crushing, every moment of joy can be transcendent in a way that I think we lose as we transition to adulthood. The game features many daydream-like sequences that reflect the intensity of the emotions Rockford is feeling, such as one where the gang is flying head over heels through an idyllic field on a windy day and whooping with joy as they tumble about, or when her anger boils over and she envisions blowing up mailboxes and parked cars when she flips them the bird. This is a reflection of her rage that her plan for her final day with her friends (and therefore her perfectly-curated mixtape) has gone off the rails. Mixtape is full of these fantastical sequences which of course do not reflect the literal reality of what happened, but convey the feelings associated with those moments perfectly.

Aesthetically, Mixtape is a pure shot of 90s nostalgia. The characters (animated on twos creating a pseudo stop-motion effect) explore painstakingly-crafted environments which might look very familiar if you grew up during that time. I definitely see the symbols of my own childhood in the wood-paneled bedrooms, the primitive home computers, the fashion worn by the local teens, and in so many other little details. The soundtrack, unsurprisingly, is excellent through and through. It features a handful of crowd-pleasers from this era such as Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division, and The Cure, but also contains a lot of (often older) deeper cuts that the game’s scenes are tailored around. I’m not sure I’ve ever said this about a video game but I do think that the licensed tracks are a core part of its identity, lend a certain authenticity to it, and it would be diminished as a piece of art without them.

Once it has taken a few beats to establish its characters and the relationships between them, Mixtape becomes a charming and unforgettable exploration of the messy experience of being a teenage delinquent and what one leaves behind when you start to take the first steps toward life outside of the small world you’ve always known. I couldn’t help but smile during some of the late game sequences which were often poignant, funny, and touching. I’m not sure I’d call it a perfect game (and it won’t land for everyone) but it’s a brief-yet-rich slice-of-life adventure that I definitely recommend.

More like Beatable. Because I finished it. How curious.

Unbeatable

Good

∅

No Recommendation

I’ll level with you, reader. I’ve been having kind of an existential crisis lately when it comes to rhythm games. I think most friends of mine know that I LOVE music/rhythm games. After last month’s disappointing playthrough of Rhythm Doctor I was jonesing for a really good rhythm game, and picked up D-Cell’s Unbeatable in an attempt to satiate that craving. My feelings about it ended up being, well, complex. It’s a solid one at its core but it makes several big missteps in terms of its story presentation and is also rife with technical issues. That being said I still did find some really enjoyable moments in it, but the important caveat is that the best parts of the game are backloaded. Ironically, I think this ended up being the poster child for why I chose a dual rating system when I started this blog. If you’re curious about why I liked it despite its flaws but can’t quite bring myself to recommend it, you can read my full review here.

At last, Chess II.

Gambonanza

Great

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Welp, we all saw this coming. After Balatro became one of the surprise breakout hits of 2024, it was only a matter of time before we started to see other games imitate and (hopefully) iterate on the formula it introduced. Where the core concept of Balatro was “what if poker, but a roguelike,” Gambonanza merges the structure of a roguelike with the timeless, elegant game of chess.

If you’ve played Balatro you pretty much know what to expect. You can hold up to five Gambits, which modify your gameplay much like Balatro’s joker cards do, and you will plan your strategy around them. Some Gambits allow pieces to take extra turns under certain conditions, others give you a chance for an effect on taking or losing a piece, so on and so forth. There are also special tile modifiers that you can affix to the spaces of the game board such as a trap tile to ensnare a piece and make it lose its turn, or a shield tile that gives the piece that moves onto it one turn of protection from being captured. You also have a stock that you can store spare pieces in, and from which you can deploy them mid-game. It definitely mixes up the base formula of chess quite a bit, to the point where it’s unique unto itself and you certainly don’t need to be a grandmaster to enjoy it.

I think one of the main issues that arise with this combination, however, is that the inherent complexity of a game like chess is magnitudes greater than Balatro’s poker hand-making gameplay, where you’re mostly juggling mental odds and molding your deck toward a certain purpose. The game board starts as a miniaturized 5x5 stage with a handful of enemy tokens but gradually expands as you progress, eventually reaching full-width and has you facing off against a full retinue of opposing pieces. Add the complexity of gambits, special tiles, and even enemy abilities in the special boss stages and the cognitive load adds up staggeringly fast. Gambonanza attempts to ease some of this by allowing you to mouse over and see the attack range of any piece and also makes your pieces shudder and sweat when they’re threatened, but I still frequently found myself cursing under my breath when I failed to account for one or more factors and blundered a good piece into a trap. I hit upon a few synergies that felt broken in a good way (much like its progenitor Balatro) but I think you need to be prepared to inevitably trade pieces sometimes and replenish your stock in the store phase between rounds. I will say that there’s a ton of potential for Gambonanza to generate moments in which you feel like a genius and bring a run back from the brink; during my first winning run I thought I was dead in the water sometime around the second boss. When it does happen, it feels incredible.

Some cognitive overload issues aside, Gambonanza is still very worth a try, particularly if you’re the type of person that frequents Chess.com. I can only do a few runs at a time before my brain starts to feel the effect of decision fatigue and needs a break, but it is quite compelling. You can almost look at every round like a miniature puzzle to be solved, and the variety between runs is very high. I guess the remaining question is, what game gets the Balatro treatment next? Backgammon? Checkers? Mancala?? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Pilgrimage Complete

Final Fantasy X

Incredible

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Back in March I mentioned that I’d started a playthrough of the remaster of Final Fantasy X, one of my favorite Playstation 2 games and one of the RPGs in my personal pantheon of all-time greats. Hard to believe the game is now old enough to vote, drink, and rent a car having just turned 25 years old. I think it’s my duty to tell you that if you have fond memories of playing this game when it was new, you should probably go easy on your lower back and also consider scheduling a colonoscopy.

All japery aside, my goal was to see if this classic still holds up in the modern era. The remastered version released on modern consoles and PC takes a light-touch approach, upscaling the graphics and replacing some textures, but leaves the gameplay from 2001 fully intact. There are a handful of assist features that let you speed up the game or increase/eliminate random battles which is greatly appreciated, though I did wish for a bit more granularity in these options. Being able to double the EXP and Gil earned while cutting the encounter rate in half would make the experience just about perfect, in my opinion. It’s definitely still a product of its time but I’m pleased to report that surprisingly, the game doesn’t feel archaic. The sphere grid is still a fascinating method of character advancement and the battles themselves reward good tactics; many boss fights are more an exercise in problem-solving versus grinding out the raw levels to overcome them.

The battle system is definitely a draw but the main course consists of the characterization and story. Although the dialogue is certainly stilted at times (and I actually only recently learned the real reason behind this), the emotional beats of Yuna’s pilgrimage to defeat Sin still hit and the whole cast is just so damn quirky and lovable. When the plot really kicks into gear it’s among the best stories in the series, and the world-building for the vividly-colored but cursed land of Spira is unforgettable. This is one of the entries in the Final Fantasy series that is most fondly remembered and for good reason. If you haven’t played it, I can still recommend it as a crucial and enjoyable piece of JRPG history.

March 2026 Roundup

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Cover photo from Cairn.

Greetings, dear reader. We’re finally starting to emerge from the brutally-cold winters around here, and honestly I couldn’t be more glad. I’m used to long, snowy winters (I grew up with them) but even after living here for years now, I’m still not used to how harsh and ridiculously cold it can get. It affects me and my overall mood more than I’d like to admit, so I’m welcoming Spring with open arms.

As for what games you won’t see in this month’s rundown, the most notable one is Mewgenics. I still consider it in-progress and I intend to get back to it, but as I said before that game definitely strikes me more as a marathon than a sprint. I’ve also continued to dip in and out of Helldivers II whenever duty calls.

I always like to start off strong with the game I have the most to say about, and this month that game is…

Everyone has a personal summit. Some are more literal.

Cairn

Incredible

★ ★

Highly Recommended

There are only a handful of games that are based primarily around climbing. I’m not simply talking about games that feature climbing as a mechanic; something like Breath of the Wild technically has it but it’s not the primary focus of the game. I’ve done top-rope climbing out in Appalachia and have been to local bouldering gyms a handful of times; I won’t claim to be an expert but I think I know the fundamentals. The thing I most distinctly remember about learning climbing techniques while top-roping was my instructor constantly telling me “get your legs up!” to get into a stronger hold or to pry the rest of my body up onto an overhang. There’s a widespread mistaken assumption among climbing novices that having a lot of raw strength is necessary to get started. It certainly helps on harder routes, but it’s far more important to have good technique and an understanding of how best to place your hands and feet so that you don’t need to rely on sheer effort on difficult moves.

Playing Cairn activated something deep inside me and all those fond memories on the rock wall came flooding back. It’s certainly the most authentic representation of climbing that I’ve seen in a video game so far, and absolutely nails the mental game that is an essential part of the sport. Half the battle on the wall is finding a route that will work for you; you have to understand what your body is capable of, where the tough moves will be, and where you can afford to hang for a bit and give your muscles a break. In Cairn you control the protagonist Aava’s limbs one-by-one, placing them into crevices and ledges as you scramble up the face of Kami, the fictional equivalent of Mt. Everest or K2. You’ll also contend with a survival layer where you’ll need to manage her hunger, thirst, and eventually also body temperature which becomes a factor as you get higher up the mountain. Aava is an experienced mountaineer (one of the best in the world, in fact) and can forage for food and water but you’ll also be able to scavenge random foodstuffs and useful tools from the bodies of the unfortunate souls who perished on the mountain long before you arrived. It’s all a lot to think about, but the game does offer accessibility features which tone down the difficulty of the climbing and/or survival elements if you so desire.

As for Aava herself, she is an experienced and confident climber who aims to be the first to summit the unconquered Mount Kami. Aava has an intense demeanor; if you watch enough interviews with people who are at the top of their sport or vocation you tend to see this kind of personality a lot and I found it to be pretty authentic in that way. She’s a bit of a mess in her personal life; it’s heavily implied early on that her relationship with her partner Naomi is in bad shape, she refuses to return her agent’s calls, and whenever she receives a message through her mechanical assistant ClimbBot she seems more annoyed than anything that her focus is taken away from her ascent. She spends so much time on mountain faces as a way of forcing the problems of her personal life to take a backseat. She’s not always likable, but she is relatable. She struggles to understand and be understood by other people and feels isolated because of it. I found her to be a compelling character, and later in the game you’ll make several important choices which impact how her story ultimately ends.

Cairn is one of those rare games that put me into a state of hyperfocus; the climbing is challenging and incredibly engrossing. Aava’s arms and legs will start to shake and she’ll start to audibly strain when losing her grip. Learning to take your climbs slow and steady and to suppress the panic when her grip starts to falter are key to success on Kami. I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention that this game is drop-dead gorgeous, featuring dramatic rises and incredible vistas. I’m not a guy who uses photo modes in games a lot, but I found myself stopping to snap some breathtaking shots frequently. I have so many damn screenshots — almost 200 — and choosing a handful to put on this post was legitimately tough. All in all, this was a memorable journey that will stick with me and is easily among the best game experiences I’ve had this year. It comes highly recommended.

The Very Angry Caterpillar

Öoo

Great

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Öoo (which I’ve been pronouncing out loud as “ooOOOoo”) is a brilliant, bite-sized puzzle game from Nama Takahashi whose previous game was ElecHead, a retro Megaman-styled puzzle platformer. I finished the entire thing in just over two hours so talking too much about the gameplay might constitute spoilers, but the concept is that you control a lil’ caterpillar dude who has been snatched up by an asshole bird, and your task is to avoid digestion by getting him out.

Our bug protagonist has the ability to drop sections of his body as bombs, and this is how you solve the majority of the game’s puzzles. You can use them as steps, to propel you in one direction or another, or one of several other techniques that the game masterfully teaches you through the quality of its level design. The controls are very simple (move with the stick, a button to place a bomb, and a button to detonate) but there are a surprising amount of moments where you realize that there are useful/necessary tricks with them that you could have performed the entire time which let you solve rooms which at a point looked impossible. In short, it’s delightful. It’s so smartly-designed, and very worth picking up for an afternoon’s worth of entertainment. Time for me to go check out ElecHead, I think…

Turns out, the thing golf was missing was PvP

Super Battle Golf

Excellent

★ ★

Highly Recommended

Here I am, back again this month to give the verdict and tell you that Super Battle Golf absolutely rules. I’ve played several more sessions with friends and the game not only holds up in terms of sheer enjoyment, but also has more mechanical depth than you’d think. Turns out you can do some really wacky shit like diving in front of others’ shots Secret Service style; I’ve seen several duels between friends at the putting green that left me crying with laughter.

You can play this online with randoms, but if you’ve got a group of friends you can convince to get it, consider this a 3-star recommendation instead. More updates are coming and they’ve promised Steam Workshop integration in the future, so I can’t wait to see what kind of wild courses and new items we get. I’ll leave you with a few highlights from our most recent games.

Your Wish is My Suggestion

Many Nights a Whisper

Very Good

★

Recommended

Another bite-sized game, Many Nights a Whisper is a story-focused indie game about a world where any wish can come true, as long as a certain ritual is completed. The player controls the Dreamer, the individual at the center of said ritual. Every night, villagers visit the Dreamer and confess their deepest desires from the other side of a wall. Each villager that professes a wish puts a braid of hair they have been growing out through an opening in the wall, and if the Dreamer chooses to grant the wish they cut the braid. The Dreamer is the sole arbiter of which wishes get granted and which do not, and ultimately to make them come true they must use a slingshot to light a flame pyre on the day of the ritual. Their mentor has been training them for 10 years for this one moment, and he will talk you through both the technique of making the shot and also about which wishes you’re choosing to grant and why.

This ultimately is the main draw of the narrative. Some of the wishes are relatively low-stakes; one villager wishes for a rival to help push them to their limits in all respects. Others are much more serious and world-altering. One person asks to make all world religions vanish overnight. They also say they realize that there’s an inherent darkness in the heart of humanity that will never go away, but that eliminating organized religion might prevent lots of pain and suffering inflicted in the name of dogma. Another person confesses that they are experiencing gender dysphoria, and wants you to eliminate the whole concept of gender altogether. For both of these, you’re forced to grapple with the concept of a world without either of these prevailing forces and consider what improvements or unintended consequences could come from changing such fundamental things about humanity.

It’s fascinating stuff, and ultimately it’s up to you to grapple with these choices and decide whether or not to grant the wish. Of course, this all hinges upon you making that one consequential shot on the final day. You’ll have the Dreamer train during the daytime, in between the sequences at night where you’re hearing the wishes of the villagers. It’s also fully up to you whether you want to commit to making the shot, or perhaps you might decide that putting this much responsibility on one person is too much, and to miss it on purpose. Either way, it’s all up to you…

Back on the road to Zanarkand

Final Fantasy X HD Remaster [2001 / 2016]

TBD

Score TBD

∅

Recommendation TBD

Final Fantasy X is certainly not among the first JRPGs I ever played, but it is one of the ones that to this day I still clearly and fondly remember. Revisiting a game that’s such a fixture in your personal pantheon can be a risky endeavor; as the years pass we tend to remember more of what we liked about certain things while the pain points slowly fade away. What I remember about FFX is being floored by its visual presentation and the fact that this was the first proper Final Fantasy to be fully voice-acted. I remember its worldbuilding being top-notch and its characters to be endearing and memorable. Yuna is one of my favorite characters in the whole series and I consider her to be the pinnacle of the archetype of the Final Fantasy Summoner.

I’m pleased to say that the game mostly holds up so far. I’m keeping in mind that in 2001, localizations were generally quite rough and the trade of voice acting for games was still in its relative infancy. It’s still leaps and bounds beyond many of its contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and its turn-based battle system is still one of my favorites. You can see a lot of the DNA of more modern RPG battle systems (most notably the Atlus SMT and Persona games) here, and they liberally borrow elements of FFX for good reason. My partner is watching while I play this (this is her first time seeing the game) and we’ve just hit Macalania Temple. Once I’ve rolled credits I’ll report back on how well I think it holds up as an entire work and what she thought about it as well.