2023 Reads
A new year means a new book list! I don't think I can top my 2022 count, but that's okay! I'm not totally sure what my reading goals this year will actually be, but I guess I'll sort it out on the way! XD For future reads, here's my 2024 list!
Four Treasures of the Sky - Jenny Tinghui Zhang
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Frederick Douglass+
The Bear and the Nightengale - of the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden
The Secrets We Keep - Mia Hayes
Indian Nations of Wisconsin: Histories of Endurance and Renewal - Patty Loew+
The First Sister - Linden A. Lewis^
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury~
Fin Mac Cool - Morgan Llewlyn^
How Long 'til Black Future Month by N. K. Jemisin
Lavinia - Ursula K Le Guin^
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austin*
Black Cowboys of the Old West: True, Sensational, and Littke-Known Stories form History - Tricia Martineau Wagner+
The Mysteries of Thorn Manor - Margaret Roberson%
Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space - Amanda Leduc+
Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson^
She Who Became the Sun~ - Shelley Parker-Chan*
The Witch King - H.E. Edgmon^
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Legends & Lattes - Travis Baldree*
Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin^
The Adventures of Amina El-Serafi - S.A. Chakraborty
Humankind: A Hopeful History - Rutger Bregman+
The Folk Keeper - Frannie Billingsly*%
Believe Me: A Memoir of Love, Death, and Jazz Chickens - (Suzy) Eddie Izzard+
Juniper & Thorn - Ava Reid
Upright Women Wanted - Sarah Gailey%
I Await the Devil's Coming - Mary MacLane+
Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut~
Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Workers' Rights - Molly Smith & Juno Mac+
The Woman in White - Wilke Collins^
King of Battle and Blood - Scarlett St. Clair
Sarah - J.T. LeRoy^
The City Beautiful - Aden Polydoros^
Freshwater - Akwaeke Emezi
Always the Almost - Edward Underhill
All Systems Red - Martha Wells%
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Nevada - Imogen Binnie
A Dowry of Blood - S. T. Gibson
The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
The Second Rebel - Linden A Lewis
Get a Life Chloe Brown - Talia Hibbert
The Hero and the Crown* - Robin McKinley
What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing - Bruce D Perry & Oprah Winfrey+^
Can't Spell Treason Without Tea - Rebecca Thorne
The Eye of the Heron - Ursula K Leguin
Artificial Condition -Martha Wells%
The Kraken's Sacrifice - Katee Robert%
Crown Duel - Sherwood Smith*
Rogue Protocol - Martha Wells%
Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self Involved Parents - Lindsay C Gibson+
Wildcat: The Untold Story of Pearl Hart, the Wild West's Most Notorious Woman Bandit - John Boessenecker+
The History of Wales - History Nerds+%
Ander & Santi Were Here - Jonny Garza Villa
The Glass Castle - Jeanette Walls^
Rosemary and Rue - Seanan McGuire^
The Gilda Stories - Jewelle Gomez
Irish Fairy and Folk Tails - Various+
The Dead and the Dark - Courtney Gould
Haunted Wisconsin - Michael Norman and Beth Scott+
The Other Black Girl - Zakiya Dalila Harris
The Ruins - Scott Smith
He Who Drowned the World - Shelley Parker-Chan
Fledgling - Octavia Butler
Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend - Mark Collins Jenkins+
The Vampyre - John Polidori%
This is Halloween - James A Moore
Sorrowland - Rivers Soloman
The Lamb will Slaughter the Lion - Margaret Killjoy%
Mexican Gothic - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Love Her or Lose Her - Tessa Bailey^
One Last Stop - Casey McQuiston*
The Last Hero - Linden A. Lewis
Lovelight Farms - B. K. Borison
Reindeer Falls Collection: Volume One - Jana Aston
Currently reading: One Last Stop (Audiobook to help me sleep XD)
Nonfiction is annotated by +
A Re-read is annotated by *
A book completed from the list below is annotated by ^
A Read with Empty will be annotated by ~
A Novella %
My current, loose and not that interesting goal for this year is to really work on the books I have current access to right now... at the start of this year. Because it's a lot XD This means books currently favorite in Scribd, on my StoryGraph 'to read' pile, or a book I currently own on my shelves. Main goal is at least one of these a month.
For my own personal reference, I'm putting a list of such books below to hold myself accountable.
Edit: Now the end of 2023, and here's a breakdown of my goal to read books I already had access to at the start of 2023:
I didn't read one a month per se, but I got more than 12 done, so I call this a win. These books are:
-Can't Spell Treason Without Tea - Rebecca Thorn
-The City Beautiful - Aden Polydoros
-Finn Mac Cool - Morgan Llewlyn
-The First Sister by Linden A Lewis (proceeded by the other two in the series)
-Get a Life, Chloe Brown - Talia Hibbert
-The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls
-Haunted Wisconsin - Michael Norman & Beth Scott
-Her Majesty's Royal Coven - Juno Dawson
-I Await the Devil's Coming - Mary McClane
-The Kraken's Sacrifice - Katee Robert
-Lavinia - Ursula K Le Guin
-Love Her or Lose Her - Tessa Bailey
-Mistress of the Art of Death - Ariana Franklin
-Nevada - Imogen Binnie
-The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
-Rosemary and Rue - Seanan McGuire
-The Ruins - Scott Smith
-The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
-Sarah - J.T. LeRoy
-Vampire Forensics - Mark Collins Jenkins
-What Happened to You? - Oprah Winfrey
-The Witch King - H. E. Edgmon
-The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The books I did not get around to reading from this list are as follows: Black Water Sister by Zen Cho; Blood Scion by Deborah Falaye (o); The Book of M by Peng Shepard (o); Charity and Sylvia by Rachel Hope Cleves (o); The Cruel Prince by Holly Black (a); The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey (s); Fallen by Lauren Kate (o); Fanny Hill by John Cleland (o); Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender (s); The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea (s); The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith (o); Helping Her Get Free by Susan Brewster (o); The Impossible Girl by Lydia Kang (s); Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (o); The Merry Spinster by Daniel Lavery (o); On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong (o); The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (s); Radiance by Grace Draven (a); Watching the Tree by Adeline Yen Mah (o); The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (s); Wings of Fire (o); Witches Steeped in Gold by Clannon Smart (o); The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid (s)
23/46
Whoa! That's exactly 50% of the books I had on my list! That's pretty cool! All in all, I consider this 2023 goal successfully done!
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BALIOC'S READING LIST, 2023 EDITION
This list counts only published books, consumed in published-book format, that I read for the first time and finished. No rereads, nothing abandoned halfway through, no Internet detritus of any kind, etc. Also no children’s picture books.
(There were so many children's picture books.)
Hand of the Sun King, J. T. Greathouse
Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Circus of Dr. Lao, Charles G. Finney
When the Angels Left the Old Country, Sacha Lamb
Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us, Rachel Aviv
Elder Race, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Yamada Monogatari: Troubled Spirits, Richard Parks
Victory City, Salman Rushdie
Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, Richard Rorty
Cage of Souls, Adrian Tchaikovsky
A Morbid Taste for Bones, Ellis Peters
One Corpse Too Many, Ellis Peters
Priest of Bones, Peter McLean
Priest of Lies, Peter McLean
Demon Summoner: Apprentice, Greg Walters
By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions, Richard Cohen
Tsalmoth, Steven Brust
Priest of Gallows, Peter McLean
Priest of Crowns, Peter McLean
Waybound, Will Wight
Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata
The Tatami Galaxy, Tomihiko Morimi
These Violent Delights, Chloe Gong
Death in Venice, Thomas Mann
Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life, Rory Sutherland
The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton
Storming Heaven, Miles Cameron
Against Worldbuilding, and Other Provocations: Essays on History, Narrative and Game Design, Alexis Kennedy
From Ritual to Romance, Jessie L. Weston
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Rats and Gargoyles, Mary Gentle
Labyrinth's Heart, M. A. Carrick
Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
The Long, Long Goodbye of "The Last Bookstore," Mizuki Nomura
The Last Sun, K. D. Edwards
The Hanged Man, K. D. Edwards
The Hourglass Throne, K. D. Edwards
Pinocchio, Carlo Collodi
The Thirteen Petalled Rose: A Discourse on the Essence of Jewish Existence and Belief, Adin Steinsaltz
The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
Untethered Sky, Fonda Lee
The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius
The Star-Child, Oscar Wilde
Monk's Hood, Ellis Peters
St. Peter's Fair, Ellis Peters
The Leper of St. Giles, Ellis Peters
The Virgin in the Ice, Ellis Peters
The Nutcracker, E. T. A. Hoffman and Alexandre Dumas
The Sanctuary Sparrow, Ellis Peters
Child of God, Cormac McCarthy
The Devil's Novice, Ellis Peters
Dead Man's Ransom, Cormac McCarthy
Plausible works of improving nonfiction consumed in 2023: 10
["plausible" and "improving" are being defined very liberally here]
Balioc's Choice Award, Fiction Division: The Circus of Dr. Lao, Charles G. Finney
>>>> Honorable Mention: Rats and Gargoyles, Mary Gentle
[This seems like the correct place to point out that, for the Balioc's Choice Awards, I consider only works that were first published with the last 100 years. Otherwise it would just be "surprise, old classics are often classics for a reason."]
Balioc's Choice Award, Nonfiction Division: The Thirteen Petalled Rose: A Discourse on the Essence of Jewish Existence and Belief, Adin Steinsaltz
>>>> Honorable Mention: A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
The Roscommon Princess Award for Luminous Trembling Beauty in the Face of a Bleakly Mundane World: The Star-Child, Oscar Wilde
The Anguished Howl Award for Somehow Making Me Regret Reading a Book About a Demon Summoner in the Thirty Years' War: Demon Summoner: Apprentice, Greg Walters
The Tamsyn Muir Award for Demonstrating that Popularity Really, Really, Really is Not the Same Thing as Quality: The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan
The G. K. Chesterton Award for Being G. K. Chesterton, I Mean, to Whom Else Could I Compare Him, For Someone So Avowedly Stodgy He is the Ballsiest Motherfucker I Have Ever Read: The Man Who Was Thursday, G. K. Chesterton
**********
...this year was much like the last several years, only somehow even more so. Not in a good way, I fear. My current lifestyle continues not to be super-conducive to reading, and writing a weekendlong LARP kind of knocked the wind out of me, both during and after. If it weren't for a massive silly-fun historical-mystery binge in December, my numbers here would be shameful. And you will notice that a whole lot of the things on that list are very short.
Most of the contemporary fiction was pretty much what I expected it to be. There were few real standouts. Things by good authors continued to be mostly good; things by shlocky authors continued to be shlock.
I should probably drive less for my various solitary recreational jaunts, just so that I can spend more of that time with a book. I should definitely read more old stuff, because old stuff continues to be the most reliably rewarding. (The cream of the cream of the old stuff, anyway, which is...what you read.)
I continue to be Extremely In the Market for recommendations of really good, deeply-informative nonfiction.
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2023 game list, part 1: I love complaining!
Once again continuing what has become an honorable tradition thanks to @smash-64 💜
I tried to promise myself I'd be more organized this year, trying to take notes after I beat things, making lists and gifs and everything, as it has become a consistent yearly undertaking. In truth, what happened is that I felt more overwhelmed by this than I did the last three years. The best explanation I can give is a combination of two facts: this year, while not particularly worse than what came before, still saw my confidence in myself tank a bit (i.e. What does this matter when few people read it and I don't bring much things of value to the table?)...
And the fact that I played very few games that really stuck with me, that I enjoyed enough to see through to the end and feel like that had merit, for a lot of the year.
When that wasn't the case, it was more than likely I'd been on my nth playthrough of Katana ZERO of the year (more on that in a later post, hopefully).
I probably need help, don't I?..
games I played, but don't have much to say about at the moment without being prompted, aside from 'I kinda liked them, I guess', ordered best to worst:
Purrfect Apawcalypse trilogy (2019-2021) - series of VNs that's genuinely just good fun as you find yourself attached to the characters before you know it. You'll know if this one is for you at a glance. Also, this is how I found out about Panel Royale! LOL
The Witch's House MV (2018) - good old RPG Maker horror with a few decent twists. The remake has good QOL changes.
Gunbrella (2023) - the plot might be forgettable, but you get a gun that's an umbrella! What's not to enjoy?
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (1995) - I played this game, but only in the most technical sense. Literally cheated the fun out of it - either that, or this platformer style is not for me.
Coffee Talk: Episode 2 - Hibiscus & Butterfly (2023) - the most upsetting entry on the list. The writer behind the original game has passed away, and his absence is felt keenly even if you're not aware of the fact - because this sequel lacks charm.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (2021) - yet another of those cheap and short indie 2D Zelda clones. The definition of the word meh.
Irisu Syndrome (2008) - a unique free puzzle timewaster. Tries to have a story and fails.
dishonorable mentions (the part with the most complaining)
2064: Read Only Memories (PC, 2014)
[♪ Home (Not) Sweet Home]
Starts off decent enough, doing the bare minimum to string you along the mystery (which, for most people with standards, wouldn't even be good enough, but I was willing to stick with it for the sake of the neat audiovisual presentation).
As soon as the murder scene is revealed, however, the main plot starts to fall apart, and the longer you spend with the game's writing (which seems to go on and on forever) and characters (about as flat as a pancake fresh off the pan), the more bleak and yawn-inducing they seem (including Turing, who just took longer than everyone else to annoy me).
Do yourself a favor, play VA-11 Hall-A (which this game gratuitously references) instead. You'll get all the benefits of cute pixel art and upbeat soundtrack, but with an actually good story\character cast to match. I swear it says something about 2064 that one of its most exciting moments was seeing throwaway lines from a VA-11 character!
Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (PC, 2015)
[♪ Climbing the Ginso Tree]
This is a game that won awards back when it came out almost a decade ago. Unfortunately, it feels like it was made to win awards and little more. While the credits scrolling up the screen tried to convince otherwise - with the usual special thanks given to families and pets of the developers - I sat there, unsure of what I was supposed to take from this experience (once again, the less words you try to use to tell your story, the more it usually suffers!).
The heart of any platformer is its movement systems - and, while eventually Ori's tools open up just enough to make you feel at least a little free and alive in its world, they also never go beyond what is almost painfully typical. Double jump, wall climb, ground pound, glide, charged projectile? None of that is going to wow anyone. The way it comes together is not too pleasant, either - Ori's too floaty and the obstacles before him, while painted with a talented stroke, are too unclear in their presentation to make for truly fun traversal. The exception to this is the escape sequences - sure, a lot of the time they're not much less frustrating than the rest of the game, but they're definitely more memorable, to the point where the accompaniment to one was the only part of the soundtrack I could think to showcase.
I don't regret the time I spent on this, per se, but what I can tell you is that it probably didn't deserve the awards. Also, the way the wall jump worked was annoying! Pushing towards the wall to do it feels very counter-intuitive, and with this I found that I much prefer when games have you face away from the wall to register wall jumps, or do not require you to press a direction at all.
Celeste (PC, 2018) [♪ Checking In]
+ Celeste Classic (2015, played as part of full game) :)
I was in high school when this made waves. I pointedly feigned disinterest as it splashed all over the internet, while making sure to download the soundtrack quickly and listen to it - more than occasionally - over the next three or so years. Lena Raine's work carried me through my school years and empowered me, and all the while I hadn't a clue what playing the game is actually like.
Those were the better days.
Now, the things about this game that seem to appeal the most to a lot of people are how refreshingly simple Madeline's moveset is and how much the game respects your time with death transitions and reloading, and the story it tells through heartfelt cutscenes and gameplay working in sync. To which I boldly say... none of those things are good enough.
Having to climb and manage your stamina adds another layer to navigating the rooms, sure, but to my simple ass, that's one layer too many. To the game's credit, there's a setting to make climbing toggleable instead of requiring you to hold down the trigger, and using that was the only reason I managed to push past the hotel and Oshiro (call me a scrub, it was genuinely overwhelming otherwise), but it still did nothing to change how I feel about this mechanic fundamentally.
I get it, it adds precision and verticality to your movement, and, seeing as you're literally supposed to be scaling a mountain, it's more than a natural inclusion... but its existence did nothing but add pressure for me, somehow. I would frequently forget it's an option at all before realizing the room in question expects me to utilize it. Instead of feeling like climbing expands my options, I felt constricted and awkward.
My second issue is much simpler. I'm a spoiled brat, and Celeste's respawning process involving that annoying whoosh sound effect and a transition that, yes, takes only about a second, but is still not quite instant, was not good enough. I recognize that having it be truly instant would not be ideal, either, but I can't help but wish that was the case.
As for the story... It underwhelmed me even back when I was doing surface level research at the time of release, and it's not impressing me now. It's okay, and I recognize why it would resonate with people - the themes of self-acceptance and resolve are plain to see (and just as plain to mull over). But in my time with the game, Madeline never began feeling less like an avatar for my failures and more like an actual character, never changed into someone I would truly like.
By the time I reached the Mirror Temple, I was certain that this game, in most respects, is just not what I would ever want. I pushed towards the summit anyway, and left it feeling profoundly... nothing.
However... Celeste Classic did not have any of those things! That little prototype gem of a game wastes zero time trying to set the stage and make you feel things with ~a story~, doesn't give you any opportunity to climb whatsoever, and neither does it waste your time having the screen fade to black when you die! And these three things, I reckon, are key to why this smaller version, that's supposed to just be treated as an Easter egg now, a relic of the past, and to be forgotten in favor of the project it grew into... resonated with me so much more! I beat it twice! It's lovely! It's what I actually needed Celeste to be!
IT'S COMPLICATED
AI: The Somnium Files (PC, 2019) [♪ MonzAI]
+ AI:TSF - Nirvana Initiative (PC, 2022) [♪ Nefarious Institute 1]
You know how they say not to judge the book by its cover? This is a story of me learning (once again) to judge a game neither by its reception nor by the credentials behind it. When I plowed through this duology, I came to understand that sometimes, lightning might strike just the once.
Of course, most of my bitter feelings about it stem from just how miraculous of a fuck-up Nirvana Initiative ended up being as a sequel (it's impressive how much it had to twist everything its predecessor stood for to even have a chance at making a mediocre point!), but a lot of the disappointment came from the way the first game carries itself in general, and maybe even from the presence this game has among fans. 'Oh, if you want more of the magic and mystery that you so enjoyed in Zero Escape, you have to try this! It'll be just as good!'
I should have had my doubts from the start, given how little I had enjoyed the ZE series after 999. AI1 flounders in many things, like its obtuse, deeply unfun gameplay loop - most of which is pressing random buttons until you see the most ridiculous shit present itself. There's also the overt reliance on stale and perverse jokes, and a story that can barely do much except trudge to the finish line and attempt to convince you the journey was worth it with a trite dance number, of all things.
But the thing is… even with all that, the first entry was somewhat compelling during its runtime, though most of that comes from its bold novelty. The idea of taking advantage of the surreality of dreams to find deeply concealed truths is fun to occasionally ponder, and there's just enough fluff to the places you visit and things you do to string you along for the ride (though having to check the same spots for flavor text on each revisit to very little results is a deep annoyance I have with both entries). The characters actually got a chance to grow (if not by much… this series' urge to be immature at every turn is nothing short of ruinous, sometimes), and their designs strike a wonderful line between outstanding and cringeworthy that makes them just… stick out in your brain, you know?
So while I thought the song and dance (both the literal and the metaphorical) were ultimately not worth much, I was still convinced, fooled by the magic just enough to see things come to an end; and the resolution itself was satisfying and believable, if nothing else. And with how exhausted I felt reaching this point, I figured that'd be enough.
To me, AI1 is all about finding shards of diamonds in the rough, and it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that its fandom runs away with what little they have to try and improve on it (and often succeed). As such, you'd expect its sequel to take advantage of how much room there is to grow, capitalize on this chance to refine things, and use the few strong themes the original presented (value of bonds and family made both by blood and by choice, finding those you can rely on to carry what you have done forward, etc)... right?
Um, yeah, turns out it twists over itself even more than I'd already thought possible in order to make sense (not to mention seemingly forsaking most of that mess right at the true end in order to approach the established universe from a contrived meta angle). If AI1 can be described as having extremely unrefined gameplay coupled with a decently intriguing story, NI is just about the opposite of that.
While I'm glad they bothered to make exploring the dream worlds enjoyable this go around, there's no way in hell that makes it worthwhile to bear witness to the innumerable ways in which this mess of a sequel sullied the already weak foundations laid down by its predecessor. When I had finished that game, I wrote, on impulse, that 'I haven't been this confounded by a sequel's existence since Chrono Cross'. It just… did not need to happen, like, at all.
Nirvana Initiative posed to me one of the worst questions you can have while playing a game, which is…
'Why am I doing this, again?'
Let's be real, it was mostly for the soundtrack. Unlike AI1, this game had passable music! Though having to watch ANOTHER dance number (like half a dozen times, actually! and no, there's no skip button!) just about had me gagging.
That's not even the worst part about that sequence, no - that would have to be the way it almost actively ruins and undermines what's probably the only passable character arc in NI (and even then, you have to squint hard for it to pass your judgement, given how it starts... gotta hand it to this game for managing to have multiple relationships with genuinely questionable setups involving uncomfortable age gaps).
I wanted to feel touched by the new, somewhat expanded narratives, I wanted to see the world grow a little, despite all the grievances I was certain I would have... But not even halfway through the plot, I realized that my true wish was to just move on. I think that's what I'll do here, as well, as even reminiscing on this chaos is quite dreadful.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch, 2022) [♪ Agnus Colony]
Don't become prey and victim to your own expectations - or to bad advertising.
Xenoblade is a special series, full of wonder and power. Words fail me this year, as they did the year before, when it comes to describing how much of an impact these games - the second entry most of all, a game I think about now and then with a bittersweetness on my heart that I oddly never can get enough of - had had on my mental well-being last year. They might as well have saved me back then, and while getting to experience them was something I'd been planning to do for a while, the specific circumstances it all had happened under were just so special, so exceptional, so wild, that it's hard to think of those days as anything but a gift.
And yet, there are plenty of things in this particular journey I still have to reconcile with. I never settled on what my impression of 1 is, in the end (or, some might say, I never properly played it); I could use a fresher look at 2, and… I never, ever, will finish Xenoblade Chronicles 3. It's a game I once had hopes for, but nowadays don't ever want to think about.
I thought it a privilege, of sorts - the fact that I was there to witness (and acquire) a brand-new release in a series that became dearly important to me. I ended up hearing many things - the trailers, the rumors, the leaks. They all spoke of a definitive resolution to the series, of levels of refinement never seen before, of intrigue so big you can barely take it, of key character appearances we were all dying to see.
Turns out most of what we were so eagerly expecting came with an extra price tag.
The base game of Xenoblade 3 is a mirage, a mere shade of what came before it. The environments are open and vast, but they look more drab than ever - and with the new autowalk feature, it takes even less time to get sick of it. The music takes you on a journey, but you forget what it sounds like far sooner than you'd prefer. The battle system promises lots of options and a nice learning curve, but it only overextends, overwhelms and forces you to grind. The cutscenes look every bit the part of a Xenoblade story, but meander and stretch things out to the point of boredom, which means none of the characters get enough time to grow on the player, either… Though a lot of them would probably go nowhere even given all the time in the world.
And the setting as a whole? Well, it's a simulation, so who cares about it feeling unique or fun? That's the point, the game says, you're supposed to empathize with these characters breaking out of their bonds, out of this miserable existence!
Well, I say that things can be made appealing even in decay. You don't have to actively worsen things to make a point.
Future Redeemed is an impressive demonstration of how things could have been. It fixes practically every point where the base game falters - and it is in this part of the game where all those promises that once seemed hollow finally come true. Sort of. The exploration process is smooth as butter in the way none of the games before were, characters are at last back to having defined roles in battle, and all that teasing becomes a thing of the past as 3 acknowledges its own roots and past in full, and you think to yourself… 'If only we'd got this in the base game all along!'
But we didn't. And the credits on Future Redeemed roll far too soon to truly be satisfied.
Is this how you wanted the saga to end?
honorable mentions
Butterfly Soup 2 (PC, 2022) [♪ Night Tourist]
*I hope you'll forgive me for not finding a GIF for a mostly static VN...
It's so funny. For me it has been two years; for the creator, it'd been five. But I guess time doesn't matter when it comes to maturity, as I feel like both myself and this game have done plenty of growth. And for that, I love it all the more, just as I am now thankful to be able to call Butterfly Soup a short series.
Compared to the first game, the art is more refined, the tone is more consistent, and treatment of serious topics is more grounded - in more ways than one, this sequel is like a fond, yet melancholic look at what you once had, what changed since then, and what you hope to make of things. But between all that, it stays sincere and silly in the best of ways - the ones that make you feel cozy on the darkest of nights, the ones that endear you for a good while yet. Truly, this game was a ray of light in a sea of mediocrity this year.
Road 96 (PC, 2021) [♪ Hit the Road]
Yeah, I know. The fact that I have played a goddamn walking simulator at the behest of a good pal (who might or might not be reading this, hi on the off chance that you are!) is nothing short of a miracle. Not to mention the fact that I ended up having a good time with it!
I'll put it plain: the vibes of this game are almost impeccable. It wastes little time setting things up - it's the turn of the century, and a massively corrupt government is practically folding in on itself as it closes its borders. It's up to you, as you're literally put into a blank-slate teenager's shoes, to go on a desperate journey and see whether or not you make your way out.
Over the course of Road 96, you do this six times, and the people you meet on the way and choices you make with them may or may not shape not just your own future, but that of the whole country. There's nothing for it, then, but hit the road and see what awaits you, as you sit in a car that's probably stolen, blaring music from your carefully curated tapes… or are dropped off on the wayside with nothing but a paltry backpack to speak of… or find yourself biding your time near a gas station… or… whatever it is the game throws at you, as you hope that the strangers you run into actually deign to help.
Yes, the biggest way this game attempts to stand out is with our good old friend, RNG. Even reading blurbs about it, you cannot escape the all-too-typical claims of 'your own personal journey', 'a thousand unique paths waiting for you' and all that… months later, I find myself unable to decide whether this helped the game or harmed it more, as it's definitely smaller than it makes itself out to be.
As a story hook, this setup is clever and delightful, as I tried to illustrate a moment earlier, but the moment you begin to overthink it, you realize that the randomness aspect clashes hard against the continuity the game tries to establish. You, as the player, indeed learn more about the world and colorful characters in it each time you venture forth, but the avatar you control is supposed to be clueless as ever, setting out on a path that is, in fact, not quite their own any more. It's a weird gripe to have, and I found it an easy one to ignore, but I wish something could be done about it anyway.
As for the rest of the plot, let's just say it's... surprisingly binary, and the supporting cast small and not always compelling in turn. The game sacrifices some of the personal intimacy and uniqueness it has built up to make a sweeping, painfully boring statement of 'freedom good, suppression bad' before credits roll, but as damaging as that is to the overall experience, I feel like one can't deny the fundamental appeal of just being asked to go on a journey with sweeping stakes and truly, truly banging music. Seriously, it was meant to be put on speakers and blasted as the world passes you by!
In a word, Road 96 is ambitious, and in a sentence, it is ambitious, yet falling short of itself. Nonetheless, I was impressed by how it managed to worm its way into my heart for a while.
A Space for the Unbound (PC, 2023)
[♪ Don't Have Much Choice]
Wouldn't you know it? I had actually played two games involving entering people's subconsciousness to solve their problems this year!
Truth be told, I'd been looking forward to this game for about a year, given that it was published by the people behind Coffee Talk (which, if you recall, I had quite enjoyed). The warm and inviting screenshots on the back-then almost empty store page, showing off awesome art and promising a sweet little journey with slice-of-life tropes and a mystery waiting to be solved… well, to say all of that was alluring is to say nothing, really. I just about jumped when I received a notification for this game releasing at last at the beginning of the year, and wasted little time trying to dive in.
The sad thing is, what you see is not always what you get. The cozy, comfortable, sensible vibes of the early game - running around the city, doing chores at your school, naming every stray cat you come across, watching the protagonist's diary fill up as he crosses all the little goals he had set in life off his precious list… Yeah, those things won't last - definitely not long enough to get you attached to characters living in this world.
As the plot begins to unfold, it fumbles over itself trying to introduce various cliches and supernatural elements, to the point where you recognize the whole experience as a tedious drag as you see exactly where it's heading, and think to yourself that you have heard all this before. It's yet another heartfelt story about self-actualization, and as the game hammers it in harder than ever before, you sigh and wish you could go back to the times of bottle cap collecting and cat petting. Sometimes, simpler is better.
Unfortunately, that's not exactly true when it comes to actually playing A Space for the Unbound. The gameplay is as simple as can be - basically all you do is walk around (quite slowly) and interact with things. I can appreciate how linear the game is, for the most part, but I wish it let us accomplish our goals without wasting too much time! Not to mention, if you try to see everything there is, you have to be prepared to deal with quite a few mind-numbingly repetitive mini-games for far longer than you have to. Don't do that. It'll just sully your impression of the game.
If you're somehow still interested in this after reading this messy opinion of mine, don't be too discouraged - you'll see plenty of beautiful sights, hear some cute music, and, maybe, be affected by the story far more than I was. (Besides, for a cat lover, it's always nice to see others appreciate them!) Just... try not to waste too much time with the game's superficial sidequests.
Tales of the Abyss (3DS, 2011 port of a 2006 release)
[♪ The Distribution Base]
There's something ironic in how playing (most of) this game has been one of the best things I have done with my lovely 2DS since I homebrewed it earlier this year... and yet I quite regret not checking how (ahem) easily available the PS2 version is, instead. They may be functionally identical, but the hardware is not - you have no idea how hard some of the goddamn Mieu Fire puzzles become when your character is taking up a mere four or so pixels of an already tiny screen. Man, that was trying my patience at its finest.
These horrors aside, though, what kind of game are we even dealing with here? Well, it’s a Tales game first and foremost. I can’t deny claims that Abyss has a few strengths of its own (most notably, of course, actually bothering to have coherent character development arcs), but it’s not quite enough to obscure the ever-prevalent issues this series has:
exploration and side-questing is still annoyingly obtuse, not to mention traversal is painfully slow in the first half of the game,
some characters (in this case, Anise more so than others, but I'd argue Mieu's whole existence is part of this too) are obligated to suffer because Tales has to meet its unhealthy anime tropes\wackiness quota per game,
the skit system has not, unfortunately, evolved one bit (the amount of times I would skip a skit on accident, because any input halts its playback entirely…),
while I’m inclined to say the battle system is, for the most part, an improvement (the Field of Fonons mechanic is quite a nice change given the foundations of Tales gameplay, I have to admit), any goodwill you might want to give it gets shattered when you realize Free Run breaks bosses in half. And aside from that, it’s just your usual button-mashy fare.
So why did I push on with this game as far as I did, pulling the classic move of quitting right at the final boss instead of, well, any earlier? A lot of that is because I was just in the mood to mash some buttons in bed until I realized I was slightly underleveled for the finale and caught myself groaning at the mere thought of trying to even cheese it. A shame, that, because the ending of this game is pretty wonderful for what it set out to do, and it was the only bit I did not see on my own. It's like my experience with Final Fantasy VI all over again…
That's not all there is to it, though. Abyss has some of what's probably the most involved and curious worldbuilding (once you get past all the awkward made up jargon it loves to throw at you) of any Tales game I know! Not that this says much, because that's a low bar, and I'm not too familiar with the series at large, but it was enough to keep me engaged for a long while. And, as mentioned earlier, it puts in greater efforts than I expected to endear you to the cast as they slowly band together and uncover their own talents, purposes and aims in life - Luke in particular.
I liked him almost immediately - because I'm not too hard to please when it comes to this series, and his design is, I feel, particularly sweet and striking (especially given how nicely the game used the Important Haircut trope with him, and of course, the contrast between him and Asch). But that alone doesn't a good protagonist make - it's the fact that the story allows Luke to make mistakes (from small ones to straight-up catastrophes), get his comeuppance and grow from them organically, at his own pace, that makes him stand out in my mind.
As Luke sheds his sheltered ways of thought and accepts his responsibilities, those that were traveling with him, either out of obligation or by chance, begin to support him more and stand by him in earnest. It all comes together gradually and at a satisfying pace, and is definitely a highlight of the experience to me.
Growth and connection are probably among the biggest themes of the game, so it's nice to see that it applies pretty much equally to both protagonists and antagonists. Sure, it's the job of a Tales' Big Bad faction to be goofy and up to nefarious activities, but beyond that, the group has solid enough chemistry both among themselves and with the party that I actually ended up looking forward to most encounters with them, even if ultimately it felt a little predictable. As an aside, for a game this old, the voice acting was really good and plentiful (though there is none for skits, which sucks), and further piqued my interest in the story along the way.
To conclude, I'd like to say that the biggest thing I learned while playing this game is that I'm a sucker for grounded tales of (ha) self-actualization even this many years later. And also that once you play one Tales game, you truly, to some extent, know them all.
SANABI (PC, 2023) [♪ Warm Hospitality]
Do you want to know why I ended up playing this one? Of course you do, that wasn't really a question. I only bring this up because the answer can be revealed with a single screenshot:
...yep, the inspiration is that blatantly on display. I was expecting it, of course - the Katana ZERO community is the only reason I know of SANABI in the first place, and even as you read people's thoughts on it, the extreme similarity is practically all they ever bring up, be it in a positive or negative light. It pleased me and warmed my heart, while also making me feel wary - it's one thing to be inspired by something, and another to actually carve an identity of your own.
That said, KZ is far from the worst thing to try to replicate, particularly when it comes to visuals - SANABI has some awesome scenery that makes me feel right at home. And while the story at times feels so much like an amateurish copy that it leaves me confused more than anything (I'm sure the awkward English translation sadly does not help matters, not to mention the fact that I'd played this game in an unfinished state - you might expect me to write about it again next year!), the gameplay is anything but.
I'm sure there are quite a few platformers out there that have you use what's essentially a grappling hook to swing through the stages, but SANABI is my first experience with something like this, and in this regard the game absolutely manages to shine on its own. Movement is lightning-fast and responsive, enemy targeting is extremely generous - almost to the point of being handholdy (and, of course, they all die in one satisfying hit - as do you, if you set the game to the highest difficulty. It's nice to be given an opportunity to learn the ropes before engaging with the game earnestly!), and there's something to be said about how the level design has that extreme kind of clarity to it that I always appreciate and favors speed over precision, with how spacious everything is.
My only big issues with how the game plays are how it doesn't seem to be designed with a controller in mind (it is an option, but I found myself moving much more precisely with KBM! Me! Someone who never plays games with that!), and, once again, the just-a-bit-too-long death animation\transition. Being able to skip it helps, but I just yearn for no time to be wasted...
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