A few nights ago, my wife and I were talking about games we remembered from the GameCube era. The conversation bounced between all the usual suspects: Wind Waker, Luigi’s Mansion, Pikman, Double-Dash, Paper Mario. Then I casually mentioned Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg.

The look she gave me immediately told me she had no idea what I was talking about.

At first, I tried explaining it. "You play as a kid in a chicken suit." That got a laugh. Then I added, "You roll giant eggs around while fighting evil crows." Somehow that made it sound even less believable.

What started as a simple conversation quickly turned into an hour-long rabbit hole. I was pulling up gameplay videos, looking for copies on eBay, pulling up old reviews, and eventually reading about how the game was actually made. The deeper I dug, the more I realized how absurd the whole thing sounded. If I hadn't played it myself, I'm not entirely sure I would believe it was real.

But that's what makes Billy Hatcher so fascinating to me.

It's not just that it's a weird game. The GameCube era was full of weird games. It's that Billy Hatcher feels like the kind of game that couldn't exist today. Not because it was controversial or groundbreaking, but because somebody at Sega looked at an idea about a kid in a chicken suit rolling giant eggs around and thought, "Yeah, let's give this a shot."

And somehow, they gave that idea to Sonic Team.

Back When Weird Was Enough

The more I dug into Billy Hatcher, the more I realized that this game wasn't an accident. In hindsight, there may not have been a better team at Sega to make it.

Today, when most people think of Sonic Team, they think of Sonic the Hedgehog. That's fair. The blue blur has been the studio's defining creation for more than three decades. But in the early 2000s, Sonic Team felt different. They weren't just the Sonic studio. They were one of the most experimental teams in the industry.

This was the same group that gave us Nights into Dreams, ChuChu Rocket!, Samba de Amigo, and Phantasy Star Online. Looking back at that lineup, a game about a kid rolling giant eggs around doesn't actually feel that out of place. If anything, it feels perfectly on brand.

What I find most interesting is that Billy Hatcher wasn't built around a character or a story first. It was built around an idea. Sonic Team producer Yuji Naka has talked about how the team became fascinated with the concept of eggs because they naturally create anticipation. Every egg is a mystery. You don't know what's inside, and that uncertainty makes you want to keep going. The more I thought about that, the more it reminded me of what gaming felt like when I was growing up.

Before every game was dissected in trailers or Reddit posts there was a sense of discovery. You didn't always know what was waiting around the next corner. Billy Hatcher somehow captured that feeling and turned it into its core mechanic. Every level was built around finding eggs, protecting them, growing them by feeding them fruit, and eventually discovering what would hatch.

It's a ridiculous concept on paper but that's exactly what I love about it. Billy Hatcher feels like it came from a different era. An era where a talented group of developers had a strange idea, and instead of spending months trying to justify it, they simply started building it and for a moment in 2003, Sega let them.

One of the things I noticed while rewatching gameplay footage is that I had completely forgotten how strange Billy Hatcher actually was. In my memory, it was just a platformer. The kind of game I would spend an afternoon at my grandmas house playing after school without thinking too much about it. But revisiting it as an adult, I was caught off guard by how different it feels from almost everything else I remember from that time.

The eggs weren’t just collectibles. They were the game.

You rolled them through levels, protected them from enemies, fed them fruit to make them stronger, and eventually hatched everything from animals to power-ups. Nearly every mechanic revolved around this one simple idea.

It surprised me how committed the game was to the bit. There was never a moment where Billy Hatcher felt embarrassed by its own premise. It wasn’t trying to be cool. It wasn’t trying to chase trends. It was a game about giant eggs, and it fully believed that giant eggs could carry an entire adventure.

As a kid, I don’t think I appreciated that. I just thought it was fun.

As an adult, I think that’s exactly what makes it memorable.

A Strange Kind of Success

The reality is that Billy Hatcher wasn’t a massive success. It reviewed fairly well, but it never became Sega’s next big franchise. There was no long-running series, no annual releases, and no major revival. Outside of a few cameo appearances in other Sega games, Billy mostly faded into gaming history.

And yet, people still remember it.

Maybe that’s because Billy Hatcher represents something that feels increasingly rare. It wasn’t built around an established brand. It wasn’t chasing a trend. It was a strange idea that a talented group of developers believed in enough to turn into a full game. For better or worse, it was unapologetically itself.

The funny thing is that I started writing this article because my wife didn’t know what Billy Hatcher was. What began as a simple conversation turned into an evening spent watching gameplay footage, reading old interviews, and trying to understand how a game this unusual ever got made in the first place. By the end of that rabbit hole, I realized the answer was surprisingly simple.

Billy Hatcher exists because there was a moment in gaming history when weird ideas were allowed to be enough.

Not every game has to redefine a genre. Not every game needs to become a billion-dollar franchise. Sometimes a game just needs to leave an impression.

More than twenty years later, I can still picture that kid in a chicken suit rolling a giant egg through a brightly colored world. The fact that I’m still thinking about it all these years later feels like its own kind of success.

And honestly, that’s probably the best legacy Billy Hatcher could have hoped for.

I’d love to hear about the games that have stuck with you over the years. Not the classics everyone remembers, but the weird ones. The forgotten rentals, the strange impulse buys, the games that somehow never left your brain. Drop them in the comments I would love to hear some childhood nostalgia!

Into this rapidly changing landscape stepped Sony, a company searching for a shooter franchise that could stand alongside the industry’s biggest names. The answer would come from an unlikely source: Insomniac Games, a studio known for colorful platformers rather than alien invasions and apocalyptic warfare. Their experiment would become Resistance: Fall of Man, one of the PlayStation 3’s defining launch titles and the beginning of one of Sony’s most ambitious original franchises.

This is the complete story of the Resistance series.

The World Before Resistance

By 2005, many of gaming’s biggest shooters were moving in a familiar direction. Military realism was becoming increasingly popular, World War II remained a dominant setting, and developers were racing to create bigger online experiences. While each franchise had its own identity, many were competing for the same audience with similar themes and aesthetics.

Insomniac Games decided to do something different.

Known primarily for the colorful worlds of Spyro the Dragon and Ratchet & Clank, the studio began developing a new project under the codename I-8. Rather than creating another modern military shooter the team envisioned an alternate version of the 20th century, one where humanity’s greatest conflict wasn’t against itself, but against an unknowable alien threat.

The premise was deceptively simple: What if World War II never happened?

In the world of Resistance, Europe avoids the devastating global conflict that defined real-world history. But peace never arrives. Deep within Russia, a mysterious alien species known as the Chimera emerges and begins spreading westward. Entire populations disappear. Cities fall silent. Governments collapse. By the time the rest of the world understands the scale of the threat, much of Europe has already been lost.

What made the Chimera so terrifying wasn’t just their technology or numbers. They transformed their victims. Humans captured by the alien race were converted into Chimeran soldiers, creating an enemy that was both familiar and horrifyingly alien. The invasion felt less like a traditional war and more like a plague consuming civilization itself.

This unique blend of science fiction, alternate history, horror, and military action gave Resistance an identity unlike anything else on the market. It wasn’t the clean, heroic space opera of Halo. It wasn’t the grounded realism of Call of Duty. It occupied a strange middle ground where Cold War paranoia, alien invasion, and post-apocalyptic horror collided.

At a time when many shooters focused on empowering the player, Resistance emphasized survival. The Chimera felt overwhelming, unstoppable, and often frightening. Even when players won battles, the larger war seemed hopeless. That sense of desperation would become one of the franchise’s defining characteristics.

Sony recognized the potential almost immediately. As the PlayStation 3 launch approached, the company needed a showcase title that could demonstrate both the technical capabilities of the new hardware and its commitment to building new intellectual properties. Resistance offered exactly that: a visually impressive shooter with a distinctive setting, ambitious multiplayer features, and enough world-building to support an entire franchise.

When Resistance: Fall of Man launched alongside the PlayStation 3 in November 2006, it wasn’t simply another shooter entering an already crowded market.

It was Sony’s attempt to create the next great shooter universe.

Resistance: Fall of Man (2006)

When Resistance: Fall of Man launched alongside the PlayStation 3 in November 2006, it carried an unusual burden. It wasn’t simply another launch title it was expected to help justify the purchase of Sony’s expensive new console. The PlayStation 3 entered the market at $499 and $599 price points, making it one of the most expensive console launches in gaming history. Sony needed software that could showcase the system’s capabilities while convincing players that the next generation had truly arrived.

Resistance: Fall of Man answered that challenge.

Players assumed the role of Nathan Hale, an American Army Ranger sent to Britain during humanity’s desperate last stand against the Chimera. What began as a military campaign quickly evolved into something stranger as Hale discovered he possessed a unique resistance to the Chimeran virus that had transformed millions of people into alien soldiers.

The game’s greatest strength was its identity. While many shooters relied on familiar weapons and military settings, Resistance embraced experimentation. The Bullseye could tag enemies and bend bullets around cover. The Auger fired rounds through walls. The Hedgehog turned corridors into death traps with ricocheting spikes. Nearly every weapon felt memorable and distinctly “Resistance.”

The game also showcased the PlayStation 3’s online ambitions. At launch, few console shooters offered multiplayer on the scale that Resistance delivered, supporting matches of up to 40 players at a time. For many early PS3 adopters, Resistance became the system’s first truly essential online experience.

Critics responded positively. Reviewers praised the game’s inventive weapon design, ambitious multiplayer features, and impressive scope for a launch title. While some criticized its visuals and familiar shooter structure, most agreed that Sony had found one of the strongest games in the PlayStation 3 launch lineup. The game ultimately earned generally favorable reviews and a Metacritic score in the high 80s.

Commercially, the game exceeded expectations. By September 2007, less than a year after release, Resistance: Fall of Man had sold more than 2.1 million copies worldwide, making it one of the PlayStation 3’s earliest major successes.

More importantly, it gave Sony something it desperately needed: a shooter franchise with the potential to stand alongside Halo, Gears of War, and Call of Duty.

The war against the Chimera had only just begun.

Resistance 2 (2008)

The original Resistance had established a compelling universe, but the sequel needed to prove that the franchise could compete with the biggest shooters in the industry. By 2008, the landscape had changed dramatically. Halo 3 had become a phenomenon. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had redefined the military shooter. Expectations for sequels were higher than ever.

Insomniac’s answer was simple: make everything bigger.

Resistance 2 shifted the war from Europe to the United States, transforming the conflict into a full-scale alien apocalypse. Nathan Hale returned as the protagonist, now a member of the elite Sentinel program, as humanity faced extinction on its own soil.

The sequel dramatically increased the scope of the series. Players fought colossal monsters, defended ruined American cities, and participated in some of the largest battles ever seen in a console shooter at the time. The campaign emphasized spectacle in a way the original game never attempted.

Multiplayer received an even bigger overhaul. Competitive matches expanded to an astonishing 60 players online, while an eight-player cooperative mode introduced large-scale missions that became a favorite among fans. Few console games could match its ambition.

Critics largely embraced the sequel. Reviewers praised its scale, visuals, multiplayer offerings, and cinematic presentation. The game achieved a Metacritic score of 87 and was frequently cited as one of the PlayStation 3’s strongest exclusive titles.

Commercially, Resistance 2 became the franchise’s best-selling entry, surpassing three million copies worldwide by early 2012.

Yet beneath the success, a fracture was beginning to form.

In an effort to compete directly with contemporary shooters, Insomniac adopted several design trends popularized by games like Halo and Call of Duty. The weapon wheel was removed in favor of a two-weapon limit. Health packs disappeared in favor of regenerating health. The atmosphere became more action-oriented and less horror-focused.

While critics generally applauded these changes, many longtime fans felt the series had lost part of what made it unique. Years later, Insomniac itself would acknowledge that some of the creative decisions failed to resonate with the franchise’s core audience.

Resistance 2 was bigger, louder, and more successful than its predecessor.

But it also sparked the identity crisis that would shape the future of the series

Resistance: Retribution (2009)

While Insomniac was expanding the mainline series on PlayStation 3, Sony had another challenge to solve.

The PSP needed major exclusive franchises of its own.

Rather than creating a simplified version of the console experience, Sony Bend Studio chose a different approach. The team developed Resistance: Retribution, a third-person shooter designed specifically for the PSP while expanding the broader lore of the Resistance universe.

Set between the events of Resistance: Fall of Man and Resistance 2, the game follows James Grayson, a former British Marine whose life is shattered when his brother is transformed into a Chimera. Consumed by guilt and anger, Grayson embarks on a personal campaign against the alien threat that eventually grows into something far larger.

Unlike Nathan Hale, Grayson wasn’t positioned as humanity’s savior. He was driven by revenge, making him one of the franchise’s most relatable protagonists. His journey offered players a ground-level perspective on the war, focusing less on grand military operations and more on the human cost of the Chimeran invasion.

For many fans, that perspective became one of the game’s greatest strengths.

Critics were pleasantly surprised by what Sony Bend accomplished on the PSP hardware. Reviewers praised the game’s visuals, storytelling, controls, and ambitious scope. At a time when many handheld spin-offs felt disposable, Retribution was treated as a legitimate chapter in the franchise rather than an afterthought.

The game earned strong reviews, with many outlets calling it one of the best shooters available on Sony’s handheld platform. Years later, it continues to appear on lists of the PSP’s most underrated titles.

Commercially, Retribution performed respectably, though not at the level of its console counterparts. More importantly, it demonstrated that the Resistance universe was flexible enough to support different genres, protagonists, and perspectives without losing its identity.

Today, many fans regard Resistance: Retribution as one of the franchise’s hidden gems: a game that quietly expanded the world while some of the larger entries fought for the spotlight.

Resistance 3 (2011)

By the time Resistance 3 entered development, Insomniac Games found itself at a crossroads.

Resistance 2 had been the franchise’s biggest commercial success, but fan feedback revealed a growing dissatisfaction with the series’ direction. In chasing the trends that dominated the late 2000s shooter market, Resistance had lost some of the identity that made it special. The horror elements had been reduced, the atmosphere had become more action-focused, and several of the original game’s unique mechanics had been abandoned.

Rather than double down on those changes, Insomniac chose a different path.

Resistance 3 represented a conscious effort to reconnect with the franchise’s roots.

Set four years after the events of Resistance 2, the game abandoned the bombastic military spectacle of its predecessor and focused instead on ordinary people trying to survive in a conquered world. Humanity was no longer fighting a war it could win. The war was over.

The Chimera had won.

Players stepped into the role of Joseph Capelli, a former Sentinel living in hiding with his wife and son in the ruins of Oklahoma. Unlike Nathan Hale, Capelli wasn’t a super soldier or humanity’s chosen savior. He was simply a survivor. That perspective fundamentally changed the tone of the game.

For the first time in the series, players experienced a world that had fallen.

The United States had been transformed into a frozen wasteland dotted with abandoned towns, shattered cities, and isolated pockets of human resistance. Communities clung to survival while Chimeran forces continued to reshape the planet. The atmosphere felt less like a military shooter and more like a post-apocalyptic road trip through the end of civilization.

The change in tone was immediately noticeable.

Gone were the massive armies and globe-spanning battles of Resistance 2. In their place were quieter moments of tension, environmental storytelling, and encounters that emphasized fear and desperation. The game drew inspiration from horror films, alien invasion fiction, and classic American road stories, creating an experience that felt far more personal than previous entries.

The gameplay reflected this shift as well.

Insomniac restored the weapon wheel from the original game, allowing players to carry a full arsenal rather than being restricted to two weapons. Fan-favorite weapons returned alongside new additions, once again emphasizing experimentation and creativity over military realism. The bizarre and imaginative weapon design that had become a hallmark of the franchise was back in full force.

Upon release, Resistance 3 received some of the strongest reviews in franchise history. Reviewers praised its atmosphere, weapon design, pacing, visual variety, and renewed sense of identity. Many publications described it as a return to form, while others argued it represented the strongest campaign Insomniac had produced in the entire trilogy. The game ultimately achieved a Metacritic score of 83 and earned numerous year-end accolades from gaming outlets.

In the years since its release, Resistance 3 has become something of a cult classic. Discussions of the franchise frequently place it at or near the top of franchise rankings. With many players viewing it as the creative peak of the series a game that finally balanced the horror, science fiction, action, and world-building that had made the original concept so compelling.

Unfortunately, critical acclaim did not translate into commercial success.

The gaming landscape of 2011 was unforgiving. Shooters were dominated by industry giants such as Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Halo. Budgets were rising, competition was fierce, and audiences increasingly gravitated toward established multiplayer ecosystems. Despite positive reviews, Resistance 3 struggled to gain momentum in the marketplace.

While Sony never publicly disclosed exact sales figures comparable to those of Resistance 2, the game fell short of expectations and failed to generate the commercial impact needed to justify a major sequel.

Resistance had finally become the game many fans wanted the problem was that fewer people were paying attention.

In retrospect, Resistance 3 occupies a fascinating place in gaming history. It stands as an example of a franchise successfully correcting course creatively while arriving at a moment when market conditions made success increasingly difficult. It was the critical high point of the series, the culmination of everything Insomniac had learned over five years of development.

And, tragically, it would also mark the beginning of the end.

For many players, Resistance 3 felt like the start of a new chapter.

Instead, it became the franchise’s final stand.

Resistance: Burning Skies (2012)

By 2012, the future of Resistance was already uncertain.

Resistance 3 had earned strong reviews but failed to become the commercial breakthrough Sony wanted. Insomniac was beginning to move toward new projects, and the franchise’s momentum was slowing. Yet Sony still believed Resistance could help support one of its newest initiatives— the PlayStation Vita.

The result was Resistance: Burning Skies.

Developed by Nihilistic Software, the game served as both a prequel and a showcase for Sony’s new handheld hardware. Players assumed the role of Tom Riley, a New York City firefighter caught in the early days of the Chimeran invasion of the United States.

The premise was compelling.

Rather than portraying elite soldiers or resistance fighters, Burning Skies focused on an ordinary civilian thrust into extraordinary circumstances. It was a perspective the series had rarely explored and one that fit naturally within Resistance’s themes of survival and sacrifice.

Unfortunately, the execution struggled to match the ambition. While the game successfully brought Resistance to the Vita, critics felt it lacked the polish, atmosphere, and creativity that defined earlier entries. Reviews praised some aspects of the story and setting but criticized repetitive game play, technical limitations, and underwhelming design choices. The reception was noticeably weaker than previous Resistance titles, earning mixed reviews across the industry.

Commercially, the game failed to provide the Vita with the system-selling exclusive Sony had hoped for. At the same time, the Vita itself faced challenges in the marketplace. Without a breakout success, Burning Skies quickly faded from public attention.

In hindsight, the game feels less like a new beginning and more like an epilogue.

It would become the final Resistance game released to date.

The Franchise That Arrived Too Early or Too Late?

The story of Resistance is one of gaming’s more fascinating “what ifs.”

On paper, the franchise had everything it needed to succeed. It was developed by one of the industry’s most respected studios. It launched alongside a major console. It offered a distinctive setting, memorable weapons, strong world-building, and multiplayer features that often pushed technical boundaries.

Yet Resistance never became the cultural phenomenon Sony hoped it would.

Part of it’s problem was timing.

When Resistance: Fall of Man launched in 2006, the shooter market was becoming increasingly crowded. Halo already dominated the Xbox ecosystem. Call of Duty was preparing to reinvent itself with Modern Warfare. Multiplayer communities were becoming more centralized around a handful of blockbuster franchises.

By the time Resistance 3 arrived in 2011, the competition had become even more fierce. Shooters were no longer competing solely on campaign quality or creative design. They were competing as long-term ecosystems built around online progression and massive player communities.

Resistance excelled at many things. It never was the biggest game in the room. The franchise occupied an unusual middle ground. It lacked the military realism of Call of Duty. It lacked the colorful iconography of Halo. It lacked the dystopian political themes that helped define competitors like Killzone. Resistance was something stranger: a blend of alternate history, science fiction, horror, and post-apocalyptic storytelling.

For the players who connected with that vision, it was unforgettable. For broader audiences, however, it was often difficult to explain exactly what made the series special. And yet, more than a decade after its last release, Resistance refuses to disappear completely. Fans continue to request remasters, PC ports, and full-scale reboots. Every major PlayStation showcase seems to reignite speculation that the Chimera might return.

The franchise occupies a unique space in Sony’s history; not forgotten, but unfinished. Perhaps that lingering sense of unrealized potential is why Resistance remains so beloved.

It wasn’t PlayStation’s Halo.

It wasn’t PlayStation’s Call of Duty.

It was something entirely its own.

The series dared to ask what the world might look like if humanity lost its war against an alien invasion. Across five games, it delivered some of the most imaginative weapons, memorable settings, and atmospheric storytelling of its era. Even when sales declined and the spotlight moved elsewhere, the franchise never stopped striving to be different.

Today, Resistance stands as both a success and a cautionary tale: proof that creativity alone doesn’t guarantee longevity, but also evidence that truly unique games can leave a lasting impression long after the market has moved on.

Now you might be thinking, this is a pretty simple concept that at this point in my adult life shouldn’t be too complex. You’d be right! Splitting focus on something, at least for me, is something that’s proved to be incredibly hard. I can’t read two books at the same time. If I’m playing two separate video games at the same time inevitably one of them gets more of my attention. It’s human nature to have a preference on what you’d rather be doing. It’s why we often make choices on doing one thing over another other. I guess what I’m trying to say is none of this feeling should be problematic, at least if you are respecting your time and the time that you’re giving the thing in front of you.

Going back to the book I mentioned before. I finished it today and my immediate thought was not “wow I enjoyed this” or “that was worth my time.” My first thought was “Oh cool I can start this next book now that I was planning on reading. That’s not to say Valor was a bad book by any means, I actually REALLY enjoyed it while I was reading it but every time I went to pick it up I would think about wanting to do anything else. It certainly became a case of right book, wrong time very quickly.

All of this to say that I’ve made a realization about myself. I don’t respect my time or the time that I’m giving things I could (and probably should) love properly. I’ve always thought of starting a book, game, or TV show over as not respecting my time. I’d always view this as playing something again when I already gave up on it. It always felt like, to me, that I should see it through so I don’t waste that time going back to it again. I think the opposite is true, If I’m wasting my time reading a book I don’t feel like I want to read right now I’ll inevitably come back to it at the right time… but I’ve already read that book and now if the right time comes I have to spend those 20-30 some hours reading it again.

This post isn’t some profound wisdom I think everyone should know but just a little observation about myself and how I’m going to be more mindful of the future. Our time is precious and there is no real reason to play the game you don’t want to be playing. It’s not no, it’s just not now.

Originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988, Final Fantasy II is the next stop on our quest to play every Final Fantasy game. FFII was a Japanese exclusive and was released just a year after the original Final Fantasy. It never made its way over to the US for its original system and took until 2003 to release in the US. Square wanted to create a game that was different enough from its predecessor but also welcoming to new players.

Prior to playing Final Fantasy 2 I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy and felt like I was ready to dive into 2 as soon as I rolled credits on the first. I tried to start this game the same way I started the original, by going in completely blind, but it was pretty hard to dodge the feedback the Final Fantasy II might be the worst Final Fantasy game of the entire series but was it really? I was determined to find out.

Side note, If you haven’t going back to read my Final Fantasy recap, I definitely think its a good starting point for this series. I’m playing most of the Final Fantasy games for the first time as a long time Kingdom Hearts fan. I have played a few FF games if you want to read the premise you can click the primer linked before this sentence.

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Getting started, this game starts up with 4 named characters and no class selection from the start screen. Which is a huge departure from the nameless Warriors of Light in FFI. I’ll talk more about the characters and customization later but going from Final Fantasy I to this I was a little surprised. I know this is kind of a staple of these games moving forward but it’s nice to see the game taking risks early on. I guess that’s a running theme in FFII. The game mixes things up and takes some bold swings.

The game opens with the story of an evil empire planning expansion through the nation. A party of four children are out and get attacked by some dark knights and left for dead. Three of our four protagonists are rescued by the rebellion leading to the main party that carries us through the game. I’m going to try to leave the heavy spoilers for later in this post but I wanted to go break by break and talk about some of the things I liked and struggled with in this game.

Mechanics

I really wanted to delay talking about this as long as I could because this feels like the part that everyone talks about with FFII. No matter which way I wrote this it just keeps coming back to this discussion so lets rip the bandaid off from the beginning. For those that don’t know and are coming into this blind FFII uses a system to determine stats and skills akin to that of something like Skyrim. The more you use something the more it levels up. This is interesting because it’s designed so that you can really play into anything you want. Early on this was a huge boost because Maria starts with a bow, a weapon I learned is relatively ineffective at doing damage, so I was able to pivot her into being a mage. For the first couple levels she was lagging a bit behind the other two characters but a couple times of having them defend and her kill enemies with spells and it felt like she was quick to catch up. The downside to this is that it’s also incredibly exploitable.

You may have heard Final Fantasy II called the game where you hit yourself. Lots of players have found that the quickest way to make your party extra bulky is by hitting yourself to take damage so that your HP skill increases. I’m not sure if the pixel remaster fixes the need for this but I can confirm that it is still a way to increase HP. That said I think I did this maybe once or twice before completely ignoring it as an option. My characters became relatively bulky pretty quick.

I do think the weapon system of this game lends itself to some creative design tho. Most weapons take up one hand slot which makes perfect sense. I think the game really wants you to use a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other. I however was determined to plow through this game so I opted for two weapons on each of my characters, one in each hand. This way I was doing two attacks with two of the same weapon and hopefully gaining more xp.

The system for leveling up feels like it should be complex. Post game I looked at a few guides to see how things level up and people have written extensive posts on how to max out your stats in this game. That said I was just fine not worrying about any of that. The game (at least the pixel remasters) throw things at you with such a high encounter rate that it I never really felt the need to grind out stats.

Magic

While I talked weapons briefly magic deserves its own category in all of this. Magic in FFII levels like your other skills, the more you use it the more it levels up. How the game handles spell leveling is a bit strange tho. Each level of a spell raises the damage output slightly while also increasing the number of times it hits at the expensive of more MP. You also have no control over the level of the spell outside of just not leveling it up. In FFI your spell levels were tied to the level it was purchased at. If you purchased a lower level fire spell to cast it with less mana cost you could do that but here you’d have to purchase two fire spells and basically never use one unless you were desperate.

I guess I should mention that every spell you purchase/find starts at level one- including the two high powered spells the game tosses you near end game. Both of which require you to grind up their level to be even remotely useful. I ended up trying to grind up their levels up a bit but settled on letting Maria cast the spells she had already learned to get through the final push.

Characters/Story

If you’re wanting to dodge some light spoilers feel free to skip this section entirely.

I enjoyed Firion, Maria, and Guy as characters although they were a bit one note. I think this game tries to give them personality enough to attach you to their characters but leave them vague enough so that you can fill in the blanks. I think each of them was compelling enough that I wanted to see them succeed but I also cared about completing this quest with them. That said the story itself felt very much inspired by Empire Strikes Back. I did later confirm that this is pretty much exactly the case. You can feel it inspiration.

Another area that I really struggled with this game was the fourth party member slot. FFII adds a revolving cast of characters that you meet throughout the game that come and go from your party. The problem with this is that often when they’re introduced enough to where it feels like they’re kind of locked into a class already but they’re still often way under leveled from your current party. I think this does a huge disservice to what could be an interesting cast of characters. Often times If they were the only members of my party to get knocked out I wouldn’t revive them unless I had to revive someone else. Which also led to them being even more under leveled than they were before. I think I might have cared more about this fourth party member if they were with you for more than a couple missions before the game decided that it needed to kill each of them off. I get that they were trying to go for a slightly heavier theme and they were also giving some of these side characters their hero moment but some of the deaths felt very unearned because I cared so little about the characters.

I can see the foundations that this game was laying out for future games and I think with more time in their stories I’ll probably appreciate this part of FFII a little more though.

Keywords

Another interesting thing that FFII adds is this keyword system, by going around and talking to NPC occasionally these red words will pop up. If you have your character “learn” the keywords it will unlock extra pieces of dialog that often tell you where to go. I think this system was interesting because it allowed for you to have some choice in dialog options. What I think it struggles with is that if you don’t learn the right keywords it sometimes gets hard to figure out where to go. There were points in the game where I was missing important pieces of information because I never picked the right keyword or forgot to learn something. I still think this thing is neat enough if not just a minor annoyance.

Pacing/The World

I know I’ve called out multiple places that I struggled with FFII but the pacing of the game overall might be the biggest area. It’s not terrible in the beginning but around 2/3rds of the way through the game tasks you with finding the ultima spell and then sends you on four separate quests that completely slow down the pace of play and are required in order to get the spell the game tells you you need to proceed. If you’ve read my thoughts on ultima above you understand why this is frustrating. Not only does it completely derail the games pacing but ultima feels completely useless when you get it. I guess this is neat in a way that ultima is the big grand spell of legend and when you acquire it it’s basically worse than anything you’ve already found. It almost feels metaphoric in some way but the game derailing its own pacing to make you get a weak spell is incredibly frustrating.

The other completely frustrating part of this is that there are multiple dungeons with multiple dead end rooms. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I would be going through a dungeon that would present me with like five doors and I would pick every wrong door before finding the right one. The problem with this is that often times opening the wrong door leads you to an empty room where you’re almost certain to get ambushed by enemies. I wouldn’t have minded this if it happened once or twice but this felt like every single dungeons gimmick. By the time I hit the end of the game I wanted nothing to do with the dungeons which is such a shame because FFII has some incredible dungeon backdrops. Castle Pandemonium at the end of the game felt exactly how I want the end of a game like this to feel but was slogged down with FFII’s awful dungeon design.

And lets not get me started on the floor is lava dungeon mechanic I complained about in FFI because that’s also back in this game too.

The other major problem with pacing comes in how enemies scale over the course of the game. Relatively early on enemies begin to do status effects as moves, some of which if applied to all of your characters at once cause insta death. The game does not shy away from enemies trying to inflict multiple status effects on your whole party. While the enemies themselves aren’t inherently difficult to beat fighting off the difficulty curve of maybe getting stunlocked out of the game is beyond frustrating. It creates a weird pace of play where you just don’t want to deal with combat.

It’s not all terrible though I guess. I liked the overworld in this game a lot and I think the travel mechanics were neat if not mostly rehashes of the first game. This game did also introduce chocobos to the mix which was a pleasant surprise.

Final Thoughts

I was talking to a friend the other night about this article and I think I finally landed on how I feel about this game. FFII isn’t really a bad game but its biggest fault is that its almost always compared to the original game. FFII released a year after the first and was desperately trying to ride the hype of the first game while standing out on its own. Because of this it tries really hard to introduce these systems that now feel like staples of gaming but in the vacuum of FFII kind of don’t work. The biggest thing that it succeeds at are the areas where its most like its predecessor which unfortunately makes it a slog to get through when you’re playing it back to back like I was. To farther drive home this point the first time Final Fantasy 2 was released in the US was bundled along side the original game, most people in the US probably also played the game the same way I did and ended up playing these two games one after another.

That’s not to say the game itself is all bad. I actually think the ability to level up every weapon on every character is pretty unique and I think with just a little more tweaking there something there that works really well. I liked that the game had a solid foundation of a story even if it didn’t really stick the landing in terms of where it wanted to go. I think Final Fantasy 2 is worth checking out if you’re interesting in playing this style of game or if you’re already curious about the game itself.

Final Rankings:

I’ve really been thinking about how I’m going to end these articles and I think I want to start ranking the games overall. At this point it’s kind of tough with I my the context of I and II but I have to start somewhere I suppose. My current order for FF game rankings is:

• I

• II

It’s slightly anticlimactic but I do think it’s not necessarily better than the first in any groundbreaking way. I think they’re kind of interchangeable in a way. Both feel very foundational for the series as a whole and if I keep this list slightly fluid there’s a chance they could go up or down depending on how I feel later in the series. I will say if Final Fantasy II does end up as the worst game in the series the bar is still pretty high.

if you’re new here this is my end of week post that I usually make before (mostly) disconnecting for the weekend. Usually I’ll still be around commenting on notes and saving some articles to read through the week but I try to let my hair down and enjoy my time over the weekend. So let’s round up what I’ve done this week and talk about some stuff I might have planned for the substack.

Games

Kind of shocking but I didn’t really get the chance to play a ton this week.

I’ve fought through the bits of FFII I’ve been working on. If you’re curious I’m at the dreadnought now and based off what I’ve looked up I’m a little under the halfway mark. My save file says I’ve been at it for 4 hours but it really feels like I’ve spent so much time in this game already that I genuinely don’t know how that can be. I guess maybe it’s a spoiler for my article that I’ll eventually post about it but I’m really not enjoying my time with the game. It’s not that I don’t like it but there are parts that feel like it’s a slog. I think it could have the chance to really stick the landing and maybe be better than 1 but for now it’s looking like it might be pretty low on my rankings. We’ll see though.

I have been really craving doing another run at kingdom hearts. I wrote an article about it this week and it’s got me itching to play it again- I have the games on steam but have never actually fired them up. I do think this might be a later date thing tho.

TV and Movies

This week has been an interesting one because I’ve managed to get a good bit of tv and movies in for a lack of playing games.

I’m trying to get back into anime. I say trying like I’ve ever really been super into anime. Most of my anime watching experience was catching late night Toonami growing up and watching whatever they had. I have watched a few shows to completion and my jumping back in point right now is both through things I know I like.

I’m forcing my wife to watch Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood for the first time (she’s enjoying it don’t worry). That’s been a treat to rewatch. Knowing things I do know but also getting to enjoy it through a lense of her never watching it has been a blast. We’re only a few episodes in so I’m sure I’ll circle back to this in a bit to talk about it as we have more time to consume it.

I’ve also been watching episodes of Cowboy Bebop while I walk on the treadmill at the gym. On lift days I do 30 minutes of cardio so one episode is usually more than enough for my time. I’m still early in this one too but I’ve enjoyed it so far.

My problem with anime is usually the length. Having shows run multiple hundred of episodes is daunting no matter how into it I think I would be (looking at you one piece.) if you’re reading this and have suggestions please let me know below.

That said we did watch The Boroughs on Netflix and I’m kind of indifferent. I liked it enough, it had a scifi feel to it that kind of captured the unique charm of the first season of stranger things - but I still don’t know if I trust the Duffer brothers to stick the landing. Fair warning it does feel like there should be a second season here.

Books

I’m still trucking through Valor (book two of the faithful and the fallen series) I’m a little over 60% done according to fable and I think it’s finally picking up to where I can see myself finishing it maybe this weekend. So far I’m a month ish in on reading this book which is incredibly abnormal for me. It’s not that I don’t like it, it just feels incredibly low stakes. I mentioned to a friend earlier on Thursday that I wanted the author to kill off any of the characters I cared about just so I felt like they had a little less plot armor. I still stand by that even if it does sound a bit goofy.

He did convince me to start the second Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook. I listened to the first one in about a day and a half (I do a lot of mindless work at work for the first couple months of the year). And described it as a “junk food read”. That’s also not to say I didn’t enjoy it, I think it probably was my favorite new book I read of the year although that bar is kind of low too. I think I’ll enjoy the second one and I’d really like to write something up about how I felt about these books. Maybe I’ll do something up about the first one and then revisit it when I’m done. Is that something you guys would want to read?

Around the Stack:

This is the part of this article where I recommend a couple posts I read this week that I really liked. I think we’re reaching a point where my substack reads are mostly current but sometimes it throws me an oddball older post I haven’t read yet.

Prof. Rock's Learning Arcade

The Games That Carry Us

A few days ago, I went through an emotional moment, not directly my own, but involving a friend of the family. It was one of those situations that makes you stop and think about grief, about difficulty, and about how we deal with those moments when life doesn’t go the way we expect…

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3 months ago · 30 likes · 10 comments · Prof. Rock

The Gentle Meeple

The Villain Seat

The most ruthless player at our Nemesis table is a man who meditates every morning and practices Japanese martial arts…

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2 months ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Marco Stefano Doria

Alternate Worlds

We Don't All Make It

I’ve never written a trigger warning before, and I don’t like the words “trigger warning,” but I’ll start at the end — John doesn’t make it to today…

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2 months ago · 9 likes · Brian Schneider

I grew up in a gaming household. I remember from a young age I used to watch my dad play Tomb Raider and Metal Gear Solid, my parents even got me an N46 so I could play on my own. As much as those systems remind me of being a kid it’s really the PlayStation 2 that feels like home to me.

I was 7 when the PlayStation 2 came out. My older cousins parents managed to get him one on release. They weren’t as strict as my parents so we spent a lot of time over there playing games we weren’t really supposed to (Sorry mom!). There wasn’t really anything that made me beg my parents for my own system, not when I could go over his house. That was of course until sometime around 2001 when I saw the first commercial for Kingdom Hearts.

When you walk away, you don't hear me say…..”

I think every kid that saw the Kingdom Hearts trailer for the first time thought “I really don’t know what this is, but I need it” and I was simply no exception. From the iconic music to a spiky haired boy holding a big key next to Donald and Goofy, something about this game was so bizarre that I just needed to play it. Kingdom Hearts is one of those games that is notoriously confusing on the outside and this first trailer really captures why that charm was so captivating. Whether the game itself is or isn’t confusing is a completely different topic for another day but the trailer was laying the ground work for the series at large.

I remember talking to my cousin about how we had to play it. Eventually his parents gave in and let him get a copy of it. I remember staying over his house and staying up all night just playing through the first couple levels. Eventually I knew if I wanted to play the game myself I’d have to beg my parents to get me my own PlayStation 2. So I did just that.

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For Christmas that year I asked for one thing, and one thing only. A PlayStation 2 and Kingdom Hearts.

Looking back at that Christmas it really just shows how amazing my parents are. My mother is one of the most creative people I’ve ever met and my father works so hard for just about everything he has. I’m sure me asking for the latest video game system and a brand new game probably wasn’t something that was necessarily in the cards but they we’re going to do everything they could to get it. I remember waking up that morning and opening gifts. As a child you get down to the end of the pile and start thinking “oh no I didn’t get what I wanted” when you don’t see it under the tree. There’s a bit of disappointment that as an adult now you probably feel some shame about. I remember opening the last gift and inside was a note asking me to venture to a part of the house to find another clue.

I guess I should mention my mother loves a scavenger hunt. So as I ventured through the house following this trail of clues that eventually lead me to our basement where on a table next to an older tv was a smaller stack of presents piled up. I opened them to find Ratchet and Clank, Jak and Daxter, Sly Cooper and of course Kingdom Hearts. Looking back at this list my parents really managed to pull out all the stops in terms of titles. However there was one problem- I still didn’t have a ps2.

I didn’t let my disappointment show instead I hugged both my parents, thanked them immensely, and sat down to play a video game. I like to think it didn’t take me a while to notice but it probably did and I’m sure you’re all thinking it too. My parents had of course gotten the console and had set it up so that I could enjoy the games they got me. I was over the moon.

Immediately I popped in my copy of Kingdom Hearts and started playing. I remember plowing through the parts I had played over my cousins house. Playing until we had somewhere to be, finding a save point and…. I didn’t have a memory card.

Panicked I grabbed a ps1 memory card and tried to save it on that. Didn’t work, drat. So I did what any normal kid would do and left the system on. We came home, I played some more. Eventually I had to wrap up and go to bed, but I couldn’t just leave the system running forever right? I couldn’t tell my parents that this awesome gift they got me was incomplete because I had no way to save my progress.

So I just never told them. For months I would power on my PlayStation 2, best destiny islands, go through traverse town and maybe deep jungle. There are few places I know like the back of my hand but if you asked me to draw you a map of those 3 I could with ease. Eventually my dad had realized I wasn’t making progress in any of my games and when he realized why they did end up getting me that memory card for my birthday (seven months later).

I think about this story every time I fire up a copy of Kingdom Hearts. There’s a couple other little memories I have tied to this series. It’s far and away one of my favorite games and I don’t doubt that some of that is based in nostalgia. Sadly, I don’t know where that original copy is. An ex partner stole it in the break up as much as I wish it was still with my ps2. However, that is a system that will never leave my collection.

What are some games that you have an immense nostalgia for? I’d love to hear these stories down in the comments.

Board / In Person Games:

I haven’t really had too much of a chance to get a board game on the table this week. Mostly because our dining room table has been an absolute mess as my wife and I have been using it to make shirts for our upcoming trip with her cousins. We did however have some time to sit down and do something slightly adjacent.

I haven’t mentioned it here but I have always casually enjoyed Magic: The Gathering. I say casually because I’ve played a few other trading card games at a somewhat competitive level and I know with Magic that’s not how I want to consume that game. A few years back while we were saving money for our wedding I was working at my local card shop, having only ever really been MTG adjacent one of my coworkers taught me how to play Commander format and I genuinely enjoyed myself. We’ve since bought a number of the preconstructed decks and played with friends or little quick matches 1v1. I had mentioned this to her cousin and we’re planning on bringing some of them down so I can teach him how to play so we’ve been brushing up on the format and just some general interactions. I did forget how much fun it is and hopefully we’ll get in a few more games before our trip. Maybe I’ll even write up an article about this at some point.

Books

My reading lately has been a little all over the place. Earlier this year I finished rereading the first Red Rising trilogy and put a hold on finishing the second half of the series (Iron Gold, Dark age and Light Bringer) because everyone else I was discussing it with also put a pause on the series. Eventually I’ll get back to it even if they don’t simply because I’ve been enjoying the series on reread much more than I did the first time, and I did genuinely love this series on the first go.

Now my problem with this has been that I’ve struggled to find something else that would grab me the same way. I tried Dungeon Crawler Carl at the recommendation of a thousand tiktoks and I devoured the first book in about a day or so. It was fine and I will continue the series but it didn’t have me wanting to read the next one right away. I’ve actually been considering writing something up about how I felt about it but the more I think on it the more I think I need to read more to make a better judgement call here. I’ll probably pick up the second book soonish and see how I feel about it.

I’ve also been struggling to get through the second book in John Gwynne’s Faithful and the Fallen series Valor, not because its a bad book by any means but its not holding my attention. I think maybe I’m not in the right headspace for this style of epic fantasy but every time I get into it I really enjoy my time with it, its just finding the time to sit down and get really into a several hour long reading session. I’m going to finish it and I know I’ll like it when I get to the end but for now its felt like a slog.

I also picked up Christopher Ruocchio’s Empire Of Silence a couple weeks back. I think this one might be the next book I read because I’ve been thinking about it since I picked it up. Maybe this is why I’ve been having so much trouble with Valor. It seems like its going to scratch the same itch in my brain that Red Rising did so I’m hopeful. I’ll be sure to post more about that when I get to it.

Video Games

If you’ve been reading my posts it should be no surprise that I’ve been playing FFII as a part of my all the Final Fantasy games project. I don’t know how quickly I’m going to make it through this one but I’m going to finish it. FFII has some weird quirks I’m not used to yet, mainly the leveling system. I think once I get going I’ll be way more into it but I’m sure I’ll put my thoughts on this in my FFII recap post

I’ve also been playing the Silent Hill 2 Remake and let me tell you that’s been something. I don’t remember a game in more recent history that has frustrated me as bad but pushed me to keep going. Last night while I was trying to wind down I got so frustrated with the games combat I had to power it down and walk away, which is incredibly unusual for me. Granted I’m only at the apartment complex so it’s incredibly early but it feels so clunky and cumbersome that I’m not sure I’m actually having fun with it. I’m still feeling it out but it might be a turn the difficulty down and just walk through the game type of game for me because I want to see it through.

Substack Posts

Each week I’m going to try and close these out with 3-4 substack posts I read that I want to share with my audience. I’d like to try and shine a light on other creators (although I’m sure most of these guys are bigger than I am) as a “I liked these and want to recommend them” section. This week I played catch up on a few posts and my feed recommended my some older stuff so these may not be the “newest” posts but I did enjoy each of them!

The Video Game Storyteller

Climbing That Wall

Content warning: contains themes of loss and grief…

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a year ago · 32 likes · 35 comments · The Video Game Storyteller

Behind the Screen

A Practical Guide to Prepping Situations, Not Plots

For the last two articles, I’ve been writing about situational prep, or as Justin Alexander wrote, “Don’t prep plots.” This third article is the instructional companion and focuses on breaking the process down into actionable steps so you can run this process at your own tables…

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3 months ago · 28 likes · 4 comments · Chris Vicari

Board Gaming with Bapter

Tea Garden Gameplay and Review: Gardens, Leaves, and Combos

I received a review copy of Tea Garden, but this isn’t a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own…

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4 months ago · 3 likes · 2 comments · Bapter

SKILL ISSUE

I miss when Animal Crossing villagers used to bully me

Now I know what you may be thinking when you read this title: “What is wrong with you?” And I would be wondering what is wrong with me, too. But what is wrong with me is that the villagers on my island don’t bully me like they used to. I’m not sure whether they were sent to anger management class or had an intervention. The mean jokes and comments they …

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2 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · SKILL ISSUE

Closing Thoughts:

I hope you enjoyed this little spiral into my thoughts for the week and got something out of it! Let me know in the comments if this is something you think I should keep doing each week and if its something you’d enjoy hitting your inboxes. I feel like these weekly recaps are a little more personal and less structured. Sometimes its fun to just put pen to paper and get something out of it.

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The first stop on my epic quest to complete every Final Fantasy game is the game that started it all. Released in 1987 originally on the Nintendo Entertainment System. When it came to figuring out how I was going to tackle this game I had nothing if not a plethora of options. Final Fantasy is one of those games that has been released on every system including Android and iOS. There is certainly some debate about which version you should or shouldn’t play and let me tell you I definitely did some digging on this one.

I opted to purchase every final fantasy I could on steam so I could play the various versions either on my PC or steam deck depending on what I had going on and I certainly think I made the right choice. For I-VI I purchased the pixel remasters which were released in 2021/2022 depending on the game. While some fans think that you probably should play the original versions for the first time the pixel remasters added a few options that just seemed enticing to me. From what I can tell the biggest differences are the more refined pixel graphics (I’ll touch on this later), refreshed soundtrack, and the ability to save on the world map.

So with all that out of the way let’s start from the beginning.

Spoilers ahead!!!

FF1 has a pretty basic story, four warriors of light searching out to power crystals. It all feels like the final fantasy I expect from my limited knowledge. Which isn’t to say it’s bad by any means, it’s got a simplistic charm that you can see right from the jump. There was a weird time travel twist at that end that, considering my deep appreciation for kingdom hearts just feels right.

Another thing that I wasn’t expecting from the start is how much control the game gives you. You have complete control over every member of your part from name to class. I opted for the more traditional class approach that the game places as the default (Fighter, Theif, Black Mage, White Mage) but I could see this opening the game up for multiple playthroughs just to see how it changes my experience with the game.

The classes themselves are kind of what you’d expect them to be. In my party my fighter dealt the damage with the thief being a secondary damage dealer. My black mage early on felt like he was putting out good damage but later tailed off towards the back half of the game while my white mage fell into the healer role that could occasionally one-shot a party of undead creatures. Which I guess brings my to my first big point.

Magic

The magic system in FFI is… interesting. Each level your characters that can learn spells unlock spell slots similar to a D&D style system. Each spell level has 4 options but your characters can learn 3 of those 4. I believe one of the things added in more recent versions was the ability to unlearn spells which I could see being useful but never really came up for me. Each spell is purchase through a vendor for a certain amount of Gil depending on what level the spell is which makes perfect sense. What did really confuse me tho I guess ties into my next point

The Weird Difficulty Curve

Okay, I hear you, yes this is an old school RPG and this is kind of the thing those games are known for. However I’d be remiss to not talk about this at least slightly. When the game started my melee classes felt like they were going to stay the strongest parts of my party and for the most part they were. With only my Thief/Ninja petering off in damage levels towards the end. I feel like there was probably a way around this that I missed but somewhere around halfway through the game my thief started feeling incredibly underwhelming. The magic classes were another weird one on this scale. Early on it felt like my black mage was doing some incredible damage spikes and the multi hit spells were taking out entire parties. Again around halfway it felt like that changed but in a different way. Bosses started having large amounts of elemental resistance that made my caster feel incredibly useless. I started prioritizing spells like temper and haste to make him more support focused than heavy damage. My white mage somehow found herself being incredibly important as the later dungeons were filled with vampires/zombies/undead and the early level holy spells often could one shot most of those parties.

The good thing about all this is that I never truly felt like I had screwed up my party composition. Even when I was forced to adapt nothing really felt like I was truly out of the game.

Gameplay Loop

Most of FFI’s gameplay was exactly as expected. Go to a new city level up characters, explore the dungeons. It was a basics formula that I found myself just getting lost in the loop of. That said this game definitely feels of its time at points. I’m mainly thinking of a section of the game where you happen to find an oasis city in a large sand area. I randomly stumbled upon this while trying to grind out some levels and I’m sure if I hadn’t I probably would have spent hours trying to figure out where to go.

I dont really think this is a bad thing especially if you temper your expectations with the idea that this game is almost 40 years old. Games like the original Legend of Zelda also had this same problem for me when I first played them and I think it’s just part of their charm.

Music

Speaking of charm I’d be doing this game a disservice not talking about the soundtrack. I’m sure as I go on through this series I’ll keep bringing up just how incredible Nobuo Uematsu‘s soundtracks are. FFI certainly was no exception. The pixel remasters let you switch between the original compositions and their updated forms. I’m pretty sure there’s no real wrong answer here although I did play with the upgraded soundtrack and some really nice over the ear headphones which was a stellar experience.

Bosses/Dungeons

For the first entry in the series it felt like FFI had a lot of notable boss battles. Each one felt unique enough that they never really felt stale. Their respective dungeons were also fine enough with the later ones having some relatively annoying travel mechanics (god I hate the floor is lava and ice spikes).

The last boss however I do kind of have some gripes about. I mentioned earlier that towards the end the game felt like every boss was getting greater elemental resistance and I was having trouble landing hits with spells that would stop or paralyze enemies. This weirdly turned the final boss fight into a very stale loop that kind of felt like I was cheesing the game. I would hit with my warrior and use my mage to buff him with haste that would increase his hit speed, my ninja would cast temper on him and then my white mage would play the “can I keep the party alive” mini game. Eventually it would turn into hit with warrior, temper with both black mage and ninja and heal spells with white mage. Temper stacks so getting big damage off on the final boss with one hit allowed me to basically roll through the end after a few failed attempts prior. I’m glad I found a system that worked but it felt incredibly cheesy at the end of the game.

Overall Thoughts

Final Fantasy is a great foundation of a game that while it has its quirks and is sort of dated is incredibly solid. My steam timer has this sitting at 14 hours of play through and I’ve 100% completed the game. I could see myself coming back because it’s relatively short and a fun little ride. I don’t think this games time period really holds it back although I’m curious to see where this ranks overall as I venture farther into the series.

If you haven’t played FFI it’s worth checking out. If you have let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

Final Fantasy is one of those game series that’s run incredibly adjacent to all of my favorite gaming things but has never fully captured my attention. That’s not to say I’ve never played a final fantasy game. For reference I grew up in the PS2 era of gaming and watched my neighbor play most of FFX(10) and X-2. Years later I went back and played FFX when it got remastered on PS4 just to say I had. I also have gone back to play everyone’s favorite FFVII(7). I guess my real divisive point with this series comes from the fact that I’ve definitely played XIII(13) and XV (15) and people seem to have really mixed opinions on those.

I’ve liked all of these games enough but never really felt like I dove into the series proper. Yes, I know each final fantasy game isn’t connected unless otherwise stated (like X and X-2) but I want to go back and experience these games that people hold so fondly in their memories just to say that I did.

Before diving into this experience I think it makes sense to talk a little bit more about what games I do like and why I’ve landed on the conclusion that I probably will really like most Final Fantasy games even tho I barely remember any of the pieces I have played. I’ve always enjoyed story driven RPGs; persona 5 and mass effect 2 sit atop a list of games I’ve absolutely adored. While it seems like most people complain about turn based combat when it comes to older FF games genuinely that’s not something I mind. I’ve replayed older Pokemon games over a dozen times each and genuinely enjoy the slower paced combat. I guess I should also mention that one of my favorite video game series of all time is the bastard child of final fantasy in kingdom hearts right? However, there was one other game that pushed me over the edge on wanting to go back through this series.

Last year, like most people, I was blown away by a little game called Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I won’t bore you with gushing about this game, everyone’s done it. Just know that it left such a lasting impact on me that I spent the next couple months talking to anyone and everyone about this game. It hit so many of the right notes for me as a perfect game that I couldn’t get enough. I ended up playing it three separate times and 100%ing it on both PlayStation and Steam. There was one thing in nearly everyone’s thoughts that kept sticking out to me. People kept calling Expedition 33 “the Final Fantasy game that square refuses to make but everyone wanted” so I had to know.

So I’ve typed all this out but what am I actually going to do?

I’m going to start from the beginning and play every Final Fantasy in order starting with 1 and working my way up to 16. I will likely be skipping any side games for now unless I feel really compelled to play them when I get to their place in the order. I probably will also not be playing the MMOs until the end of the list just because of the time sync. Every game I play will be the most accessible version of the original game so like FFI - FFVI will be the pixel remasters because I can get them on steam and they’re mostly true to form. I will be playing the original version of FFVII because I can pick that up on steam, perhaps I’ll go back and play the remaster once I’m done but I want to stay true to the form and get the proper experience out of the game. Once I finish each game I’ll share my thoughts here. You may also get some midpoint thoughts on some of the older games as well as maybe story predictions so we can see how wrong I am as we go.

Now I want to hear from you, which Final Fantasy game is your favorite and which ones do you think someone like me who is experiencing FF for the first time will like the most?

Long time no talk. This is going to be a bit of a different post for me but one I’ve been thinking on for a bit. A while ago I made a post on my notes about wanting to expand my substack to be a little more about some of my other hobbies. While board gaming is a huge part of my interests it’s far from my only interest.

The post was pretty well received with a lot of people encouraging me to just write what I wanted to write. However, something in me held onto the idea that the content I wanted to write really didn’t fit with what I was trying to do. So I’ve done what any logical and sane person would—

Renamed my substack.

Looking at things from a wider scope I wanted something that felt less niche and focused. I wanted something that spoke to all my interests but left the door open for something vague because I am, if nothing, a man of many interests.

So, what is pixelshift?

Really it’s just more of the same with a brand new coat of paint. When I was boardbanter I spent a lot of time trying to focus on creating stories out of the games I played. I did want to widen that scope so it wasn’t just board games. Now I plan to really just write about whatever I’m consuming for the week. It could be book, video games, occasionally movies and music whatever I think is worth sharing.

I have a couple things lined up in my queue that I think are going to be fun projects to write about and I hope that you’ll enjoy reading about them too.

my goal is to get back to posting at least twice a week. Maybe more if inspiration strikes.

I do hope you’ll enjoy reading what I have planned!

5. Rowdy, Partners- I first heard about Rowdy, Partners at Pax in December. We were waiting to get into the expo hall and right by the queue was a group of people dressed like over the top wrestlers. When we found out they were demoing a game my buddy and I tried to circle over to their booth but their single demo copy was already in use. throughout the day I thought about this game several times and knew I needed to circle back to see what its all about. Rowdy partners is a 2v2 trick taking game that gives a nice cleaver twist on the mechanics itself. Each player takes on the role of one of the games Western themed wrestlers and go head to head in a tag team match. Rowdy Partners takes the trick taking theme that we’ve seen done multiple times and puts a nice little spin on it. I really liked the time I spent with this game and couple possibly see it going up a few notches on this post after a couple more plays. While I genuinely don’t care much for wrestling I would be interested to see if someone that does would place it higher. That said I loved it and can’t wait to get it back out again.

4. Flip 7 - This one was tough to place but I think it at least deserves an entry here. I feel like there was a period of time late last year/early this year where Flip 7 dominated my tiktok feed with people singing its praises, and probably rightfully so. Flip 7 is a push your luck card game that has the complexity and size of something akin to Uno. Flip 7 has become the game that we own about 3 copies of and often just leave in the car in case somewhere where were going calls for a quick and easy game to play. If we’re playing with someone who has never played before its easy enough to teach and play which can’t be said about even some of the small box games I own. I think everyone should own a copy of Flip 7 much like I’m sure most people own a copy of Uno.

3. Take Time - Another Pax game! I feel like take time was everywhere before Pax. Take Time is a coop game where you work with your other players to build a clock by increasing the values on the clocks face while following each puzzles unique rules. The games core rules are slightly akin to The Mind or The Game but slightly more forgiving. I was never really a fan of The Mind so this should be shocking but I love the twists Take Time takes on a familiar style of game. Take Time comes with 40 unique puzzles that each increase in difficulty as the game goes. We’ve made it through maybe the first handful and I can’t wait to see what the later half holds.

2. Hot Streak - I feel like Hot Streak was the party game of 2025 and rightfully so. The quirky mascot racing game totally took me by surprise and its quickly become a staple of our rotations. Hot Streak is a game about betting on these goofy mascots as they race, stumble, flip off the track, and do anything but what you expect them to. There is so much love and care that was put into this game by its creators and it shows. From the zany backstories given to the characters in the rule book to the way the box doubles as a board I really think Hot Streak is the complete package. We’ve pulled this game out for anywhere from 4-9 players and honestly its one of the few games that works really well at higher counts.

1. Zombicide (2nd Edition) - Finally we’ve come to the reason this is titled “ that I played! Since this one has been out for a while. I played Zombicide recently for the first time the other day solo and I absolutely loved it. For a long time I was intimidated by the number of versions of Zombicide or how many expansions it has. I felt like I somehow missed out on getting in on it early and it was too late to enjoy it. That said I got a copy of the modern version of zombicidie from my local game store the other day and I’m actually upset I waited this long to get in on it.

   Zombicide is a game for 1-6 players where you fight off zombie hoards and complete objectives as the survivors of a zombie apocolypse. If you’ve ever played a tabletop miniatures game Zombicide is closer to that than any board game I’ve played and it plays so well for it. It’s a tight rule set that works well and for its size is incredibly easy to teach for how dense its rule book is. I’ve never found a zombie game that really stuck with me the way Zombicide has and its definitely pushing me to get more games out solo.

If you’ve made it this far thank you for taking the time to read this list. Did you play any of the games that I mentioned here? What new games have you played this year? lets get a conversation going in the comments!

Every year we get together with my parents and sit down at for a game of Santa’s Workshop. Usually its on Christmas Eve, some years sooner, others later but not a December goes by without it hitting the table. Much like other traditions its predictable but provides a sense of comfort. Usually I set up the board while someone else serves dinner. I always break out the rules for a quick refresher and then am reminded that its pretty simple. Send elves out, pay resource cost (coal) receive resource and place it on a toy. Sure, there are some weird quirks like the stable that’s constantly growing cookies (points) and provides a smaller resource or slight game advantage. I can bank on some of the quirks that will come out with my family when we play this game or how my wife might strategize. Every year when we sit down it feels like our little preserved place in time where things are just the same as they were when we last unpacked its box.

To me, I think that’s the most amazing part about having this game be our tradition. We only get it on the table once a year but each time it comes out its a special moment to be shared. Something that I know once we have kids and they’re old enough to play well add them into the games as well.

Every year after we complete our game of Santa’s workshop we jot down the winner and the date the game was played on the back of the board. I know what you’re thinking. This is sacrilegious. I, too thought that once upon a time but this game is ours. It’s moments in time preserved on the back of a game board. Laughter about how my wife blocked my elves out of the workshop for the 3rd turn in a row because she just had to beat me. It’s my mom not fully strategizing for a couple turns and not being able to come back into the game but just having fun being with the 4 of us my Dad crushing my wife’s all time high score and me just having to point it out. I know some day, my parents wont be around anymore and I will be happy to have my moms handwriting on the back of this board or the memory of my dad getting excited over getting the final piece of cloth he needed to complete his current objective. These are the moments that I want to hold onto for the rest of my life.

I take good care of my board games, I really do but there’s something about this one that I can’t help but love the fact that our family has made it our own. It’s the one game that no longer comes off the shelf when we have a game night no matter how appropriate of a time of year it might be. It’s the one game that I will ONLY play with just our family.

If you’ve made it this far in the post and you’re still wondering about the game - it is a good one. They also released a second edition of it that makes a few minor rules tweaks and changes some things to make the game a bit less cut throat at times although I’ve only really looked at it from afar. I wont be buying a copy of the second edition, even though we do sometimes upgrade of editions of games along the way. This one to me is one that well always play this specific copy of. I know I haven’t really done a great job at talking about the actual mechanics of the game or how it plays but I really didn’t want this post to be about that. You see, the winter months are usually pretty rough for me mentally and while I do love Christmas it’s not always the easiest. As I think about the holidays and try to find some reasons to have a bit of Christmas cheer I look back on the last couple years and think about the wonderful memories I’ve made around the table sharing these moments with the ones I love the most.

If you’re reading this, just know that I appreciate each and every one of you. If the holidays are rough I hope you too are able to look back at the memories you’ve made with the people that bring joy into your life. I usually try to end these posts with a question or something to tie it all in but on this one I want to know if you have any traditions that come out every year like this. If you don’t just drop a holiday memory in the comments. I want to hear about it. I know there’s still about a week left before Christmas but if you’ve made it this far- Happy Holidays.

Enter A Gentle Rain.

I’m not really sure where this game came from. It’s one of those games that’s been in my collection for a while that I knew very little about but purchased on a whim probably while it was on sale at target or something but in an effort to pull some more games off the shelf I opened it up, laid a card game mat on a tv tray and started to read the tiny rules book that was included in the box.

The rules are simple Each tile has a lotus on its side. The lotus’ will be one of eight colors and each new tile you lay out has to match up with an existing lotus in your pond. If you have four tiles touching one of the four lotus’ will blossom. Your goal is to grow the lake, get the lotus’ to blossom and essentially spawn all 8 lotus tiles. However, there was something in final block of the rule book that really stuck out to me.

"In A Gentle Rain, It Is The Journey That Matters, Not The Destination.”

Gentle rain, from the jump asks you from the jump to take its simple rules and let yourself be immersed in the world. The rule book suggests throwing on some comfy clothes and some ambient music and brew yourself some hot cocoa or tea. Gentle rain wants you to feel comfortable and to give yourself a moment to be calm in the space.

After reading the rules and sitting down I flipped over that first tile, and then the next, and the next. constantly matching tiles together trying to piece the lotus blossoms on the board. Gentle Rain doesn’t do anything ground breaking, but that it does and what it asks of you as a gamer sitting down to enjoy this slightly abstract puzzle it does well. As I sat on my couch flipping tile after tile, matching lotuses and trying to figure out each move time just slipped away. I had my phone open on crunchyroll getting ready to chromecast something while I sat down and I just never managed to make a selection. I was lost in the game play while trying to solve what Gentle Rain had asked me to do.

The most rewarding rounds of Gentle Rain that I had were the ones I was thinking the least about. I’m the kind of gamer that wants to think at least three turns ahead. often I would find myself creating these little nooks that wouldn’t be easily solved by the games tiles and would be solving tiles that I thought had no chance to be solved. That’s not to say that there isn’t some strategy here. I’m sure someone out there has easily solved the best way to win at this little game but honestly, I don’t want to know what that is.

A Gentle Rain, for me was a nice afternoon away from stress. A nice bit of escapism in a time that I needed it most. It’s a game that doesn’t feel like you need to win it. My best round was 6 out of 8 blossoms spawned - and I feel really good about that. Like the closing line in the rule book says; “It Is The Journey That Matters, Not The Destination.” and I really can’t wait to go on this journey again.

However the turtle shell was not going to make the flight from New Jersey to Texas and I was not going to be able to pack my heavy weight games with me for this journey. So we had to get creative.

I think the idea came while I was scrolling tiktok late one night. I came across a video from someone I follow in the board game space (Dani Stranding) about travel cases for games. Dani had gotten a craft keeper from Michaels and had taken a couple of small box games and had stored them in the craft keeper for easy transport. It was honestly a genius idea and the perfect solution to the puzzle of how were we going to get more games with us on this trip.

The next thing we needed to solve was what games would be coming with us on the trip. My whole idea in using the craft keeper was to load it up with games that had little to no components or components that could be housed in the boxes that came with the craft keeper. To do this I would have to take everything out of the boxes they came in and store it in the little plastic boxes. These little craft keeper boxes are perfect for storing 4x6 photos so they’re not really that big. The biggest challenge would be fitting things into these cases and not losing a ton of cards/components. I was going to allow myself to remove pieces if it wouldn’t hinder the integrity of the game itself (IE: removing 1-2 cards from codenames that I would never remember were removed.) Also to save space I had the idea that I would print out QR codes that linked directly to the rule book for every game that needed it.

So you’re probably wondering what games fit in here and what I took with me. I did some digging to see if I had photos of the game case still intact with all its pieces so I could show you how proud I was of getting this much weight down there but unfortunately I do not. I do however still have the list of games that went on this trip.

For party games I took a couple of our big hits with us. Codenames, Anomia, Just One and Zombie Fluxx. Honestly this category I’m pretty proud of the coverage that I got here. Each game fills a different niche situation that we could find ourselves in but also covered just enough variety that we could really mix it up if we need too. Codenames being the big one here because we could play it with a ton of people if need be but it was also easy to teach. Since codenames is a team game it would be relatively easy to break into larger teams to get a game going. I assume most people have heard about or played codenames so I wont bore you with the descriptor but it works really well in this exact situation. I did have to break convention a bit and split this into two boxes.

Anomia is one of my favorite party games and the cool thing about it is it really only requires the deck of cards you will be playing with. players flip over the top card and if their symbol matches another players they have to say a word that fulfills the other players category. (IE: I have a card in front of me that matches your card. My card says type of animal and yours says pizza topping. If I shout pepperoni before you yell dog I win that card.) its chaotic, fun and super easy to teach. Just one is a party game where you’re trying to get someone to get people to guess a word using one word clues. if anyone matches your word that word cant be used by the clue guesser. I think Just one plays up to 8 so this was also a perfect fit for the group that we had. I also assume everyones played the ever changing pick one play one game of fluxx in some form. We have about 5 copies of it in varying states but zombie fluxx happens to be our favorite. So it was no surprise that we took this with us.

I should also note that this was a weird time in gaming for me where I was really into splendor. For some reason it was a game that slipped through on me as something I didn’t think I would really like. Until one of my buddies that I was working with at our LGS at the time forced me to sit down and play. for weeks after I was playing games of splendor on BGA almost nightly so this was also an auto include. If you’ve owned splendor you know the struggle here. Half that box is cardboard but the plastic poker chip like components make this one a doozy to condense. Somehow I did it and managed to pack this one in two boxes. Code names and splendor would be the last ones to break this convention tho.

Speaking of games we were playing religiously at the time, this was around the time that Andi and I were playing Arboretum pretty heavily. For us this was a cozy game where we wouldn’t get too competitive (even tho she usually kicked my butt). The theme of placing trees in patterns was a nice way to de-stress if we really needed it which made it a good auto include as a “just us” game.

We also really like Unstable games for situations like this. Most of their catalogue is easy to teach and play in minutes. I believe at this time we had also just recently picked up here to slay which is a party building game that features cute little animals (like most of their games) outfitted to look like adventuring party members. Of all of the unstable games catalogue this one probably has the most complexity while still remaining easy to learn and quick to play. We also brought unstable unicorns with us because its just a fun little game.

To kind of round this list out of games that existed in this carrier we also packed Trash Panda (a push your luck dice roller), The Game (co-op mind reading game), Dungeon Mayhem (D&D Free-for-all Brawler) Deep Sea Adventure (small box push your luck explorer game) and Coup (hidden role deception style game). All of these kind of filled a niche that we needed them too while also being fun to play and simple enough that we could easily pick up with anyone.

Now for the stuff that didn’t make it in the case - because of course I didn’t pack everything in my checked bag. In my carry-on I packed a copy of Love Letter for the airport and two tiny epic games (zombie and dungeon). We did play love letter at the airport but I don’t think it made it beyond that and the two tiny epic games never actually made it to the table.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the solution I found to traveling with board games. I know I’m planning on using it on our travels this coming year so I’ll be sure to share what games I pack for that trip as well. What games do you travel with if any?

I have always viewed VTTS as a means to an end, I want to play this game but its impossible to get together so lets just get online and play instead. Which has always put a weird taste in my mouth. It wasn’t until about 2 years ago when my wife’s cousin who lives states away suggested we get together to play D&D and I realized there was no other way to play than online. I spent a few hours learning the tools of roll20, which to me as a fan of tactile pieces and on table play felt foreign but I persisted. Having no other choice but to play online I started to really enjoy getting things together in roll20 and getting the chance to play together with people who I really can’t play with any other way.

That game of D&D has since died out but we’ve kept up our tradition of playing games online since we can’t be together in person all the time. A few nights ago we spent a couple hours online playing some of my favorite board games on Tabletop simulator. I remember talking to Andi after it was said and done and conversing about the idea of lugging our complete collections of Root and Everdell to Texas, which frankly sounds like a nightmare. Playing with them online gives us the chance to share these place settings we love so much with people that are near and dear to our hearts but not exactly in close proximity.

I look at VTTs a bit differently now, they’re less that crutch that everyone uses because we don’t feel like driving the 30 minutes to someone else’s house and more a space online that we can connect for a few minutes and enjoy the time with our friends that aren’t close. After all isn’t that why we play games in the first place?

It’s the morning of our wedding. I’m up at 6 am and the ceremony isn’t for another few hours. My best friends wife is now making coffee for all of our guys and while I’m setting out the breakfast she brought back with her. I’ve already thought about texting my soon to be wife to see if the girls need anything but was promptly told by one of our friends that I’m not supposed to do that.

A little peak into the person behind the blog here, I’m naturally anxious about most things. I don’t like sitting around and waiting if I feel like I have something to do. I’d like to think that my friends all know this of me at this point which is why when one of my groomsmen saw me up so early and asked “You wanna play some board games?” I knew I needed to take the time to relax.

I am, of course, the one that owns most of the games in our friend group. Usually its my job to teach everyone the rules and learn them ahead of time. I had spent the night prior leading my 3 groomsmen and myself through several games in our collection and loving every minute of it. However there was a stack of games that were brought by one of my groomsmen that we hadn’t touched, games I didn’t know the rules for and wasn’t sure if we would like so we hadn’t played them the night prior.

“Come on, get at least half dressed I’ll set up a game and we can all hang out before the photographers get here.” were the words I was not expecting to hear that morning but somehow it worked and I obliged. I started getting my suit on and my cousin, Alex, laid out the components for a game called Clank! that I had not played before. The other two guys came over and Alex explained the rules of the game. They were simple yet complex enough that I was able to take my mind off of the things I thought I needed to do before we walked down the isle. Honestly, It was probably the perfect choice of game to play through all the chaos happening around me.

If you haven’t played Clank! before its a dungeon delving deck builder about pressing your luck while also trying to steal artifacts and not get caught by the dragon that guards the place. The board itself looks like a lot is happening. I wont dive too deep into the mechanics of the game itself but it’s definitely one of those games that genuinely looks a lot harder than it actually is.

The point of this is that Clank! quickly became one of my favorite games after this one play through. I don’t think its a perfect game by any means, If I’m going to be honest, there are definitely faults but the memories I have of being up early in the morning, throwing on my suit and cramming around two coffee tables that we drug in from the other room the night prior to play a board game can honestly never be replaced.

But there is a duality to this that I have to share. A cautionary tale if you will because while I love Clank! my wife absolutely hates it.

Before I delve into this I should explain, Andrea is great, she genuinely plays a lot of games with me that I know she doesn’t want to play or have interest in. For the most part she does try just about every game once. So when I explained Clank! to her she was sold. We picked up the game and I believe two expansions with it with the intent to get it on the table as quickly as possible.

Another important part of this that I should note is that it’s kind of become a running joke that I always carry board games with me. I think at the time of writing this I could go open my trunk and pull out at least 10 games. So when I packed up our board game bag for a game night with her sisters and threw Clank! in there no one should have been surprised.

The night went on, we played a few games and it started to get late. I had mentioned earlier in the evening that I had gotten this game, it had some sentimental value to me and it would be cool if we got to play it. No pressure of course. My sister in law, a few glasses of wine deep, just happened to ask about Clank! so naturally instead of reading the room that everyone was tired and that a game of this size was NOT the move. I set up the board and began to teach everyone how to play.

The game went on for a little over a half hour, but I remember it clearly. My sister in law, who at the time was the only one not exhausted, decided to delve down deep under the castle. In Clank! the artifacts that are deep down underground are usually the more expensive ones. If you’re able to navigate the underground labyrinth and get out you’re rewarded with a lot of points. However there is a catch, should you die in the castle your points are halved, should you die underground… well you don’t get any points.

Andrea, My wife, up until this point was a very good sport. She’s a lot more of a methodical strategic thinker than I am when it comes to games. Don’t get me wrong I love a good strategy but she’s the kind of person that will try to see two strategy and pivot when hers doesn’t play out the way she needs it too. She decided to grab the closest relic and run. Which to be clear is a VERY fair Clank! strategy. She grabbed a measly 5 pointer and bolted for the exit.

It’s been some time since we’ve touched Clank! so I’m probably going to get this part wrong but once you leave the castle with an artifact there is a mechanic that speeds up the game for the other players. Once someone is out you also have to run. So by Andi triggering the end of the game so early everyone else unfortunately was trapped inside.

I think it was because everyone was tired but there was some fallout from this move. The sister in law that suggested we play it left the table angry and we unfortunately have never brought Clank! out around this group again.

It’s always interesting how your first impressions leave a lasting impression and I think about this often in regards to so many other aspects of life. For me; I will always remember Clank! as the game I played on one of the happiest days of my life, and unfortunately for my wife she’ll remember it as the game that her sister stormed off from the table after we played it.

I pulled the trigger on buying Dispatch a few weeks ago after seeing all of my friends on steam play it while the episodes released. Since everything had come out I binged through it in a matter of 2 days, even starting a play through of a second which is rare for me in these kind of games. There was something about its world that was drawing me back in and I couldn’t quiet place my finger on it. It wasn’t until a few days ago while I was watching my wife play through it that it dawned on me. While we’re super saturated with Marvel and DC movies/shows Dispatch manages to do something that none of them have really done before. Take the mundane parts of living in a super filled world and make them the main focus.

If you haven’t played Dispatch (first of all what are you doing, get on that!) I’ll give you a quick spoiler free description. You play as Robert Robertson, a former super hero now given the day job of working for the Superhero Dispatch Network, dispatching a rag tag group of heroes on their missions to serve downtown LA. Dispatch puts a heavy focus on the mundane aspects of Robert’s life from his day job to relationships with the other heroes. While normally this doesn’t sound like it would be appealing it’s far and away some of the best parts of Dispatch’s storytelling.

A while back, probably closer to 6 or 7 years ago, I ran a Masks: A New Generation campaign that was relatively short lived. Masks is a game that focuses on young super heroes (think Teen Titans or Young Justice). At the time I was running it super hero media was in vogue and I was having a really hard time wrapping my head around what constituted a good story. The Masks rule book does a good job of focusing on the player characters being young and developing super heroes. Instead of a health pool Masks uses a condition pool which changes the way you view yourself and the world around you. Your emotional state is constantly shifting on success and failures as the game goes on. Which for me was probably the coolest and most difficult thing to wrap my head around.

Every time I would attempt to sit down and prep for a session I was focused on “what cool things can I present to my player characters this time” instead of focusing on their day to day lives. This separation made very large scale fight and big heroic act feel like the normal. sure, there is an argument to be made that for super heroes the heroic is kind of their normal but I’d like to challenge that ideal a little bit. In a world of super heroes I think the mundane is something that should be explored more often.

I got to thinking about my time with Dispatch after reading the piece wrote about choice in RPGs. Their idea of having player actions have real consequences while also offering branching choices instead of allowing players to just do everything got me thinking about my own shortcomings as a storyteller. If you’re not following them please give that write up a look.

I think I’m going to take another look at Masks when trying to decide which tabletop rpg to run next time and if I do I think I’m going to lean more into the mundane aspects of the player characters lives. There’s a lot of story to be had there and I think by leaning into that It will make the heroic aspects feel more grand.

Have you run a super hero themed table top game? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

So lets dive in:

Accessories:

Board Game Sleeves:

Okay, I admit this one is a bit tricky because no two games are really alike. That said I’ve gone on a journey recently trying to sleeve some of our most loved games. I’ve always liked the idea of preserving some games from wear and tear but over the last year I’ve really dove into the world of sleeving games.

My go too has become Sleeve King’s game bundles. Sleeve king makes it super easy to purchase the sleeves you need for specific games. You just select the game you want to sleeve and their bundle adds all the necessary sleeves to your cart. While I can’t speak to the longevity of their lifespan the feel of their sleeves has always been premium quality to me. If you’re looking for an alternative I have tried GameGenics Sleeves and they are also fine with the caveat that they don’t have a bundle pack on their site.

Dice Trays:

I looooove a good dice tray. I think this is probably my oldest gaming accessory that I bring just about everywhere. If I don’t have to track down loose dice on my floor its a win. I have a couple BCW dice trays that I picked up from my local game store. The cool thing about these is that they snap together and fold down for easy storage and transport. The hex trays to me are the perfect size but they also sell square ones if that’s more your jam.

Gamey Susan:

Okay - yes, if you read my pax unplugged rundown you probably saw this one coming. My Gamey Susan is probably one of my favorite board game accessories I own right now. A convenient and well designed storage solution for all those little bits and bobs from every game you own, the gamey susan is a board gamers ultimate accessory. My only warning is this guy is a little bit on the bigger side - they do make a mini version. if you need the space. I LOVE this thing. Having easy access to all the little components right in the center of the table is so awesome. It spins just like a regular lazy susan so everyone can get whatever they need.

That said If you’re not into the idea of the the gamey susan or think you might need some more space. I’ve got another recommendation for you:

Component Trays:

These are the component trays that I used before my gamey susan. I still use them every now and again when I travel. They’re easy to use and foldable which makes them super easy to store and toss in my bag for game night.

Board Games:

This one is tough because I’m constantly told that people don’t want to buy games for me that I already have. For this guide I’m going to give a few games that came out within the last year that I have really enjoyed or am looking forward to.

Hot Streak:

Hot streak is probably one of my favorite recent purchases. If your gamer likes wacky party games that play well from 2-8 players Hot Streak might the purchase for you. Hot streak is a game about betting on racing mascots and the zany antics they get up to. Mascots can topple over, run the wrong way, or even race off the tracks. This game is so much fun if everyone gets into the antics of the mascots. I’m writing a review on this soon so be sure to check back in on that shortly!

Take Time:

Take time is a co-op game where players work together to build a clock. Sounds boring, I know. The real charm of Take Time is like a cooperative puzzle like nature of the game itself and the 40 unique missions that change with the game. Full disclaimer; I don’t own this game I just saw it played several times at Pax Unplugged and it was the hot ticket. That said I will be adding Take Time to my collection soon!

Flip 7:

Flip 7 is a small compact card game about pressing your luck to get to 200 points. Its small package and unassuming nature gave me very little hope for this game but its become a mainstay in our collection. It’s easy to teach and quick to get a few games in. We love this game in our house and I always recommend this game even to my non-gamer friends.

What items are on your board gamer wish list this holiday season? Did I miss some must haves? lets start a discussion in the comments!

Saturday morning we got up around 6 am to shower, get dressed and depart. our intentions were to catch the 8:10am train into Philadelphia to be at the convention center a little after 9 am so that we got to check out the first look hall before the expo hall opened. We split up with our buddy Ryan who wanted to wait for the expo hall to open and then dart to a vendor booth that he wanted to check out. Ryan had gone to Pax in 2019 and saw a vendor he really wanted to purchase a set of glasses chains from (They had little dice on them, they look super nice) but when he had gotten to their booth the last time they were sold out. So we split off from him with our other friend Bryan and headed to the first look room.

If you’ve never been to PaxU the first look hall is where you get to check out some new games for the convention. The big one this year at the first look hall seemed to be Sanctuary by the people that made Arc Nova. There were a bunch of tables that had it out already set up to be played all of them were already occupied. There were a few other games set up so we grabbed a table and sat down to play a game called Pride of Ninja. The cool thing about the first look room is that all the games are already, mostly, set up for you so all you have to do is sit down and grab a rule book and learn to play the game. If for some reason you don’t want to read the rule books they have little table flags that indicate that you’re looking for someone to teach you the rules. We were limited on our time so we grabbed the rule book and started to give it a go.

Pride of Ninja is a pick and pass card drafting game (Think Sushi Go) where you’re collecting Ninjas that can knock out you out of the round. It was quickly paced and relatively easy to understand. While I did not end up picking this game up at the convention I did really enjoy my time playing it, and it was added to my BGG wish list for a future purchase. Once we wrapped up Pride of Ninja it was time to head to the expo hall to see if we could check out some of the booths. Once we got into the hall we were immediately placed in a queue system that moved pretty quickly to allow people in. It was a little after 10 so we were some of the first few people in. Our first goal was to meet up with Ryan after he made his purchase so the four of us could wander the hall together.

I have to take a quick moment to shout out the developers of Rowdy, Partners. When we got through the Queue we were immediately greeted by two grown men dressed like wrestlers who were trying to pull people into their booth to check out their game. The stunt worked because we did get pulled into the booth. While someone was playing their established demo copy one of the guys whose name I unfortunately don’t remember gave us a quick synopsis. From what told us it’s a trick taking game where you play 2v2 in a feature match against other wrestlers. The wrestlers are over the top, loud and have some fun things they can pull off. It seemed like the kind of game that would go over well with our friends even if it wasn’t something Andi was into.

I guess now is probably a good time to mention that I went into this experience wanting to not really pick up a ton of new games but to enjoy the expo for what it was, a place to meet developers and check out what they’re working on. If nothing else I would get to play a bunch of cool new games and chat with some awesome people. I did however want to purchase a board gaming accessory I’ve been eyeing up for some time but more on that later.

We left the capstone booth with the intention on maybe coming back later to purchase Rowdy, Partners but really needing to find Ryan. He shot us a text that he was in the 2900s row and we headed over to the sign to meet him. along the way Bryan caught something that he wanted to check out while we were there, the Fallout RPG. While he was standing in the booth looking at the back of the book and flipping through the copy they had to look at he was approached by someone we both follow on tiktok - Scotty.K.Fitness. Scotty if you’re reading this (I’m so sure you’re not) it was super cool to meet someone you see online so much and to have their personality be exactly as you see it. Scotty, walked Bryan through some of the mechanics of the RPG and gave him some comparisons from systems were used to. I didn’t catch the full conversation because it wasn’t for me but I do know that Scotty bought Bryan the book and the starter set which was super cool of him to do.

We met up with Ryan and kind of just wondered the floor from 11 -2pm. We saw a few things that were at least noteworthy. We met the creators of a game called Not So Neighborly - FamBam Games. Which seemed like a fun little party game about creating (And ruining) neighborhoods. We also met the developer behind Love, Career and Magic, a card game that aims to take the fantasy setting and roleplaying in D&D and make it easily accessible in a reality TV world. Honestly. I don’t know if I can accurately explain this game as I didn’t get a chance to fully demo it but I did spend a good 15 minutes with the creator of the game who was super passionate about it. We did pick up both of these games.

Wondering around the floor was kind of a blur, we looked at a lot of games and talked to a lot of people but I did get my Gamey Susan that I really wanted to pick up. I’d been seeing them online for a while and thought it was probably something worth getting to make our game nights easier. I really can’t wait to use it.

Around this time we realized that we should check in for the meet and greets. One thing about me is that I LOVE Dropout.tv and Ify Nwadiwe from Um, Actually had a scheduled meet and greet at Pax Unplugged this year. We wondered up to the meet and greet area to find that unfortunately it was already capped so we took a break, grabbed lunch and then headed back to the expo hall to look around some more.

If you’re this far in I’m sure by now you’re realizing that the bulk of my day was spent just wondering the floor. There are so many booths at Pax Unplugged and so many different things to check out. At one point Bryan stopped to check out the card game Overpowered while Andi and I headed over to the Leder games booth to see what they had.

Leder was demoing a new unpublished game that doesn’t seem to be fully in development yet. The crowd at this point was massive so I didn’t really get to check it out. I did chat with one of their workers about Ahoy! which has been on my shelf of shame for a really long time. I think maybe I’ll actually be able to get that one on the table soon.

Andi and I made our way over to another booth that was demoing this 2v1 cooperative fighting game. We spent about 20 minutes trying to play it with the help of the person demoing but it just wasn’t clicking for us so we walked away.

At this point we made our way to Asmodee to check out the Two Towers trick taking game, which is the squeal to the hot Fellowship of the Ring trick taking game from last year. Honestly, I knew going into it I would love it because we are a Lord of the Rings family in this house and I’ve heard nothing but good things about the first game despite not being able to get it on the table. The guy running our demo was super into it and helped us out immensely in learning how to play. We left the booth ready to purchase only to be told they were only selling 300 copies of the game a day, which were unfortunately were selling out in the first hour because they came with a white tower pin that was exclusive to the con. He did tell us that we could earn a Barad-dûr pin by completing a couple “quests” in their lord of the rings game room.

We headed down and check that out. The quests were super simple; demo a game, take a photo, roll some dice and then give the person at the end of the room a quote from either the books or movies. This room was AMAZING and I’m super happy we checked it out. All of the Lord of the Rings games that came out in the last year all look incredible and I could probably gush about how neat they look all day. Perhaps thats a topic for another post. We did get our pins which I’ll be sure to throw a photo up in here somewhere of.

around now it was getting to be late so we made our way back to the hall to grab some final purchases and pick up some things we didn’t want to carry around the con floor.

One final funny story that I can throw in here now is that we are both suckers for blind boxes and one of the booths had a “Mystery Games box” where you could spend $50 and get 5-7 games. I should note that we did buy one and got some suspect choices of games. Some of them I’m sure we'll play others I’m not so sure of. (Red Outpost, Star Fighters: Rapid Fire, Love Formula. Eternal Palace, Kemomimi Panic, and Triolet) if you’ve played any of these games please let me know if they’re any good.

I headed back to grab our copy of Rowdy, Partner that I mentioned earlier and a copy of Critter Kitchen. We love Flamecraft and when I saw Critter Kitchen on tiktok leading up to the con I knew I wanted to pick it up. After we grabbed everything they announced the expo hall was closing so we tried to head over to the board game library to see if we could get a seat and play some games to round the night out.

unfortunately it seemed like everyone had the same idea and we couldn’t grab a table. I think if we had planned it out a little better we might have been able to. I do know there was an indie games market happening around the same time as the expo hall closed but we ended up not making our way over there to check it out. From what I saw post con I kind of wish that I did though. Maybe Next year.

What I Plan To Do Different Next Year:

• Three Day Passes:

  • This one is a must. I feel like we missed out on SO much just by doing one day, and probably the busiest one at that. Next year were getting a hotel room and staying close by to where we can leave and come back if need be.

• Planning:

  • My biggest regret is not getting the Two Towers trick taking game at the convention itself. I’m sure I’ll pick it up when it releases but it would have been neat to bring it home early, and with the pin.

  • I also wish I could have seen some of the panels and gotten to actually do the meet and greet I wanted

• Check out the panels and book those early too:

  • When I scrolled through the nav app I saw so many things I wish I would have at least just sat in a few minutes of. There were so many cool panels about inclusive in role playing games to getting the rules of a board game wrong. I wish I had time to check those out but the day just flew by.

• Grab a table and just sit down.

  • I was so worried about trying to demo games that I think I overlooked what probably was my favorite part of the day, just chatting with people and learning about the games we all love.

Overall pax was awesome and I’m so looking forward to next year. Did you go to pax this year? what were your highlights and some of the cool games you checked out? Drop a photo of your haul too. I’d love to see it. My Pax Haul below.

A couple years ago I started writing on a blog that no longer exists about my journey to get through my insane backlog of games. If you’re like me and you have a tendency to buy board games with your interest in mind I’m sure you also have a shelf of shame wrapped up in factory sealed plastic that has not been punched out of its punch sheets yet. As you can guess by the now defunct blog mentioned above my project didn’t go as planned but I’m going to give it another shot. I want to make 2026 (and probably 2027 if we’re being honest) the year I get through the backlog and finally play some of those games that have been collecting dust.

This substack is going to serve as a log as I go through my collection. My goal is to write about each game after I play through it giving my thoughts on what I liked/didn’t like and maybe discover some gems that I’ve been sitting on along the way. My low stakes goal is going to be to at least play a couple games a week. Maybe as time goes on and we see how this thing goes well structure it out a little bit more but for now we’re going to keep it light. Each week I’ll post a recap of the games I played and my quick burst thoughts on them at the very least. If a game deserves a longer in depth look I’ll be sure to write about those too.

That said, I’m not going to limit myself to just posts about this project. I want this substack to be a reflection of my hobbies and the things I like. So you might see me talking about some of the tabletop games I’m running or playing in, I might occasionally post about a book or video game I really like. I hope that this will be interesting to someone out there and that you’ll follow along to share your thoughts as well.

I look forward to sharing my board banter with you all!