Video Games

What I'm Playing

Ghost of Tsushima, Developed by Sucker Punch Productions, Published by Sony Computer Entertainment, Playstation 5, 2020.

This game has been a real treat. Basically, it's capturing a lot of what I remember liking about the old Ubisoft open-world formula but with a clear story direction, good characters, and a point to what's happening.

You are dropped into 14th century Tsushima, Japan in the midst of the Mongol Empire's attempted invasion. Tsushima is an island roughly halfway between Korea and Japan, so it's the first stop for those seeking to conquer from the mainland. You play as Jin Sakai, the last of your clan after the rest were killed off defending against the Mongol's landing. Nearly killed at the hands of the Khan, you fall into the sea and wash ashore, saved by a thief with a checkered past. As she leads you out of the area, you and her both have to stick to the shadows and fight underhandedly to stand a chance. Once you escape, you start circling up any allies you can find, helping locals victimized by both the invading army and opportunistic bandits alike.

The game revolves around two central conflicts. The first and most obvious is external. The samurai army in Tsushima evaporated that first night, so you're fighting such an uphill battle trying to get a foothold. It requires finding friends from a wide range of places: thieves and pirates, ronin, widowed clan matriarchs, and an old samurai who retired to his dojo.

Alongside that struggle against the Mongols, Jin also struggles internally. From the outset, he is forced to adapt to hopeless circumstances. Without a band of warriors he can rely on, he spends much of his time fighting alone or with one or two companions in tow. In order to survive, he becomes the titular "Ghost," employing assassination tactics and tools to silently cut through swathes of the Mongol forces. This stands in stark contrast to the strict warrior code that samurai are expected to uphold. He is reminded by his uncle, Lord Shimiura, who he's in service to as a warrior, that his tactics spit in the face of everything he'd been taught and is a dishonor. This conflicts lives on in all of his relationships throughout the game, where he's conisdered a pragmatic hero, a monster, a hypocrite, among other things. It's a great throughline.

It's also really pretty. Despite the horrors of war, the burnt homes and death and tragedy, the art direction really sells just how stunning of a place this is, and why it's so worth fighting for.

I'm somewhere in Act 2 of 3, trying to be a moderate completionist and completing obvious side content before moving on to the next major plot point. I'm enjoying my time with it a lot.

Cyberpunk 2077, Developed by CD Projekt Red, Published by Warner Brother Entertainment, Playstation 5, 2022 (PS4 and Xbox One versions released in 2020)

(Edit 5/31/2026: I ended up getting Cyberpunk again for the PS5 and I am plugging away at it a little at a time, not for the story but for the mechanics. I also ended up watching the anime recently, and it's good. The two are good companion media for each other.)

I am somewhere between one-third and one-half of the way through Cyberpunk 2077, and my feelings on the game have sine-waved quite a lot. I find the setting and social commentary really interesting, but CDPR's UX and controller layout always has this veneer of jank that I struggle with until I settle into it.

Additionally, I am starting to reach a point where odd glitches and annoying level/encounter design is starting to irk me. I had to put the game down for the night last night, after getting stuck in the level geometry on try #3 of a tricky section. Wack.

On the whole, however, I think I am mostly enjoying my time with it. I find the main narrative thrust, that of a main character losing himself and choosing to either fight it or embrace it, pretty compelling. Its commentary on technocracy and corpratocracy is also poignant, and feels like the extremes that the writing team came up with in 2020 are closer to reality in 2025 than I would like. But I find some catharsis in throwing a wrench into the game's world system in part because of that familiarity.

I finished the game after more-or-less completing two playthroughs. I've got a first draft of a review underway.

Finished/Dropped

Grandia, Developed by Game Arts, Published in the U.S. by Sony Computer Entertainment. Playstation, 1999.

Grandia is a JRPG, originally made for the Sega Saturn. I discovered it through Hazel's YouTube video about Cozy Anime RPGs. Cute setting, fun writing, cheesy voice acting, and a neat implementation of an active time battle system. I am not accustomed to JRPGs, but it has been a great blend of challenging and approachable.

Update 2025-09-23: I fell off playing until recently. I am about 17 hours in, and I have zero clue as to how far I am. I know I will eventually hit a disc change, but I am avoiding online guides so I can experience this thing organically.

It has also been a great game for my emulation handheld. I have an Anbernic RG35XXSP (a mouthful, I know), which is basically a chonkier GameBoy Advance SP with a 4:3 screen. I'll probably write a little review for this thing sooner or later.

Update 2025-11-07: I am about 21 hours in, and hit the disc change. It took a while to figure out how to best handle disc changes on the emulator, but now we should be good to go. No idea how much more game there is left, but I've enjoyed plucking away at it!

Update 2026-01-27: I picked Grandia back up for the first time in a couple months. Thankfully, It's simple and straight-forward enough that you can come back to it after a couple months without losing a beat. Apparently, it's a ~45 to 50 hour game, so I'm a ways away from finishing it. But, my emulator handheld is handling 2-disc games way better after an update, so I don't have to jump through hoops! Here's hoping I can squirrel away some more time for it.

Update 2026-05-31: I finally beat the game! It took a little less than 50 hours altogether. The characters are cute, the story isn't anything groundbreaking but it's got plenty of momentum to keep you moving forward. The actual writing for the English translation is a little rough which both reads awkwardly and negatively effects the voice acting. Some folks blow this fact out of the water and act like it's the worst dub job in gaming history, which is kinda silly. It's pretty much a box-standard mid-to-late 1990s anime dub in video game form. Folks are just kinda dorks about it. I recommend finding an emulator and giving it a try!

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Developed by Sandfall Interactive, published by Kepler Interactive. PC, 2025.

Where do I even start? I saw the hype boil over post-release and got curious. I had not been keeping up with new releases, but discovered it was available on Game Pass. I was absolutely blown away by the prologue and early sections, and after discovering the game ran decently on Linux, I hopped off the Xbox to buy the game on Steam.

The dev team knocked this game out of the park. Excellent story, a great implementation of old school JRPG mechanics with some modern creature comforts, an excellent soundtrack by a composor that the devs discovered on SoundCloud, and an altogether great experience.

Update 2025-11-07: I dropped this game a few months ago and haven't really picked it back up. I do know enough of the plot to know what's coming. It's very philosophical and unmistakably French in how it handles its own existentialism. Very Camus/Foucault-coded, if that meaans anything.

Final Fantasy XV, Developed and Published by Square Enix, 2016.

I tried (and quickly dropped) FFXV a couple weeks ago. The setting is kind of neat, but neither the gameplay nor characters got their hooks in me in the opening chapters. I hoped to get more out of the game than I did, but alas.

I may give it another try later in the winter, when I get an extended break from work.

Kingdom Come, Deliverance, Developed by Warhorse Studios, Published by Deep Silver, 2018.

Tentatively, I am dropping KCD. I really wish I were more into it than I am. The setting is fantastic, and it appears to be well-written and well-executed. Thirteen-year-old me would have definitely lost a few months to it. However, there are some pervasive bugs, mostly nagging rather than game breaking, but it can be a death-by-a-thousand-cuts game.

More than anything, I can't jive with the combat. If you've ever played Chivalry or Mount & Blade, it's a similar system whereby you use mouse movements to direct the sword, giving you the ability to feint, block, dodge and parry. There's plenty of depth to the system for someone sufficiently motivated to sink their teeth into.

However, that someone is not me. I just find it supremely frustrating, and I cannot budget the time needed to get good at it. Again, I'd have probably spent many, many evenings on it in middle school if it existed then, and I would have probably gotten proficient at it. But I'm too old for this. I even downloaded a save file that gives you significantly boosted stats and late-game gear, but I still found myself unable to handle tough opponents. And as far as I can tell, there isn't really any other way to alter the game to make it easier.

It's also one of those games where the difficulty is one of the key selling points for its biggest fans, and basically every conversation about easing the combat difficulty is met with demands to keep practicing and that you'll eventually get there.

That's why I never bothered with the Dark Souls series, either. I don't play games to beat my head into a wall.

The next best thing would be seeking out mods that de-fang the difficulty. I may look into that sometime. Just for the sake of exploring the setting, charting the characters' journeys, and seeing the story to its conclusion.

Sonic Adventure, Developed by Sonic Team, Published by SEGA, Dreamcast, 1999.

(Edit 2026-05-31: I dropped my latest attempt at playing this in the midst of moving. Moved on to other things. It's always there to come back to though!)

I am starting one of my triannual playthroughs of Sonic Adventure, the first game I ever beat. It's janky and wonky, and a little awkward, but it's one of my absolute favorites. I was a big-time Sonic kid in the early-to-late 2000s, and even got into making terrible fan art. For better or worse, I nuked that old DeviantArt account a decade ago.

In any case, I always enjoy playing through this game. It's usually pretty easy and breezy, something I can blitz through in an afternoon.