Gaming at the Castle in the Mist

2025 End of Year Wrap-up

Since this is my end of 2025 round up, I’ve forgone a final Spinning Discs entry for the year due to my play of new videogames throughout the last three months of the year being light.

Some ground rules: To qualify for a selection, I must have finished the videogame (this rule shaves off a great deal of games I played throughout the year, otherwise we’d be here forever). Games categorised as “Runner Ups” aren’t indicative of quality or enjoyment: I feel I have less to say about them than the others.

The Visual Novels and its ilk:

Misericorde Volume 2: White Wool and Snow
Such a surprise release at the end of 2024, the bulk of my playtime was done through new years eve and the start of the new year: an excited engagement for my favourite pathetic former anchoress Hedwig. White Wool and Snow follows up the sudden ending of Volume 1 and continues Hedwig’s weak search for the murderer in the abbey. There’s a pervasive regret tingeing a lot of the text this time around through Hedwig’s pain as a narrator, often reflecting on the events as she tells her story and as that retelling catches up to the present self narrating it.

It’s intriguing to see the way her faith and previous position as anchoress continues to jut up against the ‘realities’ of the world and the position she’s been thrust into, along with all the lesbianism going on. And holy shit, is that stuff incredible. Although, much of it is tinged in this melancholy both in how Hedwig tells the story and how you the reader can see the ways she conflicts through it. It’s cutting in its pain and delicate with how Hedwig struggles with her sexuality and it never feels stifling through that. On top of that, the mystery of Catherine’s death deepens, and with the meta stuff coming to the fore and not hiding away as much this time… the shape of the story comes into sharper relief with these additions.

Of the Devil: Episodes 1 & 2
Much like Misericorde, where coming away from the first episode I was left with a solid feeling of ‘I like it and I’m eager to see where it goes’, Nth Circle have really solidified Of the Devil as a work I’m excited for through Episode 2. Right at the forefront, the cyberpunk elements are baked into the world (as they should be for the setting) instead of window dressing with no depth, and commands how those elements influence the characters and their roles.

The presentation of this game wears its inspirations on its sleeves but it feels like it has its own identity through its chimeric composition; it all comes together to form a clear self-owned identity. While I do find moments of direct references a bit of an eye-roll or overplayed at times, they don’t detract too largely from the rest of the work.
Episode 2 brings us back to Morgan’s part-time hobby and I found that to really heighten the court segments, especially compared to Episode 1. The imaging of blackjack for the cross-examination gives it a fun flavour (and some variance) and helps visualise where to press and when to let go of a line on inquiry. If you’re close to 21 or have 21 then you know not to push, but if you’re in the single digits you still know there’s more you can get out of this cross-examination. Overall I found the court scenes to be really well paced this time around, compared to Episode 1, and much clearer in what it was asking from you. When you’re running on the same wavelength as the game, as Morgan’s line of thinking, it hits that same ‘jackpot’ feeling as the Ace Attorney games do – and when the ball’s rolling and you keep that momentum up? Ooooh it’s such a great feeling and the Of The Devil knows when to hammer that home to you through it’s audiovisuals.

Placing Morgan between ‘criminal’ and ‘criminal defence lawyer’ is such a fun twist to things too, and really makes the way she interfaces with that job and society through it fascinating. Add in the ways she has to work around (and with) her new part-timer Serra - courtesy of the events of the first game – and it is always a delight to watch. We see her navigate that more deeply in Episode 2 both through Morgan’s interactions (or lack of) with the other characters. Serra often gets along more charitably with characters than Morgan can - often the bonus scenes you can unlock upon completion of a chapter feature guest conversations between Serra and whoever was the new characters in the episode, often furthering this difference in Morgan and Serra’s approaches to relationships. The dynamics and expression through the pacing of scenes and conversations of the character make Of the Devil feel tight, it’s a simple joy to play through it.

In the Palace of the Birds
Four girls are trapped in a house during a storm play a game called The Palace of the Birds to pass the time, opening up to each other as they play, enquire, prod and tease. In the Palace of the Birds floats between fiction and reality; the blend of folktale/fable-like storytelling fusing into the fiction of their game, wrapped up in their reality of isolation this dreary night. I love the cadence of the text as well as the flow of the diegetic tale. Unravelling where what they’re playing originates from, in all its folktale form, to the little bits of questions from the characters as well as the player, that arise about the world and why they would play this game engrossed me into this small slice of a visual novel.

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (Kai)
I wrote about Questions Arc here and looking back I’m not ecstatic about what I wrote – still learning the ropes I guess – but a lot of that dislike is born of hindsight, now having completed the game hahaha.

A fuller Answers Arc piece is in the works but I figured it was worth posting up my shorter thoughts here, since it, as a whole, was something I enjoyed. However, Answers Arc might’ve been an exercise in frustration at times… there’s a lot of repetitious confirmation of details and spelling out ‘answers’ that grates if you have been paying a fraction of attention (as satisfactory as those confirmations could be!). While that was already something that existed in Questions Arc, due to the repetition of certain details, such as the curse’s victims (something I felt enervated about towards the arc’s conclusion), the specificity of its usage here felt like the confidence of the game flagged. Regardless… even though there was a few red herrings I took the bait on, it was fun to have the “truths” revealed and even though the game dragged its feet towards the end, I overall had a great time with it, and can see why it’s such a classic.
As a side, I don’t think I mentioned on here that I set out to play Higurashi because of Silent Hill f… and f isn’t on this list because I haven’t seen all the endings… And maybe I didn’t like it as much?

Runner ups -

The RPG:

Trails in the Sky (FC)
To steal a term from a mutual of mine: This game is a quintessential “popcorn RPG”. Incredible road-trip vibes that’s exemplified by having every chapter start and end with the main duo of Estelle and Joshua.

I’m so thoroughly charmed by this game that I can overlook some of the more distasteful 2000s-ness stuff that can mar the occasional scenes that crop up. There’s this great progression through Sky as you meet NPCs, party members and see the main characters grow over the course of the game; an ever growing familiarity with the people and places they inhabit that charts a course of progress for our main duo and for the player. It feels like it enables this sense of community within the world, helped by your position as Junior Bracers – kind of a communal service guild that helps people out with various tasks – represented through the sidequests. Often these are presented to you through the guild branches but if you choose to explore a little and talk to folks, sometimes you can find hidden sidequests from these conversations. This makes it all feel really natural, there’s no markers for you to chase, just your own curiosity of this small slice of a greater world.

The combat system, while fairly plain, does feature this fun turn steal ability with your powered up skills called “S-Crafts”. Taking a turn advantage right out from a boss always feels great! Meanwhile the orbment system, which determine your party member’s stats and arts (this game’s term for magic) has a fun flexibility to it that goes in line with how party members join and leave the team. Estelle especially, as a jack-of-all-trades party member really gets to show this off with how often you can adjust her to suit the need of the party composition.

Playing the PSP version of the game meant I could never rely on the turbo mode available on later re-releases to carry me speedily through the areas, so in a sense, it grounded me more into the world of Liberl. Hell, I went out of my way many times to go and talk to every NPC in town (and outside of it) after and during every little plot development! And the game only took 40-ish hours to complete! Trails in the Sky knows what it is – it doesn’t break barriers by creating something you haven’t seen before but in that it plays comfortably in the sense that in what it does, it does solidly and makes for a great time.

Runner ups –

Let’s get kinetic:

Sin & Punishment: Successor of the Skies
I was initially meant to open up the blog with a post about this game… a year later and I still haven’t found the words for it. I fell hard and fast for Sin & Punishment (N64) right at the end of 2024 so playing the sequel was a no-brainer. Surprisingly for me, I played and replayed Successor far more times that I usually would for any game.
Initially I wasn’t taken by it in the same way as predecessor: it wasn’t as outrageous and bold, didn’t feel like it was being more than it could be – pushing the boundaries of the console. But Successor is robust… I do find it a tad bit too challenging at times (as my further experience with Treasure games continues to confirm) but it keeps its paces up, keeps you moving through the world and offers great variance with its stages and bosses (and boy are those bosses something!). It’s such a great run and gun. I had a blast playing it to completion and later playing again to unlock the duo/switch characters style; alternate colour palettes and swapped shot types between the two main characters, and replaying the game with that configuration and in co-op, and then some more because it’s a damn great game!

Skin Deep
Such a comical game! Playing as the “insurance agent” Nina Pasadina, who is deep frozen and thawed out when cat’s spaceships are invaded and captured by space pirates, you get into all kind of stealthy and chaotic situations to rescue the cats and make your escape. There’s much fun to be had within this game. Nina’s clone, who was created from her in “wonky space” and left behind, wants revenge and has employed the pirates to get the job done while causing messes of Nina’s work along the way.

It’s all the various tools as your disposal around the ship to get the job done that creates these comical situations and chaos as the ripple effect of your actions cascades along in a room – the game goes to great lengths to ensure there is clarity to the chaos, often attempting to demonstrate the cause and effect to you, for example, throw a lit lighter at a flammable pipe and viola! explosion accompanied by fun little cut in showing you this. It doesn’t always work: when multiple things are going off at once and the game slows down to a hilarious slideshow, you’re just as likely to get caught in the crossfire of your design as much as the pirates you’re trying to remove do.

There’s something charming that the cats retained that boxy Blendo Games look, while all the weapons and tools continue that very diegetic presentation, like when you check ammo will have you look at the magazine, remove it from the gun to see count the bullets – there is no head ups display for you to keep track of – or you can zoom into the ‘description’ for an item and it tells you what it can do such as electronics, which will warn they can spark when hit/broken, which in turn can cause flames near flammable objects. I’m pretty charmed by that all, and I especially love that each stage/level has a “markers mark” in the ship’s helm: the names of the designers who lead in the creation of the level are listed here, which is cool touch.

Ys 1 Chronicles +
This one is cheating a little bit because I played the PC-88 version (courtesy of the EGGCONSOLE release) over the course of the previous year and loved it, so it was only natural to pop this one on and try it out. I played it on Hard mode because I though my previous knowledge of the game would enable a greater challenge, and Dark Fact, the final boss, is like severely more difficult in this version of the game! We love a good DVD screensaver boss. I had to go back and watch the original to be sure it wasn’t always this hard hah!

But to circle back to the Chronicles+ version, there is much to love in the way it infuses more life into the world of this initial Ys location. Many of the NPCs (much like Trails in the Sky) have names, and are jotted down in a notepad when you talk to them, each with their own little blurb for what they do around town, their relations to other NPCs etc. It does a lot to make you kinda care about this small slice of the world and the basic premise is still simple. Find a missing girl! The mines are filled with monsters, clear them out because it isn’t safe for the local towns! Recover the magical books of Ys! The basic premise keeps you rolling but it really is the way the world exists and the actual RPG progression that nails this adventure.

At around halfway through the game your level caps out and you head into Darm Tower, the final dungeon. This makes up the last half of the game and the tower iconic as always, with a new way to view it. I enjoyed the overlooking view that adjusted as you made your way higher and higher up the tower, going from seeing the towns and areas you explored earlier to further into the horizon as the afternoon changes to night time. Just a lovely sense of progression in this one, really an all time banger of an adventure RPG.

Kero Blaster
Kero Blaster is an action-platformer developed and co-developed by Daisuke ‘pixel’ Amaya and Kiyoko Kawanaka. It’s a game that feels like it lives under the shadow of the ever-influential Cave Story but I wouldn’t call Kero Blaster a lesser game in any way; it’s shorter, snappier and comes packed with a hell of a harder mode that endears me to it more. Kero Blaster is a game I’m glad I returned to, having initially played it and completed the base mode in 2020. I didn’t appreciate it for what it was at the time, my struggles against it overtook my enjoyment.

Now though? Being much more familiar with the arcade-leaning shooter type of game it is, even with my lacklustre platforming skills, I could enjoy Kero Blaster so much more. Losing all my lives in a level never feels like a setback – often you know what went wrong (or if your platforming is as atrocious as mine, you’ll fall into a pit for a jump you’ve cleared plenty of times already hah) yet making it back to that point never feels like a time sink or unfun. It’s such a profusely charming game that I’ve grown fond of in my time with it, and the Zangyō (hard) mode that remixes levels and creates a good closure to the story is such a blast to play through and the perfect capstone to it.

Runner Ups -

Additionally, wasn’t sure where to place it but I felt it would be remiss of me not to mention it: I played heaps of ASTRONAUTILUS as a late playtester. It’s damn good! I still catch myself humming the music on occasion too. I really liked the presentation of the world both through the levels, progression and the rewarding scenes. The overall style of the game has this wonderfully bold colour blocking look that makes it both crunchy and welcoming.

The chimeric:

Murasaki
Murasaki is a puzzle/STG blend which allows you to select two characters with different attack and bomb capabilities: Kairi shoots slower but has shots that travel a longer distance, which can allow for more leeway in positioning, whereas Saki has a shorter travelling shot that comes out faster, which creates openings for larger explosions. The key difference between this game and regular STGs is that only one shot at a time can be fired, leading into the puzzle aspect of the game. Both of these character’s shot types affect how you approach the targets, which are square or circular bombs that appear in the stage that you shoot to push into the same colour/shape to create an explosion chain that clears enemies: the larger the explosion, the better the clear, the more points you get etc. This is also used to cancel enemies bullets, and in boss fights is done so that you can send their shots back to them, damaging them further.

Playing through the six stages available with each character is a blast. Figuring out routing that works best between Saki and Kairi is an exercise but one that preps you up for the various encounters and bosses. Bosses, once hitting a certain health value, will drop a shining red blob which you can maneuver over to and trigger a “duel”. Duels extend the fight and lead to more conversations between the characters and end the stage with a unique artwork upon successful completion.

This also ties into the collections menu.

Within that menu lists each duel you’ve completed, which adds more incentive to try and challenge the bosses in this way. Through unlocking these, and exploring what else the collections menu has to offer, which includes things like challenging you to reach certain score thresholds for stages, it acts as a way to disseminate information about the world and the characters of Murasaki. I found this to be a great incentive even outside of how much the stages would entertain me. Often I would play just to play the game, for no motivation from the collection’s goals, only to find I had unlocked several items in one sitting! Eventually I found this did nudge me in the direction of seeking out further challenge from each of the six stages (plus more…) but never really with the sole intent to “unlock everything”. Although… I still haven’t felt like I’ve had my fill to move onto the sequel game…

D2
Set (and released) at the turn of the century, and often feeling like it can only exist the way it does due to that, D2 is a game where you play as the Warp Inc.’s digital actress “Laura” as a plane she is travelling on gets hijacked, hit by a meteorite and crashes into the Arctic wilderness of northern Canada. Spread across four discs and loaded with real-time cutscenes (a major selling point for the time, and it does wow in it’s own, gentle way), what follows is such: A survival horror game that heavily eschews contemporary convention. It doesn’t feel like one in any measurable sense.
Sure there is limited ammo and health recovery items, and you can hunt to gain meat to heal yourself with. Exploring interiors feels closer to a point and click game than anything else; combat is engaged through random encounters, and Laura is fixed firmly in one place as you aim with the controller stick and turn with buttons to face your opponents. “Opponents” that are the malformed, chimeric alien-plant humans. They are deeply upsetting to hear and fight against, often busting in green pustules and giant eyeballs, groaning in pain and crying – I find, even at their least human looking, the game still wants you to consider them as such. And upon completion of a fight you receive experience points, much like you would in an RPG.

To explain as such doesn’t exactly convey they way this all comes together in the game itself. The dead quiet of the sound effects cutting out just before you hit an encounter becomes a void you’re primed for. The frenetic aiming of Laura’s as she gets hits heightens the stress of some late-game encounters, and you feel it too. Overall, it defies categorisation well, and in that non-conformity it weighs you across its isolated snowscape; its temporal nature of the cutscenes, and fraught combat. There’s such a strong confidence on display with this work, and to meet that takes some patience from you, but what I found in this game, taken as a whole, is something like no other.
I do have gripes with parts of it. On occasion is can be a bit slow on how to progress (and towards the end, especially in the mountains of the third disc, I may have relied on an emulator’s speed up function to trot along) often requiring back-and-forthing between the scant few NPCs in a zone to trigger the right cutscenes, although talking about it in such a way feels too surgical… There are moments within to my distaste (such as how the hostage scene is handled) and the game tends to leave many questions unanswered, and can feel preachy at times but fuck, like I’m not playing something like this again in anything else, you know?

Metal Garden
Much like the prior game listed, there is this wonderful downtime trekking across a landscape to allow you to chew on the work. The journey is the style, is the rhythm of this game; its beating heart and melancholic tune. I posted about Metal Garden earlier this year, shortly after finishing it, and was hoping to replay it after some of the updates it received, but due to various reasons I never got around to doing that. Anyway – Metal Garden is filled with a genuine wonder while playing walkabouts and it’s one of the games that’s been on my mind for the greater part of the year.

Apologies this took a while, I thought I’d have it written up by the end of January at the latest but some wrist strain I had been putting off resting and recovering from set this back further out than I thought it would go. And then with work too and with how hot it’s been lately hasn’t put me in the mood to work on it. Regardless, I have finished it. I hoped you enjoyed it. If I continue these end of year write-ups in the future I am likely to place a hard limit on the amount of videogames I list and talk about. As much as it hurts to do so, because I often want to talk about everything, I have to par this down to release it in a reasonable time frame. We’ll see where it goes from here, I want to try and stick by this blog more consistently! Happy new years folks.

#2025 #end of year #thoughts