Spinning Discs - March 2026
Spinning Disks is a feature where I collect thoughts on a smattering of games I’ve been playing lately, over the last three months. Often these are smaller works, or games I haven’t finished yet but still wish to talk about.
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There’s some games that’ll be in a void between late last year, that I didn’t mention in my end of year wrap up and don’t fit the bill for being played this year (sorry Shin Sakura Wars I’ll get back to you 😓) but...
With it being a new year I decided to circle back to some games to finish off stuff floating around in my libraries, like Trails in the Sky FC. After egging my sister on to check out the series, starting her off at Daybreak (I know), the wait for latest entry in the series left her with some time to poke at where it all started. She smashed through Sky FC and SC and that motivated me to get back to my save file on my Vita and finish it off. I had left it partway through the final chapter and getting past the finish line was long overdue. A terrible habit of mine, doing that to most games I play and RPGs tend to be the particular victims. I bear a great deal of fondness for Sky FC, which I included in my 2026 EoY write-up. I won’t echo what I said there but give that a read if you’d like to view my thoughts on it.
I also picked up some Final Fantasy games for the first time in ages:
Final Fantasy V
I chose FFV because it’s one of the “classics” of the series (I mean all of the 90s ones are, aren’t they?) I’ve always wanted to play but indecision on which fan-translation to choose from always came in which leads it to being a game I’ve started a few times but never stuck with. Opting to go ‘fuck it’ and play it in it’s original language (since I’ve picked up re-learning Japanese over the last year now), I’ve been having a blast with the thing. To no surprise it is super fun to play and I’m charmed by our main four characters: Bartz, Lenna, Faris and Galuf. They make a great team and despite the occasional comical hijinks (what’s a Final Fantasy game from that era without them?) and their camaraderie is particularly enjoyable. Whenever Four Hearts starts up in a cutscene I get a huge grin on my face.
There’s also something deeply charming with the presentation of the SNES era FF games. I forgot how much I love their economic conveyance of emotions (so much sprite reuse for various expression! A particular enjoyment of mine…) and ‘stage blocking’ that they employ – while I am loathe to use the word, it does make these scenes more immersive to me. Through the lack of greater detail, relying on the limits of the sprites, music and timing of the actions, I am further drawn into the world by the gaps created by this combination. Those gaps – much like Makai Tōshi SaGa’s chosen party that you watch grow through your choices, both combat and overworld – create a rich space for your imagination to fill in, allowing you to further visualise scenes and events with a greater “detail” to them. For an early example: watching Syldra save the party and Faris’ plea to her not to die, while Lenna runs up next to and ahead of her to stop Faris from running into the water… it create such a moving scene with very little actually happening visually.
I also love the iconic Final Fantasy job system and V is the one that crystallises it in a way that feels like they’ve been chasing the strengths of this iteration for years, never really hitting that same peak like it does in this game.
By each job having a certain “points” threshold to unlock new abilities, be they passive, like the Knight’s Two-Handing, or active (on the command bar), like any Time Mage or Black Mage’s attacks, then having those abilities be “equippable” on other jobs (usually at a limit of one ability, with the exception of the Freelancer job that allows you to select multiple abilities from other jobs) you’re given a veritable play pen of job abilities to grow builds across your four characters.
An early and basic example is setting everyone up on Monk to give them the “Barehanded” ability – allowing your character to attack and deal comparably decent damage without a weapon equipped – and then equipping that ability onto a White or Black Mage, and they can go to town on enemies without too much of a physical attacking disadvantage. This is great too because by being Barehanded, characters will actually attack twice in succession for the turn, so at the early points of the game your mages might do as much physical damage as your physical attackers in their solo hit! Figuring these things out and playing around with different combos, and the party spread, has made for a pretty good time and I’m excited to see what else I can get up to with those last few lingering crystal shards that’ll unlock the remaining jobs the game has on offer (I saw those shards fall in Walse Tower I know that means there’ll be more, game….)
Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise
For Stranger of Paradise I wanted some meaty action after stewing in visual novels for most of the previous year and holy shit does this game deliver. At its worst, it feels held back by the dogshit loot system that doesn’t feel like it needs to be so damn granular on stats and levels and drops but at its best? Well it is one of the few games that has made me bump up the difficulty while starting off with it! Since I would find myself button mashing and ‘auto-piloting’ my way through the levels and combat encounters, switching to the Hard difficulty made me make use of my full combo abilities, job actions, and general attacks. It forced me to be more attentive during fights, and thinking about how I am inputting my moves while also utilising my party members more often too. And since this is Final Fantasy, we’ve got jobs.
Each job has a selection of weapons they can use, and each weapon has its own moveset complete with customisable combos (to a degree), and then take tha further with direction inputs; a block that can combo into particular moves (depending on the weapon); a parry that acts double time as your MP regen by stealing the damage of an opponents’ attack, and potential Blue Magic catcher (hey trying to get Blue Mage skills is actually fun for once!) and then you can do things like steal you r opponents spell, catch them in that move, cancel your attack by swapping jobs after using a combo ability and that makes you dash forward too and… look I could go on about all the stuff you could do in this, I’m only scraping the surface of it.
Ten Metre Tide
Sometimes I download a slew of games from a game jam so I’ve currently got a bunch from the ToxicYuri VN Jam. Now with these, I tend to download a small smattering of the games and often peck away at them slowly, often playing an even smaller selection of what I end up downloading. It’s not a very conductive process and my interests wax and wane often. The “benefit” of a game jam game is that they often are fairly short, usually under an hour. At times this leads to finding some great stuff made in outrageously short development periods but often it’s a selection of (technically fine) works that don’t speak to me in any way. Unfortunately for Ten Metre Tide it is in the latter category. It’s perfectly competent as a work and, frankly, has a really gorgeous visual style that catches your eye and is presently lovingly. In particular the multi-media approach is charming and flows well, and I enjoy seeing the stitchwork and embroideries used for the UI, especially since it is a physical art brought into the digital world.
The game offers up the story through a non-linear direction. You are prompted to choose to view a scene or skip it, with extra scenes being interwoven into the main story denominated with a grey background and the title in brackets and lowercase text, while the main scenes are marked with a black background in uppercase text. It is expected, and even prompted by the game, that you choose which scenes you’ll wish to view adding to the non-linearity of it’s story structure. Now when I played, and I’m not really sure why I chose to do this, I viewed every scene as it was presented. Perhaps if I had stuck with the main scenes only, and later viewed the side scenes in another playthrough I could’ve liked this game more? The story itself never grabbed me in any fashion. I didn’t find it bad but it wasn’t very notable to me. The gist of it focuses on a trio of women who are living/have lived in a small, dying coastal town and their dynamics through that, their positions and roles within this town and in regard to it dying off, and of course, their relationships to each other and how this change is affecting that. It has intrigue but it never felt like it came together in a way that I enjoyed.
Pokémon Legends ZA
In a rare moment of weakness I decided to play this figuring I had enough of a good time with Legends Arcues (even though I do not believe that open world works with Pokémon but I’m not engaged enough with the series any more to care enough with that direction) to give this a go and I hate to say it but this game is kinda what my younger self always dreamed of in a Pokémon game. I can view it through a distanced lens so in that sense it’s not for any nostalgic reason hah, I am far too divorced from the series to really have that attachment to it anymore. I’ve forgotten most of everything with the games, things like type advantages or disadvantages or what types a particular ‘mon is etc. it’s all information that doesn’t matter to me anymore and my engagement with the series is removed from what it was as a child, and that’s fine. I’m not interested in chasing that or returning to it; my interest in this one stems more from the shift to an action focus.
I’m treating it the same way I would any other action game – using spacing to avoid attacks, utilising the timing of returning a Pokémon and certain moves to dodge attacks (classics such as dig and fly still act like they always have but now with a more particular usage, things like dragon rush act this way now too). Protect works like a the Reflect spell from Kingdom Hearts now and that shit had me jumping up out of my seat to watch for the first time. Doing things like baiting fast attacks to punish the opponents wiff, combo-ing your moves to take advantage of their AOE effect on a slower startup attack etc. It’s kind wild to see the ways that this, as an action game (for kids), changes up the usual formula but gets so many of the fundamentals right. You can hitstun bosses!! Because it is action focused, you can get away with taking down much higher level opponents through smart play via these changes.
I like the experimentation of these Legends games but I also like that this entry is self contained within a city. It’s both limiting and freeing in a way – the constraints of the cityscape create a sort of monotony to the play but the freedom comes from the fact I know there cannot be more than the city space and they do play around with it changes. The inclusion of Wild Zones, spaces specifically for the ‘mon’s only and treated as distinct from the “people” spaces in the city and verticality, allowing you to run around and hop between rooftops, helps keeps the space interesting. The worst aspect of it is that the pace of the exploration can become a bit of a timesink loop. The ease at which you can spot something new to distract you on your way to your next goal, be it side-quest, battle zone, main story mission or catching ‘mons, is really addicting in the worst ways. I do not like that I can get so lost in it because of this ‘just one more’ kinda feeling.
Arknights
Spending the last several years with a “dumb phone” (A flip phone with no access to the internet or anything – a maddening experience in our current age) I upgraded to a smart phone for work related reasons, and decided, against my usual tastes, to try Arknights again. Initially, I played this some time around when it launched in English and stopped because could not wrap my head around the tower defence/tactics and found the severe restrictions for the play it had back then to frustrating. Promptly left it be and never really came back to it. Nowadays I’m a little keener on different gameplay types and more willing to engage with stuff out of my wheelhouse (even if I know I won’t really like it).
This time around, I found the ‘on-boarding’ of the game is a lot smoother – there’s various things like raising your units’ levels no longer being so manual, practising stages no longer being tied to its own resource so you can practice it as much as you want and refine your strategy/experiment more, along with the stronger tutorialisation that made the segue into it a lot smoother and more enjoyable. I could have fun (or not!) figuring out how to clear stages and best configure my units to do so this time! Granted this all comes at the cost of being a fucking gacha game and having like seven billion popups and notification numbers on my screen makes me break our in hives. I knew after the first few weeks of play I’d drop off it hard, which I have, and towards the end of that I started to open game only to gather my resources and tick my checklists... I wasn’t playing the levels anymore. Even when playing it I do still find games like this or any FOMO, treadmill type stuff vile ...irritating and needy in the worst ways. There’s a strong part of me that wishes this was simply something I could download and play at my own pace, with being able to unlock characters from playing the game and clearing levels… but it is not that… Ah well, at least I’ve whetted myself on this stuff for my eventual dive into non-live service videogames of the tactics genre.
Resident Evil
For some foolish reason I believed I could play through the entire PS1 Resident Evil trilogy in a weekend. Both routes in 1 and 2. Even if I no-life’d that shit I wouldn’t be able to because I am not familiar enough with the original games to play them with haste. In fairness, my precluded knowledge of the space of Spencer Mansion and all its attachments do bear familiarity – I have played the arranged mode of this game that was released in 2002 and later re-released in HD (under the same title). Although, it is no replacement for the original foray into survival horror and bears more fruits to those well versed in the original’s romp.
Mistake will be made, the learning process of navigating through the twisty corridors of the PS1 Resi games is part of their delight. The way one will constantly have to weight decisions based on routing, which key items you’ve come across and might need, which health or ammo items you had to pass on by – all measured by the fantastic inventory system – and resource management, key in how you choose to approach encounters and rooms for the limited ammo usage, the consumable save item (ink ribbons) and limited health items. These constant routing decisions, along with resource management that makes you choose how you approach a section e.g. do you take out the zombies in this hallway because you’ll believe you’ll pass through it a whole bunch or do you choose to skip through towards that one locked door you’ve finally gotten a key for? Do you remember where that door even was? It makes for such an enriching play that even when you do risk it for the biscuit and opt to not use one of your delicate ink ribbons on a save then die to an unexpected enemy or play poorly in a way that you dry up all your healing items, or get luck out and die to a trap, you still carry that knowledge forward in the next session. It doesn’t matter if you lost like half an hour of play because due to this, you make up for it through that knowledge you’ve gained and can better prepare yourself for that – be it tightening up your routing to avoid the creatures that roam the halls of the ever iconic mansion, or packing more of that rarer ammo for your big guns along to make the room less of a hassle.
Plodding along through the every familiar halls of Spencer Mansion, albeit in this more original (truncated if I was to be mean) form is an absolute delight.
I’m charmed in how familiar it feels to something like a dungeon crawler, that every dripping loss of resources as you delve further and further… only to feel that sigh of relief as you stumble through another creaking door into the all too soothing sound of a safe room. It’s fucking good. It’s a great game and it’s great seeing where it all started, seeing where the genre staples got codified. I have been struggling with it, often finding Jill to be low on health items and stumbling through its surprises along the way. And those damn Hunters have gotten me a fair few times with their nasty decapitation attack, but I’m close to the home stretch towards the end now, so I’m keen to wrap it up and maybe give Chris a try for once.
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I haven’t got much else for this quarter. Been doing other stuff… Go and watch Ikoku Nikki/Journal with Witch, ok?