As if writing an intro for The Games of the Year wasn't hard enough.

It was easier to narrow down a list of Games of the Decade than I thought, to be honest. I was worried I'd forget about some of the best games I've played these past ten years, but then, they wouldn't be on this list if they were forgettable, would they? Each of the games on this list has had some impact on me, be it emotionally, mechanically, or in terms of pushing the medium of videogames forward as whole — or all of the above. Some of these games probably won't come as a surprise. Some of them might make you scratch your head. My taste is weird. Some caveats:

• For this list I did not allow myself any remakes barring one selection. So games like Ocarina of Time 3D and the PS4 version of Shadow of the Colossus are a no-go. That said, if there's a bundle for a pair of games, I did in fact count them as one entry.
• I limited myself to 30 games, but like my GOTY list I did not rank them in any order, because it's 2019 and in my very humble opinion weighing games against each other like that is a worthless endeavor.

Also, thanks much to @projecttiger_ for the Peppermint art!

So. Let's start!

Super Mario Galaxy 2

The Wii is the very first console I ever learned how to hack. It was the easiest one to do it to, and it was a boon for a 16 year old who wanted to play tons of videogames but didn't have the money for any of them. All this to say, I pirated Super Mario Galaxy 2.

And then I beat it.

And then I bought it anyways.

That's how good SMG2 was. It felt like a culmination of every quality aspect of a Mario game up to that point. The platforming was sublime. The music was sweeping and catchy. Every level added a new mechanic that changed the game and kept things fresh. I had 100% completion of that game, and to date a Mario title has not topped it since. I don't know if we'll ever get another Mario game as good as it, if we're being honest. That's how good Super Mario Galaxy 2 was.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I didn't think Ocarina of Time could ever be topped as my favorite Zelda game. I love them all, really (except for Skyward Sword, sorry), and I completely acknowledge that a big part of my love for OoT stems from nostalgia, but even then, I didn't think another Zelda game could make me feel as strongly as that one did. And then Breath of the Wild came along. I don't like most open-world games, but BotW changed that. It made exploration fun in its own right. It used topography to encourage it, as opposed to a bunch of glowing markers on a map that you beeline to to do open-world things. It had a melancholic, Princess Mononoke-esque atmosphere to it that made traveling meditative and beautiful. I don't know if I can ever go back to Breath of the Wild — I finished it completely in a few hundred hours, and I can't see myself doing that again — but I loved the time I spent with it.

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

I wasn't that excited for SSBU when it was first announced. I didn't care that all the old characters were coming back, and none of the new characters were ones that I was interested in. But then I had it in my hands, and the changes to the game's systems were enough to make all of that criticism go away. Ultimate is the best-feeling Smash Bros game by a long-shot. It's the perfect speed, has the best balance, and most variety. The DLC characters have all been entertaining in their own ways as well. A Smash Bros game was going to be on this list — it's a celebration of gaming in and of itself, after all. But even putting that aside, Ultimate deserves to be on this list because it's just plain good.

Celeste

I don't tend to go to games for self-improvement. In fact, I feel bad a lot of the time when I'm playing videogames — I can't shake off the feeling that I'm wasting my time, and could be doing something more productive. But Celeste didn't make me feel that way. Here was a game that asked me to be kinder to myself, that encouraged me not to quit, that told me that it was okay to ask for help when I needed it. Celeste taught me to be a better person, and that, coupled with its fantastic music by my celebrity crush Lena Raine, along with pixel-perfect platforming that people are still mastering to this day, is why it deserves a spot on this list.

Bloodborne

As I've said on this blog many times before, I'm not the biggest Souls fan. Hell, I would barely call myself a fan at all, despite understanding the series' merits. Bloodborne got me close, though. I spent hundreds of hours in this game, marveling at its Gothic aesthetic, discovering its secrets, and unraveling its plot. For once, I understood what drew people to Souls games. It helped that I got to use a cane-sword to turn into a whip, to be honest. Bloodborne worked for me in a way other Souls games didn't because it was easier to follow and had a fast-paced, aggressive version of combat that meshed well with me, the guy that only plays rushdown characters in fighting games. I still posit that it's better than any Dark Souls game, and I ask that you forward any hate-mail for this take to my P. O. Box.

Undertale

I mean. It's Undertale. What can I even say about this game that hasn't been said already? It sprung out of nowhere and took the entire world by storm. Hell, Sans himself is in Smash Bros! Regardless of how you feel about this game, it had to be on the list, right? I was lucky enough to play Undertale before the hype crashed over everyone like a wave, and I'm happy I did. What made Undertale so interesting to me was how unassuming it first was. I was nearly bored with the first section of the game. I had no idea what I was getting into. And then I, uh, killed Toriel. And I felt really bad about it! So I restarted my game. The rest is history, heh.

Undertale is undoubtedly an important game. It asked interesting questions about how we treat violence in the games we play. Sure it was a little hamfisted at times, but it had heart (pun intended). Plus, even disregarding all of that, it deserves a spot on this list for the soundtrack anyways.

Fire Emblem Awakening

Fan purists are fun. And by fun, I mean extremely annoying. I bring this up because if you ask a Fire Emblem fan if they like Fire Emblem Awakening, there's a 50/50 chance they'll spit at your feet. These people are bad and wrong. I am right. Listen to me.

Fire Emblem Awakening saved an entire series of videogames, and if nothing else, I owe it for that. I used to have to perform a seance to pray for a Fire Emblem game to come stateside. Now the games release simultaneously with Japan. There's a Dynasty Warriors crossover. A gatcha game with 4 variations of Lyn in it. If you told ten-year old me that was the case, he'd laugh in your face in disbelief. The way Fire Emblem Awakening made the series accessible to so many of its fans and introduced itself to a generation of new ones is one of the things I loved most to happen in the game industry this decade.

Journey

Much has been made of whether videogames are art or not — Geoff Keighley is still trying to convince everyone that they totally are on Twitter to this day. We never needed to have this conversation, but even if we did, Journey should have immediately ended it. A game with very little in the way of words, it was a short, sweet, beautiful experience that has inspired so many games like it since its release. The music is on another level, and the emotional catharsis of the final level of the game is something that I still think about to this day. I kind of feel like Journey has been lost to the shuffle of time as the medium has progressed, but I don't think that progression would have been possible in the first place without it.

Final Fantasy XIV

Before Final Fantasy XIV, my experience with MMOs didn't extend beyond a brief stint with FFXI, and F2P Korean games like Maple Story, O2Jam, FlyFF, Trickster Online and so on. They were fine for a kid with no money, but they also soured my taste for the genre, as all of the games I mentioned were heavy on grinding to encourage spending on microtransactions. Even then, I started XIV on 1.0, which didn't help warm my feelings on MMOs.

I'm glad I stuck with it, though, because FFXIV has not only gone on to be my favorite social experience in videogames, but also one of my favorite Final Fantasy games, period. It captures the spirit of the series in a way that we've been missing since Final Fantasy X, and each expansion has only improved on its quality. It's helped me make some great friends, too. Plus, it lets you play a bunny girl! Do I really need to explain further?

Bayonetta 1 + 2

I couldn't pick between the two Bayonettas, so I'm just including them both. They compliment each other well, with the first game having the best last boss but the second being tighter mechanically overall. Bayonetta is what got me into character action as a genre, helping me go back to classics like Devil May Cry, too. It's a reminder of the fact that vidoegames can just be fun, and it's the kind of wacky, over-the-top thing that could only ever exist in this particular medium (although I've heard the Bayonetta anime is pretty good too). The titular character is one of the best chaotic good protagonists ever. Okay Kamiya, now that I have your attention, where is Bayonetta 3, I swear to God—

Minecraft

Hatsune Miku's greatest creation besides Levan Polka, Minecraft is the kind of game that doesn't show up very often. It's a cultural phenomenon, a game literally everyone on planet earth has played, and one that everyone can enjoy. It's a game that I think has been genuinely been good for the world, one that can be used as an educational tool or a conduit for creativity. I can't build at all because I have the imagination of a goldfish, but I love exploring the randomly generated biomes and seeing what kind of interesting flora and fauna get created. Even now, years later, I get a thrill entering a cave in Minecraft, and I think that says something of its longevity.

Spec Ops: The Line

There are lot of problems with Spec Ops, if we're being honest, but playing through it I didn't notice any of them at first. I still think about this game because whether its message landed or not, at least it tried to say a single interesting thing about shooters and violent videogames in general. It's a game that stays with you once the other shoe finally drops, and frankly, kinda did the Undertale thing before Undertale. If FPS games were even half as interesting as Spec Ops, I'd probably play them a lot more.

Titanfall 2

Before Titanfall 2, I had a brief relationship with multiplayer shooters. I dabbled in Halo, ran games of Gears of War with friends, and was really into Timesplitters 2 when I was ten, but that's about it. After Titanfall 2, I'm surprised they still even make multiplayer shooters. I mean, why? You literally cannot beat running off a wall to punch another guy in midair before jumping into your mech and taking out another enemy team. I put hours and hours of my time into Titanfall 2's multiplayer. And that's just the multiplayer! The campaign is one of the best I've seen in the genre, with outstanding level design and gimmicks that shake things up without overstaying their welcome. It's tragic how slept on this game is, and just talking about it makes me want to play it again. Just. Play Titanfall 2, please.

The Walking Dead: Season One

What happened to Telltale Games was tragic, especially considering their pedigree. The game industry is worse off to have lost it, and The Walking Dead: Season One is proof of that. A game with an interesting protagonist that was Black? Sign me the hell up. The slower, narrative-focused pacing of TWD was something unfamiliar to me when I first started the series, but it was good for me to delve into. The writing was fun and snappy, and the relationship Lee had with Clementine felt real. Very few games make me cry, but if they do, they probably deserve a spot on this list.

Doki Doki Literature Club

I started DDLC at 10PM on a weekday, then playing it until 3AM in the morning before going to sleep for 3 hours so I could be ready for work. It is, in my opinion, the only way one should experience Doki Doki Literature Club. It's a game that implanted itself into my brain for months, and one that still crosses my mind to this day. Hell it's literally the only videogame I've ever actively contributed to the wiki of. It's hard to talk about this game without spoiling it, but it really did affect me in a way that most videogames haven't. If you enjoy horror and/or meta-commentary in your media consumption, then I implore you to give it a shot.

Gravity Rush 1 + 2

How shocked are you to see this series on the list? Really, how surprised could you possibly be? I never shut the fuck up about Gravity Rush. I've literally run out of ways to explain why it's one of the best games ever made and one of my favorite games of all time. I thought nostalgia might have blinded me, so I replayed them both recently. Incorrect: they're still fantastic games. One of the characters of my novel has Kat as their namesake. When they put my cold, lifeless body in the ground, my tombstone is just going to read "Play Gravity Rush 2 You Damn Animals." And that's really that on that.

Dragon's Dogma

I love it when games are just unabashedly weird. Dragon's Dogma fits that bill perfectly. It is just a clunky, strange game. It's esoteric in its quest design and its systems are sometimes incomprehensible without reading a lot of external documentation to figure it out. None of that matters to me though because Dragon's Dogma is a kind of weird that we don't see from AAA developers in the industry anymore. I'd even call it the last of its kind. It's a game that really did try to be different, a blend of Western mythos and scale combined with the sensibilities of a quirky SNES JRPG. This game has released at least 4 times, and I've rebought it every single time. I only wish there was a sequel I could put on this list as well.

Tetris Effect

It could easily be argued that Tetris is the greatest game ever, and you'd probably win. Luckily Tetris Effect is technically a different game, and thus I am not cheating adding it to this list. It's kind of hard to explain why this game is here, other than the fact that Tetris is amazing. However, if you appreciate a e s t h e t i c in your games, then Tetris Effect has you covered. Tetsuya Mizuguchi has mastered the ability to sync music and gameplay in tandem, and Tetris fits into that loop perfectly. The way clicks and clacks pair up with the soundtrack create an experience in your brain that's hard to top, and one I always go back to whenever I want to relax.

Also, as an aside, this game narrowly beat Puyo Puyo Tetris for a spot on the list, mostly because I suck at Puyo Puyo. But you should play that too!

Pocket Card Jockey

I know what you're thinking. "This isn't real, Mint. You made this game up." To which I say, congratulations! Assuming you have a 3DS, I am now introducing you to one of the best games of the past ten years. Developed by Game Freak, resident Pokemon devs, Pocket Card Jockey is a game where you win horse races by playing solitaire. It sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. And makes its quality all the more incredible. I am actually too embarrassed to share with you how much time I've spent – and continue to spend – on this game. Despite its difficulty, and the fact that it takes a while of breeding good horses before I was finally winning races, none of that mattered. The core gameplay loop of pairing cards and strategically maneuvering your horse around the track is so satisfying that I could do it forever. Literally. This is my "If You Could Only Play One" game, easy.

Nier

It feels like Nier got thrown into the bin for good when its hotter sibling with the nicer ass entered the scene two years ago. I'm here to remind everyone that despite being the ugly, clunky one, Nier is still one of the best games of the past ten years. It's a game that's hard to forget (pun intended, sorry for this one), and its strangeness is part of the charm. Nier and his pals are some of the most interesting characters in games, especially Emil, my precious son. Nier is one of those games that I feel actually use literary technique in its storytelling, and it's a big part of what helped me be more critical of games as a whole.

Nier Automata

Like I said, Nier Automata is the hot sibling, and despite the fact that it left its brother in the dust, it still deserves the praise it gets. Automata got the budget that Yoko Taro deserved, and it shows. PlatinumGames finally allowed it to reach the level of polish in its gameplay systems that the series was missing. Nier Automata was a game that I needed when it first released, its ending one of the most emotional, impactful experiences I've ever had playing videogames. Sometimes I get extremely depressed about the state of the game industry, but 2B and Co.'s adventures are proof that games can be something more, and that they still have more to say.

Spelunky

There was a period in my life where my interest in games was outpacing the amount of money I was making — and by that I mean I was 14, so I had no money at all. This was decidedly a boon for me, though, because it led to me delving into places like the TIGSource forums, playing indie games like Cave Story, and, in 2008, the original version of Spelunky. The game introduced me to the concept of rougelikes, genre-blending, and the idea that one person can create something really special. In 2013 we got the remake of Spelunky, which in my opinion represents everything great we've received from indie games ever since. It's a game that's designed with perfection in mind, with every system interlocking to provide an experience that's actually very difficult to put down. Spelunky also gets the award for "Game of the Decade I've Only Managed to Beat Once," other than Breath of the Wild, heh.

Bravely Second: End Layer

I fell off the JRPG bandwagon for a while, despite it being my genre of choice when I was younger. It was a combination of the lack of interesting mechanics, the bland, anime-harem stories, and cheaply developed games that were flooding the market. Seriously, outside of remakes, this decade was not kind to JRPGs. For the most part. Bravely Second not only got me to appreciate the style again, it also proved to me that games like it don't have to waste your time to be considered entertaining. It let you change your enemy encounter rate at will, chain battles together to get experience faster, and speed up battle animations as much as you want. It's a game that respected me, and in turn I beat it to show the same level of respect. Couple that with one of the coolest twists I can think of in a game, and you have a recipe for some of the best JRPG goodness since the PS2 days.

Pyre

Being honest, any of Supergiant's games could be on this list. I narrowed it down to Pyre, however, because it's a game that actually made me scream. About my choices, I mean. Pyre makes you go through the cruel process of getting to know dozens of amazing characters and then deciding their fates. No choice feels right. Every choice feels right! I was constantly tearing my hair out over what to do next. I'm being vague about this because the choices are a spoiler in and of themselves, but I'll put it this way: I finished Pyre in one day, and played the multiplayer mode on top of that for another few months. Everything Supergiant makes is gold, but Pyre might be their game with the most luster.

The Last Guardian

Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games ever made, but surprisingly, I didn't play The Last Guardian until last year, long after the game had released. I don't know why. Maybe it was the price tag, or the fact that I wasn't sure if the game could meet my expectations. But it did. This might be a spicy take, but The Last Guardian is just as good as The Shadow of the Colossus, and in some ways, is even better. More than that, The Last Guardian is one of the best games of this decade because frankly, I don't know if we'll ever get another game like it, given the current state of the game industry. A short, artful game from a AAA studio that's $60 and doesn't have microtransactions or expansion packs or isn't a "live-service" experience on the PlayStation 4? Maybe in another 15 years.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

We're lucky Birth By Sleep came out in the past 10 years, or I don't know if I'd have been able to put a Kingdom Hearts game on the list at all. The other games are good and fun if you're a fan, sure, but BBS stands apart because of its surprising amount of focus and a simplicity to the story that hasn't been found in the series since...uh, the first Kingdom Hearts. Aqua, Terra and Ventus are all endearing (or in the latter two's case, endearingly stupid) characters, and their relationship is one that I appreciated. There aren't very many games about family out there, I think. The Command Deck is also the best version of the Kingdom Hearts combat system. No I will not be responding to this post, thank you.

Watch Dogs 2

Do you know how many games let you play as black men? Do you know how many of them let you play as nerdy black men? How about nerdy, well dressed black men? When you narrow it down that far, I can only think of one game, though I wish there were far more. Watch Dogs 2 is great because of that reason alone, but it's also prescient in its message and also unabashedly fun. The character interactions are great, the game never takes itself all that seriously, and it feels authentic in its understanding of technology — well, for the most part. There are very few games that represent the kind of person I am, and for that reason Watch Dogs 2 is on this list.

Persona 4: Golden

Okay, look. My relationship with Persona is...tumultuous at best. Regardless,  this game came around when I was in a very difficult spot in my life, and I give it credit to get me out of it. It helped me to break out of my shell a little bit, be more confident in myself, to try and make friends and say yes to things more often. The idea of the social link system isn't exactly novel — it's just a gamified version of anime's favorite conceit, "My Friends Are My Power" — but damn if it wasn't the message I needed at the time. So I owe Persona 4: Golden. Not the other ones, though.

Rune Factory 4

"Stardew Valley?" you say? Huh, what? I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the 400th hour I've spent on the best farming/dungeon crawling simulator in videogame history. I bought Rune Factory 4 on a whim during a sale, not thinking I'd spend too much time on it. God, was I wrong. So, so wrong. Everything about Rune Factory 4 feels so good to actually engage in. Farming crops to make money to get stronger to go dungeon crawling to unlock new farming items to farm better and so on and so forth. Plus there's an actually interesting plot to delve into, even if it's fairly standard JRPG fare, along with a huge cast of characters to get to know in detail. Not to be dramatic, but I'd die for Forte.

Wonderful 101

"Wonder Team, diplomacy has failed!" And unfortunately, so did this game's sales numbers. Wonderful 101 deserved better than it got. Critics lambasted it for its esoteric character action mechanics. It was released on a system that me and two other people bought. It's one of Platinum's messiest games. But I'm here to tell you: none of that matters!!! Wonderful 101 is a joy on every level, a kaleidoscope of everything that makes Platinum and character action games great. It has the strongest finale in any videogame I've ever played (Mash A to Save the World), and some of Platinum's greatest set-pieces. It's a celebration of the kind of ridiculous that only videogames can pull off, and I hope it gets the chance to shine again someday.

Holy shit!!! That was so goddamn long. Thank you for reading about the thirty games I liked most these past ten years. Here's hoping the next ten are just as good, in terms of the games we get to play, and our lives in general, really. As usual, tell me your faves, as well as how wrong and/or right I was, either in the comments below or @mint on Mastodon! And if you like any of the stuff I write, please consider hitting up my Patreon or Ko-Fi. Thank you and see you in 2020!

Wow look at that, even more "Of the Year" stuff. Love to give my opinion about things, it's my favorite. Anyways, I'm keeping this one simple and just posting a bunch of videos/soundcloud links of music I liked this year. I couldn't bring myself to write about 30+ albums, I'm sorry. Think of it as a very fancy playlist. Also, assume — unless it's a single — that I enjoyed the whole album of any songs I post. As always, big shout-out to @rainfruit on Mastodon for doing the Game of the Year and Music of the Year art!

Thanks and enjoy ✌🏾

Caligula Overdose - Love Scope

Prescription for Sleep - Shovel Knight

Slow Magic - I'll Be There 4 U

Blue Encount - Polaris

Katana Zero - Delusive Bunker

Astral Chain - Savior

Pokemon Sword - Gym Leader Theme

Guilty Gear - Smell of the Game

River City Girls - Bully

Anamanaguchi - On My Own

Polkadot Stingray - A-un

Sayonara Wild Hearts - Inside

Daemon x Machina - Arms of the Immortal

Ace Combat 7 - Daredevil

Mikazuki BIGWAVE - I Wanna Be With You

https://mikazukibigwave.bandcamp.com/track/i-wanna-be-with-you

Jukio Kallio - Happy People

Survive Said the Prophet - Mukanjyo

Siren - Polrais

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road

Beyonce - Before I Let Go

Beyonce - MOOD 4 EVA

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers - Main Theme

Jaden Smith - K

Mansionair - Astronaut

Utada Hikaru - Face My Fears

Battle Tapes - Belgrade

Devil May Cry - Devil Trigger

Passion Pit & Galantis - I Found U

Asian Kung-Fu Generation - Dororo

Carly Rae Jepsen - Too Much

RADWIMPS - Tie Tongue

Kotonohouse - Good Bye

BABYMETAL - Shanti Shanti Shanti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQnG_T7kbt

The year is slowly coming to a close, which means it's time for me to talk about the games I really liked this year. At first glance, I thought this year was pretty weak when it came to releases overall. But when I went through and compiled my list, I realized there were a lot of nice experiences that I almost forgot I enjoyed in the first place. This is probably because time feels like an exhausting, compressed orb that is crushing us all and leaving no hope for the future.

Or something.

Regardless, there was quite a bit to enjoy this year, so without further ado, let's get started! Oh but two addendums: First, know that this list does include games that didn't actually come out this year specifically. This is a list of games that I played this year and enjoyed, regardless of release date. This list is also unranked, because ranked lists are weird to me in a medium that provides so many varied experiences. And finally, shout out to @rainfruit on Mastodon for doing this year's GOTY and MOTY art!

Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition

Vesperia was always a bit of a white whale for me, having released on a console I was never interested in. I had always heard of its quality, but never got a chance to experience it myself. Luckily, Bandai Namco agreed that more people should be able to enjoy the game, and released it on the PS4 and Switch. And I'm glad they did — Tales of Vesperia is every bit as good as people made it out to be, and has aged gracefully since its original release. The cast is entertaining, and the questions the game asks about following authority in the face of desperate situations are interesting. Yuri is the type of person that would rather feed a fascist to giant scorpions than try and use the power of friendship to defeat him, which feels especially prescient in 2019. A weaker final-third isn't enough to stop Vesperia from being one of the best games I played this year.

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

I've been waiting for this game for so long, and wow did Team Aces deliver. After a series of middling-to-downright-disappointing releases, Ace Combat 7 looked to be a return to form, going back to its focus on weird military plots and giant fantasy-sci fi weapons. The game deals it in spades. If you've never played it before, Ace Combat is basically Metal Gear Solid in jets, with an incredible soundtrack to match. In fact, it fills in the hole where Metal Gear Solid used to be, now that Hideo Kojima is too busy with his current Postman simulator. Definitely check it out.

Slay the Spire

There's a beauty to "just one more run" types of games. I'm usually deeply addicted to at least one of them every year, and this year's culprit is Slay the Spire. It took forever to release to the Switch, but boy if the wait wasn't worth it — my playtime can attest to that. I was surprised that no one had thought to combine the standard rougelike structure into a card game before, because it fits the genre like a glove. Crafting the perfect deck is a combination of skill and luck that almost never feels unfair, and there are always new strategies to experiment with. Despite coming out months ago, I still play Slay the Spire at least once every day, which is pretty much the most ringing endorsement I can give it.

Devil May Cry V

I was tempted to just type "Pull My Devil Trigger" in this spot and moving on, but I promised I was going to put more effort into this post this year, so here we are. Like Ace Combat 7, Devil May Cry V is a return to form, long-awaited after the edgy, sniper-abortion-filled mess that was DmC: Devil May Cry. And like Ace Combat 7, it was worth the wait: DMCV is the most accessible game in the series, with tight character-action that has a huge skill-ceiling, but can still be enjoyed by casual players who just want to do cool shit and look cool doing it. The soundtrack slaps, the story is nonsensical hype, and there's at least one scene where the main characters do a silly dance — there's really no more to it.

Now it's time to stare at Platinum expectantly until it gives us Bayonetta 3 so we can keep this genre-train going.

Dragalia Lost

Now I know what you're thinking: "Really Mint? A gacha phone game?" But hear me out: Dragalia Lost is really good. It is! It's just a competently made game. The gacha is there, but really only necessary for the most hardcore endgame content, which I'm personally not that interested in. I and a few friends have played the game for a while now without spending a single cent, and get along just fine. It's polished in a way that I never would have expected from a mobile game — a genre that I actually didn't have much experience with before Dragalia Lost, but which I now appreciate given my busy lifestyle. So yeah. It's on the list! This is my blog, what are you gonna do about it??

Katana Zero

I wasn't expecting to like Katana Zero as much as I did. I finished it in a day, which is less a testament to the game's length and more to the fact that I literally could not put it down until I was finished with it. After the semi-disappointment that was Hotline Miami 2, Katana Zero tagged itself in to offer the same fast-paced, instant respawn gameplay. The Swordsman begins and ends the game with the same skillset, with each room he cuts his way through turning into a puzzle that forces you to use the kit to its fullest potential. There's also an extremely unique and interesting dialogue system that I wasn't expecting, where your protagonist has time to interrupt or ignore conversations as they happen. It doesn't have much of an effect on the plot itself, but I appreciated the personalization it added. Honestly the only thing I didn't like about Katana Zero was that it ended with some questions left unanswered. I want more, which says a lot about the game.

Final Fantasy: Lightning Returns

Bet you weren't expecting to find a weirder choice for a GOTY pick than Dragalia Lost, were you? Listen: I finally got around to playing the Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy this year. I liked FFXIII, and I wasn't very fond of FFXIII-2. But Lightning Returns hit me in a way I wasn't expecting. Everything about it, from its action-y combat system to the meloncholy-yet-hopeful atmosphere to the fact that I got to play dress-up with Lightning, made it stick out to me as a memorable Final Fantasy experience. Those are few and far between, so I have to give credit where credit where it's due. And I also have to give credit to the fact that the XIII trilogy really wasn't that bad — hindsight is 20/20 and all that, but I'm going to be a bit more wary of ruthless gamer criticism from now on.

Collection of Mana

Going to give it to you straight: the only real reason that this game is on the list is because Seiken Densetsu 3, now officially known in the west as Trials of Mana, finally got a true, localized released in the states. After Chrono Trigger, Trials of Mana is one of my favorite SNES games ever, and one of my favorite games of all time, so I'm extremely happy that it's easier for people to enjoy it. This game was truly ahead of its time, with multiple story paths based on a chosen character, cool job upgrades, and a natural evolution to Secret of Mana's combat that makes it even more engaging...honestly the only caveat I can give towards this game is maybe waiting until next year to play the remake, which will without a doubt also be on next year's GOTY list.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers

This was a tough one for me to put on the list, to be honest. Do expansions count enough to be their own game? Sure, why not. The real issue for me, though, is that to enjoy Shadowbringers you have to run the MMO gauntlet in Final Fantasy XIV's A Realm Reborn questline, and that's such a big caveat that until it gets fixed by Yoshi-P and Co., I can't recommend FFXIV wholeheartedly. All that said, Shadowbringers is simply the best Final Fantasy experience in years, if not a full decade. It captures the sprit of the series that I haven't felt so strongly since FFX. The story is beautifully woven, filled to the brim with callbacks to the years-long journey our Warrior of Light has been on that it makes the whole thing feel personal in a way that's only possible in a well-written MMO. Its finale is one of the most exciting things I've experienced this year. And it has a Nier crossover! I mean, come on! Do I really have to explain further?

Grandia HD Collection

I'm so happy this pair of games hasn't been entirely forgotten. Yeah, the port is a bit rough around the edges, but it doesn't dull the shine these games give off. The first game is so endearing and earnest in its pursuit for adventure that it feels like a relic from happier times. The latter is what happens when you get the entire cast of Metal Gear Solid and have them dub a JRPG. And both games have a battle system that still hasn't been topped by most of the competition in its genre. I always appreciate a JRPG that turns standard encounters that are usually a "Mash X to win" affair into something engaging, and I'm surprised more games haven't gone the route of Child of Light and tried to imitate the style. Regardless, the Grandia HD Collection is a classic experience that shouldn't be overlooked.

Astral Chain

I feel bad for the people who thought Astral Chain was going to have a plot like Nier Automata's. That was a Yoko Taro endeavor, and while Astral Chain plays very similarly, it doesn't deliver nearly as much on the narrative front. That's fine though because Astral Chain whips so much ass. Very rarely do I anticipate something as much as I did this game and end up being satisfied on every level, but that's how I felt playing this one. The combat takes a few hours to get used to, but eventually it turns into an acrobatic dance of death, with you and your (Chaos) Legion cutting through the battlefield in a synchronized display. It is, for lack of a better word, hype, and I was whooping with excitement more times than I can count. PlatinumGames rarely disappoint, and Astral Chain was no exception.

River City Girls

I love cute stuff. It's an aspect of myself that I have fully embraced this past year and a half, and I've been a lot happier for it. Shedding toxic masculinity and embracing pastels is something I recommend to everyone. River City Girls is about cute girls in pastels that kick ass — of course it was going to be on this list. It's an entertaining beat-em-up experience from beginning to end, with a lot of combo potential and some great dialogue. Kyoko is one of my favorite characters of the year, too. The ending leaves a lot to be desired, and it's probably not nearly as fun if you're playing it by yourself unless you're a major River City fan, but you're always one dab away from forgetting all that and enjoying yourself.

Code Vein

I'm not, like, the biggest Dark Souls fan. I like Bloodborne, but that's about it. A good way to get me to like Dark Souls is to let me make a hot anime girl, with multiple coffins strapped to her outfit like a walking Hot Topic advertisement. It also helps to make the game approachable and accessible in a way that Dark Souls isn't (more on that later). Code Vein is probably "too easy" for Dark Souls purists. Its story leaves much to be desired — hell, I started skipping some of the cutscenes if they were repetitive or dragged on for too long. But dammit if it wasn't fun to play! It was edgy and faux-heavy metal in a way only anime can be, and watching my hot vampire girl and her hot vampire friends kill monsters never stopped being entertaining.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Oh hey, speaking of approachable Dark Souls! I've always been a fan of Respawn, so I was confident that Fallen Order would be a good experience. What I didn't expect was that it was going to be Dark Souls with difficulty levels, sprinkled with some Metroid and a dash of Tomb Raider platforming. It's a chimeric little game, and while it's derivative in most senses of the word, it does all of the things it copies very well. The combat is fast and fun, and the exploration is fulfilling outside of some tedious backtracking at times. I wasn't expecting a Star Wars game, a genre known for its explosive set-pieces, to be so meditative. Sifting through beautiful locals alone with my thoughts as I traveled from one place to the next was a relaxing experience. It ends on a strong note, and while I don't feel inclined to ever really go back to it, that's fine — I enjoyed the time I spent with it.

Groove Coaster: Wai Wai Party

I'm glad I waited a bit to write this list, or I would have missed adding Groove Coaster to it. Groove Coaster is one of my favorite games ever, and definitely my favorite rhythm game. I've been playing the series since 2011, if you'd believe it! This game is most similar to the Arcade Cabinets you'd find at a Round 1 or similar, with lots of tracks from Vocaloid, Virtual Youtubers, and Touhou. It feels like a game built specifically for me in many ways, and even has songs from anime like Neon Genesis Evangalion and Gurren Lagann! My favorite part of the game are the "ad-lib" notes, secret notes that you can press along to the rest of a track's beat-map to increase your score. It's very intuitive, and it's always satisfying to go that extra mile and feel like you've solved a little puzzle by paying attention to the song's route.

This section feels a little less restrained, sorry about that. I just really like Groove Coaster! I think everyone should play it. The only negative is that the DLC is pricey, and of course that includes the Undertale tracks.

Indivisible

I want to open with saying that I would literally die for Ajna. This is barely a joke. The cast of Indivisible is fantastic, and the writing amongst the party members never stops being entertaining. Some of the designs for them are a bit cheesecake-y, but that's made up for with its diversity. There are tons of different cultures on display in this game, and it's great to see. Indivisible isn't a perfect game by any means, and I'd argue it's not nearly as polished as Lab Zero's only release before it, Skullgirls. But it's filled with a lot of heart and passion you can feel in every part of the game. It's not a challenging experience by any means, but it's relaxing and comfy in that rental-PS2 game sort of way. I'll definitely be going back to it when some QOL features are added, but even then, it deserves a spot on this list.

Addendum

If you're a Patreon subscriber you may notice a particular omission from the first version of this list – Kingdom Hearts 3. As I understand it that game comes out January 23rd, 2020, so I'll see if I add it then, but as of this point I'm annoyed enough with the product that we got that I can't add it to this list without feeling like I'm lying to myself/banking on my own fandom as a reason to keep it on. Which sucks! I liked KH3 at first but my opinion has just completely soured on it, and as someone who's been into this series since I was like, 7, that's pretty disappointing to think about.

And that's it!!! All in all, a surprisingly solid year for games. What were your faves? Tell me here, or @eightbitsamurai on Mastodon! And if you like any of the stuff I write, please consider hitting up my Patreon or Ko-Fi! :)

There haven't been many new games to play lately, but that hasn't stopped me.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

I wanted so badly for this game to be good. Luckily, it is! I am not that into Star Wars and frankly I like the tv shows more than the books – thankfully, Fallen Order lands closer to the latter than the former. Its plot isn't mind-blowing by any means, and the lack of fast-travel options is frustrating later on, but it's a solid game that apes on lots of other games and mixes them together into a familiar and enjoyable blend. Taking the posture-based combat of Sekiro and combining it with the exploration of a Metroid game and the platforming of a Tomb Raider game is not something I would have expected from a Star Wars game, of which what we've gotten since the Disney acquisition has been bland and boring. But surprisingly it all works. It's a game that doesn't outstay is welcome and never stops being boring, all the way up to the end. Even Blando Calrissian grew on me by the time I was finished. I recommend it!

Final Fantasy XIV

I'll never stop singing this game's praises, and the introduction of the Nier Raid is no exception. Lately though, I've given myself the goal of getting one Physical DPS, one Ranged DPS and one Magical DPS leveled up so I can run all three kinds whenever I want. I have Dancer up to 80, and am in the process of leveling Ninja. Right now I'm deciding between Black Mage and Summoner for my Magical DPS. Leveling hasn't been so bad. I'm not in any rush to get any of the classes leveled up quickly, so I log on, say hi to my Free Company, and hit the roulettes. So far I'm quite liking Ninja at level 46ish, though I'll need to check a guide for the rotation. I like classes that can do lots of support and utility, which it fits into nicely.

After I'm done with all that, I might get into healing again. Who knows!

Pokemon Sword

I almost didn't want to put this on the list because of how it's been an instant drama lightning rod lately, but this is my blog and I do what I want so whatever!!!

Speaking honestly: Pokemon Sword is a good Pokemon game. It's the furthest I've gotten into a Pokemon game since Ruby and Emerald. That being said: there's a lack of polish that I really wasn't expecting, on pretty much every level, from the weird pop-up to the awkward slow-downs to the fact that - and this is not a joke - you can see a mouse cursor flying by in the game's credits sequence. It's a great, functional game, but it's definitely no "Pokemon of the Wild," so to speak. I think the people who were hoping for something more have valid complaints, but I don't fault people for enjoying it, either. Will I buy the next one any time soon? Not until they shake up the formula, I don't think. I have the benefit of not having played much Pokemon in a very long time, which helps in that regard, but once I finish Sword, I think I'll have had my fill for another long while.

Smash Bros Ultimate

Terry is out, and he owns. He feels like a natural evolution of a character like Ryu, a fully integrated traditional fighting game character in a Smash Bros game. He hits hard, has lots of options, some extremely sick cancel combos, and just is a blast to play in general.

In terms of who I want next: 2B, as usual. Sora would also be cool, but feels unlikely. Shante? ...I don't know who else I'd want, to be honest. It feels like this game has everyone, but I'm sure Sakurai has more surprises in store.

What about you? Tell me what you've been playing, either here or on Mastodon at @eightbitsamurai! And if you like any of the stuff I write, please consider hitting up my Patreon or Ko-Fi! :)

It’s snowing outside and I want to write something so here we go.

I love debating power levels, I grew up on DBZ so that sort of thing is inevitable. My current question has been, while playing the Dissidia Mobile game, “which Final Fantasy protagonist is the strongest?” Luckily I’m enough of a clown to have what I think is a definitive answer, but it comes with a couple of caveats. This will be based purely on performed feats, which is important to make note of, and does not include MMO characters (although if I did, the FFXI Warrior of Light would absolutely be strongest). Spoilers for Final Fantasy games to follow, but they’re minor.

So, in my opinion, Lightning is the strongest Final Fantasy protagonist, but not at first. In Final Fantasy XIII she’s pretty powerful, but I’d say Cloud and Zidane could take a crack at her and win.

It’s Final Fantasy XIII-2 where things get wild.

In Final Fantasy XIII-2 you learn about how Lightning became a defender of the Goddess Etro, and it’s at this point where she becomes the strongest playable character in the entire Final Fantasy series, discounting glitches and exploits. In the Requiem of the Goddess DLC, Lightning can have 999,999 HP, and 9999 Strength and Magic.

“Okay Mint,” you say. “But that’s DLC. What if we discount it?” Well she only gets stronger! In Lightning Returns, she can cap out at the above, reach ridiculous levels of speed, max out her affinity with all elements, Elementaga, Holy, Time Travel, and Odin at her disposal. The girl is stacked, and in terms of feat goes on to kill, like, multiple gods.

That said, I did mention caveats, and one of the big ones is that Lightning Returns isn’t technically a mainline Final Fantasy games. So what if we take away all the extra games and focus on Roman Numeral titles only? Then I’d say Noctis is the strongest character in the series.

The Ring of Lucii makes Noctis ridiculously OP. If Lightning’s strength comes from getting pissed at the gods, then his comes from being “supported by them” (whether it’s really support is in and of itself debatable, but nonetheless he does get his power from them). His royal arms also make him ridiculously powerful, and by XV’s end-game he’s more powerful than the astrals of his universe. He could stomp XIII Lightning in a second.

So that’s what it comes down to, in my opinion. Just to finish it off, here’s my full list of protags, excluding the Warrior of Light, Firion, and Onion, because there aren’t enough feats to actually judge them:

1. Lightning (God Mode) and/or Noctis
2. Terra Branford
3. Zidane Tribal
4. Cloud Strife (especially post-Advent Children)
5. Cecil Harvey
6. Squall Leonhart
7. Bartz Klauser
8. Tidus
9. Vaan

Oops lol.

Of course as soon as I wrote that last post, I get laid off! Should have seen that one coming, heh.

Anyways this is a new segment I call "What I've Been Playing," which is exactly what it sounds like. It exists because I find that full reviews of games are exhausting for me, but I still want this blog to have a purpose.

Anyways, let's talk!

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition

Yes that's the real, full name.

DQXIS:EoaEA-DA is a reminder that JRPGs can be good. A "good" JRPG to me is one that isn't stuffed with loli bullshit, and tells a story that isn't groan-worthy. DQXI has both of these things, so it's already a 7/10 for me. What bumps it into fantastic territory is its character moments and town design. The dialogue in this game is sublime, and even the most minor NPCs have interesting things to say, along with full character arcs at times. It's a game that feels like a warm meal on a cold winter day, and I appreciate that.

Also Jade hot.

The only downside I can think of in DQXI is the absolutely atrocious music. Even setting aside the fact that it's made by a bigot, it's just so goddamn bad. Turn it off and play literally any other track you might own on top of it. Or listen to a podcast. This is a good game for that sort of thing, especially during the dungeon crawler segments.

Otherwise, yeah, an amazing game and I hope to finish the third act after taking a break.

Code Vein

Code Vein is called anime Dark Souls, but it's more than that, I think. It feels like Code Vein is designed to spite the standard Dark Souls systems. It's "difficult," but not overwhelming, explorable but not labyrinthian. It's a game that metaphorically and literally gives you a gun to use on people with swords. It's not really a contest unless you're playing the game without an ally, if your cute guy/gal vampire power-fantasy gets interrupted by a swarm of enemies, or annoying tracking attacks.

I liked Code Vein. I finished it in a few days, which is really saying something, considering my gaming habits (finishing shit?? Never heard of her). There are some questionable character designs that I wasn't a fan of, and some melodramatic moments that I skipped, but its gameplay loop was undeniably doing something for me. I recommend it for people who are scared of Dark Souls, because this game definitely is a good entry point into that genre — it'll be more difficult for you than it was for me, but it doesn't punish you for your mistakes as much. Also its character creator is worth the price of admission alone, in my opinion.

Indivisible

It has problems, this is absolutely true. The back-half is too easy for most people, and the lack of fast-travel is a pain. But Indivisible is just so goddamn cute that I can't bring myself to care. I loved Ajna and her group of diverse misfit friends. I loved doing 200 hit combos. I loved the music. And I really loved the platforming. I wasn't expecting Indivisible to change the world when I backed it, but I trusted Lab Zero to make something worth playing, and that happened. It was the perfect length for me, and I see myself doing another playthrough in the future, after the game's issues have been further fleshed out and new characters are added.

Children of Morta

So. This one came out of nowhere for me.

I had heard of Children of Morta before, but I didn't know what to expect from it. I'm only a few hours in, but what I've gotten from it is a beautiful pixel game with engaging dungeon crawling mechanics. Which is great! But what really sets this game apart for me is the story.

I am, in the words of Guile, a family man. It's really important to me and is a long-standing part of the culture I've grown up in. Videogames don't tell stories about family that often. And I'm not including all those games from developers that have a kid and feel the need to make a game about how they'd kill anyone to protect them.

That's what makes Morta so refreshing. It's a game about an entire family that has to fight off a sinister Corruption to protect the land. Between dungeon runs, you get brief moments between the characters that flesh them out and make them feel like more than just character classes you swap between. One of the first in the game is about Kevin, who wants to help his older sister and dad fight as well. I admit that I almost teared up when he was finally allowed to join.

I'm a sap, so this works for me. And just look at that sprite-work! It's gorgeous! I can't wait to keep playing this game and experience more of these story beats.

That's Vol. 1 of "What I've Been Playing!" What about you? Let me know here or tell me @eightbitsamurai on Mastodon! And if you like any of the work I do, consider hitting up my Patreon or Ko-Fi please! :)

It's been a while since I posted, so I figured I'd let everyone know what's up.

The big update about my life is that I think I've achieved a semblance of that impossible goal of "life-balance," weirdly enough. I've been regularly working out, reading, and working on my book pretty much every day. On Saturdays I stream with my buddy Jared, when we can, and I consider my Sunday a free day to be a couch potato. I go to bed almost always at 11 and wake up at 6. It's shocking. There has been a consistency to the things I do that I am surprised by – the free-form nature of my college life made me used to staying up until 3AM, waking up at 10, doing the exact opposite the next day, and doing nothing but play Nuclear Throne or what-have-you.

To that end, I haven't actually been playing that many games lately. By the time I do all the stuff I want to do in a day, I have an hour, maybe two, to play a game, and I tend to stray towards one-offs like Overwatch or Apex Legends to unwind. Trying to dig into some giant RPG is an exercise in futility. And beyond that, I just haven't found myself that interested in games that are coming out recently, besides Astral Chain, which I devoured in a week, and River City Girls, which I played on stream. I've been curtailing my game purchases to save up for a trip to Japan next year, and in the process have come to realize that most of the stuff I find myself excited for, I don't end up finishing. I'm trying to be pickier in what I play, to prevent any more of the sensation of staring at a long list of games and not wanting to play any of them.

Besides that, I'm beginning to realize that I'm not content with how I've been spending my time. Obviously some of that can be blamed on capitalism – maybe if I didn't spend 8 hours a day in an office, I'd have more time to do what I wanted – but I can't really stop that (yet), so instead I'm taking the sickle to all of that to focus on my creative endeavors. Like most people in their mid-twenties, I've condensed my identity into the things I consume and the things I'm ashamed of not having done yet. For me that shame points toward my book. I'm progressing steadily through the second draft, despite spending a lot of time ignoring it in favor of doing literally anything else, almost afraid that if I opened its document it might yell at me for neglecting it for so long. Recently however, I read through the manuscript and, perhaps for the first time ever, realized I was making something that maybe, potentially, possibly, just might be worth reading.

Confidence? In my writing? It's less likely than you think.

It's impressive how that one tiny firefly of self-esteem illuminated the pages so that I could see them again, and this time finish them. Anyone who tells you that depression enhances their creativity is wrong, possibly the most wrong anyone has ever been in their life. I feel unwound. Like I can stretch my limbs all the way out to the end of this project that's been hounding me since 2017 and feels like it's just getting off the ground.

That isn't to say that I'm not stressed out – I am, all the time – but I feel like I'm still in control: of the things I can fix myself, of the way I spend my time, and how I can react to the problems life has been throwing at me. I want to say that this is what it's like to be an adult, but I know for a fact the rug will be pulled out from under me, and I'll have some new, harsh life lesson taught to me that I was never expecting.

But that's where I'm at. I'm already compiling my list of Games of the Year and Music of the Year. If I don't post again in a while, you can be sure those two things will most definitely be happening (they have to, I already have Mint art ready for it, heh). In the meantime, I hope life is treating you kindly, and that you are treating yourself the same.

PS: Spook Month, Spook Month, Spook Month, Spook Month, Spook Month

Third Time’s the Charm??

I’m free from Shadowbringer’s icy grip and can do other things with my life again…like play other videogames! This isn’t totally fair, I’ve also started drawing and have actually been pretty consistent with my novel, but you know, whatever. Anyways I played the Oninaki demo. That’s my intro, let’s just jump in and talk about it!

I can pretty easily say that this is already Tokyo RPG Factory’s best game so far, even having spent only a few hours with Oninaki. You can tell, because it has a soul, which is more than I could say of their previous two games – and this is coming from someone who actually liked I am Setsuna! But where that game and its predecessor were so intent on capturing an era of nostalgia without remembering what made the games from said era actually good, Oninaki feels like it was born from an interesting idea then expanded upon. The game is about a young man named Kagachi who can go between the real world and “The Veil,” a place where lingering spirits of people get stuck in a sort of limbo. As a Watcher, it’s he and his friend Mayuri’s job to send those spirits off so that they can be reincarnated.

This involves a lot of beating evil spirits up. Where Tokyo RPG Factory’s previous games were turn-based, ATB affairs, Oninaki is an Action-RPG. I can best compare it to a Mana game, with a dash of Diablo and a sprinkle of, weirdly enough, Chaos Legion mixed in. You team up with cool spirits to run through scores and scores of enemies on your quest to ease the spirits of those that have passed. It’s a relatively simple affair, but when it flows, it flows, especially when you start collecting more spirits and unlock more moves.

Depending on the kind of person you are and what kinds of games you like, Oninaki’s combat could best be described as either “meditative,” or “boring.” I enjoyed taking out enemies at a rhythmic pace, listening to a podcast all the while. But I could also see it easily putting you to sleep, seeing as there wasn’t much challenge to speak of, and some sections felt like they went on a bit too long for my taste. It might be worth it to turn up the difficulty from Normal Mode, just to make your pulse quicken. Luckily you can switch difficulties whenever you want, which is something I always appreciate!

That said, I think it’s worth it for the game’s world-building and atmosphere alone. This game was a lot more reflective and self-aware than I was expecting. It immediately explores the aspects that come with being able to see the dead, and the impact a Watcher could have on someone who might have lost a son, for example. There are some pretty dark concepts though, and I’d throw in a content warning for suicide, of which there’s, uh, a lot of discussion around, even this early in the game, haha.

I also love the art style and character art. The daemons, as well as Kagachi and Mayuri, all look great, and I’m excited to see what more of your spirit companions look like.

Now onto the meh stuff – this game can chug. The beginning especially felt like the game missed its alarm and was rushing to catch up and load as you played it. An example below:

Oof. This translates into the combat as well, although I feel like I got more of a hang of it as time went on, I think it could be smoothed out just a bit. Also, the game is in Japanese, which is fine, but there’s so much dialogue that occurs between Kaguchi and his daemons that doesn’t get subtitled, which I feel kills some of the world-building that Tokyo RPG Factory has spent time crafting. Lastly, there’s a weird lack of music in the game. I passed through dungeons that were almost completely silent save for the occasional tune when a tougher enemy or boss appeared. I feel like the monotony of the combat could be dialed down with a bit of music!

All that said, I’m cautiously optimistic for Oninaki. If its sluggishness could get improved before release, and if its retains its interesting story through the whole game, I could see it being a great time!

This Lore Entry contains spoilers up through Stormblood, with major spoilers about Heavensward. Thanks for reading!

Mint was born in the west of the Azim Steppe’s great plains, in the Towering Still, as part of the Qalli tribe. Her settlement was one of the smaller of the Au Ra, and being a fiercely territorial group, in which ones herd determines their strength, it was quickly overrun by stronger Au Ra. Mint’s parents, more unorthadox than most of their kind, refused to let their child be raised in servitude, and thusly paid to have their then one-year-old daughter moved to an orphanage in Ul’dah where she could be properly taken care of, with the help of a traveling Lalafellin merchant named Papoki Poki.

However, as Papoki did his duty, he came to find himself rather fond of the girl, with her piercing green eyes and cheerful song — even as an infant, Mint never cried. Feeling that he could do just as good, if not better a job than any Ul’dan orphanage, Papoki took the girl under his own wing, and named her Popoki Poki.

Thus did Mint, then known as Popoki, grow up with her adoptive Lalafellin father. She travelled throughout Eorzea with Papoki as he went on with his merchant duties, and in doing so learned more about the world, and how to communicate within it. As an Au Ra of the Qalli, she had learned to communicate through song, and so the common-tongue came as a struggle to her. To this day, she still finds herself ending her sentences with a faint lilt, a reminder of home.

As Popoki grew up, she realized she found herself well in-tuned with the elementals, who communicated with her often in her teenage years. Papoki, an earthly man with little interest in the aetherial, did little to engage with this aspect of Popoki’s growth, electing to instead have her focus on the ability to defend herself with sword and staff.

Unfortunately, tragedy struck soon after Popoki’s 17th year, when their merchant cart was attacked by bandits near Limsa Lominsa. Papoki was mortally wounded in the process, and he bade Popoki run to Gridania, where he knew the Padjal would take her in due to her conjuring capabilities. He passed before he could tell the girl more of her Au Ra past, a subject he regrettably never approached with his daughter, in fear that she would leave him.

Alone, Popoki made her way to Gridania, but with no coin to her name, there was no way to get there by Airship, Chocobo Cart, or Aethryte Crystal. And so the trip took closer to a year, especially as the girl took various odd jobs as a healer and found she was quite good at it, in no small part to elemental attuning. Popoki soon found herself part of a rag-tag group of medics that took to the Carteneau Flats after Bahamut was struck down, giving aid to any who needed it. Exhausted, the girl finally found herself in Gridania, where E-Sumi-Kan took note of the girl’s healing ability, just as Papoki predicted, and bade her join the Conjurer’s Guild, where she would go on to become a White Mage. It was a Job that Popoki found she took great joy in, as she felt that she was in some small part making up for her inability to save her father.

Soon thereafter, Popoki’s adventures as a Warrior of Light began. The story has been told a million times over already, but there have been some facts omitted or unknown up to this point. However, after my chance meeting with the famed adventurer in a bar in the Ishgardian Brume, I’m able to reveal them to you!

First — though many an admirer has professed to her, Popoki is already married. The circumstances of said coupling were…curious, to say the least. Apparently she met the Miqo’te, named Brimstone, while galivanting through the Gridanian wilderness during a Starlight Celebration. After a one-night stand that apparently involved a moogle’s pom-pom, a unicorn the Warrior of Light found and tamed, and a bet on who could hold their breath in one of Gridania’s waterfalls longest, Popoki found herself married to the girl the next day. Luckily it seems to have worked out alright for the two of them, despite everyone else’s confusion.

Popoki’s life as a White Mage ended after her dear friend, Haurchefant lost his life in the Dragonsong War. Having grown disillusioned with the art of healing, and its inability to save anyone she was fond of, she took on the mantle of the Red Mage during the rest of her time in Ishgard.

Popoki also found herself slowly losing her ability to commune with the elementals, apparently after she briefly lost the power of the Echo during the Dragonsong War. Her ability to speak to them would end completely soon after the Stormblood revolution.

Speaking of — during her time in Doma, Popoki found herself in the Azim Steppe once again, and had a brief encounter with her Qalli tribe. Though she had no deep connection with the tribe at this point in her life, it felt good to come home and be amongst her cultural roots. It was then that she also learned her original name: Sarantuya Qalli.

But why does everyone call her Mint, you may ask? It was a nickname bequeathed to her after she dyed her hair a deep green in honor and memory of her father Papoki, who called it his favorite color.

So, where is Mint now? Well, it’s said that after the events in Doma, Mint went on a bit of a vacation, where she could be found most often in the Golden Saucer and Costa Del Sol. She apparently took on dancing as a hobby in the meanwhile. But, last I heard, she had somehow found herself in the First, greatly changed. In what way, I can’t be sure, but I imagine she isn’t too stressed about the situation. One thing Mint told me in our time in the Brume was that her multifaceted life and upbringing, and her connection with the aether, has made her worry very little about the physical and material. Au Ra, Lalafell, or whatever else, what matters most to her are the bonds she forges with others. Regardless of what’s changed about her now, I’m sure that part of her has stayed the same.

I haven’t played a Pokémon game to completion since Gold came out in 2000. 19 years of Pokémon games have been released since, and with each new generation I try to get back in and find myself bouncing off of them, feeling like I’ve wasted the money and time I put into them. I’ve learned from my mistakes, and don’t plan on getting Pokémon Sword and Shield, but the lack of changes in the games even as what is supposed to be "The Big One," the first mainline Console Pokémon, fails to engage me, has made me think about what my ideal Pokémon game would be. That’s what this post is about. What would it take to bring me back? I’m no game developer by any means, so please take these ideas with a grain of salt. I’m sure they’d need to be balanced to some extent and most probably aren’t possible. But I think if even a few of these ideas got implemented, I’d be a lot more excited for a new Pokémon game.

Note: I’ll be using a lot of Gen 1 Pokémon as examples because they’re the only ones I remember…sorry, heh.)

Wanna Catch ‘Em All

When it comes down to it, Pokémon is a game about catching. The entire premise of the series stems from the creator’s love for finding and collecting bugs in the Japanese countryside. As the series has progressed, however, it feels like that focus has been lost. Development is almost entirely spent on changing a battle system that is, in my opinion, perfected. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Mega Evolutions were the last thing that needed to be added to Pokémon’s combat, and that the only thing worth doing at this point is adding more of those, as well as new moves and balancing move-sets overall. I’ve never understood this focus on battling development — unless you play competitively, you’ll hardly ever feel the need to master the constantly changing mechanics (unless you got a harder Pokémon game…but we’ll get to that).

So instead, why not focus on enhancing the mechanics built around catching Pokémon? I hate using the word immersive, but it honestly fits here: making a region where the Pokémon feel like actual animals, with unique patterns of behavior towards the game world and the player, would do a lot to make the game more engaging to me. What if the rattatta you saw on the field ran away from you and up a tree out of reach, instead of just being a random encounter? What if the only way to get that rattatta to engage with you was to have a flying Pokémon get up to that tree? What if you could sneak up on a Pokémon on the field and throw a pokeball then and there? If you can catch it unaware, you’d have a higher chance of catching it without battling — a thing that happens in the anime…a lot, actually. It could mimic the throwing mechanics from the Let’s Go games, but with the added option of not using motion controls.

Then you could expand on that with the game’s exploration aspects. What if there were quests that led to specific Pokémon you could catch, or even shiny variants? Say you hear about a strange black-colored Charizard in town that’s been hanging about in a nearby mountain range. What if you traveled to that mountain range with a rock Pokémon that could push boulders out of the way, or by sitting on the back of a flying Pokémon large enough to carry you? If you can get through the area successfully, you have a shot at catching a rare Pokémon without having to spend copious amounts of time waiting on RNG or having to trade your way to a shiny Pokémon. Other quests could give you access to rare, unique-sized, or even Max IV pokemon! You could have quests where you investigate a Pokémon that isn’t native to an area, or quests where you’ve found an Alolan version of a Pokémon on a different region — there are tons of possibilities that’d do a lot to break the pacing of Town → Gym → Town → Gym → Cave → Town → Gym.

The Detective Pikachu movie was so engaging to me as someone who’s nostalgic for pokemon because it put the focus on Pokémon existing as something other than a means to a battling-end. I think putting in the effort to make a region feel like a real world with Pokémon literally everywhere and existing outside of the realm of waiting to be caught by you would do a lot to excite me. Even just letting Pokémon interact with each other would do a lot to excite me! Imagine an Onix and a Graveler duking it out while you pass through a cave system? Or seeing a school of Magikarp being led by a Gyrados in the ocean?

I Be Up in the (Pokémon) Gym, Just Working on My (Pokémon) Fitness, He’s My Witness (Ooo-wee)

The other pillar in my boredom with the Pokémon Series is in regards to its in-game difficulty. It’s funny, Pokémon is a lot like fighting games, in my experience — the NPC fights are way too easy, but getting online requires more depth, preparation and meta-management than I have the time or skill for. So! I know online Pokémon is where the "real" difficulty is, but this post is going to focus on what difficulty can be pulled from the game’s campaign. I’d also like to say — these suggestions should be adjustable. All games should have difficulty modes anyways, and there’s nothing to stop what I’m about to suggest as being a "Hard" mode separate from the already existing easier version of Pokémon.

First, it’d be great to have trainers on the field that have more than two Pokémon at any time. Am I really the only trainer in the region that thinks to carry 6 Pokémon, outside of gym leaders and the elite 4? On top of that, have the trainers use stat-altering moves. Have them switch out Pokémon when necessary, and heal, and all that jazz. Basically, make them as strategic as gym leaders.

So that’s that, but speaking of gym leaders, how do we mix that up? What if we did something super out there: get rid of type gyms! There are so many Pokémon out there right now that you can do more than just types! As an example: what if one of the "gyms" was a Herpetarium, so you’d be battling serpent Pokémon? So you’ve got to consider Poison types like Ekans, but then you have stuff like Serperior, or Steelix, or Dragonaire, and maybe even some water types? And on top of that, what if the gym leaders had a pool of Pokémon they could choose from to make each battle a little different? Stuff like this could help mix up the variety of the battles, and force you to think outside your team of standard six, which gives you more of an incentive to catch and use Pokémon you might not have at that point in the game, or even in general! In my opinion, new mechanics like Dynamax don’t really need to be added — I just need a reason to more competently use the mechanics we already have.

Also, and of course this is a pie in the sky idea, but it’d be nice if fights were a little more dynamic. I’m not talking full action game here, but even just fighting Pokémon directly on the field as opposed to going to a new screen would help to make the game feel more lived-in as well. For stuff like water battles, you could still be transitioned to a battle arena, however.

Those are probably my biggest suggestions! I also had a wild idea about being one of the first explorers of a brand new region with no civilization, just new Pokémon to discover, but that felt more like a spin-off than what you’d expect from a mainline title. Maybe I’ll make a post on that one day though, where we can start shooting for some really off the wall ideas.

What would you like to see in your dream Pokémon game? Let me know, either by commenting here, hitting me up @eightbitsamurai on Mastodon, or @mintymentha on Twitter! And if you liked this post and want to see more like it, consider checking out and supporting my Patreon! Thanks for reading!

A couple of months ago I won an Xbox One at a Target that does contests nobody signs up for because they (understandably) believe they're a scam. They also gave me a copy of Anthem that I didn't want, which they were nice enough to exchange for a $60 gift-card, heh. This was a great win because it was a console I didn't own, but was always interested in – I've never had any kind of Xbox, only ever holding a controller of its ilk in my hand for Halo matches at friends' houses.

When I brought the thing home, I putzed around with it for a little bit, downloaded a bunch of games from the Game Pass trial that I immediately deleted after being overwhelmed, and started another Minecraft file before stopping because I remembered that I was incapable of making anything more than a dirt house in that game.

And then I remembered the Xbox One was backwards compatible.

The realization hit me like a wave. I hit the store: there was Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, a game I was hankering to play again but too lazy to pull out my PS3 for. Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey were accounted for as well, both games that I had always wanted to play on the 360. And so were all three games in the Final Fantasy XIII series.

Soooo in a whirlwind three or four weeks, I played all three FFXIII games, which is what this retrospective series is focusing on. I was considering making this one article, but I quickly realized that it'd be way too long, so I'll be writing one article for each game, starting with the first one, obviously. Please note that this is a retrospective, not a review – there's a lot to look back on with these games, but I'm more interested in looking at them nearly 10 years after their original release, not in the lens of a straight analytical review. Without further fanfare...

Fanfare

Final Fantasy XIII was revealed in 2006, when I was 12 years old, and released in 2010, when I was 16. I never actually played it when it released, which might come as a surprise to anyone who knows me and my love for the series. I can't exactly remember why I never did: I might have exhausted my 3 game allowance by the time it was released, or been distracted by other releases. You have to remember that 2010 also saw the release of Nier, Bayonetta, Vanquish, and Demon's Souls, all games I was extremely interested in and impressed by.

It was that, and most likely the reception from fans. At this point in my life I was actively keeping up with what the critical world had to say about videogames, and the general consensus on XIII was that it, shockingly, wasn't good. Some fans were saying it was the worst game in the series to date, as hyperbolic gamers are wont to do. I figured I'd decide for myself at a later date, and just never did. On top of that was the fact that my PS3 wasn't getting any younger, and running games on it was a huge pain. I learned this when I was 19 and finally decided to give the game a shot. Going back between it and other games on my PS4 was a chore that I eventually decided wasn't worth putting up with until now, 5 years later.

Now, having played it, I feel that FFXIII was unfairly shoved into the dirt. Nowadays I am most interested in games that have a solidified vision and execute that vision with intent. Final Fantasy XIII fits that criteria neatly, as it had a very specific message, and its creators built it in such a way that pretty much every aspect of its gameplay is tied into that message. Minus a few misgivings, it does what it sets out to achieve very well. Like all Final Fantasies, it is completely separate from every other game in the series. It's this uniqueness that makes each game stand out, but also what causes each one to get flack – uh, outside of the nostalgia that shows up for them later. However, FFXIII has received more animosity than any other FF before it, and that's for one big reason that we're going to need to talk about: the hallways.

Highway to Hell

A constant line of critique towards Final Fantasy XIII is the way it shuttles characters from one area to the next down what are essentially very long (and very pretty) hallways. The characters run from point A to point B, fighting enemies, and that's the core loop of the game. There are no towns to explore, and barely any characters to talk to. Critics complained that the game left little room to wander off the beaten path until the very last section of the game.

I personally didn't have a problem with this for a couple of reasons.

Baby We Were Born to Run

Final Fantasy XIII is about a group of people who are brought together under a series of unfortunate circumstances outside of their control, branded as fugitives and forced to run for their lives and find a way to change their fate and earn their freedom. It's an immediately compelling tale, with a cast of characters that constantly butt heads, argue, split up and rejoin, before unifying under a single banner to win the day. Lightning and Co. feel petty and vindictive and distrustful in a way that feels real. They're not buddies by any means – at least, not at first – and it was refreshing to see them come together in a way that felt slow and realistic.

The plot unfolds at a break-neck pace, and the game isn't interested in explaining its world to you. Unless you dive into the codex, you're forced to come along for the ride, just as disoriented as the cast that's been thrown headfirst into their unfortunate circumstances. This confusion feels like a deliberate choice – the worlds of Pulse and Cocoon existed long before you arrived, and when you do show up, it's in the midst of earth-shattering events that have everyone in a tizzy.

These elements reflect themselves in the hallways, which also feel like a deliberate choice. A band of fugitives on the run from the entire world don't really have time to stop and smell the flowers. They're not going to be able to run around town and talk to people who fear them as a threat to the entirety of civilization, whose faces are plastered on every TV labeling them as the enemy. Lightning and the gang are never really given a chance to breath, so it makes sense to me that this is reflected in the game's environmental design.

Blinded by Fight

The crux of every JRPG is the combat system. My playthroughs of games in this genre have lived and died on how entertaining the combat is, as you'll be spending 70% of your time in any particular JRPG fighting. It's why JRPGs that don't extend past mashing the "Attack" button don't last very long for me. No amount of fun exploration or interesting plot can get me to slog through a game with boring combat.

FFXIII doesn't have boring combat. The Paradigm System is one of the best combat systems in the entire Final Fantasy series, as far as I'm concerned. It perfects the ATB-style of fighting, gives it the flair of the ever-entertaining Job System from other Final Fantasies, and is deeply customizable. Every battle in FFXIII requires strategy and finesse – you can't auto-pilot your way through any encounter, because each one is a puzzle that asks you to break an enemy so that they stagger, letting you up your damage output and finish them off. Switching Paradigms becomes a juggling act to manage buffs and debuffs that can completely change the tide of battle.

Honestly the worst part of FFXIII is that it doesn't let you fully explore the potential of the Paradigm System until you're nearly finished with the game, and often restricts you to two party members for multiple acts throughout the main story, which limits your customization. But the fact that I wanted to fight more in this game is a miracle in and of itself, and participating in combat made those hated hallways fly by for me. I'd argue that the positives of the combat system outweigh the negative in the game's lack of exploration.

I'm an Adult (I Swear)

This last point is an extremely petty and personal reason why I don't care about XIII's hallways – I'm impatient. I have things to do. Other games I want to play. And FFXIII's bee-line approach makes getting through it quick and simple. You can get through it in a cool 30-35 hours if you skip the stuff in Pulse like I did, and I appreciated that! Too often, "exploration" in JRPGs is just for the sake of it, rarely providing anything of value and turning into a "check every room and talk to every person" checklist so you can find, at best, a hi-potion, or at worst, an unmarked quest that should have been easier to find in the first place. FFXIII trims the fat, and that's a personal positive for me.

How Different is it?

Often, Final Fantasy XIII is put up against other Final Fantasies and said to be too linear in comparison. But how much is that true? Going back and following the paths of the parties in previous Final Fantasies, you'll find that the formula of "linear first 3/4ths, open finale" is present in lots of them. Final Fantasy VI is basically a shuttle until the World of Ruin segment. I barely remember moving anywhere but a straight line in Final Fantasy X. And you could go wherever you wanted in Final Fantasy XII, provided you were fine with getting immediately killed by mobs too powerful for you to go up against. I would posit that Final Fantasy XIII's pathing is no more linear than some of the most popular Final Fantasy games. Sure, it's not true for every FF – but to say that FFXIII is alone in that category feels erroneous.

Overall I believe that the hate for Final Fantasy XIII's hallways overpowered any other potential conversation for the game, which is disappointing. You can tell that's the case, because the entirety of my retrospective on the first game in the series revolves around it. Hell, I'm at 1800 words so far, and I've done nothing but talk about the hallways! There's a conversation to be had here about how overblown complaints ruin the interesting conversations around a videogame – this certainly isn't the first game to receive this fate – but that's outside this retrospective's scope.

Regardless, I have to admit that I let this overblown """discourse""" color my own feelings about Final Fantasy XIII, which is disappointing. Take away the talk about tunnels and funnels, and you have a Final Fantasy with an interesting combat system and grating, realistic, ultimately endearing characters. I'm just saying, I'd die for Sazh, and I would absolutely let Fang kill me. I liked Final Fantasy XIII – not enough to put it in my top five, but certainly close to it.

But, what happens when we take the hallways away? In fact, what if we said "screw hallways! Let's have no direction at all!"? Well, then you get the subject of my following retrospective, Final Fantasy XIII-2. And the results, in my opinion...well, they aren't great. But we'll get into that next time.

So...until next time!

If you liked this post, or even just think I'm cute. maybe consider donating to my Patreon??

cw for depression and suicide

After a couple of unsavory events on Mastodon I withdrew for a bit, both because I was gettin' real tired of what was going down, and also to check in with my own thoughts and feelings in regards to irony poisoning and how it can effect you negatively. To do that I figured I'd talk about my own experiences.

To reach far back, I first got real cynical when I was 16, as cis dudes who are 16 are wont to do – genuine enthusiasm read as fake to me, and rough experiences that I had at home made it difficult for me to open up emotionally in pretty much any capacity. That continued through must of high-school, where I found myself getting increasingly more short with other people. I didn't even trust people who, as I now know in retrospect, were actively trying to be nice to me. This paired poorly with the image that built up around me in school. People would react to anything I said as "ah, Mint's sarcastic," or "Mint's angsty, and that's just how he is!" It was a feedback loop that I think I internalized, feeling like I needed to uphold that identity to feel like I was unique or my own person while I got through HS.

Eventually I graduated and went to college. Being the only black person in pretty much all of my classes caused me to withdraw from the physical world and hang out online a lot more often. My toxic personality began to show itself in the spaces I spent time on there. It's like I was physically incapable of being able to post something positive or nice – everything was a biting quip, a dunk on some post or another, a sarcastic shrug...Twitter, Facebook, it didn't really matter. I wasn't conscious of the effect it was having on me. The mental toll of constantly acting like nothing mattered, yet simultaneously getting angry and rolling my eyes at every little thing I saw online, was definitely doing damage to my psych, whether I realized it or not.

It didn't help that I got extremely depressed while I was at my university, for a variety of reasons unimportant to this post. I doubled down and started hanging out on subreddits like /r/me_irl and and /r/toorealformeirl. These were subs that were based pretty much entirely on feeling worthless and wanting to die, masked under a plastic-y gauze of "haha funny jokes." I turned my depression into something that I constantly laughed about, thinking that if I didn't take it seriously, it'd...go away, I guess? I don't know. In case you couldn't tell, it wasn't exactly an advised move.

Things started to change when I graduated. The pendulum started to swing in the other direction. I'm not really sure if any one thing caused me to shift, but I decided that I just wasn't going to be like that anymore. I unsubbed from those subreddits, and deleted the memes off of my phone. I'm not going to act like it was all a sudden finger-snap of a change, though – this was a months-long process. I had to look at the enthusiasm and joy that I saw in other people, both on and offline, and recognize that maybe it wasn't as fake as I thought. That I shouldn't immediately scoff at the concept of just...not being sarcastic or detached from everything going on around me.

I never really believed in "fake it till you make it" up to this point, but it turns out, at least for me: it works! I first started with trying to focus on writing about good things that happened to me every day, even if I felt like garbage. I tried to go for 3 things each day, but any amount was good enough. I moved from that to focusing on only posting about things that I liked, instead of stuff that was bothering me (minus the real serious stuff, like racism and the like). I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts (I'm back on Twitter, but look – I gotta find artists, alright? These Mints aren't gonna draw themselves). And I even started using lots of exclamation marks when I talked about stuff I enjoyed!! Which is weird, but it really got me into the mood to be positive more often!! Which is why! I talk like this!! Sometimes!!!!

Moving to Mastodon also helped in this regard. I felt like I could get a fresh start with new people, and not feel like I had to be "The Sarcastic Shitposter," as if that was just who I was meant to be. It's right there in my bio, even!

Engaging in stuff I love, like writing stories and gushing about my girl Mint, have slowly made me feel better about myself. I haven't been in this mindset for very long – only about a year, which is a drop in the bucket of negativity I've built up for so long. But it's really helped me to be more mindful and healthy in online spaces – and it's even had an effect on how I approach situations offline as well. I just think that's a worthwhile thing to pursue. I encourage anyone reading this to take a moment and reassess how they communicate and portray themselves online. If such a review makes you realize that you're a bit (or a lot) irony-poisoned, then I'll be the first to tell you that you don't have to be like that. You can be more positive and pleasant – even if it feels fake, it's still real to the people around you. And eventually it'll be real to you too!!

Oh wow, would you look at that! This isn't lenisaura! How weird. This is, in fact, a Ghost blog! I set it up myself!

Why Move?

Three reasons: first, I was getting pretty sick of Wordpress, honestly? It's soooo slow and clunky and requires so much upkeep. Feels like I was updating plugins to get things to work more than I was actually...you know, writing. And Ghost is so much smoother and simpler to work in, I'm actually enjoying the process of writing in its client. It's real good!

Second: to challenge myself! I learned a whole lot getting this thing running through a droplet – did you know that the command line puts MySQL info on a grid when you ask for it? I didn't, until a few hours ago! The fact that I pulled any of this off is a personal accomplishment that I will be basking in for a while, thank you very much.

Lastly, I very much like the idea/aesthetic of Mint having a Café, and that's reflected itself in a couple of ways, including my Discord, and I'm making that become the image of sorts for my blog!

What's Changed?

Well I moved pretty much all content from my other blog over, excluding fanfiction, which you can still easily find on AO3. Other than that, the blog looks about ten times nicer, in my opinion! There are some issues with images not wrapping properly, but that'll smooth out as we go along, now that I know the proper image dimensions. I'm also going to figure out how to go full dark-mode in the coming days. I'll also probably be adding Disqus as a method of commenting as well.

That's basically it! Have a look around and feel free to ping me if you see anything that looks broken, either on twitter @mintymentha, mastodon @eightbitsamurai, or email me at mintymentha@protonmail.com! Also be on the lookout for posts soon, including a culmination of my thoughts on the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy, as well as some musings on trying to live a post irony-poisoned life.

Thanks! And thanks to Mal, StaticCafe, and Templewulf for helping me get this thing up and running!

I’m Mint and I live in a dumpster.

Ok, I actually live in Denver, CO, where I do various things for money that let me live not in a dumpster.

When I'm not doing that, I run this little café. It's got all sorts of posts about games and music and creative projects and my feelings (ugh).

Fun facts about me:

• I’m 26
• I’m perpetually tired
• I love cute things of all kinds

You can find me on Twitter @mintmakesthings, where I retweet Gravity Rush fanart.

For questions and inquiries, please fill out the contact form.

Thanks for stopping by!

There’s something to be said about a solid running animation in a videogame. Considering that most games involve movement, it’s easy to take for granted what really good movement feels like in the heat of play. But it’s very easy to mess up the way it feels to actually move about in a virtual world. That said, I’m going to go through a few of my favorite movement animations in games.

Main Character — Xenoblade Chronicles X

The original Xenoblade was a slog to get around in. It truly felt like Shulk and Co’s movements were slower than the actual animation, making it look like you were sliding across the ground. Xenoblade 2 fixed this, upping the movement speed overall. But it’s Xenoblade Chronicles X that remains the leader in the trilogy when it comes to movement. Your character’s standard run was brisk and speedy, but it was the full-on sprint that took the cake, letting you hoof it through the game world without losing a breath. It also could be chained into an immensely satisfying jump that let you cross chasms with ease.

2B — NieR: Automata

Surprise surprise. Every animation in NieR: Automata is absolutely bonkers. 2B’s movements have a weight to them that make her feel real, while still being responsive enough for you to feel like you have complete control over everything she does. Hell, even her walking animation is good! Platinum knows how to pick ’em. This won’t be the last time they’re on the list, either.

Cole — Infamous 2

It makes sense that Infamous is on this list, considering Sucker Punch created Sly Cooper, one of the better platformers of previous generations. All three Infamous games felt great to move around in, but Infamous 2 gets the edge here for the fantastic ice powers you can get, which make moving around even more exhilarating.

Bayek — Assassin’s Creed: Origins

Ever Assassin’s Creed game has great movement in it, so I decided to just pick one of the more recent ones. Origins was a great game overall, but I especially enjoy how Bayek’s weight shifts through the sand as he walks and runs out in the desert. The way holding the control stick in one direction leads to him eventually sprinting at full tilt is also intuitive after a few minutes of practice.

Hunter — Bloodborne

I don’t know what it is about Bloodborne in comparison to other games From Software has created, but it’s the one with the movement I loved the most. It just felt tighter and easier to control. It’s also one of the few games on this list where moving backward is just as important to me as moving forward. The way you can go back and forth on a dime to control distance between your enemies is why I decided to put Bloodborne on this list.

Link — Breath of the Wild

The Link in Breath of the Wild is a spunky little guy, and that shows in his running animation. The way his armor and weapons clink and clank against him in the usually silent Hyrule gives the animation even more character. I’m also not usually a fan of stamina systems, especially when it comes to running in a game, but I’m willing to let it slide for the simple fact that Link’s sprint feels much faster in Breath of the Wild than it does in Skyward Sword, which has the same concept, but worse.

Noctis — Final Fantasy XV

Regardless of how I feel about Final Fantasy XV as a whole, I can say pretty confidently that it feels good to simply run around in the game’s world. I don’t know how Noctis doesn’t get tired running in all that black in the middle of the midday sun, but I’ve learned not to ask questions when it comes to this game. Either way, there’s an exaggeration to Noctis’ run that makes simply running around all together satisfying, especially when coming up on a gang of monsters you’re about to crush.

The Traveler — Journey

It’s a good thing it feels good to move about in Journey, considering running is just about the only thing you do in the game. I don’t mean that in a negative way, of course — Journey is an amazing game, and the way the Traveler shifts and slides through the sandy dunes of its world make exploring entertaining, even in the most vast stretches of landscape.

Raiden — Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Oh hey, Platinum’s here again! The ninja sprint that Raiden does in Revengeance feels so good in action. It’s also a useful gameplay mechanic, letting you move automatically above or around objects to focus on fighting your enemies as opposed to getting stuck on geometry. Plus Raiden looks great doing it the whole time. And the way electricity gets stamped on the ground when he takes steps…it might be time to do another playthrough of MGR, everyone.

Amaterasu — Okami

Some say Okami is too long of a game. I say those people are incredibly wrong about everything and should reconsider their life-choices. Besides the fact that the game is amazing the whole way through (eh…give or take the first thirty minutes), it also feels amazing to dash about as Ami. The way flowers sprout behind you is such a unique stylistic touch, and the fact that they turn gold when going at your fastest speed is a level of detail that would help Platinum — then Clover Studios — make a name for itself later on in the game industry.

Treasure Master

Look at this guy. Look at him go.

Bubblegum’s place smelled like incense and perfume when I walked in. This usually meant that Aprajita was cooking something up and masking the smell to keep everything fresh. It smelled amazing, strong but also delicate, and not so intense that I felt my sinuses burning.

“Yo, I’m here!” I called out.

“One minute!” came Bubblegum’s reply.

The apartment was decorated with all sorts of pictures of Bubblegum and her partner. I picked one of the frames up, gazing at it absentmindedly as I waited. Bubblegum and Aprajita were sitting together on a boat off the coast of Malaysia, according to the inscription on the back. The former was decked out in all pink, per her usual style, with a grin so wide it almost took up the whole picture. Next to her was Aprajita — or as their girlfriend like to call them sometimes, “Api” — wearing a blue blazer that looked way too thick for the weather they must have been in. They had a tiny smile on their face — a momentous occasion, all things considered. The two expressions you most often get from Aprajita were usually “neutral” and “slight frown.”

Bubblegum came bustling through the door, an orange box in her hands.

“Alright, here it is!” she said, passing the box off to me. I nearly buckled under the weight of the thing, surprised by how heavy it was when it reached my hands. Bubblegum clasped her hands together, smiling.

“They’re not that far from here, so it should be quick!”

I gave an exasperated sigh.

“Bubbles, I know we’re band-mates, but that doesn’t mean I’m also your delivery girl!” I said, putting the package down next to me and placing my hands on my hips.

“Of course Mint, of course! Buuuut shipping is expensive, and if it’s a local delivery, me and the customer get a discount when you do it!”

“Yeah, and all I get is a sore back,” I muttered. “What’s in this thing anyway?” I asked, tapping the box with my boot. Bubblegum crossed her arms.

“I can’t tell you that, obviously. It’s against the law.”

“From what I’ve heard, the law isn’t a thing that’s stopped you before.”

“I will neither confirm nor deny the truth of those statements,” Bubblegum replied. It came out so quickly and rehearsed that I was almost worried about the sort of crap she got into before we met. But she’d never tell me, so it was never worth dwelling on.

“Ask them yourself!” she continued.

“That…would be weird,” I said, scrunching up my face.

“From what I’ve heard, being weird isn’t a thing that’s stopped you before.”

“Touché,” I said. I lifted the package up and slung it over my shoulder.

“If nothing else, this courier gig is going to get me jacked,” I said as I made to exit Bubblegum’s place. “Tell Api to save some food for me, please!”

“Will do! If they’re feeling extra generous, they might even throw some curry in on the house.”

“God, please.”

“But…only if you get that package there quick. Ciao!” The pink-haired woman shut the door behind me before I could protest.

“Well, curry’s a suitable enough bribe,” I said to myself. “May as well get to it now.”

My skateboard was waiting for me on the porch. I kicked it off of the wall and hopped on, kuh-kunking down the two stairs that led to Bubblegum’s home before getting onto the sidewalk. My friend wasn’t lying about her customer being close — they were only a block or two away. And the weather was perfect for a ride on my board. A breeze was running through the summer sun, preventing it from scalding the neighborhood with its heat. Clouds assisted in the endeavor, only letting the yellow orb peek through them now and again as they passed above me.

I lazily pushed myself left and right on my skateboard, mind elsewhere as I let muscle-memory kick in while I rode. I had been across these paths so many times before when coming to Bubblegum’s house for band practice, I could probably ride through them with my eyes closed. It was incredible to think that our little garage, grass-roots effort had gotten so popular so quickly. People were even starting to recognize me while I was out skating! I had no idea how I was going to deal with it if we really blew up…

Before I could ponder the effects of potential fame any further, I found myself standing in front of the client’s place. They were on the third floor of a narrow apartment complex, nestled between houses on either side. It looked to be a little cramped. I shrugged, hopping off my board and making my way through the lobby and onto the elevator. It spit me out where I needed to be, with the client’s apartment being only a few paces away.

I gave the door a swift knock, and waited.

Nothing.

I gave another quick rap with my knuckles, louder this time.

Still nothing.

“Hello?” I called out. It was then that I realized I could hear a faint sound on the other side of the door. I put the box down and leaned close to the door, ear pressed against the cool, black-painted wood.

It was music!

And not playing from speakers, either. A guitar was shredding somewhere inside, completely drowning out any sound of my knocking. While I admired the thing’s aggressive style, I had places to be. This just wouldn’t do.

“Hey!” I shouted, now finally pounding on the door. “I have a package for you, fam!”

The sound cut off. I let my hands fall to my sides, tapping them impatiently while I waited. I was just about ready to leave the package in front of the door and bounce when it finally swung open.

A taller girl stood in front of me. She had striking pink hair that swept forward, nearly obscuring her eyes. and shaved on one side. And she was dressed in a casual grey jumper that looked like something a mechanic might wear. The sleeves were rolled up to reveal chain-patterned tattoos on either of her arms. My eyes widened, a thought exploding through my head unannounced.

Holy shit she’s cute!

“C-can I help you?”

I gaped at the girl.

“Hello?”

“O-oh! Hi! Um, I…” I was sputtering. I was already screwing it up! Aprajita would roast me if she found out. I could already hear her words echoing in the back of my head. “Some top you are.” Noooo!

I tried to stick the landing as best I could. I gave a small wave. “Hi, I’m Haruko! My friends call me Mint.”

“Um…cool,” the girl replied. “I’m Queen. My friends call me Queen.”

“Oh, cool, cool…” So much for sticking the landing. I shot up straight.

“Oh right! I have a package for you. From Bubblegum? The Etsy lady?”

The girl — Queen — lit up at the realization. “Awesome! I’ve been super excited for this stuff.”

I passed the box to her, putting my hands behind my back afterwards. Queen gestured towards her apartment.

“You wanna come inside? It’s hot out, I can give you a glass of water or something.”

My heart shot up into my throat.

“Are you sure? I don’t want to intrude…”

“You aren’t. I’m here alone, so if anything, you’ll be brightening the place up. Come on in.”

I stepped into the apartment and past Queen, trying not to look too eager all the while. I caught the smell of metal coming off of her fingers from playing her guitar. When I walked through the hallway into the apartment, I let out a small gasp.

“Woah…”

The apartment was filled end-to-end with all kinds of fancy technology. A lot of it I couldn’t even describe to you. Stacks of computers were lined up like battle-stations, and multiple desks were strewn about with monitors on them displaying all kinds of information that I definitely did not understand one bit. Cables snaked their way pretty much everywhere — past monitors, coiled around desk legs, under tables and scattered on the ground. Queen stepped through the jungle of tech with ease, not bumping into a single thing as she walked from one end of the living room to the next.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said as she headed into the kitchen. “I don’t usually have guests over, so I’ve never had to clean up. It’s a bad habit of mine.”

“You’re good,” I said. “Do you work with all this stuff?”

“Yeah.” The kitchen was separated by the living room with a counter, so the tall girl was able to continue talking to me while she accessed her fridge. “Most of it is just diagnostic stuff, but the rest is for one kind of project or another, even if I’m never actually working on them as much as I’d like.”

I sighed in understanding. “I feel that. I have like three or four songs on my mind at any given time. Nine times out of ten I don’t work on any of them and veg out on the couch instead.”

“Oh, you play?” Queen asked, stepping over to me with a glass of water and gesturing towards a couch that I hadn’t noticed amidst the sea of electronics. I nodded.

“My friends and I started a band a couple of months ago, actually. Minty Fresh. I didn’t pick the name, by the way!” I quickly added as I sat down, waving a hand. It was Bubblegum’s idea. I promise I’m not that conceited…”

Queen seemed to have stopped listening to me. Suddenly she put her hands on her head, gasping.

“You’re the singer of Minty Fresh? What the hell?”

“Um…yes?” I replied, acting as a question more than an affirmation. Queen shot her hands out towards me, palms upward, as if I just broke one of her computers.

“That’s amazing! I was at one of your shows, like, two weeks ago, at Future First! You opened for Kanon!”

I gave a sheepish grin. “Yep, that’s me…”

“No wonder you looked so familiar! This is so cool! I always wanted to start a band, but the guitar has always been kind of a hobby for me. But you’re like, out here! Doing it!”

I laughed. “Don’t sell yourself short! You were shredding pretty hard just now from what I heard.” I was trying to turn the subject away from me, still unused to the fact that people were starting to recognize who I was. We were in a small enough town, but still…it was weird.

Luckily, Queen seemed fine with moving on. “Thanks. It’s a nice break between projects. Ah, speaking of!”

I sipped at the water Queen provided me while she jumped to the parcel I had delivered, pulling out a pocket knife that she used to swiftly cut the thing open. I sat up on my chair to look over her shoulder while she pulled everything out. It was more advanced-looking technology, as well as some sort of shiny block.

“Yes! This’ll do nicely.”

I kicked my legs idly on the couch as the girl examined all of her new toys. “What’re you gonna do with all that stuff?”

It seemed like Queen had to struggle to tear herself away from her present to focus her attention on me. “I’m trying to make a helmet. I want it to have a HUD, and maybe even interface with a couple of my other things.”

“Oh, I see, I see. A HUD, huh? Pretty cool.” I had no idea what a HUD was.

“Where does Bubblegum even get this stuff?” I asked. Queen laughed.

“It sounds like we shouldn’t ask. She was selling it for pennies, too, she may as well have been giving it away for free.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of her MO. I assume it’s a middle finger to…something.”

“Capitalism?”

I shrugged. “Oh hey, what’s that at the bottom of the box?”

Queen turned beet red. “This is, uh, just an extra thing that I got.”

“Can I see?” I was curious, but I didn’t want the girl to explode, which seemed very close to happening if you got a good look at her face.

“S…sure.”

She passed the thing to me. I could tell just by feeling it that it was made out of crocheted yarn of all sorts of colors. I ran it through my fingers and turned it around.

“Oh my God.”

It was a sweater. Emblazoned on the front was a cat hanging on a branch with text above it that said “Hang in There!”

Queen couldn’t meet my eyes as I looked up from the sweater and at her.

She’s…too cute!

“Did Bubblegum make this for you?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible. The girl nodded. “I knew I recognized the handiwork. This makes more sense to put in an Etsy shop, anyways.”

“This is so embarrassing…” Queen muttered. “But I guess I won’t see you again, so…”

I gave her the most innocent smile I could. “Oh, you won’t?” I asked.

Queen looked like she was about to faint. I almost felt bad for teasing her so much, but enjoyment beat out whatever little conscience I had.

“I mean…if you want to…oh, actually, I remembered something. At your concert, I saw you were struggling getting some of your equipment working.”

This time it was my turn to blush.

“Was it that obvious?” I asked, tapping my cheek.

“Oh, no no, it’s not your fault!” Queen was up and about again, moving to grab a sketchbook off of her desk. It was clear that she was always in her element talking about tech, which was, like everything else about her, extremely cute. She flopped onto the couch next to me, flipping the book open to a page with what looked like a pair of headphones, striped red near the top.

“That stuff is always really difficult to work with, especially in the moment. But see, I had this idea for a headset that sort of unifies everything it connects to, and lets you control it with minimal effort.”

“That’s…awesome.” I wasn’t even trying to flatter her at this point. It’d actually be really helpful for concerts too.

“Right!? So I was wondering if you’d wanna try it at your next show?”

I beamed. “Sure!”

“Awesome.” She was up again, pacing back and forth. “So I’ll need to get a look at all your instruments and amps and stuff, and definitely anything wireless you have on stage. Hmm…and I’ll need your measurements too.”

I crossed my arms, giving a sly smile.

“Measurements, huh?” I asked, coupled with an exaggerated eyebrow raise.

Queen stuttered yet again. “O-of your head, I mean. I don’t need, like, other measurements.”

I crossed one leg over the other. “Sure, but do you want them?”

She pretended not to hear the question. “Alright, so I definitely don’t have enough space to do this here…is it okay if I come to you?”

“Yep!” I replied, hopping from my seat. “It’s a date!”

“It is? I mean, it is. Right.”

I grabbed a marker off one of Queen’s desks and gently took her hand to scribble on it.

“Here’s my number. Call me whenever you wanna swing by, Q.”

“O-oh. I could have just put it in my phone.”

“I know,” I replied, grinning. “Well I won’t be taking any more of your time, and I have to get ready for practice.” I made for the exit, Queen following behind me. I turned to the girl as I kicked my board, letting it slide under my arm as I grabbed it from the air. I was absolutely trying to flex, and was very happy the thing didn’t slap my face, like it did pretty much every other time I tried to pull that move off.

“Feel free to order from Bubblegum again. I certainly wouldn’t mind,” I said as I waved my goodbye. As I left the apartment, Queen called out to me.

“Hey Mint!”

I turned. “What’s up?”

The girl had a hand in her pocket. “Oh, nothing, I just…I like your hair, that’s all. It suits you.”

“Oh! Thank you!”

“Yeah. Alright, see you later.”

The girl closed the door. I was able to contain myself all the way to the elevator, where I couldn’t stop myself from hugging my skateboard and squealing in excitement.

Wow it’s been a while, hasn’t it? To be honest, after having a nice freakout about The Freelancers, I’ve mostly been focusing on writing it again, and have really been at it in earnest, catching up on chapters and solidifying where I want the plot to go. Any time that hasn’t been going to writing has been spent on consuming other media, or working, which means the blog has been left by the wayside a bit.

That said, I had a fun idea recently, regarding Mint. I think making her a vocaloid, a spur of the moment decision at first, has helped in the long term with making her an interesting character. For one, it allows her to exist has a multimedia entity. A recent example of this is that Mint is officially an UTAU, voicebank at all. You can download her voice and use it to make any kind of music you want.

Beyond that, I’ve been thinking of the ways having an OC essentially be data could affect their story. One way I considered is how redesigns/alternate designs could work. Which is my way of introducing Peppermint!

Peppermint is a Mint offshoot. Essentially, she’s a homebrew of Mint’s original software, that’s been modified and redistributed enough to become popular among vocaloid fans. Her design is an inverse of Mint’s, with red hair and eyes instead of her usual green. Her personality is also different – where Mint is a firecracker (or a trash goblin, if you asked her girlfriend), Peppermint is more subdued, which you can tell based on her facial expressions and body language. They’re even different in terms of musical interests – Mint having a focus on future funk, and Peppermint with rock and otherwise more dramatic/intense genres.

Peppermint is quieter, but a bit more intimidating. She is also, admittedly, a bit of a trash goblin like Mint, but she does a better job of hiding it. She likes marathoning shitty movies, dancing, and tinkering with her motorcycle on days off.

This was originally going to be an April 1st joke, but I missed the deadline and I liked Peppermint enough for her to be a real thing, so…poof, here she is. I hope you like her as much as I do!

Lately I’ve been finding the indie artists I see in my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist on Twitter and sending them DMs about how I enjoyed their songs. My trend towards empathy has been scaling upwards as I’ve gotten “””older””” and part of that has reflected itself in my thoughts on the process of creation. I can’t imagine what it’s like to make a song and posting it on Spotify, but I feel like it’s an extremely brave thing to do on such a saturated platform. I think the enthusiastic thanks I get in return for my DMs is a pretty good indicator that this is true.

I have mentioned now and again that I’m writing a novel about a bunch of gay kids with psychic powers. I said it’d come out in 2019, which is probably a mistake. I haven’t written for it in while. For once it’s not because I’m not sure what to write next — one of the perks of being on a second draft instead of a first, I guess. It’s actually because I’ve been pretty paralyzed at the idea of releasing the thing, just, you know, in general.

Anyone who tells you that you should just write for yourself is either a liar or already extremely famous. To act like your creations are not made with the intent of sharing them makes no sense to me. Obviously one should write for themselves in the sense that they create what they want to create…but creativity is a form of communication and expression. To that end, the idea of putting my all into this work only to have two or three people read it is enough to have me lie in bed and never get out of it.

I think my general lack of self-esteem does a good job of exacerbating this issue. You’re kind of expected to believe that everything you make is “good.” No one wants to hear about what you don’t like about your work — unless of course, you mention it after said work has become popular, in which case it’s seen as humbling. Hell, even writing this makes me feel like I’m being…hmm. Ungrateful? Which is a weird description, but pretty accurate, I think. It feels like I’m expected to just be happy with what I get when I finish this novel. But not addressing the fact that I want as many people as possible to read this stupid thing feels disingenuous.

I don’t know if The Freelancers will be great as I work on it. I don’t even know if it will be good. I don’t know if people will want to read it, or tell other people that they should read it. If creativity is a form of communication, lack of interest is a pretty good litmus test for quality, shallow as it sounds. I think this writing block has just been sitting here because I have to come to terms with the fact that the immense effort I put into making this book will not be met with much in return. I think that’s supposed to feel freeing, but for me it’s just depressing. Oops.

This is probably — well no, it is — the reason I’ve been writing so much fanfiction recently. The instant feedback you get from it is kind of addictive, I’m not going to lie. People know what Kingdom Hearts and Nier Automata are. The barrier of getting people to care about your characters and the world they inhabit is non-existent when it comes to fanfic, and all that’s left is for people to read what you wrote. That’s freeing, but it’s also not what I want, creatively.

A lot of this plays into how social media works, and vying for the attention and time of people with less and less of it. Most people don’t even read the most popular and critically acclaimed books that are coming out now. Why would they read this random thing that I’m writing? I don’t have a publisher. I don’t have much in the way of marketing skills. I am nobody, and I don’t see why I should continue to try.

Alright, PHEW, that all comes across as very depressing, which I don’t mean for it to be. It’s just been something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Hell I’m far from the only person who’s struggled with these thoughts. But I am struggling with them, so…regardless, I don’t plan on quitting any time soon, mostly out of stubbornness than anything else. I’ve come this far, all that’s left is finishing it, putting it behind me, and getting prepped for the next project. Because I think, regardless of how I feel about myself or my creations, I won’t be able to stop making things. It’s in my nature, as cheesy as that sounds. If you’ve stuck around this far, and you do plan on reading The Freelancers when it comes out, know that I’m extremely grateful. If you couldn’t tell, I’m kind of dying for validation here. Whoops!

Oh Alliance Alive. I’m very sad that nobody played this game because Legend of Legacy was a doozy that probably warded people away. This is because it was bad, I mean that it was bad. It was hampered by obfuscated systems and the complete lack of a plot, and was a huge grind to get through. Did you know that some characters had secret affinities with certain weapons? Now you do!

Alliance Alive arrived to fix Legend of Legacy’s, well, Legacy. And wow does it do a fantastic job with that! There are so many aspects that got fixed that it’s less of a spiritual sequel and more of a spiritual redo.

So why do I love Alliance Alive so much? Let me count the ways:

A combat system that finally makes sense. Where Legend of Legacy had too many systems that didn’t make sense, Alliance Alive has a bunch of systems that are all laid bare in their entirety, while also easing up on the complexity. Everything is defined by formations and roles, no more secret systems to speak of. It harkens back to a nice little blend of Romance Saga and Final Fantasy II, speaking to the pedigree of the game considering its developers. It’s extremely addictive to set up a bunch of different formations to change your strategy up on the fly. Also the bump to five active party members instead of 3 is a huge improvement. Speaking of Party Members…

An Alliance with Soul. Your 9 party members, like, talk to each other! It’s wild! They have lines and a personality and everything! And they’re all really charming! I can’t remember their original names because you can name them whatever you want from the Status menu, but I’m particularly fond of the Daemon Fox lady and the young scientist girl. Their interactions are a lot of fun. There’s also a plot to speak of (written by the same person that wrote Suikoden II) and it’s actually pretty engaging, concerning a human uprising against the daemons that have them under their thumb. It’s not mind-blowing by any means, but there are enough mysteries to keep you enthralled.

The Alliance System. People have been saying that Ni No Kuni II is like Suikoden II, but when it comes to closeness, I’d say Alliance Alive hits that mark a lot closer. About 9 hours into the game you unlock the Alliance System, wherein you set up 5 Guilds on your giant Ark ship. You then recruit members for your Alliance in different areas and assign them to the different guilds, which increase their power and help you out. The way you recruit these people is part of the fun — one human with an obsession with wanting to become a daemon joined when I switched my active character exploring the map to one of my daemon characters and talked to him. Another joined after we kicked their butt in a fight. There’s an addictive “collect ’em all” quality to grabbing all these characters, and I’ve essentially put the main quest on hold to find them at the moment.

A World Map. For real! And rather than just running around, you get a cool little glider that you can use to strategically fly from place to place to access secret out of the way areas, like new spots to build Guild Towers and guild members to recruit. It’s very cool (although the game can lag a bit if you’re moving too fast).

QOL Stuff. You can save anywhere! If you need to backtrack, 9 times out of 10 the game will fast-travel you there if you want! All the stats are explained this time (I’m serious, Legend of Legacy was bad)! You can change character’s names! The enemies are all visible on the map! You can chain battles to expedite grinding, if you want to grind at all!

JRPG Nostalgia. I guess this all culminates to one single feeling I have about Alliance Alive: it actually pulls off that nostalgia for the SNES/PS1 era of JRPGs. Something about raiding a hot spring to save a bunch of talking frogs felt like peak Final Fantasy IX to me, and that’s very much a good thing. It even has secret party members! There’s no obnoxious fanservice, no tedious sidequests that feel like padding, and every system in the game makes sense to include, letting you put as much or as little time into it that you want (seriously, you can completely ignore that Alliance system if you want to). And it does all that without hewing so closely to those SNES/PS1 JRPGs that it doesn’t actually do anything interesting or new. It’s just a really good game that feels like it was made with love, in my humble opinion.

Now that Alliance Alive is getting ported to the Switch, give it a shot! It’s definitely the most slept on game of 2018, and I highly recommend it!

I wanna preface the below with the understanding that I don’t think Hyper Light Drifter is a bad game. It is demonstrably not. Honestly, my standards are so low at this point that as long it’s not filled with gross loli shit or racist under/overtones, then your game is probably fine in my book. BUT HLD (or Hyper Lightmension Driftunia if ya nasty) has a lot of design decisions that I think are very interesting but that I found myself not agreeing with, enough that I’m making a whole blog-post about it.

For the unitiated HLD is a succesfully kickstarted top-down action-exploration game that is pretty hard to define in terms of its inspirations. It feels like it takes bits of everything from traditonal SNES JRPGs to Zelda to — and I’m sorry to say it — Dark Souls. It has no plot to speak of, really. Sure, you can speculate, but unlike Dark Souls, which has a plot you can piece together with some digging and a Vaati video or two, that’s pretty much impossible with HLD, because there’s not a single line of dialogue in the game outside of tutorials. We’re going to get back to this.

Hyper Light Drifter is beautiful. It’s one of the best looking 2D games I’ve ever played. Every pixel is lovingly crafted and purposeful. The fluidity of the animation as the Drifter cuts through enemies never stopped being engaging as I played through the game. Every setting is distinct in its aesthetic and carried a different variation of the overall melancholic tone that the game provides. The music is also fantastic, with brooding synths that sound like they came straight out of a Blade Runner film but without all the Asian fetishization.

What’s the Point?

Let’s get back to that part about HLD having next to zero plot. This can be fine as a design decision. Shadow of the Colossus has so little dialogue, it probably all fits on a double-sided 8.5 by 11 sheet. The problem is that even SotC has an easy to understand goal. Obfuscation doesn’t equal a compelling world to explore in. Dark Souls’ environmental design and even its inventory descriptions give you some idea of what’s going on and your place in its world.

HLD doesn’t have this in any way. Why are you going around killing these enemies? What is the village hub you go back to for upgrades? What are these skeletal titanic remains doing in the world? A little bit of mystique is great in getting the imagination going, but you can’t just stop there. There has to be some thread that players can go down to answer at least some of these questions, even if they’ll never be solved fully. It hearkens back to the unforgiving, hostile environments of a game like the NES Legend of Zelda, where everything is out to kill and you don’t really know why, but doggone you spent money on this cartridge and you’re going to finish it. It’s just not something I’m into personally. By the time I fought the last boss, I assumed I was supposed to feel something about the events that followed. But with no understanding of the stakes towards the conflict I had just been through, I just sort of…blanked out.

You Zig, I Zag

“But Mint,” you say with an exasperated sigh. “The plot is just window-dressing for the main focus, which is clearly the combat, you cheeky tart!”

Alright, fair, fair. And I will say that when all the pieces come together, HLD flows in a way that feels great.

Dancing through bullets, dodging past enemies before cutting them down with your sword can be exhilarating…in the right circumstances. But it takes a long time to get there. Combat is stilted and slow unless you upgrade yourself with a particular set of skills from the main hub of the game. It’s totally possible to miss these upgrades. The only reason I knew of them was that I spent a bit of time researching where best to put the upgrade points I had collected after finishing the first dungeon of the game.

The Chain Dash is a move so fundamental to the core of Driftunia’s design that I was baffled that it wasn’t immediately available in the Drifter’s tool-set — it was like having to level up for the block and dodge roll in the original Kingdom Hearts. The same can be said of the Dash Shield, which lets you move through energy shots with the right timing, and the Sword Deflection, which does exactly what it sounds like against enemy projectiles. The game became infinitely more fun after I built this toolkit, but I don’t feel it should have been “built” in the first place. Getting upgrade parts to improve your character is a staple of the action-exploration genre, I won’t argue that. But as I mentioned, with a myriad of upgrade choices to choose from, you might completely miss these skills. Couple this with a lack of i-frames, busy screen-effects, and some bosses that were more a chore than a challenge to fight through, and you have a game that is definitely mechanically sound, but not built with the sort of tempo I’m interested in when it comes to action games.

Nooks and Crannies (and more Nooks)

And so we find ourselves in the third pillar of Hyper Light Drifter’s design: exploration. Again, I want to make it clear that I don’t think that any of what I’ve talked about up to this point is particularly bad. It’s just not for me. And this applies with HLD’s exploration as well. A lot of the game’s hidden areas are based on the old-school design philosophy of “bumping into all of the walls until you find a wall that’s not actually a wall.” As you get into the game proper, you’ll find yourself wondering if the forest of trees to your left is actually a game border or a spot that takes you to a new screen just out of reach, with goodies to peruse. I’ll admit that I sometimes felt pretty good about finding these spots, especially as they led to new beautiful areas and bits of currency that brought me one step closer to a new item. But by the end of the game, I was getting a bit tired of it all, bumping into one object after another and destroying every item in every room to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Some of the secrets are pretty obvious. Others are so obtuse to reach that you’ll find them either out of sheer luck, or by checking a guide.

This isn’t as big a cardinal design sin as the inability to keep track of everything. You’ll find lots of areas that you’ll need to backtrack to after gaining a certain number of keys, and you have no real way of remembering them unless you make a note outside the game, or, again, keep a guide handy. I unlocked two monoliths. How many are there in total? No idea. I didn’t feel any incentive to explore much outside of the critical path because I knew I’d forget where everything was and had no idea how much progress I was making for the extra stuff.

I guess the general thesis I’m making after writing all this is that HLD really wants you to care — about its characters, its world, and itsmechanical systems — but doesn’t do enough for it to earn that care. It’s simultaneously aloof and open, wanting you to dive into everything it has to offer but not really giving you a reason — or even, depending on your prior preparation or luck, the tools to do so. I didn’t hate my time with Hyper Light Drifter. But I didn’t love it either. I didn’t feel much of anything, and I think that’s a shame, because it’s a game that, with a bit more time, is definitely something I could see myself loving.

The Saga of Mint™ has steadily ballooned over the past couple of months. This mostly occurs via random Mastodon posts and LINE conversations with my friend, described as “Lore,” much the same way one would place fake dinosaur bones around the house to later discover for themselves.

Since Mint’s creation a stream of cast-members have entered the scene. First, there was Queen, Mint’s girlfriend. I want to do a post about her at some point, but she’s my friend’s OC so I’d like to collaborate with her in writing it, or have her make a post on this blog herself (if she gets off her lazy ass to do it. Doubtful!!!).

So instead today I wanna talk about Mint and Queen’s roommates: Bubblegum and Aprajita.

Bubblegum

Bubblegum is somewhat of a mystery to everyone that knows her. It is rumored that she ran an illegal software ring at some point in her past. Some have said that she was CEO of a massive plushie-making corporation. Still others believe that she was Hatsune Miku’s previous vocal trainer. No one knows for sure because Bubblegum is a rather private person, but it doesn’t particularly matter, especially to Aprajita. Much like her roommates, Bubblegum is a staunch anti-capitalist, regardless of what her former inclinations might have been. She runs an Etsy shop out of the group’s house, filled with all kinds of accessories and custom-made sweaters. Bubblegum is exceedingly cheerful, and she uses the depths of her knowledge on all matter of subjects – wherever it may have come from – to provide advice to everyone in the house.

In case you couldn’t tell, she loves pink. She plays the drums, and has a pet bird named Floof, also pink. And as another fun fact, she played a part in how Mint and Queen first met. But that’s a story for another day.

Aprajita

Aprajita is Bubblegum’s girlfriend. She’s from Malaysia, and helps her friend Sunny run a coffee shop around the corner from the group’s house. She’s also an Artist, Graphic Designer, and designated cook for the household. That last point stems from the fact that she’s an amazing chef, and finds the work relaxing.

Aprajita is as quiet as she looks, but that’s often misconstrued as docileness. Anyone who attempts to take her to task with that line of thought will find themselves rudely awakened via acute verbal decimation. She is trust-worthy and strong-willed, nor is she one to ask many questions. Aprajita is as much an emotional rock to the household as Bubblegum is – this is probably why they’re dating. However, there will be days where she’d like to be left alone, which her roommates respect. On days like this, Aprajita gets even quieter than usual, spending time in her room working on some project or another. It never lasts for very long, though, and she’ll be back with her friends soon afterwards.

She met Mint while working as a designer for one of her tours, and two quickly became friends. She also plays the Bass guitar, and has a pet fish named Toothy that she would literally die for. Aprajita is Ace, and her name, color, and design are based on the Blue Pea flower. There is a reason for this.

That’s all for now. There’s more I want to do with Mint and Co. but I don’t know if I’ll implement my ideas anytime soon. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m content in imagining these characters and the world they’re in and having it just exist, without plans for a novel or a visual novel or a graphic novel or any other kinds of novels. They let me feel imaginatively fulfilled when I’m feeling down on other projects, or too beaten up by my day job and physical ailments to do much creatively.

All that said. If you want to make a character in Mint’s little world and connect it to mine, please feel free to do so. It’d probably be fun. Or maybe not. I dunno, I’m not your mom. The app I used for Mint, Bubblegum and Aprajita is here, and actually got updated with a bunch of new stuff today, surprise. If you make one, show me where I usually hang out: @eightbitsamurai

And if you want to see something I’m working on that actually has a plotline and is progressing pretty steadily, check out the Post-KH3 Fanfic I’m writing here: The Foretellers Saga.

“That’s the stream everyone! Gotta cut it early, Queen and I have somewhere to be!”

Mint took her headset off and placed it on the table, running her hands through her hair. It always got messy when she was wearing it. The stream was good — it was a Tuesday, meaning it was quiet enough that Aprajita and Bubblegum didn’t have to stick around and moderate. And the game she was playing was pretty fun too. But, real life called, and she had to answer.

Mint leapt from her gaming chair, grabbed a nearby brush, and bounced lightly out of her room and across her house’s wooden panels. Her socks masked her sound. Good — she wanted to initiate a surprise attack.

The girl turned left at the end of the hallway and stopped outside the door. Queen, Mint’s girlfriend, could be heard inside, lightly strumming her guitar. Though she wasn’t inside, Mint could picture her face: pink hair masking her eyes, which were probably furrowed in concentration as she moved from one chord to another.

Sun filtered past the awning and through the window, warming Mint’s face. She smiled, turning to open the door to the studio slowly so as to not let it creak. Queen’s back was turned. She crept up on the girl, before letting out a bellow.

“Queen!”

The taller girl leapt off of the stool she was playing on, nearly dropping her guitar. She whirled at Mint.

“What?” she asked, concern written on her face. Mint almost felt bad for teasing her girlfriend, but it was too easy not to. She turned away from Queen, running her fingers through her green locks in a dramatic flourish.

“Brush my hair!” she commanded.

Queen sighed, letting her shoulders relax.

“Hell Mint, I thought someone broke into the place! You almost gave me a heart-attack. What if I dropped my guitar?”

“I wooooould buy you another one?” Mint asked. Queen sighed yet again. She sighed pretty often around Mint.

“Right. Can’t argue with that I guess.” She threw a hand out, gesturing at Mint’s brush in defeat.

“Get over here,” Queen said. Mint hopped over to the girl and sat on the floor, crossing her legs while Queen got back on her stool and began to brush. The girls sat in silence for a moment as Queen settled into a rhythm going through Mint’s sea of hair with the brush.

Mint’s eyes were shut in relaxation when she heard Queen begin to hum. It was the same few chords from before. She opened her eyes to look up at Queen, lost in thought. Mint smiled. Queen eventually noticed, blushing a deep crimson.

“What?” she asked.

“You’re cute when you get so into your work.”

“O-oh.”

“Is this for the next album?”

“Maybe. I’m trying to figure out the mid-section but I can’t seem to get it down.”

Mint stuck a hand out towards nothing in particular.

“Let me hear it tomorrow. Maybe I can help.”

“Alright.”

The pair sat in silence for a moment longer. Mint tapped on Queen’s knee.

“Have you thought about what you’re wearing tonight?” she asked. Queen looked away.

“I kinda thought…I wouldn’t have to go.”

“What!?”

Mint leapt to the air, nearly knocking Queen on the chin as she did so. She flipped around to look at her girlfriend, hands planted firmly on her hips.

“You have to go! I’m presenting an award! And it might be to Miku!”

Queen’s exasperation was palpable. “I know, I know, I just…”

Mint’s expression softened. She lightly lifted Queen’s chin up with a finger, who had resorted to staring at the floor.

“Just what?” she asked.

“I wanted…to wear…a suit.” Queen could barely get the words out. Mint tilted her head.

“That’s it?” she asked, puzzled. Queen ran a hand through the shaved half of her hair.

“Agh, see, I knew you wouldn’t get it!”

“Get what? You gotta tell me Queen!”

“I just…I feel like it’d be embarrassing, you know? But I don’t wanna wear a dress. I want to wear a suit. But no one’s ever seen me in formal clothes before. Just my usual punk stuff. What do they think I’m gonna wear? What do they think I should wear? What if people think I’m weird?”

Mint interrupted Queen’s rambling. She grabbed the girl’s hand and yanked her to her feet.

“Wha–“

“Come with me.”

Mint sped out of the room, nearly yanking Queen’s arm off as they half-walked, half ran to their shared room. She directed Queen to the dresser on the far wall and yanked it open. It was mostly filled with Queen’s things — Mint still grabbed most of her clothes out of her suitcase, since she was too lazy to hang them up after the girls had moved in together.

Mint pointed at the dresser.

“Where is it?”

Queen stared at the dresser, mouth open as if she were about to say something. She looked at Mint, then back at the dresser again. Mint crossed her arms.

“You must have it, if you wanted to wear it, right?”

Queen nodded. She pulled out a black bag that was hanging in the middle of the dresser.

“Put it on,” Mint said.

“What!?”

Mint tapped at her ear. “Huh. I didn’t think I was wearing my headset,” the girl said. “So there’s no audio feedback. Which means I definitely was clear in what I said. Put it on!”

“A-alright.”

Queen went to the bathroom to change. Mint rolled her eyes.

“She knows I’ve seen her undress, and that I’ve undressed her myself, right?” she asked the room’s dead air. It didn’t respond, leaving Mint to huff alone.

She waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Finally, before she thought to go and find the girl herself, Queen came back into the bedroom, dressed in a sharp white tuxedo.

“Sorry,” she said, giving a sheepish grin. “I had to talk myself out of the bathroom. Uh…Mint?”

Mint seemed to have short-circuited. She was, at the very least, speechless. She took a few steps forward, until she was face-to-face with Queen, and reached out to touch one of the suit’s buttons.

“It’s too much, isn’t it?” Queen said, her worst fears realized. “It’s –“

“It’s hot.”

“It’s what?” Queen sputtered.

“It’s. Hot.” Mint looked up to lock eyes with the girl, before getting on her tip-toes to kiss Queen. When Mint backed away, Queen was just as speechless as Mint was moments before.

“Uh, that was nice,” she finally managed to say. “You really like it?”

“Queenie,” Mint said, using the girl’s pet name. “The only thing stopping me tearing that thing off of you is the fact that it’d be a pain to get ready for the Award Show a second time.”

“Wow. You really like it.”

Mint smoothed her skirt down, seemingly more composed. “Sure I do Queen, but do you? It’s your opinion that matters. I don’t want to pull you one way or the other, I just want you to be comfortable. And happy.”

Queen examined the suit on her body again. “I feel…good,” she said. “But I’m still really nervous. I mean, you know me Minty. Big changes, big anxiety.” The girl let out a short laugh.

Mint had a hand under her chin. She wasn’t looking at Queen at all anymore, but rather the wall behind her — or, perhaps even further. Queen knew that when this was happening, it meant the girl was going into overdrive. Finally, her eyes lit up.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she said, before running out of the bedroom. She turned to poke her head back in.

“I mean, get ready to go, but don’t go anywhere!” she said. “And keep the suit on!” she added as she ran out of the house.

It was two hours until Mint returned, and when she did, she shooed Queen away from her. “Don’t look at me!” she shouted as she ran down the opposite end of the hallway and into the bathroom. Queen watched her zoom past.

“Are we…are we still going to the show?” she asked, confused. Mint didn’t answer.

More time passed. Queen looked at her watch. She knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hey, it’s almost time to go, but, I don’t think I’ll–“

The girl was interrupted by the bathroom door swinging open. Mint stood in front of her girlfriend wearing her own suit, cut slightly differently at the cuffs. She twirled for Queen, before ending with a pose.

“Well? How do I look?” she asked her girlfriend, winking.

It was Queen’s turn to short-circuit. She was beet-red this time around.

Mint continued, seeing as her girlfriend was verbally out of commission. “I didn’t want you to be nervous, so I figured, why don’t we match? I wasn’t sure at first, but I think I cut a pretty good figure in a suit, don’t you?”

Queen steadied herself on the bathroom door.

“Yes,” she said simply.

“So, you’ll go?”

“Yes.”

“In the suit?”

“Yes.”

Mint clapped her hands together.

“Great!” she said. And she meant it.

They were finally ready to go. The two girls stood at the front door, putting their dress shoes on. Queen mumbled something, but Mint couldn’t quite hear it.

“Huh? What?” she asked, leaning forward to hear her. Queen looked away before repeating herself.

“I said, ‘what did I do to deserve such a good girlfriend.'”

Mint’s eyes widened. She stared at Queen for a second, before finally speaking.

“I mean, if you got a girl like me, you’re probably not too shabby yourself, right?”

Mint reached up to kiss the girl again, before the two went on their way.

You’re 3.99 years old. The wedding you’re at is boring as hell, so your cousin hands you a GameBoy Color with Link’s Awakening inside. The only videogame you’ve played before this is Pac-Man, at an arcade in Egypt. You are in awe. You cannot believe videogames can be like this – they can tell a story, just like the Redwall books that are enamoring you at the same time. You want an N64 on your birthday, and instead of getting Star Wars Rogue Squadron like you planned, you get Ocarina of Time.

You’re 5 years old. You still haven’t beaten Ocarina of Time. You’re only allowed 2 games a year, so you’re trying to savor the experience. Plus, you’re terrified of the Shadow Temple. You are enthralled by this game. It is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. You explore every nook and cranny. You finally understand what the phrase “explore every nook and cranny” even means, because you’ve done virtually everything there is to do in the game. You finally beat it. You cry. A lot.

You’re 8 years old. You have a few games under your belt at this point. Besides reading, they’re your favorite pastime. Your mom acquiesces to your passion for the hobby, as long as you’re reading, getting A’s in class, and only playing on weekends. You’re finally getting a PlayStation 2 for Eid-al-Fitr. It’s the first time you’ve ever fasted for real. You’re allowed one game along with it. You pick Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly, having enjoyed the previous games in the series. It’s the first game that’s ever betrayed you. You are crushed. You return a game, for the first time in your life. With your second chance, you choose carefully. You see a game called Kingdom Hearts on the GameStop shelf, and recognize Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 on the back of the box. He didn’t let you down before. You buy it. It is incredible. You love it so much you break your mom’s rules, playing it on weekdays for a brief 20 minutes while she’s away to pick up your little sister. You beat it. You cry. A lot.

You’re 11 years old. You’re getting a game for your birthday. You’re keeping up with the industry now. You know what IGN is, and you like to do the polls on GameFAQs, and print out the walkthroughs. You really want Shadow of the Colossus. Your mom asks the GameStop clerk if the game is violent. Your heart freezes. Is this the end? The clerk looks her dead in the eye, and says “no.” Thank you Jeff from the Aurora Mall GameStop. I hope you’re living your best life. Shadow of the Colossus changes your life. You’ve cried from games before, but not like this. You question things you were certain of before the credits rolled. You realize that games can be more than just entertainment, or even more than just a story. They can change who you are, fundamentally.

You’re 12 years old. You hate middle school. It is the worst thing you’ve ever experienced, and you’ve had an infected lung tissue removed from your body. That’s how bad middle school is. But it’s okay, because Kingdom Hearts II has released. You have grown up, and the game has grown up alongside you. Sora has grown up alongside you. You play it in a rush during your Spring Break. The ending is so cool that you show it to your friends. They don’t care and have never been interested in Kingdom Hearts in their life, but you can’t help it.

You’re 16 years old. High School isn’t as bad. You skip prom to play Portal 2. You don’t like Skyward Sword, and it causes you to question everything you’ve ever known. You aren’t sure if you’re changing, or if the games you’re playing are. Sometimes you’d rather write than play. You have ideas for novels, but you know you aren’t good enough to make them. Not yet. Everyone is talking about Skyrim. Your friends are talking about Skyrim. Your teachers are talking about Skyrim. Your crush knows what Skyrim is. You want to talk to her about it. You don’t. You don’t talk to her at all, actually.

You’re 19 years old. College is…okay? You have money to buy your own videogames now, from your job at the Registrar. Despite that, you find yourself spending less money on them. You don’t find yourself enjoying them much anymore. You replay all of the Kingdom Hearts games in the HD collection. They’re still good. You recognize that they’re silly, but they’ve been with you all this time, and they mean something to you. You think next year might be better.

You’re 20. You hate everything. You hate college. You hate your major. You hate your roommate. You don’t want to do anything. You spend hours lying on your bed. You go to class, sometimes. You stare at the menu screen of Xenoblade Chronicles X, but you never press start. You don’t even know what the point of getting it was. What a waste of money.

You’re 21. You switched majors. You feel weird about it, but you realize it’s for the best, and that you have to make choices for yourself sometimes. You pick up Persona 4: Golden. It’s soothing. A reminder that you can do better, and be better. You move in with your friend from middle school. You have plans to stream together. You never do, but you like living with him,and don’t dread going home.

You’re 22 years old. You think you like videogames again. Final Fantasy XV, Gravity Rush 2, Nier Automata, Tales of Berseria, Yakuza 0: you’re spoiled for choice, and reminded of the quality they can carry. You wonder again if games changed when you weren’t looking, or if you changed when games weren’t looking. You think it might be both. You play every Kingdom Hearts game in order, from Kingdom Hearts to Dream Drop Distance. You hear that Kingdom Hearts III is releasing fairly soon. You doubt it.

You’re 24 years old. Kingdom Hearts III is releasing tomorrow. You wrote that novel, and you’re about to write it again. You don’t live with your friend from middle school anymore, but you stream with him (almost) every Saturday. You’ve reestablished your whole online persona, and feel more comfortable with yourself than you ever have been. Kingdom Hearts III has blot out the sun as it looms over you. You wonder what will come after it’s finished. You feel like a chapter of your life is closing, and it makes you very uncomfortable. You are embarrassed that a videogame about Mickey Mouse is causing you to have a life crisis, but you figure that writing about it might help.

It doesn’t.

But it was still pretty fun.

I’ve really been doubling down on my Vocaloid OC, Mint, and I wanted to solidify some info about her character now that I have a better idea of what she’s like.

So, more background: Mint primarily sings future wave and future funk music. But Mint only sings part-time, or when she’s on tour with Queen. The other half of her time goes to videogames.

With the negativity, bigotry, and other general garbage surrounding the gaming industry, Mint felt like her talents and upbeat personality would best be served trying to change the culture around videogames. As such, she does Lets Plays online, where she’s extremely popular with the 17-24 age range for women – or at least, that’s what her analytics say.

She generally likes to play JRPG and Action games, but is known for the occasional FPS as well – even though they aren’t usually her speed. A secret: Mint absolutely LOVES Picross, but it’s not entertaining enough for a stream, so she plays it on her downtime.

Mint runs a tight ship on her channel, with a thoroughly enforced set of rules. Her roommates, Bubblegum and Aprajita, will sometimes mod her channel during Twitch streams, and even play games with her when they aren’t busy. She hopes that her prescense in the industry will inspire other girls to get into gaming, both from a development and content-creation perspective, and to improve the environment for any marganlized person that wants to be part of the industry without being harassed or discouraged.

In light of that aspiration, it is important to know that Mint will take shit from no one. Her infamous fight with a harasser at a Denny’s Parking Lot is proof of this. Nor does she care how that may affect her “image” – she keeps her dented skateboard from that day on her wall, both as a memento to the man she sent to the hospital, and a warning to anyone else looking to mess with her. She is adamant that a person should stay true to their beliefs and mean what they say. She doesn’t appreciate flowery words or too much talk, although this can sometimes get her into trouble with her sponsors.

People often ask: what the heck is up with Mint’s robo-ears? They aren’t ears at all, in fact. Rather, they’re a headset that Mint tends to keep on at all times. Developed for her by Queen, Mint’s headset is extremely high-tech. It exists as a pair of noise-canceling headphones, can be used to take phone calls, automatically syncs up with most of her consoles and auditory equipment for her playthroughs, and lets her integrate with the games she plays. It is her most prized possession.

When Mint is on break, she can be found in the local skate-park, where she’s general grinding her way to relaxation. She picked up the sport a few years previous and enjoyed the freedom and spontaneity it allowed her. Fans looking to score a selfie with the girl would find their best chances there, assuming she’s in good enough of a mood.

Mara waited.

She had been sitting on the rock for a few hours now, but had been waiting far longer. Years, in fact, and seven to be precise. It was a lucky number for a lot of people.

Not for her.

Were she not so anxious, Mara could have taken a moment to appreciate the beach spray as the waves lapped up against the shore. The cove was always beautiful this time of year. On a weekday, everyone at the island would be working, and with her free period being the last one of the school-day, Mara was able to enjoy some of the stillness outside, with only the occasional passing car disturbing her bike ride. If you could fly, you’d be able to see how the cove formed into a crescent moon of sorts, almost perfectly. There was supposedly a mathematical beauty that could be applied to geography, but Mara wouldn’t know — it was her worst subject.

She checked her bag for the seventieth time.

Chalk: check.

Prism: check.

Pocket knife: check.

MP3 Player: a very expensive check.

Everything was there, she knew that, but it was the only thing keeping her sane while she waited.

Mara examined her wrist. 8 o’clock. 17 minutes to go.

It was time to start.

She hopped off of the rock, careful not to scuff her uniform shoes in the sand, and trudged over to the cliff wall. It was vined over, but that’s what the knife was for. With a deft hand, Mara flicked it open, cutting away at the foliage until there was nothing but cracked gray rock in front of her. Satisfied, she turned away and took seven steps forward, before pulling out the prism from her pack and laying it down on the sand, making sure the sun would shine on it.

10 minutes to go.

Mara took a deep breath, taking in the smell of the sun as well. No point in panicking — if it wasn’t perfect, it wouldn’t work. Not for another seven years. She returned to the wall, pulling out the chalk. The sigil wasn’t too complicated, but it required a steady hand. Mara didn’t need the Book to draw it — she had memorized it by heart in the past seven years. It dotted itself on every doodle she whittled away at in class. There was no way she was ever going to forget it.

She took a step back, admiring her handiwork. It was perfect, or at least as perfect as she could make it. And with 7 minutes to spare too. Not bad. Mara sat back on the rock. Nothing left to do but wait.

The last seven minutes were agonizingly slow. But it was finally time. The sun touched the horizon. A beam of light shot itself across the ocean waves, straight into the prism. A kaleidoscope of colors burst forth, painting the sigil on the wall in rainbow hues.

A moment passed.

The sun continued to set, but the colors were now burned into the wall. They sparkled, before bursting out, like a switch had been activated. Mara did her best to contain her excitement: it had worked.

The wall began to fade away. In its place stood a girl with brilliant red hair and a grin plastered on her face.

“Did you wait long?” she asked.

“Rubrum!” Mara shot forward, tackling the girl with a hug. She held her like that for at least a full minute, before Rubrum finally yanked free from the girl’s grasp, laughing all the while.

“I take it that’s a yes.”

“Seven years, seven hours and seventeen minutes, to be exact! I’ll be happy if I never have to see the number again. But forget that, come and sit down!”

Mara led the red-haired girl to a blanket she had spread out on the sand. There were two smoothies waiting for them.

“Wow, you’re actually prepared this time,” Rubrum said. Mara pouted.

“Shut up! I was ten last time, I barely knew how to tie my shoes.”

“I’m pretty sure ten year olds know how to tie their shoes, Mara.”

“I will shove you back into that hole if you don’t stop!”

“And miss out on a mango smoothie? You can try.” Rubrum plopped onto the blanket, taking a giant sip from the drink, before letting out a satisfying sigh.

“Ah! I missed this.”

Mara sat down next to the girl.

“What, they don’t have smoothies in your world?”

“They do, but nothing like this.” Rubrum took another sip. “Ours are all about revealing the secrets of the universe, and other such nonsense. I hope when they’re found, ‘add flavor to your food’ sits at the very top. See how dumb they feel.”

“If I had known, I would have brought more for you to take with you,” Mara said, trailing her finger in the sand.

“It’s all good!”

“Oh! I did bring this though.” Mara ruffled through her bag, and pulled out the MP3 Player.

“I filled it up with a whopping 30 gigs of Ska music, just for you. God knows why you like that stuff, but I guess somebody has to. Oh, and it’s red!”

“Holy crap, is that a Zune!?” Rubrum grabbed the music player out of the girl’s hand, examining it closely. “I was looking at these in my Scroll like a week ago! I can’t believe you got me one!”

“I can’t either,” Mara replied, unable to stop herself from grinning. “This was a year’s worth of savings, for your information. Don’t say I don’t do anything for you.”

This time it was Rubrum that put Mara into a choke-hold of a hug.

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”

Mara pushed the girl off her. “Yeah, yeah, you’re welcome.”

“I’ve actually got something for you too!” Rubrum pulled her satchel off from her robes, popping it open. She pulled out a green book.

“You said you were interested in flight techniques, so I figured I’d give you my old beginner’s book of runes! It’s really simple stuff, so you can do it, even without the aptitude. Just…make sure nobody’s around when you do it, or they’re going to ask questions.”

“Wow!” Mara took the book into her hands, flipping it open to check the pages.

“Yeah, I think I can make this work. Thank you!”

“Of course! Now take a sip of your smoothie, it’s starting to warm up.”

“Oh wow, you’re right.”

The girls drank and talked, regaling each other of the time they spent apart. Thought it had been so long, it was if no time had passed at all. The sun gave way to stars as the hours passed. They lay on the beach, staring up at them.

“It’s weird,” Mara said.

“What’s weird?”

“That we meet up like this, but…you know, we both look up at the same stars. It’s weird to think about.”

Rubrum snorted. “That’s corny as heck, Mara.”

“Pft. Yeah, it is.”

“But it’s true.”

The girls sat in silence.

“Can I really not come see you?” Mara asked. Rubrum got up, the elbow she lent on slightly scraped by the sand.

“You know you can’t, Mara. If you did the Gate would get closed immediately. We’re already brushing up against dimensional law as is. I had to petition the Elders for a year and a half just for them to considerthis.”

“I know…but I want to.”

“And I want you to…” Rubrum sighed.

“Fine. I will ask them. But no promises, do not get your hopes up!” she rushed to finish as Mara squealed in excitement. The red-haired girl got up, examining a rock of some sort on her wrist.

“That’s time. I better get back.”

Mara sat up, running her hand through her hair.

“Really? You can’t stay a little longer?”

“Hey, I’m about to ask the Elders to break a ten-thousand year law. We really shouldn’t push it, Mara.”

“Ooookaaaay,” she said, getting up herself. The two girls walked to the cove wall together. It shone its rainbow hues once more.

Rubrum turned to Mara grinning. “Same time, same place?”

Mara grabbed the girl into a hug. “Always. I’ll be waiting.”

Rubrum rubbed her eyes and quickly turned away, hoping that Mara didn’t see. She did.

“See you!”

The red-haired girl stepped towards the wall. And then she was gone.

Mara stood in front of it, waiting. She knew nothing was going to happen — that Rubrum wouldn’t suddenly reappear, that they’d get to go on further adventures together — but it didn’t hurt to wait.

Nothing happened. Mara grabbed her things together, hopped on her bike, and began to peddle. She had no idea what she’d be like seven years from now, but she knew that Rubrum would be waiting for her.

And Mara would be there.

I’ve been meaning to put this guide together for a while because I have a bunch of friends that don’t know where to start when it comes to JRPGs. Which is fair — there are a million of the things, and a lot of them are pretty bad. That said, what’s nice about the JRPG is that despite what sounds like a niche genre, there are tons of options for all kinds of people to get into them based on their own preferences, from action games to the more traditional turn-based affairs.

Disclaimer: Blah blah blah opinions, this isn’t a book of gospel, blah blah, tell me what you’d suggest as a start, yadda yadda.

The format of this guide is as follows: I’ll name a game, and then I’ll name who it’s for. The only exception to this is what game you should play first, which, if you’re a beginner in the genre, should always be…

Chrono Trigger

Chrono Trigger, for all intents and purposes, is pretty much the perfect game in its genre. It’s JRPG nirvana. It never slogs, never forces you to grind, and has a combat system that’s easily approachable while still being cool to experiment in. It’s an expertly paced game that teaches you all the standard JRPG systems. The only thing that might cause me to hesitate when it comes to recommending Chrono Trigger as your first JRPG is that everything after it might feel weak by comparison. And that’s the best praise I can give it!

Child of Light

Child of Light is a great intro into JRPGs, and a good indicator that just because something is made by a Western developer, doesn’t mean it isn’ta JRPG – I promise you, that sort of conversation isn’t worth arguing about. It’s relatively short, grabs the amazing combat system from Grandia 2, and is family-friendly as well. The art and music are also phenomenal. Plus, you can play it on literally every modern system out at the moment.

Persona 4

If you’re a fan of anime, or miss high school (which, honestly, why?) but haven’t played a JRPG, Persona 4 is right up your alley. A satisfying blend of high school sim and traditional JRPG gameplay, with a dash of pokemon-esque strategy, Persona 4 is an addictive trip. Pick this if you miss summer trips with your friends. I went with this one over Persona 3 and Persona 5 because the former takes forever to get going and the latter is so mechanically perfect as a turn-based game that it’d be hard to go back to earlier games in the series. Persona 4 is available on the PS2, PS3, and in enhanced form on the PSVita.

Shin Megami Tensei IV

Maybe you read all that and your nose wrinkled in disgust. “This is why I never got into JRPGs,” you’re thinking. “I don’t want dating mechanics or slice of life skits!” You’re probably looking for Shin Megami Tensei IV, then. If you ever thought “I want Pokemon but instead of being my friend they want to kill me” then this is actually the perfect game for you! What you get in exchange for a brutal game is an interesting storyline about the nature of humanity and what words like law, chaos and neutrality really mean.

Seriously though…be careful making this your first choice if you’re not ready for it. And IV is on the friendlier end of the spectrum!

Nier / Nier Automata

Are you looking for more interesting and weird storytelling as present in SMTIV, but without the brutal difficulty? Do you like good music? Are you a dad? If you answer “yes” to any of those questions, you’ll love Nier and/or Nier Automata! Though the latter is a sequel to the former, you can jump into them in whichever direction you like, in my opinion. The original game in the series is a bit less polished than the first, so if that sort of thing is important to you, start there before moving to the silky-smooth gameplay of Automata. Either way, you won’t be disappointed!

Paper Mario / Mario Bros. RPGs

The Paper Mario and Mario Bros. RPGs have the benefit of being attached to the most iconic videogame character in gaming history. Both series have simple but interesting and active combat systems that are easy to grasp as a JRPG beginner, and include all the characters you love — including some wacky new ones. Any of the games are a great place to start, but I recommend Paper Mario and the Thousand Year Door and Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story from each series, respectively.

Tales of Berseria

Maybe you’re the type that finds the turn-based nature of JRPGs to be a snoozefest. If you’re willing to not to shy away from some Big Anime Archetypes, The Tales series is right up your alley! These are fast-paced action games that make combat fun even 30 hours into a story. Before last year, I would have recommend Tales of Symphonia or Tales of the Abyss as good places to start. And they still are! But Tales of Berseria gets bonus points for being on the current generation of consoles, as well as including an interesting group of characters and some quality of life choices that help set it apart from other games in the series.

Final Fantasy X

Of course there was going to be a Final Fantasy game on this list. It’s hard to avoid the JRPG Juggernaut. Out of fifteen games, I went with FFX. It has a simple but effective battle system, isn’t incredibly long like some other Final Fantasy games, and is straightforward — sometimes literally, depending on the area you’re in. Plus, if you find yourself wanting to dig deeper, there’s a metric ton of post-game content you can dive into that will test your JRPG skills to the limit. It’s also available on pretty much every platform in existence, so it’s easy to find a copy.

Blitzball still sucks, though.

Fire Emblem Awakening

Are your turn-based JRPGs not turn-based enough? Let Fire Emblem give you the strategic rush you need. Fire Emblem games can be extremely difficult, but Awakening gives you enough options to ease your way into the game’s addictive RPS strategy systems without having to worry about getting your entire team killed. Couple that with a fantastic localization and tons of customization options, and you’ll be knowledgeable enough to be one step closer to playing Final Fantasy Tactics, the graduate-level equivalent of the strategy-jrpg.