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Year in Review: 2025
Dec. 31st, 2025 03:00 pmAnother one down, eh? I did some things.
Twitch gave me this:
There's nothing surprising about that, really, it's the games I streamed for these playthroughs. The funny part, I guess, is that I got it at the very start of December. Perhaps that's why Chrono Trigger is in there despite me skipping the Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge this year: the Twitch year is a little unaligned from the calendar year.
Steam gave me this.
It's a bit more reliable than prior years, although my kids still use my account a lot. I think my fourth most-played game was Planet Coaster 2, which I've never actually played. My fifth most-played game was Beltmatic, which is accurate! My kids have been watching a lot of Real Civil Engineer and thus they're really into simulations and automation games lately, and Beltmatic grabbed my attention for a while.
VVVVVV being number 1 is funny: that's caused mostly by my youngest son, CannonTrys, who has become somewhat of a VVVVVV speedrunner, playing the game for hundreds of hours this year across all of Switch, 3DS, Steam, mobile and his Miyoo Mini. I do enjoy the game but I'm not especially good at it myself.
On Switch, I spent the most time with Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, and Mario Kart World. We got a Switch 2 fairly close to launch, actually, but I've barely played anything exclusive to the new hardware.
However, this year has been really hard on the system(s) I work in, and that's resulted in a generally hard year professionally. Furthermore, as I've discussed during Trials of Mana and FF1 Monster Party, in mid-November a colleague of mine passed away - which is a terrible thing just on its own, but it also meant I inherited their workload. Where I had been really excited about work opportunities in my 2024 Year in Review, this year has just been dry and a lot of things I wanted to happen didn't work out. Ubiquitous generative AI has also been more of a negative than a positive on my day-to-day, unfortunately.
There was also some terrible family medical news earlier this year that resulted in my parents selling their home in the Spring - it was all dramatic. I guess that's why it doesn't seem like I did much here for a few months.
In short: all the personal news was kind of bad news this year! But really my wife and kids are happy and healthy. I live in a nice place and my job is stable - for now. I am grateful, and still mostly privilege-aware.
I got the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters for both Steam and Switch in 2024 and I've still only played 1, 3 and 5, so I'd like to walk through 2, 4 and 6 under some kind of variant condition. One of my kids gave me an idea for FF6, so I'm just figuring out FF2 and FF4. Perhaps there will be FJF events for those!
For some reason, my kids all got into Pokemon games recently. We got chatting about it and now we're finding ways to transfer Pokemon all the way from generation III games forward into Scarlet/Violet. As I facilitate this, hatching eggs and giving them stupid names and stuff, I find myself actually quaintly remembering all the past adventures I had with them. It sounds like some campy nonsense out of the anime but I'm serious! I may have just remembered this week that I kind of love Pokemon games. I might need to spend some more time on that in the coming year. It probably won't be for the sake of variant gameplay.
As is tradition for these posts, I'll just say I'm happy to talk to anyone who likes things I share to connect via BlueSky, Discord or GameFAQs (which cannot decide if it's dead or not).
I hope we'll all have a great time in 2026.
Variant Playthroughs Done in 2025
- Valkyrie Profile (PS) with Classic Jobs:
I had been talking about doing this for a long time! The setup was harder than I expected but it was okay... although the game didn't always want to behave under the conditions I forced upon it. The fact that special strategies were needed to bypass several bosses (due to a partly documented bug) actually made the playthrough challenging and interesting. It was a bit on the slow side, but I'm glad I did this. - Final Fantasy II (GBA) with Jobs 2025:
This was another Four Job Fiesta spin-off event facilitated by RevenantKioku, and just a nice, simple thing in terms of implementation. I enjoyed this; it's another one of those funny cases where it may actually improve the game in general. My favourite aspect was carrying job restrictions into the Soul of Rebirth bonus content. - Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster (Steam) Four Job Fiesta Volcano:
After a bit of a break, I did the actual Four Job Fiesta for the first time in several years. The Volcano variant was a nice way to not get stuck with knight and white mage (which are fine, but... played out for me). - Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster (Steam) Side Quest Challenge:
This one required a fairly elaborate helper app that one of my kids helped with, as well as a lot of community involvement that made it pretty fun. That said, it's a challenge in name only: it's an incredibly easy playthrough, even with 0.5x experience enabled throughout. I had a few favourite quests, like the one where I had to play with the controller upside down, and then one where I had to play with the game upside down... basically anything that wasn't "kill n of x". - Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles (Switch) OR4M:
I was so happy to have this remaster, finally, but I had wanted to do this OR4M thing for a long time. This made a good inaugural playthrough. I am the first person to document finishing it on this version, which is pretty cool, because there are substantial, arbitrary buffs to enemies in chapter 4. The final battles were very exciting. - Final Fantasy (NES) Monster Party:
This is maybe my longest-teased playthrough, with concepts of it going back to 2018. I had mentioned it in my Year In Review posts for 2023 and 2024! I'm very glad to have finally done it; it was fun and it looked awesome. However, in the last week it's come up that some of the mechanics at the very end of the game may have been a bit broken so there's a non-zero chance it might need to be revisited. - Trials of Mana (SNES) Prescribed Party 2025:
This was another RevenantKioku event for a game I'd played several times and never beaten. It's weird because I strongly disliked the beginning of the game, but the end is pretty great.
System-Specific Year in Reviews from 2025
This year I was surprised to get a year-in-review from Twitch, and I was able to find one from Steam that wasn't expressly sent to me. Nintendo didn't have one for me! Perhaps it's because of times being precedented or not.Twitch gave me this:
There's nothing surprising about that, really, it's the games I streamed for these playthroughs. The funny part, I guess, is that I got it at the very start of December. Perhaps that's why Chrono Trigger is in there despite me skipping the Chrono Trigger Holiday Challenge this year: the Twitch year is a little unaligned from the calendar year.
Steam gave me this.
It's a bit more reliable than prior years, although my kids still use my account a lot. I think my fourth most-played game was Planet Coaster 2, which I've never actually played. My fifth most-played game was Beltmatic, which is accurate! My kids have been watching a lot of Real Civil Engineer and thus they're really into simulations and automation games lately, and Beltmatic grabbed my attention for a while.
VVVVVV being number 1 is funny: that's caused mostly by my youngest son, CannonTrys, who has become somewhat of a VVVVVV speedrunner, playing the game for hundreds of hours this year across all of Switch, 3DS, Steam, mobile and his Miyoo Mini. I do enjoy the game but I'm not especially good at it myself.
On Switch, I spent the most time with Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, and Mario Kart World. We got a Switch 2 fairly close to launch, actually, but I've barely played anything exclusive to the new hardware.
Other Happenings in 2025
I am on the fence about relating my personal and professional identity so I don't usually discuss my work much, although for people who watch my videos and read between the lines my work is probably pretty obvious! I'm not hinting at something one might want to hide like contract killing or drug dealing; it's more a matter of keeping my professional image relatively pristine. Sometimes I care about this and sometimes not.However, this year has been really hard on the system(s) I work in, and that's resulted in a generally hard year professionally. Furthermore, as I've discussed during Trials of Mana and FF1 Monster Party, in mid-November a colleague of mine passed away - which is a terrible thing just on its own, but it also meant I inherited their workload. Where I had been really excited about work opportunities in my 2024 Year in Review, this year has just been dry and a lot of things I wanted to happen didn't work out. Ubiquitous generative AI has also been more of a negative than a positive on my day-to-day, unfortunately.
There was also some terrible family medical news earlier this year that resulted in my parents selling their home in the Spring - it was all dramatic. I guess that's why it doesn't seem like I did much here for a few months.
In short: all the personal news was kind of bad news this year! But really my wife and kids are happy and healthy. I live in a nice place and my job is stable - for now. I am grateful, and still mostly privilege-aware.
Plans for 2026
I finally got a few things off the list! Valkyrie Profile and FF1 Monster Party had been a long time coming. Lufia 1 and Breath of Fire 1 still sort of interest me so I'll try to get at least one of those done this year. It would also be fun to play FF1 through... well, as far as I can in the series - with blue mages only. But that'll take some scripts or hacks and that's time-consuming. Oh, and there's another FF1 project I'd really want to do that'll require scripts and a helper program, but I don't want to overcommit so I'll just leave that for now!I got the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters for both Steam and Switch in 2024 and I've still only played 1, 3 and 5, so I'd like to walk through 2, 4 and 6 under some kind of variant condition. One of my kids gave me an idea for FF6, so I'm just figuring out FF2 and FF4. Perhaps there will be FJF events for those!
For some reason, my kids all got into Pokemon games recently. We got chatting about it and now we're finding ways to transfer Pokemon all the way from generation III games forward into Scarlet/Violet. As I facilitate this, hatching eggs and giving them stupid names and stuff, I find myself actually quaintly remembering all the past adventures I had with them. It sounds like some campy nonsense out of the anime but I'm serious! I may have just remembered this week that I kind of love Pokemon games. I might need to spend some more time on that in the coming year. It probably won't be for the sake of variant gameplay.
In Conclusion...
Honestly, this year was terrible! Sometimes, in the worst times I have, personally and professionally, every so often I just think, "I need to play a game". Often when this happens I remain time-constrained so a game with low time-investment fits really well, like my beloved Vampire Survivors or Peglin. However, I really found Xenoblade Chronicles X and Trials of Mana chilled me out during the worst times. It really feels like a disgusting vice when I say it like that, but I have to think it's better for me than huffing paint or whatever I could be doing. So... hurray for videogames!As is tradition for these posts, I'll just say I'm happy to talk to anyone who likes things I share to connect via BlueSky, Discord or GameFAQs (which cannot decide if it's dead or not).
I hope we'll all have a great time in 2026.
