Games What I Played September 2k25
Chat, it's that time of month again. And it's still been rough. I've been real, real bad at keeping in touch with folks. Olympic levels of bag fumbling. On the plus side, I've gotten one project done in a way that's not great, but at least it's done, though I'm feeling like I need to do something new. But in this economy? Who can afford to do something new.
Aside from games.
Previous months, which I still haven't compiled into one easy to copy/paste master post, and at this point may just be a part of The Bit even if it would make my life easier: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August.
Old Games
Final Fantasy XIV
Hey. Hey Erenville.
I’m riding your mom.
New Games
Super Robot Wars Y
Super Robot Wars is art.
Super Robot Wars is Art.
Super Robot Wars is Art.
Super Robot Wars is ART.
SUPER ROBOT WARS IS ART.
(Also Jet Jaguar is the best boy and if anything happens to him I'll kill everything with space lasers.)
Trainatic
Another Idle game! This was…. Ok. It’s more on the active side for longer of it’s life than I really care for, but it’s not like Cauldron where it lies about also being an idle during those times, plus it gave me a sphere grid. It’s fine. These are all fine. I don’t have a lot of needs that these things fill, just the urge to watch a number go up because my brain is broken.
The Trolley Solution
So, this was an immediate wishlist as soon as I saw the trailer. Not because I think it looked great; it’s a fine trailer, but it’s not something that immediately attracted me. No, I noted it *specifically* because one of my friends *loathes* the trolley problem as a thought exercise. Absolutely refuses to engage, and I think my repeated jokes make her hate me a little more. So I knew I had to gift it to her. And then it came out, and I did, and she swore at me and I had a hearty chuckle. The game accomplished it’s task. So then I picked up one myself, and you know what?
It’s fine. It’s not especially hard, it’s a comedy game, and it’s full of sensible chuckle jokes. I liked it, but I also find the problem fascinating, and the game clearly has a lot of joy with the concept. It’s good, really good for a joke thing on a sale somewhere down the line. I probably wasn’t going to spend even half these words on it, but. There’s a point in the game where I was forced to choose between a “. . . woman with an ample bosom, or a woman with an abundant posterior,” and when I chose to hit the woman with the ass, the game awarded me 8,008 points. I have to respect that.
Silksong
And out of nowhere, some random team dropped a spiritual successor to 2023’s delightful indie game Lone Fungus. It’s weird that it’s full of bugs, but I guess it makes sense that there’s only one mushroom present in the game, so it makes sense. Wonder when the full sequel to that’s coming out though.
Stupid jokes aside, I don’t remember when I first played Hollow Knight; but I do know that it was a year or two after the release. I didn’t jump onto the Kickstarter for the game, both because funds have almost always been tight for games in my life, and also a fundamental distrust of Kickstarter as a funding method. Setting aside that broader conversation, when I was finally gifted a copy by a friend, I was completely blown away. Hollow Knight is a fantastic game; it’s a highly responsive, gorgeous metroidvania where the abilities you get mostly influence how you move through the world. It was then, and remains today, one of the shining examples of the genre, and the game unfolds in a way that I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced in the genre. Maybe the first time through Symphony of the Night.
So to say that expectations were high for Silksong would be like saying that space is pretty far up there. Not only is Hollow Knight one of the exemplars of the genre, but the team announced that Silksong was a full-ass game in February 2019, and they were working on playable Hornet since 2018, so they’ve had roughly seven years to create something.
And wouldn’t you know, they done did it again. Hollow Knight Silksong is a goddamn masterpiece. I genuinely don’t know how to start singing it’s praises, especially since people who are paid to do this have probably done it better. But let’s try anyway, yeah? That’s the point of this exercise.
I was completely sold when I walked into the second area of the game. The first area is a deep well you get dumped into to get used to moving about. It’s fine, as far as first areas go; it’s pretty simple, there’s enough platforming challenges to get used to Hornet’s unique attributes, notably her dive-kick pogo jump, and you experience the opening bits of the world with a basic boss fight. Then, you escape from the mossy pit and enter into a blasted hellscape of rock and bug carapace as you enter the pilgrim base camp that acts as you enter the Marrow, and it is *immediately* apparent why the game took seven years.
The background animations and artistry are incredibly complex; you can see the individual carapaces that make up the Marrow as you work your way through it. Whenever you hit a wall, a flurry of chunks and bits comes off where you strike. It’s the most intricate world art I’ve seen in a while that calls to mind a dark, almost Gieger-esque design (minus the penises). And while each area has a different feel and design ethos, they’re all just as intricately designed and painstakingly realized.I can’t think of another game that’s spent this much time on their backgrounds and art assets that aren’t just VNs, and frankly the art detail puts a lot of VNs to shame. And that level of detail and quality persists everywhere in Silksong. The music is excellent, when it kicks in. The sprites and animation are super smooth and silky, and I was consistently delighted watching Hornet move through the world and fight all the amazingly designed bosses.
And no small part of that was because Silksong plays like a dream. Hornet controls better than basically any action game that I can think of. She’s highly responsive, with absolutely no lag between button press and action, and her attacks are meaty and fun to do. When she dashes, she *feels* fast, which is an incredibly important feel in a game like this. And she’s fun to play, especially with the Crest system that allows you fundamentally alter her moveset for a few major differences in move set. You don’t have to, and when I was stymied by a boss the answer was frequently to go back to the default moveset and play more aggressively, but every player can find something to love here. Hornet is amazing.
But the bosses are (largely) genuine works of brilliance. Not only are they also exquisitely animated, they’re designed perfectly along the lines of a Mega Man boss. Mega Man bosses work best when they’ve got a good design and two or three attacks that have clear tells. This allows a player to learn what a boss can do quickly, and eventually learn how best to react and overcome the challenge the boss is present. Silksong’s bosses all do this. Most have three or four attacks which have clear tells, so the challenge is learning these tells and reacting appropriately. What this turns into is a ballet of movement as Hornet darts around the screen, dodging attacks and dashing in for a quick strike, only to fade back until the next opportunity presents itself. It is exhilarating, and works 99% of the time.
That said, I think there’s a few issues, but I don’t think they’re flaws (for the most part). Hornet takes a lot of damage; she takes two masks of damage from most bosses, and at most she has ten masks, eleven with a special badge. So she’s way less tanky than the Knight, and it can be frustrating if you’re bad (like I am) and end up tanking a bunch of hits. As a corollary, some of the runbacks to the bosses are *rough*, and while you can get good at them, a good run back may still see you take some damage, so you’re approaching these bosses that do two damage hits down a mask or two, so everything is even tighter. On top of that, the crest system is neat, but it’s also more restrictive than Hollow Knight’s badge system, which I loved. Also, there are a few bosses that are just dogshit designs. Fuck you forever, Savage Beastfly 2.
I don’t need to sing Silksong’s praises though. It’s wonderful; I enjoyed every minute of playing it. I got to the point where I wanted it over and used a guide for the last few percentage points, and I definitely used some of the cheese strats for a few of those bosses that I couldn’t duel, but I fought every boss except for one. And I’m looking forward to the absurd additions Team Cherry is going to make to this game. Though I’ll probably tap out eventually; some of these fights are at the high end of what I feel I can do as a player. What an incredible achievement. Also Sherma best boy.
Also, if I can put on my mediocre white man hat and comment on something that I know relatively little about, I saw a few people asking “What can game dev studios learn from Silksong” back when it was released. I think the answer to that is fucking nothing, not because Silksong offers precious little to learn from, but because they’re doing things the way that most studios should be run. Team Cherry won the fucking lottery with Hollow Knight, and used that windfall to continue what they were doing and expand on it. They were able to fund themselves such that they didn’t need to rush, and had no outside middle managers rushing things to making extravagant demands on the game. They probably should have had slightly more communication regarding the game than nothing at all for about six years, but that’s more to do with the fact that this is a Kickstarter stretch goal and promise, so there’s some slightly different requirements there. In short, Team Cherry is what should happen if the game design system (and capitalism writ large, maybe) actually worked as designed. That this is such an outlier is perhaps cause to examine the greater systemic issues, but like. They made an exceptional game. They were compensated and rewarded fairly for that. And they used those proceeds to make another exceptional game. That’s how this shit should work.
Hades 2
I kind of intended to take a slight break and delay playing this a bit as a bit of a breather from Silksong, but then it hit 1.0 days before I polished off Silksong, and I was curious, so I fired it up.
I promptly lost 10 hours over the course of about a day and a half which also included a grocery run and some bagel testing, so like. I kind of have to address it at least a little bit?
I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent in Hades 1. I have it marked as beaten in my Steam page, but that’s largely because I had it bought elsewhere. If I wanted to dig my Switch out and hope it still powers on normally, I probably could have a better number, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve spent minimum 100 hours there. The only reason I didn’t touch Hades 2 during it’s Early Access period is because I knew I would glut myself on what content was there and be unable to pick it up later.
I was right, I think. I’ve played Hades 2 enough to know that it’s fantastic. It surpasses the original in basically every regards. The game plays better, Melinoe’s weapons feel better (though I miss the Gun), the systems and their interactions are more interesting, and the characters just as bombastic and fun as the original game. Of note, I wasn’t sold by Hades 2’s character portraits as static pieces of art, but seeing them in game with all the lighting and particle effects really sells it.
It’s Hades 2. I don’t know what more I can say at this point. Between this and Silksong, that’s probably spots one and two on my GOTY list secured, and everything else is vying for the scraps beneath it. But now that I’ve completed those, I can more effectively return to Expedition. Or could, if spooky season wasn’t approaching.
Games What I want to Play
Back in May, I did a list of games I was interested in for the remainder of the year; I meant to touch base with it last month to see progress, so let’s do that now just to see how I’ve done (badly, I’ve done badly
Own, Have played at least some of
Super Robot Wars Y, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Own, Haven’t Played
Wanderstop, Look Outside
Don’t Own, Want to Play before End of Year
Promise Mascot Agency, The Hundred Line Last Defense Academy
Don’t Own, Still Want, But Lower Importance
Suikoden Remake, FFT Remake, Raidou Kuzunoha Remake
Still not Out
Am I Nima
And this was done well before I knew that Silksong or Hades 2 were going to exist and leave early access respectively, and doesn’t take into account the FFT remake, the Raidou Kuzunoha remake, or whatever else I don’t know exists yet. And I haven't even gotten to the Rise of the Golden Idol DLC! Ugh. Wish I had more time.
