Monthly Game Catalogue #1: August 2025

With gaming as my number one prioritized hobby, it becomes easy for games to blur together in my memory. Thus, these monthly gaming catalogues exist as a way for me to document every game I’ve played in a month with some quick thoughts. Note: I don’t see the need to list games I’ve replayed, only ones I played for the first time.

* = beaten

1: Ninja Gaiden Ragebound*

I’m a pretty diehard fan of the old 2D Ninja Gaiden games. I marathoned them all a couple years ago, even going out of my way to play the Game Boy Ninja Gaiden Shadow. Understandably, it felt like 2D Ninja Gaiden fell by the wayside thanks to the much more popular 3D formula. Thankfully, Koei Tecmo, Dotemu, and The Game Kitchen (developers of Blasphemous) proved me wrong.

What we have here with Ninja Gaiden Ragebound feels like a natural evolution of the formula. I wouldn’t exaggerate and say something akin to “this feels like if 2D Ninja Gaiden continued on the Super Nintendo”. The action and fantastic pixel art here would be too much for my beloved SNES to handle. This simply feels like a modern and flashier version of those older games. I know older gamers cringe when they hear the word “modern”- don’t worry, this game isn’t easy. There’s nothing as unfair as the last world in the original NES Ninja Gaiden, but Ragebound is still quite hard. I loved the different abilities Kenji and Kumori had at their disposal in this game. The Game Kitchen kept the feeling of those older games; many enemies die in one hit just like the NES trilogy. It’s the bosses that require pattern memorization and high skill gameplay. Oh, and the pixel art is stunning too.

I really loved this game. If I was being objective and refused any nostalgic feelings towards the NES trilogy, I would say Ragebound is easily the best 2D Ninja Gaiden.

#2. Resident Evil (2002)*

My full thoughts on this game can be seen in this review here!

Obviously this game is beyond legendary. While I enjoyed it, I found the inventory system pretty hideous, and the door animations needlessly annoying. Aside from those aspects- great game!

#3. OFF

OFF’s protagonist, The Batter, would be on the Mount Rushmore of “quirky” RPGMaker protagonists alongside Madotsuki from Yume Nikki, Brad from LISA, and a few others.

OFF is a very…trippy game to say the least. It starts off by asking the players name and fully addresses the fact that this is all a video game. You play as The Batter- who’s sole task is to “purify” the world of specters.

If you’re looking for a game with a tone very few games have, OFF is for you. It has the ATB from the older Final Fantasy games which I’m of course a sucker for. You enter these segmented zones and quickly find out that specters have infested them. There’s some pretty good puzzles scattered throughout the game.

While I really enjoyed the gameplay and the new soundtrack, I inevitably stopped caring about OFF enough to finish it. Usually, I need to care about at least one or two characters to finish an RPG, even one as short as this game (roughly seven hours). Your party members are just some circles…literally. The Batter is incredibly focused on his goal of purification, leading him to have minimal dialogue. The best character is easily The Judge, who is this creepy cat well aware of everything in this universe being a game.

I’m sure its too much of a “basic taste” complaint to levy against the game to say that the characters bored me. Again, I love the world, gameplay, and the music, but this feels like a game I’d rather watch a 30 minute video essay on YouTube about rather than actually play through it. If you’re a diehard fan of Undertale, it might be worth checking out OFF since the inspirations are clear.

4. Final Fantasy XII

More complete thoughts can be found in my video here!

Final Fantasy is a top five gaming franchise for me. Despite that, I tend to gravitate away from the games after X. XVI was pretty decent but it wasn’t an RPG, and I didn’t beat it. I bought a copy of XII a couple of years ago when it was on sale and decided to finally try it out.

The shell of a really legendary Final Fantasy game is here. The music is outstanding, the world of Ivalice is as awesome as ever, and the characters seem really cool!

Unfortunately, the game remains what I just said- a shell. The characters never reach their fullest potential, and some pivotal plot moments sometimes happen off screen!

Luckily, I really loved the Gambit System. I thought it was a fun strategical twist on the ATB system we saw in games prior.

All it takes is about five minutes of research on Final Fantasy XII’s development to see that the original director, Yasumi Matsuno, left development midway due to some health issues. You can kinda see that the game is missing those extra little spices that really make a Final Fantasy game special. If you’re solely interested in strategy-like gameplay and don’t care much about characters though, this game is for you! Despite not finishing it, I don’t feel like I wasted my time.

5. Momodora: Reverie Under Moonlight*

I swear I'm not trying to be a contrarian, but I've never been a huge fan of Hollow Knight. Despite the upcoming Silksong demanding every gamers attention, I was really in the mood for a metroidvania. I decided to look into my backlog, and saw Momodora Reverie Under The Moonlight in there. My love for this game caught me off guard! Maybe it’s the 4:3 aspect ratio, or the anime inspired pixel art, but something about this game makes me feel like it's a game I would've played on my computer as a young kid.

This game is really gorgeous, and it hits my personal specific tastes extremely well. The story is sparse, there's not many NPC's you can talk to, and it’s a pretty short game. You can 100% it in about six hours. There’s no stupidly obtuse trick to getting the good ending either. While I have some nitpicks like basic enemies hitting like tanks, and instant death spikes being annoying in a metroidvania where you lose map progress and money via dying- I still loved this game. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but I didn’t really want it to.

6. Momodora Moonlit Farewell*

To my complete surprise, this game released eight years after the previous one! I'm not sure if there were some developmental troubles, or the developers simply wanted to take a break, but either way – this is a very good sequel. No longer is the aspect ratio 4:3. The pixel art feels much less anime inspired. This time around there are many NPC's and much more story threads unfolding. There are also a lot more upgrades and passive effects to equip. The menu is flashier and prettier. If you play Reverie and this game back-to-back like I did, you’ll see the improvements immediately. Money and map progress is saved after dying, and no more instant death spikes either!

I think it’s pretty safe to say that this game is more polished than Reverie Under The Moonlight, but for some reason I kinda prefer Reverie. I think I’m just a sucker for games with cryptic stories. And no offense to the genre, but I can’t really recall a metroidvania where I really cared about the story. I respond better to the metroidvanias that let the map do the talking, and I think Reverie achieved that goal better.

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As always, thanks for reading.