Veryn

I gave it a 4/5, but some of the dialogue and character beats still feel fairly clumsy and there are some narrative decisions I haven't seen a point to yet.
The improvement from the first book makes me hopeful though.
I'll circle back around for book 3 at some point.

Cover for the novel 'Of Darkness and Light' by Ryan Cahill.

First book of 2026 was 'Of Darkness and Light' by Ryan Cahill.
This is a sequel to his debut and I was happy to see a clear improvement in the pacing and prose. It still has a nostalgic "EragonxWoT" vibe, but has started to feel more like its own world and story.
Not perfect, but I love dragons.
4/5

Perlica has exactly one answer to every problem, and it's mass industrialization.

Big "when all you have is a lightsaber, everything looks like a youngling" energy.

IMO it's a little too pandering, and the story is a little too basic, but it took OG Arknights a few chapters to get its footing, so I'll trust the vision.

Nefarith and her pawns are also boring as villains, but the new one who showed up in ch2 seems like he'll be more interesting.

After spending something like 40 hours addicted to Endfield over the past 4 days, I'm going to consider that a "beaten game" for my yearly list, even though I'm going to keep playing it.
Good game.
I currently give 4/5, despite gacha.

The factory must grow.

Gacha is a twisted scourge on our society that should be destroyed.

Anyway, I'm going to be playing Granblue UnF for most of tomorrow and then follow it up with the Arknights Endfield release.

Baba is End!
Very cute game
I think I cleared 91 levels, which felt like a lot, but apparently there's almost 500???
Some of the puzzles were getting pretty hard, lol, so I'm happy stopping there, but it's also nice to know there's more if I want to go back.
4/5

It does have some cool set-pieces, and I'd say it's better than the second one, but like-
That's a pretty low bar.

I don't know why I let my friends convince me to watch Avatar 3 with them.
What a strange movie.

Baba is You is melting my brain.
Not going to try to 100% it, but it's pretty cool.

Also, screw Romeo. If he was really Pinocchio's friend then he shouldn't have killed me 15 times in a row.
smh

First game of the year was Lies of P.
Had more fun than I first expected tbh, very competent Souls-like.
Though, the dialogue felt machine translated and it was hilarious just how much they copied 1-to-1 from Bloodborne.
Like, even the text font is the same? The font???
3/5

Had enough goals for the year that I made a Bingo sheet.
Going to try to see how many I can get.

Maybe it's finally time to go back and do Act 3 of Silksong? Hmm

Went back and beat Simon and the new superboss in E33.
Game is fun.

KH: BBS, FE: Awakening, TWEWY CO: E33, FF7: Rebirth, FFXIV: Shadowbringers Hades, Celeste, Sekiro

New addition to my Video Games 3x3 with E33 knocking out MonHun Rise.
I'm leaving Hades in because, even though I think the gameplay of 2 is a straight upgrade, I think the original is a stronger overall package. It just hit harder when I played it.

Tier List 10 - E33, Tunic, Furi 9 - Hades 2, Metroid, Silksong, Hollow Knight, 1000xResist, MHWilds 8 - FF7, FFX, DOOM DA, Astro Bot, Bananza, DMC 5, Awaria 7 - Start Again, Ghost of Yotei, Super Mario RPG, Ori WotW 6 - Pokemon ZA, P5R, DMC 4, Journey, Oblivion, Nioh 2

I remade it at a higher resolution cause wow the first one ended up crunchy.

10 - Isles of the Emberdark 9 - Hands of the Emperor, Vicious 8 - Dead Hand Rule, Strength of the Few, Mercy of Gods, Will of the Many, Shadow of Lightning, Slaughterhouse V, Dispossessed, Threshold, Pilot 7 - Vengeful, Farthest Shore, Left Hand of Darkness, Tainted Cup, Hellbent, Fox Wife, Gods are Bastards, Brief History of Chronomancy 6 - Edge of the Dream, Tombs of Atuan, Blood and Fire, Drop of Corruption, Hexologists, Babel 5 - Lies of Locke Lamora

Personal tier list of all the books I finished in 2025!
Gonna give my Book of the Year to Emberdark. In a wider context, I might give it a 9 instead of a 10, but it was my personal favorite this year and I wanted something to hit 10!

Tier List 10 - E33, Tunic, Furi 9 - Hades 2, Metroid, Silksong, Hollow Knight, 1000xResist, MHWilds 8 - FF7, FFX, DOOM DA, Astro Bot, Bananza, DMC 5, Awaria 7 - Start Again, Ghost of Yotei, Super Mario RPG, Ori WotW 6 - Pokemon ZA, P5R, DMC 4, Journey, Oblivion, Nioh 2

Okay!
Now that I've met my goal of beating 26 games this year, I whipped up a tier list.
IMO, every game I played this year was enjoyable.

Box art for the game 'Astro Bot'.

Just ran credits on Astro Bot.
Very cute game!
It really felt like I was playing a new Mario Galaxy with PS5 graphics, which is high praise imo. It wouldn't have been my personal choice for GOTY in 2024, but I could feel the love that went into it, so I get it.
4/5

Ben Starr, willing to do anything for money

Idk if my favorite part of TGA was "Uma Masoomay" or "Ben Starr will do anything for money"

Glad to see E33 win so many awards; probably my favorite game in the past 5 years.

Of the new announcements, I'm most excited for the Star Wars game and the Control sequel, but there were a few I'll keep an eye out for.

Picked Astro Bot as my 26th and final game to beat this year. Figure it'd be good to round out the year with last year's GOTY winner.
It's very cute and enjoyable so far.

Cover art of "The Mercy of Gods" by James S.A. Corey.

27th of 26 books this year: The Mercy of Gods.
Very engaging mix of "first contact" sci-fi and themes revolving around trying to survive under an incomprehensible and authoritarian regime.
Really enjoyed the writing; I've never read/watched The Expanse, but this makes me want to give it a try?
4/5

Watched The Godfather for the first time yesterday.
It was a great movie, but it oddly felt like I'd already seen it before? Probably because I have, scattered across dozens of references in other media.

It was interesting, like walking through a museum.

Cover art for the novel 'Dead Hand Rule' by Max Gladstone.

And that's book 26 done!
Dead Hand Rule starts pretty slow, it's almost a slog of setup for the first half of the book, but once Dawn re-enters the plot and events kick off it just keeps going and all weaves together wonderfully.
All of Gladstone's craft books are worth a read imo.
4/5

Sixth Batch: Birthday Cake
Verdict: Delicious
(Though the inclusion of actual frosting may have made it a little too sweet? Gave me ideas for similar flavors)

I'm at 25 games played and 25 books read for the year, out of my goal of 26.
Doing pretty good.

Picked up the DOOM: The Dark Ages on sale.
Game is sick.
I love the shield, really does a good job of making you feel like an unstoppable force.
All 3 modern DOOM games have played pretty different, and they've all been a ton of fun.
4/5

A friend lent me Metroid Dread.
I've played a few metroidvanias, but this was the first time i've played an actual Metroid game, lol.
And it was great! I only got lost like twice!
The double-jump occasionally pissed me off, and I'm awful at aiming, but I had fun.
Samus is so cool.
4/5?