September 2025 media
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Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter: An incredible remake of one of my favorite games of all time, with combat mechanics cherry-picked from across the series, a light dusting of new sidequests and dialogue, a solid new arrangement of the soundtrack (which can be reverted in the settings), and the most appealing 3D art Falcom has done yet. My only real complaints are localization quibbles; it’s annoying that GungHo changed a bunch of proper nouns and even pronunciations rather than maintaining continuity with earlier releases, as NISA did. But that’s not nearly enough to sour me on it—I’ve played the original Trails in the Sky through to the credits multiple times, and I’m thrilled to do it again.
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Hades II: It’s still early, but I’m not as high on this one as I hoped I would be. The characters aren’t bouncing off each other quite as well; combat feels a little overcomplicated now; I don’t know that I wanted a wider variety of resource nodes to mine; I don’t even like the music as much. All that said, the core is still solid and it’s still a lot of fun to play. It’s just a victim of the incredibly high standards the first game set. If things stay as they are and my opinion doesn’t change as I play more, a slightly lesser Hades is not the worst place to be; even if my opinion improves, I can’t help but think I’d be more excited if a studio as talented as Supergiant had opted for something less iterative.