Issue #4 – A Look Back Before Looking Ahead to 2026 RPGs

In the world of Promise Mascot Agency, mascots are a separate living species from humans although their role in human society remains largely the same. As a disgraced and secretly alive Yakuza member, you have a massive debt to pay off via a discarded mascot agency on a cursed island. Besides cut scenes, you exist entirely in your little truck which is why I bought the game on PC as the Switch version is lacking other cars on the road and it’s terribly important that I can knock over or get hit by other cars here and there. You drive around town with Pinky the mascot that looks more like a severed thumb to collect upgrades, find items for sub-quests, encounter new friends and invest in the town. During that you’ll recruit mascots and negotiate their terms of employment which can be a bonus, extra time off after a certain amount of jobs and so on.  One of the car upgrades you can get lets you launch Pinky out of the car and add some debris to clean up town, I got most besides the flying one which I didn’t find. There’s since been a free update to add another upgrade that lets you grind the truck but that and some new hero cards isn’t quite enough for me to play more.

The jobs are promotional events the mascots will attend after you’ve assigned them based on their personality type. During these jobs the mascots may occasionally need help as they get stuck in a door and are attacked by bees. Thankfully your friends have given you hero cards that can be used, this gives you a small hand to try to bring the hazard type’s number to zero within a few plays, doing more quests will upgrade these cards to have higher damage which is important to do so long as you pay attention to how many actions playing a card uses.

Money management is extremely important as you’ll have to pay wages, bonuses, buy various upgrades, items and invest in the town to get more businesses to open and enable you to take on more jobs.  Meanwhile a debt with a minimum daily payment amount looms over your head. Once you unlock the passive income of merchandise through a mildly annoying crane game, and hiring subcontractors that becomes less of a problem.

You can also get to know your employees and develop a short personal story with them which is a nice touch. Further on into the main plot you start a political campaign with your friend Pinky running for mayor, and you can start political debates to increase your chances of winning. Pinky may also be my top character of the year, a true inspiration to us all.

Promise Mascot Agency is a lovely irreverent game that is super fun and unique. My only real complaint is that the human models look absolutely atrocious.

• Dispatch

I’ve never played the Telltale games and in fact have only played one “choices matter” adventure type game being Life is Strange. The visual style and animation are extremely outstanding paired with almost as good voice acting. The hero management is a fun aspect but only matters when it comes to getting certain results at the end, as you can fail literally every one and still beat the game. Which is good as my luck in that game was not high and the PS5 version had some control glitches.

• Digimon Story Time Stranger

This is the first Digimon game I’ve bothered to play and it was a fairly standard RPG but I had a lot of fun. I wasn’t particularly familiar with the franchise and thus most monsters were completely new to me and I had a lot of fun unlocking new ones and playing around with the digivolution system. It has some minor similarities to SMT games as you can feed lesser digimon to stat boost your main ones and there’s a couple of fusions but only at the last level. 

• Pokemon Legends Z-A

Pokemon games are usually fun and this is still true of Pokemon Legends Z-A. I really like the real time combat system in this and sneaking around in the battle zones was a blast. I really didn’t mind that everything took place in a city although they could’ve made it look better and added some mini-games. They also took the rollerskates away which is a massive let-down. The finale was a bit of a let down for reasons I shouldn’t spoil. I didn’t like the whole package enough to bother with completing the game and am only interested in the DLC due to the increased cosmetic options really.

• Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma

I really enjoyed my time with this Rune Factory spin-off, unlike the last time they made an unnumbered entry. I was initially worried the game was going to be front loaded but the actual matter was that it’s quite a short game. I finished it by the end of the second month and it’s definitely possible to finish it by Spring if you know what you are doing. The graphics aren’t especially impressive but the character designs are phenomenal and I hope the designer sticks around as they made picking a spouse a hard choice this time. The combat was fun enough if easy and some of the dungeons were really cool even if certain features were half baked and moments that seemed to be set up to be spectacular were not so. I adore a lot of the new systems introduced here and I hope some of them make their way to the Story of Seasons franchise.

• Doraemon Dorayaki Shop Story

I played quite a few shop management games this year from Story of Season’s Grand Bazaar, a bit of Touhou Mystia’s Izakaya and Discounty which I believe I put down to hop onto this. My first Kairosoft game, when I played the demo I was immediately blasted with an unholy volume of pop-up events. Having to start the game a second time as there was no save carry over it became a lot less overwhelming. The really confusing part was the sheer number of crossovers with the Doraemon mangaka’s other works. Man he really liked time travel stories. It’s a nice little management sim game where you unlock new recipes to sell, send your kids out across space and time to find new ingredients and try to rank up through contests. I never did make a nice looking store but I did manage to beat the game in a nice hyperfocused obsessive ten hours. I might have to make time for another one of their games, although another cross-over could be fun.

The end of the year is a good time for reflection (unless you rolled vampire). After listening to the Thirsty Mage podcast episode about gaming hardware in 2025, I decided to put to pen my own thoughts on the subject. The eternal arms race of gaming hardware has always been a part of my life, from the console wars of the 90s to the HD remake of said console wars to mobile game explosion of the 2010s and to the emulation hardware renaissance of the 2020s. The stage and the players upon it may change but the show must go on, only now it feels like the sound is a little less furious.

I think we’re in a weird sort of transition after the end of a long era of transformative change. For about four decades new video game hardware was dropping all over the place. Seemed like every few years there was either a new generation or at least a couple odd offshoots of the current one, all contenders vying for a spot as one of the big shots. Some of them were the iconic hits, some of them were flops, some barely made headlines. But regardless of which horse you were backing at the time, every new hardware announcement brought with it a sense of wonder. What could this device do to the idea of video games? What new possibilities could be unlocked only with this hunk of plastic and circuitry?

Up until about the HD era, new hardware meant whole new forms of games could be imagined. A SNES was a different experience and set of possibilities than a PlayStation. Hell, a SNES was a design space distinct even from a Genesis. Different hardware even in the same generation had game expressions unique from each other, strengths and weaknesses in this or that aspect or genre. The Genesis was badly limited in JRPGs but seemed to be the place to go for strategy games. Multiplatform games sometimes had to be remade from the ground up to fit the distinct hardware. This didn’t always work out, but something like the N64 port of Resident Evil 2 is damned impressive just for existing in spite of its (many) shortcomings. Regardless, new consoles were exciting because the advent of a new game box meant something transformative about how games could look and sound and function (polygons! CD-quality music! Internet connectivity! Horse armor!)

Given that background, I think we first started feeling diminishing returns as of the PS4/Xbox One era. Games looked sharper, ran smoother (mostly), and were certainly bigger. But what was really all that new that was only made possible by the hardware? Open worlds weren’t invented here but commercially took off. Was the concept that different from the sandbox games of the PS2 and PS3 though? There was the advent of live-service games, but that was just stapling MMO and gacha monetization onto existing modes of play. The consoles could interface directly to social media and I think that’s a bad thing. I’m not closed-minded enough to think that no new or innovative games dropped in that era, but I don’t think most, if any, of that was only made possible by the advance in hardware. “The same, but bigger and shinier” doesn’t mean this started a BAD age of BAD games, but it did help to cement a trend that started in the PS3/360 era: hardware parity.

Multiplatform releases, especially including the PC, weren’t as ubiquitous. For years the best we could hope for were janky PC ports (anybody else remember Capcom’s messy offerings for anything besides Street Fighter?) or clumsy, half-baked console conversions (the Xbox was not good as an Orange Box, and shoutouts to StarCraft 64.) But as of the late 2010s the playing field became largely even (sometimes adjusting for Nintendo’s hardware being underpowered). Things might run a little smoother or look a little nicer on one side of the fence, but it was by and large the same experience. With the abandonment of dedicated handhelds as a primary platform, the design space among the big players has shrunk further (the bite-sized and/or reasonably-scoped market has largely been consumed by the indie revolution). At this point I think we’ve hit functional parity across all platforms. Yes, the PC version of a given game usually has more teraflops and you can mod Cloud to have a tramp stamp. Aerith made him get one, it’s canon. But you can largely get the same games with the same core experience.

I should point out that parity is a good thing. People shouldn’t be stuck with crappy experiences just because they happen to be on the wrong hardware. I’m not forgetting all those stripped-to-the-bone Wii ports. But the trade-off ends up being uniqueness (save for Nintendo, of course.) Nintendo has been doing their own thing separate from the other core platforms since 2006, to greater or lesser success. Currently greater. MUCH greater. Their exclusive franchises will always be locked to their own hardware. However, a PS5 doesn’t feel much different than an Xbox. It doesn’t feel much different than a PC once you actually launch a game. Hell, it doesn’t even feel that much different than a PS4. The dual sense controller has some need features, but hardly any games take full advantage of them and they both have Astro in their names.

This all gives context to the main question: what do I think of the state of gaming hardware in 2025? It’s alright. It’s functional. There are worrying trends on the horizon: costs are rising, bubbles are bursting, the walled gardens are getting more cramped. Anti-consumer practices are on the rise (Nintendo switching from a perfectly functional virtual console to a subscription model SUCKS, but it’s working from their perspective), physical media is at risk, and Windows continues to cripple itself further with every update. And yet: the consoles play games and they pretty much work. There’s not enough red rings or yellow lights to cause a panic. Nintendo fixed their awful joycon stick design. It’s fine.

It’s just not exciting anymore though. Diminishing returns have diminished so far that new consoles feel like smartphone upgrades: iterative. I’m not crying apocalypse over this though. The switch 2 is a switch with more juice. That’s all I needed it to be though. The PS5 is a PlayStation that plays the new PlayStation games. That’s all I need from it. Microsoft has by and large given up on the Xbox’s future, but their current hardware is still going to be getting ports and general support. This console generation is set to last for a long time, which again, is fine. Amped-up new hardware is no longer a game changer. We don’t need a new gen any time soon.

I don’t mean to frame it all as purely negative. I still love gaming and there are plenty of new games on the horizon I’m excited for. I’m not in my grumpy old man era yet, at the wizened age of thirty-five. Although by anime standards, that pins me as having one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. There’s a field of gaming hardware that continues to leave me asking, “What’ll they come up with next?”

The real excitement happens when you step away from the “official” platforms. Raspberry Pi-based emulation consoles are better and easier to find/build than ever. Emulation handhelds are taking off like crazy, as they have been for the past two or three years. We’re in for a flood of devices that have shaken off the cheap e-waste mantle. For the most part they’re all solid quality gadgets for reasonable prices that can give you a lifetime supply of free games in almost any form factor you like. I think there’s a bit of a dumb arms race in this scene though: a lot of competition to reinvent the Steam Deck wheel (in some places quite badly; no handheld should EVER have Microsoft Teams slapped on it). I don’t see much point in a handheld too big to fit in your pocket with a battery that can’t last a subway trip, but I’m not really the target for that part of the market. I do love to see weird gadgets like the R36T with that bubble screen or the MagicX Zero40 making a dedicated device for vertical shmups and DS games. I’m happy with my Retroid Pocket 2S and my jailbroken Nintendo/Sony handhelds, but it’s fun to follow the scene and look at all the offerings for the niche enthusiasts.

The steam machine is on the horizon too. I think the intent is solid; a consolized pc that’s intended to just work right out of the box for people who want the convenience and a solid Linux machine for those who want to treat it as such. Maybe it’s not going to have absolute top of the line specs, but who the hell even needs that anymore? Slapping more raytraced 250fps teraflops into your game just enhances the placebo effect of it all. This walled garden has an open gate into the wilderness beyond. I hope it gets more people both into pc gaming and into Linux.

That’s where I am then. 2025 hardware represents boring standardization on one end and exciting experimentation on the other. There are things to be worried about going forward: the tech world’s relentless and wasteful obsession with AI has led to GPU and RAM shortages. Console and PC prices are going up and standards are going down. Hell, even the retro handhelds I gush about are going to be affected. But look around you: there’s already so much out there. If you let go of your hunger for more and shinier polygons, you might find the gizmo that’s right for you (or gain new appreciation for the ones you have.)

Just about any device out there, including the phone I’m typing this screed on, is capable of playing a decades-spanning treasure hoard of incredible games for free. THAT’S worth reflecting on when you’re looking at hardware.

1. Story of Seasons Grand Bazaar

I remember owning the original DS entry for an extremely short timespan as I saw the pop-up about the game having a freshness system and having to sell my items through a weekly bazaar, paired with not terribly good graphics. I decided this era of the series was no longer for me. This has got to be the best remake this series has ever had, a massive graphical upgrade along with additions and quality of life features meant I put a good fifty hours into it. I did beat the main story within the first year or thereabouts and the spouses aren’t interesting enough for me to stick around but I loved running around catching bugs, gliding around town, dressing up, stomping crops out of the ground and breeding cute livestock variants. This is almost certainly the game I’d recommend for people wanting to try something from the series that started it all. 

2. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter

Hey look it’s that game David wanted us all to play. This was released on my week of leave I took off for my birthday meaning I got to crack into it and beat the game in just over a week, the high speed mode certainly helped. The positional combat system is something I love even if it means missing moves sometimes. I can take or leave the action part as I only used it for certain enemies. I’ve still yet to learn why people regard Estelle as one of the best female gaming characters as she didn’t seem to especially stand out throughout the story. I found the graphics of the areas weren’t especially much but the character models and animations were all great. Hopefully the follow-up releases at the same time of year and I can blast through it almost as quick, although it seems I might have to pay attention to how enemies react to specific inputs if the finale was anything to go by.

3. Xenoblade Chronicles X

I no longer need to keep a USB plugged into the back of my Wii U and I’m now experienced enough with games to understand this one. The main understanding being that you have to jankily stealth your way through some parts of the story. It is now the first and so far only Xenoblade game I’ve beaten. It gets last place on this list for what they did to the story in the new final chapter.

Octopath Traveller 0

I talked about my early impressions on an episode and am happy to say I’ve discovered a solution to some of my problems with this entry. My favourite part of the game so far is just getting to ‘splore even if dastardly signposts get in my way for what is mostly no reason, heck I just found a town in a volcano where everyone is wearing creepy getups and refuses to talk to me. I’ve even gone through the pains of actually swapping out certain party members and going into boss fights missing skills I thought I had equipped. I am about forty hours in at the time of writing meaning I expect to finish this game probably by the time Dragon Quest VII reimagined comes out.

Demonschool

The game with the worst name for SEO. I am very much enjoying my time with this tactical game that only occasionally leans on the puzzle side, and well that’s more for the perfect turn number thing which I have managed for every fight so far and I don’t want to STOP NOW. I love the funny writing and playing around in combat sometimes getting things right by mostly fluking it. It seems now the bosses are ramping up the challenge and I had to actually pay attention to what it was doing and now I’ve got scary healing clowns to worry about. I’m really hoping I unlock more fishing spots and am neglecting to max a friendship with a certain character because I have just googled and I need to wait until the near end of the game to maybe romance another one, though I’m terrified I might end up like that blonde girl in Paranorman.

The past year I’ve kept busy with plenty of great gaming including the euphoria of a new console release from Nintendo. While I don’t foresee myself ending up with new hardware this year (even though the Steam Machine pipe dream might be slightly intact), I do see a bunch of games my body is ready to play.

• Dragon Quest VII Reimagined

February kicks off the year with two of my three most anticipated titles, luckily one in the beginning and the other at the end of the month. Dragon Quest VII Reimagined starts me off with (another) remake of the PS1 classic. I first played it on the 3DS and adored its story telling and world building, but with an even more streamlined experience, I’m happy more people will get their hands on this one.

• Resident Evil 9

Then at the end of the month I’ll catch up with my old pal Leon Kennedy in Resident Evil 9.

• Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter

One that wouldn’t have been on my radar half a year ago is now among my most anticipated titles of 2026 and that’s Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter. I finished the remake of 1st Chapter and can now finally understand why David won’t shut up about this series! Also here’s hoping we get surprised with Final Fantasy 7’s final part!

• The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon

A most anticipated game list is never complete until there is at least one Trails game listed, and this year we get two. What better way to start the year then to jump into what likely will be an 80 hour adventure in the latest story arc of what has to be the longest running story line in the history of video games.

• Clockwork Revolution

To be honest, I was hoping we’d get another entry in the Wasteland franchise from longtime CRPG developer, InXile Entertainment. Instead, we have a trippy, Steampunk inspired first-person adventure to look forward to, hopefully at some point in 2025.

• The Adventures of Elliott: Millennium Tales

Everything that Team Asano touches seemingly turns to gold despite the worst game title in video game history. The Octopath franchise has been a revelation, and I plan to be there on day one when they apply their beautiful isometric HD2D aesthetic to the action RPG genre.

• The Blood of Dawnwalker

Fans of the Witcher 3 need to add this game to their Steam wishlist. Some veterans of CD Projekt Red left to create a new open-world dark fantasy game set in 14th century Europe where you play as a daywalker, a vampire at night and human during the day. The action-RPG has a unique mechanic where the game plays out over the span of a set amount of time and your actions dictate the outcome.

• Sacrifire

My backlog is about as long as the Mississippi River, so it’s rare whenever I download a demo to my Steam Deck. Something about Sacrifire was just too appealing to pass by and I was blown away with my short playthrough. It’s been a long wait since the demo was taken down, but I’m looking forward to the full release, hopefully later this year.

• Trails in the Sky – 2nd Chapter

This has been my most wanted game since completing the remake of Trails in the Sky in October. It’s cruel punishment making us all wait until the fall of 2026 for the 2nd chapter, but it will be all the more sweeter when it finally releases.

Now we’ll just pretend that I played any of the games I anticipated for last year’s release and continue on for what I’m most excited to play in 2026, knowing that I might in fact beat some of these games listed. So here are my top five upcoming games that I’m definitely totally going to play and beat.

• Pokemon Pokopia

A Pokemon game with both similarities and connections to the Dragon Quest Builders series? Sign me up! Now initially playing as a ditto trying to be human was something I didn’t like but the character has grown on me. The main thing I’m hoping for is some good writing and things to work towards besides decorating as I’m a little tired of all that. 

• Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream

After devouring the second game in the series (first to release in English) in approximately eight days, I was hungering for some time. Miitopia and its re-release had some of the same flavour but we still needed more. While it took over ten years we’ll get to enjoy more of the insane comedy instilled not only by making funny miis but also what they get up to. My only concern with this release is that we mightn’t get the make-up or wig system from the Switch port of Miitopia, which will make my return as an emo clown rather difficult to accomplish.

• Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave

As a big fan of the whole two mainline Fire Emblem games that released on the Switch I’m excited for another one that seems to be at least somewhat connected to Three Houses (although I did think Engage was good besides its story). As we still only have the first trailer there is some speculation that we might follow multiple character paths, perhaps in some kind of weaving fashion. 

• Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection

Have I beaten the other two games? No. Does it matter? Not especially. Am I excited to go through a game getting called Princess? Most definitely. I might suck it up and play on Switch 2 so I don’t have to fight over both the TV and game with my husband who is excited to play one now that the proportions don’t weird him out. I’m most excited to see all the new monsters since last time, but I’m a little concerned about the well being of a character we’re seeing in previews who isn’t getting any day one DLC costumes. 

• Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

It’s a new Arkham game but Lego.

Donkey Kong Country – Snow Barrel Blast

One of my first encounters with an icy landscape came from Super Mario Bros. 2, a personal fave that I mentioned in Issue #1 as part of my NES top ten list. However, it wasn’t until Donkey Kong Country’s Snow Barrel Blast level, the first area of the Gorilla Glacier world, that I fell in love with a platformer’s snowy setting. The way Donkey and Diddy would slide around, in addition to periodic snow flurries that would hamper visibility, made for a steep challenge, but the beauty of these late-game spaces has always stuck with me.

Earthbound – Winters

The vignette style scenario where you first encounter Jeff in Earthbound takes place in the snow-filled Winters, making it a perfect candidate for this list. The coziness of Dr. Andonuts lab and Jeff’s boarding school is a perfect complement to the charming music that plays while you wander the elements. That your sole companion during this part of the adventure is a bubble gum chewing, bubble-blowing monkey is yet another reason why Earthbound’s vibes have so rarely been matched.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert – Snowy Siberian landscapes

One of the stark differences between the original Command & Conquer and follow-up Red Alert was the inclusion of snowy battlefields that truly highlighted both the red uniforms of the Soviet forces and the blood spilled by the scores of infantry pumped out on both sides. The snow-covered landscapes of Red Alert felt even more fitting given the late November release timing back in 1996. I still remember going to now-defunct Future Shop with my dad to buy our physical PC copy of the game, which truly feels like a lost moment in time, but a precious memory nonetheless.

Super Mario 64 – Cool Cool Mountain

The timeless Nintendo classic, Super Mario 64, featured not one but two snow-filled levels, and it’s the one you encounter in the foyer of Peach’s castle that earns the title of wintery wonderland. A cabin on a white-capped mountain hides a tricky, treacherous slide, a banger of a music track, and multiple races against the penguins who call Cool Cool their home. The platforming here is made all the more nerve-wracking due to the mountain’s icy slopes and wind gusts, but for a moment, you can stand side-by-side with a mama penguin and her child and take in the peaceful scenery. Or you can listen to the devil on your shoulder and toss penguin junior off the cliff, you monster.

Final Fantasy VI – Narshe

Our final wintery wonderland encapsulates both a city and the approach to it, as a classic Square RPG opens with one of the most iconic sequences in video games. A trio of Magitek armor slowly, methodically push towards the Narshe, where the two heroes of Final Fantasy VI, Terra and Locke, meet for the first time and begin a journey that spans continents and even the end of the world. Snowy Narshe and the caves that surround it serve as a fitting introduction to key elements like The Returners, Moogles, squad battles, but it’s subsequent visits to Narshe that offer even more poignant moments, like Terra’s encounter with an Esper or reuniting with Mog.

Chrono Trigger – 2300 AD (Wasteland)

Winter isn’t all fun and games, though. Some snowy spaces are ones we want to escape from rather than to, and one wasteland that immediately jumped to mind was the world of Chrono Trigger’s 2300 AD. The icy winds howl and blow and you make your way across the overworld from dome to dome, but the interior spaces over no respite from the cold. Instead, food stores have run dry and the inhospitable climate means hope is in equally short supply. While the year 2300 is one I’m not expecting to see, I sure hope it turns out better than this version.

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