Mento's Month: September '26
by mento
The end of another season means new anime is upon us as well as plenty of recent and less-recent video games to talk about. Discussion topics: N64 platformers, a shelf-fulfilling prophecy, two Indies with gorgeous retro-futuristic aesthetics, and the horrors of the Super Mario Galaxy RetroAchievements subset.
Game of the Month: Final Fantasy XVI (Square Enix, 2023)
Something that dawned on me the more I played FFXVI this month is that it almost resents the idea that it's an open-world RPG in the model of a XII (or XIV, from which I understand most of its creative team is drawn) rather than a linear, story-driven one like Final Fantasies X or XIII. Exploration is rendered nearly pointless: the best you can hope for when running around one of the large, realistically-rendered regions across the world of Valisthea is a fight with mobs that you can end with a single cooldown Eikon ability or a baby's handful of gil and mats from shiny drops and chests. The fact that you earn far more from defeating a pack of monsters than you do from the chest they were guarding is frequently where the game disappoints most. It also takes a very long while before the game starts getting serious about side-questing (there's a renown system unlocked much later on that provides boons the more of it you earn as an added incentive) and the game's "notorious marks" bounty hunt side-activity, which are really the only reasons you'd ever want to wander off into the wilderness than to stick to the beaten path toward the next story destination. Definite shades of FFXIII apologists promising that things improve some 20-40 hours into the playthrough.
I obtained an accessory that gives me a brief damage boost whenever I successfully precision dodge (that is, dodge just as the attack is landing) but, more importantly, it gives me this badass little cutscene whenever I do it.
For as much as FFXVI feels like a game at odds with itself, or maybe one that failed to reach the impressive targets it initially laid out, there's still a sense that the core of the experience—the story and combat—were well attended to if none of its other aspects saw the degree of developer attention they required or deserved. Combat has the speed of an Ys, where choosing your moment to unleash all your strongest attacks at once is often pivotal to turning a 15 minute fight into a 5 minute one, while spending the rest of that time using the parry and evade-counters in rhythm with the enemy patterns creates a vibe closer to those Arkham Batman games where dextrously controlling the room is the order of the day. Clive infrequently acquires new abilities based on elemental Eikons (this game's eidolon/summon equivalent) to play around with and by pouring enough ability points into mastering these abilities you can eventually begin to mix and match them for a preferred build. Of course, we're still talking some twenty hours in before he even gets the third of these elemental suites: the most he can equip at one time. I've grown particularly fond of the wind ability that can pull enemies towards you; there's a series I keep returning to where you can jump, pull an enemy up to where you are, hit with them with a full aerial combo, then use a downthrust to knock them to the ground leaving them prone for a finisher. Of course, this only works on the smaller, weaker mobs which can otherwise also be taken down with a strong enough breeze, but you find your fun where you can.
Clive also regularly fights alongside his NPC dog, Torgal, which can be commanded to apply pressure to enemies with the multiple-hit "sic" (great for when an enemy is staggered and larger combos keep building a damage multiplier), the air juggling "ravage" (not that it's hard to start an air juggle of your own), and a heal that's just enough to recover a fraction of the damage you took in the last attack, providing you don't get hit again while it regenerates away. If nothing else, the dog commands remind me that I've been meaning to replay Secret of Evermore some point this year.
My favorite dumb pointless little thing this game does is that it has a flowchart that connects all the characters and their relationships with one another, and with a click of a button you get the "inner voice" of a specific character to see how they feel about everyone in their orbit. Even the dog gets one.
I appreciate both that the story gets as complex as it does while following several nations and their machinations and that the game is replete with glossary/lore-tracking functions to ensure you have all the Cliff's Notes equivalents you need to make sense of it. Not that the plot is as involved as, say, a Final Fantasy Tactics (or as oblique as something like Final Fantasy VIII or Type-0) but having at least two places you can visit in your home base to get all the exposition details you may have missed during the game's perpetual procession of cutscenes is a boon that either reflects well on the developers or badly on us, the ADHD-riddled audience. It's a bleak, uncompromising (at least for FF) tale of revenge, resentment, and redemption with a similar overall theme to FFT (or Berserk, from which FFT liberally borrowed a lot of plot elements) in how it makes the case that an external, unambiguously evil force can so easily shape the world of men to their preferences by taking advantage of the moral weakness, greed, and pride of those in positions of power. As true to today's geopolitical climate as it's ever been, sadly. (Well, not that I have any proof that an interdimensional ghoul is pulling all the strings, for as much as Stephen Miller might look like one.)
It's fair to say that Final Fantasy XVI has a far more serious tone than previous games in the series, treating its darker themes and stark violence with the austerity they deser- wait, what's this side-mission called again?
Other Gaming Tomfoolery
Hogging the rest of my attention this month was the second half of the 64 in 64: Plats All, Folks! season of my recurring N64 retrogaming feature, which coincided with the 30th anniversary of the system's North American launch earlier this week. The eight games covered during this September—which included Banjo-Kazooie, Doraemon 3, A Bug's Life, Chameleon Twist 2, Donald Duck: Goin' Quackers, Earthworm Jim 3D, Rugrats in Paris, and Scooby-Doo: Classic Creep Capers (the last two of those not strictly 3D platformers)—certainly varied in quality but were instrumental in helping me to understand how the 3D platformer genre was coming together during its salad days. Some developers had a better idea than others how to make that genre (and especially the camera) work, is the unsurprising conclusion I reached.
(This nugget of wisdom and others can be found here: Part Five, Part Six, Part Seven, and the Finale.)
Hey, tell me something I don't know.
Banjo-Kazooie obviously topped the pack, moving right up to #2 in my overall list (though it'd be #3 if Ocarina of Time were on there), while I'll admit to finding Goin' Quackers to be an agreeable "Bandiclone" and Chameleon Twist 2 to be just as appealing as its predecessor when creating challenges around its speedrun-friendly array of platforming tech focused around the protagonist's dextrous tongue. I could be convinced to revisit the more Zelda-like Doraemon 3 should it ever get a fan translation and/or RA support, and I admire how strange A Bug's Life was given it's meant to be an anodyne Pixar movie tie-in by a contract developer later made infamous for cookie-cutter platformers (by way of the LEGO series). As for the others, if I ever play any of them again it'll be too soon. The last of those four articles posited several options for what could be the theme of a final-for-real-this-time season, so if you've been enjoying that series let your opinions be heard. I am, after all, extremely susceptible to peer pressure.
Elsewhere, I discovered my zen this past month with Shelves & Sorcery: Tidy Up the Enchanted Shop, presently my #1 2026 game (also the only 2026 game on my completion list so far, but hey). The idea is that you run a magic shop in some fantasy setting, or at least work as a shelf-filler for same, and due to an enchanted mishap the entire contents of the store lie on the ground in a random heap. The goal of the game is to simply place all those goods back on their shelves, from books to weapons to crafting materials to crystals and ores. Where it gets tricky, especially in the larger stores, is that you might have several shelf units dedicated to a single broad type of item (potions typically having the largest selection) and so in order to remember where anything is you have to decide if you want to organize these shelves by the items' shape, color, name, or whatever other ordering makes the most logical sense to your brain.
My house also looks like this, albeit with far fewer books. Intelligently, I elected to clean this digital mess up rather than my own habitat.
Being that this is a fantasy world, you do have a few upgrades and spells that can help: the upgrades include being able to carry more items at once (invaluable) or a longer reach to put items on shelves from further away, and the spells include the means of highlighting every item of the same type as the one you're holding to easily gather them all or else take everything in your inventory and automagically assign them all to their display areas. The game has three stores right now of increasing size (going from 1,000 total items to over 4,000) as well as four modes: casual, timed (which is just for online high scores; it doesn't give you a time limit), no magic, and Archmage (which maxes all your spells and upgrades from the jump). It's the sort of game that you'll know whether or not it appeals to your sense of calm and your organizational acumen by the time the trailer's finished, but I found it had the same therapeutic power over my slight OCD predilections as, say, the PowerWash series.
Finally, I should talk more about my podcast game—Super Mario Galaxy for Wii—but I'm thinking I make it the subject of an October "RetroPiece Theater" breakdown instead since there's a lot to discuss about its selection of challenge achievements. I also really need to vent about its all-coins subset too, because gosh darn if those things aren't intimidating. I've since completed my Mario 120 Stars run and am now moving onto Luigi, whom has a higher jump but is more slippery for whatever reason (maybe his confidence issues makes him less footsure?), all the while sweeping up as many these all-coins runs as I feel qualified to handle.
The "Indie Game of the Week" of the Month: BioGun (Dapper Dog Digital, 2024)
Surprise, surprise, I went with the exploraction game from this month's set of excellent Indies to be the highlight. It has a few issues, largely stemming from its overambitious nature, but BioGun (#484) is an admirable attempt to marry the gunplay, sci-fi, and mild horror aspects of the Metroid series to the cute but deceptively difficult template of Hollow Knight and its sequel. Shrinking down into a dog's body to fulfill the role of a vaccine dogsbody, the game is able to use its setting to create some fascinating level design and enemy encounters (take that, chlamydia!) while having plenty of ideas for traversal upgrades, passives, and multiple weapon types to give you much to experiment with as you work your way from one organ to the next. It's a fully-featured "one of those" and it's a little dispiriting (to the devs most of all, I'm sure) how easily even games of this depth can fall through the cracks given the genre's ubiquity.
Finally, the last Metroid is in captivity. In this dog's ventricle. (I'll admit the neon does get a bit much sometimes.)
Next are two first-person immersive adventure games with some truly exceptional retro-futuristic aesthetics, hampered by some very basic and straightforward puzzles if they even can even be called that. Nobody Wants to Die (#483) takes on the noir genre in a story that must've been at least a little influenced by Altered Carbon, given it revolves around rich elites abusing a technology that lets people switch bodies through what are essentially SD cards capable of housing a human consciousness, and its crime scene investigations have you toy around with some intriguing hologrammatic forensics tech. Meanwhile, The Invincible (#486) is based on a contemplative '60s sci-fi yarn where something goes horribly awry on an alien planet and it's up to the ship's astrobiologist and her captain to start piecing the particulars together as they first rescue the rest of their crew then investigate their enemy nation's presence on this cursed world. They could absolutely hire this development team to help bring a real-life version of this setting to fruition in a movie/TV serial sense, given the incredible vistas and CG renditions of hypothetical '60s space age technology.
Finally, we have Piczle Cross Adventure (#485): yet another game that experiments with merging the picross/nonogram puzzle format with a second genre to see if it adds to or detracts from the core logical picture grid solving process, similar to what Murder By Numbers and PictoQuest have done in the past. I'm going to argue that it does help a bit, though having to ensure all the puzzles are things that would exist in the protagonist's town (that is also adjacent to a desert, a forest, and a jungle somehow) does limit its purview a little. It was cute and amusing though, so it gets a pass.
The Weeb Weeview
First, we rank the summer anime. Rigorously. I made it weird. Sorry. Here's a top ten of what I saw:
The Ghost in the Shell ****
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (Season 4, Cour 2) ****
You and I Are Polar Opposites (Season 2) ****
The Saga of Tanya the Evil (Season 2) ****
Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You ****
Though I Am But an Inept Villainess ****
Dara-san of Reiwa ***
Daemons of the Shadow Realm (Season 1, Cour 2) ***
A Livid Lady's Guide to Getting Even ***
From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman (Season 2) ***
(The Ghost in the Shell) I doubt we'll get another season given it reached the end of the source material, but I'd take a dozen more adventures with these cybernetic goobers.
Then next we have some previews for the upcoming autumn (October-December) season. At least, these are the ones I feel qualified to talk about. Did you know there's two separate anime debuting this season about banking and the stock market? Folks sure are feeling this recession, huh? Anyways, as usual I'll go through all the returning shows I'm looking forward to and then move onto the premieres that seem noteworthy:
The Apothecary Diaries S3: The big one for autumn. The second season of this show was sublime and I'm well on board for more Maomao and her emotionally stunted detective work (I'll admit the thematically similar Inept Villainess hyped me up a little for this show's return). Time to start working on my concubine/Columbo portmanteaus now. Con...columbine? Wait, maybe we better not.
Ranma ½ S3: Really pushing these seasons out at a clip. I never saw too much of the original Ranma ½ and only picked up bits and pieces of its romance + martial arts approach through early internet memes and video game adaptations like those SNES fighters, so my experience with this reboot is filling in a whole lot of missing context while waiting on tenterhooks for another fighter roster member I recognize to finally make their debut.
As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World S3: This would be the isekai where the young protag can read the stats of his subordinates and citizens, albeit more in the Nobunaga's Ambition sense of qualitatively judging their utility in a military/leadership setting. I've been getting more into "macro" fantasy shows like this, where it's more about managing a whole kingdom than a single dude or his adventuring party (Tensura being on point last season helped), and this one in particular has the juice. I mean, it would have to if it's on its third season.
A Wild Last Boss Appeared! S2: What started as an Overlord-lite "I reincarnated as my evil-coded OP MMO character" isekai variant has only become more curiously compelling over time, as there's a divine conspiracy at work and affairs aren't quite as cut and dry as they seem. The finale of the last season had a very enjoyable skirmish between the overpowered demon lord and the titular dark horse wildcard, traumatizing the nearby designated hero and his party in the process as they essentially witnessed Godzilla and Ghidorah throwing down, ultimately leading to more questions than answers as to what's actually happening in this world. Hopefully it can maintain that compelling mystique going forward.
Suikoden: The Anime: Just as I finish my seasonal feature of exploring anime inspired by games, they make another one. And this one's only 28 years too late to be a tie-in for its source material, Suikoden II (though relatively close together if we're just talking the remaster). Anyway, Suikoden II has the best story of that whole series so this was the right choice for an adaptation, even if it might be weird to do Suikoden 1 later given the inverse chronology, and I'm intrigued to see what Konami's (somewhat) new animation studio can do. I could definitely see a Silent Hill anime following close behind if they don't screw this up too badly. (They also have a second show this season, Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden, about a sick girl healed by transplanting the soul of a battle-loving hero to boost her immunity with the mild side-effect of her wanting to leap out of bed to go bust some heads. No idea if it'll be good but it's always smart not to put all your eggs in one basket.)
Reborn as a Space Mercenary: An isekai where instead of getting dropped into a Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, it's Elite Dangerous. Protag reincarnates in his favorite space trading sim, along with a high-tech spaceship well beyond what this universe can throw at him, and just sets out to the stars seeking fame and fortune. There's aspects of the story I don't care for (harem shit mostly) but it should make for a nice alternative to all the fantasy media if they can animate the dynamic space combat well (its maker, Studio A-Cat, doesn't have the best track record sadly).
The World's Strongest Witch: I had an absolute blast reading this manga, in which a young woman is given a seemingly useless skill (it's one of those scenarios where everyone receives some god-given "ability" when they come of age) and is essentially left to fend for herself by her disappointed family. What the skill actually does is access the internet of our world, and that includes the fan wiki, GameFAQs page, YouTube, and Reddit forums for the game world she obliviously inhabits. Perceiving the words of commentators like AssEater69 to be those of the gods, she quickly turns her fortunes around with all this cheat info plus a small degree of meme culture shock. It's very dumb as parodies go so you kinda have to be on its meta-humor wavelength to get anything out of it, and another case where you have to wonder if its one joke can sustain a whole season of anime, but I'm hopeful this will be the big new comedy this season. Of course, my sense of humor sucks, so...
I'm Dating a Dark Summoner: I read a bit of this one; it's a D&D-inspired sex comedy where the party's titular dark summoner (and moody goth chick) casually hooks up with its straitlaced, pious cleric and neither wants to admit how much they're into the other, given their opposing... well, everything. The secondary cast of the party's other dimwits have their moments too. If you're an Oglaf fan or can deal with the salacious content (and there's a lot of it) it can be both sweet and funny at times. And if you just really like well-endowed goth ladies, then, well, it's got you covered there too. Or uncovered, as is more often the case.
Plus some sequel shows where I might need to catch up on their first seasons (when I'm not catching up with the rest of the summer stuff): Chitose is in the Ramune Bottle, Sasaki and Peeps, The Ramparts of Ice, and Reincarnated as a Sword. There's also the second season of Black Clover but the first "season" of that is like 200 episodes, so maybe not.