Here are my notes and media consumed from June 10 to 16, 2025! Family visits continue, video gaming esssays, progress on the same games, and some work shenanigans.
š This week was my birthday! The exact date is easy to find but Iāll leave it ambigious here. The point is that I had a great time, got a cake at work and at home, got a couple of great gifts, including: the Casio CA-53W, an couple of awesome t-shirts (one of them is of Metroid, and it rocks!), and a couple of videogames: Fantasian: Neo Dimension and Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age
šŗ So, as I said last week, my sister is visiting. One of the problems with that is that I havenāt been going to the gym. I just prefer to get home early and binge-watching series together. This is only temporary after vacation time is over! I will definitely return, at some point.
āļø This week was a bit low when it comes to writing. I didnāt dedicate a lot of time to it, and the only blogpost I shared (my third post on videogame franchises) was already 90% complete since last week. It was quite a busy week.
š§ Part of the blame goes to work! We begun testing a new feature last week, and it went better than planned, although it still has lots of things missing or not working properly. It will require a lot of changes before we can actually implement it in production.
Gaming
Dragon Quest XI - Iāve played this for another 5 hours, and yep, this is definitely my weekend game now, I want to be playing it even more, because it is just so good! I am playing in small chunks and not all day simply to avoid any possibility of burnout, and itās great. Currently, I visited a city that was frozen by some witch, and I visited a library looking for a book detailing how she was defeated in the past. Now I am on my way back to the city, to talk to the queen about my discoveries and find out what to do next.
Final Fantasy VI - I have made a lot of progress here as well. I talked to the Empire, which seemed willing to put an end to the war, however, it was all a ploy that ended up with unleashing a terrible power. I am on my way to face them one more time, hoping to stop them before it is too late. I already played this part of the game so I know whatās coming, and I am hyped to go through it once again!
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver - I got a Steam Code for Soul Reaver 1 & 2 remastered, and played it for about an hour. This game is absolute nostalgia for me, one of those I saw older kids playing. I thought it was a genuinely incredible game, and I am glad I finally get to play it and experience it myself. The dub work is already stunning, and the remastered graphics look just like how the game looked in my head.
Reading
The Big Time - Read up to chapter 14. I will for sure complete it this week. A couple of really interesting dialogue happened, as well as some nice science fiction exposition that explained some reasoning behind how this universe works. I am looking forward to how itāll end.
Hunter x Hunter - Read up to chapter 394. I think I will stop here for a while, at least until the Manga is no longer in hiatus. I am enjoying the story quite a bit and I am eager to know more, but more progress is yet to come and Iād rather know I have more to read, than that to be forced to wait. I donāt know, my brain is weird.
Watching
The Fugitive - Tommy Lee Jones chasing Harrison Ford is not something I expected to watch, I didnāt know it existed, but I am totally here for it. This movie was awesome, like, such a good action flick from the 90s. Itās one of those that made me go āthey donāt make them like they used toā somehow. I wasnāt even alive when this came out, itās all just fake nostalgia talking, but yeah, itās just a cool dad movie, perfect for Fatherās Day, and yes, my dad chose it.
Arrival - I had heard and meant to watch this movie for ages. Then I saw the director, and I knew I had to give it a go already. It did not dissapoint. I expected a hard science, realistic take on a first contact story, and that is exactly what I got. I did not expect the cosmic and the philosophical dilemmas to be what they were too. I donāt even want to say much more, just give it a watch if you havenāt. Itās definitely worth it.
Week Links
Here are some things that interested me around the web!
Blog Posts
It will only take three hours - Procrastination is a problem, especially when youāre like āIāll obviously do this in time as soon as I startā so you leave it until the end, welp.
The Sensation of Change - Marisabel writes about dreams and how her brain has been rewiring during her process learning Japanese. It kind of reminds me of Arrival which I just watchedā¦
My Note-Taking Problem - Matt has a note-taking problem, I donāt have a problem because I just donāt take notes, so yeah.
Kidney Transplant, Take Two - Nathan was one of the first bloggers I followed on the fedi. After some time out, itās nice to see him again, he had a kidney transplant (again), and hereās the story!
Videos
This week was definitely very oriented towards gaming essays and retrospectives! I actually didnāt watch that much YouTube overall, which I found interesting. And most of these were videos I listened to, rather than watched.
What Makes a Game Retro? - TechDweeb and the rest of the retro handheld gaming channels team up to answer this question!
Was it Good? Chrono Trigger - Josh Strife has some great gaming essays and Iāve been enjoying his āWas It Goodā series. I also really liked his video on Soul Reaver
Still Worth PLaying? Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain - The previous game to Soul Reaver. The development of this series is actually so interesting, and really messy, I wish I could see what all those games could be if they werenāt surrounded by issues, from dev teams to publishing and all of that.
