April 2025 Summary

I am really struggling right now, it feels like I write monthly summaries every week, and weeknotes every couple days. Why is time going by so quickly? This is madness, this is not right!

Alas, let us get started with the summary for April, 2025.

Podcasts

Into The Aether - lots of RPGs on these past few episodes, not enough PSP games but I am still having a blast as always.
Unexplained - Had time to listen to the Season 6 Episode 12 three-parter, A Darkness on the Edge of Town. I think I started the episode too many times since I listened to before sleeping…
Sir Khan - I returned to Warhammer 40K lore, and this Spanish podcast still remains the one I enjoy the most, every episode is just hype and filled with great narration.
Into The Aether (Patreon) - Still listening to the early episodes, but also some of the Any% ones which are only 10 minutes long.
The Ten Minute Bible Hour - Listening up to episode 233, which is still going through Matthew 10, and it’s been great!
Retro Game Time Machine - A little too many racing/sports games episodes for my taste lately, but I am still enjoying listening to them.
NPC: Next Portable Console - Just more news regarding handhelds, the Retroid Flip 2 has been pretty well received it seems, despite its thickness and strange design choices.

Movies

Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith - This movie was rereleased on theaters for its 20th anniversary, and I had the pleasure of watching it on the big screen. Honestly, this movie holds up so well compared to the earlier prequels, it was so hype, and John Williams’ score was outstanding, when Battle of the Heroes started playing I was just so invested into it. That last act is wonderful, that choreography is superb. It was awesome.
The Forge - Much earlier in the month I saw this. Christian media is usually not that great at being good for anyone but other Christians. Other than The Chosen in recent years, of course. This one had some interesting themes when it comes to parental figures and letting go of distractions even if they aren’t really that bad—like videogames or lazyness, ~~is this a personal attack or what?~~—still, not amazing or anything.
Ford v Ferrari - I didn’t actually see this one from the start, but I heavily enjoyed what I saw of it, and I just wanted to mention it anyway, it was pretty cool.

TV Shows

The Last of Us - Watched all of season 1 and caught up to episode 3 of season 2. This is a pretty dark and grim show, that shows some really ugly sides of humanity. It’s about an outbreak where fungi takes over the world and humans become Infected, which reproduce by biting humans—basically, zombies. It follows Joel and Ellie—the only person with immunity to the fungus—as they travel to a hospital where they may be able to develop a cure. They will face terrible dangers, most of them aren’t the Infected, but humans, desperate to survive.

Anime

Mob Psycho 100 - Finally returned to watching this to my sister, we only saw a couple of episodes, only leaving the last one of Season 1 to watch today (now May 1st). This is such a good series with very fun character dynamics, and of course, amazing fight sequences with psychic powers!

Manga

Usogui - Read up to chapter A gambling manga I started early this month. I thought it was quite entertaining, and it’s full of action sequences as well, which I didn’t expect, the art can be a bit mediocre at times, but I heard it gets really, really great later on. The story is enough to keep me interested though.
Hunter x Hunter - I keep going very slowly on this one.
Uncle from Another World - I returned to this, but I am also going quite slow.

Gaming

Hollow Knight - Still exploring, still having fun. I fought against one big jellyfish boss and I had to fight along another knight to be able to defeat them. It was a very epic sequence and I really enjoyed it. I think I can now proceed with the story, as a new area is available to me, but I still have not explored it at all. I am currently checking out some areas not fully filled in my map.
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - Still exploring, still having fun, I pretty much started this game on a whim, returning to an old save that only had like 30 minutes of progress. I’ve explored and found my way around a lot of the castle, and collecting souls is pretty fun. I love all the mobility options I have now as well. It’s just a solid game that is holding up much better than I expected, although I am making use of save states pretty often, because I always forget to buy potions.
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blase - I completed chapter 28 and this game just exceeded my expectations by a lot. Not only gameplay-wise, but on its story. For most of the game, I’ve been flying through dialogue scenes, yes, reading all of them, but not really bothering much to connect plot points and the like. I already enjoyed the character interactions and the gameplay itself, but having the story develop in such a way is a great plus too.
Craftmine - Even though I only played this for a day in a LAN party with friends, it was simply a blast. Turning Minecraft into a meta-game of itself is such a unique and crazy idea. It impressed me a lot, and I hope we can set up another session one of these days. Although I should try to play it solo to be honest.
Ember Knights - We completed the DLC and enjoyed a lot of it, there were new bosses and environments. One of the bosses is an isometric version of the Mantis Lords fight from Hollow Knight, which I thought was pretty fun.
Full Metal Furies - This is our now 4-player co-op game after Ember Knights, not only does it have better performance, and an actual story, it’s also a bit more of an beat’em up with RPG elements, with levels instead of procedural generation, which I actually quite like.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Only played this like 10 minutes, but it was already very enjoyable and I’m tempted to keep going, I should dedicate myself to other games though, I feel.
Spelunky - Just another fun 4-player session that ended up in absolute chaos, we are still unable to reach the 3rd environment.

Reading

Cibola Burn - Read up to chapter 48, enjoying every chapter of it. I will definitely finish it tomorrow, for sure. Reading 40 chapters in a month is not bad, but I feel like I could have gone much faster if I wanted to. But well, things happen.