That's a wrap on my 2025 gaming recap.

If you count FF14 expansions as their own games, this would be close to 35 games finished this year. But I'm not sure I can count them.

In 2026, I plan to spend more time reading than gaming if possible.

The werehog stages are way too long and rely way too much on platforming over bottomless pits. Also the combat, while fun, gets so tedious when you're fighting the same 3-5 enemies over and over. Sometimes in waves.

Overall, I think less of Sonic Unleashed, but it's still a top 10 Sonic game.

Sonic Unleashed (360/PS3) was 29th. I finished the PS2 version in high school and enjoyed it.

I hate the sun/moon medal system, it's just forced padding and killed my interest in finishing the 360/PS3 version.

Thankfully I was able to play on PC and mod it so the medal system was less tedious.

Pokemon Sapphire was 28th. I was eager to replay Gen 3 this year.

I love Gen 3. It's my 2nd favourite after Gen 2/the Gen 4 remakes. So I was stoked to play through Pokemon Sapphire, it's aged wonderfully and the music is still amazing. Probably better than the 3DS remake's.

Such a fun time.

Breath of Fire 1 was 27th. This game has aged like 30 year old milk.

Even for a SNES era JRPG, the story and characters are almost non-existent. Also some of the dungeons are utter garbage.

I'm glad I finally finished it, but I'll never play it again. It was a chore.

Pokemon Leaf Green was 26th. I started with Gen 1 and still have very fond memories of it. The remakes do almost everything right, outside of the forced tutorials.

I had a blast replaying Leaf Green. It's a pretty great time.

Sonic x Shadow Generations was 25th. I had no interest in replaying the OG part of the game, I don't enjoy the Classic Sonic stages much.

Shadow's part of the game was fun and mostly good, but it could have been a bit longer and had Shadow interact more with other characters.

I hope she pulls through and lives to say "hello" for many years to come.

Frieren is amazing and gives you a feels train.

Some people don't like that and like their power fantasy stuff. -shrug-

So cooked that it could be used to play field hockey.

So cooked that it could be used as a door wedge.

So cooked that it could be used to stop a pile of papers from scattering on a windy day.

Baldur's Gate 3 was 24th. It does some things better than 5th edition D&D. Like rename Chill Touch so it makes sense.

Overall it was a solid game, but Act 3 definitely brought the experience down quite a bit for me.

I missed a bunch of content, so I plan to do a 2nd playthrough someday.

Like a Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name was 23rd. I wanted to like it, I really did.

But this game didn't need to exist. I can't go into specifics without a ton of spoilers for the Yakuza/Like a Dragon franchise.

Expedition 33 was 22nd. My GOTY, without question. There's a few small problems I had, but they were mostly nitpicks.

Overall, I loved it and want to do a NG+ in the future.