Long before I knew what “grinding XP” meant or knew what a Phoenix Down was, I was already deep into the world of JRPGs. Back then, I didn’t have a massive library of games available to me, so anything promising dozens of hours of gameplay instantly drew my attention. One of my earliest forays into the JRPG genre was Final Fantasy II on the SNES (It’s actually called Final Fantasy IV, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day). That game kicked off a lifelong fondness for the Final Fantasy series, even if I haven’t actually finished most of the mainline entries.
Well, that changes now.
Armed with my trusty Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, I’ve embarked on a mission: to play through every mainline Final Fantasy game it can handle. And I’m starting right where it all began, albeit with the 2004 Game Boy Advance remake, Final Fantasy I, from the Dawn of Souls anthology.
First Impressions from a Nearly Blank Slate
Aside from a vague memory of beating Garland once years ago, this was essentially my first real experience with Final Fantasy I. And right off the bat, I made full use of modern conveniences: 2x speed and auto-mapping the A button to the trigger so I could turbo through the many, long, repetitive battles. Let’s be honest, those random encounters feel relentless, so anything to streamline them is a blessing.
Final Fantasy I has you playing as a customizable party, and sets your party as the four Warriors of Light, each carrying a darkened crystal, and you’re tasked with restoring balance to the world. Or something to that effect. Like many NES-era games, the real story is half-buried in the game manual and whispered through snippets of NPC dialogue scattered across towns. Don’t expect cutscenes or lore dumps, this is old-school storytelling where you’re expected to connect the dots yourself and let your imigination fill in the gaps.
Lost Without a Guide. And That’s Kind of the Point
I made it about a third of the way through the game before caving and pulling up both a walkthrough and a world map. Final Fantasy I offers little in the way of direction. Instead, it leans on cryptic clues from villagers and a whole lot of trial and error. It reminded me of being on the playground, swapping secrets with friends about how to wake the elven prince or where to find that random witch who needs a magic eye.
It’s charming in a way. When you stumble upon the specific place you need to me is exciting. But it also means a lot of wandering interrupted by constant random battles. Exploration is a chore when every five steps you get warped into another pointless encounter. I know the newest remakes (Pixel Remaster) has an option that lets you turn off the random encounters altogether, but that wasn’t an option here. If you’re not following a guide and don’t know where to go, you MIGHT eventually find the right place to go. And you’ll be massively over levelled when you get there.
Dungeon Design Done Right
That said, I really enjoyed the dungeon design. They’re sprawling, treasure-packed mazes that feel rewarding to explore. Unlike later entries in the series where dungeons sometimes devolve into glorified hallways, these had nooks and cranies to explore. Finding new, powerful loot and immediately smacking a boss with it? Always satisfying.
Thanks to my turbo-boosted gameplay, I ended up over leveled without even trying. I didn’t grind on purpose, I just got lost a lot. By the time I reached each of the four elemental Fiends, they went down in 3 or 4 rounds. The real challenge came from resource management: making it through a dungeon with enough HP and MP left to survive the trip back to the nearest town. More than once at the start of the game, I limped out of a dungeon with my party barely clinging to life. Eventually, even that tension faded as my levels climbed.
Final Boss, Final Thoughts
The only minor roadblock was the final boss, Chaos, whose brutal AoE spells finally gave my White Mage something to panic about. Even then, I managed to beat him on the first try. When the credits rolled, my in-game clock showed 13 hours, and my party was hovering around level 61.
So… how does Final Fantasy I hold up today?
It’s tricky. Evaluating a nearly 40-year-old game with modern eyes is unfair, but inevitable. The magic system feels thin, the stats often feel meaningless, and gear is mostly just a numbers game. Most of the spells go unused, equipment lacks flair, and your Black Mage is either useless or a glass cannon depending on how full their MP bar is.
And yet, Final Fantasy was a revelation in its time. It pioneered mechanics and tropes that became the foundation for the genre. Games I’ve loved over the decades owe their existence to this one.
Should You Play It?
If you’re looking for a polished, modern RPG experience, this isn’t it. But if you want to pay homage to where it all began, to the roots of a genre that shaped generations of gamers, then it’s worth your time. Especially with some emulator tweaks to make the ride a little smoother.
I’m glad I finally checked this one off my list. Even with its rough edges, Final Fantasy still manages to shine. It’s a monument to what came before, a stepping stone in the evolution of RPGs. I may not recommend it to everyone, but I absolutely respect the ground it broke.
Now, onward to Final Fantasy II (The real Final Fantasy II, not the US version which is actually Final Fantasy IV).
A copy of Wingspan: Oceania was provided by Stonemaier Games for review purposes.
Wingspan has become a titan in the board game world. It’s by far Stonemaier Games’ most well-known and widely played title, earning recognition even from people outside the hobby, though many still refer to just as “that bird game.”
The base game of Wingspan focused on birds from North America, but the expansions have gradually introduced avian species from other corners of the globe. Wingspan: Oceania brings us the birds of Australia and New Zealand, with nearly 100 new bird cards, fresh player boards, new dice, and most impactfully, introducing a brand-new resource: nectar.
Nectar is the biggest change in Oceania, and it fundamentally changes how you play. Acting as a wild resource, nectar gives players far more flexibility in paying for bird cards and activating abilities. It’s incredibly useful. So useful, in fact, that it comes with a small catch: nectar spoils between rounds if unused. That said, it’s rarely a hindrance. Most players quickly learn to burn nectar before any other resource. Its wild versatility more than makes up for the spoilage.
What’s more, many of the bird powers in Oceania are designed to share the love. Many abilities now provide resources or cards or some other benefit to all players, with the acting player getting slightly more of the reward. This small shift encourages more positive player interaction, a rising tide lifts all ships kind of situation, perfectly in keeping with Wingspan’s gentle and inclusive tone.
The new player boards offer subtle but impactful improvements. In the forest row, you can now spend a resource to reroll the birdfeeder. In the wetlands, you can spend a resource to refresh the bird tray. These changes directly address my long-standing complaints about stagnation in the base game, especially when unhelpful cards or dice sit unused for entire rounds. These tweaks breathe new life into familiar systems.
I reviewed Wingspan over three years ago. While I admired its beauty and accessibility, I also noted some personal gripes: a very slow opening round, a hefty dose of luck, and minimal player interaction that sometimes made it hard to stay engaged when it wasn’t my turn. But here’s the thing: even with those reservations, Wingspan kept returning to our table. It’s one of my partner’s all-time favorite games, and whenever we have friends over, especially people new to the hobby, it’s the game that gets suggested. Again and again. And the fact that it continues to hit the table, speaks volumes to its quality.
As a reviewer, I rarely revisit games after I’ve covered them. The constant influx of new titles pulls my attention elsewhere. But Wingspan: Oceania brought me back. And more than that, it made Wingspan feel fresh again.
Wingspan: Oceania is an expansion that doesn’t just add more, it adds better. The new bird cards are lively and fun, their powers promote inclusive interaction, the nectar system smooths out some early-game struggles, and the updated player boards address longstanding pain points. It enhances the base game in every meaningful way.
In fact, I doubt I’ll ever play Wingspan without it again.
An essential expansion that transforms a good game into a great one. If you own Wingspan, Oceania is a must.
Somewhat recently, I made a slightly impulsive purchase that I’ve come to deeply appreciate. I picked up a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro on Facebook Marketplace. I didn’t have any plans for it, I was just thirsting for a new console, and when I saw the Switch 2’s launch price, I decided it was the perfect time to pivot away from Nintendo. For those unfamiliar with Retroid, it’s a slick little handheld device that runs on an Android OS, has a built in controller, and manages to emulate a staggering range of consoles. After firing it up, and following Retro Game Corps guide for suggestions how to configure it, and playing Tetrisphere, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. It’s the classic conundrum. With this device, literally thousands of games are at my fingertips, how do you choose what to play!?
The realization that this single device can play every mainline Final Fantasy game up to 12 was a revelation. I’ve always been a fan of Final Fantasy, and JRPGs in general, although my track record on finishing them is spotty at best. Thus begins my newest gaming project: a full Final Fantasy playthrough challenge, from the humble beginnings of Final Fantasy I on the NES, to the fully voiced drama of Final Fantasy XII on the PS2. No skips, no shortcuts, just a steady journey through one of gaming’s most iconic RPG series. I’ll be playing the best available versions I can run on the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, which, in some cases, means GBA remakes, and in others, full console ports.
Why Do This?
Part nostalgia, part curiosity, and part unshakeable love for the genre. Final Fantasy has always been in the background of my gaming life, from playing Final Fantasy IV on the SNES as a kid and utterly mesmerized by the story, to playing dozens of other JRPGs by Square Enix over the past decades, and seeing the same themes and monsters make their annual appearances. But until now, I’ve never experienced the entire series in a cohesive, chronological way.
I’m curious to see how the series, and my tastes, evolve: mechanically, narratively, thematically. How the battle systems grow more complex. How the stories shift from high fantasy and simplicity to science fiction political intrigue. How the pixel art set pieces give way to pre-rendered cutscenes and voice acting. Final Fantasy has been around for over 35 years, I want to witness the full scope of what it became, one game at a time.
The Rules of the Challenge
Mainline single-player titles only: That’s Final Fantasy I through XII. I’m skipping XI because it’s an MMO and I hate MMOs. I’m sure I’ll throw in some spin-off games in there, like the Tactics series, or the first two Dissida games.
Best version available on Retroid: GBA remakes, PSP ports, and patched translations where needed.
No rushing: I’m not speedrunning, nor am I working towards 100%. I’m playing the games like I play every game. exploring where my curiousity gets peaked, and skipping optional sections when I hit a wall.
Written reflections: After finishing each game, I’ll post a review-style reflection, highlighting story beats, mechanical design, and my personal experience with each title.
What’s Next?
I’ve already wrapped up Final Fantasy I–V, and the posts are rolling out one by one. From the humble, D&D-inspired beginnings of FFI, to the mechanical joy that was FFV‘s Job system. In the first 5 games there has been a surprising amount of variety.
Next up? The legendary Final Fantasy VI. If the online consensus is to be believed, one of the best games in the series, if not one of the best games ever made.
I hope you join me on this pilgrimage. Whether you’re a longtime fan or just Final Fantasy-curious, I hope my journey through these iconic worlds sparks some nostalgia, or maybe even inspires you to start your own.
I’ve talked about a couple different word games on this blog. Mostly in the context Paperback and Paperback Adventures. Word games hold a special place in my heart, as my wife and I played a lot of Scrabble online when we were in a long distance relationship. My partner adores other word games, like Wordle and Crosswords, so it should come as no surprise that when we visited a board game café together, and she saw A Little Wordy on the “Staff Picks” shelf, it was the first game she grabbed.
A Little Wordy was designed by Ian Clayman and Matthew Inman, and published by Exploding Kittens in 2021. This is a two player, or two team game, where each player is given 4 vowels and 7 constants to create a secret word, then players go back and forth using clues to help them guess the word their opponent picked.
The clue cards vary in ability and cost, the cost being berries that you have to give your opponent when you use them, as well as give more berries when you make an unsuccessful guess at your opponent’s secret word. Once both players have correctly guessed the word, whichever player has the most berries is the winner.
The clue cards offer you a myriad of ways to help you deduce what your opponent’s word actually is. From eliminating letters to confirming the first letter, to deducing the length of the word, each clue card is a tool in your arsenal to help you in your quest to figuring out your opponent’s word.
A Little Wordy is a bit of a race, in the sense that the longer you take to guess your opponent’s word, the more berries you’ll be forking over to them. Some of the most powerful clue cards have you handing over 4 or 5 berries at a time, which is the equivalent of 2 incorrect guesses. With 11 letters to pick from, is it more valuable to just guess willy-nilly, or do you use those powerful clues in the hopes that you’ll only need one guess to pin your opponent’s word to the wall?
I imagine the real answer is somewhere in the middle, but A Little Wordy does offer some fun tension that you don’t usually find in word games. Where most word games feel like a vocabulary test, A Little Wordy makes you feel more like a detective. As you use the clue cards and cut down the list of possibilities, you get a feeling like you’re circling your prey. At the same time, you can feel your opponent getting closer and closer. You need to weigh the benefit of using a powerful clue card against just guessing a word and hoping for the best.
There is some significant luck involved with the initial tile draw. Sometimes you’ll pull a Q with no U, effectively just giving you fewer letters to use. Another challenge is that dreaded S, which exponentially increases the number of potential words by pluralizing everything. In that case, hopefully there’s a clue card that will help you pin down where in the word that S is sitting.
A Little Wordy does manage to be exciting and interactive, which is more than most word games can boast. Yes, having a good vocabulary is going to be a boon, and the luck of the letter draw can tilt the scales one way or the other. But it’s exciting when you start to see the shape of the word you’re chasing start to take shape. When your opponent is idly sliding tiles around and getting closer to your word before moving the letters around again. I felt genuine excitement when I got the word right, and it’s even clever in that just because I guessed the word right first, doesn’t mean that victory is surely mine. If I overspent in berries, my opponent has the chance to keep playing and if they guess my word before the berry supply is tilted in my favour, they can steal the victory from my grasp.
If you like Boggle or Bananagrams, A Little Wordy offers a more interactive experience than either of those two games. It’s less competitive than Scrabble, and is adorned with the characterful art that adorns all the Exploding Kittens games. A Little Wordy doesn’t really work as a party game, though, you’ll want to stick to So Clover and Codenames for that situation. But if you do have a single partner who really enjoys word games and puzzles, the deduction element of A Little Wordy fills a little niche that I didn’t even know I wanted until I played it.
Disclaimer: A copy of Re;Act: The Arts of War was provided by publisher BrotherMing Games for the purposes of review
I didn’t have a lot of friends, growing up. I lived in a village with ~500 people, and with such a scant population, the amount of people my age who were interested in the same nerdy things that I was into were diminishingly rare. to compound the issue, even just getting the nerdy products was a challenge.
But, a determined nerd can surmount all problems. We had a teacher come to my town for a year when I was 10, and while he was there, he taught me how to play Magic: The Gathering. It wasn’t long after that, that Pokémon cards found their way into my home. Shortly after that, I had enough terrible cards to make a couple Yu-Gi-Oh decks. I spent a lot of time playing duels on my own, two-handed. I tried to teach my mom, but she immediately dismissed it as too confusing. Eventually, I convinced two of my friends to get on the cardboard bandwagon, and we immediately started pouring what little money we could earn raking leaves and shovelling snow to augment our meagre collections.
So why am I telling you all this? Because the reaction chain in Yu-Gi-Oh has heavily influenced the core of Re;Act: The Arts of War by designers Chris Lin, MingYang Lu, and Eric Zeringue, and published by Brother Ming Games in 2024 after a successful crowdfunding campaign, but they’ve added a grid based movement and asymmetric characters to spice up the game.
Brother Ming games sent me the deluxe version of Re;Act. This is a bigger box that includes two neoprene mats instead of a board, and acrylic standees in place of the cardboard ones. The acrylic standees are big, colourful, and bold, creating a really eye-catching game. The incredibly stylish anime-esqe artwork is equally attractive, if you’re into the style (spoiler: I am). The deluxe edition also comes with an art book, including some background on the characters and commentary on how the developers worked on each of the characters. It’s a fantastic looking product.
Re;Act is a 1 on 1 grid combat game, managed almost entirely by cards. Each player controls an artist and is aiming to take down their rival. Re;Act comes with 8 vastly asymmetric characters to choose from, with each one lending their own flavour and flare to the combat. Understanding the core of the game is simple. Players start with a hand of cards, drawing one more on each turn (even on your opponents turns), then the active player plays one of their intent cards. The opportunity to play then passes to your opponent, who can play a reaction card. Opportunity passes back and forth with players either playing reactions or passing until both players pass in succession, then the reaction chain resolves, starting with the most recent played card, and working toward the oldest.
The intentions and reaction cards control everything in the game. If you aren’t holding a card that says you can move, you cannot move. Some characters have incredible movement, like the Tagger or Dancer, who hop all over the board, ducking and diving into and out of harms way. Other characters, like the Calligrapher have terrible movement, but instead they can control and influence every other unit’s movements. That dancer who had planned to step in, attack, then duck out of range, may suddenly find himself pulled in, overcommitted, and surrounded by the Calligrapher’s minions. Card management is critically important, and may be what catches you off guard in your first few games. That said, it’s not terribly difficult to learn a character. Each character’s deck only has 4 or 5 different cards to learn and remember, plus a few extra persistent abilities that you can use round after round. The first time you play, you’ll quickly find the boundaries of a character, then within those boundaries you’ll be able to play and stretch what they can really do.
Re;Act is a high-stakes duel. No action itself is difficult or complex, but the ramifications of each action is consequential. The duel ends when one of the two artists take just 3 hits. Being one square too far in any direction can make or break all of your plans, and when you’re trying to plan your turn 4 reactions in advance, suddenly the simple system becomes a complex web of decisions.
Duels should be, and could be, short. 20 to 30 minutes per encounter, with most of my games only really lasting 4 rounds. But Re;Act is a tough game to get into. First, both players need to understand the core game. Then, each player needs to understand the nuance of the character they’re playing. And finally, to do well, both players need to understand the limits of what the opposing character can do. Re;Act is a game that demands mastery from its players. It’s not the kind of game that instantly shines from the first play. Re;Act wants you to pick a character and really get to know their abilities and tricks. It wants you to pick a ‘main’, and develop tactics and strategies for each of the opposing matchups. In some of our first games, turns were excruciatingly long, mainly because any action had long reaching consequences that needed to be well-thought-out before committing to them, and the trying to understand the risk of the reaction chain was a bit hard to wrap our minds around.
I’ve long held the opinion that duel games are at their best when you have a partner to play with who is equally enthusiastic and invested as you are. Re;Act falls into that same camp, if you can find a group or community who wants to dive into this system with you, I have no doubt that you’ll have a ball. The more you play, the more you’ll understand the strengths and shortcomings of each character, which in turn should make the game move faster.
Most of my battles consisted of players trying to manoeuvre themselves into a favourable position, and waiting until your opponent couldn’t react before striking. Not quite the build up of tension and sudden bombastic explosion of consequences all at once that you’ll find in some other games, such as Neuroshima Hex. Re;Act can often see players chip away at each other, a tit-for-tat battle until one person manages a skilful riposte. As I said before, it’s a game that rewards mastery.
One of the benefits of a simple system, at the core, is that the asymmetric characters matchups create a new experience each time you play. And looking into the future, plugging in new characters is a fast and easy way to increase the variability of Re;Act, and looking at the community on BrotherMing Games discord channel, if you’re willing and wanting to go deep, there’s a community ready to welcome you with open arms. They even have templates for creating custom characters if that strikes your fancy. I suspect there will be a season 2 soon, which, another half dozen characters, would just send Re;Act‘s replayability to the moon.
I don’t often get the chance to play head-to-head duel games anymore, but Re;Act: The Arts of War reminded me of why I love them. It’s got that same spark that first hooked me into Magic, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh. Tight turns, tactical tension, and the exhilaration of a well-timed counter.
Re;Act isn’t for everyone. It asks a lot from its players. Time, patience, and a willingness to dig deep into asymmetry and matchup knowledge. But if you’ve got a sparring partner and a shared desire to master a system, this game delivers a unique and rewarding battlefield experience. It doesn’t ask you to spend hundreds on booster packs. Instead, it asks you for something much more. It asks you to learn, adapt, and grow.
For those looking to fill a Magic-shaped hole on their shelf, or for a anime-flavoured combat game with teeth, Re;Act is absolutely worth the dive. Beautifully produced, deceptively simple, and rich with potential, it’s a modern dueling gem.
