castti florenz wifeguy

wow, what a year. after 2024, I figured out that properly anticipating & working a backlog around current releases was too much of a fool's errand when more often than not the highlights of each month instead just fell into my lap without any sort of planning on my end. I can confidently say that I didn't expect to get back into Sonic as hard as I did, or to give at least a 1/5th of the titles listed here any attention, but here we are.

before I start this little commentary, let me stress that the term 'babygirl' is used very leniently. I do not harbour deep seating feels of reverence or affection for egomaniac Alex YIIK or war criminal Martin Walker -- Takumi is fine though. he's never done anything wrong ever.

Eleanor Lamb (row 4, column 3) & Olivia Haas (row 5, column 2) were both drawn by sakuracila

Hinako Shimizu (row 4, column 1) was drawn by vvormsuture

while I checked out Generations at the beginning of this year & soon after entered a deep dive into everything Sonic, touching on nearly every single game the series has put out while also getting into the comics, I decided to put Jet as my centrepiece instead of Sonic himself just because he's my favourite character (which Crossworlds coming out this year happened to compliment nicely)

Sage is here because (besides TMoStH) Frontiers was the one mainline Sonic game out of the 15+ I played this year that I had a completely fresh/blind experience of. my verdict is that it was okay. honestly I probably should've just put Surge on here instead.

Dante's presence represents my playing of every Devil May Cry game this year (yes, including the reboot).

if I had to pick a favourite, it would probably be DMC3, followed by 4.

row 1, column 4 is my WoL from FFXIV, though as of right now I have only completed A Realm Reborn.

it's worth mentioning that Alex is here because of the YIIK I.V update that came out at the tail end of last year, which reworked the combat, rebuilt many scenes, & altered a significant amount of story content. i'm not strong enough to publicly shill the game or hide my disagreements with it, but I will say this: calling it a 'guilty pleasure' would be redundant.

Balatro is here because I got a gold stake at the beginning of this year while I was killing time during a trip & that was important to me.

yes, I did get all 100 endings in Hundred Line. no, it wasn't worth it. (still got my vote for best narrative, though)