February - March 2026 Progress Report
Missed a post, no one cares~
I’ve added 0 games to my steam library in two months and Tales of Arise was so terrible I nearly lost the will and desire to play videogames at all.
April I’m just playing Witcher 3 on Deathmarch difficulty and anything extra is up to a future me that will likely still be uncaring and unambitious as the me of today.
Technically Clair Obscur was one of the first game I beat in 2026, but I’m adding it here since I couldn’t finish the review until just now.
Total games added to backlog: 0
Total completed: 4
40-70+ hours to complete, Clair Obscur is a fantasy exploration story-based game with turn-based combat and quick time events (which can be adjusted through accessibility settings.) You play as Gustav, a member of Expedition 33, soon to set out of the city of Lumiere and it’s barrier into unknown territory in order to stop the Gommage – an event, a countdown, that happens every single year, without fail, that erases people from existence starting from the oldest, to the youngest. Sail out into the unknown to do what no expedition has done before – defeat the paintress… For those that come after!
I thought it was wild that Clair Obscur swept the game awards and won GOTY, but after playing, I understand. Without singing it’s praises too much, there are a ton of wonderful and unexpected twists and conversations you are present for, but not involved in enough to fully understand them, that make a second playthrough worth it since you would be replaying with knowledge of the context. The worldbuilding is very thorough, immersive, and has one of the most well developed and interesting storylines I’ve ever heard of. Exploration is lovely and rewarding, you can play and battle in a lot of different playstyles due to the very flexible pictos system, and I found combat and parrying to still be fun 80 hours in, even though initially I was anxious at the QTE system. The music especially a stand out, as I’m writing this review an entire month after I 100% Expedition 33, and still fondly remember “Linen and Cotton” and listen to it on occasion. The only real gripe I can name, is that it’s easy to trip into a fight with an enemy that’s a much higher level than you; but since that’s the only negative point in the entire game I can think of, I can only highly recommend playing Clair Obscur. If the QTE’s make you nervous, please try out the demo – this game is too amazing to miss out on.
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Webbed
4-8 hours to complete, Webbed is a chill physics based puzzle platformer sidescroller game where you play as a female peacock spider rescuing her boyfriend from a Bowerbird, who has mistaken him for a lovely blue rock. Gather the local bugs, arm the ants, request flight support from the bees, eat the flies and band together to rescue your love!
Overall, lovely game and I really enjoyed the unique movement system and most of the gameplay. Something I was worried about most was webs despawning, but even if you leave the area for a long time or go crazy building multiple webs, they all stay, though the threads may snap if you structure them improperly. There are some collectables that reward you with stickers and cosmetics such as hats, and you can dance with the other bugs for cute animations. The only cons I can point out is that webs can be “slippery” to place and sometimes they connect to random, undesignated objects; and finally that the Anthill was a huge pain to navigate, and building the thing inside the ant nest was a huge pain because you are a tiny spider and not meant to lift heavy objects. Overall, still a solid game with an easy recommendation from me.
Cats in the Forbidden City
10 to 30 minutes to complete, Cats in the Forbidden City is a short hidden object game in which you explore the 1761 silk painting “Ten Thousand Nations Coming to Pay Tribute” (Winter version, there are two!) where an unknown artist painted the scene of foreign delegations from all over the world visiting the Qianlong Emperor in the Forbidden City. There are 200 cats to find, as they have been digitally drawn in this historical piece – so not only do you get to learn and get close up with a piece of history, you can find cats in it too.
By clicking on the title, you can view the digitally scanned painting (299 × 207cm) without the cats. While this particular game is fairly short due to the paintings size, Catnip Studio has done this before with other silk paintings, some even being 40ft, or 12 meters long, so if you enjoy this one or are feeling particularly interested in history, there are a few other games to go through such as “Cats of the Qing Dynasty” “Cats of the Tang Dynasty” and one of my favorites; “Cats of the Yuan Dynasty” which was made sometime around 1271 – 1368, according to ChinaCulture (.org)
Tales of ARISE
40-80 hours to complete, Tales of Arise is a Fantasy JRPG with heavy storytelling and romance that takes place on the world of Dahna, with it’s natives being the Dahnan race, which has been terrorized and opressed by the neighboring planet Rena, it’s natives being the Renans. Enter our odd and mysterious hero, Alphen, a Dahnan with amnesia and a metal mask on his head he can’t remove. After a chance encounter with some freedom fighters and the Renan tsundere female lead Shionne, they team up to slay the four Renan Lords and liberate the Dehnans from their shackles.
I have a love hate relationship with Tales of Arise, and after completing the entire game and DLC to it’s fullest, I can say I firmly disliked my experience. The graphics are gorgeous, the character designs are lovely, the combat is sorta fun; but Arise has two major flaws which are all sorta tied together and compile on each other. First, the storyline is genuinely terrible, to the point that I can only assume the writer(s?) have only ever consumed mid-tier shoujo manga and anime where the bad guys are defeated with the power of friendship and romance. There is an absolutely obscene amount of cutscenes, to the point you can have a cutscene, walk four steps, get into another cutscene, and then have four more scenes in a row. There is also 300+ extra chatter dialogue, on top of repetitive battle dialogue where your characters insist on having conversations while also yelling out the move of every single attack they use. Arise is not a game, it’s a yapping simulator with more dialogue and cutscenes than gameplay, and ten hours in I just started skipping everything and muting all voices because I just wanted to play the damn game and move my character around.
Second, this game is weirdly shallow? It’s not open world at all, you have some open zones that lead to areas that are all pathways with enemies plopped in the middle of the road. Invisible walls are everywhere because taking shortcuts is illegal, jumping on things or over things is prohibited, and going off the intended path is forbidden. There are animals like cats and dogs, you can’t pet them. There is ranching, but it’s just a text adventure. You have a photo mode, but you can’t rotate or adjust the camera, and it’s impossible to get a clean UI for screenshots because bandai insists on setting their brand name or title somewhere, and you can’t hide the mini map. Also, I just want to comment, you can collect 38 owls for cosmetics, but the owls do not make owl sounds, it’s humans making owl sounds and it was just kinda baffling.
This last bit is likely less of a game issue and more of a personal bias, but did you notice that there are six main characters, both an equal amount of girls and boys? That’s right, all of them are going to be paired off! The romance is present in pretty much everything, and most of the scenes/skits/CG’s are variations of “Oh no, are you.. hurt?” “No! I’m fine.” “Ok, but I care about you..” “We are friends, right?” “Of course.” Circling back to the writer(s??) only writing the most childish hero journey possible, the end of the game is going deeply annoying and nonsensical as you assume it would be, unless you really enjoy it when heroes overcome all difficulties with the power of love; instead of intelligence, skill, and character growth. I know I kinda signed up for a JRPG with romance in it, but there is genuenly too much repetitive cutscenes, skits, and narration that add no value to the story. This was my first Tales game, but since the only real part of the game I seriously had fun with was fighting the aspect of wind, Procella Sylph, I just might make it my last.
I still think about the end of Act One in Clair Obscur. :)
Your rating for Tales of Arise tells me I was wise to skip that one. Shame though. ‘Tales of’ are mostly fun games.