Stuff I Got Wrong in 2025

Image Credit: Arc System Works

Hey there! It’s Kyle, the resident article writer for this website. I temporarily loaned out my space to my co-hosts so that they could share their top games of the previous year. Go check them out if you haven’t. If you watch our show, then I’m sure you can guess what their number 1 choices are.

Now before we move on to 2026, I wanted to take the time to look back at my work from the past year. This is going to be a much more laid back article. This is going to act like an addendum to a few articles from last year. If you haven’t read them yet, I’ll be linking them in the section headings. Just click the images and the article will open up in a new tab.

I still stand by everything I said in my articles. Some of these are changes I’d make because of changes to the games, or new information that I wasn’t aware of, while others are going to act as a fifth entry for some of these articles.

This is all meant to be fun. We’ll get back to the “real” articles next month. For now, let’s go back to the past.

Avatar Selection and You

Image Credit: Arc System Works, CyGames

The second entry in my monthly article series. I like the idea for this one a lot, but I think that you can tell that I was still trying to figure things out. First off, the idea for this article came from a Youtuber named KBash, who made a video a few years back with the same name. His video was definitely the main inspiration for this article. His video can be found here.

Now in this article, almost every game I talked about is still getting updated. My main jobs in Final Fantasy 14 haven’t changed. I’m still rocking Red Mage, Paladin, and Gunbreaker, with a little bit of Dancer thrown in the mix. I’m not playing Marvel Rivals anymore. Nothing against the game, it’s just not for me. The biggest change comes in Granblue VS Rising.

Granblue has gotten some pretty substantial updates since this article. For starters, four new characters have been added, and there have been some interesting balance patches. I say they’re interesting because my character, Zeta, got gutted. But another character that I liked got some pretty substantial buffs.

In regards to Zeta, she’s been the victim to system changes, rather than any direct nerfs. On the game’s launch, she was a high damage character with strong mixup tools. During the patch where Versusia was added, there was a universal damage nerf to Ultimate Skills, so Zeta no longer had massive burst damage, but she still had her mixups. Then in the Galleon update, they took away Zeta’s powerful mixup tools off of hard knockdowns. In the span of a year she went from a high damage character with strong mixup options, to a character with strong mixup options, to a character (debatable). But when one door closes, another one opens.

Zeta wasn’t my first choice of character to play in this game. On launch the character that I was originally drawn to was Vira Lillie. She was pretty much everything that I was looking for in a character. She’s a modified Shoto with a pretty cool toolkit with her notable options being great buttons with her f.Medium and f.Heavy, a full screen neutral-skip move and a projectile that acts as a setplay tool on hard knockdowns. She also has a transformation (Luminiera Merge) that enhances her Special Moves, and gives her an airdash movement option that no one else in the cast has.

The problem is that on launch, Vira sucked. She was so weak, and didn’t feel like she was taking advantage of her Ultimate Skills like the other, better characters were. Vira was getting small buffs through the game’s patches, but nothing that ever propelled her up the tier list. And then the Wilnas patch happened.

This patch finally gave Vira the tools to make her feel like a real character! And it really all came from one small tweak. Her 22U (Ultimate Summon Luminiera) got buffed to come out faster. This one change modified her whole combo game, letting her combo into U-Lumi off of her regular three-hit auto-combo, where previously she only got a combo if it hit a crouching opponent.

This buff also made it so that Vira could very easily combo into her Luminiera Install just by spending 50 meter. When her 22U hits, it puts the opponent in a weird get-up animation where she can (depending on spacing) use her Command Grab to enter her Luminiera Install. 

This is one of the best ways to buff a character. Nothing about Vira has fundamentally changed from how she played on launch. She just got some of her moves tweaked so that she can swing with the rest of the cast. Now these buffs didn’t make her the best character in the game. But it did make her a lot more fun to play, and that’s what I’m looking for. I was having fun with Zeta, but then ArcSys and CyGames took that fun away and made her another boring Shoto-like character in a game filled with Shoto-like characters. I’m just glad that my original choice for a main finally became usable.

Also, with buffed Vira I was finally able to get into Master Rank in this game. Something that I wasn’t able to do with Zeta.

My Confront Characters

Image Credit: Arc System Works

From one fighting game to another. I’ve been playing a lot of Guilty Gear Strive over the last year. It’s basically become the main fighting game that I play when I need to pass time. I have a lot of opinions on which characters I think are not fun to play against. First is Happy Chaos. He’s the best rushdown character and the best zoner in the game. Third is I-No. Everytime she gets a knockdown, she puts you in a guessing game where you’re always going to be wrong. Fourth is Slayer. Every time I fight Slayer, I just assume that my opponent doesn’t know how to play the game. They just pick the high damage character and get carried by that. And fifth is Bedman. This character is just sensory overload where I lose track of what he’s trying to do. So that just leaves second place, and it’s a close second to Happy Chaos.

If Vira is an example of what happens when you reasonably buff a low tier character, Potemkin is what happens when you overtune a low tier character. Potemkin is Guilty Gear’s resident grappler, and he has been one of the best characters for a while. If you’re unfamiliar, grapplers are typically slow moving characters that have a hard time dealing with projectiles. The trade-off is that they have large health pools and can deal massive damage with their command grabs.

Potemkin isn’t like that. He has fantastic movement options in the form of his Hammer Fall and Heat Tackle special moves. He can reflect any projectile with F.D.B. (Flick Dat Back). When he reflects a move, it becomes a slow moving projectile that he can walk behind. And to top it off, Pot was also buffed with one layer of superarmor on moves like Hammer Fall, Slide Head, and Potemkin Buster, his signature command grab.

My problem with Potemkin is that he gets rewarded for being belligerent. The person piloting Potemkin gets rewarded for being the dumbest person on the planet. He has the highest health pool in the game as well, so that means he’s free to go full send on the opponent. If the Pot player is right, they get huge damage and a shitload of meter to play with. And if they’re wrong, it doesn’t matter. An optimal punish from the opponent isn’t going to do that much damage.

Potemkin is what I call a “Failing Upward” character. There’s just so much that you have to be worried about when fighting Pot, that the mental stack becomes too much to deal with. And again, because Pot has the most HP in the game, Pot players can just keep sending it, especially with all of his superarmor moves. I don’t think that he’s as bad as launch Happy Chaos, but this is a very close second place on my “Most Obnoxious GG Characters” list. Version 2.0 cannot come soon enough.

If you want to learn more about what makes Pot so good, LordKnight and Diaphone both have videos discussing the character’s strengths. These two are both high level fighting game players, so they know what they’re talking about.

Gaming’s Best Superbosses

Image Credit: Larian Studios

SPOILERS FOR BALDUR’S GATE 3

I really enjoyed writing this article. Superbosses are one of my favorite concepts in video games. Getting a bonus challenge after you’ve rolled credits in a game is always exciting to me. I love getting to see what the developers come up with as a way to test the player on what they were supposed to learn throughout the game. However, because of my own incompetence, I missed out on one of the coolest superbosses in recent memory.

When I first played Baldur’s Gate 3, I didn’t spend a lot of time in the final act. For me it was a mix of being overwhelmed with too much to do, and also just wanting to be done with the game. Having recently replayed the game I decided to actually spend time exploring the city. And within these walls is one of the coolest boss fights in this game.

Raphael is one of the coolest characters in the game. It was such a bold move from the developers to introduce the literal devil to the player so early in the game, and then turn him into a background character. He’ll show up every now and then to try and get you to accept his deals, but it isn’t until the 3rd act when he finally takes center stage. 

In the third act, he offers to give you an artifact to free a being that can destroy the Elder Brain. In exchange, he wants the crown that’s being used to control the Elder Brain. You can choose to go along with him, or you can refuse and find a way to steal it from him. But if you do steal from him, you’d better be ready to face the consequences.

As you try to leave his House of Hope, Raphael takes away your portal and he’s not happy. Raphael has come with his demon army to try and stop you, and so begins the best fight that this game has to offer. Coming in with a whopping 666 HP, Raphael is a monster that will not go down easily. But before you can even get to the boss, you first have to deal with these four pillars around the arena that are giving him buffs. And dealing with the add-ons wouldn’t hurt either.

In the original article when discussing Volo from Pokemon Legends Arceus I talked about how presentation can go a long way in making a fight memorable. And it’s no exception with the Red Devil. When the fight begins, a wholly unique theme plays as the fight music. This track has everything to set the mood. An organ, chanting, and it even has Raphael’s voice actor (Andrew Wincott) singing in character. And when you finally put the devil down, you’re rewarded with the best piece of armor in the game.

The presentation on display goes a long way in carrying this fight. There are plenty of ways to “cheese” the fight and make sure Raphael doesn’t get to play. From moves like Hold Monster, Planar Binding, or even just the Slow status. I personally had Wyll set Hunger of Hadar while Raphael was trapped in the corner, and he couldn’t do anything. And if all else fails, a little bit of barrel-mancy goes a long way.

This is entirely on me for not including this in the original article, but in my defense I didn’t even know that this fight existed. And I think that it’s a testament to how massive of a game Baldur’s Gate 3 is. It’s the kind of game where you’ll learn something new about it every time you replay it. And I think that’s awesome.

The Greatest Moments in Final Fantasy

Image Credit: Square Enix

SPOILERS FOR FINAL FANTASY 10

When I wrote my article on the best moments in Final Fantasy, I hadn’t played Final Fantasy 10 yet. But at the end of 2025, my PS5 broke and I figured that it would be the best time to finally take this off my backlog. I had tried to play it a couple of times before, but I was having a hard time getting into it. I think that the game is fine, but it’s on the lower end of my personal FF rankings. I think that if I played it earlier in my life, I would’ve liked it a lot more. But as one of the last five Final Fantasy games I had on my list to play, it really didn’t do a lot for me. But there was one scene that did manage to make this Grinch’s heart grow three sizes that December night.

I really don’t like Tidus as a protagonist, or as a character. I just think that he’s obnoxious, and sportsbros really just annoy me personally. That being said, I do acknowledge that Tidus is the heart of the party. He’s the one keeping the party’s morale up as they march to their fight with Sin. He’s also there to help Yuna, not just as her Guardian, but also as her friend. The scene in Lake Macalania shows what kind of person Yuna needs from Tidus.

At this point in the story, the party is at their lowest, and Yuna is even thinking about giving up on her pilgrimage to defeat Sin. And Tidus is there to encourage her with some what if scenarios. He tells her that they could go off to Zanarkand, and Yuna gets really into the idea, already thinking about how it would go with lines like “We could see blitzball. Your Zanarkand Abes would play. We could all watch you play, in the stadium all lit up at night. I’d cheer and cheer ‘till I couldn’t cheer anymore.”

Tidus then goes on to describe his Zanarkand to her. And it’s kind of cute to watch this doofus try and describe things in a poetic way. “Let’s go to the sea, before the sunrise. The city lights go out one by one. The stars fade… Then the horizon glows, almost like it’s on fire. It’s kinda rose-colored, right? It gets brighter and brighter, ‘till everything glows. It’s really pretty. I know you’d like it.” This is where James Arnold Taylor really gets to flex his chops as a voice actor. But it’s also funny that we’re basically listening to Johnny Test recite poetry.

But Yuna knows that she can’t abandon her pilgrimage. She can’t leave behind all of the people in Spira that are counting on her and her Guardians to defeat Sin. And then the FMV starts, “Suteki Da Ne” begins playing, and I’m sobbing. 

I’m suddenly transported back to 2001 when this game came out. Flashes of another me playing this game when I’m ten years old appear in my mind. I suddenly realize that I’m playing peak. In this world this is my first Final Fantasy game and I then go on to say for the rest of my life that Final Fantasy 10 is my favorite.

At some point while you’re playing a long-ass RPG, you either get invested, or you move on. I moved on from FFX so many times in my life, that I figured this would be the playthrough that made me get invested. I do still prefer FF8 as a love story over FFX. I’m just personally not big on “doomed by the narrative” stories. But I’m glad that I finally played this game. And for a very early PS2 game, it still looks great, especially the FMVs. They were really taking advantage of the new console’s hardware, doing things that the PS1 couldn’t do.

Closing

And there you have it. Some quick addendums to some of last year’s articles. Like I said, I just wanted to share how some of my thoughts have changed throughout the year, as well as giving updates to some of the games I’ve played. The whole idea for this came to me after I fought Raphael in Baldur’s Gate 3, and I was thinking about how I wanted to talk about how cool that fight was. 

We’ll be back to the regularly scheduled articles next month. For now, enjoy the new year! Here’s hoping that it’s even better than the last!