Summer is approaching its end, and I had to play another MMORPG. After having tested a few options, I decided to research one that had been recommended to me a couple times, especially after playing SWTOR in February.

Star Wars is one of my favorite franchises of all time, and I’ve always dreamed of being able to play a game with a big amount of freedom where I could explore the galaxy in a detailed manner. While SWTOR is a good game for that, it didn’t fit the mold for what I am looking for in this series of articles, but this month I went to try an older MMORPG that has a spot in history for one of the most popular games of its time.

In August, it was Star Wars Galaxies: Legends.

My objectives and rules

As usual, I created a new character and started playing following my specific set of goals and rules, which are as follow:

• The goals:

  • Every month this year, I will play a different MMORPG.

  • With this game, I will look for my ideal triangle of game experience: challenge, immersion, and socialization.

  • For a challenge, I’ll hope the game can make the leveling experience fun but not too easy, forcing me to be careful when playing.

  • For socialization, I’ll be looking for player communication, group features and content.

  • Once the month is over, I will move on to the next game.

• The rules:

  • I will not look for game info (quests, builds, etc.) outside of the game, limiting myself to read within the game itself or asking other players for advice.

  • I will not use general or world chats, and use only local (/say) chat, DMs (/whisper) and group/guild chat.

  • I will only party up with players that I’ve met in the area, rather than using matchmaking features.

  • I will not accept help from players in the form of better gear/items or money, unless it is in exchange for a service or simply advice.

  • I will choose Roleplaying servers where possible.

  • I will not use teleportation skills or features, but will use porters like horses when they are available.

So I spent August playing Star Wars Galaxies: Legends, with no permadeath rules, but all the other classic rules enforced.

Star Wars Galaxies: Legends

Star Wars Galaxies (abbreviated as SWG) is an MMORPG launched in 2003 by Sony alongside LucasArts. Unlike other MMORPGs that launched around the same time, SWG was designed from the ground up as a sandbox. Players were allowed to pursue different interests while existing within the virtual recreation of the galaxy far, far away.

Being a trader, musician, doctor, bounty hunter and even a Jedi (if you met the really obscure requirements to be Force-sensitive) were all part of the same game, and there was no main quest, only some regional quest lines that allowed players to partake in small stories for certain characters and factions.

In 2005, after World of Warcraft’s massive success, the developers were pushed to evolve the game and make it more similar to other MMORPGs, and they introduced changes to the game. Adding a universal main quest, the possibility to choose to be a Jedi from character creation, and some changes to combat made the game way different from what players had been enjoying for the first two years.

In 2011, the game shut down servers just two days after Star Wars: The Old Republic was released, as licensing conflicts between Sony and EA meant only one Star Wars themed MMO could exist at once, to avoid competition.

However, many players still miss what SWG was, with the ability to create their own cities and play the game as more than just “adventurer in space”. This month, I played Star Wars Galaxies: Legends, a fan revival of the game for those who wanted the most amount of freedom in the game.

The Challenge

It is clear that in SWG there is no focus on combat being flashy or difficult, as the game serves more as a stage for players to roleplay their characters and scenarios, rather than as the typical modern MMORPG experience, where players level up and combat becomes gradually more complex and difficult.

However, it is worth mentioning that, because I was playing as a Trader, most of my combat resulted in standing still while shooting at my enemies, and I am aware that other classes include extra skills that can be used in combat for increased damage, precision, crowd control and buffs and debuffs.

Doing research I found that even the combat classes don’t go very far in terms of how difficult the game becomes, but the community seems to be happy with it, because SWG is proposing a different gameplay idea. Combat on foot was never a hassle, nor particularly exciting, but simply a part of the game that was there, optional for those who didn’t want to engage with it, but entertaining enough for those who did want to delve deep into its systems.

On the other hand, one of my biggest Star Wars fantasies was owning my own custom starship. SWG allows for this, and while the number of starships in the game is not massive (but still there’s more than in SWTOR), any ships that have a walkable interior can be customised on the inside, and flown either in first or third person.

Space can be navigated freely and you can make hyperspace jumps to other locations, and every region includes its share of NPCs that are affiliated to different factions, meaning some of them are hostile. Space combat is a bit more complex and engaging than ground combat, because it doesn’t just involve shooting, dodging and deploying countermeasures, but also managing your energy, shields and different components of your ship.

Per example, you could specifically target an enemy’s engines to bring their ship down to a halt for an easy kill.

I did a good amount of space missions, and found that combat was never overwhelming, but there was enough challenge during sequences when fighting multiple enemies at once that I felt the missions were fun and did not become repetitive.

Generally, in terms of challenge, I would say SWG does not provide a really hard challenge, but it is not what the game is designed around to begin with, so I understand why this is like that.

The Immersion

SWG is a very immersive game in many aspects. The galaxy is big, with plenty of planets to visit. I spent the majority of my game time in Tatooine, and just Mos Eisley is already as big as the biggest settlements in Skyrim. The map of Tatooine is full of other settlements of varying sizes, and when I finally ventured into space and I visit Bespin and the Cloud City, I was so lost that I had to ask other players for directions on reaching the spaceport.

Many actions for the Trader are done by building structures, per example, you can go prospecting for minerals manually, but you can also build a machine that will mine in bulk with the right resources. The maps are big, but there is no way to teleport. To travel across great distances, you are given two options:

• Head to the spaceport, fly to orbit, then request landing in a different settlement.

• Use a landspeeder or any ride you own to move across the map at a faster speed than normal.

Where the immersion seems a bit weaker is in how the systems are presented. Of course, this is because I am used to modern games, but in SWG, most of the environment is described through text along their static models. Many emotes exists, but for the most part, the world feels mostly static.

There is one thing that caught my eye, however. Law enforcement exists in the game, as NPCs that actively check players. During my walks through Mos Eisley, I often had to stop to be checked by stormtroopers or police in search of contraband. You actually have to stop until the search is complete, and at some point I even was caught with contraband on me (I don’t know what).

All it happened was a loss of reputation with the local faction, but I was never attacked or arrested in any way.

The Socialization

My time in SWG Legends was spent mostly solo, as I explored the galaxy, crafted my way to level ups, and my interaction with other players, lacking any need for groups for content, was mostly spent talking to ask for advice, tips on how to advance, and asking about the game.

I realized that the majority of players used the “Roleplay” tag on their characters. While I do enjoy roleplaying in MMORPGs, I haven’t done it in years, and I thought that it would be best for my research if I focused on exploring the different aspects of the game as opposed to spending my time roleplaying.

Socialization exists in SWG in a special way, and that is through the vast expanse of player-made structures, buildings, cities, etc. While other games have player buildings, they are often locked within specific areas of the game (like player housing) or the game itself is based on player structures, and does not provide other areas. In SWG, players are allowed to build anywhere that is empty, and that’s how you end up with a busy Tatooine where you have other settlements beyond Mos Eisley and Hammerhead.

Clearly this game does not enjoy the popularity it once had, but the fact that you can explore a world filled with actually functional remnants of what other players put in place before you is very interesting, and I think that applies to how the socialization aspect of this game works.

Conclusion

I think SWG Legends is a very unique game. While it was built on the foundation of a sandbox, it still contains a main storyline that is adapted to each class that you choose to play as, and the freedom it provides players with, from economy to development of the empty space is more reminiscent of games like Conan Exiles or Ark: Survival Evolved.

However, as an MMORPG, in the way that other games in this series have been, it left me a bit unsatisfied. Would I play it on my own to fully explore what it has to offer? Maybe, depending on my free time and what other games I had available. But I don’t think I would go out of my way to spend time playing this.

In general, I think it is an interesting game, but it is not my ideal MMORPG.

The September attempt

After having done some testing, and slowly reaching the end of the series (I can’t believe we started in January with Turtle WoW and now we’re here), I have decided I will be playing The Elder Scrolls: Online in September. Of course, any extra feedback and suggestions are welcome in the comments!

• Read the January attempt: Turtle WoW

• Read the February attempt: Star Wars: The Old Republic

• Read the March attempt: The Lord of the Rings Online

• Read the April attempt: Final Fantasy XIV

• Read the May attempt: Guild Wars 2

• Read the July attempt: Phoenix XI

While some people believe that Halo: Combat Evolved was the first console FPS to use one analog stick for movement and one for camera as a default, the first game that actually used this as a default is Alien Resurrection for the PS1. The game was criticized for this, because simply separating movement and aiming between the two sticks was not enough to set a standard for the industry moving forward.

When Bungie developed Halo CE, they didn’t simply map movement and camera to two different sticks, they innovated and created an entire system around the controls that ensured that playing with a controller was as approachable and fun as it was on mouse and keyboard.

Today I will be writing about Halo’s golden triangle, their innovative camera controls, and the community that was built around their games.

Friction, magnetism and acceleration

In Alien Resurrection, reviewers criticized the difficulty of aiming with a twin-stick setup. While movement with the left stick was fine, controlling the camera with the right stick made aiming very difficult, as the stick did not provide the same amount of precision that a mouse could.

The developers at Bungie went beyond simply mapping the camera to the right stick. They integrated aim assist in the game by default, and ensured that a controller player could fight the ruthless Covenant on equal footing by using three mechanics: friction, bullet magnetism, and sensitivity acceleration.

Crosshair friction

To ensure that players would not wildly swing their camera around when trying to place it on an enemy, the game uses crosshair friction. When moving the reticle over an enemy, the game would slow down the camera to help the player land their shots more consistently.

While other games used lock-on targeting or bullet snapping (think of how shooters like Call of Duty snap your crosshair to the enemy when you aim down sights), Halo simply made a system where the player would have a bit more time to react, let go of the stick, shoot or take another action.

Bullet magnetism

Since crosshair friction was not a perfect, instant aim assist, it was not enough to provide the console users with a gratifying projectile exchange. More was needed in order to let players feel like they were a badass super soldier.

Halo: Combat Evolved added to their aim assist system by making bullets curve towards the enemy, instead of jerking the camera itself. As long as your reticle was red, even if the center of it was not directly on the target’s hitbox, the bullets would go in their direction, providing a higher hit in general. The experience was smoother and satisfying, as you could be shooting Grunts in the head from far ahead with the Magnum’s big reticle without needing to have perfect aim.

Sensitivity acceleration and response curve

A standard setting nowadays, the response curve for joystick aiming was introduced in Halo: Combat Evolved. Before Halo, joystick aiming had a 1:1 speed correlation: tilting the stick to 10% of its range would result in a 10% of max speed movement of the camera, while fully tilting would result in max speed movement.

Due to the small range of motion on controller joysticks, this resulted in twitchy, erratic aiming that games before Halo struggled with (such as Alien Resurrection). When Halo introduced the response curve, they used math to create a non-linear curve of sensitivity, where aiming uses what is now known as a Dual Zone setting: In the inner half of the stick’s range of motion, the speed correlation is not 1:1, and moving the stick 5% or 40% produce near identical results, allowing the player to make small adjustments to aiming without swinging the camera past the target.

In the outer half, the sensitivity ramps upwards aggressively, allowing for a player that is tilting the stick fully to execute faster 180º turns or to navigate the environment at a fast pace without bumping into walls.

This, combined with the acceleration, ensured that a player could do three things with a simple motion and the game would react accordingly:

• Tilt the stick only a little bit, and the camera will move slowly and smoothly to allow you to aim with precision.

• Tilt the stick fully and the camera will move at the highest speed in the settings, letting you switch targets or navigate the maze-like Forerunner environments with ease.

• Hold the stick at max tilt for a second, and the sensitivity will ramp up even further, allowing you to turn around quickly.

Aiming evolved

Introducing all of these systems to their controls allowed Halo: Combat Evolved to truly feel like an evolution of the shooters that came before it, and it was such a brilliant choice on Bungie’s part, that these design choices became the standard for all future FPS games on console, and some say it might have even saved the genre for the platform.

The Golden Triangle and constant aiming

With the matter of aiming solved, players were now able to enter any area in the game’s levels, packed with enemies, and fight them without having to struggle with the controls themselves. Grunts were small and their heads where closer to the center of their body, so they were easy to kill. Elites were typical humanoids, but they required downing their shields before being able to kill them. Jackals hid behind energy shields, but a well placed shot on their hand would reveal their weak spot. Hunters needed to be dodged in order to attack their back.

Bungie then had an opportunity to implement a new design choice in the gameplay. Something that was eventually coined as the Golden Triangle.

Now that players could move and aim smoothly, the game allowed for a higher quantity of enemies for the player to take down. Games like GoldenEye and Alien Resurrection had introduced the mapping of the shooting button to the Z-button and R2 buttons respectively, but other controls were different per each game. Halo, once again, pioneered a choice in control layout that allowed for the player to keep their thumb on the camera stick without sacrificing their offensive capabilities.

Allowing the player to be able to move their camera at all times while still attacking was a key reason why the game was able to present certain combat scenarios that could have otherwise been unbalanced or too punishing.

The Golden Triangle

At the core of Halo’s gameplay sits the Golden Triangle, the idea that combat must be balanced upon the use and alternation of guns, grenades and melee attacks. Grenades acted as area control tools, forcing enemies to evade in a certain direction or dealing good damage in an area to weaken a group. Melee was the perfect finisher for an enemy with broken shields, or during any moment of stealth the player achieved.

While other console games required the player to manually switch to other equipment before being able to throw grenades or attack in melee, Halo implemented these shortcuts to maintain the fast pace of combat that a super soldier should be able to keep.

You were left with five buttons for combat: shoot, throw grenade, melee, jump, and reload/replace weapon. While some people use a “claw” grip on their controllers (I do it sometimes), most people tap the face buttons with the same thumb that they use to move the right stick. If you don’t have the thumb on the right stick, you can’t aim. If you can’t aim, you can’t kill, and if you can’t kill, you get killed.

In order to maximise the amount of time with the thumb on the right stick, Bungie mapped the two main actions, shoot and throw grenade, to the two triggers on the controller, with melee relegated to a face button (melee attacks are often used at the end of a combat sequence, and not used as often as the other two), along with the jump and reload buttons.

So, in order to ensure that the controls would be efficient, they designed a specific gameplay loop around which the controls would feel best. Thus, the Golden Triangle (Grenade>Shooting>Melee) was born.

Triangle Evolved

Some people claim that the Golden Triangle is Halo’s signature design choice, and that 343 Industries (and now, Halo Studios) is in the wrong from deviating from that design from the moment they took the reins of the franchise with Halo 4.

However, it is worth mentioning that the Golden Triangle was never immutable. Let’s take a look at how their gameplay loop evolved over time:

• Halo: Combat Evolved: The original Golden Triangle, grenades, guns and melee, nothing else, nothing more.

• Halo 2: Added a spin to the gameplay by introducing dual-wielding. Removing the ability to throw grenades and melee attack when using two guns at once, in exchange for higher firepower or interesting combinations (plasma + precision weapons) added a fresh touch to the gameplay along with an increased weapon sandbox.

• Halo 3: Introducing equipment (like the Bubble Shield or Deployable Cover) was a choice specifically designed to continue evolving the Golden Triangle, with single use pick ups that could provide protection or increased mobility in a pinch.

• Halo Reach: Replacing single-use equipment with armor abilities (such as Armor Lock or the Jetpack) that regenerated after use was a bolder design choice to emphasize the fact that the Golden Triangle was not an order, but a suggestion.

And when Halo 4, Halo 5 and Halo Infinite came along, with their own takes on the gameplay (such as 4’s loadouts or 5’s Spartan Abilities), they were simply new evolutions of the Golden Triangle. Some were smart choices, others not so much, but nothing was truly betrayed in that regard.

Bungie.net and the community they built

Being able to play shooters in console at a high skill level enabled gamers to actually compete. When Halo 2 released, it became the foundation of the MLG (Major League Gaming) Pro Circuit, kickstarting competitive gaming in consoles as a whole.

Soon enough, players were playing social games as well as ranked, competing with each other, then participating in the Bungie Forums, where they could see detailed reports of their matches online.

With the release of Halo 3 came Forge (the map editing mode) and Theater (the match recording feature), alongside File Share, a system where players could upload anything they created, from game modes, maps, clips and pictures.

Even when Call of Duty started rising in popularity and eventually dominated the console gaming market, the community behind Halo did not move on for a long time. The arena style matches, verticality of its maps, longer time-to-kill alongside lack of fast movement options (unless you learned some tricks that were considered closer to the skill ceiling) captured an audience that did not care about Call of Duty’s frantic and twitchy gameplay. Movement in Halo was tactical, requiring more map knowledge and game sense than direct skill with the controller.

Bungie’s own involvement with the community, such as their “Bungie vs. the World” event, where the developers jumped into matchmaking and rewarded any squad who could beat them by a 20 point lead (earning you a medal called Steaktacular) was part of why Halo was considered such a pillar of online gaming.

Back in the day, owning certain armor pieces were directly tied to the developers and the community. Per example, the Recon helmet was locked behind certain conditions. Before it was unlockable through the Vidmaster challenges added later on, the only way to unlock the Recon helmet was to have it given by Bungie themselves after sending them a clip of an extremely impressive kill. Per example, using explosives to launch a traffic cone at a high enough speed that it would kill an enemy on impact.

That, as well as finding the skulls, the easter eggs, and other typical things like finding ways to go out of bounds, joining lobbies for custom games (remember Fat Kid?) made me sink endless hours online watching videos, reading guides and discussing with other players. For me, Halo was incredible when I was stuck at home with no internet, but it became magical when I went on vacation and plugged my Xbox 360 to the internet.

I got one card for three months of Xbox Live Gold and was again, temporarily, a part of the community that loved the games. Even now, when the franchise has become a niche, and there’s more people trying to drag it down than to enjoy it publicly, I prefer to remain positive.

Conclusion

Halo might not be the flagship franchise of Xbox anymore, and it may not be as culturally relevant as it used to be, and that’s okay. No matter what the future holds for the franchise, certain things cannot be taken away. The impact that Halo had on console shooters as a whole will forever be a part of history.

On my part, as a younger gamer who only engaged with console shooters starting in the 7th generation, its biggest impact will be the wide replayability of its campaigns with its sandbox and difficulty options, and the endless amounts of fun had on matchmaking competing against random people from all over the world.

Nowadays, the modern games are much less popular, and fans of the franchise like me are either left to choose between three paths: move on from the games, grind out those achievements, or become one of the players who continue to play the same modes in the same maps year after year. refusing to let go of their good times.

Either way, the games are not going anywhere for now. If you haven’t played the Halo games, I will always encourage gamers to try out the campaigns. They are gaming history by now.

For a final article on this retrospective series, I will be discussing about 343 Industries/Halo Studios’ management of the franchise with their modern games. If you would like to know when it comes out, feel free to subscribe for free (or pledge) to receive the next posts to your inbox.

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After returning from Spain, I have spent some time focusing down on my backlog. I finally beat one run of Outward with a friend, started Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven, gone back to playing The Finals and had a brief but lovely stint with The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante.

We are approaching a time in the year where many big games might be released (unless any delays happen again), but this is The Game Enjoyer and I have no obligation to play everything and write about everything. Instead, dear reader, you get a small, curated selection of the games I would like to tell you about.

Today I’ll be writing about my next Star Wars game, my beloved Gravity Rush games, and how I am finally going through Monster Hunter World, 8 years after it came out.

The Eyewitness

• Rideshare Stimulator replaces lead writer with AI: Saber Interactive (developers behind WH40K SpaceMarine 2) reportedly laid off their lead writer in Rideshare Stimulator and replaced her with AI-generated content. Developers have not disclosed their use of AI in the project, but she claims that not only the writing, but the voice acting use undisclosed AI.

• Electronic Arts purchase closes: EA is acquired by the Saudi PIF (Public Investment Fund), and states that they’re planning to cut around $700 million in costs per year, inclusing $170 million in “organizational efficiencies”. That means a lot of lay-offs for EA. Grim times for the developers.

• Let It Die shuts servers and becomes an offline game: In August 31, Let It Die’s servers will be shut off, but Grasshoper Manufacture has made one final change to the game. For a single-time purchase, an offline version of the game that strips out MTX and premium currency will be available, so that the game will live on even after server shutdown. Commendable considering how little companies care nowadays for the longevity of their abandoned games.

Upcoming: STAR WARS Zero Company (August 27th, 2026)

Out of the many Star Wars videogame projects on the calendar, one of the ones that piqued my interest the most, right behind Galactic Racer (October 6th, 2026) is Zero Company, a tactical strategy game that is slightly reminiscent of games like XCOM and Mutant Year Zero. I love everything Star Wars related, and at the time I am playing Star Wars Galaxies: Legends, so I am in the right mindset for a Clone Wars-era entry to pull me even deeper into the galaxy far, far away.

To make things better, a won bet against a friend means I won a free copy of the game, so I will be eagerly playing Zero Company on release day for free. While tactical games are not my strong suit, I’ll be giving it its fair share, and of course, writing about it when it’s time.

Journal: Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2

The Gravity Rush duology is a very dear franchise to me, and I often call back to it when talking about my favorite videogames. As a game I would slot easily in the “superhero” sub-genre, I consider them (but particularly, Gravity Rush 2) great examples of what makes a superhero game so entertaining and special.

The power fantasy of falling through the streets of Hekseville and Jirga Para Lhao and protecting their citizens from the Nevi threats is unparalleled, because the game developers understood that limiting the players’ resources would make the game less fun. Instead, with a little bit of skill, any player can overcome the game’s limits (the stamina gauge that limits your ability to float in zero gravity) to bend the game’s physics to their will.

When people talk about Marvel’s Spider-Man for PS4 as the kind of game where you “would never use fast travel” because of how fun it is to traverse the city, I always refer back to Gravity Rush, where the same rule applied, 6 years before the friendly neighborhood superhero was brought back to consoles. Add to this a unique aesthetic, a worldbuilding created from zero for the franchise and a banging soundtrack and you have a pair of legendary games that are, in my opinion, severly underrated.

Now Enjoying: Monster Hunter World

The Monster Hunter franchise is very intriguing to me, because they are games designed from the ground-up for co-op gameplay. I recall having played the original for PlayStation 2 way back in the day, and then forgetting about the franchise altogether until I got to test the Monster Hunter World beta on PS4.

This month I have been enjoying the game on Steam with my friends after agreeing to a certain pact. One of my friends has played the game for over 600 hours, another for over 100. We all agreed to start from the beginning, and also for none of us to use our “main weapons”, because I was personally turned off from this kind of games by the prospect of not being able to engage with the game as my teammates rushed to complete the objective.

My previous experiences playing online had been like this: starting the quest, I slowly explore the area, gathering items, finding clues leading to the monster’s location, then fighting it, using the environment, chasing it to its nest, using traps and explosives… except my online teammates are using the highest tier weapons available and completely obliterate the monster before anything else gets to happen.

When I managed to remove this experience, what was left was an incredible game: seeing monsters fight each other when crossing paths, setting up traps in their way, or having a teammate launch me into the air with their weapon so I can mount the monster (without the Iceborne expansion you don’t get the convenience of grappling onto the monster automatically). Enjoying the game like this, I can easily see myself grabbing the expansion eventually, and moving on to Monster Hunter Wilds as well.

The Poll: Star Wars videogames

If you could rank your skill level at something like Call of Duty from 1 to 10, and you were, per example, a 6, you would mostly want to play with and against players with skill from 5 to 7. This ensures that you will have opponents that you can outplay, that will push you to the limits of your skill, and force you to become better.

Many people have already debated whether skill-based matchmaking is a good or bad thing. To me, it doesn’t matter, because what dictates whether you will have fun or not while competing is not your skill level nor the opponent’s. It’s simply a matter of the players’ mindsets. Allow me to explain.

The “tryhard” versus “casual” divide.

A few weeks ago I was playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection with a friend of mine while chatting about our lives. We played the social playlists (they were called this back in the day, but today they would be called casual), because we don’t care to compete in the ranked games. At some point, we were matched against a team of 4 who absolutely thrashed us. While we were playing casually, not trying particularly hard to win, they were like a SWAT squad in coordination and skill.

I discovered one of their players was streaming on Twitch, so I went to his channel and asked him “Why are you guys playing social games instead of ranked?”. They were a team of 4, calling each other out, and playing in a well-coordinated way that would better fit proper competition instead of a few guys trying to unwind after work.

His answer was “I’m sorry, but it’s impossible to find a game in ranked playlist anymore.” I don’t know if his apology was genuine or sarcastic, but he did tell the truth. The playerbase had shrunk to the point where the queues to find a ranked game were getting too long. Of course, a game like Halo MCC has this problem due to many factors, but the issue I want to emphasize in this article applies to a few other games.

The Finals’ struggle to retain new players.

One of my favorite competitive shooters of recent times is Embark Studios’ The Finals, a fast paced PvP shooter that features destructible environments and triple team skirmishes. As it was free-to-play, I convinced my friends to give it a go, and we loved it from the start. The gunplay felt great, the mobility and destructible environments meant skill was about more than knowing where to shoot, and the variety of character classes (Light, Medium or Heavy), weapons and equipment meant we could constantly change things up to keep the game fresh.

However, after we finally felt we had learned how to play properly, we ran into one slight annoyance. More often than not, our team (composed of me and my friends, all leveled between 15 and 22) would face teams composed of hardcore veterans of the game (with profiles that marked levels above 150 and all the way to 500). These players would consistently use the same weapons and team compositions, the same tactics in specific maps, and of course, would generally be more skilled at the game (consider that The Finals is not a generic shooter, and the environment plays a big part in it).

We persisted, but I then found out that player retention was a problem due to this abundance of veteran players that dominated the newcomers. Everybody loves to win, and these veteran players have good knowledge of the game’s “meta”. So using their knowledge of the meta and their skills, they go onto every mode, including the non-ranked playlists, and fiercely compete in every game as if they were playing ranked.

On the other side, the newcomers who are just trying to learn the ropes play matches where, as they slowly learn what is going on, they are repeatedly killed and defeated. This causes most people to quit, because the game gives you the impression that being able to compete requires a sizeable time investment. Why would you spend hours getting destroyed at a game just to be able to have fun, when you can just go and play another game where you can have fun from the very beginning?

Should veteran players “relax” when playing casual games?

This is a matter of opinion. In my humble one, yes. Games that offer a separation between ranked competition and casual gaming do so for a reason. I enjoy playing ranked games, and whenever I choose to play ranked, I do my best to win at any cost.

However, when I play casual, for whatever reason (trying to unwind after work, playing with someone who doesn’t want to play ranked, or maybe playing with little time and the chance that I might have to quit mid-game) I relax and stop trying so hard.

Maybe I will use non-meta builds just to experiment, or I will spend some time in the chat joking around. In the case of Team Fortress 2 I might try to start a conga with the opposing team.

I can also understand the case for “no”: some people have the most fun when they are fiercely competing for every single win. I can understand that, but that still makes me question why not play ranked? My only guess is one that might be a bit judgemental.

Are these veterans jumping into casual game modes, trying their hardest to win, because they know that the casual games will be easier to win? Are they seeking some kind of gratification from victory and their only way to win is to play against people who aren’t trying? I’ve talked about this with some people before and even got the answer “I don’t want to risk my rank” or “I am warming up before I hop into ranked”.

Whatever the truth, there is something undeniable, and it is that this player mindset affects the game itself.

How are the veteran players affecting The Finals’ player retention?

As I said before, new players are being pushed away from the game by the highly skilled veteran players who don’t cut them any slack. This same issue is happening to Marathon, where new players face a hard wall once they move into the real game due to players with better equipment and map knowledge hunting them in every run.

Can developers remedy this somehow? New players can play games against bots, sure. This still means that, once the players decide to move on to real games, they will face the same wall. Developers could also segregate players based on level or even hidden skill level (ELO, MMR, TrueSkill and similar), but that is more likely to create even longer matchmaking queues.

Lastly, developers could even ask their community to take it easy when playing casual modes, but this is unlikely to work, and there are very few gaming communities where player goodwill overcomes competitive drive.

So are games like The Finals and Marathon doomed to slowly lose their playerbase, because the skill gap between their consistent players and their potential new users is too wide? Perhaps, it remains to be seen. As it is now, The Finals continues to provide content and new seasons to its players, and has carved itself a small niche due to the great gameplay it proposes.

Will Marathon survive? In my opinion, it will. It has great gunplay, and new modes like Vault Breaker can help it carve itself another niche separate from other extraction shooters.

Into the Shell

NuCaloric has just offered me a simple contract. Head to the Perimeter of the UESC colony in Tau Ceti IV, scan a fungal bioprinter then download an agricultural report, to be done in two different locations within the area. I prepare my shell, Recon, with my weapons of choice, backpack, shield, and implants. I pack some healing items and ammo, then start downloading my consciousness into it.

Infiltrating the Perimeter

On arrival to the Perimeter, I find calm and foggy weather. ONI, the CyberAcme AI agent informs me about the UESC (Unified Earth Space Council) activity in the area. I know it’s going to be drone patrols, which should be light in the Perimeter. However, with me and other Runners skulking about, every passing second is an opportunity for one of the Runners to be discovered, drawing attention to us and bringing reinforcements.

I immediately break into a sprint, having located the fungal bioprinter half a kilometer away, in a building called Overflow.

First Encounter

It doesn’t take long for me to find my first threat. A single UESC drone stands in my way, with its back turned to me, its sensors still unaware of my presence. With my backpack still practically empty, I take a few shots at it, breaking its shield and then destroying its robotic head. I quickly loot whatever I can, put it in my backpack, and continue running.

After having shot my firearm, the possibility of UESC or other Runners being aware of my presence increases. I decide to take a shortcut through a building, taking the opportunity to loot anything on the way. As I slip into the safety within the walls, unnoticed, the constant noise of wind and UESC’s electronic growling becomes muffled.

I make it through the building without finding any threats, and exit back into the open, now closer to Overflow.

This time I walk right into a group of UESC drones, led by an Assault Commander. I engage in a firefight and dispatch them, taking some heavy hits myself. The Patch Kits and Shield Charges I put in my backpack ensure I make it through the fight and continue my path unharmed.

As I reach Overflow, I cross a river. The sound of my steps through the water is quiet compared to the echoing thuds of my shell’s steps as I sprint between canyons and fields.

Read more

…and Vana’diel is my playground, literally. After a refreshing summer vacation in my beloved Spain (and in fact, now World Champions of football for the second time!), I have returned to Iceland and continued my research on what constitutes my perfect MMORPG.

I once played the retail version of Final Fantasy XI Online through their free trial, and while its PS2-era graphics and sounds and its harsh, unique approach to MMORPG combat were intriguing and entertaining, I thought that it had become a bit too modernized for my taste.

With a myriad new features and sources of XP that make leveling a much more solo-friendly experience, retail FFXI is not the same game it was back in the day. Due to this and my increasing curiosity, I ended up playing a fan-server that captured the game as it was during the time where the level cap was 75. That was Horizon XI, and this month of July I have been playing Phoenix XI, a new project made by other fans that preserves the same era of the game in a slightly different style.

Warning: Due to my time in Phoenix XI being during their beta testing, the availability of other players was limited. Due to this, this article will be written using both my experiences with Phoenix XI and with Horizon XI.

My objectives and rules

As usual, I created a new character and started playing following my specific set of goals and rules, which are as follow:

• The goals:

  • Every month this year, I will play a different MMORPG.

  • With this game, I will look for my ideal triangle of game experience: challenge, immersion, and socialization.

  • For a challenge, I’ll hope the game can make the leveling experience fun but not too easy, forcing me to be careful when playing.

  • For socialization, I’ll be looking for player communication, group features and content.

  • Once the month is over, I will move on to the next game.

• The rules:

  • I will not look for game info (quests, builds, etc.) outside of the game, limiting myself to read within the game itself or asking other players for advice.

  • I will not use general or world chats, and use only local (/say) chat, DMs (/whisper) and group/guild chat.

  • I will only party up with players that I’ve met in the area, rather than using matchmaking features.

  • I will not accept help from players in the form of better gear/items or money, unless it is in exchange for a service or simply advice.

  • I will choose Roleplaying servers where possible.

  • I will not use teleportation skills or features, but will use porters like horses when they are available.

And while I have, so far, played with a Hardcore/Ironman challenge in every game before, I knew for a fact that Final Fantasy XI is merciless in its combat design, and death is not a matter of if, but of when. In this specific occasion I decided to not follow a Hardcore challenge, which is okay, since it was never a part of my ideal game.

Phoenix XI - A Final Fantasy XI fan server.

Final Fantasy XI is the franchise’s first foray into the MMO genre. Releasing in May of 2002, it introduced players to Vana’diel, a fantasy world where players took on the roles of adventurers, come to their chosen nations to fight the Beastmen and compete with one another.

With several Jobs (classes) to choose from, the ability to swap between them within the same character, and a combat system that is more reminiscent of Final Fantasy XII than of any modern MMORPG, the game felt truly unique. Unfortunately, as its popularity decreased, the developers introduced more ways for solo players to be able to progress without partying up with others. Features such as Trusts (summonable NPCs that fight in your party) and Records of Eminence (extra quests that reward you with more XP for killing a certain number of mobs, per example), made it easier to reach the endgame, and the game slowly became similar to other, modern MMORPGs that focus more on rushing through leveling.

On research, I found that fan servers such as Horizon XI were devoted to maintaining an older version of the game playable that I tried and fell in love with, but that I quit playing after I started having less time to dedicate to gaming.

Recently, when looking for more MMOs to play, I found Phoenix XI, a new server looking to start from zero in a similar vein as Horizon XI. Wanting to keep a streamlined Final Fantasy experience, I tried to recreate my FFXIV character and chose to made an Elvaan Black Mage called Guemin.

The Challenge

As explained before, I chose not to follow a Permadeath challenge, because I knew already that the world in Final Fantasy XI is merciless. Fighting an enemy solo is a struggle and a gamble, and the only way to ensure victory is to look for enemies that are lower level than you. This isn’t even that straightforward, because the game doesn’t show you the level of enemies, and instead gives you a description such as “It seems like easy prey.”, “It looks like a decent challenge.” or “It seems tough.”.

Normally, this difficulty is exacerbated at the beginning of the game, where your options are limited. As a Black Mage, my low level routine was casting Blind and Poison on enemies, and then chipping away at them with a combination of melee attacks from my staff and casting elemental spells like Stone and Water. After fighting, I would often have to stop and heal in order to ensure I would survive the next fight.

The progress is very slow, and when you die, you lose XP, which means that, if you’re not careful, you might not make progress at all. The best way to progress safely and quickly is by partying up with other adventurers, being able to chain mob kills faster than usual and being safe in numbers.

I also attempted to deal with the crafting system, but the amount of grinding was so intense that I decided not to engage with it for the sake of my own sanity. Overall, if we exclude the idea of Permadeath, I would say Final Fantasy XI is the most difficult of the MMORPGs I have played now. Perhaps a bit too difficult, but that’s a question for the final article in the series.

The Immersion

Final Fantasy XI could struggle with immersion due to the hardware limitations from the time when it was developed. If the game itself does not allow for a great number of NPCs, visual fidelity, and variety of animations, then you can’t really immerse yourself in the game, can you? Well, I disagree.

Being an adventurer in Vana’diel is an immersive experience in its own way, not because of the visual fidelity or realistic scale, but because of the way the lore is set up.

Similarly to how FFXIV is set, player characters in Vana’diel are adventurers, come to one of the three city-estates to assist their factions in their struggle against the Beastmen and one another (there is a lack of PvP, but the competition between players is done through earning points in the Conquest campaigns). However, while the modern interaction of online Final Fantasy considers each player character as the protagonist, the main Warrior of Light, and other players are simply adventurers, Final Fantasy XI specifies that there is no one special adventurer.

In Vana’diel, everyone is equally important to the story and the writing reflects that. Through our avatar we are audience to the developing plots and stories where we, along with other adventurers, are participants of their conflicts, but never the true protagonists.

The spirit of Vana’diel is truly one where adventurers exists simply because they do, and not because of a predetermined story. This reminds me of the world design in World of Warcraft (when I played Turtle WoW), in the sense that there was no mandatory, linear main story to follow in order to progress, and a player was free to explore and tackle each area as they saw fit, with only a few limitations based on level as to which quests are available and which enemies are too dangerous.

So, is Phoenix XI an immersive experience? Yes, in a way that most modern MMORPGs no longer care or manage to replicate.

The Socialization

This is where the game truly shines. While the chat system in FFXI is outdated and most people opt for third party apps, you can still easily find people who are willing to party up, simply because the solo experience is unforgiving at best.

Linkshells, the game’s guild system, allow one person holding the Linkshell to create Linkpearls, which must be equipped by other people in order to access the guild-specific chat. Outside of this, players can join Unity groups, which are bigger than Linkshells but not faction-adjacent. and then there are the Conquest factions, where players compete against each other to bring the world areas into their faction’s control.

The majority of the game’s experience is designed around adventurers grouping up in parties to tackle the challenging combat, and so it has always been expected that players are willing to chat to each other and collaborate. To add to this, the player market is designed in a much more immersive way.

While you are able to access the Auction House to set your items up for sale, you are also able to set up your very own market to carry with you, using the Bazaar mechanic. When you set up your Bazaar, you select the tradeable items you are willing to sell, and set a custom price for them. An icon appears above your head that you are selling items, and any other player can approach you to see what you’re selling and buy the items directly from you without your specific interaction.

Originally, certain zones taxed Bazaar sales, which created a fun player-led initiative where they would all agree to set Bazaars in the closest untaxed area, which would be an area where mobs spawned. For many servers, this created the “Rolanberry Fields Black Market”. This would cause certain players to keep the area clear of mobs to ensure that transactions could occur without interruption.

While the beta of Phoenix XI was a bit deserted due to the majority of testers moving on to endgame content, my time in Horizon XI was full of moments where I would party up with strangers to move through zones, leveling up and making friends along the way. The smaller communities that play these games ensure that eventually you know people by name, even if you don’t interact with them often.

Conclusion

The question here is “does Final Fantasy XI during its level 75 cap era fit the mould of my ideal MMORPG?”, and the answer is yes. It is difficult (quite so), it is immersive, and it demands socialization.

It is also a quite unique game that I recommend everyone try at least once, since it is very different from the two usual MMORPG templates (one being the target lock, quickslot combat, and the other being the isometric variant, Runescape style).

However, August approaches and I must move on to the next adventure.

The August attempt

In August I am undecided between something a bit more open, such as Albion Online, or something that leans in more to immersion, like The Elder Scrolls Online. I fortunately still have a week to decide and try out both games before committing to research in one. And as usual, any feedback and suggestions are welcome in the comments.

• Read the January attempt: Turtle WoW

• Read the February attempt: Star Wars: The Old Republic

• Read the March attempt: The Lord of the Rings Online

• Read the April attempt: Final Fantasy XIV

• Read the May attempt: Guild Wars 2

However, since I started writing The Game Enjoyer I have felt an urge to play more games, to expand my horizons and test my limits. I feel like that would bring me more ideas for writing (and so far it’s been working). When the Steam Summer Sales came up, I decided to go take a look at anything interesting, and I ended up buying 6 games in total.

Football Life Simulator

As a fan of football, I am always eager to try any flavour of football games, like Fantasista Asuka, Football Manager, Soccer Story or Rematch. Football Life Simulator (or FLS for short, from now on) brings a new twist on the genre that I had not tried yet: a Player Career mode that gives you the ability to play the player’s life even outside the pitch.

It’s just one of the many “simulator” type games out there, and in FLS, you get to play the matches through a series of quick-time events for shooting at goal, dribbling, defending, etc.

Outside of the match, a first-person perspective allows you to move through different areas like your house, the gym, the shopping mall and the pub, meeting people and purchasing items, and playing minigames at the gym to increase your stats.

However, the game is in Early Access, and as of July 2026, it seems like the developer has abandoned the project. Add to this the fact that the game clearly has tons of AI-generated content, including dialogues that are written by AI, and even an AI chatbot that allows you to interact with the NPCs directly, although it doesn’t work really well.

I purchased this game and ended up refunding it. Even though I was intrigued by the premise, and I believe the project can be completed to produce a decent game, it is not a game that I can recommend at all.

Should you buy it? - No, it might be abandonware.

The Invincible

Based on Stanislaw Lem’s homonymous novel, The Invincible is a sci-fi walking simulator a la Firewatch following Dr. Yasna, a biologist who wakes up on the surface of a planet and must reunite with her crew while exploring and using tools such as a scanner and binoculars.

I love science-fiction, and the premise of The Invincible was immediately attractive to me. I haven’t read the novel yet, but the game proposes a series of player choices that alter the storyline as it progresses. The visual design is remarkable, and exploring the surface of Regis III is fun because of it.

As a walking simulator, the gameplay in The Invincible requires little focus, so I would consider this game to be more of a relaxed, low-intensity experience, but not at all a cozy game. The plot can be suspenseful and the dialogues are written with certain technical language which can have the player needing to think about what is being said in order to fully understand.

I am still not finished with it, but I consider it to be one of the best purchases for me in this sales period.

Should you buy it? - If you enjoy walking simulators and science-fiction plots, yes.

The Legend of Khiimori

I had seen clips and posts about The Legend of Khiimori for about a year before I saw it on the Steam store. Marketed in my context as a game similar to Death Stranding, it presents itself as an adventure game where you play as a Mongolian courier, riding through the landscapes with your trusty horse.

The game features a few survival-craft systems, but focused around your horse rather than yourself. You can craft items like throwables and ammo, and there is food and healing items to worry about, but the main point is to ensure your horse is fed, watered and happy.

Outside of those, the main appeals are its deep dive into horse breeding and eugenics and its inventory balance system.

The horse breeding is a whole game in itself. The horses’ DNA provides you with certain stats, and you are expected to tame wild horses and stable them, eventually finding the combination that will produce a foal with the exact stats that you want. It’s not just about breeding a horse that is fast, has high stamina or high health, but also about getting a horse that will not get scared at the first sign of enemies, or horses that are more tolerant to the cold or heat. The horses act both as equipment and as companions, and the systems in place to customize them are very well made.

The inventory balance is less detailed than seen in Death Stranding. While Kojima’s courier simulator features a physicalized inventory system, with every single package and item being an actual box that Sam will have to carry somewhere on his porter suit, The Legend of Khiimori worries only about weight balance. The items are not physicalized, but choosing whether to put them in either side’s saddlebag or in your own backpack can affect the horse’s balance.

Of course, this being an indie game in Early Access, I don’t expect them to be able to replicate Death Stranding’s system in equine form. The game is still a great experience, carrying items and letters across a huge map featuring many environmental challenges, certain enemies, collectables (such as Ovoo areas, which summon storms and can be cleansed by offering certain items), and enjoying the companionship of the horses, with the full care and detail that developers Aesir Interactive have put into them.

The only thing that I have against this game, if at all, is that it doesn’t feel cozy in the same way that Death Stranding did for me. I attribute this entirely to the lack of curated music, but The Legend of Khiimori is not trying to recreate Death Stranding, and it might very well carve its own spot in this apparent new genre of delivery simulators.

Should you buy it? - If you like horses and relaxing games, and don’t mind an Early Access, absolutely.

Marathon (2026)

Let me begin by saying I don’t like extraction shooters. I only gave a chance to Marathon because I am a fan of Bungie, after having played Halo and Destiny for many, many hours. I only ever played the original Marathon games for about a couple hours in an old computer, but I didn’t finish them.

I like Marathon, but I don’t think it will manage to retain popularity within its niche. Despite having a spectacular sound design and a very unique artstyle, Marathon has exchanged its original proposition, that of a game where runners are supposed to be shadows, sneaking through Tau Ceti IV without being noticed, for a more action-packed, Battle-Royale style game where you are rarely going to go through a run without finding hostile players and a massive amount of UESC drones (AI enemies).

It runs into the same issue that The Finals has in terms of retaining new players. When a new player finally learns the basics and steps up into the proper game, they are immediately discouraged from playing the game by the veteran players that follow the meta and who are unwilling to relax or cut some slack to clearly inexperienced players in order to help them learn more about the game.

For me, a solo player who likes to be stealthy and avoid conflict, a Marathon run is a coin flip: will I manage to get through the zone unnoticed, achieving my objectives, or will I be relentlessly hunted by an unemployed opponent that can only feel joy when he knows he has cut someone’s progress short?

For those who are fans of extraction shooters, you might still have a hard time getting into Marathon, because progress in the game is directly tied to its story and contracts, and completion of the contracts can be disrupted by players who, having already completed these contracts, have easier access to weapons and equipment that give them the upper hand in engagements against you.

Should you buy it? - If you like extraction shooters, and have the patience or skill to progress the story in spite of a few hundreds of players that will exclusively seek PvP conflict, yes.

Project Gorgon

In my search for an ideal MMO, I came across Project Gorgon, a game that reminds me of RuneScape. In this MMORPG, you don’t select a class, but rather you get to discover and level up a series of skills as you play the game, which means every single character is unique (making an exception for min-maxxing players who willingly go out of their way to find and level every single possible skill in the game).

Project Gorgon is a true sandbox, with no linear story at all, even in its tutorial area. Once you have created your character you are left to figure everything out on your own, and create your own goals. The game’s skill system means every player fights and explores in their own unique style. Per example, I ended up making my character a psychic monk. I discovered the Psychology skill by reading a book on it, which gave me abilities to deal mental damage to my enemies from afar like “Psychoanalyze” and “Tell me about your mother…”. Combining this with melee combat while equipped with no weapons gave me the Unarmed skill to have a series of melee attacks that you can later chain into combos.

Oh, in order to have the combos available you have to meditate, which is its own skill. You can also butcher enemy corpses for extra loot, and Butchering is its own skill. Burying corpses of enemies makes them respawn faster and also increases your Compassion skill.

Basically, everything in Project Gorgon is a skill you can level up, or an activity that allows you to level up skills. Progression is built into the core of the design, and you can truly choose to play whatever you want in that world. In the end, it was too open for my “Ideal MMORPG” series. Even dying is a skill that you can level up! But still had a grand time in it.

Should you buy it? - Project Gorgon is a small game like Runescape with a small, friendly community. If you love open sandboxes with a near unlimited amount of options, then yes!

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (2023)

I have a small obsession with games that don’t hold your hand. From Morrowind with its world design and NPC directions, Breath of the Wild with its immediate release of the player into freedom, the Dark Souls franchise (despite my grievances with its combat design) to other open games like No Man’s Sky or Hell Is Us.

I enjoy when games allow the player to stop and think. It tells the player “figure it out” and does not immediately give them hints to keep them progressing. I recall playing God of War Ragnarok when I had just gotten my PS5, and being upset that, if I ever stopped to look at the gorgeous world that was around me, the characters would immediately start telling me where to go next.

So I have often looked for games that allow the player to wander and make mistakes without constantly nudging them in the right direction. This is exactly what Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened (a remake of the 2006 game of the same name) was shown to me as. In this game where you play as a younger detective, the difficulty options limit how much guidance the game gives you in order to figure out where to go.

Setting it to the highest difficulty (because why not? I’m here to make mistakes), I have found this to be a game that truly does not care whether you have reached a dead end. A couple times in the first three chapters I have been lost, but never once I thought it was the game being purposefully misleading. Every little clue, dialogue option and observation you can make makes sense, and the red herrings found in game are not put there just for the player’s annoyance.

Everything in this game is in place for the player to figure out, whether by genius or patience, and I think it’s a great showcase of what games like Monkey Island or Broken Sword could have evolved into if the mainstream industry had leaned into games being more challenging.

Should you buy it? - Either you like puzzling mysteries to solve, or detective stories, or Lovecraft mythos. This game has everything and you don’t need to play in the highest difficulty. So yes!

What did you buy?

If you bought anything interesting during these Summer Sale, please drop a comment and tell me about it! I’m always looking for new experiences to enjoy.

After having spent about five weeks enjoying newly married life, travelling through Spain, riding horses, eating good food, drinking good beer, and driving a powerful car through the Spanish highways, I’m finally back to Iceland.

Despite the depressive shock on my return, there is one positive aspect to it, and it’s that I’m finally able to play more games and write more about it. In the time I’ve been away, the community has continued to grow and The Game Enjoyer has grown with it, and now, in the second year of TGE, it’s time to continue building upon it.

Therefore, and with no more delay, let’s get back to the Monthly Issue!

The Eyewitness

• SONY announces no more physical game copies starting in 2028: Terrible news for gamers that enjoy collecting their games and who are worried about losing access to their digital libraries. For me, personally, it’s a terrible choice. Losing the options is always bad, and while I usually buy digital (because I don’t have space for a lot of physical games) I don’t like the idea of not being able to buy a game disc even if I wanted to. The second-hand game market will die.

• XBOX fires 1600 employees in one day: Asha Sharma published an email in which she explains that a big re-structuring of Xbox will be happening into 2027, including the immediate layoff of 1600 employees, with another 1600 on the way as roles are eliminated. Everything is done in the name of making profit. I get it, it’s a business before anything else, and at least she is being transparent about the real motives, but it’s never good to see the industry shed employees like this.

• IO Interactive’s Project Fantasy has funding pulled and begins independent development: Project Fantasy, an upcoming online fantasy RPG by IO Interactive (Hitman, Kane & Lynch, 007: First Light), was being developed by IOI’s Istanbul studio, but after XBOX pulls their funding, the studio is closed. At least IOI has maintained ownership of the IP, and development will continue independently.

Upcoming: Grand Theft Auto VI (November 19, 2026)

After yet another delay, it seems like, finally, Grand Theft Auto VI will be releasing this November. I have a strange relationship with the GTA franchise. I like the games, but beyond playing the stories and doing some of the minigames, I don’t find them to be particularly interesting sandboxes.

I am pretty sure that the story in GTA VI will be great fun, and I am now very interested in seeing the immersion that the game can provide. However, the one thing that I am really looking forward to is the Online variant.

Whenever it comes out, I am sure that GTA Online (for the new game) will be a great source of fun with friends in the same way that Red Dead Online was great fun if you could group up some people to run missions with.

Regardless of online or single-player, if the game proves to be as immersive as RDR2 can be, I’m in for a good time.

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The following section contains spoilers about the mentioned games.

Journal: Undertale and DELTARUNE

I played Undertale when I was 17 years old. I had an old laptop that was not good for playing any modern videogames, and it even struggled with League of Legends. Undertale, however, ran perfectly. I saw it gaining a lot of attention online and decided to try it out, and it had me hooked for a long time.

I’ve always liked games with deep lore and cryptic characters, but it wasn’t until much more recently that I finally understood the themes of agency that were present in the game, and not just its subversion of the RPG genre and the idea of empathy and morality when you have the power to undo your actions.

When DELTARUNE first came out, I expected more of what Undertale originally delivered, but it is quite different. While Undertale makes a point out of the fact that it is a game, and this affects the story, DELTARUNE’s main theme seems to be agency.

Every character in the game has their own personal story about agency and loss of it, and after having recently beaten Chapter 5, I can’t stop thinking back to the times where I would read theories about Undertale, W.D. Gaster and the possibilities of whether DELTARUNE was a sequel, a prequel, or an entirely different game.

Now Enjoying: Halo: The Master Chief Collection

As you know by now, Halo is my favorite game franchise. Adding up all the games play times, I must have racked up something like 4,000 hours. Those are rookie numbers for most people, but for me, it is a lot.

The Master Chief Collection is, for me, the best way to play the games now. After having beat the campaigns several times, and going back to its matchmaking every now and then for a few games of shooting and riding, it became just a background game for me, something to boot up a couple times a month to play while chatting with my friends. But now I have a goal in mind:

While I know it might take me months, or years, I am slowly chipping away at the massive amount of achievements available for Halo MCC. And not only I am making progress, I am also having a lot of fun with it. Finding little easter eggs, trying to beat par times or par scores in the campaign, and slowly building up to the bigger achievements like accumulating 2,500 Assist medals has been like a breath of fresh air to my Halo muscles.

I will keep you all posted as I make my way through the list.

The Poll: Summer Sales!

When I started The Game Enjoyer, I did it out of three reasons. One, to provide my grain of sand into trying to combat the modern wave of negativity towards the majority of games that have released.

Two, to polish my writing skills, which had become rusty over years of disinterest in writing. Three, because I wanted to try and prove to myself that someone could be considered a decent “games journalist” without having to rely on being unfairly harsh or suspiciously positive.

I never expected this Substack to take off the way it did, but after one year of TGE, it’s clear that something must have clicked with many. I don’t know if it was the interaction with other languages, or a coincidence with Substack’s own Onboarding program putting TGE in front of many new users.

I came to terms with the idea that the subscribers are there, the views are there (although not matching the subscribers yet), and rather than it being an error or an issue with the system, it might be because I am writing something that people want to read.

Am I good at writing?

I’ve always had a pragmatic way of doing things and perceiving success. I never want to jump to conclusions and I prefer to temper my expectations. This is useful, and every time TGE has had a leap in popularity, like my post about old-school RPGs getting hundreds of views for the same time, or breaking the 1000 subscribers barrier in late April, it’s been a huge surprise because I never expected it.

It doesn’t mean I am expecting this kind of hits now, but I believe we have a big community in the gaming Substack now, and I am glad that I am seen by people, because I try to spread positivity, and we are in short supply of that.

My issue with monetization.

Recently, Harrison Polites decided to drop his paywall, and after reading his article, I was impressed by his mindset. Using his paywall exclusively for an archive, but still allowing free subscribers access to all of his new posts.

When I created the Substack account, I was bombarded with constant reminders to set up my pledges and paid subscriptions. At first I refused to do it, because I didn’t think anyone would want to or have to pay for whatever poor quality articles I would write.

Then, just to clear those notifications, I tried to set up paid subscriptions, and realized I was unable to do it. I forgot about it, because from the day that I created TGE, I decided I didn’t want to put any content behind a paywall.

No disrespect to any writers who do charge for some of their posts, of course. I simply thought I wasn’t good enough for it.

Has something changed?

Not really, other than the fact that, during my vacation in Spain, I was able to set up my paid subscriptions and pledges. I had a dilemma about this for some time, because I have settled into the rhythm of 4 posts a month, and I don’t want to take that away from any of the free subscribers. And I finally came to a realization.

The Game Enjoyer’s paid subscription model.

Because Substack writers are, basically, content creators, and Substack does not specify that you must have a paywall, I realized that I could have paid subscriptions on, even if I didn’t offer anything for paid subs exclusively.

The subscription would work simply as a means of support. Pay whatever the pledge was (I recall setting the minimum amount) simply for the action of supporting TGE with some money, which would allow me to declare my gaming costs as business expenses (maybe not, but I am not opposed to researching this).

So, still, one post every Friday, four per month, all free for you to read. And then I realized, July has five Fridays. Then I thought I could offer something for the paid subscriptions.

So here is the paid model. Every time there is a fifth Friday, there will be an extra article that will be paywalled. This is the way I came to terms with both sides of TGE.

I maintain my four posts a month for free subscribers, but I also offer special content for anyone who would like to monetarily support the Substack.

Is this a definitive, forever model?

No, unfortunately. As life goes on, my availability to write can change. If I run out of ideas, I will prioritize the free articles. When I was promoted in April this year, my amount of free time for writing was reduced drastically. Once I become a father (soon, I hope), I might have even less time to write, due to having less time to game.

But I cannot plan so much ahead. For now, this is it.

For you, free subscriber.

With the surge in subscribers since March, I have met many new, wonderful people in Substack. Some are writers themselves, others are readers who engage with comments. Some have even reached out to me directly through DMs to ask for opinions and advice.

When I started TGE, I never expected that it would get to this point, the engagement with the community, the visibility, and most importantly, the amount of people who agree with my takes, in the sense that people tend to be so positive about gaming.

I wanted to write to extend my own positivity towards others, but at the same time, others’ has rubbed off on me, and I enjoy gaming more because of it. So thank you, kindly, and I hope you will continue to read The Game Enjoyer, for free or not!

Even though, like many, I didn’t come to know them until I played Dark Souls on a PS3 (I know, I know). That was right when their games started rising in popularity, with the Dark Souls franchise and Bloodborne starting the trend of the souls-like genres and the now old discourse among gamers of whether these games should offer a difficulty slider or simply present you with their base design.

If you ask me, despite the fact that I find these games particularly difficult, I defend that they should not have a difficulty slider, but at least allow you to fully pause the game (gamers that are also parents would agree with me, I’d hope).

So, if I seem to be positive about their games, why can’t I enjoy them?

I’m at odds with their combat philosophy.

I will first of all state which games I am specifically talking about:

• Dark Souls

• Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

• Dark Souls 3

• Bloodborne

• Elden Ring

• Demon Souls (the PS5 Remake)

• Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

I haven’t engaged with their older games, nor with the Armored Core franchise, or King’s Field. I started with the Dark Souls trilogy, and at first, I followed my favorite RPG tradition: build a tank.

I started putting points into Vitality and Endurance, scavenged for some good, heavy armor, and as expected, I plowed through most areas in the first few areas, as most of the regular enemies were not so dangerous. But the boss fights… I always struggled. It took me some time until I was told that tank builds are different in Dark Souls. You are not going to outlast your enemy by trading blows, and your shield is not going to be an invincible bulwark against the onslaught of your quarry’s attacks. Being a tank simply means being able to survive four or five hits instead of two or three.

I quit that playthrough on the return to the Undead Asylum. Years later I tried again, using the famous GiantDad build, and made it quite far, all the way into the Duke’s Archives, before I quit due to the disappointment that every fight relied exclusively on knowing how to dodge and parry everything and using an overpowered build to smash the boss.

Some time later, I tried one third time. I wanted to play with the fact that in Dark Souls (and other games like it), status effects can be applied to bosses too. I wanted to be smart, see what a boss was weak against, and equip myself properly for it. Still no luck.

Is this in any way me considering the game’s design to be bad? No, but rather me just not understanding something crucial about how the game is played that never clicked.

My experience with every other game was the same, except for Sekiro and Elden Ring. In Sekiro, it was all about the parries. In Elden Ring, I tried using magic and made it quite far.

What I do love.

I am particularly sad about not enjoying the games, because they have many things that I love. Their music, the graphics, the world design, the deep lore…

This is the reason why I keep coming back to the games, even when I am pretty sure that I won’t finish it. I admire From Software for being a developer that sticks to their design philosophy. They want you to play the game their way, to learn from your mistakes, to get up when you’re knocked down, and to feel a true and complete sense of accomplishment when you finally defeat your foe and emerge victorious past the fog gates.

The music and voice acting is always superb, the artstyle fits the world and the vibe, and the world design and lore provide such an immersive experience (and if you read TGE, you know immersion is the prime quality for me).

If anything, the only downside I would give these games is that their worlds always feel quite dead. Of course, this is by design, but I can only play so many games where my character is a nobody that embarks on a quest through the ruins of a once great world in order to accomplish… something.

My bone to pick with the combat.

Not counting Sekiro, I feel like the hitboxes in the FromSoft games are unreliable. For a game that not only expects you to be good at dodging and parrying, but also the consequence for failing to do so is losing progression, being sent to the last checkpoint and losing the items you used, I feel like the quality of its hitboxes does not accompany what they expect the player to do.

Of course, this is a skill issue, but for my taste, when you need to develop extra skill to compensate for a part of the game that is not well made or polished enough, it should not be an expectation for the player.

There’s also something that has been polished over time, but it’s the janky animations. Rolling behind a charging enemy, a hulking titan wielding a huge club above its head, thinking that you’re safe behind it, only for the enemy to turn on a dime, facing you right as it unleashes its attack, is something that always infuriated me.

All it took was more time to get used to it, but why would I have to fight my own intuition as a player? If you ask me, better animations could have (and did, eventually) allow for a more fair challenge.

Still, ultimately, my final gripe with the combat is how far they have gone with the boss combos. I can explain my issue in one single sentence: “I don’t like only being able to hit my enemy once or twice as it does a 10 hit-combo that I have to dodge perfectly.”

Is it skill issue? Yes. Is it still a valid opinion? Yes. And I will continue to play FromSoft games, eventually finishing one, I’d hope. And I will continue to be annoyed when this kind of design makes it through, despite knowing that it is by choice, and my own choice to play it.

Conclusion

I really wish I had the patience for a game like this. I will always admire and enjoy parts of the FromSoft games, and do my best to play them to completion, but it simply does not click with me.

That’s okay, however. There’s hundreds of games for me!

What is my ideal MMORPG?

I have a penchant for massive online worlds, ever since I tried Star Wars Battlefront 2 as a child. When I didn’t know much about games, names like World of Warcraft or Runescape didn’t mean much to me, but I already knew that I liked the idea of being in huge maps sharing a game with other people.

When I was a teenager I dedicated time to my first proper MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic, and then the concept finally clicked when I fell in love with Final Fantasy XIV.

In the past year, writing for The Game Enjoyer has helped me analyze my own tastes much better, and I feel like I am really in tune with myself, with what I enjoy about videogames in general, and particularly what I seek out of this specific genre that I so enjoy.

What I turn my nose up at:

Over the course of my gaming life so far, I have tried many MMORPGs due to many reasons: lack of a high spec computer, no money for subscriptions, or curiosity about older games has made me play things like Star Wars Combine, Azusa Online and other more well known games like Throne and Liberty or New World.

The reasons I’ve had to not continue playing one have been pretty consistent. I am not a fan of grinding, or daily rewards, and I am put off when a game’s community does not engage with each other.

Games like Black Desert have lost my interest immediately after character creation due to the way the game is played. I am not competitive when it comes to progression, but when a game expects you to perform repetitive tasks over and over for a minuscule increase in stats, I check out.

When a game offers me a nice screen on login with a calendar, expecting me to play the game at least once a day in order to receive increasingly valuable rewards, I check out. Not because I don’t care about the rewards, but because the feeling that I am missing out on a good reward if “I don’t log in today too” stresses me out.

When a game offers me minuscule skill progression, and I have 20 different buttons for combat at level 3 and barely anything new at level 50, I check out. I love to feel how my character goes from a simple low level mage or warrior with one skill at my perusal, gradually, to a high level mage or warrior with two full hotbars to use during combat.

I am very picky with my games. When the supposedly “massively multiplayer online” game is massive, but people are not playing together, then it also turns me off from it.

What I seek, then:

When a game provides me with a blank slate for a character, a relatively weak adventurer that I can develop into a powerful hero, and progression means it takes time to level up, complete quests, and invest into finding, purchasing or crafting better gear, that’s the kind of game I enjoy.

When the story and world are designed cohesively, so that it feels that I am playing through a fantasy world, rather than a theme park created to funnel me into the specific activities that the game wants me to do, I am invested.

When fighting enemies feels like a real threat, and missing out on my skills or gear can make the difference between beating them or being sent to the respawn (or losing my character), then I am invested.

When other players run around and chat and are open to collaborating, to make quests easier or to complete dungeons and other instances, and I don’t need to rely on third party apps or the game’s own party making system, I feel like the game rewards you for socializing.

If you have been following this series of articles, you know what it is that I seek already, so we can really move on with it.

What game, if any, has met my standards so far?

As of June 2026, I have played 5 MMORPGs while following a specific set of rules in order to discover if these games are my “ideal” one: Turtle WoW, SWTOR, The Lord of the Rings Online, Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2. I spent a month in each of them, more or less, took notes, then debated myself on how well they fit the mold. There will be 5 more games to come in the rest of the year, so I cannot say there is one specific best option, but so far:

The ideal Challenge: Turtle WoW

When it comes to the challenge, I realized that after playing Turtle WoW I had continued to do Ironman attempts in every other game. This was a mistake, because not every MMO treats death in the same way.

You are expected to die at some points in certain MMOs, but the ones that offer Hardcore challenge are the ones where you know the game is designed for you to be able to make it through with a single life. Turtle WoW, and by extension, WoW, are games with a particular challenge, aside from its Hardcore mode.

When I played tWoW, I found every single encounter to be threatening. Some people might find this annoying, as you don’t want to fear for your life every time you fight, but in my case I found this challenge refreshing. Every time I travelled between safe zones I knew that a stray enemy could aggro me, and if I wasn’t prepared to retaliate, I might be in trouble. I also knew that if I wasn’t alert, I might accidentally end up outnumbered, and that could easily lead to death (and it almost did once).

Other games have been challenging in other ways: in SWTOR, Heroic areas provided a big challenge, FFXIV has extra, optional dungeons and boss fights that are harder than their base versions.

Despite that, the game that, so far, remains the undefeated best at providing a fun challenge is (or was) Turtle WoW.

The ideal Immersion: Final Fantasy XIV

What is the point of playing through your chosen fantasy of being a hero in a strange setting, if the setting itself doesn’t feel real? Many MMOs provide players with a huge world, full of interesting lore and characters, and then make the player interact with the world.

Other MMOs create a huge world with interesting lore and characters, but do not make the player interact with it, making most players unaware that they are in a fantasy world.

For me, games where I am forced to interact with the world and its characters are more enjoyable that games where I’m not. If I must go through doors and complicated city layouts to reach my targets, perform manual tasks, look at maps and read journals instead of having quest markers everywhere, then I forget that I am playing a videogame and I immerse myself in the world really well.

In this regard, Final Fantasy XIV is the game that I have felt the most immersed in. Crafting my own gear and actually seeing my character perform the crafts is part of it, but also taking the airship, porters and ferries to move around the world, talking to the different shopkeepers and completing the many, many side quests that provide insight into what Eorzea is like. The MSQ only gives you a quick glimpse of what the world is like, and then encourages you to go and invest more of your time on it by yourself.

The ideal Socialization: LotRO/FFXIV

I have a hard time playing MMORPGs when players act like they are alone in the world, because it somehow isolates me from the online aspect of it. When I see people chatting in the general (or local) chat, emoting together, and generally being open to engaging with strangers, it makes the whole experience feel more real.

In this regard, I have struggled to decide which game fits my ideal better, Final Fantasy XIV or Lord of the Rings Online. On one hand, FFXIV had a community that was very eager to engage in a personal level. Everyone wanted to know each other and have fun together, and during my time in that game I met a lot of individuals who had very interesting personalities.

Meanwhile, in LotRO people who were most open to talking were either roleplaying or mentoring, and most of the conversation was about the game and its world and lore. When I played LotRO, every social interaction made me learn more about the world and the game systems, and while I didn’t make as many friends as I did in FFXIV, I have fond memories of having met strangers during my journey and receiving critical information from them that allowed me to survive even when going into high level areas.

My experiences in both games served different purposes: in FFXIV it tied the social aspect together with the immersion, enhancing how “real” it felt to be an adventurer in Eorzea, while in LotRO, finding people to ask for advice became a part of the challenge instead, and to quote the movie itself, “Frodo wouldn’t have gotten far without Sam”. Without every player that I met telling me what dangers lied ahead, I would have died way early.

Expectations for the future

I will be playing Final Fantasy XI in July, and beyond that I am still undecided. I know for a fact that FFXI will be extremely challenging. I am hoping to find more games that are challenging and rewarding, but I think the aspect I am most interested in at this point is a game where the social aspect is still important.

Since I have seen how third party apps and matchmaking features have made socializing near meaningless in this kind of games, I am looking forward to any kind of game where they have found the design solution to this. Removing QoL features might actually improve the game in some ways.

Recommendations

If you have any games that you think I should try this year, please leave a comment below with your recommendation and the reason why you think it could be an ideal MMORPG!

I first moved out of my childhood home in 2019, at 20 years old. I had lived there for approximately 10 years. After moving out, I would travel back to visit once a year, sometimes more. In the past five years, I started realising that my mother’s apartment was visibly deteriorating: water damage had appeared on some walls, certain rooms had become empty and unused, with the door always closed. Many of my old things had been packed and put in a storage room so that my bedroom could be used by guests, and some doors had become wobbly and didn’t open and close reliably.

This also applied to her car: the keyfob was missing more buttons every year, new bumps and scratches appeared every time, and even the trunk’s opener button was now missing the button cover. This often put me in a state of wistfulness, thinking that somehow, this physical space becoming worn down was a real sign that my childhood and teenage years were also further and further away every time I visited.

Of course, this is simply because it’s what it is. Every year I come visit and things keep slowly deteriorating, and of course, my childhood is further away because I am becoming older. I shed the wistfulness quickly, and instead channel this train of thought into an opportunity for an article.

How I feel when my digital space becomes old and abandoned.

When I was about twelve years old I was introduced to the Halo franchise through Halo 3. What followed was years of spending summers and Christmas at my father’s house, the only times in the year where I could connect my Xbox 360 to the internet, playing matchmaking endlessly in queues of Social Slayer, Action Sack and Big Team Battle.

Even when Halo Reach and Halo 4 had released, I kept returning to Halo 3 because it felt the most fun to me, and it retained its popularity for many years. In 2022, Halo 3’s servers shut down, along with many other games. Of course, you can still play it offline, and if you wish to play Halo 3’s competitive modes, you can always boot up The Master Chief Collection to play it in an improved way.

It’s not the same, and you know it. While the MCC is a great way to play Halo, it’s not the same as the original. The menus are not the same, the culture and playerbase are not the same. Booting up my old copy of Halo 3 through backwards compatibility on my Series X, then trying to access matchmaking, gives me the same feeling as walking through my mother’s house and seeing the things that are missing or broken.

There is the familiarity, and the memories, but the knowledge that, despite being in the same place, you can’t do the same things you could before, and you can never go back to that place, is enough to make one sad and melancholic.

The feeling when the game is alive, but service has stopped.

In a similar vein sits Destiny for me. I am talking about Destiny 1, not the sequel. When I saw that Bungie was developing a brand new space shooter, and saw that it was meant to be an MMO, I was head over heels. I managed to get my hands on it two years later, when The Taken King had already released, but Rise of Iron was still not live.

It blew my mind, to have my very own character, existing in a world that acknowledged that every player was its own Guardian, all working together to defend Earth from the alien threats. I had many hours of fun patrolling the different locations, completing the story, dungeons, and eventually taking the fight to Oryx himself.

Then, when Rise of Iron released, I joined my friends to complete the story, upgrade my weapons, and survive the Archon’s Forge (an Horde-style activity in the open world). I recall having this feeling many times: after having spent a few hours at night playing with my friends, they would call off for the night, around two or three in the morning. We would be in orbit (just a menu, but with delightful design), and each of my friends’ ships would fly away when they disconnected, until only my ship remained. The song “Remembrance” would play while in orbit, and I sat in front of my TV, late at night, listening to it, and a little bit sad that the night of fun was over.

Now the song makes me long for those days. Of course, Destiny 1 not only still exists and is playable, but it’s also in a better situation that Destiny 2, since the sequel ended up removing parts of the game to keep its size low. You can still pick up Destiny 1 for consoles with all the expansions and experience the whole game from beginning to end, and there is plenty of people online who are willing to help new people party up for the harder content.

So, if I am so sad about Destiny 1, what stops me from just booting it up again? My friends aren’t playing anymore, and making new friends is possible, but it would simply not feel the same as when I did it ten years ago.

This is partly because the game was “abandoned” in favor of its sequel, but also because of a different feeling that I will bring up again later.

Why it still happens even when the game is alive.

When I was ten years old, I used to play a browser fantasy RPG called Sherwood Dungeon. Doing some research as I write, I find that this game still exists, even though it has lost almost all of its playerbase.

Back in the day, I would use a laptop and spend hours dungeoneering, collecting loot, and fighting monsters and other players. I never did any social activity or progress especially far. It was simply a silly game that I played for hours, just because it was fun. In this case, Sherwood Dungeon triggers more happy memories than sadness, but it is a case similar to the other two games.

The truth is simple. The deterioration of these digital spaces, whether it comes through abandonment of the game by its developers (by shutting servers or stopping maintenance or expansion) or its community (by players losing interest and moving to a new game), is not bound to make one feel sad by itself. It is because of any emotional attachment that we make to the game of our childhood that we then feel hurt when we see the game become old and abandoned.

Halo 3 is no different than my mother’s car and home in this sense. It’s a place or thing that once felt like home or provided me with an environment to be in for entertainment, and seeing it no longer active is sad, just like seeing your old dog become less mobile.

The fact that I am becoming older and these things are deteriorating can be sad, but it’s also an opportunity to look forward to the future. There are new games, new homes and cars in the future. It’s okay to have a comfort game, but it’s also great to have the time and space for a new one.

When you don’t let go of your abandonware.

In 2024 I spent a month playing an old, small online game called Underlight. The experience of playing this game was so bizarre that I don’t know if I can properly explain what it' is supposed to be.

This is a MUD (Multi User Dungeon) Online RPG that focuses on heavy roleplaying. The game itself presents a slightly meta narrative where your avatar is simply the projection of a dreaming person, into a plane called the Dreamstate, where the game takes place. There is no storyline to follow, as every single piece of lore other than the inception of the game has been crafted by the community through their roleplay and interactions.

In the game, one can fight monsters to level up, but new skills can only be learned from other players who are teachers. There are no quests, other than the ones posted by other players, and there are no NPCs at all. All shops are run by other players too. In its heyday, this was sustainable, but at the time when I played, this was simply a barren collection of abstract levels, inhabited by monsters, with empty rooms with lore to read, and the occasional presence of another player.

This other player was either a newbie trying out this free game from 1998 (such as me), or a veteran of the community visiting their favorite game. My time playing Underlight was quite enjoyable. As I like heavy roleplaying, I did my best to participate, and other players, both old and new, were happy to engage with me. I eventually quit the game, as I tend to do with sandboxes, because it is difficult for me to play for a long time if I don’t have a specific objective in mind.

In the topic of this article, what makes these veteran players stick to their abandoned game after 28 years? Underlight on Steam peaked at 23 players online back on the official Steam release, and averages about 2 players per day. At the time when I played, the Steam counts showed about 10 average players.

Clearly, the veterans who still play Underlight have a strong attachment to the game. Maybe they personally contributed to the lore, or they have great friends that they only ever meet in game. It makes me wonder if they don’t feel any kind of sadness seeing their game, which once could have a few hundred concurrent players, now an empty world for them to reminisce.

If they wish to spend part of their free time in Underlight, I cannot complain nor criticize, God knows I also spend much of my free time indulging in my own pointless gaming affairs.

Conclusion

If you have reached all the way over there, I want to thank you for tolerating my rant about such a simple topic. Yes, I feel sad at times because I miss how gaming felt when I was a kid. But I am also excited to see my future and what new gaming experiences await.

Normally I would ask you to comment with your own experience of feeling nostalgic over an old game, but I also want to ask, what is a modern game that has you excited to keep moving forward?

Who would’ve thought? Not me. Last year I started The Game Enjoyer because of two reasons. First, to simply engage my writing muscle as a hobby, as I had done it less and less over time and I found myself with an increased amount of free time.

Also, to try and spread some positivity around the gaming community. I struggled to find unbiased reviews from "professional gaming media, and content creators lean more and more into negativity, as this is what brings them money and attention.

Being completely unbiased would require a professional effort, but I am not a professional, so why wouldn’t I just allow myself to be more optimistic? It’s been one year since, and I’ve played many games, written many articles, and given deep thought to certain aspects that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

I’ve enjoyed writing, and it’s all thanks to you!

The Eyewitness (looking inward)

• Over 2,000 subscribers in one year: While 2025 was a slow beginning, 2026, with the current MMORPG series, consistent posting, and collaborations, has made the subscriber count skyrocket! A year ago I didn’t imagine getting to 100 subs, let alone over 1,000. It’s incredible to me and I’m really happy to be a part of the community.

• Extra languages not originally intended: While I exclusively write in English, I have found great members of the gaming community in Substack in Spanish and Italian. Substack is truly a gold mine for seeing other perspectives!

• Shoutouts and collaborations: I wasn’t aware of what Substack really is, and I was so happy to find great Substacks such as Peter Monks, Amy J, Brian Schneider, Luca Castronovi, Fran Pérez, Alex Antra and Harrison Polites, all writers that I very much enjoy reading and who inspire me to put more effort and polish into every article.

Upcoming: Another year of The Game Enjoyer

It’s one year done, but I’m still aiming to write for longer. I’m just getting started. I tend to alter my plans as I go, and considering how little I had in store at the beginning of this adventure, I think I ought to plan ahead better this second year.

For the rest of 2026, I am looking forward to continuing my monthly MMORPG series. In July, I will be playing the beta for Phoenix XI, a fan-server for Final Fantasy XI that aims to maintain the original of the classic versions, in a similar vein to how Turtle WoW did it.

Other than continuing the Monthly Issues, I would hope to still find inspiration and ideas to continue adding two extra articles every month. I would love to do more collaborations with other writers in the platform, both for The Game Enjoyer and for their own Substacks.

Something that I have thought about, but that I am unsure on how to put in practice, is the idea of interviews. If I can meet anyone in the industry; a developer, composer, writer… and talk to them about their game, it would make for interesting articles, but it’s a difficult thing to do, and I will have to plan it really well if I want to do it.

Regardless, I am sure that ideas for articles will continue to flow in for yet another few months, and I wish to continue writing The Game Enjoyer for long.

Journal: Looking back to 2026 so far

After having made the case in 2025 about being able to complete my game backlog easily when I take things in a more calm, casual approach, I found that I am now starting to juggle too many games at once.

For the months of April and May, I have been playing the monthly MMORPG for the article series, while also dedicating some good time to Red Dead Online, as well as playing some Halo: The Master Chief Collection in my pursuit of the most achievements I can reasonably manage to unlock. At the same time, I have been watching my wife (read the next section) play through Red Dead Redemption 2, and even started a Nuzlocke run of Pokémon Shield (which is making the game much more tolerable).

At some point I started feeling overwhelmed with the release of many other interesting games, such as PRAGMATA, or the new 007: First Light, doing my best to juggle them all so I can write about everything and also enjoy them personally.

I believe one month away from the computer, enjoying my vacation, will serve to reset my mindset and get back to what was working before.

Now Enjoying: Being married in Big 2026

At the end of May, me and my partner tied the knot and are now officially married. This doesn’t change much. We have been living together for over five years, we have many commitments and are in it for the long term, and now are officially recognized as a married couple with all the legal conditions it comes with.

Now that she is finished with Red Dead Redemption 2, once we are back home we will be playing 007: First Light, and I will continue with my own endeavors. With my trusty laptop to enable me to continue writing while abroad, I am playing some simpler games such as Warsim: The Realm of Aslona and Super Fantasy Kingdom, the kinds of games that I can play for twenty or thirty minutes when taking a break in between activities, or in the morning while having some coffee before the day truly begins.

The Poll

And if we take into account that it is still in development, and the release date for the final product is expected (and take this with a grain of salt) to be 2027 or 2028, it might become the most expensive.

It has been in development since 2011, and now, 15 years later, the currently playable product is a massive mess that is as impressive as it is disappointing. You know me as the Game Enjoyer, and there is a lot to love about what one can find in Star Citizen, but also a lot to frown at.

The project has currently surpassed $1 billion in crowdfunding. They made all this money simply from selling merch, game packages, ships, and sometimes even images of ships (I am not even kidding).

I am a big lover of sci-fi, and Star Citizen has been a game that I’ve been looking forward to since 2016, when the videos I saw about the game and its promises left a hole in my heart that I unsuccessfully tried to fill with No Man’s Sky and Elite: Dangerous. Those two are good games in their current iterations, but there is something that Star Citizen does that no other game has managed to replicate right now, for better and worse.

The Project: What is Star Citizen supposed to be?

Star Citizen is led by Chris Roberts, creator of the Wing Commander series, as a spiritual successor to Freelancer, which was originally led by him but finished by Microsoft after he exited the project.

Much like its’ spiritual ancestor, Star Citizen is a space simulator, with a coat of MMO and expanding the gameplay with a lot of new mechanics and systems. The game was originally expected to be much smaller in scale, but as crowdfunding met goals further and further, the company, Cloud Imperium Games (CIG from now on) made more and more promises.

With every promise came the expectation of something new; a new addition to the list of playable ships, new gameplay mechanics, new planets and systems, new activities, etc.

Most of the features were delayed, but over time, the game became playable, crumb by crumb. First came a playable demo that allowed players to walk around an enclosed hangar to inspect the finished ships, including their exteriors and interiors. After this came the Arena Commander module, which allowed players to test fly the ships in combat and races in controlled servers and maps.

Then came Star Marine, the space-legs (first person view) portion of the game, as a PvP mode where players would fight each other with firearms in different maps.

Finally, in 2015, the Persistent Universe came out, the game as we now know it, which allowed players to seamlessly use their ships or walk, use other vehicles, and move around the system at will to perform different activities. The biggest update to this mode was delayed until December 2017, when Alpha 3.0 was released, signaling the beginning of the game’s real “early access” phase, in which we are now stuck.

Star Citizen is supposed to be, in its current state which is not the final release, a big space sandbox. Within it, you can live out the fantasy of being a freelancer in its set of 3 different star systems (Stanton, Pyro and Nyx) to do all kind of careers: you can be a trader, a mercenary or bounty hunter, a ship scrapper, a courier, a miner, and engage in all kinds of odd jobs such as hunting wildlife, repairing and fixing stations, refueling other ships, being a medic, hunting other players with bounties on their heads, finding missing people, scavenging for loot, etc.

This is not even taking into account the variants for each career, as it is not the same to make money trading legal goods than to make money running drugs.

Aside from the established missions, the game often offers events with bigger contracts that often require the cooperation of the community or server in order to be completed, with more complex and chaotic environments and bigger rewards awaiting at the end.

What about Squadron 42?

A single-player campaign was scheduled to release in 2014, but kept being delayed date after date, until it was put on hold. It seems to be slated for release at some point in 2026, but at this point I won’t believe anything until I see it with my own eyes.

Squadron 42 is meant to be a cinematic, single-player campaign featuring both space combat and ground firefights, with a storyline featuring a cast of renowned and probably quite expensive individuals such as Mark Hamill (Star Wars), Henry Cavill (The Witcher), Gary Oldman (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) and John Rhys-Davies (The Lord of the Rings).

The biggest aspect of Star Citizen to me is the freedom in its sandbox, so while the single-player campaign is not particularly appealing to me, I will play it if it’s well polished and has decent reviews.

The Persistent Universe: What it really is

At this point, I have explained what Star Citizen presents itself as, and where some of its flaws lay. However, the real product is quite different to what is promised.

In truth, logging into the Persistent Universe is simply crossing a threshold into a realm of randomness and endless possibility, as long as every possible good outcome also has an equally possible bad outcome.

Per example, one day I may decide that I want to spend some time doing bunkers. That’s the community’s way to describe the specific Mercenary contracts that involve you travelling to a planetary location to travel on foot and eliminate hostiles from a specific building, usually an underground facility, but not always.

As I boot up the game, I wake up in my last location, in an apartment at my last space station or city. I then commute towards the hangars: in a space station this simply requires taking an elevator down to the hangar hub, but in the city it involves having to take a shuttle or metro to reach the spaceport. The public transportation doesn’t usually bug out, but it can happen that it never arrives to its destination, or simply that it takes off into space (and no, it’s not supposed to).

If I make it into the hangar, I then head to the terminal to retrieve my ship of choice. When I click the button, I am assigned a temporary hangar as my ship is spawned. I take an elevator that takes me to the hangar. Sometimes, a bug causes your ship to simply not spawn, but if it doesn’t, then you can simply climb aboard and sit at the pilot’s chair. From there, I pull up my Mobiglas, the terminal for all useful info in the game, and get my list of contracts. I find the contract, if available, that asks me to help eliminate hostile forces from a facility in exchange for a few thousand credits, then turn on the power in my ship, engines on, and signal the hangar to open the doors so I can take off.

All of this usually works, and I particularly appreciate that hangar doors don’t open until you request so, as you could otherwise be an easy target for griefers.

I pull up the Mobiglas again, to check my star map, and set a route for the facility where my contract is meant to take place. I take off, leave the hangar, spool my Quantum Drive, align myself with my destination, and set off flying towards my objective.

This usually works well and rarely bugs out, and if it does, it’s due to the server itself failing, and not due to the game bugging.

On arrival to my destination, I already see some enemies crowding the entrance to the facility. Rather than landing and making an easy target of myself, I dispose of them with the laser repeaters at the front of my ship. Once the area is safe, I land, loot anything noteworthy from the bodies, and take the elevator down into the bunker.

Server FPS: The hidden dynamic difficulty.

Here, many things can happen. In Star Citizen, server decay actively shapes the game experience. A fresh server, with anything from 15 to 30 server FPS (the maximum I have experienced is 21), delivers a snappy and solid experience: doors open quickly, terminals react immediately, and enemies, both in space and on the ground, act smart and aggressively.

In the bunker, two things can happen. If server FPS are low, then the AI controlling the enemies (and, if alive, the allies) is sloppy and slow. Enemies seem lobotomized, they don’t make logical decisions, their reaction speed is slow, and eliminating them is more a matter of methodically sweeping the area rather than engaging in a proper firefight.

When server FPS are high, you go from predator to prey. The moment you make your presence known (either by taking shots at your enemies or by being seen or heard), hostiles become efficient hunters, closing in on your location, taking cover, providing suppressing fire for each other, and even retreating into areas that give them the advantage. Coming from someone who has played hundreds of hours of Halo campaigns, I must admit that, when it works, the enemy AI in Star Citizen is quite impressive.

If CIG manages to ensure that servers retain this performance even during peak player concurrency, then one of the aspects of the game will be praiseworthy.

After contract completion.

Once the enemies have been eliminated, I receive my payment, along with a notification that I am no longer allowed access to the facility, and I have 30 minutes to exit the premises before I am considered to be trespassing. This is enough time to loot the bodies of my enemies for ammo and other valuables and make my way back to the ship with no hurry.

Over time, I have accumulated enough money to purchase improvements. Maybe I am changing the components of my ship to make it better, or straight up purchasing a different one. Maybe I am renting a ship for a limited time to partake in a different loop, or getting a good set of heavy armor and weapons to tackle on more challenging content.

Regardless, there is no specific “endgame” right now, and all I have is the freedom to fly around and do any contracts that tickle my fancy, until the game has received enough updates that the developers say it’s time to wipe all progress again.

Eventually, if the game comes to a full release, the wipes will stop. And now, after reading all this, fully honest, first hand account of what playing Star Citizen is like, you must be thinking, “Mr. Enjoyer, why do you play it?”.

Why I still choose to play Star Citizen despite it all.

First of all, I must simply give credit where it’s due. Star Citizen is an impressive display of cutting-edge technology, and I believe whatever CIG comes up with in order to make their project come to fruition is only gonna benefit the games’ industry.

On the other hand, why do I play Star Citizen? Why don’t I just wait for the game to be fully done, so that I don’t have to wrestle with a myriad bugs, progress wipes, and the unfinished experience?

I love Star Citizen. No other game gets even close to its sense of scale. The idea of flying your ship with its fully rendered interior, landing it inside another ship with a fully rendered interior, as it also flies in the universe, all seamlessly and in real time, being able to land on planets or fly into space, it’s simply something that seems impossible and yet it exists.

Star Citizen can be one of the most immersive experiences of all time. Deciding to go out for missions and preparing your ship with weapons, ammo, food and drinks, medicine, then flying to the location, fighting your enemies, looting them, carrying the loot back to your ship and then taking off again? No other game does it like Star Citizen.

No loading screens, no tricks. Everything is physicalized, everything can be interacted with in one way or another. And of course, it doesn’t always work. In fact, it rarely ever works fully. Players have developed a kind of sixth sense for bugs, and they have learned the workarounds to all of them. That’s part of what makes Star Citizen be a really difficult game to get into: one can only truly play the game after learning how to avoid the bugs.

That’s no way for a game to exist, of course, which is why I don’t usually recommend people to play it. But if you are like me, and you love sci-fi, and you love immersive games, and you are willing to put up with a game that seems to actively work against you at times, then you might love it. After all, the cheapest entry level is $45.

Conclusion

Have you played or currently play Star Citizen? Have you thought about it? Most of my friends consistently refuse to engage in it, and I can’t possibly convince them to try it, because they have a point. Maybe it’s too late for me and I have been charmed by what the game offers. I’m looking forward to reading your opinion.

…and I spent it playing a big game. Guild Wars 2 is an MMO that I have played once before, but I never got too far into it. This time, after learning more of the mechanics in the game, I had a much more complete experience, even though it wasn’t my favorite.

My objectives and rules

As it is the norm now, I created a new character and started playing following my specific set of goals and rules, which are as follow:

• The goals:

  • Every month this year, I will play a different MMORPG.

  • With this game, I will look for my ideal triangle of game experience: challenge, immersion, and socialization.

  • For a challenge, I’ll hope the game can make the leveling experience fun but not too easy, forcing me to be careful when playing.

  • For socialization, I’ll be looking for player communication, group features and content.

  • Once the month is over, I will move on to the next game.

• The rules:

  • I will not look for game info (quests, builds, etc.) outside of the game, limiting myself to read within the game itself or asking other players for advice.

  • I will not use general or world chats, and use only local (/say) chat, DMs (/whisper) and group/guild chat.

  • I will only party up with players that I’ve met in the area, rather than using matchmaking features.

  • I will not accept help from players in the form of better gear/items or money, unless it is in exchange for a service or simply advice.

  • I will choose Roleplaying servers where possible.

  • I will not use teleportation skills or features, but will use porters like horses when they are available.

And I spent May playing Guild Wars 2. This game is different to other MMORPGs in that there is no questing system per se, and anything outside of the main story is done dynamically with events and Renown Hearts, NPCs that lead a specific area and have a specific set of objectives to complete, but the world was open enough that I was able to pursue my goals and do my research more than properly.

Guild Wars 2

Guild Wars 2 was released in August 2012 as a sequel to the original Guild Wars, with a story that is tied in from the first game through three novels (that I haven’t read). With its heavily customizable classes and some interesting features like a “choices matter” storyline and a huge open world to explore, Guild Wars 2 transported me back to the insatiable curiosity that I felt once before in Turtle WoW.

The game arrived to Steam in 2022, and became free-to-play in August 2015. With over 15 million created accounts, an original soundtrack which includes Jeremy Soule (The Elder Scrolls), and Liam O’Brien seems to be everywhere for the Sylvari. Echoing back to the January attempt, I made an Asura Thief.

The Challenge

While Permadeath is not a mandatory rule for me, I have pursued it in every MMO in the series so far, and I continued it with Guild Wars 2. The game offers a middling challenge, as every class has some survivability options, and the game itself has a very interesting system to give you a second chance if you fall in battle.

You enter a “downed” state where you are still able to (barely) fight your opponents, become invisible for a second to lose aggro, or possibly heal yourself (as long as you are not being attacked). The presence of jumping puzzles with fall hazards means that dying is still more than likely, but luckily I only had two brushes with death, managing to survive by reviving myself from the “downed” state after clearing off my enemies at the very last second.

The only quest to follow is the main story, which is unlocked in chapters every 10 character levels, while the rest of content is area locked. Every area has a certain amount of things to complete, including helping factions, climbing to find Vistas, completing Hero Trials, etc. as well as some dynamic events that happen occassionally or can be triggered manually.

I meddled with crafting for a while, but I found it to be so annoying and dependent on drop rates (that weren’t enough) that I did not want to engage with it. For now, FFXIV’s crafting system reigns supreme.

The Immersion

Guild Wars 2 puts a big focus on worldbuilding. Every race has its own lore, story and social environments. In the case of the Asura, the capital city, Rata Sum, is a confusing set of rooms and ramps distributed among three or four different floors. Even after spending some time running around the city during the main quest, I could never find my way around without looking at the map.

The game design allows for a quite immersive experience. Some quests involve you using tools or disguising yourself to interact with the world in a different way than simply fighting enemies. The gathering of resources occurs through mining, chopping or harvesting items in spawning pools that can be interacted with.

The game offers its own in-world explanation for the prevalence of teleportation devices, but the world itself is not designed for immersive journeying. Without looking at the map, it is not possible to go from point A to point B (two landmarks) unless there is a specific environment mark that shows the way or you check the map.

To put this into perspective, Turtle WoW had signs that told you where each road led, while FFXIV did not offer guidance on the overworld, but it had signs in the cities to show the way to different guilds and shops.

The Socialization

You’d think a game called Guild Wars 2 would focus on guilds and other kinds of player interaction. You would be right. The majority of the game environment is open and you can see other players participating with you in real time, and the group content like dungeons and raids is supported by a matchmaking system (that I wouldn’t use, anyhow).

During my time playing, I quickly made friends with a few players that I met in the starter area, Metrica Province, as well as the next zone. One friend in particular spent a good amount of time trying to help me understand the crafting system and being supportive.

Guild Wars 2 seems to have a welcoming community of players who love Tyria and wish to see more people enjoying their game. This time I did not join a guild, despite the name of the game, and did not participate in the biggest mode available, World vs. World.

The time I spent walking around Rata Sum let me see hundreds of other players, but I did not interact with most of them, except for one occasion where some hijacked my conversation with a friend to ask me questions about my play rules.

In general, I would say the social aspect is the peak of what Guild Wars 2 has to offer, not because the challenge and immersion are lacking but because the game itself is designed around allowing as many people to interact together at the same time, and, in the month that I have played, I have seen a surprising lack of toxicity compared to other modern MMOs (allowing myself to call this game modern due to its control scheme and design philosophy compared to others)

The Conclusion

To be as transparent as possible, I must confess that, after having played LotRO in March and Final Fantasy XIV in April, it was difficult for me to get fully into a new game. I was still particularly hung up on wanting to continue the previous adventure.

Still, I want to highlight the welcoming attitude of everyone in the community that I’ve talked to, and the fact that Guild Wars is full of content and does not force you to play it in a linear manner. The spirit of adventure, and choosing where to go based simply on your own eagerness to explore and the difficulty of mobs in each area, is preserved in this game in a manner that many other MMOs of the same era do not, including SWTOR, FFXIV or Neverwinter Online.

Because of the skill-based combat, the social environment and the decent immersion, I would rate Guild Wars 2 an 8/10 for this specific challenge and set of rules. It could do with a more fun and less grindy crafting system, but it’s overall a great MMO to play.

In June

In June 2026 I will be travelling for vacation, so I won’t have time to play any MMOs. This eventually led me to decide that the MMO series will settle at 10, 5 from January to May and then 5 from July to November, with a final article in December to bring the series to a conclusion.

I am hoping that the time off in June will help me recharge my MMO battery, as playing Guild Wars 2 after FFXIV has been quite draining, since they are two modern games with a big variety of mechanics to engage in.

• Read the January attempt: Turtle WoW

• Read the February attempt: Star Wars: The Old Republic

• Read the March attempt: The Lord of the Rings Online

• Read the April attempt: Final Fantasy XIV

• Read the July attempt: Final Fantasy XI

In fact, the ability to capture screenshots and photos natively from the game (without resorting to third party software) has already existed in videogames even in the XXth century.

Games like Metal Gear Solid (1998) included a camera among usable items, which would then save photos to the console’s Memory Card.

Gran Turismo 4 (2005) included the Photo Mode, where the player could choose a car to display in tracks or other locations and take pictures of it to then save to USB devices.

Halo 3 (2007) evolved this idea with their inclusion of the Theater, a mode that would allow the player to observe replays of any previous content, from Campaign mission playthroughs to Matchmaking or Custom Games matches (including Forge). In it, players could observe the events from the perspective of any player in the match, follow them with a 3rd person camera, or simply control a free camera that could be moved through the environment as the replay progressed.

Players also had direct control over enabling or disabling certain HUD elements, name tags for players, and stopping, advancing or replaying segments of the recording, in order to make clips or take screenshots, which could then be shared into the game’s online "Shared Files” system.

In other words, virtual photography has been a possibility for almost 30 years now. What has really made it go from a gimmick to a requested feature is the graphics evolution in recent years. Players amazement and immersion in more realistic virtual environments pushed some people with the artistic penchant to become virtual sightseers, in a genius symbiosis that provides free marketing for a game, at the same time as it creates a new activity for players to engage in.

My first stint into virtual photography

Having no internet at home during the early 2010s, I spent an unreasonable amount of time playing Halo 3 in any way possible, including exploring maps in Theater Mode and watching recordings of my own campaign playthroughs.

I would often take screenshots of things that I considered cool, but would not upload them due to the impossibility of accessing the network.

It wasn’t until much later, in 2018, when Marvel’s Spider-Man came out for the PS4. I played that game a lot, and it’s one of the first videogames I completed to 100% including unlocking the platinum trophy. Other than the many things to do in the game, I also spent a decent amount of time playing around with the Photo Mode.

Back then I never considered it to be a particularly artistic endeavor, maybe because it was a superhero property or because the environment wasn’t so interesting (sorry, Manhattan). Still, this was when I started seeing more and more kinds of screenshots and composed pictures from people online, including some that were really cool or fun. Despite the simplicity of the Photo Mode in Spider-Man, some players managed to get really creative with it.

Photo Mode evolved and improved

Taking screenshots wasn’t anything that I was looking forward to, until I fell into a specific habit during certain times of the year. When my partner went on vacation while I still had to stay home for work, I would often send her emails once a day or every other day, telling her about my day, asking her about the vacation, and, at the end of the email, I would attach a screenshot from the game that I was playing at the time.

This was like a journal of sorts, where, in order to better illustrate what I was doing (like Alan’s attempts to escape the Dark Place or exploring the criminal underworld in Star Wars Outlaws, I would attach a recent photo from the game in question.

Now, I am not great when it comes to visual arts, but my partner’s interest in the photos that I took made me want to try harder to produce better looking shots. This was made easier by the fact that more recent games put more effort into their Photo Modes, allowing you to remove characters and items from the background, changing the time of day, adding extra light sources, altering field of view and depth of field, and many more details.

Photo Mode journaling

After I got used to taking photos in games, I started looking forward to it. In consoles, it’s easy to reach the photos’ location, allowing you to collect an album of your experience with the game. In PC, different games use different methods for screenshots, and the quality can be better, and it’s more convenient for later editing.

Eventually I would play something like FFVII Rebirth and take photos throughout the 100+ hours playthrough, and then sit back and look at them when I wanted to remember the game. This, in fact, tracks back to one of my favorite games ever.

Final Fantasy XV and Prompto’s photography

Final Fantasy XV, which turns 10 years old in November, is a game with a lot to love and a lot to hate. At least, that’s the average opinion, as some people consider it to be one of the worst games in the franchise, while others see past its many flaws and consider it to be one of the best.

Personally, I love it, admitting that its development and post-launch treatment was disastrous is not mutually exclusive with fawning over the beauty of its world, the great characters, and the amount of immersion it provides. One of my favorite things about it is, in fact, Prompto’s photography skill.

Throughout the game time, Prompto, one of the party members, will take photos umprompted (I’m sorry), whether it’s during combat, exploration, or other moments like camping, resting at a hotel, or in the car. Once the party decides to sleep, the game’s interface shows you the last 10 pictures that Prompto took. You can choose to save some to the album, up to a max of 100, as far as I remember. The album is then presented back to the player right before the final boss fight, asking the player to choose one photo to take with them into the final encounter.

This system automatizes something that many players would otherwise not do, and adds to the emotional strength of the game’s story as you are then reminded of the whole journey from its very beginning.

Journaling for Substack

Back in 2025, when I started this Substack, I wanted to use my own content as much as possible. Ever since then, I take screenshots in all my games as I play them, if I intend to write about them. I would say my Substack posts include about 90% of screenshots taken by me, with the rest of them being taken from Google when it’s about a game I haven’t played recently or it hasn’t come out yet.

Despite the motive for the journaling being Substack, it is an activity that I enjoy to a great extent. No matter what game it is, I have come to love fidgeting around in Photo Mode and would greatly miss it if a game came out without it.

Whether I’m playing through a horror story, a sci-fi adventure, a fantasy RPG, or hunting outlaws in Red Dead Online, the ability to capture my experience with the press of a button adds a lot to it.

And for those games that really lean into the photo aspect, I have slowly tried to improve my composition and be more artistic about it. If I really feel like it, I even post them to online communities.

Online communities

Photo Mode in gaming has reached a certain level of popularity, and one can browse through online communities like Virtual Photographers or Photo Mode Phantoms in Reddit or similar ones on Discord to see how many people really like sharpening their photography skills while in games.

Games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding (and the sequel) are some of the most popular games to take screenshots due to their graphical fidelity and the ability they offer to play with the frame and setting.

I have had a lot of fun with Alan Wake 2, Star Wars Outlaws, Death Stranding 2 and No Man’s Sky, and looking at other people’s pictures have inspired me to learn more about what makes for a good shot.

These gamers are no longer a minority, and it’s quite common to expect a modern AAA game to include a photo mode. Whether you are exploring the cosmos, fighting monsters in caves, investigating a case in the rain-soaked, neon-lit streets of a dystopian metropolis, or enjoying an emotional road trip through large expanses of forest engulfed highways, these digital tourists will be spend hours of their game time finding the perfect location, best angle, and specific settings to take the best photos possible.

And I will also be doing my best to provide The Game Enjoyer with the best screenshots that I am able to take. What about you? Do you engage with Photo Mode when you play a videogame?

When I was a kid, my only source of games was buying them physically at game stores and blockbusters (until they disappeared). For a console gamer, this was no problem. What else was there to do? Digital gaming did not reach the consoles until the 7th generation, and even then, bigger games were not easily available at first, with the PS3’s first fully digital “big” game being Burnout Paradise in 2008, and Microsoft turning the market in Xbox Live with their “Games on Demand” service in 2009.

When it came to computer games (whatever my old laptop could run back then), my only source of videogames was digital, and with no ability to spend money online, all I could do was pirate. This way I enjoyed TES III: Morrowind, UNDERTALE and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl.

On the day I turned 18, I headed to the bank, commissioned a debit card for my bank account, and purchased UNDERTALE on Steam officially. I made a vow then that I would never pirate another game. Since then, I follow a simple rule of three steps for a videogame that I would like. I purchase it. If I cannot purchase it for any reason (if it’s too expensive, can’t afford it at the moment, or it’s not available for my platform), I wait for it to be available (waiting for a sale or new platform release). If it won’t be available to me, I don’t play it until my conditions change.

Following this rule so far I haven’t been unhappy about my gaming choices. This is where the Monthly Issue stops being about media piracy. Moving on!

The Eyewitness

• Turtle Wow shuts down: On a forum post, a team member of the WoW fan server announces that all services will shutdown after May 14th (today). I contacted one of the guild members that I played with in January to ask about this, and it seems to be a pity that most people will simply have to move on or play something else.

• PS5 digital games now have DRM: Playstation Support confirms that PS5 digital games purchased after the March update will be unavailable after 30 days since last PSN connection, even if your PS5 is set as the primary console for the account that owns the game. I don’t really know what’s the point of this, since most people keep their consoles online and those who stay offline do it out of necessity mostly.

• Gang of Dragon could be cancelled: After NetEase stopped financial backing of Nagoshi’s new project, it seems the developer has not been able to secure additional funding. With the studio's Youtube channel now having been scrubbed and deleted, the only sliver of hope that the project may be completed remains on the Steam page, which is still up.

Upcoming: Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced (July 9th, 2026)

As I've explained before (The Game Enjoyer: Issue 3), Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was the first game that made me cry, about 12 years ago now. Emotional attachment aside, I still consider it one of the best games in the series. It retains the classic combat style, which I see no fault with, while introducing a very nice RPG flavor to the naval side of things.

I have no negative opinions about Ubisoft, and I would like to see them succeed again. If Black Flag Resynced is simply a nicer coat of paint and a slight expansion to what was already a great game, then I will happily support them. I just hope it doesn’t mean that Ubisoft will be another company that makes all of their business simply remaking old games instead of creating new ones.

Journal: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is surprisingly immersive. While I didn’t explore all it offered back in the day, like playing Checkers or Nine Men’s Morris, fully engaging with the Kenway’s Fleet system, or even going all the way to upgrade the Jackdaw (the main ship) to its max capacity.

What I did engage with, however, was its notoriety system, with different levels of danger based on how many crimes you commit, which has pirate hunters spawn and come for you at sea.

I also spent a great amount of time sailing simply to listen to all the available and collectible sea shanties, as well as hanging out in taverns where NPCs play period-accurate music.

I spent many hours playing Black Flag, and I’m curious to see if the same thing will happen when Resynced drops in July.

Now Enjoying: Windrose

I picked up Windrose after seeing a lot of hype about it, mostly because I wanted to stick to the pirate theme for this month’s issue. However, this game has done nothing but surprise me in good ways.

I am not a big fan of survival-craft games, and normally I can only tolerate one for longer than two days if I am playing it online with friends. Windrose quickly relegates the survival aspect to the background, after a tutorial stage that leads to you rebuilding your ship.

Once you are able to sail, the game opens up and, despite it being in Early Access, the amount of polish and content already included in its current version is better than some of the most recent pirate games on their respective official launches.

Windrose offers an open story, RPG-inspired leveling and skill trees, base and ship construction, and resource management in a small scale that, personally, feels better. Of course, this is specifically because I am not a big fan of heavy management in games outside of a few very specific cases that have caught my attention.

Now, if only there was a Windrose that exchanges the Caribbean setting for a sci-fi one, I might have found a forever game for myself.

The Poll

Starting with their iconic showcase of Watch Dogs at E3 2012, Ubisoft has been considered to be on a downward spiral when it comes to the quality of their releases. Personally, I have found some of their post-2012 games to be quite fun, particularly For Honor (2017), The Division (2016), Ghost Recon: Wildlands (2017) and Star Wars Outlaws (2024).

Despite this, they have gone through a lot of trouble, and it seems now, with the upcoming release of Black Flag Resynced and their recent restructuring, they might have a shot at redemption, at gaining back the trust of some gamers (I know some who will never trust a developer after it messes up this badly), and becoming a successful company once again.

For me, shooters are one of the most enjoyable game genres out there. No matter the perspective (first person, third person or top down), there’s always fun to be had in shooting hordes of baddies, throwing explosives and punching them through the many levels a game offers.

However, when I was a kid, shooters were a foreign concept to me. I recall being 8 years old, sitting at my brother’s computer when he was out of the house, and launching some game he had installed. It was either Medal of Honor or Call of Duty, but I played it. I launched a tutorial mission, where the sergeant prompted me to pick up a gun in order to begin the training. Me, not knowing what button to press, tried everything I could while the sergeant became increasingly aggressive at my inaction, which ended up with me being shot due to insubordination, and a game over screen.

About 4 years later, I was introduced to the Xbox 360 by my cousin. He had it hooked to the ADSL router, and was playing a colorful and engaging shooter, where two teams of 4 soldiers clad in futuristic armor, blue and red, killed each other repeatedly as a deep voice announced the score.

My first foray into Halo was through playing Halo 3 on split-screen with my cousin. I played matchmaking with him, and I recall that I sucked. My hands sweated, my heartrate shot up. I had never played a shooter before, and he threw me into the deep end of the pool: my cousin was one of the best players in Spain at the time, and playing with him meant we often were matched with people around his skill level when we played ranked playlists.

While I became immediately hooked to the matchmaking, it wasn’t until he launched the campaign that I truly fell in love with Halo. The first few notes played by the flutes as the Chief speeds through the atmosphere, crashing into the jungle, with Cortana’s monologue playing in the background, were simply a prologue to a campaign that I would end up playing over 30 times by the time this article is released.

My history with Halo

After those first few days of experiencing the peak of Halo, I begged for an Xbox of my own, and, in December of 2010, I was blessed with my very own console, along with a copy of Halo 3. From then, it was ODST, then Reach, then Combat Evolved: Anniversary, and Wars, and the original Xbox version of Halo 2, and Halo 4…

Halo simply ranked at the very top of my overall gaming rank, did so for many years, and even now, if I had to name my top 3 favorite games of all time, I am pretty sure that a Halo game would rank in there.

After all, it is a franchise with over 20 years of tenure. Before I talk about it any longer, I would like to make sure that every Halo game is included.

• Halo: Combat Evolved (2001): The original and first. Difficult, with wonky physics and crisp sound effects. It retains its charm and is one of my favorites in the franchise.

• Halo 2 (2004): The sequel and entry that turned Halo into the king of competitive shooters at the time. Possibly the most difficult game in the franchise and arguably the entry for the hardest game challenge of all time, Halo 2 LASO.

• Halo 3 (2007): The final piece of the epic trilogy, nearly a masterpiece, and the greatest multiplayer game of the seventh console generation.

• Halo Wars (2009): The real-time strategy spin-off, which was surprisingly good and introduced some neat pre-rendered cutscenes. Local units!

• Halo 3: ODST (2009): The Halo 3 spin-off which bridged Halo 2 and 3, flirted with open world, and introduced a different style of soundtrack. Personally, the best game in the franchise, even though it is a hard competition.

• Halo Reach (2010): The end of an era. A prequel for the first game, and Bungie Studios’ farewell to their biggest franchise. A fantastic game with a tonal shift.

• Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary (2011): The shoddy remaster of the first game, and the game with which I experienced Halo CE originally. Not so good, but still a fun game.

• Halo 4 (2012): The first game I ever preordered. Back in the day, I enjoyed it. Later on, I thought it wasn’t very good. I came back around to liking it after seeing what came next. It also featured a nicer looking version of Cortana.

• Halo: Spartan Assault (2013): A top-down, twin stick spin-off that contains a story set between Halo 3 and 4. I only played this for half an hour, it is fun, but not particularly memorable.

• Halo: The Master Chief Collection (2014): While this anthology had a really rocky launch, it is currently the single best way to experience the majority of what Halo has to offer.

• Halo: Spartan Strike (2015): A sequel to the top-down spin-off. I cannot speak about this one, as I haven’t played it yet.

• Halo 5: Guardians (2015): What is, in my opinion, the worst of the main entries. While not a bad game, it doesn’t hold up to the others. To be fair, its multiplayer was a lot of fun.

• Halo Wars 2 (2017): A sequel to the real-time strategy game from 2009. It was bigger, looked crisper, and was great fun, but it included some kind of deckbuilding mechanic that didn’t go down well with the fans of the niche.

• Halo: Fireteam Raven (2018): An arcade shooter, and by that I mean a big machine in arcades around the world. Unfortunately I have never had the privilege of trying one, although my best friend did and he said it was a lot of fun.

• Halo Recruit (2018): A mixed-reality experience. Honestly, I have nothing to say. I learned this existed just now.

• Halo Infinite (2021): The new main entry after 6 years of waiting, returning Halo to a more classic artstyle, open world, new storyline and eventually building up to be a great multiplayer entry. Unfortunately, it lost the majority of its playerbase before the game was good.

• Halo: Campaign Evolved (2026): The campaign of the original Halo, remade and being brought onto PlayStation systems as well! I am skeptical, but I will be following it with great interest.

With 25 years of history and over 15 entries, Halo is not only a shooter that changed the way FPS games are played on console, but it refuses to die, and it might yet make a comeback.

To me, it continues to mean a lot. I have great memories playing Halo, made many friends, spent many sleepless nights unlocking achievements. Seeing what Halo is now makes me a bit sad, but no game franchise remains great forever. Even Tetris has some bad versions.

To me, there are many things that make Halo feel special. In this article, I want to talk about two specific themes.

The lore

You cannot have fantasy or science-fiction (or science-fantasy) without a good amount of worldbuilding. Even the shortest story must include some background in order to provide context. Halo is an interesting case, because its lore is quite simple in the games, but it hides many layers of complexity that are explored in the books, but also in the game’s collectible terminals.

Most of Halo occurs in the 26th century. Humanity has expanded through the galaxy, under the banner of the UNSC, the United Nations Space Command. While originally only finding conflict with rebelling groups of colonists, most of the games focus on humanity’s war against the Covenant, an alliance of several alien species with a common religion, as well as the resistance against the Flood, an alien parasite that could potentially consume the entire galaxy. Of course, most of the conflict happens around the titular Halos, massive weapons of mass destruction that span the galaxy.

At this point you can already see some themes: the Covenant and the Flood, two biblical references. Halo is full of biblical references, quotes, and themes, but I will talk about it in their own section.

The main character in Halo is John-117, also known as the Master Chief. He is a Spartan-II, a super soldier, genetically enhanced, with a set of advanced armor, and often accompanied by an AI, Cortana. Master Chief is the protagonist in all the numbered entries of the franchise, as he faces Covenant, Flood, Prometheans, and Banished. With this very basic lore, one can understand most of Halo: The Covenant wish to activate the Halos in zealous ignorance, while the UNSC must stop them. The Flood are there to consume everyone. Every game progresses the plot in this kind of story.

But you can delve deeper into the lore. There are several kinds of Spartan, as different projects were made. Spartan-IIIs are disposable version of the IIs, with a higher rate of successful production. Spartan-IVs are an advanced version of the IIIs, less disposable, but not as effective as the IIs. The Covenant undergoes a civil war and separates in two factions. The Halos were built by the Forerunners, who also bickered among themselves. Humanity might have been chosen by the Forerunners as successors, or perhaps humans ARE Forerunners…

Through a combination of reading books and unlocking the terminals that can be found starting in Halo 3 and future games after it, anyone interested can discover the depth of the lore behind Halo. As a big nerd, this has always interested me, and I spent some of my pre-teen years writing fan-fiction about Halo, with my own characters taking on their own missions during the war.

The music

The music is, in my opinion, the single most iconic thing that Halo has going for it. It is no wonder that, for Halo Infinite, 343i (now Halo Studios) decided to re-use a piece of Halo 3’s soundtrack, and brought on Gareth Coker (Ori and the Blind Forest) to compose a soundtrack that got closer to the original trilogy’s as oppose to Halo 4 and Halo 5: Guardians’ soundtracks, which diverged from the original style while still maintaining some of the classic Halo leitmotifs.

When it comes to the music, there are two names that are legendary: Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori. Of course, I must add here that I consider Martin O’Donnell to be one of the quintessential videogame composers, alongside other massive names like Nobuo Uematsu or Yoko Shimomura, but I do not engage with him anymore in his involvement in politics in America. The Game Enjoyer is based in Iceland and I do not intend to discuss politics in any way.

As for the music, Halo: Combat Evolved would not have been what it is without its great themes, from the menu theme with those classic gregorian chants to the intriguing drums of Covenant Dance. O’Donnell and Salvatori cemented their status as legendary composers with Halo, and their work in Destiny continued to be great and one of the best parts of the Destiny franchise.

Even now, when I have played Halo so much that I cannot reasonably give these games any more of my game time, their music accompanies me. I don’t actively listen to it, but the themes just come to mind when I’m absent-minded or in silence.

Conclusion

Let’s take a break right here. The lore and the music are, in my opinion, two of the three key elements that give Halo its identity. The third is its gameplay, which has been altered in several ways throughout the franchise’s lifespan, but maintained a specific core.

Other than its gameplay, I would love to talk about the impact that Halo had in the market appeal of Xbox as a brand and consoles. How its multiplayer was an element in shaping the online culture of the time (especially between 2004 and 2010). This article would be quite long if I included everything I want to say, so I will have to continue in a separate post.

This one will do for now! Halo is a special game to many, and it is to me. How about you? Drop a comment!

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In April, I decided to play Everquest. Not Everquest II, but the original, which can be found on Steam to play for free. After doing a little bit of research on what kind of game it is, I decided to create an account and give it a try. However, I found it to be more complex than I was willing to put up with: the User Interface was really rough and required a lot of customising, the amount of servers to choose from was astounding, and each server offered a different amount of content and progression.

I decided to set Everquest aside and return to one of my favorite games of all time: Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn.

My objectives and rules

As usual, I wasn’t planning on playing the game in a normal way. Since I am looking for a game that will give me a very specific feeling, I have a set of rules and options that I must follow in order to find out the real answers to my questions.

• The goals:

  • Every month this year, I will play a different MMORPG.

  • With this game, I will look for my ideal triangle of game experience: challenge, immersion, and socialization.

  • For a challenge, I’ll hope the game can make the leveling experience fun but not too easy, forcing me to be careful when playing.

  • For socialization, I’ll be looking for player communication, group features and content.

  • Once the month is over, I will move on to the next game.

• The rules:

  • I will not look for game info (quests, builds, etc.) outside of the game, limiting myself to read within the game itself or asking other players for advice.

  • I will not use general or world chats, and use only local (/say) chat, DMs (/whisper) and group/guild chat.

  • I will only party up with players that I’ve met in the area, rather than using matchmaking features.

  • I will not accept help from players in the form of better gear/items or money, unless it is in exchange for a service or simply advice.

  • I will choose Roleplaying servers where possible.

  • I will not use teleportation skills or features, but will use porters like horses when they are available.

And I spent April playing Final Fantasy XIV Online. Since it is a game I am more than familiar with, I went ahead and added a special set of rules specifically for this game:

• I will only follow the Main Story when my progress is blocked.

• I will only use gear crafted by myself, once the ability to craft is unlocked.

With these rules in place, I intend to circumvent the issue with Final Fantasy XIV: Much of the gear is completely irrelevant, as the leveling is extremely fast and you find better gear just by completing the main quest.

Final Fantasy XIV Online: A Realm Reborn

Final Fantasy XIV Online was originally released in September 30, 2010, although the modern version of the game that has received critical acclaim, A Realm Reborn, was released in August 27, 2013, after Square-Enix gave the project to Naoki Yoshida to salvage it.

The original release was resource intensive, slow, laggy, and was designed similarly to Final Fantasy XI, the previous online iteration of the franchise. With its rework, A Realm Reborn made the game akin to other, modern MMORPGs, and it surrendered graphical fidelity in the pursuit of stability and polish.

10 years later, the story that was originally started in the original release came to an end after a set of expansions, from the masterful Heavensward, the expansive Stormblood, the edgy Shadowbringers and the final act, Endwalker.

I have a personal history with FFXIV, and you can read about it in Love Found and Lost: Final Fantasy XIV, as well as in Gaming's greatest moments by Harrison Polites.

Still, I decided to set all my bias aside and create a brand new character and stick to my rules. I wanted to experience the game from the perspective of a completely new player. Does FFXIV meet my standards in the golden triangle that I am, slowly but surely, formulating month by month? Let’s dissect it.

The Challenge

While FFXIV has always been an extremely easy game (to me at least), it does include some content than can be difficult. For the most part, its Savage Trials (Boss Fights for 4 players), Savage Raids (Boss Fights for 8 players) and Alliance Raids (Dungeons for 24 players in three groups of 8) are the biggest challenges available, and they sit in the endgame of their respective content packs.

Outside of this optional “hardcore” content, every quest, dungeon and trial that is available in the base game, either as part of the main story, or as an optional unlockable, is extremely easy, for many reasons:

• Lack of meaningful mechanics:

  • In the dungeons of A Realm Reborn, there are often side paths and puzzles that must be completed before finishing the quest, but in future expansions, every dungeon has been reduced to a hallway with a singular path to follow, cluttered with groups of enemies. All modern dungeons up to Endwalker are simply tunnels to fight through.

  • At the same time, boss fights have been simplified. While in A Realm Reborn, bosses could have specific mechanics, like having to hide behind pillars for certain attacks, or using items in the environment to weaken the boss, the modern ones only ever provide one mechanic: avoid the AoE attack or otherwise deal with it as appropriate.

    • To clarify, the different attacks that bosses can do often leave markers on players: some markers require players to spread, others require them to stick together, or stand in specific areas.

• Overpowered gear and stats:

  • The majority of quests in the game often reward you with gear matching the quest’s level, which means you are always able to equip yourself with some of the best possible gear for your level, ensuring you are never behind the best stats.

  • As the game is updated, classes’ skills and spells are buffed to match them to the new content, which in turn makes them stronger than older content. This caused a “stat inflation” which made content from 2.0 be extremely easy to beat in later years, although this was fixed not long ago by lowering all numbers and equalizing fight levels.

When I started the game, I quickly understood that I would breeze through the first 50 levels at a brisk pace if I played normally, even with my restrictions on party gathering and transport. This is the reason why I decided to only use gear crafted by myself, and why I wanted to avoid the Main Story Quest (MSQ) to not level up too quickly.

With lower stats as a result of not being able to constantly replace my gear with better items, some of my time spent journeying between Ul’Dah and Gridania was relatively difficult. Playing as a Thaumaturge, I had to fight enemies one on one, and make intelligent use of spells like Addle (to lower an enemy’s attack power) or Sleep (an Area spell to put enemies to sleep for 30 seconds) to ensure my survival.

The time spent crafting my own gear also slowed down my progress, but did not make it any more difficult. By the time I reached level 15 with my Thaumaturge, I realized I had to continue the MSQ, as I did not have access to Limsa Lominsa or La Noscea, the other areas available in the map, and therefore no access to airships, ferries, and some other guilds and quests.

Intermission:

Enjoying the read? You can check March’s attempt here.

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The Immersion

After removing the minimap, teleportation spells, and other players’ nameplates, I turned FFXIV into a more immersive experience. Starting in Ul’Dah as a Thaumaturge, I navigated the city by following the signs leading to each guild and important location, reading quest descriptions (which, thankfully, often provided directions to reach my destination without checking the map), or even trailing other players whose gear hinted at their destination.

By suggestion of a kindly Lalafell I once met in the city, I also put my camera in the first person perspective, and the scale of Ul’Dah really surprised me, even as an Elezen. Being able to teleport around made it so the scale of the world felt smaller, and so that you stopped visiting certain locations once you got done with them. When I wanted to go from Ul’Dah to Gridania, I couldn’t teleport, and I couldn’t use the airship (I unlocked it later), so I had to go from the city to Central Thanalan, to Eastern Thanalan, then to South Shroud, Central Shroud then Gridania. The whole trip would take a minimum of 10 minutes if I used the Chocobo porters, but longer if I just ran from one city to another.

While the world was designed in an extremely immersive way, and engaging with every crafter class all at the same level surprised me by showing that the NPCs often discuss items and ingredients related to their crafts, there was still the clash with other players. By level 15, I was clad in a full set of High-Quality Hempen Robes crafted by myself, along with some Leather Boots and Mitts. With my Brass Cudgel and Leather Targe, I looked exactly like any NPC Thaumaturge that you could find in the game.

Then I would take a walk through the city and pass a Mi’qote Dark Knight (If all these words mean nothing to you, imagine Gandalf the Grey standing next to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) with a greatsword with neon lights, wearing a sweater jacket, a t-shirt and some shorts and sneakers. As much as this used to annoy me, I was so focused on my mission to craft myself the gear and progress as much as possible within the month that I simply ignored them. There was still enough people who still looked like Eorzean adventurers.

On arriving to Limsa Lominsa, I saw more of the outfits that broke my immersion, but at this point, I had made my peace that this was simply part of the game, and I had found many other things that made the game immersive for me.

The Socialization

My first attempts at Socialization in FFXIV were some private chats with some high level players, asking them questions about the modern status of the game, and their thoughts on socialization. Most of the information I got was what I expected: most people originally made friends directly from the game, but then slowly ended up moving their chats to Discord, and now don’t meet many new people since their community is closed.

Later on I had a spontaneous chat with two Lalafells who were extremely friendly. They offered support and advice for my challenge, cheered me on (one of them sat down and played Megalovania on the bongos), and we even came to the agreement that they would spread the word of my challenge to have other players come chat to me if they found me in the world.

While every server has a specific vibe going on, Zodiark, the server I chose, seems to still have a little bit of that old-school life in it. Eventually I was invited to a Free Company (a guild) called Wildwood Sentinels, which set me in a position similar to how I was back in the January attempt.

Since I refuse to use Duty Finder, gathering a party for a dungeon is a matter of finding players in the overworld. When the MSQ finally prompted me to brave Sastasha, my first thought was to visit the closest city to gather a party. In Limsa Lominsa, which is infamous for being the most crowded and most inactive area in the game, I tried twice to convince fellow adventurers to join me, and I was ignored.

I tried to recruit players in Ul’Dah, my starting city, but it was so empty, the few players who were standing around who weren’t “afk” simply ignored me.

When I made it to Gridania, it took a while, but I convinced three random players to join me for the adventure. At first, a Lalafell, the Chocobo Knight, Nonovachi Tatavachi, who bought into my challenge, and then Noxer Skyblade and Mei Atoei, who agreed to help me. When I told them to meet me at the entrance of the dungeon (even though, technically, I could have prompted the dungeon start on my own even if they were somewhere else), they insisted on accompanying me in my slower pace of travel. We walked to the airship docks, took the airship to Limsa Lominsa, then walked down to the docks, took the ferry to Aleport, and finally made our way to the entrance of Sastasha.

The dungeon was extremely easy, but the experience of gathering my own party made a big difference. While the Duty Finder provides you with players, it is easy to see them simply as NPCs or tools to progress, and more often than not, you forget about who you were travelling with as soon as you part ways.

This is not the case. I will not forget any of the people who aided me, and I would like to think that, for however longer they continue to play FFXIV, they will remember the time when the weird guy who insisted on not teleporting rallied them to challenge the easiest dungeon in the game.

The Conclusion

As much as I love Final Fantasy XIV, I must be unbiased for the sake of this article. It is not a difficult game, and my set of rules don’t make it any harder, although they do make it more complex.

When it comes to immersion, I ended up accepting that, with the newer lore introduced to the game, more modern clothes and technology is simply part of it. I managed to remain immersed for as long as I avoided Limsa Lominsa. The socialization aspect was reduced compared to my original playthrough of FFXIV, but it was still there, so long as I was willing to initiate conversations.

Even though it was difficult, it was definitely possible to find party members to tackle on the group content through local chat, so in that regard, the socialization might be better off than I originally expected.

All things considered, for this very specific challenge, I would have to rate FFXIV a 7/10. While the immersion and socialization are taken far, the game provides a very underwhelming challenge.

Special Thanks

• Hidril Niort and the members of the Wildwood Sentinels.

• Nonovachi Tatavachi, the Chocobo Knight.

• Noxer Skyblade.

• Mei Atoei.

• Kofia Jenkins.

• River Lynn.

• Shinji Hirayama.

• Darsial D’ayalavalva.

• Rasadri Sirb.

• Adriras Sira.

• Nora Osatu.

• Eve Armstrong.

• Lucia Lockhart.

• Nick Rosenberg.

The May Attempt

After some research, I have decided I might attempt to play Guild Wars 2, although I am always open to suggestions!

• Read the January attempt: Turtle WoW

• Read the February attempt: Star Wars: The Old Republic

• Read the March attempt: The Lord of the Rings Online

• Read the May attempt: Guild Wars 2

• Read the July attempt: Final Fantasy XI

As I complete the final mission, three days away from the article deadline, I decide that it’s enough. I have all the info I need for my article, and playing the game any longer only tempts me more to quit the challenge series and simply play the game itself.

I met so many people and took so many pictures, that since they can’t all go in the main article, I figured I could post them here.

The beginning of the journey! Just arrived to Ul’Dah.

First steps as a crafter, in this case a Weaver, which allowed me to craft my own robes.

After I braved the journey on foot from Ul’Dah to Gridania, and hanging out at the tavern.

Meeting Ras and Adriras Sira, two Lalafells who overheard me chatting in Ul’Dah and came to interrogate me about my challenge.

Cutscene time, unlocking the first of the crystals as part of the main scenario quest.

After taking the airship to Limsa Lominsa, I finally unlocked the remaining crafter and gatherer classes. Here’s me doing my very first fishing.

During some quests in the Black Shroud, I had to steer clear of this dangerous level 50 monster. A target for someone else.

After gathering a party in Gridania, my new friends and me completed Sastasha.

For the next dungeons, the Tam-Tara Deepcroft and Copperbell Mines, I gathered a completely different party: Kofia Jenkins, River Lynn and Shinji Hirayama accompanied me for the first and Darsial D’ayalavalva and Nick Rosenberg replaced the latter two for the Mines.

To get to the mines, Kofia provided me with a passenger seat in her mount. I got to be behind the passenger seat, in any case.

One night, I simply hung out at the Gold Saucer with friends, and even played a match of Mahjong with them.

For the final challenge, I tackled Ifrit alongside Kofia, Eve and Lucia.

And that was as far as I was willing to go, afraid that otherwise I may go off the deep end and abandon my articles to simply play Final Fantasy XIV.