Uh Oh! We're Drowning in Games Again

Summary

The Besties Podcast: "Uh Oh! We're Drowning in Games Again"

Date: June 19, 2026
Hosts: Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy (absent), Chris Plante, Russ Frushtick

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Episode Overview

In this rich and sprawling grab-bag episode, the Besties crew rank and review a diverse range of recent video games, from quirky indie entries and major releases to handheld hardware updates and even a couple of off-topic gems. The show’s throughline is playful banter, honest critique, and each hosts' genuine affection for gaming, all wrapped in the fun “Game of the Year meets King of the Hill” format.

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Key Segments & Discussion Points

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Banter: The Great Berry Debate

[00:00–03:31]

• The episode opens with a raucous, off-topic discussion about the dearth of berry varieties and which fruits “feel” like berries.
  • Griffin McElroy: “Small, plump, juicy, sweet. These are berries. I don't need like an apple slipping in there because its seeds are, you know, in the right place.” [00:26]
  • Griffin advocates for exploring other dried fruits: “We gotta stop living in fear of dry, dry food.” [01:19]
• The hosts riff on cereal berries, dried fruit experiments (especially at Trader Joe’s), and the philosophical boundary of what constitutes a berry.

Memorable Moment:
Ross points out the absurdity of berry classification:
“There needs to be a drawing of it when you open the encyclopedia…No one's putting a fucking stipple apple in your encyclopedia.” [00:43]

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Game #1: Crushed in Time

[06:02–14:23]

• What is it?
  An adventure game from Draw Me a Pixel, the studio behind There Is No Game, that blends traditional point-and-click with meta-game mechanics and game development themes.
• Griffin's Experience:
  • Played through with his son Henry, describing the puzzles as “not so difficult that he couldn't get quite understand them.” [10:00]
  • The game has you manipulating the UI itself (“rip buttons out of the main menu and use it,” e.g., the wrench icon). [07:28]
  • Continual shifting of game worlds—beta versions, wireframes, 8-bit styles.
  • Emphasizes metafiction: characters are aware of their existence in a game, exploring the creative and technical process of game development.
    • “It is more about game development as a creative process and kind of everything that goes into.” [08:54]
• Criticisms:
  • Only one core interaction mechanic (pulling/grabbing), which Griffin found a little limiting [11:37] but still fun.
  • Humorous, clever writing remains a highlight.
  • Ross comments that the games “couldn’t be more French” in tone. [13:23]
  • Discussion of potential smartphone versions; they expect iOS to arrive later in the year.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Sherlock in this game is just profoundly useless...most of the time are like, Sherlock is standing in your way...you have to figure it out.” – Griffin [09:38]

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Game #2: Teardown (DLC: Relics of Barcuna)

[14:26–18:37]

• What is it?
  A voxel-based, physics-driven sandbox about planning and executing elaborate heists in destructible environments, now with fresh DLC.
• Russ’s Review:
  • Highlights the game's continued evolution, especially the new Indiana Jones-inspired “Relics of Barcuna” DLC, featuring traps, hidden objects, and dynamic lighting.
  • Notes the addition of cooperative multiplayer.
  • “You can now play it in cooperative multiplayer, which seems like it would be super, super fun…” [15:17]
  • Recommended to start with the base game, as DLCs can be a bit advanced for newcomers.
• Notable Quote:
  • “It uses like an incredible lighting system and lighting things on fire…it ties in with obviously the tropes you would see in an Indiana Jones thing.” [16:29]

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Hardware Spotlight: Ayn Thor & Retroid Pocket 6

[18:37–27:19]

• What are they?
  Modern handheld gaming devices, often used for emulation and as portable Steam/Android machines.
• Chris’s Experience:
  • Owns the Ayn Thor (dual OLED screens, custom emulator builds), which he calls “beautiful and overkill.” [19:14]
  • Major recent breakthrough: GameNative 1.0 allows much better portable Steam play.
  • Major travel tip: To play Steam games offline, WI-FI must be disabled before boarding flights; otherwise, cloud saves and offline play may break. [25:47]
  • Griffin highlights the importance of form factor: “I think I would rather play most Steam games on a smaller device than the Rog Ally X.” [24:27]
  • Minor gripes remain around offline play, but consensus is that Steam's eventual native support will be transformative.
• Notable Quote:
  • “Form factor is huge for me. It is so huge…just clamshell shut your thing and have it light and just toss it in a bag is huge.” – Chris [22:58]

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Game #3: Voidling Bound

[27:35–30:05]

• What is it?
  A third-person, run-based action game where you train and mutate critters on far-off worlds.
• Griffin’s Review:
  • Gameplay: Catch creatures, collect resources, mutate/evolve pets, then repeat the loop in rogue-lite missions.
  • “It feels fantastic and it really encourages you to experiment with making lots of different Voidlings.” [28:39]
  • Critique: Becomes repetitive over time; mission structures can get stale.
  • Vibe compared to Spore, though the reference may be lost on younger players.
• Notable Quote:
  • “It looks like Spore. It does. I think the vibe of the game is very Spore-coded.” [29:06]

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Game #4: Pronoun Palace

[30:05–33:03]

• What is it?
  A “Scrabble combat roguelike” with a dystopian, highly political narrative about bureaucratic roadblocks in gender identity.
• Griffin’s Impressions:
  • Creative mechanics: Scrabble-style combat, tile management, spells affecting the board.
  • “It is a game that is pretty explicitly about the bureaucratic barriers that trans folks have when it comes to transitioning.” [30:27]
  • The game doesn’t pull punches in its art or subject matter.
  • “There’s a principled, earned kind of rage happening behind the tone, but also moments of joy.” [32:15]
  • Deeply engaging, had Griffin playing late into the night to finish a run.
• Notable Quote (Ross):
  • “This game does not hold back in a pretty incredible way. Just, like, very dark things that you’re fighting… not pulling punches…” [31:53]

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Game #5: The Adventures of Elliot (Square Enix HD-2D Action RPG)

[36:29–48:59]

• What is it?
  A heavily-anticipated, Mana/Zelda-inspired Square Enix action RPG with HD 2D visuals.
• Collective (Dis)satisfaction:
  • Griffin: Stunning visuals, but plagued by “absolute fucking toilet tier mobile game ass UI” and intrusive sidekick dialogue. [38:04]
  • Ross: Hoped the game would “open me up to this genre,” but the story is clichéd, the cast unremarkable.
  • Constant handholding: The helper character (Faye the fairy or princess) offers ceaseless, obvious advice, even after toggling the “Reticent” mode.
    • “It is malpractice to have a game that looks this stunning and then put an absolute fucking toilet tier mobile game ass UI over the entire thing...” – Griffin [38:04]
    • “You cannot walk past a cracked wall in this game without your little person saying, like, that wall looks like you could get it with a bomb. Thanks. Why? If you do it every single time, like, why not just make them doors then?” – Griffin [40:11]
  • Gameplay is otherwise solid (fun dungeons, weapon upgrades, magic system) but weighed down by writing and design choices.
  • Chris jokes the pro tip for enjoying it is to “turn on Japanese subtitles” to not hear the helper’s advice; actually, Jason Schreier recommended turning on Japanese VO. [45:55]
• Notable Quotes:
  • “None of the characters are interesting, the story…not interesting.” – Griffin [44:02]
  • “It just gets on my nerves all the time.” – Griffin [45:53]
  • Ross: “If you can ignore the…weak narrative, bad VO and all that stuff, like, it’s a pretty fun action RPG. And I think there aren’t a lot of those these days, especially not in this art style. And it actually gives me a little bit of hope…” [46:20]

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Side Discussion: Persona, Nier, and the Evolution of JRPGs

[49:44–53:37]

• Listener mail: Which Nier game to start with after loving Persona/Metaphor?
  • Chris recommends Nier Automata; Griffin cautions that it’s not similar to Persona, but it’s a must-play if the listener is open to a different vibe.
• Short digression on onboarding improvements in new Persona releases and the enduring appeal of Persona 4.

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Honorable Mentions, Extended Roundup

[53:37–60:34]

• Russ:
  • Subnautica with child (using passive monster settings).
  • Blueprints (first-person puzzle game), currently at day 44, six sanctum doors unlocked.
• Griffin:
  • Revisiting No Man’s Sky: Now features customizable, pilotable corvettes that act as mobile bases, blurring the line between home and ship.
  • “You can build them using parts that you find…They can land on a planet, you can add whole rooms and furniture…But you can also now just get up out of the pilot seat at any point while you're flying.” [56:42–57:24]
  • Anticipating Hello Games' next project, Light No Fire, and speculating how it could innovate after No Man’s Sky’s post-launch redemption.

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Film Sidebar

[60:41–62:03]

• Chris saw Disclosure Day (new Spielberg), “pretty mixed feelings” especially for those used to newsroom settings.
• Recommends Cutter’s Way (radiance re-release) as an alternative: “A lost classic…if you love neo noirs or the Big Lebowski, this is for you big time.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Form factor is huge for me. It is so huge…just clamshell shut your thing and have it light and just toss it in a bag is huge.” – Chris, re: handheld gaming [22:58]
• “Sherlock in this game is just profoundly useless…” – Griffin, on Crushed in Time [09:38]
• “You cannot walk past a cracked wall in this game without your little person saying…that wall looks like you could get it with a bomb.” – Griffin, on The Adventures of Elliot [40:11]
• “This game does not hold back in a pretty incredible way…not pulling punches…” – Ross, on Pronoun Palace [31:53]

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Timestamps for Major Topics

| Segment | Timestamps | |--------------------------------------------|-----------------| | Berry Debate / Dried Fruit Sidebar | 00:00 – 03:31 | | Crushed in Time Review | 06:02 – 14:23 | | Teardown & Relics of Barcuna DLC | 14:26 – 18:37 | | Handheld Hardware (Ayn Thor, Retroid 6) | 18:37 – 27:19 | | Voidling Bound | 27:35 – 30:05 | | Pronoun Palace | 30:05 – 33:03 | | Adventures of Elliot (Square Enix) | 36:29 – 48:59 | | Persona, Nier, & JRPG Tangent | 49:44 – 53:37 | | Honorable Mentions | 53:37 – 60:34 | | Film Sidebars | 60:41 – 62:03 | | Recap, Acknowledgements, Next Week Preview | 62:03 – End |

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Recap of Topics Covered

Games:

• Crushed in Time
• Voidling Bound
• Pronoun Palace
• Teardown (Relics of Barcuna DLC)
• The Adventures of Elliot: Millennium Tales
• Blueprints
• Subnautica
• No Man’s Sky
• Persona 3 Reload, Nier Replicant/Automata

Hardware:

• Ayn Thor (Android handheld)
• Retroid Pocket 6
• Discussion on Steam/Android compatibility trends

Films:

• Disclosure Day (Spielberg)
• Cutter’s Way (Radiance re-release)

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Takeaway

This episode is a quintessential Besties grab bag, packed with sharp insights, quick pivots, hot takes on games both hyped and obscure, as well as a glimpse at the quickly evolving world of gaming hardware. The hosts maintain their signature blend of expertise and irreverence, never shying away from calling out design missteps while championing innovation and accessibility. It’s a must-listen for anyone trying to keep up with the fast-moving intersection of games, hardware, culture, and community in 2026.

Transcript

[Ross Freshik]

Don't you think there should be more berries?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Like, different types of berries, like, in life?

[Ross Freshik]

Just like there are prime berries. Right. We can all agree on the prime berries.

[Griffin McRoy]

Straw, blue, black.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah, sure. Seems like too few.

[Griffin McRoy]

You want the whole rainbow.

[Ross Freshik]

It's just like for a genre of.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah.

[Ross Freshik]

That is such a staple of, for example, cereal, to have so few options to pick from.

[Griffin McRoy]

Well, there's the bullshit classifications. And before you, dear listener, pushed and pushing your glasses up. Actually, a banana is technically a berry. Like, I'm not. No. Small, plump, juicy, sweet. These are berries. I don't need like an apple slipping in there because its seeds are, you know, in the right place.

[Ross Freshik]

There needs to be a drawing of it when you open the encyclopedia. Like a stipple drawing of an actual berry. No one's putting a fucking stipple apple in your encyclopedia.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Is strawberry a berry, though?

[Ross Freshik]

Yes.

[Griffin McRoy]

I'm not. I don't. Chris. I just explicitly said I don't give a shit.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I just wanted to ask about aggregates, but it's okay.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah, it's an aggregate berry. It's a super berry.

[Griffin McRoy]

Give me an orange berry.

[Ross Freshik]

Ooh.

[Griffin McRoy]

I don't even know what an orange berry would be, but it would just imagine the exotic flavor that it could possess.

[Ross Freshik]

Would not be good in cereal, though. It would make the milk curdle.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah, I guess it's not a stipulation. It doesn't need to be good in cereal, but.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, but that's your main berry.

[Ross Freshik]

It should be.

[Griffin McRoy]

That's your main berry consumption. It should be.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I feel like there are a lot of green berries, but you probably shouldn't eat any green berries. Wait, wait.

[Griffin McRoy]

Is it grape? Is a grape a berry? Again, I can't. I don't. I can't stress this enough. I don't care. Yes, a grape is a berry. Look at it. Juicy. Plus, that's why sweet, small, juicy is a berry.

[Ross Freshik]

Especially champagne. Grapes are like great berries.

[Griffin McRoy]

Oh, yeah, those are.

[Ross Freshik]

There might be a science. No, I don't care about the science. I care about what feels like a berry to me. In my heart and my soul.

[Griffin McRoy]

It feels like a berry. Watermelon's a berry. No, it's not. Watermelon's not a berry. It's too heavy for me to pick up.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, can't bite right into it either.

[Griffin McRoy]

How can that be a berry? We need to be drying it. We need to be raisining more stuff also. Cause raisins slap ass. They are so good. And I think they're the best Byproduct of grapes and thyme. And I know that's a controversial position. I love me a cran raisin, but let's cranberries. Give me a dried up. Give me a dried up BlackBerry. Give me a dried up banana. We dry everything up. Let's see what's good, let's see what's not. We gotta stop living in fear of dry, dry food.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah. I am frequently astounded by the experiments that Trader Joe's does on dried fruit. And it. It worries me to some extent because they might be going too far.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah. Dry mango. That's okay. Yeah, that's fine. Papaya. Dry papaya is kind of nothing.

[Ross Freshik]

Hold on. Dried pineapple. No.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah.

[Ross Freshik]

Can allow.

[Griffin McRoy]

I do. Absolutely.

[Ross Freshik]

Can, can allow.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Anyway, I think we have another 10 minutes on a new topic. Why don't we have more nanas?

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, I don't have any. Oh, no. My name is Griffin McRoy. I know the best game of the week.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week.

[Ross Freshik]

My name is Ross Freshik. I know the best game of the week.

[Griffin McRoy]

Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a game of the year club. And just by listening, you, my friend, have become a member of said club. This week we're gonna be talking about a bunch of different stuff. We've all played a handful of games here in one of our classic grab bag segments. So we're gonna be covering a ton of stuff. Then we're gonna circle back in the B block to talk a little bit about the adventures of Elliot the Millen. So a big one stuff to the gills this ep, but maybe we should take a break first and catch our breath because that was two and a half minutes of recording we just did. And I'm freaking out.

[Ross Freshik]

I'm exhausted too, just listening to it.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Ross Freshik]

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[Christopher Thomas Plant]

new I want to go back in time. I want to go back in time.

[Ross Freshik]

I want to be crushed in time. That is my fetish.

[Griffin McRoy]

It's funny that you guys said the opposite.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Shit.

[Griffin McRoy]

It's really funny how Russ was like I want to start with something new and Chris was like, I want to start with something old and we could

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

just be crushed in time. You know, I think we should start with being crushed in time.

[Griffin McRoy]

Okay, I would love to talk about crushed in time. I played through all of it mostly over this past weekend. I was traveling, as was Chris, to go to our friend's wedding in Austin. Sorry you didn't get the invite, Russ.

[Ross Freshik]

I was there at the window banging and no one heard me.

[Griffin McRoy]

We thought it was the Wendigo, but now that I know that it was you, that makes a lot more sense. Question Time is the new adventure game sort of inspired by classic point and clicks created by Draw Me a Pixel whose name you may not recognize, but is a studio that made a really delightful adventure game called There Is no Game Where There is no Game dealt with, I don't know the state of modern gaming in a sort of parodical way. You went through a handful of different gaming genres, solving different classic adventure game style puzzles, all the while kind of like dismantling the games in which you are exploring. Crushed in Time does a very similar thing in a way that I thought was a lot more sort of cogent than There is no game. Did either of you guys play it yet?

[Ross Freshik]

No, I haven't had the chance. I love There is no Game. But yeah, I do get the sense that like it was like five or six disparate ideas sort of melded together into an anthology.

[Griffin McRoy]

Sure. It starts out and it's like you're looking at a main menu and you have to rip buttons out of the main menu and use it. So the wrench icon for the settings, you pull that off and now you have a wrench item that you can use. That was sort of where that game started. Then it went all kinds of different directions. The one you should know about is that there is a point and click adventure game in a very classic LucasArts style featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, which is the focus entirely of Crushed In Time. The reason it's much more cogent is it's a Sherlock Holmes and Watson story more than it is anything else. And it sort of sticks to it, the subject that it explores. And if you'd rather go in sort of pure to this, to this thing and not kind of know any of those sort of twists, I'm not going to like fully blow the thing wide open. But you may want to skip forward a couple of minutes. What this game explores is, is that same style of like, what if video game characters were aware that they were in a virtual simulated sort of style thing and they were solving these classic point and click adventure puzzles, but they were doing so while traveling between different versions of the game. So, for instance, you might get pulled into alpha and now the environment is all wireframe Y and not quite finished. Then you hop into like a brainstorming phase. You hop into like, there's like an eight bit era that you go in and explore and then a four bit sort of game and watch style era. Like you are moving between all of these different things as these characters are sort of learning the truth about the nature of their world. That is kind of the hook. It is more about game development as a creative process and kind of everything that goes into.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That sounds like a delight.

[Ross Freshik]

Does it still hold together as like also a Sherlock Holmes mystery?

[Griffin McRoy]

Mostly? Yeah, I think so. I mean, this version of Sherlock Holmes is mostly just kind of played up for laughs. He is a total dummy and Watson is the one that like actually knows what is going on.

[Ross Freshik]

I mean, that was always kind of the case.

[Griffin McRoy]

That's always the case. Right. But Sherlock in this game is just profoundly useless. And in fact, a lot of the puzzles that you're trying to solve most of the time are like, Sherlock is standing in your way. Sherlock won't let you drive the car. Sherlock won't do this. You have to figure it out. So that's like the tone of the game. Whereas there is no game was sort of a scattershot and now this is the microtransaction world. It's an rpg, but everything's microtransactions and we're going to say something about that. This is purely a start to finish. Like, here's the creative video game process and the characters in the game know that they're in it and they're sort of learning about it.

[Ross Freshik]

That's really cool. I was worried because, you know, obviously there is no game format can be done a lot, but it can be also kind of a box that you can get caught in.

[Griffin McRoy]

Right.

[Ross Freshik]

So them finding a way to make an entire game and an entire narrative that's consistent, but still working in that video game framework is like cool. That makes me more excited to try it, quite honestly.

[Griffin McRoy]

They've made one big choice that I'm a little bit torn on. I finished the game and I really, really enjoyed it. I think it's a great follow up to there's no Game. I think in a lot of ways it surpasses it.

[Ross Freshik]

Do you have a sense of how long it took you?

[Griffin McRoy]

Not too long, maybe five hours or so. Five or six hours. And most of that, by the way, I spent on the plane with my son Henry. And we were just kind of like passing it back and forth, which was a really fun little time because the puzzles are not so difficult that he couldn't get quite understand them. But the main, the only means of interaction you have with the world is you're this like omniscient, you know, cursor that they can't see but they know has some influence that they always explain away, like, oh, something slapped me, there must be a bug in here or something. The only interaction you have with the game is grabbing and pulling on things. So like to interact with a button you have to like grab it and you pull it and then when it snaps back, it interacts with a thing. Or if you're launching a thing, you pull it back in one direction, let go almost in like A Super Mario 64 like face manipulation type thing.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That's it.

[Griffin McRoy]

Like all the puzzles are like, you have to help Watson get across this train by like pulling different parts of it into the right place and then launching in between different points. Like it's comprehensively.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

That sounds like you run out of options.

[Griffin McRoy]

You would think so, but because the game world is changing with every chapter, like the stuff that you are doing is pretty dramatically different, even though the mechanics of interaction are exactly the same. For instance, there's a prototype world where because it's a prototype world, the mechanics are a lot looser and you can adjust them and connect different sort of. This is interactive, this is a button that means this is interactive. I can drag it onto this item and now I can use that for that. Like, it's pretty clever how. And I feel like there is no game was like this too. Like it doesn't none of these mechanics or puzzles, like, overstay their welcome. You get like a handful of pretty clever sort of solutions to these things. And there's a whole hint system in the game too, if you usually bounce off of stuff like that. I feel like maybe there's no game was a bit cleverer because there's not quite as much of the. Like, I don't know, it was so sick. Like popping the screwdriver off the one icon and then turning the computer around and you could unlock. Screw it. And that felt really, I don't know, satisfying and exciting. And the puzzles to the solutions in this game are satisfying too. But I do think it suffers because of this strange choice that they made, which is like there's only one way to really interact with stuff that makes sense. But I had a great time with it. I think it's a fun game and it's got that great sort of like, I don't know, sense of humor about it. That is a tricky thing to kind of nail.

[Ross Freshik]

I will say their games couldn't be more French. They are the most French games. At least the older one there is a bit.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Ye.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah. I mean the.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Be careful. Rayman's just waiting behind the corner.

[Griffin McRoy]

Rayman is coming soon. Yeah. But that's crushing time. It's neat. I haven't gotten stuck into like a, you know, point and click adventure game in a while and I'm happy that I checked this one out.

[Ross Freshik]

Nice.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Is there a smartphone version of this on the way?

[Griffin McRoy]

I don't know. I mean, there is no game had a smartphone.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Like I. Yeah, this seems like the sort of game that I would want to play in that game.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah. So I played it on my Rog Ally X and it was like you move the cursor with the thumbstick and then you grab with the A button and pull it back. It's not particularly.

[Ross Freshik]

Like there wasn't any touch support for that.

[Griffin McRoy]

There was, but like, I don't know, I feel silly when I use my Rog Ally X with its thousand buttons and then just use the touchscreen. But it is probably a better sort of experience to, you know, actually point and click.

[Ross Freshik]

It sounds like there will be iOS versions coming later this year for sure.

[Griffin McRoy]

Okay, perfect. Love it.

[Ross Freshik]

I've got a new release that I want to talk about specifically Teardown has a new dlc. I've talked about Teardown a lot over the course of the years.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah, I think I've really stuck to this game as it's kind of evolved.

[Griffin McRoy]

Can you remind folks? Because it has been, it has been a while.

[Ross Freshik]

So Teardown is the game where it's like an open world ish sandbox environment and everything's made out of voxels and everything is fully destructible with physics. So for example, you can knock building down from like the base of it and no matter how tall the building is, it will all fall and crumble and crush in a realistic way. Despite the fact that it has like Minecraft looking graphics. And most of the game, it's the core game is about planning heists where you set up a scene and come up with like the best route through that scene to like steal a bunch of objects in a row. And they have different variants on that.

[Griffin McRoy]

The idea being there's like a prep phase where you're smashing routes through the world and then as soon as you pick up the loot, right, the timer starts going and now it's up to you to like execute the route correct. It's very, very clever.

[Ross Freshik]

I absolutely love this game. It has captured me and it's not the sort of game that I play all the time. But they've been very good about releasing updates and DLCs over the course of the many years since it first came out. The last dlc, which came out a couple months ago, is actually multiplayer, which I have sadly not had chance to play. But you can now play it in cooperative multiplayer, which seems like it would be super, super fun and something that I would want to do probably with my kid once he's a little bit older. But what I have been playing is a new DLC that just came out called Relics of Barcuna. They've had a number of DLCs. I think it's been like five DLC packs and each of them has like a different theming to it. So they've done sci fi, they've done like art heists and things like that. This one is like a straight Indiana Jones riff.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

So you're using the like key art and it's literally Voxel Indiana Jones. Yeah, best way.

[Ross Freshik]

Totally. So you've got things like hidden objects and traps and, and things like that. It uses like an incredible lighting system and lighting things on fire. Like that's all like an incredibly natural format and it ties in with obviously the tropes that you would see in an Indiana Jones Thing. So, yeah, I mean, the reason I bring it up is mostly twofold. One, if you ever played it previously, you should definitely know that it has multiplayer now. And I would recommend at least trying it and letting me know how it is, because I definitely want to try it. And two, yeah, this DLC has been really fun. I love how they just keep approaching this relatively simple idea in completely different ways every single time. And it's got, like, a really strong mod component, the modding genius.

[Griffin McRoy]

Did you play them? Did you play much multiplayer?

[Ross Freshik]

No, I haven't. I haven't tried the multiplayer yet.

[Griffin McRoy]

Okay.

[Ross Freshik]

But that is something that I've been meaning to try. It seems like it'd be really, really fun in co op. I don't know.

[Griffin McRoy]

You would need a lot of great communication to like, make that.

[Ross Freshik]

I mean, yes and no. Like, this seems like the sort of thing where if you just wanted to fuck around, it'd be a lot of fun. Like, yeah, I think my kid would have a blast just, like, knocking buildings down. Obviously, if you're trying to, like, do a mission or something like that, it might require more of that, but, you know, I think there's a lot of opportunity to. To have a lot of fun in this. And I've probably played, like, 50 or 60 hours of teardown over the years, so it continues to stick with me.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Do you have a recommended starting point? Because there is so much stuff like, should people just play the base game?

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah, just play the base game and see if it's your bag. I think the base game does a very good job of, like, easing you into the mechanics. I think some of the later DLCs, like, there's a Wild West DLC and things like that. I get the sense that they kind of assume that you know some of the tricks and stuff from the base game, even though, like, most of your gear does not carry over. Like, you usually start the DLCs with, like, no gear at all, and you're unlocking new stuff as you go. So, yeah, I would just start at the beginning. It's a very good place to start.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I dig it. Hey, y'. All, I have to talk about the Ein Thor again. And I have to talk about it so much that while I was supposed to be enjoying my friend's wedding in Austin, Texas, the first thing I needed to tell Griffin the second I saw him was, have you heard the good word? Which is that game Native 1.0 is now available. And at least in my experience, Steam works very well on the Iron Thor.

[Ross Freshik]

Let's take a Step back. Because like, I barely even remember what the Ein Thor is.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

A lot of words. A lot of words.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You see, now that Justin is not here, somebody needs to really step up and be the. There's a new handheld, the Ironthor. It came out actually, I think like mid last year, but has developed this humongous following amongst a relatively niche group of people as the hot emulator handheld of the moment. It looks like a Nintendo ds, but unlike a Nintendo ds, it has dual OLED touchscreen screens, which is just total overkill. Everything about it is beautiful and overkill. And the appeal of it as an emulator has been that people have been designing all of this custom stuff for it. So it just looks fantastic. Still not plug and play. Like you need to set it up. You need to go watch the retro Game Corps video for an hour and get it all good to go. But relatively, compared to how these things were years ago, really easy. If you watch a video, you're gonna have it set up within an hour.

[Griffin McRoy]

It's also a thing where if you set up one of these Android devices, it's. It's pretty easy to set the rest of them up.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

The gamble that I made in finally deciding to do this and selling off all my other emulator handhelds was the game native support. And I think we had checked in on it maybe a few months ago. Griffin, where you had tried it out. Yes.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, I mean there's a couple of these types of compatibility layer, Steam emulators, I guess, that you connect your Steam account to and then you can play games. Most games, a lot of games on your Android handheld through game native or I forget what the other one is. There's like another game hub. Game Hub. Thank you.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes. But it had issues because you are playing the Steam game with cloud saves and everything. I know that, Griffin. Your big issue, which is a huge one, was that the save stuff was just not working at all. There were also issues about it being stuck if you were offline. That you couldn't get the game to actually boot was a problem people were having for a while. From what I can tell, most of that stuff is just gone. Gone. And also you can run things that wouldn't be useful in the past because it has things like I think full on frame generation, but it has FSR. So you can make games like Persona 3 Reload, which I have been playing on this little handheld, look and run really well. It still is a little hitching now and then. To be fair to Persona 3 reload, it was doing that on the Steam deck too. So this, this machine is able to play some pretty intensive games and especially if you are up for playing things that are not like Super Twitch based, it's a perfect match. It works so well that I was also able to play a number of Steam Fest demos on it, which, you know, nothing. Like, these are. These are the things that should break, that could break on your PC and they're working fine here. I'm realizing just how important form factor is to me right now. And I. Yeah, I always thought I was the opposite. I thought like, Steam Deck is good enough. I'd rather it just work, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Man, like y', all. Griffin, I know that you've been championing this for a while, but like that ability to just clamshell shut your thing and have it light and just toss it in a bag is huge. Especially when I have an RPG that I want to be picking at throughout the summer. Right. And that's exactly how it's worked. I mean, I literally put it in rest and I hop in whenever I can and then I toss it back and I don't worry about is great.

[Griffin McRoy]

I love my Thor. I have been. I got the Retroid Pocket 6, which is kind of now the sort of like entry level ish thing that looks fucking amazing and can play a ton of stuff and doesn't cost like $800. It's like a really nice size. I got it right here. It's like the size of Vita. I really, really like it a lot.

[Ross Freshik]

Is it the same size as the 5?

[Griffin McRoy]

The 5? Well, I'm glad you asked. Yes, it's virtually. It's almost entirely the same size as

[Ross Freshik]

the phone, but they moved the thumb. They fixed the thumbsticks.

[Griffin McRoy]

They did. Well, you can get whatever orientation you want. The left thumbstick can be on the top or on the bottom, depending on what you prefer. I got it because of game native. I got it because of game native and Game Hub of there's types of Steam games that I don't want to hold my big Rog Ally X to play Mina the Hollower that does not need all of that raw power. I would wait. Form factor is huge for me. It is so huge. And while I agree that the game native compatibility stuff is insane, I downloaded Dragon Quest 11 because I hadn't played that one in a really long time. And I love the way it looks and got it going while I was in Austin after you gave me the recommendation and was playing it a little bit before our Flight and then got on our flight and then it lost connection to the Steam servers and then the thing just shut down and then I couldn't relaunch it again until I

[Ross Freshik]

got back on the Internet.

[Griffin McRoy]

That is still. And maybe it's game to game, but this has been my experience every single time. And that is like the context in which I want this thing the most is when I'm traveling and want a little light handheld that I can play a lightweight Steam game on. It's impressive and there are definitely contexts in which I would definitely want to use this just sitting around the house. I think I would rather play most Steam games on a smaller device than the Rog Ally X. But until I feel like until Steam native, which is gonna happen. It's gonna happen. But until that happens, like the compatibility layer thing is just gonna make with it hard.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah. And it's going to be like every emulator handheld thing where I almost certainly know exactly what happened there. You had wifi on and then you got on a plane.

[Griffin McRoy]

A plane.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Right. And the like trick. This is not to say that you did it wrong. This is just a.

[Ross Freshik]

Clearly Griffin did it wrong and doesn't.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

No, no. This is like. No, no, no.

[Ross Freshik]

Chris, please mansplain Griffin on a.

[Griffin McRoy]

No, I want to hear how to

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Griffin's point that these things, like all of the emulator handheld things are like. Well, in this case, I just left wifi off the entire time I was traveling.

[Griffin McRoy]

Okay.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

And then when I got back, I turned it on and then uploaded.

[Griffin McRoy]

So wait, with WI FI off you could still like launch games and stuff.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Y. So the trick again, and this is insufferable. I'm sure there are people like, why would you even bother if you just turn off WI fi before you leave your house and before you open your games and then you go out, you can just open all your games. As long as you've opened them once, you can then continue to open them, but you have to leave WI FI off. But this is exactly the like, that shouldn't be how things work. But for people who use emulator handhelds, that is like, oh, there's always.

[Griffin McRoy]

You're used to stuff like. Yeah, I did not know that. I assumed if you turned WI FI off, then the whole thing just fell apart. But video games. I am still super excited about this world, about the Android and Linux gaming handheld world. I feel like everyone is kind of holding their breath a little bit for native Steam.

[Ross Freshik]

It's going to be a fucking.

[Griffin McRoy]

The hardware advancement since the Ayn Thor have Not been anything to write, like anything. The Retro Pocket 6 I like a lot, but it's like not. It looks identical to the five. The screen's way nicer.

[Ross Freshik]

Steam running on every one of these

[Griffin McRoy]

things natively without on whatever you want.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Right.

[Griffin McRoy]

That's like. That's going to be fucking huge. And because of the, you know, world economic situation sort of keeping hardware from, you know, evolving as quickly as it has in the past, like, I feel like this is the thing that everyone's sort of waiting on.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They have to be working on it, right?

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, no, I think, I think so. Yeah.

[Ross Freshik]

There's been leaks and ARM versions.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

They've said that. Okay.

[Ross Freshik]

I don't know if they've publicly said it, but it's for sure happening and just a matter of time.

[Griffin McRoy]

I got two quick ones if I can add on. There is both of these on Steam. One is called Voidling Bound, which is a third person sort of run based action game. You are sort of an astronaut, a space explorer who is traveling between these planets that have been taken over by this corruption. And the means that your organization has come up with to fight this corruption is to train up space creatures and evolve them in a sort of more kind of risk of rain style third person action thing. Not a turn based, Pokemon style thing.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah, they don't want to get sued.

[Griffin McRoy]

No. So like the basic loop is you'll have a little critter go into a world and collect a bunch of different resources and like elemental mutagens and then you go back to your base and then you spend those to evolve your critter. And you know, they get different abilities. You can upgrade sort of their stats on a skill tree. You go out into the next mission, you find eggs to hatch new creatures. And it is very neat. It's got a lot of heat, this game. And I've played it for a few hours. I really like what they're doing. It feels fantastic and it really encourages you to experiment with making lots of different Voidlings. So there's a reason to really engage with the mutation system. And it looks like Spore. It does. I think the vibe of the game is very Spore coded. Yes.

[Ross Freshik]

Which like, I don't even know if that's even a relevant. It's not a relevant reference. I know for sure that's not.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

No.

[Griffin McRoy]

But it does look like Spore. I think I have wrapped up my time with it. It has gotten a little bit repetitive because of this like mission based structure of like go out, you know, find, find some stuff. Destroy this corruption and fight a final boss, and then you come home and you get. Get your rewards. And that's been a complaint that I've sort of heard leveraged at the game. But I think it's really neat and I'm always excited by a game that can, like, introduce a fold into this sort of tried and true pet training formula and do it in a way that, like, feels really great because the running around and shooting and dodging and all that jazz is really terrific. I've also been playing Pronoun palace, which is a Scrabble combat roguelike.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Griffin McRoy]

And it. And it is. It takes place in this dystopian world where the fascist government has taken away everyone's pronouns. And it is a game that is pretty explicitly about the, like, bureaucratic barriers that trans folks have when it comes to transitioning.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah.

[Griffin McRoy]

And that stuff is so, I don't know, unlike stuff that I am typically exposed to in games while being aware of that sort of.

[Ross Freshik]

Let alone in a puzzle game.

[Griffin McRoy]

Let alone in a puzzle game. But it is also like a Bookworm adventure style. Like, you go into combat, you have a set of, like, 16 tiles with different letters and different values on them. And so your Scrabble style, like, spelling out big, long words, you get access to spells that allow you to sort of, like, change the board so you can replace one tile with a super powerful TH tile. And those spells recharge as you, like, use certain letters. So, like, to recharge your TH spell, you have to, like, use a bunch of U's, but as you use those, it, like, recharges. But then there's also, like, you know, passive upgrades that is very roguelikey, where you're going through, like, a few acts on your way to, you know, take on the head of the party that has taken away everyone's pronouns. They throw a lot of stuff in there that is very, very, very clever. Like, each fight has a different. Like, this enemy inflicts this kind of status effect. There's one enemy that makes it. I forget what they're called. It's like a pair of enemies. And they will change rows into specific colors. And you can't touch those same colors together while spelling a word. Or they'll make letters capital, and then those can only be used to start a word. And so you're, like, trying to figure out ways to get through.

[Ross Freshik]

Holy shit. I am looking at screenshots right now, and this game does not hold back in a pretty incredible way. Just, like, very dark things that you're Fighting that are like, oh sure, not pulling punches on God. There's like a woman in like a coffin and there's like a child connected to her still with the umbilical cord.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, no, I mean they go fucking. It goes fucking. It goes fucking hard. And it is like, I don't know, there is a, I think a principled earned kind of rage maybe happening behind the tone of the thing, but it is also like there are moments of kind of joy that happen on a successful run in the face of all of this stuff. I don't know, I found it incredibly, just incredibly fucking cool.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah, it looks really cool.

[Griffin McRoy]

And the. I played through, I was up really late just like trying to finish a run because it was going really well. And then I ended up completing it and it was like 1:30 in the morning and I didn't realize it. So it can really, really get its hooks into you. But yeah, it's just a banger sort of all around.

[Ross Freshik]

That's cool. Yeah, I gotta check out.

[Griffin McRoy]

Let's take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll talk about our old pal Elliot, the time traveling adventurer.

[Ross Freshik]

This episode of the Besties is sponsored by ProtonVPN. Okay, you know when you're like googling, you're just like going around Google looking things up, whatever it is, and then suddenly every single ad that you see is related to things you've searched. Or for example, you're traveling. Let's say you're in another country and you try to watch something and suddenly it's just blocked. That is where ProtonVPN comes in. ProtonVPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private and lets you access the Internet. Like it should work. Open, secure and on your terms. Unlike most VPNs, Proton is backed by strong European privacy laws and years of expertise creating a safer, faster and more open Internet for everyone. If that sounds good to you, it is very, very easy to get started. Right now ProtonVPN is offering our listeners 70% off a two year plan. When you go to protonvpn.com besties, that's P-R-O-T-O-N-V-P N.com besties for 70% off your two year plan. That's proton.com besties.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

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[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Didn't play this one. What the hell are we talking about? Why is Elliot going on adventure?

[Griffin McRoy]

Well, he's an adventurer, Chris, so you sound like a real fool. Did you not play the Adventures of the Millennium Tales?

[Ross Freshik]

No.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Everybody kept telling me that I shouldn't play the game.

[Ross Freshik]

Okay, so this is an amazing game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I was just trying to listen to my friends, you know, I didn't know that's recommendations.

[Ross Freshik]

Okay.

[Griffin McRoy]

We originally were going to do a whole episode about this game because I've been looking forward to it for a very long time. Square Enix's new HD 2D sort of inspired by classic, you know, mana series inspired by Zelda, top down action sort of RPG style thing like all of that.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yes, yes.

[Griffin McRoy]

Check, check, check, check, check. Loving, loving it, loving it. And I have really not enjoyed my time with it and I think we were all sort of on the same page and didn't just want to dump all over the thing for a show.

[Ross Freshik]

Well, let me take A step back because I was very excited about this game for one main reason. And as we all know, JRPGs largely don't stick with me. And I understand this is not technically a jrpg, but it has a lot of the elements that are in those games. Sure. But part of the reason those games don't stick with me is because I don't necessarily find the turn based combat to be super engaging usually. So the idea of having an action based combat system, very enticing and also visually speaking, very enticing. And I think, Griffin, you'll probably agree with me. I think this game looks fucking stunning. Like it's really nice to play.

[Griffin McRoy]

It does. The game looks stunning as Octopath looks stunning, as the Dragon Quest remakes look stunning. I'm a sucker for this stuff. The pixel work that they do is incredible. It is malpractice to have a game that looks this stunning and then put a absolute fucking toilet tier mobile game ass UI over the entire thing for the entire run of it. It's crazy to me.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah, the UI is not pretty to

[Griffin McRoy]

look at and I realize that that is probably a quibbling complaint. This is why I feel nervous talking about this game because there are a lot of people out there who like it. So please. Your mileage certainly may vary with this game, but there's things about it that just seemed like such bad decisions that ultimately kind of detracted so completely from the stuff I enjoyed about the game that I just didn't want to stick with it any longer than I absolutely had to. The UI is chief among them because about an eighth of the screen is occupied by a little circle where your helper sits. And you get a couple different helpers throughout the game. One is the princess who has magic healing powers. She's pretty chill. And then the second one is a fairy and they tell you what to do fucking constantly. They tell you what to do all the time.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Is there some overlap happening between mobile and I guess portable or even console games that we're not quite piecing together yet? Because here's what I mean. We have that the Octopath Traveler 0, which is a like pseudo adaptation of a mobile game. We have this new Final Fantasy that just got announced that is also a pseudo adaptation of a mobile game. We have this. That is like.

[Griffin McRoy]

Sounds like I referenced the mobile game thing. The only similarities that when you are playing the game and you defeat like a certain number of enemies, you activate like a chain bonus and now they drop more currency when you defeat them. And that the way that shows up on the screen, it just looks like a big, big banner promoting a limited time gotcha event in Fire Emblem here. It looks crazy. That's a small complaint. The UI is pretty bad. But the main thing is really just the constant input that you get from the child that lives in the corner of your screen. And I know that there's like this whole trend of like, what if. What if Ocarina of Time was a modern game, I think it'd go a little something like this link. You gotta use the small key. You got the small key link. Like, I find those largely kind of annoying because I don't think that's particularly representative of modern gaming, but holy shit, guys, you cannot walk past a cracked wall in this game without your little person saying, like, that wall looks like you could get it with a bomb. Thanks. Why? If you do it every single time, like, what? Why not just make them doors then? Like, okay, do you think it was

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

meant to be like a starter rpg? Like, I think.

[Griffin McRoy]

Well, they have talked a lot about their intention being like, accessibility. They want the game to be accessible. But, like, that is an insulting interpretation, I think, of a game being like, accessible to a younger generation to have, like, you already. The cracked walls thing, I'll use that as an example. They're bright yellow, orange, glowing crack. It's not like in, you know, Zelda. We're like, oh, if you look carefully, you can see it's bright yellow. It looks like a bright neon tree is, like coming out of the wall. Like, okay, you've communicated that to me and then you went ahead and you double communicated it to me. And I know there's people out there thinking, but you can change how much the character talks to you. In the settings menu, there's a setting called, like, standard and then one called Reticent, which is fucking great. And folks, let me tell you, not nearly reticent enough. I did not notice a difference. I read a kotaku interview where they were talking about how surprised they were at the fan reaction that this character is. They're chiming in, like, way, way, way too much because they just love. They just love Faye the fairy. And it's like, man, you're in too deep. This is not good, dude.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I love the idea that if you put Reticent on Faye the fairy just kind of is like sweating and it's like, I really want to tell you something about that wall over there.

[Ross Freshik]

I want to talk about this game in the context of me and how this had the potential to sort of Open me up to this world. Griffin, you haven't really. Apart from the chatty fairy who's there, you haven't really talked about the narrative of this game. Okay, so the narrative of this game could best be described as like how in my brain when I think of a JRPG and I like copy that over to like what the game is actually like. This is what this game, what you

[Griffin McRoy]

imagine, what I imagine the most, like

[Ross Freshik]

tropey, magic, crystal, evil. Like secondhand to the king.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, the evil advisor to the king. The mustache twirling advisor to the king.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Who?

[Griffin McRoy]

From line one, you're like, yeah, evil. That's him.

[Ross Freshik]

I think he has like a pause where he says something like, yes, sir. And you're like, oh, well, okay.

[Griffin McRoy]

So he's the bad one and Elliot is a pure unblemished perfect.

[Ross Freshik]

Okay. So that's the crazy thing. I'm like, there's gotta be. When I'm playing these games, I like, I need a little bit of conflict where like there's some like someone that's like a little jerky and someone that's too nice or whatever it is. Elliot is an outside the town adventurer. He goes about. He's basically a Han Solo. He goes completing quests for people, but he doesn't live in town. And he's like, people go to him when they're really in need. So I'm expecting like when Elliot gets introduced, fine, he's gonna be like this rogue. No, he's as fucking gung ho super. He's basically Superman in terms of tone, like he's Clark Kent. So he goes and saves a bunch of orphan shit like within minute five and then continues to be this like utmost sweetheart.

[Griffin McRoy]

Just not interest. Like none of the characters are interesting, the story.

[Ross Freshik]

And I don't even blame the voice actors because I think the voice actors probably directed in a way that just makes everyone seem very flat. My pro tip recommendation comes from friend of the show, Jason Schreier. Turn on the Japanese subtitles. Do not drive yourself nuts. Both in terms of the chatty angel and also just general vo.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, assuming.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah.

[Griffin McRoy]

So but even that, like, I don't know, man. So there's a whole time travel mechanic. So you are going through different versions of the overworld and there's lots of dungeons, right? So there's a lot of stuff to do. There's a lot of stuff to explore. There are little mini dungeons where you can go and you'll find an item that makes it so now you can equip more accessories or Now Faye has learned a new magic spell, and there's

[Ross Freshik]

some interesting stuff in that. Stuff where you can combo different passive abilities with active abilities to really customize. It feels almost like a Metroidvania kind of thing.

[Griffin McRoy]

You have your sort of action ring, like in a mana game, where you're switching between the different weapons because you have access to, I think, eight or so different weapons, and they all feel different and are useful in different circumstances. And then you have this system called Magicite, where you collect these crystals and you take them to a merchant who Gacha style draws sort of random upgrades for these weapons that you like, equip a certain number of, depending on what your Magicite capacity is, but you're creating different builds. I dig all that stuff. The combat is fun. It feels good. I found a sprint spell and now the world is actually pretty fun to get around. I wasn't loving it before that, but there's a lot about this game that, like, I could play a game where I just go into different sort of short dungeons and solve a few puzzles and beat some bad guy asses and I get an upgrade for my weapon. Like, cool, man. Like, I'm. I'm down for that, but it gets on my nerves.

[Ross Freshik]

Okay?

[Griffin McRoy]

It just gets on my nerves all the time.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Before we go further, there's a thing that was said earlier that was just so bonkers. I need to make sure I understand this. The advice that Jason Trier gave you, Freshtick, was to turn on the Japanese subtitles.

[Ross Freshik]

No, no, no. Turn on Japanese vo.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, okay. I was just like. I was like, wait. So the trick to liking this game is to not know what's being said?

[Ross Freshik]

Probably. Maybe, yes. Here's what I will say about this game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I feel better.

[Ross Freshik]

I think there's a version of the game that Griffin just described that you can play right now, today, because unlike a lot of square RPGs, you can skip every fucking cutscene in the game. You can skip all of it and just have objective, chase, objective, get upgrade. And it is. I think it's fun. I think as that game, it is fun. So if you can ignore the. In my opinion, weak narrative, bad VO and all that stuff, like, it's a pretty fun action rpg. And I think there aren't a lot of those these days, especially not in this art style. And it actually gives me a little bit of hope that maybe if this game is successful, Square will Explore more action RPGs in this format or other studios will. But yeah, just turn your ears off

[Griffin McRoy]

if you can, because Yikes I mean. Okay. But I think it is limiting to say that the only thing's wrong with it is that the characters are paper thin and the setting isn't particularly interesting because the whole world is not interesting. The enemies that you fight aren't very interesting. And there's like. I've played for a while and I've run into maybe six different enemies in like, different color palettes and like different. You know, they do maybe some different shit here and there. There. There is a lot of stuff that it does beyond the scope of like the. The. The world building or whatever that I find to be pretty lackluster, I don't think. But it's great.

[Ross Freshik]

I think it's okay. I think it's good to. Okay.

[Griffin McRoy]

But that is not like. That's such a huge discipline to have Team Asano, who makes stuff that I really like go after these classic sort of genres. I adore the Mana series. This does not come anywhere even remotely close to that, in my opinion. I don't know. It feels like so many decisions were made that are so perplexingly bad to me. And the ultimate sort of nail in the coffin for me being like, why? What joy will I find in exploring this big world that you filled with, like, treasure and activities to do if I am being instructed literally constantly what. How to do it?

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah.

[Griffin McRoy]

It really is a real buzzkill.

[Ross Freshik]

Well. And you wouldn't understand what they were saying if they were speaking Japanese.

[Griffin McRoy]

That's a fair point. There's a lot. I say all this. There's a lot of people who are wicked into the game. And that is cool too. I fully understand why. It just made a lot of decisions that I did not enjoy.

[Ross Freshik]

Hey, people at home, can you drop into the comments? You can go to the newsletter comments if you want. Besties fan, Give me some recommendations of games in this style of action RPG beyond, like the Zeldas of the world that you think I would enjoy. Because I'm genuinely like, I want to explore this genre more. And yeah, I want to hear. So please write in.

[Griffin McRoy]

Have you played Secret of Mana?

[Ross Freshik]

No.

[Griffin McRoy]

Secret of Evermore. Those classics.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You played Crosscode, right?

[Ross Freshik]

I started playing crossword. I didn't necessarily care for Crosscode. Okay. I bet the people at home. I mean, I can. Secret amount of. Maybe that might be an approach. Or I'll bet the people at home have some other wrecks.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Thank you, people at home.

[Ross Freshik]

Appreciate you. We have one reader mail question I want to call out. This comes from Wick. If my partner has played the recent Atlas Games and loves Persona and enjoyed Metaphor. Which Nier game should she play first?

[Griffin McRoy]

Hmm.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay, so this is a question for me, I'm gonna assume here. Right. Like the real sicko. I think you definitely want to play a game that has Nier in the title is what I would start with. I don't think you want to play like Drakengard 3. I.

[Ross Freshik]

There's just two Nier games, right? Am I wrong?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Basically, there's. Yeah, there's Nier Replicant and Nier Automata. Those are going to be the real choices that you have right now. Unless you want to go back and play older versions of Nier Replicant, I think you should just play whichever one looks the most enjoyable to you. Nier Replicant has kind of a like semi fantasy aesthetic. Automata has a more sci fi aesthetic. I think you should chase either in either direction. There are advantages to playing either first. Like, you will appreciate some things in Automata if you played Replicant first. And likewise the other way around. I think Automata is like a guaranteed banger and like, you do need to play through it multiple times. We've talked about this on the show before. When I say multiple times, the game evolves pretty significantly by round three. But even. Even at its base level, it's really exciting and entertaining. Where Replicant. I think at times it's just based off of an older game, so it can be a little bit more of like a slog. So I'm saying this all out loud. I think Nier Automata is where you want to start.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah.

[Griffin McRoy]

I'm gonna pull you over here and just say I don't think that those games are anything like Persona or. Yeah, true.

[Ross Freshik]

Actually, that's a good point.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It's a very great point.

[Griffin McRoy]

Metaphor.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McRoy]

There's not a ton of games that do what those games do. That's why they stand apart so much. There's stuff like Rune Factory that does like fantasy stuff with social simmy kind of stuff almost. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot of Persona games. Hey, there's a lot of Persona games.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Hey, I'm Unplug a thing. We just did an episode about Persona Summer at Post Games in which we talked about all the different Persona type of games, like Tokyo Mirage Session. So if you are looking for more info about the sort of games that fall into the Persona camp, I think that'd be helpful for you guys.

[Griffin McRoy]

I'm so excited for the Persona 4 revival. They keep releasing more and more video that. I can't wait for that freaking Thing, man, it's gonna be pretty cool when

[Ross Freshik]

I play it for the first time. Yeah. This is.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

You never played the Vita version?

[Ross Freshik]

I played like four hours of Vita version.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Okay.

[Ross Freshik]

There was a convenience store. There's a little girl. She seemed excited about the convenience store. Murders started happening and then I fell asleep.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I will say the onboarding now, like having done Persona 3 reloads first 10 hours or so, they've really figured out how to make these games digestible in a way that they just weren't in the past.

[Griffin McRoy]

I mean, I think Metaphor did the best to do. Metaphor.

[Ross Freshik]

Really?

[Griffin McRoy]

Fantastic.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Yeah.

[Griffin McRoy]

God, I've been having the itch to go back and play Metaphor and that's crazy. Is that game.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I saw that Switch 2 release, I was like, oh, oh, no.

[Griffin McRoy]

Ah, yeah, man. I thought about it. It really feels like that game is due to get its golden or royal or like expanded version of it. There are parts of that game, especially in the back third or so, if you rem serves, that just kind of seem rushed. It feels like it's ripe for one of those anyway. Do we want to do honorable mentions? I've talked about so many games, I don't know that I've saved anything for this bit.

[Ross Freshik]

I will talk about two games that I've been playing. I continue to play Subnautica with my child with the passive monster settings on the console command is invisible in case you want to do the same thing. That's been very effective. It works on Switch 2 and PC and it's incredible. We met our first Reaper. And if you've never played Subnautica, you should probably know what a reaper is. They are 50 foot long, just death machine shark creatures that have giant fangs and teeth and look horrible. And because of the setting, we were able to like just swim up to it and scan it. And he was so excited to read about the description of what it was in the like pda. And it. It's been such a delight. I'm like through the roof happy about it and so excited to play Subnautica 2 once it's a little further on in early access. The other game I want to mention is a game called Blueprints. It's a first person puzzle game where you explore a house Blueprint. Status update. I'm at day 44.

[Griffin McRoy]

Okay.

[Ross Freshik]

I continue playing with my wife. We have six sanctum doors open. We have two to go. Obviously we don't know what remains after that. We've done some of the things inside the sanctum doors. Some of them remain uncompleted but progress is being made, and it is a very good video game.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah, dog. Yeah, man. I'm so excited for you. I continue to be so excited. I want to hear about.

[Ross Freshik]

I don't know what I'm going to do with my notebook when we're finished, but I want to make sure we save it and keep it safe because it is such a fun visual representation of the journey that we've been on.

[Griffin McRoy]

I thought of something I can talk about. I played a little bit more no Man's sky, which I think I mentioned last week having brought. There's a whole thing that they added to the game that I didn't know about and didn't mess around with until after last week's episode. I did learn about it. There's a class of ships called corvettes, and you can build them, which is not an entirely new thing, right? Like, they've had sort of ship crafting if you want to make this type of fighter.

[Ross Freshik]

They have, like a freighter, right? A freighter. Ship builder.

[Griffin McRoy]

So. And then, yes, there is a freighter ship which is like a huge, like, you know, Star Destroyer size, like, ship that is. Can be like kind of a mobile base of operations. But it's like, it's enormous. And you can customize it, and that's, like, very, very cool. Corvettes are something in between. And you can build them using parts that you find while, like, exploring the world. You go out hunting for these parts. There are rewards for missions. You can find derelict ships in space that you can salvage, and you're finding all these different parts. And what you're building is a ship that is smaller and controllable. You don't really control your freighter, just sort of. You can't drive it around. It's just kind of there a big floaty. These you can control. They have stats. They have, like, the different technology slots that you can, like, customize.

[Ross Freshik]

Can they land on a planet?

[Griffin McRoy]

They can land on a planet and you can add whole rooms and furniture and, you know, machines that are doing, like, the different processes that you have to do for your resources. Or you add like, a med bay, or you add, you know, a room full of plants that you can harvest at will. And you can add, like, a captain's quarters. It can be as big or as small as you want it to be. But you can also now just get up out of the pilot seat at any point while you're flying, while the ship is still moving, you know, set to autopilot, coasting over the planet side. And you go up and like chill up in your room looking out the bay windows like that into the world.

[Ross Freshik]

That's fucking sick.

[Griffin McRoy]

Or when you're in space, you can step up from the pilot's seat, do some shit around the ship and then open up the loading bay doors and just do a quick spacewalk. Just like hop out into free floating in outer space and come right back to your ship. So like it is the best of both worlds. You have this entirely customizable ship that you can turn into your home base. You can have a whole room that you just fill with cargo containers. And now all of a sudden, like storage is no longer really a concern anymore. But also then you blast off and now you're doing space fights in it. And it can just be sort of.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

It never ever gets old. It never gets old that this game is now so much better than even the over promising trailer from the beginning.

[Griffin McRoy]

It's insane. It's crazy, wild, crazy. And it's. I don't know. I really love coming back and playing this game. I'm done. I finished the expedition. Or at least this expedition's a little bit annoying. They're like time gated and you can't complete it until the whole community has come together to do a certain number of missions. Sort of Helldiver style. I don't love that. But I'll come back and do an expedition. Or when they add a new thing like pet battling, like I'll come back and dip in. And I'm never disappointed, man. I'm always absolutely surprised and delighted by what they've done. And it's fun to just kind of like check in every once in a while.

[Ross Freshik]

I am so curious to see God. I'm so excited for Light no Fire, which is their next game. How the fuck do you go from like all of this to starting a new game? Because there's no possible way. In the same way that like you think about Destiny 2's launch, there's no way to implement all of the stuff that your previous game had. And some of it thematically wouldn't even make sense. So how do you match just the slate or even come close to the slate that no Man's sky is offering?

[Griffin McRoy]

I don't think they need to.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Right.

[Griffin McRoy]

Like I don't think you need to have Critter battling. Some of the things are so kind of like tacked on that like it does, but it does, I think it

[Ross Freshik]

does set a standard of like it kind of needs to be a full game. It can't be the like Absolutely.

[Griffin McRoy]

That is the thing. That's the thing that, like, no Man's sky needs is, like, a light, no pile. Well, no, I mean, I'm saying, like, the difference. The thing. No Man's sky, they have updated for 10 years and added all these content, and it's fulfilled far more than fulfilled the promise of, like, what those original trailers showed you. It still doesn't feel great to, like, get in a laser fight.

[Ross Freshik]

Sure.

[Griffin McRoy]

Like, I don't think that the combat is, like, particularly great. And, like, there's just certain parts of it that do feel, like, still kind of antiquated in the, like, inventory management side of things. And, like, there's, like, core stuff that, like, if they changed it, it wouldn't be no man sky anymore. So the idea of, like, a whole new thing that can take the great lessons that they have learned, making updates to no Man's sky, but have it be built on maybe a stronger foundation. I don't know. Light no Fire is such a. I don't know anything about it. I don't know that really. A lot of people do.

[Ross Freshik]

We just know that it's on a single planet the size of our Earth, and it's in. There's no scale. Like, it's actually the size of our Earth.

[Griffin McRoy]

Yeah.

[Ross Freshik]

And everyone's just on that same planet.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Cool.

[Griffin McRoy]

That sounds cool.

[Ross Freshik]

Sounds fucking cool.

[Griffin McRoy]

That's not much, but yeah.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah.

[Griffin McRoy]

Chris, you've been playing anything? Watch anything?

[Ross Freshik]

No.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

I went and saw Disclosure Day, the new Spielberg movie.

[Ross Freshik]

Yeah.

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Pretty. Pretty mixed feelings on it. I love Spielberg. I love even modern Spielberg. This movie, I think, is probably great for every person who has never had to work in a newsroom and any person who has had to work in a newsroom and does not have faith that people change their minds just because vague information is given to them, I think it will be skeptical. That said, I do want to offer a different paranoia thriller, which is Cutter's Way, which just got re released by Radiance. It is a lost classic, in my opinion, starring Jeff Bridges and the father from Home Alone, giving an absolutely bonkers performance. And if you love, like, 1970s conspiracy thrillers, if you love neo noirs, honestly, if you love the Big Lebowski, this is for you big time. It is an absolutely incredible movie. So if you see Disclosure Day and you love it, hey, fantastic. If you see it and you're like, I would like something that is getting at conspiracies about how the powerful keep us under their thumb. I think you should check out Cutter's Way. Cool.

[Griffin McRoy]

Sick. That's it for this week. Thank you so much for listening to the Besties. Do you want to talk about everything we talked about so far, Chris?

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

Oh, boy. We talked about so much. We talked about Crushed in Time, voidlingbound, Pronoun palace, new teardown dlc. It's called Relics of Barcuna. We also talked about traveling with the Iron Thor and playing Persona 3 reload a little Bit and the Adventures of Elliot. And then for our honorable mentions, we had Subnautica Blueprints, no Man's sky and on the film side, Disclosure Day and Cutter's Way Cool.

[Griffin McRoy]

Wow, what a beefy one. Hey, if you still haven't gotten enough of us and are prattling on, you can go to patreon.com thebesties and you can get access to our monthly bonus episodes where we do bracket battles on different topics. And you can also get access to episodes of the Resties that Chris and Russ do, talking about games that we didn't have time to cover here on the rest of the show. Do you want to thank some folks?

[Ross Freshik]

You bet. We have some new backers I want to thank. We have Andrew A. We have Cooper de Duper. I hope that's your real name, David L7 Hemlock and probably cool dad. Thank you for being backers of the besties [e-mail] thebesties and thank you to everyone else who has supported us through the years. You make this show possible to exist,

[Christopher Thomas Plant]

which is what do we got next week?

[Griffin McRoy]

Next week we are at the halfway point of 2026, as outrageous as that seems. And so we're going to be taking both a look back at our favorite games of the year so far. Start putting together a bit of a hit list for each other on what we, you know, should go back and check out some of our personal favorites shared with the class. Then we're also going to take a look at what's still due to come in the rest of the year and put together a list of our most anticipated stuff as well. A celebration of time, past, present and future. Much like the Adventures of Elliot the Millennium Village, we'll be hopping between eras to find the bad advisor and to stop him. So yeah, stay tuned. Join us again next week for the best. Because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's best games? Besties.