Good Morning Folks! After giving you updates on my life… it is time to roll on into the rest of my year in review topics. I legitimately do not know how many of these I have, but I have stalled long enough. This morning I am going to talk about the games that were important to me during the last year in either a good way or a bad way. This list is not going to look anything like most 2025 in review lists, because I do not play a ton of new games. I play an awful lot of ARPGs and treat each season as though it were a game launch. This wildly skews the sort of results that I have in this scenario. I am also this time sort of loosely grouping the list into less important to more important, but not necessarily a strict order.
Path of Exile II: The Last of the Druids
This is probably the most recent of the games I am going to talk about it, and I am still more or less playing it. On December 12th, Path of Exile II released a big update that launched the Last of the Druids and Fate of the Vaal league. In it they gave us access to the first of the Int/Str hybrid classes the Druid which has ascendancies for Shaman and Oracle. More important than that, they gave us access to the primal ability tree and the talisman weapon that allow us to turn into a Bear, Wolf, or Wyvern. I’ve been deeply critical of Path of Exile II up until this point, seeing it as a bit of a mechanically worse version of Path of Exile that just happens to have better graphics and a better user interface. Playing Bear Druid, and specifically Demon Bear Shaman is what really pushed me over the edge to truly enjoying this game. It is fun as heck to hop around the map causing big explosions with my fat bear ass. The game still has problems… and will continue to have problems for a very long time… but this gameplay got me hooked.
Slormancer
Slormancer is a little 2D sorta isometric view roguelike arpglike game that is a heck of a lot of fun. I did not play this game anywhere near as much as I should have, but I hope to remedy that in 2026. I did play it enough however to want to talk about it. The mechanics of this game are just really fun, and it reminds me of what if you took Rogue Legacy and turned it into an ARPG. I mostly played the knight character, but the archer was pretty fun as well. This really wants to be played with a controller though, and is ideal for television gaming. Once I get off my ass and figure out what I want to use as a proper Steam in the Livingroom setup, I will probably be playing more of this. If you have not checked it out and like any of the types of games that I eluded to in this post… check it out. It’s a heck of a lot of fun for $20.
Dune Awakening
I have such wildly mixed feelings about Dune Awakening. This is going to be a game that goes in my disappointments of the year pile. The AggroChat folks and friends decided to play together on a private server that Tam rented for us as we all got started, and I feel like that is the correct way to play this game. It is unfortunate that it requires someone shelling out for a server, and it is even more unfortunate that it does not grant you private access to the shared open world pvp deep desert. What killed this game for me though… was upkeep. You are required to play a certain amount of this per week in order to generate enough fuel to keep the shield on your base active, or your base slowly disintegrates over time. This feels really fucking bad. Namely because I got busy with various events while playing this game… and then had the death of a spouse which knocked me even further out of whack with ever getting back in. Once I lost everything, there was no point in me going back. I would love to see a pure PVE sandbox version of this game that allows you to set custom rules on a server by server basis for things like upkeep. The game itself has gone from a peak concurrency of not quite 200k players to an average of 8k…. so I think maybe it did not work quite right for a lot of players.
Hellclock
So what if I told you there was a game… loosely based on the real world events surrounding Brazil’s War of Canudos… that took place in the aftermath of the abolishment of slavery, but also somehow involves exploring dungeons and killing zombies and shit? Hellclock is a deeply odd and stylistic roguelike ARPG where you have a fixed amount of time to explore on each run, and once you run out of time everything winds back and you get to keep any powerups that you purchased during the previous run. The cyclical nature of the game is deeply satisfying and you get various tools to extend your runs as you get better. I did not play anywhere near enough of this game but again I think it is prime fodder for once I sort out my Steam in the Livingroom setup. I have to solve my wireless network woes before I really do that unfortunately because I have my old gaming rig hooked up in the livingroom, the connectivity speeds are complete ass. I’ve also not really figured out a good keyboard and mouse option, and there will be games that I don’t necessarily want to play with a controller. Anyways NONE of that is about Hellclock, which is just a universally interesting game.
Titan’s Quest II
Titan’s Quest II had quite a number of updates throughout the year and I spent several days really getting into the game and checking out what it had to offer. I landed on the decision that I do not really enjoy playing a melee class in the game, but dig the heck out of playing ranged. I played a sort of icicle archer thing that worked really well, and honestly the game itself is just gorgeous. The fights are pretty interesting, and this is very much a worthy successor to the first game, which in itself was a worthy successor to Diablo II. If you like ARPGs in general or you were ever a fan of TItan’s Quest, then I suggest checking it out. They are continuing to release updates for the game as it is still in development so if you would rather play it once it is finished, then this might be a game to put a pin in and check back when the 1.0 release finally happens.
Abyssus
This game is a heck of a lot of fun to play with a friend, and Ace and I spent a bit of time playing this game and should probably at some point return to it. I think Destiny Rising more or less stole the place in our gaming lives that this took up for a bit. Essentially Abyssus is a wave based arena shooter rogue-like… about exploring the depths of an underwater dungeon. You and your friends take on waves of monsters, get loot, and work your way down to fixed boss fights at specific floors. The deeper you go the harder it gets and the more varied the environments become. Big Nautical-punk vibes with this game because you are both wearing these diving suits while you wield your big damned guns and kill things. The further you go the more points you get to configure your build and control your weapon load-outs, but a lot of options unlock symmetrically as you reach certain floors giving you a mix of guaranteed upgrades and choice based upgrades. I am not sure this game would be fun solo, but it was a blast with someone hanging out on voice chat.
Path of Exile – Mercenaries of Trarthus
Mercenaries of Trarthus was a challenge league that ran in Path of Exile from June 13th to October 27th and represented the first new content we had gotten in almost a year since the launch of Settlers of Kalguur the previous year. First it was just amazing to get some new content in the game, but more than that it introduced Mercenaries and I have always loved those sorts of mechanics in ARPGs. One of my favorite aspects of Diablo III was building out my companion to buff the things that were weak in my build, and that is largely what players did in order to make some truly busted builds. The real meta of the league was doing some sort of build that could apply large amounts of Lightning damage, and then using Doryani’s Prototype on your mercenary, to debuff all of the mobs in your presence to have large amounts of negative lighting resistance. I think the build that I ran as my second in the league managed to get close to -300% Lightning Resistance while dealing a ton of damage with Storm Brand of Indecision. It was thoroughly busted but lord did I have a lot of fun playing this league.
Monster Hunter Wilds
There will be some of you who do not remember just how much I got into Monster Hunter World when it released in 2018 both on the original PS4 release, and later when it came out on PC in August of that same year. I had never really mainlined a Monster Hunter game despite trying to dabble in them on the mobile platforms, but this game sucked me in and stole so much of my time. Monster Hunter Wilds was a return to the same style of game as Worlds and when it launched I had a heck of a lot of fun playing it. Sadly I did not really stick around as much as I thought I might, but that does not discount the fact that I had an awful lot of fun playing it. I probably would have played it more but every time Ammo, Sita and I tried to group up I started having network problems. Capcom… has some of the shittiest grouping systems ever, and if they got someone from a western live service game to come unfuck their game interface… I think folks would be around far longer. I only put in around 60 hours, but it was 60 hours well spent.
Last Epoch – Beneath Ancient Skies
On August 21st Last Epoch dropped a pretty signfiicant update with Beneath Ancient Skies which added a whole new chapter to the game and a new league mechanic hunting down primal monsters and chosing to evolve them making them more difficult and rewarding. I had a really fun league with this game, but ultimately I burned through it pretty quickly. I played a Fire Minions Necromancer build and then ultimately hopped on the Thorns damage train for quite possibly the stupidest build I have ever played in any game where I am just nuking the entire screen with thorns damage. The new act was a lot of fun and it is probably the best content they have added into the game to date. The primal league mechanic was also a lot of fun, and each time this game expands it keeps getting better. I think the challenge for me is that I “finish” with the game way faster than I do with Path of Exile. I reach a point with my builds where I have seen everything that I really want to see and really pushing to the true pinnacle content of the game requires more hours than I really want to dump into it. That is not a failing of the game and more a case that it still needs more years to cook before it will be as rich of an experience as Path of Exile has.
Path of Exile – Legacy of Phrecia Event
Earlier when I talked about Mercenaries of Trarthus, part of the reason why that league was so damned much fun is that it had been a literal year since we last got a new league in the game. So much of GGG’s time was being devoted to the care and feeding of the fledgling Path of Exile II, that the POE core felt ignored. That is not to say things were not happening, we had a few fun private leagues like the Pohx League event, but there was one thing that probably took the cake. Almost as a shadow drop, Grinding Gear Games gave us the Legacy of Phrecia alternative ruleset event where every single one of the 19 Ascendancy classe were replaced. It was wild to play through this and I played a Righteous Fire Scavenger… which is the alternative version of the Scion. It was so much fun, and now this game mode exists as an alternate ruleset that you can use to create custom leagues. There is part of me though that wishes at some point all of the Phrecia ascendancies go core and become just alternate options allowing us 38 different ascendancy choices in the game.
Destiny Rising
Destiny Rising is essentially my game of the year…. but it does not get the top slot for reasons I will talk about later. This is a gacha game from Net Ease that remixes the tried and true Destiny format, but also makes it a heck of a lot more enjoyable in the process. There is no reason why I should be loving a Gacha game as much as I am, because I thought Genshin Impact broke me of that. However… Destiny Rising is shockingly fair when it comes to its Gacha mechanics. I have 3 accounts, 2 of which I have spent zero money on… and they both feel like I have plenty of things to do without having spent a dime. The whole three acccouints thing is largely because I am trying to maintain a guild when there are really only two or three of us that are actively playing. That is a whole other discussion. If you ever loved Destiny at any point in the past, you owe it to yourself to check out Destiny Rising. It is so damned much fun and really streamlines what made that game great. If you DO end up playing… hit me up because we certainly can use some more active players in our guild to do dailies.
Guild Wars 2 Fractal Incursion Event
My “Game of the Year” really goes to more specifically an event of the year. In September, Guild Wars 2 shadow dropped an event called the Fractal Incursion. This added a new feature to the game which allowed you to randomly queue for Fractals, giving the game what it needed so badly… a more modern group finder. Not only did they do this… they bribed the fuck out of us to run tons of them by providing a path to a piece of legendary armor, and also giving you a pathway to get said armor for every single weight class in the game. The end result was that Lion’s Arch specifically around the Mists portal was busier than at any point I have ever seen in this game’s history. The above screenshot was taken one morning when I was working on my blog post… so completely off peak hours for either EU or NA and it was STILL packed. Better yet we are going to be getting a version of this same group finder for a combined version of Raids and Strikes later this year. This has breathed so much new life into Guild Wars 2, and prompted us to have some really fun Thursday night fractal groups as we all chain ran them trying to get through the achievements. Absolutely the highlight of my gaming year, and on the 13th I believe we are getting a return of the Fractal Rush event so looking forward to that as well.
Those were my games and gaming events of the year. I am sure it looks pretty different than the lists for most people. I did not really play much in the way of single player experiences this year. I hope to remedy that in 2026, but who knows where that will go. My happy place tends to be listening to an audiobook while plugging away at a mechanically interesting but narratively devoid experience. Even for this coming year my games list will be the games that I played, not necessarily the games that came out so at some point when I finally do get around to beating Clair Obscur it will probably make a list. Anyways. Were there any unusual games that made your personal Games of the Year list? Drop me a line below.
The post 2025 in Review: The Games appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! This morning I am keeping it going with my year in review series as this time I talk about some of the movies that I watched. Normally speaking I would say that these are movies that both impressed me or disappointed me enough to have something to talk about. In this case… I mostly just enjoyed all of them for various reasons. With everything that was going on this year, I leaned way more heavily into YouTube, Books, and Serialized content than I did on movies. However I did buy a fancy new television and a nice soundbar setup, which caused a significant uptick for awhile in movie viewing. There are tons of things that I did not watch last year and will probably watch in the coming year. Normally speaking I would say these are things that I watched in a given calendar year, but I also think in this case everything in the list actually came out last year.
This morning I am also going to try something a little different. I did this the other day for a friend who was dyslexic, and I recorded an alternate track of narration for my blog post. I don’t think this is going to be something that I can reasonably do for EVERY post, but I thought it might be interesting to experiment with it. So essentially I am going to write this post in full, and then come back by and talk about things again, not necessarily following the written script…. so you will end up with two slightly different experiences. Hopefully it works and drop me a line if you participated in this experiment and enjoyed it.
Happy Gilmore 2
This is probably the biggest shock for me of the year is that one… a Happy Gilmore sequel was released, and two… that it was really freaking good. There is a lot of heart in this movie and it is well worth the watch even if you have not liked anything Adam Sandler has released in years. For me he peaked at The Wedding Singer, but this movie is charming as fuck especially for those of us who grew up during his heyday. The real take away of this movie though is how amazing Bad Bunny is in a comedic role. This man is delightful and has been charming in pretty much any situation I have seen him in, but he stole every single scene he was in as the busboy turned caddy. Seriously, you need to watch this for no reason other than just how funny he is as Oscar. I hope we see him in more comedic roles going forward.
Tron: Ares
If I had a disappointment of the year, it would probably be Tron: Ares. Everything about this movie seemed like it was primed to blow me the away. You have a Nine Inch Nails soundtrack, you have these really cool red and black suits… and I obsessively loved Tron: Legacy and was pretty hungry for a sequel. This movie is not that. This movie is its own thing and clearly sort of exists as a side adventure in the world of Tron lore. It doesn’t really dabble much in the tale of Flynn and Tron, but instead sort of goes off into its own territory telling the tale of Sark. If treated with the appropriate perspective… I enjoyed the film a lot and look forward to what is supposedly the proper sequel to Tron: Legacy that is coming next. The film has some really fucking cool visuals though, and I think that was sort of its entire point. I am always deeply suspicious of Jared Leto, his literal cult leader status, and what it brings to the movies he is in… but for the most part it did not seem to adversely impact the end product.
Adulthood
Now we move on to very very dark comedy in the form of Adulthood. This is a tale of siblings, family, death, and inherited secrets. Josh Gad does an amazing job of playing the deadbeat manchild that never quite grew up, and is chasing a goal that he will never seem to reach. Kaya Scodelario does an excellent job at playing the sibling that was forced to be the adult for everyone in the household, and continues to be as things start to fall apart. There are a number of genuinely hilarious moments and Billie Lourd does an excellent job playing the effective villain of this tale… where everyone is already a wholly bad person. It is not necessarily an amazing movie, but it is a fun watch.
Takeout
This film is a bit rough around the edges, and is of all things a Tubi exclusive… which means it is on a free movie service. However what you end up getting is this really gritty horror/slasher/drama set around the folks who are working at a very low rent fast food restaurant in the middle of nowhere late at night. The character actors are pretty uneven in their delivery. For example N’kone Mametja does an excellent job in the lead role as Nova, and Daniel Janks puts up a great performance as a professor character. Even Darron Meyer does a pretty solid job and is an actor that I have liked in other things before. The characters of Harper and Susan the owner of the restaurant however are thoroughly unlikable in mostly annoying ways. I enjoyed it and it is worth a watch… and has a relatively decent plot twist… but other than that it largely is just a pretty stylized take on the slasher-in-one-location genre.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
I am not sure we will ever return to the heyday of Marvel, where we are getting multiple banger must see movie experiences every year. However I still think last year was a pretty decent year for Superhero films. I’ve always low key enjoyed the Fantastic Four, but never really felt like anyone managed to capture what I enjoyed about it. As a kid it was always about the Nasapunk futurism and interesting technologies… more than the actual superpowers that they had. This film gives us that feeling in spades as it takes us to an alternative version of history that is deeply compatible with the whole Walt Disney world of tomorrow vibe. It has been so long since we have seen anything close to optimistic futurism, and this movie delivered on that. Sure things went off the rails and that civilization was essentially taken to the brink of destruction, but it was delightful seeing it on screen and rendered beautifully.
Superman
Last year also delivered the best Superman film that we have seen since the 80s heyday of Christopher Reeves. If this is at all what we can expect from the James Gunn DC Universe, then I am all on board. We got the first rendition of Kryto the Superdog I believe in a live action film ever, and it was delightful. We also got a cameo for the Milly Alcock played Supergirl character coming to the screen this year. I am on board with all of this. Essentially the DCU had to start somewhere and I think this was a good place. The blue boyscout has always been one of the major pillars of DC comics, and now they just need to nail a good Batman film set in this shared universe… and they will own my soul. Gotham is my favorite setting and always will be, and the best version is the old Batman Animated Series. I have hope and quite honestly I think James Gunn gets where things need to go.
Bring Her Back
There are sometimes experiences that are so weird that you have to experience them for yourself. This movie is a fucking mess and do not watch if you are not prepared for gore and body horror. Sometimes resurrection goes wrong, and takes way more effort than it is worth. This is one of those situations. Holy shit is this movie fucked up, but in the best possible of ways. I can’t say it was phenomenal but it was really interesting. That is all I am really going to say here. Watch it if you like twisted things and have a reasonably strong stomach.
Weapons
If you want phenomenal genre defining masterpiece though… look no further than weapons. I’ve loved Zach Cregger since his days in White Kids you Know. The Gallon of PCP sketch is still one of the funniest things I have ever seen, and Zach plays the titular character with his Gallon jug of PCP. I had thoroughly missed his transition into horror auteur, but apparently there is something about making people laugh that works beautifully for also scaring the shit out of them. I also highly suggest going back and watching Barbarian, which is fucked up in so many ways but is an amazing viewing experience. Everything about Weapons was just perfect… and it is a film effectively told out of order through the point of view of a bunch of different characters… all looping through the same time. Once you have seen multiple perspectives you start to learn more details about what is happening before it all comes crashing down in the final act. Pure magic. I hope this sweeps all of the award shows.
K-Pop Demon Hunters
It is hard to deny that this was the year of the K-Pop Demon Hunters. They dominated everything and even the little Korean donut shop that I go to on Sundays… has specialty Rumi, Mira, and Zoey themed donuts. If you somehow made it through 2025 without watching this… stop what you are doing… go watch it… you will thank me later. It is overwhelmingly charming. I do not care at all about K-Pop or Boy/Girl Bands in general, but this show is infectuous and has so many great characters. I would die for Derpy the Tiger and Sussie the Crow. This movie is especially important for you to watch if you have kids, and more importantly if those children are little girls. They need to see this film. I would be shocked however if they are not already indoctrinated into this madness. While I hope Weapons does well, this is probably the film that took the hearts of the world by storm… especially because no one was really expecting much from it.
28 Years Later
I’ve been a fan of this series since the first film, and I still think it is one of the better zombie films that we have ever gotten. 28 Years Later is something that I was really looking forward to… and I can’t necessarily say I am disappointed in it… but it was not the film I was expecting. This is more a tale centered around a family than anything else, but it does happen to exist within the settings of a truly bizarre and interesting world that has grown up around a rage virus based zombie apocalypse. Nature is healing… in weird and interesting ways, and it is at least cool to see what a potential future for this world looks like. I thought Ralph Fiennes character of Doctor Ian Kelson pretty much stole the movie though, and I am very interesting to see where the next film which is a side-story centered around the Bone Temple takes us.
The Monkey
Another really great horror film and dark comedy this year is The Monkey. It is centered around a cursed object that ultimately leads to major catastrophe befalling the owners. Essentially each time the monkey drums… someone dies in a truly disturbing way. The narrative largely focuses on twin brothers… played by the same actor… who deliver WILDLY different performances… and the role they have been forced into as the caretaker of this malicious object. There are a lot of genuinely hilarious moments that center around death, so I have to admit this was a great film for me to watch while I was grieving… because sometimes it is important to be capable of laughing at loss. I am wired to love horror films… but not everyone is. Some of the deaths are pretty bloody and gruesome, so if you have a weak stomach this might not be your film. I enjoyed it thoroughly though, but also I am pretty freaking twisted at times.
Freaky Tales
Now we finally arrive at the film that is truly my movie of the year. Freaky Tales is an anthology of interlocking tales that center around Oakland California in the late 80s. The wildest part about this narrative is that some of it is based on real world events and people, and KQED has a good article/podcast episode talking about this. You have Rainbow Punks, Fascist Cops, a Hitman with a Heart of Gold, and an Astral Projecting Samurai Basketball player. What more could you want? Rap legend Too Short serves as the narrator for all of these tales, and while the totality is a bit rough around the edges at times, it is a really good experience to watch. I think more than anything the reason why this is my movie of the year is because it kind of came from out of nowhere, and has so much heart that I can’t help but love it.
Were there movies this year that you loved that I missed? Do you disagree on my takes on any of the films I did talk about? drop me a line below.
The post 2025 Year in Review: The Movies appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! This morning I am continuing my series of talking about things that I liked in 2025 and this time moving on to series based content. Some of this is traditional television series, and others are anime… but it felt right to sort of split a line between this kind of content and one off experiences like a movie. I consume an awful lot of my content on Plex, and as a result it was very easy for me to go back and look at what I had actually watched during the Calendar year of 2025. This morning I am going to talk about some of the high points, and some of the low points, much like I did the other day with books. In truth I really did not consume anywhere near as much content as I normally would… 2025 was a rough year for so many reasons.
Pantheon
This lives in that realm of Anime but not-Anime that so many properties like Avatar do these days. I was tipped off to this series by my friend Sita who begged both me and Ammo to watch this, and I have to say I am very glad that I did. This is a very William Gibson-esc transhuman masterpiece that has some really awkward bits in the third act. Effectively this series SHOULD have gone on for longer, but only got two seasons… and there is a clear point in the middle of Season Two where they realized that they were not going to get a Third Season. So they very quickly had to rush to the ultimate conclusion of everything that they were working towards… so that in itself feels a bit jarring. However this is so well worth the watch if you have never seen it… or like me did not even know it existed.
Dan Da Dan
This quite literally might be the highlight of my year when it comes to media viewing experiences. I fell in love with this series in a massive way, and I will probably always have the opening for season one by Creepy Nuts living rent free in my head. Season One was fucking amazing, and Season Two just kept things up as the friendship and the will they or won’t they nature of Momo and Okarun continues to deliver. The show is fucking wild honestly, and I admit it probably takes about three episodes to hook you. The plotlines are among the more outrageous when they come to anime, and I would relate it to something akin the lines of FLCL. If you stick with it though, I think you will end up a convert. It is just plain fun on so many levels and I am anxiously looking forward to season three whenever it drops.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew
Growing up in the era of The Goonies and Flight of the Navigator… both movies that I love deeply still even as an adult… I really wanted this to be amazing. I am not sure why it was not. On paper everything about this seemed like it was going to be a homerun. I think maybe the problem that I had with this was the fact that the weakest bit… were the adults. Specifically I feel like there was some exec somewhere who would not greenlight this project without an established adult actor playing a character in it. As a result it sort of felt like Jude Law stole way too much screen time, and was not actually worthy of it. Anytime it was just the kids doing shenaningans and adventures it was cute and fun… but when you looped him into the mix it got weird quickly. I think there could have been something really good here, and it did have moments of magic but collectively it just didn’t really work.
Murderbot
One of the series that I talked about in my book post was Murderbot and chaining through the entire series of books prior to the start of the television series. I was so glad that I did this, and I was even happier that for the most part… every single character in this series felt spot on for their book counterpart. That is… except the titular character of Murderbot. I had trouble adjusting to this for a bit, because Alexander Skarsgard will on some level be Eric Northman from True Blood for me. That said… as the series continued on by about episode three he had won me over completely and now I am not sure I could picture another actor playing Murderbot. I am so amped for this to continue because that first book is far from the best of the Murderbot adventures. We haven’t even encountered my favorite characters yet. We will be eating well with this one I hope, pending it continues getting good reception and more seasons.
The Witcher: Season 4
Something that I absolutely did not expect to be posting… is that The Witcher seires might have won me back. Season 3 was fucking awful. They did my boy Eskel so damned dirty, and them playing fast and loose with some of the lore… in the worst possible ways… made it all just feel awful. I was not planning on watching this season, but only did so because a friend of mine was talking about it. I can’t believe I am saying this… but I think Liam Hemsworth might be a better Geralt than Henry Cavil was. Things are starting to veer closer to the normal lore of the books/games as well which is a massive improvement. More importantly than that I got to hang out with some of my favorite characters a lot this season… Dandelion, Yarpin, and Zoltan. Massive improvement over the shitshow that was season three and I am hoping it keeps this upward trajectory.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
I will be honest… this is one of those series that I only watched because my friend Ammo was talking about it. I am not normally into elves even in the least, so the fact that this series is not only about an Elf… but also a damned dirty finger wiggler (Mage)… would have originally pushed it out of my normal scope of interests. This is legitimately one of the best Anime and or Series in general that I have ever watched. The way the story is told is so interesting and unique, and the whole perspective of someone who lives for thousands of years…. and how they might view short lived races is fascinating. Not to mention the story has an awful lot of heart to it. Season two will be dropping pretty soon and I am hoping I can find it in dual language version because I greatly prefer watching television as to reading it.
Delicious in Dungeon / Dungeon Meshi
Have you ever said to yourself that you really wanted a cooking show with the central conceit of it being played out through the lens of a D&D style adventuring party? No? Well I had not either until Tumblr sold me on this show by constantly pushing cute images into my feed. This is a show that I started with subs, and then rewatched the entire damned thing dubbed because I just like the characterization of the individual characters a bit better. Japanese voice actors can sometimes be a bit over the top for me, especially since I am not culturized to that being normal. Marcille especially just FEELS better in the Dubbed version to me and is way less annoying than the Japanese counterpart was. Super charming and cute show, but please note… it is ABSOLUTELY a cooking show. The fact it is happening in a Dungeon and has occasional combat is just a side effect of the settting.
Honorable Mentions
To Be Hero X gets a bit of an honorable mention for me. Really good show, but I did not finish it during 2025 so I don’t quite feel right giving it its own spot on the list. Additionally I really enjoyed the Ironheart series and Daredevil: Born again and hope we see more of those in the future. Marvel really is in this awkward spot right now and I am hoping they can pull their shit together and start producing amazing stuff in the way it was during the first decade of the Avengers Saga. I still fucking love Shoresy and Season 4 was pretty great, and I know that I have Season 5 queued up to watch in the coming weeks. I would prefer for it to finish so that I can watch it all in one setting, and it is just starting to release episodes.
Tomorrow I will be talking about the movies that I watched and either enjoyed or disliked enough to talk about in 2025. What were some of the highlights for you last year when it came to serialized content? Drop me a line below and let me know.
The post 2025 In Review: The Series appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. As I often do, the start of a new year is a time for reflection back upon the previous one. While I never can seem to keep exactly the same rhythms anymore, I figured I might branch out and start what are hopefully a new series of yearly “in review” posts. 2025 was one of those years where I had to lean on distractions heavily, and those distractions came in many forms. Some of them were comfort gaming, others experiencing new anime, and an awful lot were the books that I read. This morning I am going to talk about some of the more significant books that I enjoyed. I set my goal for 30 books and ended up reading 38. For those curious, I use both Bookwyrm and Storygraph to track my reading journey. Bookwyrm is a federated client so it is very easy to share on Mastodon if the mood strikes me and I want to write a proper review of a book. Storygraph I mostly use because it has a really good recommendation algorithm, that has fed me a few books that I otherwise would not have paid attention to.
My Best Friend’s Exorcism
Probably my favorite single book of the year was My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. This was my entry into this author’s work and at some point I want to check out more books. I read Witchcraft for Wayward Girls and it did not quite land the same for me. I think that might be in part because so much of this is my adolescent years bottled and packaged up into a novel form. It takes place in the 80s that I remember so vividly, and the pair remind me a bit of two of my friends who were always together but similarly somewhat mismatched. There is a made for amazon movie for this book… but I could not get through it. It just did not capture any of the magic of this book for me about demon possession and undying friendship.
Dungeon Crawler Carl
If we are not talking about single books, then my highlight of the year is reading the entirety of what has been published so far in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. This was my first foray into RPGLit and while I loved it… I am not sure if the larger genre is really my thing. In truth it takes a few books for this series to really reach its stride, and I think part of that is Matt Dinniman shuffling off the normal constraints of the genre and leaning into the best aspects of this cast of amazing characters. Specifically I LOVE the voice acting of Jeff Hayes, and if you have read these in text form, you owe it to yourself to listen to the audio books as well. Right now A Parade of Horribles is supposedly slotted for release in May and I am literally almost thrumming with excitement for it.
Murderbot Series
Another series that I fell in love with this year is Murderbot. In the months ahead of the release of the television series, I burned through these books and they are really comfortable reads. Each of them is very short and very focused, with a fast moving narrative that is just a delight. This will be another one of those series that I consume happily whenever a new book comes out, and at some point I should really dive out into the other things Martha Wells has written. Reading these books has made me realize that I might be slightly on the spectrum, just because the running internal monologue of Murderbot feels so god damned familiar to me.
News Flesh Series
In the column of… I should have read this decades ago… we have the Newsflesh series. Legitimately I remember seeing Feed at borders so many times and almost picking it up. I love Seanan McGuire, and I had no clue that Mira Grant was a pen name until earlier this year when I dove down this rabbit hole. This series is so damned good that it is almost painful that I did not read it before now. So many great characters delivered with only the level of sass that Seanan can. At some point I am going to start the October Daye series, because I am fully on board with anything crafted by this author I think. If you like zombies and honestly a kind of fresh spin on them, or at least fresh for the time in which these books came out. I highly suggest giving these a read. They go pretty quickly.
In the biggest disappointment or the year… we have Space Oddity by Catherynne M. Valente. I loved the adventures of Decibel Jones in Space Opera last year so freaking much, that I was rather excited to read this sequel. The problem is… this book is a bit of a meandering mess. It eventually does find its heart and lands the plane safely… but holy shit are you going to have to wade through a lot of nonsense to get there. More than anything it feels like this author was pressured to write a sequel and had zero fucking clue how they wanted to do this thing. The entire first half of the book could essentially be removed and you would still have a reasonable plot. It just sort of feels like stalling until inspiration hit and then rushing to the finish line.
Camp Damascus
Camp Damascus from Chuck Tingle is the book that almost broke me. I had never read a Chuck Tingle book before, but this is very much not the usual “pounded in the butt by” book. This book is bleak… really fucking bleak. It is extremely well crafted and does a phenomenal job of exploring the themes of “gay conversion” camps through the lens of horror. Sure this is horror and sure there are fantastical elements, but the core of this narrative is all too real. It is well worth a read but it was a bit of a suckerpunch that left me reeling for awhile. I finished the book on March 27th, and it was not until July 23rd that I even attempted to read another book. Sure I had a really fucking bad July… for reasons I have gone into at length in so many posts… but this book drained me of the will to keep reading for awhile.
Sworn Soldier Series
Another series that I really enjoyed last year was the Sworn Soldier series by T. Kingfisher. Essentially this is the Gothic horror of Poe, Shelly and Stoker for a modern audience. Each of these books is pretty short, similar to the Murderbot books and are extremely easy reads. What Moves the Dead is effectively a re-imagining of the Fall of the House of Usher, and from there we get more interesting snippets of nature gone wrong, and eldritch horror in the other two novels. Alex Easton is an immediately likeable protagonist, and the books are just enjoyable. Well worth your time if you enjoy unknowable horrors.
Cerulean Chronicles
At least for me, as I have found out what a regressive shitbag that J.K. Rowling has turned out to be… I struggle with the Harry Potter series. I will always love the characters because those books meant so much to me as I was reading them, but I want zero of my dollars to ever go toward supporting her quite frankly evil causes. I’ve read that TJ Klune set out to write the Cerulean Sea series as an unabashedly clear wizarding tale, and one of love and warmth and acceptance. They succeeded in this and the two books are a joy to read. I happened to be turned onto this series just as the sequel was coming out, so I was able to read them back to back. The first novel is really tight and clearly focused, but the second one takes a little bit to get started but has a rousing finish. If you crave some intentionally queer friendly wizarding worlds… I suggest you also dive into this series.
You can always see the full list of everything that I read in 2025 over on my Bookwyrm goals page, as that is probably the easiest and most concise way to see it. You can also follow me on Storygraph to see what I am actively reading there. I occasionally write reviews there, but fairly rarely as most of my content ends up here on the blog. What were some of your favorite books that you read in 2025? Would love to hear of anything that you think I should read so I can add it to my 2026 list.
The post 2025 in Review: The Books appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
