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This year marks the 15th summary on this blog, and we reached the milestone of over 600 blogposts! As always, the Rayque3 Staff wishes you a great 2026!
It's been a bit of an eventful year, more than I expected it to be. So without further ado, let's get to it before I turn into a popsicle as today's blogpost is written in a basement in Switzerland, of all places. How did I end up here? Who knows.
The Youtube Department (Rayque3 Staff)
Our other video was a tad late. It was intended to be published while the corresponding event was still ongoing, but we couldn't get it through quality inspection on time. It happens, y'know. But I'm glad it's out.
Top 10 Most Viewed Videos for this year
1. WarioWare: Smooth Moves - All Microgames (33.500 views)
6. Kirby's Return to Dreamland - All Mini/Main/EX Bosses (6.200 views)
7. Donkey Kong 64 - All main bosses (2.400 views)
8. Borderlands 2 - Sound effects: Constructor's Digistruct (1.500 views)
Off-topic but tangentially related, Croc 1 was confirmed last year to see a physical release on the Switch and PS5, but its supplier keeps delaying shipment. It was intended to be released earlier this year, and despite it's still scheduled for "Q4 2025", they've been awfully silent. Darn, it appears Lux will have to wait a bit longer before he can finally play it.
The MapleStory Europe Department
Most of this year's work has been maxing out 6th Job with some modest upgrades on gear. Progress on Union's been superb, seeing as I now have a weekly income of over three billion mesos. I'm close to 9700 Union, Artifacts are Level 53 and with how consistent Union progress has been for several years, reaching that fabled 10.000 Union score might happen next year. I'd like to have some serious progress on gear, but with so many major updates being held hostage from KMS that isn't likely any time soon. But you make do with what you have. With the second weekly Monster Park Extreme, I'm able to push characters past Level 260 for extra stats. In particular, with the Burning Beyond event, I took the Level 270 event challenge for Len which I've completed last week. Not gonna lie, the class is not great. It's lacking in its basic gameplay with limited movement options and an obtuse chance-based on-hit healing when so many other classes have unlimited access to it. Add insult to injury, Len's fully-upgraded main attacking skill remains awfully short and by that point, it's outclassed by so many others. But the nuance I've learned this year is that subpar classes aren't the worst to play as long as the weekly bosses are short. Remember: if you only need to use buff sequence and Origin for a quick buck, class choice (thankfully) doesn't really matter anymore. Be wise with your time spent. Keep it easy.
Guild Castle: Personal Research maxed out very recently, and seeing that TMS expanded Guild Castle a second time, EMS should have more Personal Research skills later. Both Housing and Guild Castle has been adopted in KMS (as per the roadmap post-Pangyo truck incident), and this leads me to believe that the non-KMS Housing/Guild Castle will be replaced by their Korean counterparts. Remember, this wouldn't be the first time. Most forget that Soul Weapons and Root Abyss doesn't originate from KMS, but was overseas content adopted-and-made-mainstream by KMS later.
My coverage for the first three waves of 6th Job was published, and with new skills released not too long ago, I should be working on that blogpost soon. I'm not quite settled yet on my thoughts, so I'd like to wait a bit longer. It needs more testing, and I'm expecting to have it maxed out by early February (which should help to finalize my thoughts).
Any other closing thoughts that I haven't already discussed at length? With how much of a disaster it's been lately, I've been gravitating to write less about Maple in general. Seeing as I don't sugarcoat things, the past two years have been overly negative because the state of the game is simply not doing well. Anyone that believes otherwise is full of shit. I'd prefer to avoid the discussion but that's not always possible. Now, you tell me what is the plan for Classic MapleStory because I have no reasons to believe it'll have a chance for long-term survival. Nexon's already struggling to maintain Reboot past its expiration date, yet they insist to add an even more complex server type to the client. You know what's going to be really funny? Every time Classic, regular or Reboot has a critical bug, one will drag every other server into maintenance mode. You thought Jett, Sia or Steam Market integration was bad? We might witness the worst one yet.
The LEGO Department
The portfolio-related goal for the year was to develop a walking sequence for Ouroboros. I am close to figuring it out. It's a new build, so it comes with its own problems. While I finally got the main play feature to work last year, none of its solutions were sufficient for a pair of legs. Seeing how much torque part 46490 delivered, I expected them to work for everything. As always, I learned the hard way that this was not the case. Thus, I had to start from scratch again.
You may recall that I saw potential in a robot leg design from James Bruton. By July I had the necessary parts to build them and by September I had a proof of concept. Those clutch joints were not needed, oops. But the LEGO leg design had a fatal flaw: it couldn't carry weight. The way it's designed is nonoptimal for torque. With the "real" one, you could compensate with better motors, but with LEGO we don't have this option. This proof of concept was already using the best possible motors, so it required a different approach. Going back to the drawing board, I identified the issues* and designed a new frame. Lo and behold, by November I had the breakthrough I was looking for! As you can tell from this video, this new build can hold a lot of weight, but it's still in early stage of development. You can hear the buggy motor struggling to carry all that weight, so I'll have to increase the amount of them to improve the leg design's performance.
But that'll have to wait, as this year has been really expensive because buying LEGO parts is not cheap*. In particular, after last year's success I stockpiled Powered Up motors and gen 4 Mindstorms as I expected to need more of them for the legs. Of course, that did not work so I ended up going back to the EV3 ecosystem, which required yet another purchase for the cables, buggy motors and sensors I did not have. But all of this has been a worthwhile investment in knowledge and experience, as the project is getting somewhere. A walking sequence should be possible next year!
I wasn't expecting to go back to the EV3 ecosystem, but given the circumstances a walking sequence wouldn't have been as fast if I stuck with the generation 4 Mindstorms. Even though you can run six motors on the latter, EV3 has a few advantages like being able to run four (and possibly more) of the absurdly powerful buggy motors with an insane RPM of over 1k, which is what I'll be using to compensate for the linear actuator's otherwise awful speed. The reason why I haven't tried this before... is simply because documentation on these finds do not exist. Buggy motors on an EV3 requires converter cables, and it appears that in the past decade nobody went out of their way to confirm that it works. If you can't Google for these answers, you have no choice but to financially take risks to find those answers yourself.
Either way, having learned Micropython for Pybricks proved to be a worthwhile venture because programming EV3 is the same but on Visual Studio Code. Using VSC is a tad more challenging than the simplified Pybricks software, but it also allows me more options with the EV3. For instance, the microSD allows me to run much larger programs, which is inevitable the more complicated this project becomes. Sound files can be played, which you can't on gen 4. The USB port can be used to control the project through Wifi*, and I can opt to run LEGO's own USB camera for video tracking. I'm excited for the newfound possibilities for several of my projects running EV3, but I also dread the programming...
Anything else? Remember those retail flags? Earlier this year, I've gotten my hands on a product display. Usually there would've been a blogpost about it, but I've decided to wait because the display requires restoration. It's a side project, if you will. Electrical engineering has always been a field I'm not very good at, and in self-imposed challenges I find a way to slowly get better at it. I've been able to fix most of the problems except for one I can't identify the cause, though it's probably one of the two capacitors that needs replacing. I could send it to a repair shop, but that defeats the point of learning it myself. Anyway, I figured that this restoration process would make for a fascinating blogpost, but till then the great article on Stonewars will have to suffice. So much stuff to do, but so little energy to do anything, really...
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Blimey, time to talk at length about some (but not all) of the games I've played this year. Not all of these were great, to be honest. But I see value in talking about what games I'd not recommend. Caveat emptor - you know the drill.
To my surprise, the three games I would recommend avoiding have more problems in common than they should have. They are Xenoblade X Definitive Edition, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and "Sarge, look! She's doing Morph Ball!". You'd be surprised to hear I had a draft for a blogpost for Ragebound, but after going back and forth on it I've decided to let that one go. But damn, this lineup is painful and it really do be like that sometimes. It's about to get real nerdy in here...
Xenoblade X Definitive Edition (or DEX, for short) somehow manages to do more harm than the DE for the first game. It repeats the same mistakes yet finds ways to make them worse. As the Switch is no Wii U, giving the DEX a higher resolution meant that other things (i.e. polygon count, textures) had to give. The overhauled style is also too far off to be faithful. I could go on for hours but the main problem that the DEX introduces is with its new story. It deconstructs everything the original built up, damages it and leaves nothing left to care about. Aside from what I've said, my interest in the series has declined after how much the Definitive Editions have butchered the original works. Furthermore, the haphazard rework of the reward tickets requires a year of daily logins in an offline JRPG to craft the post-game outfits, unless you pay for NSO (which was free on Wii U). Reminder that they did not futureproof this, so eventually once the Switch servers go offline the next release of this game will repeat all of the problems - Bonjelium, another 100h+ grind and all now-paywalled holofigures become unobtainable. I've gone at length recommending Xenoblade to friends, but if they don't go out of their way to play the originals, none of them can share the same enjoyment because these won't be the same. After Xenoblade 3's second half not living up to the series standards, I started to crave for a sequel to X. But after the DEX, I'd rather want they'll never continue X and have another numbered entry instead. Thanks, I hate it.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is not a great game. A series known for its brutal difficulty and tight gameplay, Ragebound is too forgiving and wants to do too many things. None of its interesting gameplay additions are executed well because something else got sacrificed for it. The game is either insufficiently playtested, or offended playtesters so much they overcompensated with bandaids to a detriment. The game ultimately became a forgettable experience where even on its hardest difficulty, 100% wasn't too much of a challenge and yet the game still somehow overstayed its welcome. All of its best aspects including presentation, adaptation of the source material and its underrated soundtrack are wasted by the abundance of flaws. It doesn't even run 60 FPS on the Switch (2), which is inexcuseable. Ragebound is a harsh reminder that not all returns can be stellar, and that it's never too late to pick up the classics from a bygone era. Now, let me wallow in Kaze no Chronicle which is humorously on-point with the secret ending and the state of this franchise.
Metroid Prime 4 not delivering is the most painful one of this lineup, because Nintendo had a lot riding on it. It is clear why they were reluctant to give the game's development to Retro Studios; all of their best employees left the company long ago. What we're left with is an unfinished game, released out of obligation because it was announced too early. It probably would've been better if it was cancelled for the Switch and fully developed for its successor, though with the 2017 announcement it would've been a legal mess. Nintendo heavily invested in Retro Studios during its development, so I can't help but see Prime 4 as a loss leader with growing pains for the new team. That said, I have little hopes for a sequel because there are things about Prime 4 that's so fundamentally flawed that they're better off not making one. At its core, MP4 is like the first Prime* but worse in every way. It has the same beams, but without the type matchups and visors to keep things interesting. Several Metroid (Prime) staples are missing, i.e. the Gravity Suit and Screw Attack. It has the same biomes but its linearity gave it the infamous "corridor shooter" moniker; as it lacks a labyrinth to get lost in. Maps are light on puzzles and exploration yet heavy on backtracking. There's an excessive amount of handholding. Bosses tread same ground and honestly, the writing is so utterly broken that it breaks canon in ways the writing team probably aren't aware of. All of this blends into an one-trick pony and anyone that pretends that the game is great has yet to suffer through its endgame twice. If you are going to tackle Hard Mode, I'd recommend to do GE early as its first perk can be unlocked early. Sylux should not have been in this game and the story would have been more compelling without it. Weavel would've made narratively more sense if they insisted on a returnee from Hunters. The game's front-loaded and once you have recruited Tokabi, it drives off a cliff barring VUE-995. The Famitsu interview can take a hike because shifting the blame to Bamco just means Retro 2.0 couldn't get shit done for six years, and any excuse they're giving is just damage control. If they have to explain the story in an interview, that means they should've included it in the final product. Ultimately, Prime 4 is one of those bargain bin games like Other M and Federation Force. You have been adequately warned; I'll remind you that for its hefty price tag, you could've gotten both Metroid Dread (arguably the best game you can get for the Nintendo Switch) and Metroid Prime Remastered instead for the same price.
In the wider discussion of Metroid Prime 4, there was this one comment that stood out to me. It mentioned that when Metroid Prime 1 came out on the GameCube back in 2002, people feared Metroid would lose its identity in becoming a generic first-person shooter like all games were becoming during these days. This concern was only all the more valid, with Microsoft's immense success with the launch of the XBOX and Halo. Two decades later, there's not much left of it and it's ironic to see the few employees that left Halo ended up working on Prime 4, alongside other industry veterans from franchises that have met a similar fate. It reminds me how easy it is to take the talent we had for granted and that it's all been utterly wasted. The industry has never been this successful yet I can't say as a hobbyist it feels that way.
On the bright side, the Metroid franchise can afford a dud like Prime 4, which wasn't a luxury it had back in 2017. You might remember the drought that this franchise had, and at the time, Prime 4's announcement was significant. Though funnily enough, by the time MP4 released, the franchise was back on its feet with Samus Returns on the 3DS, Dread and Prime Remastered on the Switch. It may not have been there during the Metroid renaissance, but it has played a role as its early announcement was crucial for Nintendo. It was during the time when the Wii U flopped and the Switch desperately needed some big announcements to get customers on board. In that regard, it has done its job. So... win?
Now, do I have anything positive to say about any other games I've played this year? Well, of course I do. If you were looking for the killer app on the Switch 2, play Donkey Kong Bananza. R.O.B.'d game of the year, it's such a fantastic addition to the franchise that celebrates its history in ways you can't even comprehend until you're knees deep into the Emerald Rush DLC. Bananza is Nintendo at its best: innovative, forward-thinking and a videogame first and foremost. This, alongside Metroid Dread, are my only true recommendations as must haves on the Switch family. If you liked Bananza's gameplay loop and have yet to decide whether if the DLC is worth it, I'd say it's the icing on the cake that's unfortunately missing in the base game. Heads up: the time spent on Emerald Rush eclipses the time spent to 100% the base game. Finally, a new contender to compete with LEGO Dimensions for the title of king of the collectathons...
While not officially released this year, Cyber Shadow had its physical release on the Switch. Forget Ragebound, as it's the successor fans of Ninja Gaiden are looking for. I'll be writing a dedicated blogpost for Cyber Shadow one day, but let me tell you that it's excellent. It has the tight gameplay, it has the difficulty, yet it gracefully handles respawns so you can keep trying. Even better, as your kit expands, the game evolves with it and remains challenging. Once you get the parry, that's when the game really clicks in a way only one other indie title has ever done for me. It's a niche game that requires an acquired taste for difficult games, but rest assured: if this style is your cup of tea, Cyber Shadow is worthy of your attention. Bonus points: it plays well with the SNES controller. As the saying goes... vote with your wallet.
Anyway, with most of Nintendo's announced lineup having released, we'll start next year without knowing much about what's in store. Will Metroid 6 live up to the insane standards set by Dread? With Nagoshi's game finally coming out, does that mean Nintendo will ask him for the next F-Zero? Does Mega Man 12 mean that Capcom will inevitably call Inti Creates to restart ZX3? Is Half-Life 3 finally upon us? What has Treasure been cooking for over three years now? Only time will tell. But I can confirm that it's time I get a Super Famicom in 2026. This one has been long overdue, as I've always wanted to expand my library of Nintendo devices and hardware add-ons. It feels like now is the right time.
That it's for 2025 - I'll see you guys again next year!
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