Preamble

I lied about the date, I’m actually posting this a week later than what it says, but that’s when I should have written this if I had thought about it sooner.

Basically I wanted to round up everything from my media thread for this year and pick out what things I liked the most.

Honestly picking out only 5 things is really hard and I’m not sure if I have the best choices, I kind of just chose what I think made the biggest impact on me overall. Things that I’ve had floating around in my mind ever since I experienced them.

Ordering them is another thing altogether, I’ve always been bad at things like that, so I kinda just threw them into an order that felt good enough to me.

Hunter’s Top 5 of 2024

5. Drakengard

Honestly I think what’s stuck with me most after Drakengard is the OST. I know it’s something that gets memed on a lot like “it sounds like a CD skipping”, but there’s just something about it that really appeals to me.

It’s a chaotic mixture of noise made with mangled samples of classical music. It’s overbearing, it’s repetitive, it’s harsh, it’s beautiful, it’s like nothing else I’ve ever heard before.

It works amazingly well with the atmosphere of the game. It’s really just wonderful.

The game itself I found clunky and oftentimes frustrating, yet I couldn’t help but love it by the end. Ending E was absolutely my favorite. If you’re someone like me who had only played the Nier games and heard very little about the Drakengard series, I would recommend at least giving it a try (especially if you can emulate it to take advantage of turbo).

4. Tsukihime (Remake)

Aside from Doki Doki Literature Club which I read a long time ago, this is pretty much the first visual novel I’ve read, and I really enjoyed it.

My first experience with Tsukihime was through Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code, and once I heard they were releasing a remake of the visual novel, I knew I had to get it. I ended up buying the Limited Edition for Switch, which came with a really nice art book.

I’m not sure which route of the visual novel was my favorite, though Arcuied was definitely my favorite character. The artwork was also spectacular. I hated that they disabled screenshots after starting Ciel’s route because I kept seeing art I wanted to have a screenshot of.

I know that this remake only has two of the routes where the original has more, and I heard they were going to have another release later that includes the other arcs, so I’m definitely looking forward to experiencing more of Tsukihime when that arrives.

3. Xenogears

Xenogears is actually a game I’ve tried to play multiple times, but I’d always just end up dropping the game after rescuing Margie. It’s not that I didn’t want to play Xenogears, it’s just how things ended up going. However, after getting my hands on a PS1 and an actual copy of the game, I knew I had to fully commit this time no matter what.

I even ended up buying an Elgato Game Capture HD with the component adapter to record my gameplay, which also gave a good use to the 2012 Macbook Pro I had laying around to run the original software for it. Unfortunately it did bug out once and another time right at the end of the game I forgot to hit record until a ways in, so it’s not 100% of my playthrough, but it’s on my Youtube channel anyways under a playlist. I mostly did that so I could share clips and screenshots with my friends, after a session I would go through the recording and take any clips or screenshots I wanted. It was really fun, and I’ve started to do the same with other games as well.

As for the game itself, I had a blast with it. From my previous attempts at playthroughs and looking at guides I had a general idea of what I wanted to do with the game, mainly making Elly busted, which I did eventually achieve and used her Aerods to trivialize many encounters, until I had to replace her with Emeralda. That did mean I didn’t try out characters like Maria or Chu-Chu, mainly using Fei, Citan, Elly, and Billy, but I still had fun throughout the game and I never really got to a point where I felt stuck or that I had to really grind, until the end when I had to get some deathblows on Fei and Emeralda. The random encounter rate did feel a bit annoying at times though, I wish it was toned down just a bit.

As far as the story goes, I loved it. I already had a basic grasp of the lore of the main characters, but seeing everything actually play out in the game was still great. As I’m sure almost anyone would say, I wish they hadn’t started running out of budget during disc 2, I would have loved to at least see the cutscenes fully realized instead of a lot of them being done in that slideshow style where it’s just a still image behind the characters. That first segment when you start disc 2 is very memorable however. Another scene I really liked, and unfortunately one I did not get recorded, is an optional scene at the end of the game featuring Citan, Ramsus, and the Elements, which I found very sweet.

The music is also fantastic. It’s a soundtrack I listened to before ever playing the game and it’s one I’ll continue to listen to. Stand out tracks for me in particular are Torn, The Beginning and the End, Prayers -The Joy of Hope-, Shevat -The Wind Calls-, Cage of Remorse and Relief, and my favorite, October Mermaid.

2. Look Back

When I heard they were going to adapt this into a film, I went out and picked up the manga to read it first. I definitely enjoyed reading the manga, but I loved the movie.

I used to draw back in Elementary School / Junior High, I never really considered myself good at it but I did enjoy it. But, I never really stuck with it after taking the necessary art classes. Since then it’s been a thought that would come up every now and then, “I should learn to draw again”, but I’ve never committed myself to it. I have always had a desire to create something at least, whatever form it might end up taking.

Watching Look Back and later Girls Band Cry brought those feelings back full force, and while I still haven’t really taken any steps towards acting on those feelings, I’m definitely at a place in life where I’d comfortably be able to without worrying about it taking time away from other things like school.

(This is a bit meta, but coming back to this after a couple of hours, I guess you could say that programming is creating something, like this website. I guess I haven’t made something that feels me enough to satisfy myself. Maybe that just means I have to work on this website and my new wiki (wiki.hunterm64.org btw) more.)

1. Girls Band Cry

I am so very glad this was made available with official English subtitles. This is an amazing anime and more people need to see it, and being easily available helps a lot. My next wish is for a blu-ray release so I can hold this anime in my hands, but that might just require waiting a bit longer.

Seeing a clip of the animation style online is what got me interested in watching Girls Band Cry, and it’s definitely one of the highlights of the series for me, it’s unique and very well done. I would also point out how I thought the music was good, but considering it’s about music, that’s kind of a given.

If you haven’t watched this yet, go do it. Right now. It’s on Crunchyroll, or you can buy it on Prime Video. There’s other ways of course, but make sure the subs they use are good.

Nina’s the best btw

Afterword

After writing all of this and coming back to it, there’s some entries lower on the list that I wrote a lot more about than my number 1, so maybe the ordering is a bit out of whack, but I don’t really care. It’s my website and I can do whatever I want.

Thanks for reading, and here’s to a 2025 full of more wonderful experiences!