Strange Days #28
January 2026 | Chipping Away
I’ve been playing through Pokemon Emerald (2004) this month after getting a retro handheld console for Christmas. A flimsy plastic box with a tiny screen and a reputation for breaking without much reason, but one loaded with thousands of old games, many of which are next to impossible to actually play in 2026. I’m excited to dig into its library and fill in some longstanding gaps, like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound and Advance Wars, but, to begin with, I’ve stuck to a well-trodden path. I’ve been wanting to scratch the itch of a classic Pokemon game for a while, having not really played one since the re-release of Yellow on the 3DS eShop almost a decade ago. The series has been going in a different direction for a long time, so playing through Emerald has been a nice reminder of how good these games used to be. No bells and whistles, just total faith in the loop of finding and catching weird little monsters that help you move forward to the next place. And then the next, where even weirder monsters are waiting. On and on and on.
As you move through the game, challenges emerge that serve as barriers to progress. Deliver a letter to a man lurking in the depths of a cave? No problem. Shut down a generator before it goes haywire and destroys a nearby city? Sure, why not. Free the scientists of a weather research lab from the tyranny of a gang of organised criminals? On it. Once a task is done, the next one quickly reveals itself. And because none of it takes very long, the momentum is rarely diminished. Fleet-footedness is something I wish I saw more often in RPGs. Even the best ones are often plagued by long stretches of waiting for things to happen. In Emerald, though, there’s no dead air, no empty space, no killing time. It moves too fast for that. So far, it’s taken me around 30 hours of fairly relaxed play to get to the last gym, and I’ll probably be done with it entirely in another five or six. This is still a lot of time, of course. Emerald isn’t a short game, by any means. But its lean narrative design, built on top of a rich and rewarding gameplay loop, makes it feel sprightly for an RPG, and I’ve had a fantastic time chipping away at it in short bursts this month, making steady progress whenever and wherever I can.
I’ve taken a similarly sporadic approach to another game I’ve been playing. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (2025) wasn’t really on my radar until recently, when it started appearing on game of the year lists and won a few high-profile awards. This kind of high fantasy isn’t usually my thing, and I thought it was more of an action game than an RPG. But after catching up on the reviews and reading up on what it actually was, I figured I’d give it a go. And so far, I’m glad that I have. It’s a checkpoint to checkpoint game, where you navigate short sections one after the other, fighting enemies, finding items, and gaining experience, all of which gets you ready for the next section, and so on and so on. I’m about halfway through the second act, and I’m only now starting to get the hang of it. The battle system, a blend of real-time and turn-based combat, is built on dodges, jumps, and parries, and if you don’t get the timing exactly right you’re punished for it. When you do get it right, though, it feels like you’ve cracked the game, but that’s not a feeling that lasts very long. Enemy types change frequently, and so you have to constantly learn new attack patterns, new timings, new ways to make it through each fight.
The variety keeps things fresh, which would be more than enough to sustain the whole thing on its own. But every character in the roster has a different (and often confoundingly complicated) battle style layered on top of the foundations of the combat. It’s not just attacks and spells, but stains, and stances, and perfection grades. Pictos and Lumias. Foretells and twilights. And plenty of other things I haven’t even encountered yet, I’m sure. I don’t know whether all this depth is entirely necessary. There’s so much to master on top of all the dodging and jumping and parrying, and if you don’t get a feel for how each character plays you risk making them virtually unusable when you need them. Thankfully, it’s not been much of an issue so far. Like Pokemon Emerald, Clair Obscur is a fast-paced game, and it moves quickly enough that I’ve been able to ignore most of the complexity and focus instead on enjoying the ride. How long I can hold on to the luxury of ignorance, though, I don’t know. I’m sure I’ll hit a wall sooner or later that demands that I engage with these mechanics in a more meaningful way, and that’ll most likely be the point at which I bounce off the game. But for now, at least, I’m happy to keep playing as long as I keep moving forward. And surely that’s all that really matters.
Speak soon,
Matt