Things I enjoyed in June 2026

02 Jul, 2026

June has been tiring. It's too freaking hot in here. Playing, watching and reading stuff was some of the things that kept me going through this hellish climate.

Roman noises in the background

I'm not sure how famous Zerocalcare is outside Italy¹. He's an italian comic artist who started producing cartoons in his artstyle on Netflix. In 2021 was Tear along the dotted line, in 2023 was The world can't tear me down, this year Due Spicci (or My Two Cents as I think it was translated) came out and, as the other shows, I enjoyed it! It's a bit longer and a bit... I don't want to say less personal because it's not. The other two felt like a biography even if they weren't, this one felt a bit less like that, that's the way I want to put it. And it's not really a fault of the show, it's probably just how I percieve it. The themes and the storytelling are as good as always with gutpunching moments, personal crisis that as a millennial I felt very close, but fun and snarky moments as well. He's got a peculiar style, so be prepared if you don't know him and want to try his shows or comics out.

Storms approaching

Talking about animated shows on Netflix, my bf is a huge DMC fan, and as such we HAD to watch Adi Shankar's adaptation. The first season left me not knowing if I liked it or not and with time my opinion worsened. Granted, it had a soundtrack that, as a person who was an adolescent in the '00, felt really nostalgic and Lady's flashback episode was good, but at the same time it... didn't feel like Devil May Cry somehow. Especially the characters. Especially Lady.

What about Devil May Cry Second Season, you might ask? It didn't change my perspective, unfortunately, despite feeling a slightly bit more like the DMC games. I think my big problem is that it feels to me like I'm watching a Devil May Cry story with a filter that doesn't belong. Too many themes that don't belong, too american in the way the story is told, characters that feel like the shadows of themselves (or outright different characters), music that I like in its own right but feels misplaced sometimes². And, you probably already know I got a pet peeve with character themes used when the character is not involved, so why are Bury the Light and Shall Never Surrender even here if Nero is not?

I assure you, I want to watch this with an open mind and I'll still watch the third season. But I'd much prefer play a new game if I had to choose.

Remember our lord and saviour chaos?

Talking about series I'd love to see new games of, I'm seriously refraining myself from replaying the entire Xenosaga trilogy. Maybe because I still have a lot of japan-only side content to tackle! This time it's Xenosaga Pied Piper's moment. What is Pied Piper, you might ask? It's a short prequel to the main story, released on japanese mobile phones in 2004. For many years considered lost media, has got a nice resurgence in the last few years. First a full walkthrough posted on YouTube, then a fan remake made with RPG maker based on the visuals of the walkthrough and now (since late April this year) available on Steam and Switch thanks to G-MODE. This last official port hasn't recieved a translation yet... But the remake has! And that's what I played.

The story is pretty cool and follows the investigations of Jan Sauer, better known as Xenosaga party member Ziggy, before he became a cyborg. The remake overall is also pretty cool: it's got an original soundtrack inspired both by the original PP and the main trilogy, a new battle system and a lot of qol. If you're a Xenosaga fan I wholeheartedly recommend it! You can get it here.

There's a you that remains

Apparently, I've played a lot of sci-fi games in June. One of those was a game I wanted to play since it came out in 2024. 1000xResist is an indie adventure game (I've read people describing it as a mix of visual novel and walking simulator and I think that checks out) with a fantastic story. I don't want to disclose much about the story itself, I feel like the less you know, the better. I loved it, and I think it might also be because the themes match my tastes to a great degree. It's got clones, alien invasions, memory shenanigans, strict societies where rules are everything, characters with gray motivations... All very compelling stuff for me.

A major complain the game gets is that the gameplay is not that engaging and it should have simply be a VN. I disagree. The mere fact you can move in the various locations yourself gives the creators freedom to use all kind of different ways to tell the story, and I think it's one of its biggest strenghts. It reminded me of the movies Arrival and Everything Everywhere All At Once and my favourite level of Dishonored 2 for very different reasons.

It's longer than other games of the same genre and I'll admit the graphics might not be everone's cup of tea, but for me? It might become one of my favorite indie games ever. I'm honestly excited for Prove you're human, the team's next game!

you can be both an hacker and an archivist

Another sci-fi game, another story told in a peculiar way. Something has happened on a ship far away and you can understand the what and whys reading all the documents in the ship's systems and talking to the two AI's who can't stand each other. This is Analogue: a hate story, a 2012 indie Visual Novel. It's pretty cool being an archivist in this game, learning about the lost society of the ship, but prepare for unpleasant stuff and a lot of misogyny.

As I write, I also started reading its sequel Hate Plus, focusing more on AI *Mute, while Analogue is more about the other AI *Hyun-ae, and I'll probably give you a more detailed opinion on the duology next month. But even by itself, I think Analogue is a nice experience.

(not) Trails

Last game, not sci-fi! In february I finally caught up with the Trails series. Or the main games, at least ³. Time to tackle the spin offs! I finally found a switch physical copy of The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails⁴. From what I had heard, I expected something a bit different, especially story/lore-wise. Not bad by any means, but I heard multiple times that "it's not canon yet, but it surely will!" and I feel like, other than Nayuta's family name and Creha's characters design, there's not much that links it to the main series, almost nothing. Not only that, I feel like the worldbuilding actively disregards the main games' one, especially after Horizon. I don't know, we'll see, I'm not complaining if they actually never make it canon.

The gameplay itself is fine, but once again, it plays more like a Zwei than like a Trails: you have two characters (Nayuta and the fairy Noi) that you can control at the same time through small dungeons whith Falcom's classical PSP graphics.

I think it's a fun game, and it perfectly works if you play it even if you don't know anything about the Trails series. I'd argue it might work better, because you'll have no preconceptions! Anyway, see you when they canonize Nayuta as Towa's grandpa.

I owe an apology to my english literature teacher

Classics are strange. You learn about them in school and you hate them, or maybe just misunderstand them. For years, stories from the '800 by english female authors were stored in the "romance" corner of my mind. I never really cared for romance for the sake of romance⁵. The recent Wuthering Heights movie trailer describes the story it's based on as "The greatest love story ever written". I haven't seen the movie, and I'm not sure I want to see it in the first place, but I've finally read the book and, let me tell you, that book is not a love story. Not entirely, at least. That's first and foremost one of the most heated revenge stories I've ever experienced, written around the love between two horrible people. Heatcliff is that kind of man who would vent his hatred on anyone and always think he's right, Cathy is one of those girls who would take a bad decision and then keeps telling you how sad she is, never taking the blame on herself. They're absolutely despicable. And terribly entertaining. I had fun! My only problem with it, is that I read it on a book with an italian translation from the 70's that felt ancient and had some of the names translated, but, once I got acquainted to it, it wasn't a big problem anymore. However, the book contains Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey as well and I'm not sure I'm reading those here as well.

Strange stuff happening in Perdido

The first time I heard about the Blackwater saga is when a colleague told me he read a whole six books saga in a single week because he just couldn't stop reading, and from that episode I kept hearing about it over and over again, until I finally found the first book, The flood, at my local library last month. I was in the mood for a horror story. And I'd agree and it's pretty cool even if the story does not have an ending in the first book. Now I get why here in Italy all 6 books are sold together in a single boxset. This is why I can't really say much about the story after just a single book. I like it so far and I think it's well written.

Also, I knew nothing about the writer, Michael McDowell, but I found out he's worked on the scripts of Beetlejuice and Nightmare before Christmas. Unfortunately he's passed away in 1999. I'm excited to read more of his works.

what else?

• Muse new album came out and I love it. I also got the tickets to watch them live next November!
• After many months I started watching anime alone again: for some reason between reading and playing I never found a proper time to do it, but now an episode during breakfast has become a small morning routine!
• Xenoblade Kart! It's fun!!

See you next month!

#books #monthlyrecap #series #videogames