Recent blog posts from danbruno.net
Tokyo Xanadu : I’m continuing my Falcom run from last month by replaying this oddball in preparation for its sequel, Kyoto Xanadu . On paper it seems like a marriage of Falcom’s strengths; in practice the combat is not quite Ys -quality and the narrative not quite Trails -quality, and it’s all held back by a surprisingly mediocre localization. The bones are still good, but I suspect it’s for the…
The month of Ys : I’ve been gradually picking through my backlog of unplayed or unfinished titles from Nihon Falcom’s Ys series, and this month I got into a groove and hammered through four games in a row (!) to complete the set. Based on my rough sense of fandom preferences I think I’m lower on The Oath in Felghana and higher on The Ark of Napishtim than average. All have their sharp edges, and…
Titanium Court : I admit I found the prerelease hype-building for Titanium Court to be a little insufferable; it was a lot of winking and nodding from the IGF crowd who wouldn’t even mention which game they were praising. Still, enough people whose opinions I value were into it for me to give it a whirl. And hey, it’s pretty neat! The gameplay is a clever hybrid of match-3 and tower defense, and…
Ichiko Aoba’s Across the Oceans 2026 Tour : I’ve mentioned on here before that if I can see a live Ichiko Aoba concert, I will. It’s taken me across the country, over the border into Canada, and now, appropriately enough given this tour’s title, across the ocean to London. It was a treat to see Aoba play with both the 12 Ensemble and with Taro Umebayashi , who helped compose,…
They Are Still Being Shaken This Morning : This is a goofy teen romance manga series with one of my favorite twists of all time: the point-of-view characters are not the two naive high schoolers crushing on each other, but three strangers who ride the same morning train as them and obsessively dissect their progress in the group chat. It’s an absolute delight and I’m so glad it was picked up for…
Xenoblade Chronicles X : This is the one Xenoblade I hadn’t touched yet, and I used the recent Switch 2 upgrade as an excuse to pull it out of the backlog. I’m dozens of hours in and still can’t quite decide how I feel about it! The evidence suggests I’m enjoying it well enough, but I can’t help but wish I liked it either more or less. If I liked it more, I’d feel better about the…
The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon : We’ve enjoyed years of improbable wins in the overseas Trails fandom, from localizations of the niche spinoff titles to remakes with simultaneous worldwide release dates. Horizon , though, may represent the most improbable win of all: the international releases have somehow caught up to the Japanese ones. Nothing to sneeze at when we’ve been an…
The New Yorker at 100 : A recent Netflix documentary made for the preeminent (or rather preëminent) magazine’s centennial. The New Yorker is a relic in many ways—some interviewees valiantly argue that it’s not entirely old-fashioned—though in a time of crumbling institutions and cynical brand cashouts that actually doesn’t seem so bad. I found myself envious of a world where a great reported piece…
Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor : This is the new special exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I only knew a couple of Homer’s pieces from their appearance in the MFA’s regular galleries, and they never really spoke to me one way or the other—but after seeing the larger survey of his work here, I’m much higher on him. (I think it was a mix of getting more context on his…
Today was my last day at Epic Games. I haven’t written a ton about career stuff here, so for context: I previously worked at Harmonix Music Systems for thirteen years, from August 2008 until its acquisition by Epic in November 2021; I then worked at Epic for another four years from November 2021 until, well, just now. I’m not sure I ever quite fit in at Epic. I was happy enough for a while, as I…