Weekend Gaming Playlist

While many people may be looking forward to this weekend for the extra day off on Monday, this RFP fan is just happy to finally have his Switch back from Nintendo’s repair service. My Switch has been out of commission for weeks, stalling my progress in a few ongoing titles that I hope to kick-start this weekend. At the same time, however, I’ll be continuing to press through a game that’s been sitting DEEP in my backlog for literal decades. Here’s what I’m playing this weekend!

Final Fantasy V (PSOne)

I’m ashamed to say that despite owning Final Fantasy Anthology on the original Playstation (checks notes) 22 years ago (!), I for whatever reason have never put more than an hour or two into Final Fantasy V. Life, it seems, has finally conspired to rectify this grave error. With my Switch down for the count the last few weeks, I went digging around the Playstation Store for an RPG to enjoy. To my delight, the PSOne version of FFV was readily available for just 10 dollars, and I’ve been plucking my way through this classic JRPG ever since. I’m still not even halfway through the game, but I can easily see why it’s so well loved. The characters are charming, the class system is engaging, and its story (while thin on detail) moves at a brisk enough pace – and with enough emotional beats – to keep me engaged. I plan to press on and hopefully roll credits on this title next month.

Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny Demo

I’m gonna be honest with everyone – I freaking love the aesthetics of the Disgaea series. I really do. But I have struggled time and again to get through this series because of god-awfully slow character progression and intense levels of grinding. I know the grind is the point of these games. Disgaea dives in headfirst and embraces the grind with ludicrous abandon. But my gaming time is precious, and I have a hard enough time completing 40-50 hour RPGs these days, let alone 100+ hour behemoths. But with the announcement of new quality of life features and a pumped up progression timeline in Disgaea 6, I’m ready to give it another go – starting with the demo that was released this week. I’m still very much on the fence on if I’m going to pick up Disgaea 6 or Mario Golf, but I hope a delve into the demo will give me a better idea of what choice to make in the coming weeks.

The Legend of Zelda (NSO)

I’m a father of two boys, and my oldest (a four-year-old) has finally reached the age where he’s interested in watching me play video games. We started with a march through the NES Marios, completing the original Super Mario Brothers, SMB 3, and playing a good portion of SMB 2, before a brief foray into the original Metroid left him annoyed at how often I was dying (whoops). But now I’ve gotten him hooked on watching me play The Legend of Zelda, and my plan to educate him on the classics is coming to fruition. We had to take a few weeks off after my Switch went down, but I’m excited to jump back into Hyrule with my son in tow this weekend, as we tackle Dungeon #3.

So those are the games I’ll be enjoying this weekend, and as usual for me, it’s a healthy mix of classic and modern RPGs. Let us know what games you’ll be playing over the long weekend in the comments below!