Operation Backlog Completion 2026
May 062026
 

In a recent interview with Nintendo Life about the Switch 2 port of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, director Naoki Hamaguchi touched briefly on the third game.

He said he’s gone through the full game 40 times (note: this doesn’t mean he’s playing through it like a complete game, but rather that he’s been going through different sections to test it) and that progress is going well.

Last September, Square Enix mentioned that the release timing for Part 3 had already been decided, and back in January they said the title had been decided.

All of this sounds like we’re marching closer to the official announcement of Part 3. I’ve seen people speculate about a Summer Game Fest reveal, and I can see it happening.

Meanwhile, I haven’t played Rebirth yet.

It’s incredible. The start of 2024 was packed for me with Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth coming out so close together, and not only did it take me until the end of last year to finish Infinite Wealth, but I haven’t even started Rebirth yet!

Will I have played it by the time Part 3 is announced? …If it’s announced at SGF, almost certainly not. Will I have played it by the time Part 3 is out? That feels like a more reasonable goal to shoot for.

Are you ready to play the third part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake trilogy? When do you think it will be announced?

May 012026
 

Wednesday evening, a PEGI listing for Tales of Eternia Remastered was discovered online.

It was a Nintendo Switch rating that strangely listed the release date as being April 16, 2026.

The page has since been taken down, but since it was there, it seems likely that it’s a legitimate leak and was posted too soon (possibly because of a delay, if we want to speculate on that erroneous release date).

Tales of Eternia is the 3rd game in the Tales series. For its North American release, the title was changed to Tales of Destiny II, possibly because Tales of Destiny had been the first Tales game released outside of Japan.

(For added confusion, there’s an actual Tales of Destiny 2, too, but it was never localized.)

While my Tales remaster hopes have focused on games never released outside of Japan at all, Eternia is another one I’d love to see, because it’s hard to find copies of it nowadays. On top of that, it’ll be nice to see one of the older games get a remaster for a change.

I still have many Tales games left in my backlog… and speaking of the backlog, you might have noticed today is May 1, but there’s no sign of a mystery game month like we’ve done in the past. I’m currently lagging so far behind in my in-progress games that I decided to skip mystery month this year to focus on them instead. Next year? Here’s hoping!

Anyway, there’s a good chance Tales of Eternia will be the next Tales remaster announced! Are you planning to play it?

Apr 242026
 

FuRyu has announced a PC remaster of Exstetra, a turn-based JRPG originally released in 2013 for the 3DS and Vita.

While the original was never released outside of Japan, the remaster will be available with Japanese, English, and Chinese language options.

According to its Steam page, Exstetra is about a high school boy named Ryoma who can awaken his allies powers by kissing them, which sounds both silly and entertaining.

Now, since I wasn’t familiar with the original, I checked its Wikipedia page and learned that the developer was Studio Saizensen, who developed several games I haven’t played but also did a lot of work on Glory of Heracles for the DS.

(I also learned that Yoko Shimomura composed the main theme, so that’s neat.)

It doesn’t look like there’s a trailer for the remaster yet, but I found one for the original.

Anyway, I never heard of Exstetra when it first came out, but now that the remaster has been announced, I’m curious about it. What do you think of Exstetra?