Nintendo

It's been a while, but my gaming progress has been at a snails pace.

I've finished SMT V:Vengeace! Overall, I still really like the game, but it didn't leave as big of an impression as the vanilla version did. I'd still recommend Vengeance over Vanilla, I've just played so many SMT games that I eventually hit a bit of a fatigue.

Now, ironically, since then, I've been playing another SMT game: Persona 5 Tactica. Unlike with the main games, I don't care about completely filling my demon compendium in this one, which is the thing I got actually fatigued about.

Tactica has a lot of similarities to the Mario & Rabbits games, which I did enjoy. These aren't proper SRPGs in my book, but rather puzzles with light SRPG mechanics. Often times side-quests even want you to do them in a single turn. The one new mechanic added to the formula is the main thing you're trying to do as much as possible: All out attacks. Basically, under certain conditions, your characters get another turn and you deal massive damage to all enemies within the triangle created by the 3 characters you play with. All you other options just serve to set these up.

The gameplay can get a bit samey. To counteract this, maps themselves are movement puzzles with switches to stand on and similar things.

I like the new story and characters, although the game is unexptedly wordy. If you're good at the ganeplay, half the playtime is cutscenes.

Lastly, I finished Ai: The Somnium Files and started the sequel: nirvanA Initiative. Still a really good time, but this time around, you don't play as Date and there are less branching paths. You know, the best things about the first game. I'm close to the end, I think, and my overall opinion is heavily dependant on the resolution. The mystery is fun, but it only stays fun if the explanation is both good and had a lot of foreshadowing - once again, like the first game.

I started Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time this week. I jumped into it blind, and wasn't expecting it to be so hard. But I'm really enjoying it so far, about 5 hours in.

Chrono Trigger, and Quake 2 and Valheim co-op with a friend

Thank you for asking me about Pokotopia. I “finished” it today and I’m really mad about it. First, it was an almost perfect formula for me. It was a Dragon Quest Builders sequel without all that pesky fighting. But I made the mistake of Spring Break: I poured time into it. Instead of playing a little or even an hour each day, I spent five hours plus for a week fulfilling main missions and moving the story forward. The problem is that the main story is not the point of the game, so when I’d completed the story, I felt done and unsatisfied.

To anyone else playing, I recommend devoting yourself to whatever you find in it that it fun. For me, it was paving roads. I don’t think I had a more enjoyable three hour period than when I put yellow stone flooring throughout the town. When I mentioned it to my wife, she commented that “of course you love the infrastructure parts”.

Dollar to hour enjoyed ratio was excellent, but I should have known better and paced myself on the game. There’s more to it, though. As soon as the credits were done, I found a new Pokémon.

Most of my “gaming” is getting the next season in my Kahoot! Challenge for my 7th grade students. This season will be based on softball and baseball, and programming the excel spreadsheet to take in Kahoot data and spit out a baseball box score has occupied a joyful majority of my leisure time. The spreadsheet is getting so big that between mass copying formulas, I had time to write into my favorite thread on Lemmy.

Since I'm working this weekend and only have my Switch, I'm bouncing between Pokémon Violet, Scarlet (for exclusives), Arceus and Sword just doing a few little tasks each day in my endless quest for a shiny living dex.

I've also been playing a bit of Gale of Darkness now that it's been rereleased. I played a lot of Colosseum as a kid, but never managed to get a copy of this one. It's pretty rough, but about what you'd expect. Some of these models and animations are insane.

Looking forward to getting back to Monster Hunter Stories 3 and Resident Evil Requiem next week.

Very little gaming time since since I've been busy with a Magic the Gathering project - building on a box of Premodern decks, a "nostalgia" format with only cards printed between 1995 and 2003.

I don't have the time or interest to keep up with the crazy speed of MTG releases nowadays, so this type of format that doesn't require updates suits me better. The idea is to have a bunch of decks ready and use it as a board game of sorts, just pick up a couple decks and play any time we feel like it.

Will still be working on this for a few more weeks, but now that I got the lists defined and I finished organizing which cards I own and which cards I need to buy/trade I should have more time for gaming again.

Playing Witch on the Holy Night!

Progressing through Chapter 8.

Playing Astalon: Tears of the Earth!

Current side-game. An old-school metroidvania with 3 different characters (the classic "warrior, mage, archer" trio), each with different strenghts, weaknesses, and traversal abilities. The map design is great with interesting puzzles, the challenge is "just right" so far and bosses are fun. I think the balance between characters is not great (mage seems way better than the other two), but that's not a major issue.

However... the checkpoint system really sucks. Health recovery is very limited and anytime you die you go back to the entrance of the castle. Sure, there's some fast travel spots and you unlock a ton of shortcuts so getting back to where you were before will be much faster than before, but these runbacks get tedious very quickly. I'd also like to add that the key required to use the fast travel is a missable item, which is just mean in a game with this design.

Played more Vision of Mana and misunderstood how skill points work the entire time. I thought they were shared among all characters, which didn't really make much sense to me, but the system with the extra points from gold clovers had me utterly confused.

Meanwhile, in Fallout 3, I'm finally getting to use the one mod that I prepared (aside from bugfixes and visuals). I want to play mostly vanilla, but when I looked through the list of companions to prepare my playthrough, I noticed my favorite companion from my first attempt to beat the game was missing. I experimented with a bunch of mods back then and just forgot this was one of them. But I want to have Bittercup as my companion! She and my character, Jimothy, are two very different kinds of idiots who just happen to perfectly misunderstand each other. I'm almost ready to follow the main story again, but I'll stop by a DLC that is not too far away from Megaton, though I remember really not liking that one...

Arma Reforger and maybe The Long Dark

Played a bit of Tom Clancy's The Division, slowly clearing the side missions and leveling up. Have cleared the level 20 main mission, and I think level cap is 30, so still a bit left.

TD1 is a great game and it turned 10 years old the other day. The snowy city is beautiful even though its a quarantine zone :/