De_Narm

Thanks for asking, but there isn't yet. I've dabbled around quite a bit and wan't to focus on actually finishing something this year. Maybe for the next one.

Over the last two years, I've often lost my drive to continue since there are always new shiny ideas that are far more interesting than doing a lot of the menial work game dev involves. Kinda the opposite of your problem, really.

Didn't game too much this holiday season and I want to focus more on making games instead of playing them this year - let's see how that one is working out.

Anyhow, got in a good chunk of SMT V Vengeance! The QoL stuff is awesome, but it's still pretty similar to the original - just with more quests and demons along the way . I don't mind since I loved the original game, but if you didn't it likely not worth it.

Started Ai: The Somnium Files! Decided to play through some detective games with my partner. This one is a great start! I like the characters, it's both fun and has a good mystery. I'll probably go through the entire series + rain code, then do the Ace Attorney games. Are there other games like this?

At this point getting slandered by Israel seems more like a badge of honor. I don't even want a nation committing an ongoing genocide to like me.

First of all, I plan on clearing my backlog:

• Octopath 2
• Nioh 2
• 13 Sentinels
• P5 Tactica

Besides that, I have a few things on my mind:

• Hundred Line Defense
• Final Fantasy Tactics A2
• Xenosaga 1-3 (or maybe the rumored remake?)
• FF 7
• Persona 4
• Dragon Quest 1-3 Remakes

Probably already too many RPGs for a single year.

My cat does leave a strong smell. It has become my favorite smell.

Vaguely in order from worst to best, always referencing the most recent release:

• Baten Kaitis Origins Just worse in pretty much every way compared to the original.
• Super Mario RPG It does show it's age and feels way too simplistic for my taste.
• Pokemon Legends Arceus I loved the first area. In fact I spent so much time there, every other area became boring since I was overleveled and already had most of the Pokemon. Needs some serious balancing.
• Baten Kaitos There is much to be loved as the game does so many things you normally don't see. However, a good chunk of mechanics is best ignored as the game progresses and battles become monotonous.
• Star Ocean Second Story R Kinda a repeating thing this year, the first half was awesome, the second half not so much. Both story and many mechanics took a nosedive.
• Harvestella All around really solid but simplistic. The story goes hard after a certain point and at the end I felt like I finished multiple games.
• Xenoblade X I love everything Xenoblade, but this one has a few problems. E.g. Skells. They don't scale with anything and are so much better than ground combat, they basically drain the RPG elements out of the game once you get them. Beat the entire second half without ever changing my Skell. Also, much more personal, I much prefer the headcanon I built for half a decadd over the new story elements added in the remaster.
• Metaphor A mixed bag. There is so much good compared to Persona 5, but having endless mana regen just completely kills any challange and led to way less thightly designed dungeons.
• Pokemon Conquest I just love SRPGs and having multiple layers and meta progression between dozens of different stories made it perfect to play every so often. Placement is heavily biased, playing a few campaigns with my partner is a tradition for the holiday season. A good chunk of maps is really annoying if you play the game for longer stretches.

With my limited knowledge of no Mandarin at all, I recognize the vectors to be the 5 chinese elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth).

The matrix just combines these symbols into new characters, but no clue how most of them are read. Could make sense in the context of alchemy, could be total bs. The few I do recognize work sometimes, like fire + fire = blaze, others don't - or I'm reading them wrong.

But like, there is no reason you should have to travel further, just because your country is bigger.

In addition, as an EU resident you can travel across the EU like it's one big country. The US is only about twice as large as the EU.

It's in a similar vein. There are new demons, quests, QoL stuff and some rebalancing changes just like in P5R. However, instead of a new chapter, Vengence added a new route through the game - revamping most of the story. (Or fixing the lack thereof.)

Currently, it's still quite similar to vanilla SMT V, but I've been told it will diverge a lot more quite early. Don't know if or how many new locations there are.

Still not that big of an achievement, but it's total length and India is only about 1/3 the size of the US. So it's more than 3 times as dense already.

Probably Alaska then, but I have no clue which episode. These types of episodes are all jumbled together in my mind.

I think it's the one future episode with Lisa as the POTUS, 'the president wore pearls'.

The joke was Maggie writing a card from Antarctica,, which now is a beach paradise due to global warming. If memory seerves right, there are even some penguins sonewhere in there.