De_Narm

I remember putting so much time into the GameCube version as a kid, but I don't think I ever finished the game even once.

For the most part, I just enjoyed doing the police chases and dragging them out as long as possible. Think multiple hour long ones. Destroying police cars and creating as much property damage as humanly possible. Sadly, on the higher levels these became quickly frustrating as the police started deploying instant K.O. spike traps. Losing your run an hour in to one of these was the worst feeling.

The actual racing was fun, too, although I never liked drag races. Their control scheme was just awful. And I probably wasn't any good at racing, given that I don't remember ever finishing the game.

Still, I have a lot of nostalgia for the game and the soundtrack shaped my tastes in music to this day. I haven't enjoyed another racing game since then, I should probably go back and finish it.

I think it's worth to have a look at either the Gothic or Risen games, both made by the same people. They are quite old and janky, but they check a lot of your boxes.

There's also a remake comming up for Gothic 1.

As someone who's lived in Germany for years: that's a first for him.

Did a lot less than gaming than I originally planned. Still on Octopath Traveler II.

My B team, consisting of Castti, Agnea and Partitio feels a lot weaker than the other one, even accounting for the missing fourth character. I probably need to rethink their classes before finishing their final chapters. However, it's hard to beat the automatic buff and debuff at night in combination with the automatic weakness revealed. I did finish up a lot of other things, like collecting all rusty weapons (all of which are equipped to Hikari for his solo run attempt) or the Commerce chapters from Partitio.

Started Danganronpa and also completed the first chapter with my partner. The first case was super obvious, but I really enjoyed the courtroom gameplay anyway. I expect the others to become increasingly more difficult. I hope nothing bad ever happens to Sakura.

Careful with the spoiler section, I don't know if the game play out the same each time or if murders differ between playthroughs.

That's right, I almost forgot about him! While I can remove Ochette now, I think the extra challange of using only 3 characters is a welcome one.

More Octopath Traveler II.

I may just finish the game in the coming week. I wrapped up several stories this past week and can gladly report that the final bosses are a difficulty spike. At least the first one. I needed to devise an actual strategy and think about my builds for the first time. Looking forward to doing the same with my B team and probably for the secret boss as well.

You can, but only with really specific people. I think the person needs to be both physically able to do so and have enough knowledge to execute the task. For example, I don't think you can make someone write a death message in a language the person doesn't know.

So, you could say 'eat a specific anmial and die' and that would be a dice roll. 'Eat a corona infected animal and die of the virus' would be likely impossible, since your average person couldn't tell which animal is infected.

However, just find a person working with deadly diseases in a lab setting and command them to infect themself before going outside. Let them go on a trip until they die and your chances are quite good, depending on the virus.

It's been a while since I played the first one, it was my very first Switch game and OT II is probably one of my last ones before I get a Switch 2 (...assuming Monolith announces anything). Overall, I feel I enjoy them roughly the same. OT II improved on almost every front, except for the most glaring issues I had with the first one. I still think both are good games, though.

Continued with Octopath Traveler II.

By now my Ochette pretty much one shots most random encounters, her whole kit of monsters is just a collection of strong multi target attacks. Since these don't even cost mana, there's not much reason to switch it up. Once I've fully levelled her Merchant job, it will be her latent power AOE every fight instead.

Funnily enough, I'm not even that much overlevelled. I've done all stories up to Lv 30 (Well, almost - since the first character is fixed until their story is done, I've got 2 teams of 3 I rotate between. Hikari will be a solo run afterwards.) and I'm level 34 with Ochette. About 31 with the other three I took along.

Also watched my partner play a ton more Tomodatchi Life. One they had enough of it, we've also got Danganronpa THHAE from the recent sale lined up. I don't know much about it, but seems like a big jump in terms of atmosphere coming from AI: Somnium Files.

I've played so much on lower end devices growing up, a stable 20 is fully playable. Even played some games dipping into single digits. 30 is buttery smooth. I can't tell the difference above that.

Sounds incredibly stupid and they didn't even try to come up with a proper number based on anything, they just went with a nice round number just above their current population number (~9 Million).

Been working through Octopath Traveler II.

I've done all chapter 1 and most chapter 2 stories for all 8 characters. I've come to accept that any attempt to prevent overlevelling for the main story is fruitless as my Ochette just cuts through any boss. Instead I've done some optional high level stuff to get challanging boss fights, which were great.

Also watched my partner play a ridiculous amount of Tomodachi Life. It seems like a lot of fun, but the pool of random events seems quite small. Also, a few things from the original game were cut, like the option to create custom songs.