Switch 2 is here! Well, not mine, but in general. Should be getting mine soon though. How many of you have gotten it already? And how are you liking it so far?
Finished Chatper 9 of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition ! I was expecting this to happen in the story, it was kinda predictable. Still, interesting to see.
Got the flight module after that, and now I can fly everywhere! Completed FrontNav of Noctilum, and now just running around doing affinity missions so that I can be couple of levels above the recommended level to start the next chapter.
Played a good amount of Marvel's Midnight Suns. It seems to me that I am spending lots of time in the Abbey, instead of doing the fighting. Not that abbey parts are boring. It's interesting to see the super-hero drama. There's tons of dialogue. I think I am on day 7 or 8, so not too long in grand scheme of things but haven't heard a single repeated line, IIRC.
Trying to most of the side missions before continuing with the main missions, so this will probably take a long while to finish. I am around level 7 now, and have unlocked lots of abbey areas.
Characters unlocked
I have unlocked Spider-man, and the next main mission is with Dead Pool, and I am assuming will unlock him. Also have some locked missions with some other new characters like Morbius.
Also started Ghost of Tsushima.
I originally played it a while back on PS+ Extra, but then my sub expired when I was just about 10-15 hours in. So bought it on on-going sale and downloaded it when I was near the end of The Surge, but when I finished it, I didn't want to start another melee action game right away, so went with Marvel's Midnight Suns.
Then my kid started playing Ghost of Tsushima Legends (MP part of the game), and I saw him playing it and got the itch to play it myself. And here I am.
I am apparently in the start of Act 2, but was hadn't done any main mission yet and was clearing the first area, so continued with that and have completely liberated the firs area now. Going to start on the main mission in second area now.
What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?
Just flying around the world doing quick missions, killing monsters and finding relics was so fun. Spent way too much time doing that.
On the fence about it.
I've been quite impressed with the reviews about its overall build quality, the results of some durability test videos I've seen are honestly amazing. Well, asides from the screen film that scratches easily, but I planned on putting a screen protector on it anyway. However, I've been traumatized from so many drift issues I had, and the teardowns show that the design for the new sticks is very similar. There's some tweaks and it's possible they solve the main issue, but I'm not convinced about that yet.
Since finding SD Express cards also quite hard around here (and I want a 1TB one) I'll probably wait more to see people discussing/testing the new sticks, and also follow the backward compatibility progress since there's 7(?) games I own that are still listed with problems.
Playing Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land
The technical aspects of this game are starting to annoy me. Performance is wildly inconsistent, with some regions running quite well while others are a stuttering mess. This wasn't as much a problem earlier in the game but gets significantly worse in the the later regions, in particular the third. Also, this game is a bit glitchy - I've had issues like clipping through ground, getting stuck in places you shouldn't, or geometry not loading. It's nothing gamebreaking and more on the "amusing" side, if you're curious about it you can see some examples in this video. Finally, got a couple crashes too - but lost no progress thanks to the autosave. All of these things combined made it very clear to me that this game needed more development and testing time.
Despite the technical problems I'm still enjoying it, but it's gotten to the point where I needed to highlight this for potential buyers. Word around is that it's poorly optimized in other platforms as well, but obviously the Switch is the one that's going to struggle the most due to that.
Back to the game, I took some time in the weekend to craft some equipment, which is another way of saying "tripled my stats". And then I did if again some mid-week when I unlocked the facility that lets you duplicate crafted items, so I'm ridiculously overpowered right now. All of this was completely unnecessary given how easy the game is, but I just can't resist when a game gives me the option to break it in half 😀.
I figured out that a (!) marker instead of a (?) in the map means it's a Normal quest intead of Random one, so I went and cleared all of those that were available. Also finished the Pioneering goals for the first three regions, mainly because I got tired of seeing places I couldn't get to because I needed the special ammo you get from these.
After that I focused on the main quest and got a lot of progress, and I'm now exploring the fourth (and probaly last) region. While I miss the all-wholesome story from the previous games I'm really liking the way this one touches on the dangers of alchemy - most of the sad/messed-up character backstories are related to its misuse, and there's a lot of unpleasant implications on what the Aladiss Empire was trying to do with alchemy prior to its collapse. This is something that the Dusk trilogy had touched upon, but has a much bigger focus in this game.
The twist at the end of the 3rd area was really, really interesting too.
Twist discussion
Yumia losing the memories of her mother that were her main drive at the start of her journey and having to find herself a new reason to continue caught me completely by surprise. I really like how this also works as a way for her to grow, as this re-evaluation lets her accept both the "good" and the "bad" parts of alchemy.Another great thing is how this is subtly foreshadowed by several things - Rutger's past where he "sold" memories through an alchemic device, the lore that mana is made from memories and also in-game mechanics - when you fall down from a high place you spend mana to avoid the damage.
So it makes sense in-universe that when Yumia falls from a gigantic structure she can survive using mana - but needs to get a lot of that, and unconsciusly uses her strongest memories to create it.
I'm probably close to the end now, so I should finish it during the next week. Still have to decide what I'll be playing next, but feeling the urge to go back to VNs, been quite some time since I finished one of these.
Yeah, flying around your skell is pretty fun and speeds up taking care of the small stuff.
Well, Switch is my favourite console, and I just wanted a faster Switch with Switch 2, so don't really have any reason to not buy it.
I never finished Atelier Ryza, but didn't it have a similar theme about people frowning upon Alchemy and an old kingdom getting destroyed because of it?
Me too, but I'd rather wait a bit to see if there will be hardware-related headaches on this first batch of consoles. And while the extra processing power would be nice (see my comments on the Switch 1 struggling with Yumia), it's not like there's any games I really want to play for that platform right now.
There was a plot point about an old kingdom self-destructing due to the abusing alchemy, but it didn't reflect much in the present - alchemy was mostly forgotten, Empel and Ryza weren't subject to heavy discrimination and so on. They also didn't focus much of the story around it, it's more about Ryza and friends growing into adulthood.
In this game almost everyone treats Yumia's with suspicion and/or disdain at first, like a criminal who is "allowed" to use her skills because they need her for the expedition. The plot is almost entirely around the exploration of a kingdom similar to the one mentioned in Ryza, except this time we are going much deeper in detail in their misdeeds and abuses. Plus, the main villains of this game are people related to that kingdom that continue to abuse alchemy to this day, and almost every single party member has a tragedy in their backstory related to alchemy.
Yeah, for most people, unless they want MK: World, there isn't much need to upgrade right away. I have various justifications for getting Switch 2, but it drills down to a simple thing, I want to get it. 😀
Agreed about Ryza part. Yumia sound much darker.