Nintendo

I played some more Donkey Kong Bananza. I think I'll finish the post game stuff, it's still really fun!

I tried the demo for Shinobi and enjoyed it. I won't get the full game though. It looks amazing, but I feel like I've played it before, as in played games that were kind of similar maybe.

I also tried the demo for Mina the Hollower. The graphics and sound are really cool, but also not getting this one for now. If I have nothing to play some time from now I might revisit them. But I doubt I'll have nothing to play 😅

I got Cyberpunk 2077 delivered today, so I'll be playing that on the weekend. I've only just created my character and barely started the story. Never thought I'd see genitals in a game on a Nintendo console 😂

Mostly played Bananza, cleared sublevel 1000 today. I will say the levels are not nearly as memorable as Odyssey's were. I only played that game once when it was released and still remember most levels better than whatever I did in this game last week. The first level was my favorite one for a long time, and then it was a long lull. It got better though, two out of three levels after the split path converges again were really cool!

I am also happy to report that, after 30 years, I have finally caught Carmen Sandiego in the 1994 CD-Rom version of her game. I can finally bury this grudge and move on!

I hope to find some time to pick Yakuza 3 back up. Luckily, I put the game on hiatus in a very convenient spot just before a location change and have enough experience with previous games to not have forgotten how to play.

Having played Midnight Suns for so long, would you recommend it? I'm interested in the gameplay, but I don't like Marvel at all. At least the movies - I couldn't get through a single Avengers one. Haven't tried any comics thus far.

As for my own week, I continued with Baten Kaitos. Thus far, with each passing hour, I like the game more. It's just so charming and there are so many unique things about it. This week, let's talk about cards. Everything in this game comes in the form of card:

• Your battle deck, of course, and there is one for every character you can get.
• Out of battle healing items
• Equipment
• Quest items / Overworld puzzle items
• Special items

And these cards have so many weird things about them. Let's focus on the actual battle mechanics:

• Each card has at least one number, but some have multiple from which you can select each time you play them. You get percentage based bonus damage/healing for pairs or straights - think of Poker. You just have to play them in order in a single turn - called a combo. The bonus is only applied if all your cards played belong to a pair/straight, therefore playing less cards can do more damage. At the start, you can only play 2 cards a turn, but these increase with your class level.
• A lot of cards have elements attached to them. Damage is calculated for the whole turn, not per card. Because of that, they can cancel out each other! Play a fire and a water spell in a single turn, and they negate each other's damage.
• Some stronger cards can only be played after your combo has enough cards played already, and these usually end the combo, regardless if you could otherwise play more cards.
• Based on your affinity with a character, cards can temporarily transform mid-combo into stronger attacks.
• There's a crafting system built into your battle system. Playing a combo of a flower bud and a light spell? You get a bloomed flower card after the battle. A lot of the cards used for crafting recipes do nothing on their own. And these things can get complex fast - want steam rice? Play rice, a pot, a water spell and a fire spell in a single turn! (I think, I haven't managed yet.) Hints for recipes are written into a lot of the card descriptions.
• Cards age. Most healing cards are food based. After a few hours, they permanently perish and turn into debuff or damage items! This does apply to other cards too. Your nice flaming swords? After a while, they turn into normal ones.
• Once your deck is exhausted, you skip a turn to reshuffle your old cards into your deck. The same happens to your enemies, which adds more decisions to boss battles, which can last awhile.

This results in a deck building and battle system which, I think, won't get stale even for minor encounters. There's always an interesting decision to be made, and you constantly get new cards, too. I think there are about a thousand different ones in the game.

Even grinding comes in different forms! Of course, you can grind for EXP or money. Grinding could also mean fighting weak enemies to craft a lot of cards. Due to the ageing, it could technically also mean waiting for certain cards to grow stronger. Conversely, if you ignore the crafting, you could get weaker by grinding too much since all your healing items spoil!

I finally picked up a Switch 2 a few days ago along with Tears of the Kingdom. I've never played it before, so I am excited to check it out!

Finished Stella of the End!

Probably the best among the kinetic VNs produced by Key. Art is beautiful, the characters and world are interesting, and while it has the usual "if you played enough Key VNs you can probably guess the ending" problem it was still an excellent journey.

Philia's growth over the story was fantastic, and Jude was a really solid protagonist. I loved the epilogue as well.

Finished Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus!

The platforming sections in this game are hard - there's been a couple spots where I was forced to take a break because I was getting hand cramps. 😄 Bosses are challenging but nowhere near as bad, with the only issue being that they can take a long time - the final boss has 6 stages and even after getting a lot of practice it still took me more than 10min to beat it.

Overall a great game, but one that I can only recommend if you don't get frustrated by dying a lot. Oh, and make sure you play with a good and confortable controller, you're going to need it.

Playing ATRI: My Dear Moments!

From one story about a robot girl in world where society is collapsing to another. 😄

But this one is quite different, a slice-of-life story in a world where oceans are rising and reducing livable land. It's an unusual combination of themes, and having a disabled MC is another interesting take - Natsuki lost his leg in an accident and has to rely on an old, poorly fitting prosthetic while dealing with trauma and phantom pain. Atri is also great, a fun and smug gremlin who is a disaster at all types of housework but also a ball of positive energy that slowly helps the MC deal with his trauma.

This is another VN with great visuals - the backgrounds are particularly impressive, with a very detailed photo-like style. One curious thing about this game is that it has English language support but it's not available on the western eShops, so if you want to play it you'll have to buy from the japanese store.

Playing We Love Katamari Reroll+Royal Reverie!

The announcement of a new game in the series after more than a decade reminded me I had never played the second game, so I decided to pick up the remastered version.

This second game is "more of the same", but it's still good fun. Since these games are usually short and I got a day off today I'll probably finish it before the end of the weekend.

Paper Mario and the Origami King - Partner picked up the game around launch, played up to the final boss, put it down for a few months, came back and restarted their save. Infuriating but whatever. Then, they dropped it after playing for a few days.

Finally, in need of a 'simple' RPG to balance out the rest of my in progress games right now (Yakuza 4, W40K Boltgun, NFS Unbound) I picked it up and am about 30% through, so I'll probably play a bit more of that.

Battlefield 6's open beta launches this weekend, so I'll hopefully be putting some hours into that. I have heard quite good things about it from those who already have time in the game, but I suspect a lot of the current goodwill is just vibes-based because this game is better than the abysmal 2042 and mediocre V, and because it appears to be a bit of a spiritual sequel to 3 and 4. Although I have played the last four Battlefield games, I wouldn't consider myself a Battlefield fan so I'm hoping I can be a little more critical while playing and get an idea of whether it's worth my time and money. It was pretty clear to me from playing the 2042 open beta that the game would be absolutely terrible for years after launch, so I saved myself a lot of pain and some money by picking it up much later for a heavy discount.

I’ve started pre-planning for another year of teaching seventh grade. Most of my gaming this week has been at school, playing both Cabo and Flip 7 in the afternoons after work is done for the day.

I got my regular couple of weekend hours of Octopath Traveller in this morning. Tomorrow will be my 1000th daily check-in on the game, and the game’s narrator announced that they will on’t send any daily letters after that, so I’m a little bummed. It’s been a rewarding, play at my own pace game for nearly three years! I can’t wait for Octopath Traveler 0 (although I’m still mad about it being on a game-key card)!

Probably Wotb, then Lake to cool down 🙂‍↕️