I’m replaying Prey (2017) and Fire Emblem Awakening. Also, some Super Mario Wonder, when my children and wife are not hogging the switches.

On a whim, I decided to start a Total War Empire campaign as Poland-Lithuania. I saw a meme about playing games in your Steam library instead of buying something on sale, and I felt justifiably attacked.

Finally finished up my first playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 and started a new playthrough two days later, ha ha! I did not find Gale at all in my first run, so I got him this time around and am traveling with a different party. Still having a ton of fun with this game, and I’m excited to explore parts of the story that I missed the first time around!

Also about halfway through a third playthrough of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, siding with the Black Eagle house this time around.

Sea of Stars.

It’s a nice take on an old school JRPG. Keeps the complexity manageable, doesn’t take itself too seriously on the story, but stays engaging.

Ys IX Monstrum Nox

I’m at the final chapter of the game, and here’s my thoughts:

The game has adopted many bad trends from other games that it becomes annoying halfway thru the game, here are some of my complaints:

• The dialogue, a lot of useless fluff dialogues that takes extra 2 seconds for the characters to animate. If there’s 10 people in the scene, then those 10 feel the need to chime in to say something frivolous.

• Just can’t get emotionally invested in the character, maybe it’s the writing, maybe they just follow cookie cutter anime tropes most of the time (thrown in some ‘twist’ later on). I weirdly care more about the side characters from Lacrimosa than this one.

• The constant interruption of the flow. You gained control of your character, moved to main/side quest point, cutscene, walked forward 10 steps, another cutscene. And the problem is, most cutscenes are just insubstantial.

• Side quests that are not side quests anymore, since you need them to remove those artificial barriers. You can farm nox, but it’s way slower. Side quests also suffer from ‘everything needs lengthy writing’ RPG syndrome nowadays. Better writing, not more writing. I had the same issue with Horizon Forbidden West, where most side quests contain way too much dialogue that’s been used to pad the game to 100+ hours, where it could be a 30 hour game.

• The raids / grimwald sections are bit too much. I like how they are mostly optional in Lacrimosa. In this game, you even need to do them to remove the barriers to optional area.

• Third Eye / detective mode is a mechanic that devs should move away from. Just outline the points of interest, don’t make it so it’s hard to see everything else.

• The lock-on in combat is a wild mess for me. I don’t know whether it’s my settings, or the game.

On the other hand, what I like about this game:

• The vertical mobility, that’s to shake up the exploration. The problem is it’s kinda janky, I’d often fall down after grappling to a ledge, because the ledge is too small. Wall run often ends up being blocked, etc. I hope that they will polish the mechanic more in the future. In combat though, I barely use them to fight enemies thanks to the messy lock-on

• I enjoy doing the collectibles (petals, treasures, graffitis) in this game.

Besides that I’ve been slowly progerssing Resident Evil HD Remake, trying to get infinite rocket launcher.

I’m going through the story mode of Backpack Hero, and I wish it was better. If I get too frustrated with being unable to tell how to progress, maybe I’ll just stick to the classic roguelike mode. It does do a decent job of walking you through the various play styles the game offers though.

I started and finished Cocoon. It’s a puzzle game that works a bit four-dimensionally, but it’s also a very linear experience, so even though it seems like there are so many options in front of you that you can never figure it out, they actually keep the possibility space small and manageable. I can’t imagine what the QA effort must have been like to make sure that you didn’t get yourself into an unwinnable state, but they seemingly pulled it off.

I started Starfield. $54 on sale felt like a good price. It meets expectations for what you’re getting out of a Bethesda game, with the exception of a lack of city maps (which I knew going into it was a complaint, but I really feel that criticism now). It’s still early goings, but I’m enjoying it so far. I mostly had to put it down for Thanksgiving weekend, because I knew I’d have games that would run better on the Steam Deck while I was out of town.

Wargroove 2 has been a satisfying continuation of Wargroove so far. No complaints. It scratches that Advance Wars itch, arguably better than Advance Wars itself.

Speaking of which, in an effort to start carving through my RPG backlog and prevent myself from starting another long playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, I started a game I picked up on sale this week, Pillars of Eternity. I never picked this one up back in the day due to its real time with pause mechanics, which always felt like a sloppier way to handle an RPG than just doing real time or turn-based. I still stand by that, but at least the game’s mechanics seem to work with it in a way that matters with its “interrupts” where the casting time of each ability really matters. I’m still very early on in this one too, but the game does me the favor of showing me all of the dice rolls like any good CRPG should so that I can start to deduce the things I should be prioritizing. I want to get through this game and its sequel before Avowed comes out, since it’s set in the same world.

Taking it a bit slow this week after more than 200h of Pathfinder Kingmaker the last month.

More Risk of Rain Returns. I finished all the Providence Trials, that I have available, the only ones missing are for the two characters I haven’t unlocked yet. I gotta say, those trials are a nice way to unlock and get to know most of the alternative abilities.

Next I started Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. I’m in chapter 3 currently, and so far it’s not that interesting. You can pretty easily tell that it’s based on a 16y/o PSP game, even if it’s a remake. The cinematics look alright, but are full of upscaling artifacts. The animations are pretty stiff at times, which is a bit disappointing, since I thought FF7R did that really well. As for the combat, it’s kinda one-note. You only have one attack button, along with four materia slots, so you can do some super basic chains. Although, since those four slots also include pure stat increases, like HP Up, you might just run around with one or two offensive abilities, so it can feel really samey. The main missions are really annoying, since you get a short cutscene every few steps, it feels like. Outside the main missions, you have tons of tiny side missions (300 apparently). So far these have been super short, like less than five minutes most of the time, four or five environments, and almost all in linear corridors. To be honest though, I like a mindless grind like this from time to time, I just wish the rest was a bit better. I will keep playing though, since the game is on the shorter side, so it shouldn’t be too bad.

Then, I also got me one of those new Steam Deck OLEDs, and sold my old one for cheap to a friend. I haven’t played a lot on it yet, tried Crisis Core and Risk of Rain Returns, and did like two runs in Peglin, but I quite like it. I barely used my old one (I found the fan to be super annoying), and this OLED model might end up the same, but the improvements are really great. Even during Crisis Core, which had the GPU at 90%+ and the chip at 20W TDP, it was pretty quiet and a more pleasant frequency, same with Nioh 2. Maybe I should replay Ori and the Will of the Wisps on it, since everyone’s always saying how great the HDR is in the game and how beautiful it can look on an OLED screen.

Finally decided to get Mass Effect Legendary Edition since it was on sale. It’s been such a long time since I played the original ME and I hadn’t gotten to the 3rd. Loving every moment so far. Gonna go for a renegade run across all three just to see what happens lol

Started playing Minecraft again, some FC 24 and various racing games (GT7 and ACC mostly with some Wreckfest thrown in).

EA Sports WRC: I’d have though that EA would take the easy way, get DR2 gameplay which was ok, upgrade graphics to be next gen, rebrand to the official license and sell for 70$.

They have instead reworked the physics to the point they are probably the best ever a in non - hardcore - sim(RBR) rally game, tarmac is finally fun. They’ve added 12 rallies which is twice as many as DR2 had at launch and mostly based on real life stages, not fantasy, not to mention they are available in different seasons (Monte Carlo in winter with ice feels completely different to summer). There are plenty of cars which look and sound great. They have sacrificed graphics on the other hand, the game looks no better than last gen DR2 and there were stutters. All of that for 50$.

It’s very weird for EA but I’ll take it. They’ve been, surprisingly, well behaved this year although I don’t play their sports games so maybe they doubled down there to compensate 😂

Other than that I’ve finished my “normal”, good, 3 druid BG3 playthrough, started an evil, dark urge Bard one.

Started playing Yakuza like a dragon. I wanted to start a new RPG. Also started a new playthrough of Eden Ring, following the wiki since I missed a lot of stuff in the past. Going with a samurai build

I’ve been playing Soulstone Survivors. I kida forgot it existed and was searching the Steam Store for a Vampire Survivor like and was reminded I own it.Itt is clear that the makers were in the middle of making a ARPG rougelike when VS came out, and they successfully made the change. As a result, it has well fleshed out systems across the board.

CrossCode!! One of my top favorites of all time. It’s such a good charming game with awesome gameplay. I wish there was more 😭

I’ve been jumping around between BG3, Control and Moonring. I highly recommend Moonring for anyone looking for a modern old school style rpg. It’s completely free too

Diablo 4