Nintendo

I dropped Baten Kaitos Origins. I hate to do it, but as I tweaked my deck more, combat just got more boring. I was curious, so I did some research: Apparently, the fanbase is split right down the middle. You'll either say the combat is better than the first game's in every single way or you'll hate it. I cannot say anything good about it...

It also doesn't help that the game quadrupled down on Quest Magnus, my least favorite part of the original game. Just lugging random things around that you think you might need when you can only carry a very limited amount of them annoyed me, but at least you mostly needed them for side quests. In the prequel, you also upgrade other cards with them, mix them together to get new ones and they affect your stats? Stop, I'm already dead!

I've been wanting to play this game for almost 20 years...

So I started Echoes of Wisdom instead. I didn't think I'd play it so close to release, I wasn't too hyped for it. But I quickly remembered that I absolutely love making enemies fight each other in any video game, so that's a part I enjoy! I'm slightly disappointed at how much it's taking from the modern Open World formula, I was hoping the 2D side of the franchise would keep things traditional.

I'm not too far in yet, but I have come across my favorite boss from Oracle of Ages! What a deep cut, I did NOT expect to see him ever again! But it makes sense, with a basic block your wand essentially becomes the Staff of Somaria.

I'm still playing Civ 5. I understand now why the game is still being played today. I had no problems playing Civ 1 a few years ago, I would have problems now. It's simple balancing decisions like large empires having both up- and downsides that impress me. The Civ I know was all about settling like mad.

Finished Ginka!

Overall a good VN. Ginka was a great character and I loved seeing all the different sides of her, there were some good twists, and even a nice epilogue showing a bit of the character's lives after the ending.

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Finished The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom!

While I still prefer more "traditional" Zelda games, this was a blast to play. The developers seem to be experimenting with a middle ground between the old-school games and more open-world entries like BOTW, and I think they did a really good job here.

There's a few annoyances that could be improved in a sequel, like the lack of good rewards for exploration/puzzles and some clunkiness in the combat, but nothing major.

And since this is a topic a lot of people ask, the performance problems are definitely noticeable and I would have preferred the game to stick to a locked 30FPS, but again it didn't hurt my enjoyment of the game.

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Since I finished Zelda 5min ago I haven't yet decided what I'll play next. 😅

Leaning towards towards another VN, in which case Emio: The Smiling Man or Atri: My Dear Moments (link to the Japanese eShop) are the strongest candidates.

I am still working through Tears of The Kingdom. I bought it at launch, but I don't play very often. The size of this game is wild - I finished Breath of the Wild in 70 hours, and now I am 65 hours in ToTK and still have like 70% of the game left.

I'm playing Pirate Quest 3 and Neir:automata.

Probably switch between both depending on my mood. I might pick a quick, not serious, fun game filled with cat puns or a more in-depth get ready to try to figure out the story with cool anime type actions parts.

Twilight Survivors on Android. Not much to say about. It is Vampire Survivors with 3D graphics and a dash mechanic. The characters are slightly more varied but there are way less of them. The only ads I have seen are 100% optional, you have to go out of your way to view them. When you do, you receive currency you can use to buy the paid DLC, which I honestly think is incredibly fair. If you enjoy Survivors-Likes, this one is perfectly fine, but it doesn't try to reinvent the wheel

I gave up on FFVII because it stopped being fun. The Midgar parts were fun, but at a certain stage it just started feeling like a bunch of random events strung together with only a loose connection to the plot. I got up to doing the mandatory chocobo race.

I've been watching my son play some Echoes of Wisdom and got called upon to solve some dungeon puzzles he couldn't get past. The hardest ones were figuring out that you could place echoes far away by holding down the button (presumably that was in a tutorial, but I missed it). Then there was trying to get past a water flow that was pushing in the wrong direction.

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It didn't feel like the correct solution, but I did it my placing a shark and following it so that it took me to the other side.

Last, in the ice temple, there was a room with a fan and ice and fire vents on either side where I couldn't reach the doorway. To my shame, I had to look up how to do it

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I knew I wanted to turn the water to ice, but didn't realise you could do it with the orb in the adjoining room.

For myself, I started playing Fire Emblem Engage. I could have chosen Three Houses, and its story looks more interesting, but I'm not that into social sim stuff and they say the Engage battles are better.

My partner and I are playing through "Digimon Stories Cyber Sleuth Hacker's Memories" in some kind of challange run similar to a Soullink in Pokemon games.

The Digimon Story games are basically just grinding, but sometimes I'm in the mood for that. Although, I prefered the older ones on DS.

Digimon have 7 different stages and many different paths to evolve from their first stage to their last one. Bacially everything can become everything. Each stage starts at level 1 and is stronger than the one before, with certain stat and level requirements to evolve. They can devolve too and that's where the grinding comes in: There is a special stat called 'ABI' that's raised by d-/evolving. If you need a certain amount of ABI, you will train your digimon, evolve it, devolve it right away and start from level 1 again. Repeat until you have enough.

During older games, you would accumulate power by doing so - you kept a certain percentage of your current stats when devolving. In the Cyber Sleuth games you don't. Each Greymon e.g. has the same base stats at the same level. ABI only slightly increases a hard cap for permanent stats you can get from a different mechanic. It's kinda tedious.

Started playing the Silent Hill 2 remake on Sunday. As a big fan of the original, I think they did a phenomenal job. Combat is harder, but that's a pretty low bar.

I didn't have much time to play this week, but I've been really enjoying The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. I don't know how it compares to other 2D Zeldas yet, but I'm really liking it so far. I agree on the performance issues, they're not too major. My only complaint would be there's a lot of reading on this game. Not that I don't enjoy reading, but there's so much story being told by conversations with the characters... It feels like a lot at times. I'll keep playing on the weekend.

As I mentioned on the other post, I just ordered the Patrick Star Game, so I'll probably get it some time next week.

I play Pokémon violet.

But the excitement i feel while playing, as on gameboy, or gba, is good.

I feel like the game isn't so polished.