I just bought Picross Lord of the Nazarick. I’m worried there will be a too much story in it for me to just work through my podcast backlog while playing, but after finishing off Picross S9, I’m not quite ready to dive into the Picross e DLCs yet.

I got to try Pokemon Scarlet on the Switch 2. I’ve played it before but now it feels really good with the updates. I’m mid way through the game and I’m considering getting the DLC

Got into Baten Kaitos Origins this week. With no work or other obligations this week, I clocked in about 10 hours - which is about a fourth of the way through the game.

Overall, I’m unsure about the game. They revamped the whole system from the first game and heavily streamlined it. Too much, I’d say. Let’s start with some generally good things:

• Battles are much faster
• Stats actually matter (In the first game, a max level character doing the same thing as a level 1 character does about twice its damage, this time around, your basic attack deals your atk stat.)
• Quest items are used more often and in better ways (You can trap things around you in cards and use them when needed, same as the first game.)
• The story is interesting thus far - it actually takes place before the first game

As for the battle system, this changed:

• There’s no more crafting system
• Everyone uses the same deck - basic attack are usable by all, stronger attacks and items are only usable by one of the three characters
• There are no poker-like combos anymore, instead all cards only have a single number, and you can play any number of them as long as they are in ascending order
• There are special combos if you play certain cards together, but that mostly amounts to not skipping numbers
• There’s no defensive turn anymore, you can equip armour to guard for a certain amount of attacks and that’s it
• I don’t think cards age anymore, I’ve only seen quest items age
• You can discard a certain amount of cards before using your turn
• There’s no shuffle mechanic anymore, all cards go straight back into your deck after usage

In combination, the battles kinda play themselves. It’s optimal to play a small deck with mostly basic attacks and basically only a weapon and 1-2 strong attacks for each character. Then you endlessly chain combos together. Just like in the original, guarding is a waste of deck space since you can only equip a weapon or an armour. For bosses only, you might add healing items.

After finishing our Monster Hunter Rise challenge run, my partner wanted to play Hello Kitty Island Adventure. There isn’t too much to say about it - it’s cute, simple fun. Doing some light puzzles, mostly collecting items, and befriending villagers. Clearly inspired by Animal Crossing, but outside of quests, the villagers don’t actually interact with you or each others. Works great for goofing around and taking lots of silly photos together - just don’t expect much depth.

Xenoblade X is progressing steadily. I haven’t played a game this rigorously in a long time! I was right about one thing, I appreciate the game more than I did on the Wii U. It’s very funny how I remember bits and pieces of the world and get to piece them together again. But there are also some awkward things I forgot about. Like not being able to fight in water. That’s a modern Xenoblade convenience I miss, would it kill my party member not to swim out into the ocean and just stay on the shoreline to fight some fat floating fish? And I don’t understand why some missions make you run through a cave with enemies that are way higher level than the recommended level for the mission. It’s easy enough to outrun anything that aggros on you, but wouldn’t it be more fun if I got to… play the game?

I finished The Witness! I did the extra challenge underground and completed all six pillars. I finished with 517/523 puzzles, but that’s a part I don’t care about. Probably just some triangle puzzles in a bush somewhere.

I am also no longer playing Yakuza 3, because they announced a Kiwami remake for it. When the credible rumors about a remake started, I didn’t really know what that’ll mean for me, but since it’ll already release in January, I might as well swap. I’m really glad this is happening, because the original really had some flaws that bothered me. From permanently failable side stories to side stories that seemingly don’t work right to a hostess management game that makes very little sense to other minigames suffering from extremely finicky controls, it just wasn’t great. I didn’t expect much, I knew it was one of the, if not THE least liked game in the series, but I still felt disappointed. Which is why I didn’t expect the Kiwami treatment. Usually only popular, ‘good’ games get remade, even though ‘bad’ games have way more room to grow.

Playing CrossCode!

On the last stretch, was trying to finish it yesterday but I reached a fairly long and complex puzzle and decided I’d rather stop for the night. 😄 But will almost certainly finish this during the weekend.

I turned combat difficulty all the way down using the sliders in the assists options, which is a fantastic feature I wish was included in all harder games. I don’t think that combat in the game is that hard, but I was underleved due to rushing and there’s some fairly obvious “stat/gear check” moments I was struggling to get past before I did that.

Borderlands 4!

I’m about halfway through the main story, and melting bad guys with Vex’s critical bleed build.

I don’t know if I’m just getting old, but the visuals on Borderlands 4 seem so noisy(?) not sure if that’s the right word, but I have trouble seeing what I’m trying to see. It’s even a challenge to spot the difference between grenades and shields in the inventory screen. Everything just looks like everything else. 🤷🏻‍♂️