What are you playing this weekend? 2024-01-05 - New Year Resolutions Edition!

Splatoon 3

Can't stop. Won't stop.

Gotta stay fresh, stay off the hook, and drip ink.

New year, new games. I accidentally managed to do a triple-finish, so I really had to think about this.

I finally finished Baten Kaitos' New Game Minus! All Achievements gotten! The game finally got hard, actually. I expected the hardest part to be the fight against three antagonists at the same time. One of them gets two attacks per turn and the game forces the weakest character into your party, so it's technically a 4 on 2 fight. Oh, and you have to do it twice in a row. I thought once that was over with, the rest would be easy, but no, the final boss actually smeared the floor with me pretty hard. I actually had to adapt my decks for the first time. I ended up putting two characters on offense only and loaded up my fastest character with light element armor and the best healing items to revive the attackers who would inevitably die to anything. That strategy even worked first try!

I'll probably replace the Switch-slot with Mario and Rabbids Spark of Hope. I was going to tackle Baten Kaitos Origins next, but maybe I should take a break after everything...

I completed all Challenge Maps in Arkham Origins, too. I still insist that the game is not as bad as people say, but I cannot overlook the amount of glitches. I'm looking forward to my first playthrough of Arkham Knight eventually, but first...

The PC slot has been replaced with Nier:Automata a few days ago. I already beat the game a few years ago, but that was when I was still unemployed, so I wasn't playing a legit copy. Now I'm going after the achievements on Steam because the game is definitely worth buying.

I've also beaten Shantae on the GameBoy. I'm glad I saved all the overworld collectibles until the end, when you can just fly everywhere. That made it much less of a headache. The ending got a bit confusing though. No spoilers, but you're dropped into a tense and dangerous situation, only to find it's not at all dangerous and after five minutes of having zero clue as to what to do had to look up a walkthrough. I'm not replacing this one, three games was a mistake, but the Shantae journey will continue eventually.

I’ve finally moved on from Dragon Quest XI to Pokémon Violet expansions. I’m holding off on finishing them completely and have been raiding a lot.

Finally getting back into Red Dead 2 and it is just incredible. I got it on release day on Xbox and played about 20 hours, and then found out the starting camp quests were bugged and my whole save was basically trashed. Quit playing and told myself I'd come back to it eventually. I wish I hadn't waited as long, but wow what a treat. The fact that I can play it on my Steam Deck on lunch breaks at work and then easily go home to my rig and pick up where I left off is huge. The rockstar cloud save works well as long as I cleanly shut down the game each time. It's pretty wild how well it runs on Steam Deck too.

More Wonder!

I was playing Backpack Hero, which initially threw me off Mario Wonder. But BPH has a major glitch that removes progress, so it's back to Wonder.

I'm also bouncing between a replay of the two top-down Lara Croft games. As well as, I started up another Atari recharged game, Caverns of Mars, for some quick shooter action!

Pokémon Violet. I want to get in a few more raids before they go away and then get moving on the new dlc.

I also need to face the academy ace tournament again for some cash.

Finished Persona 5 Tactica!

Most of my comments about this game are on the previous thread.

Overall a fairly simple game, but I had a good time with it. Worth mentioning that it doesn't seem to have much replay value other than playing or higher difficulties or trying to complete the Compendium.

Playing The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails!

A very charming Action RPG from the makers of Ys.

It's stage-based, which makes it a good game for playing in short bursts, with the stages having specific "goals" that grant you bonuses if you manage to do it. I really like the "seasons" design, where after you beat a stage you can come back and play it in a different season of the year, which is effectively a new (and harder) stage based on the original one.

Combat is not as fluid as recent Falcom ARPGs, but it gets better as you unlock new abilities and spells. Story is fairly simple, but has that usual Falcom thing where the NPCs are interesting and fun to chat with. Though it also has some of the usual Falcom annoyances, like a decent amount of missables - so make sure to explore properly before going into a new chapter.

I believe I'm nearing the endgame (Chapter 6), though I haven't played much this past few days as I have been focused on other hobbies. Will resume and try to finish this one next week.

And while we are at it, what are your new year’s gaming resolution? Play more games? Play less games? Don’t pre-order? Always pre-order?

Honestly, it's just "beat more games than you buy". I have a gigantic backlog and I need to keep moving forward with it.

I really want to finish Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Super Mario RPG. I haven't played much during the holiday break, but I'd really like to get through these two before I go back to Tears of the Kingdom and others I want to play. I don't have any specific resolutions, but hopefully I'll play more this year and finish more games before getting new ones 😬

Mostly Splatoon 3 (gotta keep up my catalogue progress!), but I’ll probably put more time into Palia. It’s a bit of a mess (plenty of bugs, and pretty choppy while docked), but it’s charming enough to keep me loving it.

I also have to make more progress towards finishing Tears of the Kingdom.

On Switch I've just started M&R: Sparks of Hope. It's great so far! Feels really polished, and I like the new changes to the movement system. If I remember correctly the first game required you to buy more powerful weapons throughout, whereas this one you attach and upgrade 'sparks' to a character. It's a pretty neat system as you can change out sparks to suit the battle.

On my Steam Deck I've been playing through the Spyro trilogy. A lot of love has clearly gone into this remake. It looks beautiful and the levels are fun and well-designed.

On PS4 I'm most of the way through Cyberpunk 2077. It's... rough on PS4. But I'm pushing through because the story and gameplay is great for the most part. I wouldn't have bought it on PS4, but a friend lent it to me. Can't complain with free.

Oh and I don't really have a resolution besides continuing to work through my backlog! I made some good progress over Christmas.

On the switch, I'm doing poorly at A Highland Song. Doing better just chilling out in Dave the Diver though.

In the desktop, because we finally had to move from windows 7, I'm now playing Baldur's Gate 3 because the new...er computer can run it. Man solid state drives, cool things!

Resolution is less to no new games for awhile.

In spite of getting new stuff, I've mostly been playing Warframe and Honkai Star Rail still. The latter is 100% grinding at this point. Too many characters needing their traces upgraded. Warframe I'm mostly trying to unlock the map, but I've also been building things and leveling them too.

I will say I've been playing Warframe mostly on PS5 and PC, but the Switch version is solid, if the graphics are cranked way down. Now that it has screws save, I'm way more interested.

What I should get playing is one of the four things I got for Christmas, Scarlet Nexux, FF XVI, Horizon Forbidden West, or Division 2. Might be playing more of the first today.

I'm still playing through Starfield... For whatever reason I feel compelled to beat every Bethesda RPG with 100%, even the B- efforts like this one. I'm just over 200 hours in and hoping to wrap up by this week. Just some remaining main quest missions and a bit of grinding. We'll see.