Nintendo

I don’t know if I’ll be playing anything this weekend; we’re days away from my yearly board game convention, Dice Tower East! For five days next week, I’ll be checking board games out of their library, learning dozens of new (to me) rule sets, and easing my ten-year-old into his first gaming convention experience. If I get a chance, I’ll play my favorite game Fog of Love, but I’d need a babysitter to pull that one off.

If I manage to play something besides Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent, I’ll let y'all know.

I spent my time once again with Xenoblade X. Currently preparing for Chapter 9, Lv 67 and 33% of Mira done.

I’m shoulders deep in my Slay the Spire addiction again. Highly recommended if you’re into difficult strategy games

Finished Never 7: The End of Infinity (part of the Ever 17/Never 7 Double Pack)!

Decent for its age. It's romance/mystery focused but adds some interesting sci-fi ideas in the final stretch.

Its biggest problem is that all "main" routes follow the same basic formula, so they get very repetitive after a while. Two characters (Yuka and Izumi) also get "secondary" routes that changes things a bit, but neither adds anything important to the main plot and I think I'd have been happier with the game if had skipped those.

Finished The Mummy Demastered!

I can't recommend this one due to some terrible design choices.

Plataforming sections gets very frustrating due to infinite respawning enemies that can knock you down. Health not recovering on save spots (forcing you to "farm" nearby enemies/objects to recover) is a stupid time waster. There's also the death mechanic, which didn't bother me too much but I have heard from others that can lead you to situations where it's almost impossible to continue, since when you die you lose all your powerups until you defeat your "corpse" - which can be quite far from your last save.

It's a shame, because the visuals are great, the soundtrack is amazing, and it generally feels good to play.

Playing Ever 17: The Out of Infinity (part of the Ever 17/Never 7 Double Pack)!

Well, this one has a much stronger start than Never 7, and seems to be more in line with Uchikoshi's later works. The cast is trapped in an underwater amusement park after a disaster, and has to try to figure out how to escape from there alive.

Very hyped to see where this goes.

Playing Momodora: Moonlit Farewell!

Now this is a great metroidvania. There's some minor annoyances (slow initial movement, fast travel takes a while to unlock), but nothing that significantly affected my enjoyment of the game.

I love its pixel art and animations, the soundtrack is good, and both exploration and combat feel great. One thing I should mention is that this is fairly linear for a metroidvania, which can bother some people.

Congratulations on the Switch 2!

I've made the mistake of trying The Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Switch 2 enhanced editions... So now I'm playing TotK again. I think in regards to the main story, I'm probably close to the ending. But I've been just enjoying stuff and not rushed to finish it. Initially I thought "what's the big deal with these updates? I can't even notice a difference". It turns out you have to manually go to the eShop and download them 😅 Once I installed the "Switch 2 Enhanced edition", I could definitely notice the difference! It does feel like a whole new experience on the Switch 2. My current objective is to get all the shrines, but -as usual- I get distracted constantly with side quests and discovering things I haven't seen yet. It's such a good game! And it plays amazing on the Switch 2.

I've been playing Mario Kart World and enjoying it. Online races are wild! Though I haven't checked out the recent update yet. I also went back to Mario Kart 8 for some online with a friend. I need to do some more of the Knockout Tour stuff, but it's also really fun to replay GP and go on Free Roam mode.

I also got Fast Fusion and I need to check out the latest update!

I finished Kena, the total playtime was just under 17 hours. I would have liked one more area that's visually distinct from the rest of the game. As nice as it looks, it's lacking in variety. I completed most collectables. The game did unlock another set of trials in the five-second span between beating the final boss and rolling the credits but I wasn't willing to go back at this point. I hadn't mentioned this yet, but the music is really good, too.

And now would have been the time to start Xenoblade X, but I've decided to wait until after Bananza. So I've started playing Mahjong 3, uh, I mean, Yakuza 3 instead. Despite the remastering, I knew it was going to be the most difficult game in the series to get into, considering the step backwards it is from the Kiwami remakes of the first two. I have heard that enemies in this game block a lot and for the bosses I've fought so far that is absolutely true. Boss fights boil down to throws, which is not the most fun way to play. There doesn't seem to be too much incentive to complete anything either, unlike the previous games. I love Okinawa as a location though, it's very different from anything I've seen in the series so far (and probably will until the day Majima becomes a pirate).