Nintendo

Mario Kart World! A friend showed me his “walking into Super Nintendo World at Epic” video and I realized that what I’ve been calling Mario Kart 8 2 might be attached to a broader naming scheme. Isn’t the next Mario movie called Super Mario World? I ran my first 100 CC race and won by the skin of my teeth. I can’t imagine I’ll find much success in 150 CC.

I have not been back to Xenoblade Chronicles X this week. I finished the first part of chapter 13, but my first full week of summer vacation has been focused on the taxi dad game.

I have spared a lot of time for Picross S 8. It’s such a wonderful way to listen to podcasts for a person who can’t normally multitask. I’m more than half done, but the puzzles I could complete in five minutes or less are in the rear view mirror now.

I checked out Robotics;dash Elite form the library again and gave it about an hour. I LOVE Steins;gate, but it’s been hard getting into other visual novels in the Science Adventure Series. Maybe I’m just not in a reading mood lately.

I checked out It’s A Wonderful World from the library and played it with my older child. It was a little bland and I lost pretty badly (just like the first time I played). I bought a tetromino game called Square One. It was over so quickly and very theme-less. I liked it a little, but I won’t be able to get is to the table again soon, I bet.

Finally, the game getting the most play is Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent. It’s the third anniversary (or maybe 4th), so there’s a lot of new stuff around. I’m still dodging the story for other bits. As long as it’s fun, it’s fine.

I downloaded Blue Prince yesterday and took a few strolls through the mansion.

I have no idea what's going on, but I'm looking forward to unlocking more secrets!

Oh shit! And I just realized it's Father's Day this weekend, so nobody's allowed to kick me off the Xbox!

I've completed the first major section of Kena and I'm very impressed so far. I like that the Rot don't just follow you around like Pikmin, but just exist in the world until you need them. You enter an abandoned house and they are already there, just hanging out on the shelves and such. The combat gameplay is very much '3rd person action game 101' without any standout features, but I don't consider it a major part of the game, considering no enemies ever respawn. I found most collectibles on my own so far, but I had to consult a map for the last few.

Got sucked into Xenoblade X, it's from one of my favorite ongoing series after all. Finished the first 4 chapters and did a lot of exploration until my vacation ended and will continue this weekend.

I could probably blitz through some more chapters if I wanted to. I'm Lv 24 and did a good chunk of the map activies already. Got about 30% of Primordia and a bit of the others.

I've already played the original version and am really curious about the additinal content, but it's also been nice to test the online features. They were long gone when I played the WiiU one.

Finished Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land!

I enjoyed my time with the game, but it's a definitely a flawed one.

It's buggy and poorly optimized, and it lacks the relaxing feeling and exceptional crafting systems that people expect when the see the "Atelier" name. I think the "Mixed" rating it has on Steam is excessive, but I can understand why some people are not happy with the game.

I really liked the worldbuilding and and exploration aspects. The crafting system is serviceable and better than most non-Atelier games, but honestly among the weakest in the series. Yumia is great and I hope to see more of her in future games. Story is fine, but too sparse for a game that tries to have more focus on that aspect.

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

After a lot of headaches with shipping and customs I finally got this. It's a pack of two very old VNs (Never 7 is from 2000 and Ever 17 is from 2002) from the same author as the Zero Escape series which is one of my all-time favorite VN series.

You can clearly see the age of the game in the technical aspects - background and art look dated, and the low quality of the voices in Never 7 is definitely bothering me (thankfully I booted Ever 17 and they sound much better there). One thing I noticed is that this VN has a lot of choices - I took a peek and found a flowchart for the game and it looks very complex, so I'm most likely just doing an initial "blind" run then using a guide to get the remaining endings. 😃

As for the story, there's already some hints of sci-fi elements (potentially time travel?) from the earlier scenes, with the protagonist having strange "premonitions" for the future. The main negative so far is that I don't like most of the cast, but let's see if they'll grow on me over time.

Playing The Mummy Demastered!

Current side game. So far it's a solid metroidvania.

Looks like this will be a very short game, I'm at ~30% of the map with a little more than 1h of gameplay. But I got this on a sale so this doesn't bother me too much.