Almost finished Octopath Traveler II.

Finished my run through with the 3 character team, finished most side stories and am almost done with Hikaris solo run. From what I’ve heard, the post-game isn’t very long, although it does require a lot of annoying grinding. Normal content only goes up to level ~50, but the final boss seems to require level ~80. You can only reasonably reach this level by hitting a 7% chance for 100x EXP from a certain (expensive) recruitable NPC within a fight with a rare monster encounter. Think metal slimes. I don’t have a number for that one, but I’ve seen 2 during my ~65 hours. Rinse and repeat for multiple teams.

…yeah, not really feeling that one. I’ll try fighting him low level. I’m not good with resetting for random stuff.

Did the second chapter of Danganronpa. Just an hour ago, actually.

The status quo changed so much, I feel like any semblance of normalcy or trust are gone.

Did a lot less than gaming than I originally planned. Still on Octopath Traveler II.

My B team, consisting of Castti, Agnea and Partitio feels a lot weaker than the other one, even accounting for the missing fourth character. I probably need to rethink their classes before finishing their final chapters. However, it’s hard to beat the automatic buff and debuff at night in combination with the automatic weakness revealed. I did finish up a lot of other things, like collecting all rusty weapons (all of which are equipped to Hikari for his solo run attempt) or the Commerce chapters from Partitio.

Started Danganronpa and also completed the first chapter with my partner. The first case was super obvious, but I really enjoyed the courtroom gameplay anyway. I expect the others to become increasingly more difficult. I hope nothing bad ever happens to Sakura.

Careful with the spoiler section, I don’t know if the game play out the same each time or if murders differ between playthroughs.

That’s right, I almost forgot about him! While I can remove Ochette now, I think the extra challange of using only 3 characters and then a single one is a welcome one.

More Octopath Traveler II.

I may just finish the game in the coming week. I wrapped up several stories this past week and can gladly report that the final bosses are a difficulty spike. At least the first one. I needed to devise an actual strategy and think about my builds for the first time. Looking forward to doing the same with my B team and probably for the secret boss as well.

It’s been a while since I played the first one, it was my very first Switch game and OT II is probably one of my last ones before I get a Switch 2 (…assuming Monolith announces anything). Overall, I feel I enjoy them roughly the same. OT II improved on almost every front, except for the most glaring issues I had with the first one. I still think both are good games, though.

Continued with Octopath Traveler II.

By now my Ochette pretty much one shots most random encounters, her whole kit of monsters is just a collection of strong multi target attacks. Since these don’t even cost mana, there’s not much reason to switch it up. Once I’ve fully levelled her Merchant job, it will be her latent power AOE every fight instead.

Funnily enough, I’m not even that much overlevelled. I’ve done all stories up to Lv 30 (Well, almost - since the first character is fixed until their story is done, I’ve got 2 teams of 3 I rotate between. Hikari will be a solo run afterwards.) and I’m level 34 with Ochette. About 31 with the other three I took along.

Also watched my partner play a ton more Tomodatchi Life. One they had enough of it, we’ve also got Danganronpa THHAE from the recent sale lined up. I don’t know much about it, but seems like a big jump in terms of atmosphere coming from AI: Somnium Files.

Been working through Octopath Traveler II.

I’ve done all chapter 1 and most chapter 2 stories for all 8 characters. I’ve come to accept that any attempt to prevent overlevelling for the main story is fruitless as my Ochette just cuts through any boss. Instead I’ve done some optional high level stuff to get challanging boss fights, which were great.

Also watched my partner play a ridiculous amount of Tomodachi Life. It seems like a lot of fun, but the pool of random events seems quite small. Also, a few things from the original game were cut, like the option to create custom songs.

Started Octopath Traveler 2 this week.

Didn’t play too much, only did the introduction for 4 of the characters. Initially, I really struggled with myself on how to approach this game. Just go with one character for the challange, do everything for 4 characters and then do the other 4 or just everyone at once. In the end, I’ll probably juggle all 8, but it’s really annoying that I can’t remove my starting character (which is why I considered the solo run, you can remove them after their story is done).

No matter what I do, I’ll proabbly end up overleveled for a lot of stuff, which sucks.

Otherwise the game is great, but I still think the main gimmick - 8 more or less independant characters and stories - just doesn’t work all that great on a fundamental level. Maybe I’ll think otherwise after finishing it, supposedly it does it better than the first one.

I’m no expert, but I think Santa Claus isn’t exactly a biblical figure and neither is the Easter Bunny. These are normal holidays around here, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many children who know any of the christian stuff.

Also, I think Christmas was actually built on top of the prior winter solstice celebrations. It’s not like anyone knew the exact date of birth for a random guy from hundreds of years ago.

The existence of a queue sparks the follow-up question: What happens if something is born while the queue is empty?

Same. Haven’t seen anything about the movie yet and this post spoiled it.

Finished Persona 5 Tactica. Overall, I like the story and new characters, but the gameplay remained too easy. Until the final boss, which took well over an hour, I didn’t even bother healing once. Of course, it’s the best battle in the game.

I think it is better than Strikers, which I thought didn’t work at all.

On the final stretch of AI Somnium Files: nirvanA Initiative, likely in the final psynch.

Almost all beans have been spilled, and the big revelation was explained. I still prefer the first games resolution, but this one is growing on me. It went from “That’s total bullshit” to “Wait a minute…” and finally “Shit, it’s actually somehow coming together”. To fully appreciate it, I think you’d have to play it twice.

Up next is likely Octopath 2, but maybe I’ll go for Nioh 2 or 13 Sentinels instead. Those 3 are my entire backlog atm.

It definitely works if you haven’t played much S1 or care about the performance upgrade. Especially in handheld mode.

Those two things just don’t apply to me. They need some new RPGs on there I can’t get on S1 to catch my interest. (Although, FF7 remake is a good start, but I’m not playing those until the series is complete.)

Almost a year in and there are like 3 games: Bananza, Pokopia and a Mario Kart game people seem quite divided about. I’ll probably get one eventually, but there is just no reason as of yet.

I don’t know about other people, but I think they really dropped the ball by mostly releasing Upgrade Packs. I couldn’t care less about them. I mean, they had years to prepare proper games instead.

Playing on merciless, I completed them all in the minimun amount of days possible. You are forced to leave palaces before their respective boss or at certain breakpoints for the story to continue.

I often got to these points by the skin of my teeth, but I love resource management in dungeons and think they are best enjoyed this way. But no shame in leaving more often if that’s more fun to you.

There is only one hard requirement if you want to see everything and get a ‘true’ ending of Persona 5 Royal. Depending on your other choices, some additional scenes may vary. The requirement is a confidant you need to level:

To get the most out of royal, you should level these 2 as well:

Everything else doesn’t matter. You cannot complete all confidants, so don’t stress about them. Just do what’s interesting to you. Just meet these three characters whenever they are available.

Oh and don’t wait until the last day of a deadline to finishes Palaces. Until after a Palace is done you cannot level you party member confidants.

It’s been a while, but my gaming progress has been at a snails pace.

I’ve finished SMT V:Vengeace! Overall, I still really like the game, but it didn’t leave as big of an impression as the vanilla version did. I’d still recommend Vengeance over Vanilla, I’ve just played so many SMT games that I eventually hit a bit of a fatigue.

Now, ironically, since then, I’ve been playing another SMT game: Persona 5 Tactica. Unlike with the main games, I don’t care about completely filling my demon compendium in this one, which is the thing I got actually fatigued about.

Tactica has a lot of similarities to the Mario & Rabbits games, which I did enjoy. These aren’t proper SRPGs in my book, but rather puzzles with light SRPG mechanics. Often times side-quests even want you to do them in a single turn. The one new mechanic added to the formula is the main thing you’re trying to do as much as possible: All out attacks. Basically, under certain conditions, your characters get another turn and you deal massive damage to all enemies within the triangle created by the 3 characters you play with. All you other options just serve to set these up.

The gameplay can get a bit samey. To counteract this, maps themselves are movement puzzles with switches to stand on and similar things.

I like the new story and characters, although the game is unexptedly wordy. If you’re good at the ganeplay, half the playtime is cutscenes.

Lastly, I finished Ai: The Somnium Files and started the sequel: nirvanA Initiative. Still a really good time, but this time around, you don’t play as Date and there are less branching paths. You know, the best things about the first game. I’m close to the end, I think, and my overall opinion is heavily dependant on the resolution. The mystery is fun, but it only stays fun if the explanation is both good and had a lot of foreshadowing - once again, like the first game.

Some free Silksong DLC, maybe?

Instead of learning skills individually, learn them as you go! Just pick an engine - I’d recommend Godot - and get to work.

Here’s a nice challange about building increasingly difficult games: The 20 games challange.

You start with Pong, which is super easy to get the hang of. You could even follow a tutorial for that one and then try to use less and less tutorials as you go down the list.

Just get going instead of watching endless how-to videos, which is an easy trap for beginners. Actually starting a project and finishing one are two of the most important skills. You’ll quickly learn which parts come naturally to you and which ones you need to focus on.

As for creativity, once you’re done with each game, try to think of a twist to spice it up and add it to the game. It can be a simple thing, like e.g. with Pong using multiple balls or maybe adding obstacles - just test what’s fun and what’s not!

Still working through Shin Megami V Vengeance!

Finished the second main area, out of 4, I presume. By now the story has established the new group of antagonists and gave more screen time to the previously underused cast. There are enough new demons that I can barely keep up with fusing them all! But I always feel to need to collected them all in SMT/Persona. (Funnily enough, I never did in Pkmn.)

Finished the first route of AI: The somnium files!

Got Ota’s ending, which didn’t actually solve the case. Luckily, the game tells you about each branching path and you can freely jump to them.

The humor is hit or miss, but it did land with me and my partner. The mystery is fun and the characters are all around fun, too. We’ll do the other routes and then jump right into the sequel!