Yes! I’ve bought most things already, so I don’t really need the money anymore. However, it’s still fun to collect new cooking ingredients (new crops; or new ways to process them) and to finish the remaining fairy requests (grow x amount of y; unlock better skils etc.).
I didn’t even know there was a New Game option, I never play those and always start fresh instead. However, it does sound interesting in this case!
Had some slower weeks, I’m still on Harvestella. By now, I’ve done pretty much everything except playing the main story past the ‘tutorial phase’ of getting all fairies. I’ve finished most companion stories and really like them, but they aren’t as good as other people hyped them up to be. They often start in a generic way, but not all of them continue like that. There are some good twists and turns and one of them especially dropped a major hint about the upcoming story which got me pretty hyped!
Also played more Pokémon Legends: Arceus. I started the third area this week and still enjoy my journey. However, as so often in these write-ups, I went overboard at the beginning and now a lot of things are kinda trivial. I spent so much time in the first area, I left with a team around Lv 50, mostly filled with alpha Pokémon. The other areas are still fun, there is just no sense of danger anymore. In addition, I think there are too many shared Pokémon between the areas. Since I’ve fully researched them already the first time around, I find myself running past half the things in the newer areas, which is just less fun. But no point in catching a hundred more Starly or Bidoof.
To keep things a bit more fresh, I shelve my entire team each time I reach a new area - excluding my starter.
I love that game! Although I only did Frederica’s ending. It’s the morally correct one, I think, excluding the true ending, of course. I wish we had more games in that style, but there’s only this and Disgea - which dropped the ball with it’s 6 entry. Everything else on Switch is a remaster of some kind.
Anyway, hard more is weird. I’ve started on hard mode, but eventually turned it down. For some battles, you just retry them and collect EXP until you effectively play on a lower difficulty anyway. There just isn’t enough side content to do instead. Curious to see what you think if you decide on trying it.
It think it’s a lot of fun, although I tend to just focus on one thing and then is devolves into a check list. Like doing all side quests, then doing all companion quests, then all dungeons… etc. I just can’t bring myself to not do that when everything is available at once.
They finished ZA within less than a week of release, including the 1k trainer battle quest. I really mean it when I say they holed up and did nothing else for several days. Since then it’s shiny hunting.
Guess I’ll only go for the DLC if those classes/characters are really interesting, then. Or if it’s on sale when I get back to FE:TH.
On my side, more Harvestella.
I’ve automated my farm and started with some animals, which I ignored up till now. They are quite lenient. They cannot die, even if you stop feeding them. It just decreases their friendship, which reduces the quality of their stuff once you start feeding them again.
On top of that, I’ve progressed all companion stories. They are quite, but somewhat generic.
Also started Pokemon Legends Arceus just yesterday. We needed a break from Monster Hunter and it’s my partners favorite game.
Haven’t done much yet, basically just trying to do anything but what the tutorial asks of me. The usual.
The price tag doesn’t sit right we me, but I’m still interested. It’s developed by Omega Force, which also worked on Dragon Quest Builders 2, which I thought was phenomenal. Although, I’d much rather see a 3rd game of that series, this could scratch a similar itch.
I entirely forgot the Three Houses DLC, I don’t think I ever bought it. Curious to see whether you’d recommend it or not.
Anyways, I did play more Harvestella and just like announced last week, I just did a lot of farming to get filthy rich.
I also did most side quests while waiting for the days to pass. The game does this thing where almost all side quests are available at once and I always feel compelled to do them all before going back to the main story - despite knowing better. I did the same for Like a Dragon 8: Infinite Wealth and came to regret it, since I was massively overleveled and the side quests became quite formulaic when done it quick succession. Same here, but I couldn’t help myself.
Played more Harvestella this week.
I went with the suggestion I got and ignored most of the side stuff until after the 3rd chapter, which meant a lot of dungeon crawling and not much farming. I got it done and would recommend the same to everyone else.
The story basically introduces each city and most of the companion characters, which then have their own story you can choose to follow - kinda like Persona does, without the filler events. I haven’t done much of these yet, so I still can’t say much about their overall writing. However, I can already praise the normal side quests for fleshing out minor characters. So far, a lot of characters had multiple side quests progressing their story despite them being average NPCs instead of companions with an actual friendship level. The world feels way more lived in that way.
Anyway, after all that dungeon crawling, I yearned for some farming and have been going all in on that aspect of the game. After the 3rd chapter, you can unlock many useful abilities making it easier to manage your ever growing farm. I’ll go back to the main story once I grow tired of that or once I’m filthy rich.
Just reading about it, I’m motivated to get back to Three Houses, too. I also went with the Black Eagles initially, although that was a compromise. I was in favour of joining the Golden Deer and my partner wanted the Blue Lions - both of us had the Black Eagles in second place. Never did the other routes.
Just a heads-up, you might want to keep at least two save files. While there are only three houses, there are more routes. If you do all routes back to back, you probably don’t want to play the first half of a diverging route twice.
Got any favourites already? Personally, I really enjoyed Hubert and Bernadette. Oh, and Ferdinand, too! The Black Eagles have so many standouts, I almost can’t imagine liking the other houses as much.
After mentioning it a few weeks ago, I’ve started Harvestella.
The game combines dungeon crawling and farming, with quite a bit of story in between. Everything runs on a daily timer with unlimited days, I think. Most actions consume stamina, which can be recovered by eating.
The farming is quite simple thus far. Your basic ploughing, planting, watering and harvesting. You can build a few machines to mill wheat etc. and you can also raise animals, but I’ve not yet played around with these much. There’s also a big list of achievements, like growing X amount of Y, and every few achievements, you unlock some new things.
The dungeon crawling is quite nice, too. And I found myself spending way more time in there, but this might change once my farm grows. You get a basic attack and a jumping button, that it at the beginning. Over time, you get more jobs and unlock special abilities, movement skills and passives. But overall, I think the combat system will remain quite chill. Something I got surprised by is the actual structure of dungeons: It somehow reminds me of Etrian Odyssey games. You’ve got your FOEs to work around (strong monsters to avoid) and points of interest you can interact with, that will either do you some good, some bad or both. You can unlock shortcuts, repair paths, collect stuff and find hidden treasures. Not challenging, but overall quite fun. (Mind you, I’m still at the beginning)
The writing is promising, but I can’t say much about it yet. However, I initially started the game because I got it recommended for its strong character writing.
As a major fan of Xenoblade, Baten Kaitos being developed by Monolith was one of the reasons I wanted to play through the series. I think I’m only missing Xenosaga now, and a return of those game is rumoured.
I’d still recommend the first game, and the second one is just really divisive. A lot of people think the battle system was massively improved over the first game.
This week, Pokemon ZA released, which meant I had ample time to finish Baten Kaitos Origins! My partner is a big fan of Pokemon and basically locked themselves into a room the minute the game released. Which meant no Monster Hunter this week to distract me, or pretty much anything else.
Overall, I remain with the opinion, that the battle system just doesn’t work for normal encounters. Once I started to use the convenience settings added in the remaster, I never got back to fighting trash mobs myself. Each fight can be approached in the same way, and I basically never changed my deck. I still fought bosses properly, as those are still fun, although these also can be fought with the same strategy throughout the entire game. Well, there’s one exception. I didn’t actually defeat the final boss. I almost defeated him properly, but the game decided to crash three times in a row towards the end of the fight - a 20+ minutes fight, I might add. At that point, I just wanted to be done with the game and toggled the option back on.
In short, while trying to remove the kinks from the first game, they threw out everything that made that battle system interesting. It’s sad to say, but now I get why the series ended there.
On the bright side, I found the story to be interesting - hence why I finished the game. It doesn’t quite align with the first game, despite being a prequel, but the twists and turns had me entertained and changed the context for pretty much everything happening in the first game. That being said, I don’t think the game works as well without having played the other one first.
I haven’t decided on the next game, but I’ll start with the demo for Towa and the Guardians of the Sacred Tree.
Still on Baten Kaitos Origins, although I didn’t progress much as it was a busy week.
Since the game is a prequel, it’s fun to see missing backstories from the original game play out here. I know what needs to happen, but I still don’t know how its gonna play out. There’s even been a massive twist that recontextualizes pretty much the whole story setup for both games.
Of course more Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, I’m still on the big grid for deviant armor. For the full set, you need to defeat all 16 difficulty levels about 3 times, meaning 48 fights against the same monster.
Generally speaking, Monster Hunter games get easier as times goes on. Therefore, Rise is the easiest one on Switch.
I haven’t played World, but compared to it Rise added a lot of extra mobility options. Of course you get the Wirebugs to zip around the map and out of pretty much every monster attack. But there’s also a new class of pets you can ride on while healing or sharpening your weapon. It’s also really easy to stack skills on your equipment to help you survive.
None of that is in Generations Ultimate and the games before that are even less accessible.
Wilds is seemingly pretty easy too, but I’d wait for a full version to release.
More Baten Kaitos Origins. I’m at the halfway point, I think.
Overall, I think the game is lacking something. There is just no excitement when opening chests or getting card drops - my normal deck mostly contains only generic cards, and I haven’t changed it much since I’ve started the game. Just replacing the one weapon card per character with stronger ones (weapons get equipped for X number of attacks, generic cards are your basic attacks). With fights being somewhat slow, encounters being common in some dungeons and your party getting fully healed anyway after each fight, I found myself using the remaster options to skip battles - I usually never touch these convince functions in re-releases.
In boss fights, however, the entire thing suddenly works. There’s strategy involved, the deck building is interesting, and I play many character specific cards for longer combos (generic cards are only for chain link 1 to 3, starting with 4 you need to play character specific cards) and healing. I could use the same deck for random encounters, but all that would do is making these fights longer.
I’ve written some longer comments about dungeons being all about resource management before on lemmy and I think that’s the main problem here. With the full heal after each fight, you can just burst down all enemies with no regard to defence or health - which works for everything short of bosses. I’ve even defeated some bosses that way - since I usually fight them once, die and then hit the re-fight button to equip my boss deck.
I also couldn’t stay away from Monster Hunter and started a fresh run of Generations Ultimate with my partner. Unlike with Rise, there’s no challenge involved this time, I’m just focusing on the Charge Blade, which I’ve never used, and compared to Rise just playing MHGU is a challenge. We plan on grinding some deviant armour and just got our asses handed to us by a Dreadking Rathalos. Good times.
Regarding Trails, do you think the original still holds? I haven’t touched the series yet, but would like to play the whole thing one day. Playing the remake would be an option, but I’d prefer playing the original versions - otherwise, it might be hard to go from the remake to the old games.
This month seems almost good. I’d like to play Galaxy some day, but I don’t think that price point is gonna work for me.
I’d also be interested in Pokemon, but I bounced hard off Gen 7 and never tried one since as pretty much every Switch title seemed disappointing. This one is interesting, I think, but at the same time looked quite clunky and I don’t have a Switch 2 yet to play it - I presume it won’t play well on the Switch.
Endangering others for your entertainment makes you a criminal too.
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:
As for the battle system, this changed:
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.
I’ve seen this multiple times already, but I just noticed whatever the dude on the right is doing.