Backlog 2020

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
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Night Owl
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So, I got to the point where I could pull Blades, and I did so. I used the two Legendary Core Crystals from the Expansion Pass thinking I'd just get my first Pity Blade. Instead...

...

...

...

I got KOS-MOS. I don't know how I did it, but I got the rarest Blade in the game as my First Rare Blade. I feel like I just blew all my luck. :shock:
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Bluie
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Night Owl wrote: I got KOS-MOS. I don't know how I did it, but I got the rarest Blade in the game as my First Rare Blade. I feel like I just blew all my luck. :shock:
You and my husband both. I remember being SO MAD that he got her so early in the game whilst I was over 200 hours into post game grinding cores just to get her. Congrats though, she is extremely useful. There are a total of 6 light blades in the game, and three of them are locked behind DLC.

----

I decided that the next indie I'd work on finishing would be VA-11 Hall-A, annnnd my save file is gone ;w;! I don't remember if I played it prior to having backups or if the save file was on the old micro SD I changed out earlier this year, but poof, the 2-4 hours I spent on it before getting distracted elsewhere is goooone. I'm trying to look on the bright side though, because I did need to be retaught the controls and I remembered that the first customer « Baaaa *glomp* » at you if you don't give him a large beer, so I made sure to give him just that this time, and I got paid more for doing it right~

Gotta say that playing it on a big TV with surround sound is really something. I was purely handheld with the switch before moving into a house with a setup otherwise, and MAN, does the OST shine. I've listened to it off and on via YT, but it sounds so much better come out of speakers it was meant to.
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Panda Parfait
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Kikki wrote:I fiiiiinally beat Meg. It was on my 4th or 5th try, though it was around my 9th death.
Spoiler:
I have double dash now, and I managed to secure Divine Dash as well, which does make it comparatively easy in every room cuz you can run around nearly impervious to all damage, while damaging everything you touch.

I also have to fight Meg with the bow. I tried it with the sword, but no...attacks from further away result in a lot less damage to Zagreus. This is all taking forever, tbh. I have no idea how the game is structured, but I assume beating Meg means I've barely started...she's my first proper boss battle. I can't see me getting this done in 18 hours. Not unless I hurry up and die 25 more times in succession to get my damage resistance up to the maximum 80%. At that level, I might be able to progress a bit faster, lol.

My first run on GodMode was actually much harder than any of the previous runs. So many more enemies spawned in every room, and a lot of them were those stupid crystals, and the floating skulls and witches. (-__-) Oh well, at least Meg is beaten. However, if I die again (which I obviously will, and soon!) I assume I have to battle through all the rooms and fight her yet again, so my sense of accomplishment is low.

There really is some fun to be had in dying and starting again, even many times, but...it does start to get wearing. I want to get to new content, not slight revisions of what I already know. I only managed to get something new by giving a gift to Nyx. (Or I think that's what did it.)

Workin' on it, anyway.
EDIT: Gotta say, I don't get why the Olympians are sending all this help down to Zagreus. The Greek gods weren't exactly known for their kindliness or charity, but they're all tripping over themselves to help a previously unknown nephew/cousin get out of his ugly, depressing homeland? Cuz they're all just so sweet? Doesn't sit right with me. I may just know too many stories about how selfish and back-stabby they are...typically it was only demi-gods and mortals who could be decent...maybe that's just not the idea of this game/world.
Congrats! Glad to hear Divine Dash has been helpful. I think that 18 hour estimate you're looking at may be based on the very first ending, but the game definitely doesn't feel done at that point. It took me maybe 30-40 hours to "beat" the game (as in, seeing the credits roll). The time it takes will probably vary wildly based on your personal skill level and how lucky you get with items/boons, though. It sounds like « Harvest Goddess » Mode will probably make that go by faster as well, but I don't personally know much about how it works.

As for the Olympians.. I don't want to spoil too much for you, but I will say that the game doesn't portray them in the most positive light, despite how it seems right now, though they do remain a bit sanitized.

I'm still playing Hades here and there, just kind of waiting for Cyberpunk to come out. After I'm done with that game, I'll probably resub to FFXIV, hopefully I'm not too rusty. I'm kind of regretting my choice of buying the game instead of staying on the trial as long as possible, but I really wanted to be a Viera. :(
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Kikki
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Thanks, Panda Parfait :) Howlongtobeat.com lists different completion times. 17.5 hours is the very lowest, for the main story ONLY, which I think means how long it takes you to complete your first full 'escape'. It lists 'main story + extras' as 35 hours, and 'completionist' as 88 hours. After talking to others and playing enough of the game to have a good idea of how it is structured, I think the 88 hour benchmark is for completely filling the journal (with enemies, allies, items, etc.) The 35 hour mark is probably to where you get the credits to roll, but I don't know what hte qualification for that is. Probably some extra story elements revealed. Perhaps through gaining enough friendship with various characters to reveal cutscenes?

I plan to call the game complete after I get one successful escape, meaning that at that point, I can write it off my backlog...but I'll probably continue to play to unlock more scenes and stuff here and there. But it'll just be picking at it when I'm in the mood...I'll move on to trying to using most of my game hours complete another game, at that point.

It's a pretty fun game, but if you play it for hours on end, it gets frustrating, ime. Unless you're dying on purpose to gather items and increase damage immunity faster, and then it's easier not to care, lol.

I super like Zagreus.
Spoiler:
His voice is just the best. (I like both the sound and the things he says/the way he says them.) And Hades kind of evokes the feeling of anyone who was a child/teenager with a strong-willed or overbearing papa who felt that he knew was was best for you and what you were capable of, much better than you could ever know for yourself. And I think a heck of a lot of us have a dad like that, cuz older-generation dads just seem to tend that way. (Obviously not all of them, though, and I know mine really loves me and has my best interests at heart, 100%, so it doesn't frustrate me like I know it does some people, including one of my sisters. Though those times are almost entirely passed now that I'm middle-aged. ALMOST entirely, lol.)

Not that I'm convinced Hades necessarily has Zagreus' best interest at heart. I more think Hades is kinda depressed and has surrendered to it. Not that that makes me like him. I don't like him. Nope.
Last edited by Kikki on Nov 25, 2020 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ronin19
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I've beaten Golden Sun Lost Age last night! I don't think it's as good as the first game, but like with how I said about Miles Morales, it's like one or two points with Lost Age having the lower score.

Gonna start up Dark Dawn and hopefully beat it before Cyberpunk comes out in 15 days.
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cinnamon_yuki
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I don't think I could finish Assassin's Creed Odyssey on time before Cyberpunk 2077 release in 15 days since I have reports and stuff I have to do during end of month. I will probably have to play Odyssey once we have a long weekend this coming week and it will be back to the backburner for now. Nioh 2 for PC, SoS PooT and ME Trilogy Legendary Edition will be out next year but I promised myself to save more next year since I'm not getting younger and I have to invest my money more on my retirement fund now. I would definitely be getting SoS PoOT on Day 1 though so I think Dec 10 to Mar 24 is an ample time to finish Cyberpunk 2077 and then SoS PoOT and returned to Odyssey before getting Valhalla, Nioh 2 or ME Trilogy.
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Bluie
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Completely forgot about the ongoing event in Genshin Impact, so today I'm going to grind it (and hopefully finish it) between Thanksgiving cooking (and eating~).

Oh, and I finally got Diona last night! The gacha was determined to never give her to me. I got 4 of each Beidou and Ningguang before she dropped. She's so smol...! A healer with an ice bow is a big improvement to my core team and I'm already having a ball playing as her.
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GameStop has FOMT for $20. It was normal priced yesterday and it isn’t advertised on the site as a Black Friday product.

I need to finish the games on my SNES Classic. I haven’t touched it in a year. I think a lot of people forget about their plug and plays a lot.
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Kikki
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I am having trouble with Hades that I've never had with a game before.

Once I've been playing it for 15 minutes, I'm having fun and like to continue. I like knowing I could trigger new content at any time with cutscenes, giving gifts and stuff, or I could unlock better abilities via darkness or gems with the mirror or work orders from the contractor...all pretty fun stuff. I also live to hear Zagreus say 'That's for last time,' to the enemy who killed us on the previous run, when he kills them, instead. The problem comes in when I put the game down. As soon as I do, it's like all desire to play again completely leaches out of me. I really do like Zagreus as an MC. But the gameplay loop is...a bit chore-like, I guess. Having to replay and replay and beat the same challenges you've already beaten over and over again to work your way back to the furthest area to take on a new challenge and get killed by IT, instead, and then do it all again. Again. Again.

~One more time.~

I guess it's just wearying? So the fun can grab me up while I'm playing, but when I'm NOT, all I can remember is the effort. So each day when it's time to start playing again, I have to psyche myself up as if for difficult exercise, lol. I'm sure it doesn't help that I'm struggling so much with extra fatigue irl, right now. Getting chores done often doesn't happen at all.

EDIT: Made it to the final boss of the third level of the underworld.
Spoiler:
Killed one, and had the other down to 20% or less. If I'd started on full health, I could have won. Poo. Now I've got to do all three levels again, and I feel like I can only stand to do one run per day, lol. Though if I get a few more darkness, I could grab another level of death defiance before trying to tackle the third level boss again...
Once they are beaten, I think I'm probably about half way through my route out of the underworld, in terms of how many rooms I'll have to go through, but I don't know precisely.
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Bluie
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IIRC (and correct me if i'm wrong, fellow Hades players), the main story progresses by just dying and returning, not necessarily through the progress in the dungeons. So, if you wanted to give the gameplay loop a little break and just do some story, that's an option.

I haven't played Hades in awhile, but I do want to go back to it really soon. I think I'm gonna finish up the Genshin Impact event (I got it 70% done yesterday, and the last 30% is gonna take some extra grinding), then prioritize either Hades or Age of Calamity. I really wanna finish them both because everywhere I go I'm getting slapped with spoilers. None of them are major, so I'm not overly upset about it, but still, I wish I hadn't seen them regardless. I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to games like I used to, so I can't keep up with most of the player base, which is frustrating, but reality.

Gotta work on VA-11 Hall-A too... :sheep:
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Kikki
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Bluie wrote:IIRC (and correct me if i'm wrong, fellow Hades players), the main story progresses by just dying and returning, not necessarily through the progress in the dungeons. So, if you wanted to give the gameplay loop a little break and just do some story, that's an option.
Some of the story seems locked behind how far you've progressed, too. And some behind specific deaths. Like, I had to kill Meg about ten times (not sure if being killed BY her also counts into the total or not...I think it did) before I was finally able to meet some others. I'm not sure which bits are main story and which bits are side story, sometimes, though. I think if it's a scene with Hades or Nyx, it's automatically part of the main story? Last time I left to start an escape, an image of Hades appeared across the screen with him yelling at Zagreus about his room being a mess or about him making a mess in his escape attempts or something. That didn't feel like main story, lol. I died a bunch of times on purpose, but the main story doesn't seem to be moving along very quickly...I'm not sure how many deaths it'll take. Maybe it has more unlock conditions, like number of enemies killed, or rooms cleared or something. I also unlocked a bit by some House Contractor upgrades.

In short...I dunno! :)

I wish there were a really fast way to die right out of the gate. So far I'm running all the way through Tartarus to face Meg and then I go stand in the lava after that. (I'm sorry, Zagreus. I'll get you through this eventually!) I can't find any fast way like lava to die in Tartarus, though.
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Panda Parfait
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I'm no expert on how things work in Hades but yeah, in my experience there is some main story that you straight up won't get to see unless you start winning escape attempts. There was a stretch of time in my game where I didn't get much new dialogue in the House of Hades anymore and it was clear that the game was running out of things to show me until I reached a certain amount of wins, and now I'm seeing a ton of new stuff whether I die or not. I assume you should still be able to see side stories if you don't win, but I wasn't handing out nectar like candy at the time so I'm not sure.
Kikki wrote:EDIT: Made it to the final boss of the third level of the underworld.
Spoiler:
Killed one, and had the other down to 20% or less. If I'd started on full health, I could have won. Poo. Now I've got to do all three levels again, and I feel like I can only stand to do one run per day, lol. Though if I get a few more darkness, I could grab another level of death defiance before trying to tackle the third level boss again...
Once they are beaten, I think I'm probably about half way through my route out of the underworld, in terms of how many rooms I'll have to go through, but I don't know precisely.
That boss was probably the biggest hurdle in the game for me. Lots of my runs died there, took me a while before I could go into that boss without being scared that I'd wipe out all my revives lol. I'd definitely suggest prioritizing Death Defiance! Early on I reset my skills so I could max it out, and I usually took Skelly's keepsake with me to the third level and beyond (I think it's the tooth?) until I was confident that I wouldn't die a ton.
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Kikki
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I like Cerberus' keepsake. :) Gives me 50 extra HP in my max to work with, to refill whenever I have the chance to buy or find HP items, or a fountain, or etc. Plus when I wear it, death defiance gives me back an extra 25 HP each time. I have 2 levels of death defiance now...I'm thinking it probably maxes out at 3, given how it looks on the HP bar area.

Since I nearly managed to win against that boss on my first go, I think I'll be able to do it on my second, as long as I go in with both death defiances and full or near-full HP, and my bow. Bow works best for me since I can hurt them from further away than they can hurt me (I always use my special 'X', rather than regular attacks. I hardly ever even touch the Y button, tbh...not when I have the bow.) I really like the spear as well since it does major backstab damage and can be used from nearly as far away as the bow, but the bow hurts so many more enemies at once, I guess I just like that, lol.

I want to meet Thanatos, darn it, this king's pet who is always winning Employee of the Month, lol. I really hope I run into him in Elysium this time, but I know it's random, when he'll show up for the first time.

I always feel like I'm performing really badly, but I think I'm actually doing okay. I have my godhood at 46%. I'd love to have it at max to give me a really big advantage...I am a fan of stupidly-easy modes, I tell you!...but that's gonna take a while. Hopefully I can keep getting boosts from the Work Orders and the Mirror to make myself tougher. I want to just steamroller my way through all my enemies to the exit, dang it.

EDIT: Yay! Did indeed manage to beat 3rd tier boss on my second try. Satisfying, because that thing is annoying.

EDIT: Holy, what's going on here?!
Spoiler:
I thought it'd take me forever to get through this fourth section, but...did I get super, suuuuuper lucky and sort of get a shortcut or something? Is it random? Well...now to try and beat this boss, I guess.
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Bluie
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Kikki wrote: I want to meet Thanatos, darn it, this king's pet who is always winning Employee of the Month, lol. I really hope I run into him in Elysium this time, but I know it's random, when he'll show up for the first time.
You and the whole fandom, lol. He is VERY popular. I've yet to run into him yet either, but some people have all the luck and have run into him consecutively, which is impressive given the % rate of which he shows up.

---

I managed to do it! I finished Genshin Impact's 'Unreconciled Stars' event last night just before I crashed. Overall, it was a really fun event that sucked me back into playing the game exclusively for a time. With the current story content locked behind a high adventure rank that would take a lot of grinding to reach, this event not only helped me gain some levels, but also showered me in the gacha currency + event currency so I can get a lot of nice stuff. I also really enjoyed the story itself as it revealed more about the world and gave some great characterization to Mona and Fischl. I'm really looking forward to the next event now, but I will be more or less shelving the game. I want to try pulling the new fire claymore girl in a few days, but I have no desire to grind levels at the moment. My entire family has gotten into the game now though, so I might be pulled back so I can help them blast through exploration and dungeons.

Welp, back to my Switch. I think once I finish Age of Calamity, VA-11 Hall-A, and Hades, I'll go back to Yakuza 0. Everything else can wait. FFXIV has a new patch on December 8 tho, so RIP gaming schedule once that drops.
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Kikki
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Some things in Hades seem to have a painfully low possibility of appearing. There is still one 'perilous foe' in Tartarus that I have not run into. In Tartarus. That I've beaten so many times entirely already. And yet that one foe simply NEVER spawned, in all this time. A wretched sneak, I think it is. I'm not sure but I think it only appears in a specific mini boss chamber. Or maybe it IS the mini boss.

At least I got to meet Patroclus a few runs ago...those are some really nice bonuses he offers. And Eurydice the run before that. She looks like a broccoli, imo. A pretty broccoli, but still definitely broccoli. All the field characters seem to be the most useful. But I really want to get Thanatos registered in my Codex so I can claim my Prophecy reward.

I faced the final boss, but I don't think I'm all that close to beating it. I'm thinking I should die on purpose for a while again...I could try to get the wretched sneak to spawn each time, too. I'm definitely going to strike Hades off my backlog once I beat the final boss once and complete the main goal of the story, because I need to move on, but there's so much content (even main story) that is not unlocked by completing the main goal that I'm sure I'll keep returning to it for a while afterwards. This game does trigger a completionist's itch. There's so much stuff! All the prophecies, all the House Contractor stuff, all the bonding stuff, the mirror, etc. Too danged much, lol. I am NOT going for completion; I think 88 hours would actually be on the low end of how long that would take.

I hate that I have to collect diamonds just to be allowed the chance to complete characters' quest lines. It makes sense, but I still don't like it. This game is grindmaggedon.
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