Backlog 2022

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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Kikki
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That's a bit of a tricky one, Shan. There's actually a fair amount of reading in AC. Half of it is unimportant chatter, but you do get a lot of instructions via talk with Tom/etc. I think you could easily learn to fish and bug-catch without reading, but there are definitely things you'd probably be confused about if you didn't speak the language at all. But...you can make your mom a player profile with her own country/language settings. ACNH is playable in: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean.

If your mom speaks/reads any of those, you'd just have to make her a profile with that setting, and the game would be in her own language. Unless you're trying to get her to use more English with this...it might be a good game if you speak minimal English, around the level of what a grade one or two kid could read (that'd be a 6 or 7-year-old, around here) as most of what is in there is pretty simple. I think?

But if it's more about getting her to play a game, then setting it into a language she's familiar with seems like it could work out well.
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greensara
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Shan - My daughters can read on probably a 1st/2nd grade level and they love Animal Crossing. Granted they've watched me play it, but they enjoy walking their characters around and doing random stuff like dressing up and pretending to sleep. I will say that though they can read, there is an awful lot of button mashing going on, and I do get asked what so-and-so said or what to do because they weren't paying attention. Also, my oldest is more into watching than playing herself, so she gets easily frustrated with controls, leading to more button mashing.

Waiting for my copy of Violet to come I have played almost to the end of Skyward Sword. Got to the final big bad and got destroyed. So frustrating. I don't know if I need a strategy or what. So close to finishing though.
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Kikki
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Finally got my two prescriptions, lol, what a farce that was!
Spoiler:
MOre than a week, chasing an entire collection of neurologists around before one of them was able to figure out how to sign a prescription before submitting it, haha. But anyway, I think the gabapentin is actually working on the nerve pain, though it doesn't deal with muscle tension. The cyclobenzaprine is certainly working on the clenching/spasms, but WOW it knocks me out! I'm going to try cutting my pills in half, because I've read (in horribly wordy, boring medical research/study articles) that 5ml actually works almost as well as 10ml but with significantly less somnolence. It'd be fantastic if that worked, though you're only allowed to take cyclo for 2-3 weeks so...dunno why they bothered since this appears to be a chronic problem, as I've had it non-stop for 3+ months now. I think this'll let me finally stop taking NSAIDs 24/7...I'm trying to go off them today. :) I think I could get away with only using the relaxants for sleeping...I can try to manage that with heat/ice/exercise/stretching when I'm awake.

I slept most of today and feel dazed even when I'm awake. Not fond of relaxants...too much sedation!
~

ANB is hard to keep track of when you set it down for a week or two, but fortunately (sort of) I'm in a quiet section since I have to wait more than two seasons to finish Restoration Plan #4...you can't speed up the 'participate in 3 garden tours' requirement, so all you can do is float along day-to-day during that stage. Meanwhile, I've finished every other requirement for #4, and I only need oooooone more small rock and I will have all 4 possible makers made. Then I've gotta use them 300 times and I can get that last maker and finally get that great maker combo that'll help me ratchet up the star rank of my crops. My chickens have all had every plain treat they need, so I can stuff them full of chicken treats until they all reach 5-item productivity without worrying about interspersing other treat types. Actually, my sheep is like that, too...but I need to give my cow 14 more regular treats before I can switch solely to cow treats. But she's already at 3-item productivity, so the milk supply is decent.

Gonna check the material requirements for Amir's palace to make sure I can build it the second I get my paws on the blueprint after the Spring Garden Tour. I need...5 more gold, and 1 more adamantite. No big deal...I could skim that out of the mine in two days without a painful level of resetting. I also need to get the Herb Pasta recipe as a festival prize before then. I still need to win the fried egg recipe (does that really need a recipe?? Crack an egg into a hot pan and boom, fried egg!) at the Chicken Festival, and then I should be able to skim for the Herb Pasta recipe that comes with Set #6. The earliest I could snatch that is the crop festival on Fall 30, so...should be no problem getting it before Sanjay is in town :)

Then I can inundate him with herb pasta every day and get married before Fall Year 2 :) Other than that, I just want to max every brand I have via festivals, which doesn't take that long.

I keep wondering what my next new game is, but I should get back to (and complete) Zero before I think about any new games. (Though if any of my wishlist goes on a good sale for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, I'll snatch 'em while the snatching is good!)
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Shan O 123
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I’m not going to worry about it right now. If mom wants to play then I’ll set it up for her but right now it’s not important.


I got a new switch lite today that’s why I’d give her my other one.

Gotta say transferring data wasn’t that bad. The only thing I’m worried about is my Pokémon data but it’s okay if I have to restart those games.


Side note I been sitting all day I gotta lay down…
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Mikodesu
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greensara wrote: Nov 20, 2022 1:10 pmWaiting for my copy of Violet to come I have played almost to the end of Skyward Sword. Got to the final big bad and got destroyed. So frustrating. I don't know if I need a strategy or what. So close to finishing though.
Have you tried 'guardian potions' at any point in your playthrough? (If not--they grant brief invincibility and I THINK they heal your shield. Afaik, the best potion in the game.) I've watched casual speedruns of the game where the player ended up resorting to one, since the final boss is so brutal both in damage to you and your shield.

If nothing else, if a speedrunner did it I'd guarantee you have access to it... the cost I'm not sure.

--
Spent most of the weekend just...getting back to normal. Finished some art while watching vods of streams I really didn't want to miss and played a lot of Genshin. I think I'm all caught up there. Harvestella is still fun. Every story section has been pretty different from the last, which I appreciate. Keeps everything novel. I look forward to automating the farm a bit more, so I can go back and clear out dungeons properly. :)
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Kikki
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I don't know if anyone's interested, but Persona 5 Royal on Switch is on sale for 25% off, which is acceptable. I'm considering it...there are 13 days left so I don't have to decide immediately. I can even stretch it out until December 1...I'm planning to make any decisions on holiday sale games by then. I played P5 on PS4 not long after it released, so I don't know if the Royal version is worth getting...P5 already had more than enough content! The holiday-season sales seem to have begun as of today, anyway. Good time to pick up any AAA games that you bypassed before, like Skyward Sword, Three Houses, Ni No Kuni II (BIG sale on that one!), Luigi's Mansion, Bravely Default, Skyrim, Super Mario, etc.

Some day I'll get Skyward Sword, just to have it on a console with more life left in it than the Wii U. Dunno if I care enough to buy it right now, though, even at 30% off. Next year's sales might be soon enough for me.

No Man's Sky is also 20% off on Switch. Still can't decide if I'd like it or not! It seems too technical and might bore me, like Kerbal Space Station did. I hope they'll keep adding more games to the sale as the week goes on.

I want to play something comforting and homey because my life is a freakshow atm, with everything in life changing for all of us and my health being absolutely bizarre. New problems keep cropping up...now there's something interesting happening with my right eye/right side of my nose. Hooray for being medically intriguing? Unfortunately, ACNH is drained dry, so I can't use that. Even restarting it again wouldn't be enough to get me interested. I don't want to re-catch all those bugs and fish or find all those DIYs again or any of that stuff... I just want to decorate it differently and inhabit it with different residents. But it'd still be the same old game, even if I did that. It'd be awesome if Squeenix would suddenly drop extra story or quest DLC for DQB2, but that's well beyond the realm of even a pipe dream.

Guess I'll do RL stuff and wander slowly through ANB for now.

EDIT: Oh hey, even if Tempest went on sale the day after these others. It's only 15%, though,a nd for a shorter time, but I can still just barely afford to wait until December 1 before making a decision, so I will wait to see how much of my wishlist goes on sale before I commit to buying any.
Last edited by Kikki on Nov 22, 2022 4:13 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Harvest Moon kawaii
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Spoiler:
Currently playing:

Persona 5 Royal (Switch)
Pokemon Violet (Switch)

Recently bought:

Pokemon Violet (Switch)
The Choice of Life - Middle Ages (Switch)
Sudocats (Switch) (Sudoku with Cats)
Pixel Paint (Switch)
Fishing Fighters (Switch)
7 Days of Rose (Switch)
To the Moon (Switch)
Time on Frog Island (Switch)
Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival (Plus 90 Day subscription/Pass) (Switch)
Goodbye World (Switch)
Paradise Marsh (Switch)
I played Persona 5 Royal about 13 hours. (Still doing the first dungeon/Palace)

Pokémon Violet is a lot of fun, too. I just arrived in the city with the school, and right before that, I caught my first full odds shiny Pokemon.

The Cyber Deals/sales on the Nintendo Switch e-shop have started. I bought 10 games today.

Super excited about my game purchases. :)
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Bluie
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I dropped Caravan Stories last night. I had an urge to at least play one of the race's story to the reincarnation point, so I went from Dwarf to Orc. I really wanted to play as the 'Gessy' race which are these cute little bunny/mouse people, but you're forced into reincarnating into every other race before they're accessible. I decided to look into it a little bit more and apparently once you finally get to play Gessy (or Lizardman) the game's difficulty ramps up to unfair levels and forces you to grind your « Mr.Gourmet's hat » off if you want to keep up. As I have mentioned in the past, I have little patience for games that do not respect my time and hold a gun to my head, so this one is off my backlog forever.

It's a shame, really, because I was enjoying it. The character designs were great and varied, the world was pretty interesting, and I was growing attached to certain characters and music pieces. The problem is that I'm not a teenager / young adult with a colossal shitton of free time any more. Had this game fallen into my lap 10-15 years ago I would have ate it up no questions, but now I just can't. I'm at least happy I got to try it after scrolling past it so many times in the PSN store, but it's going into the piles of MMOs/Online Service games I started then stopped due to them demanding my time instead of respecting it. I'll stick with FFXIV and Genshin (and hopefully Warframe if the crossplay/save update ever comes out).
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Kikki
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Finished Trails from Zero. There's an achievement in it that I think it's best to ignore. I wish I hadn't heard it existed. It's to finish the game at or below level 40. I went into the final dungeon at just under level 36, and avoiding ALL other enemies and only fighting non-optional bosses, I leveled up SEVEN TIMES. Plus the two characters they foist off on you as support come in at level 38 no matter w hat you do, and they count, so you have to KO them as soon as you get them to render them inert...so they can't gain any more experience as you go through the dungeon. And you can't achieve this on NG+ if you plan to carry your status data over...you have to achieve it when you're low-level.

Worst achievement they've ever added, I think. To get it you'd have to be paranoid the whole game about how many enemies you could fight and if you were staying a low enough level to get to the final dungeon. Just gettnig all the chests (most guarded by monsters) means you're going to fight more than you can afford to, coming into the final dungeon.

Plus the un-mapped dungeons aren't a challenge, they're just a frustration.

Great story, as always, Falcom, but you guys really need to look up 'fun' and 'frustration' and understand that they're not interchangeable just because both of them begin with the letter 'f'. Stop wasting my time with this nonsense. I missed one recipe in the whole game...turns out it was on day 1 of chapter 1, I didn't talk to the merchant at the fruit stand, so when the endgame came, I missed out on getting a major item. I also missed getting 2DP out of...what, 400 or so DP? I don't actually know where I missed them, I just know I did. And I was trying to avoid monsters in the final dungeon, so I couldn't complete the monster chests there, so I couldn't get all the chests, either.

Finishing Zero has been a huge source of stress and aggravation. I'm the type who doesn't feel satisfied to leave achievements alone, particlarly since they give you very useful reward points that let you unlock NG+ features. But the achievements AREN'T FUN, they're just tedious, and require you to play the game while nervously consulting a walkthrough every few minutes, before going in or out of any area, just in case that one step is what locks you out of that convo about fruit juice that nets you the recipe, which in turn nets you not one but TWO super-powerful orbments for endgame.

ARGH. I'm done, anyway. Really grumpy about it, but done! Such a shame, when it's such a good story...why do they ruin it with this garbage?
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infel
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Hope everyone is okay and for those who celebrate it, have a good Thanksgiving.

For me, this month has been mainly playing Pokemon. Honestly, I'm a bit surprised by this because I haven't played this much Pokemon in my entire life. Sure, maybe for a week or two, but not an entire month. I think it's because I sort of double played Pokemon Arceus and now am playing Pokemon Violet. In terms of Pokemon Violet, I've mad some slow and steady progress. Have two gym badges and am soon to get the third. I also defeated the first Team Star boss and a Titan. Overall. I'd say I'm okay with these games. I'm disappointed by a few things like the glitches and certain aspects of the towns/cities(can't really go inside of places outside of the school), but I think I'm having more fun with this than Pokemon Sword and Shield. I'm playing Violet at a slightly slow speed though because of being a bit burned out by Pokemon and being tired lately. Also, I really need to focus on my class again....Still, Pokemon has given me some joy that I've really needed.

Sadly, that's all I've really done this month. I've been really tired lately and down, and it's been hard to find motivation to play anything....I have been reading two visual novels though, Slow Damage and Our Life. Both stories are very different, but very good, with the latter a good story for those who just want a feel good story. Still, even with these it's hard for me to stay awake when reading them.

Having dabbed in much of anything else. It really frustrates me because I want to finish more games. However, anyway motivation I had this month is mostly gone. All I can say is that I hope I can go back to Xenoblade or Trails, but I don't know if I can. The Grandia Collection and Chrono Cross are on my radar though, but who knows. For now, I don't know what I'll play or if I'll finish anything else for this year. Only time will tell.

Games I want to finish by the end of the year:
Story of Seasons Mineral Town
Digimon Cyber Sleuth (not likely)
Pokemon Violet
Pokemon Arceus Post Game Content(finished main story)
Slow Damage(Visual Novel)
Our Life(Visual Novel)

Games I want to finish sometime:
Xenoblade Chronicles 1 (Switch)
Trails in the Sky FC and SC (PC)
Disgaea 1 (Pc or Switch)
Digimon Cyber Sleuth
Chrono Cross
Final Fantasy 9 and/or 10
Grandia collection

Games I'll play test during the rest of this year:
Yakuza Like a Dragon
Xenobalde 2
Trails (Cold Steel)
Tokyo Mirage

Games to play to relax:
Story of Season Games
Animal Crossing
Disgaea series
Nexomon
Digimon Cyber Sleuth

Anyway, sorry for the list. It just helps me have an idea of what I'd like to do and show what I'm working on with my backlog. Let's just hope I can make some progress over the next month, even if it's just a little.
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Kikki
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(@infel) I don't recommend playing more than one Xenoblade game at once, nor more than one Trails game at once. Not that you can't, of course...but I don't recommend it. It fudges up the story, and they're overwhelming when played alone, let alone if you juggle multiple of them. Heck, trying to play a Trails game and a Xenoblade game at the same time is bad enough, let alone two from the same series. Just one Trails game can burn you out on JRPGs for a good month afterward. If I tried to play Sky and Cold Steel at the same time as each other, or XC1 and 2, I think it'd ruin them for me.

Well, that's my recommendation, and it's over now. :)

~

Oh yeah. With Zero completed, I've done 22 games this year. :/ That's okay, but I lost a lot of time thanks to my stupid body. This gapapentin seems to work well enough to almost be worthy of the phrase 'like a charm'. Not quite, since trickles of pain do leak through, particularly as I get close to my next dose...the trickle becomes a flood from about 7PM to 10PM...but still, it's better than I thought. (I honestly felt like nothing would ever work, lol.) Guess that proves that most or even all of my pain is nerve-centric, at least. Yay?

I can't finish another game within November, but I can probably complete 2 more before the year is over, to bring my total up to a respectable two dozen. I really do want to finish RF5, partly because it's the last game my parents (as a two-part unit) gave me. Feels like it'd be a shame not to finish it properly. I'll just aim to cut right through the story. If it interests me enough to sidetrack me, well and good. If not, then I can just chase the story and probably be done in a week's play time. I don't know what other game I should aim to finish. Egglia, probably.
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infel
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Kikki wrote: Nov 23, 2022 3:50 pm (@infel) I don't recommend playing more than one Xenoblade game at once, nor more than one Trails game at once. Not that you can't, of course...but I don't recommend it. It fudges up the story, and they're overwhelming when played alone, let alone if you juggle multiple of them. Heck, trying to play a Trails game and a Xenoblade game at the same time is bad enough, let alone two from the same series. Just one Trails game can burn you out on JRPGs for a good month afterward. If I tried to play Sky and Cold Steel at the same time as each other, or XC1 and 2, I think it'd ruin them for me.

Well, that's my recommendation, and it's over now. :)

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll be sure not to do that, playing double of a series. You are very right about burning out. What may happen rather is that if I get tired of sky or just take too long to do it, I may go to Cold Steel 1. I won't play both at the same time though, same with Xenoblade. In terms of playing Xenoblade or Trails at the same time, I likely won't. I have smaller games I can play if I decide to do more than 1 rpg. Again, thanks for the heads up. It's good advice :)
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Kikki
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So, I searched for the cartridge for 2 or 3 hours (at least my leg got plenty of good light exercise?) and finally found it, exactly where it was supposed to be. Somehow I overlooked it because 1) all Switch cases look the same on the spines and 2) it was with RF4S, and I saw RF4S and put it into my Switch, realized it was the wrong game, and then assumed the right game hadn't been there.

In other words, I was really stupid. Or tired. Or both. Usually, it's at least a little of both.

Anyway, I made it back into RF5. Thing is...I can't remember anything. I don't remember how the controls worked. I don't remember how to raise tamed monster affection. I don't remember how to tame monsters. I don't remember what my farming goals were, if I had any. I THINK I was aiming for Ryker, since he's about the only one I can stand (I like Martin and Reinhart in design and surface personality, but I strongly dislike workaholics, and even a step down from full-on workaholics to the very-career-oriented types. I prefer a person who puts their best self into the aspects of life that are outside of career. To me, work is just an regrettable thing you have to do to make money to live on, that you do to get fuel for your real life...a thing that eats up life rather than is the focus of it. I don't think it'd matter if I had the most glamorous career in the world...in my books, life is in your down time. Your hobbies, home life, and social time. That's when you're a real person, to me. At work you're just a cog in the machine. Well...that's how I feel and why I can't drive up any interest in workaholic characters, anyway!) but I don't remember how I was getting on, or what events I've done. I don't know what I was aiming for with festivals or anything, or what I was growing (I see stuff growing on the Earth Dragon...about half the field there is full of sprouts, and two HUGE corns that I think must have been starfall seeds.)

I have 4 dragons, and I think I was around half way through the story? I went into Flowerstruck for the first time just today (I even went ahead and upgraded it so she now sells nutrients.) Shouldn't 4 dragons be all there is? But I doubt it, given where I am in the story. But maybe it is. Maybe something else happens after this point in the story.

I just don't remember anything about what I was doing in the game, and I can't figure it out. The controls feel so loose and clunky, too, plus the left stick on my pro controller is sticking, which is annoying...makes Alice keep walking ambling slightly forward even after I've stopped directing her that way. It's like she's slightly drunk. All I can do is keep playing, but with me not knowing what I was aiming for, it's hard to figure out what to do with my time. I was somewhere called...'Meline Ice Caverns'? I think. That's where the next story point is. I have a very powerful hammer as a gift from Darroch, so I can fight monsters there, weapon-wise, but I'm dramatically under-equipped or underleveled. I get killed in about 4 hits, and my companions in only one or two. I seem to be in the middle or end of an event with Lucas, and the Buff-a-Move contest was yesterday...I did it on my last save, so I don't remember if I won or placed at all.

Having no idea what I was doing is making it hard to pick the file back up. Don't really want to restart, though...I wasn't having enough fun to start over from scratch, I don't think. Well, if I can't figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, I'll have to at least try a game from scratch.

Tart cherry juice is fantastic in smoothies, btw. Completely replaces orange juice and tastes totally different but gives the same sour zest. I had blueberries, tart cherry concentrate, and avocado (with a bit of banana and water) whirled together today and it was quite enlivening! I'm hoping to find a local source for the stuff so I don't have to order it online all the time.
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It's been a while. I went on a gaming free week right now. Got sick so I've been sleeping for the past daysm Had a hangover with Hospital Playlist and watching the Three Meals a Day Doctors (with HP cast). xD Just saw that RF 5 is 40% off and deciding whether to get this versus Judgement. Both are within my budget but currently deciding which one to get and will tide me over until January since I'm unsure if I will enjoy Midnight Suns so I might hold off buying Midnight Suns.

I'm so happy with Gamepass and help me decide on what I will get this Autumn Sale. Outer Worlds didn't hook me yet so I might check back on it next year or so if I'm feel like playing sci-fi. There's many good deals but I have to plan carefully
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Mikodesu
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Tomorrow is the next Genshin livestream. Very curious to see how they plan on integrating Scaramouche. And why exactly they're rerunning Itto. Hopefully something slightly less BS than Childe and Yoimiya... The only joy I got out of that interaction was seeing how fast I could get the camera to spin.

On the other hand, I am really enjoying playing Yae Miko and Nahida together. They absolutely slap. I'll have to try a full team with the two of them, and not just a hodgepodge friendship team. Don't get me wrong, Cyno is fun to play, but his damage is boo-boo, comparatively. Haven't started the super cube event, but since the primos are on easy mode it'll be fun. I enjoy these boss events when they don't have a literal million HP.


And on the Harvestella side of things, I'm trying to work out the best way to make money at this point in the game. I can make plenty of money if I need to, but the combination of balancing side quests and main quest and farm work is...tough. It gets overwhelming, at times. Part of why I don't like to play more than a few days at a time. Gives my brain time to reset and then go back and do a few more. (Tbf it's all min-maxing brain. There's nothing that says I can't wait until I've completely maxed out the farm to move on with main quest, I just don't want to. :lol:)
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