Backlog 2024

[Harvest Moon kawaii]

Spoiler:

So, the release date of Virche Evermore: Epic Lycoris was revealed in the west as November 7th, 2024. (same day as Mario & Luigi: Brothership, by the way). I think I'll get the otome, though, just because I know I'll enjoy it, and I haven't played a Mario & Luigi series game in a long time, however.

Also, I bought the Switch version of Hakuoki: Chronicles of Wind & Blossom on the Nintendo Switch Day 1 (even pre-ordered it). I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but I'm still excited (didn't play the Steam versions and the Switch one is those game retranslated). Pretty sure it came out on August 1st.

A bit miffed that Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions was delayed on Nintendo Switch, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised since the Switch version of Hogwarts Legacy was delayed 8 months from the other platforms. Really hope it won't take that long this time. (still need to finish Hogwarts Legacy)

I think the next game I'll buy is 9 R.I.P. (A sequel was just teased/announced for Japan) In the West, 9 R.I.P. is coming out on October 15th.

I did play a bit of Pokemon Violet, and got a couple shiny Hisuian Sliggoo.

I played a tiny bit more of Unpacking.

I'm 55+ hours in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. I'm at the end of the first game. I'm excited to get half of the duology done but am really enjoying it.

I played more Collar x Malice, too. (still in the prologue)

Currently Playing:

1) The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (duology)

Spoiler:

Finished:

1) Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons (Nintendo Switch)

2) (Special Mention) Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Beta Demo (Story mode) (special mention since it to me 8 hours to beat the Story Mode in this demo in one sitting)

3) Pokemon Violet DLC (both parts of the DLC and Mochi Mayhem/The Hidden Treasure Area Zero epilogue)

4) Virche Evermore: Error Salvation (Nintendo Switch) (Major Content warnings and Trigger Warnings for this) (also its Fandisc/Sequel game is coming West this Fall) (The Fandisc/sequel is called Virche Evermore: -EpiC:lycoris-)

[Bluie]

Finally figured out how to proceed with my backlog. I have a lot of games right now, many of which I bought on discount, that I haven't touched due to having too many other games I haven't finished yet. I was feeling a little... er, stress? I guess? Over not knowing what I should be playing. But after some consideration, I've more or less figured out the order of what I plan on finishing first in games I've made progress on. While it's subject to change based on my mood, I plan to tackle these games in this order:

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line
Baldur's Gate 3
Astlibra
Octopath Traveler II

The first two I've made significant progress on while the other two I've made decent progress on, but know I have a long way to go. I can probably finish Bar Line (as in, unlock all the songs + characters) in a few play sessions. I have 12 more titles to clear in the 'story mode' and I'm good enough at rhythm games that I don't need to repeat any stages. With BG3, I'm in act 3, and besides finishing up the plot of my main party, I might just skip all the other sidequests so I can just be done with it all, but we'll see. Anyways, current goal is to get these all finished before the end of the year. I think it's doable.

[Kikki]

That's good! If gaming is stressing you out, something is definitely off. Retool time!

~

Spoiler:

I don't know if my anxiety is just really high, or if making a shop really is the most stressful thing I've ever done (at times on par with caring for my dying father and paranoid-delusional demented grandmother at the same time.) Probably bits of both! But I'm getting there. Little bit by liiiiiittle bit. But I suspect I need medication. Really, I suspect I should already have been on medication for a year already. Talking to doc in about two weeks.

AND I'm eating well. I'm even losing weight, albeit in increments that wouldn't impress anyone. That could stop at any time, of course. Thanks mostly to depuffery and a little bit to actual weight loss, my waist has shrunk about 3 inches. My clothes fit nicely again. I'm still a 38H, but...oh well. My two sisters are pretty much the same.
We're just the Big Booby Bunch, and that's that.

~

I am done Trails into Reverie. REALLY done, that is. Done the main story, and done the Reverie Corridor as well. I haven't completed every minigame, and it turns out you HAVE to if you want to get all 31 'memories' (I have 24 and the rest are locked to the minigames.)

Not sure if it's worth it since I hate some of the minigames, lol. Some are fun. I like Pom! Pom! Party! and Vantage Masters, but the magical girl game and the miranaire game are blarg.

Basically, I am done. It was great. Hooray! I don't think I'll be able to afford Ys X: Nordics in October. Hopefully in November? Really not sure! I need so much stuff for my shop. Building your own website is so different from starting an Etsy shop, gang.

But I think I'm basically doing well, when I'm managing to stave off thinking my heart will come out of my nose from the pressure of anxiety. Gaming's good. I don't have the time or energy to make that ACNH town to entertain my friends, though. ACNH is too much of a time suck, especially when you have to aim for certain DIYs and shop items and so on. Maybe if I do it very slowly and simply. I sure hope my friend in Oregon isn't actually dying. He was born with a bad heart and I'm afraid it might be enveloping him. (He's 34 now, I think, so...) And I hope my other friend doesn't have a nervous breakdown. But I doubt a silly ACNH town would do much to help them anyway.

I don't think I'll go back to Coral Island any time soon. I was enjoying it, but it's too involved for my current circumstances. Reverie was easy to pick up and then set down and forget about, but farming life sims tend to stick in your head and even rewire your brain a little. Can't afford that right now.

Well, we'll see in a month or so if I can get Ys or not. I'm under budget for the year but circumstances have changed a LOT in the last few weeks, so it doesn't look like it. Just as well (for me) that FLi was delayed again.

Reverie had some interesting revelations, and it was nice to spend time with Rean in a new setting again. I need to look up when Kuro 2 is coming out. Spring, wasn't it?

I forgot to get a new bag of moong dal when I was at the grocery...

[Bluie]

Finished Theatrhythm Final Bar Line - as in, finished the campaign and unlocked all the songs. It took 24 hours, thanks to the achievement system that notified me as such when I returned to the main menu. I'm definitely needing a break from rhythm games now... and for a while, methinks.

Now back to BG3. I had really burnt myself out on that game, but I think I'm ready to get back to it. Gotta finish that Wyll romance I was cooking and get whatever ending I qualify for. However, I think I want to push out a chapter in my current longfic I'm working on first. Getting real close to a big reveal that I want out of my head.

[greensara]

I keep meaning to get to finishing Sandrock, but I just haven't been in the mood when I have had the energy to game lately. The kids have been using the main Switch more lately for YouTube and the like. I am still looking forward to the new Zelda coming out soon, I just don't know if I will get to playing it right away or not. Thankfully, being busy also keeps me away from accidental spoilers usually.

I have actually gotten into an odd habit of rounding out a lot of my nights lately with playing FFXIV for about an hour or so after I finish up the portion of homework I was working on. It's possibly more of a convenience thing, since I am already on the PC anyway so I don't have to fire anything else up. Oddly enough, on the nights I play I seem to sleep better than when I go straight to bed from working on heavy homework stuff, lol. Anyway, I have progressed the story to the snowy area north of Gridania and the forests. I wish there were more teleport crystals there instead just that one in Dragonhead, but maybe I missed them? My plan presently is to level up my Paladin to 44. Then I can complete the Grand Company quest to promote my rank, which will allow me to buy Glamour Prisms outright, yay! After that I might try to level up some of the other classes, at least to see the rest of their storylines up to the job title change, like I did for Bard before I dropped it.

[Kikki]

Well...lost my OneNote. And to make a long story short, that means I no longer have any of my game notes. I don't have my list of completed games in 2024 any more...it's lost. I don't have a list of the games I was working on...gone forever. I don't have my list of upcoming releases...obliterated! Never to return!

My OneNote also had a few addresses and back-up account authorization things in it. The short gist of things is: THIS IS ALL MICROSOFT'S FAULT.

The longer, more frustrating version with more details (but a bunch still left out):

Spoiler:

My current (new in May!) laptop was having regular sudden black (and blue) screen shutdowns, so I had to send it in for servicing.

Before that, I had to do a bunch of things to protect my online content, including signing out of accounts I'm normally permanently signed into, including email and so on. Because of Microsoft's insane way of doing things with their email accounts...I lost access to an email account I have had since 1996.

I know the latest passwords as well as at least 2 from the last five years, but that isn't enough to get me back in. It has two-step on it, and for some reason, the second step is my landline. They cannot text to my landline. (When did I even authorize this? I don't want 2-step auth on that junky old email account! There is nothing of financial value attached to it. And why is the number a landline??)

Anyway, it's GONE. And with it, my access to at least two dozen other sites. (SOME of them have workarounds, but not many.)

Oh, and the reason my laptop was malfunctioning? A big windows/BIOS update was 'stuck in the pipes'. It couldn't update, and attempting to do so was making it crash suddenly. So even the breakdown was all Microsoft's fault. I will NEVER use another hotmail or live email! I signed up for a new Microsoft account to be able to use this laptop, but I used a gmail email to do so. Their recovery process/forgot password? schtick is better.

And the upshot is that I'm kind of at sea for Backlog accounting.

I don't even have my running budget account. Though at least that much is alright, as I remember where I was. I had enough left in my yearly $480 allotment to fit two more AAA games, give or take about $4, iirc, since I saved enough 2024 budget to get Fantasy Life i and Ys X: Nordics on release day. FLi is no longer an option for 2024, and I don't know if I got Coral Island and Sun Haven (both on sale, iirc, one of them small and one big, at least I can check Steam for that!) before or AFTER that announcement. Hmph.

Shoot. I still hate it, though. The OneNote loss may be the worst of it, other than that my only way to contact one friend was via that email account. (Fortunately the last email I sent on it was to get his new physical address so I could send a letter, and I wrote it down to take to the post office, so I was at least able to send a second snail mail to him to let him know, and give my true email address for him to write to instead.)

Well, I guess I get to make a fresh fall start. It's a little like going back to school in early September each year! A little.

Well, now I'll have to TRY to rebuild my completed games from memory. Too bad I haven't been using the backlog thread to keep a tally of my completed games, this year.

[K8sMum]

I'm so sorry, Kikki. Stuff like that sucks.

I use a Fire 10 tablet for email, surfing etc., saving my Galaxy 360 Pro book for real computer stuff. Last month Amazon had a decent deal to "upgrade" to the new Max 11. I went for it, was going to trade in my 10, which is a few years old.

I put upgrade in quotes because the Max 11 was the worst piece of « Puppy Doodoo » tech I've ever used. It was impossible to use because pages jumped all over, from site to site, constantly. I could not do anything on it. Newer reviews are saying the same thing. Back it went, luckily before I had sent in my old but reliable Fire 10. But the big question is how could they release a product knowing it was so bad? There is no excuse.

I've used gmail for years. I know they say there are problems with it, but as you said it is easier to get back on it.

[Kikki]

I'm so sorry, Kikki. Stuff like that sucks.

Spoiler:

Thanks for the sympathy It really does suck. The worst part (other than it all coming at a time when my stress is abnormally high) is the inconvenience. I don't use that email for emailing, so no big deal on that count. Haven't in MANY years. (Except for that one friend.) I've been using gmail for about 15 years. (My Hotmail account was created within about 6 months of Hotmail itself coming into existence. A 28-year-old account! I was in Hotmail before those damn bots keeping me out were even born.) But I used it to sign up for things since I don't want marketing email at my gmail, and it was my 'Windows' email that I logged in with at Microsoft's insistence. It was also how I was subscribed to Bitdefender and Microsoft Office!

Well, I can't transfer my Office subscription. Microsoft will only tell me that I need to sign into my account, and that if I can't, I should do the recovery process. (Already tried that SO MANY TIMES.) I did manage to recover my Bitdefender! It's AMAZING, isn't it, how much further you can get with customer service when the servicing is done by fellow HUMANS instead of 100% bots. (You'll have a hard time getting a real human at Microsoft even if you phone them...you'll have to be patient even for that.)

Glad you at least have one working tablet; sorry you had to go through that rigamarole, though, K8sMum!

~

I wish I had time for gaming right now. And even more...since I could probably MAKE time if I was determined to just do it...I wish I had the mental space for it.

Spoiler:

I dunno, it seems like businesses-from-home (I've had one before but I don't remember it being this intense.) take every waking hour...it's no 9-to-5 affair. I guess because you're always at work! Though it'll probably be better (or worse?!) when all the set-up is done and I don't have to worry about website building any more, just product-making, product photography + editing, product listing, and customer service and shipping to worry about.

Ha ha...why did I do this?

I need to move all my supplies and tools to a nook in the basement instead of having them in my room. It's going to drive me batty, seeing my work out of my side vision all the time. I need extra space, anyway, my room's little crafting space is not sufficient. And I need to be able to at least THINK about playing a game in what is usually my gaming space! It's been taken over by stacks upon stacks of tiny bits of glass and metal and stone.

I'd like to get back to Pikmin 4 or Coral Island, so that I can cross them off my, er...list that no longer exists thanks to Microsoft not letting me sign into my One Note...but I just don't have the nerves or headspace. I COULD continue chipping at mini-games in Reverie, but, funny thing...if I fail at anything right now, even in a game, it sets off an anxiety attack, lol. I start thinking how I can't do anything right, and that crimp bead broke, too, and the cord is too stretchy, and that epoxy didn't harden, and everything I do is going to fail and be a catastrophe!

Uh...yeah. So, gaming isn't relaxing right now, lol. Well, not any kind of gaming I can fail at, anyway! And you can even fail/have bad luck in ANCH, so there's basically nothing that's truly fail-proof in gaming.

[Daikon boy]

Ordered the new famicom detective club game (which hopefully will arrive here safely, since I ordered it from the UK. Only option where I had a gift card and 45$ instead of the 50 everywhere else.) Figured I knew I was going to want to buy it eventually if I didn't buy it now, and it might not be available later, plus free shipping so. Hoping it arrives safely. It'll still be a few weeks if it arrives by the delivery date. Not for Halloween but Halloween month? There are more fitting Halloween games though.

Also had dragon quest monsters delivered and will be playing that...soon-ish. I want to finish unicorn overlord first. Possibly play some more of fate samurai. Definitely play some more of star ocean 2, even if I don't finish that now. There are a few other games I'd like to pick back up again or finish but nothing I feel compelled to at the moment.
I played a little of dqm but I played the demo for a couple hours (not having looked it up and realized the save progress didn't carry over before I started it) so I'll probably take a bit longer before I kick off on that game. Since I have to do all the tutorial stuff all over again. And I did a good amount of exploration in the first section. Plus I also just don't want to stop playing the other games right now.

[Kikki]

I've remembered some things. Haven't started a new One Note, yet, but...well, if I get the morale for it back, I will then.

Coral Island and Pikmin 4 were my new (first playthrough) games that were incomplete. Coral Island's main 'story' was essentially done but all the extra story added in 1.1 was not and the ranks were not maxed yet. I hadn't unlocked any 'extra' areas like the savannah.

Pikmin 4 was almost exactly at 50% done, maybe like 52%. I had 100%-ed half the areas and gone to the next one but I think I'd only done one day there.

~

I was also working on Cold Steel III and IV. I left IV about 80% done. I just needed to finish it and I'd have 100%. Platinum trophy. III I had finished EVERYTHING else for, but I somehow missed ooooone freaking chest, so I have to do it again. Fortunately I've already done a nightmare run, so I just have to go in on easy and breeze through to get chests and I'll have platinum for III as well.

~

I know there was more, but that's about all I remember. I recall wanting to platinum Tales of Arise and Ys IX: Monstrum Nox. I was very close on Ys, but I had about three skits left to find in Arise and some other odd trophies, possibly fishing ones and so on. But I wasn't that far off, iirc. I don't think I'll go back to those again in 2024, though. I'm in the mood to keep playing with Rean, but Adol and Alphen aren't calling me back, atm.

Link would like a bit of attention, though. I could go for some farting around in Tears of the Kingdom.

Let's see when I can actually fit any of this in, though, lol. Well...at least I'm making some nice stuff! And I've been eating well for a fair while now AND the weather is gooooorgeous. I really should go outside more while I still can! All these crimp tubes can wait half an hour.

~

NEXT DAY EDIT: Hey hey! Turns out the internet at large finds the chest trophy in CS III to be the most tiresome and irritating of all the trophies, too! They have just what I want. A list of all chests in each region that count to the trophy, NOT buried within a walkthrough.

So I really can just blast through a 'very easy' mode playthrough. I don't even have to do anything else, no quests, nothing. I don't have to save it as NG+, etc. I can just run right on through to get chests. (And maybe stop to watch the scenes I find most amusing...but skip all the others!)

When I have a nice chunk of free time I tend to sleep or write or watch those stupefying 'oddly satisfying' videos. Or stress about the website I'm not tweaking or the items I'm not creating in that moment. That seems to be my favourite activity. So I haven't played anything recently but...well, once the website-building is out of the way, maybe I can unclench enough to play, then.

[Bluie]

Mmmmmnope - I can't enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 anymore. Booted it up, genuinely tried, but the spark is long gone. I guess this is just one of those games I clicked with really hard at first, but lost all interest a good ways through. The same thing happened with Elden Ring. I feel a little guilty about it, but I'm abandoning it once more.

Back to Astlibra, back to the (enjoyable) grind of getting all the weapons.

[fuulatatata]

i got soul hackers 2 on sale. i was always on the fence about this one, but funnily, a listen to the battle theme on one random day was enough to solidify my choice of buying it. i know people beat on this game a lot, but they all sound to me like a bunch of jaded revisionists. i hope i can squeeze in some free time to be able to pick it up...

[Kikki]

I don't think it's just me, but Fogu is deader than a...thing that is very dead. Even the oldest regulars have become irregulars. Or disappeared entirely.

Oh well. At this point, I mostly post here for sedative purposes. It's not like I'm actually playing any of the new Bokumono/HM games.

All the hype of Evershine has made me play Sandrock again. I'm back at the Water Tower portion of the game, so still not quite mid way through the main story, I guess? But I'm properly into the big open desert area, at least, out of the outskirts of Sandrock itself where there's some new foraging.

I hate that everyone in this genre does this horrible individual chests thing for storage. I REALLY resent Stardew for this. At least they're connected (SORT OF...you still can't sort your inventory across all your chests, you can just access them all on the same screen by tabbing through the individual chests.) Please emulate Bokumono, where you have ONE storage (or did until recently!) and you just upgrade it to fit more in. Or possibly even better, try Fae Farm, where you have one infinite storage right from the beginning.

Anyway, it's super fun the second time, too. I have lots of things going on IRL still and it's providing sedation. Well, it's providing escapism, I guess...right now I can only play games that grab my attention up completely and don't let me think about life while I do so. Sandrock certainly manages that, even on the second go. I guess it's the necessity of keeping a million details running in your head at once to be able to progress. Stressful for some, but the only thing that pushes everything else out of my head.

About to enact some big changes today, unless the various authorities are unhelpful. The direction things are going keeps changing. Well, I have to go finish my paperwork now. I wish I could open Sandrock and play for an hour, but there's no such thing as a one-hour play session of Sandrock. I tell myself I could just make a few more dew collectors since water is at an all-time low at this point in the game, and some yakmel stations for distant travel points, but that'd just be lying to myself.

[Harvest Moon kawaii]

I completely forgot to update my progress here. I finished the first game in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. (took me around 60 hours). Slightly upset I missed an in-game achievement, so I might go back and get it. Thing is, it's a ways into the last episode/case of the first game.

To take a break genre-wise (sub-genre?), I started playing Sympathy Kiss.

Currently Playing:

1) Sympathy Kiss

Spoiler:

Finished:

1) Piczle Cross: Story of Seasons (Nintendo Switch)

2) (Special Mention) Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Beta Demo (Story mode) (Nintendo Switch) (special mention since it to me 8 hours to beat the Story Mode in this demo in one sitting)

3) Pokemon Violet DLC (both parts of the DLC and Mochi Mayhem/The Hidden Treasure Area Zero epilogue)

4) Virche Evermore: Error Salvation (Nintendo Switch) (Major Content warnings and Trigger Warnings for this) (also its Fandisc/Sequel game is coming West this Fall) (The Fandisc/sequel is called Virche Evermore: -EpiC:lycoris-)

5) The first game in The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (The Great Ace Attorney Adventures) (Nintendo Switch)

[Bluie]

I don't think it's just me, but Fogu is deader than a...thing that is very dead. Even the oldest regulars have become irregulars. Or disappeared entirely.

Eh, to be fair, message boards are a dying breed outside of websites like Reddit. People more gravitate to places with a social media presence OR for video games in particular, tend to gather where there's a larger sample pool of info (GameFaqs for example - though it's more trouble than its worth, honestly). While SoS is no longer part of a niche genre, it's kind've been left in the dust.

The fact is Ushi has been bleeding members since forever. I've been here for over 10 years and I've watched it dwindle, get resurgences, and then dwindle again. It's really cool that Cher keeps it up and going, because I feel at home here despite how quiet it gets. If she ever decided to shut it down, I'll definitely feel like a piece of myself will be gone.

I personally haven't been posting much as I haven't been gaming a lot this year (or reading). Since January I have been captive to my other hobby (writing) with no end in sight, therefore my free time on games has been rather limited. Also, dropping Genshin and Star Rail (for the time being) has also freed up several hours of my day... that I inevitably give to writing and therefore gives me even less things to post about here. I've been accumulating a lot of games, buying a ton on sale that I've skipped in the previous years, which is really making a sizeable backlog, but I have no desire to tackle it right now.

So, I'm here, just not here, ya'know? I'll definitely post more once I'm making some sort of progress, but as it stands right now, I log onto FFXIV once or twice a week to do weeklies (1 raid battle for a material, and then do the 'bingo' sheet for EXP), and if my husband is off or in the office, I'll play some Astlibra (because the Switch refuses to register my wired headphones in my controller, so I have to play it when no one else is in the room, or handheld - which I do not want to). And even then, I'm more likely to open Google Docs instead.

Anyways, that might change a tad because Palworld finally came out on PS5 and I've been really wanting to try it. Lawsuit be damned.