Backlog 2020

[Bluie]

It's also really difficult to communicate to PS4 because the keyboard is cumbersome.

And also, you don't really NEED to ever do dungeons besides the ones that are part of the main quests. There are a ton to unlock, all with unique enemies, gear, ect, but you're never forced into them, and the ones you HAVE to do for the game are very manageable. I think the main thing is that it's easier to get experience in dungeons rather than doing quests, so I imagine most would rather run a dungeon.

A lot of people are in a rush to get to the level cap, they want to be at the newest content, so I can understand frustrations, but if it's a team effort and you aint pulling your weight, it's on you.

But the game is perfectly enjoyable as a (mostly) single player experience too. Heck, I started playing because I like a NPC's optional questline.

Regardless, one bad experience doesn't sour the whole game for me. I'm honestly gonna miss playing it once my trial ends, but backlog calls before I can go back to it.

[Kikki]

I tried a custom workout on Ring Fit Adventure for the first time today. Decided to make an core-centric workout...which has mostly ab stuff with a bit of back stuff, including 4 minigames. Whuh! I don't recommend completely filling your custom bar with exercises/games, not if they're all focusing on one area, cuz getting through it will halfway kill you, lol.

Spoiler:

It also reminded me that proper form is the single most important thing to get right. With a sloppy form, an exercise won't target the right muscles. And that even includes how you think about the exercise, too. Like the hip shake. Instead of thinking of moving your knees, it should be about pulling your hip up by the muscles at the side of your waist, each time, while keeping your upper body as still as you can. Cuz you can successfully do the hip shake and get great ratings by merely bending your knees repeatedly, but that won't really exercise your abs.

Ring Fit Adventure does give you little form reminders, but I feel like it could do it more often, and with more variety in the suggestions. I also don't understand some of the suggestions. Like for the ring press, an arm exercise. Why does it tell me to engage my inner thighs? They're not DOING anything then. What the heck can I engage those muscles on? Does it just want me to clench them? (For no reason I can see, when all you're doing is squeezing the ring inwards with your hands while standing upright.)

Overall it's a wonderfully designed 'game', but it does do a few things I don't get. But I suspect that the exercises I find way too easy (like the hip shake) must be ones where I'm not concentrating on form well enough. You really shouldn't be able to consider doing one of the exercises a 'break', lol. The thigh press is also way too easy. Can't figure that one out, because I'm pretty sure I do that one correctly.

I wonder if eventually they'll make a ring with higher resistance than the original.

[ryume]

However, I also unlocked hard mode versions of dungeons and some of them are brutal in more that just difficulty. This particular one I decided to run requires teamwork from the entire party that everyone had to know what action they're doing on the first boss, or we all die horribly. I admittedly didn't, but with the help of a veteran who realized it was my first run, I got my roll down by the 3rd try. The problem then became that no one else was doing their job and I had to overdo mine, thus dying - and when the healer dies, everyone dies. At the time, I thought it was completely my fault, I apologized, the veteran told me it was OK bit it wasn't 'working out', and then everyone ragequit the dungeon. Mortified at how I wasted everyone's time, I went to the internet to look up strategies to run it again, and lo and behold; it wasn't my fault entirely. It was really frustrating to realize that essentially because others weren't pulling their weight I overworked and then got blamed for party wipes. So, in conclusion, I don't ever want to do hard mode dungeons again unless it's with people I know or people who know how to respect their healer and do their job!

Hey Bluie, out of curiosity, which dungeon was it? I’ve run a few hard mode dungeons myself recently (I’m a WHM too), so I can sympathize entirely about the stress and whatnot from a healer’s perspective, especially if you’ve never run an area before. It stinks they all ragequit and acted like it was your fault - generally I’ve found the community in FFXIV to be so much nicer than the WoW community by far, but there’s always a few bad eggs out there, unfortunately.

My backlog isn’t much lately. Nothing coming out for me until FFVII Remake in March (unless RF4S comes out before that). I’ve been playing FFXIV fairly regularly, but my 30 day trial just ended on Saturday (I did purchase a 6 month subscription though), and today is shift 3 of 3 at the hospital, plus classes start Wednesday this week, so I don’t foresee too much gaming in my future anyway. You never know though, because heaven knows I’m going to NEED mental breaks between school and working full time, so I imagine I’ll be MAKING time for gaming.

[Bluie]

It was Sastasha hard. We couldn't get past the first boss. :\

[Kikki]

Snow removal trumps Ring Fit! Boy, a foot of snow'll break ya pretty quick...

I can't get past this stupid bayonette-wielding potato in Commander Keen's very first world, lol. I get stuck on the pole I'm climbing up, and can't get off of it in time to jump over the potato. And even though I did manage to do so twice in about twenty attempts, there is ANOTHER potato on the ledge just above that I have to jump to right away to avoid the FIRST murderous potato, so on those rare times I manage to get around the first potato, it's just to jump straight into the second Mr. Stabbity.

This is why I hate platformers. Though at least Commander Keen has so much nostalgia in it for me that I can have fun doing the level a few times just to listen to the sound effects that rang through much of my tween years.

[Ronin19]

Well, I beat Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth last night and I'm not entirely thrilled with how they handled new game +

Spoiler:

So I think the best idea for new game + would be to bring my Digimon from Cyber Sleuth since some of the Digimon I have can't digivolve without items and conditions like "Beat Hacker's Memory," or Beast Spirit of Light, which I think is only in Hacker's Memory. So i'm going to have two groups of Digimon with, seemingly, no way of transferring Digimon over to the other game.

Now to focus solely on Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life and I'm gonna follow my boyfriend's advice: sell all my cows just so I can hibernate. I'm at the start of Chapter 4, so it's pretty much cemented that my son will grow up to take over the farm.

If I finish up before Friday, I'll see if I can beat Wondersong in the mean time.

[Harvest Moon kawaii]

Spoiler:

Recently beat:

Pokemon Shield
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX Demo (Switch)

Backlog:

(3DS, Nintendo Switch, and PC) = A lot (over 134 games)

Currently playing:

Ring Fit Adventure (Switch)
Steins;Gate Elite (Switch)
Luigi's Mansion 3 (Switch)
Night in the Woods (Switch)

Games I have pre-ordered:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (March 20, 2020)
Digimon Survive (2020)

Games I want:

Luigi's Mansion (3DS)
Rune Factory 4 Special (digital-only in the US) (2020) (Switch)
Rune Factory 5 (Switch; 2020)
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou (Switch) (Japanese only)
My Time At Portia (Switch)
Snack Wold The Dungeon Crawl Gold (February 14, 2020)
YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World (Switch)
Detective Pikachu 2 (Switch; release date unknown)
Story of Seasons: Reunion of Mineral Town (Switch) (West: 2020)
Robotics; Notes Elite (Switch) (Coming 2020 in the West)
Robotics; Notes Dash (confirmed for the West)
Yo-kai Watch 4 (Switch; confirmed for the West)
Summer Pockets (Confirmed English-language version for PC coming in 2020)
Rewrite+ (PC)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX (Switch; March 6, 2020)

Games beat in 2020: 0

Games bought in 2020: At least 3 ( of those with confirmed release dates)

So, I played the demos for New Super Lucky's Tale and Neo Cab. I liked the demo for New Super Lucky's Tale, but am unsure about getting the game. I didn't even finish the demo for Neo Cab, it didn't appeal to me.

Haven't made any more progress in Ring Fit Adventure, because I haven't played it lately.

I started and played a little over an hour of Steins;Gate Elite. I really like it.

I started my Luigi's Mansion 3 adventure in handheld mode, and realized it's too hard for me to play that way because of my physical disability. So, I'm going to try it out on the TV. I'm in an hour in and haven't even fought any ghosts yet.

Also, I started Night in the Woods and am really enjoying it. I've probably played that for a few hours. I just started part 2 in that game.

Also, tomorrow at Gamestop I'm going to pre-order Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX for the Switch and buy a $50 Nintendo e-shop card for the upcoming Pokemon Sword/Shield DLC and Luigi's Mansion 3 DLC.

[Ronin19]

Well, now I can cross off Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life from my backlog! I have 4 more Bokujou Monogatari games left before Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town comes over: Tale of Two Towns, GameBoy, GameBoy 2, and GameBoy 3!

Now that I have some time before Tokyo Mirage Sessions comes out, I think I'll try to beat Afterparty and Wandersong. Both are relatively short games and I have the next two days off. Once those are done, who knows!

[Bluie]

I finished the lvl 50 Hildibrand quests last night in FFXIV and what a blast they were. There's something so charming about how they managed cartoon-like movement with the 3D models just to show how ridiculous the questline is. In a fantasy world under the attack of fantastical magical beasts and corrupt empires, it hilarious to see the only thing the PC has truly feared so far is the Manderville's family shenanigans.

I'm sad I have to wait until I reach level 60 and the end of Heavensward to access the next questline.

[Samansu]

Hello all! I have not gotten back to Ring Fit as my apartment is a mess and needs to be cleaned up first lol Still lots of new progress on the backlog though.

Still chugging along on Harvest Moon 2 (Fall of Year 2) and Pokémon Picross (Area 18/30). Picross is slooooow going because I refuse to pay money for picrites to unlock areas, so I am at the mercy of time lol. In Breath of Death VII I got stuck on my most recent stream and had to switch to something else. I have since grinded a few levels, so when I stream it again I should be ready to fight the evil auto-healing boss of evil! There are probably only 1-2 more dungeons left in the game.

At the request of two friends I played Hatoful Boyfriend because they wanted to watch me play. I played about an hour and a half before the game crashed. I was not enjoying it at all, so I didn't bother to continue. Also the friends never even showed up to watch, so it was a bust overall. After the crash I played some Unravel though and that was very fun. Beautiful little puzzler with neat and intuitive mechanics. Can't wait to play again! I beat the first level and was maybe 3/4 through the second level when I stopped.


My big fun addition was Pokemon: Let's Go, Pikachu! I started playing and streaming that and it is super adorable. I am quite enjoying it and it is even more fun to stream it with my friends! My Pikachu is named Basil after Basil of Baker St from The Great Mouse Detective! \o.o/ Anyway I made it through to beating Brock and getting the Boulder Badge. Not terrible for the first day.

Spoiler:

Backlog Blitz

( 2 )


Currently Playing

~ Harvest Moon 2
~ Pokémon Picross
~ Breath of Death VII: The Beginning
~ Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!
~ Unravel


Games Beaten: 2

~ Home
~ Ittle Dew

Games Purchased: 4

~ The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince
~ Ittle Dew 2+
~ Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu!
~ Unravel

[Ronin19]

So I beat Afterparty! Definitely fun and will be buying the game when it launches on the Switch (I have it via GamePass on Xbox).

I'm going through Wandersong, but needed to stop. I wasn't feeling great after playing through two acts and needed a break. I don't know what else to do, so I went back to a current file for Mass Effect Andromeda. Just two more files after the current one and I can put this game to rest. I don't know why I'm still playing through the files; just to relieve some boredom maybe.

I have confidence I can finish Wandersong by Friday though since it's not too long. Just need breaks in between.

[Kikki]

FINALLY raised the difficulty on Ring Fit. I meant to before, but it was at the same time as entering World 7, and the exercises got faster and more difficult, enough that I could only just keep up. But now I've raised it at last. Still going really well! The shovelling didn't go so well. Had to go to the chiro this morning. But he said that other than the bit of neck quirk stuff I'm prone to, I was in pretty good shape...which I knew, cuz I can feel it. I haven't had any trouble at all with any of the other recurring problem bits since getting regularly into Ring Fit. Well, except my neck/upper back, which is permanently a little crunched, lol.

Otherwise, not in that much of a gaming mood, except for going on to DQB2 to build a few extra things any time I think of them. I got the one red pencil blueprint I took done...just wanted to test that mechanic out. Though it's better for copying your own designs than anything else, imo. I may finally try Caligula: Overdose soon. It's too early in the month not to try to complete at least one more game, and I'm so bad at platformers that even though it's not even supposed to take 2 hours, on average, to complete Commander Keen, I may never get it done.

[Pachi]

I finally beat FE3H Blue Lions route! Gosh that was a wild ride. Amazingly, I clocked more hours finishing this second route compared to Golden Deer (first) I guess it's because I played on Hard, recruited all available students, and grinded maps so that the difficulty doesn't end me lol.

I'm thinking of taking a step back from gaming for now. I'm enjoying learning Japanese too much; it's taking over my free time haha. I'll still be dabbling with Octopath and Stardew but sporadically

[Bluie]

Good job, Pachi! The Blue Lions route is objectively the best story out of the three imo, though I still personally prefer Golden Deer. Have you done the Black Eagle Routes yet?

SO, I expressed my discontent with my Free Company over my hard mode dungeon experience, and in reply, a few members ran me through them all (the Realm Reborn ones)! In fact, most of them hadn't even run them themselves yet due to only following Main Series Quests and forgetting all about optional dungeons. It was a lot of fun and we all got some nice gear for glamming out of it too!

As of today I have 9 days left on FFXIV and there's a few things I wanna do before it's up. Firstly, I want to get through the 100 quests that lead up to Heavensward so that when I come back, I can just jump into the expansion. Secondly, I want to do all the Bahamut raids and do all the extreme trials just so I can have them done (because I know they get expanded on in later expansions or are required for story progression). I will probably need some help with those but i'll see how it goes. Finally just regular quest clean up that I'm almost finished with. I'm currently doing the Post Moogle quests, I have that darned riddle quest I need to figure out, and I still need to get my relic weapon finished.

I'm also getting one of my main wishes from this game and getting a minion I really want. I've been coveting the Bridesmoogle and Demon Box since I saw people with them and found out you can only get them by being invited and attending someone's (paid) ingame wedding. I happened to be in the right place at the right time and was given an invite by a random person. They told me all the goodies are gonna be there so i'm STOKED.

Once my 9 days are up, I'm going to finish Ni No Kuni II and Tokyo Mirage Sessions and see how I'm feeling after that. I still have the Grisaia Trilogy on the back burner and my only other anticipated games upcoming that I'm buying right now Animal Crossing and Trials of Mana. The amount of 'day one' games this year is gonna be low, mainly for money purposes + there's just too many games this year.

[Harvest Moon kawaii]

Spoiler:

Recently beat:

Pokemon Shield
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX Demo (Switch)

Backlog:

(3DS, Nintendo Switch, and PC) = A lot (over 134 games)

Currently playing:

Ring Fit Adventure (Switch)
Steins;Gate Elite (Switch)
Luigi's Mansion 3 (Switch)
Night in the Woods (Switch)

Games I have pre-ordered:

Animal Crossing: New Horizons (March 20, 2020)
Digimon Survive (2020)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX (Switch; March 6, 2020)

Games I want:

Luigi's Mansion (3DS)
Rune Factory 4 Special (digital-only in the US) (2020) (Switch)
Rune Factory 5 (Switch; 2020)
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Hou (Switch) (Japanese only)
My Time At Portia (Switch)
Snack Wold The Dungeon Crawl Gold (February 14, 2020)
YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of This World (Switch)
Detective Pikachu 2 (Switch; release date unknown)
Story of Seasons: Reunion of Mineral Town (Switch) (West: 2020)
Robotics; Notes Elite (Switch) (Coming 2020 in the West)
Robotics; Notes Dash (confirmed for the West)
Yo-kai Watch 4 (Switch; confirmed for the West)
Summer Pockets (Confirmed English-language version for PC coming in 2020)
Rewrite+ (PC)
Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth (February 6, 2020)

Games beat in 2020: 0

Games bought in 2020: At least 4 ( of those with confirmed release dates)

I haven't made progress in any of the games I'm currently playing because I was trying to fill up my Pokedex in Pokemon Shield. I'm currently at 226/400 Pokemon or so. So, over half. I hope to complete my Pokedex and get the shiny charm before the DLC is released.

Also, I bought the DLC for Pokemon and Luigi's Mansion 3, and pre-ordered the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon remake.

I've also decided I'm going to get Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth when it releases digitally on February 6th. You can buy a physical version on the Aksys game store.