Backlog 2021

[Harvest Moon kawaii]

No problem; I hope 2021 goes well for you. Thinking of each year as a brand new start takes the weight off, I find...makes the backlog feel less like a millstone around your neck.

~

Athena was way faster/easier to save (or restore?) than Aphrodite. Or maybe I'm just faster because of levelled up gear and skills. But I completed her questline, anyway. I felt like they didn't really try to be funny with her, not to my way of thinking, so it didn't have that touch of 'lame' that Aphrodite's part had.

Nonetheless, Fenyx burns me out a bit with the massive array of things you can do at any time. You only have to find it to be able to do it, basically. You can try doing things you literally don't have the skills to complete, even, though it will be impossible.

So I'm playing through the start of FE:TH to see if it feels like a break. Just completed my first battle, and these three kids are suddenly looking at Byleth like she's lunch. A tasty one.

Thanks! I can't figure out how to use backloggery. I'll try Grouvee.

[Kikki]

Sure, anytime.

~

Choosing a house turned out to be mega-easy. This is based on first impressions, of course, without knowing deeper details, but... I like every student in Blue Lions. (And none except Claude himself in Golden Deer.) I also liked a lot of the Black Eagles, but Edelgard freaks me out, so no.

I feel a bit that it's a shame I had to choose Girl Byleth (I prefer to play as a character of my own gender for a game like this.) because Guy Byleth is gorgeous. I mean dang, the guy is better looking than any of the other characters. (So far.)

It feels VERY refreshingly different from Fenyx and is a nice break from having too many options and too many freaking puzzles! I really like Fenyx but it's quite wearing to play for longer sessions.

[Pachi]

I'm at Capua Nor, specifically inside the magistrate's place, in Tales of Vesperia rn. It's taking all my will not to google who Estelle really is I'm not too jazzed with the battle system (or yet, anyway) -- it is interesting and definitely something I haven't done before but I want to play as a mage (Rita) but it's kinda hard when there are many enemy units since her spells miss because they move around a lot or her chants are stopped/disturbed because she gets attacked >.> Yuri is easier but I'm not sure I love melee fighting. Speaking of Yuri, he's such an interesting mc. I think this is the first time I encountered a sarcastic and not 100% goody goody jrpg mc

[Mikodesu]

Games are the only thing keeping me up till midnight this year... I'm so tired today. Went to bed late/woke up early to crank out a project by the end of the year and now that it's done I've spent the evening playing.

Little more puzzles (as much as my brain could take) and Genshin. This event is tough, but the last bit feels doable (unlike the last event). Last event can eat « Cow Poopoo ».

Got to the floor in Spiral Abyss when it splits into pairs of two teams...and I barely made it past the first two rooms. I feel like I do pretty good for the luck I've had with units. (That is to say...none.) FTP is tough. Which I guess is the point.

[Kikki]

I'm at Capua Nor, specifically inside the magistrate's place, in Tales of Vesperia rn. It's taking all my will not to google who Estelle really is I'm not too jazzed with the battle system (or yet, anyway) -- it is interesting and definitely something I haven't done before but I want to play as a mage (Rita) but it's kinda hard when there are many enemy units since her spells miss because they move around a lot or her chants are stopped/disturbed because she gets attacked >.> Yuri is easier but I'm not sure I love melee fighting. Speaking of Yuri, he's such an interesting mc. I think this is the first time I encountered a sarcastic and not 100% goody goody jrpg mc

Have to played Tales of Berseria? The entire main cast can be considered to be bad guys, depending on how you look it it. They all think of themselves to varying degrees, as well. Though I'd just say that they're on the side you usually wouldn't be playing.

[Pachi]

Nope, I haven't. This is the first Tales game I'm playing. My friend lent me Tales of the Abyss for the 3DS ages ago but didn't really progress in it haha. That's interesting though, with Tales of Berseria ^^

[cinnamon_yuki]

Sure, anytime.

~

Choosing a house turned out to be mega-easy. This is based on first impressions, of course, without knowing deeper details, but... I like every student in Blue Lions. (And none except Claude himself in Golden Deer.) I also liked a lot of the Black Eagles, but Edelgard freaks me out, so no.

I feel a bit that it's a shame I had to choose Girl Byleth (I prefer to play as a character of my own gender for a game like this.) because Guy Byleth is gorgeous. I mean dang, the guy is better looking than any of the other characters. (So far.)

It feels VERY refreshingly different from Fenyx and is a nice break from having too many options and too many freaking puzzles! I really like Fenyx but it's quite wearing to play for longer sessions.

I hope you're enjoy Fire Emblem Three Houses! I enjoyed Azure Moon a lot but then again, I haven't played the other routes due to my favorite characters are on that route.

Still playing Cyberpunk 2077. I just finish one character quest, time to do some main quest before my long weekend ends. Chapter 5 of Errant Kingdom has been delayed until Friday (Saturday in my location) unfortunately I have work on that day but something to look forward to after work.

[Ronin19]

I am progressing through Blue Dragon okay. I'm almost done with disc 2 according to a guide I'm glancing at. I'm still doing the game blind. It's pretty enjoyable, but I don't like Marumaro at all. Shu I'm iffy on as well.

Combat is pretty fun and I'm managing all right. I've decided that after this I'm gonna give Lost Odyssey a go. I've heard it's a really good JRPG and I got it free on Xbox a few years ago, so I might as well play it.

[Kikki]

Thanks, cinnamon_yuki

I'm confused, though. They keep saying that Byleth is Jeralt's child. Wth? I don't buy it. They don't act like family at all, and they don't look like they share even one atom of DNA, either. Maybe I missed where they say Jeralt adopted Byleth or something.

Also it's okay right now, in the beginning, but I sense that I'm going to have trouble making decisions later on when there are just too many people to spend time with and make decisions for. I was thinking I wouldn't recruit too many...only 2 or 3 people...because there just isn't enough time to spend on them anyway. But I read something that suggested ominously that you should try to recruit every student you can, that you'd be pitifully grateful for every single one you managed to steal away at some point.

I'm not inclined to do it, though, and I've read the opposite as well, so I don't know who to take seriously. And everyone says different things for how to develop characters, so I'll just let them take their natural routes, I think. I've never been good at the battle part of Fire Emblem anyway. I wish there was an even easier mode than 'Normal', tbh.

EDIT: HOW IS THIS THE EASIEST SETTING?!

Battle is horrible. Out of 10 people, I lost 4, in the 3rd battle of the game. The enemies all hit twice and do a lot of damage each time, often totalling around 18 damage, and you can only heal 10 damage per turn. Wth? How is this the easy mode? How would anyone ever survive if there was permadeath? I'd have already lost six characters!

I don't get it. Not fun. The rest of the game is fun, but as with Awakening, the battles? Not my thing. The characters are made out of sugar and die really easy and have no defence. Guess I gotta put shields on ALL of them. (I don't have any money, though.)

[Ronin19]

EDIT: HOW IS THIS THE EASIEST SETTING?!

Battle is horrible. Out of 10 people, I lost 4, in the 3rd battle of the game. The enemies all hit twice and do a lot of damage each time, often totalling around 18 damage, and you can only heal 10 damage per turn. Wth? How is this the easy mode? How would anyone ever survive if there was permadeath? I'd have already lost six characters!

I don't get it. Not fun. The rest of the game is fun, but as with Awakening, the battles? Not my thing. The characters are made out of sugar and die really easy and have no defence. Guess I gotta put shields on ALL of them. (I don't have any money, though.)

My suggestion is to have characters focus on skills they need to get class upgrades and remember the weakness chart (sword beats lance which beats ax which beats sword. Flying creatures are always weak to bows.).

Mercedes and Annette are your mages, so their Faith and Reason respectively should be high. Dimitri and Sylvain should focus on lances. Dedue on gauntlets, Felix on swords, Ashe on bows, and Ingrid on a combination of lances and flying.

Remember to keep Ashe, Mercedes, and Annette in the back; they can attack from far away and are pretty weak up close.

Now you can choose whatever skills they want to focus on, but these suggestions are what their skills are highest in so you can get those classes soon and have their health, attack, and defense up. Participating in skirmish battles on the weekend also helps level them up because...I think there are level requirements for classes as well.

And now I'm itching to play the game again. I still have 2 more playthroughs to get the rest of the supports with the DLC characters.

[Panda Parfait]

For Three Houses I'm personally on the side of focusing on building up the characters in your house and maybe recruiting a couple others, but it's ultimately up to you and what you want to do. If you don't plan on playing any other routes, then recruiting everyone that you're interested in is probably a good idea.

I've decided to pick up Assassin's Creed Odyssey again. I've a little overwhelmed by how huge it is, plus I have all the DLC... but I'm going to try to break my habit of trying to do every little quest on the map no matter how boring and irrelevant it is.

Yeah, I have to replay the game to get the ending because of that one choice that messes me up to get that achievement, but that's a consequence of going in blind. Otherwise, I'm sitting at 34/44 achievements and one is story-based while the others are gameplay based. Choices in this game are definitely an illusion with the exception of the ending (I like the Star ending the most btw). If they release New Game + down the line as a free DLC, I'll definitely play it again then. Hopefully, they'll let us customize V again. I would like to go through the game with my money, stats, weapons, and armor, but I'd really like to hear how male V sounds in the game and experience Panam and Kerry's romances. It's definitely not BioWare level of choices, so not a whole lot of replay value is there; you've got 3 at the minimum if you want to play through the whole game as all 3 lifepaths. I'm gonna ignore corpo; that prologue was boring imo.

Aw, that's a bummer! I know a lot of people had the same result though, I think it might be the only choice in the game that's hidden so it's understandable that so many just didn't think it was an option. I'm saving The Star for another playthrough, but I have heard a lot of praise for it. The only ending I've actually seen myself is The Devil, and I kind of wish I chose a happier route for my first playthrough, but I do think it was really well done nonetheless. I played corpo and it was pretty blah. I did like some of the dialogue options, but I feel like nomad and streetkid fit V's personality a lot better. I do hope there's a new game+ as well, I can't see myself wanting to do all the side stuff and leveling again.

[Kikki]

Thanks for the advice, Ronin, Panda My inclination for my first play have been to just let each character play to their strengths and not try to customize them (since I don't really know what I'm doing well enough to create an effective customized legion of fighters) and to stick to just my own house members but add at least one more, maybe up to 3, since I read that your battles tend to allow for 9-12 people, and with just my house I have 9.

I've been having Ferdinand as a guest and will probably recruit him. (It's for a really stupid reason, lol.) I don't know about others, but Caspar has always felt like the friendliest guy, and Petra's kinda dazzling. Dunno. But that's what I'm going for, anyway...recruiting a max of 3 others and letting everybody play to their starting strengths. I don't feel capable of doing anything much more complicated.

Increasing your...professor rank? Or renown? I don't know which, but it's reeeeeally slow. I want more activity points, dang it. Or whatever they're called. I can't see myself wanting to play this twice (at least, not unless I wait a year between plays) unless practically everything about it changes between routes.

I don't like tea parties. That timer counting down is a serious stressor! And I wish I had more money so I could outfit my dainty little kiddles with more protection for their squishy wee bodies.

[Ronin19]

Yeah, I have to replay the game to get the ending because of that one choice that messes me up to get that achievement, but that's a consequence of going in blind. Otherwise, I'm sitting at 34/44 achievements and one is story-based while the others are gameplay based. Choices in this game are definitely an illusion with the exception of the ending (I like the Star ending the most btw). If they release New Game + down the line as a free DLC, I'll definitely play it again then. Hopefully, they'll let us customize V again. I would like to go through the game with my money, stats, weapons, and armor, but I'd really like to hear how male V sounds in the game and experience Panam and Kerry's romances. It's definitely not BioWare level of choices, so not a whole lot of replay value is there; you've got 3 at the minimum if you want to play through the whole game as all 3 lifepaths. I'm gonna ignore corpo; that prologue was boring imo.

Aw, that's a bummer! I know a lot of people had the same result though, I think it might be the only choice in the game that's hidden so it's understandable that so many just didn't think it was an option. I'm saving The Star for another playthrough, but I have heard a lot of praise for it. The only ending I've actually seen myself is The Devil, and I kind of wish I chose a happier route for my first playthrough, but I do think it was really well done nonetheless. I played corpo and it was pretty blah. I did like some of the dialogue options, but I feel like nomad and streetkid fit V's personality a lot better. I do hope there's a new game+ as well, I can't see myself wanting to do all the side stuff and leveling again.

Corpo was such a disappointing prologue. I just expected more. I've seen Star, Temperance, Devil (not the same as you though), and Sun. If I had to rank them based on my experience, Star > Sun >>> Temperance >>>>>>>>> Devil. So yeah, Star is so so so so SO good! I loved that ending to bits and it fit perfectly with my V.

The Devil ending I went through was so depressing and scary that I didn't want to do it again. Temperance felt sad and I was sad during the credits because I called Judy before and, well, I'll leave that up for your imagination.

On my own backlog, I might give up on Blue Dragon. I'm near the end of the first disc and the first-hour glasses are off and I can see what the game pretty much is: A simple story with one-dimensional characters and terrible music (That boss music is just awful. I can't stand it). The gameplay is pretty much the only saving grace of Blue Dragon. (That and Zola, easily the best party member of the group)

[cinnamon_yuki]

@Ronin and @Panda

In regards to CP2077 ending, is it a decision before endgame or decisions made throughout the story. Seriously though, out of all the quest in-game, Cyberpsycho gives me the creeps. My introduction to it has me shrieking a lot.

@Kikki: I didn't know how I manage to recruite all the recruitable characters, I wish I could give you advise on how I did it. In terms of gameplay, like Ronin and Panda advise, make sure to put all mages and archers at the back and the tanks upfront but keep them away from mages since mages could hit tanks hard. Also try to recruit a tank from other house because Blue Lions doesn't have a great tank character iirc and recruit Lysithea, she's a top tier mage.

It's been more than a year since I last played FE3H and this makes me want to play it again. Just need to remember how I recruited them all. It takes meticulous planning when recruiting them all.

[Harvest Moon kawaii]

Feeling ashamed of myself. I just manually entered all of my Steam games and all of my Switch games, and 1 3DS game (I think), and not including some that weren't in the system...just my backlog added up to 206 games.

Today and yesterday I played a bit of Animal Crossing: New Horizons (for New Year's) and made a bit more progress in Paper Mario: The Origami King, steadily moving towards the red streamer.