Backlog 2023

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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You know what freaks me out about trophies/achievements? How few people have even finished the games! And I don't mean completed, just finished the main story itself. For example, only 16.5% of everyone who owns Zestiria on PS4 actually finished the main story. Heck, only about 65% of people who own it on PS4 even STARTED the story. That means about 35% of people bought the game and never played it at all. The gaming industry is making major bank on games that are never even played. :shock: This seems to be proof that gamers eyes are bigger than their, er...well, 'stomachs' doesn't work here, does it? Um, how to rephrase... This seems to be proof that gamers' completely untouched backlogs are vastly bigger than their completions?

I finally got all the monoliths. *grump!* You'd think that part'd be easy: just find the 7-foot-tall hunks of rock dotting the landscape...but if you get interested in exploring a new area or if you get bogged down in the fighting, it's very easy to miss monoliths that have been tucked into little alcoves or behind shrubbery. Only 1.9% of people on PS4 have that trophy, but then, with only 16.5% of people who even finished the game's story, that's not really surprising, is it?

I do like trophy data. It's just...interesting to see how games are played. Or if they're played at all!

Next task is...ugh...advanced item fusion. I still don't understand how fusion works with getting the traits you want, even though I've read about it. I have 3 or 4 fusion achievements left to get. At least the x99 one should be easy since I have the special items that fuse with everything.

~

I have 8 each of cabernet bell pepper seedlings and jalapeno seedlings, now! They're all doing great, so they've got a germination rate of about 67%. And I've now planted my 3 types of cabbage and also my salad burnet (perennial herb.) I put two seeds into each cell this time, as I don't have space to waste so I only planted one cell pack for each type of cabbage, but it's going to be hard on my nerves to pinch out whichever seedling is weaker...assuming they sprout at all, that is! They're just so cute and sweet, the little seedlings trying to pull their tiny green heads out of the soil.

~

EDIT: Oh yeah, btw, I'm really stupid. I have Nintendo Switch Online, and a family membership, which my Lite is a part of. But the DLC wasn't unlocking. I went through a fair rigamarole yesterday, to eventually realize that I did have a membership, and Cricket IS a part of it, but...my membership isn't an 'expansion' membership, which means ANCH DLC isn't a part of the available offerings. So I never had the DLC on that console to begin with. Obviously why I couldn't unlock it! Eh, that's okay. I don't really like designing vacation homes anyway and that's the only part locked to the DLC.
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greensara
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Yep, I am going to need to start Ringfit from scratch. Tried continuing with the difficulty supposedly lowered a fair amount from what it was at before and I was dying, well more like my body just decided it was done and went on strike of it's own accord, lol. I knew it was going to be hard getting my strength back to what it was but man, it looks like it's going to take a good while.

Had a really happy moment playing today. When I was playing the Wii a lot, we had made Miis of a bunch of the people in the family or that we knew, just for fun. So today when decided to play the stepping game in Wii Fit, while holding a cranky baby girl, who should show up dancing next to me on screen but my Grandma's Mii. She passed away about a year ago this month. She just turned and smiled towards my character during the mini game like, "You got this!" :heart: Oh my goodness. Thank you Grandma, I needed that. :)
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Kikki
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It's really nice when things like that happen, greensara :)

~

That Bayonetta Cereza game (dunno what it's actually called) has a demo, and I have NO interest in the game, even though I love the art style, but I do want to support demos as much as possible, so I'm going to download it. I'm even gonna play it. Eventually! I don't know if lots of people downloading a demo actually impresses Nintendo or other devs or not, but it's free, so no reason not to do it.

Oh, and I forgot but I went straight from 1 star to 3 stars just by getting my 8th villager, so KK performed today and if I want I can start changing my island into a proper desert, now. I'm already bored, though! If I can get the motivation, I'll attempt to move as many houses as possible to the beach and/or the cliffs so I can work on adding streams and sand pathing to the main area. It's just a matter of digging up the aforementioned motivation from somewhere. Just about ever other game on my list is more interesting to me atm (and they're all replays!)

My 9th random villager will be Bunnie. *shrug* That's fine, I think? She seems okay in a desert. My penguin villager really doesn't belong, though.

Trails to Azure in 5 more days. I'm not amped (am I ever?) but I'll probably play it as soon as I have it.

~

Pot pie for supper, yay! Sometimes I desperately need pastry. I don't know why.
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Code_Name_Geek
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Kikki wrote: Mar 09, 2023 5:31 am You know what freaks me out about trophies/achievements? How few people have even finished the games! And I don't mean completed, just finished the main story itself. For example, only 16.5% of everyone who owns Zestiria on PS4 actually finished the main story. Heck, only about 65% of people who own it on PS4 even STARTED the story. That means about 35% of people bought the game and never played it at all. The gaming industry is making major bank on games that are never even played. :shock: This seems to be proof that gamers eyes are bigger than their, er...well, 'stomachs' doesn't work here, does it? Um, how to rephrase... This seems to be proof that gamers' completely untouched backlogs are vastly bigger than their completions?
You know what's even more crazy? I suspect that trophy percentages only count people who have that game in their trophy list. I'm not sure whether that triggers when you launch the game for the first time or just by putting in the disc, but there are a lot of games installed on my PS4 or in my account that aren't in my trophy list because I haven't played them. That makes all those early trophies with low percentages even more shocking, since how could someone not even complete the opening cutscene or the tutorial? But I guess some people must boot up the game and decide not to play for some reason, or maybe they accidentally open it on a family member's account if they have a shared console (that's happened to me lol).

~

I'm almost done collecting all the emblems in Sonic Adventure DX. I only have the five Chao race emblems, three overworld emblems, and one last stage emblem left to collect. I've still been enjoying it a lot, but I think I'll be ready to move on by the time I get those last 9 emblems. I'm glad I decided to stick with it longer instead of rushing on to the next game, though.

I also made some significant progress on Pokémon Violet over the weekend. I finished the Team Star story, and found I had correctly guessed the identity of the final boss for that route. I also did the raid event with my siblings and friend and got the new legendary forms, and evolved the last Pokémon in my team (Kingambit). Now all that's left is to beat the Elite Four and finish the last route! I might still complete the Pokédex later if I feel like it, but I don't think I'll be doing that right away.

Hopefully if all goes smoothly I'll finish both of those this weekend or early next week. So that means it's definitely time to start sometime new, and maybe pick up something unfinished as well. Haven't decided what yet, but my goal is to pick up something else by the end of next week. It's going to be pretty busy so maybe something easy would be nice... I'll have to go through my lists and see.
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Kikki
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Code_Name_Geek wrote: Mar 09, 2023 3:00 pm
Kikki wrote: Mar 09, 2023 5:31 am You know what freaks me out about trophies/achievements? How few people have even finished the games! And I don't mean completed, just finished the main story itself. For example, only 16.5% of everyone who owns Zestiria on PS4 actually finished the main story. Heck, only about 65% of people who own it on PS4 even STARTED the story. That means about 35% of people bought the game and never played it at all. The gaming industry is making major bank on games that are never even played. :shock: This seems to be proof that gamers eyes are bigger than their, er...well, 'stomachs' doesn't work here, does it? Um, how to rephrase... This seems to be proof that gamers' completely untouched backlogs are vastly bigger than their completions?
You know what's even more crazy? I suspect that trophy percentages only count people who have that game in their trophy list. I'm not sure whether that triggers when you launch the game for the first time or just by putting in the disc, but there are a lot of games installed on my PS4 or in my account that aren't in my trophy list because I haven't played them. That makes all those early trophies with low percentages even more shocking, since how could someone not even complete the opening cutscene or the tutorial? But I guess some people must boot up the game and decide not to play for some reason, or maybe they accidentally open it on a family member's account if they have a shared console (that's happened to me lol).
Oh yeah, definitely. That 35% I mentioned definitely wouldn't include anyone who had a physical copy but never put it in their machine, for one thing, and for the other, I'm not certain, but for at least some games it seems like they don't go onto your trophy list until you get one trophy. Though I know that some are registered without any achievement at all, too...because I have Save the Homeland on my PS4 and it has 0 achievements (I basically just opened it, walked around for a minute, then shut the game down and never went into it again. Well, it was essentially free, so I didn't care if I played it.) Many games have achievements you get almost without fail within the first few minutes of playing, too, like Subnautica has an achievement for getting into the water the first time, and it's a game entirely about diving/exploring underwater, so that happens basically immediately, as soon as you exit your submarine or whatever your pod thing is. Terraria is also on my list, and I don't think I ever opened it, though I guess I may have, and, as with StH, been so dampened by how ugly it is that I just shut it and never looked back. That happens sometimes with games I get for a few cents!

I think most games get registered on your list as soon as you open them, though, even if you haven't gotten an achievement yet. That's how it looks from my own library, anyway.

Zestiria is a game that is now almost always about 90% off so it may have a lot of people who bought it for a few bucks then didn't give a hoot about playing it, like me with StH. I guess I should be more surprised that the percentage of people who own it but never played it isn't even higher.

~

EDIT: This is kind of game related, though it's a game I've not actually played. There's an ad banner that's most usually on top of the Fogu page when I come (I have Fogu whitelisted...everywhere else I use AdBlock) for some game called...let's see...Hero Wars? It looks like some sort of puzzle game. They're showing a wooden board with pins and rings and I believe the idea is to get all of the interlocked pins free of each other. The banner says "Only 3% can solve it!"

Ha ha...yeah. I think EVERYBODY can solve it, and that that's how they hook people. They look at the puzzle, realize THEY can do it, and pretty easily, too, and think, if they're even a little gullible or just not paying attention...gosh, am I one of the 3% smartest people in the world?? Pretty sure that's the hook. I kind of wondered this with various game trailers, too. ACNH specifically, including when the big 2.0 + DLC thing came out and they showed homes being designed. The designs were good, but not great. They made you think...hey, neat! But if that was me playing, I could do better... Feels like they're using a relative of ye olde smoke-up-the-heinie method of influence.
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Bluie
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I DID IT, I FINISHED THE GREAT ACE ATTORNEY CHRONICLES. That last case was a long one but it did wrap up everything nicely, even if I saw the true culprit from miles away. My husband even joined me to watch the rest of it play out and we were both hollering at the TV like it was soap opera we were both super invested in. The last breakdown was... sure something lol. 55 hours later, it's finished, and I think I'll legit be avoiding VNs for a little while. The only other game in my backlog that is one is 428: Shibuya Scramble which I bought sometime recently but haven't touched yet, and wont until I get a few other games done. I started Live A Live almost immediately after and I've already finished the wild west chapter. Currently on the distant future chapter. I've heard this is a shorter JRPG which I welcome, because I'll finally be starting Xenoblade 3 once I finish it.

My main plan is to finish my backlog before Tears of the Kingdom comes out, but I'm not rushing myself through my games either. I went through my redownload lists on my consoles and added back games I'd bought and forgotten about that I DO want to play, but have neglected. So my backlog is kinda... large right now. Besides Tears of the Kingdom, I really only plan to purchase Final Fantasy XVI, Etrian Odyssey III, SoS: A Wonderful Life, and Atelier Marie 100% day one, so I'm not drowning in releases, but I'd like to start 2024 with a clean slate, so I guess that's my actual main plan. Not much else on my wishlist anyways, just games with unannounced release dates or visual novels I'll get to when I'm up to it. There's a lot of games coming out this year that I don't trust to be something I'd enjoy full price or I'm taking a wait and see approach. So far the only game this year I've skipped (as in, I do want to play it) is Octopath II, but it'll still be around once I can carve out the time/money for it.
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Kikki
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Congrats, Bluie! Final cases in AA games are always really fun, imo. Shibuya Scramble was quite interesting, too, and XC3 is a very good story, though a bit out of step with the universe lore at one point, also imo. I have to play it again. The story never fully sinks in on the first go.

Which brings me to putting Zestiria down for now. I just need to make note of what I was up to. Normally if I set a game down in post-game, intending to do a few more things, I never get to them because I can't remember what I was doing, or how to do it. So!

In my current Zestiria file, (remember this phrase, me, so that you can search it later if you need to look this up!) I have all of them up to 13, but I'd like to get all LotLs up to level 21, mainly for the free transportation everywhere. Before beginning a new file, I would also like to get the stack achievements, since I still have all the blank items that can be fused with any other item in the same general category, regardless of type, which makes it easier to get those achievements, and if I wait until NG+ I would have to fight to the end to get all those items again, afaik. I also want to complete Calix VIII to finish off the bonus dungeon (did the other seven already!), though I'm not sure if the final fight will be one I can do. But I can try, anyway. Plus then I can attempt to buy my missing skits at Katz Korner.

And that's it! Everything else can wait until NG+. Some of the achievements are way too much to be serious about, though. I don't want to play the game 5 times, nor am I willing to fight the final boss on Chaos. (Simple > Normal > Moderate > Hard > Intense > Chaos. I like Simple! Though I can manage Hard even for most bosses. Probably okay with easier bosses on Intense, but anything other than that just isn't for me, I think.)

So now I can set it down, since I should still understand what I was up to when I finally get back to it.

I should probably try to get back to Fantasy Life since I was already at least half done with that replay, but the story is just so UGH. Perhaps I intersperse it with wrapping up my PS4 playthrough of DQB2, to avoid getting irritated by too much of the dopey FL story at once. The gameplay is more important, but I still hope the story/characters of FLi are less childish.
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Kikki wrote: Mar 09, 2023 12:42 pm
That Bayonetta Cereza game (dunno what it's actually called) has a demo, and I have NO interest in the game, even though I love the art style, but I do want to support demos as much as possible, so I'm going to download it. I'm even gonna play it. Eventually! I don't know if lots of people downloading a demo actually impresses Nintendo or other devs or not, but it's free, so no reason
I downloaded and played for a bit. The art style is very cool. I've never played a Bayonetta game so the art is what drew me to try this one. The story and gameplay are different enough that it's interesting. I enjoyed the little I played. I can see myself waiting for a sale and buying it.
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Kikki
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K8sMum wrote: Mar 11, 2023 5:55 am
Kikki wrote: Mar 09, 2023 12:42 pm
That Bayonetta Cereza game (dunno what it's actually called) has a demo, and I have NO interest in the game, even though I love the art style, but I do want to support demos as much as possible, so I'm going to download it. I'm even gonna play it. Eventually! I don't know if lots of people downloading a demo actually impresses Nintendo or other devs or not, but it's free
I downloaded and played for a bit. The art style is very cool. I've never played a Bayonetta game so the art is what drew me to try this one. The story and gameplay are different enough that it's interesting. I enjoyed the little I played. I can see myself waiting for a sale and buying it.
It's lovely, isn't it? Visually speaking. I love the art style AND the colours. Am also happy that you can download demos via laptop/computer rather than being restricted to only being able to do it while actually using your Switch...I am often using my PS4, not for gaming, but for YouTube or Netflix or etc, and then the only way I could use my Switch would be handheld, which I generally just don't want to (unless I've taken the extra step of putting it into a comfort grip, first.) So I like being able to tell my laptop to tell my Switch to download Cereza for me while I'm busy with other stuff.

Woo, feelin'...what would you call this? Am mildly sedated from an increased dose of relaxant. As a generally naturally rather sedate person, this increased sedation makes me borderline floaty. I also feel cuddly. I want to hug people, maybe just to have something to lean on, to ground my gently sloshing brain. I am floaty and huggy. ANd it would be very easy to take a nap. Not a bad feeling. Might as well enjoy it; it'll disappear once I get used to this dose. Which is good, since this state isn't very functional, but I feel suuuuuper zen, and stuff I couldn't get off my mind yesterday and the day before just don't seem to matter any more. Everything's cool, lol. Is this supposed to happen? I could see this state being addictive, if you could be a little more clear-headed during it. But you can't. I'm sooper dooper stoopid right now.

I wonder if I can make lunch like this? I'll cook that bag of pasta thing. That should be doable, even like this.

Counting completed replays on my gaming list makes me even less prone to want to buy new games, I'm finding. This way, doing replays feels more like something accomplished., rather than time wasted. Gonna count replays on my list from now on. Am definitely going to focus on PS4 DQB2 replay and Fantasy Life replay for my next tasks (though Azure is coming up in only a few days and I may switch to that once it's out.) I think I'll also count 3 demo completions as one game completed. I need to redo Divine Force, play Cereza, aaaand...what was the other one? Nup nup nup...no, I can't remember. I'll have to check my Switch. But I'm pretty sure there's at least one more high-priority demo on my list somewhere. I think.

Oh man, I have to hang my mom's photos this afternoon in her new place this afternoon. I wonder if I can operate hammer and nails...

I'm looking forward to going, though. There'll be lots of people to hug.
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Beat chapter four in Harvestella after having to reset and try the boss four or five times. The second to last time having only one hit left needed to win the fight. I had to put my switch down to charge immediately after so I haven't done anything else yet, but I plan on running around doing character stories after my daily farming is done before I progress the story.

I've also been playing spirit of justice, I think, and just started the first day of the trial in the third case. I try to play 20-30 minutes a day at least, usually before I go to bed when I'm drinking tea lately, since it's easier to grab a teacup if you're already sitting up and it's easier to use a stylus that way too. I still have the great ace attorney games after this, and I also have a number of other games like professor Layton, somnium files, Danganronpa and stuff I can finish after those.
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greensara
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I'm about maybe a third into chapter 3 of Harvestella and it's official: I have joined the fandom. The game really opens up after chapter 2, or what was also in the demo. The farming is still kind of meh to me, but the story, battling, exploring, quest lines, and checklist rewards are good stuff. A lot of it kind of reminds me of Ys 8 and 9 in some ways. If nobody has a hold put on it, I will likely see if I can renew my checkout for another week. :)

I saw they are going to have a Slowpoke community day next week in Pokemon Go, with a chance of shiny Galarian Slowpoke, so I may be picking it back up again after all, lol.
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Right now I’ve got seven villagers on Xelanor. Tiffany moved in today and Roswell moved in yesterday.

Flick was yesterdays NPC, C.J the day before and today it’s Wisp. Currently hunting for my eight villager, hoping for a cranky. No luck so far, on my last ticket.

Ended up with Mint, another snooty. Oh well, I’d already decided I would take whoever I came across on my last ticket otherwise it would auto fill. Not that I mind TOO much, there are no characters that I hate, but I like to know who’s moving in.
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Kikki
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Roinda wrote: Mar 11, 2023 2:49 pmEnded up with Mint, another snooty. Oh well, I’d already decided I would take whoever I came across on my last ticket otherwise it would auto fill. Not that I mind TOO much, there are no characters that I hate, but I like to know who’s moving in.
Hey, that's funny. I finally found out who my 10th villager is to be today...a 'SOLD' sign went up on the house on the beach...and it's Mint! I've never even heard of Mint. Looked her up. Not liking the looks of her, at least! Snooties really need to be visually beautiful or cute, or they're annoying, ime. She's the same colour as my grumpy villager, Murphy. I like Murphy okay but I don't like squirrel villagers, for the most part. A few are extremely cute, but the majority are on the ugly side. Mint's not one of the ugliest, like Hazel or Cally, but she's no Poppy or Marshal. Since I dont' really enjoy ACNH for the villagers (I find them more of an obstacle than anything), mine have got to be good-looking, or I don't want 'em!

Well, I'll just wait until she wants to move or until she can be replaced by a camper. I'm willing to reset my campers until they ask to replace the one I prefer them to replace. In general, resetting is something I'm always willing to do. (I sure do a lot of it when mining in Bokumono!)

I'm in the process of making everything into sand in Dew Web. It's tedious and I haven't yet decided how to go about the trees. I think I'll just chop 'em all down and replant them rather than digging them up. (Well, maybe one inventory load can be dug up, but more than that would be too tedious.) Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, fossils will appear even in sand, as will rocks, so I don't have to worry about my huge area of sand disrupting my fossils-getting process.

I'd mostly stopped playing, but happened to go on yesterday or...maybe it was actually Friday? Anyway, turns out I'd unlocked Harv's Co-op, and boat tours, and ordinances, so it was a busy day. I scraped up enough to unlock Leif. Really should get the Early Bird ordinance next, though, since I just about always am done playing before 8AM. Wish it adjusted the time by more than just one hour, though. 7AM isn't all that 'early bird', imo!
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Bluie
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Finished the distant future chapter of Live A Live. Gave me some heckin anxiety, but I still enjoyed it. Not sure which one I'll tackle next, but I won't be touching the game regardless until my next day off, which is Wednesday. Working late every single freaking day this week so gaming is down to a little in the morning (if I wake up in time) and a little a night just before bed. Most likely I'll be doing deep dungeon diving in FFXIV and/or general grinding in Genshin. I have a team named 'Friendship Build' in Genshin where I use it to grind friendship of whatever characters I've yet to max. I finally got Fischl out of it this morning and I've replaced her with Aloy (the rest of the team currently being Alhaitham, Yaoyao, and Nilou) and I do not get all the fandom's hate for this character. She's actually pretty fun to play. Like, I actually DO get where the hate comes from. She's 'lore breaking' (she actually isn't, her presence there is explained easily), she's 'weak' (subjective), and people are rightfully upset she's probably never getting constellations (upgrades). But after spending an hour or so running around friendship grinding with her, I just don't actually get why people « Baaaa *glomp* » so much about a FREE character that came with a FREE bow and is extremely easy to build. She's not here to hurt you, fandom, she just simply exists. Chill.

Anyways, only other thing I kinda plan to do is all the Hangouts in Genshin. I finally got around to unlocking all of them, and while I still really don't care about them, I want the notification out of my journal about how I haven't finished them yet. I'll be using a guide to get all the endings because I aint got time to redo them blindly.
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simside
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Blah, having more health issues, but I'm hopefully going to get to see a new doctor this week. I'm always optimistic! But I have little energy for gaming, unfortunately.

---

I did finally finish Persona 5 Royal! For real finish! Wow are there a lot of cutscenes at the end! I don't really want another long RPG after that, AT ALL, but I'm struggling to finish the few games I have going.

Technically, Temtem is also a long RPG, but I tend to get really sucked into that. I didn't get a chance to play this weekend, but I'm about 25 hours in, and... halfway-ish through the third island?
Spoiler:
Unfortunately, the third island starts with a shipwreck that leaves you without a way to buy items and with quite a distance to run if you want to switch party Tems, so I just quietly grinded with a sub-optimal team until the PC right in front of the town. Then I switched my party, leveled up a more optimal anti-poison Tem, and advanced the story... only to have the game take away both my Tems and my map. Like, the ABSOLUTE WORST thing you can do in a monster team RPG is take away your monster team, and give you a worse, temporary, lower-level one. I am also really terrible at navigating without a map, and may have to have my partner help me through the next section. They also took away the basically-HMs I've earned so far in the story, which is also annoying.

Still, I hate how much folks complain about this game, and I am (or was) having a lot of fun grinding my party. The stricter type rules are a little more fun when you start learning your advantages... though the bad Tem stats are still a little disheartening. I managed to catch a few with better stats, but they're dual type with no evolution, so I'm not sure if they're viable or not.
Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom is actually a lot longer than I thought, and I've been having fun with it still, but only playing in short bursts. I liked playing it on my lunch break, but too many of the areas are dark (underground/cave/temple/underwater) to play in my parked car. :( Not as much progress as I'd hoped.

I played another big chunk of Idol Manager, after my partner officially quit that game as well. I don't think I'm super-far from the end... I have 8/10 fame stars for my company, and fairly high level idols. Annoyingly, I'm falling just short of the next level on my resource skills, and my last several CD singles have flopped, so I am astonishingly almost out of money. It might be trying to trigger a bankruptcy, which I understand unlocks more story, but I have A LOT of money to drain, and I can get more, so it's doing it in the most annoying way possible. The CD flopping percentage is something like 5%, and it's triggered three times in a row. Save scumming wasn't resetting the spinner that determines this, and I still flopped even after raising the level of advertising to make the percentage smaller, so I don't know how to fix this problem. Worst case, I'll trigger a bad ending, which is fine. I've unlocked more-or-less all the content except for the story scene galleries, and I'm a little concerned additional stories or endings involve a lot more digging into the personal lives of the idols (or worse), which I'm not super interested in. But I do want an ending! The bad one is fine.
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