I have finished Lightning Returns! Except I can’t finish the quest that asked me to exterminate all enemies, because there are more enemies behind the point of no return. It’s impossible to hand in the quest until New Game Plus. Which is weird, but alright, since the game REALLY wants you to play again on hard mode. There’s a whole equipment upgrading system you don’t even have access to on your first playthrough and you can only upgrade your abilities so far. Plus, when you pick up a duplicate of a unique accessory, you get a stronger version instead. If it wasn’t for Monster Hunter, I’d probably play the game a second time, because I did really enjoy it. And the one thing I will say to anyone willing to try the game is: Don’t worry about the 13 day limit. It’s not a big deal at all. I’ve done pretty much everything by day 10 and had to skip ahead to the finale.

I’m about to head to the third area in Brothership, but I haven’t played much because my work schedule has been weird lately.

I’m almost done with Wario Land 2. It’s a fine game, but I just like the first one more. The way Wario’s immortality replaces death with annoyance just doesn’t work for me. It’s faster than going back to a checkpoint, but it feels worse.

Remember the ending of ‘The Dead Zone’? I have a stupid feeling it wouldn’t be a career-ender in our reality…

It’s load-bearing dust.

I have no idea what to expect from Wilds because I didn’t play World, which is very different stylistically from the older games and Rise. But I didn’t seen anything fundamentally wrong with it, so I took two weeks off for release anyway.

My playtime in Lightning Returns is only at about 50 hours, it just seems much longer because I’ve been playing it for months.

I’ve been ‘playing’ the Monster Hunter Wilds Benchmark for 2 hours today to find the right settings balance. The demo ran fine last year, but seeing the actual FPS, I just had to do some tweaking. I’m ready for the game in three weeks, I just need to make sure to finish

Lightning Returns first. I have four enemies left to hunt to extinction, it doesn’t take as long as I expected. I’m also reaching the point where I can’t upgrade my abilities anymore. They really want you to play New Game Plus Hard Mode to get even stronger: Unique accessories get replaced by better versions when you get duplicates and weapon upgrades aren’t even available until then. I’m tempted, but I got monsters to hunt next month.

I’m near the end of the second part of Brothership. The desert island sucked, but I’m still enjoying the game. I need to hurry up a bit though, last week I got extremely excited for Xenoblade X out of nowhere. I wasn’t a huge fan of the game when it was new, but Xenoblade 2 and 3 made me appreciate what it was a bit more in hindsight and I’ve been wanting to try it again for a long time. I’ve had faith in a Switch port and I’m glad I waited.

I’ve also been playing Wario Land 2. I’ve played it once before a long time ago, I don’t think it’s as good as the first one, but it’s interestingly weird in its own right.

Both statements can be true. Doctor Stephen Strange will be in the movie, Doctor Hugo Strange will not be in the movie.

These shows don’t need a second season. This is the MCU, everything can get a continuation anywhere else. In a way, this was Wandavision season 2 and I like it that way.

Brothership has been going smoothly. The islands all seem to be around the same size though, I’ve been hoping to find something chunkier every now and then. As of now, the gameplay loop is a little too small. But I’d like to give a huge shoutout to side quests straight up telling which ones will expire if you progress the main story! More games need to do that!

I misunderstood something about the main quests in Lightning Returns and I suddenly found myself done with them earlier than expected. I’m basically ready for the finale on Day 13, so now I’m spending the remaining 6 days exterminating all monsters in the world. I started with the two strongest ones before they grow even stronger. I don’t think I’ll beat the 11 Million HP superboss though. I’ll try, but I found out that he can straight up escape from combat when he’s under 25% health, rendering the whole fight meaningless and that seems too frustrating.

That intern personifies Cero Miedo.

Then. Now. But Then Again…

It took me way too long to realize how fucked up it is that you build houses on your properties and as soon as you collected enough rent money evict all those families, tear down the houses and build a hotel instead.

President Musk will be livid that his suggestion to call it ‘Gulf of X’ was shot down.

I finished Echoes of Wisdom, with completion of pretty much every side content, except I forgot to cross-reference my list of echoes with a complete list. I don’t think I missed anything, but who knows? My final verdict is neither positive nor negative, just a resounding ‘meh’. I’m always glad when they try something new, but I don’t think open world works for a 2D Zelda. A game with a top-down perspective needs more barriers or the map just becomes a square. Height just isn’t as much of a factor compared to a 3D environment.

In its place, I have started Mario and Luigi: Brothership! I was very worried about the game, since I generally don’t like it when an RPG segments its world too much. It’s been a long time since I played Partners in Time, but I remember that one being very guilty of that, where each segment felt like a ‘level’ instead of a piece of a larger world. But I’m actually very happy with Brothership so far, it’s cohesive! I’m trying to knock out the ‘Beat 300 enemies without any equipment’ challenge early and I’m getting so used to it, that I worry the game will feel too easy once my plumbers wear ties, so to speak.

I made a lot more progress in Lightning Returns. I’m past Day 7 now, which means all enemies are starting to grow stronger over time. I ran into a superboss in the Dead Dunes at some point… I didn’t know an enemy like that would just roam around like that! I got scared thinking this is what Day 7 Plus was going to be!

I did say I was going to do a second playthrough of the game to cover all side quests, but as it turns out, I have almost all of them finished already. When the game said you don’t have enough time to save everyone, they must have been lying. The 13 days you get are plenty. I might not be able to do the quest that asks you to exterminate every single enemy in the world though, but I’ll definitely try!

Great! It was weird watching Collision unsure if some or all of these fights happening on a Saturday night might not be alright.

Okay, I clearly missed something about Ricochet. One day everyone’s happy to see him in AEW, then he becomes the butt of a joke for MVP, covered in toilet paper and boo’d by everyone. Whose cat did he run over?

Even The Simpsons covered the Odyssey at some point though.

I prefer the wide game just to see the King run a marathon to castle up.

A good wig makes all the difference.

You won’t have to live in an iron lung if your health care provider refuses to cover the cost. See? The system works!

Haven’t found much time to play recently, but I beat the Deku area in Echoes of Wisdom today. This was probably my favorite area, mostly because we haven’t seen Deku sprouts as a serious race since Majora’s Mask. I find them a lot more interesting than the Korok, so I really hope they return in a major role again sometime.

At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m about to beat the game, so it’s time to finish off all the side content. I already finished the Dream Dojo including the advanced time requirements, which wasn’t that hard except for a select few challenges. Though even those wouldn’t have been so bad if there was a way to just restart without quitting out entirely! That’s a major oversight a game of today really can’t get away with anymore.

And one more thing I’ve been meaning to say for weeks but always forget… how is the lock-on so bad? Why does it seem like it prioritizes my own summons over the enemies? 99.9% of the time I do NOT want to lock on to the rock I placed somewhere! I’m actually unhappy that when Tri levels up, some summons become cheaper because the last thing I want is more entities to lock on to!