sdcSpade

More subtle than the Third Age video game that just teleports you up there to fight the damn thing. Just stab it a bunch until its health runs out, I'm sure that's how it works.

Techically 3, I would say 2 and a half. Route B is mostly the same as Route A, except you play a different character. Many people stopped playing, thinking it was just a bonus, and completely missed that Route C afterwards is a continuation of the story.

I've beaten Route A of Nier:Automata today. So next is Route B, a.k.a. the reason a lot of players missed the true ending of the game. And I won't blame anyone, I almost stopped playing there, too.

My progress in Sparks of Hope has been minimal, but I hope to finish World 2 this weekend.

There was a time when I replayed the whole Trilogy every year when summer came around. When it gets hot and sweaty, I still get the urge to dig out the Wii Remote and play them again.

Still playing Nier:Automata, still on Route A. I forgot how much the side quests ask you to run back and forth the same few areas, but knowing what the game is truly about, it actually makes a lot of sense, so I'm okay with it.

I'm halfway through the second world of Mario/Rabbids Sparks of Hope and my first impression is that I preferred the first game in every single way. The battles are no longer rated in any way, so you don't need to try to play all that well, just win and move on. Most of the maps are kinda bland. No weapon upgrades, it's just cosmetics. having two characters fully voice-acted when everyone else is silent is really jarring and it's the first time I turned voice volume to 0% in a game, now I can actually enjoy the comedy more.

But the most jarring thing to me is that it seems like Ubisoft tried to make the Rabbids... cool? Thankfully the volume decrease also gets rid of the snippy one-liners, but why do they speak in the first place? Rabbids say Bwah, nothing else. And why am I picking up pieces of lore about the planets I'm on? It's Mario and Rabbids, I'm here for slapstick, not world-building! I'm not sure where to even begin about Edge...

I'll keep playing it out of curiosity, but I'm really tempted to boot up the first game again afterwards to see if it's really the game or me that changed so much.

The second game has a secret dungeon that is unlocked by collecting all Djinns in both games. No Djinn is missable within their own game, but this obviously doesn't apply across games. You can miss 1 Djinn of each element in the first game and the second one will give you an opportunity to encounter them there to help you out, but that's the end of the leeway.

I stand by what I said originally: Shantae is great when you're in the dungeons, but annoying in the overworld. I'd say it's definitely worth looking at for the visuals though. The game is so ambitious that I have to wonder why they made it for the GameBoy in the first place. When the game released, the GameBoy Advance and the GameCube were already out for a year, too! I can only assume development took a really long time and the overall bad timing affected sales enough to get the sequel cancelled. Luckily, it's being revived now, so I might actually wait for that to keep playing the series in order.

New year, new games. I accidentally managed to do a triple-finish, so I really had to think about this.

I finally finished Baten Kaitos' New Game Minus! All Achievements gotten! The game finally got hard, actually. I expected the hardest part to be the fight against three antagonists at the same time. One of them gets two attacks per turn and the game forces the weakest character into your party, so it's technically a 4 on 2 fight. Oh, and you have to do it twice in a row. I thought once that was over with, the rest would be easy, but no, the final boss actually smeared the floor with me pretty hard. I actually had to adapt my decks for the first time. I ended up putting two characters on offense only and loaded up my fastest character with light element armor and the best healing items to revive the attackers who would inevitably die to anything. That strategy even worked first try!

I'll probably replace the Switch-slot with Mario and Rabbids Spark of Hope. I was going to tackle Baten Kaitos Origins next, but maybe I should take a break after everything...

I completed all Challenge Maps in Arkham Origins, too. I still insist that the game is not as bad as people say, but I cannot overlook the amount of glitches. I'm looking forward to my first playthrough of Arkham Knight eventually, but first...

The PC slot has been replaced with Nier:Automata a few days ago. I already beat the game a few years ago, but that was when I was still unemployed, so I wasn't playing a legit copy. Now I'm going after the achievements on Steam because the game is definitely worth buying.

I've also beaten Shantae on the GameBoy. I'm glad I saved all the overworld collectibles until the end, when you can just fly everywhere. That made it much less of a headache. The ending got a bit confusing though. No spoilers, but you're dropped into a tense and dangerous situation, only to find it's not at all dangerous and after five minutes of having zero clue as to what to do had to look up a walkthrough. I'm not replacing this one, three games was a mistake, but the Shantae journey will continue eventually.

I've yet to see anything top "Seat belts are Communism". I hope I live long enough to see the circle complete itself with "Capitalism is Communism".

I know nobody will believe me but I genuinely enjoy Last Christmas by Wham. I used to hate it but it grew on me similarly to Never Gonna Give You Up.

It's a Steam Deck, not a Game Deck!