sdcSpade

Origins isn't part of the Arkham Trilogy that is on the Switch. It's the awkward black sheep that isn't as bad as people say, but deserves most of the criticism.

It's the weekend, my dudes.

Baten Kaitos New Game Minus progress is slow. I don't play it very often right now but when I do, I get a lot done. Some enemies have begun to outspeed me, but I've only had a character die to bad defense RNG once so far.

I've spent most of my time with Arkham Origins lately. I've 100% the main game and New Game Plus (which is an odd name for hard mode), I've beaten the Cold Cold Heart DLC and have just begun the Challenge maps. When I started the game, I completely forgot it takes place during christmas, so it's an accidentally fitting game.

I'm deep enough into Shantae on the Game Boy to have more of an opinion on it. The game has two faces: The dungeons, which are a joy to be in and the overworld which is an awful slog. The game has fast travel, but it takes a long time to unlock it. And the constant back and forth makes me impatient enough to just jump into a pit and be reset to the beginning of the area. I probably could have beaten the game by now if I played it more, but I'm playing too many games at once...

Speaking of too many games, I dug out my save file for Pokemon Infinite Fusion again and finally finished off most of the post game.

I can't pick only one, I have to name three:

Moon Knight.

That's what I was wanting to hear after the Trials of Mana remake! The renaissance was long overdue!

*£

It doesn't help that the games you constantly see ads for are the dumbest, most brain-dead crap imaginable. I'm sure there are decent games for phones, but they don't seem to invest in advertising.

I expected it to be a more simple platformer, since it's on the Game Boy, but it's actually a lot more open the same way future games in the series are. But I can't say much more than that yet. Like I said, I've been mostly grinding money because just getting to the second town with just your basic attack was an ordeal.

I've made little progress in Baten Kaitos' New Game Minus. Skipping past all cutscenes and dialogues and still being able to oneshot every boss is just not particularly interesting. The game truly starts when enemy encounters start to outspeed me, I guess.

This week, I also got my new PC up and running. And so I do what anyone with a beefy new PC would do: Play an older game I could have played on my old PC whenever I wanted to! I've been playing Batman: Arkham Origins. I've played the game and its predecessors on console already, but for completion's sake I'm doing them again on Steam before eventually playing Arkham Knight for the first time, which would not have run on my old PC, at least not well. I love this series. Origins isn't very well received, but I think it's underrated. It definitely has flaws, but it doesn't deserve that much hate. But to be honest, all it takes to make me happy is a set of Predator Maps with a varied group of playable characters. It's just a shame that, unlike the previous Arkham titles, I can't really complete the game. Some achievements are linked to a long-defunct online mode. It's been restored by the community, but I really don't care about it.

I also want to eventually get into the Shantae series. I've played one of them on the Wii U (Pirate's Curse, I believe?), so I've gone back to the very beginning and started Shantae on the Game Boy! The spritework and animations are quite impressive for Nintendo's old handheld brick, though I've run into some issues differentiating between foreground and background objects. The number of times I've fallen through a platform that was actually in the background is too damn high! I've only made it to the second town because I stopped to grind the money necessary to get some expensive items that unlock new moves. I'm sure I would get the money eventually, but armed with just the hair whip alone I find the game difficult in a way that's not fun.

New Game Minus is its own achievement, so I might as well try.

A normal playthrough should take ~50 hours.

New Game Minus disables levelling up for the game. But since it carries over most of everything else, like a New Game Plus, the raw strength of my cards is still going to carry me through most of the game anyway. And when it does, I can adjust my deck for whatever the boss is weakest to, which you never have to do in a normal playthrough because it's rather easy if you can play your straights consistently. I'm mostly worried about a fight against three antagonists at the same time, because defense is the awkward part to optimize for me.

I've had to fill out Divorce Papers this week... in Baten Kaitos. I made a screenshot, in case this sounds too ridiculous. Divorce Papaers + John Hancock's Pen gives you Consolation Pay, which sells for a lot of money. Money is never really an issue in this game, but I guess if you really wanted to grind it, you could repeatedly fill out divorce papers? I wonder if any Combo ideas during the brainstorming were shot down at all at this point...

But I'm also done with SP Combos! My card collection now sits at 1017/1022 and yes, one of the missing cards is still the two-week one. My in-game time is past 336 hours though, so I just have to catch up on the lost menu time, however much that is. The others are two cards that I got through the combos that, unfortunately, both change shapes after 24 hours twice, so I'll need another 48 hours. But I'll take those into New Game Minus with me if they're the last ones missing. Even if their timer does reset, I'll lose 24 hours at worst and that's not a big deal when I have to beat the game again, essentially. So now I'm grinding some endgame weapon cards until my Shampoo finally changes. It should be soon...

Edit:
I got it! My hair has never looked more splendid. I also forgot this card unlocks the last pieces of music, so there's technically two achievements tied to this nonsense. That means I can start New Game Minus, which is probably not going to be too difficult until I'm back in the endgame if I really get to keep all of my cards.

I have realized that the SP Combos in the journey towards Baten Kaitos completion are something I have never even attempted in the original version because I have no memory of the nonsense I have to do here. It's like I'm playing a different game all of a sudden. Here's my personal highlight so far:

One combo requires the card "Good Fortune" with two other items. The fortune cards rotate through various forms, the Good variant stays that way for a whopping seven seconds. And I learned the hard way that cards can indeed change in combat. So I make sure I have all the cards I need in my hand and cycle through everyone's turns, hoping the right character's turn comes up during the seven-second window the fortune lines up.

"But surely the reward for such a combo is amazing!", I hear you say. The combo results in the card "Pretty Flowers", which is pretty worthless. And even if it wasn't, you can just put four flowers together to get the same result. And after ten hours, the flowers rot away anyway.

I don't alyways complete games. I'll usually try, but stop when things get too stupid. But there's stupid-stupid and there's funny-stupid. And it simply fascinates me how nonsensical this game is beneath the surface, in that dark place a normal playthrough would never touch. I'm now ~50% through the SP Combos, but the pace varies on the cards needed. Every now and then, I have to grind one from an enemy and this game has a stronger desire sensor than even Monster Hunter, I swear.

But aside from the wall of text, I did complete Mario Bros. Wonder. What a delightful final boss and a challenging special world to round it off. I said I wasn't going to start another B-game, but then I remembered I paused We Love Katamari Reroll for the sake of playing Mario, so I got back to that. I'm sorry for forgetting you, King of All Cosmos. I do love Katamari, I swear!