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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • Slowly carrying on with Fire Emblem Engage. It’s picking up a bit and it’s pretty fun now. I’m playing on the easiest settings (no permadeath and unlimited use of the time crystal to rewind when you make mistakes). I’m slightly conflicted about that now, because I did enjoy the old challenge of getting through without anyone ever dying. In Engage I’m mainly using the time crystal when I make a button press when I don’t mean it or immediately seeing a better placement for a unit, but every chapter or two I have a character die and I rewind to save them (where in the past I would have restarted the chapter). On one chapter, I didn’t bother rewinding and just let someone die because I knew they’d come back. It is a huge (real) time saver, but it’s a very different feel from older FE games. I know I could play with harder settings, but now the option is there, I’m not sure I have the patience and time to go back to the old way. Not sure what the point of this ramble was - still a fun game, and I’m definitely going to play through to the end.



  • Yeah, a few of the puzzles are really hard if you just don’t see it. I think I was trying for half an hour on both those tricky ones before getting it or giving up.

    I’m still really early on in Engage, so I can’t really comment on it, but between battles I’m just watching the cutscenes and going through the dialogue, not doing any of the optional support conversations or even going back to the base to check the shops etc. so it’s quite a fast pace. The story so far feels a bit meh, though - not very epic.

    I thought I might try Three Houses after this and just skip/auto as much of the monastery stuff as I could, but if I actually have to do that stuff to recruit people, it’s going to get annoying.



  • I gave up on FFVII because it stopped being fun. The Midgar parts were fun, but at a certain stage it just started feeling like a bunch of random events strung together with only a loose connection to the plot. I got up to doing the mandatory chocobo race.

    I’ve been watching my son play some Echoes of Wisdom and got called upon to solve some dungeon puzzles he couldn’t get past. The hardest ones were figuring out that you could place echoes far away by holding down the button (presumably that was in a tutorial, but I missed it). Then there was trying to get past a water flow that was pushing in the wrong direction.

    spoiler

    It didn’t feel like the correct solution, but I did it my placing a shark and following it so that it took me to the other side.

    Last, in the ice temple, there was a room with a fan and ice and fire vents on either side where I couldn’t reach the doorway. To my shame, I had to look up how to do it

    spoiler

    I knew I wanted to turn the water to ice, but didn’t realise you could do it with the orb in the adjoining room.

    For myself, I started playing Fire Emblem Engage. I could have chosen Three Houses, and its story looks more interesting, but I’m not that into social sim stuff and they say the Engage battles are better.



  • I’ve helped him out with just a couple of things, like a cloud boss battle, but he’s mainly tackling it by himself, which I’m happy with.

    FFIX seems to be regarded as a beter game in some ways, but I think FFVII is more iconic. I think I only ever tried out VI before (not for long, I couldn’t get into it). I’m not sure whether I’ll try out any others after this - I know there’s IX and X at least also on the eshop


  • I’m stepping away from Super Smash Bros because now I’m literally just grinding gold extremely slowly to buy the last ~60 odd spirits I’m missing, which are all just DLC spirits. It’s not fun that way.

    Bought Echoes of Wisdom, but my son’s been playing it and I probably won’t tackle it myself any time soon.

    Instead I bought FFVII since it was on discount and I’d never played it before. I’m slightly disappointed after hearing it being hyped for 20 years - but it’s still enjoyable enough to carry on with.



  • I bought nintendo online so that I could try out the online mode mode in super smash bros, and it’s really discouraging. I thought I was alright at it because I’ve basically completed the game and done the hardest challenges, but on online I’m riduclously outclassed. I think I played like 30 games last night and won only 2. I know it has a ranking system to match you up with similar players - I don’t know if it starts you out pretty high at first or something, because I feel like I’m a level 1 CPU right now.






  • It’s fun in many ways, like the puzzles and the items, but coming from “new” Zelda, it’s actually really tedious to have to backtrack to old areas when you get a new item that unlocks another part. It’s such a staple of old Zelda (and many other games), but now I’m sick of having to visit the same places over and over again. The joy cons also suck ass because of their inaccuracy and gyro drift, but using button input (like using pro controller) is equally terrible because it uses the right analogue for the sword.


  • I was reading/watching some opinion stuff about Nintendo console owners only buying first-party games (in relation to WiiU and third-party support) and I realised I’m one of those people. I only have a couple of third-party games for Switch, and they’re probably among my least favourite, and going back further, like 75% of the games I had were first-party games. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but I was just unaware I was one of those fans until I had a look at the games I’ve owned.

    Anyway, I might be able to finish Skyward Sword this weekend.





  • What do people think of playing a remake/remaster of a game you’ve already played the original of? Like one of the Switch Zelda remakes when you played it on GB/Wii, or Paper Mario when you played the GC version? Personally, I just don’t feel like buying the game again, even it’s been 20 years since I last played it, because I know I’ll remember parts of it and won’t have that feeling of playing a great game for the first time. Is that just a me thing, or a more widespread attitude?

    I don’t necessarily think remakes are a bad thing, since it gives people a chance to play classics that they missed.


  • Over the past few weeks:

    • Did the final battle(s) in LoZ OoT. Not actually that easy - for the first part, I thought I was dealing damage, but it was going on literally forever. As a recurring theme for me, I had to read how I was meant to progress.
    spoiler

    Turns out hitting the energy balls back at him isn’t enough! Got to shoot him and run and hit him. But if you’d already raided the all pots below for magic top-up and hearts, you’re going to run out of magic before you can beat him…

    The final final battle seemed hard, but was easy enough once I turned off z-targeting.

    • Started playing LoZ ALttP, but I just couldn’t really get into it. I loved Link’s Awakening (GB version), but maybe I’m just not in the mood for 2D Zelda right now.
    • I bought Need for Speed Paradise City on sale before. It’s alright for a while, but you often end up doing a race and then immediately driving the same race in reverse, so it’s a bit repetitive. Also the city environment is quite industrial, which is maybe the point, but I usually miss the turns because it’s mostly a grey blur. Unlocked the fastest motorbike. It’s fast.
    • Bought Skyward Sword HD, mainly for my son. Too early to say much about it, but there’s this move where you point your sword at the sky to charge it, and it’s quite difficult to actually hold the joy con in the right position for the game to recognise it. It’s kinda annoying.

    Edit: also did a run through of pokemon blue (emulated, with random battles turned off) because it’s so quick. It’s one of my all-time top games, and I still play it every now just to enjoy it again