I finally get to continue the story of Xenoblade X as all side quests up to level 60 are taken care of at last! The Red Lobster quest is very demoralizing. It’s no wonder I only found just under half, the other half doesn’t appear until you get the first 49! So if you try to do this without a guide and thoroughly comb through every nook and cranny of the city, your reward is getting to do it all over again. If all of the lobsters were available from the start this would just be a normal, tedious quest.

In the late endgame, the lack of any kind of combat log becomes a real problem. There are some rare cases in which I engage a tyrant and just instantly die and I have no idea what even happened. The enemy list in the game shows their stats and resistances, but not what they do.

In Monster Hunter Wilds, I recently realized I really don’t need most of the extra rewards you get from Tempered monsters in the field, so I’ve switched over to grinding materials from lower ranked regular monsters via the quest list. My wishlist is finally shrinking at a visible pace!

I’m about to finish Wild Arms 2. I recently finished adding all regular enemies to the compendium and fought the optional bosses. I wasn’t able to beat one of them because it would just require too much grinding. If there’s one thing the game is missing, it’s a way to reduce incoming non-elemental damage. You have spells that can raise defense and resistance, but they do next to nothing!

I dug out Smash Bros. Ultimate again for the first time in years. I’ve been doing single character runs of World of Light pretty much exclusively since launch and a list randomizer decided to pick Captain Falcon for this eighth run.

I need a new Decapolice Prayer Circle, the old one clearly wasn’t working.

Xenoblade X is being a bit weird right now. It looks like they didn’t really update the endgame content from the original game. They raised the level cap to 99, but equipment still caps at 60 for requirements. You can find a level 60 weapon that is the best you’ve ever seen of its kind and an hour later you find another, also level 60, that is literally twice as strong. I haven’t touched the story in a long time either, because all the original game’s content is basically available now and there’s a lot to catch up on. I think I’ll stop when the quests reach level 60, though that means I’ll have to deal with the lobster dolls soon. I’m honestly shocked that I only found around half of them on my own! I tend to take all kinds of detours trying to get to quest markers in the city so see if I can find any more but I haven’t found any in months…

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I’m recording my playthrough if Wild Arms 2, so it would have to have absolutely no redeeming qualities for me to drop it. And I want to play the whole Wild Arms franchise eventually and I’ve never played past the second game in the past, so I want to get the full picture.

Alright, here we go, let’s start the year off with the big one. I’ve beaten Metroid Prime 4 with 100% items and 99% Scans (because one boss has a scannable projectile, which is just great) and I have to say that it is my least favorite Metroid game (barring the NES and GB titles on account of their age). I’ll say this first: The visuals and atmosphere are brilliant. The boss fights are very good. Now onto everything else:

At the end of the day remains the question: So it’s a bad Metroid, but is it a bad game? I have no idea. Without the Metroid, it’s not a game I would be interested in playing in the first place, so I have no scope of reference.

I’ll be back in Xenoblade X for now. I’ve played it for the first time in 2 weeks and got my level 60 Skells made. Next stop, proper weapons!

i haven’t updated on this one regularly, but I’ve been playing more Wild Arms 2 on and off this whole time. It does some good things gameplay-wise, but I’m not really feeling the story anymore. The localisation doesn’t help, there are quite a few very awkwardly phrased lines.

Slow progress on Xenoblade X. But that’s fine, I still boot up the game to get my 300 material tickets per day to lessen the grind for the level 60 Skells. I didn’t think the jump from level 50 to 60 was going to be that great, but just looking at the raw defense of the default armor tells a different story. I’m level 59 right now, soon everything will die…

That being said, I’m past what was the ending of the Wii U version. I forgot exactly what it was, but I’m mad all over again that they thought it was a good idea to end the game there. You finally get some answers, but then they change the questions! Curious to see where this goes now.

Still playing Metroid Prime 4. I’ll withhold any comments until I’m done, just to be sure I’ve seen the whole picture. As it stands, it’s en route to become my least favorite Metroid game, barring the NES and GameBoy games on account of their age, and I don’t want to say that too lightly. Let’s see where else this goes first.

Title Update 4 for Monster Hunter Wilds is here and the Switch Axe got some unexpected buffs. Being able to dodge-cancel the charge of the Full Release Slash is huge! They added Gogmazios as the game’s first Elder Dragon. (Editor’s Note: Its definitely not the game’s first Elder Dragon) It starts out as a normal fight, has an interesting interlude and then goes to shit in its third phase. Packing away your weapon and repeatedly shooting it with what is basically a slingshot is just not fun, especially when the ground keeps exploding while you have to look up!

But I’m super motivated to play again regardless, because they added a way to boost lower rank armor to endgame levels. My set has been stagnant for more than half a year and now I can finally work on that again!

‘New path’ makes me think it’s a reboot and that’s why it’s not called Mega Man 12.

You’d think one look at the state of America would be enough to render their propaganda completely meaningless. You’d really think. You would really have those thoughts running through your head. But here comes reality with a steel chair to give you a concussion.

They don’t get BP if they haven’t joined the party yet. Mia had ~100 when she joined compared to the several thousand points the early characters have by now. But I’ve prepared for that for a while. I tried to save the BP reward for Cauldros survey completion, but you need 65% for the Mia quest to pop up in the first place.

I’m closing in on what was originally the end of Xenoblade X on the Wii U. I still have a bunch of side missions to do, but now that I have all but one character unlocked, I will probably rush to the new part of the story that gets me that last one so he can start collecting BP for his skills. I haven’t picked up any treasures in a while to save the BP for the final characters so it doesn’t become a stupid grind at the end. I need to play more though, I need to finish this so I can play Metroid Prime 4. I prefer to only play one Switch game at a time, because I really don’t like removing and inserting tiny cartridges with my gigantic hands.

…but I’ve started Metroid Prime 4 anyway. I couldn’t resist! I love hoe much you can configure your controls. I’ve spent quite a bit trying to recreate the controls of the Wii versions. I tried playing twinstick for the first Prime’s remaster, but it never felt right to me. I’ve never played the games on the GameCube, the Wii Trilogy version is all I know, so I need pointer controls! I can’t play for very long though, after about an hour my hand almost falls asleep and it’s probably because the JoyCons are so much smaller than a WiiMote. That’s fine though, Metroid is never a long game anyway, so this keeps it going for longer!

I have to say though, the game starts very, VERY slow. I thought the game would open up after the prologue, but there was more prologue with Lieutenant Tim Talksalot (who doesn’t stay with you all the time, thank GOD!). I thought the game would open up after that second prologue, but that’s when the game really wants you to get your motorcycle. That was about 2 hours of very linear gameplay that’s probably going to stop now, but I’m not going to count my Metroid babies before they hatch.

I have reached Disc 2 of Wild Arms 2. It genuinely feels like season 2 of an Anime, I did not remember every villain introduced on Disc 1 to be defeated by the end of it, leaving us with something completely different to do now. And the game finally upped the damage numbers by the end of Disc 1, it was about time I had to try a little harder!

Hat “Hütchenspieler” eine versteckte Bedeutung oder ist das so doof wie es klingt?

Never heard of him. (Let’s normalize this response.)

Still playing Xenoblade X. Finally reached level 50 to upgrade to stronger Skells, the old ones started to feel weak. And at this point I can definitely confirm that I appreciate the game more than I did on the Wii U. I passed the 100 hour mark, which is usually where I start getting tired of a game, but it hasn’t happened yet. On the Wii U, I had a much worse time because I front-loaded all the exploration as soon as I got the flight module. Patience is the way to go!

I’m adequately deep into Wild Arms 2 now and I have to say that this game is surprisingly easy. It already has a very low encounter rate for this era of RPGs and you can ‘cancel’ them if you’re a higher level than the enemy. I do that 95% of the time and I’m still strong enough to one-shot enemies with magic they resist. Even the bosses barely pose a challenge, especially when they have an elemental weakness. I wonder if that’s ever going to change?

I also picked up Pokemon Lazarus after some idiots gave it unintended publicity and it’s pretty good. I like how it’s a Gen3 romhack using Gen2 visuals, that’s very different from anything I’ve seen before! But I’m also learning that I can’t play normal Pokemon games the intended way anymore. If I don’t nuzlocke them, I have to pre-select a team of six and get them as soon as possible, and with the built-in cheat codes I was at least able to do that. I tried to play the vanilla way until the second gym, but I just can’t do patchwork teams anymore. And as an Infinite Fusion player, not having access to over 200.000 Pokemon just doesn’t feel right anymore. I’ve been spoiled, I can’t help it!

Eltern sollen Geräte für den Nachwuchs mit einem Klick “absichern” können.

Solange es bei Opt-In bleibt und nicht alle ihre Ausweise hochladen müssen sollen die machen was sie wollen.

Immerhin wissen wir jetzt, welche Befehle die AfD in ihrem Russlandurlaub bekommen hat.

Ich hab’s in den frühen 2000ers gemacht. Ich bin aus Schleswig-Holstein nach NRW gezogen und in der neuen Schule konnten einige Schreibschrift überhaupt nicht lesen (9.Klasse Gymnasium!), also hab ich wieder umgestiegen.

Crap, today was the day we had to leave? I jumped the gun by two years!

Keine Geschichte ist zu alt um von Epstein abzulenken.

Still working through Xenoblade X. Finally got the ability to fly! I remember when this happened on the Wii U, I was so excited I took the test robot you’re just supposed to fly out to a rock and back around the entire world instead. It’s one of the reasons why I love this game, how many big open world games allow you to fly freely like that? Though I definitely overdid it and made myself run out of world to explore back then, so I’m taking it slow this time. Just patched up the holes in my satellite system for now.

Wild Arms 2 is also progressing smoothly. It’s weird how many small things I remember, but important events feel completely new to me!

Monster Hunter Wilds introduced Arch Tempered Nu Udra recently and once again, it hits pretty damn hard! The Switch Axe’s most powerful attack gives you Super Armor and that’s actually causing problems here! One of his attacks will just flat-out kill me because it doesn’t knock me back and thus hits me multiple times! And if he winds up that attack after I’ve already started charging mine, I’m just stuck anticipating a death I know I can no longer avoid. Which means I need to exercise restraint, a word that doesn’t exist in the brain of a Switch Axe user!