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.