Finished 1000xRESIST!

This game was really good and one of my best surprises in recent years.

As I mentioned last week, this is a "walking simulator" taking place in a world where human race almost went extinct due to a plague and a new society was created from clones of the last survivor, a girl called Iris. The game has you play as "Watcher", one of the clone sisters who goes through Iris's memories and learns about the past and the history of this world.

The writing in this game is excellent, in particular for the main characters. The sci-fi backdrop works well, and I found the connections to the real-world very interesting - the developers describe themselves as a "group of majority Asian-Canadian diaspora creators", and without going into spoilers it's very clear they drew from their personal experiences when setting the tone and themes for this game.

Now, the bad parts: While the visual design is interesting, performance and resolution are underwhelming on the Switch, plus I got a couple crashes during gameplay. Also, navigating the main "hub" is horrible and you will get lost often (developers, please add a map or better waypoint system!), but despite those problems I still highly recommend this one to people who enjoy strong narratives.

Edit: The newest patch adds a map of the main hub. Definitely a good improvement.

Playing Senren * Banka!

First time playing a VN from Yuzusoft, a developer famous for lighthearted games leaning more on the slice-of-life/romance genre.

Still very early in the game (Chapter 1-3), but so far this has been quite fun. MC goes visit family who lives in a small montain village, and while there decides to try pulling a legendary sword stuck in a boulder.

Except when he tries it... the sword breaks in half. 😄 But that apparently still counts as becoming the "master" of the legendary blade, so he ends up tangled in a mess involving an arranged married, a priestess cursed with cat ears (?!), the spirit of the sword, ninjas, and even some creepy monsters. Quite curious to see where the story goes from here.

The production values and polish are great. Great art and voice work, clean interface including an excellent flowchart showing the choices you took and potential branches.

I just started with Deep Rock Galactic after sleeping on it for a while. I’m just a few hours in, but it’s safe to say that it’s probably going to be my new obsession.

Persona 5 Royal on Switch and No Man's Sky. Looking forward to Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance and Darkstar One coming very soon! I finished vanilla SMT V some time ago, and my daughter has been playing it, so we're both excited to see what Vengeance has in store.

I grabbed Cursed to Golf on sale and I'm a little addicted. I'm not usually into golf games but I am into roguelikes. Took me three attempts to get my first win and now I'm going back for better scores.
Totally recommended, especially at the current price of like $6.

Still playing Balatro, though I'm feeling stuck on the 6th (purple) stakes. I like the variety that stems from the Erratic deck and that might be holding me back.

The new Picross Namco Edition. I’m addicted to those, I should get some help.

I had plans for what my next game on Switch was going to be, but I spontaneously decided to play Paper Mario instead. I didn't expect to finish both of my games at once, so I'd rather have one of the replacements be something I don't have to think about too much. I've beaten the original game half a dozen times, so this will be a rather chill playthrough. As chill as it can be without any HP upgrades, I guess. I want those badges, baby!

I had plans for what my next game on PC was going to be, but I spontaneously decided to play Yakuza Kiwami 2 instead. I wish I'd had the chance to get into the series earlier, I have so much catching up to do! I think there's 10 games by now? I have yet to find the Mahjong parlor, gotta get through more of this silly side story involving Yakuza to get to the real game!

I'll try not to make plans anymore.

I’m working my way through Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. I never played it back in the day even though we opened a GameCube. I’ve just completed the prologue and I’m wondering if it’ll live up to the hype.

Lies of P when alone, Disco Elysium with my SO when we have the time, and Wild Rift most of the times when we don't feel like playing DE :)

Interesting that you dropped Octopath Traveler. Maybe it's the better choice.

I for myself have still been playing Super Mario 3D World. Got to the last world, finally. And yeah, the last level, Champion's Road, is indeed very hard. I've already heard of it multiple times and yep, a real challenge. Not sure if I even want to continue. I guess it would be a great achievement to have beaten that level, but it's not really that much fun to play a hard level over and over again. So maybe I'm just gonna stop here, with everything else at 100% exept that level.

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I have also been playing Okami. The start wasn't really that great, but I feel like it's getting better the more I play. I'm still not really that far though, so I'll have to see what else that game has to offer. I do like the paintbrush mechanic, it's an interesting way to give the player more abilities the further you progress, and I'm looking forward to see what other ideas the devs have.

The artstyle is obviously pretty great, Okami's visuals have hold up very well. It literally looks like you're playing a painting.

Overall, I'm looking forward to playing it some more.