Completed the story part of the Pokémon Teal Mask DLC and mostly completed its pokedex as well (just need one other version exclusive and one trade evo... I hate trade evos...), so I will probably mostly be going back to finally finish Tears of the Kingdom or playing my PC strategy RPGs, with small checks for raids featuring those last two pokémon every so often. I started one of those strategy RPGs last night, Symphony of War. Billed itself as more of a Fire Emblem clone but actually pulls more from Langrisser, IMO. Just advertises with the Fire Emblem name for recognition, probably. Anyone else here know Langrisser? Picked the remakes of 1 and 2 up on the eShop a couple years back but I admit I didn't get too far in it. Might be another thing to look at going back to after TotK.

Pokémon. Been playing it for the whole week. Almost done with the story and I have completed most of the Pokédex

I'm American and on vacation in Japan. The dollar is so strong currently that it's about $35 per game (or less if you get tax free ones) rather than $60/70. I haven't played them yet, but I grabbed Splatoon 3, Mario 3D World, and Mario Kart 8 (which I own for Wii U but at this price... I can justify it lol). I'm excited to play on the plane ride home!

Besides that, just "finished" Pikmin (platinums everywhere, and 100% everything I can think of). It was really good! Much more content than other Pikmin games.

Finished Kirby’s Return to Dream Land Deluxe!

This was exactly what you'd expect from a Kirby game: Fun, easy and relaxing. It's very similar in structure to the 3DS games, so if you enjoyed those you'll probably like this one as well. I was also surprised by how fun are all those minigames included, I spend quite some time messing around in the theme park.

Finished Cat Quest!

I didn't expect I'd enjoy this simple hack-and-slack game with a ton of cat puns as much as I did. It's somewhat repetitive in nature, but short enough that I never got bored of it. Definitely worth picking up on a sale, and I've already bought the sequel to play later.

Started Persona 5 Strikers!

Trying to transition back to story-focused games, so I picked up something that seemed like a middle ground.

So far I'm impressed. The developer really tried to keep the same "feel" as P5, with a lot of RPG elements, mechanics and themes adapted from the source game, and way more cutscenes and story sections than I expected.

Speaking of story, I'm loving it. It's sorta derivative from P5, "go into the metaverse, beat the villain's shadow and make them change their ways", but adds a lot more interactions between the party as a whole which is one of the main things I missed when going from P4 and P5. The "road trip" plot also adds a good variety of locations and situations.

Biggest issue I have with the game is the lack of some obvious QOL features. Worst one is the checkpoints - if you can go back to the real world and get a "refill" of HP/SP or access the shop from any checkpoint without any drawbacks... then why not just make that option available on the checkpoint itself and spare me going through a bunch of loading screens?

Since I've finished Caligula Effect 2, I started the Baten Kaitos Remaster today! The plan is to beat the first one, use Super Mario Bros. Wonder as an interlude, and then jump into Baten Kaitos Origins. Which would have been fine, as I expected to play Baten Kaitos normally, without trying to complete it. But alas, the game has in-game achievements so... "Ah shit, here we go again!". And the 300% game speed option does NOT affect card evolutions, so I'll have to let the game idle until my shampoo has been in my inventory for 336 hours because that's normal, right? That's what normal games ask normal players to do, right?

But there's one more amazing thing I need to share. So the remaster only has the original Japanese voice acting, not the hillarious English one. But apparently, the opening cutscene before the title screen is English in both versions anyway. Except the overall quality in the Japanese version is better than the English one? How did that happen? Why did the developers of the Japanese version hire English voice actors for that intro, despite all the same characters being voiced in Japanese in the actual game? And if that was so important to them, why were they fine with the localizers getting their voice actors from the bargain bin instead? It's all so bizarre!

I also started playing We Love Katamari Reroll as my B-Game on the side. Not much to say about it yet, but I wish there was an easy way to see all the stages with target times for their 'good' endings and what's still to collect in them.

Started Diablo 3 season 29 and trying to finish up Mario Odyssey!

Kinda all over the place. Blasphemous 2, Sea of Stars, and Halls of Torment.

Apparently only Fzero 99.

I tell myself I’ll stop and play something else, yet I keep launching it….

Interestingly enough, even on PS4 GoT had near instantaneous loading times. In an interview it was due to their focus on visual style. Most biomes are composed of singular plant types to get the vibrant uni-color look they were going for. The result was incredible loading times. I played the first half an PS4 then waited for the PS5 upgrade 60fps patch before I finished. So goooood!

I wish to finish Blasphemous for once 🥲🥲🥲

More DW11 for me. Can’t get enough. 😊