Gaming

Final Fantasy XIV (Endwalker)

I've been playing FFXIV since 2016 (3.3) and my sub has not lapsed once. This game is a significant part of my life and I'm excited for Dawntrail!

Honkai: Star Rail

I've been playing this since it first came out on and off. I have no great attachment to it, but it's fun to me, chiefly because I'm better at it than I was at Genshin Impact (because HSR is turn-based and Genshin is extremely not). Currently the Penacony arc has frozen on a cliffhanger and I'm getting a kick out of seeing people mad that that's the case, as if that hasn't been the modus operandi for MHY with Star Rail from the beginning. Like, are you new here? You must be.

Assassin's Creed: Valhalla

Picked this one up before Christmas 2023 and have been on it on and off since. A friend told me it's the "we're so back" of Assassin's Creed games, and I believe it - the game is really solid from what I've seen so far. I'm stuck because...

Spoilers for early game

The game wants me to pick a traitor from three people who all seem equally innocent. The traitor must exist and must be one of them, and I saw in a damn video thumbnail as I was looking up something related to the quests leading up to this that you can get it wrong (the text on the thumbnail said something like, "WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU GET IT WRONG") and I was like, oh no. So now I have analysis paralysis.

Dragon's Dogma 2

Nothing to say about this one other than it's not out yet and I'm seriously looking forward to it. I've been anticipating it for as long as 1 has been out. March 22 2024 please come faster.

I picked up the standalone character creator recently and plan to make my Arisen and Pawn well before the game's release. I'm going to use two OCs that have never been OCs, if that makes sense - they've never had backstories or personalities, they're just the people I made when I made a character in a videogame character creator. We'll see how well that plays out for me.

Update 2024-04-01

DD2 came out and swallowed my life. I've played well over a hundred hours and have seen the true ending, and I'm on my first NG+ playthrough right now. As a huge fan of DD1, what do I think of it? Part of my opinions are colored by the fact that I am no longer the 19-year-old I was 10 years ago with infinite stamina and patience, with the space to obsess in a certain way over a videogame's challenge and details.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is largely the same as 1, for better and worse, but mostly for better in my opinion! They updated some of the systems to be more modern but kept some of the unforgiving and sometimes almost cruel vibes of the original. As I played I was mired in a warm nostalgia that gleamed with a fresh coat of paint. I enjoyed walking around the world immensely - I spent entire days with very few breaks hacking away at everything it had to offer me. A videogame has not had me so firmly in its clutches in a long time. Thank fuck, because I am in a creative slump right now and needed something to really do.

Some bullet points:

• I liked all of the characters! Ulrika was cute and my romance ended up being a drunkard former Arisen I found at a spa because I took him on so many escort quests. What can I say, I'm a lesbian charmed by pathetic fictional men.
• The soundtrack was good, but not as memorable as the first's. This could be nostalgia talking. When they used motifs and even reprisals of tracks from the first game, like the "you knocked down the monster" theme and the victory theme, I felt like I had been transported back to "a simpler time." There's DLC to change the music to DD1's music and I bought it because I like this game and want further DLC, but when I turned it on, it felt... wrong... lmao....
• Not as enamored with the fashion in this one.
• Cool new enemy variants mixed with all of the old classics. I liked them all a lot.
• Thief is still busted as hell.
• Quests were very engaging even if I had to look up what to do sometimes. It's emblematic of Dragon's Dogma to be confusing and even misleading at times, so I was expecting this and was fine with it. It's part of the charm.
• I'm really hoping for DLC where you put the strongest weapons you got in postgame to use.
• All in all a really solid experience. I'd say it's on par with its predecessor if not surpassing. If you hated Dragon's Dogma, stay away from Dragon's Dogma 2, because it's more of the same.

The Elder Scrolls Online

As of writing this I have dumped over 400 hours into this game over a matter of weeks. FFXIV is in a patch lull and I was craving something in an online game to do, and this filled the gap pleasantly. I really enjoy the plots I've seen and some of the writing has gotten a laugh or a smile out of me on more occassions than I had ever thought it would. I don't enjoy the way people seem to hate new players, and how the game is designed to disfavor them (in your first time in a dungeon you have to lag behind and do quest dialogue, etc, while others sprint ahead and do everything without you).

2 months later from writing that, my opinion of the game has soured a bit due to the aforementioned reasons. I plan to stay subbed so I can pop in at any time and faff about with the story quests, but the gameplay is hard on my hands, so it has to be a once-in-a-while thing, and I haven't logged on in weeks...

And I haven't logged on since as of 2024-3-31.

Lies of P

Oh man. I really enjoy this game. It's a Soulsy that totally gets what it means to be Soulsy and what makes the Souls games good and does its own little twist on it, very effectively. The main character gives me gender feelings I don't normally have. I'm near the endgame, but I'm stuck because...

Spoilers for late endgame

I'm at the second Black Rabbit fight and I've only given it one or two shots, but a Souls streamer I follow who's an expert on this shit said he had a hard time with the fight and it wasn't well-designed. If HE had trouble, what chance to I have? I think to myself. When in reality I know I can beat it if I just try. I just have to... try.

I uninstalled the game to make room on my SSD for Dragon's Dogma 2. Perhaps I'll never beat it now. We'll see.