Everything is too much work

Yo! I’m still alive. Sorted through the “stuff” I mentioned in the last post (family health crisis, everyone’s fine now). The only problem is I’m exhausted and don’t feel like playing anything. I’ve tried to start a couple of games. I’m okay until they start introducing instructions. Press B to do this, press R1 to bring up such and such. It’s work. Too much work. I don’t want to think so much right now, so I end up dropping everything after 5 minutes.

What’s the plan, then? Give up gaming? Hell no. My next attempt will be an otome game. That won’t have any controls, right? Just read and read and occasionally pick some stuff. But visual novels are really boring. Boring stuff is work. So an otome game with gameplay, of which I have about 100 to choose from. Except console games are work too, so it has to be handheld or PC. That narrows things down a bit. I’ll pick something and start…. maybe… if it’s not too much work. Or chances are good I might take the whole May off from gaming and resume normal activities in June.

Anyway this was just a quick message to say I’m alive and well. See you all again soon!

Moonlight Basket – Too many limitations, and yet…

Moonlight Basket is a trading simulation game from inutoneko, an indie game company whose library I have been steadily working through for the past couple of years. Tico, the mean and lazy alchemist from Lemuore no Renkinjutsushi, is still up to her no-good profligate ways and now has to resort to trading goods from town to town to make ends meet.

The core gameplay is simple. You buy goods in one town and sell them in another where there’s higher demand. The continent is divided into different climate zones. Forest, desert, plains, that sort of thing. What grows well in the desert might be unavailable in the forest, so if you can truck a cartload of forest goods over there you can count on a huge profit. That’s the general idea.

If she has the MP to spare, Tico can squeeze more profit out of the goods by refining raw materials into better goods. Paper into notebooks, cloth into carpets, milk into cheese, water into wine (don’t question alchemy). Sometimes the items can be refined even further, like notebooks into diaries, but whether the time and MP costs are worth it is varies from case to case. Long story short, Moonlight Basket boils down to identifying demands and meeting those demands.

Different stuff is popular in different zones

There are just two little problems you have to deal with. The first is the horse and cart you need to transport your goods. The more goods you can carry and the faster you can deliver them, the more money you make. Many items are perishable so time is of the essence. Once you buy a horse, you can upgrade it, but every upgrade reduces the amount of goods the cart can carry. They’re more like downgrades, TBH, but sometimes you want to go a bit faster or explore more easily so you have no choice.

Ideally you should go for a really good horse in the first place, but the better horses are EXPENSIVE! And can only be bought at certain times of the year from a few cities. There’s a breeding option where you can buy horses from one town and breed them with others until you get your ideal horse, but first you have to pay out the nose for both the parents ($$) and the offspring ($$$$$$$$$$$!). It’s only now after 69 hours (eh?! really?) of playing that I can afford to play Mr. Fancy Horse Breeder.

Once you’ve got your horse and cart sorted out, you have to deal with the second problem: security. The continent of Ishwald is ridden with monsters and bandits that have a good nose for treasure. The more expensive your goods, the stronger the monsters that attack. You need bodyguards…. Actually you shouldn’t need bodyguards because Tico and her slave/apprentice Ruvel are plenty strong already, but neither of them want to fight so yeah, you need bodyguards. Bodyguards that join you readily are weak. Stronger ones make you jump through a ton of hoops before they join.

The good news is bodyguards are free once they decide to join you. The bad news is you have to provide their equipment yourself. The absolutely terrible news is that you have to sell 100 copies of any one weapon before you’re allowed to equip it on your guards. And you can’t equip the same weapon on different party members either. For example even though both Fill and Shio use swords, if you sell 100 Wyvern Swords you can only give one of them a Wyvern Sword, the other will have to keep using that pointy stick until you sell another 100 of a different kind of sword.

It’s even worse than that, though. Party members’ stats level up as they fight. They have a level cap that depends on the power of the weapons they wield, so you can’t just equip them with weak stuff and try to compensate with levels. Not only that, but for anything but the weakest weapons, you have to forage the materials yourself, give them to blacksmiths around the country, return the next season and buy them ($$$$$) and move to a different area to trade them before you can rack your sale count up enough to be worthy of equipping the weapon. Oh, and if you wait too long to buy the weapon, the smith will sell it to another customer and you’ll have to start all over again from step one. See why I said the game has “too many limitations” in the post title? I haven’t even gotten into the convoluted skill system yet.

If you want a break from all the trading and breeding and fighting, there are a few other things you can do. Farming, dungeon crawling, battle tournaments, playing doctor at local clinics, etc. However, like all the other stuff in this game, you can only do all these things at particular times and particular locations. Planting and harvesting can only be done in March, June and September and you have to supply your own water, seeds and fertilizer. Which means you’ll regularly have to dump all your valuable goods to truck 100KG of water halfway across the content so you can get a few herbs 3 months down the line. So many limitations!

Demand/seasonal growth chart. Looks complex but is quite easy to follow.

And yet… 69 hours… Where did the time go? For the past 10 hours I’ve been working on a goal of earning 1,000,000£. I thought it would be impossible, but I’m already up to 500,000£ now. I put it in all 5-year bonds at an 11.47% interest rate while I try to earn the rest of the money. Ah, if only real world interest rates were that delicious.

What’s keeping me playing Moonlight Basket despite all the inconveniences? MONEY. I like making game money. Also pure laziness. Everything works with a few simple mouse clicks and all the battles are automatic. The relative lack of a story and any character interactions means I can focus on my goals. Also I’m not a collectionist, but I do enjoy discovering and synthesizing new items. Oh, and making in-game money is fun too. I’m saying it twice ‘cos I mean it. Although, come to think of it… if I had applied those 69 hours to a $10-an-hour job… It’s better not to think about it.

Well, enough about Moonlight Basket. It’s the only thing I’ve played seriously for the past couple of weeks because I’m dealing with real life “stuff” that leaves me no time for “proper” games. Like Tokyo Xanadu eX+ which I started but had to shelve because the various commands take up too much mental space. Plus the enemy density is too low to provide the catharsis I crave. Too much walky-talky, not enough slashy-stabby. But I did like the little slashy-stabby that I played, so I look forward to playing it when I have the time and energy to spare. Okay, that’s enough blogging for one day. Time for a break!

Finished all 150 Picross S puzzles! Plus other stuff I’m working on

And I only cheated for one of them! For all the others I used the hint roulette at the start then solved them fair and square. No guessing, no looking up solutions online. It really is possible to finish every puzzle through pure logical deduction. Even when the puzzles are all 1 1 1 2 1 1 and stuff, if you just take your time and work from the bigger numbers to the smaller and from the edges inwards, everything falls in place beautifully. If all else fails, just sleep on it for a while and your eye will spot new connections the following day. I had a blast!

The only complaints I have about Picross S are:

1) 150 puzzles is too few!!!!
2) I don’t get Mega Picross. Even worse, it seems feature the exact same puzzles as regular Picross but in a more complicated format. At least tempt me with the promise of all-new puzzles.
3) A lot of the puzzles don’t look like anything until they’re animated, then you kind of see what they’re supposed to be but not really. The puzzle makers must be running out of ideas.

Apart from that I loved this game and will buy and download any expansion packs Nintendo releases immediately. Please, please, please Nintendo? *puppy dog eyes*

Now that I’ve realized how doable Picross puzzles are, I feel silly for giving up on Picross DS and Color Cross so easily. Silly enough that I actually restarted Picross DS this afternoon. Unfortunately the right side of the touchscreen isn’t responding to stylus presses, so I can’t play it. The screen calibrates just fine (and does respond to right-side presses during calibration) so I suspect it’s either a problem with the software or an issue with my screen protector. Or maybe the DS Lite is just old. This particular one is about 8 years old now IIRC. I’ll try to get someone to look at it sometime.

Here’s what else I’ve been working on since I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Tuesday. Yeah. I finally considered it “finished” after 110 hours. It’s very hard for me to stay interested in a game once the ending credits roll. The killing blow was when I was running around Temperentia and it suddenly hit me that I’d been doing nothing but running since the game started. Half the reason why XC2 is so long is because the developers placed everything really far apart. You have to run hours from the nearest landmark to get anywhere. Presto! Instant 100+ hour game! Padding out game time by padding out the running time, how fiendishly clever. I’ve played along long enough, it’s time to move on.

Steamworld Dig – I tried it. I didn’t make it out of the first dungeon, didn’t even get to the mines. I’m not much of a platform gamer anyway, and Steamworld is all about… digging. I don’t really dig… digging. Also the Y + B run and jump was really hard for my delicate hands to accomplish while holding the heavy Switch. And even if I do get it right, the only thing I have to look forward to is more… digging. Yah.

Voez demo – Very pretty graphics at the start, but the gameplay is horrendously boring. Tap, slide, swipe, tap, slide, swipe. The one song I played stretched on forever and ever and wasn’t even nice. And if that’s the demo song then it’s the best they have to offer. There are better mobile games out there.

Disgaea 5 demo – Something in me just does not like Disgaea. Anything Disgaea. First off I don’t think their sense of humor jives well with mine, so all this nonsense about some spoiled princess trying to boss a guy around just turns me off. By the second time she laughed “Oh ho ho ho ho” I was ready to punch the screen.

Then all the stuff you have to do like Item World and Innocents and Strategy Assemblies… just thinking about all of that makes me run a mile. I like my SRPGs simple and uncomplicated. On a pettier note, I HATE PRINNIES! They’re creepy and annoying! Long story short, I don’t even know why I tried this. I made it halfway through the tutorial battle and couldn’t turn it off fast enough.

Overcooked – Seems like a lot of fun if you play it with the right person. I played it with my toddler niece and she couldn’t get the hang of the controls at all. She has a long way to go if she wants to inherit Auntie Kina’s legacy. It’s a bit of a pity though, because Overcooked‘s cartoony designs look like they’d be a hit with kids. Hopefully I’ll find someone “proper” to give the game a real go with and blog about it some day.

After these I was going to try Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the Dragon Quest Builders demo just to say that I did. It’s good to try new genres once in a while, develop new synapses in the brain and all that. But I was fooling around with my laptop just now and before I knew it I had started two new games. How do these things keep happening to me? So I’m gonna focus on Moonlight Basket and Tokyo Xanadu eX+ for now and get back to the Switch much, much later. So many games, so little time.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – Killed the last boss after 90 hours!

Notice I didn’t say “finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2” after 90 hours. I’ve been doing sidequests ever since and my save file now reads 99 hours. I know I said last time that I would do all my questing before killing the last boss, but I went into the boss room to check out the situation and it wasn’t so tough. [Last boss] killed me twice, but they were both narrow losses so I regrouped, rearranged my blades and accessories and finished the game. The ending resolves absolutely nothing, just BTW.

The boss may have died 90 hours in, but I still have another 67 hours to go to reach my promised 166 hours. Probably won’t get that far because I’ve decided not to bother with any quest that is too hard to find or too complicated to do. If I can’t get to the spot on the map or I have to use a FAQ to find the requirements then it’s not happening. The only quests I really want to do are Zenobia’s because I love killing unique monsters. I’ll get you yet, Insectivore Malcom!

Final thoughts… I don’t have any because I don’t consider the game finished yet. I said I would spoil the story when it was over but, eh. Can’t be bothered. It wasn’t bad, actually. I thought I paid attention pretty closely during final chapter but I still had some questions about how certain things were supposed to work and what happens after the end of the game but… eh. Can’t be bothered. If any of that stuff is still on my mind after 166 hours I might write something but otherwise, eh. Age is making me a lot more easygoing about certain things.

From the start I wasn’t playing XC2 for the story anyway. I saw the very first trailer and decided to buy the game and that was all I needed, story be damned. Besides, the story only got in the way of my enjoyment. You have to fight the same goons over and over again from start to finish. And every time it’s the same old “Agh! They’re too strong! We can’t take them!” nonsense. And there’s a long CG cutscene with lots of jumping and slashing and then somehow we magic our way through the pinch. Until next time~.

Yah so anyway, more or less finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It took me a while to get into it, but I’m having a great time now. I think the best way to play is to keep sidequests to a minimum until you hit level 40 to 50-ish and chapter 6-ish so you have most of the map unlocked and are high-level enough to take a few hits.

Top 5 things I liked about Xenoblade Chronicles 2

♥Gorgeous game. Lovely graphics, very atmospheric. You could almost feel the heat and dust in Mor Adain and the cool sea breeze in Leftheria and the splashy wateriness in Uraya. The early stages were all really nice to look at.

♥Great soundtrack. I spent so much time in Torigoth that I have the theme song stuck in my head.

♥I wanted to explore a lot of places and fight a lot of monsters and I got to do plenty of that. I even discovered some secret areas on my own, which felt great. I liked the battle system too, especially once I got more blades and party members to play around with.

♥Filling out the affinity chart was more fun than I’d expected. I thought I’d hate it but meeting the various conditions was pretty easy.

♥Putting surplus party members to use through Mercenary Missions was a great idea. It would have been even better with an auto-select option to pick the blades that fit the mission best, but maybe they’ll add that with a future patch.

To 5 things I hated about Xenoblade Chronicles 2

😠Fighting the same bosses over and over again got old. It’s poor writing to keep letting them get away when we have the power to finish them once and for all.

😠Most cutscenes were long, boring and unnecessarily flashy. Square-Enix did the world a great disservice when they taught people that RPG need cutscenes to be good.

😠It took me a long time to get used to Rex’s voice. All the way till the end I thought he sounded like a right idiot whenever he tried to get emotional. “Pyraaaa!” The other voices weren’t bad but the direction/delivery was horrible with unnecessary pauses in every single line. They tried too hard to match the lip flaps at the expense of actually sounding like human beings.

😠The user interface required too many button presses. Especially for stuff like selecting blades, selling items, warping around the map, doing mercenary missions.

😠The later dungeons were boring, ugly and hard to navigate. Spirit Crucible Elpys, Morytha, basically everything from chapter 7 onwards was terrible. Somebody’s budget was running out~~~.

Not really final thoughts but I probably won’t blog about this again

It was fun. It’s still fun. I want to play some more. I want to play Xenoblade Chronicles X too, and if they make an XC3 I’ll play that as well. But I hope the writing will be better. Less repetitive, less of that “we’ll beat them with the power of friendship” nonsense, less holding back on superpowers that could have taken care of certain problems back in chapter 1… Just a better story all around. Everything else about the game I really liked so I have high hopes for future games.

What’s next

Dunno. I want to play an otome game. I also want to play something short and not very serious before starting Tokyo Xanadu. I should probably finish Sorcery Saga too. Oh, and I want to try some Switch demos I downloaded. But really I’m just going to spend the rest of the week playing Xenoblade. The battery should be charged by now, back to Tantal!

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 – The world is in danger! Time to do sidequests!

Everyone knows there’s no better time to do sidequests than when the fate of the world hangs in the balance and you’re the only one who can help. And I haven’t said I won’t save the world, I just want to pick a few herbs and deliver a few bowls of soup first. What’s that thing called, the Broken Window Theory? If I had been solving all the little problems all along, maybe things would never have gotten this bad. Yeah… right.

Well, wishful thinking aside, the real reason I’m doing sidequests now is because I was promised 100+ hours of gaming when I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles 2. My brother who played it before me says his save file reads 166 hours. So I was dismayed when I reached chapter 9 out of 10 after only 65 hours. 65 dull and dismal hours. Clearly I was focusing my energies in the wrong area. If I want to enjoy this game, I’ve gotta kick the story to the curb and go exploring!

This is a good time to do all that stuff because my party is now level 63 on average with over 100,000 gold in the bank. I can splash money around to develop neglected cities, I can afford expensive salvaging cylinders and I can go foraging in areas I had previously run away from. It’s pretty funny how enemies that used to attack aggressively now whistle nonchalantly and pretend not to notice me because I’m 40 levels higher now. Even a monster that was scripted to leap out at us went “RAWR! Oh… uh… good morning, ma’am. Just, uh, getting my daily exercise, don’t mind me.” :-DDDD

There are only two flies in my ointment right now. The first is the pre-filled map, which cuts the joy of exploration by 50%. But I’ve mentioned that before and it’s not going to change now. It is what it is and I’ve made the decision to enjoy the game regardless. Besides, I still get a kick out of discovering new landmarks.

The bigger problem is the risk that I’ll spend so much time on sidequests that I get tired of the game and fail to finish it. To reach 166 hours means another 100 hours on top of what I’ve already played so far. Does Xenoblade Chronicles 2 even have that much content? By all accounts it does, but will I even remember what the story is about by that point? I mean 166 hours is definitely getting my money’s worth, but I’d still like to finish the game if at all possible and I know it won’t happen if I fool around too much.

That’s why I have to take preventive measures to avoid that. Let’s see, I’m almost 70 hours in.

Hmm, I think I’ll fool around for another 5 hours then continue the story. Once I’m about to face the Very Definitely Final Boss then I’ll go back and do whatever I want for the next 100 hours. That way when I’m finally sick and tired of XC2 I can trash the baddies with my sure-to-be-overpowered team and watch the ending. Tadaa, it’s foolproof! To the fray!