Summertime blues~ Let’s round up all the games I’m playing/want to play/should be playing right now.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 – It came, I’m playing it and I’m taking my sweeeeet time about it. I’m supposed to be doing [important spoiler mission] right now, but it can wait while I explore vast areas of nothingness. If you’ve ever complained about an open world game having large, empty spaces just for the sake of having space, you can blame gamers like me. 70 hours and counting, will probably update around the 80-hour mark, once I finish [important spoiler mission that will surely move the plot forward but is not so important that I can’t dilly-dally for 20 hours first].

Love Nikki – I think my wardrobe percentage hit about 30% recently, and I’ve crafted almost all of the Evolution and chapter suits. I’m now turning my attention to others, especially low diamond-consumption ones like Pragya Princess. Normally I would complain about the uselessness of Momo’s guide feature in suggesting suits to craft (it suggests recolors, then once you color them it suggests you recolor them back) but it’s pointless because the publishers don’t seem to care about QoL. There are some welfare suits and a housing pavilion coming up in the next couple of weeks, so I’m looking forward to that and having a pretty good time.

Shining Nikki – Dropped it at the beginning of the year and picked it up again for the first anniversary, which did not disappoint. Gifts and giveaways out the wazoo and a powerful UR Cool suit with a powerful (but hideous, seriously) outfit, and I enjoyed reading the story in a sadistic kind of way. Plus since I hadn’t played in so long, I had plenty of main story quests to catch up with, so that kept me busy for a while. Right now I’m bored again, so I’m thinking of uninstalling for a while until Nikki’s birthday in December when there’s sure to be more good stuff.

Genshin Impact – Sumeru released at last! This will merit its own post once I’ve had a chance to explore a little more and once I’ve finished the archon quest. Huge map is HUGE, and this is only 50% of its true power! (smashes scouter) Ideally I’d like to write after I’ve gotten Lesser Lord Kusanali, because it is my mission to collect all the archons. But since no one knows when she’s coming out, I’ll play a little longer and write some quick thoughts.

Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia – Dropped it. I was kind of enjoying it at first, and the game is RIDICULOUSLY generous, possibly even topping Romancing Saga Re; Universe, but they lost me with the fiddly Force and Shinryu era. I hate gimmicky battle systems. I’ll probably write more about it if I do a “Games I dropped this year” post at the end of the year, because I did play for quite a while.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius – Speaking of gimmicky battle systems, look what we have here. The battles themselves are very straightforward, and I’ve been auto-ing my way through most of them. But I can tell things are going to get complicated with the sheer number of support skills every character has. Skills to reduce damage, skills to buff others, skills to infuse elements, skills to trigger other skills, etc etc. I’ve been around the block a few times, I know how this goes. Love the ridiculously huge numbers, though. 10,856,234,909 in a single turn, anyone?

I was enjoying the story too until they introduced the “obligatory amnesiac mystery girl whose name starts with F” and then the main character’s friend started going all broody and moody on us. Urghh… Currently playing to collect all the 6th anniversary rewards and any compensation given for the Facebook login issues the game is currently facing. After that, I’ll uninstall it until I have more time for theorycrafting and grinding.

Tower of Fantasy – Played for about two weeks after it launched but it kept crashing, especially when I had to do anything multiplayer like Joint Operations. I kind of wanted to get into it so I’d have a “standby game” whenever I was bored/not feeling Genshin Impact, but the technical troubles were too many and the game wasn’t good enough to make me want to overcome them.

Undernauts and Tokyo Xanadu eX+ – On hold because my computer has been taken hostage by Sumeru. Once the excitement wears off and GI gets stale again (and it always does), I’ll get back to them, or maybe start something new.

Epic Seven – No, I haven’t gone back to this. I’m really tempted because their 4th Anniversary is starting in a few days and they’re pretty generous with the giveways. But the fundamental issue I had with E7, which was the ridiculous amount of grinding for good gear and the lack of PVE content haven’t gone away. Even if I get shiny new units, I still have to grind to gear them, and then all I can use them in is the labyrinth, which I hate, the Tower, which is too short, the story, which I like but which takes too long to gear up to clear, etc etc. Basically I’m just convincing myself not to go back, and I think I’ve succeeded so I’ll call it a day.

Right, that’s enough of a roundup for today. It’s helped me to get my priorities in order, i.e XC3 > GI, fit in Love Nikki here and there, and drop/suspend the rest.

Before I forget, Ranshima Monogatari ~ Lair Land story, a dating sim I played way back when I had time for dating sims, recently came out in English on Steam. Check it out if you like Princess Maker-style raising sims, and if you want to chase both husbandos and waifus at the same time. And no, nobody paid me for this plug, I just enjoyed the game that much and hope more people can play it. See you all later!