What I’m playing lately (September 2024)

death scene in xenoblade chronicles 3

…one regret… If only I could get the time and energy I spent on you back…

Just realized it’s been almost two months since my last post. Just a few notes so you know I’m alive and still gaming. Quite actively, actually, but nothing really worth writing about.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 – Definitively dropped. I tried to get back into it. Loaded it up, moved a little bit and was thrown into a long cutscene. “Aha, now I remember why I stopped playing it,” is what I thought wistfully to myself as I deleted it and filled the space with other games.

I ran out of momentum, that’s all. With some games you need to keep plowing through until you finish, because once you quit… That’s all she wrote. I can’t even remember the story any more, so there’s no point looking up the ending on YouTube. I’m gonna assume everyone lived happily ever after (or died. Died is fine too) and move on with my own life. Actually I do have a few more things I could say about XC3 and why I quit, but they would be spoilery so a separate post would be better. Or nah, it’s okay. Never mind, let’s move on.

Nobody. Especially not from you. The whole game was a giant mess of awkward.

Epic Seven – It’s their 6th anniversary now, so they’ve been giving out a lot of goodies as well as hunt, gold and EXP buffs. I haven’t rolled anything great or pulled anyone amazing yet, but I did get an ML dupe which let me unlock the Galaxy Coin Shop after like 4 years of playing. Now who to get, Requiem Roana or Lone Crescent Bellona? Hmmmmm… Honestly I had no idea that taking a short break of a few months this year would cause me to miss out on the most broken PVP characters of recent times (Dragon Bride Senya, New Moon Luna, Empyrean Ilynav). It’s like they planned it or something: “Haha, she’s gone, bring out the good stuff!” I’m still playing catch up and racking my brain to figure out strategies for Guild Wars. And trying to save mystics for Harsetti. And I gotta finish Episode 5, Fenris’s side story, Bittersweet Dessert Festival, save up for a second pity so I can pull Jenua… so busy.

Another Eden – Still trying to catch up to where I had reached before I lost my account. I regret not trying harder to get my old account back because I’m still plowing through old content and it’s been months! Guess I underestimated how seriously I played this back then. And I really miss my Pizzica-chan! But there’s light at the end of the tunnel now, barely. Just a little more and I’ll make it through the old stuff and start tackling the new content (tons and tons of it). Unlike before, I’m not making any effort to fight super bosses or anything vaguely tough/annoying, so things are going pretty fast. Proper post once I finally, finally make it out of the woods into new content.

Magic Chronicle Isekai RPG – The most recent game I posted about sadly (?) seems like it’s about to shutdown. Without any notice from the developers, it seems to have gone into ‘maintenance mode,’ which is where a game stops releasing new content or characters and just re-runs old content ad nauseam until the playerbase dwindles and then they shut it down. I hear King’s Raid is in maintenance mode now, which makes me sad because I liked the little I played of it.

It’s rare (possibly unheard of?) for even major games to make it out of maintenance mode, much less one as obscure as Magic Chronicle Isekai RPG. This game lives and dies by nickel and diming players, so for them to not release a single new character, a single new P2W package, or even re-run a limited character banner means they’re well and truly sunk. I’m giving them to the end of September to announce something concrete, otherwise I’m uninstalling.

That doesn’t mean I’m done with idle games, though. I’ll be looking for a replacement. I already tried Memento Mori and the art style and girls-only focus weren’t for me, but I’m still on the lookout if anyone has suggestions.👍

Love Nikki – Same old, same old. They’re still actively releasing new suits, but I have suits in almost every genre now, so my focus is on hell suits (the good-looking ones, though. Some are needlessly elaborate), lifetime suits and the task suit de jour. My diamonds are around 14,000, which is probably the highest amount I’ve ever hard in this game. I find it hard to save diamonds in Love Nikki because I have it filed in my brain as “game I am willing to spend money on.” Which means I don’t hesitate to spend diamonds because I can always buy more IMO. In practice I almost never do buy diamonds, but just knowing that I can if I want to makes me a lot more profligate. Now I see why gacha companies work so hard to get you to make that initial purchase, even if it’s just $0.99. Food for thought.

And that’s where I’m currently at right now. Trying to get back into Switch gaming, but I fear the combination of gacha games and YouTube have destroyed my attention span for good. If a game takes more than a few minutes to get going, I already start checking out mentally. Plus with gacha games and YouTube I’m not actually paying for the privilege of having my time wasted and my intelligence insulted, so it doesn’t hurt so bad. I like the lack of FOMO and the conclusiveness of “regular” games, but that’s about it. Does that mean I’m now lost to the world of console/PC gaming? Not quite, not quite. At least I want to try all the stuff I’ve bought already, seeing as I can’t get a refund. After that will come… the reckoning.

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