Nintendo

What do people think of playing a remake/remaster of a game you've already played the original of? Like one of the Switch Zelda remakes when you played it on GB/Wii, or Paper Mario when you played the GC version? Personally, I just don't feel like buying the game again, even it's been 20 years since I last played it, because I know I'll remember parts of it and won't have that feeling of playing a great game for the first time. Is that just a me thing, or a more widespread attitude?

I don't necessarily think remakes are a bad thing, since it gives people a chance to play classics that they missed.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Uzuki is here! I haven't been playing much since Combo Breaker, but now I gotta boot it back up to check out the funny girl with the big hat. She's an absolute blast to play, I just love big buttons. Streamed an open lobby night, have some highlights: 1 2 3 4 5

Splatoon 3 - Had a long session with our coach picking apart two replays from our last LUTI set, they ~~thoroughly exposed how incompetent we all are~~ gave us a lot of helpful advice on what our team needs to work on.

Persona 4 Golden - Still early in, finished Kanji's dungeon. My attention's getting split between too many other stuff but I will finish this thing eventually.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Last two weeks have been rough at the local club, I am not doing so hot in league standings. Shoulda drawn better tiles.

Summon Night Swordcraft Story - Browsing through what to play next on my Miyoo Mini Plus, just felt like revisiting an old childhood favorite. Still waiting for the third game's translation patch...

Slay the Spire - Packmaster runs are second monitor content while I watch Youtube. Chill comfort game.

I completed Yakuza Kiwami 2 today. When I was done with all the side content, I realized there weren't any awful achievements to stop me from completing it, so I ran through a New Game Plus on the highest difficulty with the overpowered infinite ammo gun from postgame. Turns out, skipping all optional content and cutscenes, you can beat the game in a couple of hours. I don't understand why the gun makes enemies ragdoll as much as it does, but that was part of the fun for sure. Not truly completing the previous two games was a bummer because I really liked them, but it was just too much.

And all respect to anyone who can beat Jo Amon legitimately. I was never that great at Yakuza combat to begin with, but that guy does way too much damage! He's the reason I learned about that gun to begin with.

The next game I am replacing this with... is a game I'm not going to talk about much. It's the kind of game you can't even begin to talk about without spoiler tags, so I just won't even mention it until it's done. And briefly at that.

Played a little more of Paper Mario, I took a peek at the Prince Mush fight. I didn't expect to win, but I also didn't expect to run from the fight after his first attack. I tossed out the protect shell just to scout what he would even do and let's just say I'll have to do some preparations to make this work in a 10HP run. Let's see what badges I end up with at the end of the game, I won't try this again a second earlier!

Playing The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak!

Finished Chapter 3 yesterday.

Van is really great, one of my favorite MCs in the series. He's this hard-boiled investigator with the perfect amount of silliness mixed in, I love the gag of him getting "bribed" into troublesome jobs by expensive sweets.

But the rest of the playable cast so far has been... kinda mid? Agnes is the demure, prim and proper female lead that I'd usually rank very low in preferences, yet she's probably my favorite of the playable cast because Feri and Risette are just there, and while Aaron does have more personality his constant rudeness really irritates me. I'm hoping they'll improve over the game, because there's plenty of room for that.

What makes this extra weird is that the secondary cast in this game is fantastic, I'm really interested in Elaine and René's relationships with Van, recurring side characters like the informers Dingo and Bermotti have plenty of personality, there's Judith being absolutely hilarious every time she's on the screen, and even some minor characters like the film director from Chapter 3 are memorable.

Another thing that I'm positively surprised is how they're trying to push some boundaries for this series, this game is significantly bloodier with named character deaths happening often, and there's even some raunchier scenes like the one where Van visits a nightclub - all of which fits very well with the "underworld" theme of Daybreak.