Gamelog
In which I occasionally ramble about some of the games I'm playing. Updates sporadically. Image heavy and may contain spoilers.
Entry 009 - 2025/April/May 2026
Oblivion, Pokemon Legends: Z-A, Mewgenics, Stardew Valley
It's been about two years since I last updated this lmao. Oopsie daisy. To be fair, I haven't really been gaming much 
recently, and last year was especially rough. I didn't play much of note in 2025, with the exception of two games: Oblivion and Pokemon Legends: Z-A. During the first quarter of 2025, I got a hankering to play Oblivion, since the remastered version was being released in April. I had no interest in the remaster because I didn't really see the point, but I did want to try Oblivion again. I consider myself to be a fairly big Elder Scrolls fan, with Morrowind being my favorite game of all time. However, I only played Oblivion a little on the Xbox 360 when I was a kid. Since that game was technically my older brother's, I had to ask him every time I wanted to play it, which annoyed me, so I didn't play much. Fast forward a bajillion years and here we are! Me trying Oblivion again in the big 25.
After browsing Nexus Mods and skimming through various lists, I installed a bunch of mods and fiddled around to get Oblivion working. Might be slightly controversial to install mods instead of doing a vanilla run, but I figured 
since I already played Oblivion a little before, I didn't need the vanilla experience. Also pretty much all of the mods I installed are lore-friendly anyway. Setting up took me around two days in total. I was surprised by how unstable Oblivion is compared to the other TES games. Like, Skyrim I get, but how is MORROWIND far more stable to run? That game is old enough to legally drink, graduate college, and start a family. I think I've had Morrowind CTD like two or three times in all of the years I've played it. Meanwhile, Oblivion crashed like four times in the two days I was setting it up. Sheesh! My first impressions of the game were slightly negative. It sorta feels like the 'black sheep' of the three major TES games I've played. I kept comparing it to Morrowind and Skyrim and getting annoyed by random things lmao. It just feels so clunky. I think it's because I played the PC version and it was obviously designed for console. Morrowind has its quirks, but it feels way better when it comes to cycling through things for combat. 
Navigating the menus in Oblivion is also pretty awkward. I'm not sure if it's the setting, but it took a while for the game to grab my attention. Cyrodiil is so boring. Well. This version of Cyrodiil is boring. Pre-Oblivion Cyrodiil was more tropical, but they retconned it into boring generic fantasy thanks to the influence of the LotR films. At least the Norse-inspired setting of Skyrim had something, and I don't even really like Norse/Viking shit. Cyrodiil is just so bland, and the limited dungeon variety certainly doesn't help. About halfway through, I found myself bored while clearing dungeons because they're so repetitive. Once you've seen one, you've seen them all essentially.
But, I will say the one thing Oblivion has going for it is the quest writing. It has some of the best quests in the series. Out of all of the major factions, I think the Fighters Guild has the weakest questline, but it's still good. The Dark Brotherhood is peak, and the Mages Guild is also great. The Arena is a classic, and the Thieves Guild has some really fun missions. 
I still haven't touched the main questline or done any of the major DLC, so I can't comment on those, but overall, I was really impressed by the quests in Oblivion. They totally mog the quests in Skyrim and I think they're also better than a lot of the quests in Morrowind. (I still think Morrowind's main questline is tremendous.) Oblivion also has a ton of excellent sidequests. For me, the best by far was the one where you investigate Hackdirt, an odd and isolated village south of Chorrol. That quest is sooooo good! Paranoia, the quest involving Glarthir, is also a standout and pretty funny, especially if you indulge Glarthir in his delusions. >:) Honestly, most of the sidequests are good. Skyrim by comparison has positively anemic writing. I don't know who the quest designers and writers were for Oblivion, but Bethesda needs to get them back ASAP for TES 6 and keep Emil Pagliarulo away from the game.
The soundtrack for Oblivion is also good, but Jeremy Soule soundtracks are always good. I remember there being a controversy with Soule a few years back. I don't remember the details, but regardless of how shitty he may or may not be, his music is excellent. Harvest Dawn is such an iconic piece, both for the peaceful vibe it encapsulates and for the memes lol.
For my character, I decided to do something a little different and went with a Khajiit named Masha. Don't think I've ever played a Khajiit before. In-game, she's like a creamy rose gold color, but I imagine her to actually be a very fluffy and cute calico. My skills were pretty standard. I didn't really deviate from the ones I tend to favor. I went with a custom Spellsword class, focusing on Blade, magic skills, and Security. I will also shamelessly admit I'm a Sneak/Chameleon abuser. I enchanted a pair of gauntlets to constantly have the Chameleon effect so I can always be sneaky hehe. Here's a look at her stats as I last left her. I've done basically everything but the main questline and the major DLCs.
And here's a list of all of the mods I'm using. Well, probably all of them. At least everything that's listed in Wyre Bash.
Mods
The other notable game I played in 2025 was Pokemon Legends: Z-A. I really liked Pokemon Legends: Arceus but was leery about the concept of a game taking place only in Lumiose City, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm pleased to say that I actually really enjoyed it! The Pokemon Legends series remains to be the best Pokemon games released in recent history 
(well, aside from Pokopia apparently). While PLA focused mainly on catching Pokemon, PLZA is centered around battling. The game's dumb name 'Z-A' is a reference to the fact that you're battling from rank Z all the way up to A.
Like PLA, this game features starters from multiple generations: Chikorita, Totodile, and Tepig. I went with Miss Chikorita because her Mega Evolution looks the least dumb lol. The game is a sequel to Pokemon XY and is set five years after those games. You as the player character meet Urbain/Taunie, get your starter Pokemon, and get roped into participating in the Z-A Royale by joining Team MZ, all while investigating cases of rogue Mega Evolution around the city. It seems like all is not well following the dissolution of Team Flare, as wild Pokemon are randomly undergoing painful, spontaneous Mega Evolution and the rate of this phenomenon is only increasing.
The game has a basic day/night cycle, where you explore the city during the day. At night, sections of the city are blocked off 
into battle zones as trainers take to the streets to participate in the Z-A Royale. With every victory in the royale, you gain points and when you have enough, you qualify for a promotional match to move up in the ranks. As the story progresses and you reach higher ranks, more and more areas are unlocked and you'll face stronger Pokemon and trainers. Like PLA, this game features a fast-paced real-time combat system. You and your Pokemon can freely move around the battlefield and dodge attacks. You can also instantaneously switch out Pokemon and if you time it perfectly, you can use this to dodge attacks. This is especially useful if your Pokemon was about to be one-shot. Moves don't have PP but instead have cooldowns. Stat changes (like Speed Up or Accuracy Down) are temporary and will wear off after a while. Unlike PLA, PLZA reintroduces held items. If your Pokemon is carrying a Mega Stone, they can Mega Evolve and will stay Mega Evolved while their meter ticks down. Outside of combat, you can run around and catch Pokemon freely by throwing balls. 
You can also order your Pokemon to attack wild Pokemon in real time. When your Pokemon knocks out a wild Pokemon, there is a brief grace period where you're allowed to throw a ball to try to catch them before they despawn. Alpha Pokemon make a reappearance and will mercilessly chase you down. Rogue Megas are boss battles that take place in an arena. You have to dodge the attacks from the Rogue Mega and attack with your Pokemon. As they're damaged, the Rogue Megas will drop orbs of Mega Power, which you can collect to fill your Mega meter. Once full, you can Mega Evolve your Pokemon to unleash strong attacks. The meter will slowly drain but can be refilled by collecting more drops of Mega Power. Once emptied, your Pokemon will transform back to normal, and your meter will be on cooldown for a bit before you can refill it. Once full, you'll be able to Mega Evolve again.
PLA also features a fairly robust (for a Pokemon game) customization system. You pick your character from a choice 
of four presets, but later on, you can change your eye shape, eyebrows, eyelashes, eye color, eyebrow/lash color, lip color, and add facial features like moles, freckles, and dark circles under your eyes. You can also style your hair and dye it, as well as purchase different types of clothes. The clothes were alright, I guess. They skewed a little too modern, imo. Most of the clothes felt like items a 30- or 40-something-year-old Japanese person would wear. I've definitely seen artsy Japanese millennials stylize themselves similarly. I wish the game had more cute and whimsical clothing options, especially since XY had some really cute stuff. My other primary complaint was that the 'skirts' were a little weird. They're technically skorts, which makes sense to prevent camera upskirting, but I've never seen a skort look like that. The skorts I'm familiar with look like regular skirts with shorts attached underneath. The skorts in PLZA looked like skirts from the front but shorts from the back. Like, huh? Why not just model the skirt around entirely, with shorts underneath? Did the shorts clip through the skirt while running or climbing or something? If so, then make the shorts less bulky or even skin-tight. Anyway, here's the fit I settled on by the end.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed Pokemon Legends: Z-A! Like PLA, the game came across as a pleasant surprise. Battling is my favorite part of Pokemon, so I had a lot of fun with this game! I thought the characters were surprisingly 
decent and the story was alright for a Pokemon game. While I wish there was more to explore, I didn't feel like it taking place only in Lumiose City was terrible. The city opening up and changing as the story progresses helped keep things fresh. That coupled with the rewards you would get from Mable as you complete research requests really made you feel like you were making progress. In terms of new Mega designs, they're a mixed bag. I suppose it just depends on your taste, but I do think there are a handful of good ones, like Mega Froslass and Mega Delphox. If you're a Pokemon fan, I'd recommend! In my opinion, the Pokemon Legends games are the only mainline games worth getting on the Switch. The transition from 3DS to Switch has been pretty rough, but GameFreak is slowly making improvements. VERY slowly, and sometimes when they take one step forward, they'll do some backflips and zip on backwards. My only wish for the Legends games is that they add breeding. Then they'd be perfect! I mean, surely they will eventually? (Clueless.jpg) If PLA was about catching and PLZA was about battling, the only thing left is Pokemon breeding, right?
Anyway, here are the Pokemon I cycled through while playing. I kept them all at the same level (except for my starter, who is always one level higher) and each time one leveled up, I would box it and take out the next Pokemon. That way, I'd never be overleveled and I could raise all the Pokemon I want to. With how easy modern Pokemon games are, this is generally the approach I take while playing them, unless I'm doing a challenge nuzlocke run or something. The next picture is all of the shinies I caught before getting bored and putting the game away.
And here's an image dump! The last two pictures are me comparing the size of the gigantic shiny wizard I caught compared to my normal sized witch.
PLZA Images
Earlier this year, Mewgenics was released and I got around to playing it in May. I haven't played the developer's other games, which are indie cult classics (Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac), but I was eager to try Mewgenics. The irreverent humor is a bit hit or miss, but overall, I was really impressed with the game!
Mewgenics is a tactical roguelike game where you collect and breed cats. You can create parties of up to four cats and assign them classes before sending them off on adventures. 
While on an adventure, you progress through a map filled with random events, enemy encounters, and boss battles. The combat of the game is from an isometric perspective, where you direct your cats in tactical turn-based combat to eliminate all enemies on the screen before you can proceed. At any point, your cats can be downed, and if you manage to revive them, they'll be injured with a debuff. Your cats can also die, and if you have no cats left in your party, then your run is wiped and you return home in failure. Each area you'll need to clear twice before unlocking a new area. To reach these new areas, you have to progress through the area prior. For instance, in Act I of the game, to reach the Caves, you'll need to clear the Alley and then the Sewers before you can reach the Caves (and then you'll need to clear the Caves to finish your run). With each new area unlocked, the difficulty increases as you face new enemies and the length of your runs is extended. Random weather events can occur, affecting the climate of whatever locale you're in and impacting battles. 
For instance, it can snow in the normally wet Sewers, causing water to freeze into ice. During these weather events, you'll need to adjust your tactics accordingly. Some areas have permanent weather effects, so you'll need to keep this in mind before proceeding.
As your cats gain experience and level up, their stats will increase and they can learn new moves and passives, depending on their class. Your cats also have multiple equipment slots and can equip items ranging from armor to weapons or utility items. The game has a breeding mechanic, where cats can inherit traits and abilities, as well as randomly gain mutations. Your cats can also inbreed and develop birth defects. While home, you have the option to decorate your house while sorting through all of your kitties. Each furniture item has different traits, which can increase the rate your cats develop mutations, affect their happiness, make them less (or more) likely to fight one another, and more. As you progress through the game, 
you can gain more rooms in your house. My house is still fairly small, so I have it split between cats that I want to breed (downstairs) and cats I couldn't care less about (the fight club attic). There's a mechanic where if your cats fight at home, the victor gets a stat increase but the loser may be permanently maimed or outright killed. So unless you want that to happen, you'll need to manage your kitties' happiness.
Overall, I found this game to be addictive and incredibly charming. You could tell a lot of care was put into this game and I loved all of the little details. The different meows were so entertaining. They ranged from "plausibly a cat" to "grown man saying meow." I absolutely adore that your cats will occasionally sing to the OST while you're idle. It's so cute! It was really funny hearing one of my cats with a really fucked up voice singing badly. The gameplay was fun, but I think my favorite aspect of the game is the soundtrack. Seriously, it's so good! Each area has its own theme, and when you face the boss, the theme switches to a version with vocals. I think my favorite area themes are "Lonesome Road" (The Desert) and "Feline Invader" (The Crater).
And my favorite radio songs are "The Legend of the Claw" and "Napping All Day".
While I found the game to be rather addictive, I'm unfortunately a little burned out from playing it. I'm currently halfway through Act 2. I might pick it back up in the future, but for now, I pretty much got all that I wanted from the gameplay loop.
Currently, I'm back to playing Stardew. I've been on an audiobook kick recently, and Stardew Valley is such a perfect game to play while listening to audiobooks. I started a new save and am doing my first Joja run. Right now, I'm still in winter of Year 1 with the Meadowlands farm. Haven't dated anyone yet, but I'm leaning towards Abigail, just because I think the drama of dating her while fucking over her dad by helping Joja is kind of entertaining lol.
taking pictures for my gamelog! How convenient! Anyway, I created a town called Canto. My ACNH island is called Sonata so I decided to keep with the music theme. Since it's an earlier Animal Crossing game, you can't do as much as you can in the later games. Customization is pretty limited, and the overall game performance isn't great. The frame rate in Wild World is like 20 fps at best. I think most people who haven't played it before will struggle with the choppy frame rate and old graphics. But, Wild World definitely makes up for its flaws with how soulful the game is. I may be biased because Wild World was the first Animal Crossing game I played and was an important part of my childhood. But, it still has that old-school Animal Crossing charm. Aka, the villagers are mean and say the wildest shit. I was cracking up while playing this. When you start the game, you complete the basic tutorial as Tom Nook's assistant. Upon introducing yourself to your villagers, they immediately make fun of you. Angus straight up laughed in my face and called me a moron. Later, Dottie said I looked like a broke bitch, but it was okay because she was actually trying to be nice.
on my game cart by finding my old DS and using it to connect to my hacked 3DS. Wild World is a bit annoying in that you can't get the final Nook store upgrade unless you have a friend visit your town and buy something from Tom Nook. Luckily for me, I could just visit myself! I even randomly found Katie later and was able to return her to her mother. Although I will say that the connection is VERY unstable. I'm not sure if it's because of nds-bootstrap, my DS being really shitty and old, or if local play connections are just trash, but I had connection issues despite my DS and 3DS being right next to each other. I'll need to do more testing, but so far it seems like having a stable connection is just a matter of luck. It was fine for me because my visits (to myself) didn't take long, but if you're planning on spending time visiting your friend's town, you might have an issue.
After playing Wild World for a bit, I got curious and wanted to compare the game to New Leaf. Despite owning New Leaf since high school, I actually haven't played this game all that much. Aside from the GameCube game, it might be the Animal Crossing game I've played the least of. (I've never played City Folk.) It has a lot of customization options and some of the cutest furniture, but I remember the dialogue in this game being VERY generic. And, upon returning to New Leaf, I can confirm that the dialogue is boring. A lot of Animal Crossing fans will claim that New Horizons has the worst dialogue, but unpopular(?) opinion, New Leaf might actually be worse than New Horizons. Now, this might be because I've played New Horizons more, but I can actually remember some notable dialogue from villagers in that game. In New Leaf, they all blend together and they say nothing of note. They're just cardboard. Bland, generic, and inoffensive. Again, I haven't played that much, so my opinion could change. But currently, I find talking to my villagers in ACNL to be more boring than in ACNH. At least in ACNH, your villagers 
will occasionally say something funny. It's just that their dialogue is very repetitive. Of course, Wild World and the GameCube Animal Crossing are far superior in terms of villager personalities. Anyway, Molly's birthday happened like the day after I started my new town so I had to scrounge for a gift. Luckily, she seemed to like it. I completed my mayor permit and am currently in the process of cleaning up my town and waiting for upgrades/villagers to move out. I sold my previous town, so money isn't an issue. I debated on whether or not I wanted to sell my catalogue, but I decided against it. Filling out a brand new catalogue would be too annoying, even with the help of a 
In May, the long-awaited Hades II was released in early access. The first game was fantastic, so I immediately jumped at the opportunity to play Hades II. Unfortunately, I've been busy and haven't been able to play a lot. According to my save file, I've done eight runs so far, but I do have some thoughts! Overall, I think Hades II is really fun! It is different than the first game, and I'm still trying to get used to it. From my early impressions, Hades II seems to be harder than Hades, but this might be based on your playstyle. Combat in Hades II seems to be more range-oriented, which isn't my favorite. In Hades, I liked being able to go unga-bunga, but in this game, you have to play more tactically. You'll get heavily punished if you just run in and try to face-tank the enemies. Additionally, MelinoΓ« isn't as nimble as Zagreus. She has a slower dash and can only dash once, so positioning is more important. There is a wider variety of boons in this game, which can lead to some pretty interesting builds. However, I feel like this also leads to some very inconsistent builds. Since the boon pool is so diluted, you can easily get screwed by RNG and 
have a build with no damage. This issue is partially ameliorated when you unlock rerolls later in the game, but it still feels bad. Even in the early game of Hades, I felt like I was dealing damage. Meanwhile, in many of my runs in this game, it felt like I was just tickling the enemies.
over three years, I finally found Goldie! Or rather, she found me. She just happened to be at my campsite one day. It's pretty hilarious considering the sheer amount of Nook Miles I have spent island hopping in search of her. After spending several minutes badgering her, she agreed to move to my island. Currently, I have Goldie, Bob, Bea, Julian, Hazel, Marshal, Fang, Ketchup, Dom, and Whitney on my island. Everyone except for Whitney is a permanent resident. Whitney is in my 'rotating' slot, where I invite random villagers just to shake things up. I'm planning on having Bea and Goldie be neighbors, where they can spend time reading and gardening in their shared yard. It'll be super cute! I spent a little time decorating my island, but I mainly focused on skipping ahead in time. I mentioned this in an earlier entry, but I'm a little neurotic when it comes to playing Animal Crossing. I don't play daily, but I hate to 'miss' a day, so I keep track of the date I last played and set the calendar to match it. In Animal Crossing time, I'm currently still in 2022... I keep telling myself that I'll just skip to important dates and events to time travel quickly, but then I end up getting distracted and playing normally. Oops! Aside from getting Goldie, I have nothing interesting to report. Although, for some reason, whenever a villager visits my house, they keep sitting on the toilet in the bathroom. It's pretty funny!
was part of Team Fist Bump for the November Splatfest (Handshake vs. Fist Bump vs. Hug). Then, for the January Frostyfest (Friends vs. Family vs. Solo), I was on Team Friends. Unfortunately, Team Solo swept. Splatoon players are friendless, familyless 
about whether or not I wanted to get it for PC. Obviously, PC is the best way to play due to better performance and mod access. But, after asking my friend about how it felt to play on the Switch, I decided to buy it on the Switch as well. The appeal of being able to play in bed was just too strong lmao. Overall, I think the performance of the Switch version is pretty decent. Honestly, I'm surprised it runs as well as it does. There are some issues where textures take a few seconds to load in fully, as well as lag while the game loads new areas. The Switch graphics are obviously a little crunchy. Not much anti-aliasing to be seen. But overall, it runs alright. I think the biggest issue for people will be the loading screens to access new areas. This is especially noticeable in Hogsmeade, where each building is a separate instance to load. On the PC, you can just go in and out of buildings without loading screens. This will probably annoy a lot of people. However, as someone who grew up playing Morrowind on the Xbox, loading screens do not phase me in the slightest lol.
early draft, said to have authored an alchemical text called Alchemy, Ancient Art and Science. It's unknown if Argo is the same as the Death Eater or a relative. But that's where I gained the inspiration for Adra, as well as the ancient Greek naming theme.) Originally, I planned on having Adra be related to the Death Eater Pyrites, either as a daughter or sister. But now that I've plopped her down in Victorian-era Hogwarts Legacy, I'm reconsidering her background. Anyway, enough OC autism. I wish Hogwarts Legacy had a more robust character creator. Basically, all you can do is pick from a selection of premade faces as well as customize your hair, skin, and eyes. I definitely prefer character creators that let you alter individual parts of the face. The faces available in Hogwarts Legacy look a little weird. You're supposed to be a 5th year, so like 15/16 years old. However, I feel 
like a lot of the faces make you look older. It probably doesn't help that the mouth animations are a little janky. Like a lot of other games, your character kind of looks like they are wearing dentures because the mouth shows the teeth too much and the lips are oddly animated. This is mainly because a lot of game studios use an algorithm to animate speech. Hand-animating would take far too long. But because of this, characters end up looking strange while talking. This is definitely a nitpick, but it's something that I always end up noticing lol. Anyway, I've been having a lot of fun wandering around and exploring the world. Hogwarts looks great! I'm so used to how it looks in the movies that I was a little startled by all of the embellishments the game makes with the castle. It almost feels too fancy, if that makes sense? Especially considering it's basically a boarding school for children. Still, it looks amazing and I love all of the little details. I love the portrait of Wendelin the Weird (what an icon) as well as this astronomy tapestry. It's beautiful!
calling it a generic Ubisoft-esque open-world game. As someone who doesn't play those types of games, I've been having fun. I think the last game I've played in this style was Dragon Age: Inquisition. (Speaking of which, I should go back and finally beat that game...) Comparing the two games, so far I've been enjoying Hogwarts Legacy a lot more. Traversing the world is less tedious than it is in DAI, especially once you've unlocked the broom. I love flying around! The combat is also way more enjoyable. Aside from the world itself, the combat might be my favorite aspect of this game. I'm playing on hard mode, and it's so much fun once you get the hang of it! The fights are challenging, but none of the enemies have felt like health sponges so far. They just hit really hard, so if you don't react in time, you're punished. This makes even regular fights feel exciting. My only complaint is that juggling between spell sets is a little annoying. I 
think that the quests in Hogwarts Legacy are also more interesting. I haven't gotten to the major side quests that happen later in the game, but even the generic fetch or collection quests don't feel anywhere near as tedious as the ones in DAI. Admittedly, it might not be fair to compare the two games, as DAI came out in 2014. (Wow. It has really been that long...) But it's the only game I've played that can really be compared to Hogwarts Legacy. As I've said, I usually don't play these types of games. Of course, the gameplay in Hogwarts Legacy isn't perfect by any means. There's a lot that can be improved! I wish that there were more involved 'dungeons' in the open world. A lot of the treasure caves are pretty boring to explore, although some of the ruins have fun mini puzzles. While I don't mind the Merlin Trials in theory, having to watch the same unskippable cutscene every time I complete one is super annoying. My main complaint is the lack of social interactions in the game. I wish the developers 
did more with the characters. I want to be able to talk to them whenever I wish and build friendships. Unfortunately, you can only really interact with them when it's plot-relevant. For instance, in one quest, you break into the Restricted Section with a Slytherin named Sebastian Sallow. You end up getting caught but Sebastian takes the fall for you, allowing you to get away scot-free. After this, I wanted to check in with him to see how he was doing after getting in trouble. This wasn't the first time he's been caught, so the consequences for him seemed to be pretty severe. Unfortunately, you can't speak with him at all until a few quests later, when another mainline quest involves him. This really annoyed me because it made it feel like my character was an uncaring ass lol.
that he's a Gaunt and is related to Tom Riddle aka Voldemort. I also really like Professor Garlick, the Herbology professor. She's a real cutie! I didn't realize that Phineas Nigellus Black was the headmaster during this time, so I was delighted to see him. He's such a dick lol. Progress-wise, I think I'm nearing the middle of the game? It's now autumn at Hogwarts, and the last quest I completed was the Beasts class one with Poppy. I'm currently looking for a goblin helmet outside of Hogsmeade. I'm excited to play more and see how things turn out! I'm especially excited to get to the major character side quests, particularly Sebastian's. I've heard that his questline is actually better than the main story, so I have high expectations!
recommend it as your first Nancy game. Apparently it's one of the harder ones? Some of the puzzles aren't very intuitive and it felt like I was just brute-forcing my way through them. (Although maybe that's just a skill issue on my part lol. I might not have been paying enough attention.) My biggest complaint was that it does this thing that a lot of adventure games do where it's super easy to miss a click cue leading to a new area. I was hard stuck during a certain portion of the game just because I didn't move my mouse cursor over a small area in the hidden passageways. I eventually had to look up a walkthrough to progress. Still, I had fun overall. While I thought the mystery was pretty dumb, the game was charming. It satisified my itch for a point-and-click game and I liked the old school graphics, as wonky as they look. I'll probably play more Nancy games in the future, when the mood arises.
I'm pretty indifferent towards Deep Cut in general. I don't really have any preference towards the idols and just picked Shiver because I knew she was the most popular lol. I was a little surprised (and amused) by the toxicity that came about during that Splatfest. Team Frye talked a lot of shit just to come in last place. Poor Frye lmao. In October was Splatoween! I was a little worried that Nintendo was going to skip it again but they came through this year! The theme was Zombies vs. Skeletons vs. Ghosts. I was Team Ghosts and we managed to win. Hurray for a win streak! To be honest, I was a little surprised by the win. From my matches, Skeletons were absolutely stomping Ghosts. Team Zombie was practically nonexistant. The Tricolor stage for this Splatfest was Brinewater Springs, and I think it might be the worst Tricolor stage yet. Playing on defense was god awful. I don't really like Tricolor in general but good lord. I really hope Nintendo drops Tricolor for the eventual Splatoon 4. It's a nice experiment in theory, but in practice it isn't fun and having three idols makes the popularity disparity between teams even more drastic.
Super tired and unmotivated. When I'm in a mood like this, all I want to do is play mindless comfort games. So, I turned to Minecraft and RimWorld. I decided to play with a texture pack for the first time. I was so used to vanilla Minecraft that it was super jarring at first, but eventually I got used to it. I started a new world and found a mine within a lush caves system. I love lush caves! They're so pretty. Here's my cave biome ranking: lush > regular > deep dark >>>>>>>>>>>> dripstone. I absolutely despise dripstone caves lmao. After exploring a bit (and getting blown up by a creeper twice), I decided to venture out and find an area to build a house. I found a nice spot between a meadow and an alpine forest to settle down. There was a village nearby for convenient trading. I'm not the best at building things in Minecraft 
but I managed to build a small cottage. I'm using Mizuno's 16 Craft texture pack. I built my cottage using granite. I think granite in vanilla Minecraft looks hideous, but I love the way it looks with the texture pack enabled. The texture pack also changes the appearances of mobs and creatures. I like that it gives different variants to animals like cows and sheep. They're super adorable! But, I don't know how I feel about the way villagers and endermen look. It turns villagers into furries. They're... cute, I guess? Maybe I'm just not used to them, but I find it hard to distinguish between villager job types based on their outfits. Not the biggest fan of the changes to endermen. They look very 2010s Tumblr. While I was building my cottage, an enderman teleported inside. He was a very polite home invader. He walked around and inspected my furniture before peacing out.
I started a new game where my colony is a bunch of murderous misandrists lol. I made a custom ideology for it but aside from the man-hating, it's pretty chill. I'm kind of thinking I should have gone harder on the ideology and made it weirder, just to spice things up, because I've defaulted back to having a bog-standard organ-harvesting colony. (Don't @ me, that's just RimWorld things). Or maybe I shouldn't have built my base on a mountainous temperate forest map like I always do lmao. Despite it being released a year ago, I haven't played much with the Biotech DLC. Maybe I'll restart with the sanguophage scenario or something idk. I have too many mods to list, so I'll just recommend a few. 
sequentially. Anyway, you play as the titular amateur detective, Nancy Drew. In this mystery, you are sent to England to figure out what is wrong with Linda Penvellyn. Linda seems to believe that she is cursed. Along the way, you investigate the mysteries of the Penvellyn family and Blackmoor Manor. I'm having fun but I gotta say, I make for a horrible detective lmao. I keep forgetting what I was doing in between play sessions, and at this point, I feel like I'm brute-forcing my way through solving puzzles lol. I'm kind of tempted to start over just so that I can remember what I was doing. I'm currently on the forge puzzle. There are some aspects of the game that annoy me. For instance, in order to traverse certain parts of the manor, you have to repeatedly solve puzzles that you have already solved. Having to remember the solutions is irritating. You can get hints from a parrot named Loulou, but the parrot is so annoying and has such a grating voice that I've been avoiding her. I also find the overall mystery to be a little silly. That being said, I'm still enjoying the game. I think I'm nearing the end, so I probably won't start over.
remain and with humanity seemingly doomed, chaos and violence have reigned. In LISA: The Painful, you play as a taciturn man named Brad. Years ago, he found an abandoned baby girl who somehow survived. He decides to raise the girl, whom he names Buddy. As quite possibly the only female human alive, Buddy's very existence is dangerous, and so Brad has raised the girl in secrecy with his friends. However, Buddy is eventually found and kidnapped, and Brad sets out on a journey to rescue her. I'm playing on Pain Mode, which may be a mistake considering this is my first time lol. I'm not that far in so I can't say much, but woof, the beginning was pretty heavy. I've heard good things about the story, so I'm curious to see what I'll think about it. The soundtrack is unconventional. I heard someone once say that only psychopaths and schizos enjoy the LISA soundtrack but I actually really like it lol. The music was what introduced me to LISA in the first place, years back.
review won't be as specific as I'd like. But, I really, really enjoyed the remake! There's a reason why the game broke sales records and received critical acclaim. Capcom did an outstanding job with it. I loved the expanded characterizations in the remake. The Merchant and Luis were delightful and while I liked Ashley in the original, she's fantastic in the remake. I loved that it kept the goofy humor from the original. The gameplay was fun and I loved the new knife mechanics. The graphics were amazing. I loved seeing all of the old locations reimagined in the RE Engine. I spent soooo much time just looking around and admiring the details. Really, I don't have much to criticize. This game was a complete hit with me! It felt fan-servicey in all of the right ways. Some highlights include: the opening of the game (of course), the mine cart sequence with Luis, just seeing all of the enemy designs in general (regenerators are so creepy and jiggly now), and the Krauser fight. If you are even slightly interested, I highly recommend checking the remake out! All that being said, I'm curious to see where Capcom goes from here. The ending hints at a RE5 remake, which I'm not sure how I feel about. Are they just going to remake that and then RE6? What then? This might be slightly blasphemous, but I'd love to see them remake RE1. Well, remake it again. A re-remake, if you will. I'd love to see the Spencer Mansion in the RE Engine.
Wisdom vs. Courage. I chose Team Power and, for the first time since the demo, I was on the winning team! Woohoo! I was starting to think that I was cursed lol. Team Power swept! π I liked the Triforce-themed Tricolor stage. The pyramid was a neat gimmick. I had fun playing Splat Roller and squishing everyone lmao. I managed to rerank back up to S+ before the season ended and completed the catalogue last minute. I'd like to thank the Inkbrush for carrying me in Anarchy battles. At this point, it's pretty much become my main weapon. I've become pretty good with it, if I do say so myself. Of course, there's always room to improve. I think right now, I need to get better at dealing with long-range weapons. There are some matches where I feel absolutely useless because the enemy team has too much pressure and I don't have any room to zip around and kill the backliners. Recently, there was another Big Run, this time at Undertow Spillway. I wasn't able to play too much unfortunately but from the little I played, I had a pretty difficult time lol. The stage itself is a little wonky and it's easy to get overwhelmed very 
quickly by enemies. Despite being in EVP, a lot of my teammates were kind of brain dead. They kept overextending to the enemy spawns instead of sticking close to the basket. Every round felt like a struggle to survive, and there was little breathing room to overfish. The fact that the Grizzco Charger was in rotation didn't help. The weapon itself is fine. But I would have preferred a more close range weapon to help clear through mobs. While cute, Smallfry are voracious little demons. I've been enjoying the new season, although I wish that we got a new King Salmonid boss. The new Salmon Run stage is nice, but I'm still waiting for Ruins of Ark Polaris to return. Please Nintendo! It's the absolute best stage! It's so much fun skating around the ride rails. Also unrelated, but I love the new fistbump feature. It's so cute! 
My octoling is on the left hehe!
fantastic and feels great to play. Aiming feels fluid now. I stole these screenshots from reddit [
Horrorboros, looks really cool and is more fun to fight than Cohozuna. I managed to make it to the top 20% this time! Hopefully next time, I'll reach the top 5% but I'm not sure how feasible that is. The score threshold will probably keep rising as people get better and since I play freelance, my scores are heavily reliant on luck. I'd really like to get the gold Big Run badge, but I also don't want to find a Discord group to play with. Oh well, we'll see. There will be a Splatfest at the end of the month! The theme is Nessie vs. Aliens vs. Bigfoot. I'll be on Team Alien! π½
videos, I played a lot of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. I pretty much blitzed through the entirety of Year 3 and am now in Year 4 in Stardew. I've purchased all of the community upgrades and am currently saving up for the Gold Clock. Once I've bought that, all I have left in the game is to get all of the Stardrops and 100% the crafting menu. The only item I haven't made is the Life Elixir. I can't believe I haven't made it yet lol. I guess I always just bought them from the Dwarf. Unfortunately, I'm currently in Fall and I need a morel mushroom to craft it, which only shows up in the Spring. Unless I get lucky with the Traveling Cart, I'll have to wait until next Spring to finish things up. 
I finally asked Haley out to be my girlfriend. I was planning on moving straight to marriage but then I remembered that I never decorated my farm house. It looked like an absolute mess so I spent most of Summer decorating it. I guess I felt a little embarrassed getting married with a house that looks so bad lol. Here's a picture of my farm from the Summer and what my house currently looks like in the fall!
will take breaks that last months. So, I'll write down the last (in-game) day I played which was on July 14th... of 2021. Lmao. So, I reset my Switch clock to July 15th to continue playing. I'm so behind lol. I'm not sure if I'll ever catch up so that my in-game day will match the actual date. Anyway, it was nice to be back on my island. My current villagers are: Bob, Julian, Hazel, Marshal, Fang, Ketchup, Bea, Dom, Dobie, and Peanut. I'm currently waiting for Peanut and Dobie to move. I'm searching for Goldie and then planning on having that last villager slot be open for visitors to rotate through. Marshal had me run an errand and as thanks, gave me his photo. I think this is the 5th or 6th time I've gotten it from him lmao. At this point, I could make an impressive Marshal shrine lol. He cracks me up! "Oh, thanks for delivering that present. Here, have an autographed photo of yours truly!" I hope to one day 
have the amount of self-confidence he has. Hazel dropped by my house to visit. Here's a picture of us in my second floor room. It's supposed to look like a high-rise apartment of sorts. This angle isn't the greatest but I'm pretty pleased with the way this room has turned out. I still have my main room and the north room on the first floor to decorate, but I've been dragging my feet on doing so. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to decorating things. I'm almost never in the mood. Here's a picture of Julian, Ketchup, and Bob looking very rad at the town square. I love it when villagers do random activities there. It's so cute! 
showing off too much of it. Maybe one day, when I finally get around to making a separate Animal Crossing page? I have fully decorated parts of my island and like the way they look, but then I stopped once the DLC came out. I felt like I should wait to collect more of the DLC furniture to use, and then I just stopped playing and took a months long break lol. I really should stop procrastinating and start decorating. One of my friends still plays New Horizons regularly. She told me the other day that she's bulldozing her island to redecorate it again. I'd like to finally be able to show off a finished version of my island to her. She's seen my island before, but I haven't really done much work on it since. Meanwhile, I think this is her 4th or 5th time redecorating. She's going for a jungle theme this time. I'm excited to see it! Speaking of the DLC, I spent a little bit of time decorating some vacation homes. I like the way the exterior of Coco's house turned out. I like the atmosphere the fog gives, and I think it suits her slightly creepy (but cute!) appearance.
so far. I'm still near the beginning of the game, but from what I've played, I think Capcom did an excellent job with the gameplay. The OG Resident Evil 4 is well-known for its intense action, and the remake does a fantastic job with improving upon it. The knife parry mechanic is great. It helps give you some breathing room, but it doesn't feel overpowered by any means. I'm playing on hardcore difficulty, so the parry has definitely come in handy! I also like the auto-sort option for the briefcase. Playing tetris with your inventory is fun, but it gets old pretty quickly. The graphics look amazing. It's so cool to see familiar locations reinterpreted with modern graphics. Anyway, those are my thoughts so far. Resident Evil 4 Remake looks to be an amazing game! I'm glad that Resident Evil 4 Remake is good. After the disappointing Resident Evil 3 Remake, I was a little worried.
I also managed to rank up to S+ right before the season ended. Woohoo!
the island and unlocked Mr. Qi's challenges. I also completed the island museum collection. Currently, I'm still in Spring of Year 3. Stardew Valley is a really easy game to play when I want to unwind at the end of the day. It's a pretty mindless game for me, so it's nice to just shut down my brain while playing but I'm also getting a little bored. I don't really have much left to do, aside from getting married and 100%ing the game. So, as a change of pace, I decided to check out the remastered version of Dark Souls available on the Nintendo Switch.
is really fun. I decided to be a Pyromancer this time. The first time I played, I went with a default Warrior. I still pretty much play as a warrior, focusing on hacking and slashing but occasionally I'll remember to throw a fireball. Here's me meeting best boy Solaire. This time around, I think I'm going to look up a guide to figure out how to save him. He's such a delightful character. I was so sad when I had to fight him the first time around. But not this time! This time will be different and I'll save him! He's too much of a cinnamon roll to die!
Several times, the drakes glitched out and flew through the floor and died. Another time, one swooped off of the cliff, which was pretty funny. I made my way into Blighttown and remembered why I hate that place so much. After getting messed up by those annoying blowdart snipers, I cleared the small area of Blighttown accessible from the Valley of Drakes before circling back around to the New Londo Ruins. There, I remembered why I also hated the ruins (fucking ghosts!). After having enough of that nonsense, I went back to the Darkroot Basin, headed into the Darkroot Garden, and then fought my way through until I reached Sif. Wasn't having a really good time fighting him so I decided to give up for the moment and headed back to the Firelink Shrine. I went down into the Catacombs and after brute forcing my way partway through, I met Patches in all of his bald glory. 
Shortly after that, I decided I had enough of the Catacombs as I also hate that location (are you sensing a pattern here), and decided to head back to the Undead Burg to do what I'm actually supposed to do. I made my way through the Lower Undead Burg until I reached the Depths. I don't really remember the sewers of the Depths all that well, so I spent a lot of time wandering around. I managed to beat the Gaping Dragon in one go to unlock the way into Blighttown proper (eurgh). That's about all I've played so far. I'm not super thrilled to make my way through Blighttown, but I will eventually. I know I complained a lot, but I promise I'm having fun! Going through the beginning of Dark Souls again is pretty nostalgic. At least, for the parts that I remember lol.
especially excited because it looks like the DLC will have something do with Miquella! Normally, I don't care too much about the lore of Soulsborne games but for some reason, I got really obsessed with the lore in Elden Ring, particularly for the royal demigod family. I guess I just love family drama lol. Despite their small presence, Malenia and Miquella are my favorites. I was really bummed when I learned about all of the cut content that involved them, especially Miquella. I think it's super interesting you can feel his presence throughout the game, despite him not really appearing. I'm very curious to see if Fromsoft will reimplement some of his cut content, especially his ending. It might just be me reading too much into the announcement, but I feel like it hints at that since it says "Rise, Tarnished, and let us walk a new path together". Regardless, I'm looking forward to it! Although, I suspect it will be some time until the DLC is released. I've seen a lot of speculation that we might not see the DLC until fall this year or even later, but I don't mind waiting!
about it. RF4 has a lot more mechanics than Stardew, but I feel like the systems weren't well integrated into the gameplay. The game doesn't do a good job in explaining these systems either. You can cook, craft, and forge sooo many different items, which is neat. However, having to constantly consult the wiki to figure out what I can make and how to make it was annoying. It felt like the devs focused on quantity, not quality when it came to these systems. They existed as things you could do, but you could also completely ignore them (at least on Normal difficulty). The vast number of things you can do is probably a huge selling point for fans of the game, but I personally found it to be a little dissatisfying. I wish that the gameplay mechanics were more cohesive, so that there is a clear gameplay loop of farming β crafting β dungeon crawling etc. Instead, it was a little disjointed.
bachelorettes interested me enough to switch. I guess my character will just be single, as the bachelors were also very dull lol. The main female character design would be fine, if it weren't for these weird nipple tassels she has on her armor. Like, what are those??? Why?? 
play with the remixed bundles, just to change things up. They were surprisingly easy to finish. I think I got lucky with the ones I got. I normally pick the mushroom caves, but this time I went with fruit bats, which helped me complete the Artisan Bundle. I managed to rebuild the Community Center during Fall Year 1, which is a new record for me. Normally I don't complete it until the Winter or early Spring of Year 2. Aside from that, Year 1 passed with little to note other than me expanding my coop and barn. During the first half of Year 2, I focused on expanding my house and cleaning up the layout of my farm. Here I found a giant melon and ended the Summer of Year 2 by watching the moonlight jellies.
named him Pony Soprano, but on the Switch version, it doesn't tell you the character limit for names, so the 'o' got cut off. As far as I know, you can't rename your horse so Pony Sopran it is. After searching for an entire day, I finally found the strange capsule on my farm. I couldn't find it anywhere until I searched the upper corner, where it was hiding underneath the foliage near the shrine. I placed it next to my owl statue. I also finally unlocked Ginger Island. I haven't really played much since the Ginger Island update, so this was new content for me. I'm having a lot of fun exploring the island, but now I feel like I don't have enough time in the day. By the time I've finished chores around my farm and traveled to the island, it's already in the afternoon. Even when chugging espresso and eating speed boost foods, I still feel like I don't have enough time. 
eventually. I was hoping to marry before Year 3 starts and the Grandpa evaluation, but I procrastinated on it so I probably won't make it before then. Even without marrying, I should easily pass his eval and get the Statue of Perfection.
