Last Game You Played

[Moonface]

Not yet. Been only able to do a few things every chance I get.

Brock did have the Plain Badge after all, and I FINALLY have Strength access! Was able to do a few checks after that: Chuck's gym (badge + key item [which was the MysteryEgg lmao]) as well as Claire's gym (badge). So now I've got 15/16 badges. Just Blue left to fight (which, funnily enough, he has his vanilla badge lmao) and then I can face Red and gg this bitch. Though, I'm concerned about how I'm ever going to beat him. If memory serves right, Red had level 70/80 Pokemon in vanilla. My seed has 150% level buffs to all NPCs. My current party is mid 50's.

So reading this, I have no idea how that randomizer works fully from your posts about it. I assume all the gyms still have badges, but the badge you get is random? Seems rather pointless to randomise the badges since I didn't think they ever really give you anything except letting Pokémon of x level obey you, but I was under the belief that wasn't tied to y badge but rather just the number you hold.

God of War Ragnarök (PS5)
Finished everything I could currently do in Vanaheim, and rather than move on with the main story I chose instead to go do the new side quests available to me in Alfheim. It's been more enjoyable than it had been for me in my last couple of sessions, although I do still find this game has a horrific issue with consistency which often drives me insane. Also, Sony needs to tell their studios to stop having characters talk to you non-stop with hints and comments during gameplay, because this game does it to an irritating degree and apparently Horizon FW does it too. I can't even walk slightly off the path to grab a chest or anything without someone having to make a negative remark about it. Just shut the heck up and let me do what I wanna do; it's like every NPC in this game was modelled after the most obnoxious back seaters of a Twitch chat.

The Binding of Isaac: Repentance (PC)
Daily run, as usual. Today's was with Jacob and Hitbox Esau which I expected to be painful but this run was actually rather pleasant with them, for once.

[ShiraNoMai]

Except for Generation V, specific Badges must be obtained by the player before they can use an HM move outside of battle to advance the game's storyline.

When it comes to the badges from the Johto area, because you get those first, they're tied to all the HMs you'd ever get in the game. And because there's badges from both Johto and Kanto, shuffling all those around makes it harder to get access to stuff in the early game (or late game, depending).

Played some Deep Rock Galactic last night with some friendos from Shoujo's chat/discord. It once again highlights a very unique problem to me: relearning a game after not playing for a while on top of it being a cooperative team-dependent experience combines into me just being straight up awful until an hour plus into the experience.

[Moonface]

Except for Generation V, specific Badges must be obtained by the player before they can use an HM move outside of battle to advance the game's storyline.

When it comes to the badges from the Johto area, because you get those first, they're tied to all the HMs you'd ever get in the game. And because there's badges from both Johto and Kanto, shuffling all those around makes it harder to get access to stuff in the early game (or late game, depending).

How does the game avoid a softlock situation then if a particular HM is shuffled to be behind an obstacle that requires that same HM to bypass? I'm guessing the randomizer tries to avoid that?

Phasmophobia (PC)
Man, it's been ages I think since I last played this due to having so many Sunday's in a row where I had something else going on to stop me from playing, or in the rare cases I did get my free Sunday back I got to enjoy a pissing migraine instead so I couldn't play anyway.
I went through all the small maps with @Dragon Lord to do the Christmas event challenge and get the reward for doing all of it, and we did intend to achieve that with @Mr EliteL too but for whatever reason his game crashed on something like all but maybe 2-3 games where he didn't crash before we would finish the map. It's so weird.

[Mr EliteL]

we did intend to achieve that with @Mr EliteL too but for whatever reason his game crashed on something like all but maybe 2-3 games where he didn't crash before we would finish the map. It's so weird.

Yeah, stupid thing. I never did restart my laptop though, so perhaps I should've tried that. Only repeatedly checked file integrity as that sometimes worked before and changed some settings, neither seemed to improve or lessen the crashes. I played the warm-up with DL fine, got the Tanglewood, Edgefield and Camp Woodwind completion, last one was twice because you died which wouldn't allow completion on your side, those were fine. Everything in between and two after Camp Woodwind I froze. Bah! So that was about 5/10 games that happened. Hopefully it sorts itself out because the times I froze before, the next time I play it's usually better or at least less crashing.  

Genshin Impact

Mainly daily stuff recently and the TCG feature, finished the Mystic Dungeon event for NA as I hadn't done that yet where I did it for my other two accounts earlier last week. Will be playing for dailies again today, played a tiny bit on my break at work.

[Moonface]

God of War Ragnarok (PS5)
Finally getting to play a lot of this again after not having much time to do so for a week. The story is finally picking up a bit but it still seems to feel like a good amount of nothing-work when it comes to the story quests.

[ShiraNoMai]

Story so far seems to be showcasing the shortcomings of the playable cast/protagonists at every opportunity it gets, which... seems puzzling, considering all of the positive character building from the previous entry.

Except for Generation V, specific Badges must be obtained by the player before they can use an HM move outside of battle to advance the game's storyline.

When it comes to the badges from the Johto area, because you get those first, they're tied to all the HMs you'd ever get in the game. And because there's badges from both Johto and Kanto, shuffling all those around makes it harder to get access to stuff in the early game (or late game, depending).

How does the game avoid a softlock situation then if a particular HM is shuffled to be behind an obstacle that requires that same HM to bypass? I'm guessing the randomizer tries to avoid that?

Yeah the randomizer is specially designed to have this "logic" in mind when shuffling/randomizing to avoid these situations. It's why I thought I had softlocked myself for a while before, when in fact I had overlooked something. Logic is what makes randomizers actually fun and worth trying, knowing you aren't destined to fucking yourself into a unwinnable corner. 

Still trying to push my way through Blue. I've lost twice to him now, though each time I'm learning more about what I can do. My biggest challenge appears to be facing his Kingdra, which in this gen, is weak to only Dragon type moves. And this fucker is level 87. Decided to go see what the Lugia is in the Whirl Islands, and turned out to be a level 60 Articuno. It had STAB Blizzard, which is solid, and could also learn Earthquake--a move my whole team couldn't learn. I gotta plan my attack better. My set up is very temperamental on luck (too many moves with <100 Accuracy).

[Dragon Lord]

Genshin Impact (PC/PS5)

Been doing rounds of Windtrace (aka worst event ever created) to get the max amount of coins I can, and also started up another event going on currently that I've been putting off. Trying to get enough Primos to hopefully pull the last Faruzan I need for C6 without spending any money, as there's a HUGE difference between C0-C5 Faruzan and C6 Faruzan for being support in a Wanderer team. Would really hate to end up at C5 with no idea how long it'll be until she returns on another banner as a rate-up, or having to pray that I get lucky enough to pull her off of Standard.

As for Windtrace itself, I really love how Hoyoverse has failed to fix any of the issues with it. Hunters can still endlessly spam the capture ability, making it easy to just run around and randomly capturing all of the Rebels. The Hunter's ultimate is still OP as fuck. Thankfully the players themselves are still stupid. I've won so many rounds as Rebel by just disguising myself as a small object and hiding in a bush right next to the spawn, which hunters seem to rarely ever check around that area. Or I just go up in a tree and disguise myself as literally anything and I win because for some reason nobody has learned to LOOK UP when playing Hunter after the two previous runs of this minigame.

Also been spending some of my built up resources on just leveling up random characters and getting them to max ascension/level. Got both Wonderer and Faruzan to level 90, and then decided to finally ascend my Bennett from level 80 to level 90. Also maxed out all of Nahida's talents finally, as well as finally getting around to triple crowning Ayaka. Almost got Yae done too, but gotta get some more talent books for her.

Ender Lillies (PS4)

It was a long wait to play this game, but I finally started it up after my PS4 copy from Limited Run Games arrived a few weeks ago. So far, I am absolutely LOVING this game. It's going to have a very, VERY strong chance of taking the #1 spot as my favorite indie game. Gameplay is great, music is great, loving the story so far and bosses are challenging yet fair. I'll have more to say about it once I complete it, but so far I have to say that this game is a MUST play.

Fire Emblem Fates (3DS)

I said I'd never play this game, and yet here I am, playing this game. Due to the announcement of the closure of the 3DS eShop, I figured I better get it now so I could buy the other two story paths before the eShop shuts down and I'd be locked out of ever experiencing the game. Even though I know this is a terrible Fire Emblem game, I just don't want to be left in the same position I am with Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn -- having missed my chance to get them and now being unable to play them (until Nintendo decides to be smart and port them to the Switch). I'm not too far into the game yet so I can't comment on much, but I can already tell from the early goings that the story in this game is going to be as god awful as I've heard.

Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster (Steam)

Haven't played this too much, but started it up finally. Need to get it finished before the Pixel Rematers release on PS4 and I get to go through them all again for the platinum trophies!

Azur Lane (Android)

We had the next big event bringing the newest UR to the game start last week, so I've just been busy farming away. There's an error with the D3 map in the event, and the gear blueprint that drops from that map is dropping at a much higher rate than it is supposed to. Thankfully Yostar are great and instead of fixing the issue, they're just like, "Yeah, something fucked up and now this thing is much easier to obtain... go ahead and abuse it!" So I've been farming the hell out of the map because that piece of equipment is actually very good and so I'd like to walk away with a handful of copies of it before the event ends.

Arknights (Android)

Our latest round of Contingency Contract came to an end, and now we're in a down week until our next event starts up on Thursday, so I've just been doing my usual farming for resources, waiting for the next character I want to build to come out. I did build up a couple of characters I have that I've wanted to build for a while, so that was nice to get done. Will give me a few new options to play around with when the next event starts up.

Neural Cloud (Android)

The newest mobile game I started playing (about three weeks ago). So far it's been a blast, really loving it. Finally found a good game worthy of being my #3 and was able to say goodbye to Revived Witch (shame how much potential that game had, only to be ruined by incompetent devs). Looking forward to the future of this one, though it's going to make it a little awkward when Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero come out and I want to play both of those too, haha. Five mobile games isn't too much to juggle... right?

[Moonface]

Story so far seems to be showcasing the shortcomings of the playable cast/protagonists at every opportunity it gets, which... seems puzzling, considering all of the positive character building from the previous entry.

My biggest issue is how an event happens, and it just nullifies everything that came before it as every character just immediately moves on from what was happening before that event transpires. It feels like Ragnarök is the only constant story beat that doesn't fall to the wayside so far which makes the story feel disjointed into all these separate miniature arcs that aren't always leading to anything in the long run.

Speaking of, God of War Ragnarok (PS5) is the last game I played. Spent pretty much all day yesterday playing it, and it was entirely doing side content in a single realm that I didn't even manage to finish in an entire day of playing. Now don't get me wrong, I love side content and appreciate when games give a lot of it to let you experience more of a game, but holy shit this game seems to have a hard time knowing when to dial it back a bit when it comes to side content. I feel like I've spent more time in this one realm doing side content than I spent in it doing the main story.

[Dragon Lord]

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights (PS4)

Finished up the platinum for this on Sunday, and man, what an amazing game. As I said before, I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone. Definitely going to be double dipping this on Steam and 100%ing it again.

Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)

Since I was already on my PS4, I decided why not pop this game in and finally start it. So far I'm enjoying it. Combat felt ass at first, but once I realized that there is a lock-on system and for some reason they have it set to "off" by default, it became drastically better. Trying to go and take out enemy archers immediately, but having your attacks miss or the camera be all derpy (the camera is by far the most god awful thing about this game so far) was hell. Oh, I should note that I'm playing on Lethal, so that's why it's extremely important that I take out archers first when I can.

Getting the actual dodge roll has helped make the combat feel better too. Of course now I'm passed the part where you learn assassinations, so most of the time I don't even have to worry about combat too much.

Best part of the game so far? Easily the adorable foxes.

[Mr EliteL]

*stares at unused Switch that has my Ender Lilies game on it* Aye, need to definitely get back to playing other games this year. I have played some of that game, but man my poor neglected Switch with 3 new games yet to begin and 5 in progress (one very close to completing).

Genshin Impact

Completed the Akitsu whatever event on both my Main and EU accounts, didn't do on NA because I still have to complete archon quest in Inazuma and would just be weird with the Quick Start option, where everyone who appears after the archon quest show up with other such occurrences happening. Also failed to do an Abyss last reset on that account because I left to the morning before the weekly reset but slept through it. Stop leaving that shit to the last minute, self!
Also just the usual daily stuff, plus got Ayato on my NA account.

Chess
On Chess.com where I've randomly gotten into chess when I've had a slight genuine interest in the past but no drive to actually giving it a go (no it's not the first time I played chess). Despite knowing the moves going in, I got a lot to learn still. I won 2 games out of about 6 I played against an Intermediate AI. This also included me miss-clicking moves that you can't undo which caused me to lose important pieces like Queen, Knight and Rooks. Flip sake.

[Moonface]

Ghost of Tsushima (PS4)

Best part of the game so far? Easily the adorable foxes.

Huh, I didn't realize you were playing the PS4 version. Now I'm wondering if there were any actual gameplay differences between that and the Director's Cut that might explain why you're encountering things I don't really recall happening to me.
And yes, the foxes are superb! There's a moment later in the game with them that really stands out and you'll know it when you get to it.


Elden Ring (PS5)
So I gave up trying to kill the Tree Sentinel in the starting area and just went around him. Eventually tried fighting Margit and he stomped my foolish ambitions so many times I gave up and went back to exploring the world so I can try to stop feeling bored by this game and it's insistence on giving me rewards and items I can't use which removes any feeling of actual character progress.
Highlight of my time yesterday was fighting a boss called Mad Pumpkin Head (or something like that) and finishing the fight with my health bar in this sorry but incredibly clutch state:

[ShiraNoMai]

The 1HP and A Dream lifestyle suits you well, Moony

Got to the end of my Pokémon Crystal Key Item Randomizer. I beat Blue with the skin of my teeth, and now I can face Red. Wasn't sure what to expect so waltz right up to him and lo and behold, he's got a team of all Level 100s. Against my team of barely 50s and 60s. Yeah, it might be GG there. I could attempt a grind against it but I'm not sure it's worth it/fun anymore to bother.

Booted up some of my SMW and Yoshi's Island ROMhacks tonight. I'm real bad at SMW so even in the easy hacks I can't even get to the fucking H. I thought maybe a different control input layout would help so I tried keyboard and it helped a bit but my brain goes stupid trying to rewire button locations when I remember where buttons are
Yoshi hacks I had more luck with. 100% the first level of Golden Yoshi's Island. Onto the second.

[Moonface]

I feel like I've had another instance of coming very close to dying at the end of a boss fight but I've done so many by now I can't remember.

Elden Ring (PS5)
Came across Godskin Apostle in Caelid (the one at the bottom of the tower) and didn't do badly against it, but the problem I had was that boss has a particular attack that if it lands it will kill me every time, and eventually I lost interest in gambling that I could do the entire fight without being a victim to that move. Went exploring elsewhere in Caelid for a bit, and got attacked by a boss that spawns at night by one of the graces who utterly destroyed me. Decided that maybe Caelid needs to go away for a bit if I'm eating shit to optional bosses and have yet to find the actual boss of that area.

[Mr EliteL]

Genshin Impact

Mainly daily commissions and such, on my main exploring the new area and levelling up my Alhaitham. The other two just completing some stuff for the Battle Pass. Need to get on the Lantern Rite event though, started a little bit.

Phasmophobia

Played my first solo game, on Intermediate no less. Got it down to Banshee, Phantom or Goryo. Was certain it wasn't a Banshee because of lack of orbs, thought I saw EMF 5 but didn't have the reader equipped at the time, so waited around for a proper ghost event which took a while, plus needed a ghost photo as one of the tasks. Confirmed not EMF 5, took the photo, the ghost must've disappeared right on que but not as a Phantom, and turned it out was Banshee. Should've listened to the Parabolic longer to get the scream because Orbs just wasn't happening. Bah! Get 'em next time.

[Moonface]

Phasmophobia

Played my first solo game, on Intermediate no less. Got it down to Banshee, Phantom or Goryo. Was certain it wasn't a Banshee because of lack of orbs, thought I saw EMF 5 but didn't have the reader equipped at the time, so waited around for a proper ghost event which took a while, plus needed a ghost photo as one of the tasks. Confirmed not EMF 5, took the photo, the ghost must've disappeared right on que but not as a Phantom, and turned it out was Banshee. Should've listened to the Parabolic longer to get the scream because Orbs just wasn't happening. Bah! Get 'em next time.

I was really expecting to see you got your arse murdered after I read this part.

Elden Ring (PS5)
Currently in the Deeprot Depths, and after over 70 hours in this game I finally fell victim to walking into a hole and dying whilst holding 90,000+ runes. I was running about at the top of a waterfall and noticed an area full of vegetation to the side that stood out like a sore thumb against all the open water, and figuring something had to be hiding in there I just ran on over to it. Next thing I knew, I was falling to my death as I happened to run off the edge of an incredibly large hole that was hidden in the middle of all that vegetation and at an angle where I missed every single platform on the sides you're supposed to use to traverse your way down it. I'm so happy there was a Site of Grace very near with no enemies on the way so I could safely make my way back to the top and grab my runes. XD