What are you currently playing?

I completed Watchdogs, heard of Watchdogs Bad Blood but it need to be bought. Haven't got the money and not sure my brother will buy it. I enjoyed the game but still prefer Legion. Like viewing Chicago, like to visit that place, and see Cloud Gate & Willis Tower. Be going on to Watchdogs 2, I been playing Watchdogs Legion first, never think I be playing first two. Reason my love for Legion is it base in UK (London) where I from (but not from London).

 

Rotating between Pokemon Violet, Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation, and KOTOR on my iPad.

In Violet I have three badges, have beaten three of the Titans, and have done one of the Starfall raids. Once I finish the game I'm going to play a rom-hack called Pokemon Infinite Fusion before heading into Pokemon Scarlet. I'll hopefully do a longer review once I beat the game or at the end of the year.

In Fates Revelation, I have one final character to recruit and then I should have everyone but Flora (whose recruitment is weird) and Rhajat (who I'm not getting this playthrough). Then I need to buy Conquest on my Birthright save, buy some of the DLC classes, finish some of my quirky builds, and we'll call it a day. (I don't plan on revisiting Fates until LONG after Engage comes out if possible, as I mostly finished a pretty exhaustive playthrough of Awakening right before this.)

In KOTOR I just finished Taris and am at the Jedi Temple. I'm going for a Light Side playthrough and Bastilla romance if possible.

My goal for the final month of the year is to finish my playthroughs of Violet, Fates Revelation, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I'll start the new year with Infinite Fusion and keep KOTOR as a side-project game, and that will keep me busy until Engage comes out. If not, I always have a Mass Effect 2/3 playthrough to complete.

I've also been watching gameplay of God of War Ragnarok, and even watched my brother-in-law defeat the final boss. This is the best game I've never played, and is definitely gaining an Honorable Mention spot on my 2022 gaming look-back.

 

Finished with Watchdogs 2, it good game but still prefer Legion. In Watchdogs 2, I explore more of San Francisco, than just Golden Gate Bridge, zip zag road & trams. Also Japantown, Chinatown, Crab statue and Transamerica Pyramid. I like to visit San Francisco , All three Watchdogs games base in one city I love and two I like to visit.

 

Top games of 2022:

GOTY - Xenoblade Chronicles 3. This game pushes the Switch's graphics to the edge. It takes the best of the previous game and combines them in a beautiful and thematically resonant finale that's a joy to behold.

Second Place - Pokemon Legends: Arceus. A breath of fresh air in a franchise that felt stale and dying to most. It also allowed us to see a fan-favorite region as never before with stylized and slimmed-down mechanics that made the game feel fun and innovative. The bosses were actually challenging at points, and the story, while thin, was still enjoyable.

Third Place - Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. Honestly, if it wasn't for Triangle Strategy locking me out of the golden route, that game would be here. Three Hopes is a great game and a phenomenal spin-off, but it's also a clearly unfinished game. The story simply decides after a certain point that it's over despite the conflict still going on and most of the questions left unanswered. Maybe someday it'll get DLC, but considering that both Three Houses and Engage had DLC announced before launch, I'm no longer hopeful. (Pun intended.)

Honorable Mention - God of War Ragnarok. Had I actually played this game, it would tie for my GOTY. But since I only watched online playthroughs and my brother-in-law play and didn't play myself, it doesn't count.

Most Anticipated Games of 2023:

Insomniac's Spider-Man 2
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
Fire Emblem Engage
Forespoken (yes, I'm still excited for it)

 

Fire Emblem Engage came out on Friday, and due to a sudden sickness most likely via my students (two kids out, a third sent home, even the principal was sick), I had to cancel all of my social plans this weekend - several of which I was really looking forward to! - and so I got a lot more time to play...which is good, since I won't have any real time to play until Thursday at best this upcoming week.




Onto the game itself: NOTE, THIS IS NOT MY FULL REVIEW, JUST A MID-GAME REVIEW.

Fire Emblem Engage is like Power Rangers* compared to Three Houses/Hopes' Game of Thrones. And I love it for that. Fire Emblem Engage is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously. It's full of fun characters, a simple premise, and a love for the past decades of the franchise through the lens of the modern era the game is in. If you come expecting a grand, epic story with political machinations and complex characters...this ain't it. From the cheesy, 1990's-style Saturday Morning Cartoon intro to the color palette of characters, to the campy dialogue, you're getting something else. Like Power Rangers, your favorite characters probably won't be your favorite because of their characterization, but because they looked cool and/or made you smile.* (Hortensia is as hilarious as her design entails.)

Gameplay-wise, Engage is at the top. You'd think the Emblem Rings would be overpowered, but the game can quickly punish you for thinking that way, or not being creative enough in your use of them.** They're tools, not crutches. For example, one Ring allows the user to teleport and deliver a powerful magic attack to an enemy. You'd think this would be an easy on-hit kill, but you'd be wrong. Use it wrong, and your unit is now trapped behind enemy lines. Instead, you can use that same magic attack to save a unit in danger, or to stop a foe from being guarded/protected by another enemy. (For Guards to work, the Guarding Unit must have full health. If the Guarding Unit is Guarding the boss or a chokehold, it could be beneficial to warp behind them, damage them to they can no longer guard, and then finish off the enemy they were guarding.) There are ways to stop an enemy from counterattacking, ways to create obstacles, and terrain pair-ups to think about.
This game has challenged me even well into the mid-game, something that none of the recent FE games have done.*** The battles themselves are GORGEOUS, with characters' animations changing as they level up, and things looking slick and fluid. The critical animations look the best they've had since the GBA games, making them a delight. Still, the game itself feels...slow at times. Between the free movement taking too long, and the animations and screens, I just feel like the game is takes longer than Three Houses or Awakening/Fates when it comes to battle speed. Then again, I'm so used to those games, that maybe the change is just me getting use to a new game.

Overall, this game goes all-in on gameplay, with the hub-world serving more as a place to do small activities before heading out into the next battle.

Character-wise, this game is weird. As mentioned above, you'll like the characters because they're good in combat, look cool, or they made you smile. Very few if any have the depth of the Three Houses cast, but very few get the chance. It's hard to tell, because raising supports (more on the "social sim" aspect of the franchise and the game in the full review) is back to being more difficult than preferred. It's not GBA-levels of difficulty, but there are fewer options to gain support points than Three Houses or Three Hopes, and it's not built around supports like Awakening or Fates. You have to be a little more intentional than both of those eras, like the Tellius games. Still, most of the supports I've seen reveal a fun and colorful cast of characters, each with their own personalities and dynamic with the world and with each other.

Overall, this game has been a blast, and while it may not be my favorite FE game to date, it's one that I'll have a fun time coming back to. It's a solid entry points for newcomers and a fun gameplay experience for veterans, and it feels like a good continuation (and hopefully a finale) of the 3DS game era.****


Current Game MVPs:
Framme - She's the Zero-to-Hero story of this playthrough. The trick is to have her just focus on healing until she's about Level 15 or so, then give her a Steel Body Art, and let her go to town.
Yunaka - HI-YA PAPAYA! ZAPPY! (If you know, you know.) Anyways, Yunaka is very good if given some low-level investment, and she's been a rockstar this entire playthrough so far.
Chloe - I actually didn't think I'd use her or like her, but she's been pulling her weight and then some!
Alcryst - Another notch on the Archer Lord cap! (Although on one beats Claude in terms of personality.)
Celine - Having someone who can use magic and a sword early on is really nice. Equip her with Micaiah's Emblem Ring, and then she can heal also, making her a great all-around team member.
Diamant - The dude hits like a truck.

*As a fan of Power Rangers even to this day, this isn't the case for every season. The most critically acclaimed and fan-favorite season like RPM and Time Force are dark and have complex characters and nuance. Seasons like SPD, Lost Galaxy, and Jungle Fury are praised for their character development and scope.

**THAT BEING SAID, the DLC bracelet Emblem Tiki is 100% overpowered. She turns her user into a dragon and then boosts their stats and growth rates. It's great for training units though!

***Awakening becomes a joke at this point. (It's still my favorite game in the series though.) Fates depends on the version, but by the mid-game in Revelation, you'll have more characters than you can use and the latest ones either are super useful or too under-leveled to use. Three Houses has a major difficulty shift by the halfway point, but after one or two fights you'll be fine.

****Hopefully I'll remember to expand more of this later, but the game, from some of the ideas behind the concepts, to its tone and colors, make it feel more akin to the "Fateswakening" games than other games in the franchise. Again, this is far from a bad thing, but I think it's an interesting thing to note. Part of this is intentional if you know the plot of both games; also Awakening is officially 10 years old this year (11 for the Japanese version) and helped save the franchise. Awakening is my favorite game in the franchise currently, so this game being the spiritual continuation of that era is a fun thing for me.

 

I've been playing all three Dishonored games over and over, and I got each of these very early on it its life. I can't even count the playthroughs. From time to time I still find content I haven't seen before. I even purchased the tabletop RPG book for Dishonored (by Modiphius, the people who are publishing the current Star Trek system and a number of others). It's quite good and very close to the games. Of course I've also read the comics and the three novels.

It really irks me that there's no new Dishonored stuff coming out, other than expansions for the TTRPG. Bethsoft has said that the next Dishonored game, if there ever is one, will happen in a different period of history. Also, assumedly, the next one will happen on another Imperial island, like Morley or Tyvia, or in Pandyssia. None of the existing characters will show up in a new game. Well, at least that cleans the slate for them to do something new and interesting with it.

 

I got excited back in 2010 when it was announced they were putting out a remake of Goldeneye, so excited I pre-ordered it and got home to find it wasn't at all what I was hoping for. Rather than a remastered or updated version of the classic game it was like there had been a remake of the movie Goldeneye starring Daniel Craig instead of Brosnan then there was a video game adaption. It was kind of interesting to see a different take on the movie but it didn't do anything for my Goldeneye 64 nostalgia since there was no resemblance besides both being FPS games with a roughly similar plot. Anyway now they do finally have the classic game available to play on XBOX and I've been enjoying it a lot, it's still a fun game.

 

Playing Genshin Impact, such addicited game, there few days I get a break. Love some of the characters even love few before I play the game. The game is fun but also can be frusrated. Wanted to get some characters but always chance unable to get any. I don't need to pay anything but there things make you want pay on things.

 

I haven't played it in a couple of years and there's been some DLC released but I wanted to play through the regular campaign again to refamiliarize myself with the story and the controls but I'm pretty rusty and can't hit the broad side of a barn. Still really fun though.

 

Can't recall the creature's name at the moment, but you must fire the bullet into its mouth to kill it... always had problems with that... lots a fun once you get the hang of it.

 

That's the handsome Cacodemon



You have to shoot a grenade down it's gullet which stuns it then you can get a Glory Kill on it.

 

This summer starting in June im goign to be busy with

Metroid Prime 2 fort my Gamecube
Zelda Skyward Sword for my switch lite
Mortal Kombat X for Playstation 4
Resident Evil 5 for my Switch Lite
and Ni No Kuni II for my Switch Lite

 

State Of Decay 2. Been hooked on that for quite a while.
Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Discovered how insane that is.

RE4 remake. Nuff said.

In the last 24 hours I've just been watching reactions to Star Wars Outlaws. God I hope it lives up to it's promise.

 

Running through a grandmaster run with purity (so, very weird playthrough) in Jedi Survivor.

Started a new sandbox campaign in Mount & Blade Bannerlord.

Started my first playthrough since my original at launch of the GOTG Telltale game.

 

Batman: Arkham Knight
Mortal Kombat 11
Street Fighter VI

 

Starfield.

I think I'm in love.