Nintendo

Fire Emblem for Famicom (the North American release for Switch). I like the series, but this is the first time playing the original. It's surprising how little the core gameplay loop has evolved in that time, but it started off great.

Grand Theft Auto for DOS. I went in with the idea of finishing the original game, but I'm not sure how long I'll keep it up. It really hasn't aged well. When I played it back in the day I just screwed around for half an hour at a time, which I think is probably what most people did.

Your character and every vehicle control like tanks, the camera zoom is bad, the cars are nearly impossible to control at high speeds (never mind the motorcycles), it's incredibly difficult to accurately aim, there are no characters to speak of, the timers are out of control, the directions are all "as the crow flies," and (perhaps as a result) the cities are often frustrating to navigate.

Puyo Puyo Champions - help me I'm relapsing

Riichi Mahjong - mahjong causes great damage to the human spirit without a single benefit

Blue Revolver: Double Action - This has been sitting in my Steam library and I saw it got a big update. Learning how to play a shmup is on my bucket list, but so far I cannot get any further than stage 4 on the lowest difficulty. Very fun though, and banger OST.

Also went down to Round 1 earlier this week, haven't been in years. Played a few rounds of Wacca, Chunithm, Arcana Heart, and Chaos Code.

I'm starting to get back in the groove after early November has put me in absolutely no mood to be playing anything.

In Echoes of Wisdom, I've beaten the Lava and Ice dungeons. There have been a lot of puzzles lately I feel like I'm solving with jank more than anything. If it works it works, but it doesn't feel as satisfying as BotW/TotK in that regard. There are just too many puzzle pieces in my repertoire. I did learn to hold enemies in place while my summons beat them up. I regularly forget to use Tri at all, let alone offensively!

Today, I explored the Wildlands in Lightning Returns a bit. The size of the area intimidated me at first, but the enemies in the forest give enough EP to let me keep time frozen for as long as I'm there, making this the most relaxed I've ever been in this game.

I have beaten Snowboard Kids and have moved on to Snowboard Kids 2. I've never played the sequel before and while some aspects feel wrong, it's still pretty good. It's a lot easier though, I've already made it to the final race after beating everything before usually first try, sometimes second. The endgame of the first game looked a lot different in that regard! The final one seems to be the one to stump me though, Damien is fast as hell! I've only tried once so far, but I think this one will take a while.

Finished Ys X: Nordics!

Not as good as Ys 8, but a massive improvement over Ys 9. Karja is a fantastic character, probably my favorite Ys heroine alongside Dana, and her sibling-like relationship with Adol was great. I know the odds are low but I'm really hoping we'll have her show up again in a future entry.

The new engine was a huge improvement for Switch players, unlike the previous game there was no point in this one where I considered performance a problem. But I do have a lot of criticism for the "ocean exploration" part of the game - not only there's annoying gameplay issues with the speed and clunkiness of the boat, but it also looks very dated visually.

But overall this was a great game that I can definitely recommend despite some things that could have used a bit more polish.

Oh, and since @[email protected] asked about it: I got the "all sidequests" achivement by simply exploring the whole map and paying attention to the quest markers.

Playing If My Heart Had Wings!

Picked up this VN from my backlog as my next main game. It's a slice-of-life story about a group of friends who decide to revive their school's "Soaring Club" and try to build a glider and go flying.

Having a main heroine in a wheelchair is interesting, and I really like how the MC is trying to break some of the preconceptions other cast members have about her disability. Another small detail I like is the appearance of the city, a nice mix of old-school buildings like the dorm the MC lives with more modern, maybe even slightly futuristic buildings in the downtown parts.

Overall this was a good start and I'm interested in seeing where this one goes.

Playing Qualia: The Path of Promise!

I had this one in my wishlist for a while, but I was unsure if I wanted to pick it up or not. I'm a massive sci-fi fun and can enjoy almost anything with these themes, but most images you'll find for this game is of a big-boobs maid android, which made me suspect the sci-fi parts would be just a thin background. But in the end a sale combined with some small but promising spoilers I read convinced me to give it a shot.

I don't usually play two VNs in parallel, but this one is supposed to be a fairly short kinetic VN so I can probably make it work.

Playing Vampire Survivors!

Still playing this as a side-game, and still unlocking more weapons/stages/characters.

Wargame red dragon, trying a pre 1980s eastern block motorised deck