Nintendo

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Haven't had a whole lot of time to practice, but I'm working on charge partitioning. Managed to get double ball a few times in a match.

Them's Fightin' Herds - Hopped on commentary for Glue Cup 2v2 this week. Need to make more time to actually start playing again.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - After getting demoted to Expert I went on an even worse losing streak for a bit, but I seem to be clawing my way back now. It's just sample size, or so I keep telling myself.

Splatoon 3 - Oh boy, I gotta play Turf War all weekend. Yaaaaay.

Finished The Messenger!

My summary of this game is "amazing side scroller in the first half, mediocre metroidvania in the second half". Which is kinda surprising because I absolutely love metroidvanias and was looking forward to see how that part of the game was going to be, but I felt it lacked most of the things that make that genre fun.

Finished The Messenger - Picnic Panic!

Also decided to clear the DLC before moving on, which was fun but quite short. But I can't complain since it was free.

Playing Hatsumira: From the Future Undying!

Chapter 2 introduces the mermaid tribe and the next heroine Meltyna, and in Chapter 3 we meet the dwarves, the undead tribe (!) and the final heroine Reah. This is followed by a very short Chapter 4, after which the game forces us into Yukikaze's route.

He route deals with final battle against the Evil Empire™ and it was a fun and action packed route, but there's one thing that really bothered me: There's zero appearances of the other heroines. At least you get to see Aliah's side of the final battle when you play her route, wonder if the same will happen on the other two.

Currently around halfway into Meltyna's route with 86% total progress and expecting to finish this one over the weekend.

@slimerancher ,

hopefully finishing Darksiders 2.

I have started my playthrough of Baten Kaitos Origins. I did lose my first three hours of gameplay because I had an apparently rare glitch that resets the card collection when you turn off the game and the only way to fix it is a specific save/load setup done on a brand new file. It's weird finally playing the sequel to a game I know so well for the first time. It almost feels like a Romhack since it looks almost identical.

The differences do come in fast and hard when it comes to combat though and I have to say I am not happy with it. What made combat in the first game so exciting was the split-second decision you had to make. Do you take the risk and chase that straight or do you play it safe and start forming pairs with the cards you already used? In the sequel, every card has a predetermined role in the one combo you are able to play and you do that over and over again. On top of that, it's not as strictly turn-based anymore. Combat keeps going while you're setting up your own turn and once I had a full party of three characters, I no longer see 90% of combat even happening. I sometimes notice one of my characters being poisoned and I don't even know which enemy did that. I'll give it to the game that combat gets fast paced a lot earlier than in the first game, where combat is honestly quite boring for the first 10 hours, but it's just such a mess. And it doesn't help that all three characters have to share the same deck!

Meanwhile, I'm about 90% done with Tomb Raider (2013). It's shorter than I thought, but it's nice to play something that doesn't drag its feet all the time. It's got all the doodad-collecting I need and you can get all of it in 20 hours, as opposed to other games where it takes 200 hours to realize you don't actually care about getting everything.

Overall, I like the game. It doesn't stand out (anymore?) but it also doesn't really do anything wrong. It does get unintentionally funny how Lara keeps taking the worst falls and horrific injuries and just walks them off. The percentage of voice acting that is just 'pained grunts' has to be unusually high! It's a shame the game has multiplayer achievements though. I like completing games, but when I can't get all achievements, I can't care about any of them.

Usually I have more time to get in the mood for a new game, now I'll have to actually look for something.

The Grand Splatfest started in Splatoon 3, so it's defo the only game I'm playing this weekend X)