Super duper late again on responding but first, happy belated Ring day!

I hope things have improved on your end since we last spoke, and if not I hope they do get better soon for you. As for my own situation we chose to continue living in the home we're in now but due to a decline in my granny's condition we ended up having to place her in a care facility. She's healthy and stays busy there though so that's a big plus. We're sticking to living in the place we're in now too, but that could change down the road.

Just saw you have the Zero Escape series up on your list and can't recommend the series enough. I've gotta finish it myself but 999 was very good and the second game I got a bit through before I derped and fell off on progressing lol.

Anywho it's pretty late here so happy Tuesday and happy gaming!

Glad I managed to get online today and be able to wish you a happy Ring Day!

I know it's been a while now, but I am still really happy that you had finished Xenogears, and I don't blame you for needing a guide at the time (I definitely did, it's a bit obtuse sometimes). Did you ever have a chance to look at the Perfect Works? I'm on a bit of a JRPG dry spell right now, but I still definitely need to get back to Xenoblade 2 eventually. Time has been getting more and more difficult to manage fitting video games into, lately.

Hope your year has been going smoothly! I'm trying to do new things and getting out of the house more (whether I like it or not), but I'm excited for this new Backloggery update and hoping it will bring me back more.

10 more years

Here's to another 10 years!

Ohhh, happy ring day! 10 years!

I’m so sorry I’ve took so long to reply! Things have become a little hectic but it’s getting better now.

I bet you do still dream about them, I have dreamt about my dad, maybe once or twice. One dream I had was we were golfing together - my dad loved golfing. It was a nice dream but sad too. Yes you just have to keep going.

I’m sure your family do care and love you.

Thanks! How is dragon quest VII? I’ve yet to play it but I’ve heard it’s very long. Im looking forward to playing Xenogears. I like it a lot more than I did as a child, well I liked it as a child but I didn’t really understand the junction system or Triple Triad but now I find it very simple - plus I like how you can change how strong you are with junctioning. I’m actually liking some of the characters more now, I didn’t use to like Rinoa that much as a child but now I find her alright. I’ve not completed it yet so maybe some opinions things will change.

I'm so sorry, I just discovered that I must not have posted my last reply to you. I did it at the same time I did another reply, I must've closed the tab without hitting post. I feel terrible!

I will send a proper reply in the next couple of days, but in the meantime I'm really sorry I haven't replied in so long because of my screwing up.

My guess is that it's the devs way of justifying the worse endings, if the protagonist doesn't think too highly of himself then he can sacrifice himself for everyone without worries. It's just funny because to use the highest tier of magic you do need the dragon tear to be at max level, so that means that even if you have Ryu learn them, he will never be able to use them.

Honestly? I think starting with 3 or 4 would be a better choice unless you really don't mind older games. The first two really are just capcom's take on dragon quest, so it's full of grind, backtracking, and just mild inconveniences everywhere.

I don't mind answering either, the social aspect of backloggery is what I like most about it so I enjoy the chill back and forth. To the point that sometimes I just wish this looked more like something like anilist, with a proper timeline full of everyone's updates, and you can reply at them. The remake does have something like that, but it's kinda hidden on the multitap tab instead of being the focus.

I haven't played all of them yet, but I've always been somewhat fond of the series, like the kind of comfort game you play when you need some chill even if you know they're not that good. If I had to sum it up, I'd say this series is the epitome of misfortune. The first 2 games have some terrible translations, mainly due to the character limit in the games. The fifth game is highly experimental, it changes a lot of things that some people love, some hate, but the unfortunate thing here is that it was the last breath of fire game for more than a decade... just to have the 6th game being a browser game that everyone hated and lasted only a year.

The games themselves are very standard RPGs, the unique thing about them is that the characters in the series share names and have similar appareances and races. The protagonist is always a boy called Ryu with blue hair and related to dragons, the main female lead is called Nina and she's usually a winged girl with blonde hair, etc. They're really just your standard RPG fare though, an evil is fucking up the world, and the protagonist fights against it as the chosen dragon, more or less. It feels less of a choice and more like fate most of the time, with the protagonist just fighting for his friends and family.

The encounter rate is somewhat high too, which is a bit annoying, and it's the type of story in which everyone matures through tragedy, often with whole cities razed to the ground. I think it's a series that's well liked in Japan in general, so it just seems like a shame and just capcom's awful mismanagement as always.

This one has a funny mechanic in which characters relevant to the story have a dragon stone appearing besides their dialogue boxes, and it reflects their opinion of the MC by the color it takes. Fighting along them, or choosing the correct choices, make them like you more and makes them able to learn specific skills and stuff. It's funny because it is not restricted to your allies, some charas that are clearly bad have them too and you see the affinity decrease with each action they take because they go from a lack of trust to pure hate. As a side note, the MC's color is always orange no matter what, which is the color of neutral. Seems the mc doesn't hold a especially strong opinion of himself, lol.

999 DETECTED

I've only beaten Mega Man 1&2, and played and enjoyed (but not beaten) the ZX DS spin offs. I've always been more interested in the spin offs than the main games because they all look hella fun, but I've never got to them, so this is probably a good time to play them in release order since they're not too long and I don't want to get obsessed with games right now.

So far it's been good? The added dialogue is really appreciated, although the game feels both easier and clunkier, with the controls not being too responsive, but the enemies are not as aggressive as well. The platforming is still ruthless though, so that kinda sucks.

That being said, it feels like a product of its time, it has all this extra stuff to replay it a lot that I feel I simply won't appreciate due to not replaying games in general it probably made some kids happy to have something to play over and over though.

i done did that Rise Of Kong review i've talked about, oddly i didn't had time to cut it down further, but here it is [Link]

Just finished Xenoblade Chronicles DE for the first time. What a game! I can totally see why you like this franchise. I'm more of a Xenogears/saga fan, but Xenoblade did not disapoint me!

I feel the family issues on a spiritual level.. even more so after the last 3 weeks or so. Good god, I've seen so stressed it isn't funny. But I do hope that things take a turn for the better for you, and that your family stops treating you like you can just flip your mental stuff on and off, it simply doesn't work that way. I won't go too deep into my own situation but we're seriously considering selling our place, putting granny somewhere she'll be cared for and finding a home that's more up to date and requires less $$ to fix.

MMX7 is uh.. well.. lol. It's a very special game, let's put it that way. I know we discussed how crappy the X series gets the further along you get but then I played X7 and was like and some of those boss designs.. lmao. No please. I've only got X8 to beat now and I'm wondering how that's gonna play out.

Hope your week has been going well, the last few have been a struggle for me personally but I hope we'll both get through the craziness that is life.

I hate the character limit

tl;dr they're usually games with a focus on their characters instead of an overall story, with the appeal of having a pretty complex system of making items that usually utterly breaks any resemblance of balance the game could have, so this usually means that if the characters are interesting I love them, if they're flanderized and a one trick pony I hate them. Which seems to be the exact opposite reaction the fanbase has for whatever reason.

and I really, really feel I undersold how good the music is so here are a bunch of really good tracks I like:

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I'd better stop I feel I could do this all day