I’ve been continuing Pokemon X.

I also decided to give Final Fantasy VII Rebirth another chance, this time going only for the story. It’s a much better game this way even if it still feels a bit bloated. It does feel wrong tho to just ignore most of the map, even if I know it’s empty.

I was trying to finish the post Endwalker quests in Final Fantasy XIV to get to Dawntrail, but I’m not really feeling it. I’m probably burnt out on the game due to playing it for 500 hours last year.

I restarted “Edna and Harvey: The Breakout”. Partly because I wanted to play it for a long time and partly because my pc is too weak for bigger stuff. Already started it some years ago, but took a break from the game which was a bit too long to get into it again. So now I finally restarted and am verry happy with it. The dialogues and the design is just fun. Also it is quite relaxing.

All the Game Awards chatter and the current sale made me take the plunge on Clair Obscur" Expedition 33 and I’m so glad I did. Only ~8h in or so but it is such a vibrant, wild world to explore and it makes me think of the classic JRPGs I played growing up. The introduction of more active battling mechanics like parrying and dodging adds a level of complexity to the combat that I enjoy, even if I cannot for the life of me get the parry timing right.

Steam Deck took a couple minor tweaks to make it look good and the hair effects still are a bit janky (eg. Gustave’s hair will light up from a light source making it look grey). The soundtrack is phenomenal and was the first time in a long time that I’ve wanted to buy a game soundtrack (this battle track in one of the early areas cemented this as something special to me).

Super worth it and excited to dive in deep on this one.

Diablo 4 season 11

Finally “done” with World of Warcraft: Legion Remix. The final phase is a complete joke and let down. Blizzard in their generosity added two quests and one new world boss. The speed with which your character gains power is also increased, but there is still no account-wide power-sharing, so you’d still have to grind for dozens of hours on each character if you want to get to the part where you’re completely overpowered.

My sub still runs for three weeks or something, so I might check in here and there, like for the Christmas event, but otherwise no WoW for me for a while.

Now that I’m free, I finally continued with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, after a two-month break. I stopped near the end of Act 1, just after getting a fourth party member. Now I’m in Act 2, the world has opened up a bit more, so of course I gotta explore everywhere you’re not supposed to go yet, so main story progress has been slow.

The game has some small annoyances, that make you question what the devs where thinking, like the newly added option to give up in combat (so you can restart the fight), but it’s not a straight reset, you go through a jingle and animation, and then the game asks you if you want to retry. Why not just retry immediately. Selecting no boots you to the main menu, but there’s already a separate button for that, so the only reason to give up in a fight is to try again.

Then the save situation is kinda ass. The game only has autosaves, no manual saving, but it’s kinda random at times and even straight up lies to you if it says it’s saving the game. Sometimes when you change something in your inventory the game saves, but not every time. I think the game has some internal timer, so it only creates a new save every X seconds. After a fight the game saves, but it creates two save slots that are the same. Usually not a big deal, but I suspect it overwrites your most recent save in the process (because if you do a bunch of fights back-to-back you don’t have a bunch of double saves). What I’m trying to say is, just let me save manually whenever I want, and let me manage my save slots.

I also wish there were some custom map markers available, so I could mark merchants or secrets I can’t get to (or add a stat counter to the area or something that tells you if you’ve “completed” it).

Good game otherwise.