What are you playing this weekend? 2025-05-23

Finished Xenoblade X!

The extra content from the DE went into a very different direction than I expected. It was cool having a new area to explore, though not having the minimap available during that part sucked.

About the final battle... not much to comment because Ares 90 did its thing and one-shotted the boss. 😆

Also, I seriously can't believe that they didn't give you a certain character back even as post-game bonus.

Playing Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

Not sure it was a good idea to start another big open-world JRPG after 90h of Xenoblade X, but here we are.

Yumia is a cutie, and it's pissing me off seeing some of the NPCs discriminating against her due to alchemy having a bad name in this world. Which is also a surprising plot point since these games tend to be all positive and wholesome, though I don't imagine this negativity will last long.

I'm still early in the game (just cleared the lighthouse) so I'll refer to my comments from the the demo for more impressions.

Street of Rage 4 is so good! I finished it a bunch of times and still find it fun to play. Last week we did a run online with my cousin, we got up to the last boss and didn't finish it, but we'll pick up where we left off next time.

I've been playing Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. I had started it way back when it came out, but started a new save file. I'm hyped about Age of Imprisonment, it'll hopefully look great and have no performance issues on the Switch 2. Not sure if I'm going to finish it, I finished the first one on Wii U and then the Definitive Edition on Switch (the adventure and other things, too much content to 100%!). I'm enjoying it, but mostly thinking how good it'd be on better hardware 😅

I’ve gone back in time. Finally playing Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. I skipped this franchise when I was younger because I didn’t think it looked as cool as Legend of the Seven Stars. The battle mechanics are actually better than that game. Hopefully I’ll get to all of the games.

Finished my trading for the school year, so it has been a busy gaming weekend. Started Friday night with some Xenoblade Chronicles X. I finally passed level 50, so I treated myself to three new level 50 skells. I should probably watch some class videos to better understand the systems involved, but for now, I’m just finishing some affinity missions and basic missions before starting chapter 12. I was surprised by the chapter requirements:

I headed over to my friend’s place for board games yesterday. I played Jaipur which is most notable because I hadn’t played it since March 2nd, 2017 as my friend and I were waiting to buy the Nintendo Switch at a midnight launch. That was my first win of the day.

We played Penguin Party, a simple shedding game where placing penguins cards in a pyramid shape leads to more limited placement possibilities (ending with my elimination in all four rounds).

We broke out the massive game On Mars, spent a good hour learning it, another forty-five struggling to finish the first turn just to prove to ourselves that we understood the rules, then put it away since another player had arrived and On Mars only allowed for four players.

With five, we played The Crew, one of my recent favorites. It is a trick-taking game like Spades, but it is cooperative. Each round has missions (like one player can’t take any tricks or one player must take all of the threes in each suit by the end of the round). In all, we played sixteen rounds with ten wins, six losses. Hooray! (We discussed a new game that is out called “The Gang” where you are cooperatively playing Texas Hold-Em. I look forward to trying it one day, maybe at Dice Tower East this July).

We played Quacks of Quedlinburg, a bag-building, push your luck game. I played the most conservatively I’ve ever played in the game and got a well-deserved last place. I think that game is wonderful, too.

We ended the day with Cabo. I managed to pull off a final round Kamikaze, giving everyone fifty points and taking the win by forty-five in all. I may never play so lucky a game of Cabo again!

Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent has been draining my battery as usual. I spent four hours playing through story content this morning! I’m having a blast running into Octopath Traveler II characters and remembering why I prefer the mobile game (parties of eight make so much more sense in a game called Octopath!).