February certainly felt like a busy month. I think part of it was because of all the Valentine’s events going on in online games. The other part was because despite my best intentions I ended up going into “MUST PLAY ALL THE GAMES!” mode near the end of the month.
That kind of crazy feeling might be settling down though and I might be getting back to a more manageable number of games to play. On the other hand this month has the release of a pretty good DLC for Stellaris and I believe Animal Crossing: New Horizons as well. Maybe even other games I am forgetting about. All of those might throw me into “MUST PLAY ALL THE GAMES!” territory again.
Oh, well. I will worry about that bridge when I have to cross it. For now these are the games I’ve been playing:
Valkyria Chronicles
After finishing The Witcher I was craving for a traditional JRPG to play. Granted, Valkyria Chronicles is far from being a traditional one but it was another game I’ve been meaning to finish forever. A friend of mine has been playing the game too so her sharing of screenshots of the game just added fuel to my desire to play it.
Since I remembered very little about the game I’ve decided to restart it from scratch and been making some progress on it. I am still pretty early on in the game, have just started on Chapter 5.
Persona 5
I decided it was time to get back to my second playthrough, just to see if I can get that last trophy. I don’t know if I will be able to finish the game before Persona 5 the Royal releases or even the trophy itself but if not that is fine. Most likely I won’t be playing it so soon anyway.
In this playthrough I just finished the 5th palace and I am now dealing with the consequences of it.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
I was finally able to return to this game after making my peace with the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to recruit all the students in my first playthrough. In fact I was even prepared to finish it without recruiting any student from the other houses. But much to my surprise I was able to recruit almost all of them. There might still be a few that I won’t be able to and that is okay.
Right now I am in Chapter 10, I believe, slowly making my way to the Time Skip. I have some theories about how the plot will unfold and they all terrify me as it means that no matter what I do it will mean having to fight someone I care about.
Stellaris
This is where the “PLAY ALL THE GAMES!” mode started. As I mentioned earlier this month should have the release of Stellaris new DLC, Federations. I was trying to be strong and resist playing the game but reading the Developer’s Diaries and watching them stream the new DLC broke my will.
So, I decided to play with something that I was curious about that wouldn’t make much sense with the DLC. Since 2/3 of Federations will be all about diplomacy I decided to play something where diplomacy doesn’t matter, a Zerg-like species. Seriously, when you have an hive-mind alien species where everything else is food there is just no grounds for any kind of talk.
My plan was to play in a small galaxy at the easiest difficult so I could hopefully finish it before Federations released. Unfortunately I forgot a lot about the game, made some terrible mistakes and my empire became a huge sprawl which left me in constant debt and even have a food shortage. I don’t know if I can recover from this so I am pretty much scrapping this game. Still it was an interesting experiment while it lasted.
The Witcher 2
Remember when I said I wasn’t going to play this game after just finishing The Witcher? Yeah, I lied.
I just got too curious about The Witcher 2 and decided I might as well sate my curiosity. It was a good decision too because this game is so much better in every way than its predecessor. I was honestly very surprised too, because all I expected was just a better combat, better graphics and maybe a better inventory too. But they feel like completely different generations of games, which is quite shocking considering that the first Witcher was released on 2007, while this one was released on 2011.
I have no idea where they got the money for such a vastly superior game in such a short amount of time. I don’t think the first Witcher game was such a vast success, nor do I think they were earning that much just from GOG.com. Whatever their secret was it paid off. The Witcher 2 is an excellent game.
Another good surprise was that I was able to import my save from the first game. I thought it would only import my story decisions but it also imported my gear which was a quite nice way to start the game. Of course, because this is a game that gear soon got outdated by better stuff. Still, it was nice to see all my effort to get those items wasn’t thrown out of the window with the beginning of a new game.
My only nitpicks are with some systems which I haven’t quite grasped yet, like the new crafting system. Dice Poker also feels more annoying now than in the first game which I thought was impossible. Also their use of the world plough instead of the F word feels a bit odd but it doesn’t particularly bother me.
Anyway, I am still doing some side quests in the first chapter and having a blast. 🙂
Fate Grand Order
Fate Grand Order was the one that probably contributed the most to make this month feel busy for me. All because of events too!
The first one was the Valentine’s Day event. It was just stupidly grind, to the point of making me question why I play this game. The only good thing I can say about it besides the story, is that it made Semiramis an interesting character. Granted that wasn’t that hard since Fate Apocrypha was really bad with almost all of its characters, specially the ones that got close to Sieg, aka Cardboard-kun.
Then as soon as the Valentine’s Day event ended the Garden of Sinners event started. This one was a collaboration with another game from the same company that made Fate/Stay Night. I think they might even share the same universe as well but not too sure about that.
Unlike the Valentine’s Event this one was a LOT easier. Still felt a bit of a slog though because the best strategy to grind the event’s drops was to use a Craft Essence to double the number of mobs.
We also got a welfare servant from it, Ryougi Shiki (Assassin). From what I hear she is pretty good too, making her a nice addition to my team.
I think we’ll have a couple weeks without anything major going on then a new story should start. It will be nice to go back to normal, regular grind for a while.
Honorable Mentions: Azur Lane, Dead by Daylight, The Witcher (Finished), Final Fantasy XIV (Valentione’s Day event)