Probably DK.

Waiting patiently for more games to release

I am back on the Balatro kick, playing at least a few runs a day now. I recently reached the final stake on the final deck, so I guess I’m one away from “completing” the game. That’s not really how that works.

I arrived at a new town in Octopath Traveler Champions of the Continent for the first time in what feels like years. Stalling on the main story for all of 2024 (and most of 2025) didn’t kill my love of the game luckily. And now I’m in a new chapter with new locations and it feels like the story is directly reflecting what Octopath Traveler 0 might be.

Still on Baten Kaitos! Currently progressing with a snails pace due to other stuff getting in the way.

I’m still heavily invested in the game, however, a few cracks in its systems start to show.

For starter, you only ever use 3 characters at a time. Each with their own deck. Setting them up and planning their decks feels like too much investment to ever switch them up, which means the other 3 won’t ever get used. Even worse, unused characters only get half EXP.

Speaking of EXP, there’s a system in place where you just collect it. To actually level up, you need to visit a church. And you can level up multiple times at once! Now, here’s the kicker: The more level you gain at once, the more stats you get as a bonus! (Up to 10 levels.) That’s fun in theory, but if you’ve learned anything about me by reading these posts, you can probably guess that I never a batch with less than 10 levels.

There’s also a class level, which you can increase by finding certain items for each character. They often get dropped by bosses. Using them increases the cards you can put in your deck, the cards you can hold in your hand, and how many you can play per turn. As a trade-off, your timer to actually play your cards in a turn decreases. Here’s a second crack: The built-in crafting system is still fun, but you don’t have much time to think about it while actually fighting. Even worse, they waste a turn. Even if you can play 6 cards, the crafting combo is only activated if you play exactly the cards mentioned and no others. Also, since your deck can’t have fewer cards than your actual maximum amount, you need to stall until you draw all combo pieces or fill your entire deck with otherwise useless cards.

This, combined with increasingly convoluted combos, leads to the crafting system being sidelined for the most part. I used to craft stuff organically while crawling through dungeons, now it only happens when I start an encounter with the specific goal to craft. The most convoluted combo I’ve seen yet involves 4 items, three of which you have to craft themselves beforehand. A doll, a monkey statue, a dog statue and a pheasant statue. Playing them all, as a reference to the legend of Momotaro, creates a treasure you sell for a lot of money.

I’m really enjoying DK. Reminds me of the old Hulk game.

I play Trails into Reverie, i’m quite far at the end. but i doubt it’s enough to finish it.

Playing Witch on the Holy Night!

Minimal progress this week, hoping to go back to it during the weekend.

Playing CrossCode!

Reached Chapter 6.

I love the puzzles, in particular the temples which remind me of old PS1 RPGs like Wild Arms. They can get really tricky too, there was a couple spots where I ended up stuck and had to take a look at a guide. But overall they are my favorite parts of the game.

Combat is fun and fast paced, though I feel the amount of damage you take from enemies is way too high for a game where battles can get really chaotic. I’m having a much harder time against groups of regular mobs than bosses, mainly because there’s too much going on on the screen and I often don’t even notice how much damage I’m taking, or get hit with potshots coming from the edges of the screen while focusing on a bigger enemy.

The plataforming parts definitely suck. They’re finicky, you’ll miss jumps you should have suceeded from time to time, walking on ledges is a pain, but the biggest problem is that the 2D graphics don’t do a really good job at showing height - so, so many moments where you go “sure, I can obviously jump in that direction” but it’s actually on a different height. Also, some plataforming puzzles require you to go through 3+ screens and missing a single jump means a lot of wasted time.

I also played a bit of the Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter Demo and was very impressed with it - it looks and plays good, and feels like it preserves most of the charm of the original. But I’m going to keep this one on the backlog until the full game is out since I’m planning on replaying it.