Happy New Year 2021! No resolutions!

random happy new year 2021 imageHappy New Year everyone! I would have written this earlier, but I scalded my hand with hot water >_<. It hurrrrrt! But a little iced water and some salt (folk remedy) kept it from swelling and now I’m fine. Be careful when making tea this year, everyone!

Now then, on to gaming resolutions for 2021. I have none! Zero! Because I didn’t achieve any of the resolutions I set for 2020, so I’m just going to carry those forward to this year. I didn’t play any of the games I spent time One Hour Reviewing either, so I already have several games lined up to play this year. If I somehow make it through all of them before the halfway point of 2021, then I’ll think about setting resolutions.

Come to think of it, I didn’t achieve anything in any aspect of life this year, not just gaming.😂 Personally, professionally, financially, spiritually, everything-ly, you name it, I got nothing done. 2020 is like a giant blank on my resume of life, hahaha. I can’t even remember much of what happened between March and December 2020, it’s very serious.

So my IRL resolution for this year is to at least have something to look back on in January 2022 and say “Okay I got this done, I achieved this thing, I went to that place, etc.” Though with the way the world is now, that’s a tall order. You know what, I think making it to January 2021 is achievement enough, right? 🤣Okay then, I won’t beat myself up any more haha.

Enjoy your new year, everyone! Have lots of fun!

Belated Merry Christmas greetings!

Better late than never: Merry Christmas everyone!

This year I couldn’t go to our annual family Christmas pig-out fest. Not for COVID reasons (it’s not that serious in my area) but for various IRL reasons that required me to stay close to home. My aunt still sent me my share of delicious food and cake, but it’s just not the same, y’know? But compared to a lot of people around the world, I know I’m really blessed so I’m not complaining at all.

Besides, spending Christmas at home with a good game isn’t a bad deal. And failing that, Genshin Impact will do. 😂 I have many other games I could be playing, but I don’t want to play them so what can I do? I already made the decision long ago not to force myself to play games just to have something to blog about.

So more Genshin Impact it is. I ran out of the main story quests. Liyue storyline was just flashy garbage so I don’t have much hope for future storylines. It’s enough if the gameplay is fun. With that, it’s time to get back to strengthening my peeps and finalizing my parties. Enjoy your holidays, everyone!

Genshin Impact AR32 – Hit the resin gate

Trailer image for Genshin 1.2I’ll be playing mainly Genshin Impact and Picross for the rest of the year, so apologies to readers who don’t care about gacha games. Technically I’m also playing a few other games, but none as seriously as these two. I’ve been playing Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsujimura for years and years, but the current raid event is boring so I might sit it out. I dropped the garbage Atelier Online for real a few weeks ago. I’m also mostly retired from Granblue Fantasy, but I log in for the free rolls because hey, free rolls.

On to the Genshin Impact update!

  • After I reached AR29, they allowed to me to continue the story. And such garbage the story is. Instead of continuing the murder mystery investigation, I had to spend hours doing a series of glorified fetch quests, all designed to show off the latest characters Mihoyo is trying to pimp (Childe and Zhongli). It’s only at the end of the quest chain that the story promised to move on… but only once I get to AR35. Haa… This is why nobody should play gacha games for the story.
  • Instead of rushing to AR35, I’m taking the time to level up my characters instead. Raising your Adventurer Rank isn’t necessarily a good thing. It unlocks stories and certain domains (dungeons) but it also makes enemies stronger. If your weapons, artifacts and levels aren’t keeping up, exploration can quickly become a nightmare.
  • That’s why I’ve been focusing on beating bosses and clearing domains to get the materials I need to uncap my characters, weapons and upgrade my artifacts. I’m going in order of weapons -> characters -> artifacts, simply because it’s easiest that way. Stronger weapons make it easier to beat the bosses you need to strengthen your characters. And artifacts take a lot of fodder to level up so I leave them for last.
  • Current party is Traveler (Anemo) at level 51, Xiangling at 50 (gotta get them Jueyun Chilis), Chongyun at 50 (Cryo Regisvine, here I come!). Those three are my regulars, then I rotate in Barbara, Sucrose, Lisa or Amber as needed. I’d love to have a better Electro character but the gacha hasn’t been cooperative. Also I’m mostly saving my gems for a really good banner.

map of dragonspine region in genshinAnd this is where the “resin gate” I mentioned in the title comes in. When I started Genshin Impact, I heard more advanced players complaining about the stamina system, a.k.a. resin, and how everything good is locked behind it. I didn’t get it before because I could get away with ignoring domains, leylines and world bosses. But once your characters get past level 40, you’ll be feeling the pain.

Resin maxes out at 160 and fills at a rate of 1 resin every 8 minutes. Roughly 21 hours for a full refill. Wanna fight a boss? Go right ahead, have fun! But it will cost you 40 resin if you want to get any rewards. 20 resin to run dungeons. 60 resin for weekly bosses. And all these events don’t take very long to do.

It’s fine for now since I still have a lot of exploration left to do in Mondstadt (70% ish) and Liyue (40%) but the time is coming and is already here for many players where they log in once a day, do their daily commissions and use up all their resin in 15 minutes and then log out till the next day. If that happens, it will be the end of Genshin Impact and me, because I’m enjoying the exploration and the battles but not the dungeons and the material grinds. Luckily there’s a new update coming in a few days with a new region called Dragonspine to explore. As long as substantial new areas are released frequently, I think I’ll be playing for a while.

Aight, next update at AR40 unless something super exciting happens. See ya!

Up to AR25 in Genshin Impact

Life never goes the way you expect. I was planning to play Tokyo Xanadu eX+ and some other PC games, all off my laptop. Then my laptop suddenly stopped booting. Won’t respond to all the common fixes. It seems like the hard drive is okay, so there’s a good chance I’ll be able to copy the data off, but until I get round to having it seen to, PC games are out. Next time I should think about backing up not only my important files but also my game savefiles. =_=

Anyway, since my plans were thrown out of the window, I’ve been in a funk (read: sulking) so I’ve been playing Genshin Impact and Picross e8 instead of making new plans. Good old Picross, it won’t betray me. Or at least I’m already used to my 3DS acting up so I won’t feel anything if it decides to go AWOL right when I need it.

Yah so anyway, Genshin Impact update in lieu of anything better to post. Last time I posted, I said I hadn’t achieved anything worthy of note or explored the depths of the game system. Many, many hours later, I’ve done a lot of things, including:

  • Domains – they’re just dungeons with DPS checks where you grind/refuse to grind for artifacts (accessories) and materials to level up your weapons.
  • Explored Liyue and Mondstadt quite thoroughly. At least I’ve touched all the Statues of the Seven and unlocked all the Teleport Waypoints and picked up a ton of Geo and Anemo oculi.
  • Finished the story event in Mondstadt, currently investigating a murder mystery in Liyue (there was another stealth mission, but I just dashed right to the goal, ha). But I can’t go any further because I need to be Adventurer Rank (AR) 29 to continue and I’m capped at AR25 until I do a quest to raise the level.
  • Got the hang of gliding after jumping to my doom way too many times. Unless there’s a windcurrent, you don’t need to jump to glide. Just walk off the edge and immediately press X (PS4 controller). Took me way too long to figure that out.
  • Ignored all limited time events because they sound like a hassle. And the rewards are an insult. There’s a delivery event with a daily reward of 60 primogems. 60. When you need 160 for a single pull. Ha. Bite me, Mihoyo.

After playing so much more than before, I’ve gotten used to the battle system. It’s still a bit messy, but in a fun-ish kind of way. Definitely starting to grow on me, especially when I trigger useful elemental reactions. I especially enjoy using Barbara to wet enemies and then freezing them with Kaeya.

The level cap at AR25 is a good time to review my parties, weapons and artifacts so I can tackle tougher domains and events. I don’t have any gacha characters except Chongyun and Sucrose, which is a bit sad, but I’ll do my best with what I have while stockpiling Primogems for the next banner. It would be painful to pour all those EXP tomes into free characters who are destined to be tossed aside, but that’s a mobile game for you. Even the current gacha characters will be powercreeped in due time.

My to-do list for the next couple of days (gamewise): raise 3 or 4 characters past level 40, raise their weapons past level 40, give them the best artifacts and level those up as well, then undo the level cap and raise the world level to 2, then do enough sidequests to reach AR29 and continue the story.

Aight, so if you don’t see me for the next two weeks, that’s what I’m working on.

One Hour Review: The Alliance Alive – Charming little game

I ended up playing about an hour and a quarter of The Alliance Alive, because a lot was happening at the hour mark.

Story: 1000 years ago, daemons took over the world. The game world, not the real world, though you might be forgiven for being confused. As a result, the sky has been purple ever since. The main character is Galil, an adventurer, and he has a childhood friend named Azura who is convinced that the sky used to be blue. When they hear of a forbidden exhibit at a museum with a painting of the blue sky, Azura is determined to sneak in and see it one way or another.

And they did see it… for all of 10 seconds. I had to spend a lot of time turning statues and playing with lights and shadows to get that far. If The Alliance Alive is going to be that puzzle-heavy, I’ll play with a FAQ in hand to skip all the hassle. And I will quit if it gets too tedious.

But anyway, I did all that and Galil and Azura saw the very nice painting. But then they got caught by a powerful daemon. At the end of an unwinnable battle, Azura lost her eyesight and her mother’s memento sword. Galil lost nothing, which is good because he wasn’t to blame here. To be honest, Azura totally deserved that and I’m not enthused about spending the rest of the game helping her recover. I’m sick of games with pushy characters who force others to do dumb/illegal/dangerous stunts and then walk away without a scratch. This time Azura got a just punishment for her recklessness, and the schadenfreude is so delicious that I want to pretend the game ended here.

Combat, graphics, music, etc: The overworld music is horrible. It’s just noisy crackling. Unless it’s deliberate and things will change as the world is liberated from the daemons. The graphics are nothing special, I already mentioned that I’m not crazy about the noseless footless character designs because they remind me of games I don’t like.

Combat is fun, in the usual Saga-inspired kind of way. Instead of EXP and level ups, you get random stat boosts and awaken new skills as you fight. The harder the enemy, the more likely you are to get boosts and skills, which encourages you to constantly seek out strongest foes. I wouldn’t mind fighting those super-strong water devils and forest spiders right now, once I figure out a way to escape successfully.

Will I keep playing The Alliance Alive? I don’t see why not. It’s not mind-blowing or anything, but it’s very solid so far. I liked roaming around the museum checking out the funny paintings, I like the random stat-earning system (it’s like gacha before there was gacha), I liked watching Azura get her just desserts. It also seems fairly short – I have no evidence of this, but it just feels short – so I hope to be done so. And if I get tired, I’ll just drop it.

Play order of games based on One Hour reviews

If you recall, the point of the One Hour Review system was to grab a bunch of games, try them all out and then play them in order of quality and enjoyability. With the completion of The Alliance Alive, I’ve played all the games from the first batch, minus The Lost Child, which doesn’t work on the PSTV, and Final Fantasy XIII, which I have already played several hours of before and am not prepared to touch again right now.

The order of games I’ll play will be Tokyo Xanadu eX+ → The Alliance Alive → Atelier Lulua → Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment → [lots of other things] → Atelier Lydie & Scumbag. To be honest I don’t feel very strongly about any of these games, so I’m not committed to finishing them. I’ll just give them all a proper chance in turn and if finishing happens, fine. If not, fine. Then we’ll start afresh with another batch. Let’s see how it works out.