Xenoblade Chronicles 3 on hold while I play Counterside and Genshin Impact

Ashera who would be mai waifu if this was a waifu game

What the title said. I haven’t dropped Xenoblade Chronicles 3, I’ve just been too busy with real life stuff to really get stuck in. But somehow I can always make time for casual games and gacha games, because they’re just designed with the busy person in mind. Of course they’re designed to steal the time of the busy person, but the important thing is you can get in and get your fix and get out in 15-20 minutes or less, whereas I have to play at least an hour of XC3 to feel like I’ve really done anything. Of course by the time you’re done spending 15-20 minutes on four different gacha games, that hour will have already elapsed, but to quote a famous mangaka, I don’t think about that and neither should you.

Doesn’t hurt that I already can’t remember what I was last doing in XC3… Saving… something? Oh yeah, I was doing sidequests instead of going to… that place… to stop… that guy. Ah yeah… That game is great for the exploration, and I enjoy the sidequests, but the rest of it… Anyway, I’m still busy with work until mid-October at the earliest, but I’ll try to make time on the weekends to finish Xenoblade 3 so I can play other things on my Switch. I’m almost out of Picross games too, S8 when?

Genshin Impact, I just popped in for the anniversary rewards. And I hadn’t logged in for a while so they gave me some returner bonuses to keep me logging in. This is like the 4th or 5th time they’ve given me this stuff, you’d think they would just stop bothering but hey, free primos without having to do tedious events, yay. While I’m at it I’m progressing the archon quest so I don’t have to tiptoe around spoilers. And I’d like to unlock all the waypoints so I can zoom around the map easily, but man, Sumeru is HUGE. It’s going to take days to unlock everything, which I don’t have the energy for, so for now I’ll focus on this archon quest thing. Nahida is so cute, can’t wait to pull her.

Counterside – Yet another gacha game. I heard there were free pulls and that the game isn’t all “girls girls girls girls girls” but actually has useful and relevant male characters, so I gave it a try. Today is my… fourth? fifth day? I’m not too impressed with the combat, which I just auto 90% of the time, but the story is pretty interesting and the translation/localization is very well done.

Good translation is important. Don’t let anyone bamboozle you with “Just be grateful you’re getting to play it” crap. How the story reads has a big effect on how it is received. Bad translation is a waste of money and time and an insult to everyone involved. I felt that anew when I played the latest event in Love Nikki. The game is notorious for its slipshod translations, but this time they got someone competent to do the Flying Bird story translations. The result was like night and day – the event stories were actually interesting, easy to follow and even moving, in Neva and Shade’s cases. I almost wondered if I was playing a different game by accident.

But back to Counterside. I’m enjoying it apart from the fact that it crashes every five or ten minutes. Every game on my phone crashes every five to ten minutes, actually. I’d like a new phone, but it runs everything else just fine and isn’t that old, so I can’t justify an expensive new phone just for gacha games I might drop soon. Oh yeah, Counterside also crashes and hangs permanently and has to be reinstalled whenever I try to join a raid. Maybe I should get a new phone after all…

Anyway, since I just started CS, I’ll let some time pass first before writing some proper review-ish type thoughts on it. That’s enough of an update from me for one day. Back to work!

100 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 3 – Climb every mountain, ford every stream (spoilers)

IIRC I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 around the 100-hour mark. I killed the boss, did some perfunctory extra exploration and that was it. There was a lot I didn’t like that about that game (and a lot I did), but the biggest was having the map filled in for me already so there were no fun moments trying to fill in every inch of a map and discovering fun new things along the way. I certainly didn’t spend an entire playing session swimming along the edges of an ocean in XC2 like I did in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 last night. Good times. I just need one more dead body to get Colony 15’s affinity up one star so I was scouring the map for corpses. Luckily there was no one around at 2am to hear me muttering “Here, dead body dead body dead body♪” to myself.

What have I been up to in the 45 hours since my last post on XC3? Oh you know, same old, same old. Play the story a little, explore a LOT, play the story a little. I asked for more stages in an earlier post and so far XC3 has delivered in a big way. We’ve had the jungle, we’ve had the ocean, now a big ol’ snowfield just opened up for me to prance about in. This is the way!

I’ve even shelved Genshin Impact‘s Sumeru update for now. I’ll need it to sustain me when I’m done with Xenoblade and start feeling the need… the need to… uh, what rhymes with “need” and means “explore every pixel of a game world”? Anyway, that.

But it’s not all exploring, I have made some progress with the story. Just a little, not too much. I learned my lesson from XC2 where I beat the last boss too quickly and lost the will to play, so the last boss here is gonna be waiting for me for a long, long time. The world and its timeline are a little unclear right now but evidently the baddie has been hanging out in a movie theater for aeons and aeons. Another 100 hours won’t hurt.

NGL that meat looks hella good, whatever it is.

To gather my thoughts on the story further… we got away with our stupid plan from last time. We finally reached the City we were aiming for and my party found out and easily accepted how humanity was supposed to live all along, i.e. growing up, having kids, getting old and dying, instead of living for 10 years and returning to the “Queen.” Who is a robot btw. The real queens are snoozing elsewhere and my current goal is to go wake them up.

Lessee, what else happened… oh yeah, there was another crazy hare-brained scheme of waltzing into the enemy camp. Lots of shenanigans and a couple of skipped cutscenes later, and Mio has a new body! So we don’t need to worry about her croaking for a while. Turns out Alter Noah is “Noah who made some bad choices in the past” and Alter Mio is “Mio who is suffering from Noah’s bad choices” and somehow present Noah and present Mio are in love because they have always been attracted to each other for aeons and aeons of repeated trial and failure to either kill the big bad (Z) or escape their short lifespans.

Oh they’re definitely expecting you. Y’all ain’t slick.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned it before, but I hate the kind of romance where people are in love just because they are “soul mates” or their past selves were in love so somehow they also have to be in love. It’s so lazy, and I absolutely don’t see the romantic attraction between Mio and Noah beyond “the story says so.” They’re more like good off-seer buddies than anything else. I’d buy Lanz x Sena before I bought that (actually I quite like Lanz x Sena). But not Eunie x Taion, no matter how much the writers try to force it. That said, the last thing I’m playing Xenoblade 3 for is romance, so as long as they keep the new areas flowing, I’ll overlook the nonsense.

Oh yeah btw, did you shed a tear or two when Mwamba, Cammuravi or Ethel kicked the bucket? Better get a refund on those tears, because they’re all revived later. …What? It says “spoilers” right in the title of this post. All things considered, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a rather optimistic game, which is why my party can keep carrying out stupid plans without getting flattened to a paste. Or, possibly, in other timelines they did get flattened but I happen to be playing the one timeline where everything goes swimmingly. It’s all kind of vague right now, but it should get clearer as I keep playing.

Time’s a-wasting, back into the fray!

What I’m playing at the end of summer 2022

You tell ’em, Manana!

Summertime blues~ Let’s round up all the games I’m playing/want to play/should be playing right now.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 – It came, I’m playing it and I’m taking my sweeeeet time about it. I’m supposed to be doing [important spoiler mission] right now, but it can wait while I explore vast areas of nothingness. If you’ve ever complained about an open world game having large, empty spaces just for the sake of having space, you can blame gamers like me. 70 hours and counting, will probably update around the 80-hour mark, once I finish [important spoiler mission that will surely move the plot forward but is not so important that I can’t dilly-dally for 20 hours first].

Love Nikki – I think my wardrobe percentage hit about 30% recently, and I’ve crafted almost all of the Evolution and chapter suits. I’m now turning my attention to others, especially low diamond-consumption ones like Pragya Princess. Normally I would complain about the uselessness of Momo’s guide feature in suggesting suits to craft (it suggests recolors, then once you color them it suggests you recolor them back) but it’s pointless because the publishers don’t seem to care about QoL. There are some welfare suits and a housing pavilion coming up in the next couple of weeks, so I’m looking forward to that and having a pretty good time.

Shining Nikki – Dropped it at the beginning of the year and picked it up again for the first anniversary, which did not disappoint. Gifts and giveaways out the wazoo and a powerful UR Cool suit with a powerful (but hideous, seriously) outfit, and I enjoyed reading the story in a sadistic kind of way. Plus since I hadn’t played in so long, I had plenty of main story quests to catch up with, so that kept me busy for a while. Right now I’m bored again, so I’m thinking of uninstalling for a while until Nikki’s birthday in December when there’s sure to be more good stuff.

Genshin Impact – Sumeru released at last! This will merit its own post once I’ve had a chance to explore a little more and once I’ve finished the archon quest. Huge map is HUGE, and this is only 50% of its true power! (smashes scouter) Ideally I’d like to write after I’ve gotten Lesser Lord Kusanali, because it is my mission to collect all the archons. But since no one knows when she’s coming out, I’ll play a little longer and write some quick thoughts.

Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia – Dropped it. I was kind of enjoying it at first, and the game is RIDICULOUSLY generous, possibly even topping Romancing Saga Re; Universe, but they lost me with the fiddly Force and Shinryu era. I hate gimmicky battle systems. I’ll probably write more about it if I do a “Games I dropped this year” post at the end of the year, because I did play for quite a while.

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius – Speaking of gimmicky battle systems, look what we have here. The battles themselves are very straightforward, and I’ve been auto-ing my way through most of them. But I can tell things are going to get complicated with the sheer number of support skills every character has. Skills to reduce damage, skills to buff others, skills to infuse elements, skills to trigger other skills, etc etc. I’ve been around the block a few times, I know how this goes. Love the ridiculously huge numbers, though. 10,856,234,909 in a single turn, anyone?

I was enjoying the story too until they introduced the “obligatory amnesiac mystery girl whose name starts with F” and then the main character’s friend started going all broody and moody on us. Urghh… Currently playing to collect all the 6th anniversary rewards and any compensation given for the Facebook login issues the game is currently facing. After that, I’ll uninstall it until I have more time for theorycrafting and grinding.

Tower of Fantasy – Played for about two weeks after it launched but it kept crashing, especially when I had to do anything multiplayer like Joint Operations. I kind of wanted to get into it so I’d have a “standby game” whenever I was bored/not feeling Genshin Impact, but the technical troubles were too many and the game wasn’t good enough to make me want to overcome them.

Undernauts and Tokyo Xanadu eX+ – On hold because my computer has been taken hostage by Sumeru. Once the excitement wears off and GI gets stale again (and it always does), I’ll get back to them, or maybe start something new.

Epic Seven – No, I haven’t gone back to this. I’m really tempted because their 4th Anniversary is starting in a few days and they’re pretty generous with the giveways. But the fundamental issue I had with E7, which was the ridiculous amount of grinding for good gear and the lack of PVE content haven’t gone away. Even if I get shiny new units, I still have to grind to gear them, and then all I can use them in is the labyrinth, which I hate, the Tower, which is too short, the story, which I like but which takes too long to gear up to clear, etc etc. Basically I’m just convincing myself not to go back, and I think I’ve succeeded so I’ll call it a day.

Right, that’s enough of a roundup for today. It’s helped me to get my priorities in order, i.e XC3 > GI, fit in Love Nikki here and there, and drop/suspend the rest.

Before I forget, Ranshima Monogatari ~ Lair Land story, a dating sim I played way back when I had time for dating sims, recently came out in English on Steam. Check it out if you like Princess Maker-style raising sims, and if you want to chase both husbandos and waifus at the same time. And no, nobody paid me for this plug, I just enjoyed the game that much and hope more people can play it. See you all later!

55 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 3, time to start spoiling!

Me at the end of every playing session

All right, I’ve gotten the exploration bug out of my system so it’s time to progress the story.

Heh, you actually believe that? Nope, what happened was I explored and explored until Xenoblade Chronicles 3 itself intervened and stopped me with a Genshin-style “Let’s explore the area ahead later.” I laughed my head off at that point, I was like “Finally! Finally, I got you to admit defeat!” Not so open world now, are ya? 😀 If you want to experience a similar stoppage, try exploring up to Dow Dolmen when you’re supposed to go through Maktha Wildwood.

When I eventually did do Maktha Wildwood, I found out the reason why they don’t let you go through Dow Dolmen. It’s because that route leads to the end of Maktha Wildwood where there’s a major cutscene waiting for you, and they didn’t want any sequence breaking. What major cutscene? Ehehe… I don’t know. [spoilers follow, non-players stop reading]

Thing is, when I got to the end of the woods, there were bosses waiting for me. I mean, they didn’t show up as bosses but I knew we would end up fighting. I was already fed up with all the talking and the boss battles where we never ever manage to defeat the enemies, so I did a little skippity-doo, and another little one… and next thing I knew, Ethel and Cammuravi were dead. Oops, tee hee! So, uhh, if anyone knows what happened there and wants to share, be my guest.

I wish I could say I’ve been faithfully watching the cutscenes ever since, but they seriously talk too much. Blah blah meaning of life, blah why are we fighting, blahhy blah blah. Just get on with it already! I blame Square-Enix first and the Xenosaga series second for making every developer think they’re a movie studio. But I’m LOVING the vast spaces I get to explore, so Xenoblade Chronicles 3 gets a slight pass from me. Slight.

All the purple space with the fuzzy borders is mine to explore.

Speaking of slight, I have a slight complaint about the maps. There are too many palette swaps! Not enough enemy variety. Same old bunnits, Gogols, Volffs, Ropls. They just change their names and levels slightly but they look almost identical. That’s lazy programming. It doesn’t make fighting exciting, so I avoid it as much as I can these days. Besides, cowardly me always goes where the enemies are at my level or slightly below so I can explore and grab items in peace without hassle. More maps! More areas! And hopefully more variety later?

It’s the same with the colonies – every new place looks the same, the people dress the same, live in the same tents. So boring. However I believe – or I want to believe – that the colony thing is deliberate on the writers’ part. The bad guys have stripped people of individuality and sentenced them to an eternity of killing and being killed, so they had no time or leisure to develop different cultures. Once I free them of their living hells, things will surely change. Unfortunately it will almost certainly change after the credits roll, so I’m not getting my hopes up too much.

It’s coming… You can’t have a JRPG without “the power of friendship.”

Time to spoil the story~ No special reason, just musing to myself. So there’s these guys in white and these guys in black (like chess pieces) and they have to fight to absorb each others’ life force to go on living. Eventually some of them find a way to break free of this cycle of fighting. The people who were making them fight don’t like that very much, so now the escapees, i.e. our party, are on the run to a safe haven while liberating other people as we go. Things are slightly more complicated than that, but not by much.

Where I’m at right now, the bad guys have gotten an evil superweapon they’re menacing the whole world with, so we’re fixing to storm their stronghold and destroy it. Never mind that they could just build another one, never mind that this whole thing is a huge and obvious trap and we would be better off heading for safety ASAP. The characters even admit it’s a trap, but the game has already established that Noah is a massive goody-goody and the rest of the party likes it that way, so *shrug.* Don’t blame me if you all end up “Sol Triggered,” is all I can say.

Credit where credit is due: Taion hasn’t betrayed me yet. Doesn’t seem like he’s going to either, with all the focus on his backstory and character development. It’s almost like they’re setting him up to be a replacement protagonist for when Noah betrays us… or dies.

…or betray it.

Hmm? You think I’m trippin’? The seeds have already been sown, first with how ridiculously “good” Noah is shown to be and secondly with the reveal of his evil alter ago on the bad guys’ side. BTW I don’t know why I bothered to specify “evil” alter ego, it’s not like there’s ever a good alter ego. Said alter ego wears a mask like it’s some big secret or something, but it’s so obviously Alter-Noah. I wonder if there’s some significance to naming him Noah, like in Noah’s Ark? 🤔

Anyway, for all my complaining about the story, I’m quite interested in where things go from here. Us storming the bad guys’ castle 50 hours into a 200-hour game is obviously not going to end well. Total Party Kill? And then we start over with a fresh set of “reborn” characters? Might be fun, but it would reset all of our affinity progress with the colonies, so that’s out. Maybe we’ll succeed by the skin of our teeth and continue on our merry way. Hmm, it’s faster to play it than speculate – though speculating is more fun than the hour-long cutscene I’m shortly going to be subjected to. I’ll get to it and report back later. See ya~

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 – Sweet freedom! 30 hours in

It’s official: Complaining-On-My-Blog-no-Jutsu is the most powerful blogging technique known to man. Shortly after I noted in my last post that I wanted to explore more in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the game let go of the hard-driving reins and let me go basically wherever I wanted. Within reason, of course, since many areas are naturally story-locked. And there are field abilities you won’t have until you meet and befriend certain characters. I’ll let you figure out which those are.

So! I’m free to explore! And I’ve been overdoing it to the point where I tried to continue the story just earlier and I was about 8 levels stronger than the average mobs. I should hold back a little bit… NOT. This is what I came for, not that awful story… It didn’t start out so bad, but it’s getting worse by the minute. Should I spoil? Hmm… No, too early to spoil. Anyway, we all knew the story would suck. They always suck when the writers try too hard to be “deep” and “meaningful.”

Just BTW, I know it isn’t really Complaining-On-My Blog-no-Jutsu that made the game world open up for exploration. It’s probably the result of game testing, and Monolithsoft knowing what people buy Xenoblade games for. You go to a steak restaurant, order your steak, compliment the decor, chat with your friends, nibble the breadsticks, all well and good. But after 15 minutes you get just a liiiittle bit antsy. When’s the steak coming out?

Well, I got my steak. However, much as I hate being “that gamer” that clamors for stuff and complains when she gets it… 13 hours is bit soon to go exploring in XC3. Not enough of the world has opened up, and what little is available is very samey. There are not one, not two but three huge green plains modelled after Gaur Plains in the original Xenoblade Chronicles. If it’s not plains, it’s caves. And one desert. It’s worth waiting a little longer for more stages, like maybe a nice jungle zone, a beach, a snow field, maybe some volcanic rock.

But that’s all advice for you the reader. Me, I’ve got some more explorin’ to do. The alternative is continuing the story, but… the story… it’s… and the voice-acting is even more awkward that usual with those odd pauses. Not in a hurry to get back to any of that, but I won’t have much choice soon because I’m running out of major sidequests to pursue. Eh, okay, one more sidequest and then I’m definitely continuing the story. See ya!