I’m in the final dungeon of Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door and I will probably beat it this weekend, after a quick backtrack to the bottom of the Pit of Trials. Gloomtail was almost a problem, but I had just enough defense badges to survive his best attack with 1HP. I’m a little worried about Bonetail now. I’ve done a 10HP run on the Gamecube and beaten him first try a long time ago, but I forgot exactly how I did that.

I’m also about 75% done with my mystery game that I’m not going to name until it’s done. Right now, I’m rather disappointed with it.

Making steady progress in Wild Arms, too. Recently got access to the ship to explore the first part of the sea. I may have fallen victim to nostalgia; I still think it’s a good game, but I remember it being better. Maybe I remember the later parts more.

I don’t know what happened in the rest of the world, but MTV Germany started showing the kind of Anime that didn’t fit the children’s afternoon program of other stations in the early 2000s. That’s how I got to know things like Ghost in the Shell.

I completed Yakuza Kiwami 2 today. When I was done with all the side content, I realized there weren’t any awful achievements to stop me from completing it, so I ran through a New Game Plus on the highest difficulty with the overpowered infinite ammo gun from postgame. Turns out, skipping all optional content and cutscenes, you can beat the game in a couple of hours. I don’t understand why the gun makes enemies ragdoll as much as it does, but that was part of the fun for sure. Not truly completing the previous two games was a bummer because I really liked them, but it was just too much.

And all respect to anyone who can beat Jo Amon legitimately. I was never that great at Yakuza combat to begin with, but that guy does way too much damage! He’s the reason I learned about that gun to begin with.

The next game I am replacing this with… is a game I’m not going to talk about much. It’s the kind of game you can’t even begin to talk about without spoiler tags, so I just won’t even mention it until it’s done. And briefly at that.

Played a little more of Paper Mario, I took a peek at the Prince Mush fight. I didn’t expect to win, but I also didn’t expect to run from the fight after his first attack. I tossed out the protect shell just to scout what he would even do and let’s just say I’ll have to do some preparations to make this work in a 10HP run. Let’s see what badges I end up with at the end of the game, I won’t try this again a second earlier!

When I heard “CrowdStrike” took down operating systems everywhere, I thought it was the name of a virus or a group of hackers. I’m not the only one hearing an inherent villainy in that name, right?

Beat chapter 5 in Paper Mario. One of the new bosses added in the remake has opened up and I’ll just try it soon. I probably won’t win yet, but I’m curious.

Finished the main story of Yakuza Kiwami 2. The final battle ends with a quick time event that, if you lose, kills you. I wish I hadn’t found out about that, but XBox controller inputs always take an extra second to process in my brain because they’re so backwards. At least the fight is fun, so it wasn’t too bad doing it twice. The hardest fight was the pen-pen-penultimate boss, some nameless guy who had no right being that tough. Now to clean up some leftover side content, which isn’t too daunting. This should be the first time I finish the Completion List, the previous games both had something to make it stupid, but this one is very realistic.

I also dug out Wild Arms again for a third playthrough. It’s been over a decade since I last played it. That’s a series that could do with an HD Collection.

For what it’s worth, being stuck in Kakariko is the reason I bought the player’s guide in 1998. I knew what I was looking for and where it’s supposed to be, I just didn’t understand what to do. 😅 _{But I was also twelve}

I’ve mostly played more Yakuza Kiwami 2. I thought the whole Korean Mafia bit was just a side story at first, but it’s been the main focus for a while and completely pushed the main antagonist out of the picture. But that whole thing has concluded now and I think I’m nearing the climax soon.

I always thought Nintendo had an internal team of translators, at least for their big titles.

The key to a 10HP run is honestly not to waste your turns. When you can end combat in one attack and have both Mario and his partner’s turn, use the extra turn to top off your HP/FP with Sweet Treat or Appeal to get the Star Power back. Also, know your Stylish Moves for extra Star Power. It fills up so fast that you can regularly toss out the quite OP Earth Tremor whenever you’re full on everything. No need to run around with full resources. I also like the Badges that randomly regenerate you and the defense increases are also very important.

Muto and Chono are retired wrestlers from Japan (the former being more famous in the West as The Great Muta). An in-game they also use their real names. Yakuza tends to have real people make cameo apperances, but most of them wouldn’t be well known outside of Japan. Some characters appearing in side quest feel like they would be based on real people based on the way they talk about being famous, but I wouldn’t know.

I’m about halfway through Paper Mario at this point. I remember the 10HP run being a bit more difficult, I don’t even find myself using Sweet Treat on the occasional free turn anymore. And I only use items once in a blue moon, too.

What I like most about the remake so far is the battle music getting a different remix for every area.

Played a lot more Yakuza Kiwami 2. Had some issues with the game crashing, but a fresh install fixed that. Unlocked the Majima Construction game, which I’m not a huge fan of. I’d like it more if it was turn based or if you could pause and look around the field. Or just a way to zoom out at least, I tend to lose sight of my units. But yo, I had no idea Keiji Muto and Masahiro Chono were the main villains of that story! I freaked out when they first walked into the scene (and kudos to the people who modeled the faces, I recognized Muto immediately!). And then other New Japan Wrestlers join my side as well? I know they appear in a later Yakuza title, but I had no idea they got recycled into this one.

I also have yet to see anything on the Completion List that stops me from completing it. The previous games always had something that was just stupidly tedious.

Here’s a game I loved and hated at the same time. I was a big fan of Jango Fett and it was fun to play the game in theory, but good luck being in a room with dozens of enemies and trying to scan them to find the one guy with the bounty and isolate him to take him alive when they’re all coming after you. I don’t think you actually need to do much bounty hunting, but I forget if it’s completely optional. I remember the game definitely being more action than stealth though.

If they completely reimagined this game and made it more like the Hitman games though…

Not at all. But now that Hunters is more directly tied into the story and not just a spinoff it would be nice to have the full context.

I hope we get a surprise Metroid Prime Hunters Remaster before this because I have no idea who the villain is.

Donkey Kong Country Returns Returns. How many extra levels did the 3DS version add? I doubt it’s enough to get me to buy the game again, unfortunately.

I like that they went with the Breath of the Wild approach of “Let’s just give the players everything and let them figure it out.” I hope that wand is just the cornerstone of gameplay though, I don’t think it can carry an entire game. I am a little worried that it’s all they showed, especially for combat.

That’s very cool, but I think they should have waited a bit, maybe even move it to the Switch 2. Three Mario RPGs in a year is a lot, maybe space them out a bit more to prevent fatigue, you know?

Honestly, 99% of what I know about Mahjong I learned from the ingame tutorials in Yakuza 0 and I went in with zero knowledge. I knew so little, I thought the tiles you threw out were your hand.

Been playing Paper Mario some more. Beat Chapter 2 and got the quest to go a few floors down the Pit of 100 Trials to save a Toad’s dad, which is always my cue to go way further down to level 50 and get the inventory upgrade, since I’m already there. It’s quite nerve-wracking to go down there with 10HP, but I made it and I was only caught by surprise and lost my Life Shroom once. Would have been easier if I hadn’t insisted on tattling every new enemy, but you just gotta! It was a nice preview, it’s not like I’ll have any more health at the end of the game when I go all the way.

Progressed further in Yakuza Kiwami 2 and unlocked the Mahjong Parlor. And I have finally done it, I’ve won a game with Thirteen Orphans, a hand I have been chasing for literal years! Not just in Yakuza games, but Mahjong games on the Super Nintendo as well. And while doing that, I have learned that you can steal tiles from a Kan. I thought it was all over when the last tile I needed was put to the side in a pile of 4, but I was allowed to call Ron! I guess I should return to the story now. I think someone important was bleeding out or something…

I was just making a joke that the entire main story of a Yakuza game is a side dish to Mahjong. I just always spend way too much time in the parlor ever since Yakuza 0 taught me how to play.

I had plans for what my next game on Switch was going to be, but I spontaneously decided to play Paper Mario instead. I didn’t expect to finish both of my games at once, so I’d rather have one of the replacements be something I don’t have to think about too much. I’ve beaten the original game half a dozen times, so this will be a rather chill playthrough. As chill as it can be without any HP upgrades, I guess. I want those badges, baby!

I had plans for what my next game on PC was going to be, but I spontaneously decided to play Yakuza Kiwami 2 instead. I wish I’d had the chance to get into the series earlier, I have so much catching up to do! I think there’s 10 games by now? I have yet to find the Mahjong parlor, gotta get through more of this silly side story involving Yakuza to get to the real game!

I’ll try not to make plans anymore.

I have started the final DLC of Sparks of Hope, the Rayman DLC. Now, I’ve not been particularly excited for this one since I’m not a Rayman-guy, but it’s disappointing he doesn’t get to meet the Mario characters at all. It’s just two of the Rabbids. Which, in a way, makes this the least cross-overy cross-over in the series. But on a plus-side, the battle rankings are back! It’s just a bit of ‘too little, too late’, considering you only have three characters, so it’s not like you can do much to ‘adapt’ to a map to improve your performance. You can adjust your sparks, but Rayman can’t use them, so even that part has limited customizability.

I’ve looked into the first game’s DLC again, and it’s about the same length as the two main DLCs of the sequel combined. And in a game like this, where you level up and customize your characters, I think one meaty DLC is better than two shorter ones. Let me actually invest time into the skill trees and grow my characters instead of rolling the credits as soon as I get something going. Sometimes, less is more.

In Arkham Knight, I finished off Red Hood in less than two hours. Unless a map required me to remain unseen, I’d just finish off the challenges and start shooting everyone else. It’s honestly crazy how easily you get away with this, but that’s not exactly why I’m doing these Predator challenges. The Red Hood Story had enemies with bullet-proof vests, but they didn’t use them at all for the maps. It’s a bit disappointing, they always remove enemy types that a character can’t deal with but don’t add the new ones that were made specifically for them!

Next up is the character I’ve saved for last: Harley Quinn. I just think this is going to be the hardest character to use because A, she’s the only character without a grapple, so there’s very little upward mobility (my primary way of escaping), and B, she has no silent takedowns. I believe her on-screen prompts even say ‘Loud Takedown’. She is going to drag me out of my comfort zone kicking and screaming and I am scared. At least her personalized version of Detective Mode is pretty fun. The scribbles on the walls, the giggling, what little remains of Harleen Quinzel trying to talk sense into herself.

In any case, it seems like I’ll be beating both of my games around the same time, and I believe I started them around the same time, too. That’s not how I usually do this and it’s weird that it’s happening again.