Phelpssan

I think this episode shows that the production team is lacking in budget, but also shows that they care about the source material and are trying to do their best within their limits - and decent direction and voice acting can go a long way towards it.

That Atou face was just perfect.

Also no branches means no need to replay

Most (sadly not all) VNs do a good job minimizing repetition when replaying for alternative routes/endings. Fast-skipping text already read, highlighting choices you already took, or even having a flowchard so you can skip to branching points.

my recommendation will be Silver Case 2425.

Silver Case 2425 looks really interesting! It's a pair of old VNs from Suda 51.

But I think I'll go for Atri first, mainly because it's the shortest of the three.

Will wait for your complete review of Stella of the End, sounds like a good first VN.

The only caveat is that this is a "kinetic novel" (no branches/choices). I generally recommend more interactive VNs for first-timers, but if you don't mind the concept it's definitely a good story to read.

Now that you have finished both Captain Toad and Atelier Plachta, what are you starting next?

Plan is to focus on Stella of the End this weekend, then go for another VN/side-game pair... but haven't decided yet which ones.

For VN I'm leaning towards one of Atri, Witch on the Holy Night or Silver Case 2425, while for side-game I'm leaning towards either Gal Guardians or Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus.

I don’t understand why I have to play Tetris in order to craft something.

I love that particular feature. 😄 I think it adds a lot of interessting puzzle solving when crafting most complex items, since you have to think the optimal placement of pieces to build combos and so on. I also like that it's complex yet it's not as time-consuming as crafting in Ryza or Yumia can be.

But Lulua is a good option if you don't like this style of crafting.

Finished Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker!!

Cleared the main game (Episodes 1-3) and some of the Bonus stages. Might come back later to do the rest but not sure.

I liked the game but it has some annoying issues. I mentioned last week how it forces you to replay the same stage multiple times and kills the pacing, but there's also inconsistency in the quality of the stages - I think the slower-paced, more puzzle-focused ones are great, but the more action-focused ones can get very frustrating.

The compact nature of the stages make the camera get "in your way" very often, which can be a major pain when you're rushing to escape enemies or raising lava. Also, these action-focused stages often give you a single chance to get Gems or Pixel Toads, forcing you to restart on small mistakes and adding to the repetition problem I mentioned above.

Finished Atelier Plachta (DLC for Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream)!

I've been wanting to replay Atelier Sophie 2 but my backlog doesn't allow me, so I decided to compromise and get this DLC that was sitting in my wishlist.

It's a prologue to the main story, showing Plachta's arrival in Erde Wiege, her first adventure in that world alongside Ramizel and Diebolt, and how she got her Atelier. It also gives small bits of backstory for Plachta and Ramizel (mainly about their relationship with alchemy) that I don't recall being in the main game.

Gameplay-wise you just go around the Atelier, main city, and one (fairly large) area with a boss at the end. Clearing this unlocks this area in the main game and a couple of extra recipes.

Overall it's too short for its cost, but it was a reminder of how good Atelier Sophie 2 is - alchemy and combat are top-tier, the fantastic and colorful world is fun to explore, and it has a great balance of chill/slice-of-life and story moments.

Playing Stella of the End!

Good progress this week, reached Chapter 12 of 21.

This game gives me very strong TLOU vibes - it focuses on a growing parent/daughter relationship between the two leads as they travel through a ravaged land. However, this one goes for a more sci-fi approach - the father figure is Jude, a courier tasked with escorting a "newborn" android called Philia through forests and ruins of the collapsed human civilization.

The worldbuild is pretty damn good here. There's a lot of details in how humans survive in this post-apocalyptic age, including its dangers like leftover war machines or tribes of humans who have gone feral. But you also get some glimpses at the past - one of my favorite chapters has the duo going through the remains of megalopolis while they figure out the conflicts that caused the collapse of its society.

There's a post in the NSCollectors reddit front page joking that they "love GKCs"... because it's ending all FOMO for collecting and making them save money.

The GCK situation is really sad. :/

I collect physical games so in my case they're the worst parts of physical and digital combined and I'd rather consider them "digital only" releases... and since I only buy digital games heavily discounted any game announced in this model has a 1+ year delay for me.

It's the main reason I'm not buying a S2 anytime soon... not worth it for the small number of physical exclusives I can play right now.

Definitely getting Katamari, though it looks like it's digital-only so I'll probably wait for a sale. Adventures of Elliot also looks really interesting! It's Switch 2 only so I won't be able to try the demo, but I'll keep my eye on this one.

Absolute shame on Sega/Atlus for not including the DLC on the P3R release. (Edit: Looks like it'll be a full price release, GKC and doesn't include the DLC... Sega/Atlus absolutely trying to milk Switch 2 ~~suckers~~ players).

Yup, I was very dissapointed when I saw it was only 3rd Party titles because I'm not expecting a lot of new games.

Agree, though a system update forcing a game update before you can play an offline game that was working before is very unusual and I can understand some confusion around it.

I wonder if these games with "mandatory" updates do it immediately when you go online even if you haven't played them in a while? Because the Switch 1 only updated games if they were in the front screen or you manually forced an update.

If they don't this gets significantly worse - there's no good way (AFAIK) to track which games on have been updated on the Switch, so keeping your games updated is a massive PITA if you have a big collection as you're effectively forced to go "Check for updates" one by one from time to time. But at least for the previous console you could always play them without updating so there was no major harm in having your games on an old version.

Finally started this season, only two shows so far.

• 7th Prince: The MC's design will keep turning people away from this series, which is a shame because of how consistently fun it has been to watch. Production is also really good, the magic spell effects are beautiful.
• Mynoghra: Isekai+Nation Building+Strategy Games is a combo of my favorite genres, so it was impossible for me to resist this one. They definitely don't have a great budget but have been doing a decent enough job, Atou+Takuto being dorks is really fun, and the small bits of horror have been quite interesting.

Thanks for the compliment!