What Did We Play Yesterday?

Each night, I watch TV with my family. They've recently become obsessed with this god-awful realty show about an asshole collectible auctioneer guy (Gold something) and the crass materialism makes my head explode, but I like hanging out with my family, so my compromise is to play on my handheld while I half-absorb information about a sports jersey some boring-ass millionaire collector paid 12 lifetime salaries for because boring-ass millionaires are like that. Sports memorabilia collectors truly are the worst. The guy who has a 20,000-title retro games collection gets a pass. The dude who bought cloth an athlete touched once? Loser, uncool. Get bent. Delete your account and donate to charity.

Anyway, that's how I started playing a old favorite, Illusion of Gaia. I was inspired by Gaia Lab's recent re-translation of the game but it looks like they're actively working on it so I snagged the sprint romhack for now.

I enjoyed this game many years ago (still have the complete box, though I can't imagine playing these games on original hardware again), and it's crazy how much I remember of the weird localization and red gem locations. This game will always have a special place in my heart, if only for Hamlet the pig, who is a true hero. The game grapples tough subjects, like starvation and slavery, and it feels very unique to similar games of the time.

Adventures in Zelda continue. I came to Hateno, I saw the fancy hat, I got the fancy hat. The Hateno mayoral race questline is pretty silly but in addition to the hat you get access to milk and cheese. As an aside, I really can't get over how weird Sophie looks and I'm glad I don't need to talk to her anymore. I've had a good time discovering all the Cece decor in various houses, but after I wrap up a few more quests I'm going to move on from Hateno. Cece sells guard armor that is currently to expensive for me, so I'll come back when I'm ready to buy it.

Everyone in this game is obsessed with Link and won't shut up about how hot he is, and I've decided to document this phenomenon. I'm not disputing it, but the constant commentary is a bit much. I headcanon Link as completely indifferent to sex. All he cares about is food, brushing Zelda's hair and watching her sleep, breaking pots, and horses. Canon backs me up 100%.

Dipped back into Digseum for a bit and purchased my first prestige upgrades. Digging with upgraded tools is satisfying, but the gameplay is still too shallow for me to get obsessive over. I'll continue to poke at it from time to time.

Zelda was a series of nopes yesterday. Constructed items despawn, so I lost my boat and ended up crawling around in the tundra dying for a bit. I experimented with a double-fire emitter balloon platform with 2 rockets. Unfortunately, all it did was set me on fire, I didn't even go that high. Did you know there are Lynels in marshes? 😬 Surprise! While I was there I met a young lady who beats dubious food into submission. I'm not sure the resulting Monster Stew is really worth the hassle of trekking out there, but it looks like I can make my own with monster elixirs, too.

After I n a r r o w ly escaped some Surprise! Gloom! (Failed to catch a screenshot of the gloom hand just barely missing Link as he dove off the edge of the cliff to escape) I decided to go back to Hateno and fiddle with quests there for a bit.

Crushed Koroks: 1. I had a blast with this game over the past couple of days and it was a nice way to start my gaming new year. I wandered out of Hateno and found some cool caves, a really enjoyable message-in-a-bottle rescue mission, barbarian leggings, and bunch more koroks. The boat I built for the mission continued to serve me well as I explored the coast, and I found a few more caves as well as a bit of Zonai tech, frost emitters, which I'd completely forgotten about.

For some reason, it's very satisfying to don several layers of cold protection armor when it's extremely cold. Between purchased and found pieces, I have plenty to choose from.

I'm actually getting pretty good at killing Like-likes and avoiding getting electrocuted or frozen by keeses and other elemental types, but I continue to shy away from the "Big Chungus" Bobokins as my kid calls them. The memory of being murdered in one hit like 5 times in a row is still with me.

The coastal areas are among my favorites in this game. Soon-ish, I'll hopefully find the Zora kingdom and snag some swimming-boost armor so I can swim more freely. I've also got a decent stockpile of bubbul gems I'd like to spend whenever I find that guy.

Yesterday was spent exploring strange new (wet) places. Yes, I killed the wizrobe. Inelegantly, but all that matters is I killed it, and I'm getting better at killing electric like-likes. I made it to Hateno. I'm not sure how I forgot about the mushroom fashion people, but I am delighted to be here (and to buy milk, yum).

Crushed koroks: 1. I finally built a conveyance that actually works. I also went on a "wait where did I see milk before?" quest. (Turns out I didn't! Milk is in Hateno, which I haven't been to yet). So I'm headed in that general direction.

Yesterday's death was brought to us by an electric wizzrobe, which I assured my kid I could beat. Electric enemies do not have a particular weakness so I guess I'll just stab it a lot.

I found a kinda spooky grove or cemetery or something, picked mushrooms, and decided to putter around the village for a while. I also died 5 times biting off enemies too big for me to chew. I'd like to get to the point where I can fell large enemies in some clever way rather than simply chunking tons of bombs at them, but right now that's the strategy.

I finally got around to fusing an axe and confirmed you can kill those mutant trees in one or two swings (before this, I was burning them, which took some time, and hacking them with a sword takes forever). I ran out of arrows and decided to try out the boomerang. The boomerang is a work in progress. I fused a keese eyeball hoping it would help with aim but unfortunately it does not work that way. I was also reminded you can electrocute everything in a pond, so I'm going to experiment with electricity next.

I turned on damage numbers in VS. WITNESS ME.

This is the sequel to Cattails, which my kid spent a lot of time with. Wildwood is a "more of that" sequel with updated portraits and a strong emphasis on building the town and recruiting cats to join your colony. I caught many ladybugs.

I haven't played a game focused around recruitment in a while. The first example that popped into my head was Suikoden, but Terraria does this as well. So far, cats are recruited by collecting all the items on a list through gathering and hunting. Hunting involves a quick-time mini-game that is somewhat unintuitive due to how quickly the bar moves, but doable. That will probably change as the skill levels up.

I only played about 5 hours of the first game, and I'm not sure how much I'll play of this one. I appreciate this game exists and I do like cats, but ultimately that wasn't enough to keep me engaged the first time.

I said I was done with incremental games but I can't resist digging mechanics. Digseum is a short incremental game about digging up relics for a museum. Once it gets going digging is satisfying, and I appreciate the short loop.

Additionally, cheevos hunting in Vampire Survivors continues unabated. The pictured build is not great, I accidentally picked up a power when I was clicking through too fast, but you don't need much strategy to hit level 50 and unlock tarot cards.

Crushed koroks: 1, and this time I wasn't messing around. I'm now back to what I enjoy most in Zelda: running in grassy fields, picking mushrooms, and accidentally blowing myself up. (And a secret fourth thing: running from Gloom. This playthrough I seem to be encountering Gloom much more often than I'm used to.)

I found Kakariko village, where armor prices are sadly demoralizing considering at any given time I'm carrying about 200 rupees, each of which is hard-won. The plan was to hike down to the giant fairy near Dueling Peaks and get some much-needed upgrades for my armor, however...

The game's design issues are starting to get to me. The sage controls are tucked away on the key items screen, when they could have easily been included on the wheel instead of the arbitrary duplicate map button. Another attempt to build a vehicle resulted in a pathetic mess so bad I didn't even take a screenshot for lulz and I spent an unreasonable amount of time in a shrine trying to hit a plank of wood with a huge-ass bouncy ball. An unfortunate number of tasks require lining items up with a certain level of precision, a process which is usually fiddly even with the goop anchors to help.

Here's one of those opinions I warned you about. The modern Zelda games contain a lot of unnecessary tedium that can only be explained as Nintendo Being Like That. Control and gameplay issues that would have been noted within 30 minutes of testing persist through two flagship games, indicating they are intended features, and terrible-design-choices-that-serve-no-purpose-but-to-annoy-the-player are part of the overall design strategy.

Anyway, I'm not saying I hate modern Nintendo but I hate modern Nintendo and pirating Nintendo games is always morally correct. Have a fantastic holiday everyone.