Another week of toiling, another week going on with my normal life pretending like the world isn’t being too out of order, trying not to worry too much about things I can’t do anything about anymore. It’s interesting that more and more people are turning their hopes off that America is being someone worth caring about, there is less and less about it around, and it’s funny that car ads for american cars are gone, I don’t see them at all any more, while ads for chinese car brands like Chery and BYD have started appearing. I guess things are changing. Even people who before has been talking about America positively don’t really any more, they don’t really want to be associated with it I guess. Even if they get their shit together and at least vote for someone less openly fascist the next time around I think they have soiled their goodwill a lot more than I had even realised.

Books

I finished up Roche Limit by Nicola Claire, and it was a very good ending of a series, I’ve been enjoying it quite a lot, still really good characters, and a lot of fun action, and culminating in a good ending, it did feel a little bit rushed to the end though, and I wish that we could have gotten a little bit more of the romance, but all in all I’ve had a blast with this series, and probably will go on to the the at least at this time, last series in the sector universe sector files

After that one I’ve started and am a bit over half way through Caszandra by Andrea Höst, and this one is kind of like the last ones, a bit vague in some places, plot can be a bit all over the place, as is the pacing. But it’s a fun story anyhow, and I’m enjoying it, it’s just a bit weird, and not really hooking me as well as other books do, this is another one that is the last one in a series though, so there will be some experimenting with new stuff after this week, hopefully it will be a change in more than just the books that I’m reading.

Games

I’m still deeply into Octopath Traveler II and I’ve finally caught up with my last save this week, and I’m starting to see only new things, and it kind of feels even more adventeorus now. I got through the fight I was struggling so much with on my last time on the first time through this time, not easily by any means, it still was touch and go for a while, but I did it. I’m not quite sure why it was easier this time, maybe I’ve learned something about rpgs from that time, I’m also better at actually using items, rather than ending up with 500 health potions at the end of the game, which is the way I’ve usually done things. This game is still fantastic, I’m still loving the fighting, building up my characters, and experiencing the stories, I’ve seen many complain that they are not intertwined, but I kind of like how it’s structured, slowly learning more about each of the characters. It’s a lot of fun, and they did a great job writing the different stories here, I’m already thinking about getting the first game to play, but I’d better at least finish this one first, but I think I would enjoy the first octopath a lot as well, and it’s some times nice playing something that is a bit simpler. But time will tell, I should rather enjoy what I’m currently playing than planning even more buys.

Reading a bit about Live a Live which is in many ways the one parent of octopath, together with Final Fantasy V, I did start playing a bit of it on the side, and this is quite different, I’m doing the SNES version on the miyoo mini, and it’s structured very much like octopath. The battle system is the thing that I’m struggling a bit with, it’s a grid where you move around and then do actions on, and it’s different enough that I’m not quite sure if I do the right thing or not, I might play a bit more on the side, or I might wait until later, but it’s quite impressive what they managed to do with the SNES back in the day.

Another that got a little bit of a testing run is Snacktorio this by the same people that made Apico, and it’s a really fun minecraftish feeling automation/logistics game, where you cook food for monsters through building factories, and it’s really quite fun, and they have done a great job of making each level feel different. Also for a factory game just being levelbased rather than long campaigns is quite different, it’s quite a lot of fun though, and with cute graphics and theme, very much something I would think a lot of people curious about factory games, but not quite wanting to dip into something huge would like, together with shapez2 and my little rocket shop it’s with my favourites in that genere.

And as a last thing in between I did get in some picross it’s something that is just fun to do at times, I played some in some android applications, and then I had some playing of mario’s picross 2 on the gameboy which I’m still working my way through slowly.

Misc

It’s kind of been a huge week of game stuff in this week, with a lot of teasers for new stuff, probably stuff I won’t play for years yet, but I saw that Square-Enix has been working on a HD-2D Final Fantasy game, that they will release in October that looks like it is having a very octopath inspired battle system as well, which is kind of intriguing, and it seems like it will be available for the Swithc 1 as well, so that I can try it out some time.

It seems like slowly more of the newer games that I’m interested in is only going to be available on newer systems, so even I am thinking of looking at the switch 2, but I will hold back for a while, just not playing new stuff, and just enjoying what I have. I’m pretty sure that they will release a second cheaper version, the switch 2 lite, I’ve always been more into the handheld versions of systems too, and I don’t really play on a TV, so when it is released that will be something I would be more leaning towards getting. Or at least wait until the now quite botched pricing because of the AI-Hyping going on, I’m not really one that goes for cutting edge gaming anyhow.

I was also watching some wanderbot videos over the weekend, and he got onto talking about the current games industry, and the same has been going on in both into the aether and video game podtimism that I also listen to, that it may be that we’re coming up to a time where the whole thing with huge video games that are backed by inverstors and huge teams maybe are coming down towards a crash, and that we maybe will see smaller games with a bit more of a reduced scope and more experimenting instead. That would be something I would be really happy to see again. We used to have that more back in the game, where games usually only took a year, because there were only so many assets that you could show, and space was limited enough that it wasn’t really something you could do then.

This will be one of the earliest in the week posts I will make I think, was woken up early since I was on call and there was an issue at work, so at least hopefull this won’t be someting that happens a lot.