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.

Rowlet is the first Pokemon in the Pokedex of Legends:Arceus, which is chronologically the first game where the first Pokedex is created.

I played the main game almost exclusively with Mario, Luigi and Rabbid Peach. The Bros’ reaction abilities, when fully upgraded, are insane. Being all alone without enemies on a Survival Map levels of insane.

The Last Spark Hunter DLC has finally managed to throw a wrench into the team setup I used for 98% of the main game. Luckily, it was just a miniboss, but I have a feeling I’ll see him again.

I finished off Azrael in Arkham Knight and finally understood that my least favorite Predator map is actually kind of broken in the player’s favor. I was always so intimidated by how big and full of enemies it is, but they really don’t like leaving their assigned floor. Now I treat it as four seperate maps stacked on top of each other and it’s so much easier! Next up, I’ll have to replay Batgirl’s extra story for some achievements that were hidden for some reason and then take her through these challenges. She’s not actually the next character in the list, but I’m saving that one character for last. I just have a feeling she will be the most difficult one to use…

I picked up my Infinite Fusion Nuzlocke again. I had to fill up some empty spaces that the Elite 4 so rudely blasted into my team, but I’m off to conquer Johto next!

There are still 3 more characters after Azrael. Arkham Knight really upped the ante here. City had 4 playable characters total, Knight has 8! If I wasn’t such a big fan of Predator Maps, I would say it’s too many. After the challenges, I’m technically done, though there’s one more achievement in the main mode I’ve been too lazy to get, so I’m saving it for last. Nothing difficult, just something that never occurred naturally.

And to make sense of Antichamber, you need to drop your expectations of things making sense. This is the type of game where jumping over a pit makes you fall and walking into it lets you cross. Where the upstairs is next door. Just let the currents carry you and don’t try to understand why the water is dry.

Oh boy, have fun with Octopath! The main criticism is absolutely valid, but to me it and the sequel are the New Age Retro JRPGs that actually nail that old school feeling.

So I’ve played and beaten the first DLC for Sparks of Hope, Tower of Doom. It’s a roguelike mode, which is a genre I generally don’t enjoy too much, so reaching the end of the story once is all I need. It’s 33% completion, but that just denotes the characters and Sparks you’ve gotten at least one and individual enemies encountered, so true completion is nothing but grinding until you fill out that list. Not thanks! I don’t know how random the first playthrough is, but I essentially got my main game setup on a silver platter within the first few floors, so I’m not complaining!

Then I started the second DLC, The Last Spark Hunter. I haven’t played much yet, but It’s essentially just one more world of main game, but it looks really nice. I haven’t really been a fan of most overworld environments, but this one is really dense and nice to look at. Also, you basically start at level 30 and get to grow from there, so that’s one of my previous gripes adressed, even if it’s a little late.

In Arkham Knight, I finished off the Catwoman challenges. A lot of repressed memories from Arkham City came back… I really hate playing her. You can stand under a vantage point, looking straight at it, and not get a prompt to whip up there. Now I’m doing Azrael and he’s basically Batman with a few gadgets missing, so it’s a nice breather. He can even glide! I don’t think his cape-strips should allow him to do that though… That’s where my suspension of disbelief gets shaky.

And I finished Antichamber. It was kinda funny, in my first plathrough years ago I was stuck in a dead-end, looking at progress through a window for a long time. This time, even though I really didn’t remember much about the puzzles, I made that progress quite naturally and I found myself unable to find my way into that dead-end!

Completed the main story of Sparks of Hope. It’s good on its own, but I still think the first game was better overall. The characters are way more distinct in the sequel, which is great, but I never really felt much of a need to switch the party around. In the first game, you had to beat a battle in a certain amount of turns to get the perfect ranking and you have nothing like that here. Once you find something that works, there’s no need to go beyond, and I found what works 90% of the tome very early on. I also felt a lot more control in the first game. Replacing the grid with an illusory free movement (the map still works on a grid) just takes the precision out of it, and in a tactics game that’s kind of important. But most importantly, the game didn’t feel right. The game takes itself too seriously and even tried to make the Rabbids actual characters. Rabbids say BWAH, they don’t hold conversations! It just wasn’t as funny, I miss the slapstick above all else. Now, let’s see what the DLC does.

Finished off all Nightwing challenges in Arkham Knight, now it’s Catwoman time. Apparently, every brute-type enemy has been removed from her combat challenges and replaced with a regular shield-enemy. It’s a bit odd. Got stuck on an early Predator map because of a finicky Remain Unseen requirement. I’ve done those before with other characters that seemed way more lenient. But in this case, I was sometimes seen even though nobody started attacking me. And they’re very quick with that trigger finger, so I don’t know what’s so different…

I’ve finally picked up Sparks of Hope again. I’m near the end of world 5 (and probably the game), but that second half of it has been quite a downer because I suddenly hit the level cap. I’m nowhere near completing the skill trees and the game says “No, you don’t get to be any stronger.” This is no Skyrim, where you use the tree to define your class, these are your base abilites! Why the cap? I didn’t even have the extra tree unlocked for everyone when I got to that point!

In Arkham Knight, I finished off all Robin challenges, so Nightwing is next. Predator maps are always so much harder when your character can’t glide and I think I’m already out of those. Why do we not have some kind of indicator to see where jumping from a high ledge lands you? This has been a problem for me since Arkham City. I just want to be behind an enemy, not on a ledge next to him, or hanging from it or, worst of all, on top of said enemy. I got a bit stumped by a challenge that involved not using your Grapnel. I failed that so many times because it’s just a button I instinctively press.

I also dug out Antichamber again. It’s been long enough since my first playthrough that the puzzles are almost new again to me. It’s strange that I don’t hear this game being brought up as much as games like The Witness when people talk about 1st person puzzle games.

I don’t think Genjuu Ryodan is really available in any form today. It was never even released as a cartridge, you had to download it onto a cartridge from a Nintendo Power machine yourself. The game also released a few years into the N64 era, so who knows how many people actually did that?