Game completed: Fire Emblem Engage

I started this game a few days after release, but then Hogwarts Legacy came and stole all my attention and I only returned to the game after I had finished HL. This is the fourth main series Fire Emblem game I've played, the sixth if you count the two recent spin-offs (Awakening, Fates, Three Houses, Warriors, Heroes)

The way I play these games is that I do as many extra battles as possible because I want to increase support between all the characters as much as possible before the game ends. Because every support interaction gives you more background for every character, which creates more of a lasting impression and adds more to their personalities. As much as I loved Diamant, Alcryst, Alfred, Jade, Ivy, Rosado, Veyle, Panette and Yunaka, my heart eventually ended up with Zelkov. Is anyone really surprised? 

It did break my heart however to read the post-game character sheets and find out that Alfred died young. His childhood frailty caught up with him T_T

Because I've never played the old Fire Emblem games I've mostly only heard about most of the Emblem characters via other games. Marth especially keeps popping up everywhere. The only Emblem characters I properly knew were Lucina, Corrin and Byleth. If you count the DLC Emblems then ofc I knew Edelgard/Dimitri/Claude and Camilla as well. 

As far as the story goes it's a pretty standard Fire Emblem story. There's a dragon at the end of it all whose evil generals and evil armies invade the countries of the world and it's up to our hero and their friends to save the world and defeat the dragon. Funnily enough I ended up feeling really sorry for Zephia, wishing Griss would just join me already, and Sombron's story made me sad. 

The death at the very beginning was a bit overplayed, though. I've known this character for ten minutes and I'm supposed to care about their death? Alear, the MC, doesn't even remember this character, why is she grieving so hard? The correlating battle towards the end hits deeper, because then you've gotten to know the character via word-of-mouth and Alear has regained her memories. 

They did overplay the death card a bit in this game. Alear dies like three times lol.

Overall I really enjoyed this game, but it wasn't as good as Three Houses, which just ticked all the boxes. Better than Awakening and Fates, though, by a long shot. 

I might play through it again at some point after the last DLC Emblem pack has released.

After the trailer dropped everybody complained about Alear's annoying bangs, but did you see Pandreo?!?!?!

Game completed: Hogwarts Legacy

Those are basically my feelings right now. But I've done everything the game offers and now I either have to wait for new content or until enough time has passed that I'll feel good about playing it again.

The first part of this post will be general stuff. I'll warn before we go into story and spoilers. 

Before I even got the game I made sure to connect my Wizarding World account with my Warner Bros account so I could have my official House and my actual wand in the game. Connecting those two also provides a bit of extra cosmetic goodies in the game :) Of course I also preordered the Deluxe edition so I could get all those extra goodies and the 72 hours of early access. 

When I first booted up the game it preset everything at Medium settings. I changed them to High and got started. Didn't have any stuttering or fps drops or graphic bugs or glitches throughout until they dropped the first patch and then I started getting stuttering the first few seconds whenever I started the game... Thanks... 

The world is huge with lots to explore and throughout there is a slightly changed version of the soundtrack from the movies and it just keeps hitting me deep in my fangirl heart. It's been a long time since I was this invested in a game and it managed to meet my every expectation and it completely deserved the hype. 

The combat is fast-paced, fun and instinctive/reactive and I enjoyed it way more than I usually enjoy combat in games.

I managed to get all of the achievements for the game. Most of them were either story based or based on collectables so most of them were easy to get if you really went and did everything the game had to offer. Two of them were combat based, but neither of them were too difficult to achieve even for a filthy casual like me :) The last three requires you to replay the intro up until level 9-10 ish, because those three are House-specific. 

From this point on there will be spoilers! Major ones! Don't say I didn't warn you!

I've played the intro four times by now, but the action-y almost movie-like story sequences of it never get boring. It definitely starts with a bang. Dragon attack, ancient magic shenanigans, pensieves... You name it, they got it. When the camera first panned over Hogwarts with the game version of Hedwig's Theme I started crying. I've cried a few times during the course of this game. 

I loved going to classes and I wish they'd included more of them. Especially Potions classes. I need more Professor Sharp in my life. And Professor Garlick. Actually, Professor Hecat is cool too. Just give me more classes. My favourite class is probably the first Defence Against the Dark Arts when I got to beat Sebastian's ass. I love Sebastian. And his quest to save his sister and subsequent accidental delve into the Dark Arts breaks my heart but it makes so much sense. I think I actually audibly gasped when he used the Killing Curse on his uncle. 

Natty started out as the least interesting character you build a friendship with, but the end of her questline had me really fricking invested and the cutscene at the very end which shows her facing off against a boggart that takes the shape of her dead father just had me in tears and I was so proud of her. 

Poppy was so sweet. So fitting that her name is Sweeting. Her story didn't pull me in as much as Natty and Sebastian, but damn if it wasn't amazing to fight alongside centaurs and meet hippogriffs and find snidgets ♥ 

The quest leading up to finding Jackdaw's rest was different depending on which House you were in, which is why there were separate achievements for it, I assume. For Ravenclaw the quest involved helping Ollivander find a stolen family heirloom wand of unusual make and core. For Gryffindore the quest involved Nearly-Headless Nick and going into the Hogwarts kitchen in an attempt to help Nick join the Headless Hunt. For Hufflepuff the quest was to solve a really old murder mystery and it brought us straight to Azkaban! o_o I wasn't expecting to go there in this game... For Slytherin the quest involves the Headmaster's personal house-elf Scrope and going into Apollonia Black's personal and hidden cavern by the Black Lake. All in all very different quests, but doing all of them served to create a very complete portrait of who Richard Jackdaw was. 

The main quest really had its moments too. San Bakar's trial was the most memorable and amazing. Getting to tame and ride a huge graphorn was just *_* And using polyjuice potion to transform into Phineas Nigellus Black for one single quest to get inside his office was so much fun and I was laughing the whole time.

I wish there had been some kind of interaction with Morganach as well as the Keepers, but no such luck. The end of Rookwood was disappointing, but the final fight against Ranrok really made up for it. I loved seeing all the professors come together and help with the battle underneath Hogwarts. 

This is my Game of the Year. Not even a challenge.

Elder Scrolls Online: High Isle chapter

I'm so late with this post. I was going to post it after I played High Isle back in September, but then I forgot. Then I was going to post it after I played Firesong last month, but then I forgot again. The reason I forgot, I think, is mainly because this chapter just didn't do it for me at all. 

The archipelago is technically Breton territory which means we're back in the land of knights and nobility and none of that appeal to me. The druids could've been an interesting addition, but they just ended up being the same as the wyresses but with a different name.

The story is mostly obvious and there was no real mystery to who the villain was in either High Isle or Firesong. 

With High Isle they added a card game called Tales of Tribute, which is fun enough when played against NPCs, but not at all fun when played against other players. So exactly like Elder Scrolls Legends. 

I was very happy to run into so many old and known characters though! Jakarn, Captain Kaleen, Caska, Za'ji, Raz, and even Rigurt! And ofc Ayrenn, Emeric and Irnskar. It's a big ol' reunion!

Arabelle and Frii turned out to be pretty dang cool characters too and I hope we'll see more of Arabelle!

The final fight in Firesong was really epic but that's the only thing that main quest had going for it.

Necrom seems to be more my thing and I'm excited for it!

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

This show is so good. After 1899 this was my pick for dinner show because we both really liked the game and we've heard good things about this show. One person even told me it was better than Arcane. I don't agree with that, but it was still really good. 

All the music in the show is music used in the game. 

Becca is best girl. I don't care about Lucy. And after David went chrome head I kinda lost interest in him too. I lived for Becca in this show. 

I enjoyed how they showed and explained cyberpsychosis in this show. It made it seem more real than the random psychos you fought in the game.

The entire story is tragic and I was genuinely horrified when David went through with the conversion in the last episode.

Kinda sad this show was a one-off. I'm hoping they'll do more Cybperunk projects!

Brooklyn 99

I've seen all the memes from this show. I've seen the clips. And for years it was a show I considered watching, but one I wasn't entirely sure I'd enjoy since comedy is difficult for me. I like cynical, dark, sarcastic, punny humour. "I'm funny because I'm stupid" or "Let's make fun of this person" kinds of humour don't do it for me and I find them to be incredibly cringe. 

But Toni convinced me to give Brooklyn 99 a chance and I really enjoyed it. There were very few cringe moments and most of the show was just genuinely funny. 

Rosa and Gina quickly became my favourites, but Holt and Jake grew on me and I related so much to Amy. Stationery nerds unite!

Watching the first few seasons when I already knew Jake and Amy would end up together was kind of like rewatching Friends when you know Monica and Chandler will end up together. Just so much fun :3

They kinda dropped the ball on the last season, but everything up until that point was gold.

1899

This show had the same creators as Dark which we both really enjoyed so we decided to give this show another try. And just as in the first season of Dark we spent most of the time being confused. 

I really enjoyed the late Victorian setting in the first couple episodes, and I also enjoyed that everyone spoke their own languages. It's such a small thing, but if the show had been American everyone would have spoken English (maybe with appropriate accents, but not necessarily), but the show is German so everyone speaks their own languages and some of the characters know more than one language while others don't. It made for interesting communication and there were so many times where their body language conveyed more meaning than their words to the person they were speaking to, because the other person couldn't understand their language. 

The story quickly entered confusion territory and every prediction we made turned out to be wrong, but it kept us on our toes. 

When we only had one episode left I decided to check if the show was renewed so if the ending was unsatisfactory we'd know whether there'd be more or not. Turns out the show was cancelled, which completely killed the vibe. The way the show ended I would've loved to see more.

It wasn't as cool as Dark, but damn it was still cool.