Replays of Jan, Feb & March 2026: Avowed, E33 and Tainted Grail

I started up Avowed again for a third playthrough after they dropped the anniversary update with a bunch of new features, including a NG+ and a photo mode. When I first started this I figured I'd try to go for the last few achievements I have left, but all it took was one look at Garrick to realise I can't be mean. It makes me sad to be mean to the pixels. So here we go another good playthrough. 

I usually make a Godlike with very subtle growths, but this time I decided to go all in and when I did I discovered that most of the hairstyles didn't make sense with all that stuff growing out of her head, so in the end she got a huge mass of untamed curls. But she looks very cute :3 I'm very happy she'll be the one I do NG+ with whenever I decide to return to the Living Lands once again somewhere down the line.

One update or other since I last played added the ability for the soul pods to dispel enchantments so I didn't have to drag Yatzli along for literally everything, which made it so I could experiment a bit more with my companions. Kai has taken the same role as Aloth in Pillars of Eternity - he never leaves my squad. But I found myself using Giatta a lot more than previous playthroughs when the second slot wasn't automatically assigned to Yatzli to deal with any enchantments while exploring in Scattersharp and onwards. 

I found the photo mode lacking (or I'm just blind) because I couldn't find any way to change the pose or expression of my character or companions. I couldn't stage photos. So in the end I only ever used the photo mode to remove the UI when taking landscape pictures. 

Next up I returned to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I continued on with my old save on NG+ with the intention of getting the last three achievements and finally defeat Simon. Since I already had the swimsuits there was no reason for me to redo the Gestral Beaches which suited me just fine because those were the things I struggled with the most the first time around. 

I still can't believe how insanely pretty this game is in every way. Graphics, music, gameplay, mechanics, characters... it's all so beautiful. 

Getting to level 99 for that achievement was easy enough. I continued on with doing all the side content aiming to do Simon absolutely last before I headed back to Lumière. The last two achievements are tied because the last journal is right next to Simon, so I need to defeat Simon to get to it. 

I've seen talk online about Verso romancing Lune so I aimed to make that happen this playthrough and so turned Sciel down when she propositioned Verso, but she's damn persistent and Lune is making no advances. Maybe after I've completed her side quest... 

I got to the Reachers for Maelle's side quest before I felt a bit bored with the JRPG fighting style (which tends to happen) and paused my playthrough to turn towards my third replay of the year so far: Tainted Grail.

It isn't that long since I played Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon for the first time, but I had an absolute blast so when I started that NG+ save before shutting the game down the last time it was with the intention to come back to it. I didn't expect it to be this soon. 

Still rocking my dual-wield DoT status effect build I began a new save with the goal to get the achievements I was missing, which required a bunch of different choices to be made so I was all for it. I also started working on a new build focusing on magic, but since my original build was still the strongest one I stuck with that for the first two zones. Even with the increased difficulty of NG+ the Wyrdknight remained a non-issue with that build. 

I chose to romance Alisa this time around even though I absolutely can't stand her, just to be able to see the continuation of her quest line and to unlock her house as my house. It broke my heart when I couldn't tell Beor that I loved him because of it because he's so sweet T_T 

There were two free updates with new content while I played, but I didn't get far enough into the game to get to them before my attention was stolen by... The Sims 2. I had only just entered Castle Sagremor too...

E33 and Tainted Grail are to be continued once I get over my reignited Sims obsession.