I started up Tales of Zestiria on Steam this week. At this point I now have four party members and I am still plugging away at the first major town. There are a few too many options during battles for my tastes but overall I am enjoying the game quite a bit. Definitely play with a controller!

Been a pretty good week as I beat Pokemon Picross and am still making progress towards the Platinum for Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate, but a few new titles have popped in too:

* Final Fantasy VII on PS4
* Final Fantasy IV and VI on Steam
* Legend of the Dark Witch 2 (Beaten) and Petit Novel Series – Harvest December on 3DS
* FAST Racing NEO on WiiU.

Still focused on Pokecross and WO3U to finish the 100% for both. 'course with Christmas this week I'm getting ready for a deluge of new titles.

So I found this game on Steam called "Retro Game Crunch", which is a collection of retro-style games. The games are actually pretty short-- I've beaten two so far, and neither of them took more than a couple hours. Which is a good thing, because longer games just don't hold my attention much anymore, unless I'm let's playing them. There's variety in them, too. The first game involved you starting out as a blob, and eating bugs in order to evolve into a flying fish unicorn. The second game was a puzzle game where you played as a suicidal robot, and you had to destroy the healer bots in order to successfully destroy yourself. I've tried a little of the third game, and it feels like Ice Climbers with the streets of rage rule of "kill all enemies to proceed".

oops i did it again

again

Congrats!

I heard that Lightning Returns is the easiest FF13 game to Platinum. Is that true?

Yes.

None of them require any serious post-game effort.

Completion of post-game goes miles and miles beyond anything the achievements ask you to do.

Well it's been a wild week as the Christmas rush of new games hit and I spent the entire weekend recovering from that hit to my backlog.

Even before Christmas I received Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes and The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on PS3. Christmas Day itself brought Dragonball Z: Extreme Butoden on 3DS and Snoopy's Grand Adventure, One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3, and Guilty Gear Xrd ~SIGN~ on PS4.

But I managed to reverse that by beating FAST Racing NEO, beating and 100%ing Snoopy's Grand Adventure (got the Platinum in less than 5 hours), DBZ: Extreme Butoden's main story, Guilty Gear Xrd's Arcade mode with everyone, 100%'d Pokemon Picross, realized I hadn't touched Arcana Heart 3: LOVE MAX!!!!! so I cleared its new After Story mode with everyone, then realized I still had the VC version of the original Mario's Picross unfinished and took care of 100%ing that.

My goal right now is to hit a Progress Index of +75 and Invincible status on my Backloggery page before the end of the year and just have to beat 2 more games to do it. Since I'm on vacation this week, it won't be hard.

No new games this week but I did continue to make great progress:
* Beat Yukimura Sanada's Story on Sengoku Basara 3
* Finished up Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-'s Story Mode
* Finished the Platinum trophy for Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate
* Started, beat, and Platinum'd the PS4 port of Final Fantasy VII.

Currently working on Final Fantasy X HD on its PS4 port and am focused on the Petit Novel Series: Harvest December for on-the-go.

Just finished Scholar's of the First Sin last night and I really enjoyed it. There were a few rough parts, but it worked out. Really looking forward to 3, whenever it comes out. Other than that, I played through the newest Strider game, which was a serviceable, albeit toned down, Metroid clone.

Other than that, yet more hours dumped into PoE. Running a chaos build. Essence Drain with spell totems for Wither and Contagion. It's been a pretty cruise-y build.

I'm a weird final fantasy fan.
I'll admit I learned of the series with VII and tactics, and I rented/played the older ones but never finished them for different reasons. (FFX has suffered this same fate)
I bought yesterday FF IV and After years on Steam, so I plan to change that. I was surprised to see FFIV has a bit of voice acting. I'm still very early in the game, on my way to the antlions cave.

While I was at Lantis' place this last past week, I started Pikmin 3! Finally!

This game is so fun and looks fantastic. I'm in love!

I believe the Steam version of FF4 is based on the DS port. I haven't played that one myself and can't entirely confirm it yet, but can definitely say IV is what got me into the series. SLPH just finished recording a race of it too.

Yeah, apparently they took out a dungeon that was added to the DS port, but since it doesn't affect the story at all, I don't mind. I remember playing the PS port a long time ago and I was grinding to learn Float to prevent damage from a cave or something.

Right now I'm back at Baron.

It's been a week where I broke even on gaming progress: No new games but nothing beaten either.

Still working on FFX HD and have reached the Calm Lands so I'm taking advantage of the sidequests that open up at the same time. Managed to get the 0:0.0 in Chocobo racing trophy after a few tries and got the 200 Lightning Bolt dodge trophy on the first try. It's the Chocobo Racing at Remiel Temple that's driving me nuts.

For on-the-go I'm still reading the Harvest December petit novel series on 3DS and am at the 9th of 13 chapters. Overall it's been getting progressively better.

Had a pretty good week and made use of the 3-day weekend to make even more progress. I finished up Harvest December and enjoyed it enough to write up a full Tropes page. Also finished Final Fantasy X's main story and have begun the long grind towards finishing the Platinum.

Started Hyperdimension Neptunia ReBirth 3 on Vita and would be further, but apparently the latest Vita firmware update has royally hosed the battery life while in sleep mode so my battery no longer lasts a full work day to play the game during both commutes.

Also obtained and started J-Stars Victory Vs+ on PS4. Took care of the 20 Free/Online Match trophies to get adjusted to the system and dove into the 1st of 4 Story Mode runs after that.

The comparative lull in new releases ends this week as 2 new ones are arriving today and the PSN update for this week looks to have a few worth checking out.

I haven't been in a playing mood until last Saturday, where I decided to continue FF IV. I wasn't aware that I could get specific characters augments unless I gave those characters 1 or 2 augments, so I missed a few of them.
I just cleared the Tower of Zot, I believe. I haven't done so bad without grinding for gold, but I'm not sure how long my luck will continue. Maybe the fact that the game quicksaves before each battle is what has kept me from losing progress anyways, heh.

Oh, I also bought Skyward Sword, and I'm not too excited about the tilt motion controls (They are stupid)
It took me a while to figure out how to fly the damn bird properly (ish) and I had to try the part where I must land in a circle after jumping like 10 times.
And then there's Link pointing his sword to whatever point the Wii mote is pointing. Again, not a fan of the controls, but let's see how far I make it.

Yeah, the Augment system has a bit of a learning curve but can be very deadly when utilized properly. No need to worry about it too much if you don't use it in a regular run, it's only necessary to be fully optimized for the super bosses added to that version in a NG++ run.

Yeah, that's what I thought. My main goal is to just go through the story since shamefully I have never finished any of the old school Final Fantasy games (nor FF X, which I'll get to it after After Years, hopefully)

It's been a bit of a whirlwind this past week, so I'll sum things up.

New Titles:
* Steins;Gate (Vita)
* Atelier Escha & Logy Plus (Vita)
* Croixleur Sigma (PS4)
* A Boy and His Blob (PS4)
* Near Earth Objects (WiiU)
* Super Mario Advance 4 (WiiU VC)
* Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbatos' Treasure (Wii)
* Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam (3DS)

Despite that huge attack on my backlog, I managed to make pretty good progress:
* 100%'d Steins;Gate courtesy of being bedridden on Wednesday so it was the perfect time to read through it again.
* Beat the main story on J-Stars Victory Vs+, leaving the other 3 team's story modes and Victory Road for Platinum.
* Did a complete blitz (no pun intended) to finish up the Platinum for Final Fantasy X HD over the weekend.
* Finished up by doing a quick run through the main game of Super Mario Advance 4 before trying out the e-reader levels available in that version.

Looks like this week will also be good for new releases courtesy of Final Fantasy Explorers, LEGO Marvel Avengers, and a few digital titles that look work checking out.