Lunar Threads

Currently playing through Fire Emblem Awakening. This game is so much fun and has a ton of replay value due to all the combinations of pairings you can come up with, and the support conversations are so funny and sweet.

I also recently bought Suikoden II off of the PSN, and it's really engaging so far.

I've been playing Pokemon Go. I've been doing a lot of walks to clear my mind and get some exercise. When the servers have been working, it's been an engaging game. It taps directly into my loves of spatial exploration (finding new places in the surrounding town) and collection (finding new Pokemon). I wish there were a passive mode rather like a pedometer that would collect things as I walked. Right now, I'll use it in 15-30 minute increments and then put it away to get some more sustained mental time. I also try to be very aware while I'm walking, looking around before I stand aside to catch a Pokemon.

I can see the skeleton of Ingress that it's built on, a previous ARG (alternative/augmented reality game) that I didn't have a good enough phone to use back in 2012. The hot spots are decidedly commercial and urban, but I've also been pleasantly surprised by how some Pokestops correspond directly to artistic and historical features that I hadn't known existed, like murals, statues, and plaques. In a way, it's a shame that it takes a major franchise and a lot of marketing to make an ARG like this successful. I'd play the hell out of an exploratory game that rewarded engagement with natural, historical, and artistic features of the surrounding area. For example, I can imagine a game that mapped various centuries of London onto one's traversal of modern-day London, finding and tapping into sites of power to shape the London of the present and future.

I think we can all agree that almost everybody is playing Pokemon Go, it's that popular.

Aside from that I've been recently replaying Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword and Sacred Stones running different characters for the end game, with the exception of Sacred Stones since almost all characters I use are the same anyways. I've been trying to play Legend of Dragoon and Final Fantasy 8 but I keep turning them down after a few minutes, maybe its the graphics or just that I've already played them and know what to do and so it becomes boring after awhile.

I'm not playing Pokemon Go, but was amused to learn that one of my coworkers has talked another of my coworkers into trying it. I've never played a Pokemon game, which I generally think is just as well since I have a completist streak at times and don't need a game whose slogan ties right into that. :P I'm already asking for trouble by playing Neko Atsume.

I did read that the use of Ingress for Pokemon Go has made for some distressing situations, like war memorials and cemeteries being gyms and the like.

Halfway through my second playthrough of Valkyria Chronicles, which I restarted as soon as I finished it. And really wanting to start a new game of Valkyria Chronicles 2 since the characters and storyline are fresh in my mind. I should note that I put well over 500 hours into VC 2 the first time I played it, though, and I really have other things to do with that kind of time...

^ That is true; I've seen a couple of war memorials transformed into gyms. On a more positive note, a lot of churches have ended up being gyms and stops, something that many churches have acknowledged with water stations and inviting people inside. That's pretty cool.

I want to finish my stalled playthrough of VC now. I really enjoyed VC 2, and probably also put a few hundred hours into it playing side missions over and over.

I've been playing some Earthbound. I'm collecting screenshots for an as-yet undetermined purpose.

A piece of advice on VC: do the DLC missions (which are included with the recent HD rerelease) as soon as they come up, especially the "Behind Her Blue Flame" one. There's a recommendation on when to do that one, after a certain chapter, to avoid spoilers. Completing it gives you something good, though I should note that it is hard in that the soldiers are quite low in defense.

I also suggest doing the six "professional military" skirmish challenges, which are geared for individual classes. I'd done half of them before I realized that you can in fact use people of classes other than the one each is aimed at (unlike in VC 2), which makes a big difference for the lancer one. There are also enemy aces in them and some nice weapons were gained from them.

Right now I am playing Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness, LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens, and Ys Memories of Celceta. ^^

Welp, I am playing Pokemon Go.

It's literally the first Pokemon game I've ever played. The earlier games basically emphasized all the aspects of RPGs that I find the most irritating when they crop up: collecting everything, random encounters, level-grinding, and weak or sparse storylines. What convinced me for Pokemon Go (besides Jenner) was all the stories of people socializing and exploring their neighborhoods through the game, which actually sounded like a lot of fun. I'm all for a good reason to go outside, and it gives a good, really fun framework for finding new trails, parks, sights, shops, and whatever, even in places that I've been living in for 5-10 years now.

Also it's really interesting to see such a major foray into AR, so I'm curious where this is going to go. KF

Back from Australia! On the plane home, I started Valkyria Chronicles 3 (via translation patch). I really, really itch to polish up the writing, but it's adequate for me to enjoy the game. Wish they hadn't used so many of VC 2's maps to represent totally different areas though; it makes the game feel like a fan effort (as does the reuse of some of the music in odd locales, and the drawn versions of Squad 7). But still fun.

Spouse decided to start Child of Light, which I first heard about here. We're enjoying that too, even if it resulted in some compulsive rhyming. I do feel like the composer (at least for the battle tracks, don't know if there's more than one) needed an editor or other source of critique, or just some basic harmony classes, because the chord progressions don't...progress. And there's no melody there. And so on. It's not bad, just very amateurish.

^ That's a coincidence. I started Child of Light too. I didn't realize the music had any technical flaws (why would I?), but I can say I don't really remember the battle music. I do like the rhyming being a rule of sorts for the world, as well as the fairy-tale logic of the plot.

Yeah, I didn't mean to harp on the music so much there. I just got interrupted and posted really abruptly. I like the minimalist music that plays a lot of the time. And I love the visuals, and there's some quite funny writing. I'm a little confused about the backstory that starts the game, though. I thought from the prologue that the princess dropped into her sleep the same night her father got married, but later there's a reference to sisters and parents. I may need to start a new game just to see that opening again.

I'm playing ReCore. Enjoying it quite a bit so far, but it seems that everyone did for the first few hours so... we'll see.

Just finished two play throughs of Amnesia and Silent Hill 2. I forget how much I really love SH2 sometimes until I get back into it and realize just how spooky it can get. Filler may need to be filmed in the form of Spooky's House of Jump Scares or whatever it's called now. So that's exciting.

Still working on trophies for Star Ocean Integrity and Faithlessness. However, I'm also playing Disney Magical World 2 and Harvest Moon Skytree Village on my 3DS. ^^

I started Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright. So far I'm enjoying it, though it's quite a grind to get through my current mission. I need to figure out how to get across a river without having that unit immediately slaughtered.

Hmm, that description makes me want to play Valkyrie Chronicles again, a game where I also liked the strategy but loved the characters even more.

Because I haven't had time to fully get into any of the games on my list (right now, a replay of Life Is Strange, several replays of Mass Effect before Andromeda is out, and Civilization VI), I've just been playing a lot of Duck Game.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/312530/

It's the best. KF

Paper Mario Color Splash, and Animal Crossing New Leaf. I picked that back up because of the update, and started a new save file, which I didn't realize would be in the same town that my original file is (Lyton). I had wanted to do a Saith, so I named my new character Thalia. I do at least now have Epona, Wolf Link, and Medli as villagers.

I got Pokemon Moon. It goes without saying that it is very entertaining, but I think it's killing/exacerbating the decline of my 2DS -- without even getting into the lag that goes along with this combination of software and hardware. Upgrading is definitely in my future.

I resumed Animal Crossing New Leaf after the update also -- it'd been a full 12 months since I last looked at my town. It's nice to see in-game games make a comeback -- I particularly like Desert Island Escape.

I ended up getting Final Fantasy XV and a PS4. I'll let you know how it goes. I got a pretty good deal on the system and figured there would be a few RPGs I could play through the system, both new and old. (Suikoden 2? Persona 5?)

Been playing Hyrule Warriors Legends on my 3DS. We have the WiiU game but I didn't do any playing on that one, thinking that I wouldn't be able to take the motion and such. But I got unexpectedly addicted to the 3DS game -- which probably is considerably easier because of the My Fairy thing added. Oh, and because I got it so late in the year I got all these spotpass things at once, meaning I started the game with six million rupees. Really.