<–The State of the Gamer: 10/24/19           The State of the Gamer: 12/19/19–>

A weekly post updated every other Thursday detailing my current gaming projects.  I have an account at Grouvee, which is a site you can use to keep track of your backlog, so please feel free to friend me there!

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What I Obtained

• Thumper: $0.00 @ Nintendo eShop – I paid nothing because I used my Gold Points
• Earthlock: $5.99 @ Nintendo eShop – Hard to turn down this kind of a deal.  I was iffy on the demo when I downloaded it, but the low price made me give it a shot
• Apollo Justice Ace Attorney: $9.99 @ Nintendo eShop – This was also on sale
• GRIS: $8.49 @ Nintendo eShop
• Degrees of Separation: $1.99 @ Nintendo eShop

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What I Finished

Title: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth
Series Title: Ace Attorney
System: Nintendo 3DS

Date Started: 11/4/19
Date Finished: 11/28/19

This game is different from the prior Ace Attorneys in that you physically move your character around and it’s not based around court cases.  It’s literally Edgeworth investigating the situations/crimes he finds himself in, but despite this, it’s still structured in a similar way.  You have to locate clues and face off with people in “testimony,” looking for contradictions and inconsistencies.   Like the other AA games, the writing is fantastic where each case connects to the other.  All of them are centered around a global smuggling ring and a master thief hellbent on exposing corruption.  I’m unsure why it has a lower rating than the others on Grouvee, but I guess maybe people didn’t like the change in structure or maybe they preferred Phoenix as a main character *shrug*  I thought it was just as good, and I like when a game series deviates a bit but retains its sense of self, which this did.

Title: Etrian Odyssey Untold: The Millennium Girl
Series Title: Etrian Odyssey
System: Nintendo 3DS

Date Started: 6/30/19
Date Finished: 11/14/19

I defeated the Storm Emperor, but shelved the game not too long after that.  I’d reached the 6th Stratum, Claret Hollows, and the problems I kept running into had to do with the fact that I changed the job of my Highlander to Landschnect and then back, to the original so he was at a lower level than everyone else.  I like the fact that you can rest your characters, which allows you to redistribute their skill points, but my main guy kept getting killed really easily due to him being around 20 levels behind.

The game also has a level cap of 70, which is broken by defeating elemental dragons of which the Storm Emperor is one.  Slaying him raised it to 80.  I had the option of facing an ice dragon, and I’m certain soon the quest would arrive for a fire one, capping the levels at 100 or maybe 99.  I just didn’t feel like either grinding my Highlander up higher or dealing with constantly resurrecting/healing him all the time.  There was also the matter of shuffling around everyone else’s skills, too.

In the end I had played the game enough, and though I greatly enjoyed it, it was time to move on.  I would certainly play another Etrian Odyssey game armed with better knowledge, and I really liked the story it told as well.  I consider it beaten if not utterly completed, but I’ve long accepted I don’t need to be a completionist for everything lol.

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What I’m Playing

Title: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Series Title: Ace Attorney
System: Nintendo 3DS

Date Started: 11/29/19

I have…SO many questions that I hoped are answered in due time.  There are old characters and new characters as this takes place quite a few years after the events of the original trilogy (Edgeworth’s game occurs after, but at some parts crosses timelines a bit there), and there are elements that really need to be explained.  Regardless, I’m really liking it and I can’t wait to see where it goes.

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What I Played

• Pic-a-Pix Deluxe – I just keep downloading puzzles for this.  They’re cheap and I can’t get enough.
• Thumper – I like it.  The rhythms have a primal quality to them, and the controls are simple but intense.  It gives you instructions as you go along.  The checkpoints are numerous and fair.  It’s a good game.

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Let’s Plays

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice for All (Olizandri on YouTube)
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations (Olizandri on YouTube) – I finished up Oliz’s LP of the orig trig.  It was fun re-experiencing them.  That gave me the impetus to play the Edgeworth game and Apollo Justice
• Mass Effect: Andromeda (Olizandri on YouTube) – I wanted to play this before I watched a Let’s Play, but time isn’t my friend, and I can still play it in the future.  I…love it.  I’m unsure why it got such hate, and I regret any I gave it due to jumping on the bandwagon (I did the same thing with FFXIII, ugh ;_;).  It’s a Mass Effect.  I can seem some of the weird facial animations, but that shouldn’t have condemned the game, and it’s a damn shame it was so bad that BioWare halted production on any games in the series.  This is something I’d definitely play, and there’s so much they could do with it down the line.

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I’ve been considering getting a gaming laptop for a number of reasons.  One, I could stream through it since it would be more powerful than the one I have now, and two, my current one has keys that no longer work.  The “circuit” that has “9, o, l, and .” no longer registers them (I’m using a USB keyboard in order to post this).  I’m annoyed because I JUST got this laptop maybe a year or so ago.  I’ve tried fixing it by tightening up the screws, but that only worked temporarily.  It’s so irritating trying to write, and even though I have the USB keyboard, it covers the mouse.  I have a separate one for that, but it’s not as convenient as the pad it comes with.  I don’t want to have to transfer all of my information to another computer again, but it might just make sense if I want to stream.  Though it’s not like this is going to happen anytime soon since gaming lappys are a bit expensive.  I paid around $900 for my husband’s (with the help of his parents).  Chances are it won’t happen next year as we’re trying to save for house, but if you have any recommendations, I’d be happy to hear them 🙂

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<–The State of the Gamer: 10/24/19           The State of the Gamer: 12/19/19–>