What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Jarataire RPG (Switch)

August 1st, 2023

It's a new month, and I want to start blogging somewhat cheerfully. I talked about this some yesterday, but for August, I want to take the time to return to some of the games I set aside a while ago without finishing, whether it's to make progress in a game I'll eventually come back to later, give things a second chance, or just to remember why I dropped the game in the first place. Maybe it's not very productive, but since it's a plan that takes advantage of my poor attention span, I'm all for it.

Last night, I felt really burned out after working a bit late and not being able to turn my brain off for hours afterwards. I picked Money Puzzle Exchanger back up as a relaxing puzzle game and promptly got destroyed, as it's a decently difficult game. Once I got settled and reacclimated to the currency rates, I got destroyed again, just a little slower. I like this game- the uneven amount of pieces that you have to match up (as in, you need five 100 yen coins to change them to a 500, but only two 50s to change to a 100) is an interesting snag in the puzzle game formula. I also feel like it is slightly beyond my power to get good at it, which is fine.

After that, I went back to Jarataire RPG for some easy before bed gaming and picked up a couple of the stage two wind element monsters. Now that I've hit stage 3, I don't recruit everyone in my first match against them, stretching things out a bit.

I am very tired, but I'm gonna try to go to McDonalds for breakfast before my office day and see if I can think past work to stay peppy.

July 27th, 2023

Yesterday, I tried to get my sleep back in order by cutting down on my caffeine and going to bed quite a lot earlier than normal, but things were worse. I woke up and just laid there for hours in the middle of the night, had a really stressful morning dream about an inexplicably complex plan to get takeout, and still overslept until the exact same time, again waking up to mild misery. I took tomorrow off work, so maybe a 3-day weekend will help me get things back in order. Either that, or I'll just get a good night's sleep out of exhaustion.

Anyway, I played Jarataire RPG again last night, levelling to the point that I can start collecting the stage three characters. It's satisfying to make progress.

July 26th, 2023

Today, I'm trying to get back in the habit of morning posting, which I feel like helps me have a better overall day. I'm still super tired, but I'm up and going, and that counts for a lot.

After posting last night, I played co-op Halo, finding out that I did not need to be so worried about my FPS skills because I am not friends with jerks. The mix of lovely outdoor scenery and slick sci-fi buildings really surprised me when we got to the second mission, and I'm having a way better time than I expected.

Before bed, I also kept grinding away in Jarataire RPG, genuinely delighted to have hit a point where I have to level grind in a mahjong solitaire game. It bothered me a little at first that you can match any uncovered tiles, not just the edge ones, but it makes clicking through chains of matches really satisfying, especially when special attacks start going off, too. I feel like this game was made specifically for me.

July 25th, 2023

I'm still dragging, so it's another late, and probably short post tonight.

I wanted to try out some of my new download pickups, so I tried the wordily titled Metantei Conan Skateboard Run: Kaito Kid to Shinpi no Hihou last night. For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to call it Detective Conan Skateboard Run from here on out. I'm not really a massive Detective Conan fan, though I like the character design. This game concept seemed goofy, though, so I wanted to try it. It is decent fun so far- it's a Temple Run/Subway Surfers type game, with set levels and a decent amount of challenge to clear all goals on each, even early on. I might burn out on it, but maybe not for a while.

I kept going with Jarataire RPG, too, and am now one monster from collecting everyone in stage two. This was well worth the dollar or two I paid for it.

July 24th, 2023

My post is way later than I usually like to be, but I'm feeling kind of tired and having trouble focusing today. That is ok, though, I think.

Yesterday, I spent another 199 yen that I had left on my JP eShop card, but since it was a super cheap game picked up with the spare change, called For a Vast Future, I'm not counting it against my cleared game total.

I was going to try Indivisble from my set of download pickups last night, but turned on the wrong machine and was defeated enough to just kind of roll with it. Because of that, I ended up trying Costume Quest on my XBox instead. It was really cute and charming, at least at the start! I want to play more tonight if I can manage to get through everything else.

I played a tiny bit more of Jarataire RPG, too, accidentally clicking on a level I wasn't ready for, halfheartedly trying to beat it, and falling asleep. It was perfect late night gaming.

July 23rd, 2023

Yesterday was nice, but I hit the JP Nintendo eShop sale and picked up a couple more sale games. River City Girls and a Detective Conan skateboarding game were last night's victims. As such, I now have to raise my cleared games goal before I can buy another physical game to 14. I don't have the "oh no, I am such a failure" feeling I usually would in cases like this, since I picked up four games I wanted at good discounts without adding to my physical game shelf. Still, I've gotta clear those fourteen games before winter's double punch of Mario RPG and Dragon Quest Monsters!

My gaming last night was pretty normal. I played a decent amount of Soul Calibur 6, plodding along with sidequests in Libra of Souls. The gameplay feels so good that it never gets tedious, though, and levelling up and gathering new weapons is fun, too.

I played a very tiny bit more of Jarataire RPG, too, spending more time changing tile colors for better visibility than actually playing. This is actually a nice feature. Every monster defaults to its "type" color for the tile background, so focusing on a type advantage makes the tiles difficult to tell apart at the speed I want. Once I did swap out some of those background colors, though, things went a lot faster. It has to be done one party setup at a time, on RGB sliders, but this was a dollar game, so I'm not complaining too hard.

July 22nd, 2023

My mood is pretty decent this morning, but I'm getting wrecked by allergies again, so it's tough to focus. Hopefully, the medicine I took does something so I'm not condemned to a day of sniffling and nothing more.

I was right that yesterday would be an okay day, though, so I bought a couple cheap games in the Playstation Summer Sale to celebrate that things seem to be looking good in some regards. As such, I'm raising my current "games to clear before another purchase" count to twelve, as I cheated and blew off my ten game goal entirely.

As far as what I actually played went, I kept on with JarataireRPG, finding out that the monster type strengths and weaknesses can matter quite a lot, and finding some attack combos dependent on what characters I've got on the board as well. It's decent fun, even if the game itself is a bit unpolished.

I'm hoping for a calm day, but don't know if I'll do too much gaming. That's okay, though. It's nice to have a no-goals-Saturday.

July 21st, 2023

Even though I think today could be an okay day, my asthma was so nasty when I got up this morning that I wonder if I've had a cold rather than just being a lazy rat the last few days. As far as things go, though, it's fine to figure that out on a Friday. Today won't be super hard, and I have a couple of days to rest ahead.

Before bed last night, I was going through my past Switch impulse buys to see if I had anything breezy to play while feeling brain dead. I found JarataireRPG, an anime girl/monster collecting mahjong solitaire RPG that I'd picked up for a dollar or two a while back. It does have cheap game vibes, with no capital letters on the level select screen and a somewhat mysterious damage system on the enemy's side. I don't really care, though. I get to level up, I get to collect things, and I get to play mahjong solitaire. It's likely that I'll stick with this one for a bit.