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Fire Giant down.

Persona 4 Golden Sweet fucking Christ, this game is long. I picked my playthrough back up 40 hours in, right after Rise's dungeon, thinking I was roughly halfway through but here I am over 70 hours later having just finished it last night lol. Still a fantastic game, though. I remember not being 100% into replaying it when the PC port first came out but playing a lot of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax a couple weeks ago made me really eager to spend more time with these characters. Also, I did not remember the Hollow Forest being this fucking awful. It really feels like they didn't want to create a new tier of equipment and enemies solely for it, so they just took away your gear and items and have you fight low level enemies. That made me just avoid combat as much as possible, which they clearly anticipated because on like half the floors you get into fights when you open doors lol. Good thing it's not the final dungeon like I was thinking because it would've ended the game on a pretty low note. You'd think I would've had my fill after 70+ hours of playing this but I want PC ports of P3 and P5R more than ever. I want more, just... with a different cast. I really hope they'll announce the P5R port this year... In the meantime, new game + will have to do. I'll probably rush through it with a guide and skip cutscenes because as much as I enjoyed coming back to the game I really don't wanna spend another 100+ hours on it. Also, thank fucking God I once again got Hardcore Risette Fan without even trying because that would've probably made me put it off for a while. I mean, I did try and went out of my way to constantly trigger as many of Rise's lines as possible but I'm really baffled that I got it so easily not once but twice when everyone else seems to have so much trouble with it. I wasn't even using a spreadsheet to keep track of which lines I got like people recommend. I really wonder if I'm somehow doing something that everyone else isn't or just really fucking lucky with this one particular achievement. But yeah, really glad to have one less thing to worry about on NG+ because I feel like I'll already have enough to keep track of with maxing out all social links and filling out the compendium.

Elden Ring Currently on NG+++. Easily the best game I've ever played, no question about it. There were however, some issues: Upgrade materials seem oddly scattered, this might just be due to the open world nature and how I played, but I had a bunch of upgrade stones 6, a ton of 7 and some 8 while 5 was nowhere to be found. Pop-up messages "A door has been unlocked" "Stonesword key lost with use", these things get in the way take too long to disappear and having to press a button to instantly dismiss them almost got me killed a couple of times. Being asked if you want to use a flask to re-summon your horse, this was extremely annoying and would be better off as just a tutorial once you get Torrent "Hey, if it dies, you can use a flask to call it once more!" Multiplayer co-op and pvp, but at this point it's kinda pointless to complain about it, FROM has their style and it's unlikely they'll change. Everything else though, pure awesomeness. The map felt like an actual map, not a glorified checklist of quests and NPCs I don't care about, opening it and being able to just mark a path to a place I wanted to go was awesome. Being able to look at a map and just see the map instead of getting anxiety from the trillion icons, npcs, quests and other pointless shit was a breath of fresh air and I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to other open world games. NPC quests are fun, and even the more simple ones either lead to secret areas, unlock merchants or have other cool rewards. The fact that there's no quest tracker makes it that much more fun to actually complete these quests IMO, found a lady who was like "You got any grapes?" and it turns out that I did because earlier I found a ghost dude next to a "grape" (it's actually an eye), asking for a maiden to take his grapes... Never saw that lady again even though I had collected a bunch of those things, and that was cool. On the other hand there were NPCs I had forgotten about until I ran into them while doing other stuff, this IMO, feels way more organic than just having map markers or quest logs that tell you exactly what everyone wants, where to find it and where to find them once you have their items. The gameplay, it's Souls, with improvements, some streamlining and new additions, the stealth mechanic was worrying to me because I didn't know how well it'd work, how necessary it would be or if it would lead to areas that could only be cleared by using it, thankfully, it works much better than expected, and was actually quite useful without feeling like if you didn't stealth you were screwed. Having a dedicated jump button is awesome and it's hard to explain how much it improves things compared to previous Souls games. Guard counters make shields feel more useful, spirit summons are awesome and a great way to get some support without the penalty of increased boss health when summoning other players, and IMO, the best new change is the Stakes of Marika which allow you to respawn much more close to boss gates or to certain areas with tough enemies instead of having to respawn at the last bonfire site or grace, this eliminates much of the tedium and annoyance of having to fight, or run all the way back to the boss. The story is a bit more straightforward this time, there's still a whole lot of "read item descriptions" and stuff, but NPCs and cutscenes also reveal a fair bit more than in other SoulsBorne games. My favourite part was just abandoning all weapons and instead carrying a huge shield, with a couple of talismans to reduce damage, this thing can tank through even the strongest of bosses, except for two, one which is just a pain, and the other... Kinda makes sense that trying to block wouldn't work on it. TL;DR: Love it, best game ever!!! lol

Upgraded my LG OLED 55 B6 to the 2022 55 C2.

It's easier just to hunt down the bell bearings for them, really. They patched the twin husks merchant so that you buy crafting materials for like 80% less than what it used to cost.

Just rub it in whydontcha...

Got the Final Fantasy Origin platinum. Not too much grinding for this one aside from getting one of your jobs to level 99, which will take a while on your own but if you're willing to help out other players on chaos difficulty it gives you a lot of exp crystals as a reward so I managed it in a few hours. I'm probably done with this game for a while. Maybe if the DLC is good I'll jump back in but I'm ready to move on for the time being.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin Man, Nomura can just never pick a normal name for these games, can he? Anyway, this is branded as a soulslike but I wouldn't really call it one. It pretends to be one, sure. It has the respawning enemies and the high difficulty like you'd expect, but I don't think of it as one for two reasons. One, there's a difficulty selection option which goes all the way down to casual. Two, you don't lose exp when you die. In fact, you don't lose anything when you die except for MP, which is easy enough to get back. You don't really level up in the traditional sense either. SoP uses a job system like FFV or FFXIV where you can switch between them freely and each one has its own levels up to 30 (at least until NG+). The job system is easily the best part of this game. Jack can equip two jobs at a time and swap between them freely during battle. Figuring out the best ways to synergize your jobs for encounters is pretty appealing and there is rarely a "best job" for any particular boss, only what works best for YOU. Strategy guides online told me to use the black mage against Tiamat and I was really struggling with it until I decided to try switching to the lancer and throwing spears at her until she died. It made me feel pretty clever to come up with my own way, and the combat in general is very customizable and full of combos. Team Ninja excels at action combat systems better than anyone else except maybe Capcom. Of course, it's everything else that's kind of lackluster. The story is hilariously cringe and Jack is the edgiest video game character since Shadow the Hedgehog. At one point his response to a character saying something he doesn't like is to say "bullshit" and then walk away while blasting rap metal on his phone. This is what Nomura thinks is cool? What is he, 14? I can't say it didn't make me laugh, though. It's just so absurd. The plot in general is also really convoluted, but what else do you expect from a Nomura game? He has a complexity addiction that hurts every project he's in charge of. But I didn't buy the game for the story anyway. Unfortunately, the level design is also...well, bad. It's not frustrating or confusing or ugly. It's just dull. Lots of corridors and hallways like it was put together in a map maker program. No real sprawling vistas or anything like that to speak of, which is disappointing for a Final Fantasy game. There are a few interesting gimmicks sometimes but by and large the levels are basically just vehicles to get you from one combat encounter to the next. This is a game I might recommend after a price drop or if it gets a big sale on steam or CDkeys or something. The combat is quite fun like I hoped it would be, it's just surrounded by fairly mediocre trappings. If they ever made a second FF game like this and improved it the way they improved between Nioh and Nioh 2 I could see a hypothetical sequel becoming one of my favorite games, but right now it's just not there. The foundation is solid, but everything around it needs work.