I think I’m near the end of Bananza. There’s a fossil museum at some point and there’s not much space left in it, so it seems like a safe guess. And I will repeat what I said last week: The second half of the game is way better than the first!

I will also say that the Bananza mechanics isn’t that great now that I’m this deep into the game. It’s initially introduced as an upgrade to yourself, which makes sense with the energy gauge, but most of the forms you get seem to just be minor puzzle elements. It doesn’t feel right to use up your gauge just because you need to run fast or jump high for a second. That combined with how fast the gauge recharges makes me wonder why it exists in the first place. There’s a consumable item that refills your gauge, too, and quite frankly, I have no idea how to even use it because you just don’t need it. The elephant is the only one I really use anymore because it does what I generally need the most: destroy.

And I found some time to play Yakuza 3 again. I’ve finally made it to Kamurocho and, naturally, there are immediately a ton of side quests. So who knows when the story continues.

Mostly played Bananza, cleared sublevel 1000 today. I will say the levels are not nearly as memorable as Odyssey’s were. I only played that game once when it was released and still remember most levels better than whatever I did in this game last week. The first level was my favorite one for a long time, and then it was a long lull. It got better though, two out of three levels after the split path converges again were really cool!

I am also happy to report that, after 30 years, I have finally caught Carmen Sandiego in the 1994 CD-Rom version of her game. I can finally bury this grudge and move on!

I hope to find some time to pick Yakuza 3 back up. Luckily, I put the game on hiatus in a very convenient spot just before a location change and have enough experience with previous games to not have forgotten how to play.

A new Katamari? Wow, I guess the remasters sold well enough!

I don’t know how to feel about this. Octopath 1 and 2 aren’t really related in any way, so seeing a prequel with all characters appearing in the end just seems like unnecessary overcomplication. I would have rather had Octopath 3, but I’ll wait for more inormation.

In the “Free Roam” map, when you gather all of the P Switches, ? Panels, and Peach Medallions, the colors of the various numbers will now change.

That’s just not good enough. I can easily look up how many of them there are in total, but the complete inability to track your progress is the reason I haven’t played the game in a month.

This would be a good time to hear more about Decapolice. Remember Decapolice? Originally slated for release in 2023?

I haven’t played it and I don’t think I will, especially if it’s good. I’m already into Monster Hunter, I can’t lose this much time to another game!

I also haven’t had much time to play Bananza this week. I’m just past the first split in the road, where you get to choose which world to go to… as if I’m not going to go back and do them both. I hope the game gets a bit more interesting in the enemy department. So far, you really just punch them all to oblivion, even most bosses. And with my Bananza gauge seemingly never being empty whenever I even think about using it, it’s even easier. Sometimes I activate Bananza mode just to hear the music, it’s a bit broken.

And a big shoutout to YouTube for recommending a piece of the game’s soundtrack that spoiled something pretty big that I really would have liked to experience on my own terms.

Today I dove back into Monster Hunter Wilds for the Arch-tempered Uth Duna event quest. He’s usually more predictable, but somebody taught him how to roll and it’s messing everything up!

Yakuza 3 is being weird, and not in the usual Yakuza way. About a week ago, a big story segment happened and I have to go back to Kamurocho. I’m still not there. Why? Because things keep happening. One of the kids wants to tame a dog, several side quests open up and just as Haruka is dropping me off to board a plane, I get a phone call. The kids want to play Hide and Seek. What is happening here? If all of this happened before we were told to return to Kamurocho it wouldn’t be an issue at all. On top of that, some sub stories don’t seem to work right? My research says to try again later in the game, which just sounds like it’s a bug to me.

Anyway, Bananza. I was really not into the game during the tutorial. I was just lost and confused the entire time and I think it’s mostly because you’re just dropped into a cave with the ability to just dig anywhere. Once I was in the first world and had an open sky above my head, things got a lot better and I’m really enjoying it. I’m so happy they brought back “Oh Banana!” from Donkey Kong 64!

The structure is a lot like Odyssey, but it also fixes some issues I had with it. While the main collectible is unfortunately still treated with ‘quantity over quality’, the fact that they act as skill points makes them more exciting to collect. And the costumes having passive effects is also a big improvement. Speaking of which though, I will never accept DK wearing pants. It’s wrong. Speaking of very minor things that bother me: A boss dropping its banana down the hole to the next world, where it counts as a collectible for that new world. My inner statistics nerd can’t stand that.

So far I have completed the first two worlds 100%. I like that you can just dig around to randomly get maps pointing you at things you haven’t found yet. So once I’m done exploring a world on my own, I just start destroying a mountain to get the last few pieces done. Though when I say 100%, I mean everything except the stats page. The fact that the game keeps track of how much of a material you have dug through and rewards you for it will drive the ultra-completionists insane. Have fun digging through 100,000m³ of apple!

And one last thing: I had no idea Switch 2 game cover art wrapped around the spine of the box. They haven’t done that since the GameCube and I missed that so much! The Wii, Wii U and Switch 1 games on my shelf are so boring to look at, I’m so glad to have some colors back!

I finished Kena, the total playtime was just under 17 hours. I would have liked one more area that’s visually distinct from the rest of the game. As nice as it looks, it’s lacking in variety. I completed most collectables. The game did unlock another set of trials in the five-second span between beating the final boss and rolling the credits but I wasn’t willing to go back at this point. I hadn’t mentioned this yet, but the music is really good, too.

And now would have been the time to start Xenoblade X, but I’ve decided to wait until after Bananza. So I’ve started playing Mahjong 3, uh, I mean, Yakuza 3 instead. Despite the remastering, I knew it was going to be the most difficult game in the series to get into, considering the step backwards it is from the Kiwami remakes of the first two. I have heard that enemies in this game block a lot and for the bosses I’ve fought so far that is absolutely true. Boss fights boil down to throws, which is not the most fun way to play. There doesn’t seem to be too much incentive to complete anything either, unlike the previous games. I love Okinawa as a location though, it’s very different from anything I’ve seen in the series so far (and probably will until the day Majima becomes a pirate).

I’m in the last third of Kena. Nothing really changed, it’s still a simple, beautiful game. Some of the optional trials are brutal, but I think I’ve completed them all. Now I have the main hub to clean up and then the game should be nearing its end!

Played more of Mario Kart World. The Knockout Races are a neat idea, but since you mostly race on the roads between the actual tracks, you’re spending most of your time driving a straight line. It’s not as interesting as it could be.

And with all of that 3-starred in 50CC to get a feel for the game, I finally started the Free Roam portion of the game. It’s a lot of fun, but it desperately needs a map! You have an overview that shows you where the tracks are, but its missing every detail you could want. And on top of that, it only properly tracks one of the three tasks you are chasing in this mode. I can already see myself going through a list of rewards to reverse-engineer the last few coins/switches I missed somewhere!

I’ve heard the same about the collectibles when I tried to look up help, but just today I realized you can use the mask you get to occasionally access spirit memories to highlight not just chests and such, but also footprints of the Rot. So the game does give you the means to find everything, but I don’t remember if it ever tells you about that.

I’ve completed the first major section of Kena and I’m very impressed so far. I like that the Rot don’t just follow you around like Pikmin, but just exist in the world until you need them. You enter an abandoned house and they are already there, just hanging out on the shelves and such. The combat gameplay is very much ‘3rd person action game 101’ without any standout features, but I don’t consider it a major part of the game, considering no enemies ever respawn. I found most collectibles on my own so far, but I had to consult a map for the last few.

Curious to see what this will be. I find the Splatoon universe really interesting, but I have zero interest in team-shooters.

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When you have Breath of the Wild, you don’t really need anything else to play for weeks. For some people, that’s probably true for Mario Kart as well. For me, it’s really just an upgrade without any hype attached to it.

I generally always recommend playing in order of release, but it doesn’t really matter here, the games are completely standalone. Brothership does have very minor references to the older games though. One game gets an entire character returning, but I haven’t played that one either.

Mario Kart Update: One cup has a remake of an SNES track as the first one. It’s not very interesting and five laps long. More laps than the other three (more interesting) tracks in the cup combined. I really don’t understand what they were thinking…

I love the water segments though, very Wave Race!

I finally beat Brothership yesterday. It should have ended last weekend, but the end of the game really drags on. You know that obligatory five minute cutscene about the friends you made along the way that a JRPG tends to have in between the final boss and the true final boss? Brothership turned that five minute cutscene into a three hour backtracking segment! And the true final dungeon is very long, too. Something I wasn’t really in the mood for anymore…

It was a good game though! The cynic in me expected the RPG side to be very simplified and easy, but it’s the Mario & Luigi it has been when I still played it on the GBA. And the optional boss re-fights in the late game hit hard!

My main criticisms are:

• The plug system gets very annoying with you constantly needing to replace them. At least let me favorite some of them so I don’t have to find them all the time.

• First strikes are very awkward. For comparison, my first strike rate in Thousand Year Door is easily ~98%. I’d be surprised if I got more than ~5% in Brothership.

• Overworld travel gets very tedious after a while. It basically becomes Spirit Tracks without any of the action.

Now, I planned to beat the game before the Switch 2 releases, but now I had a comparison here, too. I didn’t notice load times being much shorter, but the game definitely runs smoother in those moments when it matters. There’s a Bro Move that has you alternate the A- and B-Buttons quickly, which is easy enough. But about halfway through the timer the game would briefly slow down, which always messed me up until I started to specifically slow down in anticipation. That slowdown is gone on the Switch 2!

Next, I plan to play Kena - Bridge of Spirits on PC, a game I know nothing about. I picked it out from my backlog because I was in the mood for something green. I wanted to frolic in nature, but most games in that category are large RPGs that I wasn’t in the market for, because Xenoblade X was the game I intended to replace Brothership with. There’s nothing to stop me from just playing Xenoblade now, but I already had Kena downloaded and installed when I decided to focus hard on Brothership.

And on the side, I dabble in Mario Kart World. I can’t say much about it yet, but I was blown away by the fact that they have a track that acknowledges Super Mario Land! That’s so rare… But I can’t say I’m a fan of the Grand Prix format. Driving from one track to the next is cool, but if it comes at the cost of reducing all but the first track to a single lap, I’d rather not have that at all.

Something’s gotta change.

When I booted up Brothership this week, I noticed my playtime was 35 hours. So I looked back at my comment history and I started playing the game 5 months ago. I know Monster Hunter absolutely justifies slowing down everything else for two months, but this is just unacceptable. I have no less than two new games installed and ready to go on the PC side but I am not going to play them. I need to get this back under control. I’ve been focusing on this game and I’ll probably beat it this weekend. I’m definitely in the home-stretch, but you never know what else opens up at the end of an RPG. I have the full world map visible and there are three isolated areas I can’t access, so there’s something the game is still hiding from me.

Tempered monsters are basically stronger versions of regular monsters. Arch Tempered is an even bigger leap, reserved for a select few as special events.