Tag Archives: Completion

Finally Finished: Mario+Rabbids Kingdom Battle (Switch)

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Well. It’s been a while. I have no real excuses of why the blog has been dead besides that I just didn’t have the motivation to keep up with it. But I wanted to share with you guys some of the games that I have been finishing over the past few months, beginning with this one: Mario+Rabbids: Kingdom Battle for the Nintendo Switch.

I don’t even remember when I bought this game, only that I’ve had it sitting on my shelf for a while, waiting to be finished. I think I may have picked it up on a sale somewhere or even paid full price not long after it came out. It was at least one of the games that I had started playing but stalled out in and never picked back up.
I think in my first play through I got stuck somewhere in the second world (out of four, excluding the Donkey Kong DLC) and even though I had a ton of fun with the game I put it down and didn’t look back for a long time. Queue the sequel being announced a couple of months ago and I suddenly got the urge to play the game again. I mean, I did have fun playing it and if I could just get myself to sit down and play a few levels every day I would eventually see the end of it, right?

So that’s what I did. I started a fresh file, seeing as I couldn’t for the life of me remember the story or the mechanics, and set out on a mission to clear at least the main story of the game and the main story of the Donkey Kong DLC. What followed was a 30ish hour playthrough where I completed the main story and went back to get some of the extra things done aswell. As you can see on the screenshot at the top of the post I managed to clear 100% of the levels and I found 100% of the chests in the basegame. In the Donkey Kong DLC I managed to clear the main story and find all the hidden puzzle pieces, but to get all the chest I would have needed to do challenges and I wasn’t up for that so I let it be.

Overall I enjoyed the game. The story was simple but with a lot of hidden gems and humour. The Rabbids weren’t annoying at all but seemed to fit perfectly in the Mario universe. The fights weren’t too hard, although I do have to admit that I used the “easy mode” offer you’d get for every level abundantly. Basically that came down to getting 50% extra health at the start of every fight, which made it a lot easier to get through the levels than without. My favourite world overall, and favourite endboss, had to be the third world. I won’t spoil too much but the boss was brilliantly designed and it was by far one of the hardest fights I had to do. I died a lot there, even with the added 50% health. I never really felt frustrated about having to redo some fights, even though some took me a while to figure out.
There were a lot of mini puzzles to complete and hidden parts of levels, or entirely hidden levels, to explore. The music in the game was amazing and the bright colours just made everything super appealing visually.
I didn’t go back to do the challenges because I was kind of burned out after those 30 hours of playing and I know there’s also a separate co-op campaign to do. Both aspects of the game that I may want to revisit later down the line.

I’m happy that I’ve managed to play through the main game and the DLC in a relatively short time span. I didn’t feel the need to put down the game and not return like I did in my first attempted playthrough. Maybe it clicked better this time around. I’m looking forward to the sequel release next year, although I will probably hold off on buying that until it drops in price. I still have more than enough other games waiting for me to play, but it’s nice to get some crossed of the list. Finally.

Thank you, next?

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And another goal down.
I’m on a roll this week. Filled up my Pokédex, got my last battle job to 80 in Final Fantasy XIV. I knew it was coming this week but didn’t realize both would happen on basically the same day. I’m thrilled though. Another big goal of the list. I guess it was easier getting all my battle jobs to 80 in this expansion since I had leveled everything to 70 in Stormblood and the only two that required more than 10 levels were the newly added Dancer and Gunbreaker class. So yeah.
After leveling everything now there are two clear favourite battle jobs for me: White Mage and Dancer. I’ve always liked the healing in FFXIV and White Mage is in an amazing spot this expansion. I love the renewed Lillies mechanic, the healing is strong and you can still do some decent dps aswell. I’m much more comfortable on this healer than any of the other two, with Scholar being an absolute lowpoint for me. Dancer has more or less replaced Bard, which was another favourite for a long time, and I think it will stay that way for now. I quite happily play almost all the classes in the game though, with exception to Scholar and Black Mage. I’ve never clicked with Scholar to begin with and Black Mage is just way too much of a static class for me to enjoyl. I know it gives the big booms but having to, ideally, stand still for an entire fight is just not really exciting to me. So I have leveled them and I have gotten the Shadowbringers Relic weapons for them but I don’t actively play them

The real question is.. what’s next? I’m still in a bit of Warcraft lull as we wait on the new expansion. I’ve spent a lot of time in Pokémon and as such I’m kind of done with that game for the time being aswell. In FFXIV I now no longer have to run a shit ton of roulettes every day to level up my jobs… So what’s next on the horizon? I guess I have a few options…
First off, I still have to level up Blue Mage. I know that I could just ask a friend to party up with me and get boosted up, and maybe when I’m desperate enough I will, but for now I can just casually kill things and level up slowly that way. I don’t really enjoy the whole Blue Mage shtick a lot but may aswell have something to do when I don’t know what to do, right?
Secondly, I still have my crafters to level. Most of them are around level 70 right now, with the exception of Carpenter (80) and Weaver (79). I’m leveling them with the Dwarven Beast Tribe quests though, which means I only have to do those three daily quests and I’m good.
Finally, gear up my classes now that they’re all max level. This will probably involve me running ex-roulette atleast every day. I also want to unlock Puppet’s Bunker so I can run that on the weekly reset. Other than that I’m probably going to run level roulette on a tank every day, purely so I can work towards the tanking mounts that, eventually, come from that. First up will be Gunbreaker because I just really enjoy the class.

All of the above does mean less time spent in FFXIV grinding away, which is mostly what I’m aiming for. I’m available for friends if they want to do content aswell, I think we are aiming for floor 100 in Heaven on High at some point, but I do want to take a bit of a step back and breathe so I don’t get too burned out on the game. I’m also aware that with the launch of Shadowlands next month I will probably spend less time in FFXIV anyway, so figuring out a “minimal” weekly routine early on is nice. All in all though I’m happy I got this out of the way so I can focus on the next big thing. Whatever that turns out to be.

Gotta Catch ’em All!

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As of today I can actually call myself a Pokémon Master. I have caught them all! Well atleast I caught all the Pokémon of the Galar region Pokédex, which still amounts to having to have registered 400 mons in total. I’m thrilled! I knew I set this as goal when I got the game and I have been working towards it on and off for the past half year or so. I’d have weekends where I would sit down and grind for a few hours to get everything into the correct evolutions or where I would fish/walk around for a while to catch that one elusive Pokémon. I’ve even tampered with the date settings on my Switch to get the right weather type to spawn, since some of the final Pokémon I needed only spawned in one or two locations and then also with only with a certain weather type.
Eventually it all came down to needing some Shield exclusives, some Pokémon that would only evolve by trading them and then four or five more Pokémon that I could catch in Sword. I went over to my best friend yesterday to get the Shield exclusives and the trading done. I got there needing 30 Pokémon still and by the time I left I was down to four more. I managed to get three of them at home yesterday evening and then I only needed Sylveon, which I could either wait for to spawn in the wild or train up an Eevee and hope it would evolve into Sylveon. The second method would require me to make quite some effort to get it to love me. But lo and behold, another friend happened to have Sylveon and was willing to trade it to me, even if it was just for me to register it in the Dex. So we did just that this morning and now I’m finally complete!

I’m really happy with this achievement. Pokémon as a series has been the only gameseries that I’ve played consistently since I was a kid. There’s only two generations of games that I’ve skipped, them being Black/White 2 and UltraSun/Moon. I think the time inbetween those games and the previous installments coming out were just too short so I skipped over them. I do intend to go back at some point and play them, but for now I’m content with having those skipped. It’s also the first time I’ve actually completed a Pokédex since the beginning. As I mentioned in an earlier post I remember having around 146 Pokémon registered on my original copy of Blue but then for some reason I reset the game. I think I also did quite an attempt of getting them all on my copy of Pokémon Silver, but that save has been lost by the battery running empty. After that I have made attempts here and there to atleast complete the regional Dex of any game that I played but with every new installment coming out that got more and more difficult. I think the last “big” attempt for me was with Pokémon Moon, but I stopped trying at some point and never really picked it back up.
So yeah, big accomplishment for me and a big goal of my “ultimate gamer goals” list has been crossed off.

Of course with the addition of the Isle of Armor (and the Crown Tundra in the near future) more Pokémon have been added. There luckily is some overlap with the normal Galar Dex so I don’t have to catch an additional 211 Pokémon but only around a 100 or so. However I think I’ve had my fill of Pokémon for the time being so I’m going to put catching more Pokémon on hold so I don’t burn out completely on the game.

The Backlog part 3.1: Oldschool Handhelds

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A few weeks ago I did a backlog post of my current games on my current generation consoles/handhelds and PC. In the first post I promised I’d also do a backlog of all my older games, to show you all the collection I built up over the years and to sketch how my gaming habits and ownership has changed over the years. Seeing as my oldschool backlog is quite big I’m splitting it up into two or three separate posts, the first of which will be today and will cover my gaming career on handhelds.
So without further ado, let’s start with the first 10 years of my life in gaming which was dominatied mostly by Nintendo and their Gameboys.
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As you can see I have a reasonable collection of Gameboy games. I tried to divide them up by placing them under the type of Gameboy that was needed to play them, hence the “weird” row placements. I started out with a Gameboy Pocket and Pokémon Blue when I was about eight or nine years old. Pokémon was all the rage at the time and a lot of my friends were playing with Gameboys. Add up the fact that we would travel to birthdays and family a lot during the weekends, and those drives would take 1-2 hours every time, my parents decided to get me a Gameboy to keep me busy in the car and at some family events where I would be the only kid. I can’t even begin to describe how many hours I played on that thing and of all the games you see in the left row there’s literally three I haven’t 100% completed. These are Super Mario Land 1, Kirby’s Dream World and Bugs Bunny. I’m pretty sure you couldn’t really complete the Bugs Bunny game though, it was kind of like pacman where levels just got gradually harder untill you died. Super Mario Land didn’t have a save option so although I’ve played it a lot I could never get to the endboss of the game in one go. Kirby is actually a game I picked up way later and played for a bit, but never completed. I think I spent the most time on my Pokémon games. As you can see I own a lot of them (the only Gameboy game I actually lack is Pokémon Leafgreen, which I did own but gave to an ex-boyfriend as birthday present). Unfortunately Silver and Gold no longer work due to empty battery, but I don’t want to know how many hours I’ve sunk into all of those games.
The Gameboy Color generation was next and there I’ve only not completed Hamtaro (I remember being quite far in though) and Animorphs. Animorphs I didn’t really understand, but I’m willing to pick it up again. The Tetris game was more one for my mom to play with and I believe she still has the high score on that particular cassette so I don’t really want to touch it.
I got my Gameboy Advance SP after my mom passed away. I’ve played with this for about 5 years untill I bought my DS Lite. Unfortunately I’m missing two games on this picture which I think I left at my ex’s place and thus will never see again. I managed to rebuy Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories but I’m still looking for the original Sonic Advance to complete my collection. I’m also considering getting Pokémon Leafgreen again just so I have all the old Gameboy generations complete. I have completed less of those games than on previous generations. I gamed less during highschool and only got introduced to WoW when I was 17 and that took up so much time that I didn’t really look at my handhelds anymore. I did complete quite a few games, most notably the Pokémon games and the Crash Bandicoot games. I do intend to go back and play through the rest, starting with my recently re-obtained Kingdom Hearts game.

On to the next generation!

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When I was about 18 I bought my first Nintendo DS with my own money. Although I never really acquired that many games for it, I think I had enough to keep me busy for a while. I bought it when it was out for quite a bit already and the bundle came with Need for Speed Most wanted (which I completed) and Fifa 06 (which I honestly didn’t touch at all). Again I have  quite a few Pokémon games and I have completed all of them except Diamond, which I didn’t acquire untill much later. Children of Mana was a game which I played a whole lot aswell, it was very grindy and hard but fun to play. I don’t think I’ve defeated the last boss so technically not completed, but boy the amount of hours I sunk into that. Zoo Tycoon was very much a nostalgia buy and I played around with it for a bit. Nintendogs was just plain cute and I did unlock a lot of puppies, but eventually my enthusiasm for the game died down. Sonic Rush was a gift from my ex and Bleach I had to buy as fangirl, neither games I have completed though.
Kawasaki’s More Braintraining was very hip at the time so I obviously had to have it, and I did use it a lot. As far as Final Fantasy III goes. I do remember playing a bit of it, but I never finished that one either. The only thing on this picture that I really regret buying is the Nintendo DS Browser. Before the smartphone area Nintendo offered a way to use the internet on your DS. I bought it and used it a bit but in hindsight it was a real waste of money. Oh well, you can’t buy awesome things all the time right?

I hope you guys liked looking at my “oldschool” handheld collection. I have actually completed a lot of these games, especially the Gameboy and Pokémon ones. I think it’s due to being a kid and not having that much money to spend on yourself. I would only get new games when I had saved up enough pocket money to buy one or when it was my birthday or a special occassion. I guess lack of choice makes you appreciate more what you have and actually play it fully before moving on to another game. Now that I have more money to spend, and I like getting my hands on new shinies, I get new games almost every month, which distracts me from the game I was currently playing. This buying habit, combined to looking back at my old games and the amount I actually completed has more or less woken me up and strengthened my resolve not to buy that many games anymore and focus on completing the ones I already have.

In my next and (hopefully) last backlog post I’ll take a look at my two old consoles: The Playstation 2 and the Sega Genesis. Stay tuned!