[Game Journal] The upward spiral of videogames

Janp

Janp

  • Togepi Egg Zekrom Pokémon General General Pokémon General Cadet
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    2025 update
    I'm back, and while I don't have that much time for gaming as I used to when I started this thread, I still have fun going back and talking about games. This year, I plan on playing 35 games. Last year, I started playing more games on release and I want to continue on with it now. At least with some smaller indie games. And I also managed to accumulate backlog of games, so that will be fun to tackle. Oh and Switch 2 will be releasing this year and I plan on getting it. LET'S GO!


    Currently playing

    [PokeCommunity.com] The upward spiral of videogames

    [PokeCommunity.com] The upward spiral of videogames


    Finished games

    2025
    Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024, Action Adventure, PC, 26.2 h, 9.5)
    Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001, Adventure, GBA, 3.4 h, 5)
    Cat Café Manager (2022, Simulator, PC, 8 h, 8)
    The Dark Queen of Mortholme (2024, Souls-like, PC, 0.8 h, 7.5)
    Chrono Trigger (2008 (original on SNES 1995), JRPG, Nintendo DS, 11.8 h, 8.5)
    The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (2021 (original on Wii 2011), Zelda-like, Nintendo Switch, 30.1 h, 7)
    Professor Layton and the Curious Village HD (2018 (original on DS 2007), Puzzle, Mobile, 2.3 h, 6)
    Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2025, RPG, PC, 71.1 h, 9.5)
    Hacknet (2015 , Puzzle, PC, 4.3 h, 8)​

    Spoiler: Archives
     
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    It's time for me to also put short update.

    Let me start with how I got to playing KotOR 2. I've played through first KotOR exactly a year ago. My Revan was LS Male Scout/Jedi Consular with high computer, persuade, security and repair skills. I would probably also play second game right after, but the Star Forge level just burned me out of the series with its almost infinite waves of enemies, boring and copypasted maps and pretty mediocre boss fights. And so I decided to wait few months before diving in to the galaxy far away.

    Fasforwarding to Christmas, my friend mentions he wants to play first KotOR over the holidays. So we got into a discussion about the games and I was ready to finally return to KotOR. Last time I've played KotOR 2 was more than a decade ago and I only remember few bits (Also spoilers for the game ahead) - main character waking up in healing tank, the conversation that determinates outcome from the previous game, Kreia being secretly a villain, that other Sith that eats planets, there is mission with Mandalorians and one for Hutts, where you can dance, if you play as female character and that there is a secret Jedi Order that gets killed by Kreia.

    Then my friend dropped a huge info bomb on me. Majority of KotOR 2 has been scrapped in the last minute before release and there is a mod that can restore everything back. I don't usually use mods on games, but since I barely remember anything from the game and it should be "intended" version of KotOR, I decided to try this mod. So after about 90 minutes of modding (I used guide on r/kotor reddit and decided to install more mods after all), I was ready to play. Aside from the big content mod, every other mod was either graphical or bug-fixing one. I should also mention that I didn't check the changes from the big mod that much, since I didn't want to spoil the game.

    Now, let's talk about my character. Since I've played first game as Male, I decided to pick a Female and picked her canon (or maybe Legends?) look. That look is special mod not included in regular game. She reminds me of Audrey Marie Anderson. I've always played KotOR as Jedi Consular, since green lightsabers are the coolest. But to change things a little bit, I've chosen Jedi Sentinel this time. For skills, I went with computers, awareness, persuade, security and healing. I'll once again be playing for a Light Side, since I find Dark Side in these games (and all Bioware games) really boring. It's just the most generic implementation of chaotic evil alignment. I usually play with single sword, but once again decided to shake thinks up and will probably use dual blades. Oh right and my Jedi Exile's name is Lilin Dison.

    So after a short, but great tutorial section, I got to the first familiar scene - awakening in the healing tank. After few minutes of exploring, I found both Kreia and Atton and got another familiar scene about Revan's fate in KotOR. Then I spend about 4 hours just exploring and enjoying Peragus. Since I had no Demolition skill a only found few Computer Spikes, I couldn't get through some doors or resolve some problems through hacking, but I was still amazed of the number of ways you can get past some obstacles. Let me also point out how great is the whole Peragus mystery. You're slowly revealing bit after bit and you can really piece everything by yourself. The game doesn't care about telling you the whole story at the end. That's the perfect way to reward exploring.

    Going straight to Telos, I decided not to blow Peragus up. Not that it matters at all, since it was blown up anyways by Sith. I joined Itharians on Telos. I was never a fan of Czerka. They are stupid. And Itharians are cute. I'm currently on the Telos surface and just met with Bao-Dur. He seems like pretty cool character to have on party.
     
    Let's continue!

    I quickly fell in love with Bao-Dur. He has every major technical skill, so keeping him around was almost necessary. I replaced Kreia with him. I think Kreia is better written character, but she's useless in the game without the max level DS Force powers.

    This part is pretty linear so I'll keep it short and simple. I got to the north pole and found Atris, who I barely remember being in the game. Since I'm playing as LS character, I agreed to help her to find other Jedi Masters.

    My first stop was Nar Shaddaa and after finishing few side quests, Bao-Dur offered to build me a lightsaber. I picked Viridian crystal earlier in a conversation with Atton about my previous lightsaber (to not have exactly green, but also have green lightsaber). And so I picked Viridian crystal again for this new lightsaber. I got it just in time for Red Eclipse attack on Ebon Hawk and the huge main quest on Nar Shaddaa.

    After taking care of Red Eclipse, I had an encounter with Visas, who surprised me at first and easily beat me. I didn't even touch her. Second time I used all the buffing Force powers and a battle stimulant and was able to beat her with few attacks. That's quite the difference.

    Anyway, after recruiting Visas I talked with other characters and was able to promote Atton and Bao-Dur into Jedi. Then probably the worst and the most boring part of the whole game took place. Parts where I played as Exile were fine. But the game also introduce Mira as playable character and it's disaster. I don't know why, but Mira seemed like a boring and totally useless character to me. Her relationship with Hanharr could be interesting, if there wasn't only like 2 minutes worth of dialogue about it. Gameplay-wise was Mira presented as ranged character, so I build her that way. And that was a huge mistake, since all of her solo parts throw her against melee opponents. All she did was eat all my healing, so I had to wait in between battles to heal, since I couldn't make more until Nar Shaddaa quest is finished. I somehow got past her solo part, clearing the whole map as her because I had no idea where to go and then finding out I get to play as Exile on the very same map. The rest of Nar Shaddaa was pretty easy.

    Then I went to Dantooine and finished it in about 3-4 hours in total (which is about a half of the time I spent on Telos or Nar Shaddaa). Kreia promoted Exile to Jedi Watchman and I found awesome strategy - Battle Meditation, Force Valor and Force Speed resulted in one-shotting pretty much every enemy in the game, while . And even enemies that survived one hit from Exile died to other teammates. I sided with settlers, but felt bad for mercenaries. They plan this huge attack and don't even get close to the main building. Exile stopped them all with Stasis Field and slaughter them with strategy I described above.

    Next up was short trip to Onderon. But Ebon Hawk got attacked by Onderon army and ended up on Dxun. I remember this part! At this point I mastered my strategy to the point Exile could solo the whole jungle. I equiped her with second lightsaber, so she gained another attack, making it 4 in total. After helping mandalorians, I got Mandalore on my team and he was so nice to fly me to Onderon. There I proved the innocence of local doctor that was arrested for murder and found third Jedi Master. Sadly, before we could talk, we got attacked once again my corrupted Onderon army, so I had to leave to the last planet - Korriban.

    And it was another short planet. I quickly got to the Sion bossfight in about 2 hours and could easily beat him, but Kreia said: "No!", so I just run away. I went to the optional cave on my way back to Ebon Hawk and lost almost all my LS points there, because I lost to my crew and both Revan and that random Dark Jedi before him. This basically set me to neutral and I wasn't able to get back to 100% LS.

    I sided with queen Talia on Onderon, when I was called back and met final Jedi Master after helping her. So it was time for final showdown with Sith. Kreia reveals herself as Darth Traya, kills everyone and it's on me to stop her. First I had to beat Darth Nihilus on Ravager and save Telos from getting destroyed. His battle was probably the hardest of all Sith battles. He was bulky and kept dodging my attacks. I had Visas and Mandalore with me and while Mandalore did literally nothing to him, Visas was able to cut her old Master's HP a little bit with Force Storm. I still beat him on first try, but he didn't just handed the win like Sion on Korriban (and on Malachor, but I'll get to it just in a second).

    Next up was Malachor and probably the weirdest part of the game. Weirdest in the sense that you can clearly see how unfinished the game is, even with restoration mod. Bao-Dur just vanishes, Ebon Hawk is destroyed at one moment but is completely fine in the next scene, Remote minigame has no depth to it, Kreia doesn't know what she wants, Exile wants to find Revan for some reason, even thought there was never a mention of her motivation to do so before and a lot more.

    To make it short - Sion was laughably easy and couldn't do anything against my strategy, that was even boosted by the fact that I received Force Enlightenment that made my strategy a lot faster. I died 3 times on Kreia. Two times during 3 lightsabers phase, because her lightsabers kept hitting me across the whole room for some reason, and once against Kreia herself, because she went overboard with Force Choking and killed me before I could even set up all my buffs.

    Overall thoughts
    I think KotOR 2 still holds great to this day. It was able to present beautiful world just like its predecessor and fill it with interesting characters, even though I think first game had better cast of main crew. I wasn't particulary fond of Mira, HK-47, Disciple or G0-T0, but Kreia, Atton and Visa evened the odds. I hated almost every part where I had to play as anyone else than Exile, except for T3 parts. Those were fun. But Mira's parts were the most boring and annoying bits I've played in a long time. The game was also a lot easier than the first one. I only wiped 4 times in total IIRC and barely used any healing. I had 80+ healing items at the end of the game and never even felt like using any of it. And as I said before, there wasn't really any opponent that would require more than 3 turns to beat. That includes whole Malachor except bossfights. And keep in mind that I had to solo Malachor and it was suppose to be this huge breeding ground of Sith. The game felt empty at times, which was propably because it was unfinished. Like Korriban or Dantooine had barely anything to do on them aside from the main quests. Still, this was that kind of game that I played every time I had a free time on my hands and had really hard time closing it once I was playing. Not many games had similar effect. And I'm not surprised. As I said, the KotOR universe is nice, battle system is great and story was captivating at times.

    I decided to give all games a numerical rating ranging from 0 to 10. So after all I said, I give KotOR 2 7.5/10.


    Next up is original Doom from 1993. Well, not exactly that version, because I'll be playing The Ultimate Doom from 1995 that has more maps in it. I only ever played the first Doom map and I've never even other levels, so this will be interesting.
     
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    Finished whole first episode and half of the second one. I'm having blast so far and enjoying every single level as much as I can.

    I went with "Hurt me plenty" difficulty, because I wasn't sure about harder difficulties and since I'm not as familiar with the game as I would like to to play it on Ultra Violence. As I said in my previous post, I only ever played first episode of Doom and I don't remember ever watching following episodes.

    I started the game and the music hit me hard. Just listen to it yourself:


    I was ready to kill some demons. But as I got to the first room, it was empty. I remember this very first room having at least 3 zombie soldiers. And shotgun. But there was nothing. At first I thought I'm just misremembering things, but after checking few youtube videos, I found out those soldiers are there only on higher difficulties. So no shotgun literally at the start of the game. I was still able to get it later in the level, but I had to beat few Imps with the basic pistol first and it took way too long. I think they take 6 shots from pistol to kill, while you only need 1 shotgun shell to kill them.

    But once I got shotgun I had no problems clearing up first few levels. I tried to find as many secrets as I could, but got only few in each level. I'm pretty sure you can get chainsaw in one of the early levels, but I completely missed it. I don't think I'll be replaying all the levels for 100% completion.

    My first death came in level 5, where I got surprised by the assault in the circular room, where you have to go down to activate a switch. I died few times to that trap until I realized what was going on. I totally forgot about these traps. But after that I never got caught in similar trap and easily got past the first episode. Also whoever created the dark maze full of invisible Pinkies is the best game designer in the world. That room is just great.

    Second episode hit me hard with teleporters and hard-ish beginning with just a pistol. I sniped most of starting zombie though and got shotgun pretty quickly. I also got Plasma Gun and encountered first Cacodemons. And Lost Souls and Barons of Hell became regular enemies in this episode. I usually took them down with Plasma Gun.
     
    Since I have holidays until half of February and nothing really to do, I decided to play some more games and get a headstart, because I know I won't have much time to play in April/May/June because of university.

    Anyway, I finished up second part of second episode of Doom. The maps got huge and complicated. But their design was usually pretty clever with its secrets and optional rooms. I especially loved the maze on map 6 that was full of Pinkies and Lost Souls. I was just going through the hallway and was thinking about how Doom was consider horror game and how the horror game genre changed in a past few years, going from games like Doom or F.E.A.R. to games like Amnesia and Outlast. And as I was thinking about the fact that there are no jumpscares in Doom, Pinky appeared out of nowhere and scared me.

    I was also lucky enough to find many secrets in 6th and 7th map. I got around 300 cells in Plasma Gun, which I decided to keep for a bossfight. I forgot to pick one blue armor on 6th map, because I planned on picking it up before going to the exit and forgot about it. I had low HP on 7th map because of that and I went against Baron of Hell in one of the first rooms there. And I didn't want to waste cells on it and forgot about Rocket Launcher, so I slowly worn him down with shotgun.

    I got lost on map 7, because I couldn't find way to yellow card. I picked up the area map, so I had no idea where I haven't been yet and was just going in circles. Then I somehow got right to the yellow card and I still have no idea how.

    Cyberdemon bossfight was awesome! The way you open the map and hear him approaching. And then you get hit by his almost lethal rocket attack. I tried to shoot it down with Plasma Gun on my first few attempts, but he always killed me with his rockets. I then switched to rockets and learned how to dodge his attacks, but he was still killing me pretty easily. I also felt like I was missing with rockets more than with plasma, so I switched back to Plasma Gun and finally got him.
     
    Finished last two episodes of Doom. Third one started pretty strong. It threw me against two Imps and Cacodemon with just a pistol and I was able kill them all without taking any damage. But then I missed a shotgun and went against couple of Pinkies and Imps still with just a pistol and run out of bullets, so I had to restart the map, when I got to the room with 6 Imps and only 6 bullets. This time I got the shotgun and cleared the Imp room.

    I was low on ammo for the first 3-4 maps, so I started using my fists and chainsaw more, especially on transparent Pinkies and low-floating Cacodemons. I got my hands on BFG9000 at the end of 4th map and one-shotted Baron of Hell that was guarding the exit. I got enough ammo starting from 5th map and even got way too much plasma cells, so I was using BFG often on big groups of enemies or on Barons of Hell. The Spider Mastermind looks menacing. I really love its design. But it went down with just two shots from BFG, which was disappointing.

    Last episode was the harders out of the whole game. I was always either out of ammo or health. First map threw Baron of Hell at me when I only had few shotgun shells. Thanks game, that's awesome. I had some hard times during this episode, especially since it loves to combine lava, small spaces and army of enemies all around you. I had to save and load on the 6th map so many times just to figure where to go and what is the least damaging way there. And how the teleport in the middle of the map works. And to not get one-shotted by the Cyberdemon that spawns at the end. But I somehow ended later maps with almost full HP and a lot of armor.

    Overall thoughts
    Doom is still masterpiece. Arcade-ish shooting is unintentionally funny sometimes - like the times you aim right in front of you, but the bullet goes to the upper corner. But everything else holds really well even today. Monters and locations are happy to look at and they still shine with a hellish atmosphere. Maps themselves are beautiful. They have clever design and it's fun and rewarding to explore them. In contrast with KotOR 2 I've played before this. But it's shame that bossfights were pretty boring and were all about shooting down a slightly bigger demon. And all bosses dies to one or two shots from BFG.

    I fell in love with Doom again. Not that I wouldn't love Doom. At least not in the last 4 years. 9/10.

    I'll play a short indie game Minit next. I think I'll finish it in one sitting, so then I'll either do another short indie game There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension or I'll play second Doom.
     
    Got around to play Minit after few days off from gaming and it was pretty nice experience.

    Overall thoughts (just to be consistent)
    I went in totally blind and didn't have to check any walkthrough while playing, so that was nice. I was expecting to get stucked multiple times, but that didn't happen. I had to do some puzzles on multiple lives just to figure out them. I think I skipped majority of optional stuff, since I didn't get all tentacles, couldn't figure out what is the haunted house on the north for, didn't get to the right wing of secret temple that was protected by a fire, which could probably be accessed by the watering can, now that I think about it. I'm not sure if I want to go back to the game just to see what is hidden there. The game was great, but not that great.
    The main gimmick was awesome. At first. I like the idea of the game resetting after 60 seconds, but in the end, I spent majority of the time going back to my previous location, look at/try to solve the puzzle in about 30 seconds, died and and to repeat the whole cycle again. It was barely rewarding. But it was fun looking for shortcuts and they were pretty clever. The resetting itself worked weird sometimes. It reset enemies, some destroyed items on a map, but not all of them, so you never knew if your opened path will be available even after reset. The bossfight had interesting mechanics, but was pretty boring. You could just force your way through it, since the bossfight didn't reset after you died.
    I think graphics were nice, but there were few lazy maps, like the endless desert, where some maps were just blackness with few white dots.

    Here's my final stats. I misclicked way too many times after running to the right map and I clicked on Reset button instead of Use button:
    Spoiler:


    Overall, it was fine game on one playthrough. It was long enough to still be fun and I think it wouldn't be as great if it was longer. 7/10.

    I will either play Doom 2 or There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension. I'm also thinking about replaying Gothic 2 again only after 3 months and try L'Hiver mod.
     
    First impressions from Doom 2 -> It's just as good as the first one. And a lot faster and harder. There are enemies everywhere since the very first room of the first map. And I love it.

    I was a lot more successful with secrets and got shotgun on the first map. And then I got super shotgun, which is just awesome. It has a great feel to it and I used it so much that I was constantly low on ammo. Good thing I also found Chaingun and Rocket Launcher on the second map. All the maps I've played so far were pretty short, which is a little bit disappointing. But new enemies are great. I totally forgot there were no Revenants or Mancubi in the first Doom. I'm really looking forward playing this game more.
     
    Continuing with Doom 2. I finished levels 7-18. The 7th level was great. It introduced Mancubi and Arachnotrons. And I wasn't ready for those walking brains. Mancubi were pretty easy, but I Arachnotrons surprised me and I had to restart the level. I lured them one by one to the outside area of the arena and killed them there.

    The hell outpost reminded me of early Doom 1 levels, but they were a lot longer. I got BFG9000 quickly and got used to even nastier ambushes from demons. First encounter with Arch-Vile was unexpected and I died twice before figuring it out.

    I'm not a fan of outdoor levels here. They all seems same. They are huge, mostly empty and uninspired. I don't like their brown-ish assets. I got a little burned out of the game becaues of them, so I decided to play There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension in a meantime and probably will play something else before going back to Doom 2. There is no point in playing it now when I'm full of boomer shooter genre and gets bored of it.


    Anyway, let's talk about There Is No Game. I was expecting a mix of Stanley Parable and The Beginner's Guide. And that's exactly what I got. But that's not everything I got. The first chapter (and main menu) put me in a shoes of a unnamed User that wants to play a game. But this game doesn't want to be played. The Game (manifestation of the game) said there was no game and tried hard to stop me from playing this non-game. After destroying the main logo using ! as Arkanoid paddle, then destroying new metallic logo and another obstacles The Game threw at me, like the fake OS named Flying Squirrel OS, I got to the the game's exe file. The game finally booted up. It looked just like at the start, but had Indian theme. Even the narrator is Indian now. The Game started arguing with this other narrator and they wake up an evil glitch, called Mr. Glitch. It starts breaking the game and is so successful that a new game is launched. This time it's Russian-themed. Mr. Glitch destroys it again and this scenario repeats once again with French and Chinese themed games.

    As a Chinese game is destroyed, me and The Game got suck up by the dimensional vortex and ended up in 2nd chapter and totally different video game, played on a old CRT television. A classic 2D point and click game with Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Wattson as main characters. But I'm still playing as The User. And The Game is there too. Both Sherlock and Wattson move on their own as they try to solve a mystery - why is their neighbor Wilhelm (that has one very familiar scream when you click him) unconsciously floating in the middle of his home. I loved this part. It was all once again about destroying the interface of the game, going to the "backstage" of the game and manipulating it so Sherlock and Wattson can proceed, and solving some puzzles for them using that sweet oldschool PaC games logic like using the TV static as a snow or taking a eye from a interface and paint it red in the backstage, to use it as a cherry. This reminded me of Sam & Max adventure game, where you had to shoot holes in a cheese to make emmental. There was a part where you have to find a phone number sticked on TV and use it to call someone inside the game. Genius! There is also a part, where Mr. Glitch explains its plan, but The User and The Game don't hear it, because an ad pops on the screen. This becomes a recurring joke throughout the whole game. That part ends with Mr. Glitch appearing once again and destroying the world. I had to save both Sherlock and Wattson from getting sucked by another dimensional vortex, before heading into it myself.

    Next up is chapter 3 and The Legend Of The Secret. Which is The Legend of Zelda clone. The Game gets confused for a goddness Gaia that is suppose to help a Hero stop a Dark Lord and save a Princess. So the quest is clear. We have to finish this game to open another vortex and a chance to get back home. The Hero isn't the brightess, which helped me get away with manipulation of the game world. I got a heavy HOME button that makes everything on a map jump when it's dropped from the upper side of the screen, a glitched hammer that makes everything it touches smaller and a monocle that makes everything bigger. With combination of those three things I got past a hole, a river (that part reminded me of Minish Cap), a closed door to the temple and the Dark Lord himself. Mr. Glitch was hidden in a treasure chest at the end of the game and it starts breaking everything again. And this time it is able to reprogram the game and lock The User and The Game inside.

    So the next chapter is all about F2P mobile games infested with ads. You have to pay for everything here. For alarm clock, for a walking speed and energy, for another ways of income, for leaving a map... Reminded me of a older indie title DLC Quest. This is also a part where The Game opens up more to The User and talks about how its Creator abandoned it and took its partner GiGi from it. GiGi stands for a Global Gameplay. And what is a game without gameplay? Anyway, this part had nice mechanic in which you had to use ads to solve puzzles - like when pushing a switches in a certain order.

    The chapter 5 is probably my favourite. It takes place during the ending credits. The goal here was to free Mr. Glitch from a credits so it can help us get home. The main gameplay loop here was changing names behind Characters, Backgrounds and FX, which affected the credits in a certain way. Mr. Glitch betrayed us and puts The Game's name under a Music section, which forces it to sing, and put a wooden log on top, so it can't be removed. To get rid of it, I had to finish a mini-game that changed based on who I put under Game Design. After tearing down the log, Mr. Glitch put up a locked safe, so I had to finish another mini-game. And then once more. The last minigame gave me a GG sign, which I put under Game Design and voala, GiGi is summoned. But before The Game and GiGi can have heartwarming reunion, Mr. Glitch put GG under Music section and destroys the credits, trapping GiGi and forcing her to sing forever. Well, not exactly forever, but only until I could figure out another puzzle. I had to put together a code based on GiGi's lyrics. Haven't done similar puzzle since Back to the Future TellTale game.

    The song is also pretty cool and I wasn't expecting something so good to be in this game:
    ​

    Anyway, final chapter is just as good as the 5th one. I and The Game were back on the title screen from the 1st chapter. But without GiGi, which made The Game depressed. After some more bickering, that included the destruction of game's logo again and again, we got tranported to a smartphone screen by another vortex. Here, we repaired an app and found GiGi inside. This is apparently The Creator's phone and the app is where GiGi was transfered to. The Creator run out of money after unsuccessful Kickstarter for his game and had to stop working on it. He also took GiGi and put it in Pokémon GO-like game, for which he was paid for. Mr. Glitch luckily isn't in the phone, but it is wrecking havoc in the real world. So I had to somehow get The Creator's attention and persuade him to stop Mr. Glitch by merging The Game and GiGi back together, since their division was the reason Mr. Glitch exists in the first place. So after another pretty fun puzzle, where I had to close reappearing windows on a computer and a bossfight with Mr. Glitch, I saved the world and could finally play the game. And it crashes after first intro. But at least The Game and GiGi are back together.

    Overall thoughts
    This is one of the best indie games I've ever played. It blends together several games and twist them all into an original experience. It also makes fun of some of their stupid mechanics like those weird solution to oldschool 2D point and click games, the need of the chosen hero to find billions of artifacts or F2P games as a whole. It also adds commentary about current game development and confront the player with similar questions as The Beginner's Guide. It has beautiful pixel art and clever design when it comes to the puzzles. Some puzzles repeat itself, which is a shame. The story is captivating. The (voice) acting is fine for an indie title. The game even makes fun of itself when it mentions that The Game, Mr. Glitch and The Creator are all voice by the same person.

    I know I'm giving pretty high scores recently, but I've been having fun with those games, so I give this game 9.5/10.
     
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    Started with another great series that dodged me - Might & Magic. I've played Heroes of Might & Magic, but never the original RPGs. Not it's time to give them a chance.

    I'm going in mostly blind. I have a huge map of VARN and manual that you can download on GoG alongside the game. I decided to draw my own maps of each location, but also download set of maps in case I get lost.

    I spent few minutes creating a party of adventures. I decided to go with all 6 classes, just as the manual recommended, and randomly mixed races, alignments and sexes. I also added some more flavour to all characters for even more fun. Let me introduce to you a male gnome sorcerer Dan and his close friend half-orc paladin Ondra, both having a Good alignment. It was their idea to set up on an adventure to find The Inner Sanctum. They travel alongside "Evil" elf sisters Iva and Lenka. Iva is a knight and a long-time rival of Ondra, while Lenka is an archer, who just tagged along the adventure for her own gain. Last members of the group are male human robber Honza and his girlfriend female human cleric Denca, Dan's good friends. They balance the alignments of the whole group by being completely Neutral.

    My party started in town Sorpigal. After winning few random battles against skeletons, bats and larvas, I found out I can equip everyone with clubs. I didn't notice any change in a damage done, but I guess clubs are just weak in this universe.

    It took me only about 20 minutes to get lost. This was my map at that point in the game (NOTE: I use Czech for notes on maps, jídlo = food and kovář = blacksmith):
    Spoiler:

    I found two exits from the city while exploring, a temple for resurrecting and... gnomes. They came out of nowhere in a place I couldn't use magic and they annihilated my whole party. So I decided to grind a little bit. Denca died during this grind and I accidentally saved after that, so I had to grind even more (and harder) to get 200 gold to resurrect her. It took me about 5 hours just to do so and grind my characters to level 2, since they kept missing their attacks. And not just my heroes, but also enemies. Whole turns with no hit on both sides were nothing rare. Is this fog Route in Sinnoh? I'm not going to lie, I almost dropped this game at that point, because it was so boring.

    But after buying Slings for Honza and Lenka, it was a little less annoying. Honza, Lenka and Dan beat majority of enemies, while Ondra and Iva tanked in front of them and Denca was healing everyone. I also got pretty good deal on food and could use rest for a huge healings. I continued exploring and found a trainer that let me finally level up. I was exploring every single room in the town and it backfired when I stepped on a trap door and ended up in a dungeon under Sorpigal.

    There I had to use Light spell to see and got lost again at one point, but quickly found a way out. One of the exits I discovered earlier led here, so at least I can quickly save and go back to grind in this dungeon. This was a really great place to grind, since there were 3 squares with certain encounters (and I think they were always the same - Flesh Eaters, Mutant Larvas, Skeletons and Fire Spiders). Not only they were usually easy to beat (Denca could oneshot whole Skeleton fight with a Turn Undead spell), but Fire Spiders also dropped chest that had more equipment. I got Short Bow+1, Staff+1 and several armors this way, so I didn't have to buy them. I also got Bag of Silver and Bag of Sand, which net me more money. I was able to get to level 3 and buy more equipment. At that point I usually killed weaker enemies with one hit, which made fights a lot faster. Denca and Dan also got more spells on level 3.

    I found a old man in a dungeon, who asked me to deliver a letter to his wizard friend in town named Erliquin. I checked the world map and found Erliquin lies just northwest from Sorpigal. I finished my maps of Sorpigal and dungeon under it and set to Erliquin.
     
    Finally finished Doom 2. Maps 18 and 19 must be the most (design-wise) boring and uninspired levels in the whole game. It took me ages to get through them, mostly because I got bored of them in few minutes and it took me a lot of mental power to go back to them.

    But it got a lot better with level 20 and especially after it. The "hell" portion was the insanely good. It felt like the original Doom. But I finished it also pretty quickly. I think it took me only 90 minutes to beat levels 21-30, which is a shame. Especially since I spent the same amount of time only on levels 17-19. Why couldn't more levels be like map 23? All those rooms full of explosive barrels made quite original experience. And it all peaked durint last three maps. The Spirit World has probably the best combination of assets in the whole game. The Living End is the great finisher before the final boss.

    And Icon of Sin. I don't know what I was expecting, but my expectations were all blown away with this boss. The start, where you are given BFG9000 and a lot of ammo, promised a great fight. I must say I died a lot of times before figuring out what to do and where to shoot the Icon of Sin. At first I thought I have to kill everything that spawns and then something will happen to let me attack Icon itself. I was able to clear everything until I run out of ammo, so my next strategy was to shoot the Icon itself, but it seemed like it's not working and I couldn't aim well, because of the pillar right in front of the Icon. I accidentally lowered the pillar and finally noticed the exposed brain of the Icon, so I made focused on shooting rockets there, while also using BFG to take care of hordes of demons that spawned behind me. After about 5 tries I somehow beat it.

    Overall thoughts
    I think Doom 2 is a great game, but I've played it at a wrong time. It doesn't really bring any innovation to Doom aside from few new enemies and one new weapon. Ane even those are mostly just a reskin of previous demon/weapon. It felt like another pack of maps. New monsters grew on me, but they were rare to encounter. I didn't really like the colour palette used. It was way too brown. The original Doom has more vibrant colours and I think that's what created the atmosphere of hell. I know only a 1/3 of the game took place in hell, but iirc that was also the case with original. Maps also lost cleverness of the previous game and there was a lot of backtracking and blind ends with no reward. Especially those "hometown" levels were awful. They were huge, empty, boring and ugly.
    Aside from that, it was still a great fast-paced boomer shooter. I still enjoyed killing monsters and exploring most of the maps. I also prefer the non-episodic approach since I could keep all my weapons and boosts the whole game. I'm pretty sure that if I didn't play it right after finishing The Ultimate Doom, I would enjoy it more. But since I'm rating it now, I have to give it 7.5/10.

    I'll keep Might & Magic I as a secondary game for times when I'm not sure what to play next (or won't feel like playing anything else) and will probably play either Yoku's Island Express or February Game-Along game next.
     
    I started playing Yoku's Island Express. And it's charming. In case you don't know, you're playing as Yoku, a postman beetle, who is attached to a ball. Your goal is to become a new postman on an island full of other animals. It's a metroidvania with and pinball portions of the game.

    I got all the way to the main village, where Yoku has an office. I tried to explore as much as I could and got several wallet upgrades that let's me hold more fruits. The village translator gave me a major quest - to save local deity. I have to visit three places for reasons I can't remember now. Since the world is semi-opened, I chose to check all the paths to see how far I could get. I went to the location that the translator recommended as first to check, but the path was blocked by slugs. I need a slug cleaner to get rid of them. So I visited a gardener and helped him find the slug cleaner and get rid of some slugs. After clearing up some optional pinball tables in this area, I ended close to another place I need to visit. But it's underwater and I can't swim yet. I saved a magician from falling on my way back and met him in a village to get a side quest about finding pieces of a magicial statue. And that's where I saved for now.

    I also played more Might & Magic and oh god, that game didn't age well. I have about 18 hours on it so far, but I was mapping and grinding for at least 15 hours out of that. No quests or story, just a stupid grinding so I can actually do something in this game. The battle system is so boring. Even my characters with 18 accuracy (which is maximum in character creation) only land a hit once per fight. Thank god there are spells that never miss. I decided to test how many times can Ivy land a hit between levels 5 and 6 and she hit exactly 6 times. And she has the max accuracy. This battle system is a bullshit.

    For a story, I got to Erliquin, accidentally found a magician hidden in a walls of inn, gave him the scroll and got another quest - take the very same scroll to an elf in a town of Dusk. I checked my map and Dusk was in a northeast part of the map, sitting on an island in a desert. When looked through the manual, I noticed two spells - Fly, which should get me there, but I had to grind more to get it.

    While grinding, I stumbled upon Castle Blackridge. The guards didn't let me in, because I didn't have a Merchant Pass. I got it in few hours, when I was mapping C-1 area. With it, I got to Blackridge and got a quest from Lord Inspectron. He tasked me with finding ruins in a Quivering Forest. I checked map and it's somewhere between Castle Blackridge and Erliquin. But after an hour of trying to find it, I had to look up where it is on the internet. And apparently I can only get there through Erliquin dungeon. I did that and found ruins after another short session of confused mapping.

    I got ambushed by druids there and they are one of the most annoying enemies in the game so far. They can put my party to sleep. So first few attempts ended up in a wipe. Luckily just entering the ruins was enough for the quest to be completed and I got another one from Lord Inspectron. I have to visit Blithe's Peak. Map shows it's in south from Erliquin. I found another town - Portsmith, while looking for Blithe!s Peak. Portsmith is a sexist town and hurts male characters in a party. It's pretty interesting mechanic, but I wasn't able to find the reason behind it.

    I think it was at this point I got a Fly spell. I quickly learned how to use it and used it as my main mean of transport around the map. I got to Blithe's Peak and back to Lord Inspectron. Next quest was about going to the desert and getting an item from Nomads there. The moment I stepped in the desert was the moment I resigned on making my own maps. Every time I moved one square, it just randomly turned me or transported me to different place in a desert. I somehow found Nomads and got Cactus Nectar.

    Another quest was to get to a shrine in Dusk Dungeon. I finally flew to Dusk and barely survived monsters there. So I had to grind again. I found the elf to give the scroll pretty easily. Another quest - find two brothers, who know a location of a treasure. One is located in Portsmith and second one is in Algary. I got to the dungeon and found a required shrine and then fly to the Portsmith. Found one brother and got a clue to where to look for a treasure. Then I flew to Algary and found the second brother. With their clues, I found the treasure - Ruby Whistle that can open a Minotaur Stronghold near Portsmith.

    There, I quickly made it to the lower level, barely beat minotaur and found his treasure. But I didn't get any new quests, so I called it a day and saved back in Portsmith.
     
    Continuing on with Might & Magic.

    Since I had no idea where to go next, I explored a little bit and did some more quests. I found Lord Hacker, who wanted me to bring him few items and Lord Kilburn, who wanted me to explore desert. I found aliens there, who told me about their escaped prisoner. From what I've found much later, this is actually major plot point. I also found a pirate treasure and cleared few dungeons, including the ruins I visited last time, Medusa' Lair and Wyvern's Nest.

    I still couldn't clear some other ruins and castles, and didn't figure out what to do next, so I had to check the walkthrough. Apparently, I must find a Golden Key in Minotaur's Lair, so I went there and picked it up, with a small asistance from a map. This key let me enter a secret passage to Castle Doom. I had to grind once again (and luckily for the last time), because I couldn't even get past vampire lords, arch druids and other monsters lurking beneath the castle.

    I found a king of Alamar there. He was imprisoned by the imposter, who is currently sitting on his throne. He gave me an item that let's me reveal the imposter and sent me to Castle Alamar. To get there, I had to make a stop by a druid Percella, who gave me a King's Pass. I also had to find a correct password to get past a lion statue guarding the castle.

    After exposing the imposter, he teleported me to a maze, where I had to find his name. This was such a great puzzle. Basically the walls of the maze formed the name. Sadly I stopped my own mapping a while ago, so it got all spoiled to me, but I still made a run around the maze, just to see if I can actually make my own map.

    After finishing it, more aliens appeared and told me to go to the Inner Sanctum to get a new quest. I kinda like how the game shifts from being a fantasy RPG to a sci-fi. It's revealed that the continent of VARN is actually a spaceship and it looks like Inner Sanctum might be a cocpit.

    I got stucked again at this point and had to check walkthrough. Now I have to get some more keys and travel to Astral Plane. It was hard to navigate there, but I pulled all switches there and revealed the huge secret of the Inner Sanctum. It revealed a man sitting behind a computer. He congratulates me for finding Inner Sanctum, shows me my rating, reveal what VARN stands for and opened a Gates to Another World.

    After getting there, I'm met with another congratulations text and I'm told to play a Book Two. So, that was the whole story.

    Overall thoughts
    I have a mixed feelings about this game. I can see how revolutionary and good it must have been back in 1986, but it didn't aged that well. It's still playable, but it can be tedious sometimes. It wasn't balanced experience. It was boringly hard, because your characters barely hit anything and the battles lasted an eternity. It got better around level 15, where the battles were pretty okay, but it went downhills once I got to level 18. I don't think there was a single battle at that point I lost or would be close to losing. I've played for about 25 hours, but a vast majority of that was me mapping and grinding. Quests were pretty basic. They were all about going to X or bringing Y to Z. Loot was mostly useless. I got several Flamberge+2 before I even leave Sorpigal. And that was one of the best 2H weapons in the game. Some puzzles were clever and I liked the world, even though I had to add my own flavor to it.

    As I said, I can see it getting 8 or 9/10 in 1986, but I didn't find it as good nowadays. It was slow, boring and unbalanced. I give it 6/10.
     
    Finished Yoku's Island Express. It was a fine adventure. I took a pilgrimage to a local mountain, found space monks there and helped then launch a rocket to space. To do so, I had to beat a giant spider. And it was awful bossfight. The whole pinball arena had two sections and I had to make pixel perfect plays to get to the one with the boss. It was so annyoing when I dropped down and had to re-do the whole thing. But after beating it, one of the monks agreed to help the deity, so I could move to another location.

    Team Skull base. I'm not kidding, there is a Team Skull in this game. And their leader looks like Plumeria. They have a overheating problem and a boiling water under the base could blow up the whole base. I went down and helped Plumeria take care of a high pressure there by using rocks and pinball's ball and seal cracks in a mountain with them. Plumeria then agreed to help the deity.

    While I was exploring the island, I found a fish that let's me dive in water. So I could explore even more of what does the island explore. When I finished most side quests that I could find, I went to the last location and fought a monster called Screech alongside guardians of the deities. With that taken care of the leader of these guardians agreed to help the deity.

    Now there is one recurring character - a bee that sometimes saves Yoku when he's about to fall from the pinball arena. I didn't consider it important, but I was wrong. Once the ritual to restore the power of the deity begins, this bee called Kickback interrupt it and reveals he is the main villain - God Slayer. The battle with him okay. There is a pinball maze you have to solve, then you have to shoot him down from the sky and hit him with a ball and then attack his in similar matter as Screech. And that was all for the story. I sticked a little bit more and done some more quests that I found and I think I'm ready to move to another game.

    Overall thoughts
    This game was unique. The mix of genres was original and fun. The story wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it gave me enough motivation to explore the whole island and finish majority of side quests. The pinball was okay for most parts. There were sections where I had to make a pixel perfect play to move on and a lot fo times I had to do these several times in a row. Which became annoying really fast. There also were parts, where the space between two paddles was big enough for a ball to fall through and I couldn't do anything about it.

    Overall it was great game. I loved the characters and the mix of genres. The music was amazing too. But the pinball got old very quickly. Especially parts, where I had to hit one thing in arena several times to make a progress. 8.5/10.
     
    It's time to tackle my Game-Along game - Goofy's Fun House. This is 2001 PS1 about Goofy's search for lost items from his old paintings of his old adventures. I used to play this game a lot when I was young. I know it's targeted at kids, but I recently remembered it and got an itch to play it.

    So, the game starts with Goofy letting you to his home. He walks you to a living room and offers to watch some of his old cartoons. He has paintings from those cartoons hanging all around the living room, but some items from those paintings got lost. Does that make sense? Because it should. That's the whole story of this game. Oh and you also collect film cans. These unlock more cartoons to watch.

    I explored the living room as much as I could and found out I still remember the layout of the house. There are three doors leading out of living room. One lead to garage, one to the cellar and the other one to dining room. I went to garage and got blown away by the details put in the game. I mean it's 2001 kids game. But you can see the care put into it. You can accidentally spill a red paint and when you walk on it, you will leave a red footprints. You can jump on beds and they bounce you up. You can dance to the music. You can play with toys...

    So, I went to dining room, picked some more film cans there and continued to a hall. It leads either up, out or to a kitchen. But I was able to just pick up a golf hat from a coat hook. I went upstairs and went to Goofy's bedroom. There, I started a first minigame. Right, this game has minigames. In this one, Goofy tried to open a closet, but Pluto took his key and buried it in the garden. And there, moles got it. I had to play Whack-A-Mole and had 30 seconds to hit 3 moles. After successfully doing so, I got a golfing pants from the closet.

    Then I went to Max's room, played another minigame, that only got me more film cans. It was 3x3 Tic-tac-toe minigame and I remember I learned the whole winning algorithm on this minigame.

    Going to the attic, I got a pump in a chest and skies hidden behind the crates. There was also a ghost, a zombie and a skeleton there, which was kinda cool. I had to go back down, to the kitchen and straight to the backyard from there. There I collected 5 eggs from Goofy's hens to get more film cans, got a boxing gloves from a scarescrow and went back and explored frontyard.

    It was during this time that I remembered that cellar was probably better place to go, since I'll do few things there that will unlock more collectable items in the kitchen. So I went there. Cellar is divided into two sections. There was a pump in one side, which let me flood the other side. And there was a nice warm sweater lying in a washing machine. And I can put some logs in hearth there, which will melt a frozen ham hidden in the kitchen. I went to the floaded part, jumped on a floating crates and picked up fishing rod.

    Now I have almost everything. I returned to the kitchen for a ham and went back to the garage to inflate and pick up a tire. Now I have everything.

    I started with a skying painting. Basically, you have to find 2 items in the house and then you play a minigame for the last one. I had sweater and skies, so I could win a slalom to get a medal. Which was pretty easy, but the controls were a little bit icky.

    I did this for the rest of the paintings easily and soon had a nice collection of movies to play. Except for golfing minigame. That was a pain to get through. Some of the other minigames include driving to the gym to get Goofy's gymbag, catchong worms, fishing and fighting a dog for a sausage.

    And that's the game. I watched all unlocked shorts, because they are fun. I even found them some of them on youtube, so you can watch them too:
    Spoiler:


    Overall thoughts
    I think nostalgia will affect my rating here a lot. The game is simple, but it does everything it sets up to do really well. Goofy's house is fun to explore. There are a lot of things to interact with and Goofy comments on basically everything you see and do in the game. Everything is colorful and the world around Goofy's house seems full of life, even though it's mostly empty. Minigames are mostly fun, but the game doesn't bother to tell you how to control them and even when you figure it out, it's anything but not good. It's rough, dull and I have no idea how could my younger me ever finish it multiple times.
    I enjoyed pretty much every minute of this two hours adventure. It was nice journey to my childhood and kinda made me want to play other PS1 games. 7.5/10.

    I'm not sure what to play next. I was reading through Nah and gimmepie's journals about Fire Emblem: Three Houses and decided to go back to Fire Emblem myself. I've only ever played 3DS games and last time I've played Fire Emblem was Shadows of Valentia. So I found my copy of Awakening, since that was my first Fire Emblem and will be playing that next.
     
    It's time to continue with my journal. I played quite a lot of games.

    Fire Emblem: Awakening
    I'm FE noob, even after playing through all 3DS games. So I'm sorry if my nonoptimal builds and pairing will make you feel uneasy. The only things I remember about Awakening are Chrom, Donnie, the fact that Chrom will have Lucina after about 10 maps (and that I should probably pair him with someone before that happens, unlike during my first playthrough) and the twist at the end of the game. I also remember some vaguely more characters, but don't remember how good all characters are. I never did min-maxing and reclassing to all kinds to classes just to get one skill from them. I might try it now, just to see how annoying it is.

    Starting the game, I quickly got past first few levels and leveled up my Robin quite quickly. I plan on keeping Robin as Tactician and focus on magic. But it feels like Frederick is stealing EXPs from other characters, since he can basically one-shot everything at this point of game. So Donnie is still level 2, because I couldn't get him near any weak enemy. I might do some grinding just so he can catch up with the rest of my team.

    The Longing
    I've decided to start The Longing, which is relatively new indie game with a great twist. You play as a Shade and your job is to wake up your king. The problem is... the king will sleep for 400 days. Real life days. You have one small empty room to wait and can kill time by drawing or reading books. There is a whole Moby Dick in the game, which is cool. You can also explore the caves, but the Shade moves slowly, since there is no point in rushing it. You can find gems, coal, wood and more items, that can make your room feel more like a home. And it will make time to past more quickly. I got to the 5 in-game seconds per 1 real-life second after drawing 3 paintings, making a fire and obtaining few gems. I also found mattock and was able to dig new rooms, which took me about hour and a half in total. Good think I also found door that took 2 hours to open.

    Now, I'm waiting a week for a stalagmit to drop down from a ceiling and about a month for a hole to fill with water, so I can get to new locations. I also found a spider, who is making new web that will let me climb to a new location as well. This should take only few days from now.

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance
    Kingdom Come is one of the best RPGs released in a last decade and it's celebrating its 3rd anniversary. It's a hardcore realistic experience, that takes place in Bohemia in 15th century, right before the start of Hussite Wars. You play as a blacksmith son Henry, who is the only survivor of Cumans raid on his village Skalitz. Henry is no epic hero. He can barely swing a sword, can't read, is weak, has no social skills. Well, he's just a regular human.

    Last time I've played this game, I got deep in roleplaying as a lawful good christian peasant. And it made the game hard. Even at the end of the game, I barely beat anyone, I never had enough money and my skills were overall low. I also skipped a lot of side quests, because it was hard to find them. Now I decided to really work on Henry and make him the best knight (and also thief and alchemist) in Bohemia. I heard he can really turn into god-like creature if you work on his skills. The game don't give you anything for free. You have to spend time training with a sword and find a master swordsman to teach you the basics, otherwise you'll just randomly swing it whole game. There is no crosshair for bow, so you have to learn how to aim on your own... You get the idea.

    So, when the game starts, my plan was to get +2 to Strength via a first dialogue, but I accidentally missclicked and got +1 in Speech and +1 in Strength instead. I wanted stregth, because was about to fight Kunesh as part of Henry's quest. Kunesh is an old drunk, who owns Henry's dad money for some tools he got from him. So Henry have to get either money or tools back, get a coal from a coal seller (for money or those tools) in a village and get his dad a cold beer from a tavern.

    I left Henry's dad's smithy, but instead of going to Kunesh, I went to a meadow and started picking up herbs. Why? Because there are some fine skills in a Herbalism skill tree, that will be useful soon. And since there are a lots of herbs in this location. I was able to level Herbalism up all the way to level 10. I got Flower Power skill, which gives Henry +2 to Charisma if he has at least 30 herbs in inventory, Leg Day skill, that will level up Strength alongside Herbalism and Resistance skill, that adds +2 to Henry's Vitality. And I can either sell all herbs or use them to make potions later.

    I went to Kunesh and provoked him to fight, which can be hard for newcommers, but I was prepared for everything and beat him without taking much damage. This locked me out of getting lockpicks from one of Henry's friends. That's a shame, because I won't be able to pick some chests here, but I don't think I wouldn't be able to unlock them anyway. But the fight will level up Henry's fighting skills, which is better in my opinion.

    I continued with the tutorial, got about 8 Saviour Schnapps from all around the village, trained sword fighting and helped my dad finish a sword for a local lord Radzig Kobyla. The village is attacked by Cumans after that and Henry's dad goes to protect Skalitz, while Henry is supposed to hide in Radzig's castle with others. But he chose to help his dad instead. He's too slow and can only watch as his dad and mum are killed by Cumans. Castle's gates closed in a meantime, so Henry has no other option than to flee to another castle called Talmberg. I was able to get a horse and saved a villager Theresa from getting killed by a group of Cumans. Well, I only bumped into them and they forgot about Theresa and decided to follow me instead. But it counts.

    A lot of cutscenes later, the situation is the following. Henry is recovering on Talmberg. Lord Divish and lady Stephanie of Talmberg took him under their wings and let him stay there. Sir Radzig was able to escape from his castle with other villagers during the night and went all the way to a city of Rattay. He also forbids Henry from going back to Skalitz to bury his parents. Henry is also suppose to go to Rattay after he's fully healed.

    So the quest is clear. Go back to Skalitz to bury Henry's parents. To sneak out of Telmberg, I either have to steal a guard's armor, bribe the gate guard or simple jump out of the bridge leading from Talmberg village to castle. First time I've played this part, I stole armor and was able to talk my way out of Talmberg. This time, I got armor (and bow and shield) from Talmberg's armory, but couldn't talk my way out of castle. I had no money and I hid all my herbs in Skalitz, because I was getting overweight, meaning I couldn't bribe the guard. I found lady Stephanie, since I knew I could ask her for gold, but she didn't recognize me in my disguise and when I revealed my identity, she only wished me good luck. There was no other option aside from jumping. I jumped, but got caught by guards. But this time, my charisma worked and they let me go.

    I forgot my horse, so I had to go to Skalitz on feet. I knew about 2 treasures in Skalitz. One was near a bridge and net me 300 gold coins, mace, axe and garment. The second one only had more gold coins and a silver cup. The mace and axe are great, but I don't have stats to use them. I also had to beat some scavengers on my way to Skalitz. And it went a lot better than I expected. I used sir Radzig's sword and a shield for the first scavenger and killed it without taking any damage. Then I found the first treasure and got over Henry's inventory limit, so I had to drop the shield. But I was still able to kill the second scavenger without any problems. Looks like I'm a lot better in this game that I expected.

    I got to Skalitz, got a shovel, second treasure and buried my parents. After that I got attacked by a group of bandits led by a guy named Runt. He's one of the main antagonists of the game, so he can't be killed during this part. On the other side, he uses huge club and beats you in one or two hits. He stole Henry's sword, but before he can finish the poor blacksmith, Theresa appeared alongside soldiers from Talmberg and save him.

    And that's where the game really starts...
     
    Time for another update! I was busy this week, so I barely played anything. Good thing The Longing "plays" itself.

    Fire Emblem: Awakening
    I did no progress here. I've been focusing on playing other games, but I'll get back to FE soon.

    The Longing
    I was able to explore the caves more and got some crystals for my home. I found a sulfur and coal mine and some flints, so I could make a fire. Now the time flows by 6-7 seconds per real-life second. I also found Halls of Eternity. The time stops in those halls, but I can find few items

    I'm close to unlocking new areas and I'm looking forward to see what they can offer.

    This is how my room looks like right now:
    Spoiler:

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance
    Henry woke up in a mill near Rattay. The miller here is Peshek, Theresa's uncle. They took care of Henry last few weeks, when he was recovering from almost being killed at Skalitz. But now that Henry is fully healed, Peshek wants him to pay him for all the healing potions they had to buy for him. But since he's a good man, he has a job offer for Henry - steal a ring from a grave near a executioner's house. Since my plan is to play as thief anyway, I agreed and sent Henry to the grave. There I realized I don't have a shovel in my inventory. There is one shovel at the mill, but I wasn't feeling like going back and was able to find one at executioner's house. After digging the grave, there was no ring. I decided to find where it is and got to the executioner's house. I found the ring there and brought it back to Peshek.

    Peshek then sent me to another miller called Woyzeck to give him the ring. Before I went there, I let Peshek to teach me about lockpicking and pickpocketing. I was able to level up both skills a little bit. Now it was almost a night, so I got a brilliant idea. On my way to Woyzeck, I visited several random houses and leveled up both lockpicking and pickpocketing even more. I even trained on sleeping Woyzeck before giving him the ring.

    He gave me another stealing quests. First one was about stealing some armor from Talmberg and then a horse from a village of Merhojed. I did both and leveled up my thieving skills more and more.

    But those were only side quest. For the main quest, I had to find sir Radzig in Rattay and tell him about his sword. But there is one more thing to do in Rattay - steal everything. I waited for another night and went on a stealing spree. I was so unlucky this night that the game itself just change to stop me from attempting more stealing. Random NPCs spawned in rooms I was trying to go to, shop guards didn't go to bed and everyone was hard to pickpocket.So I went with alternative and knocked out few guards and stole their armor and weapons.

    Speaking of weapons, since I lost sir Radzig's sword, I only had a club as my weapon for a while. I could use that mace and axe I found near Skalitz, but my attributes were too low to use them efficiently. I bought a longsword for about 500 gold for now.

    Going to sir Radzig, I found him while he's discussing recent events with few more lords. There is sir Hanush, who is currently taking care of Rattay, since its current heir is too young. The heir of Rattay is Hans Capon and he's one of the main characters in this game and even has a whole DLC about him. Anyway, when Henry enters the room, one of the lords is talking about the increased criminality in Rattay. They know about me!

    After some talk, where Hanush basically tell both Henry and Hans to fuck themselves, sir Radzig decides to take Henry under his protection. He agrees on teaching Henry how to fight and let him join Rattay guards. I'm feel so bad for both Henry and Hans at this point. They are both doing their best, but noblemen always scold them.

    So now I have to train with a Bernard, a captain of the city guard. He teaches Henry the basics and some more advanced moves like perfect guarding or dodging. Hans interrupted the training at one point and was making fun of Henry, before leaving to train archery. Bernard and Henry follow him and Henry got challenged to a archery competition by Hans. He even
    offers his own bow as a reward for beating him. I never beat him before at this point, but I tried really hard, got lucky and beat him with only 1 point of difference. But Hans wanted a rematch and I had to beat him in a sword fight. It's pretty easy to beat him and got his bow. It will be handy for early game.

    I went to nearby forest and tried the bow at hunting. And I had really interesting results. I was able to kill a rabbit that was like 10 meters from me with one arrow, but I was also able to miss a rabbit literally at my feat with like 10 arrows.

    I also forgot to mention that I got a dog right after talking with Peshek for a first time. It's a DLC feature, so I never used it before. And it's pretty fun to use in battle. I also tried another DLC feature - a tournament. But I forgot to learn some more advanced moves from Bernard first, so I got beaten quickly. After I went to Bernard and learned master strikes, which are OP counterattacks, and combos, which can come handy too.

    With those new skills, I got a side quest from Bernard, where he sent Henry to deal with few bandits camps. I was so overpowered at this point, that some bandits just straight up run away after seeing me. That's bad, because I could sell their ears to Bernard plus they could have equipment I could sell. At one point I got ambushed by 5 cumans and they all yielded when I kill first of them.

    I also got enough money to buy a horse. My initial plan was to buy a level 1 horse for about 1k gold, but after killing those cumans, I had about 2k gold. So I decided to kill some more bandits, sell their stuff and buy the best horse in the game for 2.8k gold. Getting a horse this early in the game will change how few quests will play out, so I'm looking forward them.

    Next time I should probably finally join the guards and do some more main quests, including going hunting with Hans.
     
    I really should put out these updates more frequently.

    The Longing
    I did explore the caves more, even got new books, including Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Odyssey and I decided to read through them. I still have about 350 days after all. I also got to the last few areas of the complex. Or I think I did, based on a map I found. I found a waterfall and another mattock. I grew a large mushroom and got to the upper levels of complex. I used purple mushrooms as a light source, but got stopped by another shade. It looked like he attacked me and it teleported me back home.

    I found out making sulfur fire will make the Shade run away because of the smell. And I think he always run to location I can interact with somehow, because the two times I tried it, he went to a location with running water that I didn't find before and then went to the cliff that leads to the upper levels.

    I think I still have stuff to do here. I know I have to find some more crystals, explore the upper levels, get enough material for a bed, find all pieces of a music instrument. And then wait.

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance
    Okay, I have played this a lot during the past week, so I'll try to keep it short. I did finally join the guards and took a tour around Rattay. It didn't end well, since one of the duties of guards is closing taverns. Hans wasn't as enthusiastic about closing a tavern he was drinking in as I was, so I had to fight him. Poor boy, getting destroyed for a third time by the same peasant. Well peasant in a full plate armor, but still a peasant. That resulted in both Hans and Henry getting scold by Hanush again. And he made them go hunting together the next day.

    This hunting quest has two different forms depending on if Henry has a horse or not. I already did this quest before without the horse, so that's why I wanted to have one. Basically Henry and Hans ride to a hunting spot. If Henry doesn't have his own horse, he has to run there on his own. I love this part, since Hans and Henry have finally time to talk. Hans reveals that he's a jealous of Henry, because even though he screwed up big time by going back to Skalitz, he was rewarded by sir Radzig, while Hans is getting scold by Hanush all the time. He also tells Henry that he likes to fight new guys to see what is in them. They talk more about Skalitz and get to know each other. Hans wants to get his ass kicked for a fourth time and challenges Henry to a hunting competition. I never lost this one. I think you have to kill 1 hare to win. I killed 5 this time, which granted me enough meat for next few days.

    After that they go boar hunting. While chasing a boar, they found themselves in middle of a cuman camp. Hans got knocked down during a cutscene, so Henry had to take two cumans all by himself. Which wasn't hard, since I already killed cumans before. After saving Hans, sir Hanush gives Henry... his own horse as a reward. Okay, this part isn't really working if Henry already has a horse.

    Bernard interupts the meeting between Hanush, Radzig and Henry with a terrible news. A settlement Neuhof was attacked by bandits. Hanush sent Bernard and Henry to investigate. This quest is all about going around Neuhof, talking with people and killing bandits. Henry finds out that Neuhof was attacked by the same group as he was in Skalitz. He eventually finds out that one of the bandits lives in Uzhitz.

    But I decided to do more side quests. I went on a date with Theresa, helped lady Stephanie with planning her cousin's wedding, hunted more cumans, helped a widow of executed thief, won first DLC tournament, explored most of the map and found new towns and villages including Sassau, where I helped Skalitz refugees, learned how to read and stole bunch of stuff all around the map.

    I also bought new equipment and decided to focus on maces this run. My Henry is slowly becoming a true knight, with his highest stats being Charisma and Stregth. I also picked bunch of fighting skills like nutcracker, that gives me a chance to knock out enemy with a hit in their head or sadist, which gives be boost in Strength if I can draw my opponent's blood.
     
    The Longing
    I got past the other shade. All my Shade had to do was to close its eyes. He was guarding a long dark tunnel, that ended in a way out of the complex. Sadly it's block by some boulders. I think I might as well try to find a way out, since I have a bad feeling about this king. Why is he locked down here? Why is the complex full of skeletons? Why don't people above care about the king?

    I used sulfur fire to see if there are any new locations, since that dark tunnel was suspiciously long and empty. And of course there was a hidden path there. I found a tower above the ground. It looked like alchemist tower with few books and another crystal. There is also the Stork nest on the roof. I think I'll have to wait there for a Stork to appear.

    I also build a bed and got to 10 in-game seconds per 1 real-life second.

    Kingdom Come: Deliverance
    I did some more thieving side quests. I stole Hanush's book for Peshek, which I nonchalantly stole from a room guarded by 2 guards and with sleeping Bernard inside. I also leveled up my stealth enough to perform stealth kills, which helped a lot with another quest line. I met a Charlatan in Sasau that tasked me with finding extraordinary holy items. But since these aren't that easy to come by, he wanted me to get just some ordinary items like a tooth, stick or burial shroud that he will then sell as holy items. While I was getting a cat's paw talisman, I found a pair of dice and realized I haven't played the dice minigame yet. I went to Ledetchko and stole more dice and played for a while. I was using combination of Devil's die that can act as a joker and 4 Odd dice, that have bigger chance of rolling odd numbers and Heavenly Kingdom die, that also has better chance at rolling 1.

    Then I finally got back to the main quests. I had to find Limpy Lubosh in Uzhitz. Going there, I quickly found his house, but there is a problem. Someone was faster than me and Lubosh is dead. So I have to talk with Bailiff and other villagers to find out more about him. Usually, Henry doesn't have high enough stats to convince them he's working for Bernard and Hanush, so there is a long and funny quest about getting drunk with local priest, doing things that priests probably shouldn't be doing and finally waking up with a hangover and giving a sermon. And only then Henry will find more about Lubosh and his companions. But, since my Henry already looks like a noble knight, I passed all the stat checks easily and just got the info straight away. A little bit disappoiting. To put Henry's stats in perspective, my current Henry has the same or higher stats than my Henry from the first playthrough at the end of the game.

    I found out about Lubosh's friend Reeky from Ledetchko. I quickly got there and talked with his father and "girlfriend", who told me he is hiding in a cave somewhere in the woods around Ledetchko. There are 3 possible caves around, so I went to the nearest one and found 4 fully armed bandits. They did take a while to kill, but Reeky was not there. And I had a full inventory of their equipment. It was nighttime, which made navigating through the forest extremely hard, and another tournament was just about to begin the next day in Rattay, so I made my way there, encountering more bandits and cumans (= more equipment to sell). I got there just in time and easily won another tournament. It took me a whole day, which I wasn't happy about, since this main quest is timed mission. I have to find Reeky before Lubosh's murderer do so.

    But it was also the perfect time to go on another date with Theresa. This time, they went to a tavern for a meal, but some vagabond thought he can just be a dick to Theresa. So Henry served him a cold steel punch for dinner. Okay, back to the main quest! I visited the wrong cave once again. So Reeky must be hidden in the last one! I found him badly beaten and dying. So... I guess I wasn't fast enough. Ups. Sorry Reeky, Theresa had higher priority. Anyway, he told me about the last member of Lubosh's group - Timmy, and confirms that it was Runt, who attacked Neuhof. Runt has a camp somewhere in the area and Timmy knows where.

    Reeky states that Timmy is probably hiding at the windmill south of Merhojed, so I went there and convinced his sister Mirka to help me. She told me Timmy is hiding at nearby farm, before 4 thugs appear looking for Timmy. They have barely any armor on them, so I let Henry answer with his mace to their intimidation. If I was to work together with them, they would take me to the camp, but my noble thief knight Henry is an honest man. He would never join those bandits. Killing them is better.

    I found Timmy and he told me location of the camp. Now I have to find it based on his description. Like literally find it. There is no marker on the map. But it's fun to do so. I found it and Henry decided to let sir Radzig know about it. So I went back near Merhojed, where is Radzig's camp. He tasked me with infiltrating the camp.

    I have a funny story about this quest. During my first playthrough, I missed a mention of getting cuman armor and disguise as one, since there are both cumans and bandits in the camp and didn't realize I could go there during the night, so I went there and spent about 3 hours of fighting everyone until the whole camp was clear. It was the time I thought those devs are crazy for this quest and that I'll never be able to finish it.

    So this time I decided to do it the right way. Kill everyone again. And it was a lot easier with trained Henry. He got hit by an arrow, which inflicted bleeding effect on him, but Henry is such a chad that he killed everyone, poisoned their food, burned their arrows and only then healed. I think this whole action took me about 15 minutes of the game time. What a change from the last time. I think there is a cutscene, where Runt is killing some man for infighting, while you're infiltrating the camp, but I've never seen it because of my way of solving it. So my Henry never knew about Runt.

    I had to sabotage their camp, because enemies will spawn again for the next main quest, which is an attack on their camp with full force of Radzig's men. He even asked Divish for more men. I think he could save them and just sent Henry there. The battle was fine and a lot faster than just killing everyone alone.

    And finally, Henry came face to face with Runt, on top of destroyed church. Runt is pretty formidable opponent, he's probably the most skilled swordsman so far. but he's not wearing a helmet, so he quickly met with the end of Henry's mace. Killing him and taking the camp down, more evidence comes to the light that there is something bigger behind Neuhof and Runt's band. Someone wealthy was paying them to attack villages around Talmberg. Merhojed got attacked only few hours after the battle, but commonfolk was able to defend themselves and even took one bandit captive. It!s up to Henry to interrogate him.

    But first, there is time for more side quests...
     
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