Hey, Gamers! I know I said that I’d not do this until after my personal stuff is sorted, but July has been such a big month and there’s not much I can do regarding my personal stuff until mid-August so I decided that I should go ahead to write this! So let’s go!
If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw that in the middle of the month, I decided to give Dark Souls yet another go. I hadn’t completely given up on it, but there is a couple of streams where people have heard me scream “I’m never playing Dark Souls again” from the other room. The Capra Demon really, really got to me. Those dogs just outside the boss arena nearly made me say that I hate dogs, which is crazy because anyone who knows me knows that dogs are my favourite beings. I went to see my dad this month, and we took the new PlayStation, Dark Souls and Fallout 4. My dad actually bought me Dark Souls because I wanted to be able to play it with Josh. I sat down in front of his very large television (I always say he’s compensating for something) while we were waiting for my mum to go get coffee. After I think 4 or 5 goes, my dad making fun of me, Josh being oddly quiet… I did it. I beat him. I don’t exactly know how but I did.
I fully agree that it’s not the Capra Demon as a boss that’s hard, but rather the arena. The dogs were the annoying addition that had to be dealt with first. I think the hardest thing about this for me is that I wanted to do it without Josh’s help, so I went out of my way to look up tips that overall were not helpful. Once I realised this and did things my own way, things got better and easier.
I’m putting Persona 5 here and using it as an umbrella term for just all games that include the Persona 5 cast. Now, with me going to my dad’s, my mental health wasn’t great so I missed a few streams of my AI route. However, I was back this week and Mementos is unlocked! I think we also have all social stats up to 2 (maybe not intelligence, but I think that was like the last thing to happen), and we can make coffee so that should make Madarame easier than Kamoshida. Yusuke was shown but we’ve still not officially met him yet. I’m at the stage where I am feeling the need to take notes and do actual research on confidants etc so that I can do the harem route. In terms of Strikers, I haven’t gone back to it after the incident (I’ll write a post when I can think about it without crying), but I am thinking about it a lot and I think I might just stream the grinding process. It’ll likely be when I wake up at normal human hours, just when I have some more time on my hands. I did go back to Vanilla Persona 5 and that went fine. I’m not doing anything special there, I just love the game and can’t play Royal on the PlayStation that’s in ‘my’ room if that makes sense. I so desperately want to plat the game, but it’s not a priority right now. I am much more focused on my AI route because that’s more… achievable.
Next, I’ve talked about playing Fallout 4 a little on here before, but I wanted to add it in here because it genuinely is such a big thing for me. It’s helping me with my reflexes and helping me think outside the box more. I think I’ve been pretty hooked on linear games for a while, so being able to have so much freedom in a game is nice (and slightly anxiety-provoking but I’m good for now). I am getting better at shooting normally, but I think right now I am very reliant on VATS. I know it would probably be better for myself if I wasn’t so stubborn and used a mix of guns and melee weapons… but no. I am level 9 right now, and I’ve found Nick. I went back to Sanctuary to do some more building and to unload, but now I’m doing that first quest that Preston gave me for the Minutemen.
Another thing that I’ve done is I have played JoJo with Josh. By JoJo, I mean the Eyes of Heaven game that I’ve been avoiding because I can’t get past this one fight in the story mode and I’m a little butthurt about it right now. But yeah, I did that and he destroyed me every single match (although the game did lag a lot so it wasn’t always my fault).
I’ve written about Yakuza a lot here because it’s a big thing in our household. I loved 0 (the review is coming, I’m just bad at reviews), and Josh has now played them all. Now, I finished 0 a while ago. Around March, actually. But then I was playing through Strikers, and I had a lot of Uni work to do and as much as I hate to admit it, playing the rest of the Yakuza games was not a priority for me. But we’re playing 0 on stream and I hated Kiryu’s combat so much, so I decided to start playing Kiwami again. Josh was about to go to sleep and saw that I had gotten a completion list achievement thing for defeating 5 enemies in Brawler. He made fun of me and went to sleep. Then… uh… how do I word this without making myself sound crazy? I accidentally stayed up all night and the next thing I know I’ve got the achievement for defeating 150 enemies in Brawler and what is Rush now?! And I’m 80% sure I finished the game the next day. So, I finished Yakuza Kiwami and got used to Brawler and started to use Beast more. Yeah, I miss Majima but I can always go back to 0 if I want to.
Leading on from that, I started Yakuza Kiwami 2. This is the first game I’ve actually had to fight with the dragon style, which I was pretty worried about. I remember Josh saying that it wasn’t the best style in 0, and that was basically all I’d heard about it. I am actually enjoying it a whole lot more than I thought I would. The combat isn’t weighed down for me the way that Josh described it. I like it. The issue I’m having with Kiwami 2 is that it feels harder to full off a combo. If you’ve read my other Yakuza posts, you know that Yakuza was the first time I’ve ever really bothered paying attention to the combos and doing anything other than button mashing. It was a bit disheartening going into Kiwami 2 as I felt like I couldn’t do that anymore. However, I’ve adapted and learnt and you absolutely can still pull off combos! I just like throwing people, though…
Mystic Messenger! During the latter part of the month, I’ve been trying to get up earlier rather than sleeping all day. I decided a way to motivate me would be to try Mystic Messenger again. I love Jaehee’s route, so I thought I’d start in the first basic route and just work my way up so that I can finally do V’s route… But I got sick the next day so missed most of the rooms. I think I really need to stop thinking of Mystic Messenger as a way to motivate me and more as a nice thing to look forward to if I wake up early enough. I have written a post about Mystic Messenger which just needs editing so expect that soon!
Now, my greatest achievement: in Stardew Valley, I finished the community centre! It felt unachievable because I was so bad at fishing but after some research and a lot of time (I was in my home town, Stardew Valley was the only thing keeping me sane), I did it. I nearly cried when I completed it, not gonna lie. It was such a breath of relief. I am going to talk about this in another post because I have a lot of emotions about it, but I also built Pam’s house. Genuinely one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt. Oh, I also divorced Shane so that I could marry Penny… then decided to wait until I built the house to see if her life would improve, but by that point, I decided to just do the all ten-heart event thing. That meant I had to make Shane’s memory go bye-bye soooooo let’s just pretend I don’t feel bad that his kids are running around my house and he has no memory of them. I mean, it’s not like he was seeing them after we got divorced anyway!
I did say that I would talk about what Josh has done too, but he claims he hasn’t done much. He started a kill every NPC run in Dishonored, and he started playing Judgement as he got that for his birthday, and he is playing Fallout 4 more now that I am also playing it. He doesn’t have any huge achievements that he wants to point out, so yeah.
So, I think that’s it for this month’s progress report, Gamers! What did you get up to this month? Let me know in the comments below. If you liked this post, give it a ‘like’ and don’t forget to follow my socials to stay updated! If you’re looking for someone to watch game, check out 2nerds_1game on Twitch, where Josh and I stream almost every day. See you next time, Gamers!
Eleanor Rees Gaming 