Snakes and Organized Crime

 Well I was in the office today so unfortunately the first "game diary" style post I'm putting up, I don't actually have all that much to say.  

In the time I had during my lunch break I, of course, played as much Shin Megami Tensei 5 as I could squeeze in.  I'm currently really enjoying this game and one thing I'm really happy about is my decision to put it on hard mode.  I remember back in my younger days, when I first got my hands on Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne (Or Lucifers Call as it was called for me) and my unfamiliarity with the series meant that I found the whole thing quite challenging.  Every boss fight was a struggle, a hard earned win that felt good when I figured out a good team of demons or a good strategy.  As I got older and played more MegaTen I eventually "got gud" so when I eventually got my hands on Shin Megami Tensei 4 I breezed through that entire game no problem and with that games hard mode being locked behind a full game clear, I haven't yet got around to doing it.  

Shin Megami Tensei 5 on hard, however, has BIG Nocturne energy that I'm really enjoying.  Just as I was getting comfortable running around the map and making short work of enemies, I enter a building and was treated to a boss fight.  I'm not going to spoil what the boss is or anything like that but it involves snakes but not by Tokyo Tower.  This boss stomped my shit effortlessly because my setup was AWFUL for it and unfortunately my lunch break ended before I could get another try.  However I've got some demons in stock that can help, I changed up my resistances so I'm not just granting it free turns and I'm ready to run right back in there and beat it's ass.  Excitement.

The other game I manged to get a fairly long session on today was Yakuza Kiwami, a game I'm playing on stream as part of my Yak-Attack series playthrough.  Most streams I do of that game devolve into me just doing mini-games for completion points but today I actually managed to progress the plot a little and I really like the plot of Kiwami so it's always a treat to see more of those cinematics.  On top of that I beat all the batting challenges which is a feat I'm particularly proud of since when I started the game I could barely even hit the ball AND I won a game of Shogi, a feat I thought was actually impossible.  I didn't get the completion point since you have to win a match without using the take-back function for that but the game can go fuck itself, I'm just happy I got a win at all.

I wanted to sign off each of these posts with a short "wot I plan to play tomorrow" bit but for the forseeable future every day is pretty much going to be playing just as much SMT5 as possible.  I actually think I'm near the end of my first playthrough for A Plague Tale: Innocence so maybe I'll put some time into that and try and see the ending but demon-busting takes main priority.