This has been a weird year in gaming for me so far. I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom on and off for a year now, and I've gotten to Hyrule Castle, but I don't think I'm close to finishing it yet. I started playing it around the same time as Baldurs Gate 3, but then put it aside for however many months it took me to beat Baldurs. With BG3 and Zelda sitting in my consoles forever, I wasn't doing much more than dabbling in other games and it hasn't lent well to me actually finishing anything!

I did manage to beat SaGa Scarlet Grace after Robio showed so much enthusiasm for it and I finished Eiyuden Chronicle Rising because I eventually DO want to get to Hundred Heroes. I miss Suikoden games, so I'm planning on getting to that some time in the next few months...

In the meantime, I've been playing a little bit of this and a little bit of that like...

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Megaton Mushashi W Wired - ultra colorful Armored Core baby brother from Level 5 with super bright anime sequences and story bits. It's fun, You're always getting new weapons to try and mech parts to build new bots. It gets deeper and deeper as you go on (like any Level 5 game) and there's actually incentives to log on every day or even try your hand battling others online.

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V Rising - plays a bit like a Diablo game but there's more of a focus on Survival than loot. You gather resources, build your own Castle(Vania) from scratch and take on a hundred+ bosses that all fight VERY differently! You can set up an online castle that plays out in real-time or a single player one that exists only for you when you save and load it up again (you can invite people to join you) but it's offline in the sense that events don't happen when you're not there. All of the Vampire strengths and weaknesses are incorporated into the game play from avoiding the sunlight (and garlic), turning people into your servants, blood magic (along with a whole host of other elemental spells)... even the quality of the blood you drink matters! Pure or unpure, you'll be stronger or weaker as a result. When I first heard of the building aspect, I thought "Well, that's not for me" --BUT-- it's so easy, well done and intuitive, you'll be making castles worthy of Dracula before you know it! Speaking of: there is a CastleVania Legacy DLC that incorporates all sorts of elements from the series, including a one-on-one showdown with Simon Belmont himself! THIS IS SERIOUSLY THE BEST VAMPIRE GAME SINCE LEGACY OR KAIN!!! Yep! I said it! It really is --THAT-- good!

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Metal Slug Reloaded - it's a Gatcha game for sure, but it's Metal Slug... as Tower Defense...!? Imagine all the smoothly-animated, pixelated gore/humor/drama of a Metal Slug game, but with a bit of strategy thrown in. I don't know if you've ever heard of Battle Cats, but THAT game is a bizarre-ass side-scrolling tower defense game starring mostly weird cat-hybrid creatures, that is admittedly VERY hard to put down! The two games play almost identically, but in here you get Metal Slugs, attack Camels, puking Zombies, Fanatics with magic spells, Women with Rocket Launchers, alien Bug Queens, mad Scientists... it goes on and on... There's literally HUNDREDS of sprites from all throughout the series' history that you can mix and match in easy-to-control but sometimes hair-pullingly hard 2D strategy scenarios... I know I'm not doing the best at describing it, but if you know Metal Slug, you kinda have an idea what to expect!

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Yeah, there have been other games I've tried on and off but the few mentioned above are the ones I've been sticking with albeit sporadically... Like I said: Weird game year...

...but still fun!