I just took 2 wonderful weeks off and played about 160 hours combined of Transport Fever 2 (city builder but without the city-building that only focuses on logistics), FOUNDRY (voxel Satisfactory), Teddy's Haven (cosy fantasy shop sim) and Bobo Bay (basically Chao garden from Sonic Adventure 2 that someone finally made into a standalone game).

Less than two hours into my first shift back I was already utterly miserable, and now 90 minutes after that I'm just... burned out. I guess it'll be back to Pokémon after this because I won't have the mental bandwidth for much else. Just gotta win the lotto!

Going back to an oldie and playing the original Paper Mario for the first time.

Also slowly chipping away at The Outer Worlds

There is a free weekend for MISERY, so I guess I’ll try that. (4-5 player coop game)

Started playing Monster Train 2. Loved the first one, but oh boy, 2 is such a let down for me. Feels like it's poorly balanced, on both player and enemy sides, and it's just an exercise in finding the most BS broken stuff rather than properly strategy.

It's not a bad game, mind you; it's just that perhaps my expectations and the game were not aligned.

Playing Yoshi’s Crafted World!

Needed a more relaxing game and this one seemed like a good option. It's fairly chill, though getting 100% in some stages can be surprisingly tricky - damn whoever decided to have those "retry the stage if you fail" challenges. Sure, you can rush through the stages and get back there in a minute or so but it's still very annoying.

Speaking of annoying, my god the OST in this game is painful. While the tracks are not that bad (but not good either) they're mind-numbing repetitive - the large majority of the stages either uses the main theme or variations of it.

But outside these two things the game is pretty good. Similar vibes to the Kirby games, though I'd definitely recommend Forgotten Land and Return to Dreamland over this one.

Polishing off Animal Well, and then back to Gunvein and other shmups.

Did a lot less than gaming than I originally planned. Still on Octopath Traveler II.

My B team, consisting of Castti, Agnea and Partitio feels a lot weaker than the other one, even accounting for the missing fourth character. I probably need to rethink their classes before finishing their final chapters. However, it's hard to beat the automatic buff and debuff at night in combination with the automatic weakness revealed. I did finish up a lot of other things, like collecting all rusty weapons (all of which are equipped to Hikari for his solo run attempt) or the Commerce chapters from Partitio.

Started Danganronpa and also completed the first chapter with my partner. The first case was super obvious, but I really enjoyed the courtroom gameplay anyway. I expect the others to become increasingly more difficult. I hope nothing bad ever happens to Sakura.

Careful with the spoiler section, I don't know if the game play out the same each time or if murders differ between playthroughs.

Went back and played a bit of Star Fox 64 after seeing the announcement of the re-re-remake. It's fun, but I think only if I play it like I did when I was a kid, by completely blowing off my allies and doing my own thing. Having to babysit my teammates while dealing with my own problems, as I think is intended, is significantly less fun.

I have been playing through the ending of Persona 5 Royal for nearly a week now. I feel like the ending is nearly perfect. The dragging action of the ending fits with the ending as well, so it is hard to be mad. I want it to be done so that I can do new game plus, but a lot of my focus has been turning the random numbers of a Kahoot! Civics review into a simulated Decathlon for my students. They aren’t as into it as the basketball, that’s for sure!