Captain Toad & LittleBigPlanet 3

While a lot of people tend to get most games for Christmas, I generally get games on release date. It’s rare I pass up on one and usually if I do, there are a variety of reasons such as having too many games to play right now or not having enough information on a key feature (both were factors for LBP3). Regardless, I still ended up getting two games in December–Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker on its release date and Little Big Planet 3 for Christmas from my parents.

I’ll talk about them in order so lets start with Captain Toad! Captain Toad is an amazing puzzle game. The story is rather simple and you don’t really get a choice of characters, but it’s still pretty fun. I’d love if they added in some co-op puzzle DLC where you can play as both Captain Toad and Toadette.

The challenges live up to their name with some easier than others. We managed to get all 3 books done and the challenges for each after quite a while and did most of the Bonus Book until, well, the Mummy stages.

Captain Toad is well worth the money. It easily finds ways to make the levels feel unique and it’s just a lot of fun. The Mummy is my only complaint for the game. It’s essentially like the Cosmic clones from Super Mario Galaxy and I hated those with a passion. I don’t like being chased and it’s one thing where you just need to solve the puzzle–it’s another when you need to get tons of coins. There are SO MANY enemies in the game. The mummy just feels like a waste and it turns a relaxing game into something that is actually kind of frustrating. Right now, we have all but one bonus challenge complete (Getting the coins in the Gold Dragon’s level) and we can’t continue until we finish it and it stinks.

That said, I’m also disappointed that time trials seem to come into play when you finish all the bonuses in the normal level books. I’ve always had issues with Time Trials (I have only one done in Mario Kart 8) and I just… I don’t feel they add anything to this kind of game to be blunt.

The game is still fantastic, but I just hate those two difficulty additions beyond reason :( And I’m not sure we’ll ever get further.

As for Little Big Planet 3… I want to start by saying I loved Little Big Planet. I also really loved Little Big Planet 2. I’m… not enjoying Little Big Planet 3 though. I find the characters interesting enough, but the same magic doesn’t feel there. I don’t care much for the way the worlds work at all, I don’t like the constant switching characters, certain levels are just plain cruel versus challenging (Such as the final two levels–you lose on a later character’s part and run out of lives and need to start all over. Or the final boss which we’re still working on.), and I just… don’t feel attached to it.

It doesn’t help that the transfer procedure was terrible and many of the items aren’t even available yet. I feel that should’ve been good to go before the game released.

I’ve heard people say the game makes up for it in the Creation Mode but I don’t play in the Creation Mode. I’ve never been able to get good enough to do anything I could think up and I just didn’t care to mess with it more. And to be honest, if I’m not enjoying the main point of the game, I don’t see myself caring much to deal with Creation Mode since you kind of have to earn everything from the main game.

And that’s the biggest thing–backtracking feels so much more exaggerated in the game–not to mention just how difficult getting certain things are. I just feel it crosses the line from challenge to cruel and keeps going. A good example is the boss you fight as Toggle–it reminded me a bit of the boss in the Wedding levels in LBP1. We had some issues with it. We definitely went through it a lot. But it was no where near as cruel as Toggle’s level and we had less lives to work with for it.

I also feel so many levels being very character specific kind of takes away from having new characters in the first place with the way LBP works. That said, I do think the side challenges are kind of neat, but I still wish the overall world was better.

I’d really like to complete LBP3, but I’m not sure if I will ever have the motivation to finish it when it just feels more frustrating than anything :(

Anyway, with that said I still have plenty to do with older games. I still need to do a lot more in Smash Brothers for the Wii U, I’m still working on Animal Crossing, and I’m still playing Fantasy Life, Tomodachi Life, and Disney Magical World… Not to mention Pokemon Art Academy and a few other titles.

I’m also looking forward to the Rosalina Amiibo coming out next month. I hope I’ll be able to get one.

Fantasy Life: Finishing Goals

Now, as most of you know I often give myself quite a bit of goals. These last couple of days, I managed to finish up some of the bigger ones in Fantasy Life.

1. Getting every Life to Creator Rank:




2. Finishing the Tower of Light and getting Celestia as a party member:

I still have things I need to do (such as hitting level 200, lots of quests for random people, and making better stuff), but I’m happy to have at least accomplished that.

Tomodachi Life: It’s Christmas Eve!

So, firstly, Happy Christmas Eve everyone! If you do not celebrate Christmas: Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, Happy last day of Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa Eve Eve, and Happy Winter Solstice! If you haven’t been playing Tomodachi Life too much, I’d recommend playing today as it is the only time you can buy the Roast Turkey in stores!:

If you buy it once, you’ll always be able to get it at least! Not to mention that the shop clerks will wish you a Happy Holidays and Seasons Greetings as well!

Speaking of the shop clerks… look at how dressed up they all are:

And don’t forget to listen to the festive music they are now playing:

And on the island itself too!:

Note: I received the game early from Nintendo. Thank you, Nintendo! :D If you are interested in Tomodachi Life, you may want to look into picking it up!

Pokedex Complete! & Secret Base

So, I finally completed my Pokedex! :D Yaaaay:




Bonus:

And thus, my Secret base is “done” essentially:


I say it like that because I still haven’t finished flag collecting. Plus to have Secret Pals (which can help with flags), I need to remove something and it is just… super frustrating. (I’m also still sad I couldn’t find this base in a tree or bush) But yes, for now, that is my base @-@ So have fun and stuff I suppose.

Tomodachi Life: Newest SpotPass item for the month.

So, it’s December 16th which means a new SpotPass item came out today!:

Earmuffs :D They are available in Light Pink, Orange, and Black.

Child updates:

And the latest children:

Plus more StreetPass:

Random news:




It’s been so quiet lately–I’m hoping more couples get together soon. And we still have so many items left to collect!

Note: I received the game early from Nintendo. Thank you, Nintendo! :D If you are interested in Tomodachi Life, you may want to look into picking it up!

Just so much to talk about

Despite not having written much lately, it’s not from a lack of things to talk about, but more of a lack of time. Between more games coming out and work also piling up, it’s been a bit of a hard balance.

I’ve still been working pretty hard on Pokemon, but have more or less given up on the “Completing Contests for all” goal I had. It seems they changed up the Contest mechanics in a patch and unless you really do have a good selection of moves for the contest, you will lose. And I hate that. I was so happy when it didn’t seem that was needed and as long as I had maxed stats, I had a good shot, but it seems that has changed and it’s super disappointing. Thus, my last two goals are completing the Pokedex and getting 1,000 Secret Base Flags. Once those are done, I’ll officially have my QR code all set up. I managed to make my Secret Base a bit more… homely (even if I still hate the small limit), but I do wish I could find the same base in a bush or Tree–not too fond of the sand colored walls. I’d also like to get the Super Training Ribbon at least for my Audino, but I just can not play Super Training at all so bleh. And I’m so sick of dealing with Secret Bases that require HMs–I don’t mind Surf, but I could care less about the others (unless it’s a one time thing and you can fly there afterwards) and it’s super frustrating. I don’t even bother now.

In the meantime, while working on my Pokedex, I am also putting up random Pokemon on the GTS for fun for Pokemon on my list so we’ll see how it goes.

As for other games, I’m anxiously looking forward to getting back to Fantasy Life. I only have a few Lives left to get to Creator and even though the game is kind of grind-based, I never really felt frustrated or bored. I really love the game and am looking forward to finishing it.

I’ve also still been playing Tomodachi Life (new update in about 4 days) and Disney Magical World (an update near Christmas). I’m still on break from Animal Crossing and I’m still not sure when I’ll pick it up again–it’s a bit of a catch-22 as I can’t fix my tree without playing more (even if it’s been over 500 days) but my motivation is just so dead because of it. I’m sure I’ll get to it eventually, but it’ll be a long while–it’s depressing though as I was really hoping to have my Dream Village updated this upcoming April with the Cherry Blossoms :/ *sighs* I love the concept of Animal Crossing, but I wish they didn’t do such a poor job with certain mechanics this time. People keep talking about Animal Crossing for the Wii U too and I can’t even get excited for that. I’d probably care less if I didn’t work so hard on my town, but at the same time I really do love most of my villagers regardless and with the exception of maybe two, I’d still be devastated if they left. At least I wouldn’t care where they moved their house though.

One of the games I’ve had, but still haven’t found time to start, is The Lost Valley. I really do want to find time to play it. It makes me sad I haven’t. I just really need more time. I’m hoping I’ll finally be able to start it once I have Pokemon and The Lost Valley finished. Heck, lack of time is also why I haven’t found time to pick up Little Big Planet 3 yet. I’ve heard mixed things on it, but I’d still really like to get the game.

Moving onto other console games, we’ve been playing Captain Toad a lot and occasionally Smash Brothers. Captain Toad has been a lot of fun for the most part, but I really dislike the Mummy Toads. I’m not looking forward to doing the new time trial stuff either… Not to mention the Bonus episodes aren’t going as well as I’d like… :( Regardless, the game is still really cute. I hope to see more stuff added to it through Amiibo. Also–one thing I’ve noticed is it seems Toadette’s levels were always harder than Captain Toad’s. I’m not sure if that’s just me though.

As for Smash Brothers, we really haven’t done much beyond some events and unlocking all the characters. Having put so much work into the 3DS version, I’m somewhat discouraged to do it all again for something that is more or less the same game. In general, my favorite thing about the game has been the Amiibo. I wish you could use the Amiibo in all kinds of different modes as I really love using and training them. I bought Peach, Kirby, and Villager at launch and recently received Pikachu. We also have Zelda preordered and I am looking forward to Rosalina for the 3rd wave so yay.

But yes, I hope I can get stuff finished soon–I really want to get everything done. For now though, it’s back to website coding for another of my websites~

Tomodachi Life: December 1st brings new things

As it’s the first of the month, the latest DLC is out!:

I actually really love these sweaters despite their name: “Ugly Holiday Sweater”. Not fond of the pants, but the sweaters are adorable. They come in Red, Green, Orange, and Blue.

Of course, December brings much more than just the new DLC–the entire island is covered in snow!:

Plus, there’s lots of new seasonal clothes so be sure to check all the shops! As for main inventory, the interior shop has the latest monthly interior:

Holiday interior! And it’s beautiful T~T Just look at it:

With the new season stuff out of the way, here is an update on the residents. It’s mostly just been more kids–more traveling, more visiting, and more being had. The strangest being this child:

I stopped bothering with editing their appearance and also just accept their default name unless the couple has a specific kid that needs to be born. And so it’s kind of scary they had a daughter who looks just like my Mii who also is named Jennifer and has the same personality.

She wasn’t the only one born of course:

Traveling adventures of the various Miis who were sent off 2 weeks ago:


I also managed to get new campers! (this one is using a sketchbook):




Plus new food as well :D

AND FINALLY GOT MY PACKET OF TISSUES! Which means I managed to get all the treasures!:

There was even a special News Flash:

In video form:

Plus random news:



Note: I received the game early from Nintendo. Thank you, Nintendo! :D If you are interested in Tomodachi Life, you may want to look into picking it up!

The Alpha Sapphire Journey

I expected to make lots of posts, but with the lack of customization, I ended up not taking many screenshots and most things I really liked are better showcased in videos. Regardless, I’m going to talk about the stuff I enjoyed in the game along with some stuff I didn’t or things that caused me to be more disappointed in other things. This won’t be a proper review (I’m not even sure I’ll be making a review to be honest just yet), but just a log mixed in with some feelings.

The game has a lot of great stuff in it, but I feel most of it comes from the completely new stuff (new story elements, more character development, new areas) versus the stuff that was actually remade.

While maybe I can give character development towards the remade stuff, I found most remade things to be kind of disappointing.

Before I get to disappointing–I will start with one thing I am pretty happy about: Contests are much easier. You do not need to have a completely different move set to stand a chance in contests–getting your Pokemon’s “appearance stat” maxed out is enough. And that is also much easier with the new way Pokeblocks work. I do not know if there is still a limit on how many Pokeblocks you can feed a Pokemon, but if there is I never hit it. And I’m honestly just happy that Contests feel a bit more flexible.

I also really enjoyed the Contest side story. While I had mixed feelings about Lisia at first, I ended up really liking her character as it went on. I would say the biggest issue with contests is the removal of many of the ribbons–now the only ribbons you get are for beating the Master contest which brings 20 ribbons down to 6 (You receive a bonus ribbon for getting the ribbon in each of the others). Since you can skip right to Master once unlocking it, there’s no real reason to do any of the lower difficulties again. I do enjoy this as it really does get quite repetitive after a while, but I would’ve liked to see the ribbons stick around.

Secret Bases were probably the biggest thing I found myself somewhat disappointed with. Despite having bigger bases and many great new designs, the bases felt smaller overall due to the tiny item limit–especially if you wanted to make full use of the Secret Base Pals which each take up a slot. I had gotten incredibly excited with my multi-level secret base, but the place looks nearly empty because I have so much space that I just do not have the ability to actually use due to such a small limit:

I don’t know how long I’ll be keeping the pals along, but it probably won’t be for much longer, sadly.

Similarly, the flags from Gen 4’s Underground were brought back and it’s just…not fun. It wasn’t a fun system in Gen 4 (and I did get the highest rank in Pearl) and I didn’t see much fun for it in ORAS. Especially as hunting down Secret Bases is a lot more tedious than I ever had to deal with in the Underground–the biggest reason for this is because many Secret Bases require certain HMs and/or bike (thankfully, I have both bikes now) to get to. The ridiculous amount of HMs in Gen 3 are one of the worst problems with the remakes in my opinion as they had a great opportunity to actually do something about it and didn’t.

The Eon Flute is a great example of how a key item can remove the need HMs tend to be forced to do–letting the moves just become TMs for those who want them. Despite this, I do not use the Eon Flute that much due to my terrible sense of direction in video games and the fact that it takes longer. Regardless, if HMs were gone in favor of this, I’d take it wholeheartedly.

I’m still pretty down about the lack of customization–seeing all the cut scenes and special events in the story just makes me sadder it’s not in the game. And it’s not even just the Trainer customization, but changing the Battle BG is gone as is changing the border style. It feels any customization beyond Secret Bases were removed and it is really disappointing.

Going back to new features, DexNav is amazing. As someone who really enjoys catching them all, it’s a lot of fun. I do find some of the DexNav exclusives kind of frustrating (let’s not talk about how long it took me to finally get a Growlithe to pop up), but it’s a feature that I feel has been needed for a long time. And thus, it’ll probably be gone next game because that’s usually how it goes.

BuzzNav is kind of cute, but I find I rarely use it. I’m usually busy doing other things and so I rarely end up reading along to it… and it’s really not something you can skim,.

And while the PSS is back, I find myself using it the least out of everything. I never cared much for Super Training and while I enjoyed having Pokemon Amie up more often than not in X/Y, with DexNav being a thing and the fact that I have to start over getting random decorations, I find myself rarely looking at it. PSS is in a similar boat–especially as everytime I see a Passerby of someone with X/Y and their customized trainer, it just makes me more upset.

Mega Audino is easily one of my favorite things about the game. Even though I still have many issues with the entire concept of Megas, I really love her design a lot. Thanks to a friend, I was able to use her a lot sooner too so yay.

Also, the fact that this certificate is a thing is really awesome:

The Secret Base item isn’t nearly as neat though :(

But yes, in short: I think ORAS did a great job on new features and a lot of the small/special details. I think it did a poor job on “upgrading” some of the stuff they were trying to remake.

For now, I’m just trying to finish my Pokedex and also finish earning contest ribbons on everyone (halfway there). I decided to also finally transfer my Pokemon away from My Pokemon Ranch on the Wii (which Pokemon Bank could’ve been ;~; ) and just… I forgot how terrible the transfer processes are in the Pokemon series. I’m currently working on Gen 5 to Bank and just… ugh, I could cry X___x

Fantasy Life: Continued Adventures

Now, you may be wondering what else I could still be doing in Fantasy Life, but I’m still doing my best to get everything to the final tier and once that is done, all skills to 20. Plus do each trial in the Tower… And get everyone to 100 affection… and well, I probably won’t update for those. While I don’t know how many more full Fantasy Life entries I will be doing (Most of what is left just isn’t very picture heavy so it’s more likely to just be something I make a quick Twitter post about instead), the stats page will continue to be updated and on this site even once I’ve finished the game and all my goals–it just will no longer be on the sidebar. Speaking of pages though, I also will be doing my best to finish up my Pokemon Alpha Sapphire log page. If you have any suggestions for what should be on it, let me know–either by commenting below or contacting me through Twitter, Ask.fm, or Tumblr. You could leave a comment on our Facebook Page, Google+ Page, or Youtube as well, but I wouldn’t recommend them as much.

With that said, let’s get on to the game!

I’ve gotten some lovely new headgear :D I can only wear the Goddess Hairpiece right now though–the Tiara is only for Paladins until I get everything to Creator mode… which is really frustrating honestly.

I also managed to get Angler to Creator level after finally catching this cute fish:

And now I can even attempt to catch this fish (the special requests are evil):

I need a better quality rod though… and better stats.

I also did a beat more re-decorating:


And thanks to several awesome people from the nice Fantasy Life IRC Chat and many many many coins plus some people on GameFAQs, I completed my Saddle Collection!:





Look at all those lovely mounts T~T It makes 10 total with Snowball:

Plus some other nice stuff I managed to get:

And Tower exploration!:

Bonus: Me poorly drawing a bomb at the Nap Dragon: