Tales From The Backlog

As the title says, I am going on vacation soon. How long of a “vacation” am I taking? I’m thinking about a good two month long “vacation.” This isn’t because I’m not enjoying writing or bad mental health. I’m weirdly very motivated right now, but I know when I need to take time for myself; and now seems to be the perfect time. It does also have to do with life changing events, but those are good events that I’m excited for.

End of a Character Arc

I am at the end of my Master’s program. I have my week long End of Program exam starting tomorrow, and then a month long web development class in July. After that, I’ll have to find a new routine to my life. While I’m excited to close this chapter in my life, I would like to use the knowledge I gained these past two and a half years to use outside of my job. This could lead to a change in style of how I write things or spinoff into a new project. I don’t know yet.

Vacation

The other big thing that I’m looking forward to is my actual vacation. Due to a virus that shut the world down, I was unable to go to Japan last year. While we ended up scraping the whole trip, we decided to use the funds to plan this new trip. What makes this trip special is that I get to bring my mom and brother along. We haven’t had a family vacation in a looong time, so I’m excited to share some time with them. They both need the RnR.

Future Posts

There will be one more post from me coming out before I go on my vacation. It will just so happen to be my 100th post on Tales From the Backlog (this is a giant coincidence that I did not plan out). It may turn out to be a long post, but I hope you enjoy reading about some of my favorite games.

In my last update post, I said I was going to fill June up with different Monster Hunter posts from the mainline games. I got two posts in and didn’t make my deadline. I will still publish those two and the others when ready; just know that the style will be more like my Backlog Tales in structure and format. I like to replay and take notes on the games I write about, and after playing a lot of Rise lately, I’m a little burnt out the Monster Hunter formula. Those will come out over the next few months.

EXP Share

Unfortunately, there won’t be an EXP Share post for July. June’s topic will be extended to August, so everyone will have two months to get their thoughts out there. If you want to know the prompt for this month, you can find it on my most recent posts.

---

To make this post not sound gloomy, here is the latest updates on the games that I’ve been playing:

Finish Games This Month

I finished Astral Chain this month after neglecting it for a while. I wrote a post on a while ago, so you can read that to get my impressions on the game. That is all I did. I promise you all that I do like finishing my games.

Currently Playing

I was originally planning on finishing two other short games this month. Those games would have been Katamari Damacy REROLL and Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. I was making good progress in Katamari Damacy REROLL, but the game angers me at certain points, and for some reason I just haven’t finished Super Mario 3D World. So instead, I accidently stumbled upon one of my current obsession, SaGa: Scarlet Grace – Ambitions. The SaGa series is a hard one to get into. The battles are difficult, it’s impossible to do everything in a single playthrough, and worse of all, the Free Scenario gameplay means that you can play the story out however you want to. For some reason though, I’m really enjoying it. It feels good winning a hard battle with all of your party members still standing, when you pull off multiple unison attacks in one round, and just learning about all the mechanics as you play. I am getting to the point where I am ready to wrap up my first playthrough though, and I’m not sure if I will be tackling and different character’s scenario after I’m done. I’m willing to try out more SaGa games (I’ve only played Romancing SaGa (PS2) and Romancing SaGa 2), but they just take so long to finish one character’s playthrough.

The other obsession right now is Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age. This is the base PS4 version and not the definitive edition that came out on all other platforms. I’ve had this game for a while, but for some reason kept going back and forth with it. I’m fully committed right now, and the only thing I worry about right now is not finishing it before I leave for vacation (I’m not packing my PS4 to take with me even though it is tempting). I have also decided to go for the platinum trophy on this one since it feels doable. I don’t know if I will play the definitive version after this, but I will probably get it for my collection and play it again one day.

Other than that, I have hopped back into Final Fantasy XIV. The trailer for Endwalker got me pumped for me and my friend to be edgelord brothers with the release of the Reaper class. Now I just need to finish post-Stromblood and finally figure out what the heck happens in Shadowbringers.

---

And that is pretty much it. I won’t be completely offline during my “vacation.” I will still be active on Twitter for most of the time. E3 is also happening, so that will be my prime source of new things that are talked about. Once again, there will be one more post after this before I’m gone for the summer, so please enjoy it. I hope you all enjoy this summer and find ways to recharge your mental batteries!

Thanks for reading,

DanamesX