Minecraft, Kenshi, Rivals...and Persona! We gaming!

I meant to make this post around new years but I just never got around to sitting down and writing it all out, so that's why it's gonna be a little late and long. I played a pretty good variety of games since the last post. 

First, in December 2024, I opened up a Minecraft realms survival world for my friends and brother to play on. My friends only played on it for a little, so it was mostly my brother and I. We settled in a cherry blossom biome and built a Hobbit-esque house in a hillside. 

The rough interior

The beginning of our base

We did some of the usual Minecraft grinding, I mostly built stuff and mined and my brother did some villager breeding and such as well. So we gradually built up our wealth and base as the days passed.

Some beef

Zombie for zombification of Villagers

Bridge that spans the great river, connecting to our base

Eventually we reached the point where beating the Ender Dragon would be a simple task, so we found the Stronghold, defeated the Dragon, and spent longer than we would have liked to find elytras. My brother then spent some more time flying around the End Islands finding more elytras and loot. 

The End

After that, my brother started work on a mega mob farm to produce gunpowder to fuel our elytras with fireworks. I did some more work on the base, making it pretty, and built a iron farm. It was chill.

Netherwart farm

Paths introduced to the base

Shout-out to Wattles for the design

The Big Kahuna

Once these farms were built, we were rich and the only remaining things to do in the game was to explore, fight some bosses, find the new Trials Chamber stuff and build more things. However, I was starting to get a little bored of playing Minecraft and wasn't feeling too inspired to do these things. I talked with my brother about it and he was fine with stopping playing. So, we had a 1v1 duel (which I lost lol) and we said goodbye to our world. I had a lot of fun playing on it with my brother and we really did build some cool stuff on it together. I saved the world file so if we feel like playing again, we can simply just load it up.

<3

The next game I played was one that had been on my Steam wishlist for a while; Kenshi. This is a cult classic game that is focused on surviving a post-apoctolyptic moon world filled with monsters and a wide variety of characters who might eat you, enslave you, or ask to join your team for 3000 Cats. I had a little bit of knowledge of the game from watching let's plays on YouTube (shout-out Gold Man), so I was able to enjoy the game from the get go. 

I've played the game for about ~50 hours, so I did a lot of stuff. So, instead of writing a whole book about what I did, here are some highlights in the form of screenshots:

Sleeping after beating up some bandits

Banter with the squad

Fighting turtles in the Swamp

Running around the world

Mommy

The base: Rukia

Ruka, my first companion

My first shack, when Rukia was new

Gotta farm to eat!

Overall I really enjoyed playing the game, I felt immersed in the world of Kenshi and it's lore, discovering new things everyday and slowly getting stronger. The people in my squad felt real, and it was cool managing my base and advancing the technology I had (and getting richer). I would probably still be playing this game, but a new game hooked me.

Enter: Marvel Rivals. It released early on in December 2024, and I started playing pretty soon after launch. It's a hero shooter, like Overwatch, but with Marvel characters. I had like 10 hours of experience on Overwatch, but from watching other people play the game, it looked really cohesive and fun to play. Once I tried it, my first impressions were proved correct. 

The home screen for Season 0

Each map has a cool transition scene

Beautiful (Yggsgard Map)

Beautiful 2 (Wakanda Map)

The login screen for Season 0

My end rank for S0 (~top 10%)

Beautiful 3 (Wakanda Map)

Special gamemode for Season 1, celebrating Chinese New Year

The developer, NetEase, is Chinese so they incorporate some Chinese elements into the game, but the vast majority of the content is pure Marvel and it's pretty fun to play with characters that many people have grownup with. I usually play Vanguard (Tank) or Strategist (Healer). My most played characters in Season 1 are Dr. Strange, Cloak & Dagger, Peni Parker, and Luna Snow. I'm aiming to reach GM this season. 

I genuinely really like playing this game, and it is pretty addictive. I have about 170 hours recorded on Steam right now after 1.5 months of playing it. It even got xQc hooked, and I've been enjoying his streams playing the game. 

I also have been playing Person 3 on the side sometimes when I'm watching streams at night, it's a nice way to game in a more chill manner. Also, I find myself liking the game and genuinely wanting to play it more often. 

Persona and Streams

Halloween 2024

October saw me reignite my Duelyst addic- I mean passion as I started a challenge to reach S-Rank by the end of the month. I started pretty low in the rankings, Rank 22 I think, so the grind was real. I definitely played 200+ games, so I was consistently gaming. I played Magmar early on, but then created a new Songhai deck that could be described as a flexible aggro deck. It has a good amount of minions to establish a threat on the board, but relies on spells to deal the most damage.

Got 100 wins with Songhai!

A rare, cool, battlefield

I had some lows, like a 7 game losing streak, and some highs, like a 14 game winning streak, that I experienced during this run. All in all, I had a good time and created some rivalries with a few players I would encounter repeatedly. I also added a few new friends. It was exhilarating getting the final win to get into S S-Rank, as I knew I had completed my challenge.

The achievement

I also started a Minecraft Realms world to play with friends and my brother, gonna have some good times goofing around on that too!

My first time seeing the Deep Dark

Our starter base

End of Summer

So, it's been a while. My plans for world domination are progressing slowly, so in the meantime I've been gaming. I haven't played Shiren in a while, but I did beat Bastion on the PS Vita. Good game man, the gameplay is fun and you can change the difficulty easily through the "gods" mechanic too. I loved the music and the visuals, definitely a strong suite for the studio that went on to make Hades. It's also meant to be replayed, but I haven't touched my PS Vita in a while. Also I started Persona 3 Portable, but haven't gotten to far since I have been ignoring my Vita. 

However, I have started playing some other games consistently. I started playing Pokemon Scarlet again, with the goal of finishing the game. It's actually a nice chill game to play, and I enjoy exploring the region and catching mons and listening to the music. I feel like your imagination and mindset are important factors to getting the most out of the game. Surely the next game will be more fleshed out tho :). I also started playing Vintage Story again, mainly because Forsen started a Pokemon HG/SS nuzlocke run(s) (rare legendary era PagMan). Vintage Story is a very slow placed game centered around manual labor as its main gameplay features so having Forsen's stream on the background while I play Vintage Story has been a nice experience. 

Here's some pics :)

Vintage Story and chill

My homestead in the hills

Chilling (literally)

Gaming through School

 Hello!

I've been playing some more Shiren whenever I get the time, and it's been a challenging experience! It has a similar charm and humor to the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series (same studio) but it is much different in terms of difficulty. If you know of the Zero Isles in Pokemon Explorer's of Darkness/Light it's like that but probably harder. The farthest I've gotten is the 19th level. Here are some pictures I've taken along my journey:

I've also had a good time meeting new characters and unlocking events in the story :)

In other news, I got a PS Vita! I've always been watching what handheld emulators show up on the market (mainly on Taki Udon's channel), but I became enamored with the decade old Vita's aesthetic and capabilities. I plan on playing many games, like the Persona series, and exploring PSP games and perhaps even some emulation/homebrew games. Here are some pictures of my system:

 

I got the 2000 series btw. My Vita did have some joystick drift, so I replaced them with new ones. Also, add me on PSN: gyozzaboy

Hello!

Monday, 1/22/2024:

 

In this blog I plan on writing about my experiences with video games that I play. I'm planning on buying a PS Vita, and I've already created a list of games I want to play on it. I'm currently playing Shiren the Wanderer for the Nintendo DS, so I'll probably make a post about that soon. See ya later!