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waltzoidBetween the reveal of the Nintendo Switch 2 and its new games and the Nintendo Direct in the previous week to prove there's still some life left in the OG Switch, there's a lot to talk about in the world of hobbies and pop culture...more than any single team of writers can handle. Here's what I've been up to this past week:
Video Games
The Sims 4 released its newest expansion pack, "Businesses & Hobbies", in early March. I still can't believe the game's 10 years old and still getting expansions this long into its life cycle (I started with The Sims 2, and I don't think the previous games have had release cycles longer than 5 years, meaning The Sims 4 has outlasted the last two games combined).
This one allows you to turn any residential lot into a small business hub where you can charge money to provide services to other Sims (including new skills like Tattooing and Pottery, neither of which I've tried out yet. It's different than buying a retail store from the "Get to Work" expansion in that it doesn't cost nearly as many Simoleons to get started, so I turned my Sim's house into a miniature creative playground where people can paint, play music, or craft gems and vases and stuff for 5 Simoleons an hour. I still think the previous expansion, "Lovestruck", is the most game-changing upgrade the game has had in a long time since "Get to Work", which added work-from-home careers, but I think I can dig this.
As for "new" games in my library, I cleared a lot of space on my PlayStation 5 to finally take advantage of a discount on Baldur's Gate III. Both of my siblings and their partners have played it and love it to pieces (my sister even met Shadowheart and Astarion's voice actors at last year's Too Many Games convention), and I've wanted to play the game for a long time but had to wait until I could buy a backup SSD for my PS5 to store my old games on it. With AAA games now sucking up triple-digit gigabyte space on PCs and consoles lately, I have to play a careful balancing act on what to keep and what to put on the shelf.
I've only completed the prologue quest so far, but I'm confident this one will be a "keeper". I prefer Larian Studios' approach to Dungeons & Dragons combat by making it a true turn-based RPG like their Divinity: Original Sin games, as opposed to the "real-time with pause" combat of the older Baldur's Gate games (and also Neverwinter Nights; all of which I should be playing more of, even if they haven't aged as gracefully as I hoped they would).
My main character is a half-elf bard named Zephia (after one of the villains from Fire Emblem Engage). I don't know if I'm going to pursue a romance with any of my companions. If I stumble along a romance arc for any of them, I'll continue down that path, just like what happened to me in Dragon Age: Origins and I wound up with Leliana.
Fan Fiction
As for fan fiction, I haven't read a lot lately, but I started off April by picking random entries from my "FE Fanfic Starter Pack" and read the first two chapters of A Road Less Traveled, a Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia story where Faye (one of the characters added to the game who wasn't in the original version of Fire Emblem Gaiden) gets left behind by Alm and joins Celica's party.
I'll admit that I'm not a very big Faye fan, as it doesn't feel like she has much going on with her other than her hopeless one-sided crush on Alm. It looks like the early goings of Road may help her work toward opening herself up to her other companions (especially Celica, her new party leader), and I'm interested in seeing how this change of scenery will help her develop. It's not quite one of my favorite stories, but the premise is solid enough that I still want to keep reading...for now.
The Sims 4 released its newest expansion pack, "Businesses & Hobbies", in early March. I still can't believe the game's 10 years old and still getting expansions this long into its life cycle (I started with The Sims 2, and I don't think the previous games have had release cycles longer than 5 years, meaning The Sims 4 has outlasted the last two games combined).
This one allows you to turn any residential lot into a small business hub where you can charge money to provide services to other Sims (including new skills like Tattooing and Pottery, neither of which I've tried out yet. It's different than buying a retail store from the "Get to Work" expansion in that it doesn't cost nearly as many Simoleons to get started, so I turned my Sim's house into a miniature creative playground where people can paint, play music, or craft gems and vases and stuff for 5 Simoleons an hour. I still think the previous expansion, "Lovestruck", is the most game-changing upgrade the game has had in a long time since "Get to Work", which added work-from-home careers, but I think I can dig this.
As for "new" games in my library, I cleared a lot of space on my PlayStation 5 to finally take advantage of a discount on Baldur's Gate III. Both of my siblings and their partners have played it and love it to pieces (my sister even met Shadowheart and Astarion's voice actors at last year's Too Many Games convention), and I've wanted to play the game for a long time but had to wait until I could buy a backup SSD for my PS5 to store my old games on it. With AAA games now sucking up triple-digit gigabyte space on PCs and consoles lately, I have to play a careful balancing act on what to keep and what to put on the shelf.
I've only completed the prologue quest so far, but I'm confident this one will be a "keeper". I prefer Larian Studios' approach to Dungeons & Dragons combat by making it a true turn-based RPG like their Divinity: Original Sin games, as opposed to the "real-time with pause" combat of the older Baldur's Gate games (and also Neverwinter Nights; all of which I should be playing more of, even if they haven't aged as gracefully as I hoped they would).
My main character is a half-elf bard named Zephia (after one of the villains from Fire Emblem Engage). I don't know if I'm going to pursue a romance with any of my companions. If I stumble along a romance arc for any of them, I'll continue down that path, just like what happened to me in Dragon Age: Origins and I wound up with Leliana.
Fan Fiction
As for fan fiction, I haven't read a lot lately, but I started off April by picking random entries from my "FE Fanfic Starter Pack" and read the first two chapters of A Road Less Traveled, a Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia story where Faye (one of the characters added to the game who wasn't in the original version of Fire Emblem Gaiden) gets left behind by Alm and joins Celica's party.
I'll admit that I'm not a very big Faye fan, as it doesn't feel like she has much going on with her other than her hopeless one-sided crush on Alm. It looks like the early goings of Road may help her work toward opening herself up to her other companions (especially Celica, her new party leader), and I'm interested in seeing how this change of scenery will help her develop. It's not quite one of my favorite stories, but the premise is solid enough that I still want to keep reading...for now.
