February 9-15, 2025

Not much to talk about this week. After beating Fall of Porcupine, I didn’t play anything for a week and a half because I was so busy. I did manage to get some gaming time in Friday night and Saturday. Still no GPU which I expected at this point, but I did finally buy some stuff to upgrade my recording equipment. I’ve got a new table, second monitor, and a couple of mics to record co-op games with my friend. It should be fun! Hopefully that will stop the disaster that was the beginning of our Tales of Phantasia playthrough from happening again. Let’s get on with the games!

Game Acquisitions



Once again, these games were all free. Two weeks in a row with no purchases! This should help offset the cost of all that recording equipment I just bought 😅 Shoutout to ScarletKitsune for Bionic Heart! Looks like an interesting short-form visual novel. I still haven’t played Smurfs 1 yet (or seen literally any Smurfs media) but now I have both games for free. There were a couple bundles released last week that look kind of interesting (namely Fanatical’s Build your own Bento Deluxe Bundle and Prestige Collection - Build your own Bundle (Bundlefest 2025) and Humble Bundle’s Deckbuilder Bonanza), but I couldn’t justify the price for them. The Bento Deluxe bundle actually has a wishlisted game in it for less than I’m looking to pay (Persona 4 Arena Ultimax), but I figure it’ll be in a cheaper bundle or cheaper on its own before too long.

# of Games: 5

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

Game Recaps

As I said, I only got some game time in Friday night and Saturday so not too much here. I feel like I’m nearing the end-game in Final Profit now. I’m mostly just running the shop to make money to buy upgrades and progress the story at this point. I didn’t get to play Tales of Phantasia with my friend either. We did hang out but ended up going out for a while and then I was stressing about the new recording setup too much to actually record something. My bad!



My current goal in the main story is to raise 1 million coins each for six power gems from Faeona to power the Capital. They were previously siphoning mana from fae but obviously Biz wouldn’t allow that to continue. At the end of my last session, I bought the VenDRANK! factory and found out I can place vending machines around the world to make more money. I spent a good chunk of Friday night running the shop to raise the money to buy and upgrade all the vending machines. In the process, I got another commodity upgrade for art.



I also unlocked the ability to craft compressed VenDRANK! by throwing 999 of them into a portal on the second floor of my shop. This will be useful to quickly replenish the machines.





I got into a cycle of raising some money in the shop, buying the building, raising more money, placing the vending machine, raising more money, upgrading the vending machine, and so forth. While I was buying upgrades, I came across a new customer who is quite peculiar.



The VenDRANK! has come to life! He only wants to drink it though and is willing to pay so I don’t mind. More customers! After a while longer, I raised enough money to buy all the vending machines and their upgrades and was greeted with a handy perk.



Now I can give compressed VenDRANK! to the driver outside my shop to keep the machines stocked. I still have to go to every machine to collect the profits so it’s not quite as helpful as I would’ve liked. While running the shop some more, I got more commodity upgrades for fruit and battlepass candles.







Hooray for paying people a living wage! At this point, I’m focusing solely on raising the money for the power gems. With the amount of money I’m making from the vending machines, I get enough in no time. I get five of the six I need and place them in their spots and am greeted with this cutscene:



Oh shit! That “gather all my resources and call in all my favours” line sounds a lot like a point of no return to me. I don’t know if I’m close to the end of the main story, but I don’t want to risk continuing it if that means I can’t wrap up all the side stuff. The main story will be put on hold for now. I continued by going back to Faeona and buying the sixth and final power gem I thought I needed to solve the energy crisis.



I also remembered the black orb outside the castle, so I had a quick chat with the old scholar outside about the nature of royalty then blew his mind by lifting the sphere.



I unlocked something down there, but I don’t see a way to continue. I’ll have to come back to that later. Now I’m focusing on raising money to buy properties to increase my passive income. After buying Magnolia the chicken’s house in Enterpriston, I get a surprise side quest.



So, she’s from the same region as the Owl Lich, which makes her quest to hatch her eggs very similar. While I’m in town, I also decided to buy the auction house too.





So, the auction house offers a way to buy tax evasion credits for a cool million each. My tax bill has never been that high so I don’t know how useful that would be. I’ll take the passive income though. Next, I pop back to the Capital and purchase the hotel. Haytch isn’t too happy about it.



Since I don’t really care about the stock market anymore, the premium offering means nothing to me. Again, I’ll still take the passive income though. I also found the skeleton who made my utility pouch, and she offered to make me a new tool with some boots of haste. They cost five million coin, and she wants another two million to craft it so I have to go back to my shop and make money for a while. After an hour or so of that, I give her the money for the tool.



The walking speed is significantly faster which will be handy with all the running around I’m doing. I went back to buying properties and decided to go for the apartment complex in Enterpriston which requires buying all the units inside first. Once I did that, I ran into the weird purple grandma who’s obsessed with VenDRANK! She asks about the electrical situation. I wondered why it was always so dark in there.



I’m more than happy to continue making the morally good choices, and the place looks so much nicer too! At this point, I’ve raised enough money to pay off Faeona’s debt to the Bureau.



I’ve never had so much money at once in this game, it feels good! I ended my session in the petition hall, so I’ll start next week’s post by paying off the debt. Hopefully the petition hall mechanic expands after that because I haven’t gotten to use it yet. After that, I only have a few more goals that I’m aware of:

· Raise 40 million coin to decurse the last accessory

· Raise 50 million coin to buy the boots of f****** haste to get the last apple

· Figure out what the deal is with the mysterious underground area outside Faeona castle

· Figure out what the deal is with the giant black orb in the other dimension and the weird orange salesmen

· Buy the rest of the properties

· Continue the main storyline

OK, it actually does still look like a lot when I write it out like that. Will I beat the game this week? It certainly feels like I’m getting close to the end, but we’ll see.

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

· Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episodes 7-8 (completed)

· Skull Island (completed)

· American Dad Season 21 Episode 16 (all caught up, show ongoing)

· Cowboy Bebop Episodes 1-6 (still watching, show ended)

· Stardust

Skeleton Crew was a fun watch, I enjoyed it. I knew it wouldn’t be as gritty as The Acolyte since the main characters are children, but Jude Law’s character still had some shockingly dark moments. I’m bummed this one once again only got one season, I thought it had an interesting premise. Speaking of shows with only one season, I watched all of the Skull Island cartoon from 2023. It was…not very good. The writing was weird, some of the voice acting sounded off, King Kong only showed up near the end, and it ends on a cliffhanger that doesn’t resolve any of the plot threads. It was clear that this was abruptly canceled which is a shame. Only watch this if you’re a diehard Monsterverse fan. On a more positive note, I started the legendary anime Cowboy Bebop and it’s definitely living up to the hype so far. I am thoroughly enjoying it. 90s anime just seems to hit different than anything else. The Stardust movie was also really good. I can’t believe how young Charlie Cox was in it! I didn’t even recognize Henry Cavill in his role. I felt the humor was just right, and I loved the fantasy setting too.

Conclusion/Upcoming

It’ll take me a little bit of time to set up the new recording equipment so once again, game time might be reduced this week. I’m hoping once everything is set up (including the new computer which could still take some time), everything will be smooth sailing and I can game some more. I’m hoping to make good progress on Final Profit, and I suspect I’m nearing the end. I hit max level 99 (nothing happened after 90) and I’ve explored all the areas. Now it’s just a matter of finishing up all the goals I listed earlier. If I do beat the game this week, the next game on my list is something called Lunar Axe. I think it’s one of those super short hidden object games I got for free a while ago. Hidden object is not a genre I’m into but reviews said this one is a little more in-depth so maybe I’ll like it. Assuming I get all the recording stuff set up, a new session of Tales of Phantasia with my friend is possible as well. I’ll be watching Cowboy Bebop all week, and maybe a couple episodes of Scott Pilgrim too. The next movie on my list is The Fifth Element. I don’t know anything about it but it sounds sci-fi so I’ll probably like it. The name Stardust sounded like sci-fi too but ended up being fantasy, which I also like. Anyway, that’s my plan for the week. Thanks for reading!

Backlog total: 3,082 (+2)

Tales of Phantasia?

You got it!

You got it!

Your turn.

Oh wow, that was just a shot in the dark! Alright, here's mine:

Hopefully this one isn't too easy. :)

Arcade Paradise?

Hand of Fate 2 - Completed. Not a bad game but pushing to 100% it has been quite the marathon. It's not a bad game but I was honestly done with it about 60 odd hours ago but those last few achievements and dealing with endless mode really dragged it out. I personally think the first game was better, just by virtue of being more contained, less is more, pure condensed experience. This game is mostly the same, and if you enjoyed the first you'll likely enjoy this too but it just has a habit of either outstaying its welcome or trying too hard with being gimmicky at times. Don't wanna rail on it too hard, part of it was a me problem and burning out a bit on it in the process. So glad it's over now though lol.

I loved both Hand of Fate games. I absolutely didn't go for 100% though. It's a shame the studio was shut down.

Post 65 - February 11th, 2025
Completion: Mega Man (NES, 1987)

Mega Man has a pretty weak start with what I'm hoping is the worst game in the series, from what I hear it's all mostly uphill from here.

Review
Mega Man did not give any good first impressions, the enemy designs are annoying, enemy placements seem specifically placed to make the player experience as inconvenient as possible, and only being able to shoot left and right makes some sections nearly impossible to do without taking damage. Mega Man was made during the "Nintendo Hard" period on the NES, where a ton of games that released for the system were insanely difficult. The only other game I've completed from this period is Zelda II, which is my least favorite game of all time, Mega Man is a strong contender for that title now. I'm sure I'm spoiled on Metroid, but diagonal shooting would have made the game a lot more enjoyable, though obviously being an old NES game that wasn't quite figured out yet. Mega Man is also very laggy, I'm no stranger to laggy NES games, however Mega Man just has pretty basic graphics even for the NES. I'm sure they didn't have the hardware and optimizations completely figured out, but the frequent lag spikes and slowdowns were annoying to deal with. I'm glad health pickups exist in Mega Man, though I wish they were more frequent, and that they were given before boss fights.

The story is almost nonexistent, the only story text is at the end of the game. What I can assume from the game and a tiny bit of Mega Man knowledge that I have is that Dr. Wily is the big villain, and he's associated with all these special 'elemental' guys. He seems like a mad-scientist sort of guy. But there really isn't too much else to say about it.

The controls and physics feel okay, but with the way that the enemies are designed and some of the platforming sections that are in the game, the physics are terrible. It also took me maybe till halfway through the game until I figured out you can switch between weapons, it's not a very clear mechanic. The bosses are way too unforgiving, the timing to dodge their attacks and their punish windows are way too tight. It's nice that they have weaknesses though, it makes the bosses way more doable. Probably the most annoying part of the game is the magnet beam, which itself isn't bad, but it is the only beam in the game that is missable, hidden in an obscure easy to miss location. It is also required to complete the game. So I had to get a game over screen from the Dr. Wily level to get back to the level select, replay the electro-man level, get the beam, refight the boss, then get all the way back to where I was before in the Dr. Wily level.

The final boss rush isn't any better. I'm glad that it's split into multiple levels at least, but the Yellow Devil is terrible. He's only vulnerable for maybe 5% of the fight, and he spends half his time slowly teleporting to the other side of the room, dealing damage to the player the entire time, though the teleport order is exactly the same every time which makes it doable. The copy boss is very annoying. Dr. Wily himself isn't the worst, though not being given any healing after the boss rush right before the fight is horrible. If save states and the pause glitch didn't exist, there is no way I would have finished this game. At least Mega Man is on the shorter side, so I was fine enough to play the whole way through.

Rating: 3/10
Completion: 100%
Time: 2 hours, 40 minutes
Days taken: 2
Next in the series: Mega Man 2 (NES, 1989)
Series progress: 1/28

Since this is the start of a new series, I'll list out all the games here. This list is subject to change and updates for this particular series, I very well may miss one or two games. I will be playing the main numbered series, the X series, Zero/ZX, and Legends. I am unfamiliar with it, so let me know if I missed any if you happen to notice. The play order is also subject to change, since the first 6 or so games haven't aged the best.

1. Mega Man (NES, 1987)
2. Mega Man 2 (NES, 1988)
3. Mega Man 3 (NES, 1990)
4. Mega Man 4 (NES, 1991)
5. Mega Man 5 (NES, 1992)
6. Mega Man 6 (NES, 1993)
7. Mega Man 7 (SNES, 1995)
8. Mega Man 8 (PS1/Saturn, 1996)
9. Mega Man 9 (PS3/360/Wii, 2008)
10. Mega Man 10 (PS3/360/Wii, 2010)
11. Mega Man 11 (PS4/XB1/Switch/PC, 2018)

12. Mega Man X (SNES, 1993)
13. Mega Man X2 (SNES, 1994)
14. Mega Man X3 (SNES/PS1/Saturn, 1995)
15. Mega Man X4 (PS1/Saturn, 1997)
16. Mega Man X5 (PS1, 2000)
17. Mega Man X6 (PS1, 2001)
18. Mega Man X7 (PS2, 2003)
19. Mega Man X8 (PS2, 2004)

20. Mega Man Zero (GBA, 2002)
21. Mega Man Zero 2 (GBA, 2003)
22. Mega Man Zero 3 (GBA, 2004)
23. Mega Man Zero 4 (GBA, 2005)
24. Mega Man ZX (DS, 2006)
25. Mega Man ZX Advent (DS, 2007)

26. Mega Man Legends (PS1/N64, 1997)
27. The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (PS1, 1999)
28. Mega Man Legends 2 (PS1, 2000)

Other Games & Media
I had some pretty bad game burnout for almost a week after I finished Halo Infinite, but I'm starting to pull through. I haven't started any new side-backlog games since I'm not feeling it right now, but I probably will soon. I just finished a Metroid Prime randomizer as well which was the only game I was able to have a blast with during my burnout. I've still been playing Street Fighter 6, I've hit a brick wall in silver 4 which is always frustrating. And I've just been playing quick matches in Rivals with some buds, not as much ranked. Nothing too new.

Up Next & Additional Notes
This is a very rough start to the series especially with my burnout, but I'm honestly feeling motivated. I will be playing two different series pretty soon, while it is pretty rough to do and takes a little extra time, I think it's nicer to have a few different options to pick up depending on my mood. I am feeling pretty refreshed having taken a 3 day break, because those last 3 series honestly felt like a slog. So hopefully this will be a fresh start, I'm definitely feeling optimistic. As much as I don't love the classic Tomb Raider games, I'm excited for the remaster to finally release so I can finally play through them and mark the series as finished, just 3 more days! Anyway, thanks for reading, and until next time!

3/10, yikes. Well, I did say to play some bad games to appreciate the great ones more 😅 Hopefully the next one is better. "NES hard" games are definitely not for me.

February 2-8, 2025

You may have noticed that this post went up on Monday instead of Sunday. I’m thinking of doing this going forward, so I have the full weekend to write my weeklies instead of staying up late on Saturdays to get it done. I actually got sleep Saturday night, so it seems to be working so far. On another note, the inevitable finally came to pass. My employer has ordered everyone back to the office full-time no later than March 17th. This is a huge blow to my way of living and will likely affect my blog as well. They’re still working out the specifics on how it will be implemented but just know that changes are coming. Game time will probably go down as well. Why the government seems hell-bent on making everyone’s life miserable I’ll never know.

I waited in line at Microcenter again on Thursday and still came away empty-handed. No GPU for me for at least another week. I won’t be able to drive up there before my workday once office work starts so if I don’t get one by March, I suspect it’ll be quite some time until I can get my hands on one. The old PC lives for a while longer. Sorry for the downer mood, life has been rough the past week. Let’s get on with game acquisitions.

Game Acquisitions


Once again, all of these titles were free, so I spent nothing 😊 Two weeks in a row without spending money! A welcome streak. I did try to buy the Safe In Our World Charity Bundle 2025 from Fanatical because it had a ton of great games for $15 but it only lasted for a few hours so I missed it 😩 Not like I need more games but I’m bummed to miss out on games like A Space for the Unbound or Little Kitty, Big City for cheap. Maybe they’ll pop up in future bundles. Oh well, more money saved, and still some interesting looking indies here.

# of Games: 13

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

Game Recaps

What’s this, a third game!? 👀 Does this mean what you think it means? If you read the title, I think you know the answer to that question. I had a decent uptick in game time compared to last week as well. Let’s start off as usual with…



As soon as I left the power plant at the end of the last session, Mx. Two was waiting for me. They said One doesn’t trust us and they were coming with us to the negotiations with Faeona. Honestly, that’s fair.



Wow, that is some serious falling out between Two and their mother. The deal went through but tensions are high. Now I need to raise 6,000,000(!) coin to get enough large power gems to meet demand, and that’s on top of the 5,000,000+ I need to remove my cursed accessory. This game is getting expensive. After the meeting, I meet up with Queen Biremue in the abandoned castle and fill her in on the details.



She’s got even more Bureau blackmail for me, very nice. I wonder how that will come into play. I met up with One to be briefed on the threat that supposedly only the Bureau can eliminate.



The threat sounds serious, but I still don’t trust One. At least now I’m holding four of the five business cards of the Lords of Business. That happened way quicker than I expected. Maybe I’m close-ish to meeting the fabled CEO? I’ll need to raise quite a bit of money before I get there though. In the meantime, now that I’m back in the capital, it’s time to run a few errands. I fulfilled the various marketplace quests, although I still don’t really understand how the marketplace works and probably won’t spend much time there. I also gave Lady Plenty the money necessary to clean the water system and Refrain the tokens necessary to purify the gem outside the museum.







Biz and Refrain finally tell each other how they feel about how the previous queen treated them, although it looks like that hasn’t eased the tension between them yet. With the errands out of the way, I headed back to the gem lab to see what Odina wanted to show me.



Yikes, I burned that thing up immediately. Removing free will is a big no-no for me. We’ll need to use other tactics to deal with the Bureau. I explored for a while and ran the shops to raise coin and while doing this, I found the green horse! He’s just hanging out in the first shop.



He wants me to wear three specific accessories at once, but I can only wear two right now and one of them is cursed! I’ll have to come back to him later, but at least I know where he is now. After running the shop for a while, I got a message that I sold 100 permits and to go the Bureau office in Enterpriston. I head over there and run into the Representative.



He has now usurped the Legislator and become the new Legislator of Enterpriston. I also set him to visit the store twice as often to buy even more permits. They get a nice 25% price increase too! I also got enough levels to unlock the next area with the ghosts to continue that storyline.



Biz’s grandmother’s fancy axe is in there, but I still don’t know how to move the black spheres. This will unfortunately also have to wait until later. While grinding away at the shop for more coin, I finally finished up Tinto the Dragon’s hoard and unlocked a new area.



I can wear three accessories now! And I can sell Tinto even more things to earn money even more quickly. Now I just need to remove the cursed accessory so I can reunite the green foal with his father. I’ll need to grind for some coin. In the meantime, I decided to pay the Owl Lich a visit since I have enough health to continue his quest.



I completed the quest, got a ton of money, and learned the whereabouts of the Owl Lich’s friend. I headed to Enterpriston to find her. While searching, I ran into the skeleton looking for accessories and completed her quest too!



I probably should’ve completed this quest sooner but oh well. I found Rebertha and had a chat with her in the café.



She won’t hurt the Lords of Business directly, but she will let me use her power as a demonstration when the time comes. It’ll have to do for now. With that out of the way, I head to my shop to grind for a while and raise the coin necessary to decurse my accessory.



Alright, I can earn quadruple XP from sales now. Not sure how useful that’ll be since I’m past level 80 at this point, but we’ll see. Now that I’m curse-free, I can wear all the accessories the green foal wants me to wear. Let’s pay him a visit.



I completed the quest and unlocked the ability to…bake bread. I can trade it to other horses, but I’m not sure if it’s worth spending the time to do that. I’ll have to look into it. With my levels up, I decided to unlock the last areas of the mysterious cave and talk to the ghost some more.



That record keeper was infuriating! It was a funny bit though. And with that out of the way, I’ve completed the ghost storyline. I also have a new customer for my shop! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that entity though. Next, I head back to Faeona and have a chat with Divina about her murderous plot.



I’ve learned how to exploit the shield gems, and Divina learned some self-reflection. Continuing across the treetops, I found the area where the game began, and Biz has some reflection of her own.



With that tough talk out of the way, I head back to the horse dimension to pick up the final cursed accessory.



It costs a whopping 40 MILLION coin to remove the curse 😭 It better be worth it. At this point, I decided to look around for some apples because I’ve been close to clearing out the labyrinth. I finally found a couple more and unlocked the next area with a little surprise.



I finally learned how to lift those black orbs! That should open up some new areas, if I can remember all the places I’ve seen them. I decided to head back to the mysterious cave because I know there was an orb blocking an apple chest there.



That was a funny conversation. Just north of the chest is the gauntlet to get grandmother’s axe. I have a Life Insurance Policy now, and a decent amount of money. Let’s give it a shot.



Oof, that was a million-coin endeavor right there. The axe doesn’t seem to do anything so not sure if it’s important beyond 100%ing the game. At this point, I finally decided to head back to my shop to earn some money. I got a few commodity upgrades in the process.









Those are some nice upgrades. As you can see from that last pic, I headed back to the capital. I decided on a whim to buy the VenDRANK! factory because I had just enough coin. Turns out there’s a whole money-making venture in there regarding vending machines.



It looks like the next thing on my agenda will be raising the money to install these things. Another successful bout of capitalism! Let’s move on to my next game.



When we last left off, Finley finally went home after a very long and exhausting double (triple?) shift at the hospital. After finally getting the sleep he needed, he heads back to work to find that it’s still just as busy.



Looks like it’s going to be another long day. Let’s head to the break room to see what Dr. Krokowski has to say.



So, the cause of everyone’s illness is being narrowed down, but the hospital is reaching capacity and staff are starting to get sick. Karl has the idea to open up the ward on the fifth floor to let in more patients. Finley tags along to help out.



With the cleaning all done, Finley heads down to the basement to turn the power back on.



Well well well, look who finally decided to show up. Dr. Theobald, the chief physician, has finally come back and explains his absence to Dr. Krokowski. The hospital conspiracy was revealed to be the building manager pulling money out of the hospital for personal reasons and blackmailing Dr. Theobald to keep quiet about it or risk losing his job and taking the blame. Dr. Krokowski isn’t taking any of his shit though and demands he shut up and helps out. The power goes out and Finley heads up to his ward to check up on Mia.



The hospital caught fire! It must’ve had something to do with turning the power back on. Everyone needs to work together to evacuate all the patients. Finley heads back up to the fifth floor to check up on Karl.



With that out of the way, Finley heads down to the ground floor to help push patients out the door. He stops to talk to the doctors of the other wards on the way down.



After the last patient is wheeled out, Finley heads back in to check that the rooms are empty. He runs into Dr. Theobald before he can make it very far.



I have a bad feeling that Dr. Theobald isn’t going to make it. Finley does as he’s told and takes the next ambulance to the school.



He’s having a rough day, poor guy. Finley arrives at the school and receives orders from Dr. Krokowski.



The mini-games to treat patients are fast and loose now. Something interesting happens in one of them.



The mini-game petered out because the patient died. That never happened before. Finley rushes to the front to help out Dr. Krokowski as the screen fades to black. On fade in, Finley heads out of the school.





Finley, Karl, and Mia look up at the smoldering hospital as the game fades to black. I wanted to write something here about how exciting it is that I finally beat my first game since starting my blog, but then the ending was all somber, so I don’t want to ruin the mood. A few pictures pop up during the credits depicting what happened after. I picked out two notable ones.





The hospital building manager was arrested for his crimes, and Giuliano is seen visiting his mother’s doll in the forest. There’s a post-credits scene too.



So, it’s confirmed that Dr. Theobald didn't survive the fire, but he died a hero. It looks like the lab tech that works in the basement may not have made it out either if the other doll is any indication. A sad ending to be sure. With my first game completion here, I can finally add my first game review section. But first, let’s quickly recap the third game I played this week.



After beating Fall of Porcupine, I pitched my friend the idea of playing through the Tales of series together. As a completionist, I wanted to play all the main games in the series with an English translation after I got Tales of Vesperia in a bundle back in 2023. He foolishly agreed, so now we get to play through the very first game in the series 😈 First impressions are actually pretty positive so far!

So, my plan for the blog was to use shorter clips with explanations between them for Final Profit and Fall of Porcupine because I started those games before I started the blog and so didn’t have any footage for them. Going forward, I planned to post full plays on my YouTube channel and embed them on my blog with a brief overview of what I did. This might increase my editing time, but it should severely decrease my writing time so I’m not spending my week writing instead of playing. This will be especially important now that I’ll have to be in the office so my free time will be limited.

Notice in my previous paragraph that I said planned past tense. This will still be my plan mostly, but I hit a snag with my OBS recording when we played this week. I’ll put the details in the Conclusion/Upcoming section at the bottom of the post. I can post the recording I have too but as I said, it’s just the beginning with no commentary.

The game starts with two boys (teenagers?), a swordsman named Cless and his friend Chester the archer, who leave their village to go hunting and bring back food. We renamed Chester to Festerr because both main characters’ names starting with C was confusing when voicing the dialogue 😋 We successfully caught a boar but when we came back to the village, it was burned to the ground, and everyone was killed! This included Cless’ parents and Festerr’s little sister. Cless finds a knights’ sword in his fireplace and tells Festerr he’s going to go to the town nearby to ask for help. Festerr says he’ll be along in a bit after he’s done paying respects.

Cless gets to the town and runs into his aunt and uncle and tells them about the situation. His uncle says he can stay there that night but then stabs us in the back by telling the knights where he is. The uncle is killed, and Cless is thrown in the dungeon, stripped of the equipment he had on him. In there, he meets a woman prisoner that helps him escape. Unfortunately, she’s killed before he can return the favor, but he does find her daughter Mint and teams up with her to escape. We renamed her Minty just for funsies. I continue controlling Cless while my friend controls Minty. We fought through the dungeon, defeated the Clay Demon prison guard, and escaped, but then Cless collapsed. Minty carries him to the house of a man named Trinicus Morrison to recover. Festerr shows back up here too. Morrison runs off to find the special amulet that Cless was wearing when he was captured but tells the kids to stay behind. Cless’ old master from the village shows up and tells them to meet him at a cave nearby. This is where we ended our session. Here’s the footage of the gameplay I captured.



Game Review

Fall of Porcupine

Ooh boy, my first review. I’m so nervous! Fall of Porcupine is a story-driven game starring Finley, a bird who has just moved to a new town to work at the hospital as a junior doctor. The gameplay consists of talking to other anthropomorphic animals at the hospital and around town as well as little mini-games when treating patients at the hospital. It is a very simple gameplay loop. There’s a setting to make the mini-games even easier but considering that how well you do at them doesn’t seem to affect the story, I’m not sure it matters.

I thought the story in this game was just OK. It starts off fairly strong as you meet all the characters and explore the town, but it doesn’t really expand beyond that. There’s a turn-based bar fight as well as a festival partway through where you can talk to people in a certain order to get a special item which mixes things up a little bit. It also escalates at the end, but then just abruptly ends with little resolution.

The gameplay is about as simple as it gets. Anyone looking for a game that’s mechanically engaging should look elsewhere; this is definitely story-driven first and everything else second. Technically speaking, there was a minor bug with the phone where when you tried to scroll up to read the latest text message, it would jump to the bottom making it nearly impossible to select it. The text messages are very few and far between though, so this did not really affect the game.

I played this one with a friend who works in healthcare, and we voiced the characters. I felt that this escalated my experience of the game over if I had just played it by myself. I likely would have been pretty bored by the end if this was a solo experience. Still, if you’re looking for a story-based game with some heavy themes mixed with light-hearted humor and simple gameplay, give this one a shot.

Time to beat (Main+Extras) - 14h:41m

Rating – 7/10

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

· Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episodes 2-6 (still watching, show ended)

· American Dad Season 21 Episode 15 (all caught up, show ongoing)

· Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Episodes 3-4 (still watching, show ended)

· The Boy and the Heron

Not as much watched this week. Skeleton Crew has been much better than I expected it to be. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is an interesting twist from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I like it, I just find it weird how little Scott has actually shown up so far. Ramona tracking down and reconciling with her exes instead of Scott fighting them gives some much-appreciated characterization. The Boy and the Heron is the latest Studio Ghibli film and the third one I’ve seen. I watched Kiki’s Delivery Service and Ponyo before this. So far, I love all of these movies. I’m glad too because I have many more on my list to watch in the future.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Going back to my OBS troubles earlier, I found out after the fact that the save state button in Duckstation (the PS1 emulator) was the same button I programmed to stop recording in OBS before I automated everything. That means the first time I used a save state, my recording stopped, and I didn’t notice 😭 I had the first half hour of the game recorded, but when I went to check the footage, I found out that my mic wasn’t working either! That means it’s just straight gameplay with none of our fantastic voiceover work ☹ We had a lot of fun with those voices too. I really wanted to see how well my mic performs with two people too.

These hiccups made me realize that my recording setup is less than ideal. I already knew my microphone situation was bad since I started using it a couple weeks ago, but now I realize how important it is to see that OBS is working while playing. There’s no easy way to do this because I only have a single TV that I use as a PC monitor so I can’t have it up on a second screen. Right now, I’m thinking about buying a second monitor and a small desk to put next to my couch in the living room and running a 25ft cable from my PC to it. I’m also looking into getting a couple dynamic mics to cut background noise and improve voice quality. Let me know if this is a good idea or not.

As for what’s coming up this week, I plan to finish Skeleton Crew (spoiler alert, I already have but not by the end of last week) and start Skull Island. The next movie on my list is Stardust. I have no idea what that is but I’m looking forward to it! I plan to get more game time in with Final Profit and continue Tales of Phantasia if my friend and I get to it. Thanks for reading this extra long post that includes my first completion and review! See you next week!

Backlog total: 3,080 (+19)

That seems like some sound advice, though it's a little tough to do with the nature of my series completion stuff. But re-ordering a few games in my side backlog by rating is something for me to consider. Looking at my profile I have 9 games marked as 10/10 masterpieces, they are some of my favorites, and 6 of them I completed in just 2024, so I think you're onto something there. I'll definitely consider this strategy once I get back into action.

As for your advice 2arda. I have been meaning to watch the Evangelion Rebuild movies, and I always love a good book, branching out to other media seems like a good strategy. I've actually been replaying one of my favorite games Metroid Prime recently and I've been having a blast with it, the Metroid games are always fun to replay for me even in burnout so maybe I can come back to that series periodically. I appreciate all the thoughtful replies :)

It's funny you bring up the series thing. I actually group all the games in a series together and use the average rating to determine where they go in my play order and play them back to back. If you look through my backlog, you'll see some entries that have a little note next to the title like (X% with Y and Z games). Something to think about.

I think co-op is a big part of the Halo series that you unfortunately missed out on. Everything is better with friends and it makes combat less punishing by dividing enemy fire and respawning after death if your partner is far enough away from danger instead of restarting at a checkpoint. I'm curious how your ratings would've changed if you had someone to play with (if at all). Glad to hear it was still overall positive though. I still need to play Infinite...

I've been experiencing some pretty severe game burnout in the past few days and it got me thinking, so I'm going to try to revive this thread here.

I've completed more games in the last year than I have in all of the previous years of my life combined, I've been playing a ton, mostly because I'm trying to branch out, try different genres and series. I'm certain it'll pass and that fire will be re-lit for me, but what I noticed is that I've gotten pretty bad burnout even with all these new genres and games, to the point where none of my comfort games seem enjoyable and I don't feel like starting anything new at all. So I guess a question is do video games as a medium just become more boring the more you play, and maybe less enjoyable despite efforts to keep playing fresh new games and genres? I have a few ideas, like how if you've experienced the highest of highs in so many games and you've played so many 10/10s that it eventually becomes more difficult to reach that again. Another theory I have is that I may be taking game completions too seriously, I'll write pages of notes while playing games and write lengthy reviews for my blog, so maybe that's taken some of the enjoyment out of playing these games, as much as I love writing reviews. And maybe I'm way overthinking it, it could be something really simple like external factors, or maybe our brains just get bored sometimes and need a second to recover.

I managed burnout very well for a while but I think it's caught up to me now. I've retired a few games very recently just because I got bored and frustrated with them which I suspect is related, I had trouble enjoying Hades, FTL, and the GOTM Turnip Boy Commits Tax evasion, retired all of them within almost a week. So I'm just wondering what other ideas people may have, do you experience burnout at all? How do you manage it? etc. Really just anything that comes to mind with your experience of it, and I'm not particularly looking for a solution, I just want to hear some thoughts.

Your idea of playing too many 10/10 games and not being able to reach that high again is how I dictate what order I play my games in. I don't understand why people will get into something by immediately jumping to the best version of that thing and then being disappointed that nothing else compares. Like buying your first VR headset and starting with Half-Life Alyx. Of course other VR games will pale in comparison! That's why I generally play my games from lowest rated to highest so the bar is slowly moving up. It may sound counterintuitive, but I feel like sometimes it's important to space the great games apart with some mediocre ones to truly appreciate them.

I use IsThereAnyDeal for games I already know I want to buy so I'm notified when they hit my price point. I also use CheapAssGamer on Twitter and r/GameDeals to make sure I'm aware of any deals going on (mainly so I know when a new bundle is released on Fanatical or Humble Bundle). Outside of that, I'm not scouring around for sales.

Two different pages for Naheulbeuk's Dungeon Master:

Here and here.

What version of Final Fantasy VI is this? It's weird seeing it in a non-pixel art style.

January 26 - February 1, 2025

So no new graphics card for me unfortunately. I got in line at 6:15am but everyone rushed the entrance at 7:30 so the line was meaningless. There weren’t enough cards to go around anyway so it is what it is. I’ve signed up for a couple Discord stock alerts and I’ll try my luck at Microcenter this week when there are hopefully more cards in and less people trying to buy them. Oh well, my current PC will have to do for a while longer. Hopefully I’m able to make the upgrade before the tariffs hit.

On a positive note, I went to a live music bar to support my musician friend and it was a really good time. The vibes were super chill and the pizza I had delivered was delicious. 10/10, would do again. It was nice to get out of the house and just hang out with friends. Anyway, let’s get back to the games.

Game Acquisitions



A comparatively light week this week, and every game was free! Can’t beat that. It’d be nice if every week was like this.

# of Games: 5

Total Money Spent: $0

Price/Game: $0

Game Recaps


Unfortunately, the light week also extended into my game time as well. I only had one two-hour session on Monday and a few hours on Saturday. On top of the music bar and failed GPU launch mentioned earlier, I also spent some time experimenting with a mic setup for future let’s play recordings. Long story short, I only have an old Guitar Hero mic from the Wii back in high school propped up in the middle of the couch not very close to me, so the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. I’ve been trying to use Nvidia Broadcast + OBS settings to get it to sound passable and it’s kinda there but I guess we’ll see. Also, no Fall of Porcupine this week as mentioned last week. You’re stuck with just the Final Profit recap. Speaking of…



After the information dump that was the intro to the capital, it was time to start exploring. Immediately after choosing to keep the Representative on my payroll, I talked to the first person I saw and had this odd interaction.





OK, interesting start. I see the people in the capital are rich and self-absorbed. Normally this is a terrible combination, but as a successful business owner, Biz can exploit this for profit I’m sure. After wandering around for a little while, I stumbled into a bar where I ran into a familiar face, as well as a business proposition.



So the offer is to substitute my mana regen for ale. I didn’t see the need for ale at the time, so I rejected the offer. I did run into an NPC later who will trade +2 passive income for every 100 ale provided so maybe it’ll be worth it after all. I’ll have to find the bar again to accept the deal. In the same bar, I also came across this guy who needs to repair the oil pipeline to get the goods flowing again.



I had no idea how to obtain rare metal at the time I talked to this guy, so I wasn’t able to help him. I found out shortly after that the market buys and sells rare metals for a fairly high price. Speaking of the market:



Yay, more responsibility! I’m still not entirely sure how the market works yet. I definitely need to spend some time there figuring it out. I know you can buy limited goods and sell back for a much lower price but I’m not sure why I would do that. There’s probably something I’m missing. After wandering around the capital for a bit longer and solving the floor puzzle in the museum, I got the notification that my post stock dividends were full, so I found the horse dimension portal to get back to the other parts of the world. I discovered that I could buy almost any property I’ve come across in the game now for some passive income, so I bought some of the smaller places to start out. I wanted to head back to Faeona to continue the quests there before diving into the capital stuff. I came across the mysterious cave that is blocked by level requirements and realized I haven’t been there for a while and have leveled up quite a bit. I went inside and unlocked the level 60 area and was treated to some story bits and a decent accessory.



I’ll take any passive income I can get at this point. With that out of the way, I entered the forest outside Faeona, got my first seed bag upgrade, and finally confronted the police officer that’s been hanging out there.



Mr. Four has some explaining to do when I see him again. With the police officer out of the way, I head into the area he was blocking and find none other than the bar tender who runs every bar in the world apparently. He says he’s mapping out the area for historical purposes and Biz lets him be. I’m not sure if that will come up later or if it’s just worldbuilding. Close to him though is a new type of Pix creature with an interesting ability.



I can trigger all my passive abilities at once in exchange for some XP and 50,000 coin. This seems like a huge price to pay, and I don’t see the benefits of this yet, so I’ll leave it alone for now. I head back into town and secure the rest of the votes to be reinstated on the Fae council.







Biz decides that her daughter should remain queen but accepts the role of treasurer. This seems like a natural next step for her. Let’s see what being a treasurer is all about.



Faeona is 10 million coin in debt to the Bureau 😭 As if my original debt wasn’t bad enough. There’s 200,000 coin in the treasury, and I can add my own coin too if I want, but I’m not ready to take such drastic measures yet. This will need to wait until later. I found the skeleton that has been pawning cursed accessories off on me and got stuck with something that removed my passive income. I need to get that fixed ASAP but the witch wants 640,000 coin to remove it! This will be by far my most expensive purchase, but it has to be done. I return to my shop in the city and run it for a while to get the coin needed. Along the way, I received another upgrade for the art commodity.





Ohhh, so that’s why there was that mysterious shot of the prince outside the apartment building at the end of the last art upgrade. It wasn’t for something nefarious; he was in love! How cute. I’ll take the price increase on art too. When I left the store to meet the artist, I also got this cutscene about the museum I mentioned earlier:



It seems innocent enough, but I don’t like the sound of Bureau experiments. I don’t trust them. Anyway, I work at my shop long enough to raise the money and head over to the witch to get the curse removed.



So now I’m totally broke, and I don’t even have a cool accessory to show for it 😭 I know the mug is needed for endgame stuff, but I was hoping for something more useful now. Oh well, time to head back to the capital and continue the main quest. I start by going to the power plant and having a little chat with Mr. Four about the kidnapped fae.



He agrees to let them go if I can double their mana generation. I’m happy to do so and free all the ones I can see before moving on. I can’t help but notice the number on the board is only halfway through, I wonder what that means. I meet up with Odina and explore Dr. Three’s gem lab.



Odina and Dr. Three clearly don’t get along. On my way out, I ran into Mx. Two.



They don’t seem too happy about bringing up the past. I fill in Odina on the plan to get rid of the Lords of Business by stripping them of their wealth. Afterwards, Mr. Four stops by to reveal his own plans to usurp Dr. Three.



It’ll be nice having a clerk around. After being super confused by how stocks work in the capital, I decide to stop by Mr. Tony’s HQ to see about getting the ability to buy franchises. What follows is a convoluted series of quests to get the items they ask for.



With those side quests out of the way, I head to the train to check on Lady Plenty’s progress on getting the train operational.



I’m not running a charity, but don’t want to seem greedy either. I set the ticket price to generate a small profit. Next on Lady Plenty’s list is cleansing the water supply.



I side with her obviously, but it’s going to take a while to raise enough coin to certify the deal. I’ll have to come back to that later. Stumbling around the capital some more, I found out how to start buying and selling one of the stocks in a rather humorous way.



Oh Biz, you troll. After some more stumbling around, I decide to head back to another city when I run into a random quest in the horse dimension.



I was hoping it would be super simple and the little boy in the village was hiding the horse. But alas, that didn’t seem to be the case. After even more stumbling around, I remember that I’ve found quite a few apples since my last trip to the apple labyrinth, so I decide to head back there. What’s that creature that’s known in mythology to guard labyrinths?



This was probably the most action-heavy sequence so far in this game. I’m not sure how the Mat of Tribute works since I couldn’t find it in the inventory, but it sounds useful. Heading out of the first town, I finally found a path to the cave below and ran into none other than the Owl Lich again. It needs more life energy to help hatch its eggs.



I spent a good amount of time and health here. The health required kept increasing, but the rewards got progressively better as well. I got a few decorations, a good chunk of max health increases, and a few hundred thousand coin. Not bad! I was also able to solve the Plant Pix’s puzzle and obtain the apple chest with the seed bag upgrade. Now I’m up to 3,000 carrying capacity on those, even though I rarely go over 100. Now that my max health is over 80, I can head to the big tree in the restaurant in the city.



A bit underwhelming of a reward. Oh well. With all of these distractions out of the way and a ton of money given to me by the Owl Lich, I finally have enough to buy Dr. Three’s properties to continue the plan. Prepare for yet again the longest clip I’ve made so far. There was a ton of story here.



Wow, two birds with one stone! I ran Dr. Three out of town and One killed Mr. Four. Crazy stuff. Heading back to the power plant, I’m tasked with bringing the capital’s energy crisis to the fae council to figure out next steps. I also find out that all the fae I rescued earlier contribute to my passive income. It almost doubled! Next time, I’ll head to the council. The story in this game has really picked up!

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

· Serenity

· American Dad Season 21 Episode 14 (all caught up, show ongoing)

· Gun Gale Online Season 2 (completed)

· Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episode 1

· Barefoot Gen 2

It looks like I watched quite a bit this week. I ended up watching Serenity hours after my last post went up. It had a much higher production value than Firefly and answered some lingering questions I had from the show. The explanations were still a tad disappointing, but I felt it was a better finale than the actual finale and I enjoyed both the show and the movie quite a bit. I also watched all of Gun Gale Online Season 2, the spinoff anime of Sword Art Online. I didn’t expect a Season 2 since Season 1 premiered way back in 2021. I figured it would just be a one-off show and I’m happy to be wrong. There wasn’t really much in the way of story here, but it was fun nonetheless. Barefoot Gen 2 was good but didn’t get close to the first movie in my opinion. I’m still early in Skeleton Crew but I’m liking it so far. It definitely has a more down-to-earth vibe than anything else Star Wars related I’ve seen. It’s a weird change of pace from The Acolyte which is the last Star Wars thing I watched. It looks like there won’t be any more Star Wars until Andor Season 2 in April, so I’ve got a little bit of a wait. I know people are tired of how much Disney is milking the Star Wars property but I’m still mostly enjoying what I’m seeing. Episode IX was definitely not good though. Now I’m rambling. ANYWAY…

Conclusion/Upcoming

As always, I plan on playing more Final Profit this week. I really want to wrap my head around all the monetization opportunities in the capital, as well as get into my new treasurer role in Faeona. I’m hoping my hangout schedule normalizes this week and my friend and I can get back into Fall of Porcupine. We’ve gotta be getting close to the end of that game, right? The next movie on my watchlist is The Boy and the Heron, the latest anime film from Studio Ghibli. I’m really looking forward to that one. I suspect I’ll finish Skeleton Crew this week and start the Skull Island animated series from a few years ago. I plan on stopping by Microcenter again on Thursday in hopes of getting my graphics card, but I expect to be disappointed. I may just have to wait it out until supply picks up. I hope everyone here has a wonderful week, thank you for enduring two back-to-back posts of mine 😅 Happy gaming!

Backlog total: 3,061 (+2)

My first month with no completions since March 2024 :( It's now been two months since I've beaten something. Ironically, the gaming blog I started took up so much of my time that I didn't get a chance to actually game. I'm 14 hours into Fall of Porcupine and 27 hours into Final Profit: A Shop RPG though so surely I've gotta be getting close to the end of something.

January 2025

Hey guys, welcome to my first monthly update! I’m not entirely sure how these are going to be structured, I’m just kind of winging this one. I expect it’ll be more of a recap with fun stats and less nitty-gritty game details. Let’s get started as usual with my game acquisitions.

Game Acquisitions


A total of 56 games were added to my backlog last month. I’m curious to see how this fluctuates from month-to-month. I’m especially curious to see how my spending fluctuates from month-to-month as well. I wanted to figure out a way to graph my acquisitions and spending week-to-week for the month, but it wouldn’t be a fair comparison since months aren’t divisible by an equal number of weeks. Darn you Gregorian calendar! If anyone has any fun graph ideas, please let me know. As far as hobbies go, I think spending $38 is on the extreme low end. I spent more than that on dinner and a show! I really think gaming is one of the cheapest hobbies you can get into, but I’ll hold off on saying that until I have more data.

# of Games: 56

Total Money Spent: $38.09

Price/Game: $0.68

Game Recaps

As expected, my single-player game took up way more of my time than my co-op game. I am bummed that I didn’t beat anything last month. It’s been two months now since I’ve had a game completion. I really want to start incorporating reviews into my posts but I can’t do that until I actually beat something. I think this chart will also be interesting with more than two games. I expect this to be on the low end for game time for a whole month as well, hopefully that picks up this month.

I’m not sure how to succinctly recap everything I did in my games for the entire month. Read my weekly posts for in-depth coverage. In Fall of Porcupine, I’ve moved into a new town, started my job as a junior doctor at the local hospital, made some friends both at the hospital and in town, grieved, and started uncovering a hospital conspiracy. In Final Profit, I built up my shop in the city, met my early demise in quite a few premature endings, uncursed a few trinkets, cemented my position as a Lord of Business, was welcomed back on the council in my hometown of Faeona where I took on the role of treasurer, and entered the capital for the first time. A very productive list of events if I do say so myself. In lieu of just posting all the clips again, please enjoy these playlists of all the clips I’ve made in these games so far.

Fall of Porcupine

Final Profit: A Shop RPG

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched last month:

· Marvel’s What If…? Season 3 Episodes 3-8 (complete)
· FLCL (complete)
· American Dad Season 21 Episodes 11-14
· Firefly (complete)
· Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Episodes 1-2 (still watching, show ended)
· Gun Gale Online Season 2 (complete)
· Star Wars: Skeleton Crew Episode 1 (still watching, show ended)
· Barton Fink
· Rushmore
· 127 Hours
· Barefoot Gen
· Barefoot Gen 2
· Serenity

I finished four shows last month, including two full series completions with FLCL and Firefly. Not bad! I finished six movies as well. I usually go for one movie a week, but I tend to link TV tie-in movies with their respective shows and watch them together, so Serenity upped my average here. I think I enjoyed everything I watched this month to some extent, although I definitely liked some more than others. Will lowlights and highlights be an interesting thing to add here? Is lowlights even a word? It is now! Let’s give it a shot. I won’t be counting anything I haven’t finished yet. This goes for games as well, which is why I didn’t bring it up in that section. For lowlights, I’ll unfortunately have to give it to Firefly for shows and Barefoot Gen 2 for movies. I still really liked Firefly though, don’t get me wrong. I think that speaks to how great my TV shows for the month were. Barefoot Gen 2 wasn’t bad, it just felt like an unnecessary sequel to a very powerful movie. The studio itself may have felt the same way because unlike the first film, this one never received an English dub. My highlights are probably What If…? for shows and Serenity for movies. I’m still a big Marvel fan, even though I understand the quality has dipped since the Infinity Saga ended. What If…? Season 1 was great, with a lot of in-jokes for die-hard fans. I felt that Season 2 fell flat on its face and wasn’t very good. Season 3 brought it back somewhat and had a satisfying conclusion, so I’m happy with it. Too bad it was the last season. In a weird turn of events, my favorite movie was probably the tie-in for my “least” favorite show. Again, Firefly was still very good, and I felt that Serenity had a satisfying conclusion to it. I can only imagine how Firefly would’ve evolved if it was given a few more seasons.

Conclusion/Upcoming

As a stats nerd, I find it interesting to put into words everything I played, bought, and watched for a whole month. It was also much easier to put together than the weeklies since I didn’t have to separately go through game footage, edit it all together, upload it, and incorporate it throughout the post. Future monthlies will incorporate month-to-month charts that compare game time and monthly spending. If I can think of anything else that would make an interesting chart, I’ll add those too.

For upcoming games, I expect I’ll beat Fall of Porcupine this month, although as a co-op playthrough that’s harder to predict. It’s a relatively short game though and we’re 14 hours in. HLTB suggests a Main+Sides run takes 11 hours and a Completionist run takes 16 hours. Since I started tracking my game time in 2023, I’ve noticed my completions tend to be on the slower end of the site stats. I likely won’t go for a full Completionist run since that would require replaying sections of the story (or maybe the whole thing, not sure) for achievements which I don’t really feel like doing. I doubt this game has chapter select to quickly grab any achievements I missed. I expect one or two more sessions to beat the game. Then I can write my first review! I don’t think I’ll beat Final Profit this month. I’m 27 hours in and HLTB suggests 46.5 hours for a Main+Sides run. Who knows, maybe my game time will really pick up and I’ll breeze through it. I’m really liking it though, I don’t want to rush things.

For TV shows, I expect to get through Skeleton Crew, Skull Island, Cowboy Bebop, and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. After that, I’ll need to pick out a completed series or two from my backlog. Maybe Snowpiercer? For movies, I’ve got The Boy and The Heron, Stardust, The Fifth Element, and Dark City coming up. I know a little bit about The Boy and The Heron but know nothing about the others. How exciting!

I’m hoping at some point this month, I’ll get a new graphics card and switch over to my new PC. It should be a substantial upgrade. I’ll definitely keep you guys updated when that happens. Thank you for reading my first of many monthly posts! Look out for my regularly scheduled weekly post tomorrow!

Backlog total: 3,061

Game #249: Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag

Platform: Xbox One
Main + Extras: 60h 08m 21s
Rating: 6/10
Date Completed: January 30, 2025
Picked By: GCTuba

Games Synopsis: An Assassin's Creed game taking place on the ocean during the big pirate craze in the Caribbean.

Blog: If I were to compare Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag to Assassin's Creed III, the only other AC game I've played, I would probably pick AC3 as my preference.

That's not to say AC4 is not a bad game by comparison, in fact I also gave AC3 the same 6/10 score. I would definitely say it's kind of average though.

I think for example, the land portions aren't too exciting when comparing it to AC3. For example, the weapon variety is lacking in 4. You get pistols, swords, smoke bombs, and a few different darts. AC3 has all of that, and more with tomahawks, axes, muskets, clubs, and probably more that I'm forgetting. For me AC3 offered a lot more toys for messing around and provided a variety that AC4 just couldn't match up with. It's also especially weird considering that axes and muskets are in the game and you can use them, but you can't keep them.

I do feel that AC4 adds a different feel to some of the weapons though, mainly the swords and pistols. Swords are duel wielded and fighting just seems to be faster. Pistols especially can be upgraded to where you're able to have four pistols that you can use consecutively. This just felt so much more fun in comparison to AC3's which were pretty much always reloaded after every shot.

The land sections also don't feel as developed or have as much variety like AC3. Aside from maybe Havana, Kingston, and the final area there isn't much going on the land. Not too many high places to go and not much to see either.

But this is a game about the ocean. So how is the ocean in AC4? Only a little bit better honestly.

I did enjoy going into ship battles, both on the water and fighting aboard other ships. This is definitely what the focus was on, and it works. It's fun. Especially when you massively upgrade your ship and you're able to shred large ships, and go to fight one of the four legendary ships. It is rinse and repeat after a while, and there's only so much variety with the enemy ships.

There's also fort battles that can be pretty fun, they're honestly just big ship battles, although there's only seven of them.

So what about the other stuff on the ocean? Aside from some rinse and repeat side quests you can partake in, the ocean isn't very interesting otherwise. There's collectibles such as treasure chests with money and animus fragments that do... something?... but the collectibles are on tiny islands that all look and act the same which all screamed lazy. Harpooning I really only did for crafting materials and wasn't really interested in. And then diving was literally the worst thing about this game, the movement controls for the diving sections were really bad.

Speaking of movement, parkour is pretty much a key factor of AC games. You need to be able to run, jump, climb, etc in these games. I don't know if it's just me, but often times the games are kind of janky in this area. Both AC 3 and 4 had issues where I wasn't able to climb sections that were obviously climbable, or making jumps in the wrong direction when I'm pointing the stick forward. In particular whenever I run into a small alley, I find myself sometimes running up the nearest wall when I'm just trying to run straight forward through the alley. It's just annoying to deal with and will often cause me to get discovered in missions.

In terms of story, I honestly didn't really like the story or even Edward up until sequence 10... and there's only 13 sequences! I thought Edward was pretty unlikable, and all the characters surrounding him didn't really have much going on for me. I didn't care about Blackbeard at all either, partly because he wasn't around too much. But at sequence 10 it all gets better. Edward isn't so annoying, and the story finally had some interesting moments while also not having as many tutorials.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag is a pretty decent game. Honestly, if you have interest in it at all, I would recommend it. It's a game where you can pretty much turn off your brain and listen to some podcasts.

TL:DR: In my opinion Assassin's Creed Black Flag pales in comparison to AC3, with not as much weapon variety, towns being lackluster, and even some parts of the ocean being pretty mild. But the parts where you can really play and act as a pirate are quite a hoot.

Up Next: Black Flag was I think the longest game in the challenge so far. So what's next on the list?



Patrick's Parabox! Picked by GreenStarfish. This is a puzzle game that messes with perspective I believe? I always love playing these kinds of games.

Sorry to hear AC4 didn't vibe with you as much as it did with me.

Shadow of Mordor?

Oh nice, I did mean 6 as you said last year haha.

Here's mine:

This probably isn't it but Red Faction Guerilla?

January 19-25, 2025


Truer words have never been spoken

Another productive week of exploring new cities and uncovering conspiracies. Let’s get into it.

Game Acquisitions


Before you ask, the game you’re thinking of was free I swear 😭 It’s not the kind of game I would pay for normally but I hear it’s actually not bad. I did get a few free games this week which is nice. I bought Fanatical’s Build your own Elite VR (New Year Edition) since VR bundles are usually really expensive but this one was as cheap as flatscreen game bundles. I hear Tea for God is really good, can’t wait to buy a VR headset to try it out 😝

# of Games: 11

Total Money Spent: $8.03

Price/Game: $0.73

Game Recaps

Anything would’ve been an improvement over last week. I’m still not happy with my content creation to gaming ratio. If it doesn’t improve when I start new games, I’ll have to figure something out. For now, let’s recap my Final Profit progress.



I entered my hometown of Faeona for the first time since getting exiled at the beginning of the game. It seems like a peaceful place, definitely a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s far from perfect though. There is a slum district, rich folk who see themselves as better than everyone else, and some people who aren’t too happy to see us. I stumbled into the library and came across some music tiles that played notes when I ran across them. I was able to brute force the solution and was greeted with this:



I don’t know if the Minstrel’s Harp is an important quest item or just a trophy but the puzzle was fun to solve regardless. After exploring Faeona for a bit, I received some quests and headed back to the city. After entering my store, Biz mentioned how she needed someone to run the Enterpriston store just like the small store from the first town for some passive income. After exiting the store, I got this cutscene from the Bureau council members.



Sounds like they’re willing to work with me when I do meet them. I imagine we’ll be stabbing each other in the back soon enough. I ended up spending a lot of time back in the city running the shop and completing quests and got quite a few upgrades. I’ll see if I can rapid fire some of them.





A bit of a weird scripting sequence break there with the guy suggesting where to find a fire extinguisher before I knew I needed one. The upgrade to put down more fire at a time when crafting battlepasses is pointless but the 18% price increase is nice.





Holy crap, a 4,433% price increase! By far the largest jump in price for a commodity upgrade.





A modest 17% increase on the price of upmarket coffee. Still picking the generous dialogue choices!





I received this mana crystal from my totally not evil friend Odina. I poured a metric ton of my mana into it and was awarded with passive mana regen+1. That should come in handy later. And I have a cute crystal dog to boot!



A very impressive 265% markup on fermented tea.





Unlocked the ability to sell fruit seeds which I see as another useless upgrade since I’m always out of them. I’ll take the 25% price increase for the fruit though. I wasted enough time in the city, time to confront my daughter the queen in Faeona.



There was a lot to unpack there. Biz misses her daughter very much and hopes to reconnect with her. She seems to be thinking the same. The fae council has now tipped into Biz’s favor, but a unanimous vote is required to get her back on the council herself. The next story quest is to secure the votes of all the council members to achieve this. Also, Divina’s child is a Lord of Business!? I wonder if that was “Mx. Two” from the Bureau council cutscene given the supposed use of gender neutral pronouns and fae background. Biz and Divina also apparently dated a very long time ago, I wonder what happened between them. Let’s head back to the city to secure the votes, starting with Pixa.



He decided he wanted me to play hide and seek with him to get his vote. A little annoying but after three times finding him, he agreed. I actually ran into Boat (the fairy selling seeds) while I was trying to find Pixa and she revealed that there are young creatures who look like her that are attracted to cities with plant life and she feels the need to protect them. She asked me to gather the three that are somewhere around the city to get her vote. Basically, more hide and seek.



The next vote on the list is Jot who runs the interdimensional upgrade shop. His quest is very simple.



Just a quick 25,000 coins to bribe secure his vote. I actually meant to go back to Faeona at this point and talk to more of the locals but accidentally started the quest to head to the capital so I guess I’m doing that next.



Immediately upon setting off for the capital, I’m greeted by a cutscene showing that the Legislator and the Representative from the Bureau are going to try and stop me from becoming a Lord of Business by sabotaging the train I’m using to get there.



Cutting back to Biz, we walk through the cemetery we were at earlier where we discovered the prince had been killed. Among the tombstones was a maze that led to an apple chest and another ending!



After reloading the save, we walk to the train and are greeted by the train captain, the ticket master, and a rich passenger known as Lady Plenty. On board the train we discover that the Representative is also hitching a ride, as well as King Bean, an orphan boy he’s looking after, and various train staff. What transpires is a plot to replace Biz with an imposter to make sure she doesn’t rise to power.



We do eventually catch the imposter and save Biz. We also learn Odina’s backstory. She was evil after all, she worked for the Bureau! Was is the operative word here though, she seems to have turned over a new leaf so I’m still trusting her for now.



The rich passenger we met before we boarded the train turned out to be a mechanic specializing in gems which could be very useful for us moving forward. Biz added her to her team. With all that craziness out of the way, we’ve finally arrived at the capital.



So neon! Seriously, I like the blue color here, it’s a nice contrast from previous environments. I spared the Biz imposter, she didn’t seem terribly malicious and was only in it for the money. Gotta stick with those generous decisions. Hopefully that doesn’t come back to bite me later. I head a little farther into town and run into none other than Mr. Four, one of the Lords of Business.





Oh boy, information overload here. This is exactly what I was afraid of. This is gonna be a whole new game now it looks like. As if the game wasn’t confusing enough as it is, now we’re adding real estate to our portfolio. Who knows what other profit-making schemes we can get up to here. I’m just about to sign off for the day when I run into a familiar face outside my new place.



I’m continuing to choose generous decisions over ruthless ones, but I definitely don’t feel good about this decision. I don’t trust the Representative at all. I guess we’ll have to see how it all plays out. Anyway, let’s move on to my other game.



We arrived at the funeral and Giuliano informed us that another hospital employee stopped by, but then ran out back. He asked us to check on him so we did and it turned out to be the janitor Gregor.



He feels guilty about Irma’s death and feels that the water leak was at least partially responsible for her demise. We assure him that wasn’t the case and that he should join everyone inside for the service. Unfortunately, the instigator that Karl picked a fight with earlier overheard the conversation and decided to start something.



The song that Giuliano played was the same song that played when his mother would tell us one of her stories. I thought that was a nice touch. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to enjoy it for long before we’re asked to leave to avoid further disruptions. That really sucks, Finley already feels guilty as it is. Mia invites us to watch her play rehearsal to get our mind off things and of course we end up getting roped into it. It was interesting but kind of long and didn’t further the plot so I won’t post a clip here. We head home for the night and wake up to find out an angry mob is descending on the hospital. On our way there, we pass by Giuliano’s and decide to stop by real quick to ask how the rest of the service went.



We missed placing the statue in the woods 😔 Huge bummer. We get to the hospital and sure enough there’s an angry mob calling for the place to be torn down. I’ll give you three guesses on who is running it.



Even one of the nurses is in the crowd! After a quick chat with Ingrid, she informs us that our boss’ boss the chief physician wants to speak with us. Let’s see what that’s about.



We’re not in trouble or anything. He just wanted to tell us that these things happen and to just keep doing our job to the best of our ability. He assures us he’ll take care of the mob outside which is a relief. After some patient checkups, we start heading out the hospital and run into some actual trouble.



Alright, angry mob is still doing their thing at the front entrance and the chief physician is nowhere to be found. Let’s try to find him.



An alternate universe where pizza cures cancer huh? I can get behind that. With Dr. Theobald nowhere to be found, we head back up to our ward to find Mia having a talk with the patient we were chasing at the beginning of the game when we hit our head.



A conspiracy regarding the hospital seems to be unfolding. The patient confirms that he saw the same files we saw in the unused ward. What were they doing there? Who was looking at them? Finley and Mia head out the back entrance to talk to Karl about our findings.



Our plan is to steal the keys to the hospital archive room and see what we can find. The plan is long, unnecessarily complicated, and just downright silly.



Goofy. I don’t think Finley is having as much fun executing the plan as Karl is concocting it.



We finally have the keys, meet outside the archive to plan our next move, and then…



Welp, the door was unlocked the whole time. The plan was for nothing! It was funny seeing the perspective shift from overexaggerated planning mode to reality where everyone was just in their normal clothes. We go inside to see what we can find.



There’s definitely missing files alright. But more importantly, the hospital is filling up and they’re short-staffed. I guess we’re picking up some overtime. After pulling an extra shift, we try to leave when we discover that the mob has infiltrated the hospital!



We’re definitely in illegal territory at this point. I wonder if the cops will finally do something about them. One of the protestors has collapsed so we help them to a room to begin treatment. Our boss Dr. Krokowski says she’ll do what she can but to treat the other patients in the meantime. Triple shift time baby! After yet another set of rounds we’re alerted that the collapsed protestor isn’t doing well and Dr. Krokowski needs our help right away.



Oh no. This definitely isn’t going to help our image about the hospital killing patients. Things are quickly spiraling out of control, but our boss insists that we need to go home to rest and I agree. What a crazy day. I feel like we may be nearing the end of the game. Is my first completion of the year right around the corner?

TV/Movie Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

· 127 Hours

· Barefoot Gen

· Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Episodes 1-2 (currently watching, show ended)

· American Dad Season 21 Episode 13 (all caught up, show ongoing)

· Firefly Episodes 7-14 (all done!)

I was able to squeeze in a movie Sunday night since I didn’t work on Monday. 127 Hours is a movie about a thrill seeker (played by James Franco) who falls down a ravine and gets his hand pinned to the wall by a rock and has to figure out how to free himself. It was difficult to watch at times since it gets quite bloody. It mostly took place at one location and used some found footage style filming which I thought was interesting. Barefoot Gen is an anime film that came out in the 80s about the atomic bomb dropped on Japan during World War 2. This is probably one of the most depressing films I’ve ever seen. It's very good but do not watch this if you aren’t in the right headspace for it.

On the TV side, I finished up Firefly and started watching Scott Pilgrim Takes Off with a friend. I enjoyed the space western vibes of Firefly, I just wish it was longer. It felt like it wasn’t long enough to have satisfying character arcs or an overarching plotline. I still need to watch the Serenity movie which I’ll do today so maybe that will have a more satisfying conclusion. I’m a huge fan of the Scott Pilgrim movie so I’m super excited to get into the anime. I’m really digging it so far, although I’ve only watched the beginning. It’s another one season show so my friend and I should get through it pretty quick.

Conclusion/Upcoming

Overall a pretty good week I think. I unlocked what I assume are the last areas of Final Profit and I believe I’m about to reach the climax of Fall of Porcupine. I probably won’t be able to play more of the latter. My friend and I are planning to watch some live music for our next hangout. The big Nvidia RTX 50 launch is happening on Thursday and he said he might join me for that too to keep me company. I’m hoping to get there around 6-6:30 to increase my chances of snagging a 5090. I know some people will be camping out the night before but I can’t do that. Hopefully the demand isn’t as high as I’m expecting it to be. I’m excited to retire this PC and move on to the new one.

On the game front, it’ll likely just be Final Profit this week. I don’t feel like I’m close to the end since I just unlocked the capital so that will likely take some time. Once I finish Fall of Porcupine, I can post my first game review! I plan to incorporate game reviews into whatever post comes after I complete the game. I haven’t actually reviewed games in the past since I feel like my opinion is constantly changing as I compare it to other games I play later but I’ll give it a shot. For movies and TV, I plan on watching Barefoot Gen 2 (more depression I’m sure), Serenity, and starting Gun Gale Online Season 2. I’m not sure what the plan is when the new PC build is put together. I want to finish Final Profit before I fully switch over but I also want to make sure everything is working as it should on the new build. There’s also going to be a lot of setup involved with moving my stuff over, incorporating my emulators into Playnite, and getting my recording stuff automated. It may be a slow week next week but we’ll see. My first monthly post should also be coming this week. I’m not sure how those will be formatted yet, maybe just some graphs for playtime and purchases or something. I look forward to figuring it out. Until next time!

Backlog total: 3,059 (+8)

A quick note on how the backlog total change is calculated. You may have noticed that my backlog only increased by eight games this week despite acquiring 11 new ones. The reason for that is because I add games to my backlog as soon as I know I’m planning on playing them, whether I’ve acquired it or not. In this case, Amazon Prime revealed their free games for January a couple weeks ago which are released in batches every week. There are three games that were released for free this week that I claimed, but I added them to my backlog a couple weeks ago when they were revealed. That’s the reason for the supposed discrepancy. My hope is that there will come a time when the total change is negative because that means I finally had some backlog progress. We’ll see if that ever comes to pass.

I guess I will post an image then.

It's been a week, I think we've been stumped.

January 12-18, 2025

In case you don’t get the pun in the title, I finally made some story progress in Final Profit. It’s nice not having to grind for coin and just unlocking stuff. There’s gonna be a lot of clips here, just a heads up. So without further ado…

Game Acquisitions


I bought both the Fanatical Slayer Bundle and Explosive Bundle. I was so close to resisting too 😩 No free games this week so the price per game went up too. Hopefully this doesn’t become a trend.

# of Games: 12

Total Money Spent: $18.06

Price/Game: $1.51

Game Recaps


Significantly reduced playtime this week unfortunately, and I didn’t get to play Fall of Porcupine with my friend. I also recorded a lot of footage for Final Profit because there was a lot of story stuff happening so it took a while to get it all edited down. I also just started up in-office work on Tuesdays and had hangouts with friends Thursday-Saturday so I was super busy. Anyway, let’s get to all the story stuff.



Continuing right where I left off, I found the customer who would take the Vintage VenDRANK! Of course it was the crazy purple lady.



Alright, she wants me to deliver some tarot cards to the witch in the apartment buildings. No problem. Before leaving the shop, I’m notified about my next commodity upgrade. Looks like craft bags are up next. Let’s go see what that entails.





The craft bag production fee is only 1 coin so still a decent uplift in profit. I want to make sure I’m only picking generous dialog options instead of ruthless ones. I want to be a good person! I still feel bad about drugging the tea. Anyway, let’s get back to delivering the tarot cards.



She wants me to deliver heart medicine to the old lady from the first town. I’m sensing a pattern here. Still, it seems important so I’m off.



An old coupon to the electronics store huh. Sounds interesting, let’s head back there. Thank God for the horse dimension.



I decided to go ahead and upgrade it since I’m already there and have the money. Will that be important later? Who knows! With all the deliveries out of the way it’s time to head back to the castle. Let’s see what the queen has to say.



The prince is dead. NOOOOOOO! I hardly knew ye. Luckily I just happened to be looking at a guide for a different part of the game and came across a way to save him. Let’s reload and try again.



There we go, that’s much better. I saved someone’s life and got a new customer. All in a day’s work. It’s still unfortunate about what happened to the real prince though. Taking down the Bureau is now a personal matter for the queen. She bestows some kind of incriminating evidence that will allow me to sell permits, the last commodity to unlock in the city. Let’s go pay the Bureau a little visit.



We have met the Lord of Business, Mrs. Fives. We show her the incriminating evidence and she allows us to buy permits. However, she warns that we aren’t allowed to sell them at our shop or there will be consequences. How ominous, I’m sure that won’t come back to bite me later. I go into my store to put the permits on sale and a lot happens at once.



So not only did I get the prompt to go back to the castle to talk about the next stage of the plan to lure Mrs. Fives into a trap, I also got the notifications for upmarket coffee and art upgrades. Since the king that sells me the coffee stays in my shop, his quest is super quick. I was just complaining in my last post about how slow coffee production was so this was well-timed, and it comes with a 20% price increase too! Nice. I decide to take a break from the main story and see what the artist is up to.



This was a neat little side quest. I got to meet the Owl Lich again who takes some of my life energy. I wonder what he’s using it for, hopefully nothing nefarious. The art now sells for roughly double what it used to and the amount of inspiration per trip can go up. Another very good upgrade. With those two side quests out of the way, I head back to my shop. The quest took long enough that I kinda forgot what I was doing and accidentally left the permits on the counter. None other than the Bureau representative who collects my taxes decided to buy the permit and I’m met with an untimely demise.



Another ending unlocked! I’m trying to find the silver lining here. The game was very gracious to remind me that it autosaves every time I enter the shop so I’m able to quickly remedy my error. After reloading the save, I place the permits on the counter and quickly leave the shop. I head over to the castle to carry out the devious plan to take down Mrs. Fives. This is where all the story stuff happens. Be prepared for an eight-minute clip with nothing but story progress.



The plan worked! Not only did I take down Mrs. Fives, I’m now usurping her to become the new Lord of Business. It’s not official yet though, I need to have a swearing in at the Capital. My home town of Faeona has been made available as well. I think these were the last two areas to unlock so I’ll have a lot to do next time.

A couple more minor events occurred before I ended my session. Right after taking down Fives, I got an interesting little snippet of backstory with Biz and her fae friend Refrain.



So they both felt neglected by the previous queen during their training which led to some resentment for each other. An interesting little story tidbit there. I also unlocked the rest of the Bureau building in the city and found records of what the Bureau has been up to in other towns. A lot of interesting worldbuilding here.



So even though I only played for an hour and 17 minutes this week, it was chock full of story progression. I should have a lot to do and talk about next time. Let’s move on to what I’ve been watching.

TV Recaps

Here is everything I watched this week:

- FLCL Season 5 Episodes 2-3 (finished, show complete)
- Firefly Episodes 1-6 (still watching, show complete)
- American Dad Season 21 Episode 12 (all caught up, show ongoing)

You might notice I don’t have a movie listed here. Because of the plans I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t able to squeeze in a movie night. I am off work tomorrow for Martin Luther King Jr. Day though so maybe I’ll squeeze the movie 127 Hours in tonight. As for my shows, I finished up FLCL. I still think Season 3 was the best season. I did like how Season 5 was a sequel to Season 3 taking place like 10 years later but it was also only three episodes like Season 4 so I felt like there wasn’t enough there. I also wasn’t fond of what they did for Kana’s character or how the only constant character up to that point (Haruko) wasn’t even in it. Bit of a dud ending, but still an interesting show nonetheless. I started Firefly and I’m enjoying it so far. I’m already over halfway through 🙁 Unfortunately it’s a very short show with only one season so I’ll finish it up quickly.

Conclusion/Upcoming

It was a shorter post this week since I didn’t play Fall of Porcupine. That’s probably a blessing in disguise though, putting these posts together is still time-consuming. It might be impossible to play even less this week than last week unless I don’t play anything at all. Would I have enough to write about!? Let’s hope that never comes to pass. For this week, I’m planning on finishing up Firefly and want to watch Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and Gun Gale Online season 2. I didn’t even know they were making more Gun Gale Online, the first season came out years ago as a spinoff to Sword Art Online which ended back in 2020. For games, I’m planning to explore the new areas in Final Profit. I’m curious if the shops become even more complex. I feel like the Battlepass commodity in the city shop took forever to get and sell, I don’t even want to think about commodities that are even more difficult to get. I’m also hanging out with my friend on MLK day so we should get some Fall of Porcupine time in. I’m officially T-minus 11 days until I wait outside Microcenter in hopes of snagging a 5090 and retiring this PC. Fingers crossed. I’ll see you all next week!

Backlog total: 3,051 (+12)

Apologies, to clarify, I'm talking about the general games search not your own individual lists:


So searching through the list of games with filters applied regardless of whether they're part of your personal lists or not and exporting these etc.

Ah, I see. There are over 78,000 games in the database right now so that would be quite a large spreadsheet but I suppose it'd be doable.

Could we possibly enable the dropdowns on the search page to be multi-select toggles rather than a single choice dropdown option?

For example under Platform allow us to toggle multiple different platforms rather than just one single one, or choose from multiple genres etc? I use the search feature to find games to play next mostly and being able to eliminate as many unnecessary results as possible would be so handy.

Alternatively would having an export option be feasible so we could filter through our searches at our own will through a CSV?

I understand cataloging games isn't the primary use case for the website but I find it by far the best in terms of scope and usability so these features would go a long way for those of us who use the site in this way!

An export option already exists in the options section of the drop-down menu in the top-right.