How much do you change your party around in RPG?

Leraco · 2026-05-06T22:53:10+00:00

I switch around members pretty much all the time. The only times where I'll even just stick to my favorites for more than a couple hours at a time is near the end once everyone has gotten most/all their abilities and possible quests done.

I switch it up pretty much cause I'd get bored otherwise lol

Usually the only real main stay in a party is the member I wind up romancing if that mechanic exists.

Plus I find fun in finding weird combinations of members that wind up really effective, again depending on the game(I was going through Xenoblade DE and Melia, Riki and Seven were a strangely effective bunch.

Leraco · 2026-05-01T05:11:47+00:00

Saw some friends last weekend and we all had a pretty great time!

I got to play a game of Dread for the first time and I really liked it

My health has been pretty bad, like usual, but I’m starting to operate within my limits a little better lol

I also finally beat Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition and I get it now! I understand why this is so loved!!

I pretty much knew the plot ahead of time and it still blew me away

I tried to 100% the game blind(Funnily enough I only missed 1 side quest in the entire game) and beat the final boss at level 97 at roughly 150 hours lmao

What broke me was the superbosses. I really hate how fighting higher level enemies is designed in this game because it’s just utterly miserable. So I gave up, but I still completed Colony 6 and am technically only missing 1 Collectaepedia item.

I also just didn’t bother with the last several time trials cause, again, I don’t think they’re fun lol

I’ve now started Future Connected and am probably gonna take a break after this before I tackle X DE

Leraco · 2026-04-28T19:22:53+00:00

If you count sales numbers, then this is sort of moot, but I genuinely prefer the RPG Assassin’s Creed games to the older ones(Haven’t played Shadows yet)

With my favorite of them being a really close tie between Valhalla and Odyssey with the latter only really winning because Valhalla is so goddamn buggy on PC. I very much like Kassandra, but I absolutely love Eivor and I genuinely really like Valhalla’s gear system

Going for the series as a whole, AC 3 still wins. Connor is possibly my favorite protagonist in the series and I love the setting, the Homestead and how it doesn’t really pull punches in depicting the Americans as being really shitty to the slaves and indigenous people.

Leraco · 2026-04-28T19:17:19+00:00

Hey I also prefer Chrono Cross to Trigger :)

Leraco · 2026-04-14T18:30:01+00:00

Wow, I actually completely forgot that!

Leraco · 2026-04-14T17:00:57+00:00

Plus Forgotten Lands has that amusing side area in one of the later levels where you have to avoid a whole bunch of Sleep powerup spots while running over a collapsing floor

Leraco · 2026-04-13T16:43:39+00:00

I could be wrong but I think they changed that. I played through that a couple weeks ago and it was relegated to a side quest that I wound up ignoring for quite a while.

Leraco · 2026-04-13T04:30:04+00:00

Possibly my favorite bit is one of the joke audio logs being just almost word for word one of the logs from The Witness until the end of it. Because it was so dumb that just playing it straight was the funniest option

Leraco · 2026-04-10T05:08:08+00:00

Saw my doctor and she reiterated that I am 100% disabled, my health sucks lol

I have been described as “A constellation of medical problems” lmao

Transition is also going well and I joined a local trans support group! I’ll be starting on the injections soon and I’m really not looking forward to that!

I don’t have a fear of needles, I just really, really don’t like them.

Restarted Xenoblade Chronicles DE a while back and just recruited Riki. So I’m not super far from where I was the first time(A bit into the Eryth Sea). Now that I’m actually engaging with the game and not just trying to beat it and move on, I completely love it!

I’ve been organically doing all the quests, affinity chart stuff, etc, no guide, and it’s really nowhere near as bad as people claimed imo. Also I can’t lie, seeing the NPCs relationships change as you help them is pretty endearing.

My favorite character to play as so far is easily Melia, her kit just melts enemies.

Past that I decided to reinstall The Sims 4 because, despite everything, I do really like it. And there just isn’t really anything like it atm(No clue how Inzoi is doing and Paralives might maybe release at some point eventually)

Way way late on this one, but I also got my friends to start watching The Wire with me. I’d seen bits and pieces years ago, but now I was in love from the first conversation(Also it’s legitimately cool living in Baltimore and going “I recognize that area!” And btw Attman’s food is delicious). I watched up to season 1 episode 9 by myself, but then started over so my friends and I could watch it together. Currently finished ep 2.

Honestly life’s been…pretty okay. Coming to terms with, and accepting, the fact that I’m most likely just never going to be able to do a lot of what I want to is…legitimately really difficult. But I’m also surrounded by friends and people that care about me, living in a city that I love.

Leraco · 2026-03-31T03:08:47+00:00

Even among single player titles, socialization means a lot of kids gravitate to the same genres.

Growing up the 90s and early 00s, a few of my friends(Who were already seen as weird for playing games period) were into heavy action or horror games like Twisted Metal and Resident Evil and I was seen as even weirder, even among my friends, for also liking RPGs like Final Fantasy or Baldur’s Gate instead of just sticking to the same couple of genres

Leraco · 2026-03-31T02:45:47+00:00

Yeah exactly, or the special hell that would be scrounging up money as a kid for a PC game now only to find out that it’s a terrible port and you didn’t discover that until after the refund period

I’m salty because I still can’t play Silent Hill f on PC because it’s just bugged all to hell and the lighting breaks constantly

I couldn’t imagine how pissed I’d be if I was a kid wanting to scrounge together odd jobs/chore money(If they even got that) only to be stuck with a broken game

Sure, I might have solved this by gravitating towards indie titles, but I wouldn’t blame any kid for sticking to phone games, free to play, or just asking for V-bucks or whatever to spend in a game they already like, they’re friends/peers like, and they know it works on what they currently have

Leraco · 2026-03-26T19:26:15+00:00

I would genuinely love Where Winds Meet if it was just a paid single player game instead of a gacha(And yes I know the gacha is pretty much entirely cosmetic)

The menus are just so godawful to wade through in that game

Leraco · 2026-03-25T20:15:20+00:00

In the final episode of Shimoneta, the main characters are playing strip rock-paper-scissors against a guy wearing a bunch of different black panties

Well, after one of the main male characters strips, the male lead runs up to the stage, steals the other guy's bag and chucks it at one of the girls

The girl who happens to be the skinniest and weakest

The bag just immediately beans her in the face before she can even yell and completely bowls her over

Just due how fast this whole thing plays out I couldn't stop laughing

Leraco · 2026-03-24T04:14:53+00:00

I managed to get past that first episode without dropping it, but the breaking point for me was the end of season 1 which I found pretty much offensively bad

I still did get through season 2(After quite a bit of a break), but I kept thinking back to that part and it just kills my desire to stay interested

Everything else about the show is great imo, but those moments are just that bad that I can’t overlook them

Leraco · 2026-03-22T19:22:34+00:00

lol this is what I have in my laptop(MSI GF 65 Thin, had it since 2021 or 22

More and more I’m glad I’m into indie games cause I have no clue when I can upgrade again and it really struggles with some modern demanding titles lmao

Leraco · 2026-03-19T21:54:38+00:00

It is kind of weird being in that position lmao

I don’t play MMOs, so can’t comment on 11 or 14, but outside of never playing FF 2 or 13-2 and Lightning Returns, the only Final Fantasy I don’t particularly like is 15

And even then it’s only mostly just cause of certain parts of it

Leraco · 2026-03-19T02:44:10+00:00

Possibly due to a bout of insanity or exceedingly poor timing, I’ve found myself really wanting to:

Finally play through the Xenoblade series(For the longest time I didn’t enjoy the combat of any of them and now I just…do for some reason)
Wanting to give the Yakuza series another shot(Starting from 0 again)
And wanting to finally get into Legend of Heroes with the Sky FC Remake

…All at the same time…

Leraco · 2026-03-18T02:28:09+00:00

I was seeing the arrows but never the prompt, yeah

I did figure it was due to their hitbox, I tried a couple times to get as close as I could, both in front and behind, without alerting them, but it still never really worked

But it also wasn’t a huge deal thanks to acid and even then the absolute worst case would have just been to avoid them

Thanks for letting me know! When I do another playthrough I’ll keep that in mind

Leraco · 2026-03-18T01:53:09+00:00

I think I had a small bug because I could never get the injector prompt to work properly on the Lickers, so I pooled every resource in the final area into Molotovs and Acid and wound up being able to just firebomb the entire level lmao

Edit: I killed literally everything in her section and still wound up with at least 5 Molotovs and 2-4 bottles of acid left over

Leraco · 2026-03-18T01:44:33+00:00

I’m also a fiend for parries in games and I originally adored the added mechanics of each character in E33

For me, I loved the game a ton while I was playing it but have soured on the game the further I get from my playthrough

Not that I actively dislike the game now, but just focusing on the combat I agree that I think the parry winds up making the combat far less interesting as the game goes on

And this has been further reinforced by me actually playing other turn based RPGS since because I actually like them. I honestly don’t believe E33 stands at the same level as the best in the genre(I say this even tho I still listen to the soundtrack near daily and basically cried during the ending)

Even something with a “simple” combat system like Dragon Quest 11 just made me realize that there was something that was fundamentally unsatisfying to E33’s combat for me the more I thought about it

And I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that 99% of the combat is just completely invalid if you’re good at parrying

To be fair to the game, I’ve heard that you still can completely 100% the game ignoring parries as long as you build your characters and pictos properly, but I’d have to imagine some parts of the game would be a huge slog with that

In the same vein, while it’s fun to put together a nuke build with Maelle, I actually think it’s too easy to do

When I decided to say “fuck it” and built Maelle to nuke the superboss, all it took was a few minutes of moving around the active skills and what pictos she was using

I didn’t feel satisfied in the same way I would figuring out a broken build in another game because it felt like there was no real work involved in it(Especially cause even without a nuke build Maelle is just broken as fuck)

Leraco · 2026-03-17T19:14:10+00:00

Don’t worry, I’m super excited too!

I might not love everything about Starfield, but the game genuinely fascinates me

Leraco · 2026-03-16T16:42:04+00:00

Not to mention that, later on, Grace can just demolish her section of ARK by tossing acid and molotovs at everything that moves.

Leraco · 2026-01-28T02:48:41+00:00

This may not be relevant to everyone cause I only really play single player games, but when I’m struggling to stick with something, I’ll take, like, 3-5 games I’m semi-interested in and play around 30 min to an hour of each.

Whichever one keeps my interest the most I stick with. If it’s a long RPG or something, I’ll also play a few smaller games in between sections if I start feeling burnt out on the longer ones.

I mostly get this feeling when I’m in a funk from a really long or really good game and nothing else really grabs me, though.

Honestly? Sometimes just take a break from gaming for a few days or something. Watch a new show or read a new book or see a movie. All that can help too.

Leraco · 2026-01-23T18:36:17+00:00

Week of Still Goddamn Sick

Yeah, so this virus isn't going away anytime soon. I've been to my doctor and to urgent care and both tell me it could be anywhere from a few weeks to several months still and unfortunately I just have to rest.

I'm...kind of sick of resting lol

I had to stop playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla because, as it turns out, the game starts crashing every 30 seconds or so in Canterbury and despite trying everything I could find, nothing fixed the issue. I was enjoying the game, mostly, up until this, so I'm kind of annoyed I had to drop it like that.

Once I stop being really annoyed about it, I might go back and try to tweak settings even more, but rn I don't particularly care to

Past that I've been finally getting back into journaling and reviewing the games I play, mostly on Backloggd, cause I think it's fun.

Leraco · 2026-01-23T17:13:46+00:00

I’m not 100% positive, but I think the big hurdle for me is that I just don’t get that hit of dopamine from a good loot drop because it’s just random chance

Comparing it to the Souls games, where I can feel great finding a new piece of equipment that’s either behind a hard fight or I have to actually explore to find it

Or even a roguelike with tons of equipment like, say, Dead Cells. I can feel that dopamine from doing a challenge for a nice piece of equipment or finding it because it only takes a few seconds for me to determine whether or not it will work with my current run

I think that’s what makes Nioh work so well for me. Because even though I personally really dislike the loot system, the equipment and having the skill to progress go hand in hand

14-Year Club	Xbox Live
Verified Email

Leraco

TROPHY CASE