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)
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