PixlBit

I know I said I'd be blogging more regularly, but it's been an insanely busy season at the park. We had major construction going on to update some very old infrastructure, and that cut our parking down from 80ish parking spaces to 40ish parking spaces. We're one of the ten busiest state parks in the state now, and I spent most of my time doing traffic control. Yellow safety vest and all. Anyway, back to 80ish parking spaces, a new entrance booth (with electricity!!! Never had that before, lol), and a new bathroom building. Both were desperately needed. And now I have 17 days left of my season, then it's off to work in the local, independent pet supply store down the road, after a well deserved sanity break.

Now the sad news. Michael Alvarado, known on Pixlbit as Michael117, died last Friday. I had posted on his Facebook page recently, and his cousin reached out to let me know. Not going into details in this post, but if anyone wants more info, I can be reached via Facebook Messenger or in a message here. Michael was the reason I joined Pixlbit after 1Up shut down.

Now on to more pleasant things.

So far, I'm liking the Switch 2, and I am surprised at how much I really like Mario Kart World. I suck at it, but I'm enjoying it. I even got Jason to play with me a couple of weeks ago, and he's not into racing games, whether regular racing games or kart racers, at all. He's not really all that into gaming, to tell the truth. So far, other than playing with Jason for an afternoon, I've pretty much just been driving around the open world and failing challenges, but having lots of fun doing it. My Switch Friends Code is 6750-1629-5891, if anyone wants to add me. I rarely play online with people, but maybe if I get better at Mario Kart I might be convinced to play. 

As for what else I've been playing, well, once Fantasy Life i came out, that's been pretty much it. If anyone else is playing, hit me up for Treasure Grove raiding. I've maxed out my hunter life and I'm a force to be reckoned with. If anyone isn't familiar with Fantasy Life, it's more or less an rpg where you are encouraged to change vocations (known as lives in the game) frequently. There are three basic types - combat, gathering, and crafting. Combat lives are Paladin, Mercenary, Hunter, and Magician. Paladins use sword and shield and are fairly balanced fighters, Mercenaries use two-handed swords and are tanks, Hunters uses bows and are great for ranged attacks, and Magicians use staffs/wands and also are good for ranged attacks. All combat lives have special attacks, and can be upgraded through skill trees. All lives have skill trees, not just combat lives. Gathering lives are Miner, Woodcutter, Angler, and Farmer. Those should all be fairly self-explanatory. Crafting lives are Blacksmith, Carpenter, Tailor, Alchemist, Cook, and Artist. Twelve of the 14 lives will be unlocked in short order, the other two as the game progresses. 

There is a story, but because there's so much to do in the game that isn't part of the story, I spent a lot of time just running around gathering resources, doing quests for NPCs, and exploring Ginormosia, an area of the game that, while you don't have to explore and unlock most of it, does have areas that feature prominently in the story. And very rare resources that you will need to level your lives up all the way to Hero status. The story is OK, but nothing that hasn't been seen at least a hundred times before. The real fun is in the exploration and the quest to level up your lives.

There's also a small village to develop and populate with Strangelings, which are people who have been transformed into objects. Once you transform them back into people, they become villagers and you can recruit them to go on adventures with you. They all fall into one of the 14 lives, and the crafting ones can help you with the crafting mini games. You only get six houses for the villagers, so you have to decide who gets to live in one. I have no idea where the others go at night. Sleeping bags on the beach? On the floor of the Guild? Couch surf with the fortunate six villagers who have a house? It's still a mystery and I stopped worrying about it ages ago. As you find more and more recipes, you can start to decorate inside your own house, and your village. It's pretty primitive compared to Animal Crossing, but it's kind of fun.

There's a lot more to the game, but I'm not going to go into it in this review. I do have a few gripes. The first is lack of a good tutorial. There is a tutorial, but it's not very well developed and leaves a lot of things out. The second, and probably biggest, issue I had with the game was too many quests involved depending on random drops of either resources or recipes to make the item that was needed to complete the quest. For example, nowhere in the game does it tell you that certain recipes can only be obtained by villagers, and you have to know how to get the villagers to give you recipes. Some recipes and resources can only be obtained by traveling merchants in Ginormosia, some resources can only be found as enemy drops in the Treasure Groves. Thank goodness there are several websites geared toward making good wikis of these things.

All in all, I really have enjoyed this game, even with issues I found. It was fun, didn't take itself seriously, and I really enjoyed the combat mechanics and the ability, once I leveled all my lives up to hero, to just use the combat life that felt the best to me. You can swap lives on the fly, and a recent update allows you to change party members almost any time (can't during combat or in a Treasure Grove, unless you're at the floor selection screen).