stuff I'm playing/watching rn, volume 2

  Rune Factory 4 Special

I bought this game for the Switch recently because it was on sale on the eShop for like $9. It's a re-release of a DS game with some extra features thrown in. I've only played the first Rune Factory game before this one, but I've been wanting to play another one for a while, so I'm glad I picked this up. There are a few things so far that I didn't like so much, but I've been having fun with it!

The things I don't like so much:

• There are some marriage candidates in this game that really gross me out (the fact that you can get married to them when they seem very young, I mean). That's not really unusual for Rune Factory from what I've seen but it still bothers me.
  
• You can't get gay married. A friend did tell me about a way to change your character's appearance into that of the opposite gender MC, but your character is still considered the gender you started with, and you can't do it until post-story anyway. I thought about restarting the game as a boy so I could switch gender (I want Frey and Forte to get together), but I'd have to redo the beginning of the game again and I kinda don't want to bother. Maybe once I get more into the game I'll change my mind.
• The game takes kind of a long time to let you start to do More Stuff? For example: I didn't unlock a hammer until day 8. Once I got to about day 8 or so, it felt like basically the whole game opened up to me, so it became a lot more fun afterwards. There was just a short period where I almost got bored of the game because it felt very linear and slow. If I remember the first game right (it's been at least a decade since I played it...omg), it also had a slow beginning. Maybe I've been spoiled by newer farming sim games that are much more sandbox-y from the start.
  

The things I do like: 

• Basically everything else.
  
• Specifically, I love Forte. She's a Saber clone in the best way. I want to draw her with Frey (the female MC) because I think they're a cute pairing.
  

  Pokemon TCG Pocket & Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

Putting these two in the same category this time because I haven't really been spending much time on them in the past few weeks. Pocket Camp in particular has started to feel a little bit repetitive in terms of daily tasks, and I've kind of run into a wall in terms of some parts of the game, mainly with the Happy Homeroom missions. The mission I'm on currently, I don't have seem to have enough of the required furniture unlocked yet to pass the level, and I don't really know when I'll unlock them, so it kind of feels like the game is bottle-necked. I'm still checking in every day or so just to do a couple tasks and check the rotating furniture.

TCGP has been okay. I have managed to keep my streak of getting all the emblems so far, but I still feel like I'm not really keeping up with the meta all that well. The power creep is very real and the battles with other players don't leave a lot of wiggle room for "weird" decks to shine because most of the popular options are very hard-hitting and fast to set up. It's still fun though, and I've been getting lucky pulls. Except for the cards that I really want, of course. (For some reason the game refuses to let me pull a Rocky Helmet. Also Cynthia full art, but the trainer full arts are super rare in this game so I'm not very surprised. I've gotten 2 so far: Blaine and Mars.)

The good news is that I have absolutely no desire to gamble on this game and pay for packs. If I do end up spending money on this game at some point, it'll be specifically for something cosmetic. I just want a Pichu icon and hopefully a matching card sleeve/playmat. I was very briefly tempted by the Cynthia cosmetic stuff, but it was like $20, which is more than I'm willing to pay for this game, so IDK. ╮（╯＿╰）╭

  Go! Princess Precure

I also wanted to start journaling about the current Precure season I'm watching, too. My partner and I have been going through and watching more or less every Precure season in whatever order we feel like, and right now we're on Princess Precure. I watched up until about episode 30? on my own, but we started from the beginning to watch it all the way through. It's a fantastic season. I think the princess theme might scare some people away by making them think it's too childish or something, but that's a mistake. It's just the right balance of dramatic, campy and uplifting. One of the characters also gives great representation of the effects of trauma and how to move forward from it while also embracing the impact it's had on you. I'd like to go into more detail on it after I've finished the entire season, but if you're reading this and you haven't watched it (especially if you're interested in magical girl media), this is my Official Endorsement (∩^o^)⊃━☆