What I Got Up To This Month (March '26)

Given it was yet another pretty crummy month for me mentally, I'm looking into changing some of my medications and am discussing with my therapist what I can do to improve things. My life, in its current form, is not sustainable, and I desperately want things to get better. If I don't change things... well, let's just say I need to change things.

Slay the Spire 2 entered Early Access and I've played a bit of that. While I'm not exactly a stranger to these games, I've "only" played about ten hours of the original. I don't quite know what compelled me to buy this sequel instead of just going back and playing more of that first one, perhaps it was just FOMO but whatever the reason, this game seems very good already. I got my first victory after about five hours and I don't know whether that was just luck or if the character I chose just hasn't been fully balanced yet. I certainly felt like I lucked into that win, regardless. I don't know how much of it I'll play in the immediate future, I feel like this is something I may check in on periodically as it works its way through Early Access, but I already recommend it.

I also played a fair amount Bungie's Marathon. Well, Bungie's new Marathon that's an extraction shooter. I have my issues with the structure of the game, and the genre as a whole, really, but Bungie knows how to make a good-feeling shooter and they've done it yet again. I wrote a bit about it here, if you're interested.

Another thing I've been playing was Pokopia, the new game somewhat in the vein of Dragon Quest Builders. I haven't played those games, but seeing as this was themed around something I'm more familiar with, and that it seems to have been receiving glowing reviews, I knew I had to give it a try. It's really good! The writing is sharp and the gameplay is simple but calming. I imagine this'll take me a while to work through, but I think I'll probably do a writeup on it when I'm finished with it.

I have a tendency to fall into various online rabbit holes, and recently that's meant I've been watching a lot of the Technology Connections. This is a YouTube channel that typically will go into excruciating detail about various electronics and mechanical devices and I just find them incredibly enjoyable. I'm not entirely sure why, if I'm being honest, but he makes hearing-about-some-piece-of-tech-I've-never-thought-about sound interesting or, at the very least, informative. I know how a catalytic converter works now! He's also from Illinois and I appreciate someone who espouses midwestern ideals of something being "good enough" or a good value.

My Horror Trek may have ended a few years ago, but a new Resident Evil came out so I played through it because obviously I did. RESIDENT EVIL requiem was a delight because it's  effectively split between RE7-style horror and RE4make-style action, with copious fanservice and callbacks throughout. I even went so far as to update the blog post I wrote a week or so after I initially published it because I was having a blast replaying the game and felt I had more to say. The game feels like a culmination of everything in the series up to this point, and I truly have no idea where they plan on going next.

As for my other ongoing series, I finally got back on the Yakuza train and started Kurohyou 2. It's more Kurohyou (that's a good thing). I really dug that first game and by all accounts this second one feels very strong already. As always, I'll have more to say once I finish it, but for now just know that I'm enjoying stepping back into this series, and especially enjoying returning to Ukyo Tatsuya. It also inspired me to write about fighting games because, well, this is sort of a fighting game!