At least they got rid of the horribly designed all-in-one internet toggle, but this is still a pointless extra click. I have limited mobile data and disabling it helps with battery life. Stop being so pushy, Google!
Gosh, I've realized I don't finish games lol. I've put many hours in Forza Horizon, Factorio, Pokemon, Cities Skylines, and incremental games but here are the ones I actually beat in 2023 so far, although I'm about to beat Pokemon Scarlet so I'll include that too.
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Pokemon Sun (cartridge). (4/10). Why am I rating this so low? It's my least favorite Pokemon game I've played. I finished it this year, but started it in 2018. The game leans way too heavy on the story and not in the gameplay. The game felt like a huge downgrade from OR/AS. It also plays incredibly slow. Not touching Gen 7 again. The battles were nice and intense with enough difficulty to excite me though.
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Chip Defense (8/10). You can find it on F-droid, and it's free. It's a little tower defense game with a theme on CPUs and instructions. It took me a few hours to beat all the levels and it hooked me.
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Pokemon White (emulator), limited pokemon center challenge. (9.3/10). I absolutely love Gen 5 and I did a challenge a lot like a Nuzlocke but more interesting and far less stressful. You can only catch the first pokemon on each route, and any non-forced heal would cost 5000*2^(number of prior heals done) poke dollars. That way, I could have a pokemon faint and not have it be the end of my 40 hour playthrough. I actually (unintentionally) lost to Ghetsis at the end but I planned for that and had enough money for one more heal, and then beat him the 2nd time.
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Factorio Bob's/Angel's (hardcore Factorio mod). (9.5/10). Do you like Factorio but want 10x more complicated recipes that include lots of byproducts to deal with? Then this mod is for you! It took me 123 hours to launch a rocket, and apparently that's pretty quick. The base is one huge pile of spaghetti with a 90 lane bus split into three.
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Pokémon Scarlet (cartridge). (8/10). I haven't quite gotten to the credits yet but I've beaten the Top Champion so I'm very close. This game is one of the most fun pokemon games imo despite being extremely flawed. The open world is a huge breath of fresh air after the last 4 gens being 4 big lines. The frame drops are not the really annoying thing about this game, it's the cutscenes and long battle animations. (Gen 7 was even worse with this). The exploration isn't groundbreaking but I love how random encounters were ditched for overworld pokemon (even with the lamentable draw distance), that you could run into and instantly fight without a 10s cutscene playing. Trainers are finally all optional. I don't play for the story but it's one of the better ones for pokemon games. Having multiple arcs at the same time keeps things interesting for me. The game isn't the most difficult (probably average+ for pokemon standards) but I made it satisfyingly hard on myself when forcing myself to comply with set mode, no items in battle, and trying to win while underleveled. Also the music is a masterpiece, bravo Giacomo.
I've played a bit of the Pokemon Adventures Red version romhack, but never completed that as it wasn't particularly interesting. What ROM hacks would you recommend? I'd like a challenge but nothing crazy.