Week of 08 Oct 2023
“Fall seven times, and stand up eight.”
Achievements Earned In:
- Trek to Yomi
- Vampire Survivors
- State of Decay
- The Book of Unwritten Tales 2
Boy, did Trek to Yomi end up being far less challenging than I had expected. I pretty quickly finished up my first playthrough on Ronin (hard) difficulty, though even without the one-hit death mechanic of the subsequent playthrough the bosses were kinda tough. The final boss especially was quite a douche, with multiple phases requiring quick reflexes. And with him down it was on to the second playthrough on the one-hit Kensei mode. Having to complete the entire game without taking damage is obviously conducive to unlocking the “kill boss without getting hit” achievements. They were pretty easy, except, again, the final boss. Jeez, did I rage at beating that douche! The first phase is easy enough (parry overhead strike, strong slash, repeat) and the second phase is also pretty easy (roll behind, spinning back attack into strong slashes, dodge attack, repeat). The challenge came in the third phase, when the boss summons two spirits to attack you. One of them attacks slowly enough that you can parry and counter, but the other has a much more difficult to counter rapid attack. I died most often by a longshot here! The nice thing about this difficulty, though, is the bosses have less health than on the just-completed Ronin difficulty, making it actually easier overall to quickly beat them before I took damage. I did finally complete this run, obviously, and moved to my final playthrough on easy for the third ending. I also still needed all of the upgrades, though I missed one in the fourth stage and had to play a fourth partial playthrough to pick that one up and completing the game!
Achievements unlocked: 28 (+20) | Completed
Oh man, I need to hurry and ask the spirits for an umbrella!
On Monday, I jumped on Vampire Survivors quick to polish off the Tides of the Foscari content. I just needed to evolve Shadow Servant (the starting weapon of Genevieve Gruyère) while killing 6000 Sammies in the Lake Foscari map. Easy peasy. Then later in the week I jumped back in to clear the Astral Stair map of the three artifacts scattered about, clearing that set of update achievements, too. And… yeah, all I have left is to defeat the base game’s final boss and do the usual with the unlocked character and I’m all done!
Until the upcoming DLC, at least.
Achievements unlocked: 187 (+5) | Completion: 98%
With my jaunty trip to Yomi completed, it was back to my jaunty slog through State of Decay. It seems they’d fixed the Xbox 360 connection issues over the weekend, so I was able to jump back in on Wednesday. Really, most of my time in this game this week was spent moping up the last few cumulative achievements I had in the base game. I’d been avoiding a particular mission because I didn’t think it was important, but soon after finally doing it did the final mission for The Law come up, allowing me to knock out the final missable campaign achievement. I also moved my home base over to the trucking depot building in the southwest of the map, which is a much more ideal location. And I haven’t looted all the buildings around there yet. I think I might be moving to the DLC in the next few days! Which will allow me to retry the “shoot one of your own people before they turn” achievement since Brad got sick and then… off’d himself. Lame. I wanted/needed to do that! And then I ended the week by blowing myself up with a grenade, unlocking one of two achievements for dying because this game has been so easy I hadn’t been killed yet.
Achievements unlocked: 27 (+23) | Completion: 59%
Jumped into The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 a couple of times this week to start chipping away at that bore of a completion. I have put off stacking this completion for a few years now, because I remember when I did the Xbox One version back in 2018 that I really did not enjoy the gameplay or story. Played through a few dialogues and put this back down. Nightmare.
Achievements unlocked: 4 (+3) | Completion: 8%
Highest ratio: 8.21
Unstoppable (Trek to Yomi)
Lowest ratio: 1.05
Master Mechanic (The Book of Unwritten Tales 2)
