May 2025 Progress Report
Lots of big games completed this month! Forbidden West has been a long time coming, but with the severe (possibly memory leak issues) complications made it very hard to just play normally and beat the game. I doubt there will be any updates to fix it though, considering this has apparently been an issue for a while now. TCG Card Sim was something that got my attention and had me in a chokehold for a while, it was pretty fun opening card packs and being a shopkeeper than I anticipated. The game is still in Early Access but it’s pretty much done if anyone else wants to buy it, I think card grading is in the works as a near future update! As for Skyrim, I was having trouble getting a short game to play but me and two friends decided to be a bit cheeky and see who can 100% Skyrim first, I think I got second place but in my defense I was unaware of the Telekenesis trick nor that I had to be lvl 78 to just get a Legendary Dragon to spawn in the first place.
For June, I plan on playing some Hyperdimesion Neptunia, but other than that I’m not anticipating anything crazy. I still have a few snowballs still to get through, so I’ll do one or two of those and depending on how fast I can 100% Nep Nep, I would really like to get into Immortals Fenyx rising!
Hope everyone has a successful June!
Total games added to backlog: 3 (Bentou bundle: Harvest Moon, Perfect Gold, Cat Is Cute.)
Total completed: 4
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Horizon Forbidden West™ Complete Edition
Aloy has successfully restored Gaia, and finally earned the recognition she wanted from her tribe. Along the way, Aloy made many friends built lasting connections, while uncovering her true identity and purpose – to protect the world just as her predecessors once did. But Aloy’s mission is far from over. To fully let Gaia do as she was designed to do, Aloy must venture out into the uncharted Forbidden West, seeking out Gaia’s missing sub-functions needed to heal the land and purge it of the spreading Blight. The fate of the world is still uncertain, and Aloy’s fight is far from finished!
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30-100+ hours to complete, Horizon Forbidden West is a visually gorgeous game with rich storylines, an absolutely massive and immersive open world, lifelike NPCs and a huge variety of enemies. In many ways, it feels like a refined and upgraded version of Horizon Zero Dawn! I spent 90 wonderful breathtaking hours on the highest graphical settings and for a while, it was an incredible experience. However, the longer I played, the more the game’s performance deteriorated. Eventually, even on the lowest settings I faced severe stuttering, random black screens pausing my gameplay to let the environmental rendering catch up, and ridiculously long loading times – up to 10-15 minutes! While there were some temporary fixes, there were no lasting solutions and it felt like I was constantly patching a sinking ship just to reach the end of the main storyline and complete the Burning Shores DLC. My computer hardware is more than capable of handing a game like this, but Forbidden West was acting like I was trying to run it on a refrigerator! After browsing forums and reading about similar issues on the discussion pages, I’m convinced the issues lies in the poorly optimized PC port and possibly a significant memory leak issue.
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Buyer Beware: Horizon Forbidden West is a fantastic game, but if you’re planning to play on PC, make sure your setup is WELL BEYOND the recommended specs – or better yet, experience it on the console it was clearly designed for.
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TCG Card Shop Simulator
30-100 hours to complete, TCG Card Shop Simulator is a first-person shopkeeping sim featuring Tetramon, a popular card game. As the storekeeper, hire employees and expand your shop and warehouse by slowly purchasing the buildings next to you as well as new licenses to stock popular products such as card sleeves, plushies, playmats, dice, and board games. Customers can play Tetramon inside the store as well should you place down gaming tables, and will use various purchased items such as playmats as you unlock them. Additionally, as Storekeeper and owner you have the fun option of scheduling tournaments, decorating your store by changing the walls and floors, or adding plants, posters, and large statues. You may also trade and buy cards to complete your own Tetramon collection!
Overall, I had a pretty fantastic time. Despite being early access, there is plenty to do and you can expect the developer to update the game about once a month. At the time of this review, I would very much consider this a full, completed game but the developer still has a bit of roadmap they would like to complete, such as Card Grading and actually being able to play Tetramon yourself which I am excited for! As for cons, I can only really think of two. The rent is really, really high and it doesn’t get better as your store expands – at max level, my rent, not including employee pay and reordering products, was about 3k per day which barely had me making a positive net income some days; and after playing 100+ hours I really do wish it was weekly as it’s a bit rough starting out. Second, employees should slowly gain experience over time and not maintain their starting speeds, and I really wish I could reward employees with card packs or free products as bonuses. Definitely consider picking TCG Card Shop Simulator up!
Perfect Gold
Two young girls from wildly different backgrounds meet and fall in love at the magical academy LeFay, a school for those seeking and pursuing the art of alchemy, healing, and controlling the elements. Audrey Clarey is a heiress who has always lived in the city of Castlecoast, her family famous for their transmutations into gold; while Marion LaRue is a rebellious girl from Doveport, a small town near the sea, seeking to hone her fire elemental abilities and earn her fame. It’s almost love at first sight, but their spark sputters out after their first kiss due to the completely separate worlds they live in. Can they get a second chance? Do they even want one?
Perfect Gold is a 3-6 hour Yuri slice-of-life visual novel that features animated character sprites and CGs in addition to its full voice acting, complete with character sliders in the settings. In particular, I really liked the art style; it’s super cute, and the animator did a fantastic job with facial expressions and casual movements. While I do think this VN is honestly kinda cheesy and can be a bit over dramatic, it’s absolutely worth picking up and playing if Perfect Gold even remotely interests you.
Wow! Huge games! Congratz! Especially admirable with the addition of memory leaks (and I guess probably frequent crashes). What patience! And the challenge to complete Skyrim first is just… the kind of thing I wish I had friends who did. :)
Surprisingly, there were no crashes in Forbidden West, just some crazy long loading times. For every issue, there was a short-term fix, but I genuinely had the impression I was plugging holes in a sinking ship. I wanted to enjoy the ending and the DLC more, but the issues honestly added 20 more hours into my playthrough than it needed. I probably won’t do NG+ until there is an update by the company or I stumble on a solid patch on Nexus. Having your game degrade the more you play it is not something I’ve ever experienced before and I’m not too keen on doing it again.
If you’re interested in reading more, I made a small thread and the discussion pages has other users mentioning similar issues.: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2420110/discussions/0/603028545007064038/
As for the Skyrim Speedrun, it was honestly pretty sudden but there are a lot of users on this website who might be enticed to do something similar should you suggest it! Everyone is pretty keen on assassinating their backlog… eventually!
Yikes! sounds really painful. I admire your patience and perseverance. Must have felt doubly good to get it over with, in a sense :)
Recruiting peeps on this site for those kinds of challenges is a really interesting idea. I’ll keep it in mind!
You were still behind even before I deployed the Telekinesis trick :)
Nice progress otherwise.
It’s not my fault you don’t sleep!!!!
Also tyvm!
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I don’t know how you could complete Skyrim in a so short period of time. Hat off!
Thanks! I’ll be taking my time replaying the original version… again! (And seeing about 100%’ing that one too.)
It was worth doing anyhow; I did a lot of quests I’ve never done before.
Couple super big assassinations this month. Very cool. Skyrim is always worth revisiting here and there and Forbidden West was a ton of fun IMO. I played on console though, so I didn’t experience those crazy load times and such.
Bet that was gorgeous!!!! I would have been flying everywhere instead of fast traveling if Forbidden West didn’t have a stroke rendering the graphics every time I flew. I would have had so much fun with the wavestriders but every time I dived to hit the water the game was like “Hey, hol’ up, don’t do that.”
Well I can see there was some post-apoc vibe in your month’s games – congratulations =) I bounced off Horizon: Zero Dawn (13.5h, 15/79 achievements) – great aesthetic, but gameplay so very Ubisoft for a non-Ubisoft game. Did you find H:FW significantly less grindy/formulaic than H:ZD?
Not really? About the same level of grind. Lots of general gameplay improvements though, you can climb pretty much anything now without slipping off, flying, combat has improved as has enemy variety, the cauldrons were still pretty freakin’ cool. More like the grind became more fun? Also in the Burning Shore DLC there are even more new enemies, including Wavestriders, a mount that dives underwater and can swim.
One of my favorite things, aside from the ability to fly with your new mounts, are the grabbing animations to pick you up. The first time it happened it was like a hawk went after a mouse!! Thay also snatch you from the water and are pretty useful in combat getting some air as you can jump right back off em’ right away.
I’m a bit salty they removed the whistling function, but tbh I abused that in the first game for free ez stealth kills.
Thanks for the thoughts. I guess it’ll be a game I’ll at least try if I win a key or it comes onto gamepass or perhaps a bundle I like
Oh competitive Skyrim playing is an interesting idea!
I’ve only played… 40 hours of Skyrim.
I tried to play it again last year but the beginning in the cart it was bugged out and was upside down… I decided I can’t be bothered fixing it and moved on again 😂
That’s a bit of a shame. If you want another try at it, there are plenty of stabilization mods on Nexus and some quality-of-life updates I seriously recommend. If you ever want a list of my go-to’s for a normal Skyrim playthrough, don’t hesitate to let me know!