Blog: Games of November 2021

I don't think I've had a month before, where I haven't played five games. I was pretty busy this month, and my PC is borked, so I guess I got to be focused for November. I'm looking forward to playing a bit more over December. I'm just about finished Secret of Mana and I'm trying to decide what to play next. I've been thinking about playing Legend of Mana, but also Final Fantasy 9 and 12, and maybe Eastward, and the Skyward Sword remake. The Axe of the Blood God is also doing a pantheon/game club playthrough of Chrono Cross, which I was thinking of playing sometime soon as well. So I have no idea what I'm going to do next, but at least I have options.

My top five games (by play time) for November were:

1. Secret of Mana (Collection of Mana) - I think I've played Secret of Mana more than any other game. It's certainly one of the two games I first fell in love with as a kid (along with Illusion of Gaia). I played a bit when the Collection of Mana first came out, but decided when I finished Trials of Mana that it would be interesting to go back to where I started and play again. It's been fun, sometimes frusterating (I've tried to do a more-or-less low level run), and a little weird. There are several things I'd forgotten and a few I don't think I'd ever seen before.
   
   
   
   


2. Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Continuing to try to "git good". I had a fair bit of fun, although honestly playing ALTTP makes me want to play Illusion of Gaia more often than not. They have very similar game play and IoG is beautiful (and I love it). I started to do a second play through to keep building towards "gitting good" but trailed off as the month got busy.
   
   
   
   


3. Trials of Mana (Collection of Mana) - Playing the original after the remake has been interesting. I've tried and bounced off this game quite a few times in the past. I'm thinking I'll write a combined "things" post about both the original and the remake - and Secret of Mana as well. Overall, I'm glad I played it certainly has a lot of interesting elements. I'm not sure how I would have felt if I played it back when it was originally released, and it does have some flaws by modern game standards, but it's really pretty and fairly fun.
   
   
   
   


4. Super Mario Odyssey - I barely play this, but I finished the "main game" and started on the post game bit and the flow and joy in running around this game has been great.
   
   
   
   


Here's my total play time chart for November:






And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month: