Brian Bloodaxe

Play
Mass Effect 3 = After finishing the trilogy I immediately restarted ME3 on insane pretending it's a shooty bang dudebro game like Gears of War. I'm actually having a lot of fun blasting through with James and Garrus and seeing what other options the game has when you aren't taking it too seriously. did you know you can ditch Dr Chakwas and replace her with young french Dr Michel? I didn't.

Ocarina of Time - I recently finished this on 3DS. I probably already posted about it. It was good but kind of empty.

Want
After ME3 I'm going to sit down with another long game. I'm enjoying playing all these things I've been putting off for literal years. I might restart Persona 4, Trails in the Sky or Tears of the Kingdom. I stalled out about ten hours into each one.

I just ran the second of two incredible sessions of Reach of the Roach God. Both sessions were absolutely defined by random magical mishaps. It looked like the group were going to make zero, or negative, progress toward their campaign goal, but that flipped right at the end of last night's session.

So last week, session 25, started with a rest. They were all hurt and low on magic so they made camp. I made two 1 in 6 encounter checks and they both triggered. One fight would have probably been ok, two though… They got scared.

One player decided to cast a dangerous spell, which summons a manifestation of the target's worst fear. This dealt with the Thorn Tiger threat, but left a snake god simulacrum living in this forest. Also through a series of poor rolls and unexpected decisions the caster became a ghost.

So since the fake snake god is sitting in a vital forest that the local village very much relies on, yesterday's session was mostly about dealing with that. The other party mage tries a weird portal spell to turn it back on itself, this certainly confuses it, but also has the side effect that it flips the snake god's gravity, and it falls into the sky. This would be job done, except two of the party were still on the snake…

Anyway, they kill the snake, the PCs make it back to the ground. The next problem hits when that second mage passed through a door and time stops for everyone but her (another effect from a poorly cast spell). In her desperation to fix this, she summons the presence of Odoyok, the titular Roach God.

Suddenly what was a hilarious farce chain of side-tracks becomes horrifically serious as one PC has to confront a power they know they aren't ready to face as a party let alone solo.

It was great and ended up with Odoyok facing the whole party in an attempt to learn about them and then the mage who triggered this cluster fuck finished it off by choosing the perfect spell and in its failure learning more about the Roach God than they could have hoped!

So yeah, super pleased. I love that two whole sessions of shenanigans can suddenly be absolutely meaningful.

Also, I can't recommend Wonder & Wickedness enough!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/145647/wonder-wickedness

I finally reached the end of Mass Effect Legendary Edition. I still love it. All of it. As I said in the PWB, I think I had convinced myself that ME3 wasn't as good as I remembered, that I had only liked it back in the day because I was such a fan of ME1 and ME2. But ME3 is a pretty incredible story itself, it's so bleak and the feeling that you are running just ahead of utter catastrophe never really lets up. Even the endings are hardly wins.

That said, this play through was the first time I played the Citadel DLC. Which I loved! Total fan service but it fitted and felt earned. BUT… it does kind of stand out as being the only upbeat part of a brutally grim game.

• Watch Morden atone for the Krogan genocide
• Save the Geth from annihilation as the Quarrians start another war
• Choose between saving the Geth or getting help in the galactic effort from the Quarrians
• Accompany your PA to a board game tournament and cheer her on
• Watch the fall of Thessia…

The Leviathan and Omega DLCs were good too. Javik adds nothing to the game though.

tldr: Great stuff. Unique. Still holds up despite some janky bits. Spaceships.

The Citadel DLC in ME3 was every bit as good as everyone always said. Just a joy to play.

Play
I stalled out on my party through of Mass Effect Legendary Edition back in the summer when I got stuck on a bit in an ME3 DLC. I decided it was time to wrap it up and I have spent the last couple weeks being reminded that I really do like this game.

I think all the negativity around it convinced me that I only enjoyed ME3 because of how much I liked the previous games. Which I guess is half right. The combat isn't great, although it is fine. The story can be a bit abrupt at times. But I can't think of another game which presented such cataclysmic stakes, and then actually followed through on them. I love this galaxy and one world at a time you get to see the Reapers tear it apart. Everywhere you go people are telling each other stories about what they've lost, wondering what happens next. It feels like there's a war going on. It feels like there's a war being lost!

It's a much more complete experience than I remember too, helped by the fact that I now have the DLCs. I'm looking forward to finally playing the Citadel DLC.