Cyberpunk: sex, romance and murder

I mostly play jrpgs, but after 100 hours of Unicorn Overlord, I needed a break. I have some games for Playstation in my backlog and I don’t normally collect for the console unless I find something at a good price or an exclusive. I bought two more Vanillaware games, Odin Sphere and Dragon’s Crown, which I intend to play later. However, I still had a copy of Cyberpunk 2077 laying around and never got to it after picking it up some months ago. I have a faint idea that the game had serious problems when it came out. If it had, it doesn’t anymore, just the occasional crash here and there. The most annoying one happened on a mission with Claire to participate on a street race. I suck at driving but, for some reason, I ride her pickup truck – aptly called Beast – fairly well. So I was in the middle of the first race and the game crashed. Then, I finished the race and won, and the game crashed. Then, I finished it in second place and the game didn’t crash. Well then, second place it is. I never experienced those crashes anymore and won the subsequent races. After we finished she asked if I’d help her kill her husband’s murderer during the last race. I obliged because I’m not in Night City to be a good person. I kill whomever I want, when I want, how I want and go to bed with everyone I fancy and pay for sex without a second thought.

In jrpgs we have to save the world to get the girl we like in the end. It’s real work and dedication. The character development is also so extensive that by the time we reach the end we have spent a while choosing the right things to say, advancing through a support level system, giving gifts, doing things together, a bit like in real life. In Night City, and also a bit like in real life, we can pay and have someone fake their interest in us. It’s the perspective from the other side. Since I’ve never paid for sex in real life, I might as well try it in a simulated environment and the experience was acceptable. I went to bed with a character after getting an sms to meet and it felt completely random because I didn’t know what was going to happen. It was that unlikeable Corpo executive woman right at the start of the game, when I was still getting my bearings. After the mission where she offered me money to retrieve a Militech drone, I didn’t accept it because I didn’t trust her intentions, and chose the less likeable dialogue options. So, by the time I got her sms, I chose the option «Shame. Was starting to like you…» not because I did but because I was being sarcastic. And then, bang, I ended up in bed with her. I enjoyed Night City.

Not long after, I was in another district ready to meet Evelyn and there were some folks on the street. A guy asked me something and I was so overwhelmed checking the menus and trying to learn the game that I said yes and paid a small fee. I honestly thought it was a mission of some kind. I went to bed with him, or I’d rather say, he went to be with me and that was it. So, I learned how it worked and approached a woman standing on the other side of the street and this time, armed with knowledge, I asked if she wanted to go with me and I paid the fee. I think I went to bed with more people but now, after some hours of gameplay, I don’t remember. In real life I have a preference for women, or I’d rather say, for people who identify as women, despite the body they were born with. One day I was talking about trans issues with my wife and I asked if she would consider staying with me if I transitioned from female to male. The question was relevant at the time because it came from a period where I had to figure myself out. She said yes, she would stay with me. She earned herself rank S++ with me without even knowing it. To those who are curious, I’m still very much a cisgender woman, however that realization didn’t come without some soul searching.

In Cyberpunk, people perform their gender freely and have all types of sexual preferences and fantasies. They also have agency, wants and needs. I met Panam and I was on a spree getting into bed with everyone in my way, or killing everyone in my way, depending on the mission. We were paying for a hotel room and she insisted on getting a room with separate beds. I still made an advance but she said no. Later down the line, another opportunity arose. I had to test the game. I made my advance and she said no again. Ok, a second no is much more awkward than the first one and by then I was just being creepy. I felt ashamed, but at the same time it’s only natural that not everyone is into us, contrary to jrpgs or L-word. Panam likes our V (it’s the name of our character) and that’s what matters. I see her as an annoying friend that’s always getting into trouble and calls me screaming for help and the help always involves me failing at stealth and killing everyone on my path and then getting scolded for it. I like Panam.

In jrpgs our character is usually a young boy. A clueless, naive boy for whom all the female characters fall for no matter what he does. Everyone says yes and the agency is on him to choose his partner. His love interest is by default in love with him. The only thing we have to do as a player is to rise in the ranks until the option to romance is prompted. In games like Persona 3 Portable we can romance several people (I’m not sure if we have to, to get max social link, but I think so – they changed that in Reload) and in Fire Emblem Three Houses we can only give our ring to one person. If the person is female she’ll always be interested in our character if we’re playing as male, as long as we get the A-support rank. In case we play as a female Byleth the same-sex romance options are more limited. If we play as a male Byleth and happen to be gay or curious, there’s only one romance option. This sends a message, doesn’t it? Or am I reading too much into things? All in all, thank the goddess that Rhea is bissexual. It was the only thing I wanted to know, since I refuse playing as a guy in jrpgs if I have the other option.

Back to Cyberpunk, no really means no, much like the no I had to give River Wards when we were having the conversation. I had no intention whatsoever in landing on a relationship with him, but the way they structured the conversation left a tightness in my chest. Still, I had to be true to myself. River is not my type. The last mission of his storyline was great and it had a good dose of creepy moments. The way his parents died when he was young was gruesome and like out of a home invasion horror movie. The mission went well, as much as things can go well in Night City, which is not much, just enough to get by. Then I jumped into another set of quests and I was hunting Cyberpsychos across the city as instructed by Regina.

By this time I’d already driven on my motorcycle collecting tarot cards. They have beautiful designs and I recommend getting all of them. However, the first cyberpsycho came before the tarot card hunt and I thought I had to kill him. After a while Regina started getting a bit passive-aggressive with me because I was killing what she saw as test subjects and it was most desirable to make a tiny bit of effort to keep them alive in order to save them. Well, I didn’t know about that! The last half of cyberpsychos were handled with care and in stealth mode or using my blades to defend from bullets, parrying melee attacks and doing counterattacks, or using quickhacks. Using defensive combat was as effective as using stealth. I had to take a break from my killing spree but the reward was nice in the end – probably could be nicer if I hadn’t killed the first half of them – a Playstation trophy popped and it’s always good when it does.

I still have the police side activities and some minor requests to do before progressing the main story but I don’t know if I’ll finish them. Before I make some progress, I have Judy’s quest to complete. I want to see where the main story goes but I also can’t get enough of Night City and its many secrets. It’s a nice game and much less buggy than Starfield which I also played for hours on end.

Seiros’ apology

** Massive spoilers for Fire Emblem Three Houses, religious themes and internalised misogyny **

It’s strange when you keep getting an annoying pull to write about a specific subject and yet there’s always something hindering that wish. I don’t want to make this personal space overly heavy with walls of text because I tend to go back to older posts to recall some games and I like it to be accessible to me and to the 5 or 6 of you who read my texts for which I’m very grateful. One of the reasons I write about video games is to remember the games I’ve been playing without jumbling everything in my head like, for example, mixing character names, storylines, or having a faint memory of a game like I do with, say, Dungeon Siege II. I played it for many hours but I don’t remember anything about the story. Or Morrowind. I remember it was the darker Elder Scrolls game I’ve played. I remember emotions, not facts, feelings, not scenes.

My memory is a problem because it deceives me constantly. For example, I love Rhea from Fire Emblem Three Houses, and yet she murdered people, experimented on children (to put it mildly) is a self-proclaimed Saint and a cult leader. The negative things always come to memory. No real live Saint worthy of their station calls themselves a Saint. They couldn’t, in practice, because canonization is a posthumous act and it takes years, if not decades, to recognize. And yet, if you want to respect the canon you have to give credit to the Catholic Church, something I have a problem with, but I don’t judge those who do not. I asked myself why I would be so drawn towards a villain, but if you asked my mother she’d easily recall the times when everything I liked in movies, anime or other media, were villains.

Rhea singing the Song of the Nabateans after the ball

In the case of Rhea what attracted me the most was her power, beauty, sadness and drive. The fact that she’s a woman may have played a role. Then again, she’s fragile, old and afraid. She’s so afraid of Nemesis that her whole convo with Claude at the end of Verdant Green was extremely uncomfortable to get into. I wasn’t expecting so much hesitation and fear coming out of an antagonist, especially one that has been making the life of our main character so confusing. And yet, those who went the extra mile and married her, will be able to read one of the best apologies and love declarations Fire Emblem has ever seen. I think that my timing was perfect after four playthroughs of too much to bear. A character that develops differently across different storylines can easily fall into oblivion because it’s not expected that people invest so much time into a game replaying it constantly and I don’t remember any game with such a rich story hidden from plain sight, intentionally or not.

Sothis

Right at the start it’s clear that our villain is having many problems dealing with grief after the loss of her mother which has arisen to a goddess status. Sothis is the goddess of Fódlan and protector of the land and all its living things. She’s in fact an overpowered alien force. Many of her children were able to transform into powerful dragons, but the few that are left have lost that power, and the only one who can still summon that power is Rhea. If you consider a dragon to be akin to a god I won’t blame you. 

“Just being a woman is enough to make my wings droop, let alone the fact that I’m such a wicked one.” — Teresa of Ávila 

It’s clear that the representation of religion in video games, especially the Catholic denomination, is done in a very negative light. It’s better than the alternative, because we shouldn’t be creating works of art to convert people to what many perceive as lies and spiritual misery. A dragon Archbishop that dominates the land is a safe option for everyone. You see, faith is not the problem; you can believe in anything you want if it makes you happy – you get kudos if it’s dragons. It’s what you do with it and in its name that’s the problem. People are the problem. So, if you have any form of faith that helps you get through life and its many challenges, try to stay away from people of the same faith and don’t proselytise. Be aware of any form of organised religion and don’t listen to what other people say, especially if they came out of nowhere and aren’t a part of your safe space. Don’t let them in, ever. In case those zealots are already inside your safe space – run. There – now you’re safe to play Fire Emblem Three Houses. 

Yes, the Church of Seiros is very loosely based on the Catholic Church and Archbishop Rhea is very loosely based on the authority of the Pope. Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes mentioned her stance towards other forms of faith in a positive light in bits and pieces of dialogue, but that’s not important for now. Rhea’s rage at the start of the game is nothing but pure revenge against her mother’s murderer. It’s a crime of passion but not only that. She’s both a victim and a warrior. If you see the battle scene where she confronts Nemesis, the fear in her eyes is palpable. After she wins the fight, she’s an emotional wreck.

Payback

Mental illness, trauma, grief and suffering gave birth to the Church of Seiros. Since she’s a part of another species – the Nabateans – which are on the verge of extinction, there’s a sense of urgency in survival and what else works best than to dominate through faith and a system of nobility with its inception in the goddess herself? The mythology of Three Houses is complex but it’s very well explained in the Fire Emblem wiki. Those bits and pieces can elude us while we’re actually worried about the best class builds and the wiki did a good job in putting together the mythology in their Three Houses Online Bible, totally free and without pop-ups of priests asking for donations. 

The system of nobility is closely connected with the power of crests which are solely gotten by birth – and not always guaranteed – originated from the goddess and imbued with the power of dragons, corrupted by Nemesis – the glutton – at a later stage and retaining a special synergy with a matching relic weapon, giving absolute power over all non-crest-bearers and implementing a hierarchy of power and abuse. Because everyone abuses at a certain point, even Seiros. Of course none of this shitshow should be allowed to continue and someone would eventually start a revolution for the power of meritocracy, because that fallacy is still in good health in current days. The power of humans over the alien dragon, to extinguish anything that could pose a threat to what humans can do “for justice,” not before having had a taste of that very same source by stealing, pilling, destroying and abusing, like humans do so well, and fighting for that objective using the power of another set of beings – the Agarthans – by destroying, pilling and abusing until there’s a big nothing left and people can return to their lives and abusing each other in other ways. The endless cycle. 

“Do you think […] that it is an easy matter to have to do business with the world, to live in the world, and, as I have said, to live as worldly men do, and yet inwardly to be strangers to the world, and enemies of the world, like persons who are in exile – to be, in short, not men but angels?” — Teresa of Ávila 

“Or priests with a sword,” like my wife says, with a snarly tone. I prefer to use the metaphor of an army of angels and not all of them good angels, however, all of them exalting unspeakable force.

We talk a lot about religion, me and her. Not all the time, but every time we do it, we go on and on for hours. The best chats we can possibly have about religion are either with fervorous atheists like my wife or someone from another faith altogether. It helps with perspective and it exercises tolerance and curiosity. Our last one was about the origins of monotheistic religions, about Judaism – which I still know so little about – and how monotheistic religions are systems that firmly establish patriarchal values, etc. I think this is why the gender of the powerful representative of the Church of Seiros feels so out of place and absurd that’s actually exciting. However, in the eyes of the Catholic church, a woman is naturally wicked, like Teresa, in all her self-deprecating glory, earned the title of Saint, something she wouldn’t have agreed on in life. A woman that was at the mercy of “learned men” for her entire life but who was smart enough at choosing her allies.

[Such endearing words] are very effeminate; and I should not like you to be that, or even appear to be that, in any way, my daughters; I want you to be strong men. If you do all that is in you, the Lord will make you so manly that men themselves will be amazed at you. – Teresa of Ávila

I want you to transform into a dragon, like the Immaculate One.

The Knights of Seiros were the army of the Church of Seiros but none of them was especially notorious, except Jeralt which was cured with Rhea’s blood, and also Catherine whom had for Rhea a dedication and love that transcended every belief system, solely focused on the person instead of her station. I decided to pair Catherine with another lover, therefore preventing her from having the heartbreak of the century. I paired her with Shamir, a down-to-earth atheist mercenary from the Knights of Seiros whom, at the time, felt indebted to Rhea. The Archbishop herself didn’t mind the lack of devotion. It’s what happens when you need all the help you can get.

This is where my mind can go on a Saturday morning without enough cups of espresso. So, in the end, if we decide to tame the beast and defeat the antagonist, we’re able to save a woman from 1000 years of grief and solitude. In a Japanese game fashion, the power of love and dedication is enough to heal any deep wound and to redeem any misdeeds, even if they include illegal experiments to give new life to a dead goddess. The transformed body parts are akin to the relics of saints. The goddess herself – Sothis – is none the wiser, and the consequence of having to deal with a silent protagonist is a terrible lack of communication that would have breathed new life into the story had it existed in the first place.

Rhea never knew that Byleth actually saw Sothis or what conversations they were having – one-sided conversations at that – and she was clueless as to why Sothis gave her power away and annihilated herself in the process, fusing with Byleth, therefore putting her power in the hands of a human which was created to serve as a vessel – a human reliquary. What I mean is nothing was going to work as intended by Seiros in the first place. The experiment she made to bring her mother back was a sad attempt at shoving the problem under the rug, the problem being the grief and trauma of having her brothers, sisters and mother killed at the hands of humans, their bodies used to build weapons to spread more misery. A trauma that lasted for centuries and left a semblance of peace where in truth a lot of families of crest-bearers were suffering in silence, never fully aware of the origins of their predicament or the secrets of the long forgotten races of beings that once governed the land. 

In any case, Saint Seiros, the self-proclaimed Saint, which is in fact Rhea, traveled across the land to find the other children of the goddess or their descendants. She found two more family members, Cethleann and Chicol from those who were alive and still in possession of their faculties. However, as I mentioned earlier, they were more akin to humans than Nabateans because they lost their powers and their dragon forms even though they were still in possession of their crests which were very powerful. 

So Rhea along the storyline had some funny mood swings. She could be motherly and affectionate and then snap into a murderous rage. It has been the source of memes across the internet. Founding a church because of the annihilation of a people and meddling into worldly affairs from a seat of power is something very historically significant and very interesting to experience in a video game. My love for this character is much more than just the religious aspect, which interests me from an intellectual, historical and maybe spiritual perspective, but also because no other character made me write so much and think so much about these matters and about a story that’s clearly half-written and yet so gripping and relatable.

Well, in the end, I chose to marry her, and I don’t regret having a dragon anime partner. If there was a choice at the end of the game to “leave Fódlan to humans and flee on the back of your dragon,” I’d take it without further thought. Fire Emblem Three Houses is my absolute favorite game, obviously. I love it so much that every missed opportunity to expand on the lore stings a bit more than it should. I’m becoming very critical of the game every time I think about it, but not in a negative sense. I’m certain that the story will still inspire others to write about it and even expand on the lore.

This text is somewhat unfinished, and I don’t even know if I articulated properly what I wanted to convey, but I’m tired of writing about this. The writers working with Fire Emblem Three Houses did a great job with the story, even though its details are a bit scattered across Fódlan and need to be found with patience and persistence.

Yesterday, I had to crucify a man in Cyberpunk 2077. There’s no rest for wicked women like me.

Verdant Wind

I finished the Golden Deer route, again. It was so good revisiting my favorite route, in terms of story, and have dear Claude accompanying me through a journey of discovery about the ancient inhabitants of Fódlan. I mean the Nabateans and Agarthans. Where did they come from? I have so many questions. However, this is what keeps me active in Fire Emblem Three Houses, because no questions will be answered that easily. Maybe an answer is hidden inside a support I haven’t unlocked yet? It was how, after all, I found out, as if I needed more proof of it, that Rhea is not your run-of-the-mill antagonist, Edelgard is not totally against faith and religion (check her support with Manuela), Rhea is not against other types of faith from the people of Fódlan (for that your need to unlock a Catherine support in Three Hopes), among other things. I rely also on the Fire Emblem wiki to learn some information I may have overlooked.

A screenshot I never tire to take. Rhea and Byleth having a moment.

I think, however, that a Fire Emblem set in ancient times where Nabateans and Agarthans were still sharing their knowledge, about everything that led to the shattering of that ancient civilization with humans in the mix, would be a dream come true. Well, a dream, because it won’t happen. Fódlan’s chapters are over, Seiros is gone, the Agarthans are wiped out. Or, instead, Seiros lives depending on your choices, and you marry her and rule Fódlan together, and the Agarthans are wiped out. Or, yet another variation, Rhea and Catherine stay together, and Catherine takes care of her forever. I still have that ending card and thought at the time it was a very wholesome ending. Catherine is a natural companion to Rhea. I can’t really see one without the other. Imagine how she would fare at the battle in Tailtean Plains, next to her beloved Seiros. For poetic reasons I chose Catherine to finish Nemesis off in the last battle. Not only did she finish him off with her Thunderbrand, she also did it in two swift critical strikes. She tanked his counterattack with pure nobility.

Always. For she’s “the one who watches over Fódlan and the creatures there.”

For this route I married Claude, because I ran out of women to marry, and I only play as female Byleth. I often forget that Byleth can be male, and only remember it while watching random YouTube videos. The game accommodates an acceptable diversity of experiences, considering the franchise’s history. By today’s standards it can be seen as very lacking, especially for people who wish to play as male Byleth and romance male characters. However, on the female front it surprised me more than disappointed. How Catherine is not available to romance as female Byleth still baffles me, considering she’s in love with Rhea and can also enter a full-on relationship with Shamir. I think the later is the most beautiful set of support dialogues in the game.

I didn’t want to spend renown to connect fates this time. It’s extremely expensive and it can mess with my future playthroughs. I played on hard/classic, and I won’t soon forget the last battle because of it. Now, with the renown I’ve amassed by trading seeds at the Pagan Altar, maybe I’ll use some at the Wayseer to pair more characters I’m interested in. A new playthrough won’t come so soon, but the clear save is ready for the next one! This time I’ve also completed all supports available for Alois, the fatherly figure I love with his dad jokes. Manuela and Hermann are still lacking some supports because I haven’t used them that much and haven’t recruited them this time either. I know I can watch everything online but where’s the fun in that?

All in all, I loved this playthrough. I was really missing Claude and his endless curiosity paired with mine. I felt like I spent a lot of time in battle to prepare my characters, but I opted for solid builds with a focus on cavalry. It was the first time I was able to gather 20 mythril, and I made a Parthia for Claude or Shamir and a Hauteclere for Hilda. I had the rusted weapons for the Gradivus and Mercurius but unfortunately not enough mythril. The stories of these weapons on the Fire Emblem wiki are a fascinating read. I also took my time reading the dialogues after saving Rhea and recalling the events she described to Claude. I think it’s as thorough as it gets, and it felt a bit lacking in detail. However, Claude’s reactions to everything she said, especially when he figured out all “saints” were alive and well, and very, very real, were priceless.

Then, after a short and sweet exchange of words and feelings, paired with a beautiful CG at the end, Claude went on to make the world he was dreaming of a reality, while Byleth took the place of the moribund Archbishop as the head of a reformed church. All is well.

Games on Christmas break

During this Christmas break I’ve been catching up with some titles I had to finish before I started playing new ones. Those were The Letter and Dragon Quest XI S. The former I explored to a certain degree. I didn’t get 100% achievements because I already had 30h of playtime and a considerable amount of branches to explore. Since they were all interconnected I wouldn’t know how a certain choice at the start of the game would land in the subsequent chapters. I believe there’s guides available but I didn’t want to check them. What I did to get the feel of dread was to kill almost every character in the game, and either continue the story or reload a previous save. We don’t really get that sense of horror until our beloved characters start dying left and right. Then we have the romance endings, where at least the pair we want to join needs to be alive. Things can get a bit tiresome after a certain number of playthroughs, the save slots don’t exactly abound for a game of this scope, therefore I decided to end it at the point that I did. It’s a great story and highly recommended by the community, myself included.

With Dragon Quest, I just had to finish Act 3 to get another ending. The main story was relatively short but the side quests were many, not all of them exactly doable from the start. The characters had to be at a certain level to tackle those challenges and investing in gear was a must. Since I spent so much time forging (I absolutely loved that minigame) I already had high leveled gear. I invested some more in it and collected even better gear than before. There’s some central quests that should be done before the final boss, like help rebuilding Cobblestone. It wasn’t an easy feat, but it unlocked a weapon shop with some of the best gear in the game. I did that one and a couple of others.

In Act 3 the game is more free in terms of places to revisit as every major and little location is available to fast travel (or zoom) to. The main cities are worth revisiting because there’s always something happening there, either a major event or side-quests to grab. Then we have Tickington where the Tockles live. By collecting the pastwords we can unlock quests at the Echo Chamber. I believe some people who played previous Dragon Quest games would recognize those places. Anyway, I did what I could but the quests were much harder than the main game. They were also not contained within a book. I graciously skipped that part. The last boss of the main game, Calasmos, took me some tries, but Victoria finished him with finesse.

I believe that if I were to platinum Dragon Quest XI S on Playstation I would be putting another 50 hours in it. Some of the late-game content felt impossible for my skill level. I’d also have to max level everyone if I even want a chance at winning in Tickington or at some bosses and challenges in the main game. I felt the game was overstaying its welcome so I married Gemma and moved on. It was, after all, one of the best jrpgs I’ve ever played and I wanted it to stay that way.

The marriage photo we find hanged on the wall in our house in Cobblestone.

This wouldn’t be a real Christmas break without Fire Emblem Three Houses thrown into the mix. I started another playthrough and this time I decided to do the Golden Deer route again. I may have played the game several times but the only route I repeated out of necessity was the Church (to marry Rhea, you know). I missed Claude and his impossible curiosity about every secret surrounding the Church that I had to go on an adventure with him again. And, most important of all, I miss battling with Nemesis. He’s one of the best, if not the best, last boss in the game. A poetic battle, the only moment in the game where I’m standing before Seiros’ archenemy while she cowers in a corner somewhere (why, Rhea?), and the only moment where God Shattering Star plays and envelops every bit of the World with it. Oh, I love this game so much I can’t even! I’m taking this playthrough really slow (except at the monastery where I rush things a bit) and I couple this with other games I’m currently playing.

Nemesis consumed by darkness

After exploring the Winter sale on Steam I found some visual novels I wanted to have. Quite randomly, I stumbled upon Misericorde, an indie novel I felt was right up my alley. I wasn’t disappointed at all, but it deserves its own post. Writing from memory will not be the perfect way to convey the experience but it’s what I’m currently able to do. Using Steam, I was able to take some notes, especially about things related with scripture and monastic life that I was totally oblivious about. This game is finished and what an experience it was. I can’t wait for the second volume!

I then started playing Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen which turns out to be a mix of my two favorite genres: visual novels and strategy rpgs. I couldn’t ask for more. I’m about 7 hours in and loving every bit of it. I’ll try to write something about it when the right time comes. I know this one will be a long journey and I think I had a good share of shorter games completed to immerse myself properly without distractions. Meanwhile, Happy Holidays!

Eruruu, Aruruu and Tuskur serving a nice warm dinner

A peaceful evening at home

Today, I was thinking about my backlog management when I started chatting about games I wanted to revisit. It’s that eternal struggle. Move on to another game or go back and replay something I enjoyed so much? This struggle made me want even less new games because the ones I have will keep me busy for ages. When I say I don’t have a big collection, I really don’t. It’s just that it’s small enough to think, “Yeah, I can play all this,” and big enough to come to the realization that I’ll probably sink countless hours in it. In the end, it’s worth it because they’re really good games worth writing something about.

I decided to relax a bit, turned my PC on, and connected the external CD player. I inserted one of the CDs from Fire Emblem Three Houses soundtrack, connected my Switch, and browsed my screenshots. I transferred all to the cloud while reminiscing a bit about Three Houses. Going through those was like being inside the game again, living inside the monastery, and meeting my green-haired valkyrie. Every time I stumbled upon Claude, I chuckled. I think he could have been a nice friend, had he existed in real life. He’s the kind of high-spirited and curious personality I like.

I went through the romances I unlocked as a male Byleth, just to see some dialogue I wouldn’t be able to unlock as female. Nothing beats the romance between female characters, but some of the ones I’ve seen were cute and endearing. I watched some little videos I’ve made. They’re only three or four, some of them just to show how hard I was struggling in some battles. I’m by no means an advanced Fire Emblem player in combat, but the story keeps me going.

I then started playing The Letter while listening to Three Houses soundtrack, which went on and on until I was ready to go to bed. There’s no shortage of great songs there. I think I’m slowly getting ready for another playthrough, but while I still have so many games on my list, for now I’ll maybe enjoy these little moments with the music and some other gameplay, drinking a nice drink and appreciating many other good stories in between.