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I forget how loudly I sound with Steve’s microphone every time we sit down to chat. I am still haunted by prior recordings where I had to carefully amplify the both of us, or just one of us, in order to be heard clearly. It has hopefully been hammered home that I should be sitting a bit further back. Simultaneously, I have noted his need to stop touching the table so much as we record, as it sounds like wind blowing into the mic as we chat.

It turns out I didn’t have much more left of Touhou Luna Nights after all, though there’s some optional and bonus content available after the credits roll. I’ll probably dabble in that a bit. I also finished Xenoblade Chronicles since this recording, having knocked the difficulty down to casual so I wouldn’t have to spend another ten hours teetering on the game’s climactic doorstep, doing little more than grinding combat and, perhaps, some quests. I typically hate dropping a game’s difficulty in order to beat it. There’s some delusional sense of “gamer pride” that feels as if I have failed to meet the game’s standards. However, I had proven over sixty hours of gameplay that I understood the game’s mechanics well enough to complete it. Being forced to grind five-to-ten levels has nothing to do with skill or mechanics. I am perfectly fine having knocked it down to “casual” so that I can finally see the credits roll on this JRPG that almost failed to release in America.

Which is a curious thing to consider. Three games were nearly held back from release on the Wii in North America: Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora’s Tower. I’ve played two out of the three, with Pandora’s Tower being the odd one out. It’s a shame that we haven’t seen the other two enjoy the same preservation as Xenoblade Chronicles, but it’s hard to argue that it isn’t deserving of it. The game is clearly the best of the three, and if nothing else, I’m glad that Operation Rainfall succeeded in bringing it over.

What have you been playing recently? Please leave a comment below or send us an e-mail with your opinions.

Opening theme music by Fallen Prophecy.