I was working my way through the trilogy of British (well, non-American at least) dancing games on Wii (all by a developer called Tubby Games), and it turns out I'd actually played them in reverse order of their release, although they were all released within the span of a year (December 2011 to December 2012). Being a Kylie fan I'd long wanted to play Kylie: Sing & Dance, and I had a good time with that game, and then I gamely gave Andrew Lloyd Webber Musicals: Sing and Dance a go. The last one for me to play was Now! That's What I Call Music - Dance and Sing. Apparently Now! That's What I Call Music is a long-running series of pop music compilations that have been a mainstay in Britain and other countries but didn't take off in the States. The game didn't have any surprises in terms of the gameplay if you've played the other two games. The combo meter is still unforgiving and the motion control recognition is still fairly dicey at best, but an appeal for me was getting to hear a number of songs that were presumably hits in Britain, most of which were not hits in the States. The game is absolutely par for the course and as with its sibling games pales in comparison to the Just Dance games (the first of which released in 2009, two years prior to this game). Which isn't to say it's a bad game or unenjoyable, just not particularly impressive all around. The game does have one little unique mode, "Crew Based Hip Hop Dance Off", which is where you pick a side and alternate little solos that are significantly more complex than what's in the main mode of the game. The music also has a different vibe and so provides a change of pace that I enjoyed.

All in all this is exactly what you'd expect based on the other two games. I once again didn't get to try out the singing parts, but one of these days I'll have to give it a go.

I've been gradually making my way through all the various Fire Emblem DLC, of which there is a significant amount. The year before last I'd played through the DLC bonus story for Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia and I'd played through the DLC third route ("Revelation") for Fire Emblem Fates the year before that, and so I turned my attention to the DLC for Fire Emblem: Three Houses, called "Cindered Shadows". I'd enjoyed Three Houses when I'd played it when it first came out, although it's not my favorite in the series. The Fire Emblem Heroes mobile game had already introduced me to the busted mechanics of Yuri, the leader of the "Ashen Wolves", which is the hidden "fourth house" of the game's monastery, but I was looking forward to getting to know the other three brand new characters.

The DLC stands alone and over the course of seven chapters brings in six already familiar characters: the three house leaders, and one other (presumably fan favorite) from each of the three houses. Each of the new characters gets a unique class (all of which were seen in previous entries of the series), but aside from the visuals they're not really game-changers since the way Three Houses is set up pretty much every class can specialize in multiple areas anyway, and here the new classes just provide new combinations of strengths. So, fun to have, but not essential by any means. The same can be said for the story, but for me the real draw was getting to know the new characters. I'm sure everyone's opinions would differ about their favorite, but it was fun learning about their personalities and histories, and I've subsequently enjoyed seeing them continue to be main characters in their own right in the follow-on Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. One part that I wasn't so wild about is that rather than exploring the monastery between each chapter, instead you'll be wandering around the "Abyss", the area below the monastery. Over the course of the DLC you'll be gaining access to more places in the Abyss that differ from what's in the monastery, but don't really provide any major benefits.

Aside from the side story (which runs about 8 hours), completing the DLC also lets you recruit all the Ashen Wolves into your regular playthrough and also gain access to all of their unique classes. The only downside for me is that it also makes the Abyss itself accessible, which adds to the already significant time suck of things to check and do in between chapters. Anyway, all told this was a fun little extra and worth it for me as a Fire Emblem fan. (And as usual, the Fire Emblem Wiki provides useful information if you need it.) I've put my Blue Lions route playthrough on hold and instead opted for a Black Eagles route, and although I've already started my playthrough of it, I'm probably not going to be able to get back to it for a good long while. Too much other Fire Emblem content to play before then! Definitely a good problem to have. ;)

I'm amazed that I actually beat an RPG for the first time since I-can't-remember-when! It wasn't that I was particularly in love with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Switch, but I think what got me through to the end was that I kept thinking I was closer to finishing the game than I was, and so I kept putting in long sessions thinking it was going to be the last. On top of this annoyance, there was also one particular part near the end that annoyed me so much that I was compelled to grind to get past it, and I also sunk in a number of hours trying to fruitlessly figure out how to finish some side quests without resorting to a guide. So basically roughly the last fourth of my almost 88 hour playthrough was more irritation than enjoyment, not to mention that the final boss was so cheap and annoying that after far too many failures I finally resorted to lowering the game's difficulty option just so I could get to the damn final scenes and credits. Ugh.

Well, after all that venting I should take a step back and actually talk about what I enjoyed about the game. The game looks better than the first two Xenoblade Chronicles games, and is a little better paced than the first one in that every time the game started to feel overly repetitive they would throw in some kind of new twist or mechanic or type of area. I wasn't a big fan of the anime art style and the hard-to-follow plot (although it's completely standard as far as JRPGs go), and of the three I still vastly prefer the sci-fi aesthetic and vibe of Xenoblade Chronicles X, but it all plays smoothly and the characters are endearing. This game feels very much in keeping with the other two games in terms of how it flows and how you progress, and although there are quite a few systems to deal with, for the most part it's not too hard to keep track of everything. The gacha mechanics for unlocking useful weapons is annoying but not that much of a hindrance since once you get a few weapons of each elemental type you're pretty much going to stick with them to level them up with anyway.

I'm finding that there's actually not that much more to say about the game, as it's a straightforward recommendation if you liked the other two games. It seems like the third entry is going to be more of the same, so I figure I might as well play through the shorter DLC episode of this game, called Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country. I'm not expecting it to be a vast improvement on this game, but more of the same should still be enjoyable. I don't really recall much about the details of the story of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but I expect it will be fun to revisit old locales in the DLC and get a better sense of the events that the previous game just showed in flashbacks.

I've tried out a Bomberman game or two over the years, but had never actually spent any focused amount of time on one before I played the now-defunct Super Bomberman R Online. The game was free to play and only available for a year and a half on the Switch eShop (and a bit longer on other platforms), and it's always disappointing to see online games get cancelled.

Anyway, the game adapted the now tried-and-true Battle Royale formula to the regular multiplayer Bomberman gameplay, and it all worked well, although I agree with the NintendoLife reviewer that it all felt pretty no frills and basic, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun. The core battle royale mechanics were pretty fun and worked well. You and three other competitors start off on one screen of a larger board, and as the rounds progress everyone gets funnelled into a smaller and smaller subset of screens until, if your survive that long, you get to the final round that pits everyone together on the same screen. Although individual matches were enjoyable, I didn't feel particularly compelled to play for any extended period of time as the experience really didn't vary at all. There was the requisite battle pass that gave you useless titles, color variations, and poses, but those didn't provide any motivation at all for me. The provided characters had a good variety of stats and abilities, and you could also pay to permananetly unlock other characters, but I didn't bother really looking into that either.

Overall it was nice to have my first real look at the Bomberman series via a free-to-play title, and if I ever get a hankering for a Switch version I can always go back to the first Super Bomberman R game on Switch, and apparently there's also going to be a sequel to that title coming out in a couple of months, called Super Bomberman R 2. I did get the original NES game a long time ago and will have to give that a go at some point as well.