Okay, so in other news from this month, I read the latest volume of the Sword Art Online light novel series. Yes, that book series is still going on, even though it feels like nobody talks about SAO anymore. I've had mixed feelings about the current arc, but it is at least offering a compelling mystery. It's also a little amusing how the Underworld has become a Gundam series. They obviously don't have mobile suits, but they do have just about everything else that a typical Gundam series does, including a Char Clone.

I just hope we don't have to wait nearly as long for the next volume. I think it was at least a couple of years between this latest volume and the last. Of course I get that Reki Kawahara has had a lot on his plate. In addition to working on the main SAO series, he's also been working on the massive retcon that is Sword Art Online Progressive. Plus I read not too long ago that he started working on yet another light novel series. For the life of me I can't remember what it's called.

Speaking of Sword Art Online, I'm please to report that my epic quest in the Fractured Daydream video game to get those special items from the Extreme Boss Raid events has been going well. I just have one more EX Raid to go, and the event in question starts a week from today. The thing is I actually haven't been playing Fractured Daydream very much for the past couple of weeks though. It's pretty easy to get burned out on that game. I mean once you beat the game's main story, all there is to do in the game besides special events like the EX Raids is play the same multiplayer quests over and over again. After a while, that gets kind of old.

So I've been playing a few other games for the last half of the month. I replayed some of the Alphadia games. For anyone who hasn't heard of that series, it's basically a ripoff of the early Final Fantasy games. The first two games are pretty good though. Plus these games have some pretty cool (though somewhat repetitive) theme music.

Another game I tried playing this month was Xenoblade Chronicles X, which I actually bought earlier this year but quickly gave up on. I decided to give the game another chance though, mainly because I wanted something different. Unfortunately my second attempt at playing Xenoblade X wasn't much better. One big issue I had was that some of the controls for the game didn't work the way the game said they did. I mean I figured it out eventually, but after finally getting through the first three chapters of the game's story I felt exhausted.

I've also a brand new game that came out near the end of last week called Varlet. That game so far has been pretty cool. It has the same sort of vibe as the Digimon Cyber Sleuth games from a few years ago. It's sort of like if the first Cyber Sleuth game had a baby with one of the Fire Emblem games, if that makes any sense. It probably doesn't. In any case, the story for Varlet feels like it could be the plot of a Kamen Rider series, which also greatly appeals to me.

Since I'm on the subject of video games, I'm fairly pleased to announce that I should be getting the Switch 2 sometime in the middle of October. A few weeks ago I got an email from Nintendo advertising a special bundle of the Switch 2 preloaded with Pokémon Legends Z-A, so I went ahead and preordered it. Of course this bundle cost me over five hundred bucks. I'm considering the idea of maybe selling my old Switch Lite once I get the new unit to make back some of the money I spent, though only if I can transfer all of my important games into the Switch 2. Plus I'd have to figure out how to something like my Switch Lite online.