To Finish Shining Pearl... I'll Need To Grind

Good afternoon everyone,

You know that feeling when the end is in sight for a game, but then you realize exactly what you need to go through to finish it? That is exactly what happened to me with last night's stream.

As you know, Pokemon Shining Pearl was what we were featuring, with the first goal of getting through the eighth gym was interesting, and it probably should've been a warning as to how the Elite Four were going to be in terms of specialty, or rather going off-specialty.. The Victory Road journey was pure torture to get through, mostly because the Pokemon spawning in it were just pure mindless action. Granted the level boosting was nice but seeing Golbat after Golbat which basically negates the effectiveness of some members of my squad is just mind numbing.

Then there is the bull shit of having to win five fights in a row with no real chance to rest after beating the Elite Four, it's straight to the Champion Cynthia. Which means the next time I play Pokemon Shining Pearl next Saturday, that entire stream will be about grinding. I will probably do off-stream re-matches against the Elite Four without using Portions or Revives to get as much XP as possible since I know I can get through them with extreme difficulty at the moment. Plus I'm going to want to stock up on every healing item I can.

One last note, every member of the Elite Four having Earthquake as a move on multiple Pokemon is just cheesy, frustration. If there is a reason why we want to over-level just have the Hit Point pool large enough to tank those devastating hits. In fact that process began this morning as I set about looking for the Lucky Egg and finding a spot to start gaining levels on my team with Rapidash being the horse of the squad and beating up on Ice-Type Pokemon in the underground.

We had two raids during the stream, first was LumiLexy who was playing Little Miss Fortune over at twitch.tv/lumilexy! The second raid was from Lunar_Princess who was playing Pixel Ripped 1995 over at twitch.tv/lunar_princess!

Following the stream we sent the fun over to Kalenal who was playing Final Fantasy XIV! You can find Kalenal over at twitch.tv/Kalenal!  

Twitch Clip Links

• This Rounds Out My Team
• The Big Come Back
• It's Up To Mew 

Played a little Final Fantasy XIV off-stream yesterday afternoon, knocking off a few main-story quests, but the length of the dialog to sit through does mean I've really slowed my pace down with the game as of late considering it's all setting up stuff for Endwalker. Plus the clear indication we're on a collision course with Elidibus is really obvious.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 diamond workout featured Defensive Combo #1, Double Combo #1 and Defensive Combo #2 for a duration of 28 minutes and an estimated calorie burn of 438 kcal

Since for whatever reason Mortal Kombat IX is delisted digitally, I tracked down a copy of the phyiscal version for the X-Box 360. I believe backwards compatibility for it was recently added to use on the X-Box One / Series X consoles... but since only my X-Box One has a disc drive, that is how we will feature it. I also believe it's only functions for head to head play are also disabled as well, so no need to worry about online achievements/

Managed to get the final two achievements in Jump Force, one was needed to unlock the other, but the game is 100% completed. I became the 283rd person over on trueachievements.com to accomplish that particular feat. According to X-Box itself, of all people who have owned and played Jump Force, only 0.01% have actually done this.

Jump Force Achievements

1. Apex Fighter: Got S rank 10 or more times on Expert Free Missions.
2. Jump Force: Obtained all achievements
   

Also spent some time working on another set of achievements in Microsoft Solitaire Collection. If it weren't for the in-game ads, this would be a lot more pleasant.  

Microsoft Solitaire Collection (UWP) Achievements

1. Playing the Odds: Completed all the odd-numbered challenges in an event before playing the even-numbered challenges
   

It's time for this week's Twitch Bits, highlights from last week from all the games featured which were Overwatch, Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Final Fantasy XIV, Kirby's Adventure, Power Rangers Time Force, Rushdown, Shock Wave Assault, Space Jam, WWF War Zone, Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories and Pokemon Shining Pearl! 

For tonight's stream Overwatch is on tap with the goal of playing enough matches to unlock the Peppermint Bark skin for Brigitte!

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!