Looking back: Feb '25, Week 4

I think it'd be an understatement to say that I was motivated by Monster Hunter Wilds the whole week - it was all I could think about. I was avoiding starting on anything, and trying to finish up as many things as possible before Friday so that I could just play the game all weekend.

So it turned out to be quite an eventful week!

✨ Monday - Tuesday: Made alterations to my meido-fuku...! But...

March was to be the month for me to work on collaborations, and one of them required me to be my flesh self. So I wanted to take the opportunity to make some alterations to a maid outfit (meido-fuku) that I got last year. The construction of the outfit and quality of the fabrics were pretty good for a costume bought online, but there were some stitching misalignments that made the apron unwearable.

So I unpicked a lot of seams and handstitched it back together!

Plus, a button to hold down the shoulder straps fell out!🥺 Here's what the fixed apron looks like on my body! It looks misaligned still, but that's because of how I was posing for the camera. 🙃

It isn't perfect though - the main fabric piece of the apron was asymmetrical/ misaligned when stitched onto the waist band, but it would have been quite a lot of work to unpick the whole apron and stitch it back together, so I made do. (It made more sense to make a whole new apron instead.) Pretty satisfied with how it looks! 💜

... But then I realized that I didn't really match the vibe of the rest of the collaborators so I chose a different outfit instead. 🤣 Looking forward to taking this dress out to conventions though!

✨ Monday - Tuesday (night): Cleared FFXIV E8S raid, and finished Like A Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name...! But...

Holy moly my games kept crashing at such bad times!!! :(((

I think FFXIV crashed 3 times in slightly over an hour? Might have been due to me uncapping my game's frame rate when we reached E8S, so now my game's capped at 60 FPS again.

But we finally cleared the fight synced without echo! :D This is a casual group for clearing past content, so we'll only reconvene in the later half of the year for the rest of the tier. Looking forward to it!

The final Gaiden segment was a long chain of cutscenes and boss fights where you were not allowed to save game. It lasted about... 2 hours? And my game crashed at the very final cutscene. 🙃

I redid all the fights, skipping all cutscenes, and that still took a little over half an hour. 💀 Glad I finished the game though!

Had a lot of fun with this one! Though my right wrist was hurting occasionally from having too much fun spamming X/ Square at the start of the game, and playing it every night.

✨ Wednesday: Finished the No Man's Sky Titan Expedition! But...

I have a love-hate relationship with NMS Expeditions. I really hate having public player bases flood my screen because it breaks the immersive experience of being alone-ish in space. But I was determined to complete this one for this:

IT'S BEAUTIFUL

I really wanted to try flying a living ship. It's VERY cool! This ship's cockpit visibility is amazing.

But Solar ships are still my favorite. 🥹 Into my freighter hangar it goes...

Spent Thursday and Friday morning clearing chores and trying to get good progress with a cover instrumental track I've been working on... and then it was...

✨ Friday - Sunday: ... MONSTER HUNTER WILDS!

I'm very satisfied with how both my preferred weapons feel in this title! Currently my main/ primary weapon is still Insect Glaive, but I've revisited Hunting Horn as a secondary weapon.

I think Wilds saw a lot of new players because of the hype, and very high expectations for returning players who enjoyed World+Iceborne and Rise+Sunbreak. It seems that the general consensus amongst players new and old is that this title doesn't live up to the hype/ has no improvements from previous titles? Well, I'm enjoying the game so I'll continue to do just that.

Yian Kut-Ku. 🥹💖

My first MonHun was MonHun Generations (2016) on the Nintendo 3DS, so I consider myself pretty late to the party. Plus, I've never defeated every single end-game monster across all the titles I've played because... I'm not that good of a hunter. 🥹 But I enjoy the action/ fighting style of the game, and I'm okay with not feeling powerful in the face of what are supposed to be very strong monsters (lore-wise), so I was very excited for MonHun Wilds.

I joked at the end of last week's reflection that I might get carpal tunnel from playing Mon Hun the whole weekend... and while I don't think I got it, it might have been a mistake to play for so many hours when my wrist was already hurting from playing Like A Dragon Gaiden... I spent a lot of time on Sunday massaging my right hand and wrist during cutscenes and auto-travel. It feels a little better today, but I guess I need to figure out the ergonomics of playing with a controller.

Also! Yuraia got this limited edition Monster Hunter Wilds PS5 Dual Sense controller for me for my birthday, and it came just in time for the weekend! 💜

Desk friend ditto says hi.

It was a pleasant surprise. 🥹 My birthday is later this month, so I wasn't expecting this at all. Hopefully it lasts for a long time. 💖

Can't wait to play more. :)

~💜~

Hopes for this week

♪ Try to record vocals for a new cover if time allows.

☆ See you in the Wilds.

Thank you for reading! 🌙🐰