A weekly status update from everyone’s favourite caffeinated weirdo.

Welcome back to Whatcha Up To! Coffee here, and here’s to the end of another week.

How’s everyone holding up? I know, I know, it might be too early to ask that given all that’s happened. Still, I genuinely want to know if you’re all well, or as well as you can be. Are you taking care of yourselves? Are you focusing on yourself? And are you on Bluesky? Because holy crap, that place has been amazing so far haha. It reminds me a lot of old school Twitter, back when it was fun to talk about games without bad actors, console warriors and trolls ruining it.

Anyway, you’re here for an update. So, here’s what happened this week:

Whatcha Playin’, Coffee?

I finished Echoes of Wisdom this week and man, I want more of it! MORE! I loved playing as Zelda and exploring Hyrule with her, it was such a breath of fresh air for the series. I hope we get more adventures with Princess Zelda. Nintendo should take inspiration from Spirit Tracks and have her return as Link’s partner on his adventure, but in playable form. That would be awesome!

I had some Gold Points expiring on my Switch this month. Rather than letting them go to waste, I decided to get something on my wishlist for cheap. In this case, I picked up Freedom Planet – the Sonic-inspired platformer by GalaxyTrail. It was on sale this week, so lucky me!

The bones and DNA from Sonic are there in Freedom Planet, but it also has its own thing going on that makes it distinct. You play as one of three characters, each with their own unique actions. There’s a mix of fast-paced action and slower combat bits. The level design is great – elements flow together pretty nicely. The story is pretty good, though it could do with some exposition into the backstory. I’ve finished the story with the speedy dragon, Lilac, and I’m currently playing as the motorcycle-riding wildcat, Carol. There’s a sequel out that’s vastly different from this game, so I might check it out later on.

Of course, it’s still Pokémania here. The TCG Pocket game is very engaging, though I’m struggling a bit with the card battles. They’re much harder than they look. In Fire Red, I’m training to fight the Elite Four. I’m severely underleveled and I’ll probably get smoked if I go in as is. So, I’m off to the new islands to explore and train to get stronger.

Last but definitely not least, I finally introduced the physical Pokémon TCG to Kid Espresso via the Battle Academy set. Even though he lost his first battle (I had to give up the pretense that I didn’t know how to play cuz we were on a time crunch to pick up Little Macchiato), he’s still determined to learn everything there is to know about the game! Which is great, haha. And the Battle Academy set makes it extremely easy to learn the basics of the game – Kid got the gist of it in no time at all.

Whatcha Writin’, Coffee?

Back to the grind! I’m writing Chapter 26 for Mobius VII Book 2. It’s focused on my Heidegger character – a minor villain in this book, but one who will make big moves later on. It takes place just after the big boss fight on the ship. Here, he’s at a pretty low point, but some news may brighten his spirits a bit. I also have to worm in a bit on the history of Station Square and the Costa del Sol equivalent, which I’ve come to call Costa Esmeralda (translated to Emerald Coast – Station Square, Emerald Coast, you see the connections?! I hope you do.)

On top of that, I’ve started the next Backlog Busting post about Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster. That one will be pretty short in comparison to the Forspoken one. After that one is Final Fantasy XVI and that’s gonna be fun to talk about.

Whatcha Readin’, Coffee?

I devoured Foundryside. It didn’t take me more than a day and a half to finish it from cover to cover. It’s been a while since I did a speed read like that. Anyway, it’s an amazing read – one of the best fantasy books I’ve read this year. Given my prodigal ability to speedrun books (OK, that might be a bit of a brag, my apologies), I should challenge myself to see how many I can read in one year’s time. Might be a 2025 thing. Besides, reading all these books will get me away from the doom and gloom of the 24/7 news cycle – a welcome relief, in my opinion.

Going back to Foundryside, I’ve requested the next book of the series from the library. I can’t find the third one, so I might just have to buy the whole damn series for my collection so I can finish it and move on to the next story, haha.

How’s Trainin’, Coffee?

Went back to lifting weights this week. I have to remember to take it easy – I’ve been doing a lot of bodyweight exercises and transitioning back to heavier weight has been a bit more difficult than I thought.

I think my main problem is that I don’t stretch enough. Rather, I don’t adhere to a strict stretching routine. That’s gotta change if I wanna see some gains, y’know?

That’s it for what’s been happening recently. Anything new on your end? Let me know below. Otherwise, I’ll talk to you next week!

~Coffee