Aaaaaaaand we're back.  Kinda.

I was feeling two weeks ago that I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to be handling my time off (and I was okay with that), but I imagined it would be some playing games, some working on Rhythm Quest tangentially here and there, some cooking, drinking a bunch of tea, etc.

Turns out life had different plans for me entirely and that all went out the window as my household got hit by Covid, lol.  There wasn't any sense in even trying to plan for productivity or anything; just getting through each day and toughing the storm was all that ended up being on the docket.  Despite being the only one in my household to have gotten my booster shot this time around, and despite feeling relatively unscathed at first, I quickly also succumbed and went into the ol' "death plague" state.  Not the =worst= I've ever felt (first vaccine shot I was just sitting in a corner holding my head and groaning), but in terms of duration and combined negative impact, it's pretty hard to beat this I think.

Thankfully I'm on the mend, starting to be able to breathe again and all that.  Smell and taste, though, that will take some time (and maybe exercises) to regain...blegh.  Before when I was in the middle of it, appetite management wasn't that big of a deal since I kept on doubting I could keep much food down anyways.  But now it's tricky because I think the lack of smell and taste throws off my sense of appetite yet of course my stomach still gets empty.  Weird...  Cooking without being able to smell is also bizarre.  I can cook without tasting anything, sure, but you rely on smell more than you might intuitively think to inform your process, I think.

Anyways, I decided I'm not going to be back to work until next week, so I have a few more days to finish recovering and shamble back into some semblance of normal life, ha ha.

On the plus side, even though I spent a lot of time with absolutely zero motivation, it's not like I got =nothing= done.  Wrote a letter, did more ALTTPR site work, today I even finished my pixel artwork for January.  But besides that, I also spent a good deal of time on Caesar 3, which was great!

Played through Mega Man 9 as well, actually.  It was...fine, I think?  Somehow I like...expected a little more from it, but maybe I'm spoiled by some of the fan games or maybe I just have a weird rose-tinted lens and expect every mega man to have some sort of mythical great level design.  I was off-put by some of the slightly "cheap" deaths in the game, but I was playing it on Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 so there's limited "checkpoint" save functionality, which helped mitigate that somewhat.  Legacy Collection 2 is...really not stellar; my first thought was actually to play MM9 and MM10 on Wii, but apparently I don't have them downloaded on my Wii?  I bet I played it on a different one...oh well.  It's not a =terrible= play experience, but it doesn't even have proper integer pixel scaling, the controls are a little funny, SFX are too loud for some reason etc etc.  Like, it's =fine=, but a little bit of a let-down.  Only worth it because I picked it up for $5, which is cheap enough for me to forgive those issues.  Anyways, maybe I'll play through MM10 again and see how it stacks up.  At least MM10 doesn't have the sfx being too loud issue (why....?).  I'll have to see what I think of the level and robot master design.  I mean, MM9s definitely wasn't BAD or anything, I guess I'm just not 100% sure what to expect.  Which is silly because I've played a ton of these games, right?

I'm not sure though; I feel like for example Magma Man's stage had an area where you just had to time walking through the large magma beams and that was....really uninspired and not interesting?  I'm thinking back to like Bright Man's stage in MM4 with the moving platforms, or like, even Pharaoh Man's stage had a lot going on.  Heck, even Ring Man's stage had its own very recognizable gimmick with the beam platforms.

Maybe that's it?  Maybe like, the stages in MM9 didn't really feel like they were solidly cohesive?  Like if you go through Concrete Man's stage (the first one I tried, wow that third elephant was deceptively hard to get used to), there's a bunch of generic platforming, then there's a section with waterfalls (some which hide platforms), there's two random fake block / death pit traps, then at the very end of the level there's a section with 6 ascending/descending platforms (no enemies).  I think that last section really illustrates my point, like why even bother introducing that mechanic at all if you're not going to do anything with it??  It only appears once at the very end of the stage just as a one-off and it's not particularly interesting, nor does it make you think "Concrete Man"...

The floating bubble section in Splash Woman makes me think similarly, it's almost just a 100% rehash of the same thing from Wave Man's stage in MM5, but I'll give it a pass since it introduces enemies in to the mix, making it slightly more interesting.  Still, think about how wonderfully cohesive Gravity Man's stage was in MM5!  Built around a core mechanic (or two), not just a bunch of random generic platformer stuff in sequence.  Or Flame Man's stage in MM6 with the fire pits...I'm not saying every other mega man is littered with gems of great design, but as I type this maybe I'm starting to get a better sense of what makes a stage memorable and enjoyable vs forgettable.

It's weird because NicoEvaluates (rip that website) listed MM9 as the best game in the entire classic series, based on design and flow.  But I guess that just goes to show you how wildly people's opinions can differ, I guess.

But enough about MM9...it's time to celebrate my latest accomplishment in Augustus/Caesar 3 -- beating the reconquered version of the infamous Lugdunum mission!

This one was definitely intimidating.  Lugdunum is infamous for being the hardest level in the entire vanilla Caesar 3 campaign, and this reconquered Augustus variant is no joke either.  Of course, you've got access to cart depots and increased trading limits and all that, but you have to build a city with 8,000 people and your prosperity target is a whopping 90!

I kept on having problems in my cities with worker shortages and I couldn't tell whether I was just playing too slowly and letting my population age out, or whether I was just being inefficient with my employment.  I had to give two attempts at Lugdunum, but the second one went very well!  I was a little more conscious of my choices, keeping housing blocks at small casa for longer without giving them any pottery or furniture or anything to avoid supply chain issues (probably also just more efficient for workers to build more housing blocks of those maybe?), and I tried to not go overboard on the amount of industry buildings that I made.  It was a tight fit getting everything in (I built no less than 3 grand temples) but in the end everything pretty much worked all according to plan!

Anyways, Covid sux, would not recommend.