How to improve soccer:

The World Cup has been fun, but several annoying things about the game are holding it back.  It all has to do with players trying to cheat to win instead of play fairly, which leaves every game with a sour taste.  Sports are supposed to be objective, fair competitions.  That's the entire reason for their existence.  No more excuses, let the game decide who is better.

The first thing the game should do is institute a new 10-second rule.  If any player for any reason falls to the ground and fails to get back up within ten seconds, he is immediately disqualified from the rest of the game and required to leave the field.  I don't care if he's really injured or pretending injury, he needs to get off the field so the game can resume.  If the 'injured' player's team has substitutions left, they can choose to substitute a new person in to take his place.  If they don't they'll just have to play a man down for the rest of the game.  This would end all the pathetic feigned injuries all the players are doing, rolling around and grabbing body parts that were never even touched.  It's the most disgraceful scene any man has ever put on, crying and whining about every little booboo like babies.

The next thing that needs to happen is the line referees need to point directly to where a throw-in should be conducted, and no player throwing the ball in should be allowed to move from that point.  If necessary a referee can put his hand on their back while they're throwing so they don't leave his hand.  I'm tired of players getting yardage they didn't earn by just walking up the sideline before throwing the ball in.

The same is true of foul kicks.  The referee needs to paint with his foam the exact spot where the foul occurred, and that's where the kick should be kicked from.  There should be none of this nonsense where the player 'adjusts' the ball by rolling it forward to whatever place suits him.  This is again stealing yardage that wasn't earned.

The next adjustment needs to be more red cards.  I would make any tackling penalty, where a player grabs the other's jersey and pulls or pushes him down, clearly an event that has nothing to do with soccer, because in soccer you're not supposed to use your hands, should be an automatic red card.  I would also give out a red card to any player who argues with a referee for any reason.  I don't care if the players are right or not, authority needs to be respected.  Furthermore, all these clamoring whining players demanding the referee change his call just wastes time because obviously no referee will ever change their call.

The World Cup should be about deciding which nation is the best in the world at soccer, not the best cheaters in the world.  Soccer could be such a fun sport to watch, if only the sport was played in a sportsmanlike manner.  When I was a kid and played soccer, we never played dirty like this.  It's the professional players who are making a mockery of soccer.  We need to return soccer to what it was always meant to be.

So long as these reforms aren't instituted, soccer isn't a top tier spectator sport.  It will continue to lag behind football and basketball and gymnastics and figure skating.  The World Cup is fun because it includes all the nations of the world and is a good way to compare peoples because everyone plays soccer all over the world.  Nobody can make the excuse that 'we don't ski so this competition doesn't count.'  Everyone plays soccer.  This competition counts.  Soccer is an innately fun sport because the action is continuous, there's no commercials, and the talent required to control the ball without your hands is spectacular.  It also means the ball is always up for grabs, because nobody can get firm control of it, since the ball can only be batted around and not held.  This creates a constant level of tension, where anything can happen in a very short amount of time.  It could be such a fun sport to watch, if it only wanted to be.  But as it stands, even this 'once in four years' event is less exciting than a regular weekend of football.

Summer 2026 Anime Preview:

The summer anime season is nearly upon us.  I'm busy with the World Cup so I won't be reviewing the debuting series, but here's how things look before I've actually seen all the new shows:

Continuing Series:

Meitantei Precure

One Piece

Mao

Slime Tensei

Re:Zero

Returning Series:

Youjou Senki

Hell Mode

Bleach

BanG Dream

The Elusive Samurai

Nanoha Exceeds

100 Kanojo

Ghost in the Shell

Possibly Good Series:

Anything's possible, I guess, but nothing stands out.

* * *

The summer season doesn't need any newcomers.  The continuing and returning series already number 13 shows a week.  Among them are 7 shows in my top anime rankings.  And most importantly, among them is the ending of Bleach, something we've been waiting a lifetime for.

Popsicle Yotsuha:

It cost $50, but I finally got popsicle Yotsuha.  She has a cool ability that uniquely can be wielded from the back row, but when I actually tried it out with my dark squad it didn't work.  This is because my dark squad specializes in taking extra turns, and Yotsuha's effect quickly wears off because the buff is turn-based, not permanent like other buffers.  Admiral Aoi's passive continuous +100% to crit is the better fit.

But what about my secondary dark squad, could they use Yotsuha?  Nope, all their abilities cost over 10 sp to enact, so Yotsuha's follow-up skill would never activate.  It turns out all that effort to acquire popsicle Yotsuha was for nothing, aside from having the cute picture/model of her in my collection.  The buffer who works best with my secondary dark squad is Admiral Mion.  She increases the sp cost of her squad's abilities, in exchange for giving them a larger effect.  But the abilities already cost so much sp that the increase, proportionally, isn't as bad as it would be with other squads.

It turns out admirals and dark squads go well together.  My other squads don't use admirals, only my dark squads.

But the $50 didn't only go towards Yotsuha, they also bought me wedding dress Yingxia's level 1 limit break, dandy Misato's level 2 limit break, and jellyfish Aina's level 3 limit break.  Squad 31-D would be strong if they hadn't imposed that 'overdrive use limit' with the 3.0 update.  I can generate tons of overdrive and fight well during overdrive, but in serious fights against strong opponents I run out of overdrive uses and then I lose.  Therefore jellyfish Aina and dandy Misato continue to be a sideshow.  However, wedding dress Yingxia has moved into the limelight.  I added her to my critical penetration squad, my premier squad, and gave her an eternal daphne.  I intend to use her constantly from here on.  Whether in the front or back ranks, she heals the party 7% per turn, she gives everyone 5 sp, she gives everyone a reraise, she has a critical penetration attack that also heals the front line, she has a multihit buff that can further add to Tadamusa's effectiveness, what's not to like?

I tried her out and she can, with the rest of the critical penetration squad, defeat orb bosses in 3 turns and Skullfeather Final Form in 5 turns.  She's deadly.  So the money was well spent, though not for the reason I initially presumed.

Yingxia replaces Risa in my critical penetration squad, but Risa is still important to the squad, because she resonates as a supporter with imp Yayoi, giving Yayoi +45% to skill damage and blaster effectiveness.  Yayoi's megadestroyer attack is already enormous, so multiplying that by a further 45% is huge.

Shrine maiden Risa is also useful as my new healer for my ice squad.  She replaces Muua and already proved her worth.  I fought Skullfeather Final Form again, this time with Risa, and beat it much more easily than the time I beat it with new year's Muua.  Unfortunately this does mean all the effort I put into improving Muua's memento will go to waste, but oh well.  What's cooler to note is that now all my ice squad members have eternal daphnes.  Eternal daphnes are rarer than memento boosters, so using them is more important.

Somehow America has already won its group in the World Cup, before even playing its third game.  My prediction that this team can go places is coming true.  If we win the World Cup nobody will care that we lost the Iran war.  The World Cup is more important and harder to win than any war.

America's Abject Surrender:

My initial advice to Trump was not to start a war with Iran.  He ignored that advice.  My next advice to Trump was to collaborate with Iranian exiles, Kurds, Azeris, Balochs and the like to form a ground army that could march on Tehran and secure victory.  He didn't do that either.  My next advice was for Trump to threaten to nuke Iran if they didn't submit, but he didn't do that either.  My last advice was that since Trump clearly had no intention to win the war he should give up and walk away already.  Trump finally took my advice, except in as humiliating a fashion as possible, far worse than just walking away.

I'm not a fan of stealing sovereign nations' money or sanctioning them in the first place, so removing all sanctions and restoring all their frozen funds is a good thing.  But this $300 billion reconstruction fund is outrageous.  We shouldn't be giving a dime to Iran.  Much less $300 billion.  I don't really care if the money is somehow sourced from other countries, that's $300 billion going to an evil country when, before the war started, no money was going to them.  That's an absolute disaster.  Regardless of who ponies up.

Furthermore, the strait of Hormuz isn't really going to be 'open' anymore.  Before the war ships could traverse the strait without paying Iran, in the future they will have to pay Iran.  That enriches Iran, an evil country, for no reason except that they're good pirates.  They aren't providing these ships a service, so why should they be able to collect a fee?  This too is a disaster.  It empowers Iran and raises the cost of goods for everyone else on Earth, including the USA.

As for Iran's commitment not to produce a nuclear weapon, that was already true before the war began.  What we wanted was to remove Iran's capability of producing a nuclear weapon, but nothing in this agreement will do that.  As before Iran could always quickly start building nukes at any time with its current infrastructure, and since everything is buried deep underground over there, there's nothing we could do to stop them.  So Iran committing not to build a nuke is worth spit.

This is what happens when people don't take my advice.  This entire Iran war from start to finish was a completely preventable disaster, and Trump compounded it with bad decision after bad decision, all the way to this surrender document which was another bad decision.  Are you really telling me that we couldn't have at least used the leverage of our nuclear arsenal to get a better deal than this one?  Where we just hand Iran $300 billion for nothing?

This completely pointless war which achieved nothing but enrich Iran, fortunately, didn't cost many lives, but it did hurt the economy to the point that Republicans have little hope for the midterms.  And losing the midterms is going to hurt us a lot worse than losing this war.  Democrats, with their insane agenda, are always trying to completely destroy America, so any power we give them will be disastrous.  And it's still unclear to me how we avoid a worldwide famine when 1/4 of all the world's fertilizer was taken off the market during spring planting season.  It's too late now, the fertilizer can't possibly get delivered on time to change what already hasn't been sown for the season.  I guess we'll see in the next year or so whether farmers really can cope with losing 1/4 of their fertilizer out of the blue.  If they can I will certainly wonder why we were wastefully overusing fertilizer all this time before now.  But if they can't, and there really is a worldwide famine that kills millions of people, that will all be on Trump and his completely pointless war.

He went into the war with zero ground forces and no willingness to use nukes and thought he could possibly beat Iran?  Whose weapons are all in underground mountains that can't be bombed by conventional means?  That was really the plan?  How stupid can you get?

Were we really intending to trade million dollar interceptor missiles for each and every $5,000 drone Iran threw at us?  Who came up with that brilliant plan to win the air war?

This may actually be the worst war in American history, in terms of competence and results.  Have we ever been so thoroughly humiliated before?  Nothing comes to mind.  Even in Afghanistan and Vietnam we left that country in the hands of a well-armed local government that simply chose not to fight, which is hardly our fault.  We certainly didn't agree to give $300 billion to Yemen after we gave up on that war.  I can't think of any war as bad as this one.

Trump is a disgrace and should resign after getting us into a war this fecklessly, and then dragging out the economic pain from it for months, now we see completely pointlessly, because in the end all we did is offer Iran unconditional surrender anyway.  What were we negotiating for months for?  We could have given Iran everything it wanted long ago, and the Strait of Hormuz could have been open this entire time!  Who can explain to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan this months-long delay where they couldn't get any oil?  What was it all for?

There's a silver lining to everything, so perhaps the silver lining to this war is that America's public opinion of Israel has finally gone negative.  It's obvious that Israel dragged America into this war that they've been lobbying for for decades.  Hopefully Americans don't forget that and continue to hate Israel for the rest of eternity.  Then maybe we won't give them any more foreign aid or get involved in any more Middle East wars.  If so, this Iran war was a small price to pay, including the $300 billion bribe.

Meanwhile, I maxed out two more mementos in Heaven Burns Red -- spanish Yuki and tuxedo Tsukasa.  I got sheep Yotsuha up to level 2.5 limit break, also a part of my light squadron, and got her memento 3/5 of the way to max.  Someday my light squad will be as strong as my fire squad.  I tested out my ice squad against Skullfeather Final Form and it can win, with great difficulty.  Nothing like how easily my critical penetration squad does, but still impressive.

Meanwhile, Lionel Messi scored a hat trick in his first World Cup match, an amazing feat for any man much less one of his age, participating in his 6th world cup.  It's like he's immortal or something.  The greatest of all time, which means a lot when we're talking about the most popular sport in the world.  That makes him simply the greatest athlete of all time.  He's an absolute joy to watch.

Wonderful +9:

The World Cup interrupted my playing of Xenoblade X, so I still haven't beaten it.  Nevertheless, I've played enough of the game that I think I can safely name the best characters from it to my fictional characters hall of fame.  Now that I've listened to all my Octopath Traveler 0 songs 100 times, they can officially enter my music hall of fame, and be the theme songs of my new wonderful characters.

If you want to know all the details about the songs from Octopath 0 that made my music hall of fame and what I rated them and how that affected my composer vs. composer ratings, that can all be found in my updated Good Music permapost.  As predicted, Yasunori Nishiki moved up from 7th place to 6th place as a result of these new songs.  But the gap is narrow, it's possible for Jun Maeda to take the 6th spot back again so long as he keeps composing more hits for Heaven Burns Red.

The very best Octopath 0 songs, which I rated 4-star or 5-star, all got represented with a new wonderful character.  As stated before, Stia got the Wishvale theme.  But the nine new songs are Against the Elite, [Agapaea, Isle of Maidens], Battle 0, New Battle Theme, [Orsazantos, the Creator], Smoke Signal at Sea, The Uncharted Isle of Orsa, Wishvale Trail and Battle - Sylvan.

Against the Elite got Elrica/Alroune, the two sisters who opposed the 'elite' King, their father, and eventually overthrew him and saved the continent from his murderous tyranny.  Since their story is intertwined it's impossible to include one without the other, or really treat them as different people.

Agapaea, Isle of Maidens got Signa, because she's one of the maidens from the isle.  Her devotion to Sazantos' purifying cause and beauty take the cake, so her being a villain doesn't bother me.  Anyone willing to sacrifice their own life for something else is pure at heart.

Battle 0 belongs to the protagonist of Xenoblade X, because he/she starts literally from 0 -- stranded on a foreign primordial world with amnesia.  Since the player gets to name the character this character has no set name.  Saving humanity from extinction is a noble task and he/she is the best at doing so, which is to his/her credit.

New Battle Theme belongs to Elma, because she's also working with the protagonist in the new world of Mira, battling all the aliens with the protagonist to save the last remnants of humanity.  Her unflappability and rationality is a breath of fresh air, especially given that she's a girl.  I find the dark skin really works on her, too.  She looks great.

Orsazantos, the Creator belongs to Sazantos, for obvious reasons.  He may be the main villain of the game, but again his cause was righteous and he only actually ended up doing good.  First he killed a bunch of corrupt churchmen, then he helped defeat a dark god.  He also looks cool and has a cool fighting style.

Smoke Signal at Sea belongs to Rinyuu, the blind cleric who wishes everyone well and doesn't fight but cooks for a living.  The song is related to her because it was Rinyuu who converted the foreign conqueror queen to the side of good, and this is the theme of that foreign conqueror queen.

The Uncharted Isle of Orsa belongs to Lin, because she also helps explore the 'uncharted' world of Mira.  Lin is voiced by Mariya Ise, one of the greatest voice actors in Japan.  She's the seiyuu behind Levy and Urara, two of my 100 waifus.  And she uses her high cutesy voice to great effect in this game, making all sorts of funny, drawn out, accentuated lines, always teasing and pretending.  She's absolutely lovable, and a strong fighter, and a genius mechanic.  What's not to admire?

Wishvale Trail belongs to the protagonist of Octopath 0.  Since he/she's also intimately connected with his/her hometown of Wishvale, like Stia, the trail right outside of town clearly belongs to him/her.  Like with Xenoblade X, the character's sex, looks, and name are all chosen by the player, so I can't get any more specific than that.  But regardless of superficialities, the protagonist makes many moral decisions and strong friendships across the game, which are all to his/her credit.  Most of all he/she worked with Stia to rebuild the razed to the ground town of Wishvale and return the refugees to their rightful home.

Celica received Battle - Sylvan from Heroes of Might and Magic because she's a space elf who helps you battle on Mira for the city of New Los Angeles, which welcomes good aliens of all types.  Celica is brave and beautiful and kind to her slightly dumb companion, which is good enough for me.  Space Elves are all so beautiful, there should be more of them in fiction.

By adding 26 songs of various ratings to my music hall of fame, I had hours of work to keep the hall of fame at 5,500 songs with 1,100 in each tier.  Luckily last year I had already designated which songs could be demoted in the future, so I was able to place all these songs without disruption.  The songs slated to be demoted were demoted, and now the music hall of fame is more accurate than ever.  It would be difficult to add any more music to my hall of fame, though.  I have plenty of demotable 1 and 2 star songs, but nothing at 3-star.  Perhaps next time I'll give up on keeping the tiers balanced and just have more highly rated songs than the tier is supposed to have.  Keeping the balance really is a ton of work, I'm praiseworthy just for managing it so far.

Two songs which used to be 3-star and thus available as a wonderful character's theme song sank to 2-star, and so I changed Haruhi Suzumiya's theme song to Nagi Heigen and Yuki Nagato's theme song to Moon Base.  Somehow I feel like their new theme songs are more fitting to their characters than the official Haruhi Suzumiya music they were originally attached to.

I'm proud of team USA scoring their biggest blowout win in USA history, 4-1 over Paraguay.  Paraguay is from South America, a continent that takes its soccer very seriously.  This level of win isn't something anybody could easily do, I don't care if you're Spain or France.  We look really sharp, like we're here to make some real waves.

I subscribed to Peacock so I could watch every World Cup game for the low price of $11.  As a side benefit I watched the six Ip Man kung fu movies and they were really good.  Ip Man is a real historical figure so I can't add him to my fictional character hall of fame, but I love how grounded the martial arts in the movies are (not much wire action, it looks like something a human could really do if they were skilled enough.)  Also, the plots are grounded and feel like something that could really happen.

The first movie is him suffering through the Japanese occupation during World War II.  His martial arts can't fight a war, but he at least managed to prove to the Japanese that Chinese aren't as inferior as they thought through winning a sparring match with their best karate master.  

The second movie is him moving to Hong Kong and trying to make enough money for his wife and children after losing everything in the war.  With no ties and no reputation in the foreign land of Hong Kong, just getting people to accept him as a martial arts school trainer is difficult.  Yet again Ip Man can't overturn the British occupation of Hong Kong with his fists, but he can win Britain's respect for the Chinese people by defeating their prized boxer in a match.  

In the third movie he faces a mirror match, another user of Wing Chun, his kung fu style, says he's not teaching it right and demands a bout to decide who the real Wing Chun master is.  What's cool is they're both family men and they're both scrounging for money and they both want what's right and they're both using the same techniques.  But Ip Man wins and proves he really is the greatest.  

In the fourth movie Ip Man travels to Chinatown in America and beats up some racists who think Asians are inferior, thus earning the Chinese there the same respect and dignity that he's already managed to earn in China and Hong Kong with their oppressors.  There really was anti-Asian discrimination in America -- just look at the Japanese internment during World War II (it's not like we interned all the Americans of German descent during the war.)  And this movie is set far back in the past, as Ip Man lived far back in the past, so it checks out.

In the 5th movie, a new actor takes to the fore as a prequel, where Ip Man is starting out his heroic life by beating up some British slavers who think they can do anything in Hong Kong to the Chinese and get away with it.

In the 6th movie, the mirror match 'villain' from the 3rd movie returns as the new main character.  It traces his reluctant return to martial arts after drug pushers stupidly decide to burn down his home and hurt his son.  He goes on a one-man crusade and takes the whole criminal gang down.

Six movies for free, since I was going to subscribe to Peacock just for the World Cup anyway.  That's a great deal.

In Heaven Burns Red I got base Charlotta's level 3 limit break and two new mementos to max -- doctor Seika and new year's Muua.  Not bad for a day's work.  I also almost maxed out all the skill levels of my new recruits.

Yingxia Event Cleared:

It cost $75, but I got the new Yingxia wedding dress SS Memoria.  I failed to get the new Iroha or Yotsuha SS Memorias, but there's still time to get them before the next event.  I'd at least like to get the new Yotsuha, who looks pretty strong.

As for now, wedding dress Yingxia is amazing.  She gives a reraise to the whole party, +5 SP to the whole party, and has a critical penetration attack.  She'd fit in perfectly to my critical penetration party, as the healer, except that at level 0 limit break she isn't nearly strong enough.  I've always wanted to play with Yingxia and my previous attempts didn't pan out, but maybe now I can make something of her.

I also got funeral Tsukasa to level 3 limit break and decided she was now strong enough to merit an eternal daphne, so I used one of my 3 precious remaining daphnes on her.  My ice squad now has a super-cool synergy going where everyone donates sp to Tsukasa, and then she radiates out that sp back to everyone else with her limit break 3 ability.  The end result being everyone has tons of sp every turn.

The astrarium returned, giving me two more powerful necklaces, this time of the thunder element.  I got rid of all my euphoria necklaces and equipped every squad with nothing but these badge-bought necklaces for the first time.  Now all my characters have a necklace giving them either +10% to attack or defense.

It also got me two more master skills, this time Ichigo's and Akari's.  I gave new year's Akari a fully upgraded memento, as well as belly dancer Vritika, gothic Ruka, and wedding dress Yingxia.

Belly dancer Vritika got to level 2 limit break, so she's probably stronger than base Vritika now, all things considered.  She's also much prettier than base Vritika, so I switched her in to my tank squad and squad 31-X.

Tracksuit Monaca got to level 2 limit break, again giving her reputation in-game of being the strongest a little lift.

Magicat Miko got to 3.5, idol Erika to 3, wedding dress Mari got to 3, gothic Ruka to 2.5, and admiral Mion got to level 2.

The astrarium boss was a fire opponent, so I tried using my fire squads against it.  They did okay, but nothing compared to my critical penetration squad, which finished it off in 7 turns.  It's crazy how a single squad can surpass all the others in all situations.

My critical penetration squad also easily handled the new score challenge, getting 1.35 million points and all the available loot.

As for the plot of the snap event, it was a short funny party game where the squad members of 31-X said 'mozzarella cheese' more excitedly than the previous round over and over until they fail and drop out.  I have no complaints with the content, but it's been quite some time since anything serious was released for the game.  It's kind of scary how I keep spending more on the game and playing it nonstop anyway.  It's just so good, the best game ever made, that it can get away with cruising like this.

The World Cup has finally kicked off.  The first two games were entertaining, showing that even with an expanded field of 48 nations you can watch good competitive soccer.  I guess expanding the size of the World Cup was a good idea after all.

Games, Games, Games!:

Today multiple exciting games were announced, to be released in the near future.  Final Fantasy Resonance, a new 2d-HD game akin to Octopath Traveler 0.  Xenoblade Genesis, a fantasy version of the sci-fi series coming out on the Switch 2.  Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave is of course coming soon.  Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, the conclusion to the remake, is coming out next spring.  Tales of Eternia is getting a modern remaster.

There are so many great games coming it's questionable whether there's enough time in the year to play them all.  The games are overflowing.

I'm still playing Xenoblade Chronicles X, which is a worthy upholder of the Xenoblade brand.  The game is so vast I can play it and play it and still get no closer to victory.  The music is okay.  Unfortunately it used a different composer than Xenoblade 1-3 which really brings the tone down.  The plot and setting are amazing, the perfect setup for the game they wanted to let us play -- a new world to explore in its open vastness.  The graphics are gorgeous.  I especially approve of the ability to dress up everyone in swimsuits or short shorts.  The fact that you can customize how your characters look with 'fashion gear' as opposed to the armor they're actually wearing is wonderful.  Your protagonist for the game is wholly customized and designed by yourself, so I made her a twintailed redhead with green eyes and she's absolutely stunning.  I couldn't be more pleased with how good she looks.  You even get to choose which voice actress you want for the protagonist, so I went with Yui Ogura.  But there were several other fantastic seiyuu I could've chosen, it was a buffet of grandeur.  The graphics of the deep jungles or towering mountains is also beautiful.  There are several great characters in the game worthy of my hall of fame, but I'll hold off until I've actually beaten the game.

I'm playing Xenoblade X on the Switch 2 despite it being designed for the Switch, and it already looks this good.  I have no doubt that a game natively designed for the Switch 2 will also look great.  Whatever the graphical limitations of the Switch 2 it seems the Nintendo designers have found a way to make it work.

My biggest complaint with the game is the actual gameplay.  The mechanics are unbalanced, with some techniques being too strong and others too weak.  No matter who you start a fight with, it feels like dozens of adds swarm in, seemingly warping into existence from nowhere, including super-high-level enemies who one-shot your party, making every fight ridiculously overcomplicated.  The levels of your opponents don't accurately reflect their strength.  Sometimes you can be 10 levels stronger than an opponent and stand no chance against them.  Other times the enemy can be 10 levels higher than you and are easily defeated.  It takes too long for one technique to end and the game lets you choose the next technique, creating a lot of 'dead time' where you're fruitlessly spamming buttons but nothing happens.  It's too difficult to find the treasure chests or hidden quest locations.  You can fruitlessly spend hours trying to find the entrances to hidden caves or jump paths to the next location.  The rest of your party is controlled by AI, but they're all totally useless, and basically the fight comes down to you soloing everything.  Xenoblade X is a great game, but not because of the gameplay.  Virtually anything would be an improvement over this.

While I'm playing Xenoblade X I'm also listening to my chosen songs from Octopath 0 for their designated 100 times to reach my music hall of fame.  I've narrowed the selection down to 26 songs and have listened to them 75 times so far.  The new hall of fame entries from Xenoblade X will be given the new hall of fame songs from Octopath 0, so it will all work together.

In Heaven Burns Red, I got swimsuit Adelheid to limit break level 4, ethereal Kozue to limit break 3, unison Karen to limit break 2, and lots of orb skills, introjection skills, memoria levels, etc.  My ice and light squads had a try at the seraph drill, and got high scores of 107k and 109k, higher than my critical penetration squad.  This proves keeping a squad around for each element is not fruitless, they're still competitive.  Ethereal Kozue is part of my ice squad so that squad is shaping up quite nicely.  Funeral Tsukasa is at limit break 2.5 so I could get to my dream scenario quite quickly from here.

Nevertheless, the latest score challenge featured a weak-to-lightning foe, and my lightning squad couldn't even beat it.  My critical penetration squad moved in and easily destroyed it with a 1.6 million score.  That was sad.

I reached player rank 150, the current max, and got an eternal daphne as a reward.  I now have 3 eternal daphnes I've decided to save for later.  It will be difficult to get any more daphnes so I have to use these last three judiciously.

The World Cup is coming soon, so I'll have to put gaming aside for the next month.  From here on it's all about sports streaming.  What a rich year in experiences.  The Olympics, the World Cup, all these games, all these visual novels, I can never catch up.