Finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Torna: the Golden Country last week. The gameplay was largely the same, and I didn't find that to be the base game's strength. I mostly liked the story but the dozens of forced side quests absolutely killed any pacing it had going for it, and there was sidequest-styled filler even before that in the main questline. On top of that, I have a few nits to pick about how the story closed out. Ultimately I was rather disappointed, considering I'd heard a lot of positive word-of-mouth on this over the years.

For now, I've got one more year left in Atelier Meruru, so I'm going to see about closing that one out. This is probably going to end up being my favorite in the series so far, but I'm really looking forward to the games with the looser/no time limits.

I also just started the demo for Synergy, an upcoming city builder in the style of Pharaoh and Emperor. Mostly good, but the biggest problem by far is that the buildings need a more developed work-order system. Could see this being a worthy successor in this genre.