I finished my second playthrough of the Elden Ring DLC and the entire playthrough overall. I tried and tried to beat the final DLC boss without using summons or ashes, but the closest I got over many attempts was about ~30% health. I eventually broke and used mimic tear for the 2nd phase and beat it the 2nd time I reached that point. I’ve also been playing some XCOM2 on commander difficulty
I don’t know where the impulse for it came from, but I started playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom again. Had to start over since I lost my 50 or so hour savefile a year or so ago, but I installed a few mods (playing on ryujinx) that make the game run and look better and also some that streamline a lot of the more annoying parts of the game (koroks just immediately give you the seeds without having to spam through their dialogue, shrine unlocking animations are skipped, cooking is faster, etc. etc.). And man, I do actually love this game. There’s a lot of annoying things about it, a lot of areas that could be more interesting and more fleshed out, but when you get into the flow of it an all of its systems interlink it’s just an absolute joy to play. Your arsenal of abilities is just ridiculously versatile and the way you unlock more and more building blocks as you play is really rewarding. Also helps that I feel much more familiar with the controls now, like it’s much easier to get into the flow. No idea if I’ll actually finish it this time, but we’ll see.
The best times I had in both Switch Zelda games was just hopping on a horse, putting on the Korok mask, and letting Epona decide where we go. Grab shrines and koroks as they’re detected, and soak in the scenery in between.