Spent a large chuck of todays session combing the desert for lost artefacts from the old world. I overestimated the search area which resulted in me scanning far more of the desert than was necessary to complete the quest. But on a plus side; I'm rich now.

Happened to do some fishing while resource gathering around the Flooded City and caught a brand new pod to use. Pod B fires a laser and I need to vent my frustrations about this; why couldn't the pod program "laser" been called "beam" unless there's another program of the same name obtained later into the game; it would've made more sense calling it "beam". It even functions more like a beam than it does a laser and if you're reading this you may be wondering "what's your problem?" to which I reply: "fuck if I know!". Just seeing the display read "Laser - Laser" ticks me off.

Moving on, rounded up the remainder of the side missions left over from my last playthrough and at this point I think I've hit a block in further progression until I continue the story. Found the machine vs. machine arena which is a nice way of shaking the gameplay up.

But this brings me to discuss an issue I have with hard mode. In this difficulty setting lock-on is disabled leaving only auto-lock available. This doesn't gel well with 9S's hacking ability since it's reliant on locking on to enemies and makes him incredibly awkward to use at times in combat. I was reminded that machines could be taken over when I stumbled upon the arena. Because you can't lock-on; trying to remotely takeover an enemy from a distance is unreliable playing regularly and if you approach them closer to get a better chance they immediately aggro. This means I completely disregard a mechanic because it simply doesn't function without proper lock-on.

Passing through the Forest Kingdom elicits memories of its founding under the King's desire to form a family. A later memory shows the king having passed away and his subjects place a memento within a baby-like machine and vow to protect them until they grow into their next King. An earlier side quest from 2B's route revealed the King died of his own kindness giving body parts to his subjects until he could no longer operate.