Eluvianii

Finished Monster Hunter Rise, the base game. I will admit, I didn't expect the upgrade in the combat system to be so much fun. Thoroughly enjoying the experience, in particular the moves they give some of the new monsters to keep up with the player's increased mobility have some, frenetic results. Gotta love when they throw in some bullet hell in your Monster Hunter game. I had heard the story to the game wasn't great and, that might be true. By other games' standards. By MH standards this is lotr. Loved every second. Kamura is also a great village to be in, having the hunter be born there was a great choice imo. There's a lot of emotional weight in knowing that these people have been with your hunter since they were born. The rampages also increase that feeling, funnily enough, having this small army of villagers gunning down monsters to protect their home is a sight to behold. I will admit, I was a tad worried after getting that first credits roll like 10 hours in, but I didn't need to. 78 hours clocked in after final boss. On to Sunbreak. Expecting great things from it.

Chapter 2 end:

Really wishing I read Gambler Jack 2 right about now.

Probably not a spoiler. Ok Grimcat is essentially Cat's Eye. With some Lupin III sprinkled in maybe. If we go there Inspector Nate actually looks really similar to the detective from Cat's Eye. I just think that's cool. One could make an argument that Inspector Daswani's outfit looks like Zenigata's but that's probably stretching it.

I see. I just double checked and they definitely made it sound like a different group. So that's a rather curious thing to change. Or conversely a rather curious thing to mess up. Not a terribly important one, but still.

I'll keep that in mind. I guess I just wasn't a fan of the first couple of choices I saw. Hell, now that I'm a little further, it seems that Law and Gray grow almost passively, but if I want to grow Chaos I have to make it an actual goal. This is gonna be something. Anyway, Chapter 1 End:

That's actually such a relief. Well, so far (like 3 quests) the quests themselves seem quite balanced, maybe leaning towards law a little bit. Idk about focusing on chaos though, mean option in a video game and all that. I already get mad at Van for being chaos in cutscenes.

Game is here! Very first thing I noticed, there are Spika songs here, plus the phones are called Xipha. Ah, yet more evidence that Zemuria is a simulation inside the Tokyo Xanadu world. Possibly created by a Towa fan who then ṕroceded to insert her into the world. And then immediately regret putting her so close to Rean. I'm a little worried about completionism. It seems the way to edge yourself towards an ending is by picking which quests to do and which to skip, but I don't wanna do that, I want to do every quest I come across. So I guess I'll get whichever ending that nets me. Otherwise, I'm just marveling at how pretty the game is. The place does very much finally looks like a city. Having mute npcs adds a lot of life to it to. And. AND. THERE ARE BATHROOMS NOW. Van has even separate rooms for a toilet and a shower. We're living in the future now. Chapter 1: Well, got a dessert tour to go through. I swear, Van is my animal spirit.

Yesterday I checked ship times on Amazon for the heck of it and it said I could get the game around Friday next week. Today I actually bought the thing and it'll get here this Saturday. So that was quite a decrease, either that or (more likely) I misread last time, I guess they got some copies into the country, is this series getting popular enough for that? Anyway, really excited. This kinda screws up the timing for other stuff I was trying to finish as I know this'll consume my life, and I was counting on at least a week of shipping to take care of that, but hey, what a problem to have, right? Guess I'll try to at least finish Reverie's post-game and see if I can give the demo another go.

Huh. If he ends up liking it, it would be interesting to see someone go through the whole thing in real time. I'll check him out.

Yeah, I won't pretend to know how that works. I must say though, the ultimate edition doesn't seem that worth it to me. It's 80 for the deluxe, which nets you the extra navi voices and costumes. Fair enough. But then the ultimate is another 30 just for items and accessories. Those you can get in-game.

Well, that was both a lot of progress and no progress at all. I have been challenged to a duel by Ryukishi. And dammit that's really exciting! I have zero confidence I can solve this without hints, but I really really want to. So I will give it a fair shot, I have some time. A few days rereading the thing sound doable. I do want to confirm a couple of the rules if that's alright. "A culprit must carry out all murders directly, by their own hands." Am I to understand this as all the murders they're involved in, or all in general? I guess this would translate to if I'm looking for one person or if there can be several. "A culprit must not die." I take this one as saying that the culprit(s) is/are alive, but faking death is valid. Right? I find it interesting that Beatrice's identity's rules seem to apply, but only partially. Shannon dies and immediately Kanon is counted as dead too, but before that they were in the same room at all times in front of everyone. Of course, even though it was said that there are no falsehoods here, it could still be possible that they were switching around from scene to scene, and whenever they both talk in the same scene they are supposed the same persona to everyone else. That would be kinda sneaky but still the truth. I don't know how to phrase that without making it sound confusing... I also don't know if doing that is possible without a Reader though. Speaking of Readers, is that why the story is so dry? There was emotion there but everything was said so concisely and matter-of-factly. Only the necessary facts were presented, it barely could be considered a story. Would a Reader turn this into a full blown episode with all the bells and whistles? Also what's with the whole "Bern is being so brave by participating."? Battler now considers Erika a friend. He's a bigger human than I'd dare to be... Well, if she does come back I hope she does something cool. Well, if you need me I'll be hitting my head against my notes. I'll post if I can come up with a theory. Or if I eventually give up but I'd prefer not to consider that possibility.

Well, it will obviously look better on ps4 and 5. When it comes to Switch, and based on the demo I will say this. Reverie had several shortcomings on Switch, being the resolution, the framerate stability, and the loading times. It was a very playable experience, but certainly rough. All of that seems to be gone in Daybreak. I don't know what black magic they pulled off but it plays butter smooth, no delay at all when starting a battle. Loading times are good. Resolution can get funky but still better than Reverie, it plays real nice. That said, if you have the ps4 version available, is there a reason not to choose that one?

And presumably no new games until 2026. We're so gonna catch up.