Eluvianii

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: Erased:

Well that's a shame. I mean at least we know it's coming? What was the wording though, there'll be an announcement for a game that's not from the big 2 series or something? Or was it just "It's not Ys" and therefore Trails counts?

Like clockwork. Need to find out what was said in that meeting. Come un guys, Tokyo Xanadu please.

Last session our gm summoned a T-rex skeleton in the middle of the night in a packed dorm building. Not much to the story, I just love the fact that that's a thing we can fight. Lots of npcs in there so it died in like a round, but it was strong, actually one-shot one of our players (unconscious, not dead). As a bonus we then decided to exaggerate the story because you know that's what people would do, so official version is that it was a two-headed fire-breathing T-rex skeleton that shoots poison from its tail.

Just watched the first Evil Dead and what the hell, why was that so good? I feel an imperious need to watch the whole franchise now.

Finished Shin Megami Tensei V, Canon of Creation route at 77 hours. I'd say it's an excellent second impression of the mainline series after the only other one I've finished, which is IV. Combat is excellent, customization is ridiculous, I like the characters, I like having these big-ish areas to explore that are so packed, exploration was one of the highlights. Music is great, I love that there's so many battle themes, but I guess that's a staple of the series to begin with. I'm trying really hard to tie my hands and wait at least, like, till tomorrow before starting Canon of Vengeance. It's a weird feeling, today was a long session, the superboss and the final boss were exhausting (superboss in a good way, final boss in a bad way), I really need to go do something else. But I'm also kind of eager to see what's in store. I'm going to wait tho. Great game overall. Super excited about the second route since general opinion seems to be that the story is a lot better. A bit concerned about the fact that it's apparently only Law and Chaos. I'm not used to that, Neutral is supposed to be the true route in this series. We'll see what that is about.

And they always do the costumes. Plus extra consumables but who even needs those.

Forget mimics, every time there's an ooze however weak we lose half the party. What's with those things? They scare us more than bosses.

Watched the Heisei Gamera Trilogy. I cannot believe I slept on the big turtle for so long, these might genuinely be the best kaiju movies I've ever seen. They're just so well rounded. They cover both the fantasy and the sci-fi side of the monsters very well. The human part of the story is great and I can't tell you how much I love having a semi persistent cast through all three movies. All of them had me at the edge of my seat too. They cover such a wide demographic too. Sometimes it feels like they're aimed to kids, sometimes it's the third movie, which gets dark. I really hope the anime is half as good as this because this just set a really high bar for me.

Depends on the context, do I also get cool immortal ghost powers out of it? Sword?

Starting Bioshock Infinite and genuinely considering the possibility that maybe the director watched Tangled and really, really wanted to have Rapunzel in his game. Movie and game share entire scenes like, damn. On that note, Bioshock 2 was an absolute gem. Loved that game.

Not even sure how to categorize this, but I want more of it.

Watched Godzilla: Final Wars. Campiest Godzilla movie ever and that's a compliment. Although I think it's probably too much of a good thing. By the final act I was thinking I'd had my share for the day and I'd rather continue this later. Still pretty damn awesome, might watch it in two sittings in the future. Wonder if there's any relation between this Earth Defense Force and the games...

Been obsessed with all 5 versions of this. Great theme for a great, mindbending show. Can't believe it took me this long to watch it.

Been playing Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, Canon of Creation route. This game is surprisingly addictive. It strikes a good balance with the difficulty, with the normal encounters being pretty easy as long as you're careful, but still being stuck for an hour or two on certain bosses. I'm also really enjoying the story. After hearing so much that this game has pretty much no story, my expectations steered too much in that direction, which means I'm getting a lot more than I was expecting (plus I hear Canon of Vengeance is supposed to be even more plot focused, so looking forward to that). The characters are simple, but I like them quite a bit and it's easy to care about them. Which is such an upgrade from IV. That game had amazing gameplay and atmosphere, but the main 3 have got to be the flattest characters I've seen in a game. Soundtrack is an absolute banger. I love the idea of demon navigators, and I love the Demon Haunt. Gotta bond with my little child killing spirits and soul sucking demons. Quite addicted to this game atm. That and FFXIV. I'm only at the base game and I was playing very rarely on and off, but now I've hit some kind of stride with that game and now I can't stop. I'm supposed to be finishing other stuff but these two have really been occupying my gaming time.

The log keeps track of dialogue all the way back to the beginning of the game! What is this, Umineko? I love this feature so freaking much, most games can't hold enough text to last a cutscene.

Given that, you can look up the most graphically intense game that you're interested in, check its requirements, and look for a laptop that's at least slightly above that. If your game asks for 8GB RAM maybe get a laptop with 12 and so on. Also, if you will play multiplayer, and if the laptop will have its own place on your desk, it's not a bad idea to look into ethernet cables for a more stable connection while playing.

Well, I guess if the kana really hoes Areum it'd be hard to come up with a transliteration to a more common name. Also active combat is good, a step up from Daybreak. It's almost Ys at this point.

Sky demo is absolutely gorgeous, I'm about to cry here, it's amazing to see how far Falcom has gone with 3d since CS1. Translation also feels more natural imo, though the npc names are sending me for a ride. Ellie → Aria? Armand → Areum? Claire → Cruse? Did Liberl have names like that all along and we just didn't know? Also gotta love that we get all 3 soundtracks. Seamless exteriors do so much more for immersion than I could've thought, it's an experience approaching Rolent and being able to just, walk in. Only just started, looking forward to see combat.

Watched Magnificent Seven. I knew this was an adaptation of Seven Samurai but wow, some scenes are the same down to the framing. It's different though. Way shorter for one but also more optimistic, makes it easier to sympathize with the characters. I ended up liking it a lot for different reasons than Seven Samurai.

Halfway through the second volume of Sword Art Online cause I wanted to get back into this franchise and if I'm gonna do that, might as well do it properly. And good thing I did. Turns out I've been slightly unfair to this first arc. I've always disliked how Aincrad feels inconsistent. In the span of 14 episodes you get adventure, romance, a ghost story, tragedy, and two teenagers playing house. Variety is fine, but this is too much for such a short story, and throughout the thing it rarely feels like the show is focusing on a main plot. Only at the beginning and the end really. But with the books it makes so much more sense. If you read only the first volume, that's it, you have a complete story. It's largely self conclusive, and it reads like a simple and short romance story, that just happens to have an unnecessary amount of lore. Second volume is a short story collection, all of which are dimilarly self contained, and spanning an array of tones. Which is fine because they're short stories. But then in the adaptation they just tacked them all together in chronological order, which I won't call a bad move but it certainly threw the pace out the window. It all makes so much sense now. I'm seeing this all with new eyes. Also, it's fun to make fun of SAO and all, but going back to this story, I'm finding I'm still quite fond of these characters, and the simplicity of the world. It's just really fun to read. I'm really looking forward to catching up properly.

Oh man, you should have seen the war over this in general discussion. Anyway my take is everything goes on pizza. It's a versatile food you can put anything on. Pineapple itself tastes quite good on pizza so obviously that one's a winner.

Mage hand bread energy. Actually that reminds me that a friend has a character in one of our active campaigns (GM's need time and rest so the title is currently shuffled between 3 people across 4 semi active campaigns) who was a sandwich who became humanoid and sentient. Name's Mayonesa. Probably don't need to translate that.

FInished Sousou no Frieren. Good show, though slightly disappointing. I think this show is at its best during those calm episodes where they just get somewhere, do some small stuff, reflect on the memories of their past travels, and everyone becomes ever so slightly closer to each other. And granted, a good half of the season was like that. But then it decides to spend 10+ episodes in an exam arc and suddenly I wonder if I'm still watching the same show. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the arc, but as something out of a very different show. Exam arcs should stay in battle shounens and special school shows. Animation is insane. Usually this kind of stuff would be left to movies. Hell, lots of anime over the last couple years have really raised animation standards, even SoL stuff. It's really impressive to watch. I really like the party, new and old. Character interactions are a joy. Enjoyed the Dragon Quest references. I swear, most anime referencing Dragon Quest just insert a random picture of DQ3 Hero somewhere. So this show just nonchalantly bringing up mini medals hit like a truck. Very nice. Plus, I choose to believe that the Overall I enjoyed it a lot. Now I'm gonna spend a while reevaluating my expectations for the story so that I can enjoy S2 more than I did S1.

Hmmm there's a somewhat recent one. We were exploring a house. Owners were good people, we were doing a few quests for them, no real reason to suspect them of anything. So naturally we scoured the place like they were the villains. Worse yet, it actually paid off because we found a secret basement were a ritual was being held. Now, inside this secret basement there was another secret room. It was sealed, and we were led to believe that whatever was on the other side was highly dangerous. One of our players goes "If you're afraid to die don't be born!" and smashes the wall open. Inside is where the main part of the ritual is held. A magic circle, and a poor undead guy who was left there bleeding constantly into it. Now, this is the thing. We knew right away that the right course of action was not touching the thing. The character that smashed the wall happened to have a thing though, a curse or something similar, can't remember. But he was compelled to aid every undead he happened to meet. Issue was, he also didn't know much about undead (either that or he failed the roll, can't recall). End result? He tried to heal the dude. With a healing spell. Therefore the undead "died", the flow of blood was interrupted, and we got to find out that it was sealing a demon of all things. So it comes out and kills our player in one hit. If you're afraid to die don't be born indeed. Afterwards the demon just spared us and left, but we have been informed it's now permanently added to the random encounter table.