Eluvianii

What do you season your ninja stars with? ...It was already there when I arrived I swear.

I just heard the most ridiculous thing. Supposedly someone saw you fighting a giant space octopus with an alien, the blue power ranger, a flaming porcupine, and Daniel Radcliffe. No. I might consider it for a scooby snack though.

Can't say if the goodbye to his parents was final or not, but it felt more like a milestone to me. I think this is the first time Kal leaves home in such positive terms. Without the uncertainty of leaving for war (there is uncertainty here, but not on the same level. He's not leaving to fight (as far as he or we know anyway)), without the disapproval from his father, without it feeling like a sacrifice. He's leaving home for good reasons, and his family is cheering for him and waiting for his return. I'm trying to convince myself that Brandon just wanted to showcase that. Plus come on, stop beating Kal down each time he gets up. At this point it's become less "Depression has bad days and good days" and more "Depression would have good days if people let this guy get a rest". What would the lesson even be if they torture him even more now? That you have to get up even if life seems hopeless? He learnt that last book and it was very painful. Just let him rest, I can't believe we're actually expecting the book to beat him down again.

Oh shoot it did happen. Kondo backtracked the progress to "70%-80%". Well no complaints here but damn, this is difficult to track.

The console knows all. One of the best moments in the series for sure. One of the best themes too, Destination of Fate is one of my favorites in the game. Well, while I'm here. Chapter 3 day 1 again

Yeah, game is a big change of pace in that it's very linear. We exchanged missables for gacha, you might be 100 hours in and find a book series you were missing in a random chest. Not that the gacha is a problem. The actual important bits the game just hands to you.

Nice. Time for Crossbell 3 then.

Makes sense. I'm missing a couple. Game arrived while I was in the middle of the 7th stratum.

I haven't played for like a week so virtually no progress, but I'm freaking out just a tiny little bit and I want to mention it. Chapter 3, day 1

Been watching a lot of anime this summer, might as well use this thread. I'm utterly in love with Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction. With a name like that I had no idea what to expect and it sure as hell wasn't this, but it might be the best thing I've watched this year. So far anyway. I've seen 6 episodes and it will have 18, but I'm confident about it. As someone who never watched the original Spice and Wolf, I was seriously missing out. I'm almost caught up with the new version and it's great. Oshi no Ko is, as expected, amazing. I love the characters and seeing them struggle to fit in the entertainment industry is so interesting by itself that I have basically zero interest in the "looking for the culprit" plot. Good stuff. As far as romcoms go, everyone seems to be quite happy with Alya (myself included), but my favorite this season has to be Pseudo-Harem. I haven't had this much sugar in my blood since Takagi-san. I love it so much. Been watching Shoushimin. Strange series, I assume this is what people felt watching Hyouka back in the day. It's good. The mix of mundane mystery, calm atmosphere, and completely nuts animation is really enjoyable. I seriously want to watch the new Monogatari, buuuuut Zoku is still in the backlog. Really should get around to that. This is getting long... add Nokotan, NareNare, and Magic Artisan Dahlia. Love all of these too. Though they have the bad luck of having to compete in such a great season. I also just watched Black Fox, which had been in my backlog a long time. It was nice. Good popcorn material. I don't appreciate the sequel bait considering there are no signs of said sequel, but I guess the movie didn't do that great and they couldn't have predicted that. Still a good watch. Looking forward to Kimi ni Todoke S3. Might have to rewatch the whole thing in preparation.

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?