Eluvianii

Finished Persona 4 Golden. Mixed feelings about this one. Some of the new events I loved, some didn't do much for me. The concert event annoys me tho that's just nitpicking. The new character feels... absent? If you don't deliberately spend time with her she might as well not exist. And the story attached to her is in a similar place. It's not a new story per se, but an addition to the plot of the original, but since that story was very much complete, it doesn't feel like this really adds anything. It starts suddenly, ends suddenly, and back to business as usual. I was confused when P5 Royal decided to make the expansion story independent from the main plot but I see now that's the better move. About the new social link Also, speaking of nitpicks. The graphics and the music! HD textures were such a big mistake. The whole game looks so weird, especially the school and any place with grass. A picture of real grass does NOT work as a texture for an anime game. As for the music, it's the dimming. Every time a character talks the music dims. Which is normal, I'm pretty sure P5 does it, but it's so extreme here. Volume goes so low it practically mutes the music. Vanilla didn't do that, why change it? As I said, those two things are nitpicks, they're small stuff. But they're also constant. They remained annoying throughout the whole game, just minutes ago I was watching the final cutscene, and even then I was distracted by the music disappearing every couple seconds. Epilogue was great. Not too long, just enough to give some closure. Or remove it maybe? It's a good thing either way. Good game I suppose. There were as many good additions as there were bad ones, so that leaves it on par with Vanilla. Curious to see how much of this revision ends up in Revival.

Just played RE8's dlc, Shadows of Rose. That was beautiful, the original ending was good already but this makes it almost perfect.

Man, trying to come up with even one is kinda difficult. Maybe Skinamarink? Super unique, cool concept, but it should have been like 25 minutes, 30 tops. Watching this for almost two hours is incredibly boring.

Twinkle considered it for a second, and concluded they probably wouldn't listen. Then again, Glint looked like he could use the reassurance. "Sure, I guess I can do that..." she hesitated. Would not being violent imply not fighting Voidbringers? Reasoning with Rob instead of hunting him? She couldn't deny that sounded wonderful, but it was unrealistic. The more Twinkle thought about it the simpler it got. She was scared. The previous weeks hadn't been bad really. Sure, there had been fighting. Sure, their lives had been at constant risk. But at least they were united, like a tightly knit tapestry. Violence itself wasn't the issue. But now one of the threads had broken loose, and it had taken another one with it, burned it to ashes. And she was afraid the whole thing would unravel from the tear they left. She was scared. Well that wouldn't do, would it. She stood by her earlier resolution to trust Ed, but she didn't have to do it passively. None of them did. It was a spren's role to support their knight, and that included keeping them in check when needed. Trust was a two-way street after all, watching in silence would just make things harder for both parts. Rob had betrayed Cup. The spren had to make sure their knights knew they were not allowed to let it happen again. "You know what? Yeah, I think that's a good idea. I'll talk to Ed. I'm sure he can handle not being violent, he's not that good at fighting anyway." elsewhere in the room, Edwin sneezed "And you can talk to Ben, I don't think he'd hurt you, but you make him listen anyway! You're there for him, I'm sure he'll be there for you. Maybe they can talk to the other knights, make sure they all remember to care for their spren!" That had cheered her up for some reason. It was a bad day and about to get worse. So letting herself be a bit more assertive, just trying to grasp that chance at being able to trust the remaining members of the group. Well, that sounded nice, even if it was a small hope. She laughed softly, and it was more genuine this time. "Thanks, Glint."

Super tangent but look at them, they're so cute! You can make anything on this thing istg. Desperately need a frilly dress for Renne.

Finished Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, Canon of Vengeance route. This one took about, 55 hours almost to the minute? I did play on Casual this time, not about to stress over optimizing builds for fights I already won. Naturally didn't touch the superbosses... It's really impressive how much better this is than the original story. They probably knew it wasn't that well received and instead of just adding an extra story at the end with the signature "Atlus rerelease girl", they tweaked the original. A what-if scenario regarding said girl, and how things can change if she's present. It was absolutely the right call, the highlight of the game was seeing the same scenes I had seen already, play out differently thanks to Yoko's influence. Granted, it wasn't all her doing, some scenes were changed just because, but even those were great, the result is overall better written characters. Ending is a bit disappointing, all ending cutscenes should be a little longer I swear, it was over in seconds. Give me an epilogue! Also the soundtrack! The original was an instant favorite, and this one managed to be a step above. It's great. Some of the best battle themes I've ever heard, and there's like 40 of them. Great game. Now back to the drawer until Atlus remembers the main series exists again in 10 years or so.

Where was this artist my whole life? I keep finding gems.

I keep hearing that. Like half the fandom was disappointed with Crimson Sin but then Horizons blew everyone's mind. And then Falcom took a year off to do Xanadu which is kinda funny but good for me.

Watched Lupin the IIIrd: The Immortal Bloodline. That was awesome, peak Lupin right here, with an incredibly weird plot which is honestly what I've come to expect from the franchise. The bigger the project, the weirder it gets. Plus this movie comes around only to say there is a sixth entry coming to this particular saga. Can't wait to wait six years for this one.

I read something about how Dimitri's route relies on certain things remaining a mystery, things that apparently the other routes explain, so playing it later would diminish the impact. Allegedly. Also I'm disappointed that only MC gets S supports. On the other hand, what in the Cold Steel is this progression? Free days? Bonding points? And of course, I'm a teacher. Not to mention I've been at this for hours and only done like 3 short main maps. Not complaining though. Just based off my experience with Awakening, that game's plot went blazing fast since it was just map after map. These breaks make it feel like time is actually passing.

I guess I am now trying out Fire Emblem Three Houses. I should probably commit a little more than "trying out" but too many games on my plate atm. Tho there's always the chance I'll get addicted against my will anyway. Currently trying to figure out a good route order, so far I've gathered that apparently Dimitri is the best first route. Also planning ships already. That's a top priority of course. You can't drop like 30 characters on my plate on chapter 1 and not expect me to do that.

That's interesting. I always figured first person would be harder because you're stuck with the information the character has. In third person if you're struggling to convey something from the character's pov, you can just zoom out and go omniscient for a bit to say it. Hell, I actually struggled a lot to write in general because I tried so hard to stay within the character's head. Only when I decided to play around with going back and forth between ground level and omniscient narration did it become easier and a lot more fun to write. I don't really think one is better than the other tho. Purely preference.

Haha, we weren't going to kick him out or anything. As I said, our table is nowhere near serious enough for that. Chaotic characters are part of the fun. We just found it funny how much evil he commits while thinking himself lawful-good, it's become part of his identity as a player, so we tease him about it.

So, in one of our current campaigns things have been pretty fair, most of us are still on our first character. Exception being the one player that listens to intrusive thoughts who's on his third (arguably fourth) character, and the player that very rarely can come, who's also on his third character, this being entirely thanks to the other player, amazingly enough. Now, no matter the intended tone of the campaign, we're not a serious table, so this isn't really a problem, but intrusive thoughts guy, there's no denying it, he's a not a good player. His characters are all the kind of people to solve all problems by the sword. And this results in A LOT of choices that are undeniably evil, even though he doesn't see them as such. Particularly funny when he tried to play a paladin. He'd go into a fortress, get an ambiguous detect evil reading, draw his sword and be ready to (attempt to) take on the whole fortress. He'll randomly try to kill NPCs the party has befriended because "they're bad guys", doesn't even need to be a paladin to pull that one. And, most recently, he gave away the newest character from absent guy, on his second or third session I might add, and with the player absent, to a bunch of shady paladins. "Yeah, we found this guy at the monastery, you should question him." We found out next day he died during questioning. So when his current character died (admittedly due to bad luck this time), he finally agreed to play the evil route because that's honestly what his "good" characters do anyway. However, it was agreed unanimously that this character couldn't be something as simple as Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic-Evil. The increasing bulk of his actions has granted him the alignment [Character name]-Evil, as clearly he's something special not covered in the rulebook. So yeah, that's how we ended up creating a new alignment for our trigger happy player.

Just watched The Taste of Tea. This has to be one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. It's like My Neighbors the Yamadas on drugs. The visual tone of the movie is so bland, the color palette soft and dark, the sound design so quiet, the soundtrack almost nonexistent, and yet every scene in the movie is so utterly bizarre, the content and presentation clash so hard they balance each other out. I couldn't tell you what this movie is about. A family lives their lives for 2 hours and 20 minutes I guess. There's nothing going on in this movie yet there's so much. It feels longer too, like I said, a little over two hours yet I feel like I just watched Return of the King. That's a compliment btw, I was enthralled the whole time. Also, Anna Tsuchiya and Hideaki Anno are in it for some reason, which just adds to the weirdness. I am confused, fascinated, and in love with this movie, would be delighted to watch again.