LadyCrimson

I usually google star names to make sure I spell them right/my memory isn't wrong, but I was too lazy this time, sorry.

...it takes a long time to clone/push out UI elements from a menu pic you want. ...and I might have to do it yet again, because that menu pic keeps changing at different story points. >.> ...gave up on the actual bottom translucent bar tho. That's beyond me (and have it not look like utter poo). ...I do like the fact the picture keeps changing, but that means I want to preserve the others so-

We are in another big longer-term drought, but what with all the covid it's hardly in the news or on anyone's minds. And of course the issue that Calif. has too many people (and companies) trying to make an oasis of production out of deserts, diverting water from everywhere. Every time I see a golf course (and then another one, and another one, all fairly close to each other) or anything similar, I frown. Only time I was "on" the American River was from further East, doing a noob white water rafting trip with my brother and other noobs. That was pretty fun. At least I didn't fall out of the raft. Sometimes sitting on the edge of those things, it feels like you're going to just fly right off. And that was on easy stuff.

My top 3 Carpenter films: The Thing The Thing The Thing My actual favorite after The Thing would probably be Starman which is completely different genre vs. most of his films. ...Escape From New York, classic, certainly not perfect, Kurt Russell is fun ...Assault on 13 was ok, very dated at this point, but works for what it is. Nothing special tho. ...Halloween, well, another classic, and I like it, but I wouldn't call it a favorite of any sort. In a way, I probably liked Nightmare on Elm Street better, I like (more) fantastical horror a bit more I guess. ...They Live, I enjoyed it as an almost parody, I found parts of it hilarious. Didn't like the last 20 minutes/ending all that much tho, and it does run a little too long. ...Big Trouble, I think I'm one of the few who doesn't particularly like it. Kurt is always great, there's some cheese-tastic fun moments, but overall, didn't excite me or anything. ...In the Mouth....pfft. I love Sam Neil but it felt overly pretentious, purposely confusing, wasn't "scary" or thrilling, and I was rather bored. ...The Fog, for the time period I guess it's ok but again, didn't really do much for me/kinda bored.

We just got home. My general viewpoint of the Sac. area we were scouting is ... well, it's very sprawl suburban. Some areas look "rich" and nice, lots of side trees, some were more moderate, and ofc some sketchier areas, but in general it felt like nothing but clusters of homes separated by main roads, with said roads having strip malls for miles. Dull to look at, very same-y looking most of the time, nothing likely would interest me locally outside of any farther away downtown events. That said, the housing clusters are pleasant enough. Did see/find one house (the real estate agent we got/met was very nice/efficient, I liked him) that would totally be an "us" house. Backyard was a little small (not that I care, that's more hubby's thing) but it wouldn't matter since it would basically be a 5 min. walk from the front door to the American River/the huge main bicycle/walking/general parkway that borders it. A huge place to walkabout etc. and you don't have to take care of it yourself! No backyard neighbor, either. Hmm. Still undecided whether I really want to do it tho. But whether that house or a similar one we could us living there. I mean, all I do is stay at home anyway. But...hm. Just dunno. If we lived up there and rented the bay area house we'd probably come out 1k a month ahead and have the BA house paid off even faster. But I hate moving! lol.

D2...the sorceress kicked butt. Necro was ok too but I probably started/made 30+ mages and 2 to 3 of any others. Only ever got one to 99 tho. Zillions of 8plyer cow runs, was never doing that again. Normally Id stop around 70ish, after I finished Hell dif with one, and theyd become a mule.

@Bartimaeus I tried to watch Wailing because of reviews. I didnt finish it/could not get into it all.

I could be home playing my game but instead hubby is dragging me to Sac because he is still curious if he would like to buy there. I am already bored. ...also, finger typing on a phone will never not suck

The game gave me this item which when active makes party and enemies do 1 damage. Obviously a way to (inefficiently) work on artes/skills proficiencies. So last night I turned it on, selected only a handful of desired artes for each party member, put AI in full-Auto, entered combat with a large mob, and went to bed. I woke up and they were still going at it.

^ I have Cat Quest on PS4. I liked it but then I stopped for some reason. I need to start it again one day. =============================== Does everything on this planet have bunny ears? I was hoping for more outfits (or even just recolors) that would make my team more color co-ordinated, but this isn't exactly what I had in mind. ...what? Is the AI actually lecturing me on being smarter in combat when I have to save them constantly? Pffft. Magic bullet time.

Tales of Arise: ---more main plot then: "This seems like a good spot to do some sidequests that have suddenly popped up all over the place." Oh btw, I'm clvl 38-39. ---take side quest, party is all "Yeah! let's do that!" ... get to spot, gigantour boss fight. Trigger/enter the battle, start title says: "ENEMY NAME: LEVEL 54" ... last 2-3 minutes, wipe (3 tries) ---take side quest ... "ENEMY NAME: LEVEL 57" ... last 90 seconds, wipe. (couple tries) ---next: ... a dungeon you can't leave/must finish once entered. Step in middle of rooms and a plethora of stuff drops on your head. "ENEMY NAME/S: LEVEL 60+" ... last 20 seconds, wipe (tried 3 times) ---I'm sensing a pattern to these new sidequests....are they supposed to be later? ---next: ... "ENEMY NAME: LEVEL 42" ... "I can handle that right." Yes, I did, in 3-4 minutes. ---take side quest. Fishing! Maybe it's an easier one. ---Dungeon: "ENEMY NAME/S: LEVEL 43-54" - but they're just mobs, I can handle those. Barely. Near-wiped a couple times, but I made it. Got to lvl 39-40, too. ---Get to big room. "ENEMY NAME: LVL 56." ... I am NOT coming back. "LEROY....." - wipe in 1.5 minutes. Sigh. ---2nd try ... 25 minutes of running/evading Dohalim around in circles forcing him to cast his Fairy Circle (thanks DLC) and a buff or two over and over, plus using up lots of healing, CP (mana) and revive consumables (I usually like to win trying not to use those). And finally - "I WIN!" *puffs up chest* AI-healing is ok but yeah...can't rely on it at all when they're that much more powerful than you. They are too slow/easily distracted. Game never tells you level of enemies until you're in the combat circle already. What it does do is warn you with short VA quips from your party as you approach, but who pays attention to that? Anyway, guess I gotta get moah power....or git gud. More likely, the former.

Arise doesn't explain a ton of things very well/accessibly, far as I can tell. Occasionally I'm probably just unobservant but, like ... crafting accessories works this way for half the game. Then at some point they added a new feature, which I only realized when I went to the craft menu and there was suddenly a new option in there. Same thing with this farming animals menu. They added a new animal you could "farm" (because of a side quest I think, no idea if it shows up before or after you discover the quest) and I didn't know until I camped and looked at the menu of the store guy (at every camp). Just a lot of out of the blue things. I also didn't realize that the Title circles, if you hovered over their center, would tell you what you needed to get them - like "catch a boss fish" or "cook this recipe while camping" or "do a side quest"... but at the same time, some new (empty, don't have) Title circles just seem to appear at certain points all of a sudden. Probably when any quest/action becomes actually available. I became better at combat and try to do everything legit, but the bosses or some side bosses. I just don't get some stuff and end up turning on WeMod and just enjoying the fights visually. Pffft.

Oh gawd ...

Am I boring everyone yet? I've reached a point where most screencaps are spoilers, anyway - so here's a different picture for you. A character is in there somewhere, can you see him? Additional: story started feeling too "serious" so I took off all the bunny/ears and things. I was also tired of never seeing the young mage's eyes in cutscenes so I gave her a different pair of glasses. Pretty! Fire always makes things better.

It is. A trend. I try to be patient but it's starting to be a tad annoying, because almost none of it feels important to furthering plot or chr. arcs, at least not for me. I'm clicking thru most skits faster and faster and faster ... Death Stranding had some super long cutscenes and things but at least they were intriguing sometimes...Tales of Arise writing is just long, dry repetition. Male lead is particularly one-note. I won't explain but ... sigh. ...my husbando makes it worth it tho. ...and the environments keep getting prettier/better. I just wish some of the areas were a little bigger. Don't need "open world" or huge, just ... a little bigger.

I post this not so much because I'm all that enamored of the song (or band) but ... I guess they've really become some kind of global phenomenon. After "Dynamite" they appear to be moving towards making most of their songs sung in English. Which, as a non-Korean speaker, I find a little less charming (and I still have a hard time understanding some of their English spoken singing). But ... supposedly they're the first band since the Beatles to have 3 albums reach #1 on Billboard in a year. Special UN Assembly envoy for the S. Korean President (edit: re: Sustainable Development Goals). Billions of YT views. They've been around long enough now that most of their members are in their late 20's. The power of youthful fans - and social/internet media access - can be a powerful thing. And I think it's a good thing. Music, as it can/does, bringing the world together on global scale. I can dig it.

^ While I'm all for making sure contracts are legally honored/full-filled/one isn't being purposely ripped off etc, I still yet always have a little bit of a hard time being very sympathetic to someone who made 20 million wanting another 50 million so desperately they'll hire mega expensive lawyers and sue. Nothing against her in a big sense, I don't live in that world after all, thus I will never understand it - and perhaps it's also because if I made 20+ million (even with the tax bite) on top of any other excess funds/savings from previous works, I would have said "nice knowing ya all, I'm retired from this fame-game now, bye." ...but that's probably why I'm not famous.

I have decided. Hootle is the best character in the game. a master actor of expressive feeling ... a shoo-in for the Owl Academy Awards. Still haven't controlled her. I just switch to take scenic pics sometimes. You will get knocked through the air and onto your backside, often. The beachwear DLC outfit for my husbando was also worth it. Hey, there's a bikini DLC for the shield-woman, so fair play. Thanks, Bandai Namco. Can't tell if Rinwell's grin = appreciation or mocking laughter.

Yeah those Fetishes were super annoying, especially if a crunchy sorceress. On the other hand. teleport let me avoid them a lot of time. Those Act 2 tomb guys who raised the dead or summoned skeletons or something could be a serious PITA too if you didn't kill them fast enough. Actually, thinking back on it, I think I liked Act1 the best, then Act 4, then Act5. The only reason one went back to Act3 was to farm Mephisto over and over and over and ... honestly the main appeal for me re: Diablo games was starting completely over from lvl1 and the loot hunt. Which was sort of missing in D3 - loot just wasn't as fun, stats/uniques/sets etc wise, imo.

Act 2 was always the least interesting Act, outside of Hardfore Chr. Killer Mr. Duriel. I would almost never go back to it/farm there with high level characters. I haven't bothered yet because honestly I played D2 for 3-4 years, maybe 4k-5k hours. The remake looks good and more stash sounds nice (although I had D2 mods that allowed that in single-player anyway) but I have a feeling after an hour admiring the new look and any QoL changes, I'd stop caring. Perhaps one rainy day. Tales of Arise: progressed story. There was this huge segment (20-30 minutes?) of nothing but dialogue cutscenes and skits, all mandatory or auto-triggered. One after another after another. That's a bit much. I hope that's not the start of a trend, but oh well whatever. I still love the action/environment etc. so I can put up with it until post-game anyway. They weren't all boring, but again the general writing style doesn't really work for me. They're either preaching or giving each other inspirational "you/we can do it!" speeches or something and because they go on for far too long I sorta fall asleep.

Spent most of the day first grabbing video stills from then editing/compressing game videos, because apparently the difference between recording in constant 3-12 minute bursts in high-quality 4k all the time vs. using 1440 (what I'd usually do) = sucking up 1.5-2TB of space in no time. Oh sure, the disk I record to started with 3TB free, but every 2-3 days you still gotta clean house before it gets out of hand. I hate losing quality tho. Edit: every video taking 20-40 minutes to render drives one batty too. Hurry up! eg, I need an 8TB disk...although, that might not be enough either. Do they have 64TB disks yet?

The problem with being a caster who has to stand still for a long time to cast some spells.... ...is that sometimes they catch up to you. JRPG's - the place to get all your culinary advice. Maybe because of all the chaos but I didn't notice at first that these things weren't just a strangely shaped, singular creature. Now that I've noticed, they're kind of cute. I suppose I need to play the dedicated mage someday (figure in the lower-center). Only one I haven't tried as combat leader yet. I'm not that fond of her character (outside of her owl), so I sort of avoid her...her spells are nice, but I prefer having two who can damage and heal, so I don't really need her.

*yawns, blinks blearily* ...two artes at 4 star, several at three star, a smattering at 2 star. ...5.5 chr. levels gained (not a lot considering the hours spent), meaning I'm a bit over-leveled for where I am, now. ...player's combat ability/understanding improved a lot from pure repetition. Still totally suck at evading, but have figured out pulling only r-trigger makes chr. spin to one side a bit to avoid, so that helped (no two-button/two hand pressing). ...upped difficulty to Moderate (there's Story, Normal, Moderate, Hard - 1 other I forget) and can now auto-combat defeat some stronger special enemies. Which is great when you want to video record stuff with the HUD disabled. ...time to progress story a little further. ...having all the party members increases their humor/personality interactions, making them all feel a bit more "there". Yup, maybe it took a little while to seriously warm up to it, but I'm lovin' this game. Still nowhere near as much silly fun as FFXV but it still hits my obsessive-brain.

Yeah, especially when you're just playing on "normal." I'm not even quite half-way through the main story yet I think. But I'm a stubborn jack--- and I am going to get all my fave artes to star-3 or 4 at least, darnit. I spent days and days and days killing that giant damage impervious mech in FFXV so I could have 6+ of the top accessory (on console no less) and this game's grind will not defeat me! Besides, I have the perfect spot for farming skills on mobs over and over. (you don't get much XP btw for repeated farming, purely about lvling those artes...). edit: on the bright side, all the things mobs drops is making me 'rich.'