Tale

Finished one route in Dies Irae. It was good, but melodramatic and with kind of cliched cliffhanger of the bad guy saying "NEXT TIME HAHAHAHAHAHA." Hopefully the other routes take care of that.

I went for my jog last night as it was starting to rain. I thought how bad could it get? Well, the lightning was bright enough that my eyes reflexively shut themselves, and the rain blown by the wind felt like I was attacked by an angry nest of hornets. Other than that, you know, it was okay.

Dies Irae finally started getting good around chapter 6. I think the frustrating thing for me is that the bad guys are the most unsympathetic pieces of work I've seen in a VN. Painfully. Their very existence as characters offends me. It really is Fate/Stay Night for the super edgy. But it's around Chapter 6 that finally something starts getting done about all that.

I finished Axiom Verge. I must have really liked it because I played through it nearly without stopping. But at the same time, I don't feel that it was too great. Just really solid.

I finished Sweetest Monster. An E(nglish)VN made by the wonderful Ebi-Hime. I'd say she was a big name in the English VN community, but that's not really saying much to be frank. Anyway the commentary has her say that she wrote it to be somewhat fanservicey, but otherwise creepy and the title delivered in spades with only about 2 hours of reading. I also played a few levels of Crash Bandicoot, but I think I need to put that on the backburner and finally plow into Axiom Verge.

Good luck clearing the backlog. Mine's only getting worse since my gaming time dropped substantially. I'll be surprised if I finish two games in the next two months. But I've bought like a dozen in this sale.

James Earl Jones as Black Panther, Walken as vision...

And it's going to have additional voice acting or something like that. Makes me feel foolish for having them both on PS3 still in plastic.

Zesteria doesn't seem to be as well received as Berseria. I was hoping Berseria was a bit more stand alone.

You're not done until you get the white robe. Just saying. At this point you're just shaming me for getting so close to buying it. I thought the game was terribly boring as heck in the original release as it was. To the point where it's the only main series game that I put down and never even wanted to pick up again. It felt grindy, slow, and just barely interactive in combat thanks to the gambit system. But I keep thinking "no, I must be too harsh. So many people love it, I bet the story is fantastic to make up for the crud gameplay. I should give it a second chance." And then I read your post.

Ramen and the Opera. I was going to a fathom events showing of The Metropolitan Opera's Macbeth and hit up a Ramen place over in that area I really enjoy. Great night. I just need to find a good showing of Hamlet now.

Not really hard at this point. Final Fantasy is probably the worst JRPG franchise I've played and has been for ages. Edit: After saying that, I could not in good conscience have a pre-order up for Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age. I think I'll see about getting Berseria instead.

How do you like Tales of Berseria? I checked the demo out yesterday just to see how it performed and it was better than expected.

Help, I can't stop myself. I ended up buying more last night. Akiba's Trip: Undead and Undressed and Hollow Knight I keep thinking I want to get that, but then I read the GOG reviews and they say the campaign is short and ends abruptly or something like that. I'm a sucker for a good RTS campaign.

Platinumed Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception, so I can finally stop playing that one. I'll miss you good buddy, until September and the sequel comes out. Back on Dies Irae and it's still ridiculously edgy. But it's not all bad.

I tried a bit of Majotori and Omni Link last night. Majotori isn't as funny as the reviews would have me believe, but the trivia questions are a diverse assortment of popular nerd culture, including movies, anime, and video games. That's what keeps it pretty interesting. I'm a bit disappointed that the character stories only tend to be about two quizzes long, and a failure seems to kill the branch. So it's not like there's lots of interesting branching going on. Omni Link I barely played, but it seems really interesting for having maybe one developer. You run around playing asteroids for the main gameplay, then there are VN segments, with supposedly branching pathways. I barely started it.

Everyone tells me to go in blind. But then the game talks about "you have one shot" and I suddenly get terrified that the game is going to delete itself at some point and I'll only be able to play it once, because I'm afraid to look up if that's even a thing.

The Ebi-Hime bundle (I've had my eye on Sweetest Monster since it released) Clannad The Nonary Games Lucy -The Eternity She Wished For- Omni Link (been eyeing it forever, Western made space game/VN hybrid, good looking art and lots of positive impressions) Majotori (a narrative trivia game where a witch goes around granting wishes, if you can answer the questions correctly) OneShot (I hear such great things) Cosmic Star Heroine (I like the rest of the dev's catalog) And the three Monolith games I don't already have on Steam. Shadow of Mordor, Condemned, and Tron 2.0. I probably would have bought the No One Lives Forever titles too if they'd had them. I wanted to grab The Long Journey Home, but 10% discount didn't convince me. Between this and Crash next week, I probably should stop buying games this year.

Summer cards are dropping funny... I got 13 cards for completing the queue once. But then didn't get any further cards after spending $100 and doing the queue 2 more times. I spent $10 again after and 13 more cards dropped.

Just as soon as we all stop F5ing the page to see if everyone else has stopped F5ing the page.

2 was incredible. I've heard 3 is less so.

I finished Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception. I simply don't want to wait for September to play Mask of Truth at this point. What a cliffhanger... I'm slowly trying to Platinum it now, but mostly playing Dies Irae. So far it feels like Fate/Stay Night with Nazis. Kind of feels like something I would have written if I was into VNs when I was a teenager. But it has great reviews and the characters aren't terrible, so I'm sticking with it for now.

I started this morning off by checking out my bosses laptop, configuring his printer and scanner. Then I went to a Japanese bistro I hadn't tried yet. Their flounder was incredible, but their sushi was nothing special. The sushi being so cheap made sense once I saw it. Went to the coffee shop run by the organizer of my writing group, got two pages written in my horror story. I could have written more, but it's a pretty disturbing scene, so I needed a break for my own emotional stability. I think I'll go back and finish tomorrow. And topped it off by fixing my mother's toilet. Needed a new valve and float. Easy enough. It's been a good day.

For lunch I had grocery store sushi. Smoked salmon, cream cheese, avocado, and just a little soy sauce. And for some reason it was the best sushi I'd ever had.

I usually enjoy that sort of film (the psychological melodrama involving women and the role they play - see The Red Shoes, Suspiria, Inland Empire as other examples), but this one left me pretty cold. I felt the aesthetic tropes by which it tried to capture a cracked psyche were all pretty standard for the genre and I ultimately had a bit of a "seen it all already" feel with it. In terms of Satoshi Kon films I think it's the weakest of the four I've seen (the only four he released, I think?) - however, if you enjoyed it I would eagerly recommend his follow-up Millennium Actress, a superb trip through the golden decades of Japanese cinema. Tokyo Godfathers is also great. Thanks! I'll have to check it out. And maybe those other movies you mentioned to.