Mamoulian War

I had a lot of work after my vaccation, and got a little bit sick, so I had decided to make a pause in moving forward with the Star Ocean 5 Ex Dungeon for a while and decided to go for that silly 1 million hit battle trophý which I was still missing. After finishing up 6W Gabriel Celeste, I had a little bit over 400k hits recorded. Soo I have searched trophy hunting forums, how to finish it. And I have found out a guide, how to make it unattended, which was a pretty good thing, as I knew, I will have not much time to play next few days. So. I went to one big dragon superboss and started my first attempt. In the meanwhile, I have done some IRL stuff, which had to be done. 3 hours and some minutes later, the party defeated the boss, and went to check the hit count. My oh my, I nded up disappointed… just a little bit over 60k hits was counted by the game… so I spent almost a week, booting up a console right after I wake up, and leaving the game running for few hours a day, while I was doing my work while at home office. Sigh… approx 30 hours later, I ended up at 960k hits. 40k to go… I really can not imagine a single person, who would have time and patience to get this trophy in a legit “legit way”. As much as I like Star Ocean games, they always come up with some silly over the top Battle Trophy, to degrade your enjoyment out of the game. At least compared to SO4, you could leave the console unatended to get this one. Thankfully, this time they added only this one stupid Battle Trophy. All others were pretty ok to get, and more than 90% of them, I could get while playing the game, without need for a grind. Looking back, SO4 battle trophies were just a torture, bacause you had to do all of them without the help of AI /rant_over

Russia has expanded the ranks of their heroes. Putin has pardoned two convicted mass murderers and cannibals as a reward for killing Ukrainians. Such a lovely country, isn’t it? https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/11/23/7430047/

>>>Insert the obvious announcement of giveaway on GOG here<<< : Styx 2. And first game of the series, if you do not have it and want to have a nice pair, is currently for sale for 1.99EUR and probably same amount in USD

Nope, you have to take them very seriously. They are slowly moving their narrative of Putin’s endgoal for the next decade or so. If the west would not ignore their propaganda against Ukraine last two decades, we would not be where we are today…

Russia is already threatening Finland with tanks

Forever. Why do you think, if Russia does not care about the lives of their soldiers in Ukraine, they would suddenly start to care about some brown or black people freezing to death in Karelia?

After doing some crafting, I was able to defeat 6-winged Gabriel Celeste. On 2nd attempt. During first attempt, I became to comfortable with a fight and I have, after 15 minutes of almost flawless figh, dropped a guard. I have forgotten to get my healers at the edge of arena, so when I was performing Rush attack, he casted his uber AoE, and wiped floor with my whole party

I have to correct myself, I have just found out that, Beth made actually 5 Terminator games I have forgotten about Rampage, and I never knew they made a Terminator game based on first movie as well

Bethesda did actually three Terminator games. Out of which the Future Shock and Skynet are IMHO still the best games ever released from the Terminator franchise. Although the graphics did not aged the best... To bad, they are in copyright limbo, so you can't get them legally anymore

From what I heard, it was not so prone to min maxing as AoD. But I have not played it yet. So can't confirm it from my own experience.

According to Global Rights Compliance human rights group, Putin has been planning to starve out Ukraine with stealing all of their agricultural enterprises and their products and cause another "Holodomor" (which they actually did as one of the first things in the south). They started the preparation for it long before they invaded Ukraine and it is possible this will start another case against Putin and Russia in ICJ... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-grain-theft-ukraine-russia-latest-b2447644.html

4-winged Gabriel Celeste and Ethereal Queen have been defeated in the last two days. Gabriel is a pain, which can wipe you easily, if you do not watch out for your melee team members, and if you forgot to craft Resurrection Mist Queen is just a crazy big damage sponge, where you need either crazy good weapons or a lot of patience. I have all the ultimate weapons now, but I was not able to upgrade them yet, so I need more patience for now . Also defeated the final boss one more time, to get Fiore's ending The way to 6-winged deities has been unlocked. I will probably have to craft some accessories for boosting Rush attacks, as these bosses will have ****load of HP, and I am already at max level, so only way how to boost damage is to upgrade my gear. We'll see.

Goal number 9/2023 complete After defeating the Ethereal Queen for the first time in Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness on my PS4, I have decided to go for full clear of the first floor of the Ex Dungeon again, to obtain more Orichalcum for the crafting trophy. But because I have finished it sooner as expected, I have went to challenge the final boss of the game's storyline as well. As expected, due to trying to get all of the Private Actions, I got again Miki's and Relia's Endings, but it has unlocked one more trophy for me as well. For finishing the game on Universe Difficulty. I have also finished every Battle Trophy in the game, with the exception of 1 million hits on enemies. I am still under 250 thousands, so it will probably take a lot more time .

The Ethereal Queen of Star Ocean 5 has been defeated on Universe Difficulty Before attempting her, I have decided to level up a little bit, and got up to average level 240. The fight was much easier to go through as the previous "Shadow Party". It took more than 20 minutes or so, but after the fight I have double facepalmed. Silly me forgot to replace the XP grinding weapons with the real deal on two characters, so they did not made almost any damage to the boss LOL... Anyway, I was unlucky with her drops again, so I got just one Moonstone from the chest behind her. Which was still enough to create the best weapon for Anne. And luckily, she dropped her feather as well, so I was able to create the best female armour in the game as well. It went to Anne right away, so she is outfitted to the max for now. The next goal will be the Orichalcum farming in respawned first floor to slowly fill out the craft book and then the 4 winged versions of the superbosses.

uff, the game looks interesting, but the streamer killed it for me Was not able to watch it more than 2 minutes... I will definitely put it on my radar and hopefully it will be released on GOG as well. (THQ is the publisher, so this seems realistic).

And again, article based on anonymous sources, which according to some people here should be frown upon, as it is a “symptom of shoddy journalism” But yeah, I bet no one would object their reliability this time I would like to point out again to the fact, that Russia last year dismissed the theory, that Ukraine was the culprit of the sabotage as laughable Said by Putin himself https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/15/putin-calls-ukraine-role-in-nord-stream-blasts-sheer-nonsense

Heh, yeah, maybe in wet Putin dreams. He tried to annex 4 oblasts, and he is not able to hold them back, which made him the first Russian leader after hundreds of years who lost Russian soil. What makes it even more ridiculous is, that he lost it to a much smaller country And if you are thinking the West cannot keep pace with Russia if they start to try, I got a bridge to sell to you as well. Or do you really think, that a country with a pre-war GDP lower than Italy can outperform the whole Western World with 100x bigger economy combined? Of course Putin think so, but that’s why everyone sees him as delusional and deranged dictator. Including China

And here you are doing a big mistake of thinking like westerner and not like easterner or russian. I wanted to make a long post for you again, trying to give you more insight on how different world it is here, and why you are discounting implanted nihilism of the east into this, but I have found today a very good explanation on how russia thinks, which does a pretty good job of explaining it. And yes Putin counts on people like Trump, ex-Berlusconi, Fico, Orban to pave his way into challenging NATO and Article 5 after he has done enough to destabilize the western society through useful idiots like Zuckerberg and Musk

Well, did not get the drop Anyway, the next boss was piece of cake and I was able to get him down easily in few minutes, unfortunately the next encounter was literally a DPS wall. I spent few hours trying to figure it out, how to defeat shadows of my party with ****ton of HP and crazy healing abilities. I had to spent more than 1 hour to grind levels so I could have at least some chance to stay alive. Well, still not enough. The biggest issue for me are the needed drops. And I am not very lucky with it, so I can imagine, that people can get stuck here, if they are even more unlucky than me. I am happy, that I have at least one ultimate weapon for Emerson, else I would not be able to get through this fight. Anyway after a while, I have find out a with a little bit of help on Japanese wiki, a nice Role assignment for the characters, although, it still did not help me to beat them I had to use Dead Man Walking Role on my tank to be able to get through this encounter. This makes the character immune to damage, but he gradually loses HP. And pretty fast, so you have to watch out for your healer, so he can top him out with heals all the time. Even with this “cheesy” tactics, I still had a lot of trouble to be victorious and had to use few times items to mass resurrect my party. In the end, I won, but again, absolutely ****ty luck with drops. You can get up to 6 moonstones from this encounter. I got none Two-winged Ethereal Queen (the last superboss of first Maze cycle) will be much harder without more pieces of ultimate weapons.

Back from vacations Cleared two more bosses in the third floor of the Ex Dungeon. Boy-oh-boy, the difficulty spiked up after the second floor. I got nearly wiped out few times by the thrash mobs, but I am slowly leveling up and getting more powerful. The first boss (Bloodthirsty Fiend) was crazy hard, and I was fighting him for more than half an hour, and used up almost all of the Fresh Sages I had to control my healers most of the time, to overheal his damage to my party. The next boss (Transmogrified Alma) was a pushover and all I needed to do, was to fill up my "limit" gauge and use the ultimate move with Emerson on 200%... I got my first Moonstone as well, and now I am thinking what kind of weapon should I synthesize with it. Probably weapon for Emerson, as I have found out, that he is sometimes very useful in fights against the bosses to control, and he can deal that way enormous damage, if he can stay alive. And I have a chance to get the best weapon for MC from the next boss. We'll see

I am happy to see this. So hopefully we might see PoE3 before my retirement (or at least before Star Citizen release).

Colony Ship just got out of Early Access. https://www.gog.com/en/news/release_colony_ship_a_postearth_role_playing_game_with_a_25_launch_discount

Nope, not with Trump around, he had already a lot of negative remarks about what happens (or more like what will not happen) when Russia hits Baltics. And do you really think, that the Russia would change the scorched earth tactics, when attacking Eastern Europe? How many towns would be razed to the ground before first Wave of defense would be created? Putin needs a war for survival of his regime. And from Russia’s political point of view, they are already in war with NATO, because they want to end the current world order. Only some politicians and people in the west are still living in the lie, that this is not affecting their future because it is only Ukraine’s war. Russian army might be currently a big ****show, but Russian way of conquest is scorching everything to the ground to make everyone else life as miserable as their own, and then rule over the smoking pile of rubble… And for that you need only some fresh mindless meat willing do get grinded for his overlord. And Russia has enough of it. Putin started destabilizing Europe long time ago, first he creates millions of refugees by bombing Syria to oblivion, and then he start funneling billions of dollars to fund populist anti-immigration parties in EU. If you think, that current incompetent army stops him from pursuing his goals as soon as people like Trump stop funding the defense of Ukraine, I got pretty big bridge to sell you…

And again, I help myself with the video of the Danish guy. Although he is from the West and not East, he is spot on, what is really going on in Eastern Europe, and how the rational people are seeing the conflict here.

@xzar_monty I have found another article describing the state of attrition warfare in the conflict. And if it is plausible, it does not look overly bright for Russia. https://www.wsj.com/world/russia-turns-to-longtime-arms-customers-to-boost-war-arsenal-5111bac4?page=1