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Bartimaeus

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Everything posted by Bartimaeus

  1. Bartimaeus
    An ungoshly amount of filler battles that takes so long to get through. The BG series had hundreds of filler battles...but they usually only took literally maybe 30 to 60 seconds to get through. In PoE, they still take just about as much time and consideration as a "real" battle, and it's such a danged drag when it just keeps happening endlessly. You would really have to enjoy the core combat mechanics in order for that not to be an issue, and I just...don't.
  2. Bartimaeus
    Post-2000 anime was so incredibly off-putting and insulting to me for all the reasons you said and more that I wrote the entire medium off until the past couple of years. Style, framing, and direction all offended me to my very core in the popular animes so it felt very difficult to draw any other conclusion. There are certain to be exceptions here and there, but they're so buried under waves of stuff that isn't that it was impossible to find them without doing a research project. Personally, I've become more of a late 80s to late 90s guy (I'm finding 70s and early 80s to be consistently too weak on characterization and writing to be able to enjoy them, unfortunately), but otherwise, I'm about in the same boat as you - Samurai Champloo is currently the sole exception to my "no post-2000 anime can be good" rule, . Yeah, we've had some discussions on how fandoms pretty consistently suck. They tend to highlight the absolute worst parts of anything and everything - they make great shows and games that I personally love (like Undertale or Steven Universe or Sailor Moon or...) look and sound like complete garbage, and it's no different for majestic or probably anyone else here. ...Probably, . ...The author of Sailor Moon wrote a non-canon story about Sailor Moon? Alright.
  3. Bartimaeus
    Unrelated to the discussion: I finished the first season of One Punch Man. It was...uh, alright, I guess? It's kind of funny to contrast it to K-On, in the sense that One Punch Man isn't really a show that appeals to me at all but is okay-ish because it doesn't do anything particularly wrong and has a few things I like about it...and it's ridiculously easy to go straight through because there's basically nothing about it to mentally digest. I mean, really, I just kept hitting the next episode button and didn't feel like the show was ever asking anything of my brain except to occasionally read the subtitles during some of the dialog-y bits...and there were a lot of action bits that I didn't need to pay attention to at all to because it was obvious how all of them would be resolved and the show didn't really do anything to try to get me interested in them. In contrast, K-On is a show that on the surface does appeal to me a lot more, but it constantly demands my attention to watch and understand it, and it does a few things so clearly very wrongly which makes it frustrating...and so the show kind of just drains my energy whenever I watch it. I probably won't watch the second of One Punch Man - I feel like I got all I could get out of it. Meanwhile, I'll probably eventually try the second season of K-On in the hope that majestic isn't a hack fraud and that it is actually less inconsistent and frustrating compared to the first season. Thanks for the link, much more interesting and fair than I expected. Yep, and what I said absolutely applies to all people too. It's just not healthy for anyone...except Minako in Sailor Moon, because apparently it's canon that she and the other three will never be given the opportunity to have boyfriends due to being Sailor Guardians - they can do as they please.
  4. Bartimaeus
    I think Theoden and Eowyn were my favorite characters of the movie trilogy - I'm trying to think of anyone I like better than those two, and I'm coming up pretty blank. Odd that it'd be father and daughter NIECE out of a pretty large cast of characters, and not even one of the main characters - especially odd because neither of those characters appear in Fellowship of the Ring, which I think is easily the best film out of the three. Out of the main cast, my favorite characters were probably Merry, Pippin...and Gandalf? I'm not sure, but I do know Legolas is easily the worst out of everyone - his entire character is half saying really obvious or over-dramatic things and half cartoony comic relief and not much else, . I'm seeing a lot of "movie was beautiful but utterly daft, do not watch" and "masterpiece, you must watch"-type ratings for this one.
  5. Bartimaeus
    Planescape: Torment also has the benefit of taking place in an already established setting. A lot of the basics of the world don't need to be explained in-game because of that, plus you can play more heavily into the setting because it's already at least a little familiar to some degree for most of your likely players. Quite the opposite with PoE - brand new setting, new races and creatures, new rules, strange names and phrases, and just way too much of all of it. Planescape: Torment was able to engross me with its writing, but PoE wasn't - not even close. Unfortunate.
  6. Bartimaeus
    What ShadySands said in my case. Was very excited for another BG-esque isometric party-based game that was supposed to be a spiritual successor to BG2...BG2, after all, is one of my top ten favorite games of all time and I still enjoy it - and then I actually played it. They had tried to "improve" on so many different things over BG2 that it felt like they'd miss something critical: BG2 was fun...and PoE was not. I couldn't get into PoE's new setting, I couldn't get into the writing style, I couldn't get into the voice direction, and most importantly, the gameplay made me want to curl up and die because of how annoying and demanding every single battle was, no matter how minor. I didn't even consider buying the second game - not unless it had a completely different set of creative leads at the helm. But I do wish it did better, since people clearly loved the series and got something out of it that I didn't, and I obviously want the isometric CRPG genre to not be completely dead.
  7. Bartimaeus
    I thought I had absolutely nothing to contribute to the discussion as it all kind of falls outside of my domain, but majestic raised an issue I've had a thought on for many years: I really don't think there is much any difference in the way "jocks" and "nerds" (and the other groups that loosely fall into those two labels respectively) view people - women, people of different culture/race, ideology, whatever. Specifically in regards to women, if anything, I think the "nerds" might be even worse than the "jocks", because it seems like the nerds idealize, fantasize, and objectify in all sorts of manners the subjects of their affection which very often seems to create all sorts of really demeaning or even outright possessive views towards them...and never mind not ever being able to form normal boundaries and behaviors towards them. The jocks that "get the girls", on the other hand, at least actually have to try and manage their relationships with those girls to some degree, and that theoretically should help see women as real people...sometimes, eventually? It really depends on how far gone an individual is regardless of which side they happen to fall in - you definitely don't want to be on the extreme fringe either way you go. For this sort of thing (not limited to just the way men see women), interacting with others that aren't like you and being empathetic towards them is probably the best cure-all for just seeing everyone for what they are...normal people. You might still hate dealing with most of them, but you should at least realize that the majority of them are really not much different from each other regardless of which groups any given individual might fall in. In contrast, parasocial relationships, whether about real or fictional people, would not seem to ever really be healthy when taken to such an extreme, IMO.
  8. Bartimaeus
    Four and a half thousand year old board game uncovered and played. I have a fondness for board and card games, so it was a lot of fun to watch.
  9. Bartimaeus
    Have always hated giant swords...but at the very least, if you're going to have them and want me to treat it even sort of seriously, you're gonna have to make them appropriately weighty a la Asuka and the fake Spears of Longinus. Do that, and I'll probably mostly forgive it - fly around with and use them like they're the same thing as a normal sword (which should already be appropriately weighty as it is!), and my eyes are gonna roll into the back of my skull. Two more episodes of One Punch Man. It doesn't feel like entertainment made for me exactly, but I am being entertained well enough - it's decently fun. I have to assume that Mr. Satan will eventually meet his match, though, because it's been patently and immediately clear that nothing that's tried to attack him has been even remotely as strong as him. I do appreciate that he has no patience for silly long-winded shonen or villain speeches - his "apprentice" nearly gave him an aneurysm when he tried to give the whole "shonen origin story" schpiel, and "explain the gist of the story in 20 words or less" was an appropriate response, .
  10. Bartimaeus
    Good point in comparing it to superhero comics - further makes me think it's not really a Japanese thing, and its extreme and disproportionate representation in anime is more of a subculture thing...probably as a natural result of the limitations and also freedoms of the medium as per the explanations you mentioned. It also doesn't hurt that most of the subcultures (not limited to Japan!) where it appears in its most extreme are predominantly aimed at teenage boys, I'm sure - anime, comic books, video games... What does it say about the type of person you are if you dislike all of these things? Guess I didn't get the memo from old Freud...
  11. Bartimaeus
    One Punch Man, episode 1. I was planning on watching this years ago, but I put it off like a bazillion times. First episode was alright, I'll probably watch another episode or two at least - basic premise is the main character is a hero that became too strong for his own good and is not only bored to death with it all due to it being repetitive and unchallenging and meaningless, but is also finding himself to be losing his humanity as a result. Is it even a Japanese thing, or is it an anime thing? I get that anime is reflective of Japan to a degree, but it seems more like an uncomfortable anime sub-culture thing than something affecting Japan at large...otherwise, wouldn't like, all of their pop-stars and actors and models also be affected? ...I just Googled "japanese female pop-stars" because I was pretty sure the vast majority of their women pop-stars are like...very petite and in their early 20s and who all have to try to look as pristine as possible at all times lest they be replaced, and I'm treated to a pile of assault and abuse stories that popped up. Wonderful - that's enough Googling for today.
  12. Bartimaeus
    Not just like it either, but actually kind of love it! This is why I still sometimes leave my comfort zone to try things I reasonably shouldn't. Surprises sometimes do happen - hey, again, that's why we're all here after all, isn't it? Me taking a big leap of faith in watching Nausicaa based purely off a fleeting feeling I got from looking at a single solitary poster...and probably an even bigger one again for Sailor Moon, and starting to post about it here and resurrecting a like 5 year old thread. I could've super easily ignored that feeling - indeed, why wouldn't I? I'd hated anime all my life, and I'd never seen anything from it to dissuade me from that notion...until I was struck by that poster. Guess that's exactly why I didn't, but it was still a pretty big leap of faith that ran counter to all my pre-conceived notions. A little beauty of life, learning, and chance occurrences right there (...especially because there was also no reason for me to start posting about it here!). Now specifically for Warlord Ran and Mountain King Myao, obviously there are some qualities that I can see myself liking it for...but the whole picture together doesn't make a lot of sense based on what we know of myself...but there's obviously something there - it's just difficult for me to pinpoint exactly what does it to make it work for me so well. Maybe it's just a combination of different factors - a specific style of humor that I like (many a facepalm were had in the watching this show, but all of them accompanied by laughs or at least good-natured groans!), characters that somehow didn't annoy me right off the bat, art style and animation that I liked, even liking the little musical and sound effect touches...really, maybe it is just a matter of all those little things being right for me that makes it work, as opposed to immediately wrong as is so often the case with things I try.
  13. Bartimaeus
    Not the fabric of reality, just my brain.
  14. Bartimaeus
    Yeah, but normally, that kind of stuff would not really work for me, but for some reason with this show, it didn't. Right off the bat, too - I called it trash from the very first episode, and yet, before I even liked the characters, it felt like it was working for me. Why this but not for so many other things like it? I don't know. It's doing something(s) right that I can't quite pinpoint that I wish I could. Jesus-freak Myao was hilarious. Indeed, . This is how I knew right off the bat before you started watching it that it would be...trouble at its best.
  15. Bartimaeus
    Never seen or heard of this game before - each battle ends with them seemingly not finishing off their opponent, right up until the one dude straight up decapitates his opponent. That was brutal.
  16. Bartimaeus
    Episode 8 of Martial Artist Myao: Yeah, I wasn't entirely sure how you would take that one because of how utterly stupid and absurd it all was, but it seems Myao makes all things good for the both of us, . Speaking of Myao, I look forward to your thoughts on episode 9... Yeah, feel free to take a guess as to what the viewers of this show like to upload screenshots of for it, .
  17. Bartimaeus
    Final three episodes of Samurai Champloo: Much better than the previous two...but boy, what a bad day for everyone. Everyone's gonna have to take some time to sleep this one off... Great show, pretty good conclusion that thankfully didn't do anything too dumb, which I was kind of worried about going into it - they played it straight while sticking to the show's strengths, and that's a good thing. Future Boy Conan verdict: Yep, it's exactly what it presents itself as, so if that strikes your fancy, you should like it. Wish I'd liked it a bit more myself, but while the show doesn't do anything in particular to annoy me, it also just didn't do that much to ever really grab or retain my interest either. The characters that I thought were most likeable were actually three off/on minor antagonists, strangely...while I had trouble with most of the main cast, particularly the titular character and the most other important character, Lana. I should re-watch Laputa, I feel like I liked that a little bit more at least than Future Boy Conan, even if it's not particularly one of my favorite Ghibli films. I've actually looked at this show multiple times specifically because every time I see the character designs, I think that it has to be at least decent. Then I see the random screenshots users have uploaded and nope right out - that's not going to happen.
  18. Bartimaeus
    If you feel anything starting to go wrong with your lungs, that's pretty much your bellwether to go in and get checked out if you can. Sudden lung failure has snuck up on many a covid victim...hope everything rights itself sooner rather than later.
  19. Bartimaeus
    How are you doing so far, and how long has it been since symptoms?
  20. Bartimaeus
    Outer Wilds. Finished it, kind of a lame ending, but I guess I'm not sure where they could've gone exactly that would've been better - pretty good game overall, exploring new stuff like that is fun.
  21. Bartimaeus
    Good lord, I just got done talking about the AAA gaming industry being a snake eating its own tail, and there we go again... Admittedly, there's no way Microsoft is as bad managerial-wise as Activision, but still. Someone should buy the toxic sludge that is Ubisoft so they can stop making the world's worst AAA games - that'd be doing all of us a favor, at least.
  22. Bartimaeus
    @Amentep Why is it when I try to look up pictures of the Psychogun, all I get are goofy-looking space-age screwdrivers?
  23. Bartimaeus
    You're walking the fence between legitimate insanity and silly cartoon villainy here, so I'm not sure whether Heath Ledger or The Animated Series Joker is more appropriate here.
  24. Bartimaeus
    I definitely have not considered myself a gamer for at least a handful of years now. But it's not anything against the games I do play or really the gaming industry* at large by any means (I still find and play ones I like!), but it used to be one of my primary hobbies - now it's secondary or even tertiary, something I only do when something strikes my fancy. So it doesn't really feel right to label myself as one anymore. That probably won't ever change, it's just something that's passed me by in most ways, and I think that's okay. *Well, actually, I really think AAA gaming is pretty broken outside of Nintendo and some occasional exceptions outside of them, but I'm pretty okay with that. Endlessly chasing the dollar at the behest of the brightest and best MBAs whose endless ingenuity seems to have convinced everyone who's anyone to mimic the snake eating its own tail. So die a pathetic death, o' corpulent and corporate AAA gaming industry - the same fate as the games you make.
  25. Bartimaeus
    Thankfully, I don't get that crazy about my non-storage drives. My C drive is a bit of a disaster (by my standards anyways), but I view C drives as being temporary, and therefore not worth worrying about. Eventually, it'll be reformatted sooner or later anyways, so why be concerned with it at all? My storage drives, on the other hand, are meant for permanent (possibly life-long!) storage, and so that's what I put my effort into - anything that's temporary means it doesn't matter, anything that's permanent means it does. At the very least, it's a good distinction so I never go too crazy with some of my obsessive compulsive behavior, . There's a limit to my insanity!
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