Keyrock

A couple of fun mini-bosses: I lost on the first try (standard for MegaTen boss battles, mini or otherwise, unless you by chance happen to have a favorable party composition) and won on the second in both cases. The Shiki-Ouji fight, in particular, was a ROFLstomp once I rolled up on him with Jack-o-Lantern (pretty much the strongest fire wielder at this point in the game) in my party. My current party:

I'm going around clearing abscesses and collecting Miman in SMT V. Before heading into unknown territory I kind of want to get High Pixie to lev 20. At the moment, my active party is completely lacking force damage. At lev 20 High Pixie gains Zanma, which will go a long way toward addressing that. In other news, I've settled on a physical build for the Nahobino. I plan to sink a lot of points into Agility, a good deal into Strength, and some into Luck, with a small sprinkling of Vitality. I've been putting most of my points into Agility (The Official MegaTen Motto: If in doubt put points into Agility) thus far, so I'm off to a good start. If some of the past MegaTen games are anything to go by, this build will suck in the early to mid game and I'll need my demon crew to carry me until the mid to late game. There are, however, usually some ludicrously powerful physical skills in late game MegaTen, including ones that can ignore resistances. Only time will tell if I chose wisely. As an aside, I've noticed that support skills seemed to have been hit by the nerf stick. I don't want to say they are useless, but they've been really underwhelming so far. Hopefully some better ones pop up later.

Wait, there are fans of Star Trek: Discovery?

Until told otherwise, I'm assuming that's pro wrestling legend Hiroshi Tanahashi.

Funny enough, a (cold) tuna sandwich is among my favorites, but I dislike tuna melts.

It's Wishbone, I like it fine. I'm sure better recipes exist, but I'm not dedicated enough to make my own Russian dressing and Wishbone is the only kind I can usually find on a supermarket shelf. Much bigger selection if I went the Thousand Island route, but I generally prefer Russian on a reuben. Hot chicken is definitely a top tier sandwich, as is a Cubano. Edit: Which reminds me, when I go to southern Florida for the holidays there's definitely a Cubano with my name on it.

The King of Sandwiches- The Reuben:

Camel Armor DLC $4.99

I defeated the first boss in SMT V on my third try. I was decently prepared on my second attempt and almost got the job done, my man was down to about 5% health, but I ran out of resources and my team started dropping like flies. The third attemp ended with a resounding victory. In a bit of delicious irony, a little while after putting the boots to Apsaras in an effort to get Leanan Sidhe to join my team, I went ahead and fused an Apsaras anyway, so now I have both on my team. Even if you're against me, you're still with me. That's how I roll. Now Angel is the weakest link in my active party, but I'm only 1 level away from fusing them into their replacement, High Pixie.

I completed the quest for Leanan Sidhe by beating the crap out of Apsaras. I was well prepared and thus the battle wasn't too hard (thanks, ice dampeners). I got the job done on the first try. Upon returning to Leanan Sidhe and giving her the news, she was so happy that she decided to join me. No word yet on whether she'll copulate with me, giving me a short but fruitful life (it's in the folklore, folks). For now, I'll settle for having a demon in my party that outlevels me and the first with dark magic. Now I'm gearing up for the first boss battle.

Don't worry, Leanan Sidhe, I'm on your side. Lucifer's been working out! I ran across the first boss:

In some of the previous games I've even managed to get status ailments on some bosses with somewhat respectable success rates. There are usually a variety of things you can do to increase your odds of landing status ailments, they vary from game to game, but raising Luck is a common thread. It seems like in a lot of games that have a Luck stat, it tends to be a throwaway stat, but high Luck builds can absolutely be viable in MegaTen games, not just for the status ailments, but also the criticals. I've had success with Strength/Agility/Luck builds in the past.

We have our fights at the Harris Teeter, thank you very much.

I'm going through the early game of SMT 5. This early in a MegaTen game the goal is to get a team that's not complete dog****. The first demon that joins you (in a scripted event) is a Pixie, which is somewhat common in MegaTen games. For a starter demon, Pixie is pretty good. She's weak physically but has decently high magic, agility, and luck, so she evades sometimes and does decent magic damage, plus she can heal. Next I got a Slime to join, which is the worst demon in the game, but you take what you can get at the start. Once I reached the point where they opened up demon fusions to me, that's when the game proper started. I fused an Angel, which beefed up my team's healing power and introduced light magic into my arsenal. I recently fused an Azumi to add ice magic to my team. A Mandrake is the weakest member of my current active party, it will be the next one to get replaced. I'm keeping the Pixie from the start of the game on my bench. I doubt this game has anything like in SMT 3 where if you hang on to the Pixie that is your first demon companion you can later turn her into an Uber Pixie, as soon as I can fuse her into a High Pixie I'm going for it. I have the necessary demons right now (Pixie + Angel) I'm just not high enough level (you can't fuse a demon higher level than the protagonist). I got a side quest from an Apsaras to get rid of a Leanan Sidhe. The Apsaras offered to join me if I complete her task. Of course, once I met said Leanan Sidhe she made me the same offer with the roles reversed. I'm pretty sure the outcome will have no bearing on the larger story, so it's a matter of which demon would I rather have on my team, Leanan Sidhe or Apsaras. I'll probably side with the Leanan Sidhe, mainly for dark magic. I have time to think about it as I'm not strong enough to defeat either yet. I'm not sure if I'm going to do a physical or a magic build for the protagonist yet, so I'm dumping most of my points into Agility since that stat is always very useful in any build.

What could possibly be a better investment of $300 than becoming 0.00000000000001% owner of the Green Bay Packers?

@BartimaeusPackers are selling team stock currently. Are you getting in on that? You could technically be a NFL team owner!

Exclusives have been around forever, they're what sell systems. I'm not a fan of it, I would rather everything was available on all platforms, but that is not a reality we live in. The whole reason Sony has repeatedly beaten Microsoft in console sales is because they've had better exclusives. Microsoft buying up studios left and right is an effort to address that. The moment they acquired Bethesda anyone who thought we would see future Bethesda games on Playstation was out of their mind.

I'm so sorry. I keed, I keef, if you like WWE Raw, that's great. I haven't been a fan of Raw in quite a few years. Of the 2 main WWE shows I like Smackdown more. Then again, I haven't attempted to watch Raw in a good while, so for all I know it could be terrific right now.

I ordered my tickets to AEW at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro NC. I've seen AEW twice in Charlotte, but I'm super excited to make the 2 hour drive northeast for the show. The Greensboro Coliseum has a storied rasslin' tradition hosting some of the biggest events for Jim Crockett Promotions, including the first 4 Starrcades, the original supershow that predates Wrestlemania. I sadly didn't get to attend any of those shows, so getting to see AEW there on December 22nd will be the next best thing. The next day I'll be driving down to Florida to my folks for X-Mas.

No QTEs. Menu-driven turn-based.

MegaTen games use the Press Turn system, the finest turn-based battle system ever developed IMHO. It's all about exploiting weaknesses. You get extra actions for landing a critical or hitting a weakness. You lose extra actions for missing or hitting a resistance. It works both ways, enemies can and will exploit the system against you.

Oh no! I better rescue this cute, innocent, vulnerable girl from those horrible monsters! That's what I might have thought were this my first rodeo. To a MegaTen veteran, like myself, this scene smells like a fish hatchery. She is initially referred to as "Demon in Kimono", but I knew it was Amanozako long before she properly introduced herself. For those not familiar, Amanozako is a spirit of rebellion. She was literally vomited out by Susano-o after he built up all the force and anger inside himself. Here's what a traditional depiction of Amanozako looks like: Amanozako is not necessarily evil, but she is ill manared, has a very short fuse, and is enormously powerful. She could wipe out that group of Pretas by sneezing in their general direction. Clearly she staged that scene and is manipulating me. I'll play along for now. She's acting as a "guide", I don't get to use her in combat, which is understandable given how hilariously OP she would be relative to the rest of my party. These 20-sided dice are the treasure chests: I don't know if opening them during the Full Moon phase gets you a better chance at superior contents, like in some previous MegaTen games, but I'm trying to do so nonetheless. Atlus broke out the serious waifu material for the World of Shadows ruler in the form of Sophia. I approve.

So many times when playing DOOM I thought to myself "I wish I was playing Jazz Jackrabbit". My prayers have been answered: