Lurker > transience

19. A Frog's Tale

PC
Feb 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g649LX2z7NE

yo can you say Mario and Luigi? A Frog's Tale is dripping with inspiration from that game, and its little beat-based mechanics are really cute and look fun to play. This game is actually on Kickstarter right now, and has hit its funding goal, but it's also out in less than a year so clearly it was being made either way and just needed/wanted a bit of money to finish up. That's Kickstarter for ya.

The music also feels extremely Chrono Trigger, especially the first few seconds, which is a good way to get me to sit up straight. I won't claim that A Frog's Tale is doing anything unique here but man. Sometimes you just need a good execution, and this game's look and feel seems to hit it. I'm pretty sure this will find its way to consoles as well, but it's being targeted for PC in the first wave. It's the perfect Switch game and I'm sure it finds its way there, probably costing $10 more than it should.

Suikoden 2 is such a traumatic subject for me. Heroic Mario can tell the tale. I'm going to give it another go in a few months.

20. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

2023
PC, Consoles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q08tFwYlNEc

Suikoden, baby. Even the battle system looks like it's taken from the old Suikoden games, and of course the game's biggest appeal, the huge gotta-catch-em-all cast. I don't know if this is exactly 108 like the original Suikoden or if it's just a hundred or what. To be honest, I haven't paid that close attention to it because it's always seemed so far off.

The trailer looks good, and they put out an ARPG spinoff called Rising that was apparently kinda disappointing. If it was good, the Suiko-nuts would be yelling about it from the trees, and that game came and went. I installed it since it's a day Game Pass game and still didn't bother just because the word of mouth was so poor.

But yeah, the trailers for this look good and the lineage is really what I'm here for. I love the first Suikoden. The ones that came after 2000 weren't really my cup of tea so hopefully this is more like the original than the sequels. I'm a little more cautiously optimistic on this one than some of the later RPGs on the list, mostly because I don't know a ton and because it's still seemingly so far in the future.

haha I forgot that was even announced

for good reason

yeah, no limits on when things are coming out. if it's been announced I'll consider it. I bet some things won't come out til late 2023 or later.

that said, I'm naturally more interested in things that aren't years away.

Now that Nintendo finally had some sort of Direct -- not what you'd want for an e3-like presentation, but hey it's something -- it's time to unveil my yearly list of anticipated games. This time of the year has historically been a good barometer for what's coming for the next 18 or so months and 2022 is the first time where I'm pretty sure I'm missing a few games because companies just aren't doing the usual June preview circuit. I don't even know what Sony is doing with its big franchises!

This year we've got a ton of JRPGs or JRPG-adjacent games coming up, so if you're into those you'll find a lot to at least pay attention to here. We seem to be in a mini resurgence of the genre after a bunch of down years. There's always some good indie games out there too so I'll try to highlight a few of those as well.

don't expect to go deathless if you go for the true ending on your first go. I'd actually recommend not to do that based on my experience.

edit: going for the true ending on your first playthrough, that is.

I spent my day tracking down hero's graves. I had to look two of them up (potion and attack) and I'm glad I did because I never would have found them.

tomorrow I'll try to figure out the next steps. I want to go for the good ending, but mostly because I don't want to grind out that boss fight.

I thought that fight was easy peasy, and I thought it made sense since the boss is such a pansy. compared to chapter 7, it was cake.

but, I also decided not to use the traps in chapter 7, so that made it way harder than it should have been.

well, I got the 3 keys. I'll try to figure out the next step tomorrow.

yeah he does. they're just dangerous and his moves are hard to read (for me, anyway). sometimes I think I'm getting the quick strike and then he does the slow beam attack, but i've already dodge rolled and eat the damage. I'm just bad so far.

just made it to the librarian. my first take was that it was a lot easier than the siege engine, but I keep running out of life about halfway through.

I looked up a video and there's some kind of wand that I don't have, and that would be extremely helpful since my only way to attack him from a distance is the hookshot and that's going pretty miserably.

I don't have that one yet. I do have some kind of dagger but it hasn't been very helpful against bosses

you must be better at the game than I am. I haven't found the game overall to be very hard but those bosses are brutal. I wish this game was less dark souls-y on the combat side but moreso on the exploration side.

Tunic is extremely cool, especially the instruction manual. the bosses might be too much though, and kinda ruin the chill sense of exploration and discovery. I somehow managed to beat the siege engine today and I'm still trying to decide if that was an exhilarating fight or if I was just that excited it was over. (I think I'm missing an item, but everyone is probably missing an item.)

I assumed you had died of old age

Ryokles posted...

oh man yeah youve really hit how lifes been going for me lately. I feel like its been two years of nothing but stress. I actually gave birth to him right before things started going to crap so hes been very sheltered. Were dealing with a speech delay now that is suspected from a lack of hanging around peers and too much screen time. Little dude is still devious as hell even without the words. Hes always go go go and its like a freakin second shift of work after working nonstop at the busiest hospital in my state. Im fortunate enough that my mother watches him while me and my husband work but I wish I could have gotten him around other kids sooner. Hell he caught Covid in January anyways despite me keeping him kinda sheltered!

remote learning really seemed like a total nightmare. I really feel for the parents who had to juggle a job and making sure their kids are actually learning so major props to you. A 14 year old oh man where did the time go?! I cant even think of this guy that age

if three is worse than two I think I might cry. He just dumped an entire bag of sand from his sensory box into my lap while I typed this

if it makes you feel any better - I met my oldest when she was 2. she and her mother (my wife) lived together while she did online schooling to get a degree. they lived in this small apartment while she lived off of student loans so she could get a halfway decent job. (I've since adopted her, she has my last name, calls me dad, yada yada)

well, when I met her, she could barely talk. she had all this baby talk for everything and nobody but her mother could understand her. the one that sticks in my head was that water was "wa wa". it stuck enough with me that to this day, whenever I ask if she wants some water, I say "wa wa?" and it annoys the heck out of her. (which is why I do it.)

there was concern about a speech delay and my wife wanted to see a specialist about it. my take was that she simply didn't talk to anybody but her and that sending her to a proper daycare, now that we had two incomes instead of one, would probably help a lot. we did that, and within six weeks her vocabulary like tripled. her mother was so understanding of the baby talk that she just didn't learn any differently, and it wasn't until I came around and was like "the f is this nonsense?" that there was a reason to do things any differently.

I hope the same is also true with yours. even if he's developmentally delayed, that doesn't mean that he's slow. sometimes kids just do things when they're comfortable. my mom used to tell stories about how I didn't really talk much because my older brother wouldn't shut the hell up, and when I did start talking, I was doing it in complete sentences. who the hell knows how kids learn? my youngest started reading at age 3. I was sitting with him and he just read me a dr. seuss book. I was pretty sure that he had just memorized it so I pulled out a different book he had never seen before.. and he read that too. how the hell did he know how to do it? I have no idea. my oldest had some slight reading disabilities, mild dyslexia and such, and really struggled to read until she was like 5 or 6. my other one just decided to teach himself as a damn toddler.

as for 2 vs. 3 years old.. well, my opinion is that 3 is the perfect intersection of the irrational child thinking with the ability to just do and say things. at 3, you start to really develop who you are and you really make some stupid as hell stands that can drive a parent nuts. I'm logical to a fault and that irrationality just drives me up the wall.

my defining memory here is one day before daycare/work, when I came behind my oldest and put her jacket on. she always insisted that her mother do everything for her when it came to getting ready in the morning, and when she turned around and saw who put on her coat, she screamed, threw herself on the ground and rolled around screaming until the coat came off. then she gave me this death stare that said "I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE, IDIOT." it was wild. my wife went over, put on her jacket and she went on with her day just fine. 3 year olds, man. get ready.

that's great to hear. what kinda tech job? I'm always weirdly fascinated to hear what my old people ended up doing as a career. so many PhDs and tech bros around here!

I'm pretty sure that I could fade away for like 5 years and maybe a single digit number of people would notice I was gone - but then I would come back and I'd still chat with everyone like nothing had happened. time freezes here.

it won't be as bad as when he finds out you voted for Squall

yeah, board 8 is this literal time capsule. there's no doubt that the pond is stagnant, but at the same time there's something super comforting about being able to step away from it for months or years and then coming back and the water all feels the same. one day this place will be a virtual nursing home. I'm convinced that I'll be talking to Leonhart and FFD and whoever in like 30 years, and we somehow still won't be able to embed links behind text. gamefaqs will somehow survive until the heat death of the universe.

Ryokles posted...

Hey man, glad to see youre doing well! Ive been working like crazy for a hospital lab, while trying to handle parenting a crazy two year old. Please tell me it gets better haha

a 2 year old! I always wonder/worry about people who chose (?) to have kids before the pandemic hit and then ended up giving birth to a new world. and to do it while working in a hospital lab -- wow! how are you doing keeping everything together? are you working crazy hours, then coming home exhausted and trying to deal with the madness of a kid who maybe can't go to daycare? do you feel like you're failing at everything all at once? 'cause that's what a lot of us have felt like during this crazy time.

last year, I was homeschooling a second grader who is too smart for his own good and therefore tries to cut corners because it's all too easy for him. one day, his mom was out of town and he was on his morning meeting next to me while I was working on a call. he then took out his headphones at the end of it and I found out he was just playing on some chess site with the awful midi music blaring while maybe listening to his teacher. god, I could have killed him! I mean, chess is the GOAT so I kind of applaud the move, but really? you didn't think this one through and now I have to catch you up on your work while also trying to keep my job?

that's the kind of failing at everything that I've struggled with, and if you're anything like me, you're probably in the same boat. I really hope you're keeping it together because it's not always easy. 2 is bad, but 3 is worse! after that it's smooth sailing in my view, though 14 is a whole new list of problems that I can't even comprehend yet.

FFDragon posted...

I read Bad Blood and it was fascinating so maybe I will check this out.

Also hi

my dude. how are you holding up? I want to say that I clicked on board 8 some time ago - it's like muscle memory, man - and saw a topic that I didn't click on about you struggling. I can't remember the context, but are you hanging in there? anything you want to share? what're you up to these days? god, I have all these old memories but they're fragments so I can't remember if you got out of the military or what. it's been a few minutes since last we spoke. hope everything is going all good for you man.

iiaattgg posted...

Hey homie

glad you are doing well. You having a 14 year old really does put time in some serious perspective

im pretty similar. I pop in once a year or two, post about weightlifting, then get distracted for a few years. Been drug and alcohol free for 4+ years. Lifes been good but challenging in many ways.

hell yeah dude. I knew you would always get yourself straight - not even the drugs, just that I knew you would find your way. sounds like maybe you've got it. challenging is a good thing honestly, and I hope life continues to give you challenges so that you can continue to overcome them.

one thing the pandemic has done a number on is my physical fitness. I've never been someone to work out regularly and I'm pretty terrible about self care, but it's gotten worse when I can just laze around the house working from home. it sounds awful, but I used to be in some sort of "life shape" just by having to go work and communicate with people, take walks to get away from the office, all that. but now? sometimes I go to the office just to meet up with my coworkers and after a few hours I am just exhausted. it's sad.

like, I was just playing my switch while keeping my eye on email, dropping it when I had to respond to something. will I get outside today? to pick up my kids, sure, but not something where I have to be "on" all day. I need to find a better life balance and it's hard to make myself do that. some people, like my wife, are intrinsically motivated to just do things, and I'm just not made that way. it sounds like you're more her than me and kudos to you for that.

well, all I can do from my computer screen is wish you the absolute best. hope things start looking up for ya. as for the thunder, take solace that you're in the place I've been for as long as we've known each other -- except that the thunder have glorious purpose to their plan whereas we're pathetically flailing trying to get to the 8 seed only to get demolished. you guys have tank commander poku and we have, like, mo harkless and justin holiday and a bunch of dudes who think maybe they're okay. whoops.

TRE, I have no worries about you since you are more machine than man. you'll power through 40 without a problem.

jesus dude. are you okay? are you living alone in a house or with someone else?

also I have to ask this: did that memphis/okc game hit during any of this and how did you feel about that

happy birthday!

my birthday, my anniversary and my wife's birthday are all within a 12 day stretch. by the time we get to her birthday we don't even care about celebrating anymore and I always feel bad about it!

30's a great age! 38 is when I felt like maybe I wasn't on the top of my game anymore. I'm still doing just fine, but things just started to get harder and suddenly my body started having random ailments for no damn reason. there's a reason athletes hang it up at 38!

I played Mario 3d World with my kids co-op when it came out on Switch. oh my god was that a destructive experience. my son is a literal terrorist when it comes to playing games with him. that dude would slit my throat for a coin halfway across the level.

ZaziGuado posted...

My wife and I just bought a house and have a child due at the end of May. We had only been trying for a couple of weeks when she conceived. We both thought it would take much longer than that based on medical history. We also thought we would have longer to find a house, but despite it being in the lease that we'd go month-to-month after the first year, the landlord of our apartment told us we'd have to sign a new 1-year agreement. So we went out and bought a house after two weeks of searching. Life comes at you fast.

hell yeah this resonates with me. my wife got her IUD out and then found out she was pregnant like 4 weeks later. I remember being like "wait.. what?" I thought trying was going to take a while, but nope!

the housing market is nuts everywhere, but especially where I am. we built a house in 2015 for about $300k and now we could put it up for like $500k and it would sell within minutes, probably well over the list price. there was this viral video a few weeks ago here (raleigh) where someone listed their house for under 300k and the realtor took a video of like 75 people showing up to see it within minutes.

the only problem is, once I make bank on my house, I then have to overpay for someone else's. I always theorize some way to make this work to finally pay off all the school debt and medical debt we've accumulated over time, but it's way too risky to do, especially with my kids having such an established life with friends and school and whatnot. plus, moving sucks so unbelievably badly.

okay, let's try this again! today was a pretty good day, outside of, yknow, watching a nuclear reactor maybe melt down in ukraine. the russia stuff is kinda hard to take seriously because it's so comic book villain-esque. like, it feels like some nonsense out of star wars where russia is the empire and their troops are the stormtroopers, just bumbling idiots that screw up all the time and sometimes blow up a hospital because the big boss said to. nothing makes sense in the world and I've just kind of resigned myself to laughing at the whole thing out of some sort of action paralysis.

anyway! today was exciting because the kirby demo dropped. we've been excited about kirby here. my oldest kid's favourite game is mario odyssey. she plays it every christmas as a tradition, which is kinda weird because the only reason she associates that game with christmas is that we got a switch on christmas 4 years ago. then again, I have been making video game lists every other year on a schedule for going on two decades now, so I don't really have a leg to stand on here. the new kirby looks like mario odyssey so I showed the trailers to my kids and they've been counting down the days. there's nothing really like mario odyssey, especially something that plays to the fact that my kids kinda suck at games. like, they're fine, but they're kids. my youngest loves video games as much as anyone i've ever seen, but he's just not there yet mechanically, and my oldest just loves happy nintendo games like yoshi or animal crossing even though she dies a trillion times in all of them.

I played the demo and.. I don't know, I guess it's good? my experience with kirby has been somewhat limited, just dabbling in kirby's epic yarn or some of the old games for a few minutes here and there. there's something kinda flat to me about kirby: the games just feel so basic and plain. the different powerups give you some added flavor, of course, but the movement and the challenge just feels so obviously missing. you move at a snail's pace and I so desperately want a run button to jazz things up. the button layout feels wrong. the jumps feel bad compared to something like mario odyssey where you have this really dynamic moveset as mario. but, I'm into it because my kids are going to absolutely adore it. they don't come to a platformer wanting some hardcore platforming. they're not pulling off complex wall bounces or trying to break the game in two like I always want to do. I can't wait to show them the demo tomorrow or this weekend when they have some free time.

the weather has been great here and I got out for a nice walk today during lunch. my wife and I watched the first episode of the dropout tonight, which is the show based on the podcast about elizabeth holmes. I liked the podcast and the show is enjoyable so far - though it is super weird that one of the main characters is Sayid from LOST and another minor character is Chloe from 24. it's strange to see some of your favourite characters from 15 years ago suddenly look like grandparents.

speaking of, we marathoned LOST at the beginning of the pandemic because it felt like it fit thematically with what we were going through, and I ended up really enjoying that. it's easy to look back at that show and just remember the way it ended but the buildup to that last moment was really special. LOST and 24 define the 2000s for me. I always wonder what would happen if I dropped LOST on my 14 year old, if that would be a formative moment for her or if she'd watch 5 minutes and just "ok boomer" me. one day I'll find out!

good deal!

okay, I'm off to bed for yet another day of work. the fun never ends!

sounds similar! you're almost there - good luck. got a name yet?

LeonhartFour posted...

Excited and nervous at the same time, of course. I know you're never really prepared to have your first kid, but I'm kinda glad we're both a little older and more established with steady jobs and all that.

My mom is super excited since this is her first grandkid, so I know our son is going to be ridiculously spoiled by her. It's also a little bittersweet for me because my dad isn't alive anymore, and I know he would've been a great grandpa.

I remember when my wife was at like 38 weeks and the end is just really hard. she had a really hard pregnancy in general, throwing up like 5 times a day for months and all that. she went to her OB appointment and said to the head doctor, "how soon can you get this thing out of me?" and he responded with "how about first thing tomorrow morning?" and that was that. I kinda just lost my mind because it wasn't supposed to be that soon and I wasn't ready. like 6 hours later I got over myself, but at the time I was like "no! no! we're not there yet!". I guess the point of my stupid story is don't be a jerk like me! it'll be great!

yeah, you probably won't find too many jobs like that, I would think. there isn't much that uses pen and paper these days! data science is obviously very attractive from a financial standpoint but not sure you need a phd to do that - but then that's how phds are sometimes. you finish school and then what? you certainly know your avenues a lot better than I do. I got a degree in psychology and then ended up moving into IT and that's worked out well, but it's not like anything I learned in school even applies to what I do now.

oh yeah, I forgot that discord does voice chat and all that stuff too. I just think of it as modern irc, because I'm old as hell by internet standards.

we just got my oldest an iphone for that very reason - she felt left out by the walled garden that imessage presents. a lot of kids don't have cell plans so they end up using a family member's old device without service which cuts them off from the non-apple crowd. watching kids figure out all these third party apps that exist on both platforms is pretty wild. reminds me of trying to play an online game between playstation and xbox or something.

oh nice! that's worth a hearty congratulations. what's the PhD in? I love how you are a certified superexpert in something and don't know what kind of job you might want.

wait, a family discord? that's wild. why not like a text thread? this must be with people outside the house? I'm fascinated by this.

yep, that's the one! I wish I had the irc logs from that one. there was this one section in Norfair that we were convinced was fake because of the artifacting, but it was probably just crappy vcr quality from 2006ish and hotarubi has proven himself as very legit many times over at this point.

oh nice! congrats dude. how are you feeling about it?

I actually didn't hate the trade. I thought it made sense. I could write a whole post about how we played it perfectly - we took out Fox, let Hali cook and then traded him when he was at his peak value for an all star, then brought back Fox the next day. but, I did really love Haliburton and he actually wanted to be here (you know how it is with OKC) so it hurt. the thing that bugged me was that our starting center, Holmes, is really good and now just has no place on our team.

how is everyone? I'm doing pretty good and hope you all are too. I don't spend much time here anymore, or anywhere online really. I mean, I still use the internet all the time but I just don't spend much time being part of online communities anymore, keeping up with dozens of people and what they were up to.

I kinda miss it sometimes - but honestly, most of my online time is spent trying not to think about all the other things I should be doing, work or kids or chores or whatever else, so I usually just zone out, watching videos or playing old games that require zero mental energy. I guess that's what happens when you go home and be a family man? I'm guessing this is why middle aged-ish people watch pointless TV all the time. I'm feeling a little sociable today so I thought I'd check in on one of my favourite places.

I'm watching my Sacramento Kings get destroyed for the 16th year in a row which is a favourite pastime of mine and gives me comfort. I've spent way too much time looking in on the Ukraine stuff this past week and it's starting to creep into my dreams so I probably need to stop doing that. I definitely don't want to talk about that. I'm looking forward to playing Triangle Strategy when it comes out in a couple of days - the demo is certainly overly wordy but I think I'm very much in the mood for an FFT knockoff, and this scratches that itch somewhat. I bet it doesn't hold up that end of the bargain, but I've been searching for something to fill the FFT void for 20+ years now and that feeling of letdown has become an odd pastime of mine. I have a graveyard of mediocre strategy rpgs in my house that is ever growing.

speaking of wordy things, I'm definitely one of those dweebs who play the wordle and all of their associated knockoffs - nerdle and worldle (how do you even say that) or octordle or whatever. every morning I make my kids breakfast each morning and we do the wordle together and it feels so wholesome. we have a 55 day streak going and I'm going to be crushed when we lose it.

and speaking of kids, my youngest (8) broke his arm riding his bike recklessly a few weeks ago so I've been spending a lot of downtime with him as he struggles with a cast. he gets it off Monday. we've been watching star wars rebels together which has been fun - almost at the end of season 3. we also picked up an xbox series s recently so we've been checking out game pass - dragon quest builders 2, monster train, spiritfarer, all that kind of good stuff. the game I've played the most on it is peggle and I'm baffled as to why.

my oldest kid (14, yikes) is currently dress shopping for a dance at the end of the week and I don't even know how to handle that. we're gonna go see uncharted this weekend because tom holland is her boy. I don't have high hopes but hopefully it's fun enough.

anyway, that's me. how're you?