Lurker > SaveEstelle

Bagheera
Dr. Facilier
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Leia
Zelda
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Anagram posted...

Ah, sit down to play, miss an attack, fall over, get killed from 2/3rds health

Love this game

baby baby baby baby baby~
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Besides Pokemon, the big one here is Breath of the Wild. I currently have ~165 hours on my file. I've completed three of the Divine Beast quests (the only one left is the rito) and 78 shrines. I bought the Expansion Pass so I'm looking forward to checking out Champion's Ballad as a kind of extra main quest of sorts prior to taking on Hyrule Castle.

I'll be brief here and let a single sentence speak for itself: this game has fast become one of my all-time favorites. A spot in my top 10 has been secured for at least 100 gameplay hours and counting. It's that good.

I played through Undertale at my roommate's behest and got the neutral ending. I can see why the game's fans are so thrilled with it but I don't like it much. Bullet hell sucks IMO and the final boss was just so brutal to me that after 20 or so tries (I'm not exaggerating) my roommate offered to beat the first phase for me and I gladly accepted. Somehow I didn't die after that but I never want to go through the torment again. I understand I might not need to face him if I choose the pacifist route but I really don't have it in me to bother. Thankfully, my roommate has offered to play through it in front of me as I played through neutral in front of him. I'm up for that.

The roommates and I play loads of Mario Kart and Smash Ultimate together and have a blast time after time. I've taken Kart online a couple of times with my friends Kalin and Tim, but I still haven't gone head-to-head with Leon. Really need to get on that.

Beyond life and games, (heh), I'm hyped for several upcoming show seasons and brand new series. Star Trek Discovery is back for a second season after airing several "Short Treks" mini-episodes over the past few months, and while I'm not a big fan of how to first season ended up handling Lorca, I'm still on board. I finished Attack on Titan "Season 3.0" the other day and I look forward to "3.5" come April. Also in April, Game of Thrones begins its epic final stretch, and I am so heckin' excited I don't know where to begin to tell you, so I won't. The Expanse -- which was miracle-saved by Amazon after a passionate fan campaign I'm proud to say I was a small part of -- is currently filming its fourth season with a likely eye for a summer drop on Prime. The Crown will be back soon, The Man in the High Castle will be back eventually, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and that Rogue One prequel series are both heading to Disney+, and a Picard show us eyeing a late 2019 premiere. Times are good for me right now.

Last but not least, a hangout Discord server I started up back in early January is about to turn a year old. It's been fun times in there; I play tabletop games for the first time in my life! Lots of cool folks. It's a nice little part of my life.

And that about sums it up! How's everybody else been doing?
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Audiovisual

Let's Go looked ugly in the marketing trailers. Full stop. It just did not appeal to me aesthetically. Furthermore, while some reviews praised the graphics, other journalists critized the game's "plastic-y" and "low budget" appearance. You can imagine my surprise when, within five minutes, I remarked at how decent everything looks. Seeing Pallet Town on this engine, colorful and popping with a subtle wind overhead, was just the beginning of my reunion tour throughout the land. An argument could be made that on the whole Let's Go's aesthetic is uninspired, but I dig it anyway.

The soundtrack is fantastic. Battle themes are solid, town themes are solid (Lavender Town's is a full-blown 10/10), everything is just solid. I was worried how the remixed music would fare but I see that Masuda prevented any butchery. The tune that plays during catch encounters is addictive enough that I somehow wound up adding mumble lyrics over time. ("Slowbro. After this we'll go to Johto. With a bird named Pidgeotto." I never claimed to be a maestro.)

Story

For the most part Let's Go sticks to the same structure of Red and Blue with a few of the perks from Yellow. The addition of Blue as something of a mentor figure is clever and fun, and it's great to see Jessie and James in 3D like this. It's a bummer they disappear from the game entirely after Silph Co just like they did before. Care is taken to set Archer up for Johto (or should I say "Let's Go Johto?") and the cutscenes are nice bonuses that don't overstay their welcome. The one big thing driving me batty is the fact that, once again, the rival character is a friendly little friendfolk who never becomes remotely competitive, let alone smacktalking. I thought they'd been hinting he would go down that path when I noticed that his facial expressions seemed steadily darker after early fights, but nope, even during the championship before-and-after chatter between he's just so happy that I made it. This has mostly been a problem I have with these games since all the way to Johto, but my search for another downright shady rivalry figure shall continue.

Pokemon Lets Go, Eevee:

8/10

Time Played:

56 hours

Pokemon Caught:

100

Average Number of Times I'd Pet Eevee Per Hour

Its kind of a lot.
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

I nabbed myself a Nintendo Switch back at the tail end of September thanks to a sweet, sweet deal from an acquaintance of mine. What have I been playing? I'm glad you pseudo-asked! I logged 56 hours on the dot with Pokemon Let's Go, Eevee before beating it just the other night. You know, this game has some obvious issues but I liked it a good bit.

I wrote a quick review for it already so I'll just paste it here:

Intro

I bought Let's Go, Eevee on a whim despite disliking much of what I'd seen during the marketing campaign. The last time I played a Pokemon game to completion was Pokemon X back in 2013 and I figured I could wait one more year for the arrival of Generation 8 before hopping back in. My immense love for Eevee seized control of me and I found myself in the possession of a copy of this game on release night. Curiously, my bank account was $60 lower than it had been before that evening.

Gameplay

There's a lot to admire about Let's Go's overall gameplay. Pokemon being visible in the overworld is a legitimate game-changer and it should be a crowning feature of future mainline entries. While somewhat janky, the ability to have any Pokemon follow you around is throughout the game is equally cool. I had a blast treating my Charizard like a replacement bicycle... provided he had ample enough leg room to compel him to even leave his Poke Ball, of course. While I wouldn't want Let's Go's streamlined lack of abilities and held items to seep into more standard titles, I must admit it was refreshing within this context. And the much-touted catching mrchanic, while hit-or-miss for me, tended to hit more often than it missed.

Unfortunately, for every admirable gameplay aspect there is something here that I didn't quite enjoy. The catching mechanic didn't replace the traditional wild Pokemon encounter style in an enticing enough way for me to stop thinking about how much I wish I could have used my Pokemon in more than just trainer battles. Along those same lines, I regret to report that while I had some wonderfully on-point days in which my Joy Con seemed to sync up well with the screen, there were other days where it seemed like something was off every time I ran into a catchable Pokemon. I never really figured out how to throw balls at moving Pokemon, either. That's probably on me for not deducing something fairly simple, but nevertheless it detracted from my experience when it happened. Catching was substantially simpler in handheld mode, but it left me wishing it were so in docked mode too. And the progression-gating at several gyms was varying degrees of goofy, climaxing with the requirement that I had a Pokemon of Level 45 or higher at Sabrina's gym. Of note, I always do once I enter that door. So why bring it up, then? Well, because I know that plenty of people do not, and many of those self-same people will tell you that they did not need to be so high a level to win.

There's a respectable layer of polish over most content, which makes the mediocre parts all the more bewildering. Your trainer says the same words of encouragement to her Pokemon during battles over and over again, and there is assuredly something else I'd intended to bring up too but I'm exhausted as I pen this review, so I'll edit this section once it inevitably comes back to me in the morning.

All told, gameplay's a mixed bag here, but what matters most is that my fun-to-meh ratio favored fun. Waltzing across Kanto with an Eevee on my head and an Alolan Raichu right behind me felt great and filled me with determination.
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

On that note, I suppose I should chat a little bit about entertainment choices I've made over the past few months -- as well as a bit of an update on life in general.

I started up school again. When I first attended college I was already 25 but it didn't feel too weird to me. I was only a couple of years or so older than plenty of seniors. Even when I had to end my tenure at 28 the age thing wasn't bugging me much. But this time I'm 31 and I'm feeling it. The freshmen are 13 years younger than me and it shows. There's just no connection there apart from very surface-level stuff so I guess it's probably a good thing I'm not some weirdo who'd want to hit up literal teenagers in the first place. I'd fail. So the age difference definitely feels fairly awkward to me but other than that it's going well. I've got a 4.0 right now and I'm excited for the next semester to begin. I'm going to run into an issue with my Pell Grants running out sooner rather than later so I'm hoping my scholarships help foot the bill in a big way.

I'm fully aware and own up to the fact that in some ways I've never really become "a successful adult." I'm facing issues now that were more societally acceptable for me to have faced around a decade ago. I still don't drive, I'm only just barely financially secure, my largest responsibility is academic, and while I've had numerous romantic relationships in the past, I've decided I'm pretty happy just playing games, writing papers, and hanging out with my cat. In a way I'm fortunate I don't have ties with my blood relations, because I'm certain I'd be getting side-eyed by now for being... me. I've grown relatively comfortable with the fact that when I'm 41, and when I'm 51, there's a decent chance I won't have changed much in many if these regards.

Another thing worth noting is that I've been seeing a therapist fairly regularly. Funnily enough, I met her because she was my psychology professor this past semester. We talked a little bit about local therapists and eventually I just kind of chose her. It's going well enough, I think. I'm also on a few psych meds. Sertraline, bupropion, and lamotrigine. They've helped. My disease(s), interstitial cystitis and chronic prostatis, are mostly manageable enough, but there are days -- and nights -- you just wouldn't want to know about. Trust me.

This message is getting kind of lengthy so I'll hit submit now. In the follow-up post I'll discuss something with far more levity -- entertainment!
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Leonhart4 posted...

SaveEstelle posted...

It's amazing that I'm not only still in these topic titles but due to tradition I'm even listed first.

I always held out hope that you would eventually return

Alas, it's probably another brief visit. But I'll try to stick around in here at least!
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

CaptainOfCrush posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

Mainline the story until you get to the second village at least.

Youll miss some gameplay systems that add so much to your quality of life until you do

Agreed. I went fully off the rails during my first playthrough and loved it, but you'll get useful stuff much faster if you generally stick to the main quests for the first 10-20 hours.

Then during my second playthrough, I got every Korok seed before stepping foot into a divine beast because I'm a psycho.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I love this game so much that despite just getting a Switch with Smash and Odyssey, I'm considering re-purchasing it on the new system and doing playthrough #3 before I start Odyssey for the first time.

It's one of the best games ever made. :D
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

You've likely figured this one out by now, but whenever something looks amiss (and especially if that something is metallic) check it out with magnesis and/or stasis.

The best way to reliably make rupees is to crack open gem rocks and sell the goodies. Try to hang on to some diamonds, though, and keep luminous stones too because there's a zora who will give you a diamond for every ten you trade him. Diamonds are worthwhile because they're useful for certain upgrades. Feel free to sell a few though.

Seek out Great Fairies!
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Kingdom Hearts 2.8
Assassin Creed 4
A cute cat necklace
A Stranger Things Funko Pop
A Battlestar Galactica Funko Pop
A coffee mug that says "FRAK" on it
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Smash Ultimate: Great
Ni no Kuni 2: Kind of bad
Pokemon Let's Go: Good
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

The Last of Us, Part II
Jedi: Fallen Order
Animal Crossing 2019
Pokemon 2019
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Persona 5R (Here's hoping)
Resident Evil 2 Remake
Ghost of Tsushima
Shin Megami Tensei V
NSMB Wii U Deluxe

Obviously not every one of these is 2019-confirmed.
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

kevwaffles posted...

SaveEstelle posted...

Londo Mollari (Babylon 5)

Interesting choice. He definitely fulfills the criteria, but for the most part not all at the same time.

Thanks, yeah. I wasn't 100% sure on that one but in the end I opted to run with it since the destruction that engulfs Centauri Prime is undoubtedly in part his own fault, which makes him ultimately ineffectual despite all his successes, and in his downfalls he's always so much more sympathetic than during his rises.

I'd say I'm toeing the line a bit, though, heh.
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~Slowbro, after this we'll go to Johto...
On a bird named Pidgeotto...~

Patrick Coulasour (Gundam 00)
Londo Mollari (Babylon 5)
Kahran Ramsus (Xenogears)
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

Breath of the Wild and Skyrim are the first ones to pop into my mind here.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

Zylothewolf posted...

Damn you are so old! Maybe its time to leave Gamefaqs and go to a park and feed the birds, or go to the local bingo hall?

Dont tell anyone that Im turning 31 tomorrow....

Happy birthday in advance. :)
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

TheRock1525 posted...

My estranged mother is liking tweets of me interacting with a stripper.

Sounds like your life's about as weird as mine.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

handsomeboy2012 posted...

SaveEstelle posted...

handsomeboy2012 posted...

I feel like a kid here

2012... were you born six years ago by chance?

Yeah and I managed to create this account without being born

I'm impressed.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

handsomeboy2012 posted...

I feel like a kid here

2012... were you born six years ago by chance?
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

LordoftheMorons posted...

Yeah, I enjoy playing with her a lot. I had went through most of WoL with Snake, but I use smashes too much and his side smash is just too slow against human players who won't walk into it. I played ZSS a lot too, but I'm pretty bad about selfdestructing with her down aerial.

"Use smashes too much" was practically my middle name for half my tenure during the Brawl days, so I feel you there. I was lucky enough with Marth's speed that for a while I felt like there was no reason not to use his smashes religiously. Somehow I slept on the ridiculous piercing/staggering potential of fast B presses.

Suffice it to say I play Lucina with a ton of non-smash moves these days, heh.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

LordoftheMorons posted...

Well, SELF is a better acronym than LFSE!

How about LEFS?

LeonEstelle and FourSave.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

It's amazing that I'm not only still in these topic titles but due to tradition I'm even listed first.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

LordoftheMorons posted...

I think I might be settling on Palutena as my main, much to my surprise

She seems fun. I messed around with her for a little while the other day and she was almost Rosalina levels of "This is very damn different."
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

Been maining Lucina instead of Marth. Not much of a change, really, for... obvious reasons. I like her as a character more and as I've grown older I've tended toward female characters far more than I used to, anyway.

Game's really fun. My roommates and I clock a few hours every week and I want to go online against Leon and my friend Kalin soon. I haven't touched Spirits Mode whatsoever yet because I'm bummed it can't be played co-op. But I'll get started on it sometime for sure. Right now I'm wrapping up postgame content for Let's Go, Eevee and approaching 165 hours on BOTW though, so... yeah.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N

Me too. Happy birthday.
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https://lparchive.org/Xenogears-(by-The-Dark-Id)/Update%20101/2-monitors11.jpg
https://imgur.com/tRu2T3N