Lurker > pyresword

The Apothecary Diaries
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

Will hold out on the other 2 for now

First thing that came to mind is Umineko but that's probably in part because I was talking about it elsewhere today. Game takes too long to say things; it devotes too much time to the finer technical aspects of mystery novel construction; and metafiction is generally not a thing I find compelling.

MacArrowny posted...

smh doing Megumi the horrible's route before Kurabe's

Megumi's has probably been the worst but I was already committed in my head to doing the "protagonist" route as late as possible for some reason.

I am presumably entering the endgame for 13 Sentinels, and unfortunately I am finally being forced to play as Kurabe. The content I have left (assuming the game doesn't pull a fast one on me once everyone reaches 100%) is:

--Kurabe route: at 11%
--Megumi route: Requires completing a Kurabe event to proceed past 71%
--Gouto route: Basically forced into doing last
--Hijiyama route: Requires progress to be made on Gouto's route in order to finish what is presumably the last scene
--An unknown amount of Destruction content (The 3rd area is locked behind Juro's route, and I don't know how many areas there are--though would assume it's either 1 or 2.)

Think the main mystery left for me is whatever the heck is going on with this cat. I suppose the easy answer is that is it's just the next body 426 jumped into, but that doesn't really feel satisfying. Of course, maybe I shouldn't expect an earth-shattering answer since the player can probably access this content much earlier if so inclined >.>. There's also the matter of what exactly are Gouto's, Kid-Chihiro's, and 426's endgames, though at this point I am definitely expecting face-turns from all characters who are still alive and weren't just clearly on our side from the beginning. There's also probably some part of the story I've just completely forgotten about because there is so much to keep track of.

Tomi is my favorite character by a lot right now, but most of them have been pretty good. Shinonome has also impressed me but I think part of that is my initially having negative expectations for her because of her design.

My "I'm guessing I like this character more than everyone else" is probably Okino, with the caveat that I think there's a lot about the character I don't know yet.

13 Sentinels update

Was gone for a bit this week so haven't had too much time to play aside from today when I played a lot.

-I've made progress on Nenji, Ei, Shinonome, and Shu's routes. Have reached the dreaded story locks in most of them, but I have some left of Shu and also I think progress in Shu's story just cleared the lock in Shinonome's story. So I guess those are next on the agenda. Putting off playing as Fuyusaka and boring anime protagonist man for as long as possible, which I'm realizing is probably a bad idea for actually figuring things out, but at this point I'm already committed. (I also at this point expect Kurabe to prove me wrong about that but I digress)

-I still have no idea who the villain(s?) in this game are or if there even are any. At different points the story has set up 426, Ida, and Morimura, and at this point it could reasonably be any of them or all of them or none of them and/or someone else entirely. There's also that talking cat who I know pretty much nothing about probably because of the choice of story routes I've made. It definitely doesn't help matters that there's multiple versions of every character and like especially with Morimura I don't really feel like I have that straight yet. It does feel like if there are villains it will be more due to circumstance than because they're just evil cackling maniacs behind the curtain or whatever, which is nice

-If Nenji and Tomi do not end up together by the end of the game I'm going to riot.

I doubt it matters too much, but I am getting the feeling 13 Sentinels expects me to play through the game a little at a time along everyone's routes rather than beelining as far as possible down 2 or 3 while ignoring the rest besides their prologues.

In any case I've done large chunks of the story (at about 60-80%) on Natsuno, Yuki, and Tomi. Natsuno's is still unlocked as of this moment but it feels like I'm nearly to the point where I'm going to be forced to do everyone else's stuff.

Edit: Actually Natsuno's story is also gate locked behind one of the Destruction events further than where I am. I've been assuming I could play up that point in Destruction immediately since I haven't seen any indication of locks in that mode, but that's not a guarantee I guess.

13 Sentinels spoilers I imagine the reveal of 426's identity has a bit more weight if you've seen more than like 1 scene total with the "current" version of the character. (In case it's a red herring I'll clarify I am talking about the scene where Yuki confronts Erika Aiba on the bridge.) I also have no idea if this is supposed to be the pre-amnesia version of the playable character or what I guess I'll call the original version, though I would guess the latter would be my guess. There's a chance that last sentence doesn't make sense at all if my understanding of the plot is wrong since I'm still missing critical information, but whatever. I'm pretty confident in my understanding of the setting and who we're playing as at this point, at least. The events that led to the current conflict and what people's motivations are is more or less still a mystery, though there is of course room to speculate

On the one hand I want Sam but on the other hand maybe if 2.2 is a complete dud for me then I can just go all-out on Acheron and/or pick up Aventurine.

I will say Howl's might be my favorite (well, probably until Boy and the Heron) from strictly the visuals perspective, but that is a pretty small factor in how I judge movies overall.

I do consider it bad by absolute standards, for the record.

It's possible "bad" is a bit strong--I do still have it in the 4-4.5 range (out of 10) which is better than it could be, but that's still like a solid 1-2 standard deviations below my mean rating (~6.5) on Myanimelist

(edit: For comparison, my "fine" category is about right at that 6.5 average; "good" is at ~7.5; and "great" is at ~9)

Great: Nausicaa > Princess Mononoke
Good: Spirited Away
Fine: Boy and the Heron > Ponyo
Bad: Howl's Moving Castle

I have been meaning to watch The Wind Rises for a bit but haven't done so yet.

If you need songs I can add this one to the list

Poppin'Party | KIZUNA MUSIC (5:15)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OijXIw4rxXo
@pyresword

Yeah ok 13 Sentinels is cool so far. Finished what I guess is the Prologue(?) and got a bit farther--notably that I've also done the initial story segments for Keitaro and Yuki.

It's still very hard for me to say anything concrete about the story or characters, but I will say this feels less like a time travel story and more like some other flavor of sci-fi masquerading as time travel

Favorite character I guess is Yuki so far but lol at the idea of current opinions having any chance of sticking with how little I know about any of them.

Oh someone already did that...I guess West Side Story

The Godfather Part II

The only ones I've seen are Slumdog Millionaire, The King's Speech, The Shape of Water, and Everything Everywhere All at Once. They were all quite good imo, but Shape of Water is the easy #1.

I was told by the title that this game would contain precisely 13 Sentinels and almost immediately I am introduced to a sentinel no. 15. This was not in the agreement!

(This game seems neat. I have no idea wtf is happening or who anyone is but I assume that's intended for now)

(People here played this right?)

rwlh posted...

It's funny because IIRC our mini collab went super smoothly. Ah well, I appreciate your nominations regardless!

I didn't actually realize this until after I nominated but I think here I reused one of the songs from the mini collab I sent you as a suggestion and already knew at least you didn't love it oops

I have been slain

Can't say I'm too surprised. I thought there was a decent chance you might like the HSR song and the Xenoblade one but the others I wasn't confident in at all, and I never really had a great handle on your taste to begin with.

Teddie was my favorite Persona 4 character.

Morgana sucked.

I just checked and it was actually $75 that I paid for Nier, but still nowhere near $150. When I bought the tickets I just did it by going through the official site for the concert itself which redirected me to Ticketmaster. I think that means it wasn't aftermarket though I don't really know how these sorts of events work in general.

The seats we had were in the second level of the concert hall but in the front couple rows of that section (not the very front), if memory serves.

A New World looked interesting to me and I always meant to go but never actually did. My understanding is it's like chamber music as opposed to a full orchestra. The song selection was definitely interesting when I looked into it though, yes.

I liked Reverie, though yes I'm definitely ready to move on from Erebonia

As far as I'm aware Kuro 1 was received very well and is considered among the best in the series, but Kuro 2 was somewhat more controversial for reasons I'm not clear on and I think necessitate talking about the plot of the game.

This is mainly what I've gathered from Western Trails fans who have played the Japanese versions; I don't know what the Japanese fanbase thinks.

As a point of reference I went to 2 Distant Worlds concerts and only remember hearing 7 out of the 18 listed in the first post. Maybe 8 if you count the Chocobo theme--I think they always do some variant of this but they're switching which one a lot and I didn't see these performed. One of the times when I was there was the Swing one from FFX which was very cool.

Distant Worlds changes their songs a lot. They've got a huge selection of already existing orchestral arrangements to choose from and they add new ones periodically. Even when I went in 2010 and 2011 there was probably only like 30-50% overlap between the two setlists, and they've got a ton more to select from now. Some songs like Liberi Fatali, To Zanarkand, and One Winged Angel do get played more often though, yes. (Incidentally I'm guessing they like doing the thing where they start Liberi Fatali with no announcement or whatever because they also did that when I went.)

If you're asking about the Nier concerts I think those always have the same tracklist, though it's obviously a bit different when you have 2 games as opposed to however many Final Fantasy has.

I think I spent about 60-70 USD on tickets for the Nier concert in 2020, though I also bought them pretty late. My memory of Distant Worlds back in 2010 and 2011 is something like 40-50. (2 at the Rosemont Theater in the Chicago Suburbs and the other at...uh...some other venue in Chicago I can't remember)

All cases were decent but not great seats.

Yanma

I haven't been in over 10 years, but I did go to 2 of these when I used to live in the Chicago area. They were very fun. My favorites were the songs Susan Calloway sang (I think I saw Distant Worlds, Suteki da ne, and Melodies of Life) but basically everything was great. Though they've added a lot of songs to their repertoire over the years which I'd love to see but they weren't playing back then--Battle With the Four Fiends being a big one.

I also went to one of the Nier concerts a few years back which was also organized by Arnie Roth (at least in the West) and that was incredible--even as someone who is more of a fan of the series' music than of the series itself. I remember being really impressed with the live version of The Wretched Automatons which was surprising because that's like not even in my top 10 songs from the series. Kaine was also great.

Definitely recommend them to either vgm fans or fans of the games.

Clefable

Missingno

dowolf posted...

HSR's space china arc is over

I suspect this is not the case :(

I just hope that whatever Luocha has got going on is more interesting than what we've gotten so far.

All right 12 stars on Pure Fiction with no Black Swan, no Sampo, and no Kafka. Take that whoever at Hoyo is trying to push DoT teams onto me.

The Legend of Korra | Greatest Change (5:15)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us8hYVeOJZw
@pyresword

Honkai Star Rail | Death Approaches (1:49)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgfW1E_YtrE
@pyresword

Made in Abyss | Vueko (3:36)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10Y1SLMM4DA
@pyresword
Character: Vueko

Will post these now. Probably more at some point later

I feel like I wasn't actually around for a lot of these contest matches. I guess technically I would have been here starting from Samus vs Tifa but I don't remember that or the match from 2007 at all.

Snake vs Sephiroth was very cool yes.

I've also been watching Frieren and it is very good. Also quite high on Apothecary Diaries as far as currently airing shows go.

Got Sparkle in like 80 pulls, which is not great considering I'd already lost the 50/50 last time. Still have to decide if I want to get her light cone. I do have a ton of jades still, but I also want to get Acheron, probably her light cone, and Sam--and I don't know if I have quite this many jades. And I absolutely cannot risk missing Sam.

I thought season 1 was substantively worse than seasons 2 and 3, but that's more because those are just such a high bar to clear than due to any real issue with season 1.

It definitely took me a fair amount of time to get to 3 stars on stages 9 and 10 even before when they gave you more turns to do it.

I'm pretty sure I did every stage of that MoC with Ratio and Jingliu. Jingliu is just busted in general and Ratio was unbelievably good with that cycle's passive buff, in addition to targeting weaknesses on the last few stages.

I don't think you have to worry too much about synergy with specifically Jingliu at least. Feels like she can be slapped on pretty much any team. (Topaz, Kafka, and Xueyi this is 100% not the case for) Of course it's not like Jingliu by herself is enough, but yeah.

I have now used Bronya in Memory of Chaos 1 time and have come to the conclusion that she is a pretty good unit, actually.

Totally normal character with a totally normal trailer that I am going to spend a totally normal amount of jades on.

I do generally try and keep relics with either double crit or speed substats, but I'm also not really in the mode where I'm worried about running out of inventory space.

*glances nervously at my 30 (probably all bad) Salsotto ropes I've been too lazy to do anything about*

I generally trash stuff that has lots of flat (as opposed to %) HP/ATK/DEF substats. Idk if this is a good idea or not

crazy train (it was in a Guitar Hero I think which obviously counts)

Wildfire has never been that high on my list of HSR songs either to be honest.

It is also a song that's much better in-context I think. The lyrics and general tone of the song fit the boss fight very well and also the climax is timed to the boss's big attack which is very cool.

We used Fantasy Note from Honkai Impact 3rd for the vgmgg list where rwlh did collabs with everyone, so they exist! There's a reason I didn't suggest Rubia at that time though, yes...

I still have one more Mihoyo song to go so there's still hope!

I love bird in the hand personally (top 2 song on the soundtrack), but I'm also not surprised at all that rwlh rated it lowly.

rwlh posted...

What is with the lyrics? Every woman likes it rough,

I feel obligated to point out here that the lyric (admittedly emphasized in a weird way) is "not every woman likes it rough" and that I think this portion of the lyrics are about trying to end a toxic relationship. (I also think the song is like 2 separate vocal songs/samples mashed together if the wiki is to be believed, so idk if it's fair to characterize the whole song that way) Not that this should really change your opinion because like personally I don't always pay much attention to lyrics at all, but yeah.

I did indeed avoid the bottom 10 so mission accomplished.