Turnip Sensei

Dungeon Travelers 2 demo showed up in PSN, and so I gave it try. Based on the demo, the dungeon crawling and combat seems really solid and the party members turned out to be pretty entertaining as well. I love all the banter, fan-service and cute girls doing cute stuff that happens here and there. It gives nice breaks from the dungeon crawling and makes the game more enjoyable overall. I was going to get the DT2 anyways, but now I want it so bad. I can't wait for the European release.

I did Riho's route and started Sango's, and so far KoiRizo doesn't seem too bad.

Mix between physical and digital is the way to go. There's plenty of great games that don't have physical editions at all. I've been doing fine with my 32BG memory card, but less than that would be bothersome. Having back-ups of your games/saves on your PC helps a lot.

I started playing KoiRizo and XBlaze: Code Embryo Xblaze has pretty impressive visual presentation. Scenes have different "camera angles", you can see the characters sprites from behind and sideways and there's some dynamic close-ups to give a sense of motion. This works best when reading on auto, since it kinda makes it seem like a interactive anime. (The sprites are not actually animated apart from faces, but still) The story seems pretty interesting as well and I like the TOi system. If reading adds about shampoo gives me shower scenes, I have nothing to complain.

The stuff mention previously is all pretty good, but it's lacking few gems. Ys: Memories of Celceta Ar nosurge Plus All the Atelier games (Rorona, Totori, Meruru and Ayesha) Demon Gaze

Here's my current wallpaper And few of my favorites

Maybe I was little unclear. Yes, you get short conclusion and dialogue for every maxed s.link at the end, but the contents don't change depending how many s.links you have done. So even if you date all the girls their scenes will be same.

I finally got around reading Sharin no Kuni to it's conclusion. I've been stalling it for a pretty long time because got burned out in the beginning of Natsumi's chapter when nothing happen.

Started playing Ys: Ark of Napishtim. It has everything I wanted from a Ys game; awesome music and tough bosses. I hadn't played a Ys game in while, so I made the mistake of not buying armor from store, and as result I got slaughtered. In Ys +10 armor means you take 10 damage less, and in early game when you have only about 100 total HP it's noticeable. I also really like the characters this time, especially the two elven girls. The stories in Ys games is always really simple, but it's somehow really heartwarming when you go visit the girls again after progressing farther in to the game, and they express their worry and ask how you been doing. More so because it's mostly optional.

Trailer for the new Vanillaware title is amazing. I'm pretty interested in seeing their take on mecha and even sci-fi in general, as their other works have been mainly fantasy.

Apart from the unstable frame rate, Blighttown is a really good level. Especially the upper platforms. My personal favorite is Sen's Fortress. I still can't forget how fast my heart was beating when I first time passed the final swinging blades.

I've been playing some Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army and it's the most enjoyable SMT game I've played since Persona. I love the setting, the atmosphere of the 1930s Japan is amazing. The story is interesting too, with all kinds of conspiracies and alternate history shenanigans. Unlike other SMT games, the combat is actually more like an action RPG. It's fairly simple, little clunky and there's not much variation in attacks, but I find it strangely enjoyable. The normal demon fusion and summoning systems are there as well. But more importantly there is also detective work to do besides the fighting. Searching for clues and solving crimes using your Devil Summoner abilities is fun, and it gives the game some good pacing. And Raidou is a one badass character. Just look at this handsome devil.

Yup, If you get into the Dark Souls mood, it's really hard to stop playing and there's tons of stuff to do. I've played Dark Souls 1 about 230 hrs, compared to 260 hrs I've spent on the whole Witcher Trilogy.

I did Kaoru's route in Ayakashibito.

Whoops, I too forgot that the seasonal cycle existed. And I went and dropped Gangsta few episodes back... Well, it's time to start watching Gansta again. Thanks for the heads-up. Fall seasonal is going to be interesting, as most of it looks like shit. You can never know beforehand, but still.

I actually took a little head start with Swan Song since it seemed like it would win, and began reading it yesterday. And also finished it yesterday... It's really compelling, but that's all I'm going to say at this point.

I feel like I should watch Katanagatari again to spot all the finer details and sort my thoughts, but whatever. Here are my random thoughts about the show.

I guess I should have know that internet is capable of only talking about how good the "porn" is. Does anyone actually know if Yurirei is any good? Judging by the length and the fact it's a Liar-soft game I would expect it to be at least decent. I'm pretty interested in the writing quality and how good the story is, since the descriptions makes it sound like it would portray intimate relationships little better than your average VN. And if it's actually a proper VN, I can't wait to see the reactions when people realize that it's not like sakura-games or nekopara.

Oujo no Abaddon is pretty great game. I managed to beat it once, but it feels like I've only scratched the surface. I had to restart once because I ran out of healing items, and even though I didn't do anything majorly different I saw some completely new events while playing through the same parts the second time. Small things like who do rest with and how many affection points you have seem to make a huge difference. And that was just with the same characters, I wonder how differently the story will turn out if I pick other characters? The exploration gameplay is fun, but I'm not sure how I feel about the combat. It makes the game tense since you have to carefully manage your limited healing supplies, but it's also super simple and not very interesting. It's also really luck based. Critical hits deal ridiculous damage, sometimes even 10x and are almost needed at times. There's also incurable status effect, so you can just hope to not get hit by it and be prepared the reload your save. The combat is actually not as bad as it sounds after you get used to it, but there are some pretty annoying segments. But the story was interesting enough that it kept me playing and the pacing is pretty good overall. Surprising events, intense chases and other stuff kept me on my toes all the time. And the story is dark. There's not that much gore like in Corpse Party, but there are plenty of other kinds of squicky stuff and lots of psychological horror as well. There was also plenty heartwarming moments along the way, and in the midst of despair and darkness they felt even stronger. Because I pursued a good ending route or something I didn't see any super messed up stuff, other than quite a few rape scenes that didn't concern the main characters, but it seems like there's possibilities to set up some NTR and other weird stuff. I just can't wait to try all kinds of different things and see what will happen...

I started playing Fukai ni Nemuru Oujo no Abaddon. When I randomly tumbled upon it, I just knew I had to play it. I mean, it's like corpse party, but there's also H-scenes and other fucked up stuff it allows. I read through the prologue, and it was pretty interesting. I like the retro art style and exploration is fun as well. There's also combat, but I didn't get experience it properly yet. The horror suffers a little because of my clumsy Japanese, but the feeling of tension that comes from unpredictable horrors is still there. It helps that the text is pretty much only hiragana, although it took some time to get used to the retro font. I have yet to see anything really scary or messed up, but I figured it would be best to take only girls to my party. My (morbid) curiosity is killing me and I just can't wait to see what this game has to offer. It's been a while since I was this exited about a VN.

Watched Ping Pong the Animation and loved it. The unusual, but cool animation style, interesting characters and subtly presentation are what made the show for me. The table tennis matches were exiting as well, but I was mostly interested in the characters. And Ping Pong did a really good job with the character development. It was really heartwarming to see the characters getting lost in life, searching and sometimes finding their way forward. The subtle presentation helped a lot, it was nice too see change through actions rather than pointing it out in dialogue.

Ep. 4 is glorious.

It's been a pretty slow week for me and no interesting games were released, so I've been playing Persona 3:FES. It's my fourth time playing Persona 3 and the game is as addicting as ever. The balance between the main story, Social Links, daily life, dungeon crawling and bosses is so good. "One more day, one more Social Link"-syndrome is strong in me.