Fred the Barber

Confession: I know I'm an adult, because I finally caved and bought cushions to put on my couch and chairs. Confession 2: I know I'm an otaku, because the cushions I bought were from https://otakumode.com/shop/creator/pomodorosa

Wow. How do I throw money at this person? I don't really feel like buying any of the merch at https://otakumode.com/shop/creator/pomodorosa, but I'd happily donate just to support her music.

What is the best fruit?

At least some variety in my hallucinations would be nice...

On a scale from Great to Best Thing Ever, how great are the early NES Mega Man soundtracks?

I rather like the Tales dubs as well, generally. There might be one or two overacted bad apples among the side characters, but the main characters are generally pretty solid and likeable. I remember really liking both the Vesperia dub and the Graces dub in particular, but I might just be a sucker for Graces. Xillia 2 was good as well (Christina Vee is always a winner).

For both of the LNs that I've been keeping an eye on (Spice & Wolf and DanMachi), Yen Press's translation rate since 2013 has been one volume every four months, not every six months. See http://yenpress.us/?page_id=560 Other than that, though, I agree with the assessment, and even going at that rate recently, they're still not done with Spice & Wolf, which had its last Japanese release four years ago...

I think Xeno is referring to the actual Japanese characters that appeared once or twice in Puchin's route. It was pretty weird. There are a moderate number of grammatical and spelling mistakes as well. But, to be honest, the overall quality seems about average for an English commercial release. It seems very comparable to what I recall from Yume Miru Kusuri or Princess Evangile, noticeably lower quality than a top-tier fan translation like Rewrite, and light-years beyond a shit-tier translation like MoeNovel's butchering of KonoSora. Edit: And regarding ef, I suspect it didn't garner a lot of votes because it had a pretty popular anime. That's certainly why I didn't vote for it; I've already seen a lot of the story.

When you're playing an RPG, and the path forks, do you try to take the path that progress onward in the level, or the path that reaches a dead end with a treasure chest? Or do you just keep going regardless and not really worry about it?

Growl about why she's here again, and go back to sleep.

Who's the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?

True, though it's been a long time. But Satsuki and TexasDice have had me seriously thinking I should revive that hobby. Next person has blushed in the past 24 hours.

Confession: For the last few posts from hsmsful in this thread, the tone of his post has perfectly matched his grumpy Tohsaka avatar's expression, and it amuses me endlessly. Hmm. Slow, sad, rock... These are fairly random, and probably not all of them are what you're looking for (or maybe none of them!), but here's some bands I found in my collection that seems to fit that general idea, with relevant and somewhat representative song selections: Dire Straits: Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young: Modest Mouse: Wilco: Bon Iver: Iron and Wine: Matthew Sweet: Idlewild: Fleet Foxes:

I've never played it, but I used to hear several people talking enthusiastically about it, always positively. However, it's been months since that chatter died down, so I can't say if maybe those people got tired of it (or if maybe they just gave up talking about it, since there weren't many of them in that forum to begin with). Not exactly the most helpful feedback, I know, but hopefully better than none... You probably want P3P, not P3 FES. From what I've heard, the combat will be annoying in anything except P3P, because you can't control your teammates, and the AI sucks. I played P4G first, and then played P3P afterwards, and I really enjoyed it. I actually like the P3 story more than P4, and I think some of the character in P3 are better than any you'll see in P4... but P4 is probably better overall. Anyway, if you liked P4G, go for P3P and you won't be disappointed. I recommend against Persona Q. I played quite a bit of it, but got horribly bored of the grindfest when I was maybe halfway through the game and just dropped it. At first things were novel and interesting, probably because I'd never played an Etrian Odyssey game, but after a while it feels like you're constantly in boring random encounters doing the same predictable actions. The plot and the new characters are really weak.The constant fanservice side stories are nice, but they just aren't deep enough to really sink your teeth into. Have you played P4A and P4AU before? If not, I'd honestly recommend against those, too, but I'm more on the fence about them vs PQ. They weren't a slow grindfest to tell you their story, unlike PQ, but it was still not great stuff. P3P and P4G are both amazing, and all those other releases are really just fanservice and fluff... I play them because I loved the main series games so much, but I'm still pretty regretful every time I play one.

I usually like (but not love) Tales games, and I preordered Zestiria long ago. I'll definitely be talking about it come October, but in the meantime, I don't really have too much to say. I will say that although I didn't care much for the combat in Xillia, I loved the combat in Tales of Graces F, and apparently Zestiria's battle system was designed by the same person who did Graces F (and not the person who did Xillia), so I'm hopeful on that front. For the rest of the game, it'll be a Tales game. They're never the best thing ever, but they're reliably good.

Wrapped up the Puchin route. Pretty entertaining. This VN does a fairly good job of pacing things, but I have two minor complaints: - There is a little bit too much time spent on drama, at times. It's not their strong suit, but I can see that it's needed to change the pace every now and then. That's fine, but still, don't drag it out so long. - Definitely too many H scenes in too short a time window. They packed 3 of them (or was it 4? they started to blur...) all together between about the 3/4 mark and the 7/8 mark of the route. The overall H-per-minute was not over-the-top (as it was in Yume Miru Kusuri), but it all ends up packed in a really short window, which ends up achieving the same effect. I just ended up skipping most of it, though; not a big deal, really. I changed my mind and decided to do Ran's route next, since saving it for the end seems like a recipe for getting tired of the VN and not enjoying it. I'll leave Yukino till the end and maybe just not do her route, depending on how I feel at that point. I guess it's a coincidence of the games I've played, but it seems the only romanceable robot girl I've seen is Aigis in Persona 3. She's my favorite Persona (not just Persona 3) character, though, so clearly there's something there that appeals to me. I really wanted to like Ell, but she doesn't do nearly as much for me, and I think you nailed the reason; she's too human, not enough robot, and ends up just coming off as a little girl most of the time. However (spoiler about Puchin route): Also, I'll throw this out there: I don't understand the characterization of Ell as loli (which the VN certainly intends). Most importantly, her facial structure seems as adult as any of the rest of the characters, but her bust size definitely is not so small that she couldn't be an adult. She's only small, in that respect, by comparison with the typical extreme sizing of the rest of the cast (see also: Kuon, who is constantly called "flat", but is definitely more like average). Ell's sprite is definitely shorter than most. But first of all, it's not that much shorter; and second of all, it's a sprite. Maybe I'm not enough of a sprite connoisseur, but I don't find them conducive to judging actual height unless they're really short. Qoo and Remi are clearly much smaller, and I can see that in their shape and sprite. But at least to me, in appearance Ell is just... normal.

How do you feel about The World Ends With You?

False, though I don't particularly have anything against either it or them. Next person has a nickname they can't get rid of.

Wink back, then go back to sleep.

turn on the jetpack strapped to my back, launching myself at him like a human cannonball. We collided...

What is your opinion on the cuteness of bats?

False. I have an apartment, not a room, but all of it is both clean and neat. Next person thinks bats are cute.

Confession: I still occasionally actually post confessions in this thread. But this is not one of them.

I got the annual Disgaea itch, and Disgaea 5 won't be out until October, so I started playing Disgaea D2 again. I picked up my postgame save, where I had the second-best sword in the game sitting around in my bag, so I leveled it up to 100, and also leveled yet another character to 9999. Next steps: reincarnate her and repeat a few times, and then go level up the best sword in the game (which I naturally stole in the bottom of the dungeon where I leveled up the second-best sword) to 100 as well. Disgaea games are such a glorious, unapologetic grindfest. Once you get the bug, it's really hard to stop.