Vokoca

Played the Nier: Automata demo, cried tears of joy and then 10k yen disappeared from my bank account.

I've played the New Danganronpa V3 demo, and here are some quick impressions. Story was nothing, for demo purposes - although it was so extremely on the nose about being a demo to a sequel that it ended up being quite charming. Kind of has me worried that if the full game gets rid of this and tries to play it straight, it might be left with no charm at all. What could be judged by the demo though was the presentation, and I'm happy to say that Danganronpa has made the jump to 1080p really well. Art is crisp and everything is full of sleek animations - the class trials look more dynamic and exciting than never before. On a similar note, the OST is also superb. There is a lot of remixes of the familiar tunes, and they sound awesome. What isn't better than before are the minigames, though. To be completely honest, they're absolute trash. It continues the Danganronpa 2 trend of putting nonsensical bloated minigames where there don't have to be any. The snowboarding is replaced with a similar and equally boring driving minigame, there's a variant on the classic colour bubble popping minigame, and then there is a terrible version of nonstop debate that expects you to pay attention to tree debates at the same time. The characters themselves are thankfully pretty great, though. They all seem more ridiculous than ever, from a robot who acts like he grew up on tumblr, to a cocky but cowardly inventor girl, who's every single line is filled with such obscenities I was constantly impressed they managed to get it out without censoring it all. The waifu game is also very strong, from a moe dialect witch magician to a super maid... but unfortunately the main character isn't one of the great characters at all. She's trash. She comes across as even blander and more boring than the main characters from the first two games. The first two main characters at least had a reason to be a boring self-insert cardboard cutout - Naegi was just a regular dude who happened to get lucky, and Hinata came across as equally normal, not remembering his talent. Akamatsu, though, has a clearly defined talent. She's a pianist - probably a damn great one too, if she's in the collective of crazy people - but then where is the justification for her being painfully boring and normal. Why isn't she as quirky and interesting as everyone else? She'S extremelly disappointing, and I can only hope she gets better during the course of the story. I will probably get the game when it comes out just to see how it turns out - but I wasn't really excited for it up until now, and the demo didn't do much to make me excited either.

Finally got holidays, so I'm going back and finishing up the games I started before. Got around to finishing Uncharted 4 first, since I was just a couple of chapters away from the end - and I have to say I'm impressed. They managed to make the last boss really fucking cool, partly by having the decency of building a surprisingly fun minigame around well hidden QTEs. Everyone can do big dumb buttons on the screen, but building a small new fraction of combat gameplay around that, that's not something I've seen since MGS4. The epilogue itself was equally awesome, what a way to finish the series. Overall the game had a great end, which is something I often appreciate the most.

After roughly 50 hours I've finished SMT3: Nocturne. I've enjoyed it quite a bit overall - the OST and setting in particular was very nice, and the battle system still fun even after I've gotten spoiled by Persona 5. Everything else didn't hold up that well though - random skill inheritance, random skill changes on level up, random stat gains/curses on level up, random treasure out of chests.... I'm glad the newer releases in the series made away with these mechanics. Still a very enjoyable game overall though. I thought I would take a break from the series, but since I've started it a week ago or so, I might just as well move onto SMTIV right away.

サクラノ詩

I just looked for "このままじゃ探せなくて" and it was the first thing that came up

When in doubt, just put a random line of the lyrics into google and there's a good chance you'll find the song. For example, the first song is Love you by Miwako Okuda. Fourth is Watashi e by supercell. Fifth is Travelers from Kirakira, etc. You get the idea, I'm too lazy to go through them all.

Haha, I really hope not. They didn't leave it open enough to justify an entire sequel - most of it is just stuff you could just claim means nothing, anyway. Though I have no doubt there will be something like Persona 5 Arena, I hope they just kind of do their own thing.

Just finished Persona 5. Oh boy... how I hate finishing long games that I enjoy - this one took me around 135 hours, and I've enjoyed every minute of that time immensely. I've enjoyed it so much that I'm left with nothing but a void now. Why, why did it have to end? Anyways, about the game itself. I've talked about the gameplay and structure here before, I think it is easily superior than the previous games. So is the presentation - and in my opinion, even the music and the story. The story was the part I was unsure about for the longest time. For most of the game, the plottwists are predictable and there is nothing that shocking happening - which isn't really a problem, because everything that happens is just so damn stylish anyway - but then, then the endgame came and blew my mind into pieces. It doesn't have any never-done before incredibly clever twists, but what it does have makes it an amazing sequel in my eyes. I won't touch any more on this to avoid any sort of spoilers possible, but Persona 5 certainly goes places. I also found the Social Links Co-operations much more interesting in terms of story and mechanics - by the end of the game I really cared about all the side characters I maxed out my Co-ops with, which is something I can't really say about Golden (and what I played of 3). If there was any part I felt like was lacking compared to the previous games, it would be the events, however. By that I mean fun times with your party members, especially when compared to P4G. Now, this is a pretty unfair comparison for two main reasons - one being the overall tone of the story, and the second one being Golden having the advantage of a re-released complete version... so I am hard-pressed to hold it against P5 as negatives in the first place. Speaking of Golden, there is one more thing I would like to mention about Persona 5, that being the ending. Persona 5 has only bad ends and a "normal" ending. However, in this "normal" ending, things get absolutely nuts, to the level of the true ending in Golden. You'd think there is no problem then - things escalate nicely and get wrapped up in a satisfying manner, and everyone is happy. Only... it just doesn't feel right. Not just because you'd expect a Persona game after 4 to have a true ending, but because there are a few strangely ambiguous and seemingly meaningful scenes left. Is Atlus trolling everyone, using the existence of Persona 4's complicated true ending to make people play P5 forever? Are they planning to release a true ending DLC? Is this just a cruel bait for the inevitable "Persona 5: Platinum" that will come out a few years later? Or did things change during development and Atlus just conveniently forgot awfully suspicious scenes and choices in the game? Whatever it is, it is driving me and a lot of people who've finished P5 nuts - so if you're waiting for the western release, I sincerely hope this mystery is resolved by the time you get to play the game, so you don't have to experience this maddening confusion.

Guys, I finally did it. Only took me 90 hours, but I've got a waifu in Persona 5. Wait... that doesn't count as finishing the game? O-oh...

If I remember correctly, P3P makes it so it is impossible to get Tired in Tartarus, so they knew it was shit. Just finished the PSP version of Final Fantasy Type-0. I've mentioned the weird balancing issues and grinding requirements here before, so it probably should come as no surprise that I cheated ~b-because it'S on an emulator, o-obviously!~ To be fair all I did was temporarily increase the XP gain to significantly cut down on the ridiculous grind time and got everyone to around level 40 - then played legit again. And it was a damn good thing I did - turns out that the last mission is just around that level - and that they actually expect you to level most of your character to that level too, instead of the usual 3 for regular missions. The ending itself - it was great, actually. There were some unexpected plottwists, and it delivered on that edgy grimdark feeling of the excellent intro. I just didn't quite understand everything that has happened (it does some very crazy things) - but after finishing watching the credits I was informed that something called the "Chapter of Truth" has been unlocked, so.... I suppose its NG+ time. I can also probably do that crazy high level content now - though I am still confused by its appearance on your first runthrough - there even was a quest that was level 79.... just.... how much time do you have to have to do the grind legit, haha.

You can have however many accounts you want, it's just a bit annoying on the Vita since you need to format your memory card each time you want to change it - honestly wouldn't recommend it on the Vita, too much of a pain.

The gameplay is actually better in P3P than the original, it's basically Persona 3 + the Persona 4 battle system improvements, amongst some other things. The everyday life part being turned into 2D isn't such a minus either, since it means everything is more streamlined - it's just a shame the animated scenes are gone too. Still, the game feels much more like a VN, which isn't necessarily a minus imo. Check PS store if it has the digital version of P3P - if it does, you can play it on your Vita. I just checked the Japanese and EU PS Store and they both have it pretty cheap, including bundles - not sure which region you're using, but it should probably be there too.

Who told you that lie? It's widely accepted that The Answer, which is the additional thing P3:FES has, is easily the worst part of the entire game and isn't even worth playing. If you have a Vita you're much better off with P3P, or just use an emulator on that one. Speaking of Persona, here are my thoughts on Persona 5 after spending around 27 hours in it. I won't even go over how good the polish and style is because we all know that from the trailers - what we don't really know from the trailers however is how much better the gameplay is. First of all, I tend to be extremely slow when it comes to progress in RPGs, which also means I usually spend more time in the dungeons - so if these aren't fun, there is a good chance I won't finish the game. This happened to me with Persona 3 (tried both FES and P3P) - after spending around 80 hours on the game and going through 100+ floors of the repetitive Tartarus, I just couldn't go on anymore. I beat Persona 4 twice, as it was just a little bit better about that, but it still wasn't anywhere near ideal. Fortunately, this is where the main difference in Persona 5 comes in - the equivalent of the Tartarus/TV World is relegated to an optional dungeon, while the main dungeons are all their own complex areas. They're so different, in fact, that the gameplay is completely different from the optional (Mementos) dungeon as well. In the main dungeons, stealth is key - and as such the levels were hand-crafted to give you plenty of covers and platforms to traverse. What's more, from the two main dungeons I finished so far, they both had their very unique gameplay mechanics - and they were both very different in design and structure as well. Forget the randomly generated hallways, these are full-fledged levels with distinct areas, unique mechanics and puzzles - although the randomly generated dungeon is always there for you as well, if you just feel like leveling up and working through the optional content. The battle system also has many little changes to it that make it much more entertaining and tactical. I won't go into details here to avoid any spoilers, but let's just say that there is much more to it than in P3/P4. The rest of the game - that is the everyday life - is mostly the same, just with slight differences to match the different tone of the story. The story is the part I can't really judge much yet, but so far I am loving the dark tone, and enjoying the characters a lot as well - to be honest I wasn't so thrilled about them from the PVs, but so far I was proven wrong every single time, they've been great so far.

Soon... soon... *HEAVY BREATHING*

Of course he will, who wouldn't enjoy the beautiful OLED screen?

All I can find is them mentioning that it exists, but they don't really have anything to show for it so far. Considering Cold Steel 1 and 2 were only one year apart (2013 and 2014), this is pretty worrisome. Put some more time into FF: Type-0 - and while I really liked the gameplay a lot at first, I am starting to see the glaring flaws. Even if you stick only to three characters instead of leveling all 14 of them (who the hell has time for that?), the character you control seems to be getting more XP anyway, leaving the other two behind. Worse yet, the Summons, which you have to sacrifice a party member for to even use, have their own level as well - and as it stands, the character I play the most outclasses the Summons in pretty much every way to a ridiculous extent, making the Summons completely useless. By far the worst part about the entire game, though, is the AI. Oh god the AI... At all times you have two more characters running around with you, controlled by the AI - and to say that they are bad would be an understatement of the century. This wouldn't even be a problem if the characters weren't your party members you can switch to at any time - but as it stands, the AI literally handles your reserves and puts them all to waste. The AI will die a lot, killing the characters you had as back-up. You brought a long-ranged character along with you so you can switch to him/her when needed? Too bad, they will be dead by the time the opportunity to switch to them arrives. Bringing characters along with you is like sending them to die, yet the game is clearly meant to be played with other characters for you to switch to at any time. And don't even get me started on the bigger bosses that require you to dodge a lot - the AI doesn't seem to know what dodging even is... Other than that I am still enjoying the game, but the whole thing just feels like a really unfair escort mission.

Haha, I really tried hard to like Cold Steel - and I mean I am in like the second to last chapter or so (haven'T checked in a long time), so hopefully I will actually finish it eventually and see if the second game is any better when it comes to the story. The focus on story progression through games leads to a different problem, though - Cold Steel is supposed to be a trilogy, and as far as I know the third game hasn't been even announced yet. Other than that, I am slowly making my way through FF: Type-0. The ridiculously overleveled side-content is still quite baffling (there are missions you need to do to unlock certain side-quests, but the missions are at least 25 levels over your current level, for example - and the game gets extremely punishing when the level difference goes over 4), but I just assume they have these for NG+ and decided to ignore them. The main missions are loads of fun so far, we will see how far I can actually get without dying in the grind-loop. I'm also slowly making progress through Fate/extra CCC. I think I've mentioned here previously how much I've disliked the gameplay in Fate/extra (the original), to the point where I just cheated through the entire game just to get the story - well I am happy to say that CCC does enough little things that actually make the game enjoyable. A little bit over halfway through the game with the yandere-wife, and I'm enjoying my time a whole lot.

Looking at all the hype here.... I should probably finish Trails of the Cold Steel and play the second one, which has been sitting on my account for over a year now... I like the gameplay and the music, but I can't say the same about the story. I've been playing Cold Steel for like three quarters of a year now with all the breaks in between, the extremely slow pacing is killing me. I've decided to stop bothering with doing every single (hidden) quest at around chapter 4-5, but it still feels so slow. I get that this is the first game in a trilogy, but all that really ever happens is world building, more world building and hints at a plot that might sometimes even happen - but it never really does, and I'm almost in the last chapter. I suppose I'm just not a fan of RPGs that focus on the world more than anything else, I feel like the amount of story I've gotten is disproportionately low compared to the 50-60 hours I've spent on the game already.

Picked up Final Fantasy Type-0 on the PSP. I haven't played much, but I am impressed so far. The tone/setting looks great, the mechanics look complex (the amount of stuff seems pretty intimidating, at least at first glance), and the entire game seems to be hard as hell. Side-objectives that kill you immediately if you fail them? Damn this thing isn't messing around...

This of course very much depends on the VN and the narrative approach it takes, but for the most part I take the role of the observer even if I do empathise with the main characters a lot, no matter who they are. I don't like taking it any further than that - I like the main characters to be very much their own entity, and finding out just who exactly the main character is is often one of my favourite parts about a story. I enjoy stories that deal with the main character as much (if not more) as the overall plot, and I find the feeling of getting left behind by protagonists who clearly know more than the reader to be pretty exciting and mysterious, although it isn't something you come across that often, as I imagine it's not that easy to pull off correctly. I don't remember exactly, but wasn't Saya no Uta written in third person? Phenomeno was too, I think - as a rule of thumb, NVL sections (and entire novels) tend to be written in third person.

I have no idea what you're talking about, hahahaha....hahaha....ha.... From the FS(JP)G memes I can think of, the - "[BLANK] will be released in 2020." and/or "[BLANK] will be released when the Tsukihime remake comes out." - is probably something everyone can relate to, though.

Playing the Nioh beta. I haven't realised how amazing the idea of Souls with a Ninja Gaiden/Onimusha flair sounded until I actually played it for myself.... damn this thing is is cool!

Slowly re-reading Dunamis15, since back when I read it my Japanese was.... bad, to say the least. Finished the first arc - and just as I remembered, it was great, and quite possibly the best part of the entire story. It's the arc that goes from normal every day life to madness full of conspiracy and grim circumstances - it is the first time you're introduced to the exceptionally dark setting, while still keeping most of the plot a mystery. The problem is - at least from what I remember from my less than optional first read - that the actual plot is nowhere near as interesting as the setting itself, and it even goes for a weirdly out of place magical twist that seems to go against the tone of the VN up until that point. I'm re-reading in hopes of having missed something important that puts the ending into a better light, so we'll see. As for the first arc alone, imagine Higurashi that gets fucked up a whole lot more and much faster than Higurashi itself ever does. The population is at a steady decline after the nuclear winter has devastated the world, yet on the isolated island - Dunamis base - students seem to lead perfectly peaceful and carefree lives. Their life is calm and full of fun.... at what price, though?

Just to clarify - what MG is translating is the Higurashi Hou release. What this means is that they're translating the Higurashi Hou specific arcs, that is: Higurashi no naku koro ni - also known as the "Question Arcs", this includes the first four main arcs (Onikakushi, Watanagashi, Tatarigoroshi and Himatsubushi) Higurashi no naku koro ni Kai - also known as the "Answer Arcs", this includes the last four main arcs (Meakashi, Tsumihoroboshi, Minagoroshi and Matsuribayashi) Higurashi no naku koro ni Rei - also known as the fandisc, including the non-canon bonus arcs (Saikoroshi, Hirukowashi and Batsukoishi) Higurashi no naku koro ni Hou - the 2014 release containing all of the above and the prototype Higurashi arc (Hinamizawa Bus Stop) and the written form of the non-canon movie (Outbreak) and its continuation (Outbreak - Kamikanshi) As if this mess of releases wasn't confusing already, that is just the PC ones. There were remakes released on the PS2, DS, PS3 and Vita - and all of these brought their own new arcs into the mix. I won't list all the releases and arcs here before it gets even more ridiculous than it already is, but basically the "complete 19 arcs" that Higurashi Sui compiles into one release are the original eight arcs (Higurashi + Kai) and two of the Rei ones - that means Sui has 9 console specific arcs that aren't in the Hou release. On the other hand it also doesn't have the new Hou arcs, even if these are as non-canon as it ever gets. Higurashi was milked to hell and back, and the result is an incomprehensible mess of releases with varying contents. What we're getting in the west is about a half of what's actually out there - but what matters the most is that we're getting the original eight arcs, and these are most definitely the best part of the entire Higurashi clusterfuck. EDIT: As for the anime, I'd say go for it. The art and animation quality is pretty bad, but the OST is top-notch. It also does a pretty good job at retelling the story, with a new arc of its own to fill in the blanks they had to gloss over while adapting the others. It's by no means a perfect adaptations, but it's one of the better ones out there.