Various thoughts on a variety of topics.
Mostly due to her habit of staying up all night to play video games, Chio Miyamo often finds herself rushing to school in the morning. Worse, some new obstacle or situation inevitably appears along the way that forces her into adopting tactics from those same games in order to get by.
An absurdist gag comedy focused on situational and reaction humor which features occasional bursts of concentrated ecchi.
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When the World of Dreams came under attack from dream-eating monsters who plunged its citizens into eternal sleep, princes from across the kingdom gathered to wage war against them… only to find their power sealed within rings. Rings which only the Princess of Traümere, an otherwise average girl summoned from modern day Earth, has the power of awakening.
An ever-more dramatic adventure series with occasional action scenes, a moderate level of comic relief, and a few romance elements.
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Having quit playing beach volleyball due to her short height, Kanata Higa is convinced to give the sport another shot after reconnecting with her uncommonly tall cousin Haruka Oozora. Together they hope to improve enough to make it to the national Valkyrie Cup competition.
An ecchi sports-centric series with a large amount of comedy and small streak of relationship drama.
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While the times may change, the notorious thief Lupin III and his friends Jigen Daisuke and Goemon Ishikawa, along with the mercurial Fujiko Mine, stay the same. Whether the target is a bank vault or digital currency stashed on a secure server, they’ll stop at nothing to complete the heist… even if the whole world is watching while they do it.
A stand-alone continuation of the 2015 Lupin series, with a similar mix of episodic and overarching stories.
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Summoned from hell by the sadistic goth-loli Yurine Hanazono, Jashin is stuck on Earth until Yurine dies… so she does her best each day to try and kill her. Attempts which always backfire in a manner resulting in Jashin being mutilated or worse. Joining them in their everyday life are the devils Minos and Medusa, along with the fallen angel Pekora, all of whom are far more at ease with an Earthly existence.
A slice of life comedy fond of 4th-wall breaking and reaction humor which features frequent violent dismemberment.
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The turn-based tactical RPG Legends of Eisenwald is a lot like the King’s Bounty games, if they had more of a focus on questing than fighting (though there’s still a lot of fighting).
The main campaign is pretty lengthy and spans multiple chapters, with early choices occasionally having a significant effect on later events and a possibility of 3 notably different endings. You can expect to get the protagonist to level 9 by the end of it, and also expect to have your army/inventory reset multiple times. Only your protagonist’s equipment and a few specific items (Black Necklace, Feline Mirror, Cursed Idol; if you’ve found them) are guaranteed to stick around, with you getting to keep your gold from the Windfeld map onward.
If you have trouble solving some quests, thankfully there’s a complete guide available which covers everything that needs covering (albeit in broken English). As far as battle tactics go, a particularly useful one against Spear/Sword users is to combine a healer’s Gift of Medbh spell with the Witch’s Adhesion spell. In addition to the main campaign, there’s a few additional single-map scenarios:
The Masquerade is pretty interesting, with a surprising number of choices and things to discover in it despite being on such a relatively small map (you can expect to reach level 5). Cursed Castle meanwhile is pure combat/conquest, just don’t count on holding anything other than castles for long since a seemingly endless stream of undead and bandits will be wandering around re-capturing everything else (expect to reach level 4 without grinding; 5 with). Each of these scenarios will take ~3-4 hours to complete.
Finally we come to the Road to Iron Forest scenario, which has to be purchased separately. Length-wise it’s the same as the previous scenarios (expect level 5 again), but as far as content it’s something of a middle-ground between them. While there aren’t any choices, it has a strong narrative focus, there are a couple sidequests, and strategy plays a large role since you have to rebuild your army in hostile lands (be on the lookout for a Guard you can hire in one of the Inns).
All in all the game is a lot of fun (if occasionally backtrack-heavy), nicely sidestepping King’s Bounty’s late game ‘stacks of doom’ issue, and I’ll probably either replay it (as a different class; Baroness is really good at 1-shotting archers/spiritualists but Mystic seems far more versatile) or try out Blood of November and possibly Bastard.
The long-running plotline regarding Kate’s father is brought to something of a close in Magic Triumphs, which begins following a pair of large time skips (a nearly 2-year gap which will presumably be somewhat filled in by the remaining two parts of the Iron Covenant trilogy). Unfortunately, rather than Roland, it instead focuses far more on the Iron Covenant antagonists and for the most reads as little more than a string of exasperating deus ex machina.
Seanan Mcguire’s eleventh October Daye novel comes very close to reinterpreting the ‘it was all a dream’ trope. While not bad, there’s not much in the way of forward momentum and it seems very much like it’s setting the story up to retread old ground. The included bonus novella is quite good though and wraps up the remaining loose thread from A Local Habitation.
The follow-up twelfth installment, Night and Silence, does in fact retread old ground… though not at all in the manner I was expecting. It appears to be the start of a ‘third act’ of sorts and leads with about two chapters worth of recap. Then, much like Magic Triumphs above, starts linking together a bunch of highly questionable events that (while they certainly do have forward momentum) don’t really feel believable in the slightest. The bonus novella here isn’t as good as the previous one either and bizarrely enough actually goes and recaps something from its host novel. Just baffling.
While Shadow Warrior 2 may at first glance look like an FPS, in reality it’s an action RPG with quite a few character progression options. Unfortunately (and similar to Cosmic Star Heroine) it also has an overwhelmingly unconventional sense of humor made worse by some notably lackluster voice acting. The actual gameplay though is pretty good once you accept that you’re expected to get hit and take damage (there’s no dodge/block ability apart from a specific Katana move).
The Bureau: XCOM Declassified on the other hand is a more conventional FPS, albeit a squad-based one with cover shooter gameplay similar to Mass Effect 2. Squad tactics are very important here if you’re playing on the higher difficulties; a style of play facilitated by a ‘bullet time’-like mechanic that lets you give orders in relative peace. There are some notable negatives however: Saving is restricted to checkpoint autosaves, the character interactions are pretty terrible, and the PhysX graphic options are broken by default (while they can be fixed easily enough, doing so results in extreme slowdown at certain points).
Cosmic Star Heroine is a throwback to early sprite-based RPGs with notably retro (though not low-quality) visuals and controls (directional buttons to move, enter to select, tab to bring up the character menu, and space to switch menu tabs). The two things that really stand out about it however are the combat system and general offhand irreverence in both the dialog and plot developments.
Combat is interesting as it’s made up of reusable abilities, rechargeable abilities, and limited abilities; reusables are generally weak attacks that can be used as much as you want, rechargeables can only be used once before you have to defend to recharge them, and limited abilities (granted by items and equipment) can normally only be used once per battle. Complicating things a bit is the Hyper Mode system, which gives every character a large strength boost every few turns (the intervals vary per character).
So for the greatest effectiveness in battle you have to plan out exactly when you’re going to use your strongest abilities and when you’re going to defend to recharge them since you certainly don’t want to be stuck having to defend on a Hyper-boosted turn. What saves this from becoming annoying is that not only does HP fully regenerate after each battle (meaning each battle effectively exists in a vacuum) but you(‘ll eventually) also have a large selection of abilities to pick and choose from; you don’t have to take the weaker abilities if you don’t want to.
Less of an unequivocal good thing is the style of humor, which is constantly present in everything from the character dialog to the item/enemy descriptions and borders on the 4th-wall breaking (there’s a side-mission which recreates part of Resident Evil 2). It’s basically a parody, with everything being a joke to some extent and plot developments often coming across as either random or blatantly contrived. So far it’s been very hit and miss, leaning a bit more toward ‘miss’ as of Chapter 8.
As for Starpoint Gemini Warlords… I couldn’t get into it. It’s very much like an enhanced Freelancer (which I loved at the time it was released), but I’ve long lost the ability to handle true space combat; the combination of 360° movement, throttling the combat speed, shield and light weapon energy usage, limited heavy weapon ammo, use of multiple skills, and a boarding minigame on top of it all is far more than I can comfortably keep track of.
At first, while reading Karen Chance’s Zombie’s Bite novella, I was completely lost and feared I had forgotten everything about the franchise in the intervening years since having read the third book in this series. As it progressed however bits and pieces started coming back and I realized it’s actually a prequel that details Dorina and Marlowe’s first meeting. Once that was established it became decent enough.
Lover’s Knot is another Midnight’s Daughter novella, this one taking place between the series’ third and fourth books. It tells two stories, one in the present and one in the past centered on Mircea, both of which are connected by the same phenomenon. Despite also involving Marlowe, it ends up much better and easier to follow than the previous novella.
I was soon lost again after starting Shadow’s Bane, the fourth full novel in the series, as I had completely forgotten how fae-centric as opposed to vampire-centric the focus had become. This particular entry has three main plot lines: The central external threat which is broken up into past/present segments identical to Lover’s Knot, resolving the issue of Dorina’s split personality, and advancing her relationship with Louise-Cesare. And while I could do without the incredible character overload, amazingly enough it manages to both juggle and resolve all those plotlines while never feeling rushed or incoherent. That said… I’m not sure I’ll pick up a potential 5th installment, as it only seems the number of house-guests will continue to grow unchecked.
