This has been an intense month as I near the completion of my remix project "Ultima Exodus: Heroes of Yore". Only the first track has been uploaded so far:
I have completed 5 remix tracks thus far and have one last one to go which will probably the most tedious and difficult one to do which is why I left it last. It will be an orchestral remix of 5 of the songs from the game: Castle theme, Overworld, Town Theme, Ambrosia, and Ending theme. I really need to finish this project up and go back to sending out resumés and looking for job openings. I'm not even sure if I could really use this project to boost up an employer's interest in hiring me. Still, it's really good practice for me in composition, editing, and mastering. And they're all turning out great which I'm really happy about. I expect this last stretch will last about 2 more weeks before I'm done.
So after watching Senran Kagura the Animé, I watched a bunch of others right after. I felt like I haven't been watching as much, but that might have been just the past 3 weeks. Right after Senran Kagura, I watched the BlazBlue animé "Alter Memory". It had a lot of the same problems the Senran Kagura animé did: Not enough action as I had hoped, some of the characters had some changes (especially Bang Shishigami), and the Story just wasn't told very well it seemed. It was closely tied to the game, but things just felt off. On the other, "Hyperdimension Neptunia The Animation" was great! Rather than take the story directly from the game, the animé had a story of its own based off the game that panned out pretty well in the end. The animé didn't take itself too seriously and often made fun of itself for its game references and for being an animé based off a game. The characters personality were brought out really well in the show and I feel both Senran Kagura and BlazBlue had problems doing that because there were too many characters while trying to fit the entire game's story into 12 episodes which inevitably cuts a lot of content out or forces change out of them. I really enjoyed the "Hyperdimension Neptunia" animé a lot and would watch it again. I also watched all of Chuunibyou Demo Koi ga Shitai! which was cute and funny. But the one animé that REALLY impressed me was "Kill la Kill!" I got so into it that there was one day I sat and watched 10 episodes of it to finish the 24 episode series. I loved it! The story seemed ridiculous and convoluted in the beginning, but it built up to a grand adventure around the middle that exploded into a breath-taking climax and finale. The animation style is unique and really absurd.
It wasn't just the story, but everything around it. The characters are brimming with personality with very obscure designs that really distinguish themselves from each other and their important roles they play in the plot. The action, dialogues, humor, and progression all move and transition very quickly which never really gives the viewer time to feel bored. The music is also very obscure and diverse as it emphasizes each character and each event in the show.
Although I really liked all the characters in the show, I would say Nonon Jakuzure was one of my favorites. She looks like the usual cute animé girl in the show, but has an odd voice and a very smug and violent attitude. Her voice is similar to Konoha's voice from the Arcana Heart series, but it's a different voice actor apparently. It's funny that her voice is actually part of her charm. She insults everyone around her other than the one she serves, uses music as her fighting ability, and has some of the creepiest and most intense facial expressions in the show. Behind all the chaos and absurdity, it had a meaningful plot behind the entire show (as most animé do) about finding one's self and about growing up. I really enjoyed every bit of "Kill la Kill" and is probably the best show I've watched this month. I started watching Log Horizon and am close to finishing it (episode 21). Although it has a similar premise as Sword Art Online where people are trapped in the game they were playing, a lot of things are very different. The show is slow, but it's also interesting. It also revolves around the human psychological thinking like SAO did, but tells it in a different manner. It's a fun show, but I can't get over how slow it feels (especially right after watching Kill la Kill which was hyper fast). Other than that, I also started Kiniro Mosaic and am up to episode 3. The show's cute and I think it's mostly slice of life so there won't be any huge plots or anything.
Man, I can't believe I watched that many shows in the span of 1 month!!! Now it's time to review my gaming to see if it's just as much. So I pre-ordered Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls and have played it off and on ever since it came in the mail. To put it simply, I think it's great! The Crusader is the only new class to be added, and it's a pretty fun character. Sadly, it's not really my type of play style, so it's kind of an "eh" sort of addition to the game. Every character gets one new skill and the max level got boosted to 70. Difficulty through playthroughs have been taken out and changed for the new system. Monsters scale with the player's level and the player can choose any difficulty they want which in turn boosts up bonuses. Better loot drops and is more appropriate to the character you're currently playing. The in-game auction house was taken down and to combat 3rd-party black market trades, any item you find is account bound and can't be traded after (2-3 hours?). The 5th Act is full of side dungeons and events to do with lots of great little quips from NPCs and followers; however, the environment is rather generic and boring while the main story is lackluster yet again. The main draw and sole reason for me buying the expansion was for the new "Adventure Mode". At first, it wasn't anything like I imagined. I was expecting instanced runs through randomized dungeons and fighting a boss at the end of it. Adventure mode places you into the game with "bounties" in each Act for the player to fulfill and get a reward. But then, you get these special currency that allows you to go through a rift and THAT'S where the mode is exactly what I was expecting. You go through randomly generated dungeons throughout the game pieced together and then fight a boss at the end of the run. It's fast and chaotic, but the rewards are worth it. From the past 3 weeks, I've accumulated 30 hours, which is a decent amount of time on it considering I haven't been playing it consistently. It was totally worth my $40. I beat Zombie Shooter 2 in one day and didn't really like it (I had to cheat the whole way through) and thought the first one was actually better. I finally got around to finishing Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale and thought it was pretty boring (I did have some fun with it). From the 4 First-Person Shooters I was working towards finishing last month, Shadow Warrior was the last on my list. Transformers: War for Cybertron (though it is a 3rd-Person Shooter) was okay. Alien Rage had some great ideas and I had some fun with it but was ultimately annoyed by the game as a whole. Rise of the Triad was just painful and frustrating. But Shadow Warrior was pretty great. My biggest issue with the game was getting lost all the time and it really broke the flow of the game. Shadow Warrior leans more towards an Action game than a proper First-Person Shooter, and that's alright. It's a chapter by chapter progression with some light open-ended exploration that sends you from one place to the other. As you get more points, you can spend them to get new abilities, upgrade weapons, and gain special perks. The game heavily revolves around the Katana, and I love swords so that was one of the main attractions for me. The combat was really fun, but getting lost all the time did deter me from wanting to play the game a second time. I bought a Groupee's bundle that came with a lot of games and one of them was BeatBlaster III. I wasn't very interested in the game to begin with and had bought the bundle for another game called "BardBarian" but I went and tried it anyways since it came with it. I didn't like it very much. It's a 2D platformer and Music Rhythm hybrid that has the player mashing abilities to the beat to build up energy to use them. Movement was slow, puzzles were boring, controls were somewhat frustrating and the music Rhythm part was just mashing the buttons on the 4 main beats the entire game. I beat it in about 2 hours (I think) and then deleted it. Jets'n'Guns Gold was also another dumb game that I ended up just cheating through the rest of the way. It was a very messy Shoot-Em-Up that had an annoying overheating mechanic with the fact that it's impossible to dodge all the bullets. You HAVE to get hit a lot of the times but the graphics are so messy and conflicting that it was more a chore than a challenge. Ultratron, a classic style top-down shooter, has the same problem with graphics. The enemies, bullets, and background generally have the same color. The rapid flow of objects being thrown at the player is overwhelming, confusing, and really tiring to the eye. It's also another game I beat in one sitting and then deleted. Finally, there's Final Fantasy XIII in which I finished just this past Saturday. Overall, I thought the game was pretty enjoyable, but I can see why a lot of people hated it. The characters didn't have enough development in the story and they felt flat and boring. The story is really "meh". It's a story that makes sense and has the basic "conflict & resolution" down, but it didn't feel THAT spectacular, sadly. The graphics; however, is probably the best on the PS3 I have ever seen. The soundtrack is pretty good, but I can see why people might not have liked it as much as Nobuo Uematsu work with previous Final Fantasy games. I liked it, there was some good tracks out of it:
What I did like about the game was the combat system and the whole world that the developers created. The story and characters may not seem up to snuff, but the game does provide a unique experience that doesn't feel common in videogames. What I liked about the combat was that I never had to grind, EVER! In fact, I skipped a lot of parts I felt was a pain and didn't want to do and worked towards what I did want to play. The paradigm shift mechanic kept me thinking and reorganizing my team and what they specialized in. So even though it felt like I was pressing Auto-Attack most of the time, there was a lot of timing and changing strategies involved that made it more interactive for me. Yeah, Final Fantasy XIII might not have been a great game, but I think I mostly enjoyed it. In fact, I'm looking forward to playing FFXIII-2. For now, my current line-ups are DmC for PS3, Recettear for PC, Project X Zone for 3DS, and MadWorld for Wii. Whether I get around to Persona 3 FES for PS2 is unknown, it really depends on my work flow and my time spent when free.
I can't believe I went through so many remixes, animé shows and videogames in one month! I hope to be this productive in the following months.
