2015 Coming to a Close

So not taking the medicine anymore last weekend was a bad idea.  In 2 days, I had a really bad reaction and I continued to feel sick the following week.  I'm still taking it right now since I'm still having burning sensations and generating air in my stomach.  I went to the gym yesterday and ran 4 miles in hopes that heavy exercise will help me (because it has the past few years every time I had stomach problems).  So this makes it week 8 of feeling ill.  I'm tired and feel small pains all around my body.  Taking medicine for so long can't be good for my body.  Hopefully this week's worth of exercise will bring me back to my normal self by next week.

It's been a crazy week.  My sister and her boyfriend were back so I got to spend time with them.  We spent a lot of time playing Wii U.  Throughout last week, my great aunt and her boyfriend came back to visit, there was dinner for my aunt's anniversary, then dinner for my parent's anniversary, a Christmas Eve party, a Christmas dinner, having lunch with friends, dinner with seeing relatives, and then one last dinner before my sister and her boyfriend has to go back home.  Now that all the events are all over, I'm focusing on recuperating, recovering from this 8-week long ailment, and trying to finish a certain amount of games.  I've been keeping track of how many games I've completed every year so I can get through more of my backlog of games.  Last year, I reached 132 and I'm only at 123 at the moment.  So I'm hoping I can finish enough short games the next few days before New Year's and beat last year's record.  Afterwards, I'm going to focus on finishing The Guardian Legend Remix Album, work on some new remixes, and finishing some games throughout January.  I didn't really feel like I relaxed in December, so I want to do so in January.

Now to share some Bayonetta in Smash Bros. Reaction videos:

This has been an interesting, awful, and exciting year.  It was great that we got Camera Obscura finally launched, but it was met with disappointment.  I was hoping to lead a healthier year, but fell ill multiple times.  We lost great individuals like Monty Oum and Satoru Iwata.  Final Fantasy VII Remake was finally announced.  Shenmue 3 was announced.  Koji Igarashi kickstarted Bloodstained.  Mighty No. 9 was delayed.  There's just so much to talk about 2015, but I'll leave it for another time.  I just wish to be healthy again for 2016.

Nintendo, You make me happy~

First and foremost, I want to say that I'm almost back to full health.  I'm going to stop taking the Chinese medicine tomorrow and see if I have any stomach reactions.  I feel my heart flutter just a tiny bit once or twice throughout the day, but otherwise I don't experience it nearly as much as I did before.  Hopefully I'm finally back to normal.  I'm closing in on 7 weeks of being ill...

ANYWAYS, Nintendo did what I said they couldn't do and that was to surprise me with a character that I'd be happy with on their last broadcast.  "Who can they possibly announce that could top Cloud?!"  I had a lot of ideas of who would make me happy like Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden since the original Trilogy was on NES and the newest Ninja Gaiden 3 was on Wii U, Simon Belmont from Castlevania 1 & 2 on NES, Sir Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins on NES, Strider on the NES, or Nathan Spencer from Bionic Commando on NES.  Other than Ryu Hayabusa, I feel the other characters wouldn't have much of an impact on the rest of the community because of how irrelevant they are now with no new games for them.  From the rest of the community, I heard these names a lot: Shantae - The Half-Genie Hero, Shovel Knight, Star Wolf from Star Fox (was in Brawl), Snake from Metal Gear Solid (was in Brawl), Isaac from Golden Sun, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, Phoenix Wright, Banjo-Kazooie, Rayman, Inklings from Splatoon, King K. Rool, Geno from Super Mario RPG - Legend of the Seven Stars, and Tails and Knuckles from Sonic the Hedgehog.  So I thought "if they were to top the announcement of Cloud, they'd have to do something really crazy!"  I joked with my friends and said they would have to announce someone like Dante from Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Master Chief from Halo, or Hatsune Miku the Virtual Diva!  And then *BAM*, it happened:


Let's actually bring this back to the beginning.  They started the broadcast with introducing Corrin:


Right when the broadcast started, I saw the characters and was thinking "are they going to talk about Fire Emblem Fates first?"  Then I realized that they were introducing the main character as a DLC character.  It was a way to introduce the game to the smash fans.  I honestly couldn't get excited because I had no idea who this character was.  But I was happy for his/her inclusion because it's not a clone character and it's not a returning character we've already seen.  It's a new character with new moves and skill sets, so I was happy for Corrin's inclusion but not particularly hyped.

The broadcast continued on and showed what Cloud was capable of and then announced that he was available to buy and download after the broadcast.  Corrin won't be available until February.  They then showed some costumes that I unfortunately want.  I say unfortunately because I've already spent $48 on DLCs and it looks like I'm going to be spending a bit more.  The costumes had Geno, Bionic Armor, Takamaru, Ashley, Gil, Tails, and Knuckles (so a lot of the characters fans want added).

Finally, it said that it reached its "climax" (I SHOULD'VE KNOWN IT WAS BAYONETTA RIGHT THERE!)  and that they were going to reveal the final character.  I was extremely scared going into watching the trailer because I felt like I was going to see a character I was going to be disappointed with like King K. Rool.  The trailer started off with Pit punching Bowser and Samus and I immediately got thrown off for a loop thinking it was a Kid Icarus character.  My heart sank and I felt a little sad if it really was a Kid Icarus character (even though I would've been happy with Viridi, she's so cute!).  Then it zoomed up to the moon and hear the voice "Oh, another Angel.  Must have missed one."  I recognized the voice, but was extremely skeptical.  Then I saw the shoes and flipped out!  I lunged out of my chair and screamed on the top of my lungs "OMG, I CAN'T BELEIVE IT!"  I don't remember what else I yelled out, but I remember yelling for a good half minute before I just watched with my mouth gaped.  I think I yelled out "I'M SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW" and "OMG, SHE'S SO COOL!"  I really cannot put into words how shocked, elated, and uplifted I was when I saw those shoes and realized that they brought in Bayonetta.  I felt that Bayonetta had a small chance of being added and I had hoped that she was already a character from the beginning since Bayonetta 2 launched on Wii U around the same time as Smash Bros. 3DS released.  But there were so many factors that deemed it seemingly impossible.  When Snake was being developed on Brawl, they said that he was "barred from using guns" because it's too realistic and violent (compared to the laser and energy shots from other characters).  Bayonetta's game was a mature game with violence, sexual content, and suggestive themes that would otherwise contradict the family friendly environment that the franchise wants to keep in Smash Bros.  But NOPE, Bayonetta will stay true to her character and have her suggestive poses, saucy banter, her guns, her disappearing clothes when she attacks, and her infernal climax which has a giant demon chew the opponents up.  I'm extremely happy with the ballot choice being Bayonetta.  I'm only sad that I have to wait until February to play her.

Recovering and Cloud Hype

The past 3 weeks have been pretty awful.  On Tuesday, three weeks ago, I was experiencing frequent heart palpitation (skipping) throughout the day.  On Wednesday, of which I wrote an entry that day, the heart palpitation was at its worst with heavy skipping, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, blurry vision, constant hunger, and a bad headache.  I continued each passing day with problems and then on Sunday that week, my father looked up my symptoms and found that they all led to hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).  I realized I've been avoiding sugar for a while since I thought it was the cause of my stomach problems.  I've also been staying up late a lot without eating in-between the night which lowers blood sugar.  Whether I really was low on blood sugar is unknown, but my condition improved the following week when I was regulating my sugar count.  But I was still having trouble maintaining my hunger.  I had to eat more food and more meals a day.  I went to see the doctor which I had made an appointment with over a month ago for a body check up since I haven't had one in 10 years.  After checking with a blood test and my physical check up, the doctor said I was healthy and that I should be fine.  That was just this past Friday when I went to see him again to review my blood test results.  It seems I've been suffering from anxiety as well.  By that point, the main problems I had left was always feeling hungry with a lot of gas generating and occurrences of heart palpitation whenever I was hungry or stressed.  The doctor gave me a prescription for Omeprazole to regulate my stomach acids so that I won't constantly feel hungry throughout the day and stop it from creating so much air (which made me feel sick).  So the past 3 weeks, it's been a roller coaster ride of feeling okay and feeling miserable.  I generally feel a bit sick in the morning, then good during the day, and then awful again by evening.  Yesterday, I felt pretty good throughout the entire day until night time.  I felt so good that I did some recording for my remix project.  Today, I've had some occurrences of heart palpitation again because the feeling of hunger won't go away for some reason.  It's leading to a slight headache.  I also have random body pains throughout my abdomen, arms and legs.  It might be a culmination of stressed pent up from the past 3 weeks.  But I'm slowly feeling okay again.  I really don't want to experience the past 3 weeks ever again.  I wasn't bedridden or anything, but I felt so abnormal and nauseated that I couldn't work, couldn't play games, couldn't do anything except watch videos.  I tried playing games, but I felt nauseated after a short while.  Watching videos allowed my mind to be distracted from all the maladies I've been suffering from.  I started playing games again yesterday since I was feeling better.  I've been mostly watching videos from Cinemassacre, some Super Smash videos, and a lot of reaction videos to Cloud's reveal in Super Smash Bros.


If I could contain the emotion and feelings I had when they revealed Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII to Super Smash Bros. in a bottle where I could open it and experience it all over again, I would do it and use it every time I felt disappointed or lacked excitement for videogames.  This trailer was revealed at the end of the Nintendo Direct stream on November 12, 2015.  I watched the 45-minute broadcast feeling mostly unimpressed as a lot of the updates weren't that exciting, announcements were further discussing games they've already revealed, or the new surprises they showed didn't get much of a reaction from me (such as Zelda: Twilight Princess HD on Wii U or Linkle as a new character, although I think she is very cute).  So when it got to the end of the broadcast and Reggie says he "senses a trailer approaching", I was thinking "ooo, new game?"  And then it started with the first three notes from the opening of Final Fantasy VII's bombing mission and I'm thinking "are they bringing the FF7 remake to Nintendo NX?"  It was a very similar reaction to this year's reveal of the Final Fantasy VII remake when I heard the first note from Advent Children in the trailer where I went "Oh hey, it's Final Fantasy VII".  And then all of a sudden, the logo for "Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U" showed up and I freaked out going "NO WAY, ARE THEY REALLY GOING TO DO IT?!"  And then I saw the "x Final Fantasy VII" logo pop-up.  I fell over on the couch screaming "OMG, THEY'RE ACTUALLY DOING IT!"  By the time it revealed Cloud's name, I was already sobbing and awestruck with the news right in front of me.  FREAKING CLOUD STRIFE IN SUPER SMASH BROS.!  This was something I talked and laughed about with my friends back in Super Smash Bros. N64 and how it was "impossible because Final Fantasy VII was on Sony Playstation".  I honestly think this made me happier than the Final Fantasy VII Remake reveal.  And just in time too since I'll be (trying) to get a Nintendo Wii U this week bundled with Super Smash Bros. and Splatoon.  The following week after the announcement, I ended up watching a lot of reaction videos to see if anyone was as excited as I was.  I never watch reaction videos because I find them mostly silly.  But seeing the raw emotion coming from Final Fantasy fans has been wonderful.  What I didn't expect is some very negative reactions from fans of Smash Bros.  Comments like "Who's that?", "No, not Cloud, why him?!", or "Ewww, Final Fantasy?" weren't as rare as I thought.  I was reminded that there were a lot of people that didn't like Cloud.  I can understand why so many people didn't like Cloud for the same reasons people don't like Sasuke from Naruto, but I've always admired the character design of Cloud wielding his iconic Buster Sword.  Anyways, here's some of my favorite reaction videos to the reveal of Cloud in Smash Bros.:


(Timestamp: 45:24)
(Timestamp: 44:35)

This is probably my favorite reaction.
EDIT: Just found this

(Timestamp: 1:46) We can't even joke about this anymore BECAUSE IT'S REAL!

In any case, I hope to make a 100% recovery in time to play some Nintendo Wii U and work on some more remixes along the way.

Maintaining my health

I wanted to take better care of myself this year because I became rather ill in November and December last year and the same thing happened in 2012.  I can't say that it's been working out this year.  Around April and May, I suffered through a string of problems with allergies, then back pains, and then stomach problems, etc.  I got better and felt pretty healthy throughout the summer.  And then all of a sudden I started feeling not right yesterday.  In the past 2-3 months, I've been experiencing my heart skipping out of nowhere.  It doesn't hurt and it feels no different from the heart skipping when you get excited, surprised, or something of the nature that causes shock; however, I've been experiencing it in normal situations such as when I'm just sitting or lying down.  I looked it up and found out it's called "heart palpitations" which occur for a number of reasons.  Since they were very rare, I thought nothing of it.  But yesterday, I was experiencing frequently throughout the day.  I tried not to think about it too much and hoped that it would go away the next day.  But I was experiencing it even more today and it got to a point I was starting to feel dizzy.  It could be anything that triggered it: I ate a bunch of spicy food on Halloween day, the weather became very cold just yesterday, I haven't been getting enough sunlight (Vitamin D), I haven't been exercising regularly and exercise too hard when I do go to the gym (I go about 1-2 times a week recently), the sudden change in time for the end of Daylight Saving Time, or I'm really hungry and it's causing problems.  I'll admit that I have a problem of going to sleep really late and often pass a good amount of time without eating which has caused various problems for me in the past (sour stomach, feeling sick, headaches,etc.).  I did wake up with a headache and feeling hungry this morning while I experienced the heart skipping.  And now that I've actually had two meals throughout the day, my heart stopped skipping as much.  I still feel hungry and have a headache.  I need to seriously go to sleep earlier today.  I also need to add that 2 nights ago, one of my bottom tooth on my right jaw started to hurt when I chew food.  I don't know if it's a cavity or sensitivity, but it's tiring chewing only on the left side.

It can also be triggered by anxiety, which I don't really feel like I am.  But it's possible that it's subconscious.  Something I never mentioned on my blog here or even to anyone else is that for the past half year, I've been experiencing an eerie phenomenon that every time I check the clock it says 4:44.  It's been appearing in other places such as the games I play: a score of 444, remaining gold of 444, etc.  As you might know, the number 4 is bad luck in Chinese and in a lot of Asian culture because it sounds a lot like the word "death".  What's also confusing is that in Chinese superstition, 4 is actually a lucky number for those who are born in the year of the Rabbit.  So what the heck am I supposed to believe?  I actually try not to think of it.  I also can't deny the fear of my own mortality.  It was just two years ago that my friend and distant-cousin, Jessica, had passed away from cancer.  She was barely 25 years old.  Although I wasn't very close to her, I took it really hard and couldn't bring myself to even see her before she had passed.  Then this past February, Monty Oum (who was very influential to me as an artist and got me interested in animation) was announced to have passed away at the age of 33 from an allergic reaction during a simple medical procedure.  Just last week, Miyu Matsuki passed away from acute pneumonia at the age of 38.  I mainly know her roles for Hisui from Melty Blood & Carnival Phantasm and for Harumi Fujiyoshi from Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.  She also voiced the character Lailah in Tales of Zestiria, which just released here 2 weeks ago.  What I fear right now is going without even putting anything substantial out in the world.  I have so many ideas and so much work I want to do and so much of life I want to experience before that happens.  I don't think anything is seriously wrong with me, but it doesn't stop of the fear of that possibility.


I have been trying to take better care of myself, but perhaps I've been neglecting going to sleep early and going out for sunlight.  I had fixed my sleep schedule for a short time in the middle of summer, but quickly lost control of it again.  There's just too much I want to do in a day and I never really feel like doing any of it during the morning and feel more "right" during the afternoon and night.  Because of the summer heat, I haven't been walking out as much.  So I've been lacking Vitamin D, again.  I've also been working really hard on my remix project the past 2 months so I haven't been going to the gym as regularly.  I'm down to the last 3 remixes in the album remix for The Guardian Legend and am keen on finishing it quickly so I can work on new projects.  I already have plans on finding making new original compositions so I can put it on my portfolio as new work and start advertising those on my resumé.  I also have a ton of new remix ideas that will help me work more efficiently and get the most out of what I want from the projects.

Because I've been working a bit harder, I didn't complete that many games in October.  I finished up Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and was pretty disappointed with it.  I bought another top-down, Action-RPG yesterday on sale in hopes of playing a fun party based RPG (It's called Kyn.  It's kind of like Krater where you control multiple characters.  Krater had 3, Kyn has 6 characters you control in live time).  I also finished Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson which I loved.  I'm still playing it to max out levels and bought the 3 DLC packs with new campaigns.  I'll probably write a long rant about it once I feel completely satisfied with playing it.  It's a really fun beat-em-up.  As I've mentioned in the past few months, I've been watching Angry Video Game Nerd reviews again and started watching their other videos.  In one of them, Mike Matei talks about some obscure SNES games that he found was worth playing.  One of those games was Run Saber which I tried out.  It was okay.  I'm reminded more of the fact that there was thunder and lightning loud and bright enough that it lit up the house and made the ground shake that night I was playing.  I finally finished Lost Planet 3 and immediately deleted it.  It was a rather mediocre game.  Traversing and quest collecting was slow and boring.  The combat was okay, but I think I only experienced it half the time playing the game.  I recorded an iOS game as completed for once!  I've been playing a game called Retimo Adventure the past few months and finally reached the end of story mode in which it prompted a message "to be continued".  It's an interesting mobile RPG where it's mostly about party management by leveling up characters, skill levels, equipment, and rank.  What got me initially interested was that it claimed to "redefine the concept of cuteness" which sounded ridiculous, but I couldn't deny the characters in the game looked really cute.  I'm still playing it now to get my characters stronger and try to climb the PvP rank ladder.  For the past few weeks, I've also started playing Gamecube again to finish the 2 games I borrowed from my friend over a year ago.  I finished Super Mario Sunshine and had one heck of a frustrating experience playing that game.  Now I'm frustrating myself with Mega Man Network Transmission.  I might write a rant about Super Mario Sunshine because there's a lot to say about that game.  I finally got around to playing and finishing Dark Void which only required 2 sittings to finish (4.8 hours of playtime).  Despite the negative feedback from critics and steam users, the game was really fun.  The jumping and flying was really fun for me, at the very least.  I do think that combat wasn't the best and was, at times, annoying to shoot an entire clip towards an enemy and still not kill them.  Lastly, I beat a game called "Cast of the Seven Godsends" on Halloween day as I was itching for a Ghosts 'n Goblins game.  It wasn't very good.  Just this past weekend, Dying Light was on sale for $30 and a 4-pack was $90.  I discussed it with my friends and we decided that I'll buy the 4-pack while they bought me games on steam to pay back the amount as giving money to each other is a bit difficult.  So along with Dying Light, I got 9 games altogether that night.  Then just 2 nights ago, BlazBlue: Chrono Phantasma Extend and Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- finally went on sale for $20 each.  Adding with buying Kyn last night, I have accumulated 12 games in the span of one week.  I felt really happy with the new games I got and been trying to enjoy them before I started feeling "not right" yesterday and today.

In terms of animé, I've been trying to watch all the cute ones.  I watched Wakaba Girls, the 2nd season of Kiniro Mosaic, the 2nd season of Non Non Biyori, and today I started watching the 3rd season of Fate/Kaleid.  I was going to start watching Devil May Cry or Nobunaga Concerto, but my heart skipping making me feel ill today made me decide to watch something cute and funny instead.  The 2nd season of Gochuumon wa Usagi desu ka? (Is the Order a Rabbit?) is airing right now and I'm definitely watching it when it finishes.  When I'm not feeling well, I want cuteness to help me get through it.

I wrote quite a bit...I just want to feel normal again so I can finish up my remixes and start on the new projects...

James & Mike Mondays - Metroid Rant

I was watching some videos last night of James (aka the Angry Video Game Nerd) & Mike playing games and I found out they recently released a video of them playing Metroid.  I made a post about it on Facebook and it was so long that it might as well be a blog post.  So here I am re-posting it here:


Watching other people play videogames through online streaming is one of the biggest trends in recent years. It wasn't too surprising to me considering a lot of us probably did it when we were younger (I watched my dad and my older cousins play videogames a lot when I was younger). Some like to watch others play to know what the game is like before buying it themselves. Some enjoy watching others play Horror or difficult games to see their reactions. Some people don't want to play games and rather watch other people play. I generally like watching high level play in competitive or super challenging games. But I noticed that the majority of gameplay videos and streams consists of people playing the game normally while talking a lot, making bad jokes, forcefully yelling a lot with screaming and cursing, and worst of all: constantly asking for donation/subscriptions.

I rarely watch videos or streams of other people play games, but I recently started watching James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) sketch again and found out that he's been making videos with his partner Mike Matei of them playing games (old and new). The AVGN was a character and thus James acted in a very specific way that set the theme to his games reviews that was both informative and entertaining. So it was really weird seeing him act normal with Mike Matei when playing videogames. What really sets apart their videos from a lot of others on the internet and Youtube is how insightful they are on the games that they play. They know a lot of history behind each game, cultural references made in the game, fundamentals to design and aesthetics, and they grew up experiencing a lot of the old games they talk about.

Metroid is definitely one of my favorite NES games of all time and so I was excited to see them play through it. What really stood out was watching James go up against Mother Brain and finishing the game. The emotion and reactions were so genuine and so relatable for someone who remembers all the challenges and grief this game gave. That sigh of relief and laugh he gave at the end had such a strong implication of satisfaction. I played the game a lot when I was younger, played it a bunch in high school, and played it again in College. I haven't played it since College and I kind of want to now after I watched James play it.

TL;DR - James beats Metroid and man did it make him work for it. It's one of my favorite games on the NES.

P.S. Kraid's Chamber Theme is the song that helped me understand how to play the left hand on a piano when I was learning how to play. I remember hearing the song when I was playing at 5-7 years old and was thinking "I want to be able to play this on an instrument".


[Updated]
So I ended up playing Metroid tonight and finished it.  Made another small rant on FB which I'm pasting back on here:

Well, I said I wanted to play Metroid after watching the video of James and Mike play it yesterday, so I did. It feels a lot easier now than it did back when I was younger other than fighting Mother Brain. I ran out of missiles the first attempt. And then in my 2nd attempt, I remembered I used to skip fighting the Metroids to conserve ammo. Still, I got knocked down to 23 EN/hp before defeating her; it was a very close call.

I was surprised I got "No Armor Suit" Samus Ending considering how many times I had to farm for missiles in the beginning and health mid-game before getting the Screw Attack and Varia Suit. I've always found it weird that Samus is shown as a brunette at the end, green hair in-game, and eventually stayed as a blonde. I've always also found it weird on why people were so shocked that Samus was a female. To me (when I was 4-5 yo), Samus sounded like a feminine name and she looked like she was wearing high heels in-game. People had the same reaction with the protagonist of The Guardian Legend (also one of my favorite games on NES) where they thought it was a guy. It totally looked like a girl to me.

Anyways, playing through Metroid was nostalgic bliss.

A Sluggish September

September passed by really quickly despite how I've been feeling.  I've been feeling lethargic this past month and I can't quite explain the source of the problem.  I've been still working, still going to the gym, and still playing games at night, and yet I don't quite want to do exactly those things.  That is to say, I want to work on a project that isn't the one I'm doing right now.  I rather be playing ping-pong, tennis or some other sport than run on elliptical and lift weights.  I want to play all the other games and not the ones I'm playing right now.  And then there just some days I don't want to do anything.  My father explains that most people don't want to do anything during this time of year.  It doesn't seem too long ago where I didn't have a choice and I'd be going to school right about now.  And yet, it also feel like a long time ago as I've gone through a lot of changes and learned a lot over the past 5 years.  I'm reminded of how I felt when I was still in college: I didn't want to be there.  I wanted to be working in the industry already so I could learn, grow, and contribute.  Perhaps that's what I'm feeling right now?  Perhaps I'm not satisfied with just doing the projects I'm doing right now?  As much as I would like a job composing and producing music for a videogame, I can't deny that I'm enjoying the experiments and projects I've been doing the past 2 years to expand my knowledge of various musical genres as well as improving my production quality for a cleaner and dynamic sound from my music.  I'm working on the next remix to the Guardian Legend Remix Album, but having difficulties constructing it together.  Just this past week, my sister visited home since Christmas and so I held off on working.  I've been away from my sister for so long now that I miss her more and more each time we part ways.  She's grown so much and matured into such a responsible adult, and yet I still worry about her.  It's obvious she's worried about me as she continues to encourage me to make my breakthrough and move down to SoCal already and start working at a game company.  She wants me closer to my friends down in LA and Irvine as well as closer to her so we can hang out on a frequent basis rather than seeing each other twice a year.  I've been constructing plans and trying different approaches the past 2 years so I can make that a reality.  I just hope that it'll have good results.

I don't know why, but it seems every game I play recently just doesn't seem to spark interest or excitement.  Everything I seem to play either frustrates me, disappoints me or does both.  I began the month playing Ghosts 'n Goblins on NES, a game that I've never beat.  I completed Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts last year, but I never got around to playing the original.  I was talking about old games with my friends and was reminded of the Angry Videogame Nerd and ended up watching a lot of his videos again as I didn't watch most of them.

I decided to give the game a try myself.  The game feels a lot more difficult in terms of how it's designed.  It's not surprise that it left me frustrated.  I've been having an itch to play a beat-em-up again and saw Double Dragon Neon.  I've heard all the warnings and did my research, but I still caved in when the game was but a mere $2.  The game had great atmosphere and presentation with its 80's themed environment, music, and cheesy dialogues; however, the game was frustrating.  The wanted to keep the game close to its origins with clunky combat and tough enemies.  There were so many things about the game that annoyed me: long invincible frames on enemies, weird hit-boxes, being overwhelmed by projectiles, enemies with high HP and super armor, high damage output from the enemies, and the worst one was having to grind to be able to get strong enough to defeat the last boss.  I eventually had to cheat to finish the last boss just like I had to cheat on the last boss on BloodRayne last month (that was pretty bad, too).  Out There Somewhere is a really short indie game with an interesting teleporting mechanic.  I finished that in about an hour and didn't think much of it.  It was kind of fun, but it was also forgettable.  The most memorable thing about the game, besides its main gameplay mechanic, was the reference to Wing Zero's "They set us up the bomb" dialogue in the beginning of the game.  Shoot Many Robots was a game I bought back in 2011, I believe.  I finally got around to playing through Normal mode and stopped there.  I can say that it was a fun game, but I didn't feel compelled to continue playing it on Hard and Very Hard.  Disgaea Infinite was a funny little visual novel game based in the world of Disgaea.  There wasn't much to it, but it did remind me that I really want to play Disgaea.  I really shouldn't have bought Mutant Mudds Deluxe, but I guess I was too curious as to why it was so highly praised.  It's just so "meh" for an Action-Platformer.  I got bored once I completed the light world and didn't even want to bother with the dark world.  Freedom Planet was a pretty good indie game.  It plays a lot like Sonic the Hedgehog with a mix of other platformer elements like Shantae.  The game had beautiful graphics, pretty good music, and personality, but I kind of felt burnt out after playing one run of the game that I didn't really feel like playing it a second time as the other character.  With getting through Ghosts 'n Goblins, I looked up the series and realized I never played through the Vita one.  At first, it seemed a lot more forgiving with multiple lives, and even a sort of health bar.  Then I quickly realized the game is just as difficult with being knocked into pitfalls to be a frequent threat throughout the game.  I eventually got to the end, but was told I needed all 22 gold rings to be worth to enter and fight the last boss.  I didn't want to go item fetching through the whole game again.  It was sort of fun to see so many new weapons, armors, items, and concepts, but it just left me frustrated once again.  STALKER: Clear Sky was kind of fun, but I enjoyed the first game a lot more for some reason considering the game is very similar to the original.  The ending was disappointing and dumb, but I should have expected seeing how it's a prequel to the original.  No Time to Explain came with the Humble Bundle I bought mainly to get Phantom Breaker Battlegrounds on PC for $1.  I've already finished Phantom Breaker: BG twice on PS Vita, but I felt compelled to get it for PC for a larger screen experience at the price of $1.  No Time to Explain was a short and somewhat entertaining game.  But again, I was frustrated with the boss battles because they were purposely made to last long and felt tedious.  After finishing STALKER: Clear Sky, I was looking for the next FPS to play.  I could have installed any of the dozen of FPS games I've bought on steam, but I decided to buy Deadfall Adventures instead for $4 when it was 90% off on the weekly deals.  The game isn't bad, but I can't say I really like it.  The combat competent, at the very least.  What really killed the experience was the puzzles in the game.  I purposely turned puzzles on Easy difficulty and combat on Normal difficulty.  I had fun with the combat, but the puzzles were tedious, boring, and some of them were cryptic.  Ultimately, I was disappointed with my experience with the game.  I'm starting a new string of games on Steam, so hopefully it'll change things around because I'm not in the mood for frustrating and disappointing.  Getting through Lords of the Fallen is starting to become difficult because it's fun, but it's hard.  That, in turn, sometimes makes it frustrating.

The one game I have hope for is Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson, of which I pre-ordered back in July and finally got this past Saturday.  When I started it up, I was a little worried.  The camera handling can be pretty whacky at times and you can't really control it.  Aside from that, the number of changes the game has gone from its previous two titles have really added a layer of dynamics and fresh perspective on the game.  I have to play differently from how I did from Burst or Shinovi Versus, which is totally okay.  The game is also a lot tougher this time around where I've failed a few missions on the beginning already.  But it doesn't upset me or make me mad.  In fact, it gets me excited to face such a challenge in the game.  I'm always so thankful that I got into the series in the first place because each game has been so entertaining and I've been able to enjoy them with the exception of Bon Appétit, that wasn't a very good game.  Combat has so much more going on now that I can't approach battle as directly as I did before.  It'd probably be easy if I actually played the side-missions and grinded, but I realized that I've enjoyed the series a lot more whenever it was more difficult.  I just want to get over my slump of disappointment and frustration in games and be able to have fun with one.

On an ending note, I ran into a new animé.  It's really cute:

Summer Intermission

Summer isn't quite over yet, but I don't really have anything planned.  June and July were great!  There was Steam Summer Sales, E3, EVO, Summer Games Done Quick, and The 5th International for DotA 2.  This past month has been sort of a blur for me.  I've gotten back to working again and finished two remixes.  I'm still working on the The Guardian Legend Remix Album and hope to finish quickly and work on more.  The quality of my work certainly has gone up, but my work count has lowered.  I'm glad I'm improving, but I expect myself to produce more work than this.  I'm currently at 8 complete audio works, and that's very little for me.  My count of completed games have also been kind of low.  There's only 5 days left of this month and I'm still at 87 completed games.  I was hoping to go beyond 90 games by now since it's the summer, but that just hasn't been happening.  For one, Terraria got an update and I got caught up in playing that every night for about 2-3 weeks.  It's amazing how much content is added with no extra charge for that game.  So near the end of July, I've been burning through some games: Remember Me, Fighties, Sol Divide, Diadra Empty, Divinity: Dragon Commander, Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires, Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved, Lost Planet 2, UBERMOSH, Cosmic DJ, Xeodrifter, Senran Kagura: Bon Appétit!, and Dungeon Hearts.  I'm going to try to finish more in the following days.  Looking through my list of completed games this past month, I can't say I've enjoyed a really good game in a while.  The closest game I would say that I really enjoyed was Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires.  The game was unpolished, lower quality than the base game (DW8), didn't have English voice overs (even though they said there would be), etc.  The game was just so low on quality that it was shocking since almost every Dynasty Warriors game I've played was pretty top notch, even my least favorite one (Dynasty Warriors 6) looked pretty and played solid.  But perhaps it's because I've never played an Empires version of any DW that I had so much fun with it.  I got to create my own character (I made Hatsune Miku), use a variety of weapons and customize their specials, look, and speech.  I got to make my own choices to achieve the main goal of unifying Ancient China.  It was the closest thing to a "make your own adventure" Dynasty Warriors RPG-experience game I wanted.  I've only finished one campaign and I do want to play the other ones, but I'm kind of preoccupied with finishing more games for now.  At this point, I want to clear up more games so I can move onto other games I'm interested in playing.

Besides Terraria, what's also been kind of halting my progress of finishing games is the amount of fighting games I started playing again.  Every year after EVO, I get excited about playing fighting games again.  I've also been revisiting a lot of older fighting games and forgot how fast-paced some of the older Capcom fighting games were.  I also revisited the old MAME collection I bought back in 2006 and looked for all the fighting games to look for one in particular: The Last Blade.  That game was really beautiful.  And then I was reminded of a lot of fighting games I've played in the past such as Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and some games I've never played before like Capcom Fighting Evolution.  I had a particular interest in that one since Ingrid (exclusive to CFE and SFA3 MAX on PSP) was hinted on Capcom Twitter to a possible return in Street Fighter V.  I finally tried CFE out and I have to say that she's kind of difficult to use.  Her moves have a lot of delay starting and ending, her projectile move is about arms reach length, and she feels kind of clunky.  But if she does end up returning in Street Fighter V, I'm fine with that.  I'll definitely play her and see if I'll warm up to her.  Besides that, I've been playing some King of Fighters 13 Steam Edition (which I mainly got to play with a friend, but he ended up not liking it) and Dead or Alive 5 Last Round on PC to try to improve on both games (which I generally don't bother doing since there's no one to really play with) as well as Ultra Street Fighter IV so I could play with another friend that has it.  I bought all 3 games during the Steam Summer Sale.  I already have 3 previous versions of all three games but ended up buying the latest ones on PC.  I kind of warmed up to the idea since I play on the PC more often than I do on consoles now (I mainly play consoles on Saturdays and Sundays).  I do admit that it's kind of fun to actually practice and try to get better at these games, but it is a bit lonely when I don't have friends willing to play it with me.  At the very least I have one friend to play Street Fighter with and I've improved because of how good he is.  But because I've been revisiting a lot of older fighting games, I've also run across a lot of old RPGs as well.  I missed a lot of great games during the PS1 days and there's a bunch of PS2 games I still haven't gotten around to playing yet.  So this has been the majority of my time taken when I'm not working which explains why I haven't been finishing any games.

Despite the plethora of games I already own that I'm trying to get around to playing, there's just so many games I'm looking forward to that's about to release already:

-Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight - Aug 4
-XBLAZE: Lost Memories - Aug 11
-Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library & the Monster Seal - Aug 18
-Final Fantasy Type-0 HD - Aug 18 (Steam Version)
-Zombi - Aug 18
-Shadowrun: Hong Kong - Aug 20
-Amnesia: Memories - Aug 25
-Evoland 2: A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder - Aug 25
-One Piece: Pirate Warrior 3 - Aug 28
-Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls - Sep 1
-Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX - Sep 8
-Sword Coast Legends - Sep 8
-Super Mario Maker - Sep 11
-Mighty No. 9 - Sep 15 (Delayed till next year)
-Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson - Sep 15  (Already pre-ordered; I can't wait!)
-Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - Sep 15
-Persona 4: Dancing All Night - Sep 29
-Samurai Warriors 4-II - Sep 29
-Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax - Oct 6
-Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance - Oct 6
-The Legend of Legacy - Oct 13
-Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege - Oct 13 (Delayed till December 1)
-Dragon Quest Heroes: The World Tree's Woe and the Blight Below - Oct 13
-Tales of Zestiria - Oct 20
-SUPERBEAT: XONiC - Oct 20
-Call of Duty: Black Ops III - Nov 6
-Fallout 4 - Nov 10
-Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 - Nov 10
-Norn9: Var Commons - Nov 10
-Rodea the Sky Soldier - Nov 10
-Star Wars Battlefront - Nov 17
-Stella Glow - Nov 17
-The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel - Nov 17
-Code:Realize - Guardian of Rebirth - Nov 24
-Just Cause 3 - Dec 1
-Xenoblade Chronicles X - Dec 4

I'm happy that there's games to look forward to, but I'm sad that I'm falling farther behind in clearing up my backlog of games.  It's even worse now that I'm adding older games that I find on Steam and PSN on sale (Grandia 2 Anniversary Edition released on Steam 2 days ago).

As for job searching, I might have mentioned a possible job position available.  I finally got a response stating that it was indeed a Senior level position and wasn't listed as one because they weren't receiving any applicants when they labeled it as such.  There's nothing I can do but keep looking elsewhere.

EVO 2015 Hype!

This is the first year I sat down for all 3 days of EVO and watched all the streams intently rather than watching it on the side while I played games or doing something else.  There were 7 streams going on at once this time around for EVO rather than just 3 which made it that much harder to follow everything.  I mostly followed Super Smash Bros. 4 and really enjoyed the high level play and all the crazy new strategies players have found and utilized during the tournament.

As varied as the character selection was for Smash 4, I couldn't help but see the same few characters throughout the tournament.  At the very least, it wasn't filled with Diddy Kongs since he was the strongest character that everyone swarmed towards playing for a while.  Funny enough, that's exactly who Grand Champion of EVO 2015 chose to play to win the tournament:


12:38 for the final combo he pulled off to win the tournament.  This was the best winning moment in EVO this past weekend.  The grand final was pretty decisive, but the fact that he was able to pull off a long combo like that at such a high percentage is what made it amazing.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax Finals actually finished on the first day.  I saw a lot of Margaret picks, which reminds me that I have yet to try her out yet ever since buying the DLC for it.  Despite being a dominant pick for players at EVO, it was Super Boy's Ken Amada pick that led to a decisive victory at the Grand Finals.  I found the Loser's Bracket Finals to be a lot more exciting as it was an extremely close game with great plays by both players.  Hagiwara was also wearing a shirt with the most adorable character which I had to look up and found out it was a IdolMaster character "Anna Mochizuki".




Tekken 7's Final was akin to last year's Final for BlazBlue where the competitor from the winner's bracket had so many chances to end the tournament as the winner, but lost it every time.  It's not nearly as close as it was for BlazBlue last year, but you can tell he was so close that he can taste victory.  Through all the missed chances and eventual defeat, he broke down and was inconsolable.  Even Katsuhiro Harada, Director/Producer of Tekken, went over and comforted the broken AO.  I feel bad for him since he was so close, but Nobi's win was well earned through the struggle of clawing his way to the grand finals from the Loser's bracket.  I really like how Tekken 7 is looking and can't wait for it to reach consoles in the States.


Killer Instinct was pretty fun to watch, as well.  There were some crazy comebacks and close games.  Rico Suave, who I remember watching play last year, climbed back to the grand finals from loser's bracket and chose characters that the commentators didn't feel were good match-ups and ended up winning the tournament.  I haven't been much interested in the newest Killer Instinct since it was Xbox One exclusive, but it looks like they're bringing it to PC now so I'm super excited.  Killer Instinct was one of my favorite fighting games back on the Super Nintendo.


I missed the Guilty Gear Xrd Finals since it was streaming too early, but I'll watch a recording.  I wanted to get Guilty Gear Xrd, but I heard they're already bringing a more definitive version out.  So I'm just waiting on that before I pick it up. Oh yeah, and this apparently happened:  I also missed the Mortal Kombat X Finals, but I didn't really care too much about it.  I kind of just want to play the game a little.  I'm not too interested in watching MKX.

Super Smash Bros. Melee was pretty nerve wrecking to watch.  Lots of great plays, a surprise Samus pick (for me at least), and some disappointing mistakes.  I was all for Mango winning a 3rd year at EVO, but he made some mistakes and SD (Self-Destruct) twice on the last round against HungryBox.  HungryBox was playing to win at EVO as he came in 2nd last year against Mango, but was denied by another Fox player Armada.  It was a great Finals to watch.  I really liked that match between Leffen and Plup (Fox vs. Samus).


Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is the game of comebacks where I saw a lot of crazy matches turn around with one character.  Sadly, I didn't recognize a single player that was in the top 8.  All the best players were knocked out before reaching Top 8 which goes to show how much the meta and new blood has changed the game in the past year.  The winner used a team composition of Sentinel, Hulk, and Haggar.  It's team Big Buff Dudes!  I didn't watch the finals for UMvC3 has intently as I was playing Heroes of the Storm with a friend while I was watching.


And finally, there's Ultra Street Fighter IV which was absolutely bonkers!  This might be the last year SF4 will be at EVO since Street Fighter V's development is coming along and is getting closer to finishing.  So stuff like this happened during Ultra Street Fighter IV's EVO:






Ultra Street Fighter IV Finals were great.


With the close of EVO 2015, so too does the trinity of Summer Events.  E3 was a bit underwhelming this year.  There were a lot of surprises like Fallout 4, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Shenmue 3, The Last Guardian making an appearance once more after a long hiatus, and some other sequel announcements like Dishonored 2; however, there wasn't anything that drew me in and got me excited like I would every E3 before.  Steam Summer Sales was also underwhelming with shady dealings in raising prices before the discount, getting rid of bundles or forcing bundles, and lackluster discounts.  There were even a few times where a game was supposed to go on sale but was switched out when the time came.  There were a lot of players I was expecting to see at the top 8 finals for EVO but didn't, but still watched some really exciting matches this year.  So I would say that EVO was the best event out of the three this year.  Although, I shouldn't complain about getting the games I did during Steam Summer Sale.  I'm slowly getting through them and enjoying the ones I'm playing thus far.  With all this done and behind me, it's time to get back to work.

Goodbye, RIP Mr. Iwata

Satoru Iwata, President of Nintendo, passed away this past Saturday at the age of 55 due to the complications of the tumor growing in his bile duct. I was shocked and saddened by the news and wrote a rather long rant (by my Facebook standards) on it today.

No music monday today. Instead, I want to talk a little bit about a man named Satoru Iwata. I want to share why his life and work mattered to me, to the gaming community, to the industry, and maybe to you.

Did you know that:

-Satoru Iwata was a programmer in game development before he was president of Nintendo? He was a freelance programmer for HAL Laboratory (a subsidiary of Nintendo) before being hired full-time working on games like Kirby's Adventure and Earthbound. In fact, he was a wizard programmer! He saved Earthbound when the script went awry; he organized and compressed the code to Pokémon Gold and Silver enough to fit the entire Kanto region into the game; he also programmed for the original Super Smash Bros. when it was just a small side project!

-He loved playing videogames as much as he loved making them. It's no surprise this day in age to have a CEO of a videogame company not know much about them or even like playing them, but they know how to run a business and will take part in the industry if it makes them money. I've worked in a company where every employee didn't play games or understand them. They didn't care about making or publishing fun games as long as it made money. So it's important to note that Satoru Iwata's desire to make "fun games" lead to some daring and innovative decisions such as motion control on the Wii. Nintendo has already tried motion control once (Power Glove) but were willing to try again. It wasn't until the success of the Nintendo Wii was known before Sony and Microsoft were willing to try motion control afterwards. He didn't always make the best decisions, but he made ones that other companies wouldn't even dare mention.

-Iwata became President of Nintendo during a time the company wasn't doing very well. The Nintendo GameCube, despite having two of my favorite games of all time in its library (Super Smash Bros. Melee and Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 & 2), was performing poorly in sales. The GameCube had a lot of great games: Zelda Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Tales of Symphonia, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance, etc. But they were geared specifically for "gamers" and those that played games often. Iwata believed that games should be enjoyed by all people and not by a small group which led to the development of the Wii and DS which garnered a lot of casual friendly games that were easy to learn but compelling. Nintendo stock value nearly doubled with the success of the Wii and DS. The Wii U and 3DS hasn't been nearly as successful, but games that I want to play on it continue to release on those system exclusively. I haven't bought a Wii U yet because of the ridiculous backlog I'm getting through right now. Otherwise, I would have bought one a while ago.

Long story short: Iwata was a man that cared about his product and his consumers because he, himself, loved and played videogames too. He has mentioned that he missed developing games, but his role as president kept him from having the time to do so. And were he not president, Nintendo might not have taken the steps to innovate and try new things. His influence, work, and ambitions left quite an impression on the industry. He wasn't afraid to act silly and entertain the masses whenever he talked about Nintendo and the games were making. He was passionate in his work and was truly dedicated to it as he had never left Nintendo since he started working under them. RIP Satoru Iwata, you will be missed.

Reflection on Steam Summer Sale & E3 2015

I can't believe the week is already over.  It just blew by like a blur and now that everything has settled down it feel like it never really happened.  It's been a tiring week trying to keep up with Steam Summer Sale AND E3 at the same time.  I wanted to spend the week finishing as many games on Steam as possible so I can move onto new ones, but I only ended up completing one old game and 3 others that I got during the sale.  I pretty much got what I wanted out of the Steam Summer Sale, but not at prices I had hoped for.  As for E3, it wasn't particularly special this year other than the few surprise announcements that really caught everyone off guard.  Let's talk a little bit about it the event:

Note: I might have missed some games, and it's hard knowing what there is when I'm not actually there as I experienced first hand going to E3 once before.  Names marked in BOLD are ones I'm interested in.

New Games (Existing IP)
Adventure Time: Finn & Jake Investigations
ANNO 2205
Assassin's Creed Syndicate
Assetto Corsa
Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
Dark Souls 3
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Dishonored 2
Disney Infinity 3.0
EA Sports FIFA 16
Fallout 4
Fallout Shelter
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Gears of War 4
Gears of War Ultimate Edition
God of War 3 Remastered
Halo 5: Guardians
Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories
Hyrule Warriors - 3DS
Just Dance 2016
Kingdom Hearts: Unchained Key
Kung Fu Panda: Showdown of Legendary Legends
Lara Croft Go
LEGO Jurassic World
LEGO Dimensions
Madden NFL 16
Magic Duels: Origins
Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam
Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash
Mass Effect Andromeda
Mega Man Legacy Collection
Metroid Prime: Federation Force
Minions Paradise
NBA Live 16
Need for Speed
NHL 16
NieR (New)
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Ratchet & Clank Remastered
Rare Replay
Resident Evil 0
Roy McIlroy PGA Tour
Shenmue 3
Skylanders SuperChargers
South Park: The Fractured But Whole
Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes
Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Star Fox Zero
The Elder Scrolls Legends
The Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes
The Walking Dead: Michonne
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
Trackmania Turbo
World of Final Fantasy
WWE 2K16
XCOM 2


New Games (New IP)
Abzu
Ark: Survival Evolved
Ashen
Beyond Eyes
Brave Tank Hero
Dreams
Firewatch
For Honor
Gotcha Racing
Horizon: Zero Dawn
ION
Mad Max
ReCore
Relics of Gods
Rocket League
Sea of Thieves
SOMA
Thumper
Unravel


Follow Up News (Previously Announced)
Adr1ft
Alone With You
Amplitude HD
Batman Arkham Knight
Battleborn
Battlecry
Below
Broforce
Capsule Force
Chasm
Cosmic Star Heroine
Crossing Souls
Cuphead
The Division
Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition
Doom
Drawn to Death
Dungeon Defenders 2
EarthNight
Enter the Gungeon
Elite Dangerous
Fable Legends
Fat Princess Adventures
Fire Emblem Fates (Formly Fire Emblem IF)
Fortnite
Forza 6
Future Grind
Galak-Z: The Dimensional
Gang Beasts
Gnog
Guitar Hero Live
Guns Up!
Heart Forth, Alicia
Homefront 2: The Revolution
Hollowpoint
I Am Bread
Just Cause 3
Kill Strain
Kingdom Hearts 3
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
Mighty No. 9
Mirror's Edge: Catalyst
Moon Hunters
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4
Ninja Strike
No Man's Sky
Nuclear Throne
Overkill's The Walking Dead
Overwatch
Persona 4: Dancing All Night
Persona 5
Relativity
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rock Band 4
Ronin
Salt and Sanctuary
Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson
Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem
Snow
Star Wars Battlefront
Street Fighter V
Super Mario Maker
Superhot
Sword Coast Legends
Teraway: Unfolded
The Banner Saga 2
The Last Guardian
The Tomorrow Children
To Leave
Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Until Dawn
Xenoblade Chronicles X
Yoshi's Wooly World



Most Surprising Announcements
Fallout 4 - I can't say I'm a Fallout fan since I've never played the originals and only played Fallout 3 and never even finished it.  But I can say that I enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot and still plan on going back to it and actually trying to finish it.  Seeing Fallout 4 in action was quite a spectacle.  Particularly interesting was all the weapon customization and crafting you can perform in the game.  This is certainly a game to look out for.  Fans of FO3 have been waiting for 7 years for this.

Final Fantasy VII Remake / Shenmue 3 / The Last Guardian - This trio of announcements blew peoples mind, drove the crowd wild, and pretty much won everyone over during the Sony Conference.  The Last Guardian has been on Hiatus for the longest time and didn't even show up in the past few E3 events.  So it was quite an eye opener to see that the game was still being developed and even showed gameplay at the conference.  I finally got around to playing through ICO and Shadow of the Colossus, so I have a better understanding of why people like them so much.  The Last Guardian is a lot like ICO, it seems.  I thought ICO was okay.  It felt a bit slow, tedious, and frustrating.  Shadow of the Colossus was amazing though.

When they got down to talking about Square-Enix and "how they brought a classic to the Playstation 1" and leading up to the reveal, I couldn't really think of anything except Final Fantasy VII.  But I refused to believe it because the fans have been denied of such a thing for ever and ever.  Upon hearing the first heartbeat from the song "Beyond the Wasteland" from Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children in the trailer they were showing, my own heartbeat sped up a little.  "Was this a new movie?  Another spin-off?"  When the words "Remake" popped up, I was freaking out!  I couldn't believe it was actually happening!  I'm sure there were many others freaking out even more than I was because I never actually played through Final Fantasy VII.  I know a lot about it, I know most of the songs by heart, and I even own the original PS1 game as well as recently buying the Steam version so that I could actually sit down and play through it myself; however, the fact is that I haven't played it yet.  I certainly have an incentive to play through it before the remake comes out now.

I never played Shenmue 1 and 2, but it's a franchise that I constantly hear about.  The fact that Sega is more focused on publishing and mobile games made the hope for a Shenmue 3 a pipe-dream.  And so it took everyone by surprise to see Shenmue 3 announced by the director, Yu Suzuki, himself on the Sony Conference stage asking for support from the fans on Kickstarter.  It fulfilled its funding goal by the end of the day.  To me, Shenmue is the game that brought quick-time events into gaming.  But to many others, it was a special adventure with a story that the fans obviously love enough to want a 3rd game after more than a decade wait.

Horizon: Zero Dawn - Besides "For Glory", this was the only newly announced, new IP game that looked interesting to me.  The rich environment and large scale combat they showed in the trailer looked immersive and engaging.  I was hoping to see more new games like this one announced during E3, but there wasn't.  This is the one new game that wowed me more than any other this year.

Let's Talk About:
Call of Duty Black Ops 3 / Dark Souls 3 - This year's E3 was definitely about sequels.  Both Call of Duty Black Ops 3 and Dark Souls 3 look amazing, but I don't feel very excited.  I'm trying to pull away from Call of Duty because I always end up paying more than I actually play to make it worth it.  I love Call of Duty and I really enjoyed Advanced Warfare from last year (albeit multiplayer breaking for me), but I can't really justify buying it every year only to play 10-20 hours ($60 at full price, $30 at lowest).  I used to play it more before because I didn't play many other games, but now it just seems difficult to find the time to play it.  As for Dark Souls 3, I haven't even played 2 yet.  2 is still under plastic wraps and I kind of know what to expect.  As opposed to CoD:BO3, I'm definitely going to get Dark Souls 3.  I'm just not that excited by the announcement like I was for Bloodborne (probably because Bloodborne is different and new).

Below / Chasm / Cuphead - I've been keeping an eye on these 3 indie games and am really interested in it.  Below looks like a top-down Action-RPG.  Chasm is a Metroidvania, I believe.  And Cuphead is like Megaman with an old-school Disney art style.  These are games I want to play.

Dishonored 2 - I'm actually a bit surprised by this announcement, even though I shouldn't.  I loved Dishonored a lot and felt like it's one of those games to be considered a classic.  To deliver such an extraordinary experience to the Action-Stealth genre in Dishonored seemed to be a one game sort of deal.  So there's a lot of expectation to fulfill in creating a sequel.

The Division - Announced back in E3 2013, we all knew we wouldn't see the game for a while.  Now that it's starting flesh out and getting close to a final product, I'm getting excited.  I've played a lot of open world, survival games and have always been left with a poor impression.  But this game looks promising and has the cooperative gameplay aspect that I'm looking for to play with my friends.  So I'm hoping for the best and keeping an eye out for this game.

Doom - I didn't like Doom 3 that much, so I wasn't too interested in the announcement of the newest Doom last year.  But when they showed gameplay this year, I became interested.  There was a lot of high jumping, fast blasting action that's rather reminiscent of old-school shooters.  I can't say I really like all the gore and blood, but the pacing and action that I saw from the trailers looked exciting.  What's more, it seems like it will come with a level editor of sorts.

Fable Legends - After showing a bit more gameplay this year, the game does look interesting.  But since it's Free-to-Play, I'm kind of wondering what kind of game it is.  Will it be lots of grinding and going to the next level?  Or will it be progression based and then have a hard mode and a harder mode?  I can't say I'm convinced yet, but it's something to look out for.

For Honor - "This is what 'War of the Roses' should've been like" is what I want to say, but I actually haven't seen enough of the game to really pass judgement.  Although it's a new IP, it's a game we've seen before in the market with games like Chivarly, War of the Roses, and on a looser case: Mount & Blade.  Still, the game is looking pretty good and could turn out to be a popular multiplayer game on console.

Horizon: Zero Dawn - As I mentioned above in the surprising announcements, this new game announcement is the only one that really caught my attention that stands out from the rest of the games and makes me want to play it.  It might be a while before we can actually play it, though.

Metroid Prime: Federation Force - I was very sad looking at this game.  Why slap on the name "Metroid" when it doesn't really look, feel, or sound like Metroid?  I guess it kind of has the concept of Metroid Prime's combat mechanics, but it's not Metroid.  Every year, I'm hoping for a new Metroid game, but this is not I asked for and not what the fans want.  There's even a petition people are signing to have all production and development of this game halted.  That's pretty extreme, and I'm wondering how Nintendo will handle this.  They might just ignore the hate and release it anyways.  I can't say I'm too happy with how this game looks.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst - So it seems like the game is called "Catalyst" because it's supposedly a prequel to Mirror's Edge 1.  It seems like fans want to see more of Faith and so there will be more cinematics actually showing her in action rather than keeping everything entirely in a first-person perspective view.  The game's supposedly going to be open-world as well as opposed to its finely crafted linear gameplay of the first one.

NieR (New) - I haven't played (or taken off the plastic wraps) of my copy of NieR since I wanted to get through Drakengard 3 first (a friend told me that NieR was better).  So it was unexpected to see a sequel to the game as it seemed like the first game was actually a spin-off of the Drakengard series.  But what's really exciting about this announcement is that Plantinum Games is going to be the one developing the game this time around.  Could you imagine what the game would be like?  Over-the-top action in an RPG?  I'm excited for this one, but it might be 2-3 years before we get to see it.

Nintendo - Nintendo's Conference was entertaining, but overall underwhelming this year.  There were new games, but nothing that really got the fans excited.  The most exciting news coming from Nintendo was the Nintendo Direct right before E3 which revealed Ryu from Street Fighter as a DLC in Super Smash Bros. as well as the return of Roy of Fire Emblem and Lucas from Earthbound (Mother).  At the very least, they announced Hyrule Warriors for 3DS which made me happy.

Overwatch - It's kind of weird to see a Blizzard game mentioned at E3, but I welcome it.  Overwatch is looking pretty interesting, but how long will it take before we get to play it?  It was a very long wait for StarCraft 2, then Diablo 3, then Heroes of the Storm.  Waiting for Blizzard games is tough.

Playstation Vita - If it weren't for Atlus, the PS Vita would be a very sad system to have right now.  With Persona: Dancing All Night and Lost Dimension, what else is there to look forward to on the PS Vita that you couldn't get on any other platform?  Honestly, all I want and need for PS Vita is Phantasy Star Nova.  Sega, please!

Salt and Sanctuary - Boasting itself to be sort of a 2D Dark Souls, I first got interested in this game when it was announced last year because it's supposed to be like a Metroidvania.  I keep craving for Metroidvania games, but not many seem to satisfy me.  I hope this will be a good game.

Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson - I need to remember to pre-order this next month.  I've already listened to the soundtrack and am really looking forward to playing this game.  Senran Kagura does a very good job of satisfying my craving for Hack-n-Slash / Beat-em-Ups.

Street Fighter V - More characters were shown and the game is looking pretty good.  I wasn't sure how they were going to innovate the game from IV, but the new ability mechanics looks like it will change the pacing and strategies for the game.  I even got excited enough to buy Ultra Street Fighter IV during the Steam Summer Sale.

Super Mario Maker - When they showed it last year, it was kind of a cool idea.  But when they showcased it this year at the Nintendo World Championship 2015 event, they revealed the limitless possibilities for the game.  I'd like to get this game if I ever get a Wii U.

Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands / Rainbow Six Siege - Rainbow Six Siege was shown last year and I was bit worried because of the competitive nature of the game.  But then they showed cooperative gameplay in scenario based missions and it immediately reminded me of the fun I had playing games like SWAT 4 with my friends.  Now I really want Rainbow Six Siege.  Ghost Recon: Wildlands is a newly announced game and it looks amazing.  It's an open-world, online-multiplayer, cooperative experience like no other game from what they've shown so far.  These are two games I really want and convinced me the most of why I should be excited for their games this year.



Now let's take a look at I wanted and what I actually got during Steam Summer Sale.

What I wanted from Steam Summer Sale as posted 2 posts ago:

Lords of the Fallen - I wanted it below $20 but got it AT $20.  I was very hesitant on picking it up because of the myriad posts on how the game constantly crashes, problems with controls, graphic glitches, and countless other problems.  So far, the only problems I've faced is frame rate dropping, even at lower settings.  The game's not properly optimized, but otherwise it seems to be running fine.  I think I can make the $20 worth it as I'll probably be playing the game more than once.

Dynasty Warriors 8 Empires - I kind of knew it wouldn't drop below $20, so I was hoping it'd at least go down to $25, of which it did.  This was another game I was afraid of picking up because of countless reports of problems with the game, but I've never played the Empires expansion and kind of wanted that sort of depth in a Dynasty Warriors game.  So I bought the game and tried it out for myself.  The graphics is downgraded from the original DW8, I can't play with native resolution, I can't play full screen without the graphics pushed off to the side, and there isn't English voice overs.  Despite all that, I'm still enjoying the game with the plethora of customization, RPG and Strategy-like elements, and new weapons.

Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor - I didn't get this one.  I was expecting to see it for less than $20 since it's been at $20 the last three times it went on sale.  But this time, it was $25.  I found out that they bundled it with the DLCs as GOTY Edition and forced players to get it as the original game was no longer available to buy.  The game's about 14 hours long and I didn't want to pay more than $15 for it, so I skipped this game for now.

Dying Light - As I suspected, the game dropped down to $45.  But the game is fairly new, so it's fair that they're keeping it at a decently high price.

Borderlands Pre-Sequel - This actually had an okay deal with the game around $20 and the Season Pass bundle for $25 (while getting the Season pass separately is $20).  But my friends and I felt like we can wait for a larger discount since we weren't in any rush to play the game.

Divinity: Original Sin - The game only got a $3 discount from its regular sale price.  But I still picked it up around $24 because I wanted to get a game I could co-op with my friend.  We're kind of running out of games to play together.

Hotline Miami 2 - Barely even a $5 discount.  Passing for now because I want to get the soundtrack with it.

Titan Souls - I found out it's only about 3 hours of gameplay.  I didn't want to pay $9 for 3 hours of gameplay.  It looks really interesting though.

Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure - This didn't even have a discount.  Perhaps it's too new.

Broforce - It's not out of Early Access yet and it's still $10.

Freedom Planet - I got it!  I haven't played it yet, but I started it up and found out it has voice acting.  Kind of strange for a 16-bit looking game.

Wings of Vi - This game is hard!  I barely got through the 2nd boss in the game and I've already died 100 times.  But so far the game is really fun!  I like these type of difficult games where it's fun, challenging, and engaging enough to keep going even after dying countless times.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth - I have mixed feelings about this remake.  But overall, I think it's a great game.  I'll admit that I miss the music Danny Baranowsky created for the original.

The Shadowcrypt - I bought it and then asked for a refund after 12 minutes of playing it.  I didn't plan on ever asking for a refund on Steam, but the game was so monotonous and boring that I got sick of it after one session of playing it.  I've played plenty of games like it in the past and saw the warning signs.  It's unfortunate, but it's not what I thought it'd be.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes - It really did go down to $5!  I immediately bought it and then immediately completed it the next day.  For a 1 hour game, I was thoroughly impressed.  The new engine they're using is highly optimized, making the graphics incredibly beautiful yet run smoothly.  The gameplay is highly refined and is what you'd expect from a MGS game.  Despite being only 1 hour, I accumulated 3 hours.  There was 1 hour of cinematics, 1 hour of listening to audio logs (which were really expensive), and there's also a bunch of side missions I haven't even played yet.  I think for $5, the mini prologue game to the Phantom Pain is well worth it.

Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R - It's too new, so it didn't go down past its initial launch sale.

Bladestorm: Nightmare - This is also too new and didn't go on sale.

Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim - This was surprisingly cut down to 50% off at $10.  I didn't pick it up yet, though.  I still have Ys Origins and Ys 1 & 2+ to get through before I think of getting Ys VI.

Axiom Verge - It didn't go on sale.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - DA:I did go on sale on Origin like I predicted it would for 50% off at $30.  But since my friends didn't want to get it and play multiplayer, I held off on it.  I'd love to play multiplayer on it, but I don't think I can find anyone to play it with.  So I'm just going to wait for a bigger discount before I pick it up for playing the single-player campaign.


Overall, both Steam Summer Sale and E3 were kind of underwhelming this year.  Steam Sale had all sorts of shady dealings such as game prices being hiked up right before the sale so that even on sale it won't be be as much.  There were bundles created to force players to buy a more expensive version of the game or bundles were taken out so the best deal wasn't readily available.  Games that should have gotten a bigger discount got a lesser discount.  Despite all that, I ended up buying 16 games (and some DLCs, mostly soundtracks) and received 4 games from friends.  I wish I got better discounts on the game I bought, but I at least got the games I mostly wanted from the sale, regardless.  E3 had some interesting announcements, but they're all sequels that we all pretty much expect to get from the game industry.  Even with surprising announcements that blow people's mind like FF7 Remake and Shenmue 3, there wasn't much to offer at this year's E3.  I guess I had a fun week, but I kind of want to continue lazing about until I feel ready to get back to work.  But I guess I'll try to work hard until EVO comes around.

Hyperdimension Neptunia U and more Drakengard 3 Rant

[MORE SPOILER ALERT FOR DRAKENGARD 3]

After listening to the music a bit more, dissecting the words and meaning behind them, and pondering on the whole story again, Drakengard 3's theme goes a bit deeper than I had tried to explain yesterday.  In my review of Drakengard 3, I mentioned the theme of "loneliness" a lot.  What I failed to point out was how this actually affected all the characters.  I've already mentioned this for Zero and Mikhail, so I think I can skip those.  Besides the idea of being "alone", there was also the "sense of belonging" that leads to the perception of being "alone".

[The Disciples]

Dito - Dito mentions many times how he seems to hate the world and all things in it.  He could never find companionship that shared his sadistic outlook for violence and inflicting pain.  He abhorred his time with Five and at one point in the game mentions how he was "having the time of his life killing people and watching Zero slaughter them alongside him".  It sounds messed up, but he seemed genuinely happy with Zero.  Yet, in Branch D he switched sides to the resurrected Five to live his dream in a chaotic world of death and destruction.  When he finally realized that he was about to disappear from summoning an angel without an intoner's song, he showed weakness for the first time.  He cried out for Zero not to leave him, but there was nothing she could do.

Decadus - As a masochist, Decadus only wanted to serve one that can please him in the way he liked it: to be punished and consistently insulted.  When serving Four, she was light on reprimanding him.  But he served her faithfully and even wished to have himself killed after Four was slain.  Zero captures him instead and Decadus humbly accepted to serve her until death.  He seemed much happier with the party in tow as each member, other than Mikhail, verbally bombards him with insults as he moans in pleasure from them.  Despite his weird ways, Zero does say that he's "been nothing but a perfect gentleman to her".  Zero seemed to have enjoyed his company and Decadus evidently liked being part of the group.  Out of all the disciples that leave in Branch D, Zero looked most pained to see Decadus go.

Octa - His entry into the party was one most unexpected.  He shows up looking like he was about to start one huge boss fight, only to drop his weapons and surrender.

Scene begins at 1:38

Octa had left because he wasn't satisfied with serving Three any longer.  He felt he didn't belong there anymore.  He claims that Three couldn't satiate his sexual desires any longer.  Despite being a dirty old man (even though he claims to be 22), he was wise and perceptive.  He often gave the most useful advice throughout the journey.  He would also mention a lot about sex and having a never ending erection along the way too.  But near the end of Branch D, when 3 of the disciples are gone, he says that he couldn't get an erection whatsoever.  Perhaps he felt the group felt lonely without the others around.  Perhaps what all the disciples wanted was a sense of belonging.  Despite being a band of weirdos, they stuck together as a group.

Cent - The pretty boy without a brain, Cent often spouts nonsensical statements as fact when he probably just made it up on the spot.  They made it a point to show how much of an idiot he is.  The only time he seemed right in the head was when he's around Two.  It seemed that Two and Cent were deeply in love with each other and that they were alone when separated.  It did seem like Cent was the most disjointed from the group out of the four members.

[The Intoners]

Five - There isn't much to say about Five.  She becomes obsessed with something and then immediately loses interest when she has it.  Nothing really seemed to satisfy her.

Four - She felt that they all should stick together as sisters.  She seemed to have all sorts of fond memories of Zero, but none of them seemed real.  But to her, she felt like she belonged at Zero's side.

Three - She never seemed sane to begin with.  She's like the black sheep of the family and didn't really have a place among the sisters.  Almost like she was lost in her own world, she never really seemed to have any connection to any of the characters, including her own disciple.

Two - Deeply in love with her disciple Cent, she never seemed to function correctly without him.  After the initial encounter with Two, the struggle of self conflict and sanity between Two and Cent is shown again and again in the alternate branches.

One - She is the only intoner that didn't lose her mind to the parasite's power and the only one that questioned their reason for being in the world.  She figure out what she and her sisters truly were and soon fought for the same reasons Zero did.  She was the only Intoner without a disciple and no one understood her motives.  Ironically, the one person that did understand her was the one she had to kill: Zero.


Thinking about it all, I really liked the narrative of Drakengard 3.  It's a shame that the rest of the game couldn't match up with the quality.



[Rant on Hyperdimension Neptunia U]

There isn't any spoilers for this game, because there's really nothing to spoil.  I kind of wish they had fleshed out some sort of story for the game, but it's simply just a spin-off meant to take on the Action Hack-n-Slash genre.  There isn't much I want to say about the game, but I wanted to talk a little bit about it.  I was disappointed with it, but I somehow still enjoyed the game.  I've completed the main game and didn't feel like I got much of an experience out of it, despite putting in 21 hours into it.  The game does have end-game content, but I'm not sure what to think of it.  The game itself plays a lot like Dynasty Warriors and/or Senran Kagura as it was made by the same developers as SK.  The catch is that most of the levels are arena based (one small room) and require taking out a lot of enemies.  The main gripe I have about the game is how confusing the balance of the game is.  Low level quests were sometimes ridiculously difficult while some high level quests were actually not that bad.  The recommended levels they listed don't seem to match up with what you have to put up with.  Some of the worst scenarios I had to deal with is a room full of enemies that can do a string of attacks that stun you.  When a group of enemies attack you in such a fashion, you will die because you'll be eternally stunned.  It's even worse when those same enemies have so much health that it takes a decent amount of time to take even one down.  I do appreciate the challenge the game provides over what SK games seemed to have presented, but it seems poorly balanced compared to the SK games.  Perhaps this was a change to the North American version because many English speaking fans that played the Japanese version said it was so mind-numbingly easy that it wasn't worth playing.  It took a bit of grinding, but I was able to complete the main quests by utilizing all the different abilities they provided so that I wouldn't die so easily.  Afterwards, it unlocked four things for me: Cheat codes, a Chapter 4 quests, a Gauntlet tournament, and a tower.  The Cheat codes can be unlocked by fulfilling certain requirements.  What they are, I don't know.  Chapter 4 quests give really high level and high difficulty enemies to fight against.  The Gauntlet is really unbalanced.  It gives items at the end (of which it didn't throughout the game), but the gameplay is so broken that it's not that fun.  On Wimpy (Easy), enemies are defeated in 1-2 moves.  On Decent (Normal), you die in one combo while they take minimal damage.  On Pro (Hard), you do 1 damage each hit while they One-shot you.  I'll try it more when I hit max level on my characters, but right now it's just farming for items on Wimpy mode.  The tower I haven't tried much yet.  It's just going up one floor after another to reach the top and fight the lass boss again.  I can dare to say that the game is adequately entertaining for me, but I can't say that it's really worth $40.  The game feels like it lacks depth and dynamics.  What made SK really great was the flow between story and gameplay.  HDN:U just seems to throw a lot of long-winded quests and then giving a few short conversations between the characters.  I'm probably going to play it more just to get my $40 worth, but it's kind of a hard game to recommend.  You'd have to really like Hack-n-Slashes in its bare core form or Hyperdimension Neptunia to enjoy the game.

The game that DRAGS-ON! [SPOILER ALERT Drakengard 3]

I really buckled down and made an effort to complete Drakengard 3 (Drag-On Dragoon 3 in Japanese) this past weekend.  Drakengard 3 is an Action game with aspects of hack-n-slash and RPG elements.  The game starts out with the main character Zero slaughtering dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers to get to her sisters to kill them.  The game doesn't give much context and just showing the player that Zero really wants to kill her sisters and take their powers.  I see this plot device pattern used in a lot of games where it doesn't tell you what the true motive or reasoning behind the adventure is until it's close to the end of the game.  Even when the player kills the last sister and then dies, it still doesn't tell the player what the whole story was about.  Then an alternate timeline reveals itself and you play through that one, and then again on another timeline.  After the third time, the game pulls a game design choice that virtually extends the gameplay time before the player can progress.  It required the player to collect 100% of the weapons in the game before they can continue to the 4th and final arch of the story.  That was an extra 5 hours of grinding for money and hunting down weapons.  Then I got through the last arch which was as twice as long as the past 2 story arch before reaching this BS, final confrontation.

The confrontation begins at 2:30

Honestly, an ending like this is absolutely beautiful and memorable.  But the problem is that the gameplay side of this section is absurdly difficult and unforgiving that it didn't feel worth practicing over and over for.  It's a music-rhythm mini-game that goes to Game Over if you miss even one note.  I tried 7-10 times before I gave up.  The long loading times between each retry didn't help encourage me either.

So there's a lot I want to say about this game, but I'd rather keep it short and simple.  I want to start out by saying that this game has flaws and problems, but I don't regret playing through it.  I guess it'd be best if I just complained about everything I didn't like first before explaining why this game is even worth talking about.

Cons:
- In-game graphics is garbage compared to what the opening cinematic looks like
- Lots of textures and models look outdated
- Many levels are reused; you will play each level 2-4 times throughout the game
- There isn't much depth or backstory to any of the characters, even though I like them
- Long loading times, despite eating up 5 GB worth of hard drive space to install the game
- Dubbing; the English voice overs weren't bad, but they changed the characters' personality
- Combat is largely because of combos and camera angle
- Usefulness of weapons; knuckles and chakrams were largely useless throughout the game
- Some enemies would strike for 25%-75% of your health, and you'd fight multiples of them
- Some levels throw so many enemies out that they literally block the view
- Forcing the player to gather 100% of the weapons to progress the story
- The game felt like it dragged on a lot and kept going when it should have ended
- The final confrontation being absurdly difficult; it wasn't worth my time

So with that out of the way, I can start talking about what I did like about the game.

[Story]
The premise is quite simple, but I enjoyed it.  It starts off explaining how mankind was at constant war with each other.  5 beings went around and sang their songs that soothed the hearts of men and ended the wars.  These beings went on to become known as intoners who the men worshiped like gods.  They were sisters of serenity that brought peace back to mankind.  But then there was a 6th sister that wanted to kill them all and take their powers for her own: Zero.  Zero charged into the castle with a dragon named Michael to slay her sisters.  As Zero fought each one of her sisters, they retreated one by one only to have a dragon summoned by them counter-attack Zero.  Michael dove in and blocked the attack aimed at Zero.  It is assumed that Michael perished shortly after as the player is introduced to a tiny Dragon named Mikhail.  After a time of recovery from the loss of her arm, Zero set out to kill her sisters again.  One by one, she hunted down her sisters: Five, Four, Three, Two, and One.  Each Intoner has a disciple that helps in summoning an angel to fight for them.  After killing each Intoner, Zero takes their disciple and has sex with them every night.  I kid you not, that is brought up a lot in the game (but nothing is ever shown).  There's Dito the sadist, Decadus the masochist, Octa the old man with an insatiable sexual appetite, and Cent the handsome idiot.  They all join Zero in the slaughter of soldiers, trolls, beasts, and all sorts of enemies to reach the other intoners for Zero to kill.  After getting 3 different endings, it is finally revealed why they were on this journey in the first place.  Zero had died, supposedly.  But she awoke and with great power.  She found out that there was a parasite living within her in the form of a flower and would one day bloom and destroy the world.  She tried killing herself when she found out only to be reborn out of the flower again and again.  Then she tried pulling out the flower from her eye only to have spawned 5 copies of herself.  They, in a sense, became her sisters and ensured the power of the parasite to come to fruition to destroy the world.  The only way to destroy that power was the strength of a dragon.  Zero had met Michael and agreed to cooperate in order to save the world.  They would kill all 5 sisters and then Zero would sacrifice herself to Michael in order stop the end of the world.  It is revealed in the middle of the game that right before Michael died, he respawned but lost all of his memories.  And that is how Mikhail became to be.  The responsibility fell on Mikhail to end it all, and that meant killing Zero.

So why did I like the story?  It was different and I was able to empathize with the characters.  It sounds so contradictory when Zero wants to save the world from destruction yet slaughters hundreds to thousands along the way to do so.  It's contradictory for the Intoners to bring peace to the people when they will ultimately become the end of all living things.  I felt the whole theme around the story was about being alone.  Zero didn't really face the quest alone because she had Michael.  Although short, that opening scene reveals a very intimate camaraderie between the two.  Zero had a lot of confidence, faith and trust in Michael while he, as an all mighty dragon with wisdom and power, had this caring nature for Zero which ultimately got him killed as he shielded the blast for Zero in the beginning of the game.  Mikhail is a totally different character.  He is depicted as young, innocent, naive, and playful.  He is incredibly faithful to Zero, yet Zero consistently yells and insults him throughout the game.  You would think that Zero would slowly become attached to Mikhail, but near the end of the game, I had a different impression.  She had already loved him from the beginning, but only she knew of the deal that she and Michael had; that Michael would be the one to end her to prevent the end of the world.  With Mikhail's innocence, I can't help but feel like Zero tried her best to prevent Mikhail from being too attached to Zero so that he would be able to fulfill that same responsibility.  It was also a way for Mikhail to toughen up and never settle for being weak, and it really reflected at the very last confrontation (as much as I hated the gameplay), because it was very difficult but it befell to Mikhail to see it through and destroy the flower.  That's one instance of showing loneliness in the game.  Zero always felt isolated.  Even when asked about her "friends" the disciples, she retorts and says she didn't have friends and never had any to begin with.  She didn't want to become attached or have anyone attached to her.  But it was clear that she enjoyed the company, as weird as they were, as in one arch, she decides to save them before they disappear and in another arch she looked pained when they left.  Zero couldn't trust anyone else to help her kill her sisters as they were the ones that brought peace back to the land.  Suddenly, that contradiction I stated earlier makes sense, doesn't it?  She killed all that impeded her way because no one would believe her or help her.  And with the Intoners having such a large influence over the people of the land, the men would fight and die for them which is what the parasite probably wants.  The only sister that understood their purpose in the world was "One" but she didn't trust Zero to follow through and wanted to fulfill the same goal Zero had.  In the end, the one who was truly left alone was Mikhail, which is why it was such an emotional scene when Zero finally told Mikhail that he had gotten stronger as he was about ready to destroy the flower (Shown in beginning of video above).  It's a very sad story in contrast to the abundant humor the game had throughout the journey, but it was one that I enjoyed.

[Humor]
I heard the first two Drakengard games were very dark and moody (I have the 2nd one, but haven't played it).  So it was kind of a shock to fans when they realized how much humor was put into the dialogues, cinematics, and characters.  A lot of the humor is vulgar, slapstick, or twisted/dark jokes as the writers said they wanted to write for a mature audience.  You can bet there will be a lot of bantering between the disciples when there's a sadist, masochist, sex maniac, and a big idiot.  The writers know the game is extremely violent, offensive, and has tons of innuendos, so they just roll with it and turn it into something funny (as messed up as it sometimes seems).

Start the video at 3:56

[Characters]

Zero - Zero is sort of a tsundere.  She isn't really honest with herself, but she has a very good reason for being so.  She knows that she must end her life at the end of this journey and doesn't want to be attached to anyone or have anyone attached to her.  She's often foul-mouthed, angry, and very frank with her words.  But there are times she shows weakness of losing people around her.  It is most evident whenever she loses Mikhail.  I kind of want to know what kind of person she was before she was infested with a parasite, but I realize that it's not important for the player to know at all in her current journey.  I kind of liked Zero's character.  She's very tough, but her rare moments of compassion reminds the player that she still human emotions and isn't just a killing machine.  If anything, she feels like a really lonely character to me.  She knows she's not a hero and not a savior.  There was no good guys and bad guys; there were only countless victims.  She just wants to set things right and take responsibility.

One, Two, Three, Four, Five - It's difficult to remember boss battle characters sometimes in videogames because you encounter them and defeat them within several minutes.  The 5 sisters make reoccurring appearances and you'll face them multiple times.  It kind of leaves an impression after a while and you start to pick up the differences between them.  If anything, Two, Three, Four, and Five were more for dramatic and humorous encounters.  One was the most serious one of the sisters and the only one that seemed to understand what was going on as well as being the only one to have not been driven mad by the flower's power.  She wants the same thing as Zero, but neither one trusts each other with the job.  Four left the biggest impression on me because she seemed very sincere about loving Zero and not wanting to fight.  Perhaps the five sisters each possess a piece of Zero's original personality.

The Disciples: Dito, Decadus, Octa, Cent - This band of weirdos made the journey less boring.  You can bring two of them into battle with you to aggro some of the enemies off of you and help you in a fight.  Along the way, they'll have plenty of things to say.  They'll complain about their situation, give advice, and yell at one another.  At one point in the game, Mikhail felt like it was so much quieter when three of the disciples were gone.  Even the one disciple felt off without the company of the others around.  It was then I started seeing the theme of "loneliness" in the game's story.  As messed up as he was, Dito was one of my favorites.  The way he reveled in violence and the pain he inflicted was entertaining and felt fitting with all the fighting you do.

Mikhail - He was a rather lovable character.  He was so carefree and childish that I couldn't help but feel sorry for him sometimes whenever he receives a barrage of insults from the party.  But I can see why his character works so well as he's so contradictory to the rest of the game.  That contrast made him stand out.  He didn't like fighting and definitely didn't like killing.  He wants to do his best and be praised only to mess up and get yelled at.  He didn't really care about anything as long as it made Zero happy.  So it was a really sad parting for him to say goodbye to Zero.  He wanted to become strong for Zero and was finally able to prove it on the very last confrontation where he bested the flower's song and finished it off.

[Combat]
One of my complaints was about combat, but I also kind of liked parts of it.  I didn't like how clunky combat felt.  There are many hack-n-slash games where starting a combo meant you were locked in animation until it's over.  You can't block, evade, jump, or cancel the animation in any way.  This meant getting hit when you're fighting something else.  I also didn't like how the efficiency of two our of four of the weapons dropped shortly after you acquire them.  They hold almost no potential usefulness throughout the game.  You only needed to use swords for multiple enemies and the spear/lance for single-targets.  What I did like is the simplicity of combat and its challenges.  The game is challenging, and sometimes not in very fair ways.  But to make the battle possible, you need to utilize everything you've got.  This means dodging, block/parry, buying and using items, upgrading weapons, going into intoner mode, switching between weapons, and sometimes using combos.  There are a lot of games where I end up saving up all the money and items and never using them because they were never needed.  Other times, there are games where you don't even use certain moves.  But the game's design and difficulty forces you to utilize them all in order to get through the game, and I think that's great.  Through its simplicity, there's a lot of planning and techniques you must use to survive and overcome impossible situations.  I honestly think it's impossible to play the end levels without Strength and Defense potions because enemies hits too hard and frequently in large groups while having too much HP to be able to be defeated normally.  Also, I love how the music has an added operatic voice melded in whenever you go into intoner mode.   That part in presentation made for such dramatic effect and lasting impression.  It reminds me of Chaos Legion where the music changes whenever you bring out your summons or in Final Fantasy XIII-2 where the music gets more aggressive when an enemy is close by.

[Presentation]


This opening cinematic was breathtaking and is sadly the only one with this kind of quality.  This made me really disappointed in the in-game graphics with some of the blocky models and outdated textures.  I was thinking that maybe they lowered the assets so that it would run smoothly, but even Dynasty Warriors 7 & 8 didn't look so bad when they have almost 4-5 times more enemies on screen than this game.  Even then, the game's frame rate would drop a lot whenever there's an explosion.  Lots of levels are reused, but are presented differently each time (different atmosphere/color tone, going backwards from last time).  There were many problems and flaws with its presentation.  But what made up for it was the writing and audio.  The jokes and humor were actually pretty good and gave a good laugh throughout the journey.  And even though I didn't like how the English dub changed the personalities of the characters, I felt like their delivery really accentuated the type of characters they've changed.  And then there's the music.  I think I might have given up on this game too half-way if it weren't for the magnificent music that ranged from being very aggressive and loud to mellow melodies of sorrow.

Arrival of the Guards – Battle Stage
Prevolt / Battleground
防来／戦場


This is possibly my favorite track and probably even the director's favorite because it was used so many times.  There are three boss fights that use this melody!

Arrival of the Guards – Zophiel
Prevolt / Zophiel
防来／ゾフィエル


That energy and that haunting melody spends a chill down my spine.  I really liked Four that much more because of her Boss Fight songs.

Kuroi Uta -black song- (International)
クロイウタ／日本国外向け製品収録版


The 8 minute final confrontation song is also amazing too (the video on the very top) called The Last Song.  The music really made for an enjoyable experience.  Without it, I don't even know what to think of how the game would be like.


I'm sad I couldn't truly finish the game, but I'm really happy that I played it through to at least that part.  It was funny, sad, and beautiful.  Sadly, I don't think it's a game I can easily recommend.