It hasn’t even been 2 months since I’ve recovered from my 9
weeks of ailments throughout November, December, and the beginning of January
and I’ve already fallen into another string of problems. It started around 3 weeks ago when I started
feeling like my lower back was tightening up. It’s not too surprising since I still sit a
lot throughout the day to: work, eat, and play. I had been working out harder in the gym in
previous weeks since I got better and was able to move forward with my physical
growth. But starting 3 weeks ago, I
haven’t been working out as much and have been under stress with things at
home. 2 weeks ago, Black Desert Online
came out and I decided I wanted to dedicate some time on an MMO since I haven’t
since Guild Wars 2, which was 4 years ago. I’ve been keeping a close eye on both Blade
& Soul and Black Desert Online for years now. With Blade & Soul, I haven’t had much time
for it. But with Black Desert Online, I
wanted to take the time to play it intently since I spent money on it (B&S
is free-to-play, BDO is a one time purchase).
I had a lot of fun playing it while simultaneously playing Final Fantasy
Explorers whenever my character had to run to a far destination. But throughout the week, my back got
progressively more irritable and it became difficult to stay seated without
feeling pain. I had been doing stretches
and taking breaks to ensure that it didn’t get worse, but it didn’t help. So last Monday, I spent the day vacuuming the
house and then worked on my ab carver. The
Ab Carver is that rolling mechanism device that’s supposed to tighten your
abdominals and strengthen your arms and back. I’ve been using it for two months now and
worked my way up to doing 15 repetitions forward and 7 repetitions on each side
(left and right) 3 sets each. That’s 87
repetitions total. So last Monday, I
moved up to doing 20 reps forward and 10 reps on each side 3 sets each. I didn’t feel anything initially. But throughout the week, my lower back got
worse to the point it was difficult to stay seated. Adding along with stress and sudden weather
change to a cold and wet environment, I was starting to feel the effects of everything
adding together. I also stayed up quite
late a few nights two weeks ago talking to friends. With the pain on my back, I started going to
sleep earlier than usual which my body is probably not used to so it’s been
difficult to fall asleep. So throughout
the past week, I’ve been having all sorts of body aches, headaches, nerve
pains, light-headed drowsiness, and a back pain that won’t go away. Some things will go away while new things will
occur. I had one day where I woke up
feeling like my arms and legs were numb and felt cold but wasn’t cold. I have other days where my arms feel like in
constant pain as if I had just gone to the gym and did some weights. Since the rain cleared up and it’s bright and
sunny the past few days, I’ve been walking a lot more. I think it might be helping certain things
like blood circulation, but I still have aches and pains occurring randomly
throughout my body each day. Worst of
all, my stomach problem is back where I feel hungry throughout the day,
generate air, and sometimes have a burning feeling. There isn’t anything particularly severe that
would put me in agony, but the little problems here and there make me feel exhausted
each day. I’m just hoping whatever is
wrong with me right now will be gone by the end of this weekend so I can go
back to working again. I’ve been making
good progress so far with two completed remixes with the 3rd one
started right before I started feeling all these ailments.
As bad as everything sounds, this month hasn’t been
completely awful. Quite a few games came
out this month with Black Desert Online being the first one. I’ve played around 42 hours or so and wanted
to at least get to 50 hours to make those $50 worth it, but my true goal was to
at least get one character to level 45 (where afterwards you’re flagged for
open PvP and players can kill you) and then start a new character and play
several characters in that manner to enjoy the game. It’s a fun sand-box MMO that has a lot of
content for players to enjoy, but I mainly focus on combat and ignore the
economy side of the game. Earlier this
week, Senran Kagura Estival Versus released and I got it a day earlier from
Amazon from its release. So far, I am
extremely impressed by the game. This is
the 4th game in the series to release in the West and each game has
been pretty different. The goal is still
the same: beat everyone up. But the
mechanics change with each game. Estival
Versus slows the game down by quite a bit by eliminating animation cancels. So you can exploit animation cancels to chain
huge combos with little consequences. I
believe this change was made to create a balanced cast of characters for Online,
competitive play. It’s a bit difficult
to get used to the delay between attacks and there are a few animation cancels
you can somewhat do to better position yourself, but I’ve been enjoying the
game immensely. Then Pokken Tournament
came in the mail today when it should release tomorrow. I haven’t had the chance to play it yet, but I
will tonight. Hyrule Warriors: Legends
on 3DS and Trillion: God of Destruction on PS Vita both release near the end of
the month. So there are quite a few
games to enjoy this month.
What I’ve wanted to do for a while is talk about a few
particular games in-depth. But I don’t
think I have time to talk about them in great detail, so I’d like to just rant
about each one for a bit.
[SPOILERS COMING UP]
[Bravely Default: Where the Fairy Flies – Nintendo 3DS]
I mentioned this game a bit in last months post. Bravely Default is a JRPG that harkens back to
the days of classic Final Fantasy with modern innovations to make the game feel
relevant, fresh, yet familiar. I wasn’t
sure if I wanted to get through the entire game and it was kind of driving me
half crazy with on particular design choice it made. The game has 9 chapters total. Between chapters 1-4, the heroes sets off on
a journey to awaken the 4 crystals around the world to (supposedly) stop the darkness
from swallowing up everything like it did to Tiz’s (one of the characters)
village. At the end of chapter 4, it
makes it seem like you finished the game, but that’s not the case. In the beginning of chapter 5, the party
realizes that everything they’ve done to help the world was undone or perhaps
they traveled back in time (In actuality, they traveled to a parallel world to
their own). Then it happens again in
chapter 6, 7, and 8. Each chapter
changes ever so slightly, but the objectives stay the same. Story wise, I loved it. I really enjoy stories that involve
time-travel and parallel universes. But
gameplay wise, I questioned what I was doing with my time. What should have been a 30 hour game turned
into 60+ hours of grinding, rematches with the same bosses, and doing the same
thing 5 times before you get to the last chapter which leads to the final boss.
There are 3 pre-bosses before the true
final boss of which the last boss has 5 phases. It was certainly drawn out and it was really
cool as a narrative, but I was tired and stressed from the gameplay as I didn’t
want to start all over if I had failed. I really enjoyed the game and liked the
plethora of classes you can choose from. Two of the greatest mechanics that they
introduced is being able to fast-forward through battle animations and being
able to control the spawn rate of random battles. You can even turn it off. From what I understand, they’re adding these
two mechanics to the re-release of Final Fantasy 9 on Steam PC, of which I’m
looking forward to as it’s one of the few Final Fantasy games I don’t have. In the beginning of the game, I really like
Agnes and Ringabel. But I had grown quite
attached to Edea throughout the game for her sassy personality and her constant
belief in justice. I loved the music and
am really surprised that it was composed and produced by musicians that
normally didn’t write for videogames before (they made the opening theme song
for Attack on Titan animé). Despite the
4 extra loops the game put me through, I thought it was a magnificent game. Bravely Second releases this year and I’ll be
borrowing that from my sister once she’s done.
[Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson – Nintendo 3DS]
I can’t remember if I talked about this game or not last
year. More of a sequel to Burst than
Shinovi Versus, Deep Crimson talks about the rise of Dōgen. He’s mentioned in every SK game (not sure on
Estival Versus, but I doubt he’s in it) so far and he dies every game, so he’s as
tenacious as Dracula if this continues. This
game was a lot more different than I thought it’d be. A sort of slanted, downwards camera angle, a
partner mechanic to switch between characters, various changes to character
playstyles (I particularly liked how Mirai could switch between 3 different
weapons), and going more for humor than before. I was expecting the game to be a lot darker
and serious considering how every screenshot and video I saw for the game was
filled with red and black levels and how grungy and heavy the music was. But the game was a lot sillier with the
resurrection of Orochi with boobs (which was really weird), and Dōgen looking
sort of like a clown (he didn’t have an image in the first two games and he
looks vastly different from the animé version). Another reason I believed Deep Crimson would
have a heavier tone is that the game right after is set on the beach and is the
complete opposite. Estival Versus is
bright and colorful with happy sounding music.
But nope, Deep Crimson has the setting for a darker story, but is mostly
humorous. It tries to be touching at one
point, but it didn’t get much of a reaction from me. Estival Versus, on the other hand, has already
made me cry like 3 times and I’m only half way done with the main story. Does this mean Deep Crimson was a bad
game? No, I don’t think it was. But I do believe that it’s the weakest one in
terms of story out of the series (not counting the animé; that was just bad
rendition of the first game). I still
really enjoyed the game and even bought the $15 DLCs ($5 each) for it of which
I only regretted getting 1 out of 3 of the DLCs. I didn’t play it as much as I wanted to (I
think I played 30 hours and wanted to play at least 50) but I got distracted
with other games at the time. I still
plan on revisiting it and leveling the characters up while playing the harder
difficulties.
[Tokyo
Twilight Ghost Hunters – PS Vita]
I can’t believe I actually got through this accursed game. The first time I played the game, I failed on
the tutorial mission. The game is half
Visual Novel and half Strategy. In the
Visual Novel parts, you read dialogues and make decisions based on choices or
senses/emotion (Love, Friendly, Sadness, Anger, Wondering – Touch, Sight,
Smell, Hear, Taste). In the Strategy
side of the game, you place traps at the start of a mission and then take out
ghosts on a grid board using up to 4 characters. You set where your characters want to go and
do (attack, use items, heal, etc.) and then execute them. Everything will move at once: your characters
and the enemies. So you need a bit of
foresight in order to strike a ghost. It’s
a bit like Frozen Synapse for PC. The
Strategy part of the game was so frustrating and random that I wasn’t enjoying
the game, but the stories of each chapter is so interesting and entertaining
that I couldn’t stop playing. The game
is set up like a standard 13 episode animé with each chapter starting and
ending with the opening and ending credits. Each chapter, the characters take up a client’s
request on exorcising a ghost. Some are
lost loves. Others are those of
desire. Each chapter had an interesting
story that continually introduces new characters that gradually adds to the
kooky cast of ghost hunters in your party.
I muscled through the game just to know what happens next and then I got
to the end and got the most boring ending out of the bunch. There are a ton of endings you can get, but
none of them are on the internet for me to see and I have no patience to play
the game over again. I really enjoyed
the Visual Novel parts and how unexpected some of the parts are. I tried kissing one of the characters using
the conversation wheel and I ended up tasting the cement in an old apartment
building. It was a really interesting
game, but the strategy side of the game really ruined my experience playing it.
That’s it for now.
Hopefully I get better soon and get back to working on projects.
