The past few months have been pretty crazy. This one week alone was very crazy. I'm not going to talk too much about politics, but I want to mention it a little.
So to get it out of the way, we all witnessed Donald Trump winning the electoral votes to become the next president of the United States of America. I don't talk about politics. For one, I am ignorant to how things exactly work in our government and the people within it. And the other is that I simply don't have much interest in learning about it. But with this presidential run, I have talked more about politics than I could ever remember doing. I think that happened to a lot of people in our nation this past year. A lot more people will want to educate themselves about politics and be more involved in the next presidential run. There were a lot of concerns for how the people would react after Trump's victory (of which many came true: racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc.), public outcry and riots, economic stability, international relations, etc. The future of our world, not just America, seems terrifying. All we can do now is bare through it and work together as a nation to make sure things don't go to ruins. I rather not go into details on this subject matter any further, so I'll stop there.
So in October, I was suffering from headaches. They were pretty bad. I had pain in the back of the head, side, sometimes right where my eye brows were. My mom mentioned my neck possibly not getting good support while sleeping or that it was bent at too much of an angle. I slept a few nights without a pillow and the headaches stopped. But it caused other problems. It was hard to fall asleep, I would wake up in the middle of the night more frequently, I would feel dizzy in the morning, and I was suffering upper back pains. Eventually, I replaced my mattress with a new one because my old mattress has been used for 16 years and concave inwards. It fixed my upper back pains and I was able to sleep on a pillow again. During the time I had the headaches, my vision started going blurry. I noticed that my left eye was very blurry while my right eye was quite sharp. Then it got to a point where both my eyes felt blurry. Now that I've been sleeping better, my vision went semi-normal again. My left eye is still sees things a bit blurry when they're at a fair distance.
Just last Saturday, I seemed to have caught a minor cold. I had a scratchy throat and near evening time I started feeling body pains all over my muscles and joints. It didn't seem that bad and I didn't really complain. But then the next day, allergies hit me hard and I started going through the same symptoms as usual: Itchy eyes, itchy nose, itchy ears, watery eyes, stuffy/runny nose, sneezing and to add to all that I had a bad cough. I continued having a bad cough throughout the rest of the week which left me with chest and upper back pains. The cough is mostly gone now, but I've been suffering from headaches again the past 2-3 days. Despite all these ailments, good things were also happening that really cheered me up. On Sunday, my parents went with me to Costco and bought me a full 88-key music keyboard to practice piano and record music with. On Tuesday, my dad asked me if I "wanted a macbook" all of a sudden and I said I wouldn't want an apple computer. He offered to buy me a new laptop and give my current one to him and my mom to use. I'm waiting for it to arrive in the mail right now and am really excited since there are a lot of games I'm not able to play that I've tried this year. And to put the cherry on top, my dad came home with a Playstation 4 on Thursday night because it was a great deal ($289 for 500 GB slim with an extra controller and a copy of Uncharted 4). He said he bought it for himself to play Plants vs. Zombies 2, but then I looked it up and realized he was looking at Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2. So I bought some games including the newly released Final Fantasy XV and am hoping to enjoy playing them for the rest of the month as soon as I get the rest of my work done. I'm organizing my computer files to transfer to the new laptop and I also want to finish a few more remixes before the year ends. Here's hoping that the rest of the month will be great and leave a good impression for the year for me and that 2017 will truly be better than this year (I said that last year and this year was pretty awful). Happy Holidays~
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Let's talk about Trillion: God of Destruction [SPOILERS]
Early this year, I had planned out some pre-orders for the first half of the year. I had a good idea of what games I wanted to pre-order and put them in, but then I saw a game called "Trillion: God of Destruction" and saw that it was developed by Compile Heart and published by Idea Factory. I seem to gravitate to a lot of the games that have these two companies involved ever since I got Hyperdimension Neptunia. Having a bit of faith in the names of those two companies, I went ahead and pre-ordered Trillion: God of Destruction as well. I did a little bit of research and saw that it was a Rogue-like Dungeon Crawler. I was busy with other games when it released and didn't quite get to play it right away. A month or two after its release, it dropped down to $15 from its original $40 (I got it for $32). I was upset that I paid so much for it when I could have gotten it for a lot less. It was around that time that I decided to start it up and play it. Then I found out that it wasn't a Rogue-like Dungeon Crawler. It only made up a very tiny portion of the game and was its mean of participating in combat.
Trillion: God of Destruction is a Simulation game that mixes elements of management simulation, visual novels, dating simulation, and Rogue-like dungeon crawlers where you ultimately have to take down a monster with a Trillion HP. The plot of the game is that a monster arrives at the gate of hell and starts eating and destroying the underworld. The great overlord of the underworld faces the monster when he hears that his brother's counter-attack had failed. The great overlord also fails to thwart the rampaging monster and meets his demise as well. He then hears a girl's voice calling out to him and offered to save his life if he were to agree to fighting the monster once again and to relinquish his own soul after it is defeated to the girl. He awakens to a patched up, almost zombie-like appearance, version of himself and is to agree that he uses his ability to train each an overlord to fight in his stead using his power. This is where the roller coaster of emotions begins.
The game caught me off-guard on so many different levels that it became one of the more memorable games I played this year. First, I got the genre wrong, then I realized the games doesn't play the way I thought it would (I thought I could choose any character and train them all together, but you don't since you can only train one at a time), and it completely blindsided me when it mentioned "hey, the overlord you're training will probably die". They don't mention this until after you've picked a character and started training them already. In the beginning, you have the choice between 3 of the overlords. I'll be mostly talking about all the characters and overlords. So I started off the game choosing Perpell (the one in orange) because she was incredibly cute. As you choose the overlord's training regiments, you'll also spend time with them, give them gifts, and run into certain events that could reward you, add more to the story, or curse/injure your overlord. For the most part, the game is bright, colorful, light-hearted and funny. But it keeps going back to the theme of despair and absolute hopelessness. I was already informed that the overlord will die if they do no successfully take down Trillion at the beginning of the game, but I had no idea how they would present a character's death. I was expecting a quick and silly "oh, they died" sort of event to occur, but that was not the case.
Characters:
Zeabolos - He's the main character and the Great Overlord that everyone seems to adore. The player assumes the role of Zeabolos and finds that for a leader of the underworld, he is kind-hearted, loyal, and empathetic. You can't help but understand why all the female characters seem to hold affection for him and all his subjects are so loyal and respect him. I really liked him as a character, though as generic as he may be. His comedic reactions in contrast to his more serious attitude was likable.
Faust - I didn't get to play her. You have to do some specific things throughout the game in order to play 3 of the other characters other than the 6 overlords and I didn't want to play the game anymore. Faust is the girl that saves Zeabolos' life and asks for his soul in return after Trillion, the monster attacking the underworld, is destroyed. She has a serious and logical personality that evokes little to no emotion, which often times rub the other characters the wrong way. She's mysterious and has seemingly shady motives throughout the game. It isn't until you get near the end of the true ending that you realize who she is what she's after. She's the daughter of a great overlord of the underworld from another dimension that was destroyed by Trillion and wishes to use Zeabolos' soul to revive her father and restore her dimension and underworld. If you defeat Trillion with Faust, you get her ending in which she refuses to take Zeabolos' soul as she had fallen in love with him from the time they spent together. She then marries Zeabolos and stays with him in his dimension and world.
Perpell - The overlord of gluttony. She's the adorable niece of Zeabolos and daughter of Zeabolos' brother, Astaroth. She's quite child-like and is often seen or heard eating sweets. When Zeabolos' offered the throne of the great overlord to whichever overlord defeats Trillion, Perpell wanted to become the Great Overlord and filled the castle with sweets. She's honest, innocent, and cheerful which easily makes her the most amiable characters in the game. Zeabolos' does his best to be a father figure to Perpell after he makes a promise to his brother in his dying breath that he'd take care of his two daughters. That's why it was the most hardest death to get over when it happened. Perpell was the first overlord I trained and sent out and I had a fatherly attachment to her where I just wanted her to succeed. When Trillion kills an overlord, it does it slowly and you hear the overlord crying out in pain and expressing unfulfilled wishes and regret. I was devastated when Perpell died and wasn't sure if I wanted to continue playing the game. It definitely made me cry. But I was thinking I wouldn't like any of the characters as much as her and decided to continue.
Mammon - The overlord of greed. She's a treasure hunter that likes to track down valuables and pawn them off. She expressed her wish of being the great overlord so she would have access to the royal vaults. I nicknamed her "underboob-girl" just thought of her as the tomboyish thief that did things her way and muscled through everything rather than thinking. But then you learn that she takes all the money she earns from treasure hunting and uses it to better the lives of those in the slums where she was born and raised until she was adopted. She has a difficult time expressing herself and eventually claims that Zeabolos "will belong to her" when she becomes great overlord. I then sensed the pattern within the game: it makes you interact, learn and become attached to a character and then have them die if you fail to kill Trillion. You not only invest time into each of the overlords but emotional investment as well. This made for a good story and character investment, but a cruel ride for your heart.
Levia - The overlord of envy. I really liked Levia, but I knew I would. She's voiced by Imai Asami, who voices Noire (my favorite character from Hyperdimension Neptunia), has a tsundere personality, is the prettiest character out of the 6 overlords. She denies her emotions often, but makes it fairly apparently for the player that she really likes Zeabolos. They're childhood friends and so there is much that the two characters understand of each other. I don't recall what she exactly wanted as great overlord, only that she could be near Zeavolos.
Ashmedia - The overlord of lust. I honestly thought I wouldn't like her very much as the "giant-boobed, 'I love sex'" archetypes are generally my least favorite of characters. She constantly talks about delivering pain to others and enjoy hearing the screams of agony from her victims. She flirts with Zeabolos a lot and makes lewd remarks that causes him to fluster. But then you get into an event where Zeabolos finds Ashmedia more docile when she's usually the domineering one. Zeabolos takes up on Ashmedia's suggestion to "sleep" with her and teases her until she nervously admits that she's "never done this before". Zeabolos is taken aback by this remark and realized Ashmedia is not who everyone thinks she is. Ashmedia then says something along the lines of "the more outgoing and open a girl seems, the more wholesome and pure they actually are". It was just so funny and cute how scared and nervous she looked. She was a girl that was misunderstood and everyone projected their ideas of who she was and she just went with it.
Ruche - The overlord of pride. She's a complicated character. She goes a bit beyond being tsundere. She is the niece of Zeabolos, the older sister of Perpell, and the daughter of Astaroth. She has the princess complex and looks down on everyone, especially Zeabolos. But there are a great number of times where she subtly expresses concern, kindness, and empathy while still trying to hold up a strong front. She's proud of her own abilities and expects a lot from herself and those around her. But she's not very honest about her feelings and it leaves a lot of confusion for everyone. She'll often scold Zeabolos for being dense and foolish, yet always reminds him that he's the great overlord and should act like it because she believes in him. She doesn't like being treated like a child and often hints that she actually has feelings for Zeabolos despite being related. She claims that she'll take the title of great overlord and become the greatest leader the underworld has ever known and would be sure to have Zeabolos bow to her abilities. When you fight Trillion with her, you will have to fight a reanimated version of her father who became a messenger for Trillion. When you defeat him, she repeated bashes the body and yells at how it wouldn't die and let her father's spirit rest in piece. When the body finally ceases to move, she breaks down and reveals the broken sad girl that she had held in throughout the game. It was a very emotional moment and felt so bad for her. To be in such an awful situation where she loses her father, then her little sister, then having to fight an abomination of what used to be her father and then having to fight a monster that threatens to destroy her home world, how could I not feel bad for her. If you get her ending, she drags Zeabolos along to help save Faust's father and home dimension rather than having him give up his soul. Years pass and she's shown to be grown up and looking more like an adult. She still expresses her concern of other girls taking Zeabolos away which still hints at her having affection for Zeabolos.
Fegor - The overlord of sloth. The older sister of Zeabolos sleeps throughout the game. She'll be asleep in the middle of the road, in the garden, under the library table, everywhere. But if it gets to the point where she has to train and fight, they start explaining that she is actually incredibly powerful and was once on the front of the war that took place between heaven and the underworld. I didn't think much of her, but she's actually a pretty cute character. She has a certain charm to her. If you get her ending, she just continues to sleep. She also has Zeabolos give her a kiss on the mouth.
Cerberus - Once a fearsome dog-like guardian, Cerberus was turned into a tiny little puppy due to the miasma that Trillion exuded. Towards the path of the true ending, Cerberus is a playable character that fights Trillion. If you get his ending, Zeabolos blows up and becomes a ghost that advises for Cerberus. I didn't get to see any gameplay or events besides the ending for him, so nothing much to say.
Elma - The sickly, younger sister of Zeabolos is a playable character towards the path of the true ending. She takes on the role of an overlord and fights Trillion, of which the power from the ring that each overlord wears that connects to Zeabolos' power cured her of all her illnesses. For her ending, she becomes the great overlord and is said to be an incredible worker on domestic matters. She then expresses her feelings that she has always wanted to be Zeabolos' bride. WHAT?! I honestly didn't see that coming at all. But then she goes on to say that "she'll be happy whoever Zeabolos marries as long as he continues to praise her".
True Ending - Everyone has to die and you have to do very specific things. That is when all the power accumulated from all the overlords flow into Zeabolos where he regains power once again to thwart Trillion once and for all. After defeating Trillion, everyone is suddenly revived and each of them sacrifices a small portion of their souls instead of having Zeabolos give his entire soul to Faust. Everything goes back to normal, and yet everyone is a bit happier, healthier, and stronger.
Which ending did I get? None of them. I played through what I could and couldn't beat Trillion and didn't want to start over with a method I knew I could win with, but I simply did not want to invest anymore time into the game. I spent at least 30-40+ hours on the game without actually finishing it. I mainly wanted to get to know all the characters as best as I could. Overall, I really enjoyed the story and thought the writing for the game was great. The voice acting (for Japanese at least) was incredible and really brought out the personality of each character and their emotions beyond anything the graphics were doing. Gameplay wise, it's rather tedious and monotonous just to get to events and to the actual fights. I laughed a lot, cried a lot, and had some fun fights. I really enjoyed the game for what it was and thought it was quite unique, but it's not a game I could easily recommend due to its difficulty and tedious gameplay. But if you're still interested and don't have a PS Vita, the game is releasing this upcoming Monday on Steam/PC.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/451780/
Trillion: God of Destruction is a Simulation game that mixes elements of management simulation, visual novels, dating simulation, and Rogue-like dungeon crawlers where you ultimately have to take down a monster with a Trillion HP. The plot of the game is that a monster arrives at the gate of hell and starts eating and destroying the underworld. The great overlord of the underworld faces the monster when he hears that his brother's counter-attack had failed. The great overlord also fails to thwart the rampaging monster and meets his demise as well. He then hears a girl's voice calling out to him and offered to save his life if he were to agree to fighting the monster once again and to relinquish his own soul after it is defeated to the girl. He awakens to a patched up, almost zombie-like appearance, version of himself and is to agree that he uses his ability to train each an overlord to fight in his stead using his power. This is where the roller coaster of emotions begins.
The game caught me off-guard on so many different levels that it became one of the more memorable games I played this year. First, I got the genre wrong, then I realized the games doesn't play the way I thought it would (I thought I could choose any character and train them all together, but you don't since you can only train one at a time), and it completely blindsided me when it mentioned "hey, the overlord you're training will probably die". They don't mention this until after you've picked a character and started training them already. In the beginning, you have the choice between 3 of the overlords. I'll be mostly talking about all the characters and overlords. So I started off the game choosing Perpell (the one in orange) because she was incredibly cute. As you choose the overlord's training regiments, you'll also spend time with them, give them gifts, and run into certain events that could reward you, add more to the story, or curse/injure your overlord. For the most part, the game is bright, colorful, light-hearted and funny. But it keeps going back to the theme of despair and absolute hopelessness. I was already informed that the overlord will die if they do no successfully take down Trillion at the beginning of the game, but I had no idea how they would present a character's death. I was expecting a quick and silly "oh, they died" sort of event to occur, but that was not the case.
Characters:
Zeabolos - He's the main character and the Great Overlord that everyone seems to adore. The player assumes the role of Zeabolos and finds that for a leader of the underworld, he is kind-hearted, loyal, and empathetic. You can't help but understand why all the female characters seem to hold affection for him and all his subjects are so loyal and respect him. I really liked him as a character, though as generic as he may be. His comedic reactions in contrast to his more serious attitude was likable.
Faust - I didn't get to play her. You have to do some specific things throughout the game in order to play 3 of the other characters other than the 6 overlords and I didn't want to play the game anymore. Faust is the girl that saves Zeabolos' life and asks for his soul in return after Trillion, the monster attacking the underworld, is destroyed. She has a serious and logical personality that evokes little to no emotion, which often times rub the other characters the wrong way. She's mysterious and has seemingly shady motives throughout the game. It isn't until you get near the end of the true ending that you realize who she is what she's after. She's the daughter of a great overlord of the underworld from another dimension that was destroyed by Trillion and wishes to use Zeabolos' soul to revive her father and restore her dimension and underworld. If you defeat Trillion with Faust, you get her ending in which she refuses to take Zeabolos' soul as she had fallen in love with him from the time they spent together. She then marries Zeabolos and stays with him in his dimension and world.
Perpell - The overlord of gluttony. She's the adorable niece of Zeabolos and daughter of Zeabolos' brother, Astaroth. She's quite child-like and is often seen or heard eating sweets. When Zeabolos' offered the throne of the great overlord to whichever overlord defeats Trillion, Perpell wanted to become the Great Overlord and filled the castle with sweets. She's honest, innocent, and cheerful which easily makes her the most amiable characters in the game. Zeabolos' does his best to be a father figure to Perpell after he makes a promise to his brother in his dying breath that he'd take care of his two daughters. That's why it was the most hardest death to get over when it happened. Perpell was the first overlord I trained and sent out and I had a fatherly attachment to her where I just wanted her to succeed. When Trillion kills an overlord, it does it slowly and you hear the overlord crying out in pain and expressing unfulfilled wishes and regret. I was devastated when Perpell died and wasn't sure if I wanted to continue playing the game. It definitely made me cry. But I was thinking I wouldn't like any of the characters as much as her and decided to continue.
Mammon - The overlord of greed. She's a treasure hunter that likes to track down valuables and pawn them off. She expressed her wish of being the great overlord so she would have access to the royal vaults. I nicknamed her "underboob-girl" just thought of her as the tomboyish thief that did things her way and muscled through everything rather than thinking. But then you learn that she takes all the money she earns from treasure hunting and uses it to better the lives of those in the slums where she was born and raised until she was adopted. She has a difficult time expressing herself and eventually claims that Zeabolos "will belong to her" when she becomes great overlord. I then sensed the pattern within the game: it makes you interact, learn and become attached to a character and then have them die if you fail to kill Trillion. You not only invest time into each of the overlords but emotional investment as well. This made for a good story and character investment, but a cruel ride for your heart.
Levia - The overlord of envy. I really liked Levia, but I knew I would. She's voiced by Imai Asami, who voices Noire (my favorite character from Hyperdimension Neptunia), has a tsundere personality, is the prettiest character out of the 6 overlords. She denies her emotions often, but makes it fairly apparently for the player that she really likes Zeabolos. They're childhood friends and so there is much that the two characters understand of each other. I don't recall what she exactly wanted as great overlord, only that she could be near Zeavolos.
Ashmedia - The overlord of lust. I honestly thought I wouldn't like her very much as the "giant-boobed, 'I love sex'" archetypes are generally my least favorite of characters. She constantly talks about delivering pain to others and enjoy hearing the screams of agony from her victims. She flirts with Zeabolos a lot and makes lewd remarks that causes him to fluster. But then you get into an event where Zeabolos finds Ashmedia more docile when she's usually the domineering one. Zeabolos takes up on Ashmedia's suggestion to "sleep" with her and teases her until she nervously admits that she's "never done this before". Zeabolos is taken aback by this remark and realized Ashmedia is not who everyone thinks she is. Ashmedia then says something along the lines of "the more outgoing and open a girl seems, the more wholesome and pure they actually are". It was just so funny and cute how scared and nervous she looked. She was a girl that was misunderstood and everyone projected their ideas of who she was and she just went with it.
Ruche - The overlord of pride. She's a complicated character. She goes a bit beyond being tsundere. She is the niece of Zeabolos, the older sister of Perpell, and the daughter of Astaroth. She has the princess complex and looks down on everyone, especially Zeabolos. But there are a great number of times where she subtly expresses concern, kindness, and empathy while still trying to hold up a strong front. She's proud of her own abilities and expects a lot from herself and those around her. But she's not very honest about her feelings and it leaves a lot of confusion for everyone. She'll often scold Zeabolos for being dense and foolish, yet always reminds him that he's the great overlord and should act like it because she believes in him. She doesn't like being treated like a child and often hints that she actually has feelings for Zeabolos despite being related. She claims that she'll take the title of great overlord and become the greatest leader the underworld has ever known and would be sure to have Zeabolos bow to her abilities. When you fight Trillion with her, you will have to fight a reanimated version of her father who became a messenger for Trillion. When you defeat him, she repeated bashes the body and yells at how it wouldn't die and let her father's spirit rest in piece. When the body finally ceases to move, she breaks down and reveals the broken sad girl that she had held in throughout the game. It was a very emotional moment and felt so bad for her. To be in such an awful situation where she loses her father, then her little sister, then having to fight an abomination of what used to be her father and then having to fight a monster that threatens to destroy her home world, how could I not feel bad for her. If you get her ending, she drags Zeabolos along to help save Faust's father and home dimension rather than having him give up his soul. Years pass and she's shown to be grown up and looking more like an adult. She still expresses her concern of other girls taking Zeabolos away which still hints at her having affection for Zeabolos.
Fegor - The overlord of sloth. The older sister of Zeabolos sleeps throughout the game. She'll be asleep in the middle of the road, in the garden, under the library table, everywhere. But if it gets to the point where she has to train and fight, they start explaining that she is actually incredibly powerful and was once on the front of the war that took place between heaven and the underworld. I didn't think much of her, but she's actually a pretty cute character. She has a certain charm to her. If you get her ending, she just continues to sleep. She also has Zeabolos give her a kiss on the mouth.
Cerberus - Once a fearsome dog-like guardian, Cerberus was turned into a tiny little puppy due to the miasma that Trillion exuded. Towards the path of the true ending, Cerberus is a playable character that fights Trillion. If you get his ending, Zeabolos blows up and becomes a ghost that advises for Cerberus. I didn't get to see any gameplay or events besides the ending for him, so nothing much to say.
Elma - The sickly, younger sister of Zeabolos is a playable character towards the path of the true ending. She takes on the role of an overlord and fights Trillion, of which the power from the ring that each overlord wears that connects to Zeabolos' power cured her of all her illnesses. For her ending, she becomes the great overlord and is said to be an incredible worker on domestic matters. She then expresses her feelings that she has always wanted to be Zeabolos' bride. WHAT?! I honestly didn't see that coming at all. But then she goes on to say that "she'll be happy whoever Zeabolos marries as long as he continues to praise her".
True Ending - Everyone has to die and you have to do very specific things. That is when all the power accumulated from all the overlords flow into Zeabolos where he regains power once again to thwart Trillion once and for all. After defeating Trillion, everyone is suddenly revived and each of them sacrifices a small portion of their souls instead of having Zeabolos give his entire soul to Faust. Everything goes back to normal, and yet everyone is a bit happier, healthier, and stronger.
Which ending did I get? None of them. I played through what I could and couldn't beat Trillion and didn't want to start over with a method I knew I could win with, but I simply did not want to invest anymore time into the game. I spent at least 30-40+ hours on the game without actually finishing it. I mainly wanted to get to know all the characters as best as I could. Overall, I really enjoyed the story and thought the writing for the game was great. The voice acting (for Japanese at least) was incredible and really brought out the personality of each character and their emotions beyond anything the graphics were doing. Gameplay wise, it's rather tedious and monotonous just to get to events and to the actual fights. I laughed a lot, cried a lot, and had some fun fights. I really enjoyed the game for what it was and thought it was quite unique, but it's not a game I could easily recommend due to its difficulty and tedious gameplay. But if you're still interested and don't have a PS Vita, the game is releasing this upcoming Monday on Steam/PC.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/451780/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)