Online Achievements

There is nothing I hate more than online achievements. These things are the bane to pretty much every completionist back from the Playstation era when you could get into Final Fantasy, collect every weapon, level every skill, get to lvl 99 and do all secrets. It was fun, you knew you completed everything and in the end you could brag for exactly this. The idea of a game or system that actually kept track of this and even advertised it online was awesome! Just think of the possibilities that your friends could know that YOU beat Ozma without help from Friendly Monsters!


So I try to play games and collect a gamerscore, I used to rent games just to see how bad some games are, but one thing I tend to notice a lot is these games require some form of Online play to collect these achievements. I think one of the best things I ever saw the Call of Duty series do, was not include ANY for their Online for Modern Warfare 1 and 2... but sadly Black Ops broke this tradition. Where they now force you to do co-op for so many missions in Zombies...

I tried to rent Brink... which of course had a lot of online achievements. Now let's bare in mind here, this game is fucking awful, it was designed to be a piece of garbage and the people who designed the game clearly never played a game in their life, because this could hardly be considered a game much less a chore for how awful it was. But I digress... The game's achievements were actually quite easy to get..... if you went online. And SINCE this game is as awful as it is, hey look at that... Not a single person plays it. So what does this mean? These achievements are now impossible to get, unless you know someone who also owns this game. Which I suppose would prove they are true friends since he's also willing to trudge through this complete shit fest of a game....* Point being, the online achievements are near-impossible now.**

I could probably point out a better example, but the few that come to mind still have an online, but to make an example... In 15 years, let's say I decided I want to play Assassins Creed 2. A game that focuses completely on Single Player, but.... for some stupid reason also has this tacked on Multiplayer which you can do what you can do in Single Player, except to people trying to hide from you. So I pop the game in, complete the game and then notice that hey.... 800 gamerscore.... wonder what these 200 that Im missing are... Oh hey, look at that... this shitty multiplayer that's tacked on? That's my missing gamerscore is from. Oh  wait... nobody plays this game, nobody has played it in 10 years. These 200 gamerscore are now impossible to get. What great game design.

What I just don't understand is, we managed to go from Atari all the way to the Playstation 2 without relying on Online Multiplayer whatsoever. And now these modes HAVE to be tacked on as if they prolong the life of the game. How about we just go back to actually putting EFFORT into games, instead of artificially prolonging the game with multiplayer which isn't content by competitive repetition. It just goes to show that these generations are losing their taste and using cheap tactics to entertain their audience.

Indie Games

When I was first thinking of writing an article on Indie Games, I was thinking "You know, if anything sucks about the industry; it's indie games." Then I realized that... games now-a-days are what suck in general and that the few Indies that I HAVE played were generally awesome: Dust, Bastion, Braid, Super Meat Boy. To me these games are EXACTLY what we need in this day in age with the garbage that publishers keep trying to shovel out to us like we're some cattle that just enjoy the same slop we get every day.

With the 40th Street Fighter that plays exactly like the previous game, the 10th Call of Duty game, all the copycat games, all the reboots... It's refreshing to see a game where the developers literally had to put their life savings into, they put 14 hours of every day, they lost their girlfriend, their child died of loneliness... Just so your game is released on time and what is the end-result? Quality.

We gamers generally have the best ideas for games. How many times do you say to yourself, "Man, if I could make a shooter, I'd do _____ and make ____ happen and---"?  Now imagine that actually HAPPENING and saying to yourself "Well, I gotta sell my car to make this happen". It just means that YOUR ideas will be put onto paper, YOUR ideas will drive you and NO ONE can tell you that they aren't good enough. This is something that I believe the industry desperately needs, in an era where graphics hail over content and everything is reused; afraid to take a chance.


What gets me is though, is that Xbox, Steam, and all these... really do a poor job advertising what could be an amazing game. And the fact that most Xbox Indie games are covered by all this garbage of Advertisements, screens, and just a really poor layout, it just shames me to see such an era of gaming where developers can bloom from nothing... are being hindered just to further advertise useless fucking DLC that no one should buy like Mass Effect 3 DLC with MORE GUNS, YAY AWESOME, GUNS. For example, Protect me, Knight is an Indie game with a ton of imagination where you protect a princess from a screen full of monsters. And level your characters further to battle. GOOD LUCK FINDING IT THOUGH.

My Collection

- NES -
Castlevania
Castlevania 2
Castlevania 3
Final Fantasy
Star Tropics

- SNES -
Earthbound
Chrono Trigger
Soul Blazer
Illusion of Gaia
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
Lufia 1
Final Fantasy III x 2
Zelda: Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Super Castlevania IV
Super Mario RPG
Terranigma
Secret of Mana

- PLAYSTATION -

Suikoden 1
Suikoden 2
Xenogears x2
Star Ocean: The Second Story
Final Fantasy 7
Brave Fencer Musashi
Final Fantasy 8
Final Fantasy 9
Legend of Dragoon
Final Fantasy Tactics
Metal Gear Solid
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Castlevania Chronicles
Vagrant Story
Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve 2
Lunar 1
Lunar 2
Arc the Lad Collection
Persona 2
Chrono Cross
Valkyrie Profile
SaGa Frontier 2
Alundra 2
Legend of Mana
Diablo

- PLAYSTATION 2 -

Suikoden 3
Suikoden 5
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
Valkyrie Profile 2
Xenosaga 1
Xenosaga 2
Xenosaga 3
Ys: Ark of Napishtim
Tales of the Abyss
Tales of Legendia
Wild Arms 3
Makai Kingdom
Phantom Brave
Grandia II
Fatal Frame 2
Disgaea 1
Disgaea 2
Soul Nomad
Odin Sphere
Ar Tonelico 1
Ar Tonelico 2 
Mana Khemia 2
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2
Shadow Hearts
Persona 4
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Shadow Hearts 2
Shadow Hearts 3
Atelier Iris


- WISHLIST - 
Breath of Fire 1 - 4
SMT: Devil Summoner


BLUE = COMPLETE IN BOX
RED = GREATEST HITS OR DISC ONLY
LIGHT BLUE = SEALED

My Collection ( Pictures )

Clannad Review ( Part Deux )

So we went over that Clannad, the first season was fairly disappointing. It was filled with tons of filler, half the characters were forgettable, and was a horrible successor to Kanon. So they go ahead and release the second season, something which... if it hadn't come, Clannad would have been a complete catastrophic failure. However, considering this is based on a Dating Simulator, it was clear the story didn't end where Clannad did, so it's clear that Clannad wasn't meant to end when it did, so this is by no means a savior chapter, but just a continuation.

So it starts off Nagisa getting past an illness which eventually makes her lose her chance to pass the 11th grade, and also lose out on being with Tomoya. Tomoya moves out of Nagisa's house and into his own house where they end up living with each other and he gets a job to pay for the place. Honestly, this is a very nice change of pace because it's kind of like showing the growth of a character; learning the new jobs, learning responsibility, watching their relationship grow.... all in exchange for every single side character that we knew. That's right, every single character is pretty much gone: Kyou, Ryou, Tomoyo, Ichinose... Forget you ever knew them cause you got about 2 episodes for them, which further cements what a waste of time their 'arcs' were in Season 1.

*SPOILERS ARE TO BE HAD*
*IF YOU WISH TO WATCH THIS. DO NOT READ*

So within a few episodes we find out that Nagisa and Tomoya are going to be getting married which eventually leads to her being pregnant.

Actually, I'm going to stop right there because this is something that kind of bugged me about this whole love. I always thought that the relationship they had was just going really slow; I never saw them kiss. They always just hung out like friends, she cooked for him. No cuddling, no kissing, no nothing....  And hey, she gets pregnant.

Wait what? They never kissed ONCE in the entire anime and she's pregnant which means they've been fucking. So me as a viewer feels kind of cheated--- afterall these are BASED off of a dating simulator so clearly it's a romance anime yet they leave out the kiss? That's pretty important if you ask me. But moving on.

Yes she's pregnant now. However Nagisa has been going on life with an illness which makes her weak. The illness has no name, no real description, it just shows up randomly, makes her sick, and... makes life suck. No doctor can cure it, no one knows what it is and... yup. It sucks.

Oh and another thing about these kinds of sicknesses in media? They kill. Yes, Nagisa dies during child birth and you can imagine how sad this is. You see, I came into this anime knowing it's sad and that it was much worse than Clannad. And knowing this, I figured this would happen and it's pretty deep. I definitely am already more interested in this season 10 times than the first season. In my opinion, compared to this... it failed catastrophically.  So Nagisa dies giving birth to their child Ushio, which promptly flashforwards 5 years.

Tomoya is in a deep depression and Nagisa's parents are raising Ushio while he pretty much suffers in deep depression. He works long hours, drinks and is slowly becoming his own father. Something that I kind of never mentioned. There's this thing about Tomoya and his father... he hates him and it's kind of hard to understand why. He kinda just tells him to shut up, yells at him, and is just a huge asshole to him even though his father just acts like a nice man... I never saw it.  But anyways, he's becoming his father and eventually the parents plan a vacation which is actually just them tricking Tomoya into watching her for a week and bonding with her which is planned beautifully.


*END SPOILERS*

I wont go into anymore detail but this season definitely saved the entire anime and it's just a shame that you have to sit through 24 episodes of absolute shit just to enjoy this and it ends really fucking sad too. However Clannad suffers from Japanese Ending Syndrome* where every anime ends like shit because apparently Japanese have no idea how to end an anime.... but that's always something to get over.




* I coined this term because seriously, every Anime ends like shit.

Capcom

Oh Capcom. You people are adorable in how you just keep trying. You try and try and try again, and for some reason people keep flocking back to you. It's kind of interesting if you ask me...  that people will continue to bash you, boycott you, rant about you.... and then you release another Street Fighter add-on that outsells the previous Street Fighter add-on. You KNOW this happens, you KNOW it pisses us off, yet you clearly do not care. It kind of puts a unique perspective on things because for so long were we under this impression that the consumer is your biggest concern*, like when we walk into Walmart, Target, Costco... and you want to return something that's outside the return date, you KNOW that if you complain hard enough, they will still take that return BECAUSE they want you to be happy so you'll continue to shop for them. We assume that a game developer will be the same way; we are the ones buying your game.


Not Capcom though. Capcom takes it a step forward, they deliberately do things in bad business just to make money. Of course they're TRYING to make money, I'm not saying they aren't. Afterall, Capcom is a business first and a..... friend... next? However all of this is pretty common sense now. This is all pretty much common knowledge that any person who knows something will tell you...  So where exactly am I going with this?

Well recently there was a survey for the worst Company in the world and I would like to put out there that, I believe the real candidate for this would either have to be: Capcom or Square Enix. Well, I suppose if this was just in the gaming world, I mean. And I'll get into Square Enix another time... this is devoted to Capcom. And I don't want this to be just a big long rant about how much I hate Capcom; I actually don't hate them... I just want to humor myself with how low this company has become.

Devil May Cry pretty much is a series I never really got into. The first game was kind of a big thing with how awesome the combat was, how cool Dante was, and how stylish everything was. It was a very unique game and it was a big thing. Capcom did something right for something that originally was nothing more than just a mistake considering it began was Resident Evil 4. And to me this game remains a classic and easily the best in the series. But one thing you need to understand about Devil May Cry is it's an arcade like fighter; it's story is paper thin, it's development is next-to-nothing, and it's pretty much just a show-off game. It has nothing to offer in terms of story... hell, if we were to take Devil May Cry 3 with the Vergil relationship to Dante, and then move onto Devil May Cry 1, you'd think the hidden potentional there for something real was completely missed as Neo Angelo** ( I think that was his name ) is just a mutated Vergil and you fight him like he's just some random enemy. There could have been something much bigger here.

But besides all that, they of course had to continue the story on.... so they made DMC2, 3 and eventually 4.

What I find funny about these games are just how.... poor the focus is. The second game literally shat all over everything the first had, so they decided on a prequel. Which is funny because to have a prequel just means that Capcom is fully aware that DMC had no where to go, so let's give him a deep backstory! And yeah... it kind of worked, but it was still not enough to make him interesting.... so they decided to give the game a new lead: Nero.

Now my point with this game actually has two sides: Capcom did a very good idea and at the same time did not. Letting Ninja Theory take care of their series pretty much gave Dante a fresh new start, giving him an actual personality and character to develop as right now he was just a cardboard cut-out. To start these new games with the same Dante would draw confusion thinking it's the same reality; it wouldn't work. However the fan reaction has been across the board negative. Even the original Devil May Cry producer hated the idea. And yet... Capcom doesn't care, they continue on. But this is small if you ask me.

Can anyone tell me if this series still exists? I mean really, I can see why people think they're trying to kill off Megaman because.... so far all he's done lately is get cancelled and appear in other games ( even as a mockery ). Just the way Capcom is handling this guy amazes me. I UNDERSTAND that the idea of MML3 on the 3DS is absolutely stupid; the handheld pretty much bombed and there's little potential to make their money back but clearly there IS demand for this game. I honestly do think the 100k petition was stupid since it was a Facebook petition, however it filled pretty quickly and still grows and I've heard plenty of people who wanted this game to come... Capcom there are other methods out there for your game.

But you don't care.

Street Fighter is pretty much what makes Capcom tick however. Within the last 5 years Capcom has made SF4 and Super SF4, SFxT, MvC3, UMvC3. And whats funny with all these games are they all do exactly what pisses us off: DLC on the disc, paid extra characters, and rerelease of the same exact game you purchased 60 dollars for with a few extra add-ons rendering your purchase completely inane. To me as a player, I am scared to purchase a fighter of theirs.... I was pretty big into MvC3 and now it's useless to me because no one is online because of UMvC3. SF4? Probably empty. Does Capcom care? Nah, because us fans just buy the next game... and with EVO out there with SF and MvC being the biggest things there, of course we're going to keep buying them. It's been around for so long, that it's imbedded into us and the community. And what gets me is... CAPCOM KNOWS THIS.
























I guess if I had to tl;dr this entire thing it would be:


Capcom knows you want their games. Capcom knows they can abuse you and your wallet. Capcom doesn't care else they would address this.... But they are still doing exactly what we hate.


*You know, cause without them they kinda wouldn't exist.

** Pardon me if I am inaccurate with this... it's been a long time.

Why Star Ocean 2 is the Best RPG Ever

So I'm just going to do you all a favor. I'm going to post a link to Amazon where you can purchase this game. If at the end of this review you haven't already purchased the game, you are a disgrace to the RPG community and to the human race; yes it is that serious.


Star Ocean: The Second Story ( PS1 )

Star Ocean: Second Evolution ( PSP )

There you go, I did all the dirty work for you. I solved the "But Romalia! This game is out of print, how am I suppose to play this! Well, you have two options: PSP which is like 10 dollars and PS1 which is like 20. So expense, availability, and access are already out of the question as excuses for purchasing this game. Now, unless you're one of those people who like... get welfare and you get JUST enough money to feed your 6 kids, you can stop here ( but honestly, I'd just starve one of those kids because this is a fun game ).


Anyways! Star Ocean 2. It's the sequel to the Enix game Star Ocean on the SNES which was never released in America. It follows the son of the characters: Claude who, well.... stubbornly decided to check out this anomaly on a planet which everyone kept screaming "Don't fucking go!", but he did anyways and it got him transported to this planet which he immediately meets your second main character: Rena. Rena happens to be the strange young magical girl of unknown origins.

Lemme just say, the worst part about this game is the first 30 minutes of it. Claude is an idiot, Rena is a cliche, and it's nothing but talk-talk-talk. So what I do is save RIGHT after leaving this area because it's pretty much where the fun begins. It suffers from, what I like to call, "Slow RPG Intro syndrome" where the first 30 minutes.... is just nothing but "OH MY GOD... JUST GET TO THE FUCKING POINT".

So skipping this, you start off.. and right away you notice something: The world music is fucking amazing. No seriously, this is easily the best world music I've ever heard of in any game. Listen for yourself:

The entire sound piece is one full piece of music. It doesn't repeat. And the more it goes on, the more epic it sounds. It's completely orchestrated... something I don't think I've ever seen in quality in any RPG. It's truly remarkable the amount of effort and quality that goes into this one song... Well, there's ALSO the 2nd world map music as well, which.... not as good, but still just as good in terms of effort.

So the battle system is pretty simple. It's an Action RPG which you hit X to attack, L1&2/R1&2 for skills. You choose any person in a team of four to control and everyone controls differently in terms of skills and attack patterns, and trust me.... One of the most fun aspects of this game is trying out different characters. What I love most about this battle system is it's not TRYING to be complicated, it's literally just mashing X and watching your character just destroy everything. Later in the game, you could equip Bunny shoes to run 5 times faster and just do laps around the enemies... It's so fun.


Now I mentioned 'trying out different characters' because this game is unique in that each time you play you can get different characters. For starters, I ALSO said "two main characters", because you can either have Claude as the main character or Rena. Both stories play out relatively the same, a handful of cutscenes are different... but who you choose decides on what characters will join you later on: Rena gets you Dias the swordsman and Claude gets you Leon the magician. But aside from that you also do private actions which can get you Ashton or Opera, assuming you do them in the right order, or if you visit a town early enough you'll get Precis instead of Bowman. And if you get Opera, you can get her boyfriend Ernest*. But each time you play, you have so many different methods of obtaining different characters that it's a different experience each time you play!

Skills make a HUGE part of the game. They alter how your character grows, like for example in the picture above 'Functionality' raises your STR, DEX, AGL, and INT for 20 levels, and below those you gain Combat Skills which affect the way your character behaves in combat: Feinting, Parrying, Casting faster, Cancelling attacks, Hitting weak spots for more damage. Each time you level up you gain Skill points which can go to any of these ( 40ish ) skills, and how you decide to accumulate will decide how your character grows. And IF you know what you're doing, you can break the game and DESTROY your enemies with these skills.

Something else skills give you: Item Creation commands. And these things are what make the game fun: Art, Customize, Metalwork, Compounding, Alchemy, Survival, Machinery, etc. They ALL help you if you use them correctly and once again, can help break the game. For example, before you're even 20% done with the game, you can make a weapon with about 1099 attack ( you can buy a weapon with about 150 ), which will pretty much one-shot every enemy and some bosses til near the end of the game. And this is how you get your weapons ( and best weapons ) for all your characters... from Minerals which you VERY easily ( for the most part ) obtain.


Leveling in this game so fun. You have 255 levels and by the time you beat the game, you'll be around level 120, which opens up a bonus dungeon with enemies MUCH harder than you've ever fought before. Each level in the bonus dungeon has higher level of difficulty much higher than the last one and as you progress, you start to grow levels much and much quicker while also obtaining godlke armor to pimp your characters out with. Each time you finish a level in this, you truly feel like you've accomplished something since each level contains a puzzle and challenge to get through them. I would say this is probably half of the games entertainment right here.

Now you might be saying... "Wow, so far you've said nothing but how easy this game is to break. Where's the challenge?", which is fair... this game is veeeery easily broken**, however with a simple private action, you can make the final boss harder than the boss of the bonus dungeon BY FAR, and even your best armors and weapons will still be a huge challenge.



Now if at this point you haven't already ordered the game. I apologize for your tastes being so awful, because what I just described to you was the best RPG. And what's funny was, I didn't even MENTION the story***, because honestly, when an RPG is already this fun without mention of a story, you're in for a ride and it's definitely something that I believe no one should ever pass up. I stumbled on this game by complete accident, it was purchased on a whim and I was completely hooked from Day 1.

The game was re-released on PSP. The translations are better****, the combat was changed a bit, voice overs were added, and a character was added. Honestly, I think the original was better, but I still enjoyed the PSP port. So do yourself a favor and help yourself to either one of them; you will thank me.


* Though I only got him once. I honestly think he's useless.

** IF you know what you're doing. If you DON'T know what you're doing, then you will very easily miss a lot and the game will be very challenging.

*** The Story actually kind of sucks... Haha

**** The Translations might be better but half of them felt completely needless and unnecessary.

Gurren Lagann Review

So like usual, this review will have spoilers. If you don't like spoilers, then quit reading reviews. Because it's kind of stupid to read someones opinion of an anime without going into detail of why they like it or don't like it. But that is neither here nor there. Let's jump right into this!

So Gurren Lagann. I've heard a lot about this and like usual, I ignored it BECAUSE people wouldn't shut up about it. It's kind of strange how the natural reaction to popularity is to go the other direction, it does this with music, video games, movies, tv shows... With enough popularity, it's no surprise people hate Obama!*, however work has been extremely boring and during my down time, I am able to pull up some Youtube and I decided, rather than search for something, I'll just watch this. And so I did... and I have to say, I can see why people enjoy this show.

The story centers about two people:

Kamina

This guy is easily what makes the anime interesting. He is the guy you want to be. He leads Team Gurren and managed to help break out of the underground caves with his little brother and in doing so hi-jacked an enemy mecha so he can fight back. Kamina pretty much embodies hope, bravery, and dreams. And by embody, I mean these three words describe him perfectly. That's all he does is dream, hope, and achieves these with his bravery. His entire philosophy is 'if there's a small chance of it happening, i'll make it happen' and despite all odds of failure, he will always succeed. He never runs from a fight, he never backs down a challenge, and he refuses to ever admit defeat. And of course, he has his catch phrases of "Just who the hell do you think I am?" and a few others... Now with all this said, you'd ASSUME with a character like this, there's no WAY there's any bad in this anime.

I'm going to say this once more. SPOILERS. <spoiler>

Well, he kinda dies 1/3 of the way through the anime. Something that... to me... ruined pretty much all motivation of continuing considering he pretty much held the entire show together

</spoiler>

Simon

Pronounced 'Sih'mohn', this is Kamina's younger brother. And my god is he just one big trope for half the anime. He's the "I don't have the courage" trope. He spends literally half the anime doubting himself, worrying, whining, and just plain getting in the way. It's because of Kamina's long morale boosting speeches does Simon ever do anything, and right after he'll just revert back to the way he was; just getting in the way. To sum him up in the first half, it would be "Big bro. I'm scared!", if it weren't for Kamina's incredible charisma. This kid, by himself, would make me turn the anime off. He was just that annoying.

<spoiler>

So after Kamina dies, Simon takes over as the lead of Team Gurren and also the main character of the anime. So, OF COURSE, he has to drop this entire whiny attitude, cause even the writers are aware that we're annoyed of this shit. So what do they do? Give us 4 more episodes of even whinier and more self-loathing shit where he wallows in self pity over Kamina's death. And FINALLY gets over it, with like... little reason other than just "Yea, ok, I'm over it."**

</spoiler>

7 years later, he's now Kamina's age. Which pretty much takes all those tropes we just had to deal with and throw them out the window thankfully, and he eventually grows into an interesting character! Truthfully, he almost feels like a completely new character the way he COMPLETELY reverted his entire personality after this. And let's just say, it's very nice to see this.... 

There are two others who the story centers around: Nia and Yoko. But to give an analysis on these two would just be silly because they're such underdeveloped characters that you really would be wasting your time. Honestly, you could just look at a picture of the two and know exactly what and who they are: 

Yoko wears extremely revealing clothes and wields a huge gun. Her personality is pretty shallow and that's about it.

Nia is the sweetest person in the world and everyone loves her. She isn't knowledgeable, but this doesn't stop her from trying. And she has long hair....

To be fair, I liked Nia. She just came out of no where and kind of helped Simon grow as a character, and without her.... I feel Simon would have been completely empty and pointless to the anime. But Nia's character is just so underdeveloped that I have a hard time growing attached to her outside of just sympathy. And that's pretty disappointing considering I DO like her a lot.

< SPOILERS >

To sum up Gurren Lagann, it's pretty much just that story you had with your friend when you were 13 years old, playing with your action figures. You kept trying to make everything more interesting by one-upping everything your friend did. The entire story is just that, "You know what would be awesome is if the characters were like... these underground people and like.... they busted out!"

"Yeah! And then these people in big machines attack them. And they STEAL it from them! Like, almost effortlessly!"

"Oh my god, yeah. And then they combine these machines and become even stronger!"

"And then we take over an even BIGGER machine and it becomes their base!"

"AND THEN THE MOON IS ABOUT TO CRASH INTO THE PLANET AND THEY USE THOSE MACHINES TO STOP IT"

"Yeah and they stop the galaxy from invading with even BIGGER machines"

"YEAH AND THEN THEY BECOME AS BIG AS THE GALAXY AND FIGHT AGAINST THE OTHER MECHA AS BIG AS THE GALAXY AND THROW GALAXIES AT EACH OTHER"

< /SPOILER >

Gurren Lagann is pretty much an anime where ANYTHING can happen for almost no reason. It happens because it's really cool and we like cool. Like, mechas combining in ways that make no sense and healing themselves, mechas powering just from motivation, mechas growing in power just because you just happen to be more confident in yourself, growing technologically more advanced within mere days of just crawling out of the ground, etc. And this is pretty much why the reason the anime works. It WANTS to be a cliche. It WANTS to yell out these awesome names of Attacking Moves that are completely silly, but gets the job done.

This entire anime sounds like something a child thought up, and after episode 17, you start to notice that the tone of the anime grows too loud and it starts to go from Hope to Absurd and it goes downhill. I guess your suspense of disbelief stops ignoring the flaws and starts saying "Okay seriously, this is just going too far" and I have to say.... the ending of it all was just... terrible. And for an anime that honestly goes out of its way to be cliche, I'm not surprised.

All-in-all, I liked it  but I definitely wouldn't rewatch it. If you happen to have the time, nothing to watch, and feel like wasting some time, I'd definitely put it on. It's pretty fun.

Pokemon Creepypasta: Inadequate Gold

Been working on this for a week or so. Give it a watch. It's a completely true story!

Clannad Review

Before I get into this. I want to throw this note out there; this is ONLY for Season 1. After Story is going to be a completely separate review. There is a reason I'm doing this as well which I will get to when I get to it.

Key anime are usually something that I enjoy more than others. They have a unique style of storytelling, they are handled in a way that the one watching can't expect what would happen what with supernatural coming into play like time travel and magic. But like I mentioned, it's handled in a way that it's not ABOUT the supernatural... it just happens to be involved. Like for instance, a character could find a bracelet which is known for causing unusual things to happen. They find it and put it on and all of a sudden, they start hearing voices and altering stuff... but that's about it. It doesn't get involved much than that. Because the anime is more about the story of just them living their lives rather than the Supernatural occurring around them.

The way Key anime usually works is: Each character has an Arc. You'll have a few set of unique characters which are introduced in episode 1, sometimes episode 2. Each of these characters will be unique in some way and throughout the anime you'll be in suspense to figure out just what is up with these characters. They'll all act something different than usual from everyone else, give off small hints to their true nature, and in the end it all comes together. It's kind of Haruhi, where the three friends were an Esper, Alien, and Time Traveller.. You didn't find these out  until the end but it all eventually makes sense when it happens.

Now the reason I felt this one was particularly suited for a review was because this one was the odd-man out for the entire patterns these anime generally go on. And for me to figure out a way to explain what I mean might be a tad bit difficult since.... well, to be put it simply; I think Clannad was handled.... extremely poorly.
I hate to throw out my opinion of something so early in a review, kind of destroying interest of what the conclusion will ultimately be, but this is my review. Get over it.

Now when it comes to the characters, you got:

Nagisa: The female love interest to the main character. She's shy, weak, a crybaby, a very sweet girl. I like Nagisa a lot. She reminds me of the perfect girlfriend to have. She doesn't care about little things and just takes life on day by day. She's been held back a grade because she's been sick so long that she fell behind in school. All she wants to do is to have a Drama class and make plays.

Tomoya: The main character. Now let me say, Key's main characters are pretty much the same guy over and over. They're all confused, silly, amnesiac, and kind of self-centered. Tomoya takes no exception to this rule. I think of all the main characters throughout the series, Tomoya might be my 2nd favorite? It's kind of hard to put them all on a scale when they're all the same, pretty much. I like him though.

Kyou: She is kind of... Tomoya's best female friend. Pardon me if my information is wrong, but I think these two have been friends for quite a while and she kind of looks up to Tomoya. She's pretty rash and protective.  I think she's probably the second most interesting female character in the anime. If Nagisa wasn't Tomoya's obvious love-interest. I'd like her to be...

Tomoyo: Tomoyo kind of just... is there. I never understood the point of Tomoyo. She reminds me an awful lot of Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh. But only because they're both very athletic, strong, and loves animals. About that loves animals part, she tends to show up dressed as a bear... this is kind of unexplained...  I really don't think she has much point to the anime outside of kicking Tomoya's friends ass for hitting on her and challenging her.

Ichinose: She's smart and can't play the violin.

That's about the extent of her.

Ibuki: I cannot stand this little girl. She likes starfish and thinks they're the most amazing thing ever. She uses them as invitations to her sisters wedding. She's so boring and stupid and serves no purpose. She's not really even a friend to anyone outside of them pitying her for trying so desperately to get people to come to this wedding.

You see, the first problem this anime has is the characters. To compare it to previous installments, the arcs "supernaturality" are almost non-existant. They're just small little stories which even have trouble holding their water in being called stories... because they're just so rushed and uninteresting that the entire anime would be unchanged without them. But this is something rather interesting because, like I said earlier about Ibuki and her starfish, she's the ONLY PERSON in the entire anime with a hint of Supernatural surrounding her, which is a shame because she's such an annoying character in the first place. I get this hunch that she was intended to be this adorable character which I'm suppose to empathize with... but she's just not. She's not interesting.

Aside from Ibuki though, the story centers almost TOO much on Nagisa, like normally the idea is to kind of give you a bunch of options for what the main character would like as an interest. As the roots of these anime are based off of dating simulators.... and they even attempt to make it a plot element; who he will end up with. But I kind of assumed it would be the girl who 80% of the anime is based off of. How surprised I was when I found out I was right.

The second problem the anime faces is the point of it all. What was the point of the anime? You see throughout the entire season(s), there's always this story going on about this little girl whose the last person in the world who is trying to build a robot because... well, she can. And this robot is the only thing  to keep her company in this world. At first this entire story was very interesting to me, and eventually turns into the play that Nagisa wants to put on. And as for the first season, this entire subplot is rendered pretty inane.



The overall feeling I got from this entire anime was that it couldn't take itself seriously. You see, Kanon and Air both had it's fair share of goofiness which helped tell the story and keep you interested, but Clannad kind of takes it to the next level where almost entire episodes are brought to this level of goofiness that it wastes time that could have been used to develop characters or even make boring characters ( Tomoyo, Ichinose ) even more interesting than they were. Ultimately, I had a VERY hard time watching this completely, and it was pretty much the the 2nd season that motivated me to continue on, which I will get onto next.

Pokemon Cards

So lately I've been in a real pokemon mood lately. I've been working on this creepypasta, I picked up Pokemon Platinum, and I've been researching new and old glitches which were completely unknown to me. So things have been really interesting to me... so I began to reflect on my past of Pokemon and the greatest parts of them. Looking back on all the games and stuff relating to said game; I'd have to say Pokemon cards were probably the crowning moment of Pokemon... or to be specific, Generation 1 of Pokemon.

The awesome thing about Pokemon cards were actually the things that you didn't know about them. Like when I was a kid, the Japanese cards, Ancient Mew, Charizard, and Gen. 2 were probably the biggest things in Cards. Hell, I remember at one point in time, I went to a Toys-R-Us during a Pokemon convention and I traded.... something... for a Southern Island Togepi. Something that was very rare and very valuable ( back in the day ), and that to me was very exciting; you didn't run into these cards, you didn't know where they came from and it was something special to have them in your possession.

My most valuable cards I have now are probably Zapdos, Allakhazam, and Ancient Mew.... Looking back on it, I really don't have very many holofoils as this all happened when I was in 6th grade. It's a shame too because as I reflect on these things, trading and collecting these cards was probably the most fun I've had. It even got me slightly interested in Magic the Gathering.

It's kind of a shame that the fad ended so quickly. With the saturation of Gym cards, Diamond and Pearl, and whatever other decks that came along; once the original series was ousted, I officially quit caring about the trading card game. I remember going to the mall one day and Pokemon Cards were like... 1.99 a pack, and I was like "Oh shit! What a deal!", so I decided to buy a pack and sure enough I got a Holographic Nintetails; this was from the original deck... EXCEPT it had a giant "Second Edition" on the lower left. This pretty much cemented in my head that this entire game was dead to me. I could no longer collect the original decks and considering the newer decks were not that cared for; they were worthless. This was a horrible day.

I remember my very first Pokemon booster pack. I got a Hitmonchan from it... I remember back in these days, finding an actual store that sold cards was almost impossible. I had to convince my parents to drive 50 miles north to some mall for, not a Booster pack, but a Deck Starter kit ( the ones that contained a Holofoil, a bunch of cards and energy ). To my knowledge only ONE store ever sold them, and they wanted like 5 bucks a pack for them. My parents were always broke so I never had the opportunity to get them...

Sometimes I have the urge when I'm shopping around at Walmart to just pick up a pack and see what I get. I know that I'll probably end up being disappointed, I'll get some worthless holographic card vs a more rare worthless holographic card. And I'll just get some nostalgic depression afterwards, kind of like I am now. But you know what? I think it's still kind of cool that the card game is going on. Something that I enjoyed as a child can be enjoyed by other children and hopefully the game will become popular again. I know it's unlikely... but anything to revive my old childhood hobby would make me really happy once again.

My Diablo 3 Review

So Diablo 3 has been out for a while and I was crazy enough to preorder the game about.... a year in advance before any one else ( my friend worked there and confirmed this ). Now I'm gonna go out on a limb and let the lot of you know, I NEVER pre-order anything. I think it's a stupid waste of time, it's going to be there and having a piece of paper that says you're entitled to it just seems like some unneeded self-satisfying busywork. So for me to pre-order this tells you how excited I was to play this game.

Now what's funny about Diablo 3 is, considering how excited I was for it... I KNEW there was no way that it could ever compare to Diablo 2. Diablo 2 was THE perfect RPG. It was pristine upon release and just got better with version updates and expansion release. I remember the days when you could buy an inventory full of Hex Small Charms and duo Amazon and Barbarians; this was what make Diablo great. So I had to come into this game with little expectations; I already had perfect. For anyone to disagree with this, you either got into Diablo 2 VERY late or you just don't like RPGs.

So what was my reaction to finally playing this game?

Bitter.

I mean, I knew what I was getting myself into. I can get over the removal of stats, I can get over the lack of skill trees, I can even get over the lack of Rune Words.... but for how long this game was on the stove, it could not feel any less finished, like I couldn't tell you what took so long for this game to come out considering how half-assed everything seems. And what's funny was it wasn't even released complete. But let's not jump right into my opinion.

My first impression of Diablo 3 were actually pretty good. You start off in a town next to the old Tristram and investigate a meteor crashing right on top of the old Sanctuary from the first Diablo game. The graphics were pretty good, the gameplay is spectacular with its phsyics; each swing feels powerful and it never gets old when attacking monsters. And the interface of the game is far superior to the older games. So yes this game DOES have it's higher points to it.

Act 1 was probably the best act though. as it felt the most finished... but it's "finished" parts are kind of what bugs me about Act 1. Let me explain, Tristam and the Sanctuary were kind of redesigned, and by kind of I mean... completely. Like the walk to Adria's hut was, rather than a small bridge past a small river was changed to a 2 mile hike past a huge river and into this cave system which was FAR out of Tristam. Tristam no longer looks the same, the only similarities are the well and.... well that's about it. 

I mean, I can kind of understand why they would do this but it also contradicts your source material, even Diablo 2 was faithful to the source material for the most part. Now it looks like a completely different town with a completely different Sanctuary; the original had a blue tint to it... now it's dark red and looks NOTHING like the original. It's a small gripe, but I excused it.

Okay so now we have the stats and bonuses to weapons. This is something that kind of prevented me from getting attached to the game. You see in Diablo 2, I ALWAYS played as the Sorceress. She was always my favorite to play as, she teleported with little cost, did great AoE. So clearly I'd choose the Wizard in ths game.... THE PROBLEM is the Wizard's only stat is INT and damage+, which is fairly boring. Hell, in Diablo 2 I had Sorc Skill+, Faster Cast Rate, Mana regen, Resistances, Lower enemy resistances.... 

Yeah, a few of those are present in this game, but it's no where on the same level as 2. It feels like Im forced to just take the INT and HOPE that a second stat is attached to it. Which is kind of easy to find because you also have the Auction House, which in my opinion was a great addition and a huge flaw to the game. I think the Auction House actually might contradict the entire point of Diablo 3 which is to FIND loot. But anyways, I digress on that point...  Finding loot in this game was Too Easy and Too Hard all at the same time.

You see, when leveling my Wizard I notice that on bosses I was doing SEVERELY low damage and dying pretty hard and this is because of my previous point; there are next to no stats on these weapons and armor you find. And with the lack of stats to put into whatever you want, you cannot alter the damage you do on the base. So what does this mean? I can either: Kill the same few enemies and hope for something or I can pay a piddly amount of gold for something with the level capped amount of Intelligence. Yeah, this is where the Too Easy comes in, because there are PLENTY of these items available which all benefit you the same. 

The problem with this is... Diablo as a series is kind of like a casino. You kill the enemies and get a chance at getting the jackpot ( Uniques or Rares ). But in this game, I don't think I EVER found a piece of armor or anything that benefited me because I always found better at the Auction House. This lottery has become much harder to work because Blizzard made it next to impossible to find anything so their Auction House works in their favor; they WANT you to abuse it because it eventually means more REAL money Transactions later on. So stat scaling is unfair, drop rates are unfair, and even the gold is hard to come by.

The story. This is probably what turned me off the most. And this part is going to contain some spoilers. But if you're reading a review for a game and not expecting spoilers, well then you're an idiot. You see, the story is just lacking all over the place, and I'm not sure if I want to explain why it sucks or just list everything that was just poorly conceived. So instead I'll just list my three biggest complaints ( off the top of my head ):

1. Tyrael: Okay, so that meteor I was talking about? That was Tyrael. And I thought this was actually pretty badass. Tyrael's back after the Worldstone was destroyed. What happened to him? Where has he been all this time?

Well... I'm not sure if this was even answered because.... well, I was so bored with the guy I kinda stopped caring. You see, what made Tyrael so badass in Diablo 2 was just how we spoke and how looked. He LOOKED like you don't wanna fuck with him. He was an Angel with Wings bigger than Boeing 777, he glowed white and his voice echoed like he couldn't give a shit to speak to a puny mortal like you.

Now he's some black guy who doesn't really do anything but stand there and tell you what needs to be done. I don't know if this guy is suppose to replace Cain ( I kind of think Adria is actually ) but my god he just is out of place now.  His entire purpose was just to warn us. Got it. Warned. Why are you still here?

2. The Black Soulstone: So this random sorcerer like guy just so happens to have an Anti-Soulstone which just so happens to absorb evil souls, contain them, and destroy them and all evil all at once.

Is this... not just the laziest writing? I really don't have much to say about this except this is stupidest thing in Diablo history.

Image of Belial

3. Belial/Azmodean: So these two were supposed to be the biggest badasses in Hell. You see these two tricked Diablo, Mephisto, and Baal all out of hell and waged war on all of Hell to be rulers. These guys were amazing. This guy was suppose to rule this desert nation with an iron fist... people were scared of him, towns were all on fire because of these guys. They were in the heart of the storm.

I killed Belial in SECONDS. I'm not even sure this guy touched me, he was so pathetic.  And my god did he look stupid.

Jared from ScrewAttack said it the best: "Is there a way to turn this game off of Baby difficulty?"

The story is just so stupid. It feels so rushed and forced. I wish I could throw some metaphor and elaborate just how I came to this conclusion but... no, the story is just flat out stupid. I mean, it was like Blizzard worked on act 1 for the first 5 years of development and finally said "Oh shit, this game needs to come out sometime this year, we gotta do the remaining acts!"

In my opinion, all this game did was make me want to play Diablo 2 more.

Introduction

So true to my word, I decided to make my own Blogger, following Kaz's footsteps. Truly he inspred me to do good things and good things I shall provide. But what will I do? Reviews? Rants? Maybe even go in depth into my mind? I don't know but I'll figure something out.

So to start things off, I just want to say I want to try new things and I definitely want feedback from you. You know who you are. So make sure you view daily because it's definitely going to be updated as often as I can.