#people really like my samples 😑

[kohakuhibiki]

Tout ce que j'aurais a demander à mon public absent, maintenant que j'ai de la visite dans mon logis, que faisiez vous quand moi, en mon absence, un certain chroniqueur (qui shoot dans toué directions) et un certain avocat (qui lui aussi shoot dans toué directions, malgré que tsé t'aurais pu juste shoulder pat le gars et lui rappeler les "délais" à la place de le grisonner, mais tsé j'connais pas toute l'affaire, vous non plus d'ailleurs messieurs et vous servez le thé en mon absence? Mais là? Anyways cashing off people's affairs (no, not like that) is always rentable, I mean...👀, Mais en prenant l'affaire t'as probablement juste overpressured some dude et scrappé la carrière (ou propulsé le layered grift si y joue comme ça(he should and must tho) d'un autre dude, come c'mon)

[demonfox38]

Completed - Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete

Oh, man. You guys remember playing video games? And not working all the time? I did that for once!

Quick question—have you ever watched "The Princess Bride"?

I'm assuming there's a good chance that you have. It's a somewhat popular cult film known for its lighthearted narrative style and trope-setting lines. Even when it gets dark, it remains pretty whimsical, which is a reason a lot of people are attracted to it. It's a perfectly fine movie! And yet, I literally cannot sit through the whole damn film without getting drunk. I can maybe manage 20-30 minutes at a time before the saccharine levels build up too much and I have to shut it off.

Is it unreasonable? Absolutely.

Is it how I feel about "Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete"? Yeah. Pretty much.

I managed to pick up a copy of this game in an actual store prior to, well, everything vile in 2020 happening. (If you're in the Des Moines area—the Southgate Shopping Center location for "Jay's CD & Hobby" happens to be where I found this. They're priced competitively compared to PriceCharting.com figures, for what that's worth!) This RPG has been on my list to get around to for quite a bit of time, and I try my darnedest to get physical copies where I can. The nice thing about the release I got was that it had a "Making of" disc that included information on the developers and translators for this game. It's a lovely feature, so if you're interested in it, you should totally check it out. There's also a music CD and a cloth map in this release as well, which is an interesting offering. It's nice that the publisher Working Designs really cared about this game. It seems like they had a bit of a family and friends operation going on, at least on the American side of the house. Makes it hard for me to pick on them.

"Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete" is the remake of the Sega CD game "Lunar: The Silver Star." Both games revolve around Alex Noa, Dragonmaster enthusiast and aspirer, and his adopted sister / love interest Luna. (Yeah, it's one of those.) As party members pile up and the plot progresses, a mystery around the previous Dragonmaster and the disappearance of the planet's goddess Althena emerges. Childish ambition gets serious, and the fate of the planet falls on the shoulders of five squabbling dorks. And I do mean that in a very nice way.

The primary draw of this particular remake involves significant plot restructures, as well as animated cutscenes, voice acting, and a whole damn musical solo by the heroine. Ya see, in the original release of "Lunar: The Silver Star", Luna gets basically dumped off at some docks, only re-entering the plot upon her kidnapping. "Silver Star Story Complete" does her the favor of not only gracing her with a song of her own, but allowing her to tag along with the party for that gap in time, developing her relationship with Alex, his friends, and most importantly, the audience. Good call. Good call.

From what I've seen in the developer documentation and IMDB listings, Working Designs did their best to try and keep as many of the voice actors from the Sega CD release as possible. (Granted, that was, like, 4 people, but it's nice they went to the effort.) The voice acting itself is okay. Of the time. There's really only one nitpick I can make here, and it has to do with a very flat line read that Mia's voice actress has for casting spells. Like, it's "Summon elemental powers 😑." Just like that. The emoji is built in. Completely devoid of enthusiasm. Otherwise, everybody's doing their best to keep lip synced and in character. It's a bit of its time, but it's fine.

Also—I suspect there may be a programming flaw based on audio sample retrieval. I had a soft lock with the game when it failed to load that particular line in one battle, and the game just refused to continue without that being played. There really needed to be a timeout for that function.

In addition to vocal work, the game has a plethora of animated cutscenes. Like the voice acting, their style and production are very of their time. Mostly, digitally redrawn from hand-drawn cells and processed with Quicktime/Adobe Premiere. It's not the highest quality animation ever, but for how much is there and the budget these developers had, I think they've aged well enough. There are some 3D models in the mix that aren't particularly great, but at least they didn't put their whole stock into using them, either. It's more in the Rough Draft studios style where they used it for machines or large buildings.

There's a lot of side mouths going on, though. Might drive a few people nuts.

Finally, the game's music has been updated. Of note are the themes "Wings" and "Wind Nocturne," which both feature actual goddamn singing. Between these two, "Wind Nocturne" is genuinely the better song, particularly in English. (The Japanese lyrics for this song are just too on the nose, especially if you know where the plot is going.) "Wings" is okay, I guess. I don't like it because of how tepid it is, especially compared to the Sega CD's "Fighting Through the Darkness." Like, "Wings" is more complex in terms of musical structure, sure. It's a crime to lose the drive and energy from "Fighting Through the Darkness," though.

The rest of the music? Eh. Fine. C. Nothing I'm going to be downloading. Not like "FIGHTING THROUGH THE DARKNESS! ALL IS EVIL, STILL WE MUST PRESS ON—"

Hey. Liking cheese is a part of getting through this game. And the translation is very loose and cheesy. Naughty, too. It reminds me of the days when you could theoretically trick one's parents into buying a hyper sexualized or violent anime at a Suncoast. Not that I did. The nearest Suncoast to me was in Sioux Falls. The best I could pull off was hanging around old Geocities and Tripod sites, trying to figure out what was censored out of the English releases of "Sailor Moon" and "Tenchi Muyo." Oh, and the one time IFC was airing the 1980s "Vampire Hunter D" movie. (Look—for as much as American TV is censored, you will remember the times you saw boobs on air.)

Was that enough dated references for you?

Being dated is a bit of a problem with "Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete." Even as a revamp, the best portions of this game are all easily obtained with either a visit to YouTube or The Spriter's Resource. I mean, bam. Motivation for bromide hunting is literally gone that quick. (Well, unless you're a completionist, I guess.) Not that the game's developers could have predicted the rise of YouTube, but the company mentions its own website in its documents. It was on the beginning edge of the Internet's rise to common use and power, and unfortunately, that same tool can easily share the best parts of the game without the game itself. (Okay, the game itself, too. Let's not pretend to be naïve about that.) It's just something to consider when deciding whether or not to play a game or if you plan on building a game of your own. The game itself has to be good, you know? It can't just be about flashy trappings anymore.

Also, as you may have sussed out, the game's target audience is pervy teenage boys. You know how people today get creeped out by Ariel and Jasmine's ages? The whole emphasis on them being sixteen and being in questionably inappropriate attire/situations for their ages? That problem's here too, but with a fifteen-year-old wearing what may only be erotic to magical clowns getting her brain scrambled into simultaneous ultimate power and complete submission to the villain. Yep. Yep. There's your warning!

The actual game portion of this game was the main reason I struggled wanting to continue playing it. When it's behaving, it's a vanilla turn-based RPG. Keynote: behaving. Several dungeons like to throw either restrictions or status ailments at you. This can be as benign as messing with player controls. It can also include robbing HP, MP, or entire party members as it sees fit. Even the last dungeon has two floors where it inflicts the party with random sleeping, which effectively locks you out of using two party members at the beginning of each battle at random (and possibly, them getting killed if they are targeted for an attack.) And yes, this does persist into a boss fight!

What really pissed me off about this game was something I learned completely on accident. See, I'm a somewhat regular visitor to The Cutting Room Floor. I like learning about what has been changed between various versions of a game, as well as what was intended to be buried by the developers. I know I have no way to prove this, but I accidentally ended up on the "Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete (Playstation)" page by clicking on the "random page" option. (I was hunting for dirt on "Lupin the Third" games at the time and got bored.) And. Well. Why don't you go ahead and scroll down to those enemy statistics and get back to me?

Oh! And the bosses scale to your level! Isn't that nice?

The stat fuckery in this game bit me the hardest for two bosses in particular. I only managed to get past the Vile Crustacean through item abuse, as the party healer Jessica just can't heal enough to compensate for the damage you are taking at that point. (It's like healing 40 points vs. taking 60.) Also, unless you are forewarned well before that fight happens, you're not going to be able to load up two rejoining party members with healing items so that they can actually help in the fight. So, enjoy that.  The other one was the dog pair in the volcano (I think Bronze Dogs?). Not that they were the worst, but you get hard locked into that dungeon, so good luck if you run out of items.

I should also mention being frustrated with the menuing in this game. For some reason, it wants to default your first action on getting into a battle after booting the game to AI. And no. No. That AI? A wasteful parasite. Keep this game on manual at all times.

Also, have fun switching items around when your characters have a full inventory and want to slap on that nice, shiny bracelet you just picked up. I suppose I can't get too mad about the inventory situation because this is likely a remnant of an era where you had exceedingly limited memory for unique item storage. I.E., shit was probably in literal stacks or a hard-coded block. But, it's still annoying to work around.

Also, at the risk of spoilers—did you read on that TCRF page about what the programmers did to make sure that the player never got rid of Alex's Ocarina? That's the kind of hacky crap I'd expect out of freshmen programmers. Key item inventories exist for a reason, you know.

I think I played this game at the wrong time of my life. Not that I could have played it at either variants' original release time, but this was probably a game I should have tackled when I was 16-22 years old. Like, in high school or college. I was trying to use this game to ease back into playing longer video games again. (Working from home for six months fucked with my ability to long-term plan. Also, I spent several days working 14+ hours coding forms in July.) So, my patience for it just wasn't there.

Like, obviously, there are good parts to this game and good-hearted people behind it. (Ya know. Pervy shit aside.) I really liked party healer Jessica in particular. It's always nice to have a cleric that has the physical strength to hit shit until it stops moving. Even if the game is firmly locked in the 90s, that was a pretty fine decade. Probably the best one I've known. So, it's not the story or the older nature of the game that put me off, really. It just comes down to not having patience for a game that wants to drag things out.

I mean, I'm the first one to say not to give up on "Tales of Symphonia" until you meet Zelos Wilder. This game is kind of like that, but that point being hitting Disc 2 of 2.

I do anticipate on getting to "Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete" at some point. Might not be right away. I need a breather. But, I'm hoping my reaction to it will be like how I felt about "Shining Force 2" in comparison to "Shining Force." Hope's gotta spring up, right? Even when the world's screwed.

And no. 🙂 I do not anticipate on playing "Lunar: Dragon Song." 🙂 I saw a speedrun of that. 🙂 I'm good.

[keepitupkei]

12. 11. 2021

Wow has it really been 12 days since I have posted. Yes the hell it has Kei. I know I have to get it together!! But UPDATE. I’m about to quit my job cause them MFers can really catch my hands. I don’t like incompetent lazy people. The people at my job are just lazy as hell, no lie. There’s only like 3 of us out of 9 that does the work.

Okay you know what Storytime Y’all one is over due for y’all and I’m about to blast everyone’s toe off. 😂🤣

… And scene.

So this past Thursday, one person didn’t come in and I’m not holding that over her head cause everyone needs a day off and I had Friday off so I didn’t give a damn. So boom she’s off and now it’s down to 8 of us. This is girl mhmm names or no names. 🤔🤔 Tuh fine no names I won’t be a petty bish. 😁 but she constantly stays on her phone all day and barely does any work. So on this day her phone screen cracked and I’m like look at God telling her to get to work. But no, what she do.. She still talks on her phone by yelling Siri to get her calls through. And I’m like oh gosh. Imma punch her in her throat if I hear hey Siri call whoever name she said.

But she doesn’t do any work. Like I said before this job is simple and is us taking the sample your doctor or the hospital gives us of your blood or urine to prep for testing. Not hard at all. May give you an irritated nose but that’s it. Cause some of that piss be stinky like 🤢🤢

ADVICE MOMENT

* please please please drink a lot of water it’s not just helpful to you but for us that have to smell your funky piss. So atleast make sure it doesn’t stink. *

But yes, she just mainly stays on her phone and only gets 2 baskets full of specimens done well not even the rest of us cause some of them ain’t shxt either get more than 5 baskets done. 😑 yeah and then has the NERVE to be taking more than a 15 minute break.

Excuse me! That’s not flying with me. So that’s one worker. This only one is supposed to be our team lead but she scary. She scared to speak up to our supervisor and tell her that either we’re getting too much work or that we’re not being treated fairly where we are. And she done got lazy too. She doesn’t try to help us accession them specimens and stays on her phone ALL the damn TIME. I’m like we’re here to work, like get it together hoes. So this dude been working for this company for 4 years. And he has the speed. But for some reason now, he don’t wanna work. And I’m like not this shxt again. Already got a lazy ass worker to my left now we got him too. So instead of his usual helping us and actually doing his damn job. He takes his time, and then once he finishes his first basket what he does yall. What does he do. Go on Freaking BREAK! Like don’t you see we got like 10 baskets and more that’s on the way to do. 🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️

But yes y’all. This girl is tired of doing and picking up everyone’s slack cause they some lazy MFers that need to get off their ass. So I’m out. I already got a phone interview next Tuesday. Prayers up 🙏🏾

And I’ll be out of there cause I have been overworked and hella exhausted. Like I’m going to the city right now to see the tree and I’m tired. And almost fell asleep on this train but I said why not let y’all know I’m still alive and have t forgotten y’all.

So just an update. I’m out this bish of a job and about to get better pay then 15.60 an hour.

That’s another thing too I got my full bachelors and I’m only worth that. Like wow, but yeah forget this company. Can’t stand them but…. I do need the money. 😭😭

But anyways until then y’all. 💋

Remember God loves you and so do I ❤️