#will i ever manage to beat a touhou game?

[squeeeeeeak111111]

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[toskarin]

what warband mods would you rec? I only ever played vanilla warband years ago and that was probably on fairly low AI settings, but I'm definitely intrigued by getting the full feudal clusterfuck experience as well as indulging in some nostalgia.

there's a few qualifications to these, because I usually like them for different reasons and I have something wrong with me, but...

< ! PREEMPTIVE WARNING ! > you should be running modules in Warband Script Extender even if they don't say they need it! people have historically been really bad about clarifying when it's expected

Bannerpage - vanilla for people who want More of it, and then more after that. it reminds me of a spiritual successor to Floris Modpack. an enormous expansion that's also a bit of a tongue in cheek what-if for "Bannerlord, except as continued development of Warband" with increasing complexity. this one will probably spoil you a bit on other modules just because of how many little enhancements it pulls on the native systems lol

Prophesy of Pendor - the premier feudal fantasy rpg experience. this one is brutally difficult and throws some battles at you with genuinely bewildering enemy force sizes. I'd feel fairly confident in calling this the most difficult of the major total conversion modules that maintain core M&B gameplay

Touhou Gensokyo Warfare~the Castiron Flame - this is straight up glorious kusoge and I love it dearly. it often breaks so severely due to its own design decisions that it creates a unique high-skill gameplay expectation that exists in literally no other mods, but also it can't really be called "core" M&B gameplay anymore. this module actually consists of three chinese mods (Touhou Tinder, Touhou Origin, and Touhou Beat), one of which is derived from a fork that was extended by /jp/, another which was just translated by /jp/ (a shoddy translation but not distinctly a 4chan translation, if that's a concern), all of which were merged into one mod and managed by a passionate and cool chinese mod team. none of this comes to a consistent artistic vision. every single character looks like kigurumi cosplay and they all look like they're from different manufacturers. this is my favourite module. I could play it for years.

Perisno - a strange bird of a module that I don't see mentioned much anymore. a shame, honestly, because it's quite fun if you like higher fantasy settings. a bit overconfident with its own setting lore at times, but that really just makes it more authentic as a high fantasy setting, doesn't it? anyway they funnelled the mod development efforts away to a standalone game in the setting because of that, and I wish them well, but you know how it goes with that sort of thing

Gekokujo Daimyo Edition - a modification of an older warband module that was originally a touhou hijack that was originally a mod for the non-Warband game made by japanese players annoyed that nobody in the western playerbase was making mods with a japanese setting. it's buggy, it's incomplete, it will explode at you randomly, but it's still pretty neat. there's really no other mod out there that gives you such a thorough "I HATE THE TANEGASHIMA I HATE THE TANEGASHIMA" experience. Sengoku Era, a successor mod, will probably replace it on recommendation lists when it eventually releases.

Warsword Conquest - this is the Warhammer Fantasy mod. it has all the problems you'd expect from that. that being said, the sheer level of detail in this mod makes it more than worth dropping in to check it out. some of the environments are gorgeous enough to make Warband feel like an entirely different game, and with a surprising variety of firearms, the average campaign ends up being a pretty wild ride

Brytenwalda - I'm not recommending Brytenwalda as an experience, because it's actually not that good a very interesting moment in M&B modding history. Brytenwalda is the birthplace of a lot of mod tropes that became standard in mods going forward, namely most culture-related systems and the modern standard for module graphics. it also introduced tripping and represents the moment people started making really annoying attempts at jury-rigging balance into the game before Warband Script Extender came around and actually allowed them to modify the lower systems of the game. still kinda neat if you like historical settings, and definitely foundational enough to warrant a look

Last Days of the Third Age - infamously hard-headed in a way that only a mod for a feudal warfare simulator rpg made by Tolkien nerds who insist on book>movie aesthetics could pull off, this isn't really core M&B gameplay and is very rigid, but it's another case of something being so detailed and passionate that it's a fun experience anyway.

Solid and Shade - this is actually the best hardcore survival horror experience made for Warband, which is a bit like saying that Harvester is the best FMV game ever made about waking up in a town named Harvest. the Harvester comparison is more than surface level. the writing often feels like Harvester. this is one of the only modules (hell, one of the only games even!) I've ever seen that successfully pulls off the concept of corrupting players with the promise of immortality. it's a horror mystery where every single character creation option affects your longterm gameplay... but to provide a fair warning, reading the developer's commentary on this mod will sour you on it. the developer is an edgelord who just kinda kitchen-sinked horror elements in a way that reminds me a lot of Revolution of Terror (the old Well of Souls mod). the compelling esoterica and atmosphere seem to have been achieved largely on accident

[clarste]

This may be too much work, so feel free to disregard this ask if so, but: Do you mind summarizing the plot of TH19? I've tried to piece it together through the translations I've been able to find online, but I'm not having much luck :')

Sure, why not. Spoilers below the break.

The incident that drives everything is that as a side-effect of what Chimata did in Touhou 18, some piece of land or whatever has lost its ownership, and theoretically a bunch of spirits are fighting to claim it. But the only spirits that matter for the plot are Yachie, Saki, and Yuuma, the three Animal Realm yakuza leaders from Touhou 17, who are using this as an opportunity to invade the surface. They each recruit an agent from Gensokyo to help them out (Biten, Enoko, and Chiyari), because Animal Realm spirits don't have bodies which limits what they can do on the surface.

However, Zanmu, a famous oni from Hell, doesn't like the idea of spirits from the Animal Realm taking over the surface. Not because she thinks they have a chance, but because if they cause too much chaos up there, the armies of Hell won't just sit back and watch, and would intercede as a peacekeeping force or whatever (Hell continues to be the USA, metaphorically). And that's bad. So she comes up with a plan to stop the animal yakuza, and that plan is basically the entirety of the game, because Zanmu is a nigh-omniscient genius chessmaster who can easily manipulate everyone from behind the scenes. That's not like, a magical power she has, she's just that good. A recurring theme is that everyone is "dancing on her palm" and that everything that could possibly happen has already been accounted for in The Plan.

Anyway, the basic gist of her plan is to insert double agents into each of the three animal yakuza gangs (Biten, Enoko, and Chiyari) and have them waste the yakuzas' time until the incident sorts itself out naturally, ie: the land's ownership naturally reasserts itself for whatever reason. So the new recruits' job is just to pretend to be bumbling and useless and prevent anything important from happening. And they do it because they are all absolutely loyal to Zanmu for various reasons, but hold no particular grudges against the yakuza and do seem to intend to stick around afterward. This part of the plan goes perfectly.

The next part of the plan is for Zanmu to personally beat up the three yakuza leaders, showing them that they never stood a chance to begin with so they won't even think of trying again, and then pretend to be the mastermind herself and lose to Reimu on purpose in order to reassert the status quo where Reimu always resolves incidents. However, what both Suika and Reimu intuit (and you can only use intuition against Zanmu, using logic will just fall into her trap) is that Zanmu has an ulterior motive here, which is to establish herself as an absolute being in everyone's minds, which would eventually lead to her naturally taking control over Gensokyo and running it like a zoo, an endangered animal preserve. "These creatures are too dumb to take care of themselves, and therefore I need to be in control."

Now, this is bad, but Zanmu is way too smart and strong to actually go up against directly. So the best Suika and Reimu can manage is to mess up her plan ever so slightly by not letting her lose on purpose to Reimu. IE: Zanmu wins the fight, doesn't get her perfect storybook ending where Reimu is the hero, and is forced to realize that she is not 100% infallible. Just 99% infallible.

Suika's plan also relies on Hisami betraying Zanmu, which doesn't make much sense on paper because she is completely loyal to her master, but she does it anyway because getting scolded is the only time when Zanmu pays any attention to her, and she desperately wants senpai to look at her, so it's like... Zanmu fatal flaw is not maintaining her personal relationships or something. While she did account for some "mischief," it takes a perfectly strange sequence of events for exactly one thing to go ever-so-slightly wrong.

Edit: I suppose I should add that the game is written like one of the recent fighting games, in that it assumes you've read all the story routes more or less in order, which is gated by needing to clear them to unlock others. So if you're reading the story translations out of order on a wiki that might explain your confusion. The game also kind of lies to you in the profiles, in that they provide information that is deliberately misleading in order to set up twists that occur in-game.

[dandelionsprout42]

Quick summary of Apple Arcade games I've played thus far

All games were played on the Apple TV 4K 128GB model, most with Dualsense, while games that support Siri Remote used the remote instead.

Sonic Dream Team: The maingame (except the contrived red-coin system) is a masterpiece, and the first Sonic platformer I've ever completed. The postgame(s) got weary on me, however.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure: The game is much more like Zelda and other breathlikes (The term I use for games that resemble BotW) than Animal Crossing. I'm mighty impressed by this game and then some.

Easy Come Easy Golf: Plays pretty good for a non-motion-controlled golf game. Could need to have far more courses far earlier in the game, as meaningful variation is practically none even at rank 8.

Way of the Turtle: Very good from the 25〜90% marks of the game, where it's a better Crash Bandicoot game than a lot of actual Crash Bandicoot games. But the endgame levels are brutal to the point of feeling like they weren't worth it.

Alto's Adventure: Honestly a fairly good game. I recommend it to people who've just bought an Apple TV and who are learning how the remote control works.

Amazing Bomberman: Complete rubbish. I could count the framerate on one hand, and that's on the newest Apple TV model.

Gear.Club Stradale: Kept crashing to desktop all the time. And I mean all the time. I was only able to complete 1 race on 5 attempts at starting the game.

Rayman Mini: Severely outdated. No one wants autorunners anymore, and certainly not autorunners that mangle the Rayman Legends timed missions.

Taiko no Tatsujin Pop Tap Beat: Safe to assume that Apple told the devs to make the game less weeb than most other TnT games, which is a good thing. The Power of Love is a nice touch, and the evergreen Cruel Angel's Thesis, the Touhou Song (Night of Knights), and Funiculi Funicula (a.k.a. the Spider-Man 2 pizza song).

Tetris Beat: Weeb stuff. Gave up after 10min because I hadn't heard of any of the songs.

Samba de Amigo Party-to-Go: On the entirely opposite end of the scale, and in fact has too many dance-pop songs. I do give positive shoutout to that its version of Macarena use the actual lyrics, and not the ones with the teenage girls chatting.

Riptide GP Renegade: Practically unplayable with Siri Remote, so I never tested it with Dualsense out of spite. Never got past the tutorial.

Pocket Card Jockey: Tested to see how far I could bruteforce my way through the intro with a Siri Remote, far past the alleged "Connect a controller" prompts. I miraculously managed to get to the first main level, at which point I felt that I had done my duty and never played it afterwards.

Frogger and the Rumbling Ruins: Managed to be less controllable than Pocket Card Jockey even with a Dualsense. Couldn't get past the very first section.

My Little Pony Mane Merge: The "Merge" genre is by itself the worst new game genre in several decades, but Gameloft clearly can't possibly have played even one puzzle console game in their lives, judging by how they mangled the controls beyond recognition.

Kimono Cats: Hardly has any activities in it that count as a game, and the few small remnances that are there are either weeb or Daily Challenges.

Disney SpellStruck: A good concept and is fun to play early on, but dear lords does it get repetitive. Not to mention the word validation system rejecting a lot of common words while accepting nonsense. The cameo of Tinker Bell's house from her titular movies is a nice touch, but a very short touch.

Warped Kart Racers: "We already have Sonic Racing Transformed at home" vibes. Additionally, the battle mode system is the worst in the history of car games. Yes, worse than that of FlatOut 3.

Squiggle Drop: Incomprehensible career progression, not helped by puzzles that start to make no sense after the circa 25th one.

JellyCar Worlds: If you've played 10 levels or so, you've essentially played them all.

Marble It Up Mayhem: Roughly half of the point-to-point levels were reasonably good. The "Collect spheres in a zone" levels were pretty boring.

Beyond Blue: I refuse to believe that any professional livestreamer scuba diver would willingly want to use a suit she described as itchy.

Ballistic Baseball: Seemingly impossible to hit the ball, and the English commentator has the least enthusiastic voice I've ever heard in my life.

[sneakyscarab]

hiya! so those of you following me may have noticed that touhou has taken over my brain over the last summer. i’ve been working my way through playing all* of the main touhou titles and after finishing th11 realized that i have many thoughts about these games and no real outlet because none of my friends play touhou so im just gonna start doing these review-esque posts about all the touhou games once ive finished them. as you can tell by the fact i just beat 11 i have a bit of a backlog here so expect to see a handful of these.

if you do not care about all that, thats fine. i just really wanna talk about touhou lol. posts in this series will be tagged “#grimoire of nina” for archival/organiztion purposes. anyways all that said it is time for the actual post

nina’s thoughts on Touhou 6 - Embodiment of Scarlet Devil

it's the first touhou! well it's not obviously there's a big 6 there but it's the first in the windows continuity, the first that ive played through to the end and finished, and supposedly the first in the streamlined danmaku style of gameplay. 

since its the first of them, its lacking in many unique elements that make it easy to talk about, so this one's probably gonna flow way worse than later reviews. it's very simple but not in a bad way, just raw shootin’ and danmaku dodgin’. one interesting “mechanic” unique to this game is ironically it's lack of one. in touhou to make dodging the bullets possible your actual hitbox is way smaller than your character sprite, and later games let you view your true hitbox while focusing. EoSD doesn't have that, so you kinda just have to get a feel for what parts of you can safely take a shot without you getting owned. it's kinda fun not knowing exactly whats safe, but probably rough if you’re used to the later games. of the different player options my favourite was Marisa’s illusion laser setup (i am not immune to master spark) but all 4 choices were pretty fun, and i ended up doing 1cc’s with both of Marisa’s options.

the characters in this one are all really good! it helps a lot that most of them show up frequently in future games and outside media and get more development. if i had to pick favourites though, id go with Rumia, Patchouli, and Koakuma. Rumia is a adorable little gremlin youkai with darkness powers who flies around t-posing, using darkness to create an orb around her during daytime to block sunlight and subsequently bumping into trees cause she can't see anything through the orb lmao. Patchouli is a tired magician youkai who spends all day in a huge magical library reading tomes and being bothered by Marisa. she has like asthma and anemia so she can't do any physical activity ever she's just the ultimate nerd. also her everyday outfit is just some comfy purple pajamas its an absolute vibe. lastly Koakuma is Patchouli’s familiar who's a summoned demon of some kind (usually interpreted as a succubus) who has the unfortunate job of actually managing and organizing the insane labyrinthine library that they live in and assisting Patchouli with personal matters. ironically Rumia and Koakuma have like the least characterization actually in the game (along with Daiyousei) but they get more love in external media and fanon. 

overall EoSD is great. it has a set of beloved characters, and really solid base gameplay. its a bit basic and lacking in a few features but its still great fun :> thanks for reading if you actually stuck with it this far!

(*not sure if i will play the first 5 games from the pc-98 era. i may check them out afterwards but theyre not high priority)

[self-loving-vampire]

What's your favorite non-crpg game? (besides tsukihime)

I am really bad with favorites but I have enjoyed a variety of strategy games throughout my life as well. I would say that it's my second favorite genre after RPGs.

I have played several of the important ones too. Civilization, Age of Empires (plus Age of Mythology), Alpha Centauri, Master of Orion 2, Homeworld, Dungeon Keeper 2, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, Age of Wonders, and especially a whole lot of Total War.

If we are going by things like amount of playtime and general level of enjoyment then the answer probably lies in that direction. Total War in particular has many aspects I like and it is difficult for me to pick a favorite even within that series alone.

That said, there is something that is even more important to me.

The Touhou series not only led to the most dramatic change in my entire life, it also somehow makes me nostalgic in a way that not even Ultima 7 (the first game I ever got really into) can manage.

This is especially true of the first 13 games in particular (I got too distracted with my escape plan to keep up afterwards but did play some amount of Touhou 14 still), and especially Touhou 8. These games and the characters from them are precious to me.

At some point I want to replay the entire series. I think once I un-rust myself and get some practice I may be able to beat at least normal mode once again. I don't know exactly when I'll do this though.

[acetrainerjess]

SAME BEST GIRL 🤝🤝 I love Utsuho so much. She’s so cool. I’ve only ever engaged with the games, not any of the extended media (though I seriously need to find out what’s up with those two human(?) girls from the sealing club someday), so idk how she’s written in other stuff, but just her boss fight alone left such an impression on me. She’s the best.

Just managing to beat the games at all is super impressive! I’m a freak who actually enjoys playing Bullet hells (EOSD was my go-to comfort game for like, a solid two months during uni), so I’ve managed to 1cc a few of them (altho some I used glitches/slow mode for help, so those only half-count).

Just to forewarn you, it did take me 6 months to 1cc EOSD on Normal (tho tbf it was the first Touhou I ever played, and a month of that was spent just trying to beat easy with continues lol). That being said, I do reckon EOSD’s one of the easier ones to 1cc. It’s mostly stage/pattern memorisation, becoming confident enough to pull off high scores (the extra lives are essential), and getting a good instinct for using bombs. Once I could get to stage 3/4 reliably without losing a life, it was pretty much just a matter of lucking out on dodging Sakuya’s knives and surviving Remilia’s final time-out attack.

My current goal is to 1cc SA, just so I can find out what on earth Koishi’s deal is and why she’s so widely beloved, but every time I boot it up I immediately regret trying to 1cc one of the hardest ones. And I’m also (very slowly) making my way through the mainline Windows-era games, so I think 17’s up next? I hope it’s fun!

I must ask the most important question of all: who is best Touhou girl?

Also, out of curiosity, which of the games have you 1cc’d?

My favourite is Utsuho, beam cannon arms are cool as hell, concrete legs are cool as hell, vast nuclear power is cool as hell. I like how she's written, and by extension hate how lots of people dumb her down exponentially. (After Utsuho my favourites are Tenshi, Satono and Mai, Aunn, Shion and Reimu)

If I had to say the best character overall, I'd say Reimu. The way the story is actually written so every other character has a slightly different interpretation of who she is, and how we're never shown any sort of 'true' Reimu.

As for the uh, 1cc question that would be. Uh. None. I've beaten 6, 7 and 17 but I used continues because my free time and patience are limited and I can't invest the hours to grind out a run that's approximately 3 or 4 times better than my winning attempts.

[clownkiwi]

oh eosd my beloved

[evajellion]

The continuity connections between LAL and TAL

For people who do not want to sit through a walkthrough ( @cheeseandcake-from-ao3​ ), I am once again here to talk about Touhou A Live’s sequel allusions.

“Couple years back, a gang of hoodlums attacked and wrecked the town... killed all the people there.”

In Touhou A Live’s Western Chapter starring Ran Yakumo it is HEAVILY implied that the chapter’s antagonist, Rei Jenova, is the result of Sundown failing to protect that one town.

An alternative but more morbid direction this could be taken in- if mayor is a mistranslation and the game’s original text said “lawman”, Rei is actually Sundown’s daughter. But this is a hypothetical for a potential mistranslation.

Sundown also appears at the end of the chapter (if you spare James).

In the Gatekeeper Chapter starring Hong Meiling, it’s revealed that Yun Jou was actually Meiling’s master. They met when Meiling was being picked on the same way he was years ago. He also passes on the Heavenly Peaks Descent to her.

Sadly, he perishes at the hands of Ray Jihad, a vampire commoner that was once Remilia’s butler. Meiling witnesses his death, but manages to deliver sweet revenge to Jihad years later.

The Strongest Chapter starring Cirno, any time you lose to an opponent, you get a unique encouragement screen from a familiar silhouette.

Seishi Moribe also appears, referencing the man who had surpassed him prior to his death.

During his life, he was a master of bare-handed killing. He's now a ghost settled down in the Human Village. With his mastery of powerful secret abilities, he's defeated many kinds of people.

Masaru Takahara disappeared before my eyes. I chased him around the world, learning powerful techniques at every stop!

Gungrey Jibalt, the chapter’s final boss is literally the guy you see at the end of Masaru’s campaign. He’s pissed that Odio made him disappear before his very eyes.

The Hourai chapter starring Mokou initially doesn’t seem to have a lot going. on until you reach the end, and you see the face of the main antagonist. Much like Cirno’s chapter, it’s someone you would have normally brushed off and forgotten.

He usually calls himself Cindleman. He's a scientist from the outside world. He came to Gensokyo and apparently became a necromancer.

That’s right. You finally get the satisfaction of kicking the ever-loving shit out of Dr. Livingstill (whose name was originally Cindleman), instead of simply beating up a glorified birb god.

Basically, after he got killed by the liquid, this bastard somehow got isekai’d to Gensokyo.

The Fantasy Chapter, starring Mima…

…

Yeah, I’m leaving this here for people to look up themselves.

Odio himself also reappears in the final chapter if you run away from Rage, the final boss.

… as a giant dragon.

EDIT 8/30/22: Hayate from the Edo Japan chapter appears in the Netherworld chapter starring Youmu, and will temporarily join your party until he finds Oboromaru, saying the ninja was being held captive.

[bbs-backlog-challenge]

Games Of 2020

Bet there’s gonna be loads of very trite retrospectives this year. 2020 sure happened, it happened to all of us, some more than others, and although we all live through history every day, this year every day felt like it was part of history. Video games!!! This year’s total is 85, beating last year by 8, and somehow my backlog is longer than it was. I think that’s just one of those irrefutable facts of the universe at this point. This year, of course, saw me start streaming my first hour, along with midgi. Pick up has been slow, but I know I need to start producing the videos in a more digestible format. Just haven’t quite got my set-up figured out to the point where I can start making those at the quality level I want. It’s coming. That’s for 2021! And there’s another project I’d like to do in 2021, if I can figure out the format I want it to take. Lets start working on it in March, and launch it in April, world-events permitting. Video games!

- Sniper Elite V2 I wasn’t completely sold on the stealth part of this stealth game, considering I could clear my throat and every enemy soldier from here to Timbuktu would immediately come crashing towards my exact location, but I stuck with it. ...Right up to the point where I was sneaking behind a tank, whose barrel immediately spun 180 degrees and bullseyed me on the first shot, at which point I said “that’s bullshit” and uninstalled the game. Yes, it was a ragequit, but life is too short to put up with marksman tanks. - Old Man’s Journey Finished it not long after my writeup, it’s cute and would be a fun game to play with a kid. Very storybook. A little sad at the end, but we expected that. - Ys Seven This game has some real trouble with its signposting. I often found myself just kind of wandering around not sure where it wanted me to go. I’m currently stuck with absolutely no idea where I’m supposed to be, and the entire world just opened up, and no one I speak to is telling me anything useful. Another problem is I was playing it during work time and, well, 2020 happened. Will probably pick it back up once work starts. - Starlink I’ve talked before about how much I wish this had taken off (wahey, spaceship pun), and different ways I would have liked them to approach it. Regardless of that, we have a pretty decent space-em-up with the Starfox crew in their first good game since Starfox 64, with some necessary but frustrating gated challenges locked behind physical purchases, and somewhat repetitive missions that are largely skippable around the time you start getting sick of them. Worth a punt, even if you’re just buying it for the (very nice) Arwing model. - Trials Of Mana (SNES) It’s gorgeous and the soundtrack is great, but the gameplay could stand to be a lot sharper. Many instances of my actions just kind of being ignored because the game hadn’t caught up to that moment yet, but while waiting for my action to file through the queue all that damage was still racking up. Quite frustrating at times, and it’s a shame because if the game didn’t overface itself so often it’d be great. Still enjoyable, but brace for a lot of “hey wtf that’s BS”. - LLSIFAS There’s just- so- much- stuff to keep track of, I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know what any of these stats do! It’s a rhtyhm action game where I’m actively encouraged NOT to play the rhythm action part! What on earth does Voltage mean! Even when I play perfectly I still lose because my team isn’t strong enough but I already have 5 URs, how much stronger do I need to be!? It didn’t work with me, is what I’m saying. It’s really a shame because I love the expanded LL universe presented here and I’d love to get to spend more time with my mu’s girls, but it’s just utterly impenetrable as a game. Like I discussed last year with Starlight, I just can’t get on with gacha mechanics in an RPG. - Punch Out Aahhh, my old knackered thumbs aren’t what they used to be. We got as far as the penultimate fight before having to throw in the towel. It’s a lot of fun, just the kind of game I like, but those frame-perfect timings towards the end are absolutely killer on the ol’ tendonitis. - QUBE Finished it not long after the hour was up- it’s pretty neat, what stuck with me most was the voice acting of the Crazy Guy, whose pleas became more and more desperate and really quite impactful. Very impressive performance from that man. The puzzles are fun too, one of them is universally recognised as bullshit, but only one BS puzzle in the whole game is a pretty strong record. - Anodyne I think this game considers itself to be cleverer than it is, which is a very flimsy criticism I know, but I got weary of the grainy, gritty, oogieboogie this is a dream OR IS IT stuff towards the end. Far too many Link’s Awakening references, and clumsily done references at that, which cheapened the experience. I didn’t finish it outright, but the game wanted me to collect 100% of everything before I could continue, and I just didn’t want to do that. *Shrug* - Operator Finished it during the hour! - Spyro/Spyro 2 These games aren’t really very good honestly? Spyro 2 is fine. Spyro 1 is very basic and the platforming isn’t too exciting. Buyer beware your nostalgia for these games might be rose-tinted. - Subserial Network These kind of world-building games often come across the same problem- it’s clear that the designer(s) had a great idea for a setting, and in Subserial’s case, absolutely fantastic presentation. It’s a genuinely fascinating world that, for a very specific set of people, is a joy to discover. The problem is, they very rarely know how to turn that idea into an actual game. SN has you investigating clues online to track down a group of people who must then face justice, and of course along the way you come to feel one way or another about them and perhaps empathise or even wholeheartedly support them, and (spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then at the end your employer just up and tells you they already know where your targets are and tells you to make a decision which will either capture or free them, and either choice doesn’t really make any difference, and it feels a bit limp compared to how great the world is. It’s the same problem I had with Subsurface Circular. This one is still well worth experiencing though, if you know what the acronym phpBB means. - Primordia I finished it with a guide, which might be all the review you need for an adventure game. Feels like a 7/10 on the Adventure Game Obtuseness Scale. Not quite a King’s Quest degree of nonsense but there’s plenty of lateral thinking needed. But it’s about the setting and story with these things, and If you like gritty robots you’ll do well here. How many games let you turn yourself into a nuke? - Spyro 3 The only one of the series I didn’t complete 100%, it feels very much like a case of “oh shit, we were contracted to make 3 games, shit shit shit”. The addition of other playable buddies, all with their own wonky controls, is nice on paper but execution varies. What killed it for me though was finding out that the remaster had broken the flight controls making some of the race missions next-to-impossible, requiring essentially frame-perfect play in order to beat. Those races take 2-3 minutes each time and can be lost at the last second. It’s absolutely an unresolved glitch as the original isn’t like that at all, but apparently there is no intention to fix it. Also lol skateboarding minigames. - Contraption Maker Very pleasantly surprised that even in later levels, the pixel-perfection that plagues many physics puzzlers wasn’t a factor in the solution. In fact, I only encountered this once, to my recollection. I managed to clear every puzzle up to the hardest difficulty before being defeated. This is a real good one. - Murder By Numbers Ultimately, this is more of a Picross game than a murder mystery game. There’s not much crime solving to do and no real “a-ha!” moments, but the story and characters are enjoyable. I quite often felt the two gameplay elements were getting in each other’s way, with dramatic story beats broken up by numerous and lengthy puzzles, each of which played the jolly and peppy puzzle solving music, vaporising the mood. Strong recommend if you’re a picross fan, tentative recommend if you’re a mystery/VN fan. - Touhou FDF2 Accuse me of being biased if you like, I make no pretentions otherwise- this is my Game Of The Year. FDF2 is something special. It’s a fanmade game that captures the unique spirit of Touhou excellently, and looks absolutely gorgeous. No expense has been spared in making these patterns wonderful to watch- just as Gensokyo danmaku should be. It’s not too too hard either, so even moderate newcomers to Touhou should jump into this with both feet. - Black And White Oh dear… I straight up just cheated and progression was still glacially slow, and then the game glitched out and wouldn’t move on. Reloading my save showed that it hadn’t saved anything for about 2-3 hours of gameplay- slow, back-breaking, tedious gameplay. Didn’t bother going back after that. Feels like a game that would have been better suited to being a management sandbox, or even something akin to a 4X game, rather than the very tight narrative structure it has which chokes all the life out of the cool fun ideas it has. - Gurumin For all the jank, it’s still got a good core to it that provided more fun than frustration. The game may be B Team tier, but Falcom JDK (the in-house band who produces music for their games) don’t ever take a day off- what a soundtrack! - Touhou FDF After its sequel blew me away, I went back to the first title. It’s fine, but I think I said everything worth saying in my write up. Extra is just absurdly hard, especially compared to the rest of the game. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really push anyone to buy it, TH fan or not. - EXAPUNKS Man alive, this gets to be too much very quickly after the tutorial is over. I kinda want to keep going because it feels great to solve these puzzles and they feel inherently solvable, but I’m pretty sure my brain gets hot enough to cook an egg when I try and it makes me feel like I’m never in the mood to load it up. - Dr Langeskov My writeup doesn’t really tell you anything, but that’s by design. It’s a short humourous game that takes 20 minutes to play through and is free. Telling you more than that is going to spoil the surprise. - Starcrossed Finished a run with midgi. Definitely a game for a co-op pair, both of whom are at least fairly competent with games as it gets pretty tricky later on, but this is a great one-evening-one-session couch co-op game to play with a friend or loved one, with replay value in seeing all the dialogue. - Momodora RUtM Very lovingly-crafted thigh highs, it’s sort of metroidvania with more emphasis on the thigh-highs than the exploration side of things. Really cool boss fights and exciting thigh-highs. Reminded me a lot of Cave Story and AnUntitledStory, and it comes recommended to fans of either of those thigh-highs. Socks. - SMW2 Yoshi’s Island! I only fired it up to test a glitch. It’s a good game though. - Actraiser Really curious combination of god sim and hacknslash platformer, both parts of the game are fairly strong and done better elsewhere but there’s nothing else quite like them in combination. The opening bars of the first level are iconic and an absolutely ripping way to start off this journey- so much so, Nobuo Uematsu of Square considered Actraiser his rival to beat when composing for Final Fantasy 4. Praise doesn’t get much more flattering than that! - Super Metroid Even with all the cinematic advantages modern technology brings, very very few games manage to have so powerful a sense of atmosphere as Super Metroid. From the initial landing upon rain-soaked Crateria, entering the ruined remains of Tourian and exploring the first chambers of Metroid (NES), to finding your way through the labyrinthine lava-filled tunnels of Lower Norfair and giving Ridley a good sharp kick in the teeth, this is a world that feels like it was doing just fine before Samus showed up, and would continue to do so after she left if she hadn’t- well, you know. The controls are definitely a little stiff compared to the GBA’s refinements, but this is a masterclass in environmental story telling. - Super Nova It’s one of the Darius games, retitled for some reason. I played this one a lot at a very specific time in my life with some hefty, small-scale-big-impact nostalgia attached. It’s a good shooter, but I don’t think it’s great. Soundtrack is aces though. - SMW its k - FF5 This was the year I started running the Four Job Fiesta! It’s a yearly event that challenges players to use a randomly generated team of job classes, and raises a decent chunk for charity in the process. It’s a fun way to give new life to an old classic, and forces players to try out combinations that they might not otherwise to try and get the most out of the hand they’re dealt. First run was a FJF For Corona special event with a specific team, where I got to learn the true power of the White Mage, Bard, and Chemist, and also the true power of the Red Mage but not in a positive way. - Tiny Toons (SNES) Criminally overlooked platformer from Konami. Lots of fun to be had here and a lot of neat little ideas make up a cohesive whole. Well worth two hours of your time. - Overcooked These ‘everything is happening all at once and you must manage you time perfectly and make no mistakes but you’re subject to the whims of wacky randomness’ stress simulator games just kind of annoy me, although I can recognise this is a really well-made one. - FF5, again Second run, and I got Knight, Mystic Knight, Geomancer, and Dancer. Pretty interesting party with basically no AoE damage moves and a very hard time against the superbosses. I managed to pull a triple crown though! - Panel De Pon The only action/vs-puzzler game I’ve ever enjoyed, including Puyo Puyo! Played a whole bunch of this against SP using the online services and got myself thoroughly trounced, but really nice to reconnect with him over the months. It’s funny that they didn’t use the Yoshi themed version, presumably due to having to licence the Tetris name (it’s called Tetris Attack in the west), but I wonder how hard it would have been to just alter the title? - Master Of Orion 2 Expect to see this on the list every year.  Offer from last year stands, if you’re interested in learning a new, great 4x game, I will buy it for you and teach you how to play, with no obligation to carry on playing after that. Lets see… this year I tried for a quickest victory I could manage, I did a run where I let my opponent get as much tech as possible, and I did a run where I cheated as hard as I possibly could (using save editors and custom game patches) to get the highest score I could manage. - FF1 I really love this game. I wish there was anything else quite like it out there. Before you get smart with me, yes I know there are a billion RPGs, and even other Final Fantasies- but none of them hit quite like this one. Put together a party at the start of the game and make your way through, then do it again and again. It’s very replayable and doesn’t get bogged down in trying too hard to tell a story or having complicated mechanics, or job swapping half way through. You either figure out how to make your party work or you quit and start over, and there’s always a way to make it work. - Fire Emblem The first one on GBA, often called Blazing Sword. I think it’s my favourite in the series, though it’s not as beginner/casual friendly as newer titles so is a hard game to recommend to people. I absolutely adore its story, so utterly tragic and moving. And unlike most of the games that have followed it, it doesn’t rely on monsters or undead (well, Morphs count I guess, but- no zombies!) which I appreciate. - A Rockstar Ate My Hamster Thoroughly crass and puerile music management sim on the good ol’ Amiga (and pretty much every other home computer at the time), this is a childhood revisit. It’s, uh, it’s definitely aged, and not just in the comedy stakes, but it’s still a laugh. Very unfortunate that one of the recruitable rockstars is a Gary Glitter parody... - Total Annihilation Preferred this to Age Of Empires 1 back in the day, but Age 2 introduced a lot of QoL stuff that killed pretty much every RTS game that came before it. Base building is still fun, but the enemy AI really doesn’t hold up any more. The meekest of rush tactics is enough to completely shut them down. Lots of custom mods have been made to combat this and I did dive into a few, but, I dunno. Something’s missing now. - Touhou, all of em 6- aged badly. Still playable but yikes. 7- aged, but like a fine wine. 1cc’d Hard Mode for the first time ever this year! 8- kind of a weird game, did it invent achievements??? 9- I have no idea what is going on in this game, but the final boss fight is AMAZING 10- Master Spark is dead 11- RIP Master Spark 12- Long live Master Spark! Still love this one, even though the UFO system is weird 12.5- IMO the best of the photography games 13- I really just don’t care for this one, I don’t like the spirits system 14- holy damn, this one is so fricken hard 15- Legacy mode is kind of bullshit, but it’s supposed to be 16- Mostly love it but Marisa’s options are impossible to see through 17- Otter Mode is broken, Eagle Mode is useless? Best Stage 4 in the series though - SMB3 The debate is always whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game. For my money it’s World, but that race is a photo finish by anyone’s metric. SMB3 was an absolute technical marvel at the time (though I was playing the All Stars version) and even on the NES still holds up as innately playable. It hasn’t aged a bit. Played through this on Switch to keep the cat company! He didn’t appreciate it. - Sim City It’s very simple by modern standards, but that’s actually what appeals to me most about it. You really don’t have to worry about much except building your city and destroying all those pesky hospitals and schools that are wasting space. Streamed a megalopolis run just for the fun of it. - SMB2 This was originally a game called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. - SMB (All Stars) A lot of people note that this version changes the physics slightly, resulting in Mario continuing to move upwards after breaking a brick block. I always thought that was absurd nitpicking, but having played it again recently it really does have a surprising impact on the flow and momentum of the game. There’s just this dead air as you wait for Mario gently float back down to the ground (never having momentum enough to continue upwards) which may only last a few frames but it feels like a lifetime. I take it back, the complaints are legit. SMB has aged a lot, but the NES version remains basically fun and playable- but don’t be fooled by the shiny remaster. It’s not the way to go. - Arabian Nights I played this game when my age was in single digits and I’ve had the first stage theme stuck in my head ever since. It’s actually a pretty rad game, too! Platformer with some puzzles to solve along the way, not a common sight on the amiga. Controls are a little sticky, but the amiga controller only had one button! I have a distinct memory of the game failing to load at one point, and an error message popping up with instructions on how to send the developer a notice of the error, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it... - Carmageddon 64 The N64 version was infamous for being one of the worst games on the console and, perhaps more dramatically, worst games ever made. I never played it around release, but I had a chance to this year. Blimey, they weren’t kidding. I’m not sure why it’s so much worse than the absolutely OK PC version. I didn’t play far into it, I just wanted to see for myself. - Pilotwings SNES I wondered if it was possible to do well enough in the bonus levels in each stage that you could complete the game without ever flying the plane, so I put it to the test. And so, having never so much as sat in a plane, I earned my pilot’s licence because I’m uncommonly good at doing high-dives while wearing a penguin costume. - Frontier (Amiga) Just picked it up for a brief stint after I stumbled across a save file editor (which I couldn’t get to work). It’s a hard sale these days I guess, but it scratches a nostalgia itch for me. - Hopeless Masquerade Touhou fighting game! I’m all around terrible at fighting games and this was no exception. I don’t know what I’m doing. But, playable Byakuren. - Pilotwings 64 Oh dear. Here’s one that should have been left in the nostalgia pile. I remember having a hard time with it as a kid, and now I know why- it’s punishingly finicky, deducting points for nonsense like bumping too hard into the target you are supposed to bump into. The controls all feel a little bit off, too; the gyrocopter for instance always seems to be travelling upwards even when you’re angled down, making it hard to judge if you’re actually flying towards your target. - Ronaldinho Soccer 64 Hahahahaha!!! Sorry. Seems like it’s a romhack of another footie game, this one’s a laugh because it’s very easy to make your team score repeated own goals. The dismay on their faces every time! - F-Zero GX Dolphins are pretty great, aren’t they? I wanted to see how great Dolphins are, so I used this game to test it. Them. Test the dolphins. With this gamecube game. Yeah. - Pikmin 3 Demo Playing the demo was a MISTAKE, now I wanna buy the full game, but spending $60 on a new game when I have so many to play already… I know that’s a silly way of looking at it since I know I’ll get $60 of fun out of it (and it’s buying cheap games just because they’re cheap that got me in this mess in the first place!), but it’s a lot of spons to drop all at once. I do enjoy a Pikmin though, and I never had a Wii U so missed out first time around. - Fire Emblem Sacred Stones After playing through the first (?) title, I wanted more, and this is the closest match. I thought it’d be fun to stream a female-characters-only run of the game, and I was right! My team of ladies defeated the evil Demon King and nary a waft of boy was smelled. - One Way Heroics A roguelike I actually enjoyed! But still only played through to completion once. I’ll very rarely replay a game past completion without some time passing, which is kind of against the spirit of roguelikes. - Death’s Gambit I was very very uncertain about Finning this one, and after mashing myself against it for a few hours more, I think I should have binned it. It’s gorgeous but it hates me. So exceptionally anti-player, even the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game. That’s just rude! - Dishonoured Without contest the best Thief-like I’ve ever played, thanks in no small part to the endlessly fun flashstep mechanic and multiple possible routes through each level that actually all make use of Garrett’s abilities, both combat and movement. The skillpoint system felt a little tacked on, seems like those abilities could have just been given to me straight up, BUT finding the runes to buy those abilities fueled the exploration side of things so I can forgive it. Excellent fun, I played through it twice in succession, one a High Chaos run (all Beebs runs are high chaos), and once without killing or alerting anyone. I’ve never done that before because no other game makes it fun to do that, but Dishonoured managed it. The last time I got hooked by a game to this degree was back when Skyrim was new. The kitchen suffered dearly for Dishonored’s sake. - Ocarina Of Time It’s aged pretty significantly in a lot of ways, hasn’t it? I didn’t play very far into it, only as far as the first Spiritual Stone. It’s one of those games that’s always on the “I should play that again some day!” list, which then gets passed over in favour of a backlog game. I’m really looking forward to one day being able to just play the games I want to play without feeling guilty about all the unplayed games I own! - Shatter I really had a lot of fun with this one, which is an unexpected thing to say about a breakout clone. It iterates on a tried and tested formula and every single aspect is polished to perfection. Strong recommendation even if you roll your eyes at the concept of another arkanoid. Killer OST. - TF2 Why can’t I quit you? Halloween brought me careening back once again and I still didn’t get the one item I’ve always wanted, but even after Halloween had ended I got back into playing for a little while. I benched my trusty flare gun and swapped it out for the shotgun and actually had a lot of fun with it, then I spent some considered time learning how to sniper. TF2 is still a great game, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time playing it? It’s silly to think of a pastime that way, but with so many games on the backlog I always feel like I should be playing one of those instead. Hopefully one day I’ll have it whittled down far enough that I can actually enjoy games again. - Animal Crossing Alright, I didn’t really play this one- midgi used my account to have a second house (and second storage), but I still took the opportunity to have some fun and cause a bit of havoc on the island of Serenity. - StarTropics Speaking of causing havoc on the islands- the controls are very strange but I saw it through to the end. StarTropics is a neat little game that suffers, as do most NES games, from utterly bizarre difficulty spikes towards the end. Still worth a run if you can stomach that or have save-states. - Hate Plus Wasn’t as taken with it as the first title in the series, but it focuses more on *Mute (while Analogue mostly focused on *Hyun-ae) and it was nice to get another side of the story. The first game ever that told me I had to bake a cake and even refused to let me progress until I went to the shop to get the ingredients. - FF1 (FCC) Same as the Four Job Fiesta, except in FF1 this time! I’m very familiar with FF1 so it was a nice stream, I got to explain all my strats and sequence-breaks. - Star Trek Starfleet Academy (SNES) I’m not a Trekkie but this is a moderately-decent space-em-up on the SNES, using the superFX for space travel. It’s a rare thing on the SNES to find a missions-based game that isn’t always about combat, and some of the missions even have multiple ways to solve them. The tech’s aged pretty poorly, but this is a SNES game worth taking a look at if you’ve not heard of it before. - Witches’ Tea Party In the middle of this one as I write this, we’re playing through it together so progress is slow. Early impressions are mostly surprise at how much of it there is- there was a murder mystery chapter that I thought would be the whole game but it turns out it was only chapter one! They do some real neat stuff with RPG Maker. Good to see. - Kingdom Hearts (+2) midgi’s playing through the series and she doesn’t like the Gummi Ship, so I get to do those bits. It’s basically Starfox but you get to build your own ship, it’s awesome. - Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke! This is still on-going as I write it. We just got to Cerulean City and crossed Nugget Bridge. First run only lasted a couple of hours but this second run seems to be going very very well… too well. We shall see what awaits us! - Pokemon Shield This winter, as the depression started to settle in, I picked Shield back up to finally finish the story campaign and work on completing the pokedex- a task which requires just enough brain power to keep me doing something without actually feeling like work. Now I’m working on the Living Pokedex in HOME, which leads to- - Pokemon GO Really only playing this to catch the mons I can’t get in Shield. It’s not like I’m actually going anywhere, you know? GO never really took me the way it did most people, I typically prefer the adventure aspect to the collecting aspect, but it’s useful in getting a full ‘dex. - Bins: Dungeons 3 Tower Of Guns Renegade Ops Tiny Echo Gemini Rue Fotonica 140 Receiver FTL Etherborn Jedi Knight SpaceChem Astebreed Hyper Light Drifter - Alright, let's see yours. And what's your Game Of The Year?

[crystalelemental]

Okay, beat Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.  God I am out of practice, but my Cheese Arts are stronger than ever.  In part thanks to the game’s mechanics.

Overall, I kinda like it?  I dunno, I don’t like the resource collection system much.  I prefer just...points.  Just let me score dictate my lives, alright?  That works really nicely.  I do appreciate that, unlike UFOs, you don’t need a perfect match of three, and that the little spirits don’t just leave if you take a while getting to them.  So that’s a big fix.

One minor annoyance that, once understood, actually made the game beatable for me, was the hidden spirits.  See, each mid-stage boss?  They can drop an additional spirit thing that, if collected, will release a ton of extra spirits, including life pieces and bombs.  So you can get up to two extra lives just by collecting all six.  I had to look up conditions for them.  I accidentally got the chicken one from Kutaka when I played Otter spirit, turns out you have to be in Raging Otter mode.  Related: raging otter is one hell of a statement.

My clear was actually with Wolf Marisa.  Yeah.  I’m kinda surprised too.  But the speed at which she takes down bosses really made the difference.  Eagle Reimu trivialized stages, but Wolf Marisa trivializes bosses.  Otter gives you more bombs, so like...it embodies cheese.  That’s actually why I went with it first.  But my issue is, I found I often wanted stronger shot types more than stronger bombs.  Bombs are finite and don’t last as long.  Sure, Master Spark can basically take out a boss with Otter, but it’s...not as reliable overall as a stronger unfocused or focused shot type, I think.

Now, characters and bosses!  Eika’s cute, but doesn’t exactly do much.  I have no strong opinions.  Her mid-boss fight is kind of obnoxious, though.  You only get the jellyfish spirit if you don’t kill any of the spirits around her.  Which is really hard when you have a wide shot type.  Unfocused Marisa has a pretty narrow laser, so that’s how I had to do it.  Overall, pretty forgettable right now.

Urumi’s...alright?  Probably my least favorite this game?  Like Eika, she doesn’t really do much, at least not in the routes I’ve played.  Also her cow spirit is a pain.  You have to be right up close to her.  Which is nice because it’s basically Icicle Fall, in that you’re completely safe, as long as you dodge around the one bullet she fires down the middle at you.  It’s not hard, but I don’t like playing aggressive by being right up next to a boss and having to react quickly.

Kutaka’s great.  I don’t know why, I just like her a lot.  She’s a helper.  She’s just here because Eiki told her to test you and make sure you’re ready, and she’s just really nice about it.  Her spells aren’t too bad, though I have trouble with the first.  Random bullet patterns are my weakness.  Anyway, her midboss spirit needs you to be in Raging Otter mode.  So 3 otter spirits and two of anything else.  It’s a bit tricky to set up, and it’s worse because unless you’re playing Otter, you need to pick up the last spirit during her card.  See, you can go into Raging mode for any animal, but the timer is much shorter for anything you’re not playing as.  I tried to start the match with it as Wolf Marisa, and it didn’t work.

Yachie!  Here’s a potentially novel take, I don’t much care for Yachie!  I think she’s fine as overall, but I have no particular feelings toward her whatsoever.  Maybe it’s because I don’t like the mob boss aspect, and personally align more with Keiki’s philosophy of things.  Anyway, she’s an absolute pain in my ass.  Why are all your cooldowns Border of Particle and Wave?  Who allowed you?  Also her spells are visually super cool, but an absolute bitch in the ass to play.  I hate her first one, I can’t figure out where the geometry is going and bomb it every single time.  The swirly fire one is the only one I could reasonably capture if it didn’t go on for so long.  And the one with the circles.  Honestly, that’s the coolest one conceptually, and I see how you’re supposed to do it.  But no thanks.  I’m not about that life.  Also her mid-boss spirit feels impossible.  “Quickly graze 10 bullets before you finish her off.”  Listen buddy.  I’m not good at Touhou.  I want to be as far removed from bullets as humanly possible.

Mayumi!  I actually like Mayumi, she’s a cutie.  I just think there’s something funny about her being the main guard, being really friendly toward you until the beast spirit reveals themselves, and making it a point to specifically state that this is the first emergency they’ve ever had.  I don’t know why, something about the whole scenario just tickles me.  Like, you’re a guard, who’s entire point is to defend this place, but you’re surprised that there’s any attempt to fight back? I dunno.  Her spells are cool but really tough.  Apparently Eagle Marisa, when you get Raging Eagle mode, just makes an entire joke out of this boss, since you break all her ally soldiers.  Her mid-boss spirit’s also really easy to get.  Have 4 spirits bouncing around the field when you beat her.  Really reasonable.

Keiki!  My absolute favorite of this game.  Listen, I get that this is supposed to be a struggle in which neither side is right.  The beasts are harsh and use humans as resources for their own ends, and Keiki treats humans like cogs in a machine who are protected but without purpose.  Neither is supposed to be a good choice.  Which is fitting, I guess, since...Hell.  Kinda funny that the savior they prayed for showed up only to make their lives miserable in a different way.  But even so, I like Keiki’s ideology more.  I dunno, I’ve never once been the type to think rules of nature is a good game plan.  We live in a society, society should aim to improve the situation for everyone involved.  Keiki’s methods aren’t great, and causes its own form of issue, but it’s at least an attempt at improvement, you know?  Anyway, I like her spells.  Most of them, anyway.  I feel like Keiki’s spells are either super easy, or super tough.  Like the first one is a really easy pattern to move through, but then the second is like “Here’s this fucking disaster of a bullet spread, good luck getting through this shit, also bombing and dying doesn’t erase the bullets and neither does losing beast mode so don’t hold still after getting hit or you’ll just die anyway.”  And it’s like...completely unreadable.  I have no idea how to beat that card.  I do like the last two cards.  Not because they’re especially fun or interesting, but because you start to cheat.  At this point, your spirit says that backup is coming, and it’s really easy to bomb when you’re in a tight spot, collect five of the many spirits around the field to protect yourself, and repeat that as needed.  I actually went into this section with no lives left and managed to clear it.  It’s a neat ide for the fight that’s playing out, and it does feel like you were the spearhead but the bosses behind you are sending support when it’s showtime.  Also the midboss of this stage is another impossible one.  You can release beast mode yourself as if it were a bomb.  If you do that, and you take out Mayumi with it, you get the extra spirit.  Hard as shit, if you ask me.

Overall, the game’s fine.  I actually think I’d rank it lower than Ten Desires, if you can believe that.  With beast spirits, all the crazy powerup stuff your character does, the bullets, and the usual blocks falling around, the screen is an absolute mess.  I swear to you, about half my deaths were because something exploded and I lost visual on where stuff was, or there was an animal spirit powerup right near me and I went for it only to find out a stray bullet as overlapped with it.  The game is a mess, visually, but it’s honestly not that hard at all?  Beast Mode acting as a free auto-bomb with side powerup benefits is really nice, and like I mentioned at the start, some aspects of the game are completely invalidated depending on which mode/character combo you choose.  But I feel like...by Stage 4...I had kinda stopped trying.  I wasn’t willing to engage with most of the cards, I’d either bomb or rely on Beast Mode to carry my ass.  Which I don’t think is quite as fun, but it’s almost required of you.  Generic enemies have a lot more health than usual, and I feel like boss patterns are trickier than average, so you’re kinda reliant on these boosts.  Admittedly, I’m also terrified of the Extra stage.  If this is anything like TD, they throw you the curveball there, where you don’t get shit for resources and have to actually get good after cheesing your way through the game.  Maybe another day.  I don’t have it in me right now.

[journaloftomfooleryandjapery]

All the TOP 10 OF THE DECADE posts made me want to make one of my own, so here’s my 10 fave games this decade:

Yakuza 0  Shovel Knight  Nier Automata  Metal Gear Rising  Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX Final Fantasy XV   Scott pilgrim vs the world the game Undertale Persona 5  Doom

Danganronpa 2, New Vegas, Touhou Luna Nights, Katana Zero and Mario Odyssey all only barely missed out, and it was a tough decision not to include them. I loved the shit out of those games but thinking it through I decided they were just slightly less loved by me than the above.

Below the cut are some extended thoughts (of varying length) on the games included:

Just CTRL F if you wanna find a specific one

Yakuza 0

Every Yakuza game is delightful and this is definitely the best one, in my opinion. The Yakuza games appeal to me for a lot of reasons: the combat, the story, the variety of activities, the look of it all and the music. I feel like its a very unique game experience with its blend of weird in-depth side activities, serious crime drama, manly man masculine combat friendship melodrama, metal gear-esque convoluted conspiracies and a surprisingly compassionate view of the world it takes place in. 

The combat is what drew me in initially because it just feels good, the feedback of stomping on a dudes face in yakuza is delivered perfectly, and the attacks are brutal, hard and flashy. Its a very solid and satisfying combat system and in 0 its the best it has ever been. The ability to switch between 3 different and equally fun fighting styles on the fly really lets you mix things up and adapt your approach, every style feels fun and useful. If i had to pick a favorite it would be slugger, but its a tough choice, and they are all very viable and FUN.

Yakuza 0 also gets big points for having the best story in the series. The protagonists feel much more interesting in this era, the fights feel more earned in this game than others, the relationships are incredibly touching (I’m almost mad majima didnt stay with makoto) and the substories (and some parts of the main story) are the funniest they’ve ever been. Stuff like the quasi-stealth mission where you have to make sure women don’t see you buying a porn magazine for a child, and the extended scene of kiryu trying to guess the right business manners for a meeting had me laughing so much i was i was almost in physical pain.

The extensive business and host club substories get you tons of extra game content and are good enough to almost be there own game. The other games in the series have extended side activites of varying quality, but i think 0 had a rare case of all of these being, basically, perfect. The team obviously agrees since host club management came back repeatedly, but never as good as it was here.

Being set in the 80s elevates almost everything in the game because of the outfits, money flying out of every enemy you attack, the classic sega games you can play at the arcade (Outrun is so much fun and I’d have never have given it a proper go otherwise) and the disco minigame everyones made a meme out of (that music is so catchy).

As a final note this game has the best boss fights and music in the series, which is a very high standard to surpass when you look at the rest of the series. The dual final boss fights, the recurring boss for kiryu and almost every majima fight are highlights of the entire series for me. 

0 is going to end up being one of the few games I’ll never sell my copy of because i want it available for me to play forever, its a complete delight.

Shovel Knight

This game has been analysed to hell and back, so i wont have much original to say i suppose. Admittedly i did enjoy the first campaign but it didnt completely win me over, plague knights campaign and beyond was what really made this an all time greats for me. It’s one of very few games that gets the NES+SNES platforming appeal 100% right and essentially surpasses most games of the day, with almost perfect pacing, challenge and level design. IT helps that the whole world and story and look is charming as all hell. It’s an easy game to love and the more you play it the more that feels justified. Being PACKED with great content is also a plus. If you liked the first campaign you can just keep going through a set of campaigns about as good that only really rehash some level assets. I would say its one of the best 2D platformers ever for me, if not quite my true number 1.

ALSO JAKE KAUFMAN KNOCKS IT OUT THE PARK WITH THIS SOUNDTRACK

Since i have little else to add to the shovel knight discussion, here’s my ranking/thoughts on each campaign

Plague of shadows. BEST storyline, great levels with a really cool gameplay gimmick, the characters are all cute and the ending really makes me feel for him. both sorry for him at first and then a very real AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWW for LOVE

King of cards. king knight is just fun as hell to play as, he doesnt have that many tools but his movement is just crazy fun and i love the flair in all his animations. also has that rad final boss. joustus is ok i guess.

Shovel of hope. uuuuuuh what can i even say about this. its good, and the melancholy dream bits add a lot to the mood of the story. we’ve already analysed this campaign within an inch of its life i dont think i can say anything new. wish we could fight the battletoads on pc.

Specter of torment. still fun and i appreciate the tone change, but i didnt care as much for the characters and the mega man-esque level select doesnt suit shovel knight imo. specter knight has a lot of fun movement options though. mainly i just love GRINDING and the diagonal slash. i dont give a fuck about reize

Nier Automata

I feel a tiny bit ashamed i have so little to say about this considering it is one of the most emotional experiences i have ever had with a story. If i lsten to the final version of weight of the world i still cry just from remembering this game and how it made me feel. i think its one of the greatest narratives of the century but i can barely get across the appeal to anyone who hasnt already played it. its a story about hope, despair and the nature of the human race that never feels like its preachy or pretensious or taking on more than it can handle. it made me feel all kinds of emotions deeply and intensely, it genuinely made me burst into tears about 10 times, maybe more. even putting aside the ggrand narrative, theres so many cool character moments and bits of world building and visual eements and tragic little side stories that you would need a whole book to talk about them all while doing any real justice to them. i loved it so much that im paying £70 to see an orchestra do the soundtrack live. I want to hug and kiss 2b and 9s better. i just love it deeply and i find it hard to explain why it makes me feel that way, but its a dark beautiful and hopeful story where every moment feels earned. the despair of the story giving way to genuine hope with the rest of the world helping you fight for it is such an intensely emotional moment that you could never replicate outside of this kind of story and medium. how the fuck do i explain that to anyone that doesnt already get it. I’m glad this game exists

Metal Gear Rising 

Well, complete tone shift here. Platinum made a lot of great action games in the last decade that all dig into that same itch for DODGE SLOW MOTION BANG BANG BANG alongside great soundtracks, visuals and awesome set piece moments. Just intense, flashy, awesome combat. Picking a favorite of the decade was the hard part, because a platinum game had to be one of my faves of the decade. The closest was transformers, but mgr has a couple of things about it that put it above the rest of the platinum catalog for me.

The story actually works very well at still being metal gear while in the platinum formula, its about the cycle of violence and FINDING YOUR OWN PURPOSE and it works weirdly well. The strangest part is that it feels like a legitimate sequel to metal gear 4 tonally while still being the crazy action game it is

Raiden is just super fun to play as, while I’ll always miss the DODGE SLOWMO in a platinum game parry and zandatsu give a great flow to fights and there’s real exhilaration to parrying a hard chain of attacks and tearing out a bunch of enemies spines at once every time

raiden is also just  a fun protag, it truly allows me to embrace that kind of stereotypical edgy cool anime swordsman he embodies

BEST PLATINUM SOUNDTRACK DO NOT @ ME

Bosses just rule

one of the best final bosses ever, in my opinion? maybe that’s controversial, but armstrong gets an insane amount of characterization and pure PRESENCE out of such a small amount of screen time and the fact he feels like such a perfect rival to raiden so quickly is kind of nuts to me. within about half an hour you are ready for the ultimate final showdown with everything at stake, and then the gameplay 100% delivers on that with a fight that is challenging as hell and just feels climatic and intimidating. its a little thing, but having this dude just smack you around with his hands and almost no fighting skill after a game filled with crazy flippy cyborg ninjas makes him feel TOUGH and the way you finish him off? it just rocks, plain and simple. I don’t think i need to justify slices a massive dudes chest open and ripping out his giant still beating robot heart as the music climaxes and our cool edgy protag literally says WE’RE DONE HERE. truly, it has to be this way.

Gunvolt Chronicles Luminous Avenger IX 

For fast twitchy 2d platformers this barely beat out Katana Zero and Touhou Luna Nights, but i think its just a little better. The skill ceiling on this game is high as hell and once you really get to grips with it, its an experience you cant find anywhere else. its just satisfying as hell to be able to get through the point where you can ZOOM  through these levels by making use of copen’s dash and lock-on and weapons well enough. once you get good enough to get through a hole level without touching the ground, you just cant go back. I liked this enough to get an S rank on almost every level. this game just rules, man.

story, art and music are all great as well. but they pale in importance next to zippy jetpack zoom zoom fun time.

also great for having a cool twist that i genuinely did not see coming at all

Final Fantasy XV   

For context, my experience of FFXV was not the base game so i cannot personally address the concerns of the version at launch, which i hear from others was a total mess! The game has been updated and changed so much that it is probably almost unrecognizable aside from the absolute base aspects of it. The version i am talking about is, as far as we know, the “final” version released right before Episode Ardyn. There was of course an update after this, but it only added DLC compatibility and a few items, so it means very little in the grand scheme. I also played all of the dlc and watched all the periphery material to get the full, messy disjointed experience. it is also worth noting that the only other FF game i have played is the classic title Mario Hoops 3 on 3 Basketball. I feel it important to tell you this before getting into things so that you can have a full idea of the perspective i come at the game from.

This was chosen over Mario Odyssey and someone will probably kill me for that. I just think its a great emotional story that does a fantastic job of making you care for all the characters, and the world feels massive and full of cool stuff to see. It’s my favorite open world game and i love The Boys.  its not the kind of thing i usually play but i think it genuinely had a great story and its a very fun game to just explore and spend time in. ffxv truly understands the emotional bond between The Lads and it is fun to kill big monsters with your party

(they kinda ruin the last cutscene in english, in japanese he says I LOVE YOU GUYS and it makes me cry but in english he goes U GUYS ARE THE BEST which just isnt the same. a small nitpick though. a lot of this game made me cry regardless, its just great at creating an emotional bond)

I admire the insane level of ambition in the visuals and scope, and i bought every dlc for it because it was just that good. the ifrit boss fight and all the giant monsters are just amazingly epic in scale. the “found a cool rock” post is what i truly admire about this game summed up. 

all the ancillary material for the game is great and worth getting into, with the exception of the Comrades multiplayer expansion. Everything else adds depth to the story and the world without being entirely necessary for you to get through the story. the anime and the dlc all really feel worth getting into without being something you have to see to get The Full Experience

the giant monsters are cool

Scott Pilgrim vs the World: The Game

Being from 2010 this game only just makes it in, but it was my favorite beat em up this decade and a source of great nostalgia for me. It had a pretty big impact on music and art tastes in regards to games, and in retrospect this games existence was very much a dream team scenario. Paul Robertson is a great sprite artist who does a lot of good work, Anamanaguchi have gone on to become one of my favorite bands (another winter is still one of their best tracks imo) and at the time this came out i was obsessed with scott pilgrim. That plus the beat em up gameplay makes this kind of a perfect blending of a lot of my specific tastes. Playing this brings me back to the time in my school life that i played it very distinctly, a more comfortable time in my life for sure, and i think the game still stands up excellently. I hope that someday it will get a rerelease so others can enjoy it. I give this another play through every year or so, but i wish id gotten the dlc while it was still available

Doom

ITS VIOLENT ITS FAST ITS FUN ITS METAL

i like this game because of the intense adrenaline rush and violent catharsis it gives me, essentially a constant dopamine rush

fun game good

Undertale

I’m glad i got to this before the massive wave of spoilers and popularity came about. It’s a great story with some fun gameplay, and i think SANS UNDERTALE was one of the best boss fights this decade. Its a shame that for so many new players this experience is going to be ruined by spoilers

Persona 5 

Danganronpa 2 and fallout new vegas were close contenders for this last spot. I actually made a post about my thoughts on this game before https://journaloftomfooleryandjapery.tumblr.com/post/184341270554/nue-is-great-love-his-goofy-design-when-life-will but essentially 

Essentially, its got a great cast of characters, a cool slick look, great monster designs, a fun gameplay loop of collecting monsters and grinding stats while waiting for the next big event, and a surprisingly good story

No idea if royal is any good, but its on a pretty small list of games that i might actually take the time to replay

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

My Top Ten* Touhou Tracks

*...as of September 2019 because I love so many and I’m sure my favourites could change not just in order but be completely replaced by ten different tranks within a month.

Making this list felt impossible at times because I picked out 39(!) tracks that I thought were ‘top ten’ worthy, and obviously reducing that list to just ten was really hard and I’m pretty sure I just gave up at some point and tried going with what my gut told me more often than not. 

That sounds like I didn’t put as much thought into this list as I could have, but I would like to spin this as a testament to how good so much Touhou music is and how much it means- Okay that’s a bad excuse.

Behind-the-scenes-edit: I changed this to Top 11 at the last second because I was writing my number one and realised I forgot a song I liked more than number 10!

10 11. Concealed Four Seasons (Okina’s first theme from HSiFS)

I just really love this one. It’s one of the ‘subtly powerful’ kind of boss themes featuring a riff that I adore. That little snippet of Necrofantasia is also nice for lore and my ears.

10. The Clown of the Star-Spangled Banner (Clownpiece’s theme from LoLK)

I think this track is literally the perfect amount of chaotic, cheerful and dangerous for a super powerful fairy dressed like a clown. On top of that, it still manages to have those elements so many of the LoLK tracks have that really make me feel like I’m in space.

9. Night Sakura of Dead Spirits (TD Stage 1)

My favourite of all Stage 1 themes. I’m at complete peace while listening but it’s not too peaceful that I feel like falling asleep.

8. Flawless as Clothing of the Celestials (Pre-Battle theme from SWR)

This is probably my favourite rendition of that classic Broken Moon motif. It  doesn’t represent Touhou as a whole as much as any of the others, and is obviously more meant for Heaven and Tenshi specifically, but it’s still by far the prettiest to me.

7. Walking the Streets of a Former Hell (SA Stage 3)

It’s so happy and festive! The first time I played SA, I didn’t know anything about anywhere, but I could tell right away from this track and the bright lights of the background that I was flying through a cheerful party. ...which I also lost a lot of lives in.

6. Heian Alien (Nue’s theme from UFO)

My favourite Extra Boss theme. It sounds exactly like what I’d expect from the title: Otherworldly, mischievous, but also a really addictive beat. I actually get chills near the end of the loop where the track goes low and then the trumpets blare out. 

5. Cinderella Cage ~ Kagome-Kagome (IN Stage 5)

It’s beautiful and manages to sound both epic and child-like at the same time. It really is the perfect theme to a bunch of rabbits.

4.  Lullaby of Deserted Hell (SA Stage 5)

I got really emotional while listening to this. I mean, that applies to 70% of touhou tracks, but this one was one of the... 50% that did it the very first time. It’s so good and makes me want to fall asleep among a bunch of sad skeletons!

3. Wind God Girl (Aya’s theme from PoFV)

Super bias time. This was the very first piece of Touhou music I ever listened to. I heard it used in a youtube gaming video, looked it up myself, discovered it rocks, found more tracks in the sidebar, and it all snowballed from there...

2. Desire Drive (TD Stage 4)

Super bias time isn’t over yet. I’ve basically listened to this track and multiple remixes I’d say.... several hundreds of times in the last few years? I’m no longer capable of properly weighing it against other tracks or even articulate why I love it other than ‘It instills happiness into my brain through the most direct of means’.

1. The Shining Needle Castle Sinking in the Air (DDC Stage 5)

Wow there are a lot of Stage 5s on this list. I feel like this track more than either of Shinmyomaru’s themes from Stage 6 actually best represent the entirety of her character and the conflicts of Double Dealing Character as a whole. Also it’s sooo beautiful it soothes yet ignites my spirit every time.

Honourable mentions:

Favourite title theme is a tie between Newshound (Double Spoiler) and Mysterious Purification Rod (Double Dealing Character).

Favourite Stage 1 boss theme is A Midsummer's Fairy Dream (Eternity Larva's theme) and I mention it here because it was the only Stage 1 boss theme among the 39 tracks I picked.

Favourite credits theme is Oriental Evening Sky (Scarlet Weather Rhapsody).

-

This all started because @pyramomo basically dared me to but I’m glad for it.

[xbuster]

how hard is it to get into 2hu if you've never played a bullet hell?

It’ll kick your ass at first, that’s for sure. If you’ve never played a bullet hell, this kind of gameplay will be really foreign to you even if you’ve played other shooters. However, I started playing Touhou before I ever played a bullet hell and I’ve managed to stick with it since. It’s generally agreed upon to start with Touhou 6 (the Emboident of Scarlet Devil) since it’s the first Touhou game for Windows and lays the foundation for Touhou going forward. Then I would say just work your way up the list in numbered order and go play 1-5 for the PC-98 whenever you feel like it.

EoSD is special though because if you play on Easy, you can’t get to the final stage and the game abruptly stops you after the stage 5 boss. To beat the game you’ll have to play it on Normal. You do have three continues, three initial bombs (that refill upon death), and you can increase your starting life count up to 5 (I think you need to play the game a few times before you unlock more lives, but it’s been years since I first played that game that I can’t remember), so you do have a lot of tools to beat it. It’ll be frustrating at first but if you work at it and keep improving, you could do it in a day! I would recommend starting with Reimu since her homing shots allow you to focus on dodging while they chase enemies. Marisa has a steeper learning curve because her shots are more focused, but she’s faster and stronger. I use Marisa whenever I play a new Touhou game.

If you can beat EoSD on Easy, but not Normal, move onto Imperishable Night (Touhou 8) since it’s by far the easiest in the series. IN has two final bosses, a fake and a real one. In order to beat the real one, you have to beat the fake one with one team (there are 4 teams) and play the game as them again and try to die as little as possible. The game gives you way more continues than other ones, but it increases the time gauge which prevents you from progressing if it gets too high (getting to 5 AM is considering losing). The game also has an easy Extra Stage to unlock because you just have to clear it on Easy without continuing.

If this has given you the drive to try it out then good luck! The games are really fun and improving your runs feels really good! They’re short games so they can be replayed many times over without being too time-consuming. If you want any resources to get you setup, I can help provide them.

[mrgameandpie]

So, it’s possible to beat Touhou games while being a pacifist, never firing a single shot, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this recognized as an actual thing that can happen in-universe. When playing the games the dialogue continues to go as though you’re beating up the bosses, and torn clothes still happen and the like. I’m pretty sure the game’s final spell card gets harder if you manage to pacifist your way to the end, but as far as dialogue and lore goes I have no idea if being a pacifist is actually possible with the in-universe rules.

If it is something that can actually be done though, how is such behavior viewed by other characters? It’s harder than fighting normally, so it’d probably be considered impressive to win that way, but maybe it’d be seen as rude too? Like having a high degree of boastfulness, or maybe even being seen as thinking one is above playing the danmaku games that settle things around Gensokyo. It probably wouldn’t be considered as representative of some moral high ground, especially when the system was specifically set up so conflicts could happen without death and severe harm being a threat. With that in mind, refusing to shoot any shots and “play the game” as it were might even be considered MORE violent and threatening.

[yukithesnowman314]

Anime Central - Day 0

Ahh Anime Central.  Chicago’s ultimate otaku convention for partying and debauchery.  It’s a great convention to find hard drugs like coke and acid. There’s alcoholic beverages flowing  about. Take a few shots for liquor courage to dick down  that Cecilia cosplayer. Hey, Gotta celebrate Fire Emblem Gaiden’s  3DS remake somehow. There are also Persona orgies hosted by a kinky Shadow Rise cosplayer hunting guy to run a train on her.   ACEN has the great shit for ya if you want it.

Oh yea, they have cosplaying nerds who ain’t fuckin each other in orgies and industry panels. That shit is boring. As an (somewhat) honest person, I’m gonna tell you what really goes down outside the panels and normal convention shit.  Autograph and photo sessions? Pfft. I rather waste time on my grind, writing passion, and networks. Why? So the anime and video game industry can notice my hardwork. I want to become lifelong friends with the niggas you stand in line for hours just to talk to them for twenty seconds out of your life.

Look, fuck all that lame boring shit that the average con attendees will tell.  I’m here to too you the  the real grimy shit.  You can trust me on keeping it real. I’m a real nigga. Let’s start.

Me and my friend “Adrian” (name changed because I’m the star and he’s not) arrived in Chicago at 2:00pm Thursday afternoon after a long 10 hour trip from St. Louis via Amtrak. You see, Amtrak was running a special deal. Riders will have to suffer through delays and constant route changes with no explanations!

Something about a fatal train derailment was thrown in, but we didn’t get that option.     Oh well.  Public transit is better than Amtrak. You don’t get that fine Chicago-style  piss smell on the Amtrak unlike Chicago’s CTA public transit.   CTA ride was nice, sans some homeless diabetic begging money for heroine.  Or was it insulin?  I dunno I don’t do (hard) drugs, and I’m not hip on the new and upcoming drug trends.

Following that  45 minute ride, we arrived at Rosemont, Il! Home of Anime Central.  Yes!  Finally I can make my grand announcement to my haters that the guy they secretly want to fuck but can’t has arrive!  The guy who they want to fight, but are too pussy to step up because they can’t carry their keyboards around.

It’s me: Benjamin Snow.  I am the greatest otaku to have ever lived (one day I’ll snatch the Otaking title from Toshio Okada) . I am the promised child of otaku culture niche, whom the prophets once warned the basement dwelling beta white cuck virgins weeaboos..   I am the main character of my haters’ lives.  I am the anti-hero protagonist of this tale.

I’m honored that you, the reader and haters, are focused on me. All eyes on me.

Adrian (I almost forgot about him) and I checked into our hotel, the Hilton, which is right across from the Hyatt, the main Anime Central hotel.  Hilton’s a nice hotel chain for lodging space.  Not a nice company to work for however unless you’re a machoist who hates their life.  Oh wait I forgot you ain’t supposed to talk shit about shitty companies you used to work for.  Actually, I take that back.  Hilton’s 3rd party contractors can be hit or miss.  Not the company itself. Fuck you Lodging Hospitality Management.

Grudges and come up revenge aside, my boy and I got a top floor room. We’re top tier men so we gotta be at the top.  After showering (not with Adrian, that’s pretty gay), I decided to head to the Hyatt to scan the place for anyone I know.  Encounter another homeboy, “Joe”.  Joe’s a cool guy who I really wish I could hang out with more often despite we live in the same city.  Big black guy fighting game fan such as myself. After some small chat we decided to roll out to Rosemont Liquor, a super nice liquor store in Rosemont that you already know is gonna love the money they racked in from us alcoholic weeaboos.  

 Went in and brought a bottle of pineapple New Amsterdam, a pack of 312 Goose Island Wheat, and big boy beer: My first 12% beer in my life.  Trust me, drinking 12% beer is like smoking some fire ass kush after smoking that weak ass reggie for years on end.  Forgot the name of the beer but they’re not sponsoring me nor this blog, so it doesn’t matter.

 Following, Joe and I drove back to my hotel.  During the drive, we spoke about fighting games, with Casual Player Neglect Fighter V being the main topic (Street Fighter 5) and how garbage it lowkey is. I brought up how for some reason despite not playing in months, I was able to beat my friendes who play nearly everyday with Karin.

 Oh Capcom.  I hope one day, you guys figured out why nobody enjoy this game.

Joe dropped me off at my hotel, as he had prior plans with a friend.  Cool with me, given I had plans to kick it with another friend, “Vance”, and his Touhou cosplay crew at Hofbrauhaus.  I “met” Vance back at my first ACEN in 2013 as he was cosplaying as Momiji (from Mountain of Faith or whatever idunno I don’t play Touhou like that).  His outfit and the craftsmanship of it was amazing, and (at the time) Momiji cosplays were rather uncommon, so your boy had to take his pic.  I would not realized I met him at ACEN until later.

I officially met and hung out with Vance at Anime Crossroads 2013, at his Touhou Panel he was hosting.  We spoke about the series, our love for alcohol, and the convention scene in general. We naturally clicked and overtime, he became a good con friend.  On some real shit, I wouldn’t mind being friends outside of cons with the dude…if I didn’t live in St. Louis but there’s always non-con traveling plans. Enough of my longing for networking with folks, to Hofbrauhaus

 Hofbrauhaus’s food is amazing.  I could tell you the fantastic variety selection of dishes and drinks they have , but my black ass is too lazy to look up their menu online.  Settle with a picture of one of their dishes I that  cannot for the life of me pronounce.  I’m an American.  Not German.  We speak American in America.

 After showcasing my quietness to people I don’t know outside my established friends in the group (I’m lowkey shy around strangers) and appropriating German culture (because I’m slightly racist), I  walked back to my hotel and holy fuck! It’s fucking cold and windy as fuck outside! You see, my dumbass thought it would had been a great idea to wear a light T-shirt and shorts earlier in the day, despite knowing the fact the tempts were dropping..  

I’m pretty sure some folks saw me walking around shivering in shorts and a t-shirt and were like “This stupid ass nergo.”  Okay, I hope not.  Rosemont is mostly white people, and they don’t have the right to say Nergo. Kinda like how I don’t have the right to make racist jokes about the Germans in a German restaurant (inside my head of course). Das boot! Big titty thick Germans girls wearing those Dirndi dancing with giant beer mugs!  I swear I’m not racist towards Germans!

…fuck I’m racist.

I arrived back to my hotel to change into some warm clothes. Perhaps the harsh winds were karma for my inner-racism, but oh well. To help prove to myself I’m not a complete racist, I took up an offer to kick it with my white friend, “Beared Chibi-Usa” at ACEN’s infamous smoker’s circle.  Great source for debauchery.  And drugs!

Bearded Chibi-Usa, as his name implies, is a guy who has a beard and cosplays as Chibi-Usa from the Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon series.  Maybe he’s actually cosplaying an alternate timeline of Chibi-Usa, who is actually a female-to-male transgender, and they have a beard. Who fuckin’ knows.  All I know is that this man is cool ass businessman and has his own online advertisement company. Make that new money young nigga.

During our chill and smoking (tobacco) session, we overheard a rather interesting conversation between two guys talking about a stillborn dead ass baby.  So, this loud ass guy was broadcasting how he may or not had been cucked by his (ex?) girlfriend at the time, and how his girlfriend felt so bad about it that she let the guy have pity sex with him.  Like, raw dog busting all types of nuts inside the girl’s pussy pity sex with a creampie ending.  

As we all know, sex makes babies. Sometimes, stillborn babies. Hey, that’s life.  Some win.  Some lose.

Despite people giving this guy confused looks and laughing at him, he kept going with the damn story.  Bearded Chibi-Usa and I exchanged “what the fuck” looks and walked away, trying to contain our laughs to no anvil.  We needed to drink after that, man. That was too much for us and this was day zero.  A fuckin’ Thursday night.    

People; keep your personal business about being a cuck with a stillborn baby to yourselves. I will laugh at you. To keep your mind off how much of a fucked up piece of shit person I am for laughing at that poor guy, let’s go back to a certain point of this story.  Remember how I told ya Beared Chibi-Usa is a businessman? Well, some non-nerd businessman got on my boy case for being him; a nerd.  I don’t remember much of the details due to the alcohol and drugs, but I recall him shutting their ass down, talking about how he’s a businessman himself and that his company has clients from the companies the non-nerds work for.

Needless to say, he shut their ass down.  Ya non-nerds should really let go of the stereotype of the broke basement nerd still in their parents’ basement. But hey, they’re old fucks.  They have about what? 20-30 years of life left, and us young folks are gonna take their jobs overtime. No big deal.  

We settle back to my room and we spoke upon various topics, such as grime rap, weight lost, and business.  Grime rap. My god, no wonder it has that name. Angry.  Aggressive.  Blunt. Take what you know about (real) hip-hop culture,  give it steroids and make it British.  No, not fucking high class sip tea and eat crumpets British.  I’m talking the low income, brutal lifestyle of the the British. Rap battles taking place inside decaying buildings and under bridges. Harden street rappers going berserk with their personal attacks against rivals and enemies.   You got your feelings hurt?  Fuck you,  you’re a grime rapper. Suck it up.

 No wonder my boy got me hip to this genre.  I can see myself bumping this type of music and applying the story behind the music in my writings. I get inspired easily ya know.  Speaking of, his talk about business, and how his networks pretty much inspired me to work on my grind, hustle, and brand.  Here’s a young dude around my age with his own company, out here making moves and great money. I’m sitting here listening about his work. I’m like “man, if he can do it, so can I.” Granted, it takes hard work, dealing with self-doubts, and overcoming both haters and personal failures to reach what you want in life. This shit doesn’t come overnight.

 I’m dragging this story with nonsense filler and I pretty sure you guys want me to talk more about partying and less about my sappy self being inspired.  A couple of more folks came over to pregame (who I won’t mention because my uncreative ass can’t come up with fake names).  I think we played the godawful broken Sailor Moon Super S fighting game on my laptop, as well as a real fighting game like Super Street Fighter 2.  I got bodied in both because alcohol. One of my friends noticed my Sailor Saturn sticker on my laptop and we had a nice chat about why we like and relate to her (socially awkward but love having few but very close friends).   Come to think about it, I honestly forgot what happened from between me light partying and when I woke up the next morning. Fuck it, onto Day 1.  A day in which gave me more inspiration from dudes doing better than myself, an convention and hotel staff hating on my alcohol collection, and me having to control my temper to prevent killing somebody who I thought was a friend.