#with having 3 gameplay things going on i wont get bored at least

[thosegothsims]

soooooo as per this post i decided to try playing around with the idea of starting to play with that whole "my version of the not so berry challenge" idea by making a sim and playing for a couple of in-game days and ohhhh i am OBSESSED with this sim rn

[repl1c4nt]

i wanna uhhhhhh update my ffxvi post: i did end up giving it a chance and so i will elaborate on the Me (tm) official review: theres a lot buckle in (spoilers for th3 entire game)

ok.,,,,,,...... now dat were all here letz go

First id just like to say soken delivers another phenomenal soundtrack(no surprize there) Historie - the holy empire and Titan lost are some of my favorite tracks in the game i cannot say i expected anything otherwise and it was a delight to get to every major dominant battle to hear what he cooked

on the topic of battle the gameplay was another huge plus for me. when all else failed i found myself returning to ffxvi for the gameplay alone because it is very genuinely fun, fast paced, and i enjoyed the variety of each eikon it kept rhe game fresh for me espically when it slowed down in every other aspect, i enjoyed every eikon battle to death whenever i couldnt decide if i /liked/ the game while playing i remember fighting titan. i had no clue how the fight would play out despite being late to the scene and i was blown away by how good it was. everything about it was so enjoyable it honestly empowered me to get to the rest of them and bahamut was just as much of a treat. it helped i love dion (i will be getting to characters) and his phase themes (beyond the heavens&ascension) were brilliant. the bahamut fight much like titan did not disappoint. for me at least it felt odin had a bit of a much welcomed difficulty spike enjoyed that fight a lot even if it wasnt as cinematic as bahamut and titan

speaking of... cinematic scenes were a weak point to me.. as cool as they were and they /were/ i cant help but feel like there had to be a better way to interrupt the fight. sometimes it really took me out of the moment to have my fight paused to just like press a button or mash or some shit. its fine just got old /fast/

as far as the rest of the battles they were all fun adn well and good.. i enjoyed every fight theme and found every fight mostly enjoyable although i cant help but feel the DPS check section fighting ultima where you kinda fly arounf him in circles would have been leagues more fun if it was a drakengaerd 3 style synced to thr music event... imagine that....it would be so awesome it woukd be so cool................. anyway as far as the actual final fight.. well lets get to the characters and story first

i wont be discussing the controversy surrounding the game because, despite it impacting my experience playing the game in very real ways, it just isnt what i wanna get into in this base post

alright. maybe i wasnt paying rnough attention but the story to me fell apart when ultima became a bigger actor on the stage. absolutely dont get the lad or the crystals. were destroying yhe mother crystals cos theyre killimg the planet fine well and good the story's pacing in this part was really wonk to me haha it would go from desperately boring an sluggish to fun for a moment and then just so boring again. it wasnt until the final two mother crystals when i became invested in whats happening. the mothercrystal plot twist was like oh ok well cid died for nothing /shrug i really dgaf either way i only really care my beloved mid. i really found myself most invested when characters i liked specifically becme involved with the plot (dion its dion its always dion)

dion's story to me was easily the best (yes my favorite heavensward character was aymeric. whos fucking surprised) fang and and vanille always had the most profound impact on me as far as ff relations go and its def because they were the closest thing we had to a canonical queer relationship and i will say dion and terance felt.. good? i know theyre not the /best/ and fang and vanille were leagues ahead of them a decade ago bit theres that just the way theres no question about their queerness just felt so good to see as a long time queer fan of the series who put up w its homophobic moments lol........... they were definitely a genuine highlight for me and their relationship was so beautiful and refreshing i wish we saw more of them.. especially because clive and jill just did not hit lolll. i couldnt believe how little i resonated with clive, joshua too. for me i usually have no problem relating to the main cast they all feel so human and real even when theyre cartoonish theres an undeniable down to earthness and relatability of most of the ff main casts i just couldnt bring myself to really care about clive

jill's story was for a brief moment something interesting and exciting. this was a woman in a yoshi p game w her own arc where the male character plays a fully supportive role and she isnt put in a passive role for her own story to move someone elses development along jill for the briefest moment maintains her own active will to get closure on her trauma where she isnt punished for it its just so disappointing its her only moments in the game. her character arc is chapters short and afterwards she would almost exclusively play passive roles, even giving clive her powers after they share an equally intimate scene both naked and venerable only for a dynamic to be reinserted through the form of dominant's power

clive was just nothing to me, i honestly tried to like him and i did mostly enjoy joshua as a character but i just did not ever care for his story ultima was so unfleshed out and strange ffxvi was best when it was pretty grounded to the on continent conflicts, the story doesnt feel like it was built around ultima the story honestly feels like it was built around the empire and ultima was an after thought. and man vs empire and then suddenly extraterrestrial/celestial freaks are involved isnt even uncommon ff plot progression. i could play like 5 other final fantasy games at that point. if the combat in ffxvi werent so addicting it would have nothing. (untrue of course it always has a brilliant soundtrack) i just really did not like the way the game built off itself it never felt natural or believable. none of the conflict with ultima felt grounded or natural or like it was built up in any meaningful way

i really dont understand the hype around clive hes very genuinely just a pretty face. i just dont care about u at all no matter how hard i tried

i never cared about hugo or benedickta either, although theyre like tertiary antagonists to be fair

joshua was another highlight for me. hes just very polite and jote was cute if definitely underutilized. i really dont have much else to say i wasnt surprised he died

clive i knew would die, that was a spoiler i knew w out a doubt going in and i was completely disappointed in it anyway. joshua made sense at Least he was basically dying the entire game and dion well. it makes sense yoshi p would kill the one gay man we cant have shit in eorzea but seeing clives entire arc be no dont kill yourselfffffff..... the world and its endless beauty is a bounty of possibilities and meaning. just to die anyway feels well. it just feels and to be fair clive did sacrifice himself for the lives of others but the scene where cid tells clive not to kill himself- regardless of how ungentle he put it- just feels so empty because well clive u could hav just killed yourself there i guess. sorry you were a slave for 13 years youll die before you get to live your life for yourself. like cmon narratively a more satisfying arc for him would have been to overcome this and live for himself even if he has to live w out joshua. he can move on hes done it partially before hes accepted himself he must live but he doesnt get to

its a shame. also unrelated the final fantasy namedrop made me reel but i forgave it for honestly being a little camp......... the lodestone name drop is Not forgiven. just horrible someone shpuld be fired

i dont really have much else to say and out of a desire to post this soon im gonna wrap it up. honestly i had high hopes for final fantasy 16 and im not one to go "oh final fantasy now sucks" because i Love ff13. i love ff15. i liked ff14 a normal amount. but ff16 just felt underwhelming compared to them.. it looked leagues better dont get me wrong even if ill always think ff13 is visually the best out of 'modern' final fantasy for its incredible cgi cutscenes good art direction and the ps3 charm the realtime cutscenes in 16 sometimes felt undynamic in comparison but real time vs cgi is very literally games hardware vs movie so........ not comparable tbh the environment and general worldbuilding of 16 was just so lackluster. the world felt so unreal even if it looked incredibly real, the plot was unfocused at times and inadequately built up, the characters are mostly uninteresting, and the character eith the most meaningful connection to clive was torgal. well torgal and cid but cid dies and leaves a gaping hole in the 'good character' category when it was just him mid and dion to begin with

still fun to hunt rank s's though ☝️

[teeto-peteto]

Question: Has there ever been a champion that you've wanted to like, but due to one reason or another, gameplay, design, voice performance, it just couldn't get all the way? Does that make sense?

augh a lot of them sadly.

Briar is the most recent one, i already adressed it in a recent post. I dont like they just made her anime highschool girl shaped, i think her design would have been stronger is she was uncanny skinny, it would fit better on her 'failed experiment with terrible hunger' concept and its a lost opportunity to make a character creepy and unsettling as Fiddlesticks was on its release. Im very bothered by her body type (wich is not bad but you know, repetitive), and if your team picks her its an insta loose so let me tell you its also not funny to play with one, i dont think she's well designed in the abilities department. I tried to like her because well, she's ''''''unusual'''''', but the type of unusualness that turns boring after a few days and then you just realize that she's just another pretty girl with Patrick Star personality.

aside from that i think i have opinions that most of the community would highly dissagree on so, sorry.

Irelia's rework didnt stick good on me. And i wanted to like her very badly but there's things that i just dont like on her that make me go 'eh' and play or think about another toplaner. Aside from making all of her skins exactly the same (you know, exact hair lenght just put like buns or other minor additions to the hair, the exact same dress piece, etc). I appreciate the rework in the artistic department but... I think her old blade was way more interesting that what she has going on right now, i understand why her blades are like this now, resembling the floating stones and all the 'power of nature and flow' that Ionia has around... but, i just dont like it. Her new lines are an improvement though, i cant really remember any lines from the old Irelia so, it's interesting how she gets to talk about her family, war, etc. One thing that bugs me the most is the Ice blade Irelia splashart... You know exactly what im talking about. I just cannot wrap my head around it. Actually imagine going to the artist and telling them 'Hey we need this new splashart for this Irelia skin, but like enhance her ass the most cause fans really loved it' ...bruh.

I know its a unpopular opinion and that she is a fan favourite and anyone could stab my throat if i say it but... I cant stand Akali. Like, at all. And i desperately tried to like her, i tried to like her on K/DA but it never works out. I tried playing her trying to somewhat bond and understand her but it doesnt work out. Look, original Akali wasnt good. I admit it, she was a copy and paste of Jade from Mortal Kombat. But the rework... It hurted me. I just couldnt understand why did they make her so... bratty, so 'pick me' type of girl, this kind of 'im rebel blehhhh' kind of person... Wich isnt bad in essence but, they made her so utterly exaggerated that it annoys me. I dont understand why they made her fall off of the Kinkou that badly and make her relationship with Shen this father-bratty daughter that rolls her eyes everytime he talks it makes me want to peel my skin with my nails. Her model update was definetly a glow up that im thankful for and she looks amazing, but... she is a pick me girl. She's the 'im not like the other girls' 'im not like my mom' 'im not like the other girls in ionia who believe in balance' and it hurts. There's a lot of positive changes on her i appreciate and i applaud, i just decide not to test it on my own because i know i wont enjoy it. I tried liking her on K/DA cause WELL at least she's interacting with 3 more people (4 with Seraphine) without being a literal child in rabies. But yeah, didnt quite work, she's better, but i dont want her near me. Her glowup is good, her emotion on the lines is amazing, but her personality kicks my ass badly. And i just hate the way Riot makes all her skins exactly the same just like Irelia, almost always the same type of dress piece (literally no matter if she's wearing a suit like crime city, a witchy design like coven... its literally the same shit) and the same type of haircut, copy and pasted but with different colours.

If anything, i could never take Sona seriously, her voice lines were bad already and her update just kept being bad or even worse. I try to like her but again, sexualized and basic. Nidalee is in the same category, playing her its fun but would you sacrifice that to hear sexual innuendos every 10 seconds?

woah noticed how the champions i mentioned are female? gee i wonder why....

am i the 'mysoginistic' one because i dont like the female champions? Or are Riot the mysoginistic ones because they think making champion splasharts with special enhance on their bodies and private parts is okay and that they can make them cold-hearted emotionless specially women because making them feel a bit of emotion makes them believe that it doesnt fit what they think feminism is about but yet they decide to give them bratty/unhinged rebelious personalities so they can raise the cocks of the disgusting male fanbase so they can go 'oh bbygirl is a feisty one what a brat' and buy skins and then produce/pay for porn of these characters? hmmm....

[the-worst-fe-player]

☕ everything about fates and the drama give us an essay king

Lamo thank you to king/queen/royalty

Okay so I'm gonna break this down into segments and header it with a different colour some will he shorter than others. Also sorry if I spell names of county wrong and rember this is just my opinion

Story

Also heads up I played it in this order conquest -> rev -> birthrights I know I should have swapped rev and birthrights but it was really expensive and I was like 14

Fates story is not the best but deffently not as bad as some people said. Overall I'll be honst I liked conquest story but not birthrights which I know most people have the opposite oppion on but like I found conquest to be more fun I enjoyed the idea of sneaking around garons back with your siblings and being powerless at times to stop a lot of the things like the massacre where scarlet dies and ryoma death there where moments I just groaned at the screen but apart from that I had more fun. Birthrights I'll be real the story kind of bored me i only really found certain parts interesting but my favourite moment from fates actually came from birthrights and it was the Xander fight where he killed elise and then let corrin kill him it was tragic and sad and I live for angst ngl. rev story I don't remember to much sorry I mostly fouced on the characters ngl but that sence with the kid turning into the faceless was really cool and also the one with makoto and she fucks with you and the doors but idk if that's classed as story or gameplay but either way that was sick

Gameplay

Fates gameplay was soild as fuck I will die on this hill. The pair up was cool, the skills and classes where sick and the character balancing minor some major problems *cough xander ryoma takumi cough* was pretty cool and corrin is not nearly as broken as Robin or byleth. I like to play conquest the most because I'm a maschoist lol but even though most of revs maps where gimmicks I love them there so iconic, tbh most of fates maps are like I understand most of fates criticism but the maps, apart from rev as not everyone likes gimmicks, I just dont understand

Phoenix mode

Honstly play the game how you want to if that's on normal Phoenix go a head I dont care you play the game how you want to. Like yeah Phoenix mode may take away all the difficulty but casual took away perma death and that's the most played game mode because that's what people want and if people want Phoenix then just let them have it doesn't bother me I will never play it but I dont care if others do.

Corrin

Okay so I actually like corrin and before you look away I will explain why I think their dislikes and why I do like them and think how they could be improved

I think the promblem people have with Corrin is that they dont have enough personilty to be a regular character but they have to much that they can't be an avatar if you know what I mean. Like with Robin they deffently had a personily but they weren't the main character chrom was so it wasn't in your face as much yeah they made some important decisions whitch often did nothing but at the end of the day it lopped back to chrom and this is something corrin cant do everything has to be about corrin as there the main lord. But corrin is kind they dont want to kill common soldiers and that's never really addressed (as far as I can remember) why corrin wont kill like the sibling bit make sense but the common solider whitch could have killed there spouse is just frustrating at times and something not many people feel while playing. Corrin would have worked better if they wasn't a self insert that went against the average players emotions. But yeah I do feel people are to harsh on corrin as well though like with the whole not earning the Yaot witch is like they kind of did though it was the fact that who ever held the yaot would bring the world peace and they did it was there destiny to do so to fight in a war and mabey kill there family but even then I don't see people giving the three houses leaders shit for there wepons and they did less all they did was be born from a group of people that committed genocide! But also many people say nothing bad happens to them but at least in conquest and birthrights corrin suffers, in conquest the blood of what you think are your siblings are on your hands one forced to commit sucide and the other painful possed and then there the amount of murder they just had to watch and then birthrights watching elise die for them and xander pretty much letting corrin kill him and everything else like bruh this shit is sad and is also the reson I pray fe stops using self inserts and goes back to the older ways

Translation

Why! Why! Who thought that was a good idea Xander what did they do to him 🥺 I haven't finshed reading a direct translation of fates yet but its like so much better then the English version if you have the chance to read through it's worth it so much. Also same with three houses it wasn't as bad but like certain scenes are better like the really cringy reponse el had to dimitri on gronder feild actually makes sense and just especially if you like crimson flower as out of all the routs edelgard and cf feels like it got changed the most its just interesting ngl anyway onto fates again

The petting game

I know I would hate it as I already hate the wake the slug a bug up and the "you didn't blow niles hard enough" stuff but it was also optional so like idk i don't really have an oppion

Fan service (camilla)

I like big tits (as long as there not mine lol) as much as the next person who also likes that stuff but even I'll admit It was way to much at times especially the did you miss you big sister part like I enjoy camillas character I'm a sucker for a character with a tragic backstory, loves there family, cares for others a bit to much and could bench press me but the times where she was just fan severse sucked.

Paying for everything sprealty

I hate it:(

Characters

Leo♥️leo♥️leo♥️

Overall I like the majority of characters, here are my top 3 favs girls and boy

Best girls : Charlotte, orochi and Nyx

Best boys: leo, saizo and laslow (idk if he counts if not Forrest)

I always see people being like (x) was wasted in fates i wished they were in a different game but literally 3/4 of the cast have that said about them so like do yall hate the cast or love it :/

My overall oppion

I have mixed oppions over all I do like fates conquest is one of my favourite fe and I hope mabey in twenty years it will get re made with a better translation and some adjustments to corrin and the story

Thank you for the ask sorry this is so long and sorry if it makes no sense

[cinema-tv-etc]

TV Show Review: The Queen’s Gambit

🎬  It’s More Than Just Chess                                                    

The Queen’s Gambit tells the story of Beth. A nine year-old orphan who is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is, until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting.

A Sneak Peek Into “The Queen’s Gambit”

At the age of nine, Beth Harmon is all alone. Her mother had just died in a car accident and she is now an orphan. It’s not like she had a very close relationship with her mother, it was the opposite actually. Ever since she was little, Beth has always been a quiet kid. No matter how much her mother yelled or screamed or panicked, Beth would always just calmly stare and said nothing.

Even on the day she was brought to the orphanage, she didn’t shed a tear. One would suppose, in a way, Beth has gotten used to being alone and maybe even prefer her own company to anyone else’s. In the orphanage, kids were given 2 pills every day. One red pill, and one green pill. The red pills were said to be vitamins, to keep the kids strong and healthy. The green pills, on the other hand, were called Xanzolam, which are usually prescribed for women with anxiety and insomnia. In the orphanage, it was given to the kids as tranquilizers to keep them calm and sedated.

She didn’t really care for the green pills until one day when she was in the basement where she stumbled onto a janitor called Mr. Shaibel playing chess all by himself. The sleek design of the board as well as all the pieces fascinated her, and she asked for him to teach her how to play. Upon hearing that, Mr. Shaibel’s reply to her was, “Girls don’t play chess.”

Beth was upset. She has never been this fascinated with something before, and yet now that her attention has been captured by the game of chess, Mr. Shaibel refused to teach her. Despite the refusal, however, Beth did not give up easily. She watched Mr. Shaibel’s gameplay, read books to grasp a deeper understanding of how chess works. And at night––this is where the green pill comes in handy––she would pop in a green pill and the chess pieces would start appearing on the ceiling as if they were magic.

And thus, she practiced in her head.

After a few nights of this and Beth’s persistence in wanting to learn chess, Mr. Shaibel eventually caved and decided to mentor her. To his surprise, Beth––for a girl who has never played chess ever before––held up quite well against himself. Mr. Shaibel was sure that she had never played this game before, but yet, she was able to play so well. So he asked her, “How did you know how to play chess?”

“I practiced, in my head.” Was Beth’s nonchalant reply.

This continued for a while, Beth would finish her school work and tests early, then she would go down to the basement to practice chess with Mr. Shaibel. It took her a while, but eventually, Mr. Shaibel who started off as her mentor wasn’t even able to beat her anymore. Mr. Shaibel surprised by her abilities, so much so that he invited a high school chess teacher to try to beat her. And even then, Beth effortlessly beat him without much thought.

As her obsession with chess grew, her dependence on the green pill did as well. Before when Beth would just take one green pill a day, now she would save up a few days worth of green pills and down them all at once. These days, she could no longer function without it. The green pills are the only way she was able to imagine the chessboard on the ceiling and practice in her head while everyone was asleep. Beth has become addicted to Xanzolam despite all the warnings that her friend gave her about the green pill.

And just when Beth was spearing through her young life getting better and better in chess, the state passes a law forbidding giving tranquilizers to children. Upon hearing that, Beth’s whole world comes crashing down.

What is she going to do now without those magical green pills?

3 Words to Describe This Show

BRILLIANT, GRIPPING, UNIQUE

Review

Ever since I subscribed to Netflix, I have watched so many more shows than I ever would otherwise. From the good ones to the mediocre ones and to the great ones. I mean, I can’t say that I’ve already watched all the shows there is on Netflix––because your girl doesn’t have the eye power for that––but I can say that I have binged a good handful of them and to be really, truly honest, The Queen’s Gambit is pretty up there when it comes to great shows.

Actually, I would even go as far as to say that The Queen’s Gambit might just be the best tv show that I’ve watched in 2020. From the cinematography to the actress and the aesthetic, everything was just so well done. Even now, a few weeks after I’ve finished bingeing it all in one go, I still sometimes go back just to stare at Anya Taylor Joy’s face. Honest to god that woman is absolutely gorgeous.

BETH HARMON AND SOMETHING ABOUT SMART GIRLS

This is something that just started developing in the past few years, but as I grow older, it feels like I am prioritizing more on brains than looks. 5 years ago I was all for that bad boy let-me-fix-you-but-i-wont-bring-you-home-to-momma type guys, but these days, it’s all the brains for me.

Maybe I am just evolving more and more into a zombie….

Me turning into a zombie aside (please love me still), while I was first pulled into the show because of Beth’s looks, it was her smarts that pulled me in and made me stay. There is something so endearing yet awe-inspiring about her way of moving through life. Despite the era that The Queen’s Gambit was set in, with chess being something that usually only men participate actively in, Beth knocked down all those stereotypes without batting an eye. What’s even cooler is that she wasn’t even trying to be a feminist or to stick one out for the girls.

Beth just loved chess, and she pursued it with all her might. It wasn’t that she was trying to show all those men that women can also play chess if she’d like, but it’s just she just didn’t care. Beth couldn’t understand why everyone was so surprised at the fact that she enjoyed and was good at playing chess. For her, it was just something that she loved and took great pride in. The way she looked at the world was for the most part very innocent, and something about that made me want to roll her up into a burrito and protect her forever.

IT’S MORE THAN JUST CHESS

A lot of people might be put off by the trailer, or by the synopsis when they see that this show is all about chess. Well, take it from someone who binged this show all in one go in a day: yes…and no.

Yes to the fact that The Queen’s Gambit is indeed a show about chess. However, it was also more than that. It tackles the topic of mental health, friendship, romantic relationships, addiction. Really, this show is deeper than what they show you in the trailer.

With Beth Harmon being a chess prodigy and whatnot it is understandable that there will be a lot of chess play going on, despite that, the show managed to make it in a way that it’s not boring nor repetitive. And this is coming from someone who detests chess from when she was little. I understand no chess whatsoever yet I have no problem following along with the storyline.

Trust me, The Queen’s Gambit is more than just chess.

DEPRESSION, LONELINESS, AND OTHER DRUGS

The Queen’s Gambit follows Beth from when she was nine years old through all her transitions into being an adult. Her despairs, her proudest moments, the people that come and goes. The viewers get to see all of that. Beth when she’s happy, Beth when she’s angry…her tears, her drunk, her crazy.

I love how Beth’s mental issues are depicted in The Queen’s Gambit. It’s like one of those people who seems to have it all on the outside, but on the inside, they were all broken in pieces. Maybe how Beth handled stress and how she always strives for nothing but perfection struck a chord in me, or maybe it was something else. I don’t really know for sure, all I know is that I really appreciate how they portrayed mental issues and drug addiction in this show.

While watching Beth go through all her mental breakdowns or her non-stop drinking blender, it never once struck me as something that is…odd. It was as if all of the emotions that she went through are all just part of life––of dealing with her emotions and growing up. It wasn’t portrayed as some sort of taboo, even among her friends. They sympathize with her, they were kind and understanding yet also firm with Beth. I don’t know, maybe this part of the review doesn’t make sense at all, but I just really appreciate that The Queen’s Gambit portrayed periods of depression or anxiety as something that people go through in life, instead of something that needs to be hospitalized. You feel me?

ROMANCE IS…KINDA IN THE AIR?

Another thing I love about The Queen’s Gambit: there is no pressure for Beth to date. Sure, she has pursuers who come to try their luck, and Beth herself also was attracted to some characters in the show, but there was never an underlying pressure from her stepmom or friends to push her to date. Which, thinking of when this show was set in––the year 1958––was quite surprising, at least for me.

While in this show Beth was never in a relationship for long, she never lacks male attention. Which makes sense given how gorgeous she is. However thinking how in the 50s and 60s where women are mainly housewives and listen to their husbands, it’s really refreshing to see Beth conquering the world one chess play at a time. Not only that, in the show, she became so well known for her ruthless chess play that men were intimidated by her. Which I can only imagine is not something you see often in the 50s and 60s.

Needless to say, The Queen’s Gambit’s takes on how Beth approaches sex and romantic relationship as a whole is very refreshing. Especially when you take the era into mind.

The Verdict

If you haven’t watched this The Queen’s Gambit, you have to. No, seriously, you need to. If you follow this blog long enough, you already know that your girl rarely ever get so gung-ho about tv shows. Books yes, every now and then. But tv shows? Almost never.

Ever since I finished watching The Queen’s Gambit, I have recommended it to nearly everyone I know that has ears attached to their heads. I seriously cannot recommend this show enough. Even if you don’t think you’ll enjoy it, just give it a 30-minute trial. If it didn’t catch your interest after that, you can drop it entirely. However, if you ended up bingeing it in under a day as I did, your girl expects a kiss on the cheek and a chocolate ice cream.

Not to mention, even if the show was just kind of bleh for you, wouldn’t you watch just for Anya Taylor’s doe eyes and gorgeous cheekbones? Because I damn well know I would. *wink*

https://literaturesandmovies.com/2020/11/06/tv-show-review-the-queens-gambit-its-more-than-just-chess/

🎬  🎥  🎞️ 📽️  🎬  🎥  🎞️  📸 📽️ 🎬

25 Things You Missed In Queen's Gambit

https://youtu.be/fDr0uKFkwpw

🎬  🎥  🎞️ 📽️  🎬  🎥  🎞️  📸 📽️ 🎬

Creating The Queen’s Gambit | Netflix

https://youtu.be/LzDhpEInMIg

Creating The Queen’s Gambit | Netflix

https://youtu.be/CDrieqwSdgI

🎬  🎥  🎞️ 📽️  🎬  🎥  🎞️  📸 📽️ 🎬

[wizardoftrash]

The Good in Transfer Limitations

This is a spoiler-free discussion on the recent announcement that Pokemon Sword and Shield will not be compatible with pokemon that are not on the Galar Dex. You will be limited to the Pokemon that can be found in the region.

If you don’t want to hear why a decision like this might be good, here’s your stop.

Ok, I really do get that this is a controversial and unpopular decision. Some folks have favorite pokemon that they might not get to use in the new game. Some folks wanted to bring their national dex collection forward into the latest gen. I’m sure there’s also a score of competitive players who are going to be out  quite a bit of time and energy with more of a clean-slate on the new gen.

But I wanted to start by saying, that this could have been much, much worse.

They’ve announced that there will be a new cloud-based way to store and transfer pokemon in the form of Pokemon Home, which will likely take more advantage of the new console’s features and capabilities. We barely know anything about this new service, but from what we do know, it’ll replace Pokemon Box and allow transfer between Pokemon Go, Let’s Go, and Sword and Shield.

There was no grantee that we would have a way to get pokemon from box, or sun and moon, onto any of the switch gen games. There was a very real chance that Let’s Go and Sword and Shield would have been a clean slate. I had said as much earlier on when players were still speculating about the switch gen games. Sure, it would have been a reasonable expectation that we would be able to transfer forward, but with a new gen, they had an opportunity to really overhaul the balance and gameplay for the series. The sheer quantity of older gen pokemon would have represented a significant obstacle in that kind of overhaul, which is why we have not seen that kind of overhaul since pokemon abilities made their splash.

1: Innovation has a price

... and that cost is time. Game design and development is an extremely time-intensive process. What might seem like a small change on the use-side can represent a huge cost to the developer both in time, and in storage space on the cartridge. Players might not fully grasp exactly how different sword and shield is from the previous games, and without ruining it for players that are trying to go in blind, this is the most different main-line series game in the entire genre, and I’m including Let’s Go when I say that. Up until this point, the series has been criticized for how unwilling they were to take risks and really change up how the game is played. Restricting the pool of pokemon that can be used is one of the things that makes that possible. There are at least 2 major changes in this gen that I can think of that would have had a multiplicative impact on development time based on the number of pokemon it would have to work for. Its not that the game would have taken too long to make, but that it would have been either too costly to make or impossible to make considering what would have been gained by opening it up to the whole national dex. Odds are good that there were other prohibitive factors at work here.

2: What we gain outweighs what we lose

Not everybody is thrilled with *every* new mechanic in sword and shield. The changes to multiplayer on the other hand are fairly unanimously welcomed. This is a total game-changer for the series, and its something that I had been hoping for from a Pokemon game for AGES. To support my claim, lets take a hard look at what we lost, because not being able to carry over certain pokemon affect a few ways the game is played.

Can’t re-live your favorite older teams

Harder to build restrictive mono-type style teams

Can’t use Sword/Shield as your comprehensive collection, or use it to trade for older missing pieces

No national-dex style post game

Narrower competitive play selection

Now to be fair, we don’t really know what Pokemon Home is going to have in terms of features. At the very least, expect to be able to use Pokemon Home as a comprehensive place for your collection to live including the newest gens. For all we know, there might even be ways to trade or even Battle using Pokemon Home (perhapse pokemon stadium style). Until then, the biggest things we “lose” are the various alternate ways to play through the story, and the variety in competitive play, which I’ll address in later points.

For most of us though, those are a tiny fraction of what the pokemon journey is. The vast majority of the pokemon playerbase gets nowhere near the full national dex, and has little to no personal interest in tournament play. If you want to re-live a classic team from a classic game, you could still go back and re-play the game it originated from, or take another stab at Sun and Moon with it. If you were really hoping to run a sheep-only team by running Mareep in with your Sword and Shield squad however, hopefully the new pokemon and featues are enough to make it worth while.

3: Fewer Useless Pokemon

This is a tough one to explain. No pokemon is truly useless, but there are loads and loads of pokemon that get swept under the rug simply because its a smidge worse than some other pokemon by-comparison. I’ve had some experience messing around in competitive play, and spent ages breeding and EV training pokemon for my friends to take to tournaments in older gens (looking at you sapphire). It always broke my heart when a neat idea I had for a fringe include didn’t work out because it was juuust under-statted enough not to be viable. Some of the time the culprit is just the meta (prevalance of fairy moves made Dark types SUUUUCK) but the vast majority of the time, its because its outclassed by a pokemon in another gen. This meant that only a tiny slice of the entire pokemon family would be anywhere decent in multiplayer but sometimes also in your pokemon journey. Why would you use Bronzong on your team when you’ve got a perfectly good Beldum in your box? *laaaame*

By restricting the pool down to just the pokemon you can encounter in the region, it creates opportunities for older pokemon that they chose to include that might have been overlooked in their own gen, and helps prevent new and interesting pokemon for being ditched for similar but slightly more optimal older pokemon that you’ve already used a dozen times and makes for a more boring experience.

4: Games are Art

“But how I play should be my choice!!!” - common expression

While that’s partially true, you should get to play how you want to play within a game environment, that doesn’t give you the right to *dictate* the environment itself. Games are as much an art form as they are a product or entertainment. Art isn't’ exclusively driven by supply and demand. An artist has intent, wants the audience to have specific experiences with their work, and has every right to shape their art in whatever way they think gets that experience across. Pokemon Sword and Shield isn’t a commission piece coded to your personal specifications, its work intended for a broad audience, and its really up to them to choose the conditions under which you interact with the work. *how* you interact with it within those conditions is still up to you, so if you want to force yourself to use only pokemon that appear in Galar and in previous gens, knock yourself out.

5: You don’t Know what you Want

or rather, you probably don’t totally know *exactly* what you want. You might be PISSED that you don’t get to roll your favorite team or pokemon forward, because you *think* that’ll be more fun. You might be furious that you wont be able to show off 100% of your new shinies in the multiplayer mode, because you *think* that’s what you’ll be doing. You might be devastated that your old competitive teams might be worthless, because you *thought* they would be all-stars in the new meta.

But you actually have no idea. The game isn’t anywhere close to out, most of the info is still a secret, and none of us have gotten our hands on it (except at e3, for 1 encounter basically). Pokemon let’s go was initially received extremely poorly, but that was before the game actually came out. Most players were pleasantly surprised, and the mechanics that people *thought* they were going to hate were well received when people actually gave it a fair shake.

Odds are good that some of what you hate about the new game you’ll learn to appreciate. You might be disappointing with the lack of transfer ability now, but it won’t be that big of a deal when the game actually comes out. There will be plenty to do in the game exactly how it comes packaged, so while you might have thought you wanted to play it a certain way, that could and likely will change when you actually play for real.

6: Competitive Renaissance

Not sure about you, but I’m thrilled that we are getting something like a clean slate for competitive play. I loved the early stages of Sun and Moon’s VGC environment. The meta was shifting, lots of fresh pokemon were getting tested and experimented with, and it was a blast to play without dealing with the same old strategies and pokemon over and over again. Yes, eventually it got stale and the meta settled, but that’s just the nature of the top level of competitive environments.

Sword and Shield has a chance to be pretty different in terms of competition. Without talking about the newest features of the game, I can say with some certainty that there is a ton of room for a diverse and interesting meta. Beyond that, there are loads of changes yet to be announced that could impact this. For example...

A full-on re-balance of all gallar region pokemon? We don’t know all of the reasons that they restricted transfers into the game to just galar region. One of those reasons could be that the ones that are making the cut are being re-balanced for viability across the board. Stats, moves, you name it, its possibly up for grabs.

A simplification of EV’s and IV’s? We don’t have a clear grasp yet on how EV’s and IV’s play into this gen yet, if at all. Previous games have added sub-games and mini games to make this a bit simpler, but what if it could just be... simpler! Narrowing the selection would make the work of converting stats from previous games less of a chore. What if it could just be... simpler?

Conclusion

Bottom line is that this is what we are in for with our next game. They won’t delay the release just to satisfy people’s whims for a national dex: the players that want this the most will still buy the game. Collectors and completionists will need it to keep their collection complete, and the most passionate pokemon fans aren’t just going to sit this one out. Have a bit of faith in game freak here, we’ve all got our favorites, but each game is genuinely a good experience.

See you at release!

[derekscorner]

Between KH2 and KH3, which game did you like more, both story and gameplay-wise?

Ah is this that KH2 vs 3 debate I hear is ongoing? Well if you’re in for a sit I can answer that.

Gameplay:

From this angle I quite bluntly find KH2 Final Mix more fun. I’m not going to argue what was arguably better or worse, gameplay preference is a matter of…well preference no matter how many wish to deny this fact.

Not that you do but I”m sure some lover or hater of one will see this and try to retort. o3ob

Anyway; I felt Kh2 final mix was more technical and “harder” if I had to describe the feeling. Like 3 KH2 is normally overly easy but when put on critical mode it’s technicalities shine.I had to learn tactics, I couldn’t spam X or △, and I learned uses for summons. Which I found ironic since the 2 summons are far more useful when you dont initiate their moves.

Like if I let Stitch wander the screen he’ll deflect projectiles and keep my MP full. Chicken Little is a great early Magnet substitute and Peter Pan+Tinker Bell gives you a Phoenix Down.This was an improvement to KH1 in which only Tinker Bell was a spell with decent combat use. 1′s other summons had more supplemental uses imo.

KH3′s summons were nearly win buttons I felt. Simba in particular, while damn spectacle, felt broken. I never bothered to learn them as I didn’t need them. Which I’m sure they have their own uses but I’m not really fond of many control schemes for them so I opt out of it.

In terms of the magic system I felt 2 and 3 were opposites. In KH3 magic is far too powerful, something many have noted. And while you dont ‘have’ to use it that’s not an excuse for a problem. You should choose not to use it not force yourself to ignore it for challenge.

KH2 on the opposite spectrum made magic nearly useless I felt. Many enemies didn’t stun nor have elemental damage. Fire’s AOE animation was good for early Critical game and Blizzard helps that first Hollow Bastion visit but many enemies shrug the base spells off later.In contrast, KH2′s Magnet and Thunder spells can be OP. Reflect in of itself is practically the only spell you’d ever need to use due to it’s nature.

So while many have long rants on either’s magic system I dont really think one trumps the other. each one is equally flawed with issues I dont see ever being addressed.

In terms of keyblade combat I preferred KH2′s because I felt like Sora was automated in 3. I spam X cause I’m a scrub at timing presses (DMC5 is helping me overcome that) and due to this I noticed real quick that Sora’s combos just felt really automated.

Like I’d press X for one hit and get three. In contrast, KH2′s combat is harder. Sora animates combos as fast as my lazy ass can spam X and I’m not floating around like a final fantasy god.

I’m not really sure how to put this feeling into words but I do feel Kh2 keyblades are funner or snappier to combo whereas in KH3 I’m playing a watered down FFXV with it’s hold/press X for combo string.

Both games are so similar outside this issue that I dont see no reason to list likes or dislikes. If anything, from here, KH3 had great quality of life changes. The menu system was easier on the eyes and I’d be a damned soul if I didn’t admit I like switching keyblades mid-combat.

I also really appreciate KH3 finally using Re:Coded’s keyblade ideas. It’s been there since that DS game yet no one every expanded on making keyblades unique since. It was a very foolish step backward to me.

I love that keyblades level up, I love that each one has a preference and the only way that could’ve been better is if they adapted Coded’s system entirely and gave each keyblade (or most) it’s own unique combo.

KH2 quite frankly just falls short in a hindsight perspective since keyblades were “stat sticks” and you only ever chose weaker ones for an ability. Which, back then, was a huge step up from KH1.

So KH3 wins in this area I also dont really hate on Kh2 for it since KH2 is a product of the era. This idea of keyblades growing with you didn’t happen till Re:Coded.

As for Shotlocks…I dont like them. I hated them in BBS and I hate them here. It’s not even a comparison to KH2 type of opinion. I hate Shotlocks, I never use shotlocks so I’m going to skip those.

I mean sure, KH2 had limits but the only limits I use are Knocksmash so I can’t exactly praise KH2′s half of that either.

And when it comes to Forms vs Transformations I think both have pros and cons the other lacks. For example, some Transformations are really cool, I love the hammer weapons or the dual pistols.

I also believe the staff transformation is what KH2′s wisdom form should’ve been in terms of how it does magic or basic attacks.

That said, I also really dislike many second forms keyblades have. I never evolve the pistols into the bazooka, I never turn the hammer into the drill, I have those second forms. It’s to the extent I prefer keyblades that have one form such as the staff.

I’m also not fond of the Kingdom Key’s 2nd form change. It’s a neat throwback and I love the outfit recolor but I dont find it fun to use.

Between the two games my favorite forms are Valor Form, Anti-Form, and the Staff Transformation. Odds are I wont use anything else unless I feel particularly bored.

I might use others more often if KH3 forced me to rely on them for tactics but as of right now it does not. This may change with 3 gets it’s Critical Mode DLC. Similar to how KH2FM forced me to rely on forms I hate like Wisdom or Final.

As a concept I will admit that I dislike transformations. I dont like the idea of keyblades becoming magical swiss army knives. KH3 pulled the idea off better than I expected but I dont like it all the same.

The only, and I mean only, thing I felt KH2 did better was tie forms to a meter. In KH3 the commands appear randomly (and often) and I dont gain consequences for using them.

In KH2 this was tied to your Drive Gauge. You had to plan what you used and this is an issue I felt KH3 had as a whole. Rather than shotlocks, I’d have preferred that Focus Gauge to be reserved for my summons and forms so that I could have better control of what I picked and to reduce how broken they are in-game.

The rest is miscellaneous opinions so I’ll rapid fire:

Gummi Ships: always hated them, BBS did Gummi Ships best. Point goes to KH3 here since I can at least skip most of it.

Minigames: I’ve never found a KH minigame fun. No one wins here

Worlds: KH3 wins this aspect too. World towns have actual people in them and when it uses original plots the worlds are quite good. I also appreciate the power to explore and soft platform again. It gives me a more immersive feeling than later titles ever have. (although I feel KH1 was still better than both here)(entirely because of how many small details/cameos/secrets a KH1 world had compared to sequels)

I dont really have a more technical opinion than that. I do however think Arendelle was a horrendous world and I hate to even be there. For a myriad of reasons….reasons that would be a rant post of it’s own.

Lil Chef: I never use the food. I dont care if it’s a good spot for ingredients. If I want to cook stuff I’ll do some irl or play FFXV.

Enemies: KH3 used nobodies more than KH2 did and I find that a damn crying shame. I also felt Unversed were underutilized. KH2 still takes the point here due to the combat points I mentioned above.

KH3 fodder is prettier and can be more elaborate but KH2 is funner to play and destroy them in so KH2.

The Disney Rides: I don’t use them, they break the game. I do like the choo choo though since it’s situational to specific battles. KH2 has nothing akin to these so there’s no comparison, I just wish the rides could be disabled or that they worked more like the train. (set to key fights)

KH2 vs KH3 Commands: Eh both aren’t that good. KH3 spams you commands to shift through and KH2 has so many for spectacles sake that the games get easy. There is no winner here, if anything KH2 should’ve restricted these like KH3 restricts the Train ride summon.

Final Fantasy: I dont like FF games but I consider the ones of Kh1 part of the main cast. Their alternate KH selves are important to me. The lack and fading of FF over the years is quite honestly something I dislike and 3′s total lack of them is inexcusable to me. KH2 takes this point since I got to at least meet Leon and crew again.

Then there’s the story.

Anyone that’s followed the blog or met me knows I strongly dislike the direction of KH’s story. It’s not a matter of things others debate, I do not like it. I hate it and I’m still teetering on quitting.

I wont even go into the points cause I’ve made a whole series of posts about my story gripes. I wont link them since this isn’t a shameless plug, I just want to iterate that my issues with the story has driven me to make 20+ tangents plus the older more angry rants.

Others liking it is fine I think, I get easily annoyed if someone tries to excuse something out of nostalgia or adoration, but generally anyone that likes it while admitting faults or agreeing to disagree is fine. (you do you folks)

If I had to rank them I feel KH2 is where a lot of issues started and I feel a lot of issues got worse after since the sequels tried to “fix” that mess. If left alone KH2 would’ve been a poorly written entry and a good stopping point for any disillusioned fan.

KH3 as a contrast tied up everything after 2 up til 3 itself. I do not consider the story good, the pacing is very jarring because it lacks a mid point, it’s weighed down by all the BS prior to it.

I do not feel attachment for the “trios” of the series, I find the repetition of them annoying. I find it a shame most have more dev time than the originals they’re cloned based on.

And I frankly dislike Xehanort as a villain. He’s not interesting, his motives seem to switch with several report entries and I dont eve get the satisfaction of ending him like I did Xemnas or Ansem.

I was entirely indifferent to the entirety of this game’s narrative as I played it. Something that worried my friend @blackosprey because I was so tired I could not even care enough to hate it.

I did fine the trios reunions well done. I dislike them for a list of reasons but they were coming back anyway, their fates sucked prior, so those were well done. I finally felt hype when the LW appeared (only to vanish, fuck you nomura) and in the final battle.

The ending was confusing to me. So many got a happy ending so I fail to see the logic of Sora vanishing. The Luxu reveal, which I found fucking hilarious, was the only sequel bait needed.To have Sora just up and die felt like a stupid decision and I’m sure many more found it insulting.

And when mentioning Luxu I dont mean it in a sarcastic fashion. I genuinely find him funnier in retrospect due to this retroactive change. Nearly every line or scene he’s said is now funny as hell because he’s this ancient troll. I consider it the first legitimately earned twist Nomura has made in ages.

Still, KH2′s writing and story isn’t great either. I could rant why, I have ranted why, but despite it’s flaws it was an “ending” to me.So if asked 2 or 3 I will pick 2. The writing in Kh2 is bad for lots of reasons but if I ignore the Ansem reports it’s no a story about Xehanort.

Ignoring one KH2 report let’s me live this simpler story of Sora and a scientist gone mad and the journey to stop him. It had a lot of stupid things or one of the worst “twists for twists sake” moments ever in the ‘two ansems’ reveal.

But still, I can play Kh2 and be in a KHverse where Xehanorts, Keyblade Wars, Ceremonies, timelines, sleeping worlds, data world abuse, and clones upon clones dont exist.

It’s not nostalgia so much as everything I came to dislike was post KH2. KH3 was all about these things I dont like. My favorite for key and nostalgic reasons is KH1, my pick of the question is Kh2.

KH3′s best assets that can’t be contested was it’s graphical evolution. I played KH3 three times back to back due to this, I came away from KH3 wishing KH1 or 2 looked like this. No game prior contests the look.

So all in all, as I reread this, it’s largely a mixed bag. Neither game is grand but I prefer KH2 because combat is more fun to me and it’s not tied down by a narrative and mythology I’ve come to hate.

I can play KH1, CoM, and KH2 and never be annoyed about something I loved going in a direction I hated.

[aaronpullinteeth]

Top 10s: Video Games

Ok, I got inspired to do this after watching UpUpDownDown and might do more of these for different topics. Right, quick rules. 1 game per franchise and an explanation as to why I love it will be given. No spoilers either.

10: Tomb Raider 1

Ok, there’s going to be a lot of PS1 games in here. It’s my era and the first console I got so deal with it. Nostalgia is powerful shit. I remember being really young, like 4 years old and watching my step dad play this game for hours. After awhile we started playing it together, we would play for hours and I was so hooked. The story was so good Lara Croft was the first human main character for a game I can remember playing and it will always have a special place in my heart. This is why the new Tomb Raider games have been so hard for me to get on board with.

9: Spiderman PS1

The first game I ever finished, start to finish, on my own. I finished it so many times I unlocked all the costumes without the cheat. I then lost my save so begged friends at school for the cheat so I didn’t have to do it all again. But ended up doing it all again anyway. I am a massive superhero fan and Spiderman was my first favorite superhero and I dreamed of a day he would get a game, so when he did, I played it to death. I loved it so much. It was like playing a season of the 90s animated tv show. Pure superhero gaming perfection.

8: Mass Effect 2

In the modern era it’s rare I actually finish a game. Modern games either have gameplay that just entertain (either handling terribly or just plain boring) or the story is terrible. This was different. I never got to play the first Mass Effect as I believe it never released for the PlayStation and I never had an Xbox. But I found the second one years after it released on the cheap. Figured I’d give it a go, I didn’t have plans that weekend. It was something else. It was the first time since....a game later in this list.... that I had experienced such great and interactive story telling in a game. And by that I mean a game where you actually felt like you shaped it. For those that haven’t played it I wont spoil anything, but when you get to the last mission, it really shows how a game can handle your choices.

7: Croc 1

The only game on this list I haven’t actually finished. But my god it was fun. Another example of games on the PlayStation 1 that were such simplistic perfection. Without much of a clear story and other than “save these creatures from the bad things!” it was engaging and that soundtrack......oh my god that soundtrack.

6: Medievil 2

Play it. Just play it. And the first one too. i struggled with which one to put on this list. And while the first one might have had a few more funny moments with dialogue, the variety in levels, weapons, environments and story for a PS1 game were way way WAAAAAY ahead of their time. A game that somehow took a great dry sense of humor, an engaging story, a lovable protagonist that wasn’t your usual “badass” (again, I wont spoil anything) it was just pure fun, start to finish. The dark, gothic yet funny aesthetic didn’t hurt either

5: Tekken 3

Fighting game perfect. Disagree? Fight me. I know the argument of “Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat vs Tekken” has been going on for ages. I am team Tekken. The massive shifts in tone between characters and story is so good and keep it entertaining no matter how many times you play. But the thing that puts this Tekken ahead of the others is the Tekken Force mode. Not only did you have one of the best one on one fighting games ever, but you also had a multi leveled side scrolling beat em up in with it. What was not to love? Sidenote: King is my character. I once was at a house party and we have Tekken set up and I beat everyone else there two times over playing as King to the point we changed the game because I just wasn’t losing.

4: Fallout New Vegas

In my humble opinion, the greatest RPG experience ever. I know a lot of people wont agree. A lot wont even agree with it in the case of only Fallout games. But this is my favorite and I pumped so many hours into this game. You could play it 20 times over and never play the same way twice. No matter what you did, it had an impact. You could start the game and kill the first person you see and that would have a massive effect on your game. You could be good, evil, smart, dumb, a scientist, a fighter, a talker, a lover, a loner almost anything you want. The only game (other than the next on this list) that I have finished without killing anyone in it....I mean games where that is actually an option, you can finish the game without killing. It’s amazing.

3: Undertale

What can I say that hasn’t been said? A game where it will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you fall in love with side characters that you might only meet once, hell it’ll make you fall in love with the generic “enemies”. Everyone and everything has a personality in this game. And when it comes to being inclusive to all, this game is the best I’ve ever seen. Every character is different and so deep it’s amazing how much time and effort must have gone into it. If you haven’t played it for yourself, do it. I mean. You’ll get at least 2 playthroughs out of it that will be different. 3 if you have the time.

2: WWE Smackdown Shut Your Mouth

The game that I have lost the most hours of my life to....I think.....either this or number 1. Almost all WWE games have the same format, at least this era of WWE games. The mode that I will focus on is the season mode. 2 full years worth of storylines and madness. All different, all fun. Some based on real WWE storylines but with twists. If you are a wrestling fan, well a WWE fan, this is the best game for season mode.....well, this and Here Comes The Pain. It;s very close. This one wins for me because you get 2 full years worth. 

1: Crash Bandicoot 1 

The first game I ever owned. The day my dad brought home a PS1 and this game I was hooked. Hours of my childhood were lost to this orange, spinning asshole. Who doesn’t love Crash? He’s the best character ever created for PS1 in my opinion. Without saying a word he was amazing. The best. And the levels were all so good and challenging. But not bad challenging. You always knew what to do, just doing it was hard work. But the feeling you get when you beat the game......it’s so good. And shoutout to the music. Best soundtrack!

[burgermiester]

My favorite games of 2017

2017 was one of the most exciting years ive ever had in terms of video games.  My two favorite series’ both had releases that I was highly anticipating, a new Nintendo system came out, and I generally discovered a bunch of games that I wound up loving enough that they broke my personal top 20 favorite games list. 

5. I am Setsuna

Whats that you say? This came out in 2016? Well the Switch version came out this year and thats the one I played, so I am counting it.  Anyway, I dont have a ton to say about this game that I havent said already.  It’s greatest strength it its atmosphere.  Between the somber piano pieces and the cold winter setting and the general topics covered by the main and side plots and character arcs, the game is very much pushing a main theme of sadness.  But the game is never really miserable either, its a very mellow sadness that I have never seen another game really go for.  If its spiritual sequel Lost Sphear (coming out next month) has as good of an atmosphere of its predecessor I expect it will be on my list for next year too. 

4.  Valkyria Revolution:

This is not just the most hated game on my list of favorite games of this year but its probably the most hated game I have ever put on a game of the year list.  Even though I love the game I totally understand why its hated.  It committed the cardinal sin of being a part of a cult classic series beloved for its one-of-a-kind combat system yet completely abandoning said combat system in favor of a boring action-rpg battle system.  On top of that, it feels like it has a budget of about 45$ the way it constantly reuses models and environments.  But I still loved it, and if you want to know the secret to my enjoying the game its that I treated it like a visual novel that occasionally wants you to hack and slash.  and I do mean occasionally, theres probably one minute of gameplay for every 25 minutes of story.  So at the end of the day I dont have a lot to say other than it was a story that I personally loved.  I’m a sucker for interesting framing devices in fiction, and I really liked how the story here is told many decades later as a discussion between a teacher and her student where the broad strokes of the narrative are told to the player right off the bat: the good country beats the bad country, the valkyrie gets defeated, but the protagonist and his friends’ plotting is uncovered and they are all executed for treason.  Seeing how these things unfold is exciting in its own way, and watching how the characters’ relationships grow and change with the ending always in mind is quite bittersweet.  If you like visual novels I cant recommend this game highly enough.

3. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

A new Fire Emblem game came out this year, so its obviously going to be on my list.  Surprisingly (to me at least) not at number one, but I was always going to be particular about this game considering how much I love Gaiden.  The art, characters, animations, music, and story are all phenomenal, easily my favorite of the 3DSFE games in these regards, but the mechanical changes from Gaiden aside from quality of life stuff like game speed and the turnwheel are all, to me, for the worse. On the spectrum of 3DSFE games I think I liked it more than Fates but less than Awakening.  But even though I dont like it as much as Gaiden, its still amazing and close to the best game I have played this year.

2. Xenoblade Chronicles 2:

Ive started to get the impression that this game is a bit divisive among Xenoblade fans so I apologize if this ruffles some feathers but I think Xenoblade 2 is a real triumph of a sequel that takes almost everything that the original classic did well and builds on it to make it even better.  I loved the story, I loved the main characters, I loved the music, I loved almost all of the rare blades and finally after 3 games I finally really enjoyed the combat.  I do have a few complaints, namely in regards to the weird gatcha system it uses to acquire most rare blades, but overall I cant really quite express how much I enjoyed this game.  And at almost 210 hours, its easily my most played game of 2017. 

1. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

Oh boy oh boy.  A game that came out in its original form back in 2006 is my game of the year in 2017.  One thing that I need to make clear is that I did not enjoy the original XII.  At all.  I wont get into a whole tirade here but in general I felt that the things it did well were eclipsed by things that were boring and/or frustrating.  Then I heard about the International Zodiac Job System and the massive changes it made to the game, all of which seemed like they would make me love the game.  So I waited for the international version to be released...internationally.  And I waited.  And I waited.  I waited all the way till 2017 when it finally came out in English with the addition of a shiny coat of HD paint on top.  And it was totally worth the wait.  Never in my life have I waited for something for close to a decade and not feel even an ounce of overhype backlash or disappointment except for this game.  So for delivering on hype in a way no game ever has or probably will again, for taking one of my least favorite Final Fantasies and making it one of my favorites, and most importantly just being the most fun game I played in 2017, The Zodiac Age is my game of the year.

[skully-skulltopus]

Bendy and The Cash Cow

I really like Bendy but the sad thing about it is that its just. Not that good. And I don’t know if it will get better at all. There was, so much disappointment to be had with the most recent chapter and its just so sad.

I’m gonna just leave my rant under this read more cause its really long and blah blah blah.

The concept I feel, has great potential but its simply going to waste. The story is boring, the most recent chapter had a chance to give you some depth and character interaction but there was none to be had. Which I don’t understand why you would do that. Unless like, I dunno you’re being cheap and letting other forces drive your game.

But anyway. I had great disappointment with Boris. Like, I had no reason to feel attached to that lump of cardboard. None at all! He stood around silently, did some stuff and stood in the elevator. Like. Okay? He was more of a progression tool than a character. There were so many things they could have done to make you feel more attached to Boris. Make him walk like he’s afraid. Give him voice lines! LET US TALK TO HIM. Comfort him in that one room perhaps instead of LEAVING HIM THERE? I get he’s a silent cartoon and Angel is like the only one with a voice actress or something? But also? I’d rather they have voices or they put more time into animating body language rather than what we were given.

Angel was just straight up edgy for the sake of being. The edge queen. Any edgier than that and I’d fall off a cliff. Why couldn’t they have made her more sincere? Like hide her face and then she decides to show you her true face. Make the gameplay so that. I dunno something isn’t satisfactory to her when it should have been. Have her come out and chase you to the elevator just so she can slam into it with you and Boris protected by its gate. That’s when you can get a good look at her messed up face! But okay she can just spill edgy lines at you from an intercom too. Which by the way, didn’t make her more interesting or anything it just made her kinda annoying? 

The story is on a steady decline of interest and also 6 bucks per ep is still too much for episodes this long, padding included. The story is just going in a direction that leaves it boring to experience. With the lack of character we’re experiencing the story is in no doubt just something that wont live up to anything amazing. Whats the point of all this? Why is Henry there? How many floors does an animation department fucking NEED? What’s the end goal? Is it just to leave? Or are we going to put an end to this inky nightmare? Are we going to save the characters or put them to rest? Cause ooo devil satan devily ink things isn’t good enough. Ooo insane Bendy worshipper isn’t good enough. Like that’s nice but can I get some meat on this ‘story’? The fandom shouldn’t be making all the good story content for you.

Gameplay now, oooof gameplay. That is a really rough one. With the gameplay I’m actually impressed people find a way to keep playing even for that reason. It’s not fun. It doesn’t even look fun. It’s just. Stale. The combat system is dreadful and it plays out more like a ‘find the key’ game than anything else. Speaking of, the amount of fetch quests that were had during Chapter 3 was abysmal! No one enjoys fetch quests THAT much. By that point it was more like padding than anything else. I think, for me at least, it also served to make Angel even more annoying. Not to mention why couldn’t you keep your weapons? Why did you have to drop one for a shittier one? That was awful and had no reason to be like that? If more time was spent on these things the combat could have been loads better, let you scroll through your weapons instead of taking them away. Also is there a patch going out for that chapter cause it had a pretty bad bug in it during one of the many fetch quests.

The whole game is being run by its fanbase and surviving through youtube. It’s come off to be more of a ‘youtube game’ than anything else and its just pandering to that for popularity and the sad part is. It’s apparently working and honestly I don’t think it deserves the popularity it has with its cut edges decisions. They let Jacksepticeye voice an audio log for christs sake and that not only, for me, breaks immersion, but it also points out how much more this is a ‘youtube game’. I like Jack, trust me I really do, but to do that to your game for the sake of having a popular ‘lets play youtuber’ just further deepens how sad and pandering this all really is. They don’t care about the story or even its fans at this point. It’s just a cash cow for them.

Also there was that one point in the game where you stumbled upon a toy making shop or something that was then never mention or interacted with again. If that wasn’t advertising for their upcoming toys then I don’t know what is.

Also no matter where I look I can’t find how much money they’re making on their patreon. So I guess they’re hiding the amount now. Which is never. Ever a good sign. 8) 

Okay so that’s all for my rant there. I’m so mad Bendy can’t be as good as it was going to be. The reviews on it just make me even more sad. 

In other news support Cuphead for sure! Get your 1930′s aesthetic done right from them! They earned it and they worked so hard on it!

[camtosh]

My Take of E3 2017 (very long post)

I’m not exactly a writer so this post won’t be perfect, full of mistakes and whatever but I have proof read it so hopefully it wont be too bad. I’ve also put a recap at the bottom of the post incase you don’t want to read it all.

EA

Starts off with typical EA yearly releases, Madden, Need for Speed, FIFA and NBA, nothing to be excited about. Showed a new co-op game called A Way Out which looks really cool, a split screen game this generation was badly needing and I’m glad someone took a risk to make one. Teaser trailer for Anthem, which we will get to later, and DLC for Battlefield. Finished with Battlefront 2 gameplay, although I was disappointed to not have Galactic Conquest we did get Skirmish and new class system which is more like the old Battlefront games. Amazing looking game and something to look forward too!

Microsoft (xbox)

Xbox One X (not exactly the best name but who really cares, the same was said when the One was released) announced at £450/$499 which I think is a reasonable price and will be buying one for that sweet true 4k graphics! Forza 7 shown and a Porsche appears on stage and no-one is surprised/seemed to care, myself included. New Assassins Creed is shown and is set in Egypt which I think is a fantastic setting and is hopefully a breath of fresh air since they took a year extra for more development time. Gameplay of a really interesting game is displayed for us to find out its a new Metro game, I haven’t played any of them before but that trailer made me want to check them out. Battlegrounds coming to the xbox, feel like this is a big deal but as I haven’t played it on the PC I don’t know why. State of Decay 2 made me remember that I no longer care for zombie games. The Darwin Project starts off with ESports commentary to let us know that they want this game to be an ESport (I don’t see that happening). 2D DBZ game announced and looks great but not something I want to pick up. The annual indie game montage showed some promising games that will probably end up being free in the games with gold program. Sea of Thieves gameplay really surprised me, something that I think I would love to play with some friends. Crackdown 3 announces Terry Crews is a part of the game which is basically an instant sell because who the fuck doesn’t love Terry Crews?! Super Lucky’s Tale is announced which looks like a children’s platformer, got to target that demographic I guess. Shadow of War gameplay is given to us and it looks really good, nemesis system is awesome and they made the game better by adding a strategic approach to attacking strongholds which I think is really cool. Now we are shown gameplay for Anthem. What is this fucking game? Did the devs just pick and choose things from every game and just throw it in their own? Titanfall/Destiny vibes too it, fly like Iron Man in an exo suit that reminds me of Fallout power armour and the game looks like it has the same setting as Evolve/Horizon. That being said it’s probably the most exciting looking game of the whole show and I want it now because I fucking love loot shooters. Finally end the show with the news that Xbox Original games will be coming to the backwards compatibility program which is cool I guess but I think I only ever played Halo on it 😂 I’m probably biased towards Xbox but I do think that they put on the best show this year.

Bethesda

Why even bother with a conference if you are just going to have a pre rendered video introduce everything? They showed VR for games that have been out for ages and DLC for Dishonoured 2. Paid mods are back, I’m sure that will go down well. A couple of sequels,The Evil Within 2 and Wolfenstein 2 announced which almost saved the terrible conference. Wolfenstein 2 looking the better of the two and seem like it has a compelling story. They close their show by letting us know that Quake still exists. Terrible showing from such a good company, shame.

Ubisoft

No Aisha Tyler!?! well ok. The first 15 mins of the show is all about Mario and Rabbids for the Switch, seems a bit boring to me but its Mario so it well sell millions. More Assassins Creed stuff that didn’t feel like they showed anything different from the Microsoft show. The Crew 2 and Skull and Bones are announced which look cool I guess. Even more South Park trailers, I honestly thought it was out already. A new IP called Starlink is announced and looks like a skylanders/amiibo thing. Gameplay trailer for Farcry 5 looked really good, 10/10 for the dog that brings you guns. They finished by announcing Beyond Good and Evil 2 which I’m guessing is a big deal, I never played the PS2 game but that trailer looked fun. Kinda boring show all round for Ubisoft, they spent a lot of time not very exciting games.

Sony

What the fuck Sony? You usually put on the best E3 show and you didn’t seem to care that much this year. They opened with the final trailer for the Crash Bandicoot remake which made me very nostalgic but not really hyped for a game I’ll probably get. I said before that I’m bored of zombie games but I think Day’s Gone looks like it can give them one last chance. Monster Hunter Wold was shown and that got me happy, I’ve always wanted to play them on console rather than a handheld. Shadow of the Colossus remaster is shown and I personally think looks incredible, 100% something I want to pick up. Gameplay trailer for COD: WW2 which to me just felt like a bunch of planes falling out of the sky and not much else, looks pretty though. DLC for Horizon was announced which I might get because that game is amazing! More trailers for God of War 4 and Destiny 2, the latter of which still has year long timed exclusives which is just ridiculous. Something about a new Gran Turismo game but I didn’t really pay attention because I haven’t played a racing game for a long time. They closed with some Spiderman gameplay which looks awesome! There was loads of cool things shown but the presentation of it felt really strange, like there was no-one to hype everything up.

Nintendo

Nintendo always do good at E3, they don’t need to have a huge conference to put on a fun show. Xenoblade 2 trailer shown and Metroid Prime 4 announced which is cool! Kirby and Yoshi games for the Switch which is increasing the likelihood of me buying a Switch. They very lowkey announce a main Pokemon game like its nothing, fucking what?! ok 100% buying a Switch now. Super Mario Odyssey is given loads of time to show off gameplay and I think it looks brilliant! Nintendo are boosting the need for a Switch in their show and its worked for me at least!

Too Long; Didn’t Read?

So pros and cons of this years show? Aka TL;DR

Cons- Well I think there is maybe one game that I’m desperate to know more about, Bethesdas full show, there was too much VR. There were more boring shows compared to ones that were really gripping and there were very little AAA new IP’s.

Pros- Star Wars looks amazing, the Xbox One X release was very exciting. Sea of Thieves looks like it has potential, Anthem looks so promising, Shadow of War looks like a good sequel and they were not all remasters! And there was Loads of content for the Switch including a main Pokemon game!

I enjoyed this year but my wallet has not.

[mattgambler]

My mixed feelings on Pathway

After playing the game for 4 hours I got bored and stopped playing. I talk about what I liked about the game and what I consider it’s biggest problems.

Pathway is beautiful, and if I were to make games myself I would want them to look like this. Pixelart is not for everybody and doesnt fit every game equally well, but personally I am happy that games with this kind of aesthetic are still being made and they usually get me at least curious instantly. You control a diverse cast of adventurers in a setting that perhaps isn’t new, but which still feels refreshing as it isnt nearly as oversaturated as your everyday Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Postapocalyptic / WW2 scenario. But Matt, technically speaking this is World War 2 as well, arent you fighting nazis? And zombies arent exactly the most original opponents either... True perhaps, but it still feels more like an Indiana Jones setting than anything else and I can appreciate that as an attempt to do something different. With that being said, it is not the setting or the graphics that quickly had me lose interest, but rather a couple of specific design decisions. 1) Roguelite Progression? I love good roguelites and I can sink weeks into them once they have me hooked, dying my way from unlock to unlock while I develop my skills until Im finally ready to face the final boss for the first time, every run feeling different because of different characters, different upgrades, etc.  Replayability and difficulty are king here and when I looked at all the playable characters that I could unlock I got excited and was reminded of what it felt like when I played Dungeon of the Endless for the first time. Pathway, however, chooses a somewhat untypical format for it’s actual missions (or adventures, as they are called). Each one of them has a wincondition that seems easily achieveable, and unlocks a completely different mission once it is done, which is only connected to the one before via story and nothing else. You can switch characters inbetween, you cannot build up a reserve of ammo or fuel, and if you fail adventure 3, you simply retry that one instead of the earlier ones. On top of that characters gain experience and become stronger, but after they die progress is not lost, similar to leveling up gods in Thea - The Awakening. Characters are different from each other, but also rather restricted in what they can and cannot do, with most characters only being able to wield one type of weapon and having perks that for the most part are only relevant in specific textbased events. For example you may find a sick camel and if you have a character with medical skills you can choose to try and heal it. Otherwise, keep moving, nothing to do here. 2) Interesting choices? Levelups are similarly uninspired. Yes, your heroes have a skilltree, but almost all of the possible choices are bland stat increases, so you may have the choice between slightly more movement, slightly more accuracy or a slightly higher critchance. Endurance is the worst example of this, as it only increases the time that a character can survive unconscious after they have been downed. That, combined with a levelcap of 5 per character and the fact that your heroes remain leveled up for all future runs as well, turns character progression into something that is not only rather boring, but also eventually completely removed from your games altogether. Personally I fail to see the appeal of this method and I would have probably enjoyed the game just as much (if not more) if levelups were completely absent from the game. The few skills that are not stat increases are usually unlocking a different weapon or armor type, so your character might be able to now wear light OR medium armor instead of only light armor. Usable abilities do not exist apart from that, they are exclusively tied to what weapons and armor you have equipped and there is one ability per weapon. A shotgun can fire at all enemies in a cone, a sniper rifle allows a person to go into coneshaped overwatch. Light armor lets you sprint, medium armor allows you to duck so you are harder to hit and heavy armor allows you to hunker down so you take only 50% of the damage you otherwise would have taken. It is all very basic and for people that have played the XCOM games, Battlebrothers, or really any game with a skilltree, there isn’t much to see here. What makes this even worse is that you can find weapons, but often you can’t use them eitherway because the vast majority of characters are shackled to only their one preferred weapon and armor type so they will always have the same weapons, therefore weaponbound abilities and because of the levelup system even stats. All of this denies meaningful choice (apart from what team of characters to send in together) and shackles replayability completely needlessly. 3)Enemy variety and combat The first adventure features nazi dogs, nazi troopers and nazi shocktroopers. I believe the final fight of the map has a first medic. Troopers and shocktroopers use rifles, the dog bites, the medic can heal and uses a pistol. Enemy numbers vary between 3 and 5 in all fights. On its own that doesnt sound so bad yet, and later adventures introduce new enemies, most notably zombies but also nazi snipers, officers, medics, I stopped playing there but there’s probably more later, right? So what am I complaining about? This is a rough guess, but I would say in order to beat the first adventure you have to go through about 7-10 battles. Each one of them uses the same three enemies. Some might not have shocktroopers, some might not have dogs, but it will always be 3-5 enemies either in a procedurally generated ruin, or a procedurally generated desert base, or maybe a desert bunker if or desert oasis. Hell, even writing this is boring. The biggest culprit here is probably not even enemy variety, but the fixed numbers. Battles happen quite regularly and they all feel pretty much the same. Sometimes it’s an ambush and you have to deploy your heroes in the center of the map, other times its not and you deploy on one side, but at the end of the day these fights all feel the same and I found myself hoping everytime I would move my people that I would find nothing again, instead of another fight. This, combined with all the other things I mentioned before basically results in a gameplay experience that is always the same. Your characters are the same (but hey, at least there are many different ones to choose from, I count that as a big Plus), your enemies are the same, the maps are the same and the abilities your characters as well as the enemies can use are always the same. A shame really. The Saving Grace However I want to note that it is not all bad. While combat itself gets repetitive rather quickly, the overworldmap and resource management in general are pretty great. One run you might run out of ammo very quickly, on another you might trigger a trap or 2 early and struggle with healing supplies and in the next you wont have enough jeep fuel. (Im kidding you never have enough jeep fuel) This, together with the fact that characters do not only use up bullets as a ressource, but also do not heal inbetween fights, gives the game a sense of lasting attrition that you need to fight against, which felt a lot deeper and had me more engaged than for example running out of fuel in FTL in comparison. One of the things that I was worried about most in combat was not the battle itself, but how I could get by without using too many bullets. How many enemies could I shank or knock out instead? At the end of the day there wasnt enough to keep me busy however. Games like The Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon have me excited about what weapon I will unlock next or how different the next run will play out. What bosses will I have to fight this run? If Pathway has bosses, then I stopped playing before encountering teh first one, I was deep into adventure 2, on its 3rd map to be specific. The game seemingly doesnt want you to have too many options, doesnt give you a sufficient amount of skills to choose or other choices to make and basically falls flat when it comes to replayability. A shame, because music and graphics are beautiful and the overworld map hints at what potential there was. If I ever run into Pathway 2 I will try it, but in the first 5 minutes of the game I will look at the skilltrees and keep an eye out for abilities like “allows character to use shotguns” and hope that I dont find anything.

[burgermiester]

Grinding Renown Made Fun!*

*Grinding for Renown in Fire Emblem Awakening is never really fun.  Its tedious, and if you want to max it out it will take many, many hours. This guide is just to show you how I made it as fun as I could while still keeping it relatively fast and efficient.  Maybe you will want to try it for yourself or make a variation based on what you like. 

(also note that my method uses a lot of the DLC so if you dont have at least Lost Bloodlines 2 and Smash Brethren 2 for Dread Fighter and Bride then it probably wont work very well, but maybe you can modify it, I am not sure.  It also would probably be nice to have Lost Bloodlines 3 for Paragon and I liked having all stats +2 from Champions of Yore 3 but those 2 arent necessary)

For starters I want to be very clear that everyone knows this isnt technically the fastest way to grind renown.  The fastest way to grind renown is exactly what it says on the wiki: make a ton of money on golden gaffe then summon a weak/cheap character, pay to recruit them, then dismiss them, repeat 2000 times.  I tried doing this on a file where I was at endgame and I found it terribly boring, which in turn meant it was not the fastest way for me to grind renown since it would take me forever to find the energy to do it. 

So when deciding how I wanted to grind renown for myself I had a few objectives: fight the spotpass characters, not buy them, and make fighting them as quick as possible; minimize the number of spaces that a spotpass character could spawn when I summon them to cut down on walking around the world map; minimize the number of times that I go into the wireless menu to make it easier to multitask (basically it was harder to watch movies or tv in the background using the fastest method since its so menu heavy, so I wanted to cut that time spent down); if possible, completely eliminate the need to manage items on my units.  I solved all these issues and these are the steps of my method (the Miester Method?):

Step 0: Grind supports before you even start grinding renown. Grinding out supports is much more interesting than grinding renown.  You get new dialogue after most fights and a lot of it is interesting.  Just make sure you are grinding on spotpass characters instead of risen since spotpass fights/purchases give the most renown, that way you are maximizing your gains for when you run out of supports to grind and are ready to move onto proper renown grinding.

Step 0.1: Pray your past self really loved playing Awakening.  Just having played the game a lot normally will put you in a nice starting position.  By the time I finished support grinding gen 1 and moved on to renown grinding I was at nearly 45,000 renown, close to half of the 99,999 max.  I cant recall how much of that was support grinding on spotpass characters and how much was there from just playing a ton of Awakening, I forgot to check, but both helped. 

OK, now on to the actual steps for renown grinding.

Step 1: Start a new game.  You arent challenging yourself here so just go normal casual. 

Step 2: Play the game up until Chapter 8 (but dont play chapter 8.)  Also beat Paralogues 1 and 3 but not 2.  This should have your world map looking like this:

The reason you want to do this is because it leaves your world map with exactly 10 empty spaces in which to summon spotpass characters.  As 10 is the maximum number of spotpass units you can summon at once, having 10 spots on the map lets you spend the least amount of time in the wireless menu.  Its also good to not allow more than 10 free spots because every extra square you add means more time wasted walking across the map.  This is why its not a good idea to do this grinding at endgame: you could be on Donnel’s island and summon a bunch of spotpass units in Valm and vice versa. 

Now, as for why I picked prologue-chapter 7 and paralogue 1 and 3 over other choices for my 10 map spots, it mostly came down to map layout.  They are all small early game chapters that take only 2-3 turns to beat on auto battle most of the time.  Paralogue 2 was much too big and would take more turns to beat and Chapter 8 is full of turn adding desert.  Remember, youll be fighting MANY battles in these maps, an extra turn or two each time translates to hundreds of extra turns in the long run.  That being said, I want to emphasize that if you havent gotten lucky getting second seals from the random shop annas, you should play chapter 8.  Chapter 8 gives you Gregor and another second seal, Gregor is especially important because hes got armsthrift without using a second seal (more on that in a bit).  I had already gotten 1 other second seal from Anna by the time I got to chapter 7 so I chose to not play chapter 8, whether or not you do is up to you.  If you choose to play chapter 8 then you need to cut either paralogue 1 or 3.  Paralogue 1 is a smaller map so will be more likely to give you a 2 turn clear over paralogue 3′s 2-3 turn clear, but paralogue 3 gives you a store with access to javelins and hand axes, two weapons that are very nice to have. 

Step 3: Build an Army.  Trust Armsthrift.   Now its time to prepare your team.  The maximum number of units youll need to field in any of these battles is 9.  If you go under 9 youll need to waste time in battle prep deselecting units, and we dont want that, so getting to 9 units is important.  To eventually get to a point where you never need to buy items for your units youll want armsthrift on your whole team.  Unfortunately theres a few hurdles to jump to make this happen since we only are at chapter 7/8.  First, we dont have our full team to pull from and second we cant buy second seals.  Naturally we will need to get as many spotpass units with armsthrift as we can, but only 5 come with armsthrift: Malice, Linus, Ike, Roy, and Ogma.  This means youll need 4 second seals to get a full armsthrift team.  Robin, Cordelia, Donnel, and spotpass characters can reclass to mercenary this way.  You will have one second seal from renown rewards meaning you need 3 more from anna shops (or only one if you choose to do chapter 8 and get Gregor and another second seal.)  Chrom is a good temporary member while you train up your team since he has an unbreakable weapon, but sadly its only 1-range which is not going to cut it since enemies will always attack him at 2 range making battles last at least 1 turn longer than they would otherwise.  As for the actual training, do Yore 3 over and over to collect all skills plus 2 for everyone and gain levels to be better prepared for Bloodlines 2 and 3 which are a bit tougher but also get better rewards (and youll be doing Bloodlines 2 a hell of a lot to get all the dread scrolls youll need to reset levels until everyone has max luck.)  Bear in mind you will need limit break to go over 50 luck, but just capping it normally or even just pushing it into the 40s then giving all your dread fighters and brides a full inventory of hand axes or javelins will make it so that your stops at the armory are few and very far between.

(optional step: if you have golden gaffe then once your units are decently strong run it 5-10 times and then never think about money again)

Step 4: Setting up the grind.  By now you are ready to fire up a couple of rounds of proper spotpass grinding.  You might want to wait until you have a full team of limit broken armsthrifters but I recommend waiting a bit, I will explain why in a sec.  So I will now give the rundown on the actual grinding that will probably become auto-pilot like for you before too long.  Open the wireless menu, go to bonus box and bonus teams and summon 10.  If your team isnt maxed out then I say pull the first 5 from one game and the first 5 from another, just to be sure you wont run into anything that kills you.  You are on casual, so its not normally a big deal if a unit dies in this process, but if its Chrom or Robin its a game over, and even if its not thats stopping for a text box which slows you down.  I recommend the shadow dragon and binding blade teams because there are no cleric/troubadour team leaders who slow things down by not killing themselves on your units and theres no armor knight leaders (and few armor knight other units) who sometimes add turns by not making it to your units as quickly in the bigger maps.  Dont save after every battle, it adds like 3 seconds each time, just do it after every cycle (10 battles).  If your units are over the 50 luck line give them their best weapons and let them go to town.  If they are under 50 then give them a full set of hand axes for dread fighters and javelins for brides and they will last dozens of cycles before you need to restock their inventory. If you are still using Chrom and/or another non armsthrift unit then make sure they are at the 9th slot on your team so they dont go into most fights.  Then just turn off and skip all animations and phases and set auto battle to blitz and auto battle every turn, forever.

Step 5:

Step 6: Break up the Monotony. This is the crux of the Miester Method.  Summoning a full set of 10 spotpass units and killing them with a very strong team will take ~8 minutes and net you 500 renown.  From 0 renown thats closing in on 24 hours of still very repetitive grinding (now you see why I recommend you grind supports first, if you can get close to 50k renown before beginning actual renown grinding youve cut that time in half).  Some people might not find level grinding to be a sufficient break in the monotony but for me leveling up in awakening, especially if your units have Paragon, is very fast and fun and rewarding.  I might even go so far as to say that building super units is the most fun part of Awakening’s gameplay.  So what I recommend is every 15 minutes or so (2 cycles of 10 spotbass battles roughly) head back to dlc land and power up somebody.  Get another dread scroll to reset the level of someone with a lot more stats to cap then run them through Bloodlines 3 solo to gain like 20 levels in 5 minutes.  Then pop back to the world map and do another cycle of spotpass renown grinding.  When enough of your units are close to max stats try and start taking on Rogues and Redeemers 3 to get limit break for everyone and start getting luck to 50.  Once they are at 50 luck you can throw your ultimate bonus box weapons like book of naga and mjolnir on them and they will never break and you wont need to mess with their inventory ever again.  Try to be going back and forth this whole time too: do a few spotpass cycles, then grab a limit break skill, back and forth.  Once everyone has limit break on them go for capping every single stat on every unit.  This will take a while because some of them really dont want to get points of magic and/or resistance.  So back and forth now between cycles of spotpass and getting more dread scrolls and resetting levels to try to get that res.  Everytime one of my units maxed all stats I gave them a forged weapon to celebrate.  I ran out of characters to cap before I finished renown grinding so I then broke up my cycles running Infinite Regalia to try and get a ragnell for Ike and a second Gradivus for my second Bride.  By the time that was done, I had less than 20k renown to go, and so I was ready to buckle down and sprint to the finish line.  That last 20k wasnt even all that bad because I felt like only now was I really in a total grind, breaking up the monotony for the majority of the experience really helped make it more fun for me. Hopefully it makes it easier for you too!

Step 7: !!!VERY IMPORTANT!!! Once you finish Renown grinding you need to beat the game on that save file or it wont carry over on new files!!!! So do that. It will be....very easy.

I dont expect it will take more than an hour. 

Once its over, congratulations! You are now W o r l d  R e n o w n!