Mal

Release. Main reason why I just went release but now that I have watched 5 seasons, having dead people stay dead would be nice. This show really likes to show dead people following the episode where they died. If you are using a computer here's a list with links. An alternative version without links. Note, I watched this on my TV with my Roku, prior to having my Steam Link. If I have the Link, I would've used that. I actually skipped the movie but maybe you shouldn't since it introduces Ahsoka (Anakin's padawan). In other words, god damn is Anakin pure cringe worthy in AotC. It's the way he talks and ultimately comes off as. I don't remember much from RotS but I expect a drop in Anakin's maturity after I finish watching The Clone Wars.

I know it is a really tall order to go through 120-ish episodes but I highly recommend The Clone Wars. I suggest watching in regular or modified chronological order. I'm current watching release order and while good, it leaves something to be desired since dead people keep on popping up. I also think a chronological order viewing will make the connected story arcs that much better. You can view each story arc as a mini movie to help guide a viewing. Really, related story arcs can be considered a full movie. I recently rewatched TPM and it totally felt like a story arc of one of the earlier seasons aka kind of bad but serviceable which I pin to how prominent Jar Jar is. After the first two seasons, it just pick up steam which just gave me the last eight episodes of season 5. Do it for Hondo and Ventress-Savage-Maul arcs! Now onward to season 6, the rest of the the prequels and then onto Rebels. After Rebels is the OT. I think I can finish in time for TFA and surely by Rouge One.

A stout/porter float is the best thing ever.

How beefy is Cold Steel I and II's scripts compared to 3rd, Zero and/or Ao? At this point, it doesn't matter where they head to next but eventually 3rd. Zero and Ao will come knocking again. I suppose XSEED might need outside help again to localize those monsters... Carpe Fulgur might be out since the work load and personal issues almost made the guy off himself. Is there any problems with Falcom directly helping with localization?

Oh sure, why not.

After what I went through, normal is easy. I have the option to bashing enemies skulls in. I can recover from a failed attempt of cockiness. For the most part, I didn't have that option in hard. I wish hard was just a tad bit more forgiving.

TitS SC I just raged quit a hard mode run. I intended this to be my initial run but the balance is fucked. You have to go into every battle with regular enemies preemptively else you can get your ass handed to you. You are mostly reliant on Arts (magic) attacks since these enemies has quite the resistance to melee, or at least from Estelle. Any surprise attacks or boss battle is a crap shoot if you'll win since the AI is kind of unpredictable. I think I can pull off what I've done in the PROLOGUE in under two hours in the 4-6 hours I've spent on this hard run. Treating every surprise attack or boss fight as a 20-40 minute fight is terrible. I'm sure I can complete a hard mode run but I think the game will turn into a 150 hours game at this rate. Normal mode, here I come. I can't even imagine Nightmare. What are the bosses going to do, one shot me every time they attack? I can already barely keep up a tank healer situation with hard...

I had to reopen up the game to remind myself of what I like about the game's combat. Right off the bat: No random encounters. Praise Aidios! You can fight as many battles as you like and maybe even gain a preemptive advantage. As for combat, there's the regular attacks, Arts (magic) and Crafts (specials). There's are also S-Crafts which is the Supers/limit breaks. At face value, this is a very normal set of commands. What this games does well is that combat positioning is crucial in battles going smoothly. Attacks can have knock backs to them and certain Arts/Crafts can affect an area or a line. Poor positioning management can lead to missing the opportunity to hitting cluster(s) of enemies multiple times. It also applies to the enemies attacking you. This becomes important during boss fights or just fights with some stronger enemies. This is one of the few games where I used certain characters taunt skills. Mix the above and I seem to recall having a harrowing boss fight or two where I just got by. I guess you can say that this game combines regular JRPG (e.g., Final Fantasy I-X, XIII) battle elements with some TRPG (e.g., Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea) elements. For the story... there are for sure the typical JRPG tropes but if anything this game takes advantage of it being part of a series of games. The lore/story is solid. See FLD's post above.

Regarding The Clone Wars (I'm close to starting season 5), the upcoming trilogy and the Dark Side. In the spoiler, I may be mixing up Canon and Legends material. I also might get rambly.

So I heard that Guts got off the boat.

From the last remake...

Wake me up when IX comes to Steam ... which is never.

Teaser I can see it now... Ride forth Valkyria for the Holy Mother... who will be the last boss.

Holy shit, I just got it working because I cleared up a misconception on my part: The wire from router #1 to router #2 goes to a LAN port (blue), not the WAN port (yellow). Sure the wire from the modem to router #1 goes to the WAN port but from router #1 to #2, it's from LAN-LAN (blue to blue). Previously in my head I saw the WAN port as the "In" port and the LAN ports as the "out" ports. It's kind of correct (reason why my jerry rigged network worked) but not really when connecting up a network. My jerry rigged network actually made a network within the network. From what I understand, the differences between the WAN and LAN ports is really subtle to laymen like me and most people I know. Same plug and shit, so whats the difference right? My jerry rigging made a client bridge when I wanted a wireless access point. God fucking damn, this problem that has vexed me since middle school has been conquered. Since I could always get the client bridge AKA my jerry rig working, I assumed that it was either my hardware or provided software that didn't enable me to pull this off. The only odd thing now is that the switch between routers is not seamless. There seems to be an area in the house where wireless devices get confused and refuse to work until you turn the wifi in your device on and off. No biggie because I got this shit to work (at 3 AM)! And for sure I'll post some long term thoughts about the Link later. tl;dr: WAN port =/= "In" port and LAN port =/= "Out" port.

So I got a Steam Link. The Steam Link itself is totally fine by my standards since it streams great while wired. Some games though seems to act weird and might downright crash. Overall though it is pretty sweet to have my Steam library along with my desktop in my living room. Though I do got 2-3 1 gripes. Gripe one is really the whole UI where a connected mouse is needed. I don't think just having a controller connected will do however I guess this isn't a huge lost since there is certainly more than enough USB/Bluetooth connections for a M+KB. tl;dr: The Steam Link is mostly great for my needs but some network problems on my end might hinder its usefulness thus justification for its purchase. See following post for my revelation and spoiler for my problem.

I watched part of Inside Out and yeah, it's pretty great. I have to say though, the aesthetics is so weird when you focus in on the hair/fur of characters and then compare them to the smooth faces of some other characters or even the background. Something seems off about it.

I feel that they could've just gone with a super-prequel. Same world but during the height of Valkyrian tech which maybe started to get buried with the events of this new game. While I am bummed but I'm not overly concerned about this change. Gameplay... bold move to make it real time. It might turn out good. As for the remaster, at the very least VC on PC allows for downsampling. Absolutely gorgeous game when done so. So no real need for changes there though the cutscene could use a sprucing up so hopefully they will redo them and update the PC release. Maybe make them real-time in-engine renders. Going from crisp 60 fps to jaggied 30 fps is kind of jarring.

More here. Could use a single player game...

I need to give this game a chance again. After Secret of Mana, the changes were just too much for my young self, kind of like what happened with Final Fantasy XII.

I'm confused. My taskbar will bug out after some hours. The clock will freeze with every icon not my installed and pinned programs disappears. For the pinned programs that are running, I can't see which is running. Additionally, my drag select, right click and stuff in the start menu will start to disappear with continued on time after the task bar starts bugging out. So I'm unsure of what I'm dealing with.

I still buy CDs...