Mal

Earth Defense Force 4.1 on sale for $30 at Humble Bundle. It's not an amazing price but if any of you decide to jump on it, I am very willing to play with you guys.

That's what kind of gets me. EA has exclusivity for about a decade. Thanks Disney.

Say... what is the deal with Falcom and nuns? And yes, it is extremely dangerous to follow Falcom on Twitter.

They do make more sense if you consider they came from the Moon. Why are there a group of evil wedding planner rabbits on the Moon? The hell like I know.

It It has been a while and I suspect that I will be on this one for a while since it's on nightmare and there are three characters.

Everything seemed like a draft with little to no editorial work done. This is a problem from the translator(s) and up to the highest heads at NISA. The translator(s) for a shit job (e.g., big hole) and on up higher at NISA for allowing such garbage to pass as a product. Ys 8 was probably pushed out due to NISA's contractual obligations and due to Falcom's fiscal year ending sometime within the last couple weeks*. A delay would've meant pushing Ys 8 to the next fiscal year so NISA pushed it out to salvage the situation. Cue the backlash that includes media outlets and fan (you might've noticed that us Falcom fans are dedicated and pretty vocal...) interactions via letters and social media that eventually made its way back to Falcom. Now here we are... * Falcom released their report like a day or two ago. Their shareholder meeting is next month which should be interesting...

Xanadu Next replay is done. I have a more favorable impression of the game now than when I played it how many years ago with the fan translation. It's a fantastic game with good progression. The bonus dungeon in this game only shows up just before the final boss and you kind of just run into it if you backtrack. You also got to do some prep work before you can go inside. I personally can't finish the bonus dungeon because it crashes on me... so I went to fight the last boss. While I was buffed up for the bonus dungeon, I wasn't totally overpowered for the boss so that was nice. I actually died once (I revived with an elixir) and I was in danger of running out of healing items! It was mostly due to trying to figure the boss out. Sure, I damaged him hard but I still need to get to the open weak spot which was a bit tricky. On to either Ys Seven or Gurumin. Edit: Seems like NISA worked through the entire Ys 8 script. I wonder how's the PC port...

No but it makes it worst. The mindlessness of the extra dungeon just bleeds out since you're just way too decked out. It is also kind of pointless to be that decked out on the first playthrough when you can get extra items in NG+ (a lot of things doesn't get carried over).

Looking it up, the turn around time from CS1 to CS2 was about a year as well. FC to SC is actually longer at about two years and about a year from SC to 3rd. The longest breaks were waiting for Zero and for CS3 at about 3 years each. Taking this all in probably means one thing: the Calvard game is a 2021 JPN game with an ENG release at probably 2023. Takeaway: I should learn Japanese. That or maybe Falcom should let XSEED have the script ahead of time. On a completely unrelated note: I loaded up Xanadu Next and got sucked right in. Sure it's a gloomy game but the combat is rewarding. After late-game Zwei II, I've forgotten how rewarding combat feels like and man does it feels good. @FLD, regarding your first Zwei II run, I suggest the following (copy-pasted from my Steam review/suggestion): I'm very serious about this suggestion because it is one that I wished I had going in.

Last Saga is coming out September next year along with CS1 and CS2 ports for PS4. Shit is about to get busy as fuck for XSEED. I have absolute confidence that XSEED will keep the Trails games. It is kind of nice that recently, Hatsu's posts about the English VA work was liked by who I assume to be Kondo. Hatsu mentioned that one of Falcom founders liked those posts.

Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection The story is pretty good and the aesthetics (I'm a sucker for cute) is great. I freaking love the characters and Alwen is a cutie pie. Gameplay almost rose to the likes of the best Ys games. In ways I can see this as a proto-type of what you find in Ys Seven but simpler. Simplicity is fine but sadly balance* just fall apart in the end. When you play, you'll know really quick what I am talking about. Game become broken in ways that I don't recall finding in a Ys game.The extra dungeons also really reminds me of the hack job that was the extra dungeon in Trails in the Sky the 3rd: lazy and mindless. With that all said, I want a Zwei 3 with the power of modern home consoles and PCs. The aesthetics would greatly benefit from it. * This is really the biggest problem with Falcom. It's a recurring theme in all their games. I can sidestep it in turn-based RPGs but I naturally fall for them in action games.

If through Steam, I use the FPS overlay. It's very discrete so I kind of have it on all the time. If I need more info (e.g., CPU, RAM info) or I am on say GOG Galaxy, I use Riva Tuner.

Need to balance out the sadhop.

It be interesting to see how the Republican party reacts over the course of a year. There has been a few who have spoken out but they are not up for re-election. Is there anyone left in there with courage to break the act of appearing united? Then again it is pretty hard to trust someone who watched it all go down and remain silent. Then there are the Dems... they got their own shares of problems. I doubt I'll ever forget the sting of the Primary. There will be rope bridges built for 2018 but come 2020, I think there will be some sort of reckoning for the party. Hell, there's probably something for the entire country...

It does. It even goes up to 3466 MHz. 3000 MHz is a step below 3200 MHz so I am kind of close. I'll need to do some more research and sleep on it since it kind of scared me until I was able to get back to BIOS. Thing is though is that it should've been as easy as choosing the XMP profile.

I'm having trouble getting my new RAM setup correctly. My old RAM is a DDR4-2400 PC4-19200 CL16-16-16-36 1.2v (4x4GB). My new RAM is a DDR4-3200 PC4-25600 CL16-18-18-38 1.35v (2x8GB). I got my old RAM up to 2400 MHz but I am having trouble getting my new RAM to 3200 MHz. Seems like the new RAM just refuses to get up to 3200 Mhz even after tweaking the timing and voltage to what they should be. When I try, I am unable to boot and I cannot even get to the BIOS to revert back to a lower frequency unless I hard shutdown then drain all the power from my system (unplug then hit the power switch a few times). I'm currently running at 2133 MHz so I am well below advertise. There got to be something that I am forgetting to change in the BIOS but I do not know what. That or the RAM is crap. Any ideas? Edit: Well, I think I got it up to 3000 MHz along with a bump in CPU speed (4.3 GHz [what I had it to] to 4.4 GHz from a base of 4.0 GHz). I seem to recall that 3200 MHz for RAM can be a pain to get to but I thought it was just on Ryzen builds... I guess not?

Now that I look at it, on PC I have a lot of in-progress Falcom games. Along with Zwei, I have Ys VII, Gurumin and Xanadu Next. I should be able to give an up-to-date view and comparison of all those titles maybe by the end of this year or early next year. It should be interesting. Maybe I should take notes and do a proper write-up.

You know how people can jump, toss the Hat and then dive into the Hat for an extra jump? I have no idea how to successfully pull it off. Hell, I think there are a bunch of moves that I have no idea to do or utilize correctly. Anyhow... Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection Just going to machine gun out some rough thoughts... This world man. It's so bubbly and fun. I honestly don't think I encounter a world like this since Brave Fencer Musashi almost two decades ago. It just feels like an adventure... nostalgic maybe? Part of this I attribute to the English VA work. You'd think Gurumin* would give me similar feelings but no. Gameplay though is a bit simplistic. I do see it evolving though so verdict is TBD. You can swap out magic and melee as needed after you get them which should give the game a bit more depth. So maybe think of it as Ys VII Light. While I am fine with 30 FPS, I can still feel it when the game feels like it is chugging along. Silly coding your game to 30 FPS... You don't have control over the camera at all. It's not terrible but at times I do feel a bit stuck. I just question why they didn't give camera controls. It would even make dialog scenes even nicer so you can see character faces. * Speaking of Gurumin... I'm liking Zwei II far better and I'm only two hours in. I feel like there is a sense of progression and direction. Gurumin never had a sense of direction since I really feel like I missed out on A LOT of things during my first playthrough on the PSP. tl;dr Wonderful world and characters. ADVENTURE. Gameplay is Ys VII Light?

What you guys think about streaming versus pirating? How do you guys think about the state of the industry? Even though I said I was going to get Crunchyroll sub, I stalled on it due to the dubious benefit to where it matters: the studios that make the anime I like. I actually much rather spend much more money importing BDs than streaming if it means the studios get a larger cut and I can in a minor way affect the rankings. What we have now with the likes of Crunchyroll is that you're paying more for distribution more than anything else. The studio you care about (if their anime is on the service) get a pittance. I understand that distributors should get their share but it feels very lopsided right now. There got to be a better way.

Super Mario Odyssey I'm not much of a Mario fan but I think it's a fine game. I personally rank it lower than Mario Galaxy (which I adore) which was the last Mario game I played. What held the game back is the motion controls. It's not needed to beat the game but something feels missing when you play it portable. Sure you can use motion controls while portable but it's awkward. Maybe I'll have a better impression when I play it docked (I only played it portable). Now to find ~550 more moons.

Full album is out and my God(hand), this album is completely devoted to Berserker.

Worse than The New Order?