toxicitizen

God Eater? It's basically poor man's Monster Hunter. It had significantly more appeal before Monster Hunter went multiplat. Bought the remasters a few years ago and now it seems unlikely I'll ever touch them. As for why I'm here, Street Fighter V update: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Best part is I'm pretty sure the initial rank up match (I've since deranked back to bronze and climbed back up to Silver) was against a bot but like... not just any bot but this fucking... thing:

Honestly, I can see that being the case for JoJo in general. The soundtrack alone adds so much to the experience. I've only been watching Golden Wind for a few days and I've already started obsessively listening to music from the previous parts because of it. I'm still tempted to start collecting the manga, though. And the VIZ releases are hardcovers, too. When it comes to novels I usually go for the big trade paperbacks but for some reason I prefer manga in hardcover. Especially when it's a nice, fancy edition like those Berserk leather-bounds. They cost me an arm but they look so fucking good.

Oh my god, why did I wait so long to watch Golden Wind?! The first few episodes hadn't really hooked me back when it first started but I'm on episode 13 now and it's already so freaking good! Even Diamond is Unbreakable took like twice as many episodes to really hit its stride. This series just keeps getting better with each part lol.

Fired up Street Fighter V on a whim two weeks ago and I've basically played nothing else since. It just sucked me right back in. I even became a little bit less of a scrub! Either I got super lucky with the matchmaking last night or I'm usually super unlucky because I've been stuck in a loop of getting promoted to Super Bronze and then immediately getting matched with Ultra Bronze players that are borderline Silver and just getting immediately knocked back down to Bronze. I'm afraid to play ranked matches now because I'm certain to get knocked back down to Super Bronze but I really don't wanna go all the way back to Bronze. I hate it there lol. I've been trying to get better and what I've been learning sometimes works as far as holding my own against higher ranked players but Bronze is full of these insane assholes that play like shit but that have gotten so good at their particular brand of shit that they're honestly really hard to deal with if your fundamentals are still shaky. They'll usually go through the same motions but if you don't know how to counter it you're fucked because they've gotten pretty good at pulling off whatever unsafe shit they do, so they're usually really fast. Higher ranked players, on the other hand, will respect you and have a healthy fear of you. So they'll be more careful and won't just rush in with blatantly unsafe shit, which ironically makes them easier to deal with when you sort of know what the hell you're doing.

Finally got around to watching The Batman last night. This might actually be my favorite one yet. It's grounded like the Nolan films (somehow even more so) but it also has that subtle gothic vibe that permeated the Burton movies, although to a lesser extent. I loved how it's really not a superhero movie at all. This is a serial killer thriller and the climax of the movie wasn't this big, bombastic doomsday device scenario but rather something genuinely terrifying because of how plausible it is. Even Batman/Bruce isn't really glorified and even comes off as an unstable psycho himself at times. I love the Nolan films but yeah, the more I think about it the more I'm leaning towards loving this one even more. Can't wait for the sequel, especially based on all the setup in this one.

Damn it, every time this happens. I'll post stuff I bought recently only to immediately turn around and buy more. There doesn't seem to be a proper Golden Week sale on Steam this year but several Japanese publishers have their own individual sales with some deals that were too good to pass up. It's about time I finally played DR3 and I've been hearing good times and been curious about AI: The Somnium Files for a while now, so 8 bucks is a no-brainer to try it out before the sequel comes out. And then there's a not-so-good deal that's still the historical low that is unlikely to be beaten for years because Koei Tecmo sucks and who the fuck knows when the game will be delisted without warning because of license expiration. I really enjoyed the first one when it came out so I've had my eye on it for a while. I probably need to catch up on the anime before playing it, though.

Well, good to know it's only going to improve from here. My main problem with it is the fucked up combat, which I think is made worse by playing on hard (can't change so I'd have to restart and I'm not doing that...) The enemies block way too much, sometimes they'll even start blocking in the middle of your combo string. It forces you to play in a way that's just not how I enjoy playing these games. I don't want to carefully dodge around enemies to punch them in the back of the head; I wanna grab the nearest bicycle and just wail on these motherfuckers with it! Also acceptable:

Grabbed a bunch of stuff on sale from various stores over the last couple weeks, most of it not really worth going to the trouble of uploading pics to post except for these: I've had my eye on them for a few months and they don't seem to get discounted as often or as deeply anymore. So when they finally dropped back down to like 12-13 bucks each I just grabbed them all. Partially as an attempt to motivate myself to finish Yakuza 3 already. I started it back in October, ffs! It's not even that I'm not enjoying it (except for boss fights! Pro-tip: don't play this fucking game on hard...). I'll just play it for an evening, clear a chapter or two and then promptly forget it exists for like a month. It's good but it never really got its hooks into me the way the others did. You played them all, right @Mister Jack? Is it just me or is Y3 harder to get through than the others?

I usually don't because NG+ is like half the fun of these games. Going back through the game in a fraction of the time and destroying every motherfucker in your way is always so cathartic. I feel like Elden Ring would go even faster, too, considering how much of it turned out to be optional content. Nothing wrong with backing up your save before key moments, though. It's no different from using multiple save files in literally any other RPG that has manual saves.

Damn, even Ethan has fully completed it before I even finished my first playthrough. The shame! Seriously though, what is wrong with me? Why did I fall off this game so goddamn hard? lol That's never happened with any other Souls game before, at least not since I finally managed to beat Demon's Souls PS3 for the first time.

Shredder's Revenge wasn't on my radar until recently (it looks great!) but I can't wait for the collection. Those NES games were my childhood. It's gonna be fun replaying them (and playing those I missed out on like Turtles in Time).

Received an email this morning informing me that my pre-order for the two FFXIV Encyclopedia reprints that were set to come out in a couple weeks were delayed to August. So instead of being a responsible adult and just appreciating that money staying in my wallet, I used that as an excuse to order all 9 volumes of Monster: Perfect Edition! This may or may not have been influenced by me finally starting to read Akira this week and it being really fucking good so far. It definitely put me in the mood to read more manga in the near future. Really excited to revisit Monster as it's been like 15 years since I watched the anime and at the time I remember feeling like it was basically the greatest thing ever. Here's hoping it holds up!

I proudly present to you the latest episode in the "I'm running out of bookshelf space because I keep filling them up with stuff that aren't books!" saga. They're finally here! I pre-ordered them back in October and they kept getting delayed because of Covid/shipping issue in the US so it's kinda surreal to finally have them. They're also much bigger than I thought they would be. I can't even fit all of my Dune books on the shelf because of their size. They look so good, though! I'm gonna be super paranoid about breaking them, though. The Witcher ones are so blunt that I almost feel like I need to wear a safety helmet when I'm around them. These on the other hand feel like they're made from a more high quality/fragile material and have so many little bits that could break off.

Yeah, I know. I just really needed a break from it. I wasn't having fun with it anymore. Although getting distracted from it so heavily by Persona 4 was never the plan. I blame P4AU for that lol.

79.8 hours according to Steam. And I haven't played since April 6th... But yeah, probably like half of my playtime was spent just exploring and screwing around. I'm at the final boss (or at least, I assume it's the final boss) of the area you reach after beating fire giant. IIRC there's a whole section of the place that I haven't fully explored yet. It seemed very unwelcoming when I checked it out so I promptly grabbed my stuff and left.

Lol to be fair, like I said, I DID actually try. I just didn't expect it to pop-up so effortlessly considering that what I was doing wasn't that different from how I would normally play.

Damn, you've almost caught up to me. Maybe I should try to finish this already before doing P4G NG+.

Persona 4 Golden Sweet fucking Christ, this game is long. I picked my playthrough back up 40 hours in, right after Rise's dungeon, thinking I was roughly halfway through but here I am over 70 hours later having just finished it last night lol. Still a fantastic game, though. I remember not being 100% into replaying it when the PC port first came out but playing a lot of Persona 4 Arena Ultimax a couple weeks ago made me really eager to spend more time with these characters. Also, I did not remember the Hollow Forest being this fucking awful. It really feels like they didn't want to create a new tier of equipment and enemies solely for it, so they just took away your gear and items and have you fight low level enemies. That made me just avoid combat as much as possible, which they clearly anticipated because on like half the floors you get into fights when you open doors lol. Good thing it's not the final dungeon like I was thinking because it would've ended the game on a pretty low note. You'd think I would've had my fill after 70+ hours of playing this but I want PC ports of P3 and P5R more than ever. I want more, just... with a different cast. I really hope they'll announce the P5R port this year... In the meantime, new game + will have to do. I'll probably rush through it with a guide and skip cutscenes because as much as I enjoyed coming back to the game I really don't wanna spend another 100+ hours on it. Also, thank fucking God I once again got Hardcore Risette Fan without even trying because that would've probably made me put it off for a while. I mean, I did try and went out of my way to constantly trigger as many of Rise's lines as possible but I'm really baffled that I got it so easily not once but twice when everyone else seems to have so much trouble with it. I wasn't even using a spreadsheet to keep track of which lines I got like people recommend. I really wonder if I'm somehow doing something that everyone else isn't or just really fucking lucky with this one particular achievement. But yeah, really glad to have one less thing to worry about on NG+ because I feel like I'll already have enough to keep track of with maxing out all social links and filling out the compendium.

Is it true that Shadow the Hedgehog is in the post-credit scene?

Oh yeah, forgot to mention but the PC version has customizable difficulty settings and for most of the game I left it as default. So if I die I can restart at the entrance of the current floor but that started feeling tedious and like a waste of time so last night I turned on battle retry and holy fuck what a broken, garbage setting lol. I assumed I'd just restart the battle from the beginning but no. I didn't die again until the dungeon's boss and my entire party got revived + healed but the boss's health bar didn't refill. It's not retry so much as God mode; just a straight-up built-in cheat code. I was so disgusted that I actually just let myself die again and declined the retry so I could start at the floor entrance instead lol. It was the last floor so it didn't really change anything.

Lmao It popped up out of nowhere halfway through Heaven, which I think is kind of early? I wonder if it glitched out or something. At this point I genuinely can't tell if I'm doing something that everyone else isn't or just fucking lucky.

That's... the most Kojima thing ever. I love this man lol.

As a 10$ upgrade, it's a no-brainer. Although on PC it's a separate version with a different achievements list, so that means I have to start over from scratch. There might be a way to transfer my old save but I honestly welcome the excuse to do a full replay. It's just not going to happen anytime soon. Probably going to hold off until I get my GPU upgrade later this year, so I can have a smoother experience with it this time.