Personal

And it turns out to be justified, as I feel like I barely have anything to say even now. The Shining Force series has found its way into my life recently, with the missus and I going through the first entry. She was very partial to Gort, Domingo, and Kokichi, and the old men in particular put in some damn fine work this run. SF1 is one of my favorite games, and all of its charms and foibles are intact.

I really ought to do a review for it sometime, particularly so I can explain why I find it better than its sequel, which we started a few days ago. I still think Shining Force II is a great game, but it should not be as uncommon as it is to find people who prefer the first. There’s a lot of nuance when it comes to what makes the games different. In fairness, I greatly appreciate the increase in battle animation speed in 2, as well as the various improvements to the interface. At the same time, I feel like more could have been done there.

On my own time, I’ve been playing the remake, Resurrection of Dark Dragon for the GBA. I’ve been a defender of the remake before, and I still am, but I find myself remembering all the downright bizarre changes made from the original. It’s difficult to discern which are done to reduce workload for the developer, and which may have some other justification behind them. For example, Bleu and Adam no longer have their portraits change upon promotion in the remake. On paper, this feels like cutting corners. But I could totally see some weirdo thinking it was better off being removed for making the main character’s portrait change feel “less special.”

This would be bad reasoning, of course, as Max is most likely to be the one whose portrait changes first, and the reason those other characters’ portraits changed in the first place was because their promotions altered their bodies, not just their outfits. Naturally, the remake referenced those promotion designs for the sprite work, so now you have Adam being a trashed robot in his portrait but completely pristine in battle after his promotion. Stupid. Other than that, a lot of weird story changes I think make the story just slightly less fun or interesting, despite all the attempts elsewhere at adding depth to the world and cast.

I may be inclined to continue onto other Shining series games. I still have the Japanese-exclusive Game Gear game to finish, and a replay of Shining Force CD due to a glitch causing me to not obtain Book 4. Shining Force III remains a massive blind spot for me, and I have the non-SRPG classic Shining games, besides.

I’m also still working through Master of Spirits 2, but it is draining. The game is nearly identical to the first, so I feel like I’m running on fumes. Speaking of using my 3DS, I damaged my charger when it got caught in my vacuum the other day. My incredible girlfriend sacrificed herself to order me a new one, which should arrive shortly after posting this. Then I can go back to playing old games. Hell yes.

Elden Ring‘s DLC final boss continues to give me trouble. I’m trying to play Lyriluscs in Duel Links, while refining my Ice Barrier deck in Master Duel. I’ve been stuck in an endless tango between Diamond rank 3 and 4 because of demoting, and it’s pissing me off.

My friend Stevie and I attempted to play through Amazing Island in our ill-advised quest to play every GameCube game of note, but the game seems to have some kind of glitch in the second minigame where it’s impossible to fill a meter up more than halfway. Something about the game not being at the right speed. Stevie could disable some cores in his emulator, solving the problem, but I didn’t have that luxury on my physical Wii. It’s strange, because the Wii should be using close-to-exact GameCube hardware, but that meter was not going above 50%. Instead, we started Vexx, a 3D platformer from my childhood I insist got way too much hate.

Professional

I’m in the process of completing assessments to get an interview for a resume writer position. Currently, I’m waiting on results from one of them. Other than that, I can’t recall anything else manifesting.

Public

I sound like a broken record at this point, but the anime directory is nearing completion — but for real this time. I probably have between 20-30 entries left to import, and most are of little consequence. Literally. Some of the remainders are just one or two sentences of thoughts. But I vowed for this site to contain all of my work, so nothing shall be overlooked. For more pessimistic news, I accidentally overwrote a review on my clipboard for something I was importing, so that is now lost. Yes, I tried clipboard history, but it’s off by default. Great. I’m trying to recover it with the help of MAL staff, but the results remain to be seen. In the meantime, I’m still hacking away at drafted reviews.

Well… see ya.