*cough*

I'd meant to get back to a regular posting pace and then life had other plans. Since last time I was out of commission for a week with the damn virus I'd managed to avoid all these years, then had to catch up on a week's worth of missed classes and studies, prep for an exam the day I got back, and just get caught up to be ready to end the semester. Not the best times!

I've got a day of class left though and everything is either finished or just about and I'm soon to have room to breathe. I've got a bit more school stuff left and then I'm free from classes for a few weeks, then back at it again in January.

Gaming

I played through the recently released Enjoy the Diner, which was a really nice and short little adventure game. It's got really nice art and a very enjoyable soundtrack (the piano version was so nice to have!).

I'd been playing the DLC for Stranger of Paradise but after just barely finishing the first and immediately hitting a block in the second, I think I'm ready to cut my losses and accept I wasted my money on the DLC.

The base game itself is fantastic, but the DLC is all post-game that turns the difficulty up to a level that just isn't enjoyable. I've got no issues with a hard game, but the ways this ratchets things up to extremes just isn't fun. I'd rather go play Sekiro or Nioh 2 again, or maybe just finally pick up and play Wo Long rather than grind at DLC that is souring me on a game I really liked.

It's really frustrating because the new content is gated behind a new difficulty for each DLC (I assume the third one does this too), the first of which has you replaying levels with customizable difficulty modifiers to... grind a material that you get as a level completion reward in order to advance what little story there is. It just feels bad, especially when you compare it to the expansions for Nioh and Nioh 2, both of which continue the story and add a not insignificant amount of new stages.

I finally finished Rabi-Ribi, which was fun. I'm excited to get to the team's new game, Tevi, which looks like it tones down some of the more questionable art direction while improving on the combat in interesting ways!

I played through NeverAwake. Absolutely fantastic twin stick shoot em up with great art direction. The challenges you get access to kept it going for me for a while after I first defeated the final boss.

I've also been playing DJMax Respect. I used to play a bunch of rhythm games back in high school and a few years afterwards but mostly fell off in the years since. It's humbling going back to the genre and having to start on much lower difficulties (though I never did play DJMax before) but it's also been a lot of fun to get back into it.

Tangentially related to playing games, someone in a discord I'm in asked for some help identifying a game, and all they had to go off of was this gif:

I always find it fun trying to identify something, and when it comes to mecha girls, there are really only so many that it can be. My first thought was Konami's Busou Shinki, which I only really have passing familiarity with. I'm mostly familiar with the PSP games, which are action games which this clip definitely isn't. I thought it might be a doujin game based on it which would make it a lot more difficult to find, given it looks like a mid-00s game to me. Another discord member spotted the similarity between the gif and the armor pieces on this model kit, which prompted me to take another look. I found another, earlier Busou Shinki game, Battle Rondo, for which I didn't find very many images, but luckily, one of those few held a key detail.

If it weren't for that turn display, I don't know that we'd have been able to conclusively identify it. There's so little existing media of this game still online that is easily searchable. The game launched in 2007 in Japan and was subsequently shut down in 2011. In my searching, aside from noting it existed, there was practically nothing I came across discussing the game in English. Still, pretty pleased we were able to find it and ID it!

Not a whole lot more going on. I'm looking forward to having the time and space to finally get to Star Ocean 2! Should be able to be more regular again barring any unforeseen circumstances. Until then!