Supposedly, there’s been a resurgence in the popularity of the iPod in the recent months for all sorts of reasons. While I’m well aware of “MP3 Players”, such as the original iPod and the old Sony Walkman, these are not devices I grew up using. As a “new-gen” audiophile myself, getting a DAP (Dedicated Audio Player, its the new term for these sort of devices as they can play much more than just MP3s) was certainly an interesting idea. However, modern day audiophiles now have an arsenal of methods to enjoy music, even when it comes to portable playback.

I’ve gotten quite good at actually making progress on my backlog. Turns out the answer was to just uninstall all social media and get rid of doom scrolling. I invested in a rudimentary capture card as well so that I can have my Switch games show up as an application on my PC rather than having to swap display inputs (which makes it easy to get up and running for a quick session).

After about a year of playing on and off, I’ve finally finished all 100 (and 1, counting the first one). In total it took roughly 105 hours or so.

Core Mechanics

• This is basically a visual novel, there’s very little fun to be had if you are a “cutscene skipper”. If you enjoyed Kodaka’s other works like Danganronpa then you’ll be right at home.
• There’s a bunch of smaller “minigames” but are mostly a one-off thing, they feel mostly like an afterthought (+25)

Structure

• There’s 2 main parts of the game, the battling and the story itself
• The battling itself has a decent amount of strategy to it, and you can in fact easily lose if you’re not careful for some of them
• In my opinion though given how little variety there is it kinda gets old fast, luckily the 2nd half of the game lets you skip battles you’ve already done
• As far as the story goes, its standard visual novel stuff but with a Kodaka twist. Each ending belongs to a particular “route” which is centered around a particular storyline, each one is also explicitly named in the game’s flowchart. (+20)

Content

• The story itself is quite good, but not all the routes are really worth doing if you just want what I consider to be the “core” of the plot. Some of them basically lead to nothing and are there just for fun.
• Everyone has to play through which basically acts as a very long prologue for the actual game
• Not Necessary: Serial Battles Route (PLEASE skip this one, the game forces you to play unskippable battles and it forshadows literately the tiniest thing), Box of Blessings, Conspiracy (does nothing but is very quick to do), Romance, Comedy, V’ehxness Route (mainly character building), Reset Route
• I would recommend playing through the prologue, then explicitly following a guide for the , then if you still want more start the S.F Route and follow a guide to unlock the pre-requisite routes while you progress through that. Everything else is largely optional IMO and is just for world-building. (12)

Technical Execution

Its fine overall. You can def. tell they didn’t have as big of a budget as Danganronpa to work with. There were some issues with leaving the game in suspense for too long on Switch but no major performance issues (+15)

We’ve seen time and time again that there is “no such thing as a free lunch”. The same is true for Discord.

1. Offer a service that is much better than all the competitors
2. Attract a bunch of users
3. Burn VC money
4. Repeat 1-3 until its time to pay them back
5. Figure out how to make money

Nitro doesn’t fund the platform, hosting free voice and screenshare is more expensive than you think. Ultimately, any choice of software for me boils down to “what value do I get out of it”.

There’s a thing here in Canada where certain theaters have these special seats that rumble and move in motion with whats happening on screen.

I recently saw the new Avatar (Fire and Ash) in one of these seats. It wasn’t a bad experience but given the markup, I don’t think its worth it:

• First it is fun (sometimes). For example when they were flying through the air, the seat would tilt in the motion of them flying. Or when there was an explosion/gunfire, the seat would rumble
• However, for me I think they overdid it at times, literately the seat would move and rumble for the smallest things. So it was kind of like a constant thing throughout the whole film. For me its a bit annoying
• For the $10-15 extra (I think I paid a bit more cause the movie was also in 3D), I’d much rather just go to a theater that has the big comfy recliner seats
• I think for the right movie (maybe something heavy on action or horror) this could be a solid purchase if its a movie you’re really looking forward to
• Or I also know that some people see movies multiple times, so maybe this can be a good option for a 2nd viewing?

Generally, though… I think I’ll live without them.

This is primarily focused on the content of the patch, not so much the features they’ve added.

Story

• Mistwake Dungeon was a good difficulty. Although I’m not a fan of the electricity star AOEs, very hard to read for no apparent reason. Please just stick with the old one.
• Cutscene quality def. got better. As in animations and uniqueness.
• Love the look and feel (Treno). There’s a ton of good spots for “gpose-ing”. Music is nice too.
• Seriously Krile? You parents were the ones who dropped you into the Source. I don’t think they’d care if you wanted to stay in the Source (just make up your mind) -> well glad that got sorted out
• “Hell on Rails” Trial (Doomtrain) is very nicely designed. Its got some nice unique mechanics, the “sucking” mechanic definetly trips you up the first time because the distance to move back + timing has been tuned so that you need to pre-position for it.
• The transition from inside the engine to outside was really cool!!! This is probably one of my top normal trials now.
• The instance battle was well done too. The roleplaying part was on point, and when it was finally time to fight a real boss you get to play as yourelf (I think this is the best flow). Love the idea using the spriggan to avoid Behemoth’s meteor.
• Cool so we just get to keep the key. If this were any bit realistic, we’ve surely learned that no one this powerful should be allowed to keep the key on themsleves 24/7. Because surely the WoL being the most powerful being will never run rogue with a interdimensional travel capable tool. Then again, seeing how stuff gets stolen all the time in the story… Well I guess it can go either way.
• I’m guessing this key is gonna be how the writers justify being able to travel to new worlds for post-Zodiark/Hydaelyn story. Its fine I guess, but a little disappointing it isn’t something more unique.
• And what do you know. Ascians. I hope we get something unqiue for 8.0… I guess thats fine but please lets not have it just be SHB all over again.

Raid

• “Feral Fandom” -> Yep thats FF14 NA playerbase for you.
• Heavyweight 1 (Vamp Fatale) Raid was cool and unique, but a bit too flashy imo. That Half Moon is needlessly large, wish we’d stop with mechanics that are designed to trick people even when read correctly.
• Heavyweight 2 (Xtremes) I take it back, this is the one with the blinding effects MY EYES. Fire and water one after another. This is a pretty hard normal fight actually (the first time you run it blind). Really punishing for bad AOE placement positions since you can effectively be cut off from the team.
• Holy wow these cutscenes are in serious need of voice acting. Its a good story but so dry and awkward without it.
• Heavyweight 3 (Tyrant). Really? Behemoth again, double dipping from the instance battle. There’s so many other cool FF monsters. I like the arena, it fits the guy well, all about history of the Arcadion/tradition. Fight is underwhelming and too easy imo, apart from 1 single trick mechanic that can cause a wipe…
• Heavyweight 4 (Lindwurm). EVERYTHING BURNS. This fight was honestly too easy, zero deaths everything can be read. 2nd phase was underhelming.
• Overall the story here while not as in depth and relevant to the story as Endwalker raids, still had a nice little twist at the end I def did not expect. Enjoyed it!

Misc

• The new Frontline map is “dangerous”. Overall the new capturing point system is far better than a non-interruptable interact like in Onsal Hakir. The snowman and aurora events are also good, and I think they come in right when they’re needed too (to spice things up/allow for a turning point).
• The map design however is far too complex, all these bridges and everywhere and invisible walls. It does add a lot of chokepoints but also makes it difficult to navigate from point A -> B (but partially I guess this is done cause the map does feel smaller than Onsal).

If you live in Socal and are also into arcade gaming (both retro and modern), one of the great weekend day-trips I’ve found is taking the Pacific Surfliner train down to San Diego.

Getting There

There are a number of departures in the morning, and while not as fast as a car when there’s no traffic, you can save your energy and do other stuff on the train. The timetable also works nicely since you can pretty much get there around opening if you want to beat the crowds.

Cleared my first 18 difficulty chart in #sdvx

Albeit its not a very difficult one, but I think I’m finally starting to chip away at the 17-18 difficulty wall.

Switch 2 Pro Controller is very comfy in my hands, but unfortunately it didn’t work out of box on PC (Linux) for me like it’s predacessor. Until there’s actual better driver support for this thing in the kernel (or Valve does something), here’s a hacky Python script to initialize HID-mode on the controller

Steps

Its all Bandori. At least 75% of that MyGO!!!!! listening time was probably Haruhikage since I came back to Bandori and had to catch up before watching Ave Mujica anime.