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[crystalelemental]

Wasn’t a fluke either. This morning she hurried out too, tried to sniff my hand like before but got no food from it, and nuzzled against my hand for a pet. I tried to prompt Gia to do the same since she’s being a coward, but Coco did it again and I didn’t want to risk behavioral extinction so they got it. Gia, you’re next. Love me, brat.

COCO LET ME PET HER! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

Our sweet coward daughter has become the first of our children to initiate contact.

This evening I went to deliver nighttime treats, and Gia was super close while Coco was watching further back, being skittish. But see, Gia usually eats all the treats because Coco is a coward. So Coco held her ground this time, and when I went to drop them, Coco ran out and flat out headbutt her sister out of the way to make sure she got hers. But, I hadn’t done it yet, and Coco began to do her morning behavior of whumping and acting cute. But this time, she got up, nuzzled on the corner of the wall, and then did that to my hand! I gave her a little scratch, worried she might run, but she didn’t! She held still and even went in for more attention! I think she ate all the treats on Gia, but honestly she deserves it. I’m so proud of her.

…anyway I went back out to the kitchen after running to tell my wife about her progress, and Coco has identified the hidden location of the treats. She was on the counter trying to open the cabinet. So our girl is smart, but a problem. Delightful. I love her so.

[crystalelemental]

game freak has the chance to do something really fucking funny

[crystalelemental]

Strange how people keep saying that "Shuro hates in Laios the same traits he supposedly loves in Falin", which is...

Seriously, look at him and his dialogue - does he hate Laios for being a monster freak? For being nerdy and weird and loving nature? For eating bugs? No, that's not it.

Shuro hates* Laios for being so profoundly socially inept (from his perspective).

The key difference between Touden siblings isn't that Falin is a pretty girl - the key difference is that Falin is caring and accommodating to other people, and Laios is awkward and unobservant, seemingly egotistic at the surface level.

(others have already written wonderful essays on why and how they grew up like that)

It has to be noted that Shuro is a sheltered noble from a land where proper etiquette is paramount - he is used to people being incredibly subtle AND incredibly observant around him. He comes from a high-context culture where everyone assumes things based on lots of social cues and shared understanding of context. That's not even a matter of being neurotypical, that's his culture (in addition to his personality and brain chemistry)

He is also rather introverted as person and doesn't have many friends. Even his attachments and emotions in childhood are expressed subtly, in a restrained and proper way. He is polite and refined, perfectly fitting into his house's expectations - even if that means repressing his childhood interests and little weird joys.

In that particular way, the opposite of Laios.

Shuro hates* Laios for being the opposite of the image HE was grown into. This strange man is so utterly insensitive and so open about it - he has no sense of shame (like Shuro), no tact and ability to shut up (like Shuro), no restraint (like Shuro). Look at him talking non-stop about things he wants to talk about and having fun (unlike Shuro) while completely overestepping Shuro's obvious boundaries!

The boundaries, I must say, that not only never before needed to be spelled out, but in Shuro's upbringing and culture would be as ridiculous to spell out as "I want to pee, so I'll go to the bathroom and remove my pants and sit on the toilet and release the sphincter holding my pee in my pee bladder"

Falin is not only awesome in his eyes for being weird and in touch with nature, but for being very delicate, observant and caring AT THE SAME TIME. She is a gem in Shuro's eyes, a miracle of his dreams.

In Falin, he not only sees a nerd-freak - he sees a hope for an introverted, polite, restrained person like himself to reconnect with that love for nature and nerdiness and freakiness.

Laios isn't like that. Laios is unobservant for subtle cues - and so a lot more loud, persistent, enthusiastic and unwittingly annoying. Yes, Falin has all that inside her too - but she restrains herself in order not to be a burden. And so does Shuro, in order to fit expectations. There's similarity between them in that regard, between two introverted and restrained weirdos. And a hope for a kindred, more open soul, from the more restrained Shuro's perspective.

* - I don't think Shuro's feelings to Laios are properly described as hate. Yeah, in his darkest moment he says that, but honestly it felt more like an accumulated stress from a continuous cultural and personal misunderstanding, rather than a profound personal hate.

...

What was the post about?.. Oh, yeah, Shuro loving Falin and disliking Laios. That's not him being too horny to think, that's him loving in Falin the defining difference between the two - they aren't gender-swapped clones, after all. Give my boy some respect and nuance.

[crystalelemental]

COCO LET ME PET HER! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!

Our sweet coward daughter has become the first of our children to initiate contact.

This evening I went to deliver nighttime treats, and Gia was super close while Coco was watching further back, being skittish. But see, Gia usually eats all the treats because Coco is a coward. So Coco held her ground this time, and when I went to drop them, Coco ran out and flat out headbutt her sister out of the way to make sure she got hers. But, I hadn’t done it yet, and Coco began to do her morning behavior of whumping and acting cute. But this time, she got up, nuzzled on the corner of the wall, and then did that to my hand! I gave her a little scratch, worried she might run, but she didn’t! She held still and even went in for more attention! I think she ate all the treats on Gia, but honestly she deserves it. I’m so proud of her.

…anyway I went back out to the kitchen after running to tell my wife about her progress, and Coco has identified the hidden location of the treats. She was on the counter trying to open the cabinet. So our girl is smart, but a problem. Delightful. I love her so.

[crystalelemental]

Okay, Class of Heroes. I think I have broken in. I now have Understanding of some things.

I was right: you need to take the early classes first. The spells you acquire are based on leveling up, and you DESPERATELY want two people on Mage to learn offensive spells, so you can clear out all the enemies that are super physically tough. Spells kick unbelievable ass, one-shotting pretty much everything except for that one enemy that may as well be a game over screen. So that's a positive.

I have also figured out a truth. Never buy from the shop. Ever. Alchemy creating your weapons for you is just infinitely more beneficial. It's time consuming! It takes forever to find stuff! But it's well worth it. In the time it took me to be able to afford one (1) weapon from the shop, I achieved enough material to get an axe, some knuckles, and a sling. So now my team went from every fight being a bit of a slog trying to muscle through even basic enemies, to annihilating most opponents. I'd like to get the club for my Celestia Priest, but I need wood.

I'm now at level 4. Leveling is slow business, but we're infinitely more established than the first team. I still see stats drop sometimes, but it's mostly been based on race. Like, the Bahamoon dragon girl lost some Wisdom because her tradeoff is physical bulk at the cost of magical, and the game said no to putting too many bonus points in that. Which feels like bullshit but whatever. The other is Vit on the Gnome. They are destined for frailty, I suppose. I don't regret it though, losing those points on level isn't nearly as devastating as not having them, given how it impacts base HP. It sucks to lose the points, but it's still a good trade. Spell slots also upgraded at level 3, giving me access to tier 2 spells. So now my Gnome can cast a shock-type spell. My Human mage can too, but she gets less casts until level 4, when the spell slots catch up and she gets four casts.

Now, this is something I looked up, but apparently spells stay. Like, if I switch from Mage to Priest? All the Mage spells are still available, but I can learn Priest spells as I level on that class too. I believe I lose some spell slots on whatever type of magic I'm not currently majoring in, but I assume that's the purpose of the higher-tier classes, where they tell you that you can retain such and such spell list. I haven't yet obtained any Psionics, I am curious because that sounds like buff magic and we do not get more than 4 casts, so I'm kinda worried they won't be worth it. But who knows, maybe the buffs are absurdly powerful to offset limited uses.

Oh, and I found a map of the Novice area. Apparently there is a minimap, you just have to find the item in the dungeon to unlock access. Which. Alright. I'd like to just be able to see, but this is fine.

Anyway, finding my stride. Still messing around in the Novice dungeon, but fingers crossed we can start making progress soon. Like, actual progress.

[crystalelemental]

"anacharafan: Fair enough, honestly I think the game is fun! It also didn't impact me like Nexomon did(as... As one can tell... -) but I thought the game play was really fun! Now I did play on my PC and the game did crash once while loading for the first time and once while I was loading the other half of the map but it was fine otherwise? ... Also yes. Yes that is the post game, I did the exact same strats. I found a Glitter bootleg named it shotgun and got to work.

Oh wow, that's cool actually. I don't think I ever got a Bootleg of anything. I always wanted to try for Magicrab but couldn't do it.

"Out of the cast I liked Viola and Kay the most and while I did like everyone they're not nearly as memorable to me as say, Deena or heck even someone like Jack(overseer game 1) .... Now I do have a bias for Gwen, who does regularly fall on my mind, but considering my pfp is also a shape shifter who likes humanity I think I just, like the trope or something. But overall honestly, the music and the gameplay are the best part to me."

Kayleigh was my girl. She was my favorite, personally. I did like the Kuneko storyline too. But I couldn't really tell you anything about the others, really? I don't remember their names. There's artist guy, and the guy who's against the vampire landlords, and like...is Viola the one that's like a character from Shakespeare? I dunno. I'd have to really sit down and think about why no one in Cassette Beasts resonated with me that strongly.

"I replayed the game once, to get the romance achievement, and then I just played my old save over and over. Because I liked the gameplay more than I liked doing the story, I think.

… Music is just a banger tho"

Okay, this is a thing that doesn't come up often, but every now and again I say it and people are baffled. I don't play games with music on. I keep them on silent and listen to other stuff. I know almost nothing about soundtrack for most games I've played, so that positive is completely lost on me. I never listened to their music. I have no idea what it's like.

[crystalelemental]

Big things are coming this Sunday.

[crystalelemental]

Okay, wife's on the controller but I did some testing in the character creation for Class of Heroes, and while this is fairly preliminary, I'm ready to talk initial thoughts.

This game is, at present, not particularly good. At all. I understand it's basically a faithful rerelease of an old game, so jank is to be expected, but I'm kinda floored at how bad we're talking sometimes.

The biggest issue is that it is hilariously wasteful of mechanics. When you make a character, you select gender, race, and alignment. You get a set amount of Bonus stats, determined upon hitting Enroll, and based on all of these factors, you select a class. So for instance, the base classes - Warrior, Mage, Priest, and Thief - only need one stat at level 12. Easily achieved. Then you have slightly more advanced classes, like Ranger, who seems to be the next step up on Thief. At the very least, they have the same level 1 skill that implies thief skills. They require not only stats, but also your alignment must be Neutral or Evil. So if you put in for an Elf with a Good alignment, please disregard that bow in their portrait, you may not have a Ranger Elf, and that's the only archer class. WHOOPS. This gets super granular with the latest classes needing a ton of stats, specific gender, and specific alignment. It is wildly specific.

To make matters worse, you might think okay, Bishop requires 13 in both magic-related stats, and either a Good or Evil alignment. Clearly, this is the blended class for Mage and Priest, right? Wrong. If you somehow manage to get this out of the gate, You will get just the healing magic. Not the offensive. You don't know this until you've done it. And the only way to do it is to roll a high Bonus points to allocate.

But wait, there's more restriction! Let's say you realize that later classes aren't good until later, and opt for basic classes out the gate. You decide that ranged weapons, like Bows, are absurdly expensive (we'll get to this), and want back row mages to cast. Well that's great, let's set up some magic! Gnomes have high Int, they'd do well. So you allocate Mage, and you get Fire, the basic offensive spell. Great! So okay, you have three back row characters, let's get one more Mage. So you go alright, let's try Fairy or Elf. Those are traditionally magic-aligned classes, surely they'll be able to-they don't learn Fire. They can learn useless options, but they can't learn Fire. So they cannot contribute to combat ever, being on the back row without offensive spells, and unable to afford ranged weaponry. Apparently, your spell list associated with each class is restricted based on race. You will not know this until you've one it, and check what spells are acquired. Getting higher-tier stuff with access to those spell types does fuck-all, near as I can tell.

The only benefit I can find is that it's really easy to reroll for high Bonus numbers. Mostly, it'll give between 6 and 10, but sometimes you'll see like 16-18, and think okay yeah, big money. No. No, that's not the big money. Rarely, you will see 26-29. And in one blessed instance, I saw 37. Which is great. Without a clear means to reclass, at least not easily, you may think that it is beneficial to allocate these points in a way that allows early access to stronger classes. But, as mentioned, you'll tech into Bishop and find out oops, no offensive spells, and then high physical defense enemies just wall your entire team. I'm not sure about this, but something increases EXP needed to level as well. I thought it was stats, but did some tests and it is not. I made the same character over and over with different Bonus values, and the difference between 6 and 37 bonus points was 0EXP. So there's no reason not to just reroll for bigger bonuses. But I assume class increases EXP. I do not know that for certain.

Okay, so that out of the way, how about the gameplay?

Dungeon exploration is immediately concerning because there is no map. You need a spell that will only temporarily reveal what the map looks like. Hope your memory is strong, or your team is big enough to not need to worry about encounters. Which. Mine have not been. I had similar difficulties with early game of my first Etrian Odyssey, so better understanding of systems might help, but right now it's a mess. I've legitimately considered dropping difficulty to Easy just to manage.

Drops are random materials, which are unknown until you identify them. This can be done one of two ways. If you have a specific class or character, either Gnome or Bishop but assuming Gnome, you can identify for free. But it can fail, and if it fails too often they get performance anxiety and can't cast for a while. Which is. So great. Or you can pay for it. Guaranteed success, but the cost to identify is the same as the selling cost, so you make no money off of doing this. Best of all, you cannot sell unidentified materials. So you are required to do this. I assume it's percentage based odds to succeed, but when an identification failed, they got scared really easily and I never saw an initial fail run into success. Like, ever.

Speaking of, money is a nightmare of unspeakable proportions. Apparently the devs are fans of Genealogy, because every character has their individual funds. This can be pooled to a specific character or redistributed evenly, but that kinda makes me wonder why that mechanic exists at all? Like, I can also just give items to others, so trade is free. I don't like it in Genealogy, but at least money was reasonably plentiful if you did all your Arena grinding and the pawn shop meant decisions had to be made. This is just free and therefore meaningless. More pressing, however, is that you start with no gold at all, random encounters are giving me only 1-2 gold, and materials are basically unimportant. The only way to make money is to find Ancient or Magic Coins, which are...100 to 150 gold at the current Bronze level. For reference, when I unlocked Ranger, I attempted to get a bow. 3200 gold for just the bow. You pay for ammo separately. I cannot even remotely afford that.

This could be mitigated if money were easily acquired, but grinding is very, very hard to do. You have spell slots, usually 3-4 casts of a particular magic type, before you're completely spent. Which means your healing situation is brutal. Frontliners are the only ones who can attack regularly, the back row needs those ranged weapons. So what winds up happening is nothing gets done. You go in for a little bit, fight a handful of fights, hope to god you got a coin or two so you can afford literally anything, then go back in. There is synthesis, but that's also random. You can find recipes, but near as I can tell, unless you get the specific things you're after, all these materials just take up space. I am dreading the moment it tells me "inventory full."

Lastly, I want to mention something that is so inane, it actually had me break down into fits of nervous laughter on audio last night. After much back and forth, I finally achieved one (1) level up. Excited to see the deal, we proceeded to go through each stat individually. Strength up! Int up! Wisdom down! Agility up! Luck up! HP went up by 1!

...I'm sorry, back that up a second. Did you just say Wisdom down? Are you actually telling me, in complete sincerity, that my stats went down on a level up? Are we serious? I have never, in my entire life, seen anything like this. I've seen stats go down with things like reclassing, but to have a level up occur and be told that any stat went down is so baffling it loops right around infuriating to hilarious. How in the fuck did my stats go down? I have so many questions about this. Is it stats not aligned to your class? I went for late game classes, maybe the early game ones are going to have more stats go down because I tried to roll 20+ bonus points on everyone and they're considered unnecessary. Maybe it factors in specific skills, like if we only attack on the frontline then we don't need spells? I have actually no idea, and am horrified by what I may uncover.

The bottom line is, game kinda sucks right now. This is some premium jank, and I am not yet attached enough to feel endeared to these systems. I'm going to keep at it, but no promises. If I continue to not get a foothold on it, eventually the other game I ordered will arrive, and I can't promise not to jump ship.

[crystalelemental]

Oh! I have a monster tamer recommendation if you're looking for more after you finish the current game you're playing (Steam beta even has multiplayer!) : Cassette Beasts!

(PS: Music is gorgeous af, look up Face Down Cassette Beasts OST, and just wait like a minute)

Oh! I've actually played that one! I didn't connect with it as strongly as I did with Nexomon, I didn't really vibe with much of the setting or the cast. The gameplay was distinctive, in that it was effectively Pokemon Double Battles but Always, which...my track record on Doubles is "man fuck Doubles." So it wasn't necessarily my favorite? I did like the type interactions. It felt a lot more dynamic than just strong against/weak to interactions.

I feel like it was generally fine, but was a bit wasteful of mechanics. Like, the fusion mechanic is fundamentally useless once you realize you can do so, so much more with two separate creatures pulling nonsense, particularly when aiming for stall strats. I think the walls were a massive pain in the ass, and a bit overpowered once you learned a few tricks. Like once I had it figured out, I had two monsters that were the literal only thing I deployed ever. They shitstomped the entire game with Leech and a shield, off of Decibelle who could apply all buffs to both allies with Echolocation. Literally unstoppable. Then postgame is entirely just...find Khepri, Headstart/Hyper Beam equivalent combo everything to death on entry so you can farm at a reasonable rate, for very little story content.

I think what really soured me was playing on Switch, and having it crash routinely once I got to the other half of the city. It was literally constant. I still don't know how to solve for most of those crashes, you could not do ANYTHING without it crashing. I never finished catching everything because of that. I just couldn't do it. I beat the game, and it was...fine, honestly? I wasn't too dazzled by it. But it's the closest a game has ever been to actually unplayable, and it did leave me feeling worse about it than I think I would have otherwise.

[crystalelemental]

Huh! That’s further along than I would’ve expected.

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[crystalelemental]

How have you been enjoying Dungeon Meshi so far, Crystal? The latest episode was crazy great, I'd like to hear your thoughts about it! Favorite story, favorite characters, and all that!

Dungeon Meshi fucks severely and often. Huge fan.

Honestly the show was excellent before, but the recent episode really surprised me with how much it handled in what felt like a lot more than 20 minutes. Like this is really well done. Chimera Falin rules, I love that. Kabru has grown on me severely as a character, dude being like “oh that’s really bad” while visibly excited. I think the big thing was the revelation of like…oh. Oh, Laios isn’t coded as if autistic, he is just autistic. Everything to do with his dynamic with Shuro hit like a ton of bricks. From a distance you can see why Shuro’s frustrated, but man Laios’ “how was I supposed to know if you didn’t tell me” and “I didn’t notice what you called obvious cues, I was just excited to have my first friend here” is salient. The character work really is fantastic.

Favorite character is still Marcille, I love her. Favorite story is up in the air, but this episode is a contender with the black magic reveal episode and reveal of the magician. I’m really enjoying it. I’m thinking of getting the manga too, but I don’t know if it’s fully translated.

[crystalelemental]

Any thoughts on the theory that Elesa is Lacey from the indigo disk dlc is Clay’s mom? Personally I don’t see it. Both because I am a massive Skyla x Elesa shipper and because from what I remember of their interactions, Elesa and Clay never struck me as having romantic chemistry. That being said, I do have an idea as to why Lacey is from Nimbassa. Clay at some point fell for someone associated with Elesa, either one of her gym trainers or a hitherto unmentioned sister.

I don’t personally see it either. I think that, generally speaking, the small details like “Lacey is from Nimbasa” get interpreted in a way that relies on information we’re familiar with, but that’s not necessarily what happened. Like, is there any indication that Clay is still in Driftveil? He could also be in Nimbasa as active gym leader, these things do change. Or depending on his own development projects, does he just live in Nimbasa now but works the next town over? Not an uncommon phenomenon. Or, as you said, it could be someone else, or entirely unrelated to Elesa. I assume Elesa is at least partially because Lacey uses Plusle and Minun, but to be honest I don’t like that association either. I get what it’s doing, and that sometimes it works, but I didn’t like the “she mains Excadrill so she must be Clay’s kid” from before she hard confirmed it, even if it wound up being correct. I dunno, I’m rambling at this point. Bottom line, I don’t really agree with it either.

[crystalelemental]

Okay, Class of Heroes is incredibly fucking frustrating. I have no gold, I do not make any serious gold in the dungeons, basic weapons cost like 700+ for frontline and one bow is 3200 so there goes the character I got to Ranger, no one in the back row can attack at all ever for some reason, I don't know what skills anything has until I've already obtained them, and there's a specific enemy I sometimes encounter that's listed as level 1 but annihilates everyone and evades every attack. I don't understand this game in the slightest.

[crystalelemental]

"twofacedangels: I tried to! years ago, when I was in high school, but I only watched it fully like a couple days ago. Rebellion was REALLY good. Loved the character development everyone got, the twists, the amazing animation, ez 10/10!"

YEAH, GOOD TASTE! Glad you were finally able to get into it!

"sinoalice was a gear gacha, where you'd pull more for weapons than characters - very coop and guild focused. died officially on January since they completed the story and…. for any gacha I say that's pretty successful.

the developers were …. a little rough to work with on the global side, since we were lower priority but if it lasted almost 7 years in JP they couldn't have been that bad."

I don't know the usual life cycle of a gacha, but it sounds...at least better than most, as far as survival. Though I can't speak to whether that equates to a particularly good game. FEH is still running, after all.

[crystalelemental]

Now that Nexomon is done, I picked up a new game. My wife and I have been in an exploratory phase, trying out things we haven’t heard of before, and this one came up. Can’t remember how. Apparently it’s a dungeon crawler, so same genre as Etrian Odyssey, and I love the shit out of those games. So I figured I’d try it out, it’s $40 for two games, and the art’s cute. I’ll post thoughts as we go through. It’s Dungeon Meshi night though, so I may not have much time to play.