#guess who wants to jump off a cliff after playing persona 3

[beanghostprincess]

... Usopp dies before Sanji gets to confess his love for him because he was too scared to do it (saying he would after finding the All Blue) and when they're cleaning his stuff they find Usopp's sketchbook (that he never let anybody see) full of drawings and sketches of Sanji.

[mozillogames]

I’m Openly Bored of Open World Games

Hoo boy, aren’t open world games everywhere these days? I hope I can’t be the only one who sees the latest open world game and almost immediately switch off from any interest in the thing. We’re reaching a critical mass of underwhelming, and rather simple, open world games that focus more on the fact that it’s an open world game than anything else, ultimately to their own downfall. While there are a few good open world games, there are a lot of bad ones as well, a flood of bad ones.

I used to like open world games, maybe it was because I was younger and had near limitless time on my hands and no major commitments outside of video gaming, sure there was school but I tended to sleep through that and just turn up to the exams at some point. All gloating aside, when you’re a wee lad of 15 or so the idea of spending an entire afternoon, from about 4:30pm until 3am, walking across a map meticulously picking up hundreds of icons on a map, slowly revealing the next chunk of the quilt and immediately preceding to mop up the clutter that lines it.

What appeals to you as a child, however, may not continue to cause a twitch in your nethers once you get older, except for Final Fantasy VII which will always cause me a stir somewhere upon my person. Now that I’m an old man at the disgustingly ripe age of somewhere in my 20s (I haven’t the time to remember or work out my age) I find myself with an actual job that I have to pretend to be good at to get money and thus eat for my own sustenance. Time has become rapidly precious and, while I may be currently playing through Persona 5 for a second time mere minutes after just finishing it, I don’t have the free time to disengage my brain and roll around an open world for the thrill that is map cleaning.

My main issue with open worlds doesn’t even necessarily descend from my lack of time in my life, instead they just tend to be so boring. Many open world games now rely heavily on padding out gameplay with increasingly cluttered maps and extra objectives, an ever increasing amount of Riddler Trophies, more Animus Fragments or Feathers than ever before, or just another hundred encampments to clear out, it’s all rather exciting, isn’t it?

There are definitely open world games that can really work, The Witcher 3 is a great example, but also things like Fallout 4. The games focus so much more on the quests that you come across that they drive your exploration of the world and point you in a direction to head to, maybe a dungeon or a building or just anything. The point is that someone put some thought into a quest chain, and they are generally chains, that may branch into more quests and you end up with a spider web of things to do. If you look at Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or Final Fantasy XV, two franchises that recently jumped into the open world pool, the quests are simple and forgettable. Normally someone tells you to get them something or kill monsters in a location and once you’ve returned with your simple and forgettable task completed you get a quick and hasty “thanks” and that’s the end of it.

Outside of the exploration itself the reasons to spend 20 minutes running out in the open wilderness rapidly run dry, one of my main criticisms of the latest additions to two of my favorite franchises were just that. The game focused more on the idea that the game is an open world than the idea of your game taking place IN an open world. I find a lot of open world games these days create an old world environment and think that’s the game, running around an open world, maybe with a few story quests scattered around, is enough to warrant the open world itself and it really isn’t.

The sandbox is an easy way to extend the length of your game quite substantially. Driving around fake LA in Grand Theft Auto from mission to mission can take literal minutes or more of your life, you’re not even really doing anything other than trying to drive in as straight a line as possible to make the journey quicker. What little I played of Ghost Recond: Wildlands was much to the same, driving through the vast and empty scenery is a boring chore and I’m quite glad the vehicles in that defied any form of physics as it made driving straight to the objective a lot easier as your truck scales an entire cliff face.

On that note, quick travel. That’s an admission of a problem already built straight into the actual game itself. Quick travel acknowledges that walking through the open world itself is already tedious and needs to be done once and only once, to unlock the locations to then fast travel to. As I stated in my video, if you took the actual structured content in an open world game and cut out all the open world walking bits the games would be a lot more engaging, to me at least. I guess that’s all that matters, that I personally have fun over everyone else.

Something that also tends to occur with open world games is the lack of player progression. It’s harder to enforce progression of your character, such as skills or equipment, without having to build large walls around entire areas of your map. You know how in older Zelda games if you had the hookshot, bombs or any other piece of equipment it’d unlock new routes and new areas? You can’t have that in an open world game as it just breaks the pacing of the open world, instead you often find yourself with everything you’re going to see within the first moments of the game itself.

In the case of games like GTA or Saints Row 3 (the only one I’ve played) you can find yourself with all the guns or equipment pretty rapidly, the games are almost designed around acquiring rocket launchers in unlikely places and then flying military jets around like it’s not a major national incident. In GTA it’s not too difficult to break into a military complex and steal said jet within the opening hours of the game, what else is the game ever going to show me? What new equipment am I likely to get that’ll change up the game more than the high tier military equipment? At that point progression is no longer something in the game, outside of the, normally, mediocre story.

Yes, this is a rather broad brush and it doesn’t apply to every game, but it falls, once again, to open world games that rely more on the game just being an open world as their major selling point than anything else. The quests in The Witcher 3 and Fallout 4 more than make up for the lack of equipment progression. The lack of this in GTA or Breath of the Wild leaves much to be desired as you find yourself doing the same objectives and actions time and time again.

I just long for more games that have structure to their gameplay. Dungeons or buildings or pathways to travel that someone has had to sit down and design with the idea that the player will actually walk through it. A well placed enemy or obstacle is a lot more memorable than 20 minutes of running through an open field maybe with a randomly placed enemy that’s vaguely placed or spawned to break the monotony. Or at least an open world game with engaging quests and characters that actually make me want to spend time in the world. If you’re going to make an open world game, wonderful, just don’t have that as your gameplay, the open world itself, put some actual effort into the game and try and write something interesting to go alongside it.

[bladeoftruths]

fate/stay night (vn) - ren’s review

welp, i’ve been inactive these past few days bcos i’ve been picking up fate/stay night vn since last week. i guess it’s about time i review it before I forget everything.

also, it’s been sometime since i last reviewed stuff.

ps: there’s spoilers inside so proceed with caution.

i finished saber’s route in just a week, rin’s route in 3 days and sakura’s route today and boy, it feels so satisfying. tbh i’ve never finished a visual novel game this fast but hey, i did it (as i procrastinated over printing my portfolio, ren pls print that damn thing tomorrow).

anyways, that being said. i know i used to believe that fate/stay night has a cruddy story just bcos it was originally an eroge but damn, the moment i watched the UBW anime by ufotable, I was completely wrong. i fell head over heels with this series and out of nowhere, i decided to pick up the visual novels just to experience the full story, and even picked up fate/grand order just to get used with nasu’s storytelling. welp, i must say, I’m impressed. also, i think most of you know this but fate is somehow inspired from evangelion and utena, and the writer, kinoko nasu is a big fan of the two series.

also, just to let ya know, i’m playing the game in this way, fate and heaven’s feel in realta nua version, while UBW, i played them uncensored bcos i’m interested in how my otp played the lovey-dovey scenes out in canon :^) (you know who i do i ship if you’ve been following me all this time haha)

speaking of the story, i’d say, i enjoy heaven’s feel the most (if not why does it take me a day to finish this route, tho i skipped thru the first 7 days bcos i’ve gone thru it and got into one of the bad endings). 

fate route is ok tho but i didn’t really like unlimited blade works story-wise. seriously, shirou’s ideals are just too stupid for me.

the romancing part, well, i couldn’t agree more but heck yes, i live for rin and shirou. they’re a dorky pair, hands-down. also, without these two dorks, type-moon will never design gudao and gudako after them.

i could only see saber and shirou like aigis and makoto/minato’s relationship from persona 3, while sakura and shirou, i couldn’t really see much as a couple but i’m really glad bcos of this, rin gets a happy end with sakura (as [spoiler alert] siblings)

alright, now i wanna talk about my opinions on the casts so here is it.

shirou is a good boy, though he can be stupid and reckless sometimes, he’s still a good boy. with rin by his side, i just don’t want him to end up becoming a broken man like archer emiya.

rin. I LOVE HER. she’s cool, badass, pretty and cute. AND A TOTAL DORK. i’d jump off the cliff to get her nendo and figma, alongside with shirou’s. also, she’s very cute when she sings; bless her seiyuu, kana ueda.

saber’s a good servant. she’s badass when fighting but she can be wholesome outside battles, especially on the daily life scenes with taiga and sakura and in UBW’s dating scene. but i’m kinda sad that she died early in heaven’s feel and ended up becoming saber alter and killed by her previous master in the end T_T

sakura, well, uhh I WANT TO PROTECC HER SMILE. she’s good and all too, but somehow when she reveals her dark side, she reminds me of akechi from persona 5 tho, idk why. (my head is still processing lots of stuff rn so i couldn’t really say why)

shinji, ugh, this charming jerk. HE DOESN’T DESERVE TO BE ALIVE. when i first watch the UBW anime i’m kinda neutral towards him but at that scene where he almost did it to rin i wanna kick him in the balls. HE DESERVE TO DIE. thankfully he did. in saber and sakura’s route. i don’t get why this jerk is even shirou’s close friend but thanks to him, shirou knows her. he’s the second character voiced by kamiya hiroshi that i hate (the first one being izaya from drrr)

kirei. ahh the fake priest. he’s a jerk tho, that’s why he’s cool as a villain. ‘nuff said. YOROKOBE will not get out of my head. jouji nakata’s voice will never get out of my head. (fun fact, his seiyuu also voiced as the monk in houseki no kuni)

lancer. he might be a jerk at first, but i really like his role in UBW and heaven’s feel tho, although he’s really short-lived in the latter route thanks to true assassin.

rider. i must admit, she’s cool. tho she wasn’t that much of use in fate and UBW, i really like her role in heaven’s feel. that sister quality in her is A++

archer. he’s cool as a servant, but he can be a jerk. idk why did he give me godot from ace attorney vibes.

gilgamesh. seeing him just gets me that ‘BEGONE THOT’ screamed into my face. he’s a jerk, but his smug and attitude makes him a good villain. shame that he didn’t shine that much in heaven’s feel tho.

speaking of servants, as much as i love saber, i like lancer class the most, then assassin and saber goes the third.

anyways, i did say i play fate and heaven’s feel clean and UBW uncensored. i’m not into eroge honestly and the reason for me to play UBW uncensored is bcos it’s the rinshirou route so i’m interested to see these two playing out the lovey dovey scene. yeah, obviously i like it tho :^)

i didn’t play the other routes uncensored bcos well, i’m not the person who’s interested to see other pairings that aren’t worth my time’s kinky scenes.

yeah, i know most people avoid playing the vn bcos it’s really wordy but hey, if you want a full story experience of fate/stay night, this is the only way you can do it as of now. i heard the studio deen adaptation of f/sn wasn’t that good and the UBW movie is also not worth watching bcos it’s not beginner-friendly. 

if you insist on starting from the anime, then you should watch the UBW anime by ufotable then pick up the vn, before proceed on watching/reading fate/zero bcos heaven’s feel and fate has a lot of connections to fate/zero especially, while UBW doesn’t hold a lot of impact.

there’s no official localization of this game so the only way you can play it is thru the fan-translations of the PC port of realta nua (aka the remastered version of the game, complete with the options to turn on/off the sex scenes in which they cannot do it for the consoles version since sony doesn’t allow eroges to be played in their consoles.)

anyways, that’s all i want to talk about. i must say that, this series really have captivated me in the end even tho ironically i detested it for being too silly haha.