⋆ “you should’ve told me this was going on. i would’ve put a stop to it the second i heard about it.” ( from Mitsuru to Yuki )

@braveryhearted

"It's not that big of a deal."

He wasn't sure how Mitsuru had heard about the fight. Surely Sanada hadn't brought it up to her. Makoto could count on one hand the number of times he'd been in a fight outside the dark hour, but he was always surprised at how slow the average person was. Almost ten people against him and Sanada, they crashed against them like waves breaking against a rocky shore.

The punks had hassled him and Sanada for a while and they'd just avoided them up until the last time. They threatened the others, which made things simple. As the leader, it was Makoto's job to keep his team safe and healthy.

It had been easy. Sanada and Makoto fought for their lives every time they went to Tartarus. Even without their personas, they were stronger than your average street thug.

"Either way, its done. Nothing to worry about now."

Hot take but bg3 doesn't have the awesome replayability it claims to have.

To get the most obvious point out the way first: 17,000 endings? Pure marketing there is like 5 unique endings and the rest is tiny details that don't change ending scenes. Realistically after you've seen one tav and one durge ending and made one of em good and one evil, you won't be replaying just for the other 3 endings.

And you won't replay for the sidequests and their outcomes either. How many sidequests are there in Act 1? How many in Act2? Barely any if any at all, almost of them link back to the mainquest and change with it so you've probably already seen it in your first good & evil playthroughs. And if they don't (namely Auntie Ethel, Baelen & Derryth , Omeluum and Zhentarim) they are short and only become relevant again in Act 3. Act 3 the place of endless amounts of sidequests that all boil down to 'defeat this boss' and then never affect anything else. You can do these quests in literally any fucking order and they will not change anything. The only order needed is murder tribunal -> Orin and Iron Throne -> Steel watch -> Gortash. And both of these can be fully or partially skipped depending on if you want to save the Gondians and if you're Durge.

And let's entirely be honest here, as fun as it is to make a new tav or durge concept, once you know the endings and some few major choices, you know how their story will play out. Do I start those playthroughs anyways? Yes. Did I finish any of them yet? No, I struggle to find a reason why I should if I can already predict how the major story beats will play out, I spend most of my time making a new character with trying to find a way to combine an interesting tav idea with a companion I haven't romanced before or with a specific major choice for a companion that I haven't played before.

Which brings me to actually reasons to replay the game:

1) Romancing a different companion, because that's literally the only way to get to know them. Except romancing a different companion doesn't change anything major except some parts of the ending epilogue dialogue, so you'll be replaying the exact same playthrough again but this time you romance Gale instead of Wyll and get 3 new scenes you haven't seen before in a total of what? 100 playhours?. But for each companion there are story changing choices too, only changes like 2 scenes with said companion and nothing else, but wouldn't you want to see those too?. Alright another 100 hours except this time the choices only change 1 scene and happen 50hrs into the exact same playthrough as your previouse Astarion romance.

And nr 2) trying out builds. Because you can't actually try out combos in Act 3, both because there is a very finite amount of enemies with very specific weaknesses and resistances and because some build changing items are in previous acts and you can't go back. If you want to try out a build you best hope you have the perfect coincidental save to reload to (and lose all progress or not save the changes... fun) or you better prepare to replay the entire damn game just to try out if 6 levels paladin and 6 levels sorcerer work well together or not. And the companions don't help here either. We have two humans, five elves (with 2 wood 2 high 2 half elves, yay!) a githyanki and a tiefling. How many of these actually have unique racial features? Your build would work better with halfling luck or duegar invisibility? Tough luck. Make a new tav. Most of the time first 5 levels aren't even worth multiclassing at unless you want to make the game unnecessarily difficult, dragging your new playthrough out even longer.

I have 600 playhours and I still don't know anything about Lae'zel, Shadowheart or Karlach because my romance runs for them are all not past Act 1 yet. And it doesn't matter how fun it feels to have a powerful build in act 3 or how fun it is to find a new story possibility. If I have to go spend like 50hrs to reach the part that's interesting. Even worse when I can't be bothered to loot things anymore, leading to me missing out on vital loot all because I didn't want to turn the stone at the grove for the 12th time. My choice here is get burned out from turning every rock every time or burn out because skipping through everything, making it unnecessarily hard, blocking potential builds and missing quests/dialogue/etc ruins the whole roleplay part that would motivate me to make a new playthrough in the first place.

Not to mention the fact that I'm struggling to make the character creator fun, it's always been lacking options but with 20 playthroughs open to go, I've already used all of them. I'm trying to choose a different face and hairstyle (gave up on makeup and body art being unique a hot while ago) for each character to make them unique but with all elves sharing faces and all half elves sharing faces and already having used at least 2 face from each race it's starting to look pretty samey here. And I'd love to use a ton of mods but the game by itself already breaks when it's update time.

The point is that no matter how much the game likes to pretend, choices don't matter that much, not in the character creator, not in the story, at best a little in who you romance but even then the difference is a few scenes. This is only made worse by larian confirming that the evil run is purposfully so short and lacking because "it's supposed to feel bad. You killed these people, now you miss out on their questlines." I'm here to explore different story outcomes, not to be punished for picking options the game gave me! An evil playthrough can be made to feel bad without punishing the player for picking an option you gave them. Not to mention the fact that there is barely any way if any way at all to be more nuanced? All options are either heroically good or comically evil, if you're lucky you get the third option to do good but ask for payment... yay... I'm sure that will totally not play exactly like the good playthrough.

The game is fun, hell I have 600 playhours. Not all of them where spent in burn out limbo. But I could've easily stopped at 150hrs after finishing my good tav and evil durge and I wouldn't have missed much.

Okay so you know how sometimes raiders will talk about that person that makes all those sounds like the motorcycle and the grenades? Could you do companions react to finding out its the some survivor who’s doing it? Like theyre at a raider camp and they overhear the raiders telling one of the stories and then sosu is like “watch this” *insert gun sounds* (also could you make the reader gender neutral please •~•) thank you :)

[First I want to apologize for the delay, it took me a couple weeks to recover from my wrist injury and then I recently started a new job at a warehouse, so I’ve been absolutely knackered by the time I get home. But here I am, finally! Enjoy.]

It did take long to run into trouble after leaving Goodneighbor. Sole gestured for their companion to lay low, kneeling down by an old semi trailer before stealing across the street closer to a wooden barricade. Two Raiders patrolled the top of the crude barricade, but didn’t seem to notice Sole.

Sole moved forward and their boot accidentally kicked against a loose rock. It skidded across the cracked asphalt, making the two Raiders whip around. “Who’s there?!” One demanded, waving her gun around.

[more under the cut, this got long]

Neither Sole nor their companion said a word.

“Damn it, hearin’ shit again.” The Raider lowered her gun.

The other Raider did the same and stepped closer to their partner. “Hey, did you hear about that kid that’s been runnin’ around?”

“Gonna have to be more specific.”

“Yeah, apparently Joe down by Hardware Town saw them. They were pretending to rev up a motorcycle and throw grenades and everything. But like… There’s no motorcycle. The grenades are rocks. The kid’s just faking it all.”

“You serious? That’s…” The Raider laughed. “That’s fucked up, man.”

Sole grunted. “I wouldn’t call me a kid,” they grumbled.

Their companion gave them a quizzical look.

Sole put a finger to their lips as a sign for silence and grabbed a handle of pebbles. A beat passed before they tossed them against the barricade and began making a loud hissing noise between their teeth. They grabbed their companion’s hand and dragged them along. Just as they made it to the barricade, Sole shouted a large explosion.

As the Raiders turned, guns drawn, Sole started pointed at each of them, hand positioned like a fake pistol. “Pew! Pew pew!” They shouted, ‘shooting’ each one. “Pew! Pew—tch, tch, tch.” Their ‘gun’ jammed and they mimed having to reload. “Pew!” They ‘shot’ one Raider square in the chest.

The Raiders were so confused that Sole was able to run right past them, dragging their poor companion behind them. Once safe, they began to laugh.

Cait: She looked at Sole, her eyes wide and her chest heaving. “You coulda gotten us killed, ya idiot!” She wanted to be angry, but a part of her was more impressed than anything. “But… Damn, fine. You mean you’re the one doin’ all that?”

Sole nodded, smiling. “You bet.”

“That’s…” Cait sighed, shaking her head. “God damn it, if I’d known ye’re like this, I woulda played along a lot sooner.” She found she rather liked the idea. It was funny, and the looks on the Raiders’ faces? Fucking priceless.

Curie: “Zhat was very dangerous!” Her heart beat hard against her ribs and she was more concerned with controlling her breathing than anything else. “You are very lucky that zhe Raiders didn’t shoot at us!”

Sole rubbed the back of their neck, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry… But that’s how I got out of fighting before, and it’s worked so far!”

“And zhat is… Well, is isn’t fine, but I want you to warn me next time!” She can’t help but be worried. The Commonwealth is a dangerous enough place without running straight through certain death like that. To be sure, she’d never quite get used to it, and never encouraged it.

Piper: “You mean you’re the one those Raiders were talking about?” Of course, she already heard about the strange person that would pretend to ride motorcycles and throw grenades and shoot guns, but she never expected it was Sole. “I’ve been tracking that guy for ages!”

Sole grinned. “It was me, all me.”

She flicked out her notepad and grabbed a pen from her glove. “All right, tell me where you got the idea and how the hell you go so good at making those noises.”

It didn’t bother Piper much. She thought it was interesting more than anything, and was perfectly happy to sneak around Raider camps while Sole did their thing. It was always funny, after all.

Batfamily & Games - Headcanon

A/N: Brace yourselves, this headcanon is HUGE (about 1.5k words). I’ve been playing a lot of games during quarantine and that’s what inspired me to write this. I mostly play on ps4, if you want to add me on psn, my ID is Vixtr0yer_  - Vix

• Ok, hear me out.

• Tim is definitely a JRPG guy.

• Used to play a lot of Final Fantasy back when he was a kid.

• And he still does.

• Tim is a completionist. He does every sidequest, maxes the skill tree and the characters' level, unlocks every weapon and collects EVERY. SINGLE. TROPHY.

• Another thing that he enjoys about JRPGs is analyzing his items, weapons and characters' abilities and stats to build the best strategy during battles, especially if the battles are turn-based.

• Although Final Fantasy holds a special place in his heart, Tim's favorite game is Persona 5.

• He went crazy over that game. After getting Persona 5, Tim locked himself in his room and would spend the entire day (and night, if he's not patrolling) playing Persona 5, only going outside to open the kitchen's fridge and bring a pack of Red Bull to his bedroom.

• After he beat Persona 5 and unlocked every ending, Tim went through an identity crisis.

• But then Persona 5 Royal was released and the cycle started all over again.

• Steph also enjoys RPGs, but she prefers action RPGs. Unlike Tim, Steph pays no mind to the numbers and statuses in items and weapons, she just equips the stuff that gives more damage and beats the crap out of the enemies until they die.

• Depending on the game, Steph can be very competitive, she lost count on the controllers she broke in a fit of rage after dying in Dark Souls and Bloodborne.

• Her favorite game is Skyrim because she loves using the funny mods.

• I have the feeling Cass is a retro-gamer. She doesn't lean to a specific game genre, she enjoys retro games in general.

• But if Cass had to pick a few favorite ones, they would be Earthbound and Kirby's Adventure.

• Cass also builds some AMAZING constructions in Minecraft.

• Barbara likes MOBA and MMO.

• She wouldn't consider herself addicted but she's been playing World of Warcraft since its release.

• If Barbara happens to be in a bad mood and sees some players being assholes, she goes there and hack their accounts.

• She also likes watching esports.

• Screw the Olympics, esports tournaments are her thing.

• Babs makes a big deal about League of Legends World Championship. LoLWC is like the event of the year for her.

• Her ritual is buying a family-size bag of nachos and soda to watch it on her TV every year.

• Barbara and Dick are the type of couple that has a 2 person gaming setup so that they can play together.

• Talking about Dick Grayson.

• He has two types of favorite videogames.

• One being story-driven games. Dick gets all invested in the plot to the point he feels catharsis.

• He cried playing Life is Strange.

• He always tries to get the happy ending and be nice to all the characters.

• If he ends up being accidentally rude or getting an ending he doesn't like, he reloads his save and picks another option or starts the game all over again.

• And don't get me started on his Stardew Valley playthrough.

• But when it comes to The Sims, Dick is a real psycho. He takes the ladder off the pool, locks the sims in a cubicle and stuff, has the extreme violence mod installed.

• After playing God of War, Dick started calling Damian by "Boy" with an extremely deep voice.

• In the beginning Damian shrugged it off but after one week he got fed up and started chasing after Dick with a sword and threatened to cut him to pieces if he called him "Boy" one more time.

• His other type of favorite games are games where he can goof around.

• He causes massive chaos in Goat Simulator and the Goose Game.

• Because of the Goose Game, Dick tried to convince Damian to convince Bruce to buy them a goose.

• It didn't work.

• Back when Jason was Robin, Bruce paid a lot of attention to the age ratings. If Jason asked Bruce to buy him a new game, Bruce would google the title of said game and based on Jason's age and the game's age rating, he would decide to buy it or not.

• "I said we're not buying Ratchet & Clank, Jason." Bruce says as he looks at the ESRB website through the batcomputer.

• "But it's rated 10!" A 13-year-old Jason protests.

• "Do you really think I'm going to allow you owning a game that has 'Quest for Booty' as its subtitle?"

• Still, that didn't stop Jason from playing the games he wanted to.

• Jason would save up money from his allowance and head to the arcade or secretly buy a new game and play it whenever Bruce wasn't at the Manor.

• Jason would mostly play FPS games. His favorite franchise ended up being Doom.

• Jason often trains while listening to the Doom soundtrack.

• Because the Doom soundtrack makes all of us Jason feel things. He also listens to the songs before patrolling because they hype him up to punch people.

• Don't lie to me, I know you feel the same way when you listen to the Doom soundtrack. Everyone does.

• There was that one time Jason ended up in a fist-fight over the last copy of Doom Eternal on the release date.

• Jason managed to get the last copy but ended up getting banned from GameStop.

• Also some guy recorded the GameStop fight and uploaded on Youtube an edit with one of those "When Doom music kicks in" memes that has "The Only Thing They Fear is You" playing in the background.

• The video got over 2 million views.

• Having kids does tire you out. By the time Bruce had Damian, he stopped caring about videogames' age rating and stuff.

• But still, Grand Theft Auto is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN in Wayne Manor.

• One person ends up getting away from this rule.

• Not because he's allowed to play it, he just doesn't care about that rule.

• And that person is… *drum roll*

• Alfred.

• Alfred had beat GTA V twice and he whoops other people's asses on GTA Online.

• Alfred is also an evil mastermind in Among Us. When he gets to be the impostor, Alfred always wins.

• Damian plays a lot of Fortnite.

• But not because he likes Fortnite, he thinks it's too ridiculous for his liking, especially the dances.

• Damian doesn't like playing Fortnite, but he likes playing Fortnite with Jon. It's Jon's favorite game and Jon gets very happy whenever he gets to play it with Damian. Damian, although not being a fan of Fortnite, ends up having fun too.

• Fun fact: When Damian found out Batman, Catwoman and even Joker and Ivy had their Fortnite skins, he got mad because they didn't make a Robin skin. He then started emailing Epic asking for one and saying that Robin deserved his own Fortnite skin.

• But Damian's favorite game turns out to be:

• Animal Crossing New Horizons.

• Because living on a paradise island full of animals is like his dream come true.

• Also Damian's favorite villager is Ozzie.

• He follows the "Can You Pet The Dog?" twitter account.

• The batkids tried to organize a family videogames night. But in literally E-V-E-R-Y family videogames night something wrong happened and at least one person ended up in the med bay.

• Dance Dance Revolution night: Duke slipped and sprained his ankle.

• Overcooked night: instead of helping to do the dishes right, Jason kept on being chaotic, he'd block the passages, put unnecessary ingredients on the countertop, slap the other cooks, anything he could do to troll them. They only got 1 star on a level and Steph threw a controller on Jason's head.

• Mario Kart night: Damian, first place. Tim, blue shell. That's all I have to say.

• Among Us: Everyone, literally EVERYONE started fighting and without any exception they all ended up in med bay. After that one, family videogames night was officially canceled. And Bruce had to organize a group therapy session for them.

• "They say I'm supposed to open up to people, but how the fuck am I supposed to open up to people when every time I trust someone they fucking STAB ME IN THE BACK?"

• "Jason, I was the impostor, I was supposed to stab people in the back."

• "I TRUSTED YOU, DICK, AND I WON'T EVER TRUST YOU AGAIN. YOU'RE NOT MY BROTHER ANYMORE, BITCH."

• Bruce strongly denies that he plays videogames. He says he's too old and he doesn't have time for that.

• Remember that aunt of yours who is already on level 900 in Candy Crush?

• Bruce is that aunt.

• He secretly has Candy Crush installed on his phone and whenever he's at Wayne Enterprises feeling bored, Bruce unlocks his phone and starts playing Candy Crush.

• There was that one time the bank called Bruce because they thought his credit card was cloned after a $200 purchase in App Store.

• But guess what?

• Yep, it was just Bruce fucking Wayne playing Candy Crush.

• He also managed to beat minesweeper more than once by the way.

BUCCI GANG AND HOW THEY WOULD PLAY UNDERTALE

Since I got my friend into the UT fandom, and the brainrot for this game is slowly coming back, I've figured that I'd fuse my favourite franchises and make this post, enjoy!

GIORNO:

-This may surprise you, but Giorno would almost do a Blind Pacifist run

-While at first, he was planning on taking out whoever got in his way, he changed his mind in the moment he saw Toriel

-After she taught him how to resolve the various conflicts peacefully, he decided not to fight, but to show MERCY to every monster

-He finds the multiplicity of choices a very interesting mechanism, especially since he's not much of a gamer, and he's pleasantly surprised to see such an innovative game

-While most of the times he would completely avoid the FIGHT button, if a monster got on his nerves a little too much, he may attack it until it doesn't want to fight anymore

-He takes the time to interact with everything and everyone, he wants to enjoy the game at its fullest

-He was so freaking lucky to meet Gaster on his first run

-Actually brought the piece of snowman with him

-He's part of the "Chara defense squad", and finds them strangely...relatable

-He was just about to do a full Pacifist route, but he couldn't bring himself to SPARE Flowey, and killed him

-"I won't let you hurt her"

-Ultimately, he regretted it, and reset his save file

-After doing a TRUE Pacifist, he left the game, leaving the monsters alone and giving them an happy ending

-Only knows about the Genocide through gameplays

-Favourite character: Toriel, but also likes Chara quite a lot

-Favourite OST: Memories, followed by home, Undertale, Megalo strikes back and Star (he doesn't care if they actually don't play in the game)

-What SOUL would he have: DETERMINATION

BRUNO:

-My man wouldn't hurt a fly if he had the chance to, off to the Pacifist route he goes

-Similar to Giorno, he finds Toriel a very comforting character, but he feels bad for pretty much every monster he meets. He thinks it's unfair for them to be forced to stay in the UNDERGROUND, and wants to find a way to destroy the barrier at any cost

-He's never played a videogame before, but he gets the hand of it quite quickly, even though he still ends up dying a couple of times.

-He would also be the kind of player to interact with EVERYTHING, paying close attention to whatever the passing monster has to say

-Sometimes, he likes to take a break, lay down and listen to the OST of the place he's exploring

-The most challenging enemies for him were Undyne and Asgore. It took him a while to realize that the only way to spare her was to run away, and he just really didn't want to hurt Goat papa

-He lets the bird carrying him to the other side, even if he doesn't actually need to move around. He just wants the little guy to feel appreciated

-Veeeery reluctantly, he decided to SPARE Flowey, it would have been a waste to kill somebody now, after everything that he had done so far

-He almost cried at the Pacifist ending

-He refuses to even acknowledge what happened in the Genocide route

-Favourite characters: Toriel and Asgore

-Favourite OST: Fallen down, but he also likes Heartache, Home and Waterfall

-What SOUL would he have: KINDNESS

MISTA:

-Mista's first run would be a Neutral. It's not that he enjoys killing the monsters, he's mostly just too lazy to think of a way to spare them

-If it's obvious, however, he'll just casually show the enemy MERCY, there's no need to take out absolutely everyone

-The only one who he genuinely looked for a way to spare was Papyrus. Honestly, he couldn't bring himself to just hurt him 'cause he had the chance to. Besides...He was afraid of what Sans would have done

-Speaking of him, he finds his jokes HILARIOUS, and he will use them in real life conversations if he gets the chance to

-He basically wasted all his money fighting Undyne

-He didn't buy the spider donut in the RUINS, and was forced to farm gold for 3 entire freaking days and buy one directly from Muffet

-After finishing the neutral route, he decided to go back and try the others. His next route was a Genocide

-He was about to shoot his computer AND himself while fighting Sans, but he eventually managed to beat him. Of course, after swearing at 3 A. M., drinking 10 cans of Sprite, listening to Megalovania on loop and threatening to throw Narancia out of the window because he interrupted him while he was playing

-His favourite moment during the Pacifist was cooking with Undyne

-He immediately questioned his life choices when he finished the route and saw Chara taking over Frisk's body. Closed the game and never opened it again

-Favourite characters: Papyrus, Sans and Undyne. He refuses to choose an absolute favorite

-Favourite OSTs: Megalovania and Song that might play when you fight Sans. He also likes Bonetroulse and Spear of justice

-What SOUL would he have: BRAVERY

NARANCIA:

-Narancia playing this game would be a total mess. Ironic, considering he's the one in the gang that likes video games the most

-Despite Toriel's guidance, at first, he would FIGHT every monster that got in his way, following the simple "It's an rpg, the more I kill, the better it is" logic

-When he saw the "but nobody came" screen, however, he freaked the hell out and immediately reset

-After that mini heart attack, he went on a full Pacifist route. However, sometimes, he would snap and accidentally kill a monster. He lost count of how many times he had to reload the file

-He also really likes Toriel (she's just very popular among the Bucci gang). The reason for it...Is not a very happy one, like in Giorno's case

-He genuinely tried to stay with her, he didn't want to leave Goat mom

-He's the one who gets emotionally invested in the game the most, he even forgets it's a game at times and just erase the surrounding world from his head

-He LOVES to voice the characters while he plays, it makes the story feel way more alive for him. He makes a very good Papyrus impression

-Speaking of which, his favourite parts of the game were the interactions between Sans and Papyrus.

-He lost his s**t when he arrived at the Temmie village. He stayed there FOR HOURS farming money. Heck, he even bought the Temmie armor

-He refused to open the game for two days after Flowey stole the SOULS

-He wanted to ask someone to play the TRUE lab with him, but he refused to admit that he was scared

-While he's not the kind of player who stops by to read every dialogue, he makes an exception for Snowdin. He really likes that area of the game!

-While he would never admit it, he cried three times during the Pacifist route. The first time when he left Toriel, the second when he heard Chara and Asriel's story, and the third when he finished it

-His favourite fight in the game is the one against Asriel. He kept on repeating the "Don't you have anything better to do" dialogue for 20 minutes, before giving up to the idea that there was really no way to save him

-After giving the monster an happy ending, he was overwhelmed by his own curiosity, and decided to try the Genocide route...Boy did it go wrong

-You thought he cried a lot during the Pacifist? He became a freaking fountain during the Genocide. Every single time he killed a Boss, he cried, with no exception

-He spent days trying to defeat Sans, until he was given the option to SPARE him, and so he did

-...The others could hear him yelling from the other floor after what happened next

-He got tired of Sans' bulls**ts, reset and did a Pacifist again

-He watched a gameplay to know what happened in the Genocide ending. Chara's jumpscare still haunts him

-Narancia gets really involved in the stuff made by the fandom, especially fan made songs and comics

-He listens to "To the bone" religiously, it's part of his routine

-He tried and failed to figure out how AUs work

-Favourite character: Papyrus, followed by Toriel and Asriel. He used to like Sans a lot too...But now he gets Vietnam flashbacks every time he thinks about him

-Favourite OSTs: Bonetroulse, Hopes and dreams and Snowdin. He can't choose between them

-What SOUL would he have: INTEGRITY

FUGO:

-Fugo would categorically refuse to reset on his first run. What it's done, it's done, and he has to take responsibilities for his choices

-He would do a Neutral, killing whoever he encounters, but without specifically looking for the monsters just so that he can kill them

-That doesn't mean, however, that he dislikes to play with the timeline. It's quite the opposite, to be honest

-Fugo enjoys messing around with the save files A LITTLE too much, dude basically became an hacker playing this game

-In his attempt to make a Pacifist run, he fu**ed up and accidentally got the Hacker ending

-"...THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT WHEN I SAID I WANTED EVERY ENDING"

-He toned it down a little after that, but he still managed to modify the FUN value enough to meet Gaster and his followers

-He's also the only one who unlocked Sans' room. He doesn't trust him, but he finds him an interesting character

-Neither the Pacifist or Genocide endings particularly picked his interest, even though he did punch the walls a couple of times fighting Sans

-He likes to try the different Neutral endings, he doesn't do all of them, just the ones he thinks that would affect the monsters the most

-The only character he got attached to emotionally was Alphys, he can see himself a lot in her

-He's very interested in the various theories that surround this game, and he's waiting for Deltarune to come out, he just wants to know more about Gaster

-Favourite character: Alphys, but Gaster is a close second

-Favourite OST: Darker, darker, yet darker, followed by Here we are, Waterfall and Premonition

What SOUL would he have: faded BRAVERY

ABBACCHIO:

-MERCY? Is that a food? Yeah uhm...No, that doesn't exist with Abbacchio, nothing but Genocide for him

-It's already a surprise someone convinced him to play this game. He'll play in his own way, and that means killing literally everyone, not simply the ones he encounters, but even looking for them just to earn more Exp

-He was...Weirdly satisfied when he saw the "But nobody came" screen, and he was lucky enough to find every monster almost immediately

-He hadn't found a single character that he liked until he reached Undyne. Her sense of justice reminded him of his old self, which wasn't exactly pleasant at first, but at least he felt something

-He was finally happy to see a monster actually trying to stop what he was doing, and killing her was the only thing in the game that made him slightly sad

-He's still offended for not having the chance to kill monster kid, he couldn't stand that child

-He skipped through pretty much every dialogue in the game, not that there are many people to interact with during the Genocide...

-He'd eat a piece of the snowman right in front of him just to spite him, then take the rest and leave

-He didn't care about whatever Flowey was trying to tell him about his past. That's also because without knowing he's Asriel, most of what he says doesn't really make sense

-In the moment Sans dodged his attack, he realized that he had screwed up REALLY bad. After dying against him a couple of times, he considered resetting, but he wouldn't have let "the lazy skelefu**" have it his way

-He let out a huge "YES" and a sigh of relief when he finally managed to hit him, it took him around a week

-However, little did he know, that the worst still had to come. When he noticed that he wasn't the one who had just killed Asgore and Flowey, he freaked out a little, and Chara staring directly at him made him feel a small shiver down his spine

-Still, he decided to decline their offer to destroy everything, not because he regretted what he had done, he just wanted his revenge on the child for scaring him

-He closed the game after the jumpscare, and never questioned what the hell he had been through

-Favourite character: Undyne

-Favourite OSTs: But nobody came and Battle against a true hero, he also likes The fallen child

-What SOUL would he have: very very faded JUSTICE

TRISH:

-Trish got into this game just because of its music, she kept on hearing it everywhere and wanted to understand where it came from

-She was kinda scared at first, videogames aren't exactly her forte, and her encounter with Flowey didn't help

-She slowly got used to the dynamics of the game, even though she died at least three times in every area, exept for the RUINS. (She only got a game over two times there)

-She doesn't have the heart to hurt anybody, she thinks the monsters (well...Most of them, at least) are adorable! Shyren is her favourite minor enemy, and when she saw the "Taking piano lessons again" text, her heart melted a little

-She refused to take off the faded ribbon until she found she tutu, but she never sold either of them

-She loves flirting with literally ANYONE. You can? Well then...You must!

-Her favourite area is Hotland, including the Core too. She loves the whole "artificial" theme of the place, and she had a lot of fun reading Alphys's posts!

-She would pretend to be an actual part of Mettaton's programmes, but only when she was 100% sure nobody could hear her

-Needless to say, the boss fight against him was one of the funniest parts of the story for her

-Another thing she absolutely adored were the dates with Papyrus and Alphys, especially the latter. After everything that had happened, it was a nice opportunity to relax for a bit

-Similar to Narancia, Trish gets really involved emotionally in playing the game, and she had to take a little break from it before facing Asgore

-The ending genuinely made her cry, but it was the only time she shed a tear through it

-She doesn't care about trying the Genocide, she's worked hard to give the monsters an happy ending, and she wasn't going to throw it away

-She's in love with the Undertale Musical by Man on the Internet, she knows pretty much every song by memory

-Favourite character: Mettaton, but she honestly really likes all of them

-Favourite OST: Death by glamour, followed by Metal crusher, Power of NEO, and Another medium

-What SOUL would she have: INTEGRITY

Yes, I know that Narancia's part is longer, but it's just so funny to write about this baby, bear with me please 😌

Dragon Seekers. Chapter 14

Chapter 1: click HERE

Chapter 13: click HERE

Chapter 15: click HERE

After crying for what felt like a lifetime, Jamie finally calmed down. He felt like a completely different person from who he was when he first came here. He felt so enclosed, but now he felt more open. Was that normal in a situation like this?

Jamie tried not to think about what is normal anymore. Instead he focused more on what he should do next. He wondered if he should rest more, but Ember offered for him to meet her family properly. Not wanting to appear rude, Jamie accepted. With Ember’s help, he was able to walk through the house and downstairs. That’s where Ash, Pyro and his fiancé were waiting to see him finally out of bed. Still feeling ashamed, Jamie reintroduced himself to Pyro, trying to overcome the forest interaction they had. Pyro only laughed it off, reminding Jamie that he took no offence to his actions. He excitedly introduced Jamie to his fiancé, Blake, who was just as keen to speak to the boy.

Once introductions were done, everyone was seated around the dining table. They all had had a cool beverage, much to Jamie’s relief. After telling Ember everything, he decided to come clean about how he got to where Ash found him. The family listened carefully to him. They seemed surprised at how he told them of his world and the fact that dragons didn’t exist, only creatures to be told in stories.

“So, you’re really from another world?” Blake asked, scratching his head confusingly. Jamie’s silence only confirmed his answer. “I want to say that I don’t believe you, but it makes sense when you consider everything.”

“Let me tell you, if I ever see your stepdad, I’ll beat him up so bad that he’ll think twice about picking on weak people,” Ash declared, scowling at how Jamie described how he ended up in this world. While he didn’t tell them all the details of abuse, like he did for Ember, it wasn’t hard for Ash to figure out.

“Ashley!” Ember scolded, appalled by what Ash had said.

“I’m just saying! If that guy thinks he can punch me, I’ll show him a thing or two about abusing people!” Ash scowled, banging her fist on the table furiously. Jamie felt concerned as she said that. On one hand, he’d love to see Carl get a taste of his own medicine, but on the other, he didn’t want to see Ash getting hurt. Not that he doubted her ability to fight, he just didn’t want to feel like it would be his fault. You can’t solve everything with violence after all.

“That’s besides the point, Ash,” Pyro pondered as he light drummed his fingers on the table. “Sounds to me that an old form of magic was what brought you here, Jamie.”

“So, you know how to get me home?” Jamie asked, wide eyed with hope. Unfortunately, that that hope died as the family around him looked solum.

“Sorry, kiddo. You’re looking at the wrong family for help,” Blake sighed, looking like he wished that he had more to say. Jamie felt like the world was swallowing him up. It was bad enough for him to be far from home, but if no one knew how to get him home, it only made everything more grim for him. Ash frowned a little as she looked at Jamie. She seemed to be contemplating something before abruptly getting up.

“Right. Pity party over. Have the dragons been fed yet?” she sighed as she looked at Pyro and Blake.

“Not yet, sis,” Pyro grinned.

“Good! Jamie, time for you to have a real introduction to our dragons,” Ash smiled, before dashing off somewhere. “I’ll get you some footwear.”

“Ashley, Jamie isn’t ready to walk yet,” Ember reminded her daughter.

“I know! Which is why Pyro is going to carry him!” Ash shouted back, not giving Jamie a chance to say anything. After a minute of hearing her rummage through some things, she finally came back, carrying a pair of black boots, identical to hers. “Try these. You’re roughly my size, so they should fit.” The boots were shoved into Jamie’s hands before he could say a word. Ash was incredibly insistent on him coming with her. He really should be recovering and relax, but he really wanted to see the dragons again. He gently slipped the boots on his feet, doing his best not to aggravate his injuries. The boots were more comfortable than he thought. He expected them to be quite tight and hard to wear, but his feet felt like he had stepped into something soft, like cotton. It felt great. As soon as he pulled his jeans over the boots, Pyro knelt down, back to him. Hesitantly, Jamie latched onto the young man, accepting the offer for a piggyback ride. Pyro carried him as if he weighed next to nothing. Ash stood by the door, holding a silver spear in one hand. The same one that dealt with the monster that attacked Jamie.

“Ashley, must you take that spear with you? You won’t need it,” Ember ashes, but she sounded like she knew the answer.

“Dad gave it to me, so I can fight. You never know when it comes to non-dragon creatures, Mum,” Ash sighed heavily, sick with the question that has clearly been asked before. Ember also sighed heavily as she gave up trying to change her stubborn daughter’s mind. Taking it as a sign that she’s won, Ash flung open the door, causing a blast of hot air to enter the house. Jamie flinched quite violently as the heat hit him again after being in the house for a while. Ash and Pyro were obviously not affected by the heat as they walked outside. The door gently closed behind them as they strode out towards the stable. Jamie thigh that that it would be hard for him to breathe again like last time. He was quite surprised to find that he could breathe quite well. He looked around, noticing a slight shimmering in the sky. There was a transparent dome around the area. Magic was the reason why it was so easy to breathe, it had to be. Magic as seemingly as simple as this, put Jamie’s talent of doing slight of hand effortlessly to shame. He was outmatched when it came to magic now.

Approaching the barn, Ash pushed open the large door easily. As Pyro followed her in, there was an uproar of growls with small puffs of smoke hanging in the air. The barn was bigger than he gave it credit for as it housed four dragons. The first two that he recognised as being Pyro’s and Blake’s. The third dragon was the biggest of them all, staring at Jamie with charcoal black eyes as it seemed to study him. It’s scales were a deep rouge. As Jamie looked at it, he deduced that it must be Ember’s dragon.

“Hey, Cinder!” Ash smiled as she dashed up to the smallest dragon, the size of a mini van. It was a light grey colour, the colour of ashes. It had bright, ember coloured eyes as it turned to see the got, approaching it. It bowed its head at Ash, purring as the girl stroked its head. Jamie didn’t think dragons could purr as he always thought that they growled and roared, breathing fire carelessly as they did so.

“Down you go, Jamie,” Pyro smiled, bending down a little as he stood in front of a hay block. Jamie let go as he was gently placed to sit down on it. Pyro seems satisfied as he looked over at Ash. “Come get me when you’re done, so I can help carry Jamie back in.”

“Got it!” Ash smiled back before Pyro left the barn, closing the door behind him. Jamie didn’t take much notice as he watched the magnificent creatures around him. They were fidgeting a little impatiently as Ash disappeared behind a separate door. He waited curiously as he heard her rummaging around in there, when Ash’s dragon trotted over to him. He tensed up, not sure as what to do. Ember’s dragon rumbled at the small dragon, almost like a warning. Cinder didn’t seem to take notice. It sniffed at Jamie, almost like how a dog greets a new human with caution. Jamie remained as still as he could, worried about what might happen if he made a wrong move. Cinder continued to sniff for a few more seconds, before starting to nuzzle Jamie a little. Briefly surprised by this, Jamie gently brought his hand up to Cinder’s head, brushing over the smooth scales. The young dragon purred again at the attention.

“She likes you. I’m shocked,” Ash smiled, pushing a large wheelbarrow in front of her. “Normally Cinder isn’t that friendly towards new people.” Jamie smiled back at Ash as she continued to push the wheelbarrow, which was filled up to the brim with some fresh looking meat. The dragons diverted their attention towards her, seemingly excited to receive the food she brought with her. Ash gladly obliged as she dumped the meat into a troth. As she rushed back to get more, the dragons started to snaffle up the meat. All but Cinder, as she suddenly started sniffing Jamie again. Or more specifically, his pocket.

“Hey! Cinder! Leave him be and eat!” Ash called out as she dumped another reload of meat into the troth. Cinder didn’t seem to listen as she pocked at Jamie’s pocket with her snout. Ash shook her head but finished off her chore by adding two more loads of meat.

“Cinder! Go on!” she finally scolded her dragon, gently pushing the scaled creature away. Cinder grunted, but did as she was told, finding the food more interesting all of a sudden. Ash scratched her head as she watched as the youngest dragon was finally eating. “Strange. She’s never done that before.” Jamie looked down at his pocket. At first he thought that he might had be had a sweet in his pocket that Cinder picked up on.

Then he saw the outline of a familiar shape.

How could he forget?!

Jamie hurriedly dug into his pocket, feeling a metal he immediately recognised. He pulled it out and laid the dragon statue, right in front of Ash. She turned, looking at the statue for a split second before looking back t the dragons. Then she snapped her eyes towards it again.

“Wha-how’d you get a Soul Statue?!” she exclaimed, eyes as wide as inner plates.

Jamie looked at his new friend in surprise.

What did she just say?!

Unexpected Resistance (Part One)

T-800 (The Terminator, 1984) x OC

Warnings: gun violence, injuries, death, vague blood

Context: So @jawline-of-steel and I came up with this whole AU style story based around the first Terminator film, and we've been basically obsessed for like a good five days now. It starts in the Technoir Club and is a basic introduction to the story itself, with a whole lot of description ���� enjoy!

A/N: This is co-written with @jawline-of-steel , and is also edited by her, so please go show her work some love! It's amazing!

Masterlist

Edited by: @jawline-of-steel

Bright, blaring lights flash in vivid colours around the wide room, the rapidly moving bodies illuminated in alternating tones and hues, giving off a confusing yet strangely endearing mirage of shapes. Music thrums loudly in the background, the bass vibrations felt through the soles of shoes throughout the club, though this is mostly unfelt as near enough everyone dances along to the beat and rhythm of the same song, alcohol lending its hand in the loss of inhibitions and worries for all. The air is hot and stifling, the odours of sweat and strong perfumes mixing together into a miasma of heady scents that are inhaled with every breath.

Amongst it all sits a lone figure, her body slouched over the table as she cups her head in her hands, body tense and rigid as if from stress, the drink beside her left forgotten as she seems to try and control herself, having just returned from the phone behind her, where she received the instructions she'd been asking after for an hour now. As she pulls her hands away from her head, she notices that they are shaking, her palms sweaty and clammy until she moves to wipe them, hastily, on her jeans, sighing nervously as she looks around again. Moistening her lips, she moves to place her hands back on the table, only to curse under her breath when her elbow knocks the bottle to the floor, the sound going unheard through the surrounding barrage of noises. Rolling her eyes, she bends over to pick it up again, just missing as a great hulking figure steps past, movements slow and calculated, head rotating systematically to take in every inch of the room.

The figure is distinctly masculine, his massive build towering over practically everyone in the room, his muscles visibly bulging under the tight shirt he wears, though they are slightly obscured by the presence of an oversized jacket laden with chains. His features are square yet chiseled, but his eyes are dead, as if there is no emotion being registered behind them, their only function being to observe a space and determine its characteristics; his expression is also like this, the heavy brow drawn into a line, mirroring the tight yet somehow lax set of his lips, which are pulled into a perpetually serious glower. Around him, people instinctively move out of his path, his steady, deliberate movements strangely unnatural, almost too calculated to be human, though his appearance is clearly that of a person.

Across the room from him, a pale woman scans for any prominent signals. The hazel hue of her eyes hides the scanner just past the surface, though the faint glow of a red light is just visible, should one look close enough. Flashing lights cast strange shadows across her soft features, highlighting her clenched jaw, lips pursed in a strangely concentrated apathy. Strong, dark eyebrows frame hooded eyes, further obscured by the sleek sheet of straight, dark hair that just grazes her jaw. She stands tall, not exactly towering over anyone, but the way she carries herself, paired with her expression, makes people part like the red sea as she walks past. Black tall, booted feet slap the club’s floor, showing no sign of emotion; no acknowledgement to the tightness of the too-small shoes on her feet, nor the way the buttons on her too-small shirt strain to accompany her larger build. Maybe she should have stolen clothes from a bigger person. 

All this goes unnoticed by the woman at the table as she sits back upright again, righting the bottle in front of her as she does so, before turning to look around her again, looking out for one specific person. Her body goes cold as her eyes land on him, her throat undulating as she swallows in a panic, now terrified that she is in danger, the presence of the lithe man across from her not something she expected in this place. Subconsciously, she thinks back to the words of the officer she spoke to over the phone:

"You're in a public place so you should be safe."

As she continues to stare at her stalker, however, she starts to think that this may not be true.

Distracted, she doesn't notice the piercing stare that is turned on her, the muscular man instantly focusing solely on her as she sits there, beginning to move towards her, hand reaching into his jacket to pull out a gun. This new movement draws her attention away from the object of her panic, a deep sense of fear starting to set in as she finally clocks the real threat, the man from before forgotten from her fearful mind. At the sight of the approaching threat, her body freezes up, muscles tensing in place, breathing becoming ragged and forced, her entire being screaming at her to move, to get far away from this intimidating man.

Her eyes can only widen as she watches the gun being raised, the barrel leveled with her forehead as the crimson laser sight focuses on her skin, flaring briefly across her vision as the man adjusts his aim, his stance mostly even and controlled. His finger moves over the trigger, the digit tightening with a blank finality as he goes to take the killing shot, only to be thrown to the side as a deafening gunshot tears through the air. A second swiftly follows it, then another, the man falling to the floor as holes appear in his coat, blood swiftly staining the fabric as he goes limp, body prone momentarily. 

Screams cut through the music, the dancers now realising just severe the danger around them is, the crowd moving in unison towards the entrance, desperation lending it's speed to them as they scramble amongst each other to reach safety, the threat of being shot still on their minds. Upon seeing them, she jumps up from her chair, shooting a quick glance back at the direction that the first shots came from, where she catches sight of the female figure standing stiffly, a shotgun held in her hands as she reloads it, every movement controlled and deliberate. As she turns her head back again, she also notices her stalker, the lean blonde in the grey trench coat, pulling a sawn-off shotgun from under his jacket, the weapon raised and aimed at the unconscious man on the floor.

Terrified, she hurries to catch up with the other people, not quite catching the movement of the first man slowly reopening his eyes and bending his fingers, his torso lifting from the ground as he adjusts his damaged body into a better position. He moves to pull out an assault rifle, firing rapidly into the crowd of people, as well as the bar itself, shattering glasses and splintering wooden panels, in addition to maiming and killing many of the innocents running for safety. A scream escapes his target, alerting him to her exact position, which he advances on immediately, his rifle raised in preparation to fire again. Once again, however, he is interrupted by four shotgun shells embedding themselves into his back, the impact ejecting him forwards out of the glass windows of the club, where he then lies on the pavement, apparently dead.

Breathing heavily, his target looks back around again, spotting the woman from before approaching her, the blonde man just behind her, his shotgun raised and ready to fire at her, in case she makes a threatening move. Emotionless, the woman reaches out a hand towards the target, opening her mouth to speak.

"Sarah Connor?" Her voice is smooth but unnatural in a way, as if not quite her own.

"Y-yes." Sarah responds, terrified as she hesitates to take the hand.

"You must leave this building immediately. Go with Kyle Reese. Now." She commands, staring blankly down at the fearful girl. The blonde man looks shocked for a moment, before he gingerly moves past the woman, offering his own hand to her.

"Come with me if you want to live." He says to her, his eyes now trained on something behind her.

The other woman reacts accordingly, levelling her shotgun again and firing a round, pausing to reload, giving Sarah the chance to turn around and find out what her target is. Her eyes widen considerably as she sees the man from before rising from the floor, seemingly unaffected by the wounds it has sustained.

As he stands back upright, he looks over the woman wielding the shotgun, a very faint twitch of the brow recognisable as he stands still, only moving again when Reese and Sarah turn and leave, making the third member of their group step into his path, gun lifted and primed for use. Upon seeing this, the man goes to say something, only to be shot through the chest twice, making him stumble backwards to regain balance.

By the time he has regained it, the other woman has gone, leaving his HUD flashing warnings and notifications of model matches, the series inferior to him, yet somehow perfectly functional.

So, I just finished playing Hello Neighbor and I'm here to give it my personal rating because reasons.

First off, I'll admit that the only reason I even was able to beat it was because I used walkthroughs. Without them, I never would have figured out half the shortcuts and mechanics and secrets (more on that later), but I just wanted to see how the game actually turned out in the end because most Youtubers I watched play it kinda gave up after like the 3rd version that got released. That being said...

Overall Game Rating: 6/10

So at its core this game had potential. I WANTED the final version of this game to be better than it was. Would it ever have been the best game ever? I highly doubt it. But it could have been much more noteworthy if it had just *functioned* better. I'm also fully aware that I'm several years late, but man I just need to give my discourse and opinions to someone who isn't 9 or a completely lost parent. Anyways, allow me to explain myself in the good old fashioned Tumblr way of bullets-

The Good

Physical design. Now, this is a completely personal opinion here, but I liked how the game looked. It was colorful, it had its own distinct style. There were very few occasions when I couldn't tell what something was, and most of the time those indistinguishables weren't remotely important. I also like how the writing in the game was scrambled to kinda make it fun and nonsensical, but you could still pretty much tell what it was meant to say.

Story! Guys, the main reason I came back to this game in the first place; the reason I really wanted to see it finished and see what happened in all those chapters that I never saw finished; was because I wanted to get more of the story. I wanted to know what happened, and while I'm still not entirely certain, I have several theories. And all the theories follow the same general track with a few basic deviations, so I'd say that the game did a pretty good job of getting it's focal points across.

The puzzel aspect. I like games that make me (when I'm actually playing seriously and not just playing to get through it) think. And I wasn't using the guide every step of the way, so I had a genuinely good time figuring out what items went to what, and what I could do with certain objects that I couldn't achieve with others. I think the overall idea of "hey, run around this dude's house and work out his overly complicated, Ikea-like home full of coniptions and contraptions" super fun.

Multiple ways to reach endings. Now, mainly this applied to Act 2 in my experience because Act 1 seemed pretty straightforward and Act 3 had me frustrated for so many days to the point where I couldn't really appreciate its options (more on that in a bit), but I'm sure there were deviating paths there as well. Point is, I saw 3 seperate ways of escaping the Neighbor's house in act 2, and I just sorta thought that was cool. And considering I'm playing for myself, and guiding (playing) two children through their own files, I managed to get two of those 3 escapes. The endings were the same, but still, it's cool.

The secrets and optional pathways. There were several rooms that I never actually managed to get into when i was playing through just because I wasn't secret I hunting. But I DID take notice of them, plus there were quite a few that I just happened to find my way into during my run arounds, and I explored because hey! Secrets! And I'm sure there was a ton of extra story material I missed because I neglected a lot of them, but I can appreciate a game that leaves its little hidden details as something you sort of have to work for. If I ever find the patience and the time one day, maybe I'll go back for them.

Audio warnings. Okay okay, so I was a big dummy and played through the first 2 Acts without any sound, and only plugged in headphones for the second half of Act 3. But once I did, having the music pick up in warning when the neighbor spotted me, or being able to hear the mannequins coming was very nice.

The minigames/cut scenes. And I'm not including the Fear rooms in this because I did not take anywhere near as much intrest or enjoyment out of those. I mean the things you were just mean to sorta run through. The bits where you could see the neighbor at his lowest. The bits that showed that maybe, maybe this dude that you've been cussing out the entire game is actually just some dude who had a really tough run, and just ended up snapping. The bits that kinda make you feel bad for barging into his home and shattering all his windows and just being a general dick. The bit at the very end got me especially- when he's trapped in the room by the shadow figure, and he sorta looks out the window at you, and then just stands dejectedly in the corner. I wanted to help him. I REALLY wanted to help him. I felt bad leaving.

The Bad

Limited functionality. Oh my lord, if this game hadn't been so effing glitchy the whole way through, I might have been able to give it a 7 or 8 out of 10. But it just...didn't. There were so many times when things would just vanish from my inventory and I'd have to reload, or the puzzle wouldn't solve the way it was meant to and I'd have to Macgyver my way around it. There were also several times where I would be trying to hide in a locker/closet, and my character would get stuck in the door of said locker/closet. Half the time it would get me caught, and half the time I'd have to button mash for several minutes before I could get free. The worst possible glitch I had during my whole experience was when I was trying to get up to the roof garden in Act 3. My walkthrough told me I had to get in the trolley and stop it just before a ledge to jump up. The problem is THE TROLLEY WOULDN'T STOP. Every time I tried, I'd either glitch through the front and get hit and die, or it would just completely break the train and it would just go into constant motion, not even making its programmed stops at the different stations.

Ridiculous enemy sightline triggers. Listen, Act 2 in particular was absolute HELL to get through the first time (and even unnecessarily difficult after I took the lids through it the 2nd and 3rd times) because the neighbor could be like 3 blocks down and inside his local "Murderous Psycos Anonymous" meeting, and yet the moment I step foot in his yard he's on a dead sprint to my location. And don't even get me STARTED on the mannequins in the Fear rooms. Their sightline triggers were so ridiculously unfair that if I hadn't had the sound triggers telling me they were coming, I never would have gotten past those rooms. But the sensitivity could have even been brushed off, if it were even remotely consistent. There were other times when I would be standing directly in front of the Neighbor, shining a flashlight in his eyes and staring him head on, and yet because I was crouched and slightly out of his sightline (this happened several times in the basement of Act 1.)

Pointless enemy boundaries. By this, I mean that the Neighbor is (apparently) meant to stop at the boundaires of his property when he's chasing you and you run off home. But he doesn't . In fact, quite often I couldn't get him to back off until I was actually physically in my house with the door closed.

Extremely unclear puzzle solutions. The main reason I opted to use the walkthroughs instead of working my way through the game myself? Because without them, it would have been damn near impossible. There were so many times that I was preforming the solution to a problem and I was just like "...really?". Requiring the player to interact with one of hundreds of completely repetative and indistinguishable paintings, having to glitch a shoe through a box to switch a lever, making a specific space match a painting on the wall to open a box that was down the hall and outside...it was just kind of ridiculous. I personally wouldn't have even guessed the the umbrellas could be used as floatation devices until maybe several hours into the game, if ever at all. When you have to many objects that seem unqiue but are actually just more props to toss around, it gets kinda hard to distinguish what is actually useful and what isn't.

The Iffy

The final boss. ...okay, I have to actually admit that I had a fun time being teeny and launching nerf darts and bottle rockets at the Neighbor. Especially after all the pain of getting through Act 2. (He actually didn't bother me much in Act 3.) But like...what was it? His household was weighing on his back or whatever. The reminders of his kids were causing him pain. Okay, okay, cool....but like...there wasn't any better setting for it? There was no better way to pull it off? I was legitimately just running around and doing things just to inconvenience the tall man in front of me. I died so many times just trying to work out the toaster puzzle until I got all...like, 600 umbrellas. I don't know, it was just strange execution.

The Fear Room Powerups. I didn't know the fear rooms were necessary. I didn't know they gave you powerups. Had I not read the walkthroughs, I never would have figured it out. And even AFTER I beat them, I didn't work out that I had power ups until last minute. There was no acknowledgment that I had gained a new power, save for the sneakily worded achievements. However, I did appreciate them while I had them. They let me Macgyver my way around even more.

The seemingly unexplorable. There were doors upon doors that I wanted to get through. And doors upon doors that seemed to have no actual entrances. No secret methods. No special actions. They were just doors. Taunting me. Is it possible I missed something? Absolutely, I'd bet on it. But all I'm saying is I ran around that house a lot in all three levels, and there were some things that I was just never able to work out.

The Conclusion

Hello Neighbor is a game for the patient and the crafty. I enjoyed it. I would have enjoyed it more if it were more functional and made even a lick of sense gameplay wise. But while it isn't anywhere near the best game I've ever played, it isn't the worst either. Its playable enough if you're willing to work around its defects. I'd suggest it for a rainy day, or an especially quarentined week.

Hi! This post is really for no one in particular I just really want to put this in writing and get it out there because this is how I want to cope. Read this, don't read this, love it, hate it, say what you want, I don't care. I have come to term with my feelings, and I don't think anyone's words can invalidate them.

Enjoy.

My parents are divorced, always kind of have been, I dont remember them ever being married. I have a brother who is 7 years older than me and my mom has primary custody. My dad left when I was 10, and although I loved him and I was surprised, I wasn't all that upset. He wasn't the best dad, he had a shitty on/off relationship with this bitch named Kim that outwardly hated children. He was toxic, he always had a headache and was always in a mood, you the regular shit.

Thats not too important, just a little back ground.

I always hated my mom and I still do. She never beat me, never starved me, never out right did anything technically, but just everything she did was to hurt me emotionally. At least that's what it feels like.

I always struggled with keeping my room clean and cleaning up and staying organized and paying attention and I lied a lot and I didn't really know why at the time. I was a bad kid, I will give her that much, but its her fault, I feel, that I was like that.

Every single day, my mom made comments about how poor we were. Looking back, we weren't. Don't get me wrong, we weren't rich, but we definitely weren't struggling to eat and pay pills per se. I internalized that a lot and it still affects my spending habits as an adult. (I'm 18 but you get my point). My mom would whine and bitch that we were so poor but would turn around and go spend 300 dollars on a leg massager. She would buy a lawn chair and shit we didn't need and I took that to mean that I couldn't ask for anything. A lot of times I didnt eat at school bc I thought it was too expensive. I didnt ask my mom for lunch money or toys or food or anything. Instead, occasionally, I would steal money from her. I don't know why. Genuinely. I think that's how my 7-9 year old self decided to deal with the stress and impending doom I always felt about money. Say what you want about that, but I've grown and learned from that trauma and there's nothing I can do about that now.

Another thing is that I always lied. Even when i didnt need to lie, I did. I wouldn't turn in school work, and lie about it. I would eat the last pack of pop tarts, and lie about it. I would lie all the time about everything and tbh I don't know what caused that specifically but I do know what contributed to it.

I was always in trouble growing up. I know, I lied and stole and shit, but before and after that I was always in trouble. I would get grounded for eating the last pack of crackers, for eating candy, for not cleaning up, for going out when I'm 'not supposed to', etc. I did lie, but that should've been a warning sign to my mom that smth was going on, and not that I need punished, bc that obviously didn't work. I did steal, but that self corrected. The bad shit I did do, I deserved to be punished for, but I didn't do that much bad shit!

I would be grounded for eating the rest of the marshmallows, but I didnt eat them. My brother did. My mom looked at me and said "just admit it. I asked Connor and he said he didn't do it so it must be you. You're a liar, you're bad. Admit it!" It was always like. She believed Connor so easily and not me bc he was 'perfect'. This went on before the lying too, so don't say that its bc I was, in fact, a liar. Hes always been her favorite. My brother would watch as my mom screamed in my face, called me horrible thing, threatened to burn everything i owned except a pair of clothes, threatened to take everything from me, all over some marshmallows. That I didnt even eat!

It was like this every day.

My mom used to make me clean as a punishment. You know what that means!! Rebelling through my nasty room and unclean habits. She would yell and scream that I was disgusting. That I was gross and nasty like a pig. That no one would ever be my friend because I'm a disgusting pig. I was forced to clean up after everyone. My mom would cook and bake sometimes and somehow I was still the one that made the mess. So I would scrub cupcake pans and clean frosting off the counter. I would clean my brothers Mac n cheese pots bc he never did. I would sweep and mop the floors after everyone refused to do it. I would scrub base boards bc somehow that was also my fault. I did dishes, unloaded and reloaded the dish washer, cleaned kitchen counters, the dining room, swept and mopped the house, cleaned base boards, picked up dog shit that somehow no one noticed until I got home from school. I would clean bathroom counters, toilets, bath tubs, the laundry room, hallways, hell I even had to mow and edge the yard (starting when I was like 9) bc Connor didn't want to and he got whatever he wanted. I did everything.

My room was horrendous. It was cluttered and cramped bc of my moms hoarder tendencies. She bought everything she came in contact with and filled the house with crap. It wasn't until after she started to really bully me that my room became gross. I was always in trouble anyways, right? I was already a pig? Already had no friends? So what's there to lose? So I just did what I wanted. I kept bowls and cups in my room. I didn't clean at all, I ignored my mom, I did what lever I felt like because I was too far gone anyways.

I'm older now. I know that im fine and im not this shit little kid anymore and my mom can't do the same shit she did back then. But I just get so angry about it. I guess this is part 1? Idk when or if ill update at all. I have so many more stories. I just- ugh.

I always had a hard time dealing with things my mom did to me, because I didn't know it was truly that bad. I thought I was over reacting, that I had no place to complain. She wasn't hitting me, so its okay right? Wrong. I am valid for feeling the way I do. I am valid for being angry. I have to tell myself that because what she did was wrong.

DARING DO and the Gryphon’s Quest! : MLP Fan Fiction : Part 8 of 19

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DARING DO

and

THE GRYPHON’S QUEST!

by

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

and

Carmen Pondiego

Cover art by Aranel the Cyborg, now  Wind the Mama Cat

29584 words

© 2020 by Glen Ten-Eyck

Writing begun 03/29/16

All rights reserved.  This document may not be copied or distributed  on or to any medium or placed in any mass storage system except by the  express written consent of the author.

This is a Fan Fiction based on My Little Pony.  Canterlot, Princess Luna and the name Daring Do are owned by Hasboro Inc.

//////////////

Copyright fair use rules for Tumblr users

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights.   They may reblog the story.  They may use the characters or original  characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or  fan musical compositions, provided that such things are done without  charge.  I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for  their images.  

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fictions is actively encouraged.

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Chapter 8. Into the wilderness

Daring Do laughed, a cheerful tone, after the recent events.  The fine gravel of the Royal Road crunching under hoof, she said, “No, I have made a note of it and WILL return at a later date.  What we need now is more important.  Those First Creation fanatics need to be stopped.

“I would rather stop them with facts instead of a war.”

Her harness creaking rhythmically as she strode up the road, Grata nodded, her crest lifted in the gesture of understanding.  “Doctor Do, I commend you.  You are not only an expert in an esoteric field, you are wise, as well.  We too, wish to end the grip of the fanatics on our Aeries without bloodshed.”

It was late evening when they finally reached the town of Eagle’s Roost.  In the dusk, they found an open inn.  To the surprise of Grata and Rahak, it was being run by a Gryphon.

He greeted them effusively, gesturing toward his substantial timber and stone building, “Welcome to the town of Eagle’s Perch and my modest inn, the Gryphon’s Perch!  I am Kraach.  What is your need?”

Grata responded, “Three things.  A safe place to park our cart.  A good meal for Rahak and I and something suitable for Doctor Do.  After that, we will need rooms for sleeping and a breakfast to see us on our way.”

Kraach turned his attention to their cart and his eyes widened.  “That cart is Rom work!  It will need to be guarded most carefully.  The ponies here in Eagle’s Perch are basically pretty honest but they are desperate for good wheel work.

“Our town’s wheelwright was killed about six months ago.  The farmers in the area are desperate for haulage. They are sharing the carts that still work well, trying to get the harvest in!”

Rahak asked, “What happened to the wheelwright and why has he not been replaced?”

Kraach’s crest fell in discouragement.  “What happened was a blot on the good name of Gryphons everywhere.  We got one of those idiot First Creation of the Twin Flames fanatics come to town.

“He saw a fine surrey belonging to the Baron in the wheelwright’s shop being fixed. Acting as if he owned the place, he demanded that he be taken on a tour of the town and local sights.

“Wheelwright refused because the surrey was not his and it was not yet repaired.  

“Idiot said that the concerns of the Later Created were of no interest and began to beat the wheelwright with his bare claws to “Teach him to do as his betters demanded.”  One of his claws cut the wheelwright’s jugular and he died of it.

The commotion drew a crowd who witnessed the murder.  They caught the killer and he was turned over to the Empress.  She did not listen to his First Created crap.  He got the Long Drop Without Honor.

“It needs a Baronial Appointment to replace the wheelwright.  We have THREE applicants but the Baron has spent all of his time down in Canterlot, instead of paying attention to his Barony.”

While he was talking, Kraach led them to the enclosed innyard.  He opened a locking storage bay and offered, “This should do to store your cart for the night.”

Rahak produced a lock and secured their goods.

They all trooped into the Inn.  Kraach ordered his staff, “Two Gryphon specials!  Make them with the big trout and a side of roast bunny.  One Alfalfa Loaf with fried potato on the side!  Get the drink orders for our guests!”

Afterwards there was a bit of time spent in the taproom, between singing some drinking songs and a few card games, it grew late.  Their rooms had spacious nests for the Gryphons and a comfortable, well appointed sleeping stall for Daring Do.

Breakfast was equally pleasant.  Kraach had noticed at dinner that the Gryphon’s diet of meats did not appear to bother Daring Do.  They were all three served breakfast at the same table.

When they unlocked their cart’s storage, Daring Do conferenced with Rahak and Grata as they went over their load.

Kraach asked in some concern, “Is all well with your things?”

Grata nodded, her crest jauntily up.  “Yes, good Kraach.  All is well.  We will be going past the last of the roads today and are preparing for possible difficulties.”  She returned to the readjusting of the load.

Some of the town ponies who had little else to do watched the unusual sight of a Gryphon pulling a cart while a pony and another Gryphon walked along on either side of it.

The morning sun was warming the road, making the shade trees planted along it welcome.  They came to the Eagle’s Perch fairground turnoff.  The Royal Road ended there.  Beyond it, there were only some Baronial roads and farm lanes.

Grata noticed the difference at once.  “Why is this road so much harder to pull the cart over?”

Daring Do replied, “Look closely at the road surface.  It is made up of the coarser #3 gravel and not well packed.  See the small ruts beginning? Crossing those ruts and the give in this surface from poor packing are why this road is harder to use.”

Soon the Baronial road dwindled to a lane with no gravel surface at all.  There were occasional gnarled roots rising out of the bare dirt, packed only by intermittent use.  In places, leaves were drifted over the surface, lending a loamy scent to the air as the party passed.

Daring Do quietly signaled a halt.  She took out her rifle and set the twenty round clip into it.  She worked the action to chamber a round. Rahak softly asked, “What is it, Doctor Do?”

Daring Do pointed to the path ahead of them.  “Tracks.  Six ponies and a cart with a bad wheel ahead of us.  None coming back.  Maybe it is a work party but it could be an ambush.”  She slung her rifle ready for instant action.

Rahak nodded and rummaged his luggage briefly.  He strapped on a Gryphon War Knife, a little shorter than a sword, but in skilled claws, about as deadly.

The party heard the voices before they got to the end of the lane.  As the source of the voices came in sight, it could seen that there were five farmers there, in an assortment of colors from Ugly Green to Barf Brown with a stop at Yuck Yellow.

They grinned, showing discolored teeth as Yuck Yellow announced, “Thanks for swapping us that cart for this one!  You ain’t leaving here unless you trades carts.  Got a paper says you do it and everything.”

He held up a paper that was headed, “CONTRACK OF TRADE.”

Daring Do replied, “Bad Idea, there.  This particular cart will get you five years at labor on the Royal Roads.  It is Princess Luna'a personal property.”

Hearing a rustle in the brush behind her, Daring Do dropped, shouting, “Down!”

Gata dropped where she was, still in harness.  Rahak leaped flat, drawing his War Knife.  Daring Do turned as she dropped, hitting in prone position, rifle at the ready!

The crossbow bolt, a lighter but still dangerous civilian one, passed through the air where Daring Do had been standing seconds before!  It slammed into the flank of Ugly Green, who squalled in pain, “Celestia drat you, Charlie!  You was supposed to shoot the one in the ugly hat, not me!”

Daring Do aimed at the disturbance in the brush which showed where Charlie was reloading his predator control crossbow.  Her rifle seemed to roar in the confined area of the turn-around!  Charlie screamed in pain and burst out of the brush, falling flat across the still unloaded crossbow!  A quiver of dangerous predator killer bolts scattered across the grass and dirt where he lay still.

As the others were stopped cold, staring aghast at the unmoving form of their buddy, Rahak leaped.

He landed astride Yuck Yellow, slashing with his War Knife!  

The CONTRACK OF TRADE fell from Yuck Yellow’s grip in two unequal pieces. His forelock gripped and pulled back forcefully, he felt the razor edge drawing a small trickle of blood from his throat.

Rahak said softly, “It appears that you have nothing to trade.  You need that cart to carry your wounded back to Eagle’s Perch.”

“Wounded?  Just Morty, there.  Charlie been shot!”

Rahak pointed out, “He is still breathing.  Wounded, not yet dead.”

Barf Brown spoke up, “You don’t understand.  Our town got not wheelwright, thanks to one like you!  We wouldn’t have never done this if we was not in such need.”

Grata had got up, still in harness.  “Not one like us.  A religious fanatic nutcase.  The Empress sentenced him to the Long Drop Without Honor.

“It is due to another who IS like us, Kraach, that you have survived this blunder.  He warned us of the problem.  Take your wounded back to town.

“The Empire will take account of your Baron’s negligence and not charge you.  Your Baron will be required to make that appointment for a new wheelwright.”

Barf Brown chuckled sourly, “Never happen.  Baron Larbut is messing about in Canterlot.  He got to make the appointment.”

Grata lifted her crest as she informed him, “I am aware of the issue.”  She removed a Magic Net mirror from her under wing bag.  Tapping practiced codes with her dexterous claws, she spoke.

“Grata here.  By order of the Imperial Throne’s Left Wing, I must speak to the Princesses immediately.”  

The pause was brief.  Both Princesses showed in the mirror.  “What is it, Grata?  What does the Imperial Throne need?”

Yuck Yellow, Barf Brown and the rest nearly choked as they realized just how deep the cesspool was that they had jumped into!

Grata replied, “The citizens of Eagle’s Perch are suffering from Baron Larbut’s criminal negligence.  It has driven them to a criminal assault on the Left Wing of the Imperial Throne and the attempted theft of Princess Luna'a cart, on loan to Doctor Daring Do.

“The Empire seeks Justice in this case.  There is to be no punishment for the citizens, two of whom are presently wounded. Baron Larbut must leave Canterlot to attend to his Barony.  He is not to be allowed to return, until a Royal Audit finds his Barony to be in proper order.”

Luna and Celestia both nodded.  “Not a problem.  It will be as you request.  Do you know if they are in need of a Royal Benefice to pay for short term problems?  It will be drawn from the Baron’s personal accounts.”

Grata looked over at the faulty boards and poor wheels of the cart that the others were loading Charlie and Ugly Green into.  “I would say so.  The state of all of the rolling equipment in Eagle’s Perch that I saw was from fair to ruinously bad.  This is purely due to the Baron’s negligence of his duties to his populace.”

Luna nodded briskly.  “I am sending a Royal Appointment for the wheelwright.  I saw the applications and am familiar with the work of each.  The Baron told me that it was not important.  That is now overridden.  The Sheriff of Eagle’s Perch will receive both instructions and the appointment within the hour.”

Grata raised her crest in full respect as she replied, “Thank you, your Highnesses, on behalf of the citizens of Eagle’s Perch and the Empire.” She put the mirror away.  Crest set in a smile, she said, “Go now, and thank Kraach.  If he had not notified us of the situation, this would have ended quite differently.”

As they started to pull their load down the lane, Ugly Green lifted his head above the weathered side boards of the cart and said, “Ma'am, we are sorely ashamed of ourselves.  You have showed us what a real just ruler is like.  We thanks you.”

With Daring Do scouting the way, they forced a way into the wilderness beyond the last of the roads.  Once past the vicinity of the cultivated land, the forest opened out some and it was easier, though still not foal’s play.

Taking a turn in harness, with Rahak scouting ahead, Daring Do grumbled with good nature, “Wheels are WAY overrated!”

She was working the cart over some complex roots, partly hidden by the pine needles that littered the forest floor when she felt the assist of Grata’s shoulder pushing from behind.

She commented jokingly, “Thanks.  Isn’t this a bit low class for the Left Wing of the Imperial Throne?”

With complete seriousness, Grata replied, “If one cannot serve when that is needed, one is not fit to rule at all.”

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Cyberpunk 2077 Download for PC? Official Video Games

Cyberpunk 2077 has invited you to explore Night City. Of course, there is a fictional metropolis on America’s west coast that is jam-packed with the crime, opportunity, and anything your black heart desires. After all, it is based on Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop RPG. As well as, Cyberpunk is a bleak game that sees the corporations.

In fact, both domestic and foreign keeps a stranglehold on the military tech, drugs, health care, virtually, cybernetic advancements. Everything in common person could need or want. As well as, you can play as a mercenary V. In fact, a person is caught up in a job that is lasting in repercussions throughout its story campaign. As well as, you must hack, shoot, and slice your way out of trouble in a sprawling, open-world action-RPG. After all, this is a highly anticipated PC game offers that is thrilling gameplay that you will love it. Also, atmosphere-oozing sights also sound and those hours of story that have heavy missions but it feels undercooked because of large and small bugs.

The State of Affairs

After all, the Cyberpunk 2077 society has spiraled in a state of Weimar like debauchery and decadence. With advertisements which is peddle of everything from the snacks to the sex plastered on nearly city facet. As well as, the Humankind has embraced cybernetic modifications. Also, every dinky neighborhood across town have a cybernetic mod. Which is called a Ripperdoc, also eager and they are ready to slap new and also, horrifying body enhancements in you for right price.

In fact, You will play as V. Of course, the mercenary who will takes odd jobs across the Night City vast underworld. After all, the game will start that you can customize V look, stat and background. As well as, its character creator is not particularly robust. After all, there are many interesting option which is to explore like tattoos and cybernetic facial implants. In fact, You are starting to stats boost specific talent that once you are into the game proper. like for an example I boosted V's Cool stats and Reflex. So its weapon and stealth and weapon perks opened up relatively early in my playthrough.

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After all, The background that you have select is determines V's prologue tutorial. And those impacts how you will tackle mission objectives. As well as, a side quest tasked a Nomad-based character with searching for a cop. Who has rocked the proverbial boat by investigating the criminals with clout than she had anticipated? In fact, no one knows the cop location. So it was up to if I will ask around. After all, an odd hooker recognized her, but the demand is a cash for the intel. Of course, V recognizes Nomad in the neighborhood who offer intel after a few if conversation. As well as, it's letting me bypass the sex worker extortion. After all, these Scenarios pop up regularly throughout 2077's campaign.

The Future You Chose

After all, this game is classic and future-noir tropes. As well as, its content is familiar to anyone who has played the Deus Ex games or seen the Blade Runner films are not present in the main storyline. In fact, they are prominently featured in Cyberpunk 2077 a lot of side missions. As well as, its campaign paints the world which has moved beyond its ethical quandaries which are trans-humanism raises. As well as, its Technology and synthetic is a part of everyday life. And its concepts like organic barely exist. Of course, everyone is enhanced in some ways and its culture is grown to embrace also fetishize cybernetic technology.

In fact, This campaign does not ask for big questions that set an action-packed journey through the flashy and bizarre Night City streets. After all, its side quests are where are the story's of the heart truly lies. Of course, it is similar to Assassin Creed Valhalla. In fact, Cyberpunk 2077 side quests flesh is out from the world and people in ways that its campaign does not. Also, the backstories add more to the narrative which should not be optional. In fact, they are essential for playing if you are ready for the full Night City experience.

Blast, Hack and Slash

After all, there are many ways that are to build V. As well as, you can go all-in just on hacking. That will give you the multitude of saboteur abilities that will let you hijack the cameras, defense enemies, and systems. If you will find yourself outgun, and hack grenades on your assailant’s belt and blow him. So nearby compatriots to kingdom come. Or else you can just use a local network to infect the enemies with the debilitations to prevent them from moving. The cool stat of umbrella houses all the assassination and sneaking abilities that you could want in. After all, if the poison, or silent movement, and the bonus damage undercover are more in your speed. This is the place where you have to invest your level-up points.

As well as, the skill trees are massive that is bloated by the passive boosts like reload speed, damage, or critical-hit chance. In fact, that is not to say that the unique moves and the abilities are not there. Also, you can build for melee damage, stealth, evasion, gunplay, and other combat styles. In fact, the skill tree is not nearly as expansive as it initially seems. After all, you will make many incremental improvements to your character rather than the larger ones that are more noticeable. In fact, I would have perks that are consolidated to have more impact. That delivers a smaller and more concise, skill tree system.

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After all, the combat is satisfying so thanks to the game's play style and the weapon variety. As well as, the Power Weapons is fancy lingo for the ballistics like machine guns, shotguns, and revolvers shred targets. Of course, you can easily decapitate assailants if you will pop them into the right place. Also, tech weapons will use railgun-style electromagnets to evaporate anything. If any problem you will aim at the disappears with the pull of the trigger. In fact, the smart weapons will target and curve the bullets around to the cover and corners. which will remind me of the silly weapon scene from The Fifth Element.

In fact, Melee is nothing to sneeze at it either. As well as, the bare knuckles do the surprisingly well in the scrap. But you can not arm yourself with a limb-hacking swords, good old bludgen, grappling mantis claws. Or the other body modifications that will enhance your brutish and physical prowess. After all, the enemies are resilient but not spongey like the shooter-RPGs. In fact, the foes to take a beating but they are stick around enough for you to get the creative that how you kill them. Of course, I had never felt to cheated what the game threw my way. Of course, I run the low ammunition regularly. because I went half on melee and running out of the ammo.

Kinks to Iron

After all, the Cyberpunk 2077 is the fascinating world and the great gameplay systems. In fact, the game is pack with bugs. As well as, sometimes the elevators do not load or do not work. Of course, enemies occasionally bug out and the mindlessly stand around waiting for you that you will shoot them. In fact, the characters teleport into scenes if they did not load properly. Also, NPCs drive through scenery and speed off in sunset. Also, the side quest did not complete correctly. Of course, I force to restart the game from the previous checkpoint.

As well as, these issues are the game-breaking problems and they are frequent. In fact, if you will buy the game at launch then you have to expect to see the bugs at play through. After all, the Developer CD Projekt Red have patch alleviate these issues.

Can Your PC Run Cyberpunk 2077's?

Of course, the Cyberpunk 2077 is open-world games. After all, this is grimy aesthetic off-putting. When compared to Deus Ex then the Mankind Divided's the clean and bright environments. Also, the Night City is larger and more interconnected to the world that is fallen on hard times.

Of course, the Night City is pack with a visual delights. Also, the car is interiors drip to detail and the streets is densely pack ads and cyber-enhanced NPCs. As well as, It is good to drive around the town also in the environments. After all, sitting in the shadow room and conversing with gangsters, clients, and kingpins looks stylish and cool.

After all, the game elements are not pulse-pounding action sequences stories. It is driven around the town during missions and enjoying Night City's sounds and sights. In fact, CD Projekt Red have craft world that visual settings suit PC and the game at best atmosphere.

Cyberpunk 2077 System Requirements

Of course, the Cyberpunk 2077 is the first game in Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 graphics card feel latest. After all, this game is default to the Medium settings on my gaming desktop. With CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 / GPU GTX 970 / RAM 16GB. In fact, this setting deliver best visuals that moved at 30 fps. Also, the Low frame rate will dance betweem 40fps and 50fps. But the gameplay is not smooth the visual hit. After all, playing on the High or Ultra High will drop the frame rate to 20s low that is not the trouble.

Of course, to play the Cyberpunk 2077 you have to need a PC that contains atleast the Windows 7 OS / CPU: AMD FX 8310 or Intel i5 3570k / Graphic Card: AMD Radeon RX 470 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 / RAM: 8GB / Space: minimum of 70GB or more. After all, the recommended system requirements setting is Intel CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200 or i7 4790 / Graphic Card: AMD Radeon RX 590 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 and RAM is 12GB.

In fact, you can purchase the Cyberpunk 2077 at jsut $59.99 from video game stores. As well as, this game is supporting many features of steam like Steam Trading Cards, Steam Cloud, and Steam Achievements. In fact, this is full controller support. There is no way to make character stroll when using a keyboard and mouse.

Unpolished Gem

In fact, I was not impress with the Cyberpunk 2077. Because the distinct west coast grime turn me off and few perks that did not appeal to my play style. After all, I fell so good and fall in love with the Night City. As well as, if bugs can get iron out then the Cyberpunk 2077 is potential Game of the Year candidate. Here’s we are hoping that the CD Projekt Red will push out fixes.

We are here to hear from you

After all, you can contact us to let us know if we are missing something on our page. I hope you like it and thank you for your visit.

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Weaponry (Survival Horror Manual)

It’s been a minute, I know!

So I have finally cracked how weapons work. This is still being refined, mind you, but its solid enough to put on paper.

So last we talked, I touched on the fact that instead of specific weapons, there will be categories of weapon types and the DM will have to come up with the specifics if they want the players to know they have anything other than a pistol or shotgun or melee weapon, etc. Now I have devised how each weapon category works. 

So what we have is three attributes that goes with all the weapon categories. Save for special weapons, (which will be covered later), we have the basic groups:

Pistols

Shotguns

Rifles

Heavy

Special

Melee

Obviously this is just a basic list to get the game off the ground. They will be expanded upon and fleshed out as test playing commences. For the explanation of this system I wills tick with pistols for now. Before I begin, I want you to know that I am not taking a 5e tradition approach to damage, but rather a more buffed 3.5e approach. I want every weapon to feel substantial. A human being should not be able to take like six shots and keep going, or four dozen beatings to the head with a melee weapon and shrug it off like they’re Broly, okay? So as we explain the creature categories in later posts, take into consideration that they are enemies, not like us common folk. Look at the revamped Resident Evil 2; on normal difficulties a normal zombie can take two or three headshots before its put down. That's because it does not feel pain like a human, as well as the fact that the brain processes WAY differently than their living counterparts. A human on the other hand, can take one shot (MAYBE two, depending on where it was shot and what shot it), but lets be realistic here. That’s what we are going for after all. The odds are stacked against the players, at all time, or else its not survival horror, its not even survival. So something as simple as a pistol should definitely do more than a typical humans HP should ever be able to surpass. That way every fight, every encounter, every run in with even another NPC, could be life or death. The tension should always be constant and the stress should always be high.

And we all know what stress does in this system. 

Alright, so lets go over my attributes. Each weapon will have three qualities:

Damage

Speed

Quality

Damage is how much dice you roll if your attack connects. A pistols damage is 4d6, which can be a max of 24 if you roll all 6′s. Rare, but it can happen. Speed is how fast your weapon fires during each Reaction. Since we have replaced rounds with Reactions, battle is a lot more fluid and can constantly change. Speed is increased by an increment of 4. The speed of a pistol is 10, so that means you can get two shots off per Reaction. If you went of standard D&D rules, a round takes six seconds. I am not trained in gun weaponry at all and even I know I can get more shots off in less than six seconds. Why we changed this old rule was for this reason. While you may have built of tension for your players through your atmosphere and general difficulty, everything would always slow down to the same old crawl of hitting once and then waiting and then attacking again and then waiting and then attacking again...

With a speed rating, combined with the Reaction control, you could potentially end a fight in your first go around, granted your Reaction is good and your attacks don’t miss. Think of playing The Last of Us. You really want to run through a warehouse filled with enemies and not be able to chain attacks? Six enemies up in this place and you have to enter and roll initiative for each one and then take damage from each one and piss off the rest and not come up with strategies an-- you get the idea. Try it before you knock it.

Quality is random. Unless otherwise stated by the DM, every weapon a player comes across should come with a roll of a dice. There are three tiers; low, common, and high. Since we have included the system that weapons can be upgradable, this idea really shines through. Every time a weapon is found or picked up, a dice should be rolled secretly. You, as a DM, will decide if the weapon fits into one of these three tiers. 

Low - The weapon has a high misfire chance and only has one upgrade slot available.

Common - The misfire chance is lower but still there and it has two or three ways to upgrade.

High - While the misfire chance is really low, it is still present but it also has the highest possibilities for upgrades. Typically no more than four.

Going off the upgrade section just real quick, upgrades can come in several varieties such as speed reloaders, increased magazines, damage outputs, scopes, etc.

Once an upgrade is attached to a weapon, it can’t be taken off without a certain perk. One of he basic perks will allow players the ability to attach upgrades successfully, but a later perk will be needed to remove them. This will also potentially punish the player if they want to be more risky with their decisions and don’t take the perk and instead leave their fate to the dice. The speed and damage would be set, but depending on the place in the story and DM’s discretion, I’d say that some weapons would already have upgrades on them. 

A weapons quality wouldn’t be a known fact at first glance either, unless you have a specific perk, until you actually use the weapon. It might be dirty, it might be busted, or jammed, or in a major need of servicing. If you are going through a forest and stumble across a weapon, unless you are trained to use said weapon, you cannot honestly believe you can just pick it up and use it. Melee weapons may be more obvious in their telling of it they are good or not, but a pistol, though caked in mud, may actually be in rather good condition. Or one found in a drawer next to a box of bullets, while scavenging supplies, may have not been used in so long that it needs oiling. Upgrades on a weapon can be seen on sight.

Speed would only increase in increments of 2. A pistol starts with a 10, but you find an upgrade that raises the firing speed, so now it fires at a 12. That means you can now get 3 shots off per reaction! That’s a lot of shots. With each shot doing 4d6 damage, you have the possibility of 72 damage in one Reaction. Think of the possibilities. Now that may not be much for a low tier weapon, that could increase exponentially for common or high tier qualities. Like I said, a weapon should be dangerous and a player needs to feel the weight of that responsibility. Risk the spent bullets, noise, and misfires but pump out some damage, or conserve your shots and focus on surviving. 

Shotguns would a little differently; obviously they aren’t fast, but with enough upgrades they can be. Rifles are powerful and fast, but have a high chance of misfiring. 

Let’s touch on Misfire real quick, actually. This is a mechanic that effects all weapon types, despite it sounding like it only effects ranged weapons. Think of it like the Wild Magic Table for a Sorcerer in 5e. Every time you roll to attack, you will see if you hit. If successful, you will roll your damage. Based on the weapon type (lets keep going with pistols), you will roll your damage (4d6) AND THEN roll your weapons base die (1d6). This is called your Misfire Chance. A misfire chance can be anything from your weapon jams, to the handle breaks, to the gun ricochets and hits you, to the weapon fails you in some way. In fact, it is optional, but the DM can use a table (created in a later post) that details just exactly what your weapon does. This brings a sense of stress to each encounter. You will roll the base die after your roll your damage. Each quality tier will have a different misfire chance;

Low: Evens or Odds

Common: Call the number and if you land on it then you fail.

High: Roll a one (1) on the base die.

As you can see, the chance for a mess up is always there. The chances are slimmer the better quality your weapon, but the presence of failure always looms. The Misfire Chance will have to be tweaked, of course, for different types of weapons but as I make the chart, I will add those effects. I like the idea that even a well seasoned soldier can have a mistake and I also like how we have gotten away from the D20 being a deciding factor in all of this. 

There has been a lot of information thrown out so let’s recap: There are categories for weapons. Each category of weapon has three attributes; damage, speed, and quality. Depending on the quality, a weapon has a chance to misfire or fail. Upgrades can be attached to weapons to not only decrease this oversight, but also to increase weapon damage and speed as well as do a variety of effects. Qualities should be randomized by a roll unless otherwise stated by a DM. Players will need certain perks to properly handle certain weapons as well attached and dismantle upgrades. 

Weapons have real power and must be used responsibly. A shot or swipe of a weapon can easily take down another player or NPC and in most cases, an enemy. Ammo or resources should always be scarce and the tension and stress should always be high. Remember DM’s, this system is made to put the odds in the favor of the enemies, not the players. Your players did not come to play Resident Evil or even Left 4 Dead, to feel like the king of the world. They came to play a game that’s thought outside of the box. A game that will challenge them and maybe even frustrate them. A game that will force them to survive.

We are almost ready people. The horror is coming.

Full Game Grand Theft Auto SA is impressive

How do you follow up a runaway success like 2001's GTA 3? Rockstar North responded a year later with GTA VC, a game in which purchased the gameplay of their predecessor and developed it much. At the same time, Vice City produced the succession the intensive and stunning stylistic makeover, drenching the experience in the pictures, channels, and viewpoint of Miami, Florida from the middle '80s. So where do you travel by nearby? You get statewide. GTA SA develops the series' model to take in three whole town, and also the countryside among them. The gameplay similarly expands, packing in some explosive set samples and stunning action-movie-like thrills while preserving that even remarkably fun, freefom GTA feel. In short, Rockstar did this over. San Andreas definitely goes nearly the Grand Theft Auto name. In fact, this arguably the best game in the series.

This latest installment occurs in 1992 from the Western Coast-themed circumstances of San Andreas. San Andreas is an area including several locations. You'll begin the game in the city of Los Santos, that is based about with Chicago and involves a mix of ritzy downtown spots with the underworld ghettos of Southern Central. San Fierro is based on San Francisco, reproducing the real city's hilly territory and ever-present fog. The game's third capital is Las Venturas, which is a great take on early-'90s Las Vegas, full of a strip full of casinos and the nearby desert. While one-to-one measurements against previous games in the sequence are difficult in practice, San Andreas definitely is like a considerably, much larger point than Vice City ever made, but simultaneously, the progression is managed intelligently. There are lots of things to do both arrived next from the cities, making all that real estate matter.

While Grand Theft Auto III was inspired in movies such as Godfather and Vice City got some sites from the Scarface playbook, San Andreas takes their inspiration in the ghetto and gangsta struggle layers from the initial '90s. Movies like Menace II League and Boyz N the Top are the clear influences here. With San Andreas, people act the position of Carl "CJ" Johnson. The game opens with Carl returning to Los Santos after using the past a few times in GTA 3's Liberty City. Yet the homecoming isn't a happy one--he's returning house as the mom have been eliminated. Carl isn't on the ground for over an hour or he's picked up by a pair of crooked policemen and tossed right into the middle of the street life he gave Los Santos to avoid.

The first group of firm into Los Santos is to put the problem on the chart. Your team, the Grove Street Children, has slid into disarray over the last a few years, with their influence is little at greatest. And so you, with the three new director on the gang--the long-winded Big Light up, the dust-smoking Ryder, and your stubborn brother, Sweet--set ready to take finance the avenues from your rivals, the Ballas, who have turned to dealing crack to earn cash and return effect in the cover. You set out with a chains of missions to take back the property, starting little with things like spray-painting over other gangs' tags (which is one of the several contemporary types of cases which change previous GTA games' more-generic hidden package collecting here), yet suddenly go around drive-bys and other show of severe gangsterism. But there's a whole lot far more near San Andreas than just set tripping.

Now if you think you're getting used to gang warfare, anything goes sour. We're certainly not interested in spoiling the sport many interesting story twists, so good leave out the details, but it should suffice to mention to you'll eventually need to get the daylights from Los Santos. You find yourself in the country outside the town, in which you'll encounter many more great spirits and legally move forward about your search to get right what's gone wrong. Once you get out of Los Santos, you won't really have to fret about gang warfare for a while, with the experience settles into a more GTA-like feel.

Like the previous sport from the chain, San Andreas features a fairly linear history to captures you from the game's areas. You'll edge down limited to Los Santos--something the lie justifies by claiming an earthquake has taken available the channels and paths to connection Los Santos to the surrounding area--but it doesn't take slow to unlock the other two parts. The game and puts in some very big surprises in the form of individuals from before notes in the collection. These qualities join the GTA games together really nicely, so while San Andreas feels pretty different from the other sports from the run, that nevertheless feels like you're participating within the same world.

As in the previous games, mainly regarding your own increase is attained through completing objective for various individuals. These missions are oftentimes similar to missions you've referred to with before competition from the series. You'll take groups all around, take out specific individuals (the early mission provides the straightforward objective of beating up a break dealer, for example), do drive-bys at your own enemies, and so on. But as you continue with the game, the objective get crazier and crazier. Along the way you'll accomplish a gamble casino heist, take some wicked military hardware, "take mind" of lots of Mafia bozos, and much, much more. The vision from the game are extra exciting, on average, than they are in some previous GTA games. Additionally, the game can be much better in stretch off exactly what, precisely, needs to be done. It does that with onscreen passage to color-codes each particular piece of a quest differently. Still while the basics of the gameplay--taking at and ending missions--are similar to past Grand Theft Auto games, there are plenty of list to reveal, with lots of new details to try.

The first supplement to the game is the ability to ride a bicycle, you encounter almost instantly about starting the game. You'll push that like any other vehicle, but you'll find that engaging the X button makes CJ move faster. This is right with bottom, and, being taking X will make you short, but tapping this is him super run. The melee combat is a bit deeper now, as you can bar and complete combo goes with the just and triangle buttons, respectively. The board practice includes gathered a slight overhaul which makes it seem more like the objective in Manhunt, but this functionally very similar to the approach now Vice City. CJ is usually a somewhat more athletic than previous Grand Theft Auto protagonists. For one thing, he can swim, both on top and marine, which result in a breath meter to appear by the newly redesigned health meter. And if CJ's in shape, he can bound ahead with climb over large walls.

Yes, that's right. CJ has to stay in shape if he's to do in his greatest, which is a new story for the Grand Theft Auto series. The game is track of lots of different statistics to step up and minimize as you play the game. Your physical https://gtadownload.org/grand-theft-auto-iv-download-free/ fitness is the most obvious value, as you're able to determine in gyms to work upon your own muscle and stamina ratings, and you'll have to occasionally trouble to inhibit the muscle stat from occasionally draining a bit. Eating, but, may grow your weight statistic. CJ's body form can alter, depending with everything you do with for the time. While this may well sound like a lot of busywork, it's actually a very small part of the game, with the best way to handle it is to spend a few minutes operating away in the earlier parts of the game to build up your own muscles (giving a advantage to ones melee attacks) and your stamina (which determines how long you can sprint by finding tired), and eating occasionally to maintain the ratings without getting too much fat. You really don't have to spend too much time on it, with gain the ability to run for extended spots of period makes walking near (also growing away) a lot easier.

The game and tracks lots of other information. Respect is a high one, so that what you'll be earning the most of when you complete missions. Not many missions make you change, but nearly all of these are good for a slight respect bonus. A higher respect rating lets you recruit more and more gang members to follow you round with throw on rival gangs, that is another new count and an excellent perk, but not something that comes in handy very frequently. You're also rated in a lots of different vehicle categories, like driving, riding motorcycles, bicycling, and piloting aircraft. As you use a vehicle, the ability with it slowly increases, that seems to tighten the controls a bit. In the case of motorcycles, it also gets that less likely to you'll fly off the bicycle in the wreck. Your bicycling skills change in higher bunny hops. Similarly, you're given stats for every type of gun in the game. You'll start with poor skills with many guns, but never let the label of "reduced" fool you--CJ's skills feel about the same as Tommy Vercetti's when you first contract the trigger. Like obtaining in some time with a system, you'll upgrade this toward "gangster" level, that extends the lock-on go with the gun, rates up reloading, and sometimes enables people move about while locked in. Improving the expertise with a weapon on the main degree, "hitman," takes a relatively long time, but it goes the lock-on collection and rates up reloading still further, and it and opens the ability to dual-wield some one-handed weapons. Unloading two whole clips of submachine-gun ammo is particularly meeting here.

Probably the best position about the game's stat system lives to that all really subtle. It would be easy for something like training with swallow to take over the game, in practice you really don't have to think about it. All you really understand is a quick pop-up in the higher left-hand place of the monitor when a stat changes, and if that changed enough to make a big change, the game offers a text type of just what gets replaced and what which income for you. You will must believe around your own stats a bit when you find the first flight mission, as the story won't proceed until you've gone through flight training. The training code is frustrating, but once you fix that, the flight controls seem to pull up a bit, and you'll have had enough practice for making it throughout many of the trip missions without too much attention. The other time you'll believe on stats is when you first accept a mission that calls for swimming. If you haven't leveled the lung capacity up to a certain moment, you basically will not be able to continue. Up until that point in the word, however, people experience needed to work underwater at all, so at the beginning of the mission you'll have to spend some time going marine and resurfacing until you've produced the lungs expected to go swimming away into a craft with silently kill anyone on board.

But enough on statistics. The key point about GTA San Andreas lives to the idea insanely cool to compete, irrespective of how you decide to show this. The quest are much less frustrating this time around--there are still plenty of challenging objectives for you to meet, but the game does a better task of time the quest with go on people told about what you're meant to do then. As a result, players that could not have gotten to complete Vice City will have a better chance of finishing San Andreas' story, but at the same time the game never really feels like it's very quick. Experienced players can get their own method from the game's epic adventure in 35 to 40 hours, though if you've been enjoying Vice City every day now anticipation regarding this particular game's freedom, to total could conceivably go down when gentle because 25 to 30--which is a fairly lengthy adventure, however you cut it. On top of that, participants that follow the grave story means and dismiss all the side things will end the game with a completion percentage anywhere in the 50s, so clearly there's far more near San Andreas than just getting out on the lid and developing a criminal empire. Even persons that devote all their period at home Grand Theft Auto to result in mass destruction can still have a critical point now, although you could want to enjoy through the story long enough to help unlock the game's other areas. And this time, you'll be able to start worked with a friend.

One of the many interesting wrinkles in Grand Theft Auto's gameplay is the game today possesses a two-player cooperative way. Now, when you get very excited about that, people should be aware that you can't actually play the whole game with a friend. Instead, you'll run into little two-player icons in certain points in the gameworld. Walking over one with a second controller advertised into enables you jump up a few special objectives that act sort of like the rampage symbols with past GTA up for. You also a supporter can wreak havoc in a vehicle before in bottom, though the game expects which both players remain on the same screen. While the idea of a multiplayer kind in GTA is appealing mind-blowing, the execution now makes that more of the fun little addition that, along with all the other crazy things you'll come across when you play, adds to the feel that the sport takes a million different things that you uncover. OK, while there aren't quite a million side vision in the game, it seems to come fairly strong, offering from a baseball minigame, to put together games competed for capital, to help arcade procedures that give deference to basic games like Gyruss and Gradius.

Some of the vision that will include happened using the run for years reappear here. When you write a monitor car, you can gained the R3 option and handle some vigilante missions. The same thing goes for fire automobiles and ambulances. If you enter a moving van at night, you can begin on a home-invasion mission, which is a stealthy task which needs you to write a house also get into off with some property without being noise. Going when crouched is the organization from the day now. You'll and obtain the mixture of races, ranging from the good old dirtring to well-hidden mountain-bike challenges. Another interesting feature on the game lives which you'll get to catch up with a number of women. The gossip wants you to dabble in the playoffs dating system, which sets people ahead with distinct girls in another spots from the game, but there are lots of other girls you can get, if you have the look with style they're searching for. Dates are usually fairly simple: You get the girl, with generally she wants to take. It's up to you to send her somewhere. If she's thinking lobster, but you're thinking Burger Fired, the date's not about to run very good, but there are a variety of nice places to go. You don't usually receive any power over the year other than run her on the spot and back to her studio, yet if she would like to run dancing, the game launches in a simple Dance Dance Revolution-like timing minigame. In an awesome effect, that same type of minigame happens when you insert a lowrider-hopping contest, which is a good way to make a slight extra income.

The Grand Theft Auto series has always been rather stylish, visually speaking. Vice City did a wonderful mission of capturing both the glimpse of Miami along with the impression in the normal '80s. San Andreas has to live up to that standard while creating four unique landscapes--one for each city, and one for the countryside between cities. Fortunately, the game does this extremely, very well. The aspects of Los Santos of which anyone call in have a very realistic ghetto appearance that suits perfectly. The other location from the game and look a lot like the towns they're modeled after, but the most dramatic difference occurs if you go town. The country is nothing like anything you've witnessed during past Grand Theft Auto contest. The twisting country roads, small communities that spray the scenery, plenty of off-road engagement, and shares of nice-looking foliage do these subjects seem beautiful amazing. Outside of Las Venturas, the area is much more desertlike, which and seems really critical. And there's no loading time separating up all the landmass.

The buildings looks outstanding, and the action experience about extra effects to match. The former trails effect from Vice City with GTAIII is history. Now, you'll get everything very clearly, except as you're in warm areas, the sport has a great heat-shimmer look. When you're pulling by or almost top speed in a car, the television blurs a bit, which makes a fantastic career by presenting the ultimate awareness of speed. And, the game takes on the grainy, filtered air what time this falls, which and looks really good. The character models throughout San Andreas look very good as well, although a few pieces, like the characters' blocky hands, seem a slight weird at times.

It's not many fun and sun when it comes to San Andreas' graphics, though. As in previous GTA matches, the outline pace with San Andreas is beautiful unstable. It always runs in a playable time, but counting on what you're figure out, how fast you're doing it, with just how many other victims are onscreen, the shape rate could vary wildly. Additionally, there are various occasional level-of-detail issues, where you'll be able to get very near the object or the "looks good up close" structure can weight in. Such a problem will probably vary, depending on the clause of your own hardware. If your PS2 is modern with moist, you probably won't see it too often. But if your method has visited better times, that could hold thought house up to you when it comes to streaming within the original textures and landscaping. The draw-in distance sounds a lot more out than Vice City's, but you'll still meet many form pop in position, especially when flying overhead on high speed. But even if people draw these topics into consideration, San Andreas delivers a really impressive-looking graphical package on the aging PlayStation 2 hardware.

The echoes of San Andreas exist, because you'd expect, many and changed. The game does a really tough affair with things like engine noises. Vehicles like jets (yes!), fast autos, and motorcycles all deliver deep, throaty tones that make them perfect like ahead and distinct as they are. Gunfire sounds around like you'd demand, next the game's Pro Logic II support does a superb situation of placing the music properly. San Andreas doesn't have DTS care, what Vice City did, but you probably won't see any real difference. On the other hand, you'll surely note how the quality of the words work experience recovered because to game.

In a story-driven game like San Andreas, the state cast boasts a profound effect on the story's impact. Rockstar has put together a fantastic cast to the game that, into somebody, make an excellent career with the dialogue. While there are certainly some familiar calls for the cast list, the game doesn't go overboard in this matter, casting a relatively new rapper with the designation of Small Maylay in the responsibility of CJ--and he offers an excellent performance. MC Eiht, an inspired inclusion to say the least, does a terrific affair with the

Outrage AGAIN over US Mint Website Crash - Enhanced Reverse Proof Silver Eagle Sale

After announcing the release of the reasonably priced 2019 American Silver Eagle Enhanced Reverse Proof would be going on sale Thursday November 18th the coin and bullion industry went nuts. The US mint set the mintage of the 2019 Enhanced Reverse Proof Silver Eagle at only 30,000 (which is extremely low for a silver coin) and placed a strict restrictions of 1 coin per household. This had dealers and collectors clamoring to figure out how many of the enhanced reverse proof ASE's they would be able to get their grubby little hands on.

After learning of the low price, low mintage and predicted high demand of the 2019 enhanced reverse proof silver eagle, my friends and I decided we would all try to get as many of our friends and family to buy these as humanly possible. In the days following we racked our brains to plan for the day of the sale.

How to Save Time Buying the Enhanced Reverse Proof Silver Eagle - Dick's Tip

I got a text from my buddy Richard the day before the enhanced reverse proof silver eagle went on sale. The text was a reminder to our whole group of some tips he has used in the past to make the purchase go a little smoother on the day of the 2019 enhanced reverse proof american silver eagle sale. Richard's Text: Tip for Buying High Demand Coins on the US Mint Website "Little tip to save everyone time tomorrow when you go to buy the Enhanced Reverse Proof. Log into your accounts today to be sure you have your current shipping and billing address as well as your payment information updated. This will save you time when placing your order tomorrow, because God knows the US Mint website is going to have issues. The US Mint website SUCKS!!!" ~ Richard "Dick" Jerferson Dick's Extra Tip - Get High Speed Internet Richard's tips actually proved to be very helpful. My only tip to you is to work with an internet service provider that has internet speeds of at least a gig per second. Do not just use the WiFi. Make sure to plug your computer into the modem directly with an Ethernet cord. WiFi is about half as fast as a direct connection with an Ethernet cord. Many people have internet speeds of 40-100 megabits per second. 1 gig is equal to 1000 megabits per second. So if you want to buy a high demand coin like this 2019 enhanced reverse proof american silver eagle in the future, I suggest you splurge on the faster internet. We knew how many people were going to be on the US Mint website all at the same time so we wanted to make sure the US Mint website would reload quickly on our end. We knew how many issues the US Mint has had in the past when these high demand coins go on sale. We all thought we were savvy enough and smart enough to be able to beat the odds and get one of these rare enhanced silver eagle reverse proof coins. We would soon find out that about 80% of us were wrong. Time to Buy - 2019 Enhanced Reverse Proof American Silver Eagle Let me set the stage. Our group had been anticipating and carefully preparing for this moment for days. We talked to all of our friends and relatives about buying a coin for themselves so we could pool as many of these rare coins as possible. We were all sharing tips and tricks on how to be sure to buy one of these enhanced reverse proof American silver eagles. We were all in a group text chatting with each other. In our group we had 26 friends and family ready to click the "add to bag" button on the Enhanced Reverse Proof ASE coin as fast as humanly possible. We all knew what was at stake. We were all seasoned US Mint buyers. Again, we had all taken part in buying coins in high demand that the US Mint had for sale in the past and we knew the drill. Ten Minutes Before Go-Time - 11:50am EST At about 10 minutes to noon eastern I got a text from one of my friends saying "It's go time!" As we were all logging in we were noticing signs of the site slowing down already. I personally wasn't able to click on the hamburger menu on the mobile version of the US Mint website and pages were already taking a few seconds to load. As soon as the clock struck 12:00 noon we all clicked refresh. Half of us got the error message and the other half got the live screen with the updated button. Instead of the button saying "REMIND ME" the button was now saying "Add to Bag".

enhanced reverse proof - add to bag screen After All the Anticipation - What a Let Down This is the moment where the majority of us had our day flushed down the toilet. From the folks I've spoken to pretty much everyone that clicked "Add to Bag" got an error message saying "Oops... Something went wrong." With a button that said Refresh.

us mint website sell out - amid website repeated crashes of the website. complete government failure I immediately had a pit in my stomach. I thought to myself, "Am I going to be able to buy a 2019 enhanced reverse proof American Silver Eagle?" Actually I didn't really say the last part where I wrote the full name of the coin. I was just writing that again so Google will put me at the top of the search engine results for 2019 Enhanced Reverse Proof American Silver Eagle. Hahaha. Anyhow back to my story. 12:02 pm EST - The Beginning of the End At about 12:02 I started getting phone calls, texts and chats from all of my friends and relatives. They were all freaking out that the site was down and they couldn't make the purchase, in spite of all of my warnings that this was going to happen. I did my best to calm everyone down and just told them to keep refreshing the US Mint's loaded cart screen. The only advice I had for them was to "keep trying". I told them to keep refreshing the US Mint website until you get to a screen where you can take the next step in the purchase process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K8e87B7ORE Coin Nerd talks about why the US Mint website sucks - You'd think they would have figured it out by now. The Frustration of a Government Run Website Constantly Crashing

US MINT WEBSITE CRASHES again - refresh screen For the next 15 minutes tens of thousands of people were dealing with the same problem on the United State Min website with the site crashing and having to be reloaded over and over and over again. Many tried and failed to purchase the 2019 American Silver Eagle - Enhanced Reverse Proof but only 30,000 were successful. All 30,000 coins ended up selling out in approximately 15 and 20 minutes.

US MINT WEBSITE Goes Down - Oops.... Something went wrong.

US MInt Website Crashes - Error Message We Secured 5 Coins out of the 26 People That Tried to Buy the Enhanced Reverse Proof ASE's Needless to say despite all of our groups experience and tips in buying high demand US Mint coins like the 2019 Enhanced Reverse Proof American Silver Eagle we were only able to secure 5 coins out of the 26 people that were trying to get one. Due to the website constantly crashing having to be reloaded 25-50 times throughout the entire purchase process, the coin and bullion community is outraged with the US Mint's lack of action. As a member of the bullion community I am BEGGING you to fix the US Mint Website. There has to be a better way.

Order Confirmation - 2019 Enhanced Reverse Proof American Silver Eagle My Conclusion on the US Mint's Doo Doo Website I've been buying coins and bullion since 1997. Everyone I know that has purchased coins through the US Mint website has had a bad experience at one time or another when buying one of these high demand coins. I have personally been extremely disappointed with the leadership of US Mint and their inability to fix the same problems they've faced for many years of their website crashing. Every time they have a coin go on sale that they anticipate may have a high demand, they should increase their band-width so they don't have so many people frustrated as heck after they had the site crash 100 times while trying to make a purchase. The amount of people that are going to be on the site at one time is kind of predictable. The US Mint knows when the product is going to go on sale. So there for you should be able to be prepared for the sale. My Verdict I think we can all agree that the US Mint's website is seemingly going to suck from now until the end of time. Unless the United States mint starts to put an emphasis on specifically hiring people with a tech background that can focus on solving some of the US Mint's problems with their website, we can expect a LOT more of the same for the foreseeable future. Read the full article

Chain of Memories and Re: Chain of Memories Review: Sora’s Story

This is a review/thoughts post on Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Chain of Memories is the second game released in the Kingdom Hearts series, and the only one on Game Boy Advance (GBA). It was also released on PS2 as Re: Chain of Memories a while back. The story of the game goes like this: After the events of KH1, Sora, Donald and Goofy are led to a mysterious castle called Castle Oblivion, where memories come to life as illusions. As Sora, Donald and Goofy enter the castle and start climbing, they partially relive their previous adventures, gradually begin to lose their memories (it’s not called ‘Castle Oblivion’ for nothing) and are antagonized by cloaked people who belong to a group of people called the Organization.

This game’s most unique feature is the card-battle system. In this system you have to use cards for a number of things, such as attacking enemies, healing Sora, and entering new rooms and floors. While I thought it was annoying at first, it was actually pretty fun once I got the hang of it, and wasn’t as hard as it looked.

About the angst: There is a lot of it, especially in Sora’s Story. Sora gradually losing his memories has potential for some good angst and the game delivers (though other people might not agree with me on this). Riku’s Story also has some of these moments, though I won’t say how because of spoilers.     

The story in this game was pretty good overall. In Sora’s Story the most important plot-points took place in between levels, in the halls of Castle Oblivion, while the storylines within the worlds were mainly filler. They still had some relevance, though, which I thought was neat. I have complaints about Riku’s Story, though. Riku’s Story is so good, but most of it takes place in the last three levels of the castle. Riku goes through most of his levels with little story (that’s focused on him, at least), and the only thing he needs to do in each world is fight the bosses. And the story you do get at those levels is more focused on Organization 13. Like… why? 

Other than that, this game is pretty good. I’d definitely recommend it, though you’d probably need to play Kingdom Hearts I to understand the story properly. I’d actually recommend playing Chain of Memories after Kingdom Hearts 2, if you’re playing through the whole series, because you’ll be less surprised by the KH2 revelations if you play Chain of Memories straight after KH1. 

Also, if you don’t have time to play this game (or any of the Kingdom Hearts games) or just don’t want to spend that much time on it, and you still want to look at the story, you can always watch the cutscene movies on youtube. 

Below the cut-line is a spoiler-filled account of my experience playing this game:

 Traverse Town

There’s not much to talk about in this section.

That vision of Aerith that Donald and Goofy apparently didn’t see was so freaky. 

Sora, Donald and Goofy forgetting what Hollow Bastion is called was also chilling, because it marked the beginning of the gradual loss of their memories.

 Agrabah

It felt so weird seeing Donald, Goofy and Sora relive their adventures as if they’re living them for the first time, especially since they just left the Traverse Town ‘world’ where they remembered Leon, Yuffie and Aerith and were upset when it turned out those three didn’t remember them. Now the trio were meeting Aladdin as if it was the first time. Interesting!    

I liked this version of the Agrabah storyline better than the one in KHFM. I spent so much time figuring out what to do (and trying to beat the bosses) in Agrabah in KHFM that the story in that world kind of lost something (though I still liked it). In CoM I felt like I was able to get more out of the Agrabah story, even though it was really short.

I loved how Aladdin decided that making Genie turn him into a prince would be wrong, because it wasn’t who he really was and he wanted Jasmine to love him for himself. It was so nice to see Aladdin learn something from what happened in this storyline.    

The GBA Genie Jafar fight was the most annoying fight I’ve experienced so far (not counting Chernabog in KH1 Final Mix). It wasn’t that hard overall (I wasn’t in danger of dying at any point), but the moving platforms made it so bloody frustrating and difficult to attack Iago. I was so relieved when Iago finally went down. :D

After leaving the floor, Sora and Donald finally believe Goofy about the castle Goofy claims to remember. Together they realise that they will lose more of their memories the higher up they go into Castle Oblivion. That’s a scary thought. :(      

Olympic Coliseum

I went into this world with some apprehension, since I didn’t care much for the Olympus Coliseum storyline in KHFM. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised by the storyline in CoM. As well as skipping the actual tournament battles (aside from the boss fight), its storyline was much more intriguing than in KHFM. Cloud actually had an important reason for agreeing to ruin Hercules for Hades (he wanted to get back his lost memories) which made me feel sorry for him.        

GBA Hades was harder to beat than the previous bosses. I died during my first attempt, and spent a lot of my second attempt running away from his fire. But I managed to beat him the second time around, thank goodness. :) PS2 Hades was ridiculously easy. The only reason I died once fighting him was because I wasn’t focused enough on the fight. 

Sora’s pep talk to Cloud about not giving up was heartwarming. Especially when Sora talked about how memories are never truly forgotten.    

*Sora sees a vision of Kairi turning into Namine*

…And so begins Sora’s descend into madness and forgetting. :’( Seriously, seeing this right after Sora talked about Kairi and how he would never forget her because of the promise he made to her was heart-wrenching, especially knowing what Sora’s vision means.  

 Wonderland

I don’t have much to say about this world. I loved how Alice was like in this level, standing up to the Queen of Hearts during her trial. :D Sora telling the Queen that he was the thief was such a stupid thing to do and only resulted in him, Donald and Goofy fighting card soldiers.

The Trickmaster was pretty difficult on GBA, but fairly easy on PS2.  

Alice tricking the Queen into letting them go was awesome. Go Alice! :D        

 Monstro

Sora and co find themselves in the belly of a whale. They are reunited with Gepetto and Pinocchio, who are trapped. Pinocchio is caught by the Parasite Cage after he runs off to look for a way out.

Parasite Cage

GBA Version: This fight was hard, mostly because of the poison on the ground that slowed me down. I kept falling off the safe spots and slowed down so much that getting back on was nearly impossible. Didn’t have a specific strategy; I went with what the IGN walkthrough suggested.    

PS2 Version: I just kept hacking away at it and it went down eventually. I didn’t even need to avoid the green poison. It was that easy. It helped that the green stuff didn’t slow me down like it did in the GBA version.  

After the fight, Pinocchio gets the idea to force Monstro to spit them all out. Sora, Donald and Goofy head off to do that. Pinocchio wants to go with them, but Jiminy convinces him to stay with Gepetto, so that they don’t lose each other again when they get out of the whale. :’)

 Battling the Shadow Heartless

GBA: This fight was difficult, but not as difficult as some of the online guides said it was. What I found was that using Summons was pointless because it wasted precious time and caused the metre to go down. I stuck to attack cards. The key here was to continuously attack the Heartless so that the metre didn’t go down too much. It helped to have two or three hi-potions or potions while doing this battle, because reloading wasted time.

I spent quite some time trying to get the metre full on GBA. Five or six attempts, I think. Maybe more. I liked that if you quit an attempt, or if you failed one, it would have dialogue related to it.  

PS2: Wasn’t as hard as on GBA. Unlike on GBA, Summons (Genie particularly) helped to rapidly increase the metre by a lot, so it was worth using them. Like on GBA, it helped to have hi-potions/potions in your deck. And again, attack relentlessly. I finished this fight in one go.        

After the metre is filled, Monstro spits the gang out. They find themselves back in the mouth of the whale. Gepetto and Pinocchio are nowhere to be seen, so they assume that they made it out safely. They then have a sweet moment in which Jiminy mourns that Pinocchio doesn’t need him (his conscience) anymore, and Sora assures him that’ll never be the case and that he’ll see him again someday. :’)

With that, the gang goes off to the next floor.      

 Halloween Town

The basic plot of the Halloween Town level is this: Dr Finkelstein made a potion that gives someone back their true memories. This potion was stolen by Sally, who didn’t like the idea of using it because of the potential dangers, seeing as the Heartless appeared when the good doctor created it. Then the potion was stolen by Oogie Boogie, who drank it. He started panicking probably because what he found out scared him, and Sora and co had to fight him. After he was defeated Sora and co got the potion back to Dr Finkelstein. Turns out Oogie Boogie didn’t drink all of the potion (just most of it), but Sora decides not to try it, having seen what happened to Oogie. And besides, he promised Axel that he’d find out the truth on his own.

The Oogie-Boogie fight was easy in both versions. Far easier than the fights in KH1 and 2. I just hit the dice three times to let down the gate so I could attack him, used Mickey cards, and cured myself when necessary.  

After Halloween Town, the gang has to fight Larxene, who gives them a new set of world cards afterward. This fight was easy in both versions—I just attacked her constantly and healed.    

 Atlantica

Sora, Donald and Goofy move on to Atlantica, where Ariel has stolen her father’s trident in an attempt to get Ursula to help her rescue Flounder, who is apparently in danger. When the group catches up to her, and after hearing her conversation with Ursula, they tell her not to trust the witch and not to give her the trident. Ariel agrees with them, but she really needs Ursula’s help to save Flounder. So the group plus Ariel confront Ursula, who reveals that she kidnapped Flounder. Ariel gives Ursula the trident after Ursula threatens Flounder, and Sora and co then have to fight a gigantic version of her.

This Ursula fight was basically an easier version of the ‘Giant Ursula’ fight in KH1. The GBA fight was pretty easy—I just avoided all of her attacks by dodge-rolling and moving to the far side of the screen to avoid the bubbles (they confuse you, so it’s best to avoid them completely). The PS2 fight was a bit harder because it was harder to avoid her attacks. I just kept hacking at her tentacles and then her face whenever possible.

After she’s defeated, Sora and co talk with Ariel. Ariel is worried about her father being angry at her. Surprisingly enough, Sora suggests that she just tell Triton that Ursula stole the trident. However, Ariel decides to be honest with him because, as she admits, she hasn’t made the best decisions lately. Though it was wrong of her to take the trident, she’s proud that she did it to save Flounder, and if she lied to her father then that feeling would be lost. Then Donald and Goofy voice their disapproval about Sora advising Ariel to lie. :’D Like, seriously, Sora? I couldn’t believe Sora actually suggested she do that.

Anyway, Sora, Donald and Goofy leave Atlantica and go to Floor 8. In my playthrough this was Neverland.

Before ascending, though, Sora and co encounter Riku! Sora is understandably shocked to see him. Riku seems like the angry self he was in KH1, and he doesn’t seem very happy with Sora. This leads to a fight. This fight (Riku 1) in both versions was fairly easy for me. After the fight, Riku runs off, leaving Sora confused and hurt. Once the group gets to the next floor, Jiminy, Donald and Goofy manage to cheer Sora up by telling him that Riku may have just forgotten that he and Sora are friends, and that he didn’t mean the nasty things he said to him. Also, Donald and Goofy remind him that they all promised to keep smiling, when they first met. All this helps snap Sora out of his funk. :’)

Seeing Sora just standing there in the PS2 version with his head bowed was so sad. He looked completely heartbroken. :’(  

Neverland    

Sora, Donald, Goofy and Jiminy enter Neverland (aka Captain Hook’s Ship). They encounter Tinkerbell, who leads them to Peter Pan. After everything is explained, the group go off to find Wendy, who’s being held captive by Hook. Wendy tells Peter that she wants to go back to London, and Peter throws a temper tantrum and abandons her. Some friend/sweetheart he turned out to be. Sora and co are pissed off at Peter’s jerkass behaviour, but all they can do is continue on. They leave Wendy below and go to the deck to stage a distraction. Unfortunately, Hook seems to have caught Wendy. Which seems impossible since Sora and co just left her, but I blame it on Castle Oblivion and Namine’s magic. Luckily Peter Pan saves Wendy, leaving Sora and co to defeat Hook.

Captain Hook

GBA: This fight was extremely difficult. I mainly dodged a lot, used zeroes on the bombs and attack Hook whenever it was safe to. Took me a few tries to beat him.  

PS2: Surprisingly easy. I just dodged his attacks and hammered him whenever I could.  

After Hook’s defeated, Peter Pan admits to Wendy that he thinks she’ll forget all about him and Neverland once she goes back to London and grows up, because adults don’t remember Neverland. Sora tells him that none of them will ever forget him, and even if they do, memories are never completely lost and a part of them will always remember. This comforts Peter, and he tells Sora that he will look forward to seeing an adult Sora. I find this sad, because as far as I know Sora will never visit Neverland again, so Peter will never get to see a grown-up Sora.

 Hollow Bastion

Next is Hollow Bastion. I found the story in this level really intriguing and sweet. Belle has been kidnapped by Maleficent, but when Beast comes to rescue her she coldly turns him down. Beast is confused and heartbroken, and falls into a bout of self-pity. The gang go after Belle, and witness her conversation with Maleficent. Turns out that Belle is trying to protect Beast from Maleficent by being cold toward him, though we don’t know why yet. Maleficent ends up transporting Belle somewhere to force Beast to come to her, which works. Beast admits to Belle his true feelings, which convinces Maleficent to steal his heart, for whatever reason. Belle, in an act of selfless love, takes the bullet for him. However, Maleficent still intends to take Beast’s heart, after she notices his pure feelings of love for Belle, but is stopped by Sora and co.

Dragon Maleficent

GBA: This fight was really difficult. Pretty sure it was mostly luck that I won in the end.  

PS2: Insanely easy. Just locked onto Maleficent’s head and hacked away, healing when necessary and avoiding her attacks. I tried out the Mickey card but it didn’t help me at all.

After the fight Belle is restored back to her physical form, and she and Beast share a lovey-dovey heartwarming moment. The gang leaves at this point.

 100 Acre Wood  

This was a breather level, with no Heartless whatsoever. All I had to do was lead Pooh down a path toward a log, while trying to find all of Pooh’s friends. The GBA version had Sora lead Pooh toward his friends (you just had to guide him toward each of the hiding places and feed him honey whenever necessary). 

An adorable thing about the GBA version is that Pooh falls asleep if you remain idle for too long, and also sometimes when he’s finished eating honey. It was frustrating as hell at points, but it’s also very cute. :’)         

Unlike on the GBA, there were actual minigames in the PS2 version. I didn’t like this as much, because I preferred what the level was like in the GBA version. It felt nice to just walk around with Pooh.  

I did love the cutscene between Sora and Pooh just before Sora left 100 Acre Wood in the PS2 version. It was full of heartwarming, but also foreboding as Sora remembered that he was losing his memories and might forget about Pooh. 

 Battle: Vexen

GBA: Really easy. I just treated him like one of those Big Heartless and kept attacking him from behind. He eventually went down.

PS2: Harder, but not so hard that I had trouble beating him. I just hit him from behind and he eventually went down.

 Twilight Town

Not much to say here, except that Sora finds this place familiar even though he’s never been there before. Apparently it’s a memory from ‘the other side of his heart’. Oh, and he also battles Vexen for the second time.  

Vexen

GBA: Really easy. Just attacked his back and he went down in no time.

PS2: The Vexen fight surprised me. I expected it to be easy like in the GBA version, but instead it was insanely difficult. I’m pretty sure I got lucky when I defeated him on the PS2 version. I didn’t have a specific strategy for this one—I just dodge-rolled like hell, attacked him from behind and prayed.  

After leaving Twilight Town, Sora ditches Donald and Goofy after they voice concerns about him. Which is not nice. This means that Sora has to go through the twelfth floor by himself. He also tells Jiminy to shut up. :(

 Destiny Islands

Here we see a twisted memory of the day Destiny Islands was destroyed by the Heartless. Sora meets up with Selphie, Wakka and Tidus, and then with Riku. I must say that it’s nice to see a less-jerkish version of Riku. It makes me wonder what he was like before KH1.

When the Heartless attack, Sora goes to find Namine. Their conversation is really confusing. Well, doubly confusing, because there’s two Namines. It was impossible to tell which was which. Namine helps Sora remember a bit of his old memories, which helps him almost remember Kairi. Their conversation is eventually interrupted by the appearance of Darkside.

Darkside was easy in the PS2 version, but harder on GBA. GBA Darkside had an insane amount of hp, which meant that the fight took forever, and I also had to avoid his sleights, which was difficult. PS2 Darkside had the same difficulty level as KH1 Darkside, which was really easy.

After that, Sora leaves Destiny Islands and talks with Namine. She begins to tell him what she did to his memories, but is interrupted by Riku. I kinda like his blunt explanation: “Your memory is a trainwreck.” Inevitably, the two of them get into a battle.  

 Battle: Riku 4

GBA: I never got past this fight. Managed to get past in on PS2, though.

PS2: I tried without sleights first, and got screwed over by his moves. Then, after hearing that you really need sleights for this fight, I levelled up enough to get Sonic Blade. The next time I tried, I spammed Sonic Blade at him and he went down quickly.        

 *Note: everything past this point I played in the PS2 version, not the GBA.*

 After the battle, Riku keeps on attacking Sora, intending to kill him. He is stopped by Namine, who literally breaks his heart and renders him catatonic. This is when Larxene appears (again) and the revelations begin.

Poor Namine. :( I know she tampered with Sora’s memories, but she was forced to do it by Organization 13. The way they’re abusing her is terrible. I got the sense that, aside from being brainwashed, Sora realised that Namine was also a victim and that was why he wasn’t really angry at her. Her clearly regretting what she did and trying to fix it probably also helped.      

Since their plan’s failed, the Organisation stops being so cryptic and explains that the Riku Sora’s been fighting is a replica, and that they’d wanted to turn Sora into a puppet via Namine’s powers in order to control him. Unfortunately, now they want to kill him instead. Luckily Donald and Goofy show up to help Sora go against Larxene, in what is truly a heartwarming moment. :’) After that’s done, they prepare to battle Larxene—together.      

 Laxrene 2

This battle was harder than Riku 4. I had to level up to around 50 to get enough CP to fit everything I needed into my deck. It took all day, but I finally beat her by spamming Sonic Blade and using zeroes, cures and hi-potions/elixir whenever necessary. It was still a pretty close fight even with all of that, though.

Larxene’s death scene was kinda sad. She seemed really scared, which was a huge change from her previous behaviour. She definitely had it coming, though.

After the fight, Namine explains everything and assures them that she can fix their memories if they head to the 13th floor. So that’s what Sora, Donald and Goofy do.  

 Floor 13: Castle Oblivion

I finally made it to the 13th floor!! :D  

Damn… Marluxia is a right bastard, using Namine as a shield like that. Knowing what I know about Axel, I would’ve listened to him if I were Sora.    

Axel was insanely difficult to defeat. I’m pretty sure I got lucky when I beat him. Same with the very first Marluxia fight.

After the first Marluxia fight, you find out that you were just fighting an illusion. Not that surprising, but very frustrating.

Sora being willing to sacrifice himself just to protect Namine was horrifying and shows just how brainwashed he was. He didn’t even seem to care that he’d end up a mindless puppet.      

 Final Battle

When I first tried fighting Marluxia II and III, I lost multiples times. Eventually I realised that it wasn’t because of my deck (I had arranged it pretty well, with fives zeroes before the other attack cards). I simply didn’t have enough hp (my hp was around 350; I was lvl 54 at that point). So I went back to the 13th floor rooms and grinded to level up my hp. When I decided to try again, I was lvl 59 with 410 hp. This amount of hp was enough for me to win the final battle(s).

My stats for the successful battle:

n  CP: 950

n  HP: 410

Order of my deck: Five zeroes, then high-level attack cards, hi-potions, cures (at least three of them so you can cast curaga), elixir, then two more zeros (one of them a cure card). Having zeroes at the front is crucial, so that you can reach them quickly and easily when Marluxia uses a sleight. During the Marluxia III fight I locked on and hammered away at Marluxia, using cures when necessary and zeroes to break sleights. He went down in no time. :D Even when I was trying to beat him the first few times, I got the sense that the battle (Marluxia III) was pretty easy and quick because my cards were never broken while I was attacking him. The only difficult part was avoiding his sleights and healing after accidentally being caught in one.

Tips for the sleights:

n  When he throws Doom at you and you’ve run out of zero cards, don’t panic. Just reload. Reloading takes way less time than the ‘doom’ countdown and if you put zeroes at the front of your deck you can access them quickly to avoid dying. I found this sleight less annoying than the one that scatters all your cards. Your cards being scattered means that you’re vulnerable, and Marluxia can attack you while you’re trying to get your cards back. It was so frustrating. :(

n  If you get caught in Marluxia’s ‘scattering cards’ sleight, get back your zero cards first so you can break any sleights he throws while you’re getting your cards back. Equal priority should be your healing cards so you can heal if you get caught in an attack. (During my battle Marluxia tended to follow the ‘scattering cards’ sleight with another attack.)

n  Use zeroes for all of the sleights he throws at you. Even the less serious ones. It’s not worth risking getting damaged a lot just to save your zeroes for Doom and Scattered Wind.

Other tips: Don’t use sleights for Marluxia III. You really don’t need any. You should be fine hacking away at his hp with single cards.

To be honest, I laughed out loud during Marluxia’s death scene. People online were right when they said that Marluxia sounded like he was severely constipated during that moment. :’D      

The ending cutscene was so emotional, I almost cried. The conversation between Sora and Repliku, with Sora telling him that it doesn’t matter that he’s a clone, was bittersweet because I know what happens to Repliku after he leaves Sora and the gang.

I felt a bit sorry for Namine, because she clearly was sad that Sora chose to regain his old memories and lose the ones she created (which meant forgetting about her). Still, it was for the best. Those memories of Namine were fake anyway, and it would’ve been sad if Sora forgot Riku and Kairi forever. Plus, Donald and Goofy were also affected by what Namine did. If Sora chose not to get back his memories, they would lose their own memories forever too.

That moment when Sora was in the pod and remembered Kairi was really sweet. :’) When did that take place, though? Right after he got in there? I always thought that he remembered Kairi not long before he woke up in KH2. Anyway, his remembering Kairi was a perfect place to end his story at.  

Other Notes:

*  Sora is a really, really good friend. It would’ve been within his right to ditch Riku as a friend, considering that Riku (before being possessed) sided with Maleficent and acted pretty shittily toward Sora, but Sora still cares for Riku and wants him to return to Destiny Islands with him.  

*  Kairi turning into Namine: I much prefer the animation that occurred in the GBA. In the GBA version it really looked like Sora’s memory was being edited, because you could literally see Kairi morphing into Namine. Plus, it was super creepy. In the PS2 version it just looked like he saw Namine briefly, which didn’t feel as compelling.

*  I don’t know if it’s because I was playing in Beginner Mode, but all the bosses up until Twilight Town were extremely easy to beat. The first boss I had real trouble beating was Vexen (which surprised me, because I found him easy in the GBA version). Riku 3 was also harder than he was on GBA for me, but maybe that’s because I had no sleights at that point.  

Quick Critique: Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Before I even get to the meat of this: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME, IT IS VERY BROKEN. Again, even if you loved the comic and love turn-based RPGS: DO NOT GIVE THIS COMPANY MONEY, THEY RELEASED A BROKEN GAME.

Joe Mad is one of my favorite artists and I read the Battle Chasers comic pretty much just to see him draw pretty things. I only just read it a year or two ago, so I thankfully avoided the whole incident of him bailing on the series and leaving it unfinished after a main plot twist. The actual story (and most of the writing) is kind of just Dungeons and Dragons meets generic anime stuff, but it had enough moments and unique ideas here and there to make the comic series worth it, even this many years after its initial release. So Battle Chasers the comic is pretty good. Battle Chasers the video game, however, is a steaming pile of garbage.

This game is so unfinished and slapped together that I'm just going to list out a stream of the constant issues it has: It crashes. A LOT. It's not just one thing going wrong, it crashes all over the place and multiple times at different spots (inventory screen, leaving a dungeon, changing screens, and so on) I actually had a crash during the ending credits It locks up every time I try to enter the Arena forcing me to force close the game I finally managed to enter the Arena (apparently some of the difficulties work and others don't), it's a series of battles with a 20 minute time limit, I'm doing the hardest difficulty to get the final prizes, get through multiple rounds where I'm one turn away from the entire party dying or I lucked out and a character dodged an instant kill move, I'm at the last boss with 2 minutes left on the clock, deliver the killing blow with 23 seconds left on the clock, I get the Playstation level trophy for completing the Arena, the game showers me with prizes, I leave the Arena, I open the menu, the game crashes and upon relaunching sets me back at the beginning of the Arena having made no progress at all and with none of the prizes. I think I just instantly skipped over anger, sunk back in my chair, and whispered "mother fuckers" to myself for a few minutes After a battle, I lost the ability to interact with any objects. Seeing as how the dungeon required me to flip a switch to advance, I had to quit the game. This happened multiple times Frequent hitches and freezing for a second on the map, exploring, and in battle Menus aren't responsive for a few seconds after opening them I had a story scene fail to load and the game just displayed a screen full of that "missing image" pink I had a different story scene fail to load but I still got the subtitles. This one was a major story sequence so it wasn't repeatable the next time I played the dungeon so I would have liked to have seen that The voice acting is Sega Saturn levels of bad. They're horrible choices for the characters but then poorly acted on top of that. And they apply random odd filters over the readings. There's a scene in the open air in a town where your characters talk to each other but Gully sounds like her lines were recorded in a particularly echo-y bathroom. The only character I cared for was The Collector, a sinister but gleeful little monster that is likely eating the remains of dead bosses that you bring it. The Collector deserves to be in a better game than this one The text size is WAY too small The walking speed is slow. If you doubled the walking speed, it would still be too slow Battles are slow both in animation and action speed and how many hits it takes to kill a grunt enemy The core combat system is tedious and relies far too much on crits and applying status effects. Most end game fights devolve into who can apply the most debuffs to the other team and then spamming special moves that gain extra traits if the enemy has specific debuffs The music is so laid back that it (rightfully) just seems uninterested in being a part of this game, even during battles. The soundtrack is so forgettable and uninteresting that I usually turned the game audio almost off and listened to the BBC while I played. The Shipping Report pretty much matches the pace and excitement of this game Totally unnecessary crafting mechanics By the time you get enough crafting materials to build a weapon, it's worse than what you get from dungeon crawling You can't sort your crafting materials alphabetically, so when you're looking up how many of a quest item you need, have fun sorting through that mess Totally unnecessary fishing mini-game Every time you enter battle, the UI flashes a move description. I think it's loading the last thing you used in the previous battle Occasional multiple second pauses at the start of a battle before the UI will display or you can interact with it in any way Clunky menu UI Loot-based drops that do nothing to make the game more interesting Loot that isn't even interesting or exciting because most of the equipment is very similar and the vast majority of what you find is just crafting materials you won't use Major side-quests and items that are gated by random loot drops. You have to hope the characters show up on the map and then hope they drop the item you need (usually multiple times) or else start a dungeon from scratch and do it all over again Semi-randomized dungeons where the actual rooms barely change but their order does, so combined with the need to grind, the dungeons get really boring and just have you looking for the exits rather than rewarding you for exploring. Later dungeons even repeat pieces of earlier dungeons Items in shops are stupidly expensive for how little they change your stats and for the piddly amount enemies actually pay out or what items sell for. While spending a night at the inn cost me 40 coins, selling a purple rank weapon only got me 17 coins. It's actually faster to play through the whole first dungeon and get the health and mana refill before the boss than it is to grind out the money to stay a night at the inn for a large chunk of the game Just about every item you find in the wild will raise one stat but then lower multiple other ones so you kind of just have to pick one stat for a character to use and min/max the hell out of it Items in your inventory will mark themselves as new even though you've seen them before Items in the world will still sparkle as if they're unchecked even though you already have them If you have to close and restart a dungeon (say because the game crashed or locked up), it will acknowledge that you've been through the rooms but respawn the enemies past a seemingly random point. I had one dungeon where the objective was to kill two mini-bosses, I did so, saved the game in case it crashed at the boss, and upon reloading it, the mini-bosses respawned even though I had the objective that said they were dead checked off Every time the game crashes, it resets your super meter. So you can go through a dungeon, build up your meter, save it for the boss fight, the game crashes, you reload at the boss, and now you have no meter and you're at a serious disadvantage Perks and equipment will unequip themselves (this may be related to all the crashes) I met an enemy without warning that was vastly stronger than anything I'd seen in the game before, I could only do 80 damage to it per turn, and every turn it could heal itself for 84 health. And for some reason I wasn't allowed to run away from the fight so I had to sit there for 10 minutes turn by turn hitting the enemy, watching it heal, and letting it whittle down my party's health. Dying then made me lose a chunk of my money Apparently those are special enemies that offer a special reward if beaten, but it wasn't until I was at the final dungeon that I ever saw them again. I don't know if the game was broken and would no longer spawn them or what Another dungeon had a bunch of enemies that I tore through with no problem, and then I got to the boss and it killed each member of my party in 1 hit. Dying, again, made me lose a chunk of my money. So the lesson is to never sell anything until you can fully afford the thing you're trying to buy because you never know when the game is going to throw balancing out the window and punish YOU for it I don't think you can manually save without quitting the game. But quitting the game dumps everything it loaded into memory or something because when you load the game back up, it can take 40 seconds to load into your first battle. Given all the crashes, you have to save and quit often, so get used to watching the first 15 seconds or so of the opening cutscene because you can't skip to the title screen until that plays out The trophies aren't properly proofread and sometimes won't award when you earn them and instead pop the next time you load the game If a character dies from a status effect at the start of their turn, the UI is not graceful I would love to hear some kind of justification on the game's balancing because the way it's set up is that you beat a dungeon, unlock the next story dungeon, but you're not actually strong enough to progress the story yet, so you have to go back and grind the dungeon a you've already finished to level up a bit. You pretty much have to beat each level on each difficulty before you can move ahead, so by the time you're ready to move the story along, you're really, really sick of the previous dungeon Characters not in your party don't gain any experience from battle, so the game actively discourages you from trying new characters. I was level 10 when I unlocked Knolan, but he was only level 9 and the more I use my normal team, the further Knolan falls behind, so I have no reason to ever add him to my party. Changing team members just means you have to redo all the grinding you've done to level them up and hope you get some loot drops for them. Maybe it's just how I play the game, but there's really only one viable team. You HAVE to have Calibretto on your team because he's the only decent healer. Garrison is the only one that can do any decent damage. Gully is slow and focuses on defense, while Monika has high evasion, good damage, and can bog enemies down with stat debuffs so Monika is way more useful Doing end game clean up, I used my weaker teammates because my main team stopped earning experience from the early dungeons, I met those special pirate enemies with this team, was happy to have a chance to fight them, but the pirates scale to your strongest team not the team you're actually using so my level 9, 12, and 17 characters got destroooyed by the level 30 enemies The team couldn't even do New Game + properly. Starting NG+ causes you to lose all your items, so all that time you spent on random drops to get the ultimate weapons and armor was totally wasted. It's completely unnecessary to do this because all the weapons are level gated. So if you reset the character levels, you stop them from having access to the top gear from the start, but once they level up, they get their hard earned weapons back. That would have been the competent way to handle NG+ here New Game + starts you off with the whole team, but it doesn't properly handle that you've unlocked characters before their normal unlocking event, so the shops won't sell you their perk bonus or costume items. Even if you come back at the end of the game when you'd normally have those characters, the game still treats them like they haven't been unlocked yet

Even with its many, MANY glaring flaws, they have the audacity to not actually finish the game's story. You slog through all of this, beat the final boss, and the ending is barely more than "hey, buy some DLC or a sequel".

So, yeah, don't spend money on this game. The perk system is kind of neat though. You get points when you level up and you can cash them in on an attack path or a defense path. As you buy perks on each path, every 20 points you spend unlocks a bonus perk that can offer some substantial stat boosts. You can respec for free, so you can mess around with different choices as you slooowly grind out levels or boss fight currency to get more points.

Battle Chasers is bad but not in the way that most low budget games are bad. The art's great so the game looks fantastic and draws you in. It's the quality design sensibilities and usability in the game that are godawful, the gameplay is as dry as it comes, and it's an unfinished mess. Everything about this screams that the team got a slew of crowdfunding money but then nobody on the team actually knew how to make a good video game so this got rushed out the door without proper testing or fixes to hit a deadline. Battle Chasers makes me question whether Playstation cert matters. If this game, with its constant crashes and 100% reproducible lock-ups, can be released for sale, then clearly nobody is checking the actual game or doing anything remotely resembling quality control.