...

Overall, this is a short and sweet game about a unionized team of magical girls fighting for better working conditions. The beach episode was done tastefully, the villain was interesting, and there was non-binary representation among the cast. 10/10 and I would read a fanfiction about this game.

I saw this in a review of Hero Hours Contract and thought it sounded amazing and like something I needed to play. After spending maybe a little under an hour with it I can say I like basically everything about it except for actually playing it, which I'm straight up not having a good time with.

Characters? Great.

Art style? Great.

Story premise? Great.

UI? Passable, and it has some clarity issues about what effect doing certain things will have or what effect they did have, like the feedback for what you do at the negotiating table is pretty ambiguous, and it took me longer than it should've to even figure out how to tell how many of what resources I even have because it's not clearly displayed anywhere.

Explanation for how to progress through the game? Technically exists, barely, I guess? What am I supposed to be doing, playing through the normal levels and getting happiness gems to get money/free time to spend on doing stuff with people to get nebulous upgrades that may or may not actually do anything meaningful? Going through the levels in the tower that seem to be what probably progresses the story? I am guessing about all of these things because it doesn't really tell you when you start playing.

Heavy dependence on RNG? Uh, whatever the opposite of great is. Doing the normal levels seemed fun at first because there's no way to really fail, you just get better rewards for completing more stuff within the turn limit. The rewards for fully clearing a level seem to be a lot better than just mostly clearing one though, and whether or not you can fully clear one seems to come down to enemy RNG deciding to cooperate or run away from you.

And then on the tower levels that are (presumably) the story progression ones there actually is a fairly low time limit and they're very possible to fail. And the fourth one of those seems much more dependent on RNG than on any of my own decisions for whether I can beat it or not. Did my character with a random chance of getting extra attacks not get the extra attack I needed? I lose. Did one of the enemies randomly move in the wrong direction so now I can't chain my attack between the enemies? I lose. Did [insert any other thing up to the whims of RNG here]? You get the idea.

The UI stuff would be easily fixable by just putting a little thing on the screen in the home base that actually shows you how many you have of money/time/gems at all times and by actually having clear feedback when you select options at the negotiating table (which would already be much clearer with the previous suggestion because you could see the counters increase/decrease if there actually were one on the screen). It was not obvious at first that I was literally just directly purchasing money/time instead of offering gems as a bargaining chip to negotiate for more of them.

And then the actual strategy sections...well, either make them a lot less RNG-based, which is relatively straightforward, or give the player more ways to compensate for unexpected/bad things happening, which can be more complicated, both to figure out how to implement and for players to engage with if it adds complexity.

Also give me a pause menu or something so I can change the settings while I'm in the game. If it exists I couldn't find the button for it, and needing to exit out of it to see if it'd let me change the difficulty from normal to easy so I don't have to deal with the annoying level made me lose any interest in trying it again.

Great idea, love some stuff about it, but the overall execution isn't really doing it for me. The stuff I liked about it I liked more than P5R and had more fun with it overall than with that though, so that's something.

🍴- how do you feel about cannibalism? 🔨- do you prefer to fix your victim to keep torturing later or to kill them? ⚰-what do you do with the body?

for phi and epiphany <3

Ask my ocs things!

I'm going to use they/them for Phi throughout as their use of she/he is generally dependant on their presentation.

🍴- how do you feel about cannibalism?

Phi:

Under normal circumstances, I don't think it's something they'd think about doing but I feel like they'd find it oddly fascinating. They've totally read Bones & All! 🤭

However they're not under normal circumstances; I ship them with a fucking vampire and there's also some other stuff with their family/backstory, so... talking more practically they would consider it if the person was dead anyway and if they were cooked at least medium well.

Epiphany:

Finds the idea kind of gross(and is secretly pretty judgemental of your guy's cult btw even though she knows them)! She'll happily have a taste of MC's blood though!

🔨- do you prefer to fix your victim to keep torturing later or to kill them?

Phi:

As a MC they are not actually looking to kill or torture. If threatened they could kill, and would possibly have a little moment of torture as a treat payback, but they're not particularly sadistic. If a fellow MC got hurt they'd probably have a go at patching them up!

Epiphany:

She's not really looking to kill because she doesn't often realise how violent she's being. When she's in that place she would focus on hurting/torturing rather than killing MC, but she's not necessarily in a state to patch them up. If MC is still breathing when she sobers up she would probably patch them up. If they're not easily fixable and they won't stop whining she would kill them. She doesn't want broken toys!

⚰-what do you do with the body?

Phi:

They read murder and horror novels so you just know they know some creative ways to dispose of a body! If you were to ask them this question they would want more details. Where is this body, how long ago did they die, etc... in some circumstances the part above about cannibalism would come into play, because it's a fairly effective method of disposal!

Epiphany:

She would rather not deal with the disposal herself. If she can get away with calling the police on an imaginary attacker she will. If not, she'll basically throw money at the problem and get in touch with some pretty shady "experts". If she's really struggling she might have to call daddy!

It’s Hip To Be Circular.

‘In the linear economy, raw natural resources are taken, transformed into products and get disposed of. On the opposite, a circular economy model aims to close the gap between the production and the natural ecosystems cycles – on which humans ultimately depend upon.’ (Circular Economy: Definitions, Principles, Benefits and Barriers, YouMatter)

Today, most products are created with a linear economy in mind. Where something is made to be bought and used, but eventually thrown away. Since the introduction of recycling, the world has tried to move towards eliminating waste by providing us with an opportunity to divide our rubbish into sections: cardboard and paper, tins and glass, and plastic. The idea behind this is that items coming packaged in these materials can be ‘easily’ collected, sorted through, recycled and reused.

We now know that it is not that simple. Statistics have shown us that a lot of materials do not get to their final destination. In 2017, around thirty five thousand tonnes of plastic was made, approximately two thousand tonnes was recycled and approximately five thousand tonnes was combusted. That leaves around twenty six thousand tonnes in our landfills. (Facts and Figures about Materials, Waste and Recycling, EPA.GOV)

So how can we encourage brands to move towards a circular economy, and what can we do as individuals to try and limit our waste as much as possible? On Circle-Economy’s website, they list the 7 key elements of a circular economy as being:

Prioritising regenerative resources

Preserving and extending what is already made

Using waste as a resource

Rethinking the business model

Designing for the future

Incorporating digital technology

Collaborating to create joint value

We’re already seeing companies being built with a circular economy at the forefront. Electronics company Fairphone sell phones with the workers and the product in mind - they ensure everyone in their supply chain is treated fairly and they deliver a product designed to last and that is easily fixable (unlike apple who design their phones to break down over a certain period of time). They also ask for you to send back your old phones, so that they may break them down correctly, and salvage what they can to reuse.

Fashion brands, like TattyMoo, Ilk + Ernie and Desert Fox Collective, design and produce clothing with less waste at the heart, by only using dead stock. This way, they help the environment by not producing more fabric, (which we know is a huge producer of greenhouse gasses each year), but by taking surplus fabric and giving it new life. Accessory brands Forage and Find Me, CLED and Argent Silversmith also reuse materials such as plastic waste found on beaches, glass and gold to create beautiful, one of a kind pieces.

Through these companies, we see the start of a future where using dead stock, recycled materials and waste can become a common, normal thing. Through their leadership and initiative, we may (and hope to!) see other companies following where they tread. It’s important to remember, though, that these products ultimately come to us and so, we also play a part in the life of an item. Most of my waste is either food scraps, or recycling, but there are a few things I do in order to keep my waste at a minimum, (which has some hoarding tendencies), but I do try to use every last piece of material. For example:

When out food shopping, I try to find items that come in glass jars over tins, boxes or plastic packaging. Because I buy things in bulk, I’m always needing jars to put loose nuts, seeds, flour, cereal... anything and everything in! Buying items in glass containers ensures two things, the first being that I’m not buying storage containers, and the second being that I’m giving something already existing a second life.

When I have things delivered to my home I keep the cardboard boxes. This way if I need to send someone a package, or wrap a present, I usually always have a box to use. I don’t need to buy a new one. I also save wrapping paper and gift bags to reuse. If I can save it, I will.

I still have a 1L bottle of shampoo that has been going strong for almost a year now and when it’s empty I’ll keep the container and use it again at a zero waste shop here in Paris which sells bulk shower gel, shampoo, laundry detergent, washing up liquid... you name it, they have it. Have a look if there’s a zero waste shop like this in your area and use your bottles time and time again. If plastic is good at one thing, it’s good at not breaking down. By keeping it, you’re ensuring it doesn’t sit on a landfill for eternity, and ensuring that you have a sturdy container for liquids for years to come!

The idea behind a circular economy means everything can be used, reused and repurposed time and time again. Nothing is thrown out or discarded, but passed on to be given a new form of life. If you have things you no longer want or need, don’t discard them. Offer them to friends and family or charity shops. Attend swaps, flea markets, host a wardrobe clear out with your pals... anything is better than the bin. There are so many good swap apps out there (OLIO is one of my faves and works well in the UK, if anyone has an alternative that is good for France, please let me know.)

As always, all sources and brands mentioned are linked above. I’d love to know your thoughts on a circular economy. Do you think it’s possible? Do you think something like this could be implemented on a global scale soon? I think there’s a lot of work still to be done, but hopefully we can, one day, live in a world where everything produced is made to last, and can be easily given a new life if needed.

Until next time,

The Sustainable Swap.

Convert FLAC Files To MP3 Information With Magic FLAC To MP3 Converter. (Flac To Mp3

Convert FLAC to MP3. Up to now, I largely ignored this complete debate, flac2mp3 but just lately I discovered myself in a dialogue with someone I significantly respect who held the opinion that FLAC was inferior to WAV when it comes to the music content. Specifically, he believes one thing is misplaced in the conversion from WAV to FLAC and that a "second-technology" WAV ensuing from the conversion WAV (1st generation) → FLAC → WAV (2nd era) could be inferior to the original. Moreover, he believes that such lack of high quality means it is best to never purchase FLAC files when WAV recordsdata can be found because converting the FLAC back to WAV can be a poor copy of the original. Now that's the massive query isn't it? Can you really hear the distinction? Read very fastidiously, as many producers will claim something to the effect that their high-res music player reveals more of the original musical efficiency than an MP3 player or good mobile phones." Saying high-res is best than MP3 is not any higher than saying a CD is healthier than an MP3 file. In fact it is, however many cannot hear the difference between an MP3 file and a CD (or a high-resolution observe for that matter). Think you possibly can? Try this online check from (make sure you pay attention on the perfect-quality headphones or speaker system you might have). John Siau, Vice President of Benchmark Media Systems, wrote a wonderful summary of what excessive-res music is—and is not It's an ideal introduction to the topic. Evidently, as a way to expertise the audible advantages of excessive-resolution music, you need a high-high quality part at every stage of the sign path. For the purposes of this dialogue, meaning music recorded, mastered, and encoded in high-res; a digital audio participant—the DAC and amplifier elements—that helps high-res playback; and headphones capable of reproducing excessive-res music. Your playback will only be as good because the weakest link in your system. And simply because Tidal does not have the identical attract as the big three — Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music Spotify vs. Apple Music vs. Google Play Music: Which Is Best? Spotify vs. Apple Music vs. Google Play Music: Which Is Finest? Whereas there are many music streaming providers round, there are three main ones that stand out above the others: Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music. But which is greatest? Read Extra — don't fret about not being able to discover something to listen to. At the time of writing, Tidal boasts forty eight.5 million tracks and a hundred seventy five,000 music movies.

When in 2001 Apple released iPod it modified every thing. It was by far the most effective day for listeners and the doomsday for artists. The music has misplaced uniqueness since all we needed was increasingly, over and over. The compression was a blessing and a curse. If previously, we had ten albums and had been glad to get pleasure from those tens of tracks, now we are so spoiled by the quantity that we completely forgot concerning the high quality. Compressed music is only 10% of what an artist was making an attempt to do. It is like reading a plot of a movie on Wikipedia relatively than going to the cinema. But anyway, some folks were still left unsatisfied because of that loss, and that is when FLAC came out, a sheer bliss so to say. To increase on that final point, the ZTE Axon 7 is able to playing Hello-Fi recordsdata up to 24-bit at 192 kHz. This puts it in the same ballpark as the HTC 10, but it comes with a extreme restriction: Hello-Fi audio recordsdata can only be performed by way of ZTE's inventory music player. To make matters worse, the stock ZTE player is extraordinarily restricted by way of functionality—it is actually capable of doing nothing more than enjoying and pausing your audio information. Couple this with a fairly restricted stock equalizer that solely consists of four presets, and it makes the Axon 7's overall audio accessibility fairly poor. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) compresses the unique audio knowledge (CD and WAV and so on.) by the lossless information compression algorithm, so this format is changing into more and more well-liked on the earth as a result of the FLAC audio information won't lose the unique audio high quality while taking part in, and will have a much smaller file dimension compared to CDA and WAV codecs. There are many FLAC music sources now, so people can easily find and download FLAC songs from the web to enjoy high quality music, or rip the CDA audio tracks from audio CDs to FLAC information instantly. The LG V20 helps lossless audio, in each FLAC and and ALAC audio formats. It can additionally play anything up to 32-bit at 384 kHz, however only by means of the preinstalled LG Music app. If you listen to lossy audio codecs equivalent to MP3 and AAC, don't worry, LG hasn't left you out. The LG Music app additionally comes with an honest equalizer for lossy music, together with a five-band equalizer for those who wish to manually regulate their sound. The equalizer has six presets: Normal, Pure surround, QuadBeat, Bass booster, Treble booster, and Vocal booster. On high of that, a handbook mode lets you play with the principle Hz, so you can discover a excellent candy spot. However, there is something to be mentioned for ripping your music in a lossless format like FLAC. While you probably won't notice greater quality , lossless is nice for storing your music if you happen to plan on converting it to different formats later onвЂ"since changing a lossy format to a different lossy format (e.g., AAC to MP3) will produce recordsdata of noticeably lower quality. So, for archival purposes, we suggest FLAC. However, you should use any lossless format you want, since you possibly can convert between lossless codecs with out changing the standard of the file. I bought a Google Chromecast Audio for my funds audiophile system , www.magicaudiotools.com as a result of problems with Apple's AirPlay. I like the Chromecast, however as I listened to my favourite music on Spotify Premium, I used to be disillusioned. The audio high quality was noticeably worse than casting Spotify to AirPlay. I made a decision to figure out what was occurring and see if I may repair the audio high quality issues. I believe I've realized what's improper, and sadly I do not think it's fixable. Read on to study extra.

Spiritual Spotlight: Jubilex, the Faceless Lord

Chaotic Evil Demon Lord of Poisons, Ooze, and Sloth

Domains: Chaos, Destruction, Evil, Water Subdomains: Catastrophe, Demon, Flotsam, Rage

The Complete Book of the Damned, pg. 60~61

Obedience: Submerge a small (no larger than the tip of a pinkie finger), severed piece of a human body in a vial of acid and chant praises to Jubilex as you watch and meditate upon the flesh dissolving in the fluid. Benefit: Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws against poison.

An easy enough Obedience to perform, though the reward is somewhat underwhelming, but there’s also the small but important caveat that it must be a human body used to fuel the ritual’s power. Human worshipers can simply cut pieces of themselves off and get healed as needed, but nonhuman worshipers will need to find or create a human corpse to harvest from. Thankfully, the portions required for the ritual are so small that a single severed hand can last for days, provided some method to prevent rotting is used.

The ritual is simple and easy to conceal from Good-aligned folk or easily-squicked party members, especially if you establish a character’s tendency to take parts of their kills for one reason or another. Few people would raise much of an eyebrow at, say, a Barbarian or the party Necromancer hacking a finger off a corpse for some purpose or another (after the fourth or fifth time it happens, at least).

EVANGELIST

Boon 1: Spreading Slime. Gain Corrosive Touch 3/day, Web 2/day, or Stinking Cloud 1/day.

Fairly weak in the grand scheme of things. Corrosive Touch is simply underwhelming by the time you gain access to it barring some edge cases, though Web 2/day can certainly be useful for subduing fleeing enemies. Stinking Cloud is an especially nice spell to have in your back pocket, though. Some nice, if niche, battlefield control.

Boon 2: Deliquescent Blessing. Unintelligent Oozes will never willingly attack you. Intelligent Oozes always start out friendly towards you. You gain Ooze Empathy, which works similarly to a Druid’s Wild Empathy, but only on Oozes in order to calm, wrangle, and command them. In addition, 1/day, you gain the power to cast a specialized version of Baleful Polymorph as a spell-like ability that transforms the target into an Ooze; 3 HD or lower creatures become a Gray Ooze, 4~9 HD become a Gelatinous Cube or Ochre Jelly, and anything with 10 or above HD becomes a Black Pudding. The target’s gear is not transformed with them, and is instantly engulfed by their new form.

Oh now THAT’S a power! Baleful Polymorph is already a hell of a Save Or Suck spell, but this one lets you turn the target into an oozy, friendly servant! There’s fewer things more satisfying than instantly slopping the enemy’s tank and then siccing it on their allies (barring Dominating the tank, but where’s the flair?), and the fact that their gear may end up completely destroyed by their own acidic excretions is just icing on the cake. Take their shape? Fixable. Take their life? More difficult, but still reparable. Take their gear? Now THAT’S a setback they’ll take a long time to recover from.

Boon 3: Faceless Form. You become a piece of Jubilex, your skin taking on a green tinge as gelatinous eyes sprout all over your body. You become Amorphous (immune to precision damage and sneak attacks), and gain All-Around Vision and Compression. In addition, you gain a touch attack that deals 4d8 acid damage.

A lovely assortment of powers for the sneaky, rogue-ish types and heavy frontline tanks while giving some much needed Sneak-Attack-proof padding to the squishiest of characters by, ironically, making them squishier. Sadly, this ability isn’t particularly game-breaking as some of the other 3rd-tier Boons are, but this handful of powers is always active, always available, and is never completely useless. I can think of a LOT of uses for an acidic attack that’s always on, beyond damaging enemies.

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EXALTED

Boon 1: Sign of the Faceless Lord. You gain Grease 3/day, Delay Poison 2/day, or Slow 1/day.

Lets be real here: Delay Poison and Slow may as well not even be a choice. Neither of those compares to the sheer utility and comedic potential that having Grease available 3/day has.

Edit: I’m an idiot who undervalued Slow. Grease is still a solid pick, but Slow is almost always better if you know you’re going to have a big boss fight that day.

Boon 2: Poisonous Touch. 3/day, you may cast Poison as a spell-like ability. If you strike an enemy with a melee weapon attack, you may cast it as a swift action targeting that enemy.

Tacking 1d3 Con damage a round for 6 rounds onto a melee strike can put an end to most enemies not immune to poison rather swiftly. One of the best things about Poison is that the damage it causes makes saving against it harder, creating a nasty feedback loop for the poor sap suffering from it. Having it usable as a swift action makes it a MUCH better combat spell than it otherwise is, but still having the option to deliver it with a touch means it still retains its potential as a sneaky assassination tool.  

Boon 3: Call Forth the Spawn. 3/day, you may cast Destruction as a spell-like ability. Any creature killed by this attack is instead transformed into an Ochre Jelly under your command. This jelly dissolves into muck after 1 hour.

I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn’t misreading that. Destruction?! Failing a save against that just deals a flat 150 damage (regardless of if you’re a Demoniac or just rocking the Fiendish Obedience feat), and succeeding the save still deals 10d6 damage! If they survive that first blast, most humanoids aren’t likely to last through the second! While this ability doesn’t have much utility outside of combat as the Evangelist boons do, it’s really, really hard to find a downside to the ability to use Destruction three times a day for free.

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SENTINEL

Boon 1: Toxification. You gain Ray of Sickening 3/day, Pernicious Poison 2/day, or Eruptive Pustules 1/day.

None of these spells are particularly ‘OH MY GOD TAKE THAT’ when compared to one another. This is both good and bad, as it means each of them can fit into different playstyles rather easily without having to be forced into a slot like a puzzle piece that doesn’t otherwise fit. Ray of Sickening is decent for penalizing targets from a range, Pernicious Poison is a niche but powerful spell , and Eruptive Pustules makes creatures that get into melee with you regret targeting you in the first place, which benefits both ranged attackers and melee masters. 

Boon 2: Abyssal Humors. You not only become utterly immune to poison, but you also become a poison factory. 3/day, as a swift action, you can exude any poison you know of so long as the cost of a dose does not exceed 50gp/HD. While exuding the poison, you may either collect it or perform various actions as part of the same swift action: apply an injury or contact poison to a weapon, deliver a contact poison via touch attack, or exhale an inhaled poison against an adjacent foe. Any poison created by ability turns to gritty, harmless dust after 1 hour.

Hm. Hmm. Alright. I can get behind this. I can really get behind this. Normally poisons aren’t spectacularly useful because of the action cost needed to apply them in the heat of battle or the foresight needed to use them ahead of time, but this power completely bypasses that annoyance while also letting you tailor the flavor of pain you want to deliver to someone. The fact you can make a toxic touch attack, slap it across a weapon, or effectively use it as a breath weapon as part of the same swift action is what truly makes this ability go from Alright to Really Good, Actually.        

Boon 3: Roiling Mind. You become immune to mind-affecting effects.

Compared to literally every other boon Jubilex grants, this one is the one that falls hardest into Boring But Practical. It’s not flashy, it’s not particularly unique, and it won’t instantly end an encounter, but it will keep encounters from being instantly ended. It’s a one-string-attached full, constant immunity to all mind-affecting effects, and because the Sentinel Boons are based around assisting the sneaky poison-user type, it’s typically mounted on a character that can actually, fully benefit from the immunity.

Well, it’s finally done.  After all these years of just refusing to play the damn game, I beat Dark Souls 2 in its entirety.  Which means, I have now beaten the entire series to 100% completion, and it is time to make a decision.

I’ll start with the game itself.  I know a lot of people identify it as the jankiest, and that it just doesn’t function right.  I’m not quite sure I’d agree with that entirely?  It’s definitely weird, though.  Like, when adaptability is low and your roll sucks, you’ll be rolling through something but still take damage for reasons.  That’s kinda shitty.  And it’s only really fixable by keeping low weight and trying to allocate points there early on.  So we hope you enjoy playing melee only for most of the game.  Not that it makes sense to do anything else anyway.

What is a major problem is how many times your slow-ass character is surrounded by like 5 enemies.  Look, the Souls series is weird.  A single boss with big attacks is not really that threatening, but a room of three normal enemies is a death sentence if you aggro them all simultaneously.  There are a ton of bosses where the only real difficulty is crowd control.  Skeleton Lords, Ruin Sentinels, Looking Glass Knight, Twin Dragonriders, Throne Defender and Watcher, Duke’s Dear Freya, Executioner’s Chariot (which extra sucks because adds are infinite unless you kill the necromancers), Darklurker, the fucking Belfry Gargoyles, Royal Rat Authority.  Then in NG+ you get Lost Sinner summoning help, and the DLC introduces all kinds of fresh hell for you, like Elana (who I actually love, but only from lore standpoint), Lud and Zallen, the Ivory King, and the ganksquad.  So much of this game is difficulty by suddenly being surrounded by too many units, and there are locations that are outright impossible to get through without a bow or spells to draw one person at a time (the run to Velstadt and the Ancient Dragon most notably).

That said...this is probably the easiest of the games.  Not for any sensible reason like bosses just being easier or anything.  It’s because you can power-level like a motherfucker, and are almost encouraged to do so.  Levels scale so minimally that, at around level 200, you still only need around 50,000 souls to level.  That is not a high bar to set, and level 200 means you can pack a lot of different tools, including your melee weapon of choice, spells of choice, and still have a good HP pool and a solid roll.  Not gonna lie: actually love this fact.  I think that the series as a whole suffers from not really allowing you to mix-and-match sets.  A lot of things require specification, and quality builds are notoriously Not That Good.  So being able to fairly easily cap most relevant stats in the first playthrough is fantastic.

That said, then you have the negative: Soul Memory.  So, in this game, you can be summoned to help a player fight a boss, to regain your humanity without using the finite consumable Effigies.  This is good, because going hollow means your HP gets cut pretty sharply, up to 50% of your max life.  Which is stupid as hell, but whatever.  Now, to be summoned, you need to be in the right tier as other players.  Meaning that, if you want to be summoned reliably to fight Old Iron King, you need to be...not at Soul Memory 800k.  Otherwise it takes like 3 days to get your 30 sunlight medals you need for that spell to get the trophies.  Not that I’m bitter.  Basically, as you fight the boss, you gain more souls, which puts you at a higher soul memory, which puts you out of range of typical players, so you can’t really farm reliably or recover humanity reliably from easier bosses.  I like the idea of encouraging co-op, but the soul memory system is awful.  It probably also influences invasions, but fuck invaders.  If you invade people, you’re a piece of shit and I hope your system bricks.

As the last thing to note: the major complain I often see is “why are so many bosses just armored sword man; what is this, Smash 4?”  Which is super legit.  There are a lot of bosses that are just different variants on knight.  Especially in the main game, this made it really easy to reach Velstadt...and basically beat him no damage.  Because you know what’s happening now.  You know how the knight fight goes, and there’s nothing all that unique.  It’s very same-y.  Of course, this does nothing to stop me from getting my shit pushed in like 37 times against Fume Knight, but honestly fuck that asshole.

Lore-wise, I feel like this is the weakest of the games, but I also feel like it’s closest to what I would want out of a sequel.  I’m serious.  I think that DS1 presented a fairly complete story, that didn’t really have a need for continuation in this way.  DS2′s focus on bringing all these references to DS1 back is obnoxious, and the thing that holds it back the most.  Focus on kingdoms within the world all you want.  Focus on this entirely separate place called Drangleic and have it focus on all this unique stuff, in a place that doesn’t even know what the hell Lordran is or why the curse is showing up.  But keeping it separate was really what is lacking here.  Why is Ornstein just here?  Just hanging out?  Why is the statue for the Warriors of Sunlight still here when nothing else remained, and why is it near fucking Earthen Peak of all damn places?  Why do the four great lord souls from DS1 just show up on NG+ with the new four great souls?  Just keep them separate.  You didn’t have to do this.

There is, however, one thing I actually like that’s a tie-in, and that’s the queens.  I like the idea of Manus’ defeat resulting in the creation of these beings of the abyss showing up, and trying in their own ways to bring things back to the Dark.  It’s something that ties in nicely, but isn’t just a shallow reference without meaning.  It also helps that they’re pretty cool.  Elana is, as I mentioned, my favorite, which has a lot to do with her trying to poison a dragon to death.  Fuck that dragon up, girl.  Stupid bitch lizard ain’t got shit.  She’s also just the most outright conniving of the four, I think.

Overall, it’s not a terrible game, but it does feel very different.  I think the main thing I take away is that it’s still very much a Dark Souls game.  It’s all focused around difficulty meaning dying a lot, but this time with added penalties in the form of hollowing, and soul memory fucking literally everything up by putting you out of summon range whenever you suck and have to re-do runs to the boss, or try to farm levels to handle a problem.  Magic is still boring a shit, and this game is almost the worst offender considering all my best spell options were just throwing Dark Orb at shit until it stopped breathing because it was fast and had a stupidly high number of casts compared to everything else in the game.  I still feel like boss health is way too goddamn high given how unforgiving the game is toward any mistake in a fight, and how little variation there often is in a moveset.  I’ve said before that I enjoy this series largely because it’s an active playing process that lets you build up your character, and that stat allocations are something I adore above all else, but it’s just not doing it for me.  I’ve played about every type of build I can, in every game.  Magic is always boring and way less effective than heavy armor with a stick.  Melee weapons function very differently, but every major boss still boils down to learn pattern, dodge or block, attack one or maybe two times then back to defense so you don’t eat shit, repeat for 15 minutes until dead.  It’s...kinda boring by now.

Which leads me to this: I’m trading this entire series in for Etrian Odyssey V on Tuesday.  I don’t hate the games, but I find there is no further enjoyment to be had here.  I’m more invested in completing a build, which leads to a lot of time just spent grinding, and I experience more frustration with getting through a run than anything else, since the series has become more of a placeholder between games than something I actually want to play on its own.  In a weird way, it’s almost become too effective of a placeholder, and I could probably accomplish more significant things or branch out a bit instead of just replaying these whenever I’m bored and waiting on something else to come out.  So, I’m done.  I’m trading it all in, and honestly, thank god.

Name: Gavin Mason Crow Age: 25 Gender: Male Sexuality: Asexual Occupation: Hacker Affiliation: Neutral Faceclaim: Freddie Highmore Status: Taken

The Story

They call you The Hermit, an old soul trapped inside a young body. Others often thrive in numbers, but you thrive in your solitude, desperately needing a place to think on your own, alone but not lonely. It is a rarity for you to venture outside of your comfort zone, a computer and animal at your side are your daily companions. You believe the world is a mystery and while fascinated by it, you are much more intrigued by yourself and those closest to you. You are meticulous and often over-critical of yourself, focusing on the smallest of details, a quality that stems from your past, along with the relentless desire to prove yourself.

Connections:

Justice - There is something in who Justice is as a person that you admire. They seem to encompass everything you wish you could be, but aren’t. You have worked together in the past, only small jobs, giving answers when they couldn’t get them on their own, and even though you know what they do, you are never uncomfortable around them.

Death - Maybe it who he is, or maybe it’s the looks he sometimes gives you when no one else is watching, maybe you are imagining these looks but you can’t help but hold your breath and falter in your words whenever Death speaks to you.

The Chariot - You aren’t someone to make friends, not easily at least, so it was odd for you when the ease of your friendship with The Chariot blossomed. They are almost your exact opposite, spending their life behind a wheel in the real world while you are content with your fingers on a keyboard, but for some reason the two of you just work.

Past:

Gavin was born the third of four to an overwhelmed and underprepared middle-class family. The children were born close together, only four years between Gavin and his older brother and less than two between him and his younger sister. Four under seven was a handful in and of itself, but it became worse as it became obvious that Gavin was lagging behind the others. At first, his frazzled parents just assumed the delayed improvement was just him growing up at his own pace. However, as his younger sister’s vocabulary started to surpass his and he started to pull away even more from spending time with his siblings, his parents realized that perhaps there was something a bit more going on with their youngest son. It was the meltdowns, occurring nearly every time things got too loud or bright, that eventually got them to give up and seek professional help.

He was eight before the diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome was given. To the boy, the diagnosis unsurprisingly meant nothing, not even worth a pause in his current fascination of counting items around the room. However, to his parents this news was devastating, they had maintained hope that this was something “fixable” and not something that would stay with their son for the rest of his life. There was an upside to the diagnosis though, now that they knew the issue steps could be taken to work with it. Through therapy, Gavin did begin to speak more frequently and was starting to get better control over his meltdowns. While still quirky and behind where was “normal” for his age range, he was finally making progress.

By middle school, he was at the same intelligence level as peers his age, which meant that he could join the regular classes most of the day. This may have been good for his education, but it was very hard on him personally. He still had very poor social skills and got obsessive over his special interests. That, in combination with the fact that he came from the special education wing, did not bode well for his social status. He was bullied mercilessly when his siblings weren’t around. His older brothers got in a lot of fights those years, but Gavin did not care about the teasing he got on a regular basis. He just cared about his action figures and finding people who wouldn’t interrupt him when he told them about all that he had collected. Those people were few and far between though, and that, more than the bullying, made him feel like there was something wrong with him.

           High school was a better time. Gavin was still more socially awkward than your average freshman geek was, but at least now people knew better than to mock the guy with Asperger’s. He wasn’t exactly a bright student, but he was average. Until, one day when he was 16, he discovered the love of his life: computers. Obviously, he had seen and used computers before, but the first semester of his junior year he took a programming course and everything just clicked. Code was something that he could understand and manipulate. Unlike other people, he could hold a conversation with a computer, telling it what needed to be done and how to do it and getting the results he wanted. He learned code quickly, once he sets his mind to something it won’t take him long to get it done.

           Computers weren’t the only thing that made that class great though, there was also George. Despite high schoolers being kinder than their middle school selves, Gavin still did not have any friends outside of his siblings. This did not really bother him, per se, but he still was quite pleased by the prospect of having someone to discuss his newfound love with. George did not mind that Gavin would ramble on about the same things that they had talked about yesterday, nor did he really care that the other boy wouldn’t really carry on a conversation about something else that often. They would stay up late coding little programs and turning hacking into a game, taking turns playing the defender while the other tried to get past firewall after firewall. Their friendship forced Gavin to go outside of his comfort zone. It did not take long for him to realize that George was going to do things whether Gavin wanted to or not. So, if he wanted to talk to George about the code that they had been working on the night before, he had to go to the comic book store whether he wanted to or not.

           Once he had graduated high school, Gavin was a bit lost. There was a sudden loss of structure in his life that he had relied on, and George was moving away to go to university. Gavin wanted to follow his friend to university, but just going to the campus tour was enough to show him and his parents that being on site for university was not going to be for him. He ended up in a two year online program for computer sciences. This was the first time Gavin was actually bothered by his disability. He saw his siblings and friend move out and away, while he was still at home dependent on his parents. It was a feeling that he couldn’t fully shake, that he wasn’t “right” like the others were.

           After finishing his degree, things started to look up. His father’s company needed a part time computer tech and he was able to find freelance coding jobs on the side. It wasn’t exactly a high paying position, but it was a stable income and he enjoyed the work. Plus, he wasn’t expected to work face to face with others, most of his work could be done from home and that which couldn’t was usually by himself as well. Eventually he was able to make enough that he could move into a modest apartment for himself, not too far from his parents but enough that he felt more independent.

Present:

           Since then, Gavin has continued to do well for himself. In the five years since he graduated, he has built a name for himself in freelance coding. He also managed to build a name for himself in the hacker communities. Initially, the hacking jobs had been a way to connect with George despite being separated, a sort of competition of who could do the most impressive hacks. They wouldn’t mess up anything, just get enough evidence to prove that they had done it.  As time went on, George took part in this less and less, but Gavin thrived in the environment and continued to share his accomplishments with the online community well after his friend had fallen off the radar.

           It was likely this infamy that had the Arcana knocking on his door late one night. He didn’t want to open the door, but the pounding was so insistent that he feared they would come in one way or another. They didn’t really give him much choice in the matter, simply giving him instructions and a date to have it done by and motivating him with the threat of revealing who he was to the authorities. Gavin may not always be the fastest on the uptake with veiled statements, but he was able to tell that the authorities would not be as amused by his hacking escapades as the other hackers. So, he did the job, and he did it well. It was a fairly simple task, but the mob paid well. He became accustomed to their requests, though he would always refuse their offers to have him join. He is, after all, a freelancer.

Personality:

           Gavin has Asperger’s Syndrome. This disorder affects him in a few different ways, but the main one is his ability to socialize. He can have a hard time socializing, understanding social cues, and properly expressing himself. His speech is more formal than that of his peers, and he struggles to understand idioms and slang. He will take people at their word most of the time, and will have a hard time understand jokes and sarcasm. He can be a bit of a chatter box, and will ramble on about the things that he is currently interested in at great length if given the chance. He has a hard time sorting his thoughts into private thoughts and thoughts to verbalized, so if surprised or nervous he often blurts out whatever is on his mind. Another effect of his disorder is that he does not like changes in his routine, and will often get upset at differences that others might consider inconsequential. Despite being generally free of any outside deadlines and expectations, Gavin will set strict routines and schedules for himself to follow. Finally, his Asperger’s has come with two other diagnosis, general anxiety disorder and sensory processing disorder. His anxiety is well managed with his medication, but the sensory processing will still affect him if put in a situation with too much external stimuli.

           He comes off as rather cold or anxious to those who do not know him. He may also come off as cold to those he does care about, but that is not truly the case. Instead it is just because he has a hard time showing care and empathy. He looks up to people who are able to do what he is not, such as The Chariot who is able to experience the world out in it instead of just from behind the computer screen. He will not pay attention or will get frustrated with subjects that do not interest or affect him. However, he gets overly excited about things that he does care about. He does have anxiety issues that become apparent in situations that make him nervous. However, in the day to day he usually seems content and has a generally positive outlook on things.