So I apologize for my tardy reviews ^^;;;

Vivio, Mio, and Sheryl are all waiting in my queue but I still haven’t been able to tear myself away.

Luckily Tier has you covered for Vivio.  Awesome pics, check it out if ya haven’t already.  Check it out again if ya have, it’s great ^^

Had a whole post but it was mostly just inconsequential ranting so I’ll just leave it at this:  awesome game.  Single & multi both very solid.

Looks like I’m currently a low diamond 1v1 player though I’m happy to play whatever else. Send me a tweet if you’d like to look me up in game.

En taro tassadar!

And we’ll see if I can get those reviews out in the next week or two ^^;;;

以上！

Don’t know the exact instant it happened but that bad apple video is now the #1 all time most viewed video on niconico!  If you somehow haven’t seen it check it out here.

If you don’t have a niconico account here’s a youtube version:

While we’re at it, here’s some other tribute’s I’ve come across as the madness unfolded.  If you’re familiar with the characters and the themes, this medley is really awesome (niconico).  It takes the theme for each character as they appear on screen and somehow mashes it into one awesome song with the bad apple beat in the background.

For those that like source material, here’s the original video request that the awesome one was made to fulfill (niconico).  There’s actually a bunch of other videos that people made (some quite good), but I guess none of ‘em were able to snatch up those 8 million views like the silhouette one ^^;  The title loosely translates to [the uploader wants to see] Bad Apple PV [someone draw it!].

If you’d rather not dig up all of those other videos, someone combined a bunch of them into one ^^ (niconico). (fun starts around :40)

Or if you want the direct comparison of the silhouette vid to the original request, we’ve got that too :P (niconico).

And of course don’t forget the video that got onto CNN (niconico).

…or the one carved out of real apples (niconico).

Or if you’re tired of song being taken too seriously he’s a contribution that takes things another way ^^ (niconico).  Best enjoyed if you can understand the Japanese but I’m sure those familiar with the characters will be able to understand it just fine ^^

Anyhow that’s all today.  Alstroemeria Records ftw.

以上！

Combo post today that’s part site update, part rambling on my current activities… I’ve been sick with a stomach bug or something for the last week which unfortunately put a stop to the momentum I was gonna have with azunyan + brs reviews going up. Think I’m just about over it now, so /cross fingers.  BRS review will be out probably sometime in the next week? but in the meantime you can check out some lovely shots over at Cool & Spicy.

So then, first order of business I have no shame and just want to give myself a huge pat on the back for completing touhou 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and, as of June 28, 2010, 12!  About a year ago I set out to 1cc all of them on normal… now I can finally call that done ^^

And I didn’t even have to abuse the 3-power marisa B for mof :P (just found out about that.  man is that fun ^^)

calm before the storm

I won’t lie, it was a horrible 1cc for ufo… stocked up a full 8 lives for byakuren and threw away each and every one of them.  Cleared her final card with just 1 bomb left (damn was that nerve wracking).  My final  score was less than 2 previous failed attempts.  Ah well.  At least now I can actually practice that stage if I want to get good ^^;

Not sure how accurate it is but according to the in game timers…

27 hours of pcb, 31 hours of in, 17 hours of mof, 25 hours of sa, and 13 hours of ufo is roughly what it took (no data for eosd or pofv).  ‘course that includes for fun runs, easy runs, and the like, but still :P  Looks like it was taking me anywhere from 15-30 hours to complete a touhou… which seems a lot shorter than I woulda thought ^^;

Oh, and before I move on… for the record, lasers shouldn’t curve.  It’s not fair!  They’re lasers.  orz (you wouldn’t believe how many times i had to practice toramaru’s regular transition attacks -_-)  (also, mostly typed that as a loose reference to a penny arcade dialog ^^;)

Next up, prints!  Adorama recently had a 20×30 sale ($10 each) along with 25% off certain size photo books.  Decided to try each out for future reference.

First up, wanted to check high ISO performance for large prints.  The following was 50mm f/1.4, 1/125s, ISO 800.

Looks ok at this size, but if you’re pixel peeping the original resolution you can see it’s gotten moderately soft.  So, how’d the print turn out?

Honestly I think it turned out just fine for a print this size.  Given the viewing distance, the softness from the lens and noise reduction are still tolerable… especially if your critics aren’t photographers themselves ^^;  Ryoko and yui to give a sense of size ^^;  Here’s a close up of the print:

Gets kinda fuzzy but I think if you compare to the original… it’s just reproducing the original ^^;

Next, feito!  I really should’ve taken a pic I was 100% happy with but instead chose from my existing stuff.  100mm f/8, 1/5s, ISO 100.

Was more than  happy how this one came out.

Wanted to put this up somewhere in the house but alas my enthusiasm was met by reality talking it over with one of my roommates…

“Mmm… this would probably creep guests out, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Guess I better keep this one in my room, huh?”
“Yeah.”

…not that single glance in my room doesn’t already creep ‘em out :P

Once again a close up… still very sharp.  Love it.

I’m guessing it’s ‘cuz my subjects are figures… but in this case the 129.6 dpi doesn’t look bad at all (from what I’ve read 240+ is what you should aim for for maximum quality).  So just another anecdote but personally a 10 megapixel camera (3888×2592) can handle 20×30 prints, even (depending on how picky you are) at moderately high iso.

Last but not least, the photobook.  Fans of super rats are probably aware of the book he released.  Alas I didn’t nab a copy myself so I can’t compare, but I must say that what I ordered was significantly more expensive ^^;  Super rats’ book was 68 pages long… the likes of which would cost $75-$100 at AdoramaPix, where I got mine done… soooo yeah… even *if* I took shots as awesome as rats I’m pretty sure no one would pay the prices I’d have to charge for a book of my own ^^;; (not to mention even if i was taking those awesome shots, I’d still need a lot of ‘em!)

I’m guessing the price difference is due to the material/process/something difference between a photobook and book with color content?  Curious as to what the actual quality/longevity differences are… (especially when the subject matter is just figures ^^;)

But anyhow I ordered a 14 page book and it set me back ~$21 (that was the discount price, now back up to $29).  It’s 8×10, hardcover, and printed on Fuji Crystal Archive photo paper.  As you can see the photos go all the way into the seam… there’s no dead zone between pages.

Must say I’m really happy with the results.  When they say photo paper they’re not kidding.  The pages are beautiful, just like regular prints.  I suppose that’s probably where the price comes from… 16 (14 pages, front + back cover) * $1.28 (8×10 print cost) = $20.48… then add cost for the hard cover and labor and I guess $29 doesn’t seem so unjustifiably high.

Now, if I was trying to sell books I’d be hard pressed to justify that higher price for the quality delivered.  Yes, it’s totally awesome, but when you start getting into the 50, 75 page range… how they heck would you convince your customer that this quality is worth $75-$100? (or $100-$140 for a 12×9 book)  I guess I mention this ‘cuz I did have delusions of maybe selling a couple books or something (after all, AdoramaPix let’s you do it directly from their site) but looking at these numbers these books are most likely gonna remain as personal mementos or gifts.

My future goal is to get enough pics of my figures I’m happy with to make a (somewhat) comprehensive album of my collection.  Because of the above mentioned pricing issues I suppose it would pretty much be for myself since I’m sure no one would pay the $100+ for their own copy ^^;;  On the other hand this little experiment has given me another outlet for this little photography hobby… I have some relatives who I think would be quite thrilled to receive a photobook of family cat pics ^^  Or rather than an album, a photobook of trip pics would be nice after traveling…

…and I’m sure all this blabbering is terribly naive to anyone even remotely familiar with photography prints and/or book publishing.  Bear with me as I try to bring myself up to speed ^^;;;  Otherwise, hopefully this has been informative to fellow photographers ^^

If you wanted I’m sure you could get really creative with the layout software.  You can put tons of pictures on a single page if you want, add all sorts of borders and text… I just wanted my pics with (for better or worse ^^;) the least amount of distractions so I didn’t futz around with much of that stuff.

All in all it was a great experiment.  All 3 items were at sale prices, got to see the quality of the photobooks, and how my pictures would hold out blown up to 20×30.  Was painful dropping even more money on frames, but now I have 2 more room decorations to boot ^^;

If you’re curious about any aspect of the process or results I haven’t gone over, feel free to ask, happy to try and help.

Now to work on that brs review… :P

以上！

click for gelbooru

touhou chireiden – subterranean animism – th11 – sa… whatever ya wanna call it, it’s generally considered to be one of, if not the hardest touhou shooter… and i finally 1cc’d it on normal!  Warning: for the uninitiated, this is just one of my self indulgent touhou achievement posts ^^;

I’m sure it’s not a particularly interesting feat for anyone who plays on hard or lunatic but for me it marks the end of 3 months of practice ^^;

…and i must say, it’s a pretty anti-climatic end to all of my practice ^^;  The run is very sloppy, starting with deaths in stage 3… as I mention in the video notes, nearly rage quit in disgust with my mistakes ^^;

Little by little I recovered after that… no deaths on either satori or orin had me feeling good about my chances (though I did have a stupid death in each of those stages ^^;)

There’s a death by death recount of my mistakes in each video’s notes… to repeat a bit of that here though… i basically have a pretty sloppy run but by managing no deaths on stage 4 & 5′s bosses I reach the final boss with 6 lives in reserve.  Then I proceed to die THREE times on utsuho’s first card.  I couldn’t believe how terribly I was playing.  Reminiscent of my first eosd clear it comes down to the wire as I tackle the last card with a single life in stock.  When that’s gone I bomb and I bomb and I bomb and nearly eat it as utsuho’s gravity increases during her death animation.  Thankfully I was prepared for that by my easy clear ^^;

Do you like graphs?  I like graphs.  Sorry, I’m a total geek.  If you enlarge the above image you’ll see it’s a plot of my touhou completions over time with the number of days represented by the bars.  Since I’m 1cc’ing in order it’s eosd, pcb, in, pofv, mof, sa.  I was surprised to see IN took me the second longest to beat, despite it’s status as one of the easiest touhou’s ^^;  and it was amazing how quickily mof fell after pofv… though i had been practicing it off and on while working on the other games… same was true for everything else so not sure what was different ^^;

click for gelbooru

Anyhow it looks like I may complete my touhou normal 1cc project within a year!  Now why does it feel like I’ve been playing all my life… ^^;

以上！

Quick touhou post:  I noticed lately that when I went back to play some eosd or pcb the controls felt strangely laggy.  My computer hasn’t really changed so it was really puzzling and frustrating to have reimu so unresponsive.  Then I stumbled upon this thread!

Wholy crap.  eosd and pcb are like totally different games.  I always felt like I didn’t have very good control for picking up power ups and this must’ve been why (well, I’m still no good, just a little less bad).  I started my touhou experience with eosd and went in game order, so I think I just got acclimated to the crappy controls from the start.  If you had told me eosd and pcb had laggy controls I would’ve wondered what you were talking about ^^;  My practice with chireiden must’ve finally awakened some appreciation for responsive controls ^^;;

So yeah, prolly old news for some, but for those still unaware… soooooo awesome!  vsync patch ftw!  Mebbe after chireiden I’ll take a break from my sequential 1cc quest to try and clear flan ^_^  If you did actually mention this patch to me before, sorry, it’s like I said above… having started out with eosd I got used to those controls immediately and didn’t notice anything wrong ^^;

Read through the thread if you’re having trouble getting it to work.  So far I’ve tried it on eosd and pcb (original installations) with no problems.  Some had issues due to renamed executables (I’m guessing from english patches perhaps?) and such…

以上！

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If you really enjoyed FFXIII, this is probably not a post that’ll sit well with you.  I pass no judgment if you thought it was great… in fact I’d be a little envious since I have been playing the series for so long and am sad that this installment failed to match up to my expectations.  If you’d like to commiserate on how FFXIII fell short of glory, well, let’s get started… (major spoilers!)

A little bit on where I’m coming from… My first Final Fantasy experience was with the english release on NES.  My uncle had it and until I was able to get my own copy, I poured over the Nintendo Power strategy guide, taking in every last detail of the adventures of BORS, TOTH, JED and LEE.

Since then I’ve partaken in as much Final Fantasy as I could get my hands on… FFIV (II) was amazing, FFVI (III) perhaps had too many characters for my liking, but a memorable and great experience.  For IIj, IIIj and V I tried out fan translations, then also played the official english releases when they came out.  I must’ve put in over 300 hours in VII, mindlessly conquering weapons or acquiring golden chocobos… on multiple occasions… ^^;;;

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VIII and IX had their own charm, X sat well with me.  X-2 reeked of fan service from the get go and fulfilled my expectations ^^;  I played XI for awhile before I became addicted to wow.  XII I’m not sure because I played the japanese release and the story was a bit complicated for my reading comprehension at the time. :P

So that brings us to XIII… I wanted to run down the list of Final Fantasies over the years because, well, XIII ranks in as my least favorite Final Fantasy of all time.  Where to begin…

Story/Characters

This can easily make or break any game I play, but for a final fantasy, it’s particularly important.  Why?  Because personally, JRPGs are nothing if not a story with some gameplay thrown on top.  Unlike western RPGs where you shape the character’s personality and actions, in JRPGs you’re generally being told a story – when you get control of a character you are simply seeing the narrative from that character’s point of view.  You’re not making any big decisions that shape the character’s motives or personality.

XIII was unable to engage me with its characters nor its plot.  Names didn’t help… Lightning?  Hope?  Snow?  Definitely got me off on the wrong foot.  Trying to ignore names I actually was initially able to interest myself in Lightning… stoic, ruthless, cares for her sister.  Not really original, but nothing is original nowadays so that was fine.  But then she starts getting all concerned for Hope.  I just couldn’t buy it.  Her whole change of heart and failure to make Hope confront his idiotic need for vengeance just seemed stupid.

from the official site

Gah, and Hope!  He’s such a little bitch.  He was being taken away to be exterminated by the government, his mom tries to fight to protect him, government ship blasts the shit out of her and snow, snow tries to save her but can’t.  Who does he get mad at?  Oh, snow of course!  Brilliant!  … … -_-  His dumb operation nora, his dumb feelings, his dumb weakness… yeah he’s a kid but that didn’t make him any less annoying.  I think I ended up cringing every time he opened his mouth to speak.

Didn’t think it could get worse, but the insanely cheesy use of his name with Lightning’s monologue… talking to Hope… about hope?  Seriously?  Not one translator raised their hand and said, “Are you insane, this sounds horrible!”?  I pray that at least in the Japanese release she said,　希望 (kibou == hope).

The conflicts the characters go through made sense… a whole world against you, your life ticking away, feelings of despair… but the whole thing with eidolons appearing every time you wavered?  I’m sorry, but it gets old pretty quick seeing each and every character go through the exact same emotional swing and have the exact same outcome.  Get sad, defeat a monster, OK, ready to go!

from the official site

To make things worse that whole theme repeats itself ad nauseam even outside the whole eidolon thing.  omg, what do we do?  I give up.  No wait, we have to keep going!  As long as we fight true to our hearts! … … over and over and over again.   -_-  Somehow they managed to make me completely jaded to the characters’ plights.  Eventually everyone just feels bipolar.  orz we’re doomed one minute and fight no matter the cost, save cocoon! the next.

So many nice plot hooks that I feel they just didn’t execute well.  They should’ve kept Hope’s mother in the party for a lot longer.  Like at least a quarter of the game or something – make the player care about her.  Maybe then Hope losing his mind and acting like an idiot would be more acceptable when she died (though while we’re at it, it would be a lot better to rewrite him to make sense :P).  But no, she dies minutes after we’re introduced to her… opportunity wasted.

Likewise with the whole Pulse excursion.  The party gets back to a world that Vanielle and Fang haven’t seen for hundreds of years, another home of Fal’cie… yet do you uncover anything interesting about the Fal’cie or lore in general?  No!  You arrive at a creepy city that’s been abandoned for who knows how many years simply to hop on a ship right back to cocoon.  No cool reveal or anything.  Old fal’cie man appears and tells you he’s gonna screw cocoon with your help or not, but what else is new?  orz

from the official site

Blegh and the ending.  You return to cocoon to stop the cavalry from killing orphan… but it turns out they were never gonna be able to do that anyway.  So instead the party pushes forward… and kills orphan themselves!  Oh wait, isn’t that what old fal’cie man wanted?  o.O  Basically the moral is… never think things through, and leave everything to fate.  Yay.  There was absolutely no prior plot development to indicate that Fang/Vanielle would have any control of themselves when they turned into Ragnarok.  Pretty damn lucky if you ask me.  …and Lightning and company didn’t even seem to have any idea that that was their plan… so what were *they* gonna do to save cocoon from falling to its doom?!  -_-

Top things off with everyone being released from crystal… except fang and vanielle?!  oh how convenient.  Now we can feel sad for our lost heroines.  Except I have no feelings for those characters.  So instead it’s just dumb.

Also, can anyone explain to me how cocoon was saved?  You’ve got a world that’s prejudiced against Pulse that is now without power/food/light (or at least, I thought that’s what we we learned about the cocoon fal’cie)… and their only alternative is to go down to Pulse.  Which is full of dreadful monsters.  And other fal’cie.  Sooooo… how is that good?  Ok, maybe better than the previous fal’cie rule, but… just say’in.

Oh, and can anyone explain Vanielle’s accent to me?  It seemed weirdly artificial because I couldn’t match it up to an accent I’ve heard before.

I think my dislike of the characters spawned disdain of the plot… which made me hate the characters more… spiraled out of control leaving me with a story based game with a lame story.  But surely the gameplay can save it right?!

Combat

…or perhaps it could be the worst combat system in the history of Final Fantasy.  Maybe I just suck at it so I’m frustrated?

from the official site

Well, as it stands, I just cannot fathom why they made it game over when the party leader dies.  Yeah yeah, you can retry from immediately before you get in the encounter, but the more important thing is that you’ve taken away an important tension builder/dimension of strategy from battle.

Though all battles become mind numbingly repetitious in all Final Fantasies, at least the previous iterations allowed for the epic comeback.  You’re fighting a crazy mob, hanging on by a sliver by reviving members left and right… nope, can’t have that anymore!  Leader dies, you have to try again.  You’re forced to keep the leader topped off.

Because of this bosses can’t do instakill attacks that would kill any party member… oh wait, except the last boss can.  ARGH!  Before I had my strategy worked out I was in a particularly long attempt when all of a sudden, *BAM* insta-death.  Game over.  Such a stupid gimmick.  Luckily I had cherub crown or whatever and was able to upgrade it enough for 50% death resistance.  But what if I didn’t?  I woulda had to go back and farm? *sigh*

Maybe the developers envisioned players breaking out of the traditional model and getting into a rapid trial and error cycle… well, ok… but unfortunately you lose the tension of that first battle against the unknown.  After the Nth time you’re fighting a boss, you know his weaknesses, you know the strategy, what items to equip… now it’s just mindless execution.  I dunno, but I place at least some value in trying to get through a fight on my first attempt.

Continuing down the line of thought that players should try different strategies in rapid succession…  if that was the case, why the hell doesn’t the game remember the paradigms you’ve set up for your battle team?!  It is extremely annoying to have to reconfigure all your paradigms every time you switch in a new member.  Are you not supposed to switch around your party members or something? -_-

from official site

XII went out on a limb with the gambit system but at least there you actually switch over and control your other party members.  XIII you’re out of luck, all AI.  Well, that seems pretty simplistic but let’s roll with it on the assumption that the developers want the players to focus on higher level tactics.  That’s how I tried to approach the system but I still get extremely frustrated because I can’t execute one of the most simplistic strategies out there:  DON’T STAND TOGETHER WHEN AN AOE IS COMING.  It is infuriating to have your party stand around like idiots while a king behemoth lands aoe after aoe.  Yes, I can just skip the battle if my characters are underpowered… but I could totally roll this mob if it was just 1 person soaking up damage instead of 3 -_-  Sure there are other ways to mitigate the threat in this situation, but the point is that I’ve been robbed of an obvious, logical strategy.

AI also started screwing me towards the end of the game when my healer kept pushing out esuna instead of healing my leader who was at half or lower health.  They’ve made a retarded system where leader death is game over… made it so that you can’t control your other party members… and your healer doesn’t keep the leader’s HP topped off?!?!?  I coulda sworn I didn’t have that problem earlier in the game, but in the end it was happening more and more often and I’d have to go to a wasteful dual-healer set up so I could personally heal myself.

It is also frustrating to be going from easy 20 second battles to 5 minute failures from one instant to the next.  For example it just seems odd that I can roll over an entire group of tough mobs with a preemptive strike, then die the next battle when a behemoth catches me with two thundagas.

Leveling

Can anyone explain to me why the interface is so horrible?  I constantly skip over nodes to more efficiently build up my characters so when I’m going back to fill in those skipped nodes… it is infuriating that pressing A takes me to the node at the very top of grid (or whatever you call it)!  Left at the top, I now have to use the extremely awkward controls to navigate back down to where I was filling in orbs.  Note to designers: 3D interfaces suck when you can’t accurately specify what direction you want to move in!

from official site

and… you can’t max out your characters until you beat the game?  Seriously?  Whose genius idea was that?  Pretty sure it was just a stupid marketing ploy to lure players into the mindless post game grind  (not that I have anything against mindless grinds.  Do ‘em all the time :P).  Newsflash: Players who love your game will do all the extra stuff without any artificial barriers.  I wonder if the developers realized the game was bad and were looking for ways to get people to play more…

Equipment

It’s been awhile since Final Fantasy has featured characters that equip a full set of armor, but I think this is a new record in terms of (the lack of) complexity.  No defense stats?  Just bonuses from weapons and accessories?  I guess that’s not necessarily bad but it just feels too simplistic…

…And couple that with the insane equipment leveling…  Great, a laundry list of strangely named components with hidden multiplier stats?  Yay.  It is such a chore to level things up efficiently.  And why is there a separate menu for upgrading and shopping?!  Adding insult to injury, after you exit one, you can’t immediately open up the other one because there’s a weird delay before “Press A” pops up orz

Maps

You know, I was firmly against all the outcry of linearity before I started playing.  After all JRPG’s story telling ultimately makes them linear.  I had no problem with streamlining the maps to purify the experience.  But with all the other faults this ended up bothering me too.

click for the sankaku complex article

In the beginning of the game I was totally in love with it.  This was the ultimate JRPG – they wanted to tell you a story so you just walk down the path pressing A to win.  No needless distractions exploring every last corner of a dungeon, just a pure story telling experience.  Well, the problem with that is if the story is no good you’ve lost your suspension of disbelief and now the whole experience just feels terrible artificial and poorly crafted.

Music

Somehow none of the songs stuck with me.  I remember there being some vocal tracks but I honestly can’t even remember the melody right now.

And the final battle?  I think there was some generic orchestral piece but again, not memorable at all.  Did they even use the crystal room theme once?

Good Stuff

No, I didn’t hate everything ^^;  What I really loved from the beginning was the feeling of wonder and discovery.  The beautiful graphics and locales really take you away to another world.  All the weird terminology and lore really had me excited.  (now if only they did something with it all!  orz)

Paradigm system – though combat in general didn’t sit well with me, I did think the paradigm system worked alright.  Combined with the AI I think this may be the first time I’ve been able to use buffs/debuffs without the hassle of micromanagement.

Explicit end game – while I hated the artificial limit to leveling I did like that they were actually thinking about end game grinding and put in that final save.  Would have preferred new game+ though -_-

So what went wrong?

I wonder if it’s just me getting older and being more less inclined to suspend disbelief.  Or was the game really that much worse than previous Final Fantasies?  As an engineer I thrive on logic.  Things must make sense.  They must be consistent.  When you break away from these expectations, you better have some good reasons to do so.  Or provide something else for me to latch on to for amusement.  Things simply can’t be epic if they’re stupid.  Well, they can be epically stupid, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the goal.

At the end of the day, I just didn’t have fun.  Perhaps if I didn’t suck so bad at the combat I would’ve just had a mediocre experience and could’ve turned a blind eye to all the plot stuff that didn’t make sense or annoyed me…  Instead I had a rough time here and there and it was insult to injury.  Why’d I dump 48 hours into it?  Well, because it being Final Fantasy, I had an obligation to finish it ^^;

from official site

Squaresoft… what happened ;_;  Just… too cheesy, too much focus on the fluff.  Felt like they’ve totally forgotten what makes a great Final Fantasy/JRPG.  Not really sure why they’re so hesitant to make an FFVII remake.  It sure would’ve been a lot better than this -_-

bleh.  Bottom line… people have different tastes… as I mentioned at top, I’m actually envious of those of you that liked the game.  So really for all my ranting… I’m just sad I went in wanting to love this game so much… and ended up so disappointed.

以上！

Click for gelbooru

Approaching a year since its release but it was just last month in Akiba when I acquired my copy.  If only the latest and greatest suit your fancy, check back in a few days when my nanoha -stand by ready- review should be going up ^_^  Then again… there was Lost today and St. Patrick’s Day on Wednesday… perhaps by the end of the week then? ^^;

back to project diva ^^;

First Impressions

As a miku fan, I was under the spell as soon as I heard miku say/sing the SEGA load screen ^^;  Getting right into things and seeing World is Mine at the top of the song list… I dunno, I still just find it fascinating anytime something I see on niconico goes mainstream or is super well executed ^^;;  The allure of the cinderella story perhaps?

Forgive the lame images… that’s what happens when you try to quickly churn out images of something like a psp without proper technique orz

Soon After Starting…

Was disappointed to find that my previous years as a musician, ouendan I+II/guitar hero/rhythm game afficionado, and fan of World is Mine were not enough to conquer the song.  I’m used to getting to the end of the song being synonymous with a cleared stage.  Not the case in project diva.  You have to have a certain score?  or something? to get a standard passing grade.

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On the other hand I was able to adapt to the system pretty quickly and started making my way through songs… usually didn’t have to replay a song more than two or three times.  Costumes are unlocked if you’re playing decently, but even if you’re not there’s the bonus of unlocking room items randomly which was nice.

Settling in…

Slowly got used to the game quirks and was able to pass songs pretty easily.  Started to notice some of the little things.  Like… is it my imagination or is there lag on some songs?  Pretty annoying.  And I don’t know if it’s my psp or what but it feels like the buttons stick sometimes killing my combo ;_;

…which at first I didn’t think would be a problem since combos don’t seem to affect score much when compared to the chance time.  But then I found out that it’s really chance time that’s key to getting a “great” score.  During chance time you get 100 points for the first note you hit, then 200, 300, etc. up to a max of 5000 per note.  That’s fine and all but to get a great rating (needed to unlock lots of stuff), you basically have to do an unbroken combo for like… 75% of the chance time?  Something like that.  Doesn’t matter if you got a perfect combo up until chance time (which is usually at the end of a song) – make that 1 mistake in the middle of chance time and you’ll be degraded to a standard rating ‘cuz there’s just no way to make up for the points.

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Also of note… if you’re not familiar with the game a pv plays in the background while shapes corresponding to the psp buttons appear on screen in gray.  Soon after a colored version of the shape flies in, and when the colored version lines up with the gray outline… hit the button and you get points if you were timed properly.  Now imagine miku shaking her butt while you’re trying to time these notes down to the millisecond :P  I definitely prefer something interesting happening rather than a blank background of course, but it’s always seemed like a weird conflict to me with these rhythm games… funny/kawaii/whatever animations going on… but you can’t look at them if you’re trying to get a good score ^^;;;  Definitely not an issue unique to this game, nor do i have a good alternative but thought I’d mention it ^^;

And Really Nitpicking…

The game isn’t optimized for the fans that want to do it all.  One of the simplest things – starting the game up – is plagued by a lack of an autoload of your save data!  So every time you have to press O, O, O, X.  (Start -> Load -> Accept Save File -> Return).  You can’t even jam on the O button, you have to press X at the end!  Yeah it’s minor, but it would’ve been super minor to have autoload and get players playing -_-  Guess I should use the suspend mode more often…

Next… it’s really hard to track your progress on unlocking things.  Some costumes require you to beat songs with a certain costume… but you have no way of knowing which costumes you’ve used to beat which songs!  (if there is, pleeease tell me :P)  And while there are icons showing if you’ve completed/unlocked pv/perfected a song… I believe it’s only for the normal difficulty!  You have to select the song then select the other difficulties before you can see the icons for hard/easy.

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Also there’s no indication when playing a song what, if any, conditions are required to unlock a costume.  So you’re forced to exit free play mode, go to module mode (costume select), then scroll down the list to the locked costume to see the conditions required for unlocking.  Memorize those conditions, exit module mode, reenter free mode, and go back to the song you need to play… not ideal.

…not to mention the requirements for unlocking things.  For example, the swimsuit… beat all songs on normal with Great or higher.  Fine, not too bad…

Except that it all has to be done with her regular costume!  And there’s a handful of other ones with the exact same condition, but a different costume!  So in the end you’d have to do a full clear of the game on normal (and i think beating on hard doesn’t count -_-) at least like 3 times? maybe 4 or 5?

Again, I apologize for the terrible images ^^;;;;  But yeah… those “wear this costume and beat a billion songs” conditions really suck because half the fun is changing up miku’s appearance between songs -_-

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figured I better throw in some proper miku mizugi pics if you suffered through those other images ^^;;

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Other Modes

There’s also the miku room mode where you can decorate miku’s room with items you unlock through regular play.  During that mode you can take pictures of her to save and use as wallpaper for your psp… but you only have zoom control over the stupid camera!  I’m sure they just wanted to keep the lowanglers at bay but as an aspiring photographer it’s really annoying to be locked on with your subject in the very middle of the frame all the time.

You can’t really interact with her in the room so alas it’s hardly much of a mode ^^;;  I  just used it to capture random psp wallpaper images but that was before i knew you could do the same when watching a pv ^^;

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As for the custom song stuff… haven’t gotten around to that yet.  (sorry persocom, can’t give you any advice ^^;;) For the moment I’m more interested in unlocking costumes ^^;

Overall

Well, I bet the miku fans it would be good for already have the game ^^;  On the off chance you don’t, try to find it used or something, you’ll likely get some good time out of it, assuming you like rhythm games at all.  I’m a miku fan, but not at all dedicated — so most of the songs were new to me.  It’s been fun getting to know ‘em with miku up to her antics in the background ^^

If you’re not a miku fan… I must say the rhythm game feels rather mediocre.  The scoring method is annoying (to me at least… reward me for those non-chance time 200 combos!!) and the game play isn’t very innovative.  And on normal difficulty (hard not available ’til you pass normal with great or perfect) you only use two buttons!  Seemed rather watered down.

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If you haven’t seen ‘em already, cleartranquil, aaron, and kyourankyodai all posted reviews many  moons ago.  They actually have shots from the game that are worth viewing to boot :P

以上！

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1cc on normal! woooooo!  4 touhou’s down, 3 to go ^^  東方花映塚 (tôhô kaêzuka (kunrei-shiki)) is the ninth game in the series and very very different from the previous ones.  In pofv you battle against an opponent split-screen as faeries, spirits, and bullets randomly spawn and attack you.

The white bullets get sent over to your opponents screen if you can destroy them by killing a nearby fairy or activated spirit.  Other features include powering up your spell gauge which lets you unleash more powerful attacks (while also clearing your screen of enemies).

If you charge up your gauge all the way and unleash your level 4 spell, a copy of your character will appear on your opponent’s screen and start attacking.  Not quite the same as a boss battle in the other touhou games, but it still makes things more hectic due to the randomly generated clutter that’s already attacking you.  You can read more about the gameplay here if you’re interested.

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Chose to unlock and use aya after reading this thread on the character strengths and weaknesses.  Not sure how credible the original thread author is but it worked out for me ^^  Reimu’s 360 field wasn’t working out for me as I’d activate spirits all around me and not destroy them in time (which spawns 3 red bullets aimed at you).

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Now I’m on to Mountain of Faith.  Ironically aya is kicking my butt in stage 4 orz  Keep trying to capture her last 3 cards and getting caught off guard.  Think I just need to get back in my bombing groove and I’ll churn out that next 1cc fairly easily ^^

quick update on figures, just got an e-mail from hobby search:

“Also, please note that order recombination is not possible any longer,
since the shipment process of the item(s) is already underway.”

3 alter releases in 1 month!  Can’t wait ^__^

以上！

IN was actually the one and only touhou I’ve ever 1-shot… kind of.  Back in August I had played a couple times on normal I believe, decided to give easy a try, 1cc’d it on my first attempt.  So technically it wasn’t the first time I had played IN but it was the first time I had played it on easy (and the first time I had ever seen lots of the later stages/cards).  Here’s the replay for that run:

As I continued to pound away at eosd and pcb I would often come back to easy IN to indulge in a low stress 1cc ^^;  Guess I partook in that more than I thought… got enough practice in to do a no-death run ^^;

Back to the normal run – I actually first 1cc’d normal with a ludicrously generous 7 lives… don’t have that run recorded yet though (and I’m sure you’re all dying to watch it start to finish, na? na? :P)

IN is the only touhou to feature spell card practice so I was happy to actually capture at least one of kaguya’s cards ^^;

Sadly I think my performance during the normal parts of the stage and non-card attacks is worse than usual ^^;

I believe a bunch of touhou goodies I ordered are in the mail now so hopefully I’ll have a post ready soon after Christmas.

To recap I’m going through the touhou’s in order (only the integer numbered games atm), 1cc’ing them on normal.  That means pofv is next… not especially looking forward to that one ^^;  On a mission though, hopefully it’ll be over quick.

Barely on topic… anyone planning to pick up that gift reimu?

以上！

First is just a 1cc of Touhou 10 – Mountain of Faith, easy difficulty.  Did that a couple months ago but only recently got it uploaded.  Mountain of Faith has a different approach to bombs – instead of having a separate stock, using a bomb decreases your power by 1.  As such if you know where/when you’re gonna get some power items, you can bomb away.  Other than that I guess it’s standard touhou fare.

Second thing is some blog news.  I’ve finally finish Dragon Age (though I’m actually playing it again ^^;;;) but Thanksgiving is upon us.  That means more down time since I’ll be out of town.  You would think then I’d have some time to get more posts up… but then it looks like I’m going to be making a trip to Taiwan + Singapore for work.  Hopefully will know more details on that in the coming days.  But at any rate, that’s another two weeks I probably won’t be posting much.

So then, all told I may not be posting regularly until mid-December ^^;;;;  Ah well.  しょうがないよね  Can’t be helped, right?  I do hope to perhaps get Fate’s review up (assuming she ships :P) in a timely manner, but it’ll depend on when she arrives.  According to Alter’s site it looks like they got her out the door on the 21st.  Hopefully I get her this week!

以上！