Update 0-1

 Skin Base Hangar Bay

Update: 0-1

Alright so… this is going to just be my little, off-the-cuff, updates in between major entries. I’ll probably try and write these a bit more casually. Think of these like a little talk in the hangar bay after we descend from our mechs after a mission. And then I whisper softly into your ear to meet me back in my private quarters…

ANYWAY… I’m writing this shortly after launching the blog. Early reviews are good. I’m mostly self conscious about the webpage itself but I’ll work on it. The actual essay isn’t too serious but I like it. Only real behind the scenes I really have to say on it is that originally I had this big dumb 6 month plan part that I cut out. I think giving myself a strict time frame and structure is setting myself up to fail. I think I’m still going to work with it for now because I have a weird guilt complex that requires me to EARN everything, even basic necessities like asking for help. But if I fall behind I won’t beat myself up over it.

Speaking of falling behind, I originally planned to write and publish Episode 1 by the end of January, but it's looking more and more likely I’ll have to count Episode 0 as the January entry. The turn of the New Year has been so brutal to both my physical and mental health, and not just work but personal life stuff. Outside of my loosely structured brain rough draft I haven’t even started the FF16 review. I sort of want to play it again… for the 3rd time. It has been 6 months and freshening things up would probably be good and I wanted to play FF mode with some restrictions to sort of stress test the systems I’ll be focusing on for the review. Maybe I won’t complete the 3rd playthrough when I get enough from it.

Also the FF16 review will be very light on story spoilers. If you are expecting a story analysis you might be a bit disappointed. I do want to write about the story but I don’t feel ready for it yet. The game is also not out on other platforms so a lot of readers might not want to read something that spoils the story. Also the story is not technically finished yet. I doubt the 2nd DLC will change my mind much on the story, but I figured it would be fair to at least let that drop too.

I also want to use this space to give out some shorthand casual reviews. For example, I played Like a Dragon Gaiden recently. I considered doing a short review for it, or maybe some silly “Gaiden” review for the Gaiden game. I decided it might be more important as a point of contrast for Episode 2. I guess at the very least I can say I liked it. The game does feel very odd. Especially early on, the writing feels very stilted. It feels like a streaming series spin-off in how it's written, but still weirdly obsessed with how it relates to the source game. Thankfully the game really comes into its own by the end and it feels like a pretty important part of the story, even if it's probably skippable. Also I won’t go into too much detail on the story, but a lot of what I was interested in its premise does feel wasted. The combat is also thankfully a HUGE improvement over Yakuza 6, which I also played fairly recently. I still think the combat is fairly weak unfortunately. The Agent fighting style in particular felt really half-baked and I stopped using it entirely. Still it's hard to get too mad at a game that probably made me cry the hardest I’ve ever cried at a video game in one of its scenes. You probably know the one if you played it.

I don’t know how much I’ll talk about non-video game art here, but maybe I’ll end with a few casual recommendations. Uhhh… Chainsaw Man, the Manga, is still going strong. I’m enjoying the Dungeon Meshi anime. I really need to get around to enjoying more stuff. At the end of every year I feel inspired to go listen to new music, so I go around and skim people’s end of the year lists. I’ve discovered that I really like Rat Saw God by the band Wednesday, especially the song Bull Believer which just feels like a religious experience every single listen. Dogsbody by Model/Actriz is another solid album I stole from several top lists. Another album I’m obsessed with is the whaler by Home Is Where. Probably very few songs feel as viscerally relatable in late 2023 than everyday feels like 9/11. And an album that I really didn’t enjoy until I gave it a few shots was 93696 by Liturgy. I never really listened to black metal too much so it was a hard sell but now I feel I can’t SLEEP without it.

Speaking of sleep. I should go to sleep. Although I guess I should end with questioning how much I like my outro.

A wiseman once spoke to me in a language I do not speak, but in words I could understand. They said “Abandoning your uniqueness is equivalent to dying.” They told me this in the form of a blue haired, high school girl in an anime I really, REALLY liked. “So don’t write generic lyrics based on other concerns. Write what YOU want to write.”

Like… is this good? Maybe I should shorten it.