I think American food and beer has a lot of bad rep. But once they set on something, they make it the best in the world.
I was very impressed by Dragon’s Milk Stout. But I must say that their Red Ale might be even better. Same richness, and more fruitiness. Looking forward to try the Golden Ale now.
Because the rumors are coming true, we meet the ghost of Maia in the temple, despite her never dying there.
After Nazis appear and all characters (except Yukki, because she’s from the previous game) get upgraded personas, there’s a difficulty spike. But nothing that can’t be resolved by grinding. Tatsuya’s Vulcanus Prime also gets an amazing Fiery Fury skill. As I mentioned, skills in Persona 2 have three target types: single, group and “all”, with “all” being the best. Why wouldn’t you like to hit all your enemies after all? Well, one reason is that some enemies are resistant to fire attacks. But here the second part of this skill comes into play: it doubles as physical attack as well. So it’s basically effective against everything.
Yukki gets a new persona too, but only for a short while, as she leaves the party after her boyfriend is killed by the Nazis. We manage to rescue Jun/Joker from Niarlotep (never expected so much Lovecraft influence). Turns out it’s Jun’s father who has been leading the Masked Circle, not Jun. Jun replaces Yukki as a party member, and all the party members get new personas once again. This time really new, instead of adding “Prime” to the name of the persona.
Now party need to beat 4 temples, one for each element. At the end of the first temple Jun gets persona mutation, first time in the game.
I think this game is easier than most other games in the series, because money solves everything. Items are cheap and you can stock tons of them, so you never run out of SP. And your SP also recovers with every step. Compare that to the stingy mechanics from Persona 4, where SP regen was one of the later skills, and SP recovery items were limited.
John Wick has changed action movies for good.
This is “John Wick” Indian style. The rolls, use of environment as weapons, like hitting with a tray, and all the other tricks.
It’s magical, the amout of abuse hero can withstain, but also realistic, exemplified with the attempt to jump through a window “movie style”. Trying to tie it all together into a Hanuman myth was a good option.
I’m not sure how the second half of the movie works, though, as I don’t believe repicursiosn for the transgender community in India is on everyone’s mind. And using fireworks as weapons perhaps not the most efficient, when you have guns? But it’s good visuals for sure.
24th and last bottle of my 2024 calendar. Took me exactly a year to finish it.
This one is interesting, as I completely missed the mark. It’s nice, a bit sweet, a bit smoky, not too warm. I placed it in 50GBP cathegory.
Turns out, this is the most expensive taster I think in the entire calendar: 114GBP at minimum, up to 150GBP:
https://www.masterofmalt.com/whiskies/eden-mill/eden-mill-single-malt-scotch-whisky-2022-release-art-of-st-andrews-collection-whisky/
All I can say, this isn’t the first 150GBP+ bottle that didn’t impress me.
“Maybe cleverness will get you nowhere. Maybe it’s only the stupid, the brilliantly stupid, who will inherit the Earth”
1859, England. A whaler “Volunteer” sails to Greenland. Only the captain and a couple of the crew members know, that the goal of this voyage is to sink the whaler and get the insurance money. Sails are obsolete, steam is the future. And there are no more whales anyway.
Writing is technically very impressive. We have the complete opposites: Sumner and Drax. Sumner is a surgeon. Drax is a harpooner. Sumner is addicted to laundaum. Drax likes to drink. Sumner reads Homer. Drax can’t even read.
Drax is also extremely violent. He kills a man with a brick for not buying him a drink. He enjoys hunting seals. But maybe it is the man you want on your boat when your purpose is to hunt and kill whales, a cold blooded killer?
The movie is brutal for sure. The skinning of seals, whale hunt and 19th Century medicine such as draining puss all shown in great detail. Not for the faint-hearted for sure.
I’m surprised we are still able to produce good animation, and not just trash. But Migration is very impressive. The herons, the pigeons, the Jamaican parrot. I mean, I didn’t even know we are allowed to do accents anymore, when everything is offensive.
The tricks are mostly classic, villain looking over one side of the column, heroes hiding over the other. But then, there are surprising animation twists borrowing from Nickelodeon (the pleeeeeeease, for example).
It’s Inglorious Bastards all over again, but it isn’t a bad thing. We have characters switching between English and German on the go, and an educated villain played by Til Sweiger instead of Christoph Waltz.
You can also view it as a James Bond movie, with cool characters shooting from the hip while cracking jokes.
The most interesting bit is that the craziest parts are actually true. An SOE agent did set up a party on Fernando Po to lure Italian and German officers away. And the crew did employ locals to steal the boats, and did blow the anchor chain with explosives. Only all the killing didn’t happen.
The saddest part is that in real life, no participant of that operation survived until the end of the war. Henry Cavils character, Gus, died on the very next mission, while his team got lost in France and bumped into a patrol. And Anders was killed in ’45, storming an Italian bunker line.
I’m making slow progress. Unlocked Snappawrecka from the arena battles. This means I have just one more orc character to open for their campaign.
Unlocked Tutmose from slowly grinding his battle. The character is supposed to be extremely bad, but it’s 4th Necron character, so battles that allow up to 5 should be easier.
In a last ditch effort in a event I also managed to unlock Nicodemus. I already have 5 Imperial characters, but Ultramarines Apothecary isn’t very good, and Nicodemus is available to unlock only once in a while.
Unlocked Snotflogga from Salvage Run. This isn’t as good as I thought it to be, because Snotflogga isn’t a campaign character for Orcs, so I’m still missing Boss Gulgortz, and missing it by some 125/250 shards.
Unlocked Tsonji in an Incursion event. As I mentioned, Machines of War are not very useful, but I still use every opportunity to unlock new characters. And I love Tau. Who doesn’t love huge mechs?
And I finally completed Indominus campaign, with 3 stars, unlocking Indominus Elite.
Magnificent. Unexpectedly cinematographic, with some cutscenes taking minutes and reminding me of Witcher a lot. The gameplay itself is more of a Operation Flashpoint and Gothic. With vague objectives that you can achieve in multiple ways and people that care about their property on many levels. Not only villagers will chase you if you try to steal something or pick a lock, but even standing by their house will alert them.
Some crimes are less obvious than others, though. For example, walking at night without a torch is a crime.
The fighting system is… different, and it also reminds me of Gothic in a way. You chose one of five different angles to attack from, and you defent by predicting from which angle your opponent will attack based on his stance.
Some opponents will also try to run away, and then you can choose if you want to let them go and on what conditions.
It is surprisingly easy to paint yourself into a corner in this game, since you can switch personas for all characters, not just the protagonist, you can end up with no healing personas at all. And you can switch personas back only in Velvet Room outside of the dungeon.
In the Aerospace museum, there’s an interesting heatwave effect from all the fire in the building. Other than that, though, it’s an annoying dungeon with a real-time timer and a goal to find kids in a maze, interrupted by fights. I’m just glad it’s over.
Before the museum, you need to guess 2 out of 4 buildings Leo planted bombs in. If you guess wrong, there’s a video showing a building being blown, but you can still continue the game, unlike of the timer in the museum runs out. I was wondering how they would reconcile that. Turns out, Leo just blows the buildings still, just later.
After the museum, the game dumps a lot of story on you. Tatsuya, Ekichi and Lisa all played together as kids, but they never seen each other faces, because they were wearing Power Rangers bird masks. They called themselves Masked Circle, same as the terrorist organisation, and the fourth kid is the leader of that organisation. They also met Maia while they were playing, although she is a few years their senior. Maia is the one that thaight them the Persona game, and that’s why all four can use personas.
When Maia told them she has to leave with her family, the kids locked her up in a temple for a night, hoping that she would stay. Tatsuya got locked up as well for objecting the plan. But at night, King Leo stabbed Tatsuya and burned the temple. Kids assumed that Maia died in the fire, and that’s the eponimial Innocent Sin the game refers to.
It might be that I played Innocent Sin and not Eternal Punishment all those years ago. Hard to remember after 15 years, and it doesn’t really matter.
The plot of both Innocent Sin revolves around rumors coming true. A topic Persona 4 will go back to with the Midnight Channel. “If you dial your own number, a Joker will appear”. Only the Joker that indeed appears to Tatsuya attempts to exact revenge on him. Frustrated that Tatsuya has no idea revenge for what, Joker disappears.
It’s interesting how battle system has devolved in later games. In Persona 2, there are attacks that are both physical and elemental. Also, Water and Earth elements were removed from later games. And some spells instead of targeting all enemies, only target enemies of the same kind.
The dialogue system is a bit wonky. The way it works is that you can speak to your team members in any order, but sometimes their reply will be to something someone else says later on.
Being an RPG from PSX era, you really need to read into what people tell you if you’re playing without a guide. There are no quest markers there.
As I mentioned, I’m not a big fan of the dialogue system in Persona games. Each character has 4 lines, that work differently for different personas. Yukki has “reason” line, so she can make “wise” persona “eager” to give you cards, with which you purchase more personas. “Foolish” persona reacts the same to Tatauya’s “Dead stare”. If it was only matter of memory, though. Personas can ask you nonsensical questions, like “is school fun?”, and the answer should also depend on the persona type. That’s where I draw the line. Luckily, the old good grind still works
22nd whiskey from the calendar was Glasgow 1770. It is a bit sweet, a bit warm, but nothing spectacular, and honestly, for 40GBP it goes for, I wouldn’t expect anything spectacular either.
Deanston 12 was a nice surprise, though. Sweet, warm, and for 43GBP, hits well above its weight. This is interesting, as I found Deanston Virgin Oak to be absolutely the worst.
This year I decided to go with World Whisky Advent Calendar from Drinks by the Dram:
https://www.masterofmalt.com/whiskies/drinks-by-the-dram/world-whisky-classic-advent-calendar/
From the outlook, it has some interesting whiskeys to try, such as Israeli and Japanese ones:
Another interesting improvement over the game is that the game is always from the protagonist POV. Here, we get more glimpses into Risette/Rise, and how she quit being a popstart.
One character they added that I think wasn’t in the game is Aya. She was mentioned as the daughter of the owner of the ramen place, and that she goes to the same school.
Until 12th episode, it’s pretty standard stuff. I don’t know what changes (the opening does for sure), but it’s after the 12th episode they’re start messing with the audience, and it becomes spectacular.
The game has a few “bad endings”, where you don’t conclude your investigation fully, the friendships fall apart. And here, they included one of those, but in a way you don’t even understand what’s going on until 10 minutes in it.
Then, the game has a bunch of random characters you need to befriend. And here, they show you all of them, but after you already did, doing a timeskip.
The reward system is a bit strange. The goal of every temple is to rescue one of the seven sages, and the temples hide some unique equipment, but it’s not the sage that gives you the reward, instead, you often find it as part of a “sidequest”. For example the reward for Turtle Temple is the Hyrule Shield, and to get it you need to kill all the ghosts. But it seems you can get to the boss and beat it without the shield, so it’s kind of missable. And all you get from sages is “thanks!”.
You are also tasked to collect hermit crabs around the world. Those are surprisingly useful, as 10 of them allow you to upgrade one of your weapons.
Over the Christmas break, I decided to give Asus GL752VW another chance after all. Ordered a new motherboard from AliExpress. The only issue with it turned out to be broken DVD connector. Maybe it broke off during transit, or was that way, those are scavenged motherboards after all, with S/N erased. Not sure it’s worth messing with even as a soldering practice. DVDs are kind of obsolete anyway.
Other than that, the most difficult part was replacing the heatpipe, that goes along both CPU and GPU. Reassembled everything, and not it’s working again.
Oh, yeah, the motherboard comes without WiFi and I guess Bluetooth modules, those needs to be scavenged from the previous board. But again, luckily those are also plugable.
Ravenswatch and No Rest for the Wicked are two games I confuse a lot. Ravenswatch is sometimes presented as an ARPG, but it’s more like Hades: generated dungeons, clear weapon telegraphs and danger zones, low character health, cooldown on dodge, direct and AoE attack, you name it. Oh, and three perks with rarities to pick from every level. The only significant difference is that instead of picking different weapons, we pick different fairytale characters.
Also, Hades had an optional timed mode. Here, it’s one of the main features. You have just 15 minutes to clear the map before unavoidable boss fight occurs. You also have limited number of revives. Yeah, just like in Hades.
One interesting mechanic is related to Scarlet, or in other words Red Riding Hood. Every night she turns into a wolf, and every day turns back, repeating this cicle 3 times over a run. I bet that’s the first mechanic they came up with, and then they build the rest of the game around it.
After playing with other characters, though, I feel like it’s a disservice to the players that she’s made the default character, as she’s probably the most difficult to start with. Pied Piper is more of a necromancer, with ranged attacks and swarms of rats that are summoned automatically.
And Beowulf is a two-handed “barbarian”, with some nice fire AoE damage.
In the meantime, I unlocked two additional characters, Guipetto and Mnemosyne. Guipetto is also a summoner, but his summons are slower and hit harder. Kind of like skeletons Vs golems in Diablo 2, or maybe the Engineer from Torchlight 2. I would be all for it, if not for the fact that the runs are time bound.
In fact, and it took me some time to realize, there is a way to turn the time limit off. But I’m not sure if there are any implications except score penalty.
I opened both Maleus Rocket and Dreaudnough a couple of days from each other. Both aren’t very useful, as you can’t deploy them in campaigns, only Arena or Guild Raids.
But from Guild Raids I got my 3rd mandatory Chaos character, Archimatos. So now the Fall of Cadia campaign is open.
This is good, because campaigns are the best way to open new characters.
It is quite rare that I get to compare hardware. After all, usually I spend a lot of time investigating what platform to buy, but then once you buy everything, you kind of stuck with it for the next 2-4 years.
But because my CPU started to act wierdly and I managed to RMA it, I decided to buy a new CPU for the same socket instead of waiting a couple of weeks without PC at all.
This is quite amazing, really. A supposedly weaker CPU providing 10% performance right of the bat. the 3D is a gamechanger, literally.
Video card offers a much greater boost, of course. But despite 40% performance boost, I’m actually slightly disappointed, as this is 1440p resolution and not even maxed out settings we’re talking about.
Regarding RMA. I shipped the faulty CPU on the 9th, got approval on the 13th and received a new one back on 18th. So less than two weeks turnaround, which is nice.
As a bonus, because they don’t produce 5900X anymore, I got the slightly upgraded 5900XT 😄
The best part of Persona 4 was the characters and anime cutscens, and it’s true about many Atlus games. So it’s no wonder anime based on Persona 4 is actually very good. I think they also used same voice actors as the English translation of the game.
I’m not sure it’s watchable if you haven’t played the game. But if you did, the way it treats the original art, music and characters is brillaint.
First, as I read somewhere already, the protagonist now has a name, Yu Narukami, and a character, while it the game, he had none. And the way they fleshed out some character arcs is fantastic as well: mainly Yukiko and her story about a caged bird.
Also, let’s admit, the fights in Persona are nothing special, personas are basically a bag of spells with a shaby animation. Here, Izanagi, Yu’s persona, has some cool fight scenes.
