Star Ocean: The Last Hope is first

I'm going to see if I can remember the game from a year ago.

Story 3.5/5
World War III destroys the living conditions on Earth, leaving the survivors to find a new planet to live on by traversing into outer space. A new organization is created dedicating itself to space explorations and research. As part of the space fleet, Eeedji-kun and Reimi venture into space on their first mission only to be disrupted by an unexpected meteor which forces them to emergency warp out from their travel course. They crash land on a monster-infested planet and create a new team to continue on the main mission while the old team stays behind to figure out what exactly happened. They find and destroy planets, combat diseases, and answer a number of questions from the Star Ocean series.

As the prequel, things surprisingly made sense. There were some recurring themes that linked with the other stories. I still question the last boss though. The biggest wtf was definitely [spoiler] the space dragon!! [/spoiler]

Characters 3/5
Everyone's so lawl about this. This game's the greatest generic stereotype library: we've got the happy-go-lucky protagonist who turns emo at some point, the cute childhood friend who gets jealous easily, the orderly one, the loli, the father figure, the megane airhead/kultz, the cat fetish, the boobs, and the goth. They covered most of their bases.

Personality-wise, I don't think there's a character I particularly loved (although I suppose Reimi scores pretty high) but I can definitely tell you my most hated character was Meracle. Eleyna, who was just a side character, might've been even more interesting than the main cast. Playability-wise, I enjoyed using Edge, Reimi, and Lymle.

Oh and wtf happened to Welch? Welch in her early days or not, she's no pink-haired ditz. Super disappointment. :(

Sound 3/5
More yays for the international version. Fortunately I avoided the English voices completely so my game was graced by the voices of Kishio Daisuke (Edge), Sawashiro Miyuki (Lymle) and Saiga Mitsuki's (Faize). The unfortunate part is that their voice actors couldn't make up for their in-game counterparts.

Sakuraba Motoi's music style really shone through in the battle tracks. Can't say much for the other stuff though.

Graphics 4/5
Pretty decent looking game with blinding lightning effects. The glassy doll eyes are really creepy at first. Like Magna Carta 2 but they actually stare straight at you as opposed to looking away.

PS3 wins with 2D character profiles.

Gameplay 4.5/5
4 brings back all the classic gameplay features from the other games - crafting, real-time battles, private actions - and adds blindsiding (going behind the enemy), battle bonuses (wait were there bonuses in 3?), and a special attack gauge (Rush Mode - a la Tales' Hi-Ougi). Rush mode is one of the more exciting parts of the gameplay since it can be super cheap if used correctly.

Swapping characters mid-battle is a great added feature. If you're so dying to the point that it's hopeless during the ass-pain that is the second optional dungeon, the Wandering Dungeon, then this is the function to use to your advantage stat.

Overall 4/5
Speaking of the Wandering Dungeon, gee-zeus it's so tedious so no I didn't kill the hardest boss in the game although the Seven Star Dungeon was deliciously fun and entertaining.

With a passable story, not so desirable characters but excellent gameplay, the game is still worth many, many hours of gaming dedication. Just remember this game is Japanese so playing with Japanese voice overs will help those strangely awkward moments.

Stumping Interviews

The JET Interview has come and gone. My half hour appointment felt like it would never end. Kept catching myself looking away when I was gathering my thoughts but that's out of habit so it was unavoidable. Overall it felt positive although I got stumped twice by the same guy with his only two questions. Even now I still don't know how to measure the success of the program upon returning (which was the first q). The other question was something about what I'd teach in 15 mins to a bunch of career-driven high level English-speaking/understanding Japanese students about Canada. It looked like he was looking for a specific answer which I suppose I failed to identify. Woe is me.

I only saw one other interviewee that whole morning when I was heading out. Wished her good luck. Other than that, the place felt so deserted. Fortunately the stormy, windy, wet and cold weather morning of Vancouver was revived by a pipping hot earl grey milk tea handmade by Mike at his bun factory. I hadn't seen him in ages but Bonchaz and his cafe seems to be doing really well. The rest of the day was superbly relaxing with some delicious ginka bishounen.

I wish I took more days off.

Alright back to the waiting game.

Taihen Exciting: 2010 to 2011

あけおめ～
Happy New Year & Lunar New Year~

/welcome 2011

Looking back at 2010 now, 2010 was a beast. From losing my last grandparent, to the mess that was the Olympics, to graduating university, to getting into my first major car accident, to Las Vegas, to AX again and met Horie Yui and Konishi Katsuyuki, to finally getting a new phone... and a lot of amazing things in between. Yeah, it's been quite fulfilling. Thanks 2010.

Now, looking ahead... Hows you, 2011?

JET had been on my mind the last two weeks since interview notifications were sent out and, to follow up on that, I got word of my interview for mid February (ughh reading break that doesn't apply to me at all...!). And as much as I'd put to put all my eggs in one basket, I finally decided on a Plan B just to be safe. SO thus began my portfolio revamp project with a self-set deadline (so I couldn't keep slacking off) and spent the past week plus to update and tweak. Although I lost a bit of sleep, I feel a bit more prepared and now it'll be up to the companies I applied for to answer my plead call. As for JET prepping, I'd like a few days to recuperate first (ahem, kick some FF12 Gilgamesh ass)...

Having experiencing the mind-blowingnumbing excitement of full time work again, I've begun looking forward to all the possible events that may come my way. The next closest thing is probably Sakuracon which is scheduled a bit later than usual to follow Easter's shift in mid/late April. It's not at all bad as I'll either be going there feeling super excited or super bummed after getting my JET results two weeks before. Then there's AX - hm, will deal with later when the time comes.

The lunar new year is already upon us though - the year of the rabbit. It's especially tasty for my year. I took a look at my forecast and it got me pretty hyped up... aside from the fact that the only two of the zodiac fortune tellers I read (from a list) both said something about traffic accidents. It's definitely made me paranoid. And one of the two had an obsession with placing cups of water in certain places. Oh and pink things.

Ah yes, new years resolutions:
Since I'm entering the next age bracket this year (omg! D:), I'm putting on the serious hat to save big money for big investments.


Serious hat with serious sheep.
(btw I've stopped playing but I needed my serious hat pic)

So, after using the SH-01C for a good month plus now I can officially say that the Signal Out on a hypersim is so much more of a pain in the ass than the simple firmware unlock. Oh where have those good old days gone?

Remember this?


It's slowly turning into this:

What is this trend...?
I just need this and this.
Get back to me in about a year and I'll tell you how well I do.