A Lull in Games-land

Though Persona Dancing All Night (a rhythm game for P4G fans like me) was released last week, it's in Japanese and it looks like the gameplay is not much fun without understanding the story; so I'll probably have to wait until the English version, which won't be released until September/October. 

Kanji Forever!!!

In the meantime, there isn't much out there that really interests me right now. Have played Sword Art Online Lost Song a bit more but all this hacking and slashing is getting a bit tedious. Super Robot Wars Z would have been lots of fun ~ if only I could understand Japanese and all the conditions that I'd need to meet in order to win SPs ... It'd also be great to understand all the special moves, skills and abilities of the myriads of robots... that really doesn't leave me much of a choice but to ... go back to my Yu-gi-oh game on my GameBoy Advanced *LOL* Yes, have revived my old handheld (bought a new battery for it) so will pick up where I left off with this game, like, 10 years ago?!? 

Sword Art Online: Lost Song

Having played Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment, which I never quite got into (not yet), I bought Lost Song anyway because I really like the anime-style graphics this series presents. It's your classical hack & slash game (which, again, not really my thing) but the gameplay is simple enough it's quite a good time killer. The music is pretty good too. Surprisingly, I'm enjoying Lost Song a lot more (despite it being a smaller game with less content I am told) than Hollow Fragment because 1) we can fly around, over the vast map and 2) I can use magic!!! The combat/ battle system is quite complicated and not so easy to grasp at the beginning but once that is mastered, the gameplay really is a lot of fun. Here are a couple of screen caps (not sure about those elf ears...): 

Family album: Asuna, Yui and Kirito

Sinon, Kirito and Asuna

This is my fav track from Hollow Fragment:

Nobunaga's Ambition: Creation

Here is an interesting game that I've been playing for awhile lately. In fact, I downloaded it way back (2014) but wasn't able to get into it straightaway. It's one of those strategy war games in which you have to spend absolutely ages to build up your own city before you start conquering neighbouring territories; the whole process, needless to day, can be v v v time consuming. Anyway, I got my hands on a Chinese edition (previously played something called the Romance of the Three Kingdoms 12, and though I kinda got the gist of the gameplay I never advanced much with the game since it is all in Japanese) and it still took me some time just to understand the basic gameplay (even with a tutorial). But after having put it down a few months, I decided to make another crack at it and it has been quite a rewarding experience.

To begin with, there are just many, many ways to play this game. You can just pick and choose a particular (seminal) battle and play either as Nobunaga or one of his allies/enemies. I decided to go for the "canon" historical account first. So before progressing I'd need to meet certain conditions first, which can be challenging. For instance, if you fail to conquer a city by a certain year, then it's, like, game over. Well, you just cannot proceed with the (real) story. I've done pretty well and am about to conquer the northwest territories. And because I'm totally anal, I've stashed up lots of cash in the treasury, as well as food for my forever expanding armies, and horses and weapons. There is so much micro management going on, which I kinda enjoy. Which is weird. Cos in real life I totally don't micro manage but I love that in my games. But I think I've built up such an empire now that unifying Japan is probably just a few more gameplay hours away. I might just pause here. 

Then I am really running out of games to play. All those Hyperdimension titles, pretty that they look, lack substance (hmm, I think that's the whole point of the series). I LOVE Super Robot Wars but it's in Japanese so I'm going to be stuck with the game soon cos of language barrier. Actually, finding a online walkthrough might help. Will have to wait until autumn before the English version of Persona 4 Dancing All Night is released.   

Persona 4 Golden Revisited

While waiting for the release of Dancing All Night (Persona 4 crew returns for a rhythm game, yeah!) in June (Japanese version), I recently picked up P4G again (after maybe a year?) and continued with my third playthrough. Interesting that, previously, I focused too much on the protagonist (his build and those of his personas) I neglected the other supporting team members (now I realise their builds aren't that great). Luckily I'm still in that part of the game where I can make changes so while Yu has some of the best personas available (and I'm on course to unlock Magatsu Izanagi - yeah! - since this is the whole point of my third playthrough), 

This is one phallic looking persona...

I have now given Yukiko, Kanji and Naoto a much better setup. I've bumped up Yukiko's fire attacks even though I missed the chance to get her the Mind Charge bike skill (boo-hoo). But since I use her mainly to heal it's not too bad. She is still a decent fire attacker. Kanji I've dropped his electricity skills and made him a solely physical attacker (Power Charge, yeah!). I love the way his attacks come with the "faint" buff. While Naoto I've now given her ice attack on top of her ohko skills, which will come in handy during boss fights. The others -- Yosuke, Chie and Kuma -- I haven't used much in this playthrough so far but will probably level them up towards endgame. I'm at the point now where I'm about to enter the forest dungeon, in search for Marie. Though it's actually skippable but I might as well have some fun with that. I think I've done everything I wanted before the unlocking of Magatsu Izanagi. I'm also on course to unlock ultimate boss Elizabeth, and for the Golden true ending, I maxed all of the social links that matter. This will be my last playthrough of the game. I really cannot wait the release of Dancing All Night!

Elsewhere, on tech-land, I've been using the new LG Aka phone (the one with eyes!) which is okay. Needless to say, it's a toy phone so it's fun to have something that looks a bit different (mine is in yellow for a start!) Sony Xperia Z is still the best though, in terms of camera image quality. I'm keeping it as a spare (and for when it rains, since it's water proof).

Yoga practice still fun. But I think my instructor (whose teacher training programme I took) was suggesting that I should go to his tougher classes more so I won't "get crushed" ... for some reason my legs were really tired when I took his morning class (7am!) last Wednesday and I got, well, crushed. But getting up so early for a class is not something that I'd like to do on a regular basis ... what to do?!?

An Update

Just realised I haven't blogged for awhile, and since the last entry I have ... yes, gone back playing Dissidia 012: Duodecim, which I bought in 2011. The first Dissidia game I really enjoyed and I remember I only stopped when I could no longer grind for one v rare item/ accessory (was it "side by side"?)

Dark Kain vs Kain

012 is, I think, an even better game. Some of the more OP characters in the original (strangely, a sequel) have been nerfed (hello Terra) though the new additions, notably, Lightning, Yuna, Firion, Vaan are pretty powerful. Back then, I max levelled Lightning, Vaan, Yuna, Kain and Terra ... probably cos they are the most easy to learn and have spammable skills *lol* Recently, I went back to level up Warrior of Light and Cecil (latter from Final Fantasy IV, which I'm still playing, on and off) as well as Firion, Onion Knight, Gilgamesh (yes!) and Prishe. WoL and Cecil are now Level 100. But the real "breakthrough" is that, after a long impasse (I was stuck with some really crap weapons), I went into one of the gates (in Scenario 000) and grind the hell out to get enough "KPs" (Kupo points!) to buy the Heike set (Ex Mode 100% but -50 duration); and with that better set I was able to get more KPs and now got the legendary "Iai build" Mwahahaha! Yes, I can use a Level 1 character to beat a Level 120+ enemy. Which makes playing 012 more fun ... i.e. I don't lose all the time. Now I can really play the FF characters I like and have fun with that.

Currently, my favourites are Cecil and Kain (yes, have become a FF IV fanboy!) followed by Lightning (I like her Paradigm shift) and maybe Vaan (haven't played him for awhile). WoL is good for grinding, thanks to White Fang (lightning) + Heike set. Think am giving mages Yuna and Terra (spamming) a rest, while Tifa is not as good a puncher as Prishe. Like Firion, Gilgamesh is okay to play but will max level them later. Hmm, that's about it. I quite like Onion Knight but, again, not as fun as  Cecil and Kain.

But will probably put this down for awhile (next mission, maybe, is to go through the highly challenging Labyrinth) cos I REALLY should start working on my yoga sequencing. I find students get bored if it's the same sequence week after week...

Final Fantasy IV

Clockwise from bottom: Cecil, Yang, Cid, (Elder), Edward, Palom
and Porom in the centre 

Well, it has taken me a good 47 hours just to reach this point in the game when I can swap party members ... in Final Fantasy IV players are forced to go through the storyline with a rotation of setups (otherwise there will be no coherent narrative)... which is both good and bad. Good because that forces players to strategise -- though inevitably you always end up having a hitter, black mage, white mage/healer and a quirky character fighting along side the protagonist (Cecil). Bad because I like to stick with certain characters and it's a pain to have to keep switching them in and out...

Anyway, am now able to party-switch because the rest of this game is pretty much just taking different party setups to farm items and exclusive equipment, which I hope isn't gonnabe too tedious. So far my favourite characters are: Cecil (no choice here, but as a Paladin, at least he is interesting and has high stats); Rosa, cos she is Cecil's love interest and a fantastic white mage, with range attack capability; Rydia is fantastic, not only cos she is lovely looking and she is also a powerful summoner (Bahamut, come on down!). The other two favourites (to make up the team of five) will either be Edward (just cos he's different, having a harp for a weapon!) and maybe Edge (the ninja) or Yang (the fist fighting monk who has a wife!). Kain, though a main character, somehow is a bit lacking in this game (keeps dying on me), and neither Cid nor the Porom and Palom twins are that impressive (when compared with the others). 

So my next destination is Mount Ordeals ... think will take that on next week... 

Meanwhile, I can do drop-backs against the wall now, which is Brilliant!!! 

A Sore Lower Back

So I was having teacher training withdrawal syndrome *LOL* and got up at 5am yesterday morning for a voluntary morning intensive practice, which wasn't too hard. Instructor Patrick took us through the universal principles of alignments (mostly muscular energy and organic energy) using the basic sequence, which I enjoyed since there is no pressure now that I'm a teacher :-) I have grown to really like doing parsvakonasana and trikonasana (so opening) but less so with virabhadrasana II ... but what really got me feeling sore was the series of 10 urdhva dhanurasana ... we kept going up and down into the wheel pose ... followed by drop back, which is super intense. I'll be taking hatha 2 this afternoon just to work on the sore ... definitely need to do quite a bit of stretching through out the week if I am to keep my body supple. 

I just LOVE this love theme for final fantasy IV

Meanwhile, as I type I'm farming "sirens" in Final Fantasy IV (the complete collection) on auto ... this item is supposed to be very useful later on in the game. The question is, do I really wanna continue with this game... It was first released back in 1991 and has remained a solid RPG game (the music is just brilliant) but without a walkthrough you wouldn't know what to do. And I'm getting a bit tired reading walkthrough ... I'd also unlocked the rarest item in Final Fantasy X-2 last week. The amount of grinding (on auto or not) can get kinda tedious. So, am contemplating what to do next with these games. I don't particularly have an urgent to finish X-2 or IV, so maybe I'll just leave those as is. I wanted to unlock a rare persona in Persona 4 the Golden but the amount of work involved I don't think I'm ready to tackle at the moment. There are at least four more games on my PS Vita but none of them I wanna play right now (maybe Dissidia 12, which I still play occasionally). So this calls for maybe another visit down the game store ... maybe there's something there that's worth getting (hopefully a game that doesn't rely too much on following a walkthrough!)

Tech-wise nothing much is happening on that front. The Blackberry Classic I bought is okay ... it's a necessary upgrade but I really miss the Bold 9900, which is smaller and more simple to use (and it was white!). Nevermind. I am (surprisingly perhaps) still using Sony Xperia Z, which is great for photos and social media (WeChat, Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, Facebook/ Messenger, Line etc). Battery remains a minor issue (it's on since around 6am and lasts until 8pm-ish if on heavy use) but other than that I still really like its colour and functionality.