One More Post...

... possibly before end of 2016! 

First, just posted below in a game forum...

UK PSN:

VLR & ZTD (loved them both)

Uncharted: Fight for Fortune (finally finished, great value!) 

Stranger in Sword City (unfinished)

World of Final Fantasy Demo (unfinished)

Steins; Gate (playing, v good)

Steins; Gate 0 (bought, in the queue)

Psycho Pass (bought, in the queue)

ASIA PSN:

Trail of Cold Steel 2 (carried over from 2015, fantastic game) 

Ao no Kiseki (old game but best JRPG I played this year)

Super Robot Wars ZIII (epic but unfinished) 

Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth (unfinished)

Digimon World - Next Order (unfinished)

Atelier Escha & Logy (unfinished)

Infinita Strada Hana (unfinished)

Summon Night 6 (playing) 

Nobunaga's Ambition Sphere of Influence Ascension (playing)

SD Gundam G Generation Genesis (playing) 

Also bought Crisis Core PSP edition on eBay, Fantastic game!!!

Did I really play all these games this year? One good thing about this blog (do people still blog?) is that it's a great record of all the games I played (might have missed out just one or two) ... sometimes I just lose track ... So it looks like game of the year for me is Ao no Kiseki, which I might pick up again next year since there are all these extra bosses I haven't fought yet (they are only available in second playthrough). But first, such a backlog to clear now! Still have Steins;Gate x 2 to finish, as well as Psycho Pass, Ascension and Gundam G Generation Genesis. Those titles will take me to end of first quarter of 2017 I reckon. 

Steins;Gate is very slow-paced (it's a VN, visual novel, after all) but the story and writing/translation is pretty good so will persevere. Then will play its "sequel" (mid-quel, whatever you call it), Steins;Gate 0, after that. I really love this time travel/ alternate timeline stuff. The Nobunaga game is another one I just like to go back to time and time again. Empire building is really not my thing but it's not one of those games you can play and play in a sitting ... so, in between bursts of Steins;Gate will play Gundam, which is a genre (turn-based tactics/strategy) I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! Hopefully I won't have to buy a new game till mid next year ... still waiting for the much-anticipated release of Trail of Cold Steel (Sen no Kiseki) III. I think that will be totally AWESOME and EPIC! And I hope it will be released on the Vita and not an PS4 exclusive!!!

Elsewhere, will be heading off to Bali for a yoga retreat next week. It's going to be on Yin yoga but I just wannabe away and staying at somewhere quiet and nice ... and have lots of massage >< Will practise and practise my handstand and take lots of IGs LOL ... so that is my simple Christmas vacation plan for this year.

So will take my Sony Xperia Z5 Compact with me to Bali ... still an excellent camera phone and it works very well with the htc RE camera.

I'm not sure about the LG V20... it's a beautiful phone (Made in S Korea!) but it's just TOO BIG to use (I just realised I cannot stand phablets)... so maybe will box it for now (than buy another phone to replace it...) I mean, if Samung releases a new colour for its Galaxy S7, maybe I'll think of replacing the V20 but otherwise, I think will just wait until 2017 and see that the new year will bring ^^

An Update

Wow, it has been a month since last entry ... so a quick update:

In Game Land, am on the final chapter of Summon Night 6: Lost Borders. Despite not having played any previous instalments I still manage to enjoy this game, given the characters are quite fun and well fleshed out (I didn't skip any of the conversations, granted I did skim over some of them). The gameplay is not difficult at all, I breezed through much of the game after the basic eight-member team was unlocked. And here is my latest (thematic) setup: 

Raju + Isuto// Amu + Natsumi // Enysha + Gian Crastof (powerful!) //
The last two I am more flexible, depending on what's required to get brave orders:
Aty + Rexx // Aya + Touya Fukazaki or Hayato // Kyle + Scarrel
I'm waiting to unlock Melgitos ... he should be fun with his special skills. I take it there will be more unlockables in NG+ so will see ...

Elsewhere am still trying to get into Steins;Gate ahead of the release of its sequel Steins;Gate 0 ... but this being a visual novel (and in Japanese with subtitles) it IS hard to get into. Meanwhile am also playing the old Marvel Alliance/X-men games on the old PSP so I'm a bit all over the place. 

In Tech Land, I traded in the Sony Xperia XA (beautiful that it is, battery life is really bad) for the new LG V20 (also in rose gold LOL). It's definitely a super upgrade but the screen (5" 7) is so large I have not been using it much. I did try to install the G5 kaleidoscope live wallpaper onto it but without success :-(  

So my latest lineup is now: Blackberry Priv (which battery life is just getting worse *argh*) + Sony Xperia Z5 Compact + LG V20. The J-Phone and Sidekick are just there as spares .. the latter I won't be able to use unless in the US ...

Kathryn Budig is always so inspiring  

And, finally, in Yoga Land, I am taking a very short break before a three-weekend handstand workshop, which I am really looking forward to attending. I will see if there are tricks that can compensate my lack of strength in the upper arm + shoulder muscles. Think I did too much reversed binding I've injured my right shoulder ... I reckon that will take months to heal ... and am off to Bali end of the year for a retreat ... despite the (long-distance) travel am determined to savour and enjoy every second while there. 

KineMaster

This is the best video editing app EVER! It is quite easy/ intuitive to use -- though you have to fiddle with it a bit to understand how Everything works. Today I finally figured out how to get rid of the "title text goes here" (by actually tapping on those words on the screen -- doh! -- then type in spaces) as well as doing split clips for slowing part(s) of the video down. Will have to do a lot more of these. Really FUN ~  

Summon Night 6 & Steins;Gate

Have two new, but very different, games on the go ... Summon Night 6: Lost Borders is a tactical/ strategy RPG, like a cuter and easier version of Tactics Ogre, and a very odd but fascinating visual novel called Steins;Gate, which has the feel of the Danganronpa series but with a lot less gameplay. The latter, in English, is available on the UK (not Asian) PSN.

I have never played any Summon Night games so this fan service edition feels very fresh (though missing out on all the references obviously) and I just love the cutesy anime, not unlike One Piece (it actually has a pirate character). Looks like the game is divided into bits with different characters in each. Not that keen on this structure since I do do a bit of level grinding and now I've come to the point to switch over to a completely different set of characters (and have to level them up)... but I hope special skills remain unlocked and new characters come with new ways of playing the game. Actually, I don't know how to execute the "assist attacks" yet ... the Chinese explanation isn't that clear. The gameplay is easy enough so far, even on Hard mode. 

Steins;Gate is just a novel and am sure I will be engrossed in this story of parallel universes/ timelines soon enough... more thoughts to come later... 

Sony Xperia XA

After months of dithering -- I still had the Samsung Note Edge (Japanese edition), which I bought the beginning of this year, and the Sony Xperia Z5 compact and I didn't wanna, well, start piling on too many phones -- I finally bought this new(ish) smartphone. Having been to the official launch of the Samsung Note7 (not that I'm getting that, SO over this brand), I decided to sell the Note Edge, which looks really dated now (and it was only released a couple of years ago) and replace it with the XA.

I also contemplated on selling the Z5 compact (Snapdragon 810 is not the greatest processor as it heats up quite quickly) and why have two Sonys? But it has 1) great battery life (no problem with hours on Pokemon GO); 2) great camera, which I pair up with the htc re cam; 3) great size that I decided to keep it. So here are what I have now:

* Blackberry Priv: total workhorse for work;

* Sony Xperia Z5c

* Sony Xperia XA

* Sidekick ID

Sold the Nokia 8310 ... like, what's the point if it is not used at all (same actually can be said about the Sidekick but I really do like its form factor).

Since the XA is notorious for its bad battery life, I use it mere as a backup. And so far so good. With its size (just a tad taller than the Z5c) and premium casing, it's just a great phone to hold in the hand. For play I've been using the Z5c quite a bit. The htc re cam is a bit problematic. Having bought it for about three months its Bluetooth kinda died. And when I had it replaced (under warranty), the second one died overnight (!) So, hopefully, third time lucky as the latest replacement works okay. It does get slightly warm but such a fun toy. 

Meanwhile on game land I'd downloaded this free title Infinita Strada, which is a card game and I love this genre. Just joined PS Plus for a month just to get some decent cards ... should be able to cruise through the first five chapters ^^ then I read that difficult level really spikes ... so will see... 

A Dharma Yoga Wheel Teaching Certificate

Hurrah! So happy to have met Yogi Varuna and Leela Om who led a Dharma Yoga Wheel workshop over the weekend. Will roll on it everyday from now on!!! #Gratitude 

A New Game

There is no Part 2 to Zero Time Dilemma because I've already finished the game and ... it was a bit disappointed. The whole game mechanism is just not as good as its predecessor Virtue's Last Reward and those twists and turns are all a bit forced. But it is also an easier game -- the Decision Game is not quite what it says on the tin cos whatever decision you make, you will always have to make other choice(s) in order to proceed with the game thus making decisions in the game is totally pointless. Still, I overall enjoyed the game and I really miss its presentation ... so despite it not having much replay value, I'd love to go back to it every now and then to revisit certain chapters. The VO is good and I just love watching the animation.   

Now I'm downloading a, believe it or not, FREE card game called Infinita Strada Hana ... strangely I cannot find much info about this game, which was released in Japan a couple of years ago and when I searched GameFaqs only one poster mentioned that it's better Monster Monpiece, which I finished awhile ago. I love card games so will see if this one is any good. 

Other than that there isn't much out there -- on both HK and UK PSN -- that has caught my attention. Err, okay, forgot to mention I'm also playing Pokemon Go >< and last night I caught Clefable, which is supposed to be rare. But what I really want on my PokeDex is Raichu and one of those dragon types. They just look super cool. And I'm Hardcore. Have been asked whether I've been to any PokeGyms for fights yet but I'm still at the collecting stage and by the time I got what I want the fad will most probably be well and truly over. Anyway, will just keep going until I don't feel like playing it anymore. The other game that I don't feel like playing any more right now is Stranger of Sword City, which is a shame cos (oh god, the game just dropped in price by half on UK PSN) it gets a bit tedious and the dungeons are getting ridiculously difficult if you haven't done the grind. (Even) I lack the patience to grind and level up... I love all that class system stuff but it's just not very stimulating (to look at). I rather jump right back to Zero Time Dilemma ... the art is just very good! I might go back to it later. Persona 4 DAN is also still on the hold uncompleted, so is Digimon World - Next Order. Think will sell that (since it's in Japanese). Nabunaga's Ambition I def will pick up again but will wait for when I'm in the mood for that ... Super Robot Wars Z3 the same. There are also those Legend of Heroes titles but will wait till the third instalment of Sen no Kiseki III to pick that up again. What else is there? World of Final Fantasy is coming out but will wait and see if it's worth getting. Gameplay looks fun though and the art is very cute.