Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

You want to support your favorite anime studios, making sure they get their just revenue for their hard work, right? Well fear not - they will work real hard on making it impossible for you.

First issue stems from the fact that I'm a mobile user with no pc access. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal as mobile versions of sites tend to be more lightweight, faster, and generally easier to use than their desktop counterparts. But the thing with these streaming sites (crunchy etc) is they all make use of what the mobile world is all about these days - apps.
Now don't get me wrong, having an app to stream your vids bypassing all the website infrastructure is by no means a bad thing in itself. Hell, I've used a very good kiss client myself, until the site went to a** anyway. But there's this one tiny thing... There is no app for my phone's OS (surprise! There are actually other operating systems than iOS and android out there! Did you know?). Okay, there is a crunchyroll app available for my phone but, from what I gather, it requires a premium account to even work (it crashes otherwise cat_stare ).
Again, wouldn't be the biggest of issues if you could stream via browser, but NOPE! Only one way to use our excellent free service, and that's through an app we've prepared especially for YOU (and you alone).
"er... Hate to bring it to you but you didn't prep an app for my phone."
"Whatchu talking about, Nuke-sama, you dimwit? There's an android app and an apple app, we gotchu covered. *pats patronisingly*"
"I have neither, I have windows."
"..... Well, f*** you. emotion_dealwithit cat_talk2hand "

I haven't even gone into the content side of things here. Thinking of checking out that old obscure animu you've seen sometime somewhere? Well, look elsewhere because we only bring you the lastest hottest stuff. Nobody watches obscure stuff (they were making animu in the 1930's? Gitouddahere! cat_blaugh ), everybody watches One Piece and DBS. Look, we got simulcasts so you can catch your favorite show 1.4 seconds after it airs in Japan!
"F*** simulcasts, I want to binge-watch GunxSword or some other Project A-ko."
"..... Well, f*** you. emotion_dealwithit cat_talk2hand "

"Tell you what, Nuke-sama. Why donchu just get yourself an iPhone like everybody else and just enjoy our excellent subscription program? We'll make our simulcasts even faster for you. Hmm?"
"..... Well, f*** you. emotion_dealwithit cat_talk2hand "

I hate this game! With passion! Or maybe not as much the game itself as certain parts that drive me into some of the biggest swearing sprees ever.

But first things first. You're a orphan boy that stumbles upon the legendary sword stuck in a rock (cos where else). But guess what? It's gonna be your sword now! Bet you never thought this would happen, eh? In the end, you set off on a journey (not quite by your own will, mind you) to restore the sword to it's former glory, secure Mana Seeds that The Empire seeks, etc etc. Soon enough you will be joined by a loud girl on search for her fiancé and an obnoxious sprite with memory loss. Together you will undertake the perilous journey to eventually blah blah (no spoilers razz ). Sounds fun enough? Well...

First issue is that you can have only four of each item. Four! You can have ten pieces of each armor element but four healing items? How long are four healing items supposed to help me in boss fights? Bosses are another issue. They aren't as much challenging as EXTREMELY annoying. Usually it's like this - boss soars through the fight area, knocking everyone around, then blasts his magics, often at all of your party, often repeatedly, then jumps somewhere far, repeat. If you can somehow find a millisecond to strike between healing everybody (assuming you still have means to do it)they can only be hit once at a time with a long-a** cooldown. Or only magic will work, magic that you've ran out of on way to his a**. I swear it'd be twice easier if you were by yourself, at least you could try to outmaneuver him. But no, you have to watch out for your stupid party.

Magic is a pain to use. First of, your MP gauge is quite small at first (and only grows by like 1 MP per magic level up) and you can only refill it by resting or using fairy walnuts (which are waaay too expensive early on, not to mention you can only have four). Why doesn't it refill on level up, like health does is beyond me (wouldn't be tedious enough if it did, I guess). Also casting can be interrupted for some reason - especially irritating when you're trying to recover from a near death situation.

If all this weren't enough, you can only give party orders while the lead character is "free" (as in not hit, unconscious or having magic fired on him, which takes a while). So if you think you'll heal others or blast your own magic in the mean time - nope. Lead can do whatever they want no matter what the rest of the party is doing but not the other way around. You'd have to switch to someone else, which'd be more trouble than it's worth.

Also for whatever reason you can only target enemies that are preferably above your status bar and well into the main view (and not be too much off screen to the side, though this is a bit random). When you move ahead you're gonna be quite a bit toward the edge of the screen and half the time won't see what's ahead and take hits from critters before you have a chance to notice. And if they're in view they aren't "enough" on screen to be targetable, forcing you to force your way through a group of dangerous hostiles, taking damage, only to be able to cast magic on them.

Overall, battle, while interesting in concept, is far more work and less fun than it oughta be - fighting as 3 people makes it all but efficient. I'm not even gonna go about have you have 3 people pounding an enemy but only one hit counts and after hit immunity periods are a good 1-2 seconds.

Monsters drop chests quite often but someone figured it'd be funny if they had legs and would move. It is funny for the first few times but then it's more and more infuriating when you have to run great distances to catch the chest that doesn't wanna bare it all to you on your first date. And even if you do catch it, it's either a healing item that you've no room for or a trap. Worst of all are doom traps late in the game that will leave you with 1 HP if you're lucky enough to not die. I swear, the devs of this game are a bunch of sadistic a-holes...

Talking to people's a pain too cos they keep running all over and you hafta catch 'em to talk to them. Logic purists groan at petrified NPC's, standing in place no matter what but at least you don't waste time running after them to get a useless comment.

Buying stuff is also a pain. There's absolutely no info about items' use, you're only told which character(s) can use a particular armor element. Not if it's any better than what you're already wearing. Or what does that item actually do. Not that there's that many items but why must it be so secret?

So in the end, is it a good game? The world seems to think so. I've found it has way too many unbearably annoying features to be very enjoyable. Story is okay, clichés on top of clichés, nothing you haven't really seen before by now. But the gameplay is a drag. Unless you spend hours grinding...

Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against mainstream music, hell I like some of that stuff. In fact my range of preffered music styles is pretty wide (ya'd be surprised what's there in my collection). I have something against the politics of broadcast that follows the rule "kill & torture". In short, stations take a small amount of "pop-u-lar" tracks and play them continuously until a) you can't stand the track anymore (kill) b) you begin experiencing physical pain from hearing the same crap over and over and over and over... Normally you'd say "change the station sir". That'd make sense but... Due to short playlists and stuff every now and then you experience what follows: I have four music tvs on me cable and in the same point in time station 1 had I kissed a girl (note that for some reason it is played on me rock radio), station 2 had Hot 'n cold, station 3 had someone else than Katy Perry (i think it was Faithless but no matter) and station 4 hand Hot 'n cold. That's variety. The same is with radio - you not only get the same stuff on every station but ya get the same stuff AT THE SAME BLOOMIN' TIME scream !!!! If not when a track ends on one station it starts on another. And if it ain't Rihanna (I liked Umbrella and Shut up & drive but the rest of the singles suck) then it's some Pussycat Dolls ( xp ) or Brittney Spears (experts are impressed with her new stuff for some reason) then it's some other gack of the sort. The Killers' Human is a pretty decent track (some say it's the track of 2008. I wouldn't go that far) but since it's played often in short time it will become very argh. And that is the purpose of radio (and music tv too) - it will bombard you with songs you hate (they're played coz they're popular so I guess it's just me wink ) or if you somhow like the song that's played they'll play it so often until you finally hate it. What happened to the old days when radios were promoting various artist from a fairly wide spectrum. Nowadays it's just trashy celebs that need to be sold so the stupid public is bombarded with their work ("it's on the radio, man, it must be good!". Who in hell buys Paris Hilton records?!!). Or maybe I'm just getting old and picky (I didn't have such a prob with radio 10 years ago. Something must've gone bad).

Recently due to technical issues I'm doomed to listening to radio as a source of background music. And what a torture it is!!! Apart from the usual chatter bs (DJ: we're callin' Fred who's trowin' a party at his place, hello Fred! Fred: ya man, woo! DJ: So what's happenin' at ya party? Fred: gahaha, ya, woo!) all ya get is the ugly pop stuff (produced by Timbaland, as hardly anything isn't, and it sounds), and even if ya tune to a more specified station (like rock) ya keep gettin' the same stuff over and over (on top of that the rock station i'm listenin' too keeps playin Depeche Mode and Bob Marley every now and then. Why, i ask ya!). The so called Late Night Club bits feature house or house or in rare occasions variable house. I get a transmit of Armin van Buuren's show but other than that there's absolutely no genre variety! I'm not sayin' ya should do hardcore but there's more to techno than house and electro. Also there's this joke i'm hearing every now and then (it's meant to be serious but it's too stupid) that "now we'll turn it up a bit and go into something more energetic" and they play minimal. WTF! something more energetic would be hardstyle or d'n'b but frackin' minimal? Ya i enjoy some good progressive house but it's not something i'd call energetic.
On the other hand i listen to this student radio that sports less mainstream stuff but while comercial radios play the most obnoxious mash of Britney Spears, Rihanna and that sorta stuff the ambitious radios go to the other extent providing music that remains unhearable but for different reasons (being just plain noisy and what not). Don't get me wrong, i can enjoy some pop-ish stuff (e.g. i like Hot and Cold by Katy Perry) but not if i hear it 16 times per hour!
On top of that, there's this concept around radio stations that the shorter playlist you have the better. Who the hell came up with that?! And they're doin' ya a big favour like "yea, go to our website and select ya own playlist, yea!". How the hell can i select anything if it all comes down to playing the same stuff that's played anyhoo 'cept in different order? Sheesh.
If i hadn't lost access to my 2 day long mp3 playlist (gut nuthin' to play it on scream ) i wouldn't listen to radio in the first place. I can play some CDs on my console but it don't play mp3 and i don't have too much CDs. Besides ya can't play and listen at the same time.
So my message sez: screw radio! Play your own sellection on whatever equipment you have! If nothing out there suits you make music yaself (like i do. well used to stressed )! Radio is bull***! Unless you have your fav station that provides everything you need. In that case: i envy you fortunate b*****d wink .

Note: this applies to music television as well, with the exception that in tv apart from crap music you get a truckload of crap reality tv.

One day i watched a show about hi tech gadgets and stuff and there was this thingy that you'd attach to your LCD monitor and it prevented others from peeking in your monitor by limiting side visibilty. What humored me is that tons of money was spent on research on how to increase the angle of vision in LCD displays and now you gutta buy yaself a special gizmo that will undo all that. That's technological progress: you work hard on coming up with something and then you work hard to get back to where you started. Sheesh...

Ya rememba back in the day when DVD came into consumer market (at the price of a medium-end PC), everybody was like "whoah hell-yeah, ya can now have hi-res movies with 20 different soundtracks, 58 lingual subtitles, bonus stuff etc". In the end, checking out my local DVD stores i read at the back of the case that at best ya get 3 soundtracks plus like 5 languages of subtitles. What the hell happened to those supposedly supported and possible suahili (or how's it's spelled) dubs and egyptian hieroglyph subtitles? One could say regions limit usage of different languages but that don't explain a damn thing. Now ya hear about Blu-ray that stores "waaah 50 GB ya can have HD flics and blah blah". What i'm saying is that everytime there's a new medium with more and more space ya hear how much kewl stuff ya can put there and in the smack happens. Same goes for games. Back in the time of multi CD games (like them old school adventure stuff like Phantasmagoria and the like that were using 8 CDs) people were looking forward to DVD where one will finally have all the stuff on one disc and in different language versions too! The result is the games are still available either in english or in the language of the country the game is released in (in other words the game is localized). Grrr, want the original thing (with subtitles if i don't know that particular language but vocals must be original), i wan't the japanese game being in japanese, chinese in chinese and i want an irish accent in an irish game wink . Subtitles are acceptable, suck occurs when a game is re-dubbed as many a time it sounds horrible but that's just my opinion.
To conclude this somewhat long lecture - all this jazz about how much stuff you can put on that new 20TB holodisk is rubbish as in the end all is cut down by marketing and what not. Yeah, it doesn't seem too sane to make a hebrew version of Plastic Little for maybe 20 people in the world wink but it'd still be nice to be able to get one.

NEVER say "never".