The Book of Daniel Vol. 2

Last month I caved and finally bought a PS5, along with my first two games for it: Clair Obscur; Expedition 33 and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (funny thing about the latter is that the original version of Oblivion was also one of the two games I bought with my Xbox 360 back in 2007).

So far the majority of my PS5 time has been devoted to Expedition 33, and I. Love. This. Game.

Great story with some unforgettable twists, great characters, great gameplay, and stunningly-beautiful art direction in terms of both visuals and music.

I like that a lot about the mechanics of the game feel very old-school to an almost surprising degree, from the battle system being a true turn-based system (albeit with an evolution of Mario RPG-style timed hits/blocks/dodges/etc. and button inputs for special attacks to speed things up) and exploring back corners of certain areas leading you to run into super-strong enemies that you can't possibly beat at your current level and know you'll have to come back for. I wonder if, in an alternate timeline, the battle system of modern Final Fantasy games might have eventually evolved into something like this game's had no one at Square ever played Devil May Cry.

The only thing I’m not huge on his how the equipment/ability system works; weapons are fine but I’m not huge on the Picto/Lumina system. But it’s not nearly the worst equipment system I’ve played either; I mean, Final Fantasy VIII exists after all.) I also wish I liked Sciel's battle mechanics a little more since I do like her as a character, but I did warm up to her a bit after shifting to primarily use her as a buffer for the powerhouse characters. Maelle, on the other hand, is a near-constant in my party - when you get it and the Painted Power picto to break the damage cap, her Stendhal move is ridiculous - and Verso (and, earlier, Gustave) also make strong powerhouse characters, while Lune is a good mage (I focused her on fire and healing), and I dig Monoco's pseudo-Blue Mage setup (the way he acquires his skills actually more reminds me of Gau in FF6).

As far as my progress in it goes - while I won't say that I'm actually done with it, as there's still a good amount of optional Act 3 stuff left, I did go ahead and play through the final boss and credit roll of Clai, so I'm going to call it for the purposes of my completion list.

My final dungeon/boss team ended up being Maelle, Verso and Monoco, and they wrecked house - between Maelle's Stendhal, Verso's Endbringer and Phantom Stars, and Monoco's Portier Crash (and, by the end, Creation Void), nothing in the final dungeon stood much of a chance. While I don't think I was too overleveled (~65) to enjoy the final battle, the last round did end up getting more or less one-shotted by Maelle's Stendhal (as did the one fight after that).

As for the ending, ( SPOILERS )

Anyway, I've been working through the higher-level Act 3 stuff after getting the ending - did some of the optional areas, did some level grinding in Frozen Hearts and then Dark Shores, got some of the collectibles (lost gestrals, manor doors, etc.), etc.  My team is currently around level 85.  I did most of the Flying Manor but got crushed by Clea at the end of it, so I'll have to go back for her; accidentally flew into the flying dragon and succeeded in taking it down (it had destroyed me at the beginning of Act 3 when I flew into it just to see what would happen), and am currently working through Verso's Drafts.  Having already seen my chosen ending, it's kinda nice to just be able to pop it in and enjoy a bit of the game without the urgency of getting to the end of the story (although some of the post-game stuff does add a bit to the story anyway). 

Very good chance that this could end up on my Top 10 Games of All Time list the next time I update it, which is wild since there's only one game on the current list from after the year 2000, and that one's from before 2010 (Grand Theft Auto IV, for the record).  I even ordered two t-shirts from the game's official merch, and put a preorder in for the Esquie plush for good measure.

1. Do you know of any other words for snow? What's your favourite and why?
After this year's neverending winter, "the Devil's Cocaine" is probably apt.

2. What's your ideal temperature range for winter?
Above freezing.  As much as I liked snow as a kid, I can't deal with it anymore.

3. Favourite winter activity? What about it makes it your favourite?
I only wish hibernating was an option.

4. What are three things you can't do without when winter arrives?
Heat, gloves, a means of snow removal.

5. Do you have favourite winter holiday activities?
Christmas is, in a nonreligous sense, my favorite holiday.  Family time for those that are left, too much food, Xmas movies, etc. etc.

Rolled credits on Life is Strange: Double Exposure the other night. Overall enjoyed my time with it; certainly not as good as the first game, but the mystery was fun to explore and it certainly looked and sounded great. I know one of the big complaints from the fanbase is that ( Spoiler )

I did like most of the new characters, but ( Spoiler )

I also thought the final decision point was a little weak; ( Spoiler )

Of course, the same day I started it happened to be the day the official announcement for Reunion came out, so I guess we'll see how the events of this one affect the story of the next game. While playing Double Exposure I did occasionally, especially in the last couple of episodes, think that it felt like the middle game of a trilogy, and (not counting Before the Storm) that's exactly what it turned out to be.

So I'll definitely play Reunion at first opportunity; we'll see how it turns out. I kind of feel like they might be pressing their luck a bit in bringing back Max's story a third time (or fourth, if we're counting Before the Storm seperately) - I'm not sure that these characters really *needed* more than the first game, which stood on its own in a way that Before the Storm and Double Exposure couldn't, but on the other hand I'm certainly interested in how their overall story ends (they *definitely* should conclude Max and Chloe's story with next one though).

But unless they announce later that Reunion will have a Switch 1 version (which, at this point, I doubt), I'll have to wait on that one until I have a system to play it on. Considering I really didn't even know of this series until like a month and a half ago, it'll be funny if that's the game that finally forces me to get a new console instead of, say, GTA6 or Elder Scrolls VI, since those are both franchises I've followed for a couple of decades now.

1. What type of hair do you have? (Thin, Normal, Thick, Frizzy, etc.)
I guess thin?  And slightly wavy if it gets too long.

2. What color is your hair currently?
Brownish, a few grays creeping in.  I also grew my beard in last August, which has a *lot* more gray in it than the last time I did so.  When I was a kid it was all blond.

3. What colors have you dyed/highlighted your hair?
Never.

4. If you could dye your hair any color, what would it be?
Nah, homie don't play that.  But if I did, maybe vantablack, with a matching trench coat and wraparound sunglasses.  Man, when I was 14 I'd think that would be such a cool look.

5. What is your hair's length?
Standard guy-short; shorter than shoulder-length, longer than crew cut.  The ends get a little unruly if it gets any longer than that.  Also, short-trimmed full beard since August, which I initially grew in as part of vacation laziness but ended up keeping for at least the time being.

1. If you could change one life-changing event in the life of someone important to you, would you?
On the surface, this seems like an easy "yes." But still having Life is Strange fresh in mind, which has an entire sequence that shows that doing just such a thing could lead to unintended, and potentially severe, results, it'd acutally be much more of a situational answer.

2. Which do you think is easier to do, being friends for many years, or being life partners for many years?
Well, some of my friends have been friends for over 30 years, and I still haven't quite gotten the "life partners" part to work (came close, but not quite), I guess the former.

3. Have you ever walked away from someone you considered a friend?
Relationships, yes, but I dont think I have specificially with friends, although of course there have been some that have grown apart or lost touch, and childhood friends that moved away in the pre-internet days, never to be heard from again.

4. If you had to choose between telling the truth and hurting a friend or lying and making them happy, which would you choose?
This one might also be a bit situational, but generally speaking truth is probably best.

5. Which would you rather hear--the truth which will hurt, or the comforting lie?
Same.  Truth may suck, but in the grand scheme it's generally for the best.

 If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that socks and bookends have one thing in common - you can never have too many of them.

December's been a tough month - nothing catastrophic, but lots of annoyances, many revolving around the weather.

A few weeks ago I got home from work on a windy day. It was a Thursday, which is my "Friday" (my "weekend" is Friday and Saturday). I was sitting there minding my own business when I heard a crash outside - it turned out that the wind had torn the chimney cap completely off my house. After a few calls through my heating oil company (the chimney goes to the oil furnace), I was able to get somebody out to fix it. That actually went well - it was originally going to be the following week, but they kept calling back and saying they could come the next day, and then that night, and the repair was only $70.

My plow guy from the last few years is no longer doing snow plowing, so I theoretically got somebody new - theoretically because the first snow storm they never showed, saying when I finally texted that something was wrong with their plow, and then with yesterday's storm saying that they no longer worked my area. So last night I buckled and ordered a snow blower, which will ultimately pay for itself pretty quickly after three or four uses versus paying somebody to do it. Of course, it didn't come in time for last night's storm, so I had a lot of shoveling to do today - fortunately a neighbor let me use their snow blower for the worst of it.

Also, some car--related expenses - first two new wheel bearings, then I kept getting a tire pressure indicator (despite the tire pressure being fine) which of course turned out to be bad sensors, the replacement of which was another $1k. I guess I should expect some of these sorts of repairs to be needed; despite my car being a 2019, it already has nearly 126k miles on it, but it doesn't make the expense any more fun.

That said, the holiday itself was very nice. Small gathering at my mom's. Because we always used to end up with way too much food, the last several years we've just done a mix of various hors d'oeuvres and desserts rather than a formal dinner; this year I made two pizzas to contribute to the spread (one a white pizza with a shallot/garlic/olive oil "sauce," the other plain cheese). We still ended up with way too much stuff, and I defniitely ate way too much of way too many things that I shouldn't, but it's one day a year. Our trinity of Christmas movies (A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation and Home Alone) was also screened (I also watched Story, or had it on in the background, a few times on my own since that's my #1).  Amusingly, my mom actually got me the Sound Machine featured in my last post, 35 years after I first asked for it and didn't receive it.  I guess she finally figured that, at 42, I'm finally old enough to not be completely obnoxious with it - of course, the downside is that I can no longer use not getting it in 1990 as a (lighthearted) guilt trip anymore.  It was a good time - but I do always hate when the holiday ends; despite not being in any way religous, Christmas is probably my single favorite time of year.

Hopefully next month will have fewer petty annoyances, aside from the general national-level existential dread - and the same goes for the rest of 2026.

I'll leave by mentioning my "current music" for this post, which is  one of my favorite songs for the holidays.   "Aspenglow" is really a winter song, not specifically a Christmas one, and to that end I don’t think they come any better - and its second release *was* on a Christmas album, so I count it.  Hearing it just makes me feel like I’m under a warm blanket in front of a fire, glass of good port, sleeping cat or two, nowhere else to be and nothing else to worry about. Someday I aspire to achieve this vision.

Fantasian: Neo Dimension
Some months ago I completed this game. This was the last ride together for Squaresoft OGs Hironobu Sakaguci (writer-producer) and Nobuo Uematsu (composer), and the planned last full game project in general for the latter. This definitely captured a bit of the old-school Final Fantasy magic and had a fun, engaging battle system akin to FF10's where party members can be tagged in and out at will, as well as a skill tree system similar to FF10's sphere grid that unlocks haflway through. You also unlock what are essentially limit breaks for each character partway through. The characters also all follow standard classic FF archetypes (basically, protagonist Leo is a mystic knight, Kina as white mage, Cheryl as black mage, Zinikr as monk, Ez as chemist, robot Prickle as maybe a paladin, Valrika as a red mage and Tan as a dark knight). The story isn't necessarily anything groundbreaking, but is entertaining enough, and the characters are fun and have a lot of personality.

One thing it is not, however, is an easy game. Especially once you reach the halfway point, the difficlty ramps up drastically, and many bosses fall into what I call the "Yunalesca category" - bosses where you have to fight them exactly the way the game wants you to, and if you do anything to deviate from that, the boss just outright kills you. For example, in the Shangri-La section, the Guardian boss - a kaiju-sized deer centaur thing - has a weather-controlling machine behind him. He'll start charging an elemental attack, and before his attack goes off you have to use a weak elemental attack on the weather machine to change it so it and the boss's charge are not of the same element. If his attack goes off with the same element as the weather machine, he hits your entire party with an attack that does more damage than the maximum possible HP cap, so it's a guaranteed game over. Also, if you damage the weather machine too much, it breaks down, the boss goes haywire and does the same one-shot party wipe. And by the way, he has half a million HP. That's just the game saying, "have fun, asshole."

So this turned out to be one of the hardest RPGs I've finished in recent memory, maybe ever. It definitely felt like an achievement to roll credits on it. I enjoyed my time with it, and I think it was a good sendoff to the Sakaguchi-Uematsu team, but I don't think I'll be in any rush to play though it again.

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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles
I rolled credits on the Ivalice Chronicles version (in "enhanced" mode) last month and was very happy with it. I first played FFT in its original release nearly thirty years ago, and although I never finished it I did later play a bit of the PSP version (War of the Lions) as well. And I have to say, I really believe this is the best version yet.

The enhanced HD graphics are nice, and not overdone, so it still retains the overall look and feel of the original. The voice acting is excellent and adds more to the experience that I expected. Leaving the music alone was the right call; that needed no enhancement. The translation (mainly based on the War of the Lions version) is a tremendous improvement over the original PS1 version, which was, frankly, a disaster. But I think the single alteration that absolutely made this version for me was the expanded roster size - up to 50 characters, up from 16 in the PS1 and I believe 24 in War of the Lions. The small roster size in the original was rather stifling - you basically had to choose who to keep from among your early-game generic recruits if you also wanted to recruit all of the unique characters, often having to make the choice between ditching and not getting to use useful storyline characters, or ditching other party members that you've already invested considerable amounts of time in. Bumping it up to 50 allowed so much more freedom to hire extra generics to experiment classes with and still get all of the unique characters; I found myself using characters like Rapha, Reis, Construct 8 and especially Beowulf, who I'd never really had the chance to use in the original a great deal this time around. And I also had a healthy roster of generic units, including some dedicated to specific classes - notably having one each of Dancer and Bard by endgame - and even play with some recruited monsters (my pet mind flayer, Squiddy, was a star for a number of random battles). Even having Cloud start with his Materia Blade and at a level comparable to your party rather than at level 1 made a world of difference, and I got some use out of him as well (after the first time, I never even bothered to do the sidequest to get him in the original).

Some complain that it doesn't have the added FF12 guest characters and the extra unit classes from WotL, but that's not an issue in my opinion - most of that stuff was broken and poorly implemented anyway. So I'm comfortable calling Ivalice Chronicles the definitive Final Fantasy Tactics experience, and don't see a reason to go back to the previous versions.

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Triangle Strategy
I think I've bounced pretty hard off of this one.

After completing my Final Fantasy Tactics run I was in the mood for some more strategy-RPG stuff, and I've had this one laying around for a long time without actually playing it, so I figured it was time to pop it in. And... I don't know about this one. My main issue is that the pacing, at least in the early part of the game is absolutely glacial. Cutscenes are fine; FFT certainly has no shortage of them, but in that game there's plenty of actual gameplay between the cutscenes to keep things moving. With Triangle Strategy, after playing a total of ~three hours I'd only played two actual battles, one of which was a short tutorial and the next being the tournament battle on a very small and restrictive board, with literally over an hour of cutscenes in between.

Add to that while the story seemed reasonably well-rendered, it didn't really grab me too strongly either, and the characters seemed fairly generic. There also doesn't seem to be a whole lot of character options/customization, which isn't necessarily a dealbreaker - Brigandine: The Legend of Forsena, a game I absolutely adore, was pretty much linear in its character progression as well, but that game had more going on to make up for it. I do like a lot of the ideas used in the battle system, from what little of it I was actually able to experience - not unlike FFT, but with new twists like terrain elevation being taken into account for damage, and enemies caught between allies taking extra damage from both characters - but I'd like to actually, y'know, get to use them.

I know I probably didn't get far enough into the story or overall game to really make a fully fair judgement, so maybe the pacing eventually gets better, but with the amount of gaming time I generally have available on any given day, I frankly don't have the time at the moment to find out. Maybe someday I'll give it another look when I'm on vacation or something.

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Octodad: Dadliest Catch
What a cool little game.  Fun control gimmick (each limb of your character controlled separately), and a super fun character and concept - Octodad is an average suburban family man who also happens to secretly be an octopus wearing a suit, and has to get through everyday life without arousing anyone's suspicion that he may in fact be an octopus.  I hope at some point to try the coop mode, where each player can take control of specific limbs so you have to work together to move him around.

My only complaint is that it's very short.  There's really just seven levels - the wedding flashback, the house, the supermarket, the grocery store, the first part of the aquarium, the ship flashback and the second part of the aquarium/final boss.  There are a couple of DLC things I haven't done yet, but even still, I can't help but wish there was more to it.  Hopefully someday we'll get something else with this fun character, 'cuz I want more Octodad, dammit!

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Currently playing: Unicorn Overlord; No Man's Sky; Terminator 2D: NO FATE; Tin Hearts.  Also currently playing Final Fantasy VII in multiple parts on my YouTube channel.

1. What were some of the smells and tastes of your childhood?
That certain smell of the elementary school cafeteria is the one that's struck me lately, because the cafeteria kitchen at the college I'm teaching at  has had the same smell (as I remember it) every time I've walked past it this semester.  I was actually going to write a post about that here and hadn't gotten aroudn to it yet.  I guess the same cafeteria pizza would be a top pick for the taste side as well.

2. What did you have as a child that you do not think children today have?
Well, an analog childhood, for one.  Not counting game consoles, I didn't have a home computer until I was in 7th grade, a Windows 3.11 rig from a computer show, and home/consumer internet was still in its infancy - AOL 1.5 was, I think, my first firsthand taste of internet.  If we're talking specific toys - pipe-smoking Mr. Potatohead comes to mind.

3. What elementary grade was your favorite?
For fun, probably 5th - that was a year that I had good friends in class, some fun and memorable activities and no major issues.  For teacher quality, 6th - my teacher that year was very influential on me and, I believe, a direct reason for me studying and teaching history today.

4. What summer do you remember the best as a child?
To be honest, they mostly kind of blend together - I don't know how many memories I could actually assign to any specific summer break during those childhood years.  Endless summer, eh?

5. What one piece of advice would you give to your younger self, and at what age?
I don't know.  Maybe make a little more effort toward academic programs in high school, like joining the National Honor Society (which I was qualified for, but didn't feel like writing an essay at the time)?  But, it's never affected anything in adulthood or the real world.  Be more outgoing?  But, I'm naturally a textbook introvert, and I don't think I could've changed that.  I guess the main thing would just be a general "stop procrastinating."

This was a fun set of questions - and timely, considering my roadside find of the old TV this past week.

1. What's your favourite TV network?
I've never put much thought into the traditonal "Big Four" networks (even less since getting rid of cable), but I guess NBC is probably the one of the four I've watched the most shows from overall over the years?  If we're doing cable too, 2000s-era History Channel (when it was still about history, and shows like History's Mysteries, Modern Marvels, Cities of the Underworld etc. ran pretty much all day.

2. If you could create your own channel, what would it be?
I'd probably just show a lot of random, seldom-seen stuff - short-lived series, one-off specials that nobody remembers, failed pilots, etc.  The weirder and more obscure the better.  Of course Cop Rock would be one of my channel's staples.

3. What TV show did you watch as a child, that you wish they would bring back?
Oh man, inject early-'90s Nickelodeon into my veins.  Like, all of it.

4. What show have you always hated, and wonder why they ever made such a dumb show?
I guess the collected works of Chuck Lorre would top the list.  Far as I can tell, the last decent thing he made was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song.

5. What TV show's seasons would you buy on DVD?
I mean most of the shows I'd want, that are available, I already have (or at least have means of watching).  Tying into question 3, a full-series edition of The Adventures of Pete & Pete would be great, since as far as I know only the first two seasons have DVDs.  But I'd be especially interested in stuff from the early/pioneer era of television, like from the late '30s through '50s, because I find that fascinating.  Unfortunately it's a pipe dream because very little actually survives; many shows were broadcast live and never recorded to begin with, and a lot of archival material no longer exists (most of what was recorded from the DuMont Network, for instance, was dumped into the East River in the '70s).