2110: Stacking

I’ve been back in the retail sector for a little while now — part time, temporary, but still in there — and it occurs to me that, despite the pay being low, I actually don’t hate it. I even quite like it, I hesitate to say.

This is not entirely what I had in mind when pondering my career choices towards the end of secondary school. This is not what I had in mind when it looked like I was starting to build a career in the games press. This is not what I had in mind when I obtained a teaching qualification. But, well, it’s where I am now — and it seems to be “working” for me pretty much as well as anything I’ve done before, perhaps even better.

You may consider this to not be particularly ambitious, and I’d probably agree with you there; I’ve been conscious over the last few years of the fact that I’m simply not very ambitious when it comes to career prospects. All I really want is to be comfortable rather than rich, and I value the situation where I can completely “switch off” from work at the end of a day and just enjoy my evenings and weekends.

The other thing which occurs to me is that retail seems to provide an environment that meshes well with whatever it is that makes my brain work the way it does. I didn’t cope well with the traditional office environment, for example, because I couldn’t deal with all the gossiping, backstabbing, politics and outright lying that went on every day. It didn’t help, of course, that I was forced out of the job in question as a result of my immediate superiors not understanding what depression is or how to help someone with it. But then I hated that stupid, shitty, pointless job with all its stupid, shitty, pointless policies and procedures anyway, so despite getting the boot from it costing me a reasonably healthy salary, I’m not sorry I don’t work there any more; I’m just sorry that the circumstances under which I left it occasionally leave me with horribly unpleasant “flashbacks” when I’m trying to get to sleep.

But I shouldn’t dwell on the past too much; as I say, retail seems to provide an environment that meshes well with me. And I’ve been thinking about why that is: it’s to do with always knowing what I should be doing. because the things that there are to do are always obvious. Gap in a shelf? Fill it. Customer at a till? Serve them. Customer with a question? Answer it. Back counter messy? Tidy it. There’s always something to do, which takes care of what was my biggest frustration with the aforementioned office job: the fact that there sometimes simply wasn’t anything to get on with. (And boy, they didn’t like that being pointed out to them.)

I make mistakes, sure, because I’m still learning how things are done at my current job, but I pick things up quickly and I seem to have been making a good impression so far. It’s tiring, too, but coming off a shift feeling knackered makes me feel like I’ve done something worthwhile rather than sitting on my arse all day — plus it’s a kind of “exercise” that I can do without thinking about it.

So while it may not be particularly ambitious to say so, so long as I can keep bringing in some pennies each month with a combination of retail and the freelance writing work I’m doing on a regular basis (not for any websites or magazines, I’m afraid, so you can’t “see” it anywhere) I think I can probably muddle through like this for the immediate future. I hope so, anyway; I just want to be able to relax and just get on with life rather than wondering what amorphous, unclear, foggy target I should be aiming in the general direction of next. I just want to live, y’know?

2109: Vermintide

My friend Sam and I tried out Warhammer: The End TImes – Vermintide this evening, a game which has been positioned by various people as “Left 4 Dead in the Warhammer universe”. I’m all for that as an idea, so we decided to give it a shot.

Turns out it takes most of its inspiration from its stablemate dungeon crawler board game Warhammer Quest, in that it is ludicrously difficult and very likely indeed to splatter your chosen heroes across the walls in fairly short order. Sam’s tried the first mission on “normal” difficulty six times today, and we couldn’t clear it once, though with two of us actually playing, thereby cutting down on the imbecilic AI, we got further than he was able to solo earlier in the day.

It seems like a good game, though. There’s five different characters to play, each of whom have a different selection of gear to start with, and there’s various bits of loot that you can collect and upgrade as you progress through the game — assuming you can actually clear a mission, of course. Having failed to clear the prologue mission, of course, we didn’t see any of that, but it certainly seems that there should be a bit of variety in there — just the starting gear offers a couple of different ways to play for each class.

I tried out the Witch Hunter and Bright Wizard classes. The former is a plummy-voiced sort of chap with a sword (either one-handed or two-handed, depending on preference) and a pair of flintlock pistols that he fires alternately. The latter is a stern-sounding lady who wields a sword and a staff which can blast out simple fireballs or cast a particular spell.

The Witch Hunter seemed relatively straightforward. The choice of melee weapons gave him two distinct play styles — the one-handed sword allows you to slash quickly, making for a fast-paced experience when wading into melee. The two-handed sword, meanwhile, is much slower but deals much more damage, particularly when its attack is charged up. I’m not quite sure which one I actually preferred, but both were quite fun. The flintlock pistols seemed to be fairly accurate, too, making for satisfying ranged kills, often before the Skaven enemies noticed up.

The Wizard, meanwhile, had some interesting mechanics. Rather than ammunition for her ranged weapon — her staff — she has a little meter depicting how much she’s tapped into the Winds of Magic. Casting spells — either the staff’s basic projectile or the more powerful charged spell — increases this meter, which then gradually declines over time. If this pops over the top, she’ll catch fire and potentially explode, which is not good, but going over a lower mark still causes damage to yourself if you’re not careful. Playing as the Wizard, then, involves taking a bit more care with your shots and spells rather than just spamming fireballs at enemies. She also has the ability to “vent” her excess magic energy with the “reload” button, so during moments of downtime, it’s advisable for her to do this — fling a couple of fireballs, hide, vent, pop out and fling a few more.

As you might expect from the name, Vermintide focuses pretty much exclusively on the ratmen Skaven monsters as enemies, but there’s plenty of variety in there. Basic Skaven will swarm you like the zombies in Left 4 Dead, but there are also specialist monsters that will be familiar to anyone who played Warhammer Fantasy Battle or Advanced Heroquest in particular — there are Poison Globadiers, Warpfire Gunners, Assassins, Gutter Runners and all manner of other horrible bastards just waiting to make your life miserable, and, as in Left 4 Dead, many of them require cooperation to deal with. Packmasters, for example, grab a character with their hooked polearm and drag them away, so another player has to free them before they get “hung” from the polearm, at which point it becomes more time-consuming (and thus dangerous) to free them.

It was surprising quite how difficult the game was, but I’m interested to try it again — hopefully we’ll be able to get a full four-player game going with a couple of other friends this weekend, so it will be interesting to see whether it’s any easier with four human players!

2108: Heavensward Dungeon Boss Guides (For My Own Reference)

I ran The Aery for the first time in months earlier tonight, and I realised that, having not run it for months owing to being at the level cap, I had forgotten almost everything about it. So in an attempt to brush up on my Heavensward dungeons as I continue to level Dark Knight — and also to provide an excuse to write a guide, which is something I enjoy doing — I present to you some information on how to beat the dungeon bosses in Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward. Largely for my own reference.

The Dusk Vigil

Level: 51-52

Boss 1: Towering Oliphaunt

Towering Oliphaunt has a few abilities to watch out for. Firstly, there’s Rear, which is an easily dodged area-effect attack around himself, and Prehistoric Trumpet, which hits the whole room.

You should also be aware of his other abilities: Rock of Ages will stun a non-tank player, Wooly Inspiration is a conal pull attack, and Rout is a charge attack. Similar to Wild Charge in The Final Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1, Rout’s damage can be split between a party member and the targeted player. It’s a good idea for the tank to get in between Oliphaunt and the targeted player when this happens.

Tank tank, healer heal, DPS DPS and this shouldn’t present too much difficulty.

Boss 2: Ser Yuhelmeric

Tons of adds appear in this fight. There are two main types: melee adds have a few area-effect attacks, while caster adds have the ability to buff everyone around themselves, including the boss. The tank should try to keep the boss away from the adds.

The only real ability Yuhelmeric has that you need to be aware of is Death Spiral, an attack somewhat similar to Nael’s Lunar Dynamo in The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 4. In other words, it’s a doughnut-shaped attack that you can avoid completely by ensuring you’re in melee range when it goes off.

Boss 3: Opinicus

This is the most complex fight in Dusk Vigil. Opinicus has several different abilities, some of which are easier to deal with than others.

Alpine Draft is a simple line attack that can be avoided without too much difficulty.

Freefall is an attack where Opinicus jumps at a player, destroying any piles of rubble they’re standing near. These piles of rubble are important, so try and stay clear of them when you don’t need them.

Whirling Gaol is a room-wide ability that causes you to be repeatedly “pushed” towards the middle. If you reach the middle, you’ll be stunned and hit. To prevent being dragged in, hide behind one of the piles of rubble.

Winds of Winter is an ability that covers a reasonable area and stacks Wind Vulnerability Up on anyone hit, making Opinicus’ other abilities more dangerous. This attack also destroys all current piles of rubble and causes new ones to drop from the ceiling.

Sohm Al

Level: 53-54

Boss 1: Raskovnik

This is a considerably more forgiving version of the Rafflesia fight from The Second Coil of Bahamut, Turn 1. If you’ve completed that, you’ll know what to do here.

Acid Rain is a circular area-effect ability that takes aim for all players.

Sweet Scent causes Dravanian Hornets to spawn and slowly move towards the boss. These deal no damage, but should be killed if your party has low DPS, since they buff the boss if they’re in range of Devour.

Devour is an ability that goes off after a player is marked and stunned for two seconds. It’s a circular AoE attack, and any hornets in range will give Raskovnik a stacking damage increase.

Finally, Spit is a room-wide attack to simply be healed through.

Boss 2: Myath

Myath will periodically spawn jelly adds around the room, and use attacks based on which ones he consumes. When he consumes a blue add, move away from the party member with a blue marker. When he consumes a red add, stack up on the party member with the red arrow. Remember, blue is poo, red gives head. Or something.

The only other thing to be aware of here is the big green snot add. Kill this as a priority when it appears.

Boss 3: Tioman

Sohm Al’s final boss has a number of different mechanics.

To minimise damage from the frontal cone attack Abyssic Buster, tanks should ensure that Tioman is facing away from the party.

Chaos Blast places AoE markers on each player, so avoid these.

Comet is the main ability to be aware of here. Two players will be marked and AoE circles will appear on the ground. When the marks fade, comets will fall where the players were standing, dealing room-wide damage to everyone based on how close they were to where the comets fall. To minimise damage from this, marked players should move away from the party — ideally to an edge — while the rest of the party keeps their distance too.

At around 45%, Tioman will become invincible and you must destroy her wings to continue damaging her. During this time, she will use Heavensfall, which marks a player and then spawns a cluster of circular AoEs on top of them. The marked player should move away from the rest of the party to minimise damage.

Finally, Dark Star is a room-wide AoE that you need to heal through.

After the wings are destroyed, the fight continues as before.

The Aery

Level: 55-56

Boss 1: Rangda

Rangda only has two main abilities to concern yourself with. To avoid being hit with Electric Cachexis, move into melee range with Rangda, similar to avoiding Nael’s Lunar Dynamo or Chimera’s The Dragon’s Voice.

If you get marked with Prey, move to one of the tall pillars at the outside of the room to transfer it and stay safe.

You should also kill adds as they spawn; none of them are particularly tough. Rangda also has a few other AoE attacks, but none of them hit particularly hard, so just heal through them.

Boss 2: Gyascutus

Gyascutus will gain a damage-up buff for every cloud of poison it farts out around the room. To get rid of these, use the Mustard Gas bombs that spawn occasionally to eat one or two of the clouds, then kill them. If the bombs eat four clouds, they will self-destruct, deal damage to the whole room and poison everyone four times. Don’t do this.

Boss 3: Nidhogg

Nidhogg’s go-to attack is The Crimson Price, which shits out fiery orbs at you. These burn for a few seconds, then blast a line AoE. If Nidhogg faces you and you’re not the tank, he’s going to cast one of these at you. Step aside to avoid damage.

The Sable Price is Nidhogg’s jailing ability. One player will get trapped, and the remaining party members must destroy it before Sable Weave casts, otherwise the trapped player will die.

At about 30% HP, Nidhogg will retreat to prepare his ultimate attack. During this time, you must defeat all the adds and ensure that Estinien remains standing. Tanks should grab the adds as quickly as possible, and healers should divide their attention between the party and Estinien to ensure he stays healthy. When the final add falls, Estinien will put up a shield, which you should dive inside to protect yourself from Nidhogg’s ultimate.

After this, the earlier mechanics simply repeat.

The Vault

Level: 57-58

Boss 1: Ser Adelphel Brightblade

The first phase of this fight is a simple tank-and-spank — kill Adelphel’s companions first, then knock him down. He’ll change form and the fight proper will begin.

When Adelphel casts Holy Shield Bash, he’ll jump to a player, stun and hit them. Paladins can Cover this.

Holiest of Holy deals damage to the whole room. Heal through this.

Finally, Adelphel will occasionally charge around the room and leave big explodey balls behind. Do not be near his balls when they explode, otherwise you’ll be very sorry indeed. (Huehuehue.)

Boss 2: Ser Grinnaux the Bull

Like Adelphel, Grinnaux has a trash phase first. Batter him down to start the fight proper.

Most of this fight is about dodging the various ground AoEs that Grinnaux applies around the room, but there are a couple of specific abilities to watch out for.

Hyperdimensional Slash lays a red AoE in front of Grinnaux in the direction of a random player. When this goes off, anyone in the way will take damage, and an Aetherial Tear will appear where the attack hits the wall. These Tears will tether to anyone near them and damage them, so ideally bait them all to the same part of the room.

After two Hyperdimension Slash attacks, Grinnaux will cast Faith Unmoving, which will knock everyone directly backwards when it finishes casting. Make sure your back is to part of the wall that is free from Aetherial Tears to stay safe.

Boss 3: Ser Charibert

Filthy rats! Charibert has a bunch of nasty abilities that you need to watch out for. It’s a good idea to tank him near the entrance to his arena rather than in the middle.

Altar Pyre is a simple room-wide damage attack. Heal through it.

Holy Chain tethers two players together — run apart to break it, otherwise you’ll both take damage.

Heavensflame causes flame rings to appear on the ground. Avoid them.

Charibert’s most annoying ability is to summon a row of knights, who will march across the arena and Slow anyone they trample over. Each row will always have a gap in it, so position yourself so they’ll pass you by safely or run through the gap to avoid this.

At about 50% HP, Charibert will disappear, then reappear with a bunch of Holy Flames around the room. Kill as many of these as possible, because Charibert’s next attack deals more damage the more Holy Flames are left. You can leave one or two Flames up and still be safe when this happens.

After this attack, the cycle repeats, though both Heavensflame and Charibert’s knight-summoning become more dangerous: Heavensflame has two sets of flame rings, and two rows of knights appear instead of one.

The Great Gubal Library

Level: 59-60

Boss 1: Demon Tome

This is very similar to Demon Wall in Amdapor Keep, albeit without the time limit. Instead, there are some new abilities to watch out for, including an instant-kill.

The first thing to do is avoid Demon Tome’s line AoEs, since these apply a Slow effect. The lines will come down the middle of the room first, then the sides. Position yourself ahead of time to avoid these.

Dark Blizzard III is a circle AoE that targets a random player during the line attacks. Avoid this.

Disclosure is Demon Tome’s instakill ability. When it starts to glow, run around the side until you’re behind Demon Tome to stay safe. If you’re in front of Demon Tome when Disclosure finishes casting, you’ll die.

Finally, Words of Winter is a ground freeze attack that causes you to slide while it is in effect. Plan your moves carefully, particularly when Disclosure is casting, and only move when necessary.

Boss 2: Byblos

When Byblos runs to the centre of the room, two books will spawn, with the ability to cast Death Ray at you, a line AoE that, despite the name, doesn’t do all that much damage.

When they die, orbs will tether to players. Tethered players need to position themselves so the orb hits Byblos to break his invulnerability period.

In subsequent phases, Byblos will spawn clouds of fumes. Party members should take it in turns to disperse these by running through them, since this causes damage. It’s important to manage them, though, as they can interfere with the orbs.

When Byblos isn’t invincible, he’ll perform Gale Cut on the tank. When this is being cast, the tank should run through Byblos or to the side to avoid it. He also has a Tail Swipe attack on anyone behind him.

Finally, Head Down is a charge attack similar to the one seen in Amdapor Keep (Hard). The targeted player should ensure the line AoE doesn’t intersect with any other players to minimise damage. The easiest way to deal with this is simply to run straight at Byblos.

Boss 3: The Everliving Bibliotaph

Three times during the fight, The Everliving Bibliotaph will use Void Summon as a supernatural “Help Wanted” advertisement. In order to prevent his questionable hiring practices, you need to stand on the glowing platforms on the ground. The number of players who need to stand on a platform is indicated by how many lights are lit up on the platform in question. Multiple platforms will highlight at once, so be ready to spread out.

If you get targeted by Bibliotaph, run away from the party to bait the AoE he’s preparing for you. Everyone should keep away from this, as it pulses several times, applying damage and Vulnerability Up in the process.

At around 55% HP, Bibliotaph will cast some combination of Deep Darkness and Magic Burst. Deep Darkness covers the outside of the arena and causes a Heavy debuff for about 30 seconds. Magic Burst, meanwhile, deals damage and knockback. Neither are pleasant.

If you’re new to Final Fantasy XIV and want some more help, I wrote a bunch of guides during my time at USgamer; some of this information is a little out of date now, but the basic boss strategies and suchlike are still valid.

Dungeon guides
Level 50 dungeon guides (up to The Lost City of Amdapor)
Trial guides (up to Leviathan Hard)
Labyrinth of the Ancients guide

2107: Dark Knight Chronicles

Continuing to level Dark Knight in Final Fantasy XIV, and I’m having a lot of fun with it. I wasn’t quite prepared for how much more powerful it feels than Paladin, but I’m really enjoying the overall feel of it a whole lot — much more than Warrior, which seemed enjoyable enough, but didn’t quite “click” with me for some reason.

I think the reason I like Dark Knight so much is that it appears to be a little less dependent on strict rotations to perform its job most effectively — or, rather, there’s more than one rotation to play around with. I particularly enjoy the fact that when playing Dark Knight it’s absolutely okay — even encouraged — to drop out of Grit, the main “tank stance”, in order to do some additional damage. This appears to be of particular benefit when fighting single-target bosses, since taking fewer overall hits means that Blood Weapon (increase attack speed, drain MP from enemy with every hit, only available when not in Grit) becomes a more efficient means of restoring MP than Blood Price (gain MP when taking damage).

Even though many of the abilities are somewhat similar in function to those found in Paladin, they somehow feel more satisfying to use. Dark Knight has an area-of-effect damage over time skill called Salted Earth, for example, that bathes an area in black and red lightning, whereas Paladin’s nearest equivalent is Circle of Scorn, which has its own little pyrotechnics display but somehow doesn’t feel quite as enjoyable to use. Dark Knight also has Scourge, which is a damage over time that can be immediately applied rather than only used at the end of a three-hit combo like Paladin’s Goring Blade. When everything lines up nicely and you can apply Scourge and Salted Earth to an enemy before letting rip with a non-Grit Dark Arts Souleater combo for a significant amount of damage, it’s a great deal of fun.

Learning my way around Dark Knight has been enjoyable, and it’s helping me rediscover my respect for Final Fantasy XIV’s combat system. People who come to FFXIV from more traditional, customisable role-playing games are sometimes a bit put out at the relative lack of personalisation FFXIV offers in terms of abilities — everyone gets the same abilities at the same levels, and the only real flexibility is in any cross-class skills you choose to use, but even here there are only certain ones that are particularly useful — but in practice it works enormously well, behaving, of all things, more like a fighting game than anything else. A slow-paced fighting game, admittedly, but a fighting game nonetheless.

Allow me to clarify. Modern fighting games demand that players learn specific button and directional inputs to perform various special moves. In order to get good at a fighting game, you need to develop a certain degree of muscle memory to be able to pull these moves off automatically. Once you’ve done that, you need to master the timing of these moves to chain them together into effective combos, and then you need to understand what the most appropriate situations to use these individual combos are.

Final Fantasy XIV is exactly the same, just at a fraction of the pace of your average fighting game. Positioning is important; responding to your enemy’s moves is important; using the right ability at the right time is important. Even muscle memory is important, particularly if you’re playing on controller — while you’re not doing Hadoken button inputs to throw a fireball at someone, you do need to be able to remember where you put all your most important abilities and be able to practically automatically perform combos with no gaps for the most efficient possible damage output. For example, on Dark Knight, my average combo runs something along the lines of LT+Y, RT+Y, LT+A, LT+RT+X, A, LT+RT+B, LT+X, RT+B, RT+X, RT+A, RT+LT+B, RT+LT+X, RT+LT+up, RT+LT+A. This pulls an enemy with Unmend, cements aggro with Unleash, kicks them in the bollocks to stun them for a few seconds, drops a Salted Earth on the ground, applies Scourge, blasts them and anything near them with Dark Passenger, does my three-hit aggro combo then my three-hit, Dark Arts-buffed Souleater combo for a nice chunk of damage. And this isn’t even getting into the situational weaving in of various defensive cooldowns to ensure that I don’t take too much damage, or other skills to support the battle.

That may all sound exceedingly complicated, but I’ve done it so many times now that it feels “automatic” to be able to perform these abilities in the order that seems to work most effectively at my level. I’m sure I’ll have to shake things up a bit as I get closer to 60 and challenging more difficult content, but for now it’s extremely satisfying to nimbly pull off these combos without breaking a sweat.

Onwards to 60 then… I should hit 54 tonight, all being well.

2106: Sex and Games Make Sexy Games…?

I penned a lengthy article about The Fruit of Grisaia for my good buddy Matt Sainsbury over at Digitally Downloaded, and it was published today. Please go and read it (it’s spoiler-free!); I was really pleased with how it came out.

In the piece, I noted that I believe the 18+ version of The Fruit of Grisaia to be the definitive version, and I stand by this statement, even with the all-ages version on Steam incorporating a few new scenes from the (also all-ages) Vita version to make up for the lack of rude bits. The story is mature and adult, after all, sex aside, so there’s really no reason to read a version that is neutered in any way when a version more true to the writers’ original vision exists.

This prompted an interesting discussion on Twitter after the fact, not directly related to Grisaia, but to sexual content in games and visual novels in general. We’re still in a situation where a visual novel featuring explicit sexual activity — such as Grisaia, or numerous others like it — isn’t able to be featured on high-profile storefronts like Steam on PC, the PlayStation Store on PS3, PS4 and Vita, and the Xbox Live Marketplace on Microsoft platforms. And I’m not talking about nukige (the visual novel equivalent of a “gonzo” porn movie, where the sexual content is pretty much the sole reason for its existence) — I’m talking about eroge, which are visual novels that incorporate sexual content as part of their narrative.

The Fruit of Grisaia features a number of scenes where the sexually explicit situations are integral to the overall narrative. I won’t give specifics to protect those who intend to read it against spoilers, but suffice to say that in each and every case, the sex scenes serve a purpose, whether it’s to reflect the deepening relationship between the protagonist and the heroines, to provide a tragic juxtaposition between pathos and eroticism, or simply to demonstrate another aspect of the characters’ personalities. In Amane’s route in particular, the sex scenes are very much front-loaded towards the start of her individual path, with the remainder exploring exactly why she is, in her own words, such a slut. And boy does she have some interesting and compelling reasons. But I digress.

The unfortunate thing with this topic is that there’s a curious double-standard applied between Western and Eastern publishers in particular. Western publishers such as Rockstar and CD Projekt can get away with depicting explicit sex acts in their games such as Grand Theft Auto and The Witcher, but if a Japanese game dares to show a little skin, it makes the collected prudes of the world clutch at their pearl necklaces (not that kind of pearl necklace) and faint onto their chaise-longues. At best, we get “minor edits” to cover things up and make things a bit less explicitly sexual — Dungeon Travelers 2 on Vita, for example, had an image that depicted a monster girl apparently fellating a ghost changed so that she was just writhing around a bit instead — while at worst we end up with butchered “all-ages” releases cutting out entire scenes.

All-ages releases aren’t always bad if they’re done well, of course; one of my favourite visual novels, Aselia the Eternal, began life as an eroge but subsequently got expanded to such a degree in its all-ages console format (which was subsequently backported to PC, and this was the version that got localised) that the non-dirty version is now considered to be the definitive way to enjoy that particular tale. But there are cases such as The Fruit of Grisaia where I simply can’t imagine them quite working in the same way without the erotic scenes.

The discussion on Twitter turned to localisation specialists Sekai Project, who Kickstarted the Grisaia trilogy and were originally intending to only bring us an all-ages release. After considerable feedback from fans, they eventually relented and agreed to publish a localised 18+ version of Grisaia via their Denpasoft imprint, even going so far as to allow Kickstarter pledges (like me!) to upgrade their donation and get digital copies of the 18+ versions as well as the physical, packaged and digital Steam releases of the all-ages versions.

In my experience so far, Sekai Project know their craft and they understand the art form that is the visual novel. They recognise that eroticism is an important part of many of these works, hence the existence of Denpasoft in the first place. But the concerning thing for some people is that the 18+ releases don’t seem to get much attention, even from Sekai Project themselves. Denpasoft’s website is a pretty bare-bones affair, and its Twitter account isn’t particularly active, whereas Sekai Project is always tweeting about something or other, launching new Kickstarters and generally enthusing about their work — and with good reason.

Why, though, are the 18+ releases dirty little secrets rather than celebrated and promoted alongside the all-ages versions? I don’t have a definitive answer for that, only theories, but I wonder how close to the mark I am.

In short, Sekai Project as a brand is keen to promote the Japanese visual novel as a valid art form and type of game to be celebrated by as many people as possible. Their keenness to get their work on Steam shows a keenness to get these titles in front of as many people as possible, since Steam is an enormous market to tap into. Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t allow adult content — aside from the aforementioned exceptions for Western games — and so any originally 18+ visual novels that come to steam will have been necessarily neutered. Sometimes there are fan patches available to restore the cut content, though in situations like The Fruit of Grisaia, the all-ages and 18+ versions are completely different base games — the 18+ version is based on the PC original, the all-ages version on the Vita version — and cannot be easily patched.

Sekai Project, as a brand keen to get their stuff noticed, is probably aware of the way the games press has been in the last few years with regard to anything even remotely sexual. As such, their apparent unwillingness to promote the explicitly sexual versions of their games is probably less to do with them being “ashamed” of the content itself, and more an attempt to enjoy a quiet life without enraging the massed heavenly hosts of Anita Sarkeesian’s 43rd Puritan Squadron (Polygon Division). Can you imagine what those narrow-minded, sex-negative fun vacuums would make of your average visual novel sex scene? It wouldn’t be pretty. Fuck Anita Sarkeesian, and fuck what she has done to intellectual discourse about games as art. (I’m aware it’s not entirely her fault, of course, but the members of the press who endlessly bleat on about feminism and the like are pretty much following her cultish teachings to the letter.)

I’m not saying that all visual novels have to have sex in them to be good, of course. But sex is an important part of art, which visual novels are, and sex is also an important part of relationships, which visual novels tend to depict with a strong degree of intimacy. Sex is a basic fact of life, of humanity, and the fact that there are so many roadblocks to exploring it effectively in video games and visual novels is kind of sad, really; thankfully, we’re not (yet) in a situation where publishers like JAST, MangaGamer and Sekai Project are giving up on publishing erotic content in the West completely, but we’re also sure as hell not (yet) in a situation where a mainstream press site would be able to publish something about a work of The Fruit of Grisaia’s ilk without getting a massive hate-boner and then spunking vitriol all over the page, completely missing the point of the “controversial” content in the process; I vividly remember just mentioning Kana Little Sister in one piece on USgamer, and getting attacked by one particularly puritanical reader for “promoting a pedophilic incest simulator”.

It’s difficult to know how this situation can be improved — or even if it needs to be improved. Could there be scope for a Steam-esque platform that allows adult games to be released and promoted, rather than relying on Web stores that many people have understandable hesitancy trusting? I wonder. In the meantime, I’ll keep banging my drum about the most interesting, compelling eroge — and, hell, nukige, since there’s plenty of interesting stuff there, too — and hope that at least a few people will listen.

2105: Into Darkness

The official trailer for Final Fantasy XIV patch 3.1 came out recently, and it’s looking simply marvellous. I am happy about this, because although I feel like I’ve got over my “rut” with the game, I’d still love to see something new at last. It’s been a long time coming, after all.

My initial reaction to the announcement of 3.1 was slight disappointment, but in retrospect this was rather silly. I’ll tell you my thinking, though: previous content patches for the game tended to include three new dungeons, a new raid (either a 24-player casual raid of the Crystal Tower ilk, or an 8-player hardcore raid of the Coil ilk) and maybe some new quests and minor mechanics here and there. And gear, of course. 3.1, meanwhile, only includes two new dungeons, one of which is a “Hard Mode” version of an existing dungeon — Pharos Sirius — which immediately made me feel a bit let down that we weren’t getting as much new stuff as we had in the past.

But then I considered things a bit more, and there are plenty of interesting things happening outside the dungeons, because dungeons aren’t the only interesting thing you can do in the game. They’re cool, sure, but I get the impression that Yoshi-P and the FFXIV team very much want to try and shake up the basic formula of the game a little bit having got it where they want to be over the course of A Realm Reborn and vanilla Heavensward. In other words, that means getting people out of the “grind the same thing over and over” mentality and into doing more varied things.

Perhaps the thing I’m most intrigued by — and most mystified by — is the new Exploratory Missions system, whereby individual players, parties, alliances and Free Companies can fly off into the Sea of Clouds with their airship(s), explore a region for 90 minutes, kick the shit out of some monsters, find treasure, complete objectives and gather stuff. This has the most potential to shake up the basic structure of the game, and I really hope it turns out well.

Details are still a bit thin on the ground as yet, but it seems like there will be three difficulty levels for these exploratory missions, with the hardest level being pitched towards Free Companies with their own airships. Monsters will have difficulty ranks between 1 and 6 instead of conventional levels, and there are apparently Hunt-esque “marks” to defeat as well as regular monsters. There will be objectives to complete that will allow players to earn the all-important Tomestones to upgrade their equipment, and treasure chests that contain new Aetherial equipment with randomised stats.

The randomised element of the Exploratory missions is the thing I’m looking forward to the most, to be honest. Exactly how random it is I’m not entirely sure as yet, but I know at the very least there will be several different areas that you can fly to when you start one of these missions — it seems you won’t be able to explicitly pick where you want to go and will instead be assigned a random landing point in a random region. The equipment you can find will be scattered in bronze, silver and gold chests, and presumably tracking these chests down will involve actual exploration of the area rather than the current situation in dungeons, where equipment can be found in boss chests and stuff in all the other chests is fairly underwhelming in its awesomeness, usually consisting of either potions or crafting materials.

Aside from the Exploratory Missions, the thing I’m looking forward to the most is the new Minstrel’s Ballad trial, which is a considerably expanded version of the final boss fight from the Heavensward story quests. This was an absolutely spectacular fight, albeit not particularly difficult, so it will be exciting to have the opportunity to see this realised as something closer to what the creators apparently originally intended. It will be a ten-phase fight — they stopped short of going for thirteen phases to match the thirteen Knights of the Round — and will apparently be on par difficulty-wise with Extreme-level primal fights and the first area of Alexander (Savage). Hopefully this doesn’t mean it will be a glorified DPS check like Alexander is, but from the little I’ve seen of it so far, it looks like there’s going to be some interesting mechanics at play.

Anyway. Patch 3.1 is coming in early November, which isn’t far away now. I’m really looking forward to seeing what it has to offer, and actually a little bit thankful that the new Relic weapons — which are apparently known as “Anima Weapons” — aren’t coming immediately, instead inviting us to grind ourselves into oblivion from patch 3.15 onwards.

In the meantime, I’ve got Dark Knight to level 50 today, so only ten levels to go before I can officially retire Paladin for the most part and start playing a tank class with a bit more damage output at high level! Darksiiiiiiide!

2104: Adult Content

From a Plinky prompt:

“When did you realise you were an adult?”

I’ll be frank with you, dear reader; despite being 34 years of age, despite being married, despite being a homeowner, despite having a new(ish) car… I don’t feel like I’m an adult.

I mean, obviously I know I am an adult, because I have to worry about things like council tax, credit cards and putting the rubbish out. But I don’t feel like an adult. I’m not particularly houseproud (except when I know people are coming to visit), I’m not the sort of person who enjoys DIY “projects” — I doubt the day when I really want to “do the bathroom” or similar will ever come, whereas for some friends of mine it came practically the moment they left university — and I don’t really know how insurance works.

These are things that people never teach you, you see — or at least, they didn’t when I was in education. During my few years as a teacher, I did deliver a few “Key Skills” classes that, among other things, involved a whole lesson on how to work a washing machine — yes, really — but I must confess to feeling a little hypocritical educating the youths of the day on things that, in some cases, I wasn’t hugely familiar with myself.

Regular readers will, of course, know that my brain is riddled with hangups and anxieties over all sorts of things, ranging from simple communication with other people to how, exactly, you go about calculating your tax code. These anxieties, at times, build into what feels like outright fear, and I find myself worrying that I’ll get everything “wrong” and mess it up; this feeling, when it grows big enough, is enough to completely paralyse me from doing something I need to do, putting it off and putting it off until it becomes a considerably bigger problem than it would have been if I’d just done it when I first became aware of it.

I probably shouldn’t do that. One of these days I’ll end up putting off something really important and getting myself into a disastrous situation. Fortunately, I’m not alone; I have people who look out for me, and while I don’t want to become dependent on them or anything, knowing that sets me a little more at ease with my life than I would be if I was trying to struggle through all by myself.

So, in answer to the original question… when did I realise I was an adult? I don’t think I ever have realised that I was an adult; I don’t feel like I am an adult, I feel like I still have a hell of a lot to learn about the world, and I don’t have the first clue how to go about doing it. And, more to the point, I’m not sure I particularly want to.

That’s probably not a very grown-up attitude to take. But, well… you know.

2103: Amane, the Girl Who Learned to Say Thank You

I finished Amane’s route in The Fruit of Grisaia tonight, bringing my time with this absolutely incredible visual novel to a close, and frankly I’m a bit of an emotional wreck right now, but I will do my best to try and collect my thoughts and post something reasonably meaningful.

One thing I will say before I jump into spoiler territory after the “More” tag is that I’m really glad I saved Amane’s route for last. Not just because she was immediately my favourite girl — and still is after playing through her route — but because her route acts as a rather wonderful way to wrap up the entire experience. Her good ending is particularly “conclusive”, and as the last thing I saw in the whole work, it feels like I’ve had a great sense of closure — although, as always with this sort of thing, I’m going to miss these characters very much. At least I have two more games in the series to look forward to!

All right. Let’s get spoilery.

Continue reading “2103: Amane, the Girl Who Learned to Say Thank You” →

2102: Seven Wonders

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Seven Wonders.”

“Khalil Gibran once said that people will never understand one another unless language is reduced to seven words. What would your seven words be?”

Regular readers will doubtless be aware that I require considerably more than seven words to get my point across in most situations, but this is an interesting question, regardless. What are the most fundamental things that you might need to communicate with other people? And, by extension, if those were the only things you were able to communicate, what effect might that have on your life?

A hasty answer to this question would consider fairly “obvious” words that reflect basic survival: food, drink, friend, dangerous, stop, help, run. Being forced to rely on words like that, though, would essentially put us on the level of primitive man: living for nothing more than basic survival and basic relationships with one another that boil down to people and things being good or bad. That, while a stable existence, would be rather dull.

So you could throw some words in there to spice things up a bit. Love. Hate. Sex. Kill. Although with those latter two in particular, you’re still not really operating on a level anywhere particularly beyond that of the cavemen.

But with only seven words to play with, how on Earth can you hope to make yourself understood? How could you possibly express yourself in all the many weird and wonderful ways humanity does today? These two things aren’t necessarily the same, since expressing yourself “clearly” does not necessarily mean that you’re being understood.

Well, then, you have to consider that not everything about communication involves words. Humanity can communicate with eye contact, with body language, with physical contact, with visual imagery, with music, with sound, with empathy, with sympathy. Consider the works of art that you might have indulged in that have no words as such: silent movies, instrumental pieces of music, visual art, dance recitals, even video games like Flower and Journey.

When you think about it that way, do we even need words at all? Well, yes, I think we probably do, since expressing the fact that you’re hungry entirely through a spectacular but ultimately impractical ballet performance is not really the most efficient way to go about things. But with the above in mind, what it does mean is that we could get by with a bare minimum of language to cover our basic needs — food, drink, friend, dangerous, stop, help, run, perhaps substituting “sex” for one of those depending on your attitude towards fornication — and the actual expressive side of communication could be handled entirely by non-verbal forms of art.

That would certainly be an interesting way to live, but to be honest, I think I like words too much to ever want to abandon them in that way. So don’t worry, dear reader; tomorrow’s post will be made up of more than the seven words I’ve proposed today. And I hope the words I choose will help you to understand me just a little bit more than the day before.

2101: Things I Couldn’t Do

I lost another three and a half pounds this week, bringing my total weight loss since the very end of January this year to five stone and six pounds — nearly five and a half stone. I may not be the sort of person who is particularly good at showing genuine-seeming excitement when speaking in person, but believe me, I’m pretty much ecstatic about this — though I have no intention of stopping here, as the initial “target” I set is still a little way off.

Back when I decided to start losing weight with Slimming World at the end of January, I was just under 23 stone. That is, quite obviously, Too Heavy. I’d always been aware I was overweight — particularly when arseholes in the street would make some off-colour fat joke in my direction — but towards the start of the year, I’d started to become somewhat conscious that more than just being roly-poly and jolly, things might actually have started becoming a bit of a problem.

I could tell this in a number of ways. Firstly and most obviously was the fact that I was terrified to know my actual weight. I wouldn’t get on scales, I wouldn’t even contemplate it. I just knew that I was too heavy, and I wouldn’t tell anyone even what I thought I weighed. The most difficult part of attending my first Slimming World meeting was knowing that I’d find out exactly how much I weighed — and, to be perfectly honest, it was actually a little worse than I thought it was, since I’d silently estimated myself around the 20 stone mark for a while.

Secondly, I was extremely uncomfortable all the time. The chairs I sat in at the job I was working at at the time felt like they were too small for me, but I stubbornly refused to order a “special chair” like the one provided for the resident fat bloke in our department — who was considerably larger than me, even — because that felt humiliating. I was terrified of the prospect of going abroad ever again, because I didn’t want to be one of the people who had to ask for a seat belt extension — that felt like it would be humiliating too. And I was still carrying around painful memories of the time Andie took me to Alton Towers for what should have been a really nice weekend — and was, for the most part — but which had at least part of it that felt utterly mortifying.

Thirdly, and somewhat related to the Alton Towers story, there were things that I felt like I simply couldn’t do any more. I didn’t go along to a significant part of a close friend’s stag weekend because it involved doing stuff at Go Ape and riding Segways, and a bit of research beforehand indicated that I would probably be too heavy for both of those things. So instead I just joined the group for the evening’s activities. I didn’t feel like I could climb a ladder because I was scared it would break; I didn’t feel I could even do basic do-it-yourself around the house that involved using a stepladder because there was a prominent notice on it indicating a maximum recommended weight that was significantly below what I actually weighed; I didn’t feel safe standing on anything that was off the ground, in fact, even if it was quite obviously designed to hold up things considerably heavier than one miserable, overweight thirtysomething.

In short, I was utterly miserable, and I knew it was my own fault for not taking better care of myself. I’d eat crap day in, day out, kidding myself that I wasn’t having much junk, just an occasional treat; I’d deal with emotional episodes by eating because I felt like I “deserved” something nice; sometimes I’d just eat because I was bored, and I felt like eating something sweet might relieve that boredom.

I knew all these things before I started Slimming World. What I wasn’t prepared for was how surprisingly easy it ended up being to change those habits — and what an immediate impact it would have on both my physical and mental wellbeing. I lost eight pounds in my first week on the programme, and have seen fairly consistent losses (albeit somewhat smaller ones!) ever since. I feel happier and more confident in myself; I don’t feel ashamed when I see myself in the mirror any more — sometimes I actually quite like what I see, as narcissistic as that might sound — and while I’m still uneasy to do some things such as climbing ladders, I know that even if I’m still not quite 100% at a stage where I can live life “normally”, I am on the right track and that I will get there eventually, at least so far as my physical wellbeing goes. My mental health is, of course, another matter, but that’s a whole other set of things to deal with that I’m not sure how to even start tackling just yet.

I’ve found myself thinking about the future a bit since seeing my progress. Not in a particularly grand way or anything — just thinking about the things that I wouldn’t have been able to do at the start of this year (such as those mentioned above) that I would be able to now. Andie and I are having a belated “honeymoon” at Center Parcs at the very end of November, for example, and I know that everything about that holiday is going to be much more comfortable and enjoyable for me than the last time we went. (Not that I didn’t enjoy last time, mind you; it was just physically exhausting to lug myself around.)

And I feel like it would be something of a symbolic “victory” for me if, once I reach my target (or perhaps even go beyond it if I feel like I want to go further), I return to Alton Towers and comfortably hop onto all the rides that I simply wasn’t able to physically fit onto the last time I went. I don’t feel I’m quite ready for that just yet, but it won’t be that long now if I carry on at the rate I’m going. And that’s a good feeling; there are many things in life that it’s impossible to “take back”, but thankfully the mistakes I’ve made with my body and my habits don’t appear to be counted in that category.