The last couple of days have been pretty much non-stop gaming on the game I talked about yesterday. I have a deadline, y'see (Friday!) and I'm one of those old-fashioned sorts of people who likes to play something through to completion before writing a review. I got this from my brother; he used to insist that everyone on EGM and OPM (and, I believe, PC Zone before that) finished the games they were covering before writing about them.

This is super-important, as far as I'm concerned, though I also suspect it doesn't happen all that much, judging by a lot of reviews I've read around the place. The rapid, daily churn of the gaming news cycle means that there simply isn't time for a full-time staffer to be able to bang out a 40+ hour game as well as doing all the other things they're supposed to be doing. Which, of course, is why we end up with garbage reviews where people rabbit on about things that offend them rather than saying anything meaningful about the game beyond its first half an hour.

The game I'm currently playing has been rewarding my commitment. There have been some really wonderful moments in the later stages that I simply wouldn't have seen if I'd decided to play just the first couple of hours (at most) and call it a day. And so I'm very glad that I'm doing a thorough job; hopefully that will be reflected in my review when it shows up.

Anyway, my eyes are going a bit squiffy and I have to go back to work tomorrow so I'd better head to bed!

I've spent almost the entire day playing the game I'm reviewing for Nintendo Life next, and dear lord is it exceptional. Not from a technical standpoint, no; it's janky, the cutscenes look like ass and the framerate tanks in more complex environments. Nor from a narrative perspective; the very premise is kind of stupid, though to the game's credit it absolutely runs with it and has total commitment.

No; this is just a game clearly designed with love. The creators love what they've created. They love designing games. They love throwing surprises in the player's path. They love providing opportunities for the base mechanics to be used in interesting, creative and absolutely delightful ways.

It saddens me a bit that the combination of technical jank and… certain assumptions some people will make about it probably means hardly anyone is going to play this. But you better believe it's going to get a glowing review from me, because it absolutely deserves it.

Once again, sorry for the vagueness, but it's embargoed so I probably shouldn't even be saying what I've said here! You won't have long to wait to find out the full truth, though! Watch this space!

I started Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny and I'm officially declaring an S-rank Cute Girls Emergency Situation.

This is Viese, the female lead.

This is Noin, who introduces herself to male protagonist Felt by kicking him right up the arse for being an idiot.

And this is Mitsue, who appears to be a shopkeeper of some description, but the fact she has a bust figure suggests she may be of some importance.

Well, I think it's safe to say that I'm 100% on board.

I really like the art style to this one so far. The sprites and backdrops are pretty similar to Eternal Mana, but the character bust figures really seem to be playing up the "90s anime" feel a lot. And I am all for that.

Not much more I can say just yet, but… well, first impressions are very good!

I've started looking at the next game I'll be doing a review of for Nintendo Life. Owing to embargo shenanigans, I won't name it or give much in the way of specific details, but I will say that it's really, really frigging good — like, way better than I expected it to be.

It's also a bit rough around the edges in a few ways, but these days I tend to find that that sort of thing gives something a certain degree of charm rather than being something to be put off by. It's a game that I think may well have been done a bit on the cheap, but that doesn't mean that it has, in any way, sacrificed its sense of style. In fact, it's one of the most stylish, visually distinct games I've played for quite a while.

Suffice to say, I booted it up for a quick go earlier and didn't stop until over two hours later, I was having such a good time. It's always a real pleasure to encounter something like this: something that you just want to play, enjoy and engage with for hours on end. So yes, I'll be putting a decent amount of time into this before penning some words for Nintendo Life, for sure — and I'm looking forward to doing so.

Sorry I can't be more specific, but you only have about a week to wait before you can find out exactly what it is I'm talking about!

A week? Shit, better play a bit more…

I beat Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. The last boss is tough! There's also some postgame content that I've explored a bit, but I'm not going to go crazy with it; the superboss is ridiculous, so I'm probably not going to bother with that. You can go back and fight the final boss again for a different ending though, so I'm going to do that tomorrow just for completion's sake, then we're all done!

Not before time, too. I actually have a couple more Nintendo Life assignments coming up. Both are embargoed so I can't talk a lot about them, obviously — and even though this blog is private, I'm going to refrain from naming the games just in case — but they're both games that are very intriguing indeed. In fact, I already had the physical version of one of them on preorder anyway, so now I just get to play it a bit early!

One is a yuri visual novel; the other is an open-structure 2D platformer. That's all I'm going to say for now; the reviews in question should be up on the 19th and the 13th respectively, so I'm fairly pushed for time on both — especially as they're both quite long! With this in mind, I've taken a couple of days off from the day job to put some real time into both — alongside the usual stuff you can expect from MoeGamer, of course!

And we're recording a podcast tomorrow too. Oh, it's nice to be busy, isn't it…? Isn't it?

I should beat Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana tomorrow. I'd go for it tonight, but after an emotionally exhausting couple of days, I don't think I quite have the mental fortitude to give it the attention it deserves this evening. I'm prepped and ready to go for the final dungeons, though, so it should be a pretty straight line to the finish.

With this in mind, I'm not sure if the final Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana piece will be tomorrow or not, as I want to prioritise actually beating the whole game before writing about the narrative as a whole, funnily enough. It will definitely be either tomorrow evening or over the weekend, though, so keep an eye out for it then.

I've really enjoyed this game. I'm glad I finally got to it, because it's a really excellent, unusual, memorable and engaging RPG with some wonderful characters, a great setting and a variety of interesting stories. Plus its non-linear "feel" — even if the main narrative is still strictly linear — makes it interesting to explore, since it always feels like there's something going on everywhere in the world.

I'm definitely excited to see where things go next from here, so you better believe I'm jumping right into the second Atelier Iris once I'm done here!

For now, though, bed. Have a pleasant evening!

As pretty much any one of you could have probably predicted, today wasn't nearly as bad as I'd built it up to be in my mind. But that's the thing about anxiety disorders — particularly if you combine them with something that interacts with them, such as Asperger's — they don't make you think particularly rationally. And, as such, that makes you terrified of things that are probably quite mundane.

It doesn't really change the fact that the over-the-top rules of corporate life stress me out quite a bit, but at least now I guess I have some sort of confirmation that they're not something one really "needs" to worry about too much.

I'll be honest, it felt like a weight off my shoulders after it was all over earlier today. Perhaps now I can focus a bit more on things that actually matter. Thank you all for your understanding and putting up with my irrational, anxiety-induced freakouts, and normal business will promptly resume.

$5+ Patrons, I'll get you your wallpaper for this month once payments have cleared. This'll be the arrangement from now on so I don't find myself in a mad panic at the end of the month to think of something to do, and the notification of receiving payment will be my reminder to sort it out 🙂

Anyway. I think I'm going to go to bed now… hopefully for a more restful night's sleep than last night.

I'm having a bad day today. I discovered this morning that a day I took off sick last week because my hernia was causing me excruciating pain and nausea was enough to trigger an "absence management" meeting tomorrow. This discovery caused me to immediately burst into tears at work, and I really do not want to have to deal with this.

I don't want to have to deal with it because I'm furious at the stupid sickness policy here, whereby they have some indecipherable "rolling year" system, in which it appears if you are ill more than a couple of times, you will seemingly never get paid sick leave ever again, and in which every soul-destroying, pointless "Return to Work" interview you have to do when you get back from a day off unfolds in exactly the same way, reminding you that you are somehow a bad and awful person for daring to take any time off to make sure you are healthy. (All this makes the "do not come in to work if you think you have coronavirus" email that went around today seem pretty rich.)

I don't want to have to deal with it because how furious I am about all this makes me feel like I'm probably going to say or do something I will regret. I utterly despise being put in unfair situations and feeling picked on, and this most certainly seems to qualify; not one of the days I have taken off sick since being here has been non-genuine — and while there have been a few sick days in the last year, I wouldn't say "a lot", and there was a full five months where I took no time off whatsoever. Yet here I am, finding myself feeling like I'm being punished for being genuinely, legitimately ill.

I hate it. Absolutely hate it. All this is just adding to the considerable anxiety I already deal with each and every day, and to be honest, all it makes me want to do is head to my doctor and get signed off for a week or two. But at the same time I'm worried that will, in itself, cause its own problems. It might make a statement, though.

I have an appointment to discuss it with the doctor on Thursday, which is later than I would have liked. I'm either going to have to grit my teeth and deal with this meeting tomorrow, or find some way to avoid it.

I'm really not built for corporate life.

I'm so happy the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo turned out so well. I was legitimately, genuinely impressed by so much of it — more so than I've felt impressed by any game for a very long time, even notoriously "impressive" ones such as The Witcher 3 and the like.

As I noted in my piece today on MoeGamer, Final Fantasy VII is an incredibly important game for me. I associate it with what was probably the happiest time in my whole life: the period when I was at sixth form — out of compulsory education, into studying the things that personally interested me, and just living for the moment without worrying about the future.

That period of time was so happy for me because it's one of the few periods where I felt well and truly completely accepted for who I was. The friendships I built and developed during that time were extremely close ones, and the experiences I shared with those friends, while mostly pretty mundane, are ones that I'll always remember. That 36-hour Final Fantasy VII binge was definitely one such experience — and one of the reasons why I will always have such fond memories of that game.

It was a time when it was exciting to explore new games; a time before the Internet made jaded old cynics of us all; a time when we could all just be enthusiastic and passionate about things without feeling obliged to play devil's advocate, or be contrary just for the sake of it. It was a good time. It was a time where I bought a lot of games and discovered some all-time favourites — I just wish I still had some of them, but you can blame the collapse of my first marriage for the loss of most of them. That's another story though, of course.

For sure, while the modern age brings us many conveniences and many amazing things — and the means to express ourselves more freely than ever — if I had the opportunity to go back to then… I'd absolutely take it.

One thing I've noticed over the course of the last few years — running MoeGamer, doing YouTube, running this Patreon — is that the hardest part of self-promotion is doing it to people you know directly. The people you are, in theory at least, closest to.

There are two parts to this. The first is definitely a "me" problem, which is that I feel way more self-conscious asking close friends and particularly family to check out my stuff than I do promoting it to strangers or acquaintances on the Internet. I'm not sure why this is, as I'm genuinely proud of what I do… but I guess it just feels like I don't want to "bother" them or something. This is, of course, stupid, because I know my family in particular supports me and what I do… I just… I don't know, really. Sometimes it feels oddly difficult to say "hey, did you know I've done over 210 videos on old Atari stuff, at least some of which you might be interested in?"

The second part… is a little less easy to deal with and understand. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with the people who are supposedly my closest friends having absolutely nothing to say when I share something I've worked on with them — and I don't share just any old thing, mind you; I share things that I know they'll be interested in. I even dedicated an Atari A to Z video to one of my friends, because it was on the subject of a game we'd both talked about a lot in the past. But… nothing. Not even a "sure, I'll give that a watch later" acknowledgement — even if they had no intention of giving it a watch later.

I don't really know why this is, and I don't want to express my frustration at them because I'm not sure it'll really achieve anything. It'd just be nice to have a bit of acknowledgement from the people who are supposedly closest to me, y'know?

Still, I can at least take heart from the fact that even if the people I've known for 20+ years appear to take no interest in the things I'm most passionate about and proud of, at least I've made some great new friends by doing this. And those people are kind enough to enjoy what I do, have interesting conversations with me and share my joy in creating stuff. So thank you to those of you who I have gotten to know a bit better over the course of the last few years — you are very much appreciated, believe me.

Anyway, enough Sunday night maudlin nonsense; I better get to bed. Back to the ol' grindstone tomorrow, fun fun fun. Still, I think I'm getting near the end of Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana, so hopefully I should be able to wrap that up in the next couple of days. Something to look forward to!

Enjoy what's left of your weekend, and I'll speak to you all soon.