Tropical Rouge Precure out in bluray subtitled:

[Gelatin] continues bluraying the Precure series for the benefits of all fans.  Pretty Cure, as the name suggests, focuses a lot on the beauty of the heroines and their amazing costumes, so a bluray high definition fidelity is a big boost for this show.  This is helpful to me because I still, technically, am undergoing a project to rewatch all of Pretty Cure, though I stopped at episode 15 across the board due to all these games arriving one after another.  Eventually the games will run out, Pretty Cure will resume, and this bluray will come in handy.

I put everything back on pause so that I could play Unicorn Overlord for a third time.  This time I resolved to up the difficulty yet further -- no use of luminous urns, any unit dying is a game over requiring I restart the stage.  In addition I killed Aramis so that the plot would change and that led to a chain reaction of lots of other characters not joining my army.  This let me do crazy new things like create a party of 5 werefox mercenaries.  This time I didn't use Josef (the overleveled character you get at the beginning).  In addition, I didn't use the broken trinity staff combo this time around, because it trivializes the content, and I wanted to actually play the game not rape it.  So the game is totally different this third time from the previous two.  One cool trick I pulled was managing to get the Holy Unicorn Sword before hitting level 30 and even learning spinning edge.  And all fairly this time too.

My squads this time are very thematic.  I have a knight squad of 5 knights, a cleric squad of 5 healers, an archer squad of 5 archers, a mage squad of 5 mages, a werefox squad of 5 werefoxes, everybody has their own specialized role to play and does that one job well.  Nevertheless, some of the squads are a motley assortment of characters you'd never think work well together except they really do.  One fun squad I never imagined before this third run uses Ochlys, Nina, Lex and Monica.  Somehow these four all cover each other's weaknesses and are practically unkillable.

I'm making my way through Albion on this extreme difficulty mode.  Today I finally beat the Colosseum and got my onyx pendant as the champ.  My units were levels 30-35 taking on level 50 opponents so I'm pretty happy with my organizational skills.

I am listening to Unicorn Overlord's music 100 times as required, actually by playing the game for 300 hours I've easily listened to all the songs that much, but I'm also listening to the music as itunes songs on top of that.  But it will be a while.  I also upranked the relative worth of Unicorn Overlord compared to all other gaming franchises, now that I see how replayable it is.  It's now my 8th favorite franchise, right behind FF Tactics.  It's left Ogre Battle in the dust.  Since I want to honor this game as much as possible, I also enshrined it in my fictional character hall of fame, adding five people from it, tying Granblue Fantasy's honor roll:  Scarlett, Alain, Rosalinde, Etolinde and Melisandre.  Alain is a great leader and hero, the perfect archetypical prince.  The other four are the most beautiful girls in the game and his best love interests, as well as being powerful warriors in their own right.  No matter how many times I play through the game these four girls are always in my active army.  Unicorn Overlord marks the first time my fictional character hall of fame has more honorees than the 1,112 found in '100 Waifus.'  The two honor rolls will continue to grow apart from here.  It's the start of a bright new dawn.

The video game renaissance started in 2017:

Most of the best games ever made have appeared in the past few years.  There was a long drought before then, but suddenly everything started to click again.  It's an interesting dynamic and I'm not sure why it happened.

Dragon Quest XI kicked things off in 2017, making the first truly great DQ game ever.  It's such a good game that it invalidates all the DQ's before it.  You can just play this one and consider the whole series covered.

Then there was Valkyria Chronicles 4, which you can say the same about as DQ XI.  It was such a good game that the entire rest of the franchise is unnecessary, you can just play this and have it all.

2017 also saw the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, an amazing game which led directly into the Xenoblade 1 Remake (the only playable version of the game) and the beyond stellar Xenoblade 3.  The three Xenoblade games together are as good as Final Fantasy 1-6.

Fire Emblem Three Houses came out in 2019, a Fire Emblem so good that it rendered all previous entries in the series moot.  Instead of playing old Fire Emblems, you could just play this one again and again and get more out of it each time.  But then Fire Emblem outdid itself again and released Engage, with just as good mechanics and an even more emotional story (though sadly a shorter one).  Engage took advantage of the entire history of Fire Emblem and filled itself up with all the best settings and characters and mechanics from its entire franchise.  By doing so it produced a nigh perfect game.  These two Fire Emblem games together are better than Final Fantasy 7-10.

Of course, Final Fantasy wouldn't take all this laying down, so it also decided to make the best game ever, Final Fantasy 7 Remake/Crisis Core Reunion/Intergrade/Rebirth/etc.  Steadily, since 2020, it's been recreating the world of FF 7 in brighter color and greater depth than ever before.  Now it shines like no other game before it, as expected of a game that spans multiple games' worth of content.

Unicorn Overlord came out last month and it easily became one of the best games ever, replacing the older version of the same idea, Ogre Battle.

Octopath Traveler 1 and 2 also came out in this 2017+ era, giving us back the varied jobs, 2d sprites and turn based combat of the old Final Fantasy series.  I don't think the characters' stories or designs are as gripping as the old guard Final Fantasy, but the music is if anything better.

It feels like the only games that haven't been superseded these days are Xenogears, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy Tactics and Tales of Graces/Xillia.  Triangle Strategy and Tactics Ogre Reborn tried to be as good as FF Tactics but it was just impossible.  A bridge too far.

Of course, there's no reason why people shouldn't play the old greats and the new ones, but the old greats all came out in the 1990's, and the new ones all came out after 2017.  What happened to gaming inbetween?  It's bizarre how the whole hobby essentially disappeared for decades and then came back as the best hobby possible.  You don't see this resurgence anywhere else.  Anime is steadily releasing fewer big hits, books have been on a continuous downslide, all the best manga have ended or are close to ending, visual novels aren't even being translated anymore, etc.  It's only video games.  They're the only thing that keeps getting better every year.  They have completely saved the 2020's.  Thank God for all these games.

If they would just make an anime of Tales of Graces and Xillia like they did Symphonia, Zestiria and Abyss, Tales would be covered.  After that all they would have to do is remake Chrono Trigger and Xenogears with modern graphics, plus a bit more content to patch the holes that were in the originals, and we could forget about all games prior to 2017. . .

Music hall of fame adjusted:

I've already listened to Unicorn Overlord's music for 220 hours, so I'm pretty sure I know how good it is without a lengthy trial period.  You can say it's already had a very lengthy trial period.  As a result, I went ahead and fitted the 16 surviving songs into my music hall of fame immediately.

I tried to keep their ratings down because a) the music of Unicorn Overlord isn't actually that great, and b) it makes it easier to fit songs in when I don't have to demote as many songs.  As a result 1 song was given a 1-star rating, 14 a 2-star rating, and only 1 a 4-star rating (the best song in Unicorn Overlord is Cornia Overworld (Day).)

To make room at the bottom I deleted Eternal Promise entirely, and merged to death 20 other short songs into 5.  Now there isn't a single song in my hall of fame shorter than 30 seconds in length.  There's now a hard barrier saying you cannot be great at that length, the minimum floor is 30 seconds.  Going with the theory that short songs can't be as good as long ones, I demoted the necessary 4-star song, 'Shop,' for the crime of being the shortest song in its tier, and the necessary 2-star songs, ranging from Final Fantasy to Mega Man to Chrono Trigger, for being the shortest in their tier.  That made life easy because I didn't have to specifically listen to every song in the tier to discover the exact eleven worst songs, etc.  The method isn't perfect but it's better than nothing, and it keeps the tiers balanced.

Most of the merged songs were by Nobuo Uematsu, Motoi Sakuraba, Hitoshi Sakimoto or Masaharu Iwata.  They already have so many points they hardly notice when a few are shorn from them like this.  The new composers honored in my music hall of fame are chiefly Mitsuhiro Kaneda, with 17 points worth of Unicorn Overlord music, and Yoshimi Kudo, with 12.

This is the last time I merge music to make room for a soundtrack, though.  There aren't any overly short songs left to merge.  Plus I'm already punishing completely innocent short songs from the higher tiers just to make room.  From here on if I want to add music I'll simply expand my 5500 top favorite songs to whatever the new total is.  No subtraction, only addition.  Also, I don't plan on keeping the tiers even any further than this.  If I want to add in a new 5-star song, I don't have to find a 'bad' 5-star song to demote.  There aren't any bad 5-star songs to demote, so I'll just add the music wherever I see fit and subtract nothing.  Starting from five even tiers of 1100 the balance will still hold in the main for quite some time.  I said after Granblue Fantasy I would never put this much work into my music hall of fame again, and I stand by that sentiment.  This is the best organized the music hall of fame will ever be.

While I was at it I also promoted taiju no mura to 2-star and demoted track 69 from FF 14 to make room.

For people who want to check out the hall of fame while it's still pretty, there's always my permapost on the right bar with all the details, which has all been updated to the present moment~

Index GT volume 10 translation underway:

About half of the book is already available.  Index translations are so fast that the second half will probably be done by Sunday.  This means I'll be reading Index while listening to the soundtrack of Unicorn Overlord instead of Irotoridori.  I've narrowed the good songs that aren't remixes from the ost down to 19 songs (from the original 90.)  Now I have to listen to these 19 songs 100 times to see if they're worthy of my music hall of fame.  I don't know if all 19 will make it across such a large number of listens.  Whatever the resulting number, it looks like it will be a manageable amount that can fit into my music hall of fame without expanding beyond the 5500 songs, 1100 for each quintile of worth that's been my tradition for years now.  It'll be tough to squeeze everything in but a lot easier than Granblue Fantasy Relink was.

I'm all caught up on the spring anime releases, save for two episodes of Dungeon Meshi and one episode of Shuumatsu Train.  I'm sure I'll have them done by Sunday too.  I'm almost up to date on Shogun, only one ep behind, so I'll be watching the last two episodes shortly after the final episode airs.  From the first eight episodes nothing has changed my mind that this is the tenth best tv series to ever air.  It has a riveting plot, relatable characters and a beautiful setting.  Go figure the best entertainment in the world would still be Japanese even when it isn't made by Japanese.  Unicorn Overlord and March Madness threatened to put me behind on everything else but things are settling down now.  At least until Eiyuden Chronicle comes out.

Russia continues to conquer, but the progress is all measured in half-villages.  Half of Novomikailovka, half of Krasnogorivka, half of Ocheretne, half of Berdichy, half of Chasiv Yar.  The progress is glacially slow.  I actually joked last year that it might take a year to conquer Chasiv Yar after taking Bakhmut, but here we are, almost a year has passed and they still haven't taken Chasiv Yar.  Exactly as I sarcastically predicted.  There's just no amount you can underestimate Russia's progress and be safe.

As for Iran and Israel, a pox on both their houses.  Without Iran there would be no Hamas, no Hezbollah, no Houthis, nobody attacking Israel to begin with.  At the same time, you can't expect to continuously bomb Iranians, assassinate Iranians, and blow up their consulates which according to the laws of war have diplomatic immunity, and expect no blowback.  Israel has violated all international law for so long that at some point somebody has to teach them a lesson.  Iran would be doing us a favor if they managed to do so, especially since it means only Iranians will be the victims of Israel's wrath as a result.  That sounds pretty much ideal to me.

Almighty Unicorn:

I beat the game on True Zenoiran (the highest) difficulty in about 101 hours, including the epilogue stage.  I also received the full clear, platinum trophy for the game.  But the two were unrelated.  I could have gotten the trophy at any point if I had just looked up a guide and discovered that the final hidden trophy involved not feeding an angry goat a biscuit.  But oh well, I wanted to beat the game at its highest difficulty to prove I could do it, and because the game was so fun I wanted to keep playing, so it was well worth the extra 101 hours.

This time I didn't pull any cheap tricks to defeat Galerius.  My regular formation army was capable of beating him -- basically Sharon's unit, with Alain giving a little help.  The other units in my army couldn't put a dent on him, but at least they could provide healing, magic and ranged assists, and every little bit helped against this monster.  Sharon's unit included the colosseum champion, a fighter, a priest, Virginia and a sellsword (who did most of the damage for me).  Sellswords really hit hard.  I didn't use them on my first playthrough but they kicked ass this time around.

I lost three units on that last battle, but luckily I had exactly 15 luminous urns left so I ended the game with no urns and all my units alive and well.  Talk about perfect resource management.  It was a messy final battle, but I'm so happy I didn't have to rearrange my squads to win that in my books it was perfect.

My second playthrough was totally different from my first, relying on different characters, different strategies and different equipment.  Sadly there's no way to play a completely different way a third time, the game doesn't have enough content to pull a trick like that.  But 220 hours of fun is good enough for any game.  It really pulled its weight.

Now I'm downloading the good songs from the soundtrack so that I can have a little memento of the game moving forward in my life.  I never want it to be totally estranged from my mind, and these songs playing occasionally in my music hall of fame will mean I can always think fondly back upon this month.

In just one week Eiyuden Chronicle comes out, so the video game fun isn't going to stop.  For now I can catch up on my spring anime and play more Irotoridori no Sekai.

Speaking of anime, the small ova of Girls und Panzer, 'commander war,' came out.  It was nice.  Also the Oomuro-ke ova came out and it too was nice, as good as the average Yuru Yuri ep.  The latest season of Bleach came out in bluray, as did the latest season of Eminence in Shadow.  I downloaded them for archival purposes even though I've already watched and rewatched the shows.  Technically Sousou no Frieren's first season came out in bluray but the filesize was so huge it was untenable.  Hopefully a more reasonable group will release a more reasonable version.

Spring 2024 Anime First Impressions:

Henjin no Salad Bowl:  Not only is this a good series, it could end up being great.  By the makers of Imouto Sae Ireba Ii and Haganai, there's no reason to doubt this show's eventual worth.  And the first episode had every sign that the creators haven't lost their touch.  Like Hataraku Maou-sama, the premise of the show is that isekai-jin have translocated to Earth, and now wield their otherworldly powers on our hapless world.  It's a comedy like Hataraku, but focuses more on shock violence and nudity, so I guess an R-rated comedy.  Pass.

Kami wa Game ni Ueteiru:  This show is extremely boring and overlaps with other, better shows that already explored its premise -- No Game No Life and DanMachi.  Fail.

Dai Nana Ouji:  This annoying prince can accomplish anything with his almighty magic already at a young age, and is surrounded by fawning nude maidens in the bath, again effortlessly.  His ridiculously charmed life is wasted on him, as the first thing he does is free a demon on the world for the sake of satisfying his personal curiosity.  Fail.

Dekisokonai blah blah:  Another show about an all-powerful nobleman who effortlessly acquires everything he wants, killing a dragon in the first episode that even the hero was powerless against.  This show has nowhere to go since it's about fighting but the protagonist is too broken to fight against.  What's the point?  The budget is also low.  Fail.

High Speed Etoile:  Car racing is boring.  It looked like a toy commercial because it was pure CG.  Fail.

Girls Band Cry:  This series was also pure cg, but that's okay because it's just like BanG Dream, which is also pure cg, and BanG Dream is great.  It's such a close copy of BanG Dream I could easily believe it if you had told me this was the next season of BanG Dream.  Girls with emotional quandaries seek catharsis through musical expression and make friends along the way.  And they have an exquisite sense of fashion and song while they're at it.  So far this show is as good as a great, already ranked anime.  A real find.  Pass.

Jii-san Baa-san Wakagairu:  This show has an unrealistic take on youthening.  Young people aren't instantly popular with the ladies or have enormous muscular frames or whatever.  It's not that easy.  I was young once and life wasn't easy at all.  In fact, young people are more likely to be depressed than old people.  Anyway, it tries to be funny but ends up just feeling out of touch.  Fail.

One Room, Hi Atari Futsuu, Tenshi Tsuki:  I really like the art of this series.  The plot is reminiscent of Datenshi Ron, but a bit less religious and a bit more romantic.  The show has too many ecchi coincidences for my taste but oh well, the art makes up for it when those events do happen.  Pass.

Seiyuu Radio Uraomote:  I'm a sucker for all things seiyuu related, I have a seiyuu hall of fame that sports 200 names, so of course I'd end up liking a show about them.  This one has a humorous premise that seiyuu are all phony towards the public, something Girlish Number touched on too.  For that matter Oshi no Ko says idols are all phony towards the public too.  Anyway, it's all well-trod ground, but it's about people I like.  Pass.

Dorei Elf no Yome:  I'm already reading the manga of this series so obviously I'd like the anime too.  It's the story about a sorcerer purchasing an elf slave because she was cute and then trying to woo her from there.  It all works out and they're currently living happily ever after.  Pass.

Blue Archive:  I don't get this world.  Why are their cat people?  Why do they have electronic halos over their heads?  What's with the sky?  Are they fighting with real guns or airsoft stuff?  What happened to the world and why does it look so run down?  The setting is a mess and there is no plot.  Fail.

Shuumatsu Train:  Apparently telephone networks really are dangerous, because the moment the 7g network is turned on the whole world went crazy.  The laws of physics were broken and anything can happen from here.  But our intrepid train trippers will somehow find happiness despite all that.  Or I assume the plot will develop in that direction.  Pass.

Yoru no Kurage:  This series is like Girls' Band Cry but animated instead of cg.  Unfortunately the motivations and emotions of the characters in this show aren't as relatable as Band Cry, so even with the better art the impression is shallower.  But it will certainly do.  Pass.

Shinkalion New Age:  Mecha from another dimension are invading Japan and only young kids with compatibility can pilot transforming trains to stop them.  Basically every anime ever.  But the art is good and I like the hero and heroine so, hey, why not.  Pass.

The New Gate:  I read the manga already so of course I'll watch the anime.  The most powerful gamer in a game is transported to the game world where his power is left intact and now he can live however he pleases.  He's a nice guy so he instantly goes around saving people.  Kind of boring but whatever.  Pass.

Idolm@ster Shiny Colors:  Each new season of Idolm@ster is worse than the previous season.  Out of nostalgia I'll grant this show 'great' status and count it towards Idolm@ster's total great episode count, but I really shouldn't.  It's all cg, and most of the idols aren't attractive.  I believe there are 16 this time, and of course there won't be enough episodes to get to know all of them.  The only saving grace is the main character, who actually is a star worthy of attention.  If they're going to keep making sequels like this I wish they'd just finish the franchise already.  Pass.

Rinkai:  The bland animated portions and the horrible looking cg really turn me off.  They put no effort into this show and the plot is as boring as the art.  I enjoyed the high school cycling club anime so this could have been good, but it just isn't.  I don't care at all about these wannabe pro cyclers.  Fail.

Yozakura-san no Chi:  All the problems in the show are resolved in the first episode so there's nothing left to watch.  He already got to marry the girl of his dreams so his life is set.  The end.  Fail.

Karasu no Aruji:  Clearly a shoujo series but I find myself liking it anyway.  Four different noblewomen have been cleared by the Empress as worthy brides for the crown prince.  From here he's allowed to use his discretion to choose whichever one he likes best, so all the girls are vying for his affection by acting as princessly as possible.  We'll see how it goes.  It's nice to see the guy with the upper hand in romance for once.  Pass.

Vampire Dormitory:  This show looked good so I was sad to see it was a boy's love thing, but in a twist at the end of the episode it turned out it was a girl only masquerading as a boy.  Now that makes things interesting again.  Pass.

Lv2 Kara Cheat:  A guy believes himself to be a failed hero summon but actually has infinite power.  The kingdom also believes he's a nobody so he's been left to his own devices.  What will he do with this infinite power?  Especially when he doesn't know he's that strong?  Only time will tell.  Pass.

Unnamed Memory:  A prince consults a witch for a way to lift a curse that makes him sterile.  It turns out the only solution is for the prince to marry the witch.  The witch is against it but the prince convinces her to live with him as a friend for a year and then see if she likes him.  Since that seems reasonable she agrees and so the fate of the kingdom begins.  Pass.

Kaijuu 8-gou:  This show is about disposing of the dead bodies of giant monsters in a very Made in Abyss, gross as possible way.  Since it doesn't have the engrossing plot of Made in Abyss there's no reason to suffer through it.  Fail.

Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau:  This is a girls' love show where only one of the girls is a lesbian, or at least is aware she is.  Her goal is to woo the other girl while not scaring her off, so basically to make it a fait accompli where her feelings are too strong to stop.  Sort of like a spiderweb trapping a butterfly.  Only time will tell whether the plan succeeds.  Pass.

Tensei Kizoku:  This young lord has the appraisal skill, and can find out who has talent just by looking at them.  He goes around recruiting people into his service in the hopes of creating a meritocracy.  Nothing objectionable here.  Pass.

Some more shows are going to join the lineup in May but this is everybody for now.  In order of how excited I am about each new ep airing it would look like this:

1.  Hibike! Euphonium S3

2.  Henjin no Salad Bowl

3.  Girls Band Cry

4.  Wonderful Precure

5.  One Room, Hi Atari Futsuu, Tenshi Tsuki

6.  Yoru no Kurage

7.  Idolm@ster Shiny Colors

8.  Konosuba S3

9.  Unnamed Memory

10.  Dore Elf no Yome

11.  Karasu no Aruji

12.  Dungeon Meshi

13.  Tensei Slime

14.  Seiyuu Radio

15.  Spice and Wolf Remake

16.  Tensei Kizoku

17.  Shuumatsu Train

18.  Shinkalion New Age

19.  The New gate

20.  Sasayaku You ni Koi wo Utau

21.  Vampire Dormitory

22.  Lv2 Kara Cheat

22 shows is a massive haul.  I doubt I'll watch them all to the end, but it's still going to be massive.  I have no complaints with this spring season, and it's only going to get better once Kimetsu no Yaiba begins.

Unicorn Overlord's broken combo:

The moment you can dig up the magia soul in Bastorius the game becomes trivialized.  If you give your mage the trinity staff, which attacks the entire enemy group, with the magia soul, which lets you recast the same spell immediately, everything on the enemy's side dies.

The only exception is if the enemy has an angel with the reflect magic skill opposing you, in which case you have to use a different unit to take that angel out.  But in 99% of cases that won't happen.

The trinity spell is supposed to have a weakness, in that it takes a long time to cast, but with a separate character using the white cat hood, you can remove that weakness and reduce the channeling time to zero.

There's also the innate weakness of a mage having low initiative, so the fight might be over before he even starts casting the spell, but the lipis ring can remove that weakness, so you just give the lipis ring to a third character and tell them to move the mage's initiative up to the start of the battle.

A fourth aspect of the combo is the sorcerer's familiar charm, which increases the power of the spell by 50%, including the copy cast, which should be given to a fourth character.  This four part combo is nigh unbeatable.  I used it to defeat Gerard and get the Holy Unicorn Sword at level 26, as well as defeat Amalia at the colosseum and recruit her, well ahead of schedule.  I've also grabbed all the available anomie weapons, (I'm still in Bastorius so I haven't collected them all yet), all their guardians also fell before me.

Frankly this combo shouldn't exist, it trivializes the game, but luckily I don't have to use it.  Generally I plan on fielding my weaker units to face the game's normal challenges in fair fights.  I just needed it to deal with these particular roadblocks that were keeping me from my fat loot.

The difficulty of the game is indeed higher, I've had to retry stages many times to avoid losing units or just losing my home base entirely.  But that was before I dug up this broken combo.  Now I fear there won't be any difficulties except the ones I impose upon myself.  Even without the combo my deeper knowledge and understanding of the game has let me ace stages I struggled with at the lower difficulty.  The difficulty can't keep up with my growing expertise as I approach 200 hours played.

For instance, this time I managed to recruit the wolf and the bear characters simultaneously, by fighting a battle on two fronts against both of them.  Last time I only recruited the wolf.  Also I spared the thief Gammel instead of sending him to jail, which later allowed me to recruit him and his archer friend, something I failed to do last time.  I'm using tons of new characters and new character combinations and strategies this time through.  A lot is still the same, but a lot isn't, and those differences make the gameplay completely fresh and exhilarating.  Like with Fire Emblem Three Houses, you can play the game multiple times by changing your strategy, because there's more than one way to win.

Once I beat the game this time I'll be content, though, because I will have already completed all the stretch goals the game has to offer.  Another playthrough wouldn't uncover any new content like this one has.

Meanwhile, Russia has taken the village of Peromaiska, basically a suburb of Donetsk, which had stubbornly held out all this time until now.  I said this would happen after the fall of Nevelske and sure enough it has.  I have to give Ukraine credit, they hold every inch of territory much longer than one would expect, but the ending doesn't change.

I also flipped the rankings of two songs, Dawn from Gettysburg fell back to 4-star, while Unstealable Jewel from Xenogears went up to 5-star.  Unstealable Jewel has been 5-star before so this isn't surprising.  It's just tough getting songs on the margins rated correctly, the difference is so slim.