25/01/2024

Helo!

It's the 25th already!

Man this month is going by so fast… does anyone else feel that too?

Well, regardless of how fast or slow, the blog update will always be delivered on time!

But don't expect much new in this one, it's gonna be pretty much the same as last time. I'm in this very weird waiting period…

Anyways

Let 's begin!

WEBSITE UPDATES

For website changes, There's Not Much to See Here!

I fixed a few buttons and updated them, that's about it!

But hey, I made a cool fanart!

Check it out:

Ebi no Tenshi from @ankonomainiti on Twitter! Go follow them, they make wonderfully cute art!

Now for the Phoenix Club Updates!

There's a few things to talk about, but the most important first: Science Partners Will Not be Posted This Month.

Why? Did something terrible happen? Did you cancel it?

Nonono, it's none of those reasons, I just felt like releasing a complete product would be better. As I said last time, I wanted the story to be accompanied by some CGs. I found an artist to do them, but it's gonna take some time for them to make CGs!

In the interest of releasing complete things, instead of releasing the story and adding the art later, I just release when everything is done!

So the release schedule is at the end of February!

Worry not however, I'm already working on the next chapter for the series!

And going forward, expect a new Phoenix Club chapter/ Side content always at the end of every even month of this year!

Before ending this segment, enjoy some concept art for the small CGs!

These unhinged scribbles and lines will be made into a real art by someone much better than me!

That's all for this segment!

ONE-SHOT OF THE DAY

Ieva

One-shot made by Yaeko Sameshima.

This one will another different One-shot of the Day segment.

This One-shot is quite different to the ones I showcased, and in my opinion, doing a proper review of it would lessen its impact.

So I won't review it.

Instead I’ll just tell you to read it because it’s amazing!

That's why you should read it!

Score: 5/5! A very unique One-shot with a great story and art!

LIFE UPDATES

I did a couple of notable things these past 10 days, but first let's start with a repeat:

Deeper In a Galactic (Rock) Addiction !

There's not much to be said other than the game is still super fun!

I have over 80 hours on it, and I don't even own the game for a month, that's incredible!

I switched from the engineer dwarf not a bit, since I accomplished everything the battle pass had to offer for him. Now I'm playing as the Driller and oh man I miss the power of the engineer…

The Driller is more focused on support by creating tunnels and his weapons mostly rely on elemental dmg which is very interesting.

But I'm still having fun with him by freezing my friends, and will continue to have fun with this awesome game!

Icy Fight!

Next up is: Honkai Star Rail: Gold & Gears Completed!

That's right, it only took me a month to complete all the content of the Simulated Universe: Gold & Gears!

Now I can give you my full opinion on it:

It was ballbusting hard!

I did all (almost) max difficulty with all the dice, only using my DoT team that consists of Kafka, (Any DoT character), March 7th and Fire Trailblazer.

I don't have any of the OP sustain 5 stars units, so I had to go with March and FTB, which lead to more intense fights as they struggle to keep my team alive and themselves too.

But hey, it was still super fun, despite some frustration I had with some of the dice too!

My favorite dice was for sure the capitalism one, where your focus shifts from battle to going to shop domains, buying as much as possible and winning! I had so much fun~~

Certificate of Completion.

Aside from that, I have been spending my time grinding artifacts levels and good substats for Dr. Ratio and Guinaifen.

Talking about him, Dr. Ratio's Light cone yesterday too! I'm so glad for that, I have no good Hunt light cones to give him before!

It was another 50/50 win, which proves to me that Hoyoverse has been tampering with my odds of getting characters, most of my 5 Stars 50/50 wins recently have been mostly for male characters, meanwhile, all my female pulls have ended in disaster and despair!

They are actively increasing my odds for Men than Female!

Which in all honesty, it's quite funny LMAO.

”What are you supposed to be…”

I also can't wait to see the 2.0 trailer tomorrow!

Now for the final segment, some random IRL Fun Stuff!

I finally had enough to buy myself a brand new PC!

A PC much stronger than the one I had!

Why?

Well, the game's requirements have been rising and rising, so I figured it was time for a brand new one after 5+ years of sticking with the same one.

It cost pretty much all the funds I have been saving up for it, so it was okay!

What I did not plan was my other spendings!

I'm currently in a tight spot with money…

I spent a little too much on giving Christmas gifts, I bought some Minori Plushies and other Phoenix Club spendings totals to a pretty decent amount of money…

But I'll be fine, the situation is not in despair, I just won't be able to buy much for the next couple of months.

This PC will be very much useful to play Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth & Persona 3 Reload and for my future dreams of playing VR Games… When I can afford them!

By the way, check out the Minori Plushies, they are adorable and I'm super happy with them!

They will fight a lot.

This one will come with me on my travels.

And that's all for this segment!

SONG OF THE DAY

The song has finally been released!

The song about Teyvat's greatest actress!

The song of the day is Se mettre sur son trente-et-un from Hoyo-MiX!

and that concludes January!

A very calm and honestly enjoyable month, I hope the year continues to be like this!

See you next time traveler!

Have a nice day!

15/01/2024

Helo!

It's time for another blog update!

Yup, it's half through the month already!

Things have slowed down compared to the last blog update, so you can expect this to be a much shorter update than last time. Which should be the case considering I wrote almost a chapter from a book worth of words.

Anyhow, let's begin!

WEBSITE UPDATES

Nothing Really Changed Since Last Time, aside from minor additions to make the yearly refreshed pages better.

There's also a new button…!

That's about it for all the changes, most of my time was spent elsewhere.

But hey, don't get upset, that time was not being wasted!

You can't waste time if you are inside time!

My time was spent further writing the Phoenix Club Side Chapter: Science Partners!

Yup, it finally has a title that may still be a work in progress…

But the story is pretty much finished!

It was passed to my editor, Miya (go visit their website), who proceeded to pick it apart and dismantle my work, which felt oddly scary…

I have received the revised story back to fix my many mistakes, but I have yet to open the file. I already feel bad for putting so much work for them for dumb mistakes I made.

I offered to pay double what I usually do because of how bad I felt, but it was denied, instead I was made fun of, which is honestly warranted lol.

I probably made a lot of dumb mistakes, but these are just the growing pains of the process. I'm gonna take notes and everything to make sure less mistakes happen, thanks for the work Editor, I appreciate it!

As for when the story will come out… by the end of the month it should be out, the only thing I need now is the art assets, which I can't make myself since my art is very below average, so I'll have to rely on commissioning artists. I also don't want to put anyone under pressure for a deadline, so if the end of the month reaches and I don't have the art, I'll just put the story up and add the art later.

I also need more artist connections in general, so if you are an artist reading this or knows an artist and think this project is cool at all, send me a message!

You would of course be paid for your work, via Paypal, that's the only payment method I really have available.

I'll delve into more of the thought process and general cut things about the story itself when it is published by the next blog update, look forward to that!

Also, take a look at this poorly made concept art for the symbol in Yuka's shirt:

It sure is something alright

That's it for all the website changes!

Have an unrelated Miku design made by Miya:

A Miya made Migu.

ONE-SHOT OF THE DAY

Kurage no Uta

Song of the Jellyfish

One-shot made by Saka Mikami.

Synopsis: Kazuma is a pretty talented athlete in pursuit of the gold medal, and during one of his routine practices, he's distracted and drawn to a mysterious person singing all alone…

Art and presentation: It's hard to find words to describe, the author of this one-shot is just… so talented. The complexity of their drawings, how much emotion they convey and the way it's presented. It's amazing.

Why you should read it: It's hard to find words to describe, the author of this one-shot is just… so talented. The complexity of their drawings, how much emotion they convey and the way it's presented. It's amazing.

Pursuing goals is a difficult course to go through, but having someone supporting you can make the hurdles easier to jump through.

That's why you should read it!

Score: 5/5! Great One-shot that surely will make you tear up!

LIFE UPDATES

Let's first begin with another chapter of the addiction: Deep Addiction Galactic!

I have been pretty much only playing Deep Rock Galactic for the past 10 days, any free time I had was a “Rock and Stone” time. The game is just too fun and the gameplay loop is way too addictive!

Even playing solo is fun, but it does feel like a worse experience when you don't have teammates.

KABOOOOOOOOM!

Me and friends have been trying to achieve the “Most Amount of Gold Collected in a Single Run” goal for ourselves. The maximum record at the time we began was 1k, but then a miracle happened!

While we had the buff of getting more gold mining, we encountered the rare variant of the enemy that exploded in the previous image, one made of gold! Killing it will cause him to explode, and instead of destroying, he makes everything around him gold!

The buff and this rare encounter completely demolished the record, we walked away with about 4.2k gold that mission!

A Miracle!

Aside from that, we also got a few rare achievements related to kicking barrels and speedrunning.

They had a full squad already :(

I'm probably going to continue playing this game for a good while, at least until the big releases are coming soon… that also are 1 week apart from each other… As an RPG fan, I already have my whole year booked.

There's one more game I have been playing during work hours, Cookie Clicker!

Work has been reeeeeeeeally slow recently, so I decided to open up Cookie Clicker and attempt to get 100% achievements on it!

(Yes, I was that bored.)

(Also, the decision to grind cookie clicker was actually made in December of last year!)

I'm at the 88% mark of achievements so far, right now I'm grinding the minigame achievements at the moment, they take so long;;;;

Look what peak gardening gameplay looks like! (Golden cookie cameo)

And now, for the final topic of the day:

Hirogaru Sky! Precure!

Soaring Sky! Precure!

This might be very unusual coming from me!

“Gushing about a magical girl anime? Really?”

Yup, it indeed is very unusual for me, I didn't really care about this genre of anime before, but I knew a friend that did care about it and gushed about it to me.

I didn't have much motivation to watch, until they said something that caught my attention...

The moment this show caught my attention. Also yes, Miya is the magical girl connoisseur.

Now, the reason it caught my attention is because of the uniqueness. When's the last time you saw a magical girl anime with a boy that also transformed like them? Probably never!

And so I began watching because of how different it is!

So, what did I think about it?

Well, I'm about halfway through the season, and it's AMAZING!

This show has very good action, very fun characters, great music and Sora is a great protagonist!

It even has a lot of heart, there's a lot of moments where I legitly almost cried watching, something I never thought about a magical girl show!

See why she's the best!

And that's all for this segment!

SONG OF THE DAY

The song of the day is Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure ~Hero Girls~ from Hirogaru Sky! Precure!

This song is just too hype and great to not be featured today!

Go listen to it please!

And that's all for today!

Told you it was a much shorter blog update!

See you next time traveler!

Have a nice day!

05/01/2024

Happy New Year Everyone!

2024 is finally here, after 365 days of waiting, it has finally arrived!

This is the first blog update since last year, and we got a lot of things to talk about, so let the massive text boxes materialize!

WEBSITE UPDATES

When I said “a lot of things to talk about”, that wasn't for this segment!

Very Few Things Have Changed since last time.

I spent most of my days resting and doing other things, all of which you will hear about soon enough at a massive block text below!

There's a new button added to the links page and the Christmas Fiend disrupting the website has gone away to plot their next move. And aside from all the yearly refresh of some pages in the website, that's all for changes!

Don't worry, she will start to melt soon.

I had an idea to do a recap of the last 6 months similar to the way I did last time for the mid-year recap, but that was scrapped after the colossal amount of work I would have to do in summarizing 25k words into 2k ~ 3k. So that was scrapped! Sorry…

But it's not all doom and gloom, I'll do another recap, but this time for a full year, not just 6 months! Hm, I guess that makes my first promise this year… I got a whole year to do it, it's going to be fine.

Talking about promises, I have a Year Plan for Phoenix Club!

I'm currently writing the firstish~ draft for it and it feels nice to write again.

By the way, check out the design of our protagonist in this story: Yuka, the Science Teacher That Rarely Leaves Her Lab!

Artwork made by Miya

The one you see in the corner is Oshare, the Cool Nurse with Cool Shades. You will see their relationship in this story, I can't wait to put it on the website!

Alright, now for the future of Phoenix Club!

I wanted to do a lot for this little fun world I created, so I made my year goal to: Publish at least 3 full chapters and 2 side content for it!

That's right, 3 chapters and 2 side content!

By full, I mean fully written 2k ~ 4k word chapters and not divided by parts like the first one was! They will also feature at minimum 2 CGs to accompany the start and end of the chapter, not made by thought, I'll commission artists to make those, my art is not good enough to do such a thing…

That's the future plans for Phoenix Club!

I want to grow and learn more as a writer this year and this plan is a perfect way to do so!

Stay tuned for the future!

Seiko ready for action!

That's all for this segment!

MANGA OF THE DAY

School Zone

SCHOOL ZONE GIRLS

Manga made by Ningiyau.

! Warning: This manga is currently in Hiatus, this review was made with only the 5 volumes currently available !

(Doesn't mean you should skip on it though ;) )

Synopsis: A quirky yuri comedy about the chaotic daily life of high school girls!

Yokoe and Sugiura have been together forever, and they’ve mastered the art of making trouble when life’s a bore. High school might be a drag, but these girls in love know just how to inject a little chaos and comedy into their sloppy school life.

Source: Seven Seas Entertainment

Art and presentation: It's simply amazing, the characters' expressions, the drawings, everything about this is so well made, it's not afraid to make their characters look goofy or angry. The art really complements the characters' feelings to such a degree that is rarely seen in animanga.

Why you should read it: It's one of the funniest mangas you will read in recent times! All the characters are flawed and they are not afraid to be themselves or to show these flaws, which makes for gut busting moments of laughter!

This manga also touches on a lot of things about romance of the same sex. Let me first say: I'm not qualified or the judge on how well this topic was portrayed in this manga, what I can say is how I felt about it.

I feel like it was tackled with a lot of respect and care, with some nuances I have never considered!

That's why you should read it!

Score: 5/5! Despite being on hiatus, it's still an amazing read!

For those who noticed, yes, This segment is different!

For the new year, I wanted to expand this segment a bit, to cover more general manga stuff from time to time. It will be mainly focused on one-shots, but there will be some manga reviews every now and again.

LIFE UPDATES

Now we have pretty much the largest life update of this year! Well, technically it's both the largest and smallest of the year since it's the first one, but hey I don't really care!

First let's talk about how My Christmas went!

For starters, a day before Christmas I bought some snacks to eat at midnight while giving the planned gifts for my friends. These snacks were… fine, nothing unique, just an assortment of chips and chocolates… there was one issue however, one of the chocolates was expired!

It was 2 days due I believe and that set the tone for that moment as I messed up a couple of gifts while also having a stomachache. Not the best Christmas, but hey, we can't be winners all the time.

In the end, most of the problems with gifts were solved, the presents I received were amazing (even though I feel like I don't deserve them), I spent most of my day resting and getting beat up by Miya in video games.

A solid 7/10 Christmas IMO.

Hm? Do you hear that? It feels like water drops from the sky? Oh my god! It's Risk of Rain Returns!

What did you think of that introduction? I know, I know, I'm very good, I know.

Anyway, Risk of Rain Returns uh… comes back in spectacular fashion!

My journey of “completing” my goals in the game has come to an end. I did all the remaining achievements and unlocked pretty much 99% of everything!

…

What's that? Where's the remaining 1%?

I'm NOT doing the endurance trials, that's the remaining challenge left and it's just too painful to do, so I won't do it!

At least the journey to 99% was overall positive, this game is great and worth every penny I spent!

I also got a video to share!

It's a funny clip of my journey unlocking the final relic in the game, which is basically “Win the Game with All Relics Active”, relics are basically gameplay modifiers such as enemies spawning clones on death or dropping bombs on death.

Anyways, here's the video:

This final relic too a few crashes to get…

Next up in the list is: ROCK AND STONE: A Man's Descent Into Deep Rock Galactic Addiction.

This game was one of the gifts I received on Christmas. It's this co-op resource extraction shooter that you play as these dwarfs mining minerals in caves on alien planets and I have to say, this is one of the most addictive games I have played in a long while!

The gameplay loop is rather simple, “kill enemies that get in your way, do objective and get out" but the unique thing this game has is that everything takes place inside caves that sometimes you have to dig your way to the objective and the objectives are super varied and unique that also are super fun to playthrough! Not mentioning the good amount of random events that happen during a mission.

I forgot why I took this screenshot… lol!

This game is also a live service game! It has all the usual things an live service game has, a battle pass, shop, events and updates. Now, some of those things mentioned may have raised some red flags, but I have one phrase that will dispel all of those worries:

“This game has no microtransactions!”

Yup, you heard it right, everything in the game you can only obtain by playing the game and there's no way to buy currency!

The progression is well tuned, you get a fairly generous amount of money and life is good with the battle pass!

In a world where most of the AAA games are overly monetized, full of microtransactions and scummy tactics to make you pay, this game stands tall and simply focuses on making you enjoy it rather than pursuing you to reach for your wallet. I have so much respect for the devs behind this game and this also helped in me getting addicted to the game.

If you have money, buy it, it's worth every single penny!

Look at the chaos we left behind in this mission.

Keeping with the mining and caving theming, I have also been Playing Undermine!

It's another game about mining and extracting resources from a cave, but this time it's top-down view roguelike and you don't have guns, only your pickaxe to defend yourself!

It's a fun little game that I have been playing when I want to watch a video or just to relax for a few minutes and the progression feels super nice and smooth.

There's not much else to say about it, solid game!

I died trying to chase the gold slime in a room full of enemies!

With all the mining stuff out of the way, let's get a little weird!

Welcome to a little game called Goblet Grotto!

Can you explain what's going on in this image?

This game is quite… unusual!

It plays and kinda looks similar to that old MMO called Worlds, but here you can attack and kill npcs and pretty much anything that breathes! The objective of the game is to collect pink goblets… I think!

I don't actually know the objective just like the person in the video I discovered this game from, it's pretty much impossible to figure out this game.

Also, this game comes with a manual and it's MASSIVE! FOR SOME REASON!!

This game certainly was an experience.

By the way, here's the video I saw this game:

Okay, so now we have finally arrived at New Year's Eve on the timeline of events.

“How did he spend the last day of the year?”

Well dear reader that asked that exact question, I got the answer: Playing Garry's Mod With My Friends!

We pretty much spent the whole play session messing around and doing whatever with the over 100 addons we had installed.

We managed to completely break the camera of a first person game, become eternally invisible and even play some board games!

It was super fun, and I would like to share a video I made about it!

These are 3 funny clips I saved from the gaming:

Also, yes, we did spawn a bunch of nukes and explode them all, crashing the server at the turn of the new year. It was like a firework show that my pc was running at 1 fps!

The new year has arrived, 2024 is here!

It's important for the first game of the year to be a banger that sets the tone for the remaining 364 days!

So the most logical choice is, of course, the 2 gacha games I usually play!

…

Why are you all sighing, they are fun! I swear!

Anyway, I played Honkai: Star Rail a lot on the first day of the year, basically catching up with all the events and story content introduced in the 1.6 patch.

I got a few things to talk about, some positive and some negative.

First the negative, they still need to work on their story telling. I felt like the story was a little rushed, like the previous ones from earlier patches, they need more varied camera angles and need to fix the transition between cutscene and game! It just hard cuts the pre-rendered cutscenes to gameplay so abruptly! It's so bad!

Presentation aside, I also felt a little weird that you can't just tell Ruan Mei to just “fuck off” or tell her off in some other way, she constantly manipulates your mind the entire quest, makes you clean up her mess and leaves. Why can we tell Kafka off and not her? it just doesn't make sense.

Alright, now for the positives, the new event was super fun!

I had a blast creating these little cushion cat creatures that are super cute and adorable!

I just wished there was more, it felt too short!

Council of Pudd.

The DLC for Simulated Universe is also another fire DLC, it's similar to the previous one, but this time you can create and manipulate your dice to great effect instead of having a predetermined one. It's also unbelievably hard, I'm getting my ass beaten into the next planet, but still super fun!

And now for the last topic of this section!

I got Navia!

I got Navia!

That's it, Genshin Impact has been fairly unremarkable the past few days, nothing really interesting is going on. It's pretty much on autopilot at this point.

Well, aside from my first ever 36 star abyss clear! Yeah, I played since launch and never really full stared the abyss… but hey, I did now thanks to Navia and Wriothesley!

Navia is too cool!

That is all for the life segment!

...

Well, that was the original ending for this segment, if it wasn't for the Persona 3 Reload Opening Movie dropping OUT OF NOWHERE TODAY!

So now I have to gush about it for a bit!

But before I do, watch yourself first!

Amazing right? God the symbolism, the song, and the absolute STYLE!

Burn My Dread was my favorite Persona opening, but this has taken its place! A worthy successor!!

I can't wait to play this game, please Atlus don't mess up the PC port!

Okay, now this segment has come to an end!

As for plans for the future, hm…

Aside from some IRL changes, I'll just go with the flow for now and make plans if needed!

SONG OF THE DAY

The very first song of the day for this year is Esoragoto mirai by Mashima Yulo

I'll be honest, this song… does something to me. I can't quite describe my feelings in words, but something about the composition, MV, and even the lyrics despite me not understanding the language… it still does have an effect on me.

Hear it for yourself first!

I'll now attempt to describe my feelings into words despite saying I can't really do it!

This song feels like I'm seeing some struggle with some sort of emotion represented by the massive Kaiju in the MV, failing to understand and always trying to run away, when faced with the Kaiju, they would always falter at the end. Trying again and again, but always being overpowered by the Kaiju…

Until one day with enough perseverance and will they manage to defeat the massive Kaiju and overcome it.

That's how I feel about this song at least!

The vision of a person who can't understand or read japanese!

If it is or it is not about that, it's not really the point. The point is that the song is amazing and had an effect on the person that listened to it!

Also, still on the topic of song of the day segment, I compiled all the previously recommended songs for this segment since last year and made it into a playlist on youtube!

You can check it out by clicking here!

This playlist is pretty varied in emotions, you might go from happy upbeat song to moody in one quick switch!

That's all for this segment!

And everything for this massive blog update!

It's the new year, full of new and exciting surprises!

I hope 2024 is a great year for all of us!

See you next time traveler!

Have a nice day!