So one of the reasons I didn't restart the blog last week was because I was taking a bit of a break from writing every day... and then the other reason is that I was busy playing Epic Battle Fantasy 5 (which came out on December 1st) every chance I got.
Just to be honest about how much I was playing it - that came out to about 40 hours of play time, or about 5 hours per day from the 1st to the 8th.
I've played previous games in the Epic Battle Fantasy series and enjoyed them quite a bit (my review for 4 is here), so this doesn't come as much of a surprise to me. It's a fairly traditional RPG along the lines of games like Final Fantasy - your party of characters has to go on an adventure to save the world, with plenty of monsters to kill, treasure to find, and cool weapons and armors to use. And these games have always rewarded scouring every inch for hidden secrets and talking to everyone to get clues about other secret areas and quests, so there's quite a bit to do. Or you can just read all the jokes, memes, and RPG parodies that the story comes up with, which as far as I can tell is "all of them"; it's utterly hilarious.
EBF 5 also allows for a number of different play styles - if you want to just breeze through the game to read all of the story and humor, then you can set the difficulty to zero and do that. Or you can play on Epic difficulty and work on mastering the battle system in order to get every single achievement, if you're more interested in a challenge. And you can change between the two easily, since the difficulty can be changed at any time.
I should mention that I do have one or two complaints, though. One is that right around the 15 or 20 hour mark, simply playing through the game starts to feel a bit like a grind. You don't usually need to grind for gold or EXP in the EBF games, even on the higher difficulties, and this one is no exception. But you do still have to deal with the monsters that are blocking your path through each of the areas, and those battles, plus the extra ones you have to go through in order to get all the treasure, start to get a little old after a while.
The other complaint is less of a complaint and more of an acknowledgement that not everyone is going to find every part of this funny. Personally, I find the mockery the author directs at feminism and political correctness (of which there is very little, to be fair) to be more grating than funny, for example. There are actually options now to tone down some of the mature humor and impractical armor designs for the female characters, but not everything is affected by that.
Overall, I greatly enjoy this game's humor, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to get every achievement I can. I highly recommend it.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
NaNoWriMo aftermath
Another flawless victory!
... Well, kind of. I made it to 50,000 words, although I probably could have done it sooner if I hadn't gotten distracted at the very end of the month. I'm fine with it, though; this is part of the reason why I try and build up a little bit extra during the month.
As expected, while I did try to keep the blog going, that basically stopped by the middle of the month. Normal posts will resume tomorrow - one every weekday, same as I was doing before November. (The explanation for why this post is being made now instead of me doing this sometime last week will also be coming tomorrow.)
... Well, kind of. I made it to 50,000 words, although I probably could have done it sooner if I hadn't gotten distracted at the very end of the month. I'm fine with it, though; this is part of the reason why I try and build up a little bit extra during the month.
As expected, while I did try to keep the blog going, that basically stopped by the middle of the month. Normal posts will resume tomorrow - one every weekday, same as I was doing before November. (The explanation for why this post is being made now instead of me doing this sometime last week will also be coming tomorrow.)
Monday, November 12, 2018
Tallying Votes
Okay, I lied, we will see more political posts this month.
Specifically, it's interesting to note that the midterm election results aren't final yet. To a certain extent, this always happens; there are always some races that are decided by rather thin margins or races where late-arriving absentee or provisional ballots might make a difference. Of course, since Florida is the site for this particular dispute, and because the races in question are some of the statewide races, this instance is drawing a bit more attention than usual. Florida's close elections and history with election recounts almost certainly aren't helping; problems that might go unnoticed in an election that's not close or in a district with no history of problems aren't going to escape notice there.
These debates do tend to irritate me a bit more than most, because they highlight the ways in which most sides here don't care about anything except victory. You'd think we would all easily agree on the notions that we want every legitimate vote to be counted, and that we want to check in detail for any errors in the process that might be preventing the result from reflecting the will of the people. For that matter, there's also the point that some elections will simply be close, and while additional checks are wise in that scenario, we can't allow them to leave the result in doubt for months or more. Balancing those two can be tricky, but shouldn't be impossible.
In practice, though, whoever is ahead when the recounts start almost inevitably seems to complain that there should be no need for the extra trouble, regardless of how close the results are, what the laws say about mandatory recounts, or what the possible sources of error in the initial count were. Whoever is behind when they end almost inevitably seems to complain that there's an obvious need to triple-check (or quadruple-check, or more) in order to remove every possible error, regardless of how long that will take or how wide the final margin ends up being. I'm sure most of the people involved in these disputes legitimately think that delaying the results of an election or not checking as much as necessary for errors are both problems we shouldn't tolerate. However, how they balance those two concerns always seems to benefit their side, regardless of the facts of the situation.
And if a recount or late-arriving votes actually ends up changing the winner, well, then we all get to deal with conspiracy theory bullshit about those votes being manufactured out of thin air, regardless of the evidence for or against that claim. I suppose I shouldn't be too pessimistic (there aren't claims like that being made in Arizona, for example, despite the post Election Day swing back towards Sinema), but the sort of claims that are coming out of some people about Florida don't exactly build faith in humanity here.
In the end, I don't think it will matter all that much; the recounts are unlikely to change the election result. I'm looking forward to not having to worry about this particular debate any more, but I also think there's a lesson here about tribalism that we should try not to lose sight of.
Specifically, it's interesting to note that the midterm election results aren't final yet. To a certain extent, this always happens; there are always some races that are decided by rather thin margins or races where late-arriving absentee or provisional ballots might make a difference. Of course, since Florida is the site for this particular dispute, and because the races in question are some of the statewide races, this instance is drawing a bit more attention than usual. Florida's close elections and history with election recounts almost certainly aren't helping; problems that might go unnoticed in an election that's not close or in a district with no history of problems aren't going to escape notice there.
These debates do tend to irritate me a bit more than most, because they highlight the ways in which most sides here don't care about anything except victory. You'd think we would all easily agree on the notions that we want every legitimate vote to be counted, and that we want to check in detail for any errors in the process that might be preventing the result from reflecting the will of the people. For that matter, there's also the point that some elections will simply be close, and while additional checks are wise in that scenario, we can't allow them to leave the result in doubt for months or more. Balancing those two can be tricky, but shouldn't be impossible.
In practice, though, whoever is ahead when the recounts start almost inevitably seems to complain that there should be no need for the extra trouble, regardless of how close the results are, what the laws say about mandatory recounts, or what the possible sources of error in the initial count were. Whoever is behind when they end almost inevitably seems to complain that there's an obvious need to triple-check (or quadruple-check, or more) in order to remove every possible error, regardless of how long that will take or how wide the final margin ends up being. I'm sure most of the people involved in these disputes legitimately think that delaying the results of an election or not checking as much as necessary for errors are both problems we shouldn't tolerate. However, how they balance those two concerns always seems to benefit their side, regardless of the facts of the situation.
And if a recount or late-arriving votes actually ends up changing the winner, well, then we all get to deal with conspiracy theory bullshit about those votes being manufactured out of thin air, regardless of the evidence for or against that claim. I suppose I shouldn't be too pessimistic (there aren't claims like that being made in Arizona, for example, despite the post Election Day swing back towards Sinema), but the sort of claims that are coming out of some people about Florida don't exactly build faith in humanity here.
In the end, I don't think it will matter all that much; the recounts are unlikely to change the election result. I'm looking forward to not having to worry about this particular debate any more, but I also think there's a lesson here about tribalism that we should try not to lose sight of.
Friday, November 9, 2018
Demon's Temple excerpt: The Temple's Traps
As she stepped forward, a red light suddenly flickered just beyond their own light’s reach. It quickly spread to cover a circle on the floor, with five points around the edge of the circle glowing particularly strongly - and then lines started to connect those five points to form a pentagram.
“Another trap!” Latoya shouted unnecessarily as the two of them dashed forward. The five glowing points were crystals embedded in the floor, and their light revealed more runes and markings in the floor around the lines that already were glowing right before the red light spread to fill them as well.
Before either of the two could get close enough to do anything, there was a bright flash of red light. When it faded, the light had vanished from the circle, and an armored skeleton armed with a rusty longsword was standing in the center of the circle facing the two girls. It made a hissing noise as it raised its weapon. As if that wasn’t bad enough, red light started to flicker in the crystals again.
“You break the circle before it summons more, I’ll take the skeleton!” Miriel shouted. She pulled her machete, sheath and all, off of her belt, and braced the sheath with her left hand as she charged forward, trying to push the skeleton away from the circle.
The skeleton just raised its sword to block. Miriel punched forward with both arms as she approached, drawing out a loud clang as its sword met Miriel’s machete, and the skeleton’s sword arm shattered from the impact. It slowed Miriel enough, though, that she only managed to lightly bump against the skeleton’s breastplate without moving it at all. It clattered at her as she fell back a pace, and then punched out with its remaining arm; Miriel attempted to parry, but missed and was hit in the stomach. She stumbled backward into the wall of the corridor, gasping for breath.
“Stop playing around and just take its head off or something!” Latoya shouted at her as she crouched behind the skeleton. She hammered away at one of the crystals in the circle, knocking it free, but that only caused the red light spreading through the circle to flicker briefly; Latoya cursed and glanced back and forth at the other crystals. The skeleton paid her no heed, though; it walked closer to Miriel.
“Working - it!” Miriel coughed out. She dodged to the right as the skeleton punched out again; its blow missed her head and cracked one of the stones in the wall behind her. Miriel still didn’t bother with drawing her machete. She just spun to the left and used the sheathed weapon to hammer at the skeleton’s shoulder. The brittle bone shattered, and the skeleton’s other arm fell off.
The skeleton hissed again, but couldn’t do much more than that. Miriel reared back and aimed for its head this time. As the skull went bouncing away, the headless, armless corpse fell apart in a clatter of bone and metal. At almost exactly the same time, there was a loud sizzling noise as the red light competing with their lantern abruptly vanished.
“Another trap!” Latoya shouted unnecessarily as the two of them dashed forward. The five glowing points were crystals embedded in the floor, and their light revealed more runes and markings in the floor around the lines that already were glowing right before the red light spread to fill them as well.
Before either of the two could get close enough to do anything, there was a bright flash of red light. When it faded, the light had vanished from the circle, and an armored skeleton armed with a rusty longsword was standing in the center of the circle facing the two girls. It made a hissing noise as it raised its weapon. As if that wasn’t bad enough, red light started to flicker in the crystals again.
“You break the circle before it summons more, I’ll take the skeleton!” Miriel shouted. She pulled her machete, sheath and all, off of her belt, and braced the sheath with her left hand as she charged forward, trying to push the skeleton away from the circle.
The skeleton just raised its sword to block. Miriel punched forward with both arms as she approached, drawing out a loud clang as its sword met Miriel’s machete, and the skeleton’s sword arm shattered from the impact. It slowed Miriel enough, though, that she only managed to lightly bump against the skeleton’s breastplate without moving it at all. It clattered at her as she fell back a pace, and then punched out with its remaining arm; Miriel attempted to parry, but missed and was hit in the stomach. She stumbled backward into the wall of the corridor, gasping for breath.
“Stop playing around and just take its head off or something!” Latoya shouted at her as she crouched behind the skeleton. She hammered away at one of the crystals in the circle, knocking it free, but that only caused the red light spreading through the circle to flicker briefly; Latoya cursed and glanced back and forth at the other crystals. The skeleton paid her no heed, though; it walked closer to Miriel.
“Working - it!” Miriel coughed out. She dodged to the right as the skeleton punched out again; its blow missed her head and cracked one of the stones in the wall behind her. Miriel still didn’t bother with drawing her machete. She just spun to the left and used the sheathed weapon to hammer at the skeleton’s shoulder. The brittle bone shattered, and the skeleton’s other arm fell off.
The skeleton hissed again, but couldn’t do much more than that. Miriel reared back and aimed for its head this time. As the skull went bouncing away, the headless, armless corpse fell apart in a clatter of bone and metal. At almost exactly the same time, there was a loud sizzling noise as the red light competing with their lantern abruptly vanished.
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Midterm Election Results
Okay, there is going to be one political post this month, instead of entirely game and creative writing posts.
The one major thing that strikes me about the midterm elections is that I'm not sure there is any kind of coherent narrative here. The losses suffered by some of the Democrats further out to the left and some of the Republicans that tied themselves enthusiastically to President Trump suggests that both parties should be looking to the center - but then there's a number of moderate Democrats that did unexpectedly poorly, some farther left Democrats that did well, and a number of extreme Republicans that managed to survive. I'm sure eventually someone will come up with data trying to show which narrative is stronger overall, but I think the message from this one is never going to be anything other than a mixed verdict overall. Which probably means it's going to be even easier for people to read whatever they want into this one, of course.
I think this election does also suggest that we can expect close elections to continue. There are a lot of Democrats who are hoping that finding a candidate less disliked than Clinton will cure all of their ills, but the defeat of some fairly high quality Democrats this time around suggests that partisanship is just going to keep getting stronger. I worry that this also means each party will stop worrying about margins and just take any victory as a mandate to do everything they want, rather than trying to find the compromises that our system makes necessary. If that does happen, we're going to see even more gridlock than we already have.
Try as I might, I don't think I see any of this getting better soon. Demographic change might help the Democrats a decade or two from now, and the Republicans might hope that the demographic groups they're currently ignoring will be won over by economic gains, but I don't think either is going to make much of a change in the near future. I guess we'll get to see whether tribalism and partisanship rip us apart before some kind of change helps us reunify - and while I certainly am interested in the results of that experiment, the drastic nature of the consequences for failure worries me quite a bit.
The one major thing that strikes me about the midterm elections is that I'm not sure there is any kind of coherent narrative here. The losses suffered by some of the Democrats further out to the left and some of the Republicans that tied themselves enthusiastically to President Trump suggests that both parties should be looking to the center - but then there's a number of moderate Democrats that did unexpectedly poorly, some farther left Democrats that did well, and a number of extreme Republicans that managed to survive. I'm sure eventually someone will come up with data trying to show which narrative is stronger overall, but I think the message from this one is never going to be anything other than a mixed verdict overall. Which probably means it's going to be even easier for people to read whatever they want into this one, of course.
I think this election does also suggest that we can expect close elections to continue. There are a lot of Democrats who are hoping that finding a candidate less disliked than Clinton will cure all of their ills, but the defeat of some fairly high quality Democrats this time around suggests that partisanship is just going to keep getting stronger. I worry that this also means each party will stop worrying about margins and just take any victory as a mandate to do everything they want, rather than trying to find the compromises that our system makes necessary. If that does happen, we're going to see even more gridlock than we already have.
Try as I might, I don't think I see any of this getting better soon. Demographic change might help the Democrats a decade or two from now, and the Republicans might hope that the demographic groups they're currently ignoring will be won over by economic gains, but I don't think either is going to make much of a change in the near future. I guess we'll get to see whether tribalism and partisanship rip us apart before some kind of change helps us reunify - and while I certainly am interested in the results of that experiment, the drastic nature of the consequences for failure worries me quite a bit.
Monday, November 5, 2018
Game review: Epic Battle Fantasy 4
Epic Battle Fantasy 4 is a comedy RPG that uses plenty of memes and parodies to tell a story about a bunch of murderous hobos that go out to save the world (again).
For the most part, it is a fairly conventional RPG. A cult has stolen a powerful artifact, and the heroes have to chase them down in an attempt to recover it before Bad Things happen. Each of the characters has different spells, weapon skills, and equipment that they can use to fight their way through the monsters in various parts of the world on their way to recover the artifact, protect the others in the set, and stop the cult.
Technically this is a spoiler, but they naturally fail, falling just short in their efforts to reach and protect all of the other artifacts in the set and arriving at the final boss arena just in time to watch the final boss get summoned. I say technically because realistically, this game parodies RPG tropes so much that it's blindingly obvious that things are going to work out that way for much of the game. The humor relies on a lot of self-referential jokes (there is no fourth wall here) and culture or gaming related parodies, and while one or two of them felt like an unfair shot to me, the whole thing still manages to be very amusing.
It does manage to be a legitimately challenging RPG, in addition to a parody, though. Particularly if you turn the difficulty up a bit - then one is forced to rely on the right combinations of debuffs and buffs to survive long enough to win. There is a level system that increases your base stats and a skill point system which can be used to buy new skills, whether out of a character specific pool or out of a shared skill pool. There's a surprising amount of creativity in deciding which skills to level first and which skills from the shared pool should go to each character; it's easily one of the more fun parts of the game.
Overall, I highly recommend it.
For the most part, it is a fairly conventional RPG. A cult has stolen a powerful artifact, and the heroes have to chase them down in an attempt to recover it before Bad Things happen. Each of the characters has different spells, weapon skills, and equipment that they can use to fight their way through the monsters in various parts of the world on their way to recover the artifact, protect the others in the set, and stop the cult.
Technically this is a spoiler, but they naturally fail, falling just short in their efforts to reach and protect all of the other artifacts in the set and arriving at the final boss arena just in time to watch the final boss get summoned. I say technically because realistically, this game parodies RPG tropes so much that it's blindingly obvious that things are going to work out that way for much of the game. The humor relies on a lot of self-referential jokes (there is no fourth wall here) and culture or gaming related parodies, and while one or two of them felt like an unfair shot to me, the whole thing still manages to be very amusing.
It does manage to be a legitimately challenging RPG, in addition to a parody, though. Particularly if you turn the difficulty up a bit - then one is forced to rely on the right combinations of debuffs and buffs to survive long enough to win. There is a level system that increases your base stats and a skill point system which can be used to buy new skills, whether out of a character specific pool or out of a shared skill pool. There's a surprising amount of creativity in deciding which skills to level first and which skills from the shared pool should go to each character; it's easily one of the more fun parts of the game.
Overall, I highly recommend it.
Friday, November 2, 2018
Demon's Temple excerpt: Investigation Begins
Alex just shrugged. “None of the hotels or tour companies said much about missing people when I asked. Didn’t really surprise me, either; even if they knew, they wouldn’t want to spread rumors for fear of affecting business. I can pretty easily ask about tours in different areas and see if there are any areas around the city they recommend we avoid, but that could indicate a lot of things, including completely mundane threats.”
“Do we know where the missing people were going or where the patrols were supposed to go?” Latoya asked, looking back and forth between Sam and Miriel.
“Not really,” Sam answered. “At least not that I’ve learned yet.”
“The patrols didn’t know which direction would be best, so they were working in a spiral pattern,” Miriel answered. “Unfortunately they were counting a bit too much on the patrols getting word out even if they got ambushed, so they were a bit lax about routine check-ins. We know an approximate minimum distance from the city for our threat and that’s about it.”
“I’ll make sure not to ask about anything too close to the city then,” Alex said.
“I hate to be too suspicious,” Sam jumped in, “but that note about mundane threats does make me want to ask if we’ve ruled out some kind of non-magical threat. I vaguely recall something about terrorism in this country, for example.”
Miriel shook her head. “Most of them have disarmed now. And while I suppose it’s possible, it’s hard to imagine the mundane ambush that could have taken out a dozen soldiers without a single one of them getting any word out, particularly after the first patrol went missing.”
“True,” Sam admitted.
“We’ll keep it in mind, of course,” Miriel continued. “But I think we probably are looking at something supernatural. No idea what effect it could have been yet, though…”
“I don’t suppose they actually could have been spirited away to hell?” Latoya asked half-humorously.
“I think we’d be able to see the magic required to open or close a planar portal from here even if they were halfway into Brazil,” Miriel replied dryly. “We might not detect an active portal, but active portals to hell tend to be hard to miss what with all the demons that typically start coming out of them and wreaking havoc.”
“Don’t think they’d have needed our help figuring out what was wrong if we had one of those, no,” Latoya grinned. “They might have needed to ask for help blasting the entire area to ruins until whatever was making the portal went away, but that’s not what we do.”
All four of them chuckled a little.
“Do we know where the missing people were going or where the patrols were supposed to go?” Latoya asked, looking back and forth between Sam and Miriel.
“Not really,” Sam answered. “At least not that I’ve learned yet.”
“The patrols didn’t know which direction would be best, so they were working in a spiral pattern,” Miriel answered. “Unfortunately they were counting a bit too much on the patrols getting word out even if they got ambushed, so they were a bit lax about routine check-ins. We know an approximate minimum distance from the city for our threat and that’s about it.”
“I’ll make sure not to ask about anything too close to the city then,” Alex said.
“I hate to be too suspicious,” Sam jumped in, “but that note about mundane threats does make me want to ask if we’ve ruled out some kind of non-magical threat. I vaguely recall something about terrorism in this country, for example.”
Miriel shook her head. “Most of them have disarmed now. And while I suppose it’s possible, it’s hard to imagine the mundane ambush that could have taken out a dozen soldiers without a single one of them getting any word out, particularly after the first patrol went missing.”
“True,” Sam admitted.
“We’ll keep it in mind, of course,” Miriel continued. “But I think we probably are looking at something supernatural. No idea what effect it could have been yet, though…”
“I don’t suppose they actually could have been spirited away to hell?” Latoya asked half-humorously.
“I think we’d be able to see the magic required to open or close a planar portal from here even if they were halfway into Brazil,” Miriel replied dryly. “We might not detect an active portal, but active portals to hell tend to be hard to miss what with all the demons that typically start coming out of them and wreaking havoc.”
“Don’t think they’d have needed our help figuring out what was wrong if we had one of those, no,” Latoya grinned. “They might have needed to ask for help blasting the entire area to ruins until whatever was making the portal went away, but that’s not what we do.”
All four of them chuckled a little.
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