Fake/Half Friday
I'm not sure when I last made a real life post, so I'll try to work backwards.
Summer hours started at work. And like I tell everyone, it's terrible Monday through Wednesday, but its good on Thursday (fake Friday) and great on Friday. This was my first week of it and Monday, I got to work "early" but each subsequent day, I've gotten in later. And in the summer (hours), Angie and I will have a long lunch out pretty much every Friday, so I should try to find some new places to try. I doubt tomorrow will be a new place though.
Last weekend, I finished Final Fantasy XIII-2. I'd say it was overall a good game, mainly story-wise. I think I had some issues with gameplay aspects and there were two major points when I kind of raged out (having to do tons of the clock puzzles in a row then the end boss sequence). To go into detail, I'd say the difficulty was bad. For 95% of the required parts of the game, the game is way too easy. I'd say I could probably five star most encounters without even using my character. Now this isn't just a "this game is too easy" comment, but it caused me to not really level up or optimize (strategy, main characters, or minions). So then, the end boss sequence hits and it's actually VERY hard. Again, remember the game is a breeze so my characters and monsters were not optimized. My minions were just maxed level "early peakers". Besides the fact that you wind up fighting 4 or so consecutive boss fights (the same boss too), the last boss is actually really tough. And the boss has a "wipe out" attack that'll party wipe me from full health, unless I switch my characters to the defensive classes. So after learning how to fight this boss and continually fighting him, if you missed a random countdown, you just died (it took a long time to actually drain his HP). So between dying and giving up and then learning and trying again, I must have been at the boss aspect of the game for about 3-4 hours. I blame it mainly on the game being way too easy, then the boss being way too hard, and the classes being way too specialized (if I'm any non-Sentinel class, it's a party wipe; if I'm double Sentinel, I lose less than a quarter health). And since they sped up the combat, it's very easy to miss a random wipe out attack and then just die in a really long battle. So yeah, I was very enraged by this even though I eventually beat it since I just gave up and turned down the difficulty (it still wasn't easy). So I don't understand why you'd have a game so easy, then such a difficulty spike at the end. So yeah... I'd still say the game was okay, but the worst part is the last thing I remember.
But I'll still try to play Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII someday. I do really like the setting of FFXIII and Lightning is one of my favorite characters of recent memory. So afterwards, I didn't feel like I was filled with RPGing (another issue, there wasn't enough equipment or such in FFXIII-2), so I decided to play Record of Agarest War, which I had on my Christmas list. From what I read, it's a tactical RPG with dating sim elements and a generation system based on relationships. So that sounded very intriguing to me, especially since it's supposed to go through five generations of heroes. So far, it's pretty good. It definitely has lots of RPG-ness going on with items, classes, levels, skills, etc. So that's really good. So far (early on), the battles are actually pretty fast. And there's a combo system, which is always fun. It might be on the long side (advertises 80+ hrs), but so far, so good.
In other news, we watched Deadpool 2 last Tuesdays. I was unsure about it, but it turned out to be very good. It's pretty similar to the first movie, which is good. I think there's always a risk of a sequel of a crazy movie to be too crazy. But it was good and I liked it. We also watched Infinity War the day that it came out. I was also pleasantly surprised since I was just worried that they'd try to do too much. But for the massive cast of characters it wasn't too bad. I did think lots of the Wakanda parts were a bit unneeded, but overall, it was really good. And while the deaths were surprising (not that people die, but who die), they also remove tension since you know they'll all (or mostly) will be brought back to life since dead people are supposed to be in sequels.
What else? There's the NFL "anthem rule change", which is pretty stupid, but NFL. I could go into a long diatribe about how both sides are idiotic, but I'll do something else. The NBA is still all about figuring out what teams/individuals are less offensive/hate-able after every playoff round, but the most hate-able teams seem to always win because that sport has no competitive balance. People (the internet) tries to tell me that the Braves are a real team again. I'm skeptical and still so disinvested when they just decided to tear down their team 5 or so years ago. Maybe I should try to watch the Champions League final this Saturday and see if the coverage of the Premier League has gotten better.
Summer hours started at work. And like I tell everyone, it's terrible Monday through Wednesday, but its good on Thursday (fake Friday) and great on Friday. This was my first week of it and Monday, I got to work "early" but each subsequent day, I've gotten in later. And in the summer (hours), Angie and I will have a long lunch out pretty much every Friday, so I should try to find some new places to try. I doubt tomorrow will be a new place though.
Last weekend, I finished Final Fantasy XIII-2. I'd say it was overall a good game, mainly story-wise. I think I had some issues with gameplay aspects and there were two major points when I kind of raged out (having to do tons of the clock puzzles in a row then the end boss sequence). To go into detail, I'd say the difficulty was bad. For 95% of the required parts of the game, the game is way too easy. I'd say I could probably five star most encounters without even using my character. Now this isn't just a "this game is too easy" comment, but it caused me to not really level up or optimize (strategy, main characters, or minions). So then, the end boss sequence hits and it's actually VERY hard. Again, remember the game is a breeze so my characters and monsters were not optimized. My minions were just maxed level "early peakers". Besides the fact that you wind up fighting 4 or so consecutive boss fights (the same boss too), the last boss is actually really tough. And the boss has a "wipe out" attack that'll party wipe me from full health, unless I switch my characters to the defensive classes. So after learning how to fight this boss and continually fighting him, if you missed a random countdown, you just died (it took a long time to actually drain his HP). So between dying and giving up and then learning and trying again, I must have been at the boss aspect of the game for about 3-4 hours. I blame it mainly on the game being way too easy, then the boss being way too hard, and the classes being way too specialized (if I'm any non-Sentinel class, it's a party wipe; if I'm double Sentinel, I lose less than a quarter health). And since they sped up the combat, it's very easy to miss a random wipe out attack and then just die in a really long battle. So yeah, I was very enraged by this even though I eventually beat it since I just gave up and turned down the difficulty (it still wasn't easy). So I don't understand why you'd have a game so easy, then such a difficulty spike at the end. So yeah... I'd still say the game was okay, but the worst part is the last thing I remember.
But I'll still try to play Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII someday. I do really like the setting of FFXIII and Lightning is one of my favorite characters of recent memory. So afterwards, I didn't feel like I was filled with RPGing (another issue, there wasn't enough equipment or such in FFXIII-2), so I decided to play Record of Agarest War, which I had on my Christmas list. From what I read, it's a tactical RPG with dating sim elements and a generation system based on relationships. So that sounded very intriguing to me, especially since it's supposed to go through five generations of heroes. So far, it's pretty good. It definitely has lots of RPG-ness going on with items, classes, levels, skills, etc. So that's really good. So far (early on), the battles are actually pretty fast. And there's a combo system, which is always fun. It might be on the long side (advertises 80+ hrs), but so far, so good.
In other news, we watched Deadpool 2 last Tuesdays. I was unsure about it, but it turned out to be very good. It's pretty similar to the first movie, which is good. I think there's always a risk of a sequel of a crazy movie to be too crazy. But it was good and I liked it. We also watched Infinity War the day that it came out. I was also pleasantly surprised since I was just worried that they'd try to do too much. But for the massive cast of characters it wasn't too bad. I did think lots of the Wakanda parts were a bit unneeded, but overall, it was really good. And while the deaths were surprising (not that people die, but who die), they also remove tension since you know they'll all (or mostly) will be brought back to life since dead people are supposed to be in sequels.
What else? There's the NFL "anthem rule change", which is pretty stupid, but NFL. I could go into a long diatribe about how both sides are idiotic, but I'll do something else. The NBA is still all about figuring out what teams/individuals are less offensive/hate-able after every playoff round, but the most hate-able teams seem to always win because that sport has no competitive balance. People (the internet) tries to tell me that the Braves are a real team again. I'm skeptical and still so disinvested when they just decided to tear down their team 5 or so years ago. Maybe I should try to watch the Champions League final this Saturday and see if the coverage of the Premier League has gotten better.