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astlibra revision thoughts
Jun. 16th, 2023 06:41 pmlet's talk about the famous 15 year old free game project that turned out to be one of the most legendary rpgs of all time now.
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knowledge checks in abrasive game designs
Jan. 11th, 2023 11:53 pmis this another rambling post about how the SaGa series is a masterpiece? yes, but hear me out: the series exemplifies the best game design principle that makes for interesting gameplay and we can see this in other games.
in fact, i talk about many different kinds of games! i barely talked about SaGa! What's Happening To Me. Has My Minor Head Injury Done Something Weird To Me.
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every time i play a game these days, i've often come to the realization that this smells like a tabletop game. the SaGa games are very obvious, but you'll also see this in titles like Disco Elysium and Citizen Sleeper that use the non-combat trpg systems out there to tell their stories. it gives it a more open-ended feeling for players to express themselves.
so i'm just gonna blog about it because i find it interesting and i like to solidify these thoughts before i post it on my real deal newsletter about player expression. this is just another dreamwidth wordvomit and should be read not as something systematic but as the aphoristic ramblings jotted down in some notebook.
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gardens of vextro thing
Jan. 2nd, 2023 06:52 pm"So, what's the hiccup this time?"
This was how the fictive bartender of my imagination started his questioning. If I ever found myself hitting a writer's block, I would materialize into this dingy bar in the crooks of my subconscious. The only bar I've ever been was some gay bar in SF, so my current surroundings were a swirling of caricatured images from Hollywood and elsewhere.
I looked around and saw the usual denizens were there: my ex blog post drafts, YouTube playlists that's supposed to inspire me to write more, traumas of writing about LGBTQ+ fiction while living in a homophobic country, stashed away stories of a past that's now alien to me, and the dreams of being accepted as a white mainstream writer. They all looked gloomy as always and would watch me with envy. I could hear them mouth "please", "write", "about", "us".
Eh, maybe next time. If ever.
I turned back to the bartender who, by the way, had the same character portrait as The Silver Case's bartender. I swear, I usually write better when it comes to fiction; I take my time to research and look at photos. But for whatever reason, it's always that dude. I guess it's because his mustache amused me.
Anyway, I shrugged my shoulders and said, "I don't get reviewing."
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romancing saga 2 remaster thoughts
Jan. 1st, 2023 11:10 pm
when i started romancing saga 2, i did not expect to find myself immersed in a game so much that i scrambled for my friedrich nietzsche books and start leafing his works for epic quotations on mortality and death.
it is a video game that resonates with me because it speaks about history, philosophy, mythology, and most importantly (for my anti-humanist/literature brain) nihilism. i cannot stress how much this game is my shit and i want everyone to fucking play this game now.
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romancing saga 1 (sfc) thoughts
Dec. 21st, 2022 03:08 pm
when i decided to undertake the saga journey, i thought the series was just the "galaxy brain video games engineered by the madman who gave us final fantasy 2". but after going through 30-40 hours of this nightmarish buggy game with kino moments, i realized i was playing a work brimming with sheer genius.
it's jank, but it is doing something more radical than i or many western game critics gave it credit for. i thought RS1 was doing things that jrpgs and crpgs can ever dream of.
it was giving me my own journey. my own story to tell.
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happy halloween from ion
Oct. 30th, 2022 09:23 am
ion has become a spooky ghost especially since i've come to realize i'll have to look at every season for new ion alt clothes. ciel no surge is actually a game i'm planning to write about in the near future lol. i'm gonna scream.
( read more for ciel first impressions )
