Status Update: January

Another post, weeks later than planned. To compensate for this, I got some surprises planned! You can read more about it at the end of this post.

First off, I just want to write about some "recent" events. I celebrated New Years with friends, and was over at my best friend's place afterwards. Saw a couple movies and had a great time. He has since then, gone back to England where he studies Chinese and English, and was kind enough to lend me his PS3 while he's gone! Because of this, I can now play the PS3 games I own physically, because my own PS3's disc drive is dead. I'm planning on getting that repaired after I return from Japan. I've also worked on learning Hiragana and Katakana, and I'm now able to write them from memory.

So, thanks to my best friend, I've been playing Tales of Xillia. I've spent 20 hours in it so far, and I love every second.  If you have played a Tales game before, you know what to expect. Very likeable characters, funny and sad moments, a lot of characterization and an epic tale spun around it all.

As I wrote on my previous post, Valkyria Chronicles 3 got an English translation patch, which is amazing. I've spent about 23 hours in that so far, decided to slow down on it, since I'm going to the US in February for the Daytona 500. That's a NASCAR event, for those of you not in the know about motorsports. Will most likely have a lot of time to play it then on the flight.

Speaking of handheld gaming, I recently got back into Persona 4: Golden. Still got a lot of stuff to do in that game. The "Hardcore Risette Fan" trophy is still eluding me, but I'm feeling confident that I'll be able to get it this time through the game.

When it comes to anime, I recently finished re-watching Clannad and Clannad: After Story (for the 15th time... It still gets me right in the feels,) before moving on to the anime version of Tales of the Abyss. I'm happy to see that they reconstructed the game into an anime so faithfully. If you've played the game, you can easily tell which location they are at, and where they are heading. It is by far the best makeover from game to anime I've seen to this date.

Luke might just be my favourite RPG character, ever.

As I stated earlier, I do have a couple of surprises coming up. One is still a secret between me, Black Ragdoll and a friend of mine, while the other surprise will be out in less than a week as a new post! It will have lots of pictures, and definitely be a post us collectors might appreciate more than others.

Hard times ahead.

Hello again! I'll just cut right to the chase here. Ace Combat Infinity didn't have a release date on September 25th after all. Rumors abound, some say it got delayed, others that it was the date for the Japanese beta-test.  Massively disappointed, and I'm sorry for just adding fuel to that fire... Anyway, at Tokyo Game Show just a few days ago, they put out a new trailer, this one with some length and story elements in it.

I've been studying some more Japanese recently, after a break on two weeks (mostly due to work). I've gotten around to learning て-form (Te-form), and I've started to work on Katakana. I thought Hiragana was bad when it came to characters looking a lot similar, but Katakana is much worse, haha. Seriously, just look at Ke ケand Ku ク. Damn. Well, it's not like you can learn any language in a day anyway, right? Got to put in some work for that reward.

On the anime front, I actually completed WataMote today, which marked my 150th completed anime according to My Anime List. That's a pretty big milestone, but at the same time I've seen a lot of people with tons more completed anime on their lists. I found WataMote to be really, REALLY funny, but I was slightly disappointed in the ending. Definitely worth a watch if you want something short to just laugh to. Ended up giving it an 8/10 (That's the equivalent of "Very Good" as I use the same scores as My Anime List). It's a series I could re-watch at a later time with someone who hasn't, purely for the laughs.

What?! No perfect 10?!

I'm not even halfway done with Azumanga Daioh, so there's still quite a wait time for that mini-review I'm afraid. Sorry! Anyway, that's it for this post. Stay tuned for more, and stay safe!