Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Kainsin's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, July 28th, 2007
10:59 pm	Nana I'm gonna start taking a different approach to this. Instead of one post per week, where I try to sum up the non-interesting stuff that's happened in my life, I'll try to post about something the day it happens. In this case, it would be the anime called Nana. I just finished watching episode 47 which was said to be the final episode. However, after the credits I notice that it's just the end of season 1 with a not-so-definite season 2 in the works... I wonder if they're just done with the anime altogether or if they plan on going further with it? If anyone knows for sure then please tell me. If not then a link to any online manga would be appreciated. As for the series itself, it's a pretty good drama about friendship and love. The anime really focuses on developing the characters and the relationships between the characters rather than some overall story plot. It's very good, in my opinion. As for the final episode...I would say that I had wished it ended differently, but now that I know it's not really the final episode, there's always a hope that things will work out the way I want. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007
7:00 am	Stuff is probably happening I've been kinda busy at work since I got back from FL, and since I post here from work well...I forgot or something. >.> My weekends have been pretty busy lately and will continue to be so for the next month. Last weekend I went up to my sister's place and stayed there because of a cousin's college graduation party. I made Japanese curry that night so it was all good. :) This weekend I plan on going up to my dad's lake lot to just hang out and maybe swim, I'll have to see how cold the water is. Unfortunately he sold his speed boat so I can't do any water skiing or knee boarding, but at least the party barge is still there. The weekend after that I'm headed out to Ohio for a cousin's wedding. Too bad it's on the other side of the state from Adam or else I'd visit for a day. :P The weekend after that is my dad's 4th of July party (on the 1st) and I'm also headed up to Fanguad's place for the 4th-6th. Maybe after all that I'll be able to settle down for a weekend at my place and relax. But getting out of the house during the summer is pretty nice. Last Sunday I had my Salvage Worlds group met. I usually don't talk about my gaming groups here much but this event was special because...well...my character died. :( I really liked him too, but not too much I can do about it. I went from full to dead in one swing of an extra's saber...that's just how the Savage Worlds damage system can go. Everyone basically has 3 hit points, and if you fail your rolls to soak that damage you're probably dead. >.> I rolled up a new character which is actually the younger sister of the character that died (he was searching for her, so I guess it made sense). I also made her a healer because we don't have one in the party. >.> As for anime, which I haven't talked about in a while, I'm going to only post about one this week. That one is called 'Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.' If you like horror at all you should watch this anime, it totally rocks. I don't even really want to explain it because it's much better if you experience it yourself without any sort of plot information that might give spoilers (even a general outline of the plot could!). I'll just say that I was really hooked, staying up far later than I normally do just to get in a couple more episodes. It's also the only horror-based anime that actually had me kinda scared when I tried to get to sleep (well, maybe only after trying to sleep after episode 8). In FFXI news: Nekomi (Fanguad) has joined us in a static party and we went from 50->51 last week. We've also been doing some Assaults, at least the two teir 1's that we can do with a level 50 cap. We can easily beat both of those Assaults, though, and they're on their way to getting up to teir 2. I've also been leveling up Blue Mage when I have the time. It's been pretty painful at points...the crappy parties, I mean. The lfg times also tend to be pretty long, but I have other things I do when lfg so I'm not worried. I completed my Black Mage relic set last week as well. It only took a little over 2 years, but it's finally done. Now to put Dynamis on the back-burner as I haven't really enjoyed it in the past year. This isn't FFXI related, but MMO related so I'll write this here. I've been trying out the beta of a Korean MMO that's being ported to the US called Sword of the New World. The graphics are really cool and the music is pretty nice. The gameplay is okay in that you get to control three characters at one time (reminds me of FFXII, but without the cool gambits) however because of this the game seems more focused on a player's ability to solo, which is something I don't have all that fun doing. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007
7:47 am	Florida ftw I decided not to post while I was in Florida because...I'm lazy or something. Disney was fun, even though walking for 7-12 hours per day can be tiring. ;) Epcot was a blast, I've never been there before. Actually, there was I lot I hadn't done since the only other time I went to Disney I was 7 or 8. Dash and I got some curry rice and gyuudon in the Japan section of Epcot and they were most delicious. It's been a while since I've had curry so I was really craving it. The villa we stayed at was pretty awesome too. Very large and could easily hold, like, 10-12 people sleeping there (we only had 5 total). It also had a pool and jacuzzi on the deck, so I was in those about every other day. However, now it's all over and I'm back at work. No more vacations or work travel planned for me for the rest of the year, so I'll just have to cope with that, hehe. In FFXI news: Frank and Sarah were at my place Sunday-Monday and we got our set party going on Monday. We all went from 47->50 pretty quickly with a little help from the Anniversary Rings that SE is handing out. I used two charges of those plus a charge on the Empress Band for a cool 7,000 bonus exp that night, basically a free level. :) My Ninja is now 50 and we were able to complete genkai 1 for them. The plan is to stick with these jobs (which is cool because I'm having fun with NIN) and start working on Artifact gear as well as Promathia missions once the next update that will make them easier is done. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007
6:31 am	Finally back Okay, so it's been a while since I last posted...I can explain...honest. 7 weeks ago I left for vacation down to St. Marteen. It was fun, like always, even though it rained for a couple days while I was there. I got sunburned (which hurt) but my skin's all good now. :) I also had no internet access, so I couldn't post here for that Wednesday. :P After that I was supposed to be down in Virginia for work for 3 weeks, but that turned into 6. I didn't have a dedicated computer I could use to access the internet at work, so I pretty much was only able to check my work e-mail once or twice per day. I did bring my laptop and had it in the hotel room, but I usually only post to my LJ at work so... >.> Anyways, I'm back at home now and posting here. It does seem like I'll be going back down to Virginia next Wednesday for a little more work, however. Also I'll be going down to Florida with Dash, Emi and Phaser from the 11th to the 18th for yet another vacation! :D The travel never stops! In FFXI news: I just finished up getting all my jobs to 37+ over the weekend. My next goal is to work on merits, but I'm not in a hurry to get back into more exp grinding, so I'm just taking it easy. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 22nd, 2007
7:05 am	Classes?! I was in a corporate-sponsored Software Testing class the past two days...8 hours each day...man that was boring stuff. :( Anyways...I tried out making some more sata andagi to bring to my EarthDawn group last Saturday. Using the oil-on-the-hands method that Tempest and a co-worker recommended to me, I was able to form the batter into a good ball shape and dunk them in the oil. I still have a little bit of a problem judging if they've cooked enough or not, but at least this time they weren't in funny shapes. The sata andagi are definitely best hot...like, within 10 minutes of being fried. They're still good for another hour when they're slightly warm, and still good-but-not-as-good cold. I tried my best to finish up my cooking right when I was going to leave for my GM's house (he only lives about 5 minutes away) so they were still pretty warm by the time I got there. Everyone thought they were pretty good, which was neat. My first time bringing something home-cooked to the game. Definitely a down-side to making these is the lingering smell of frying sata andagi in my apartment for the next day or two. >.> In FFXI news: Dynamis-Tavnazia win last night! We were actually able to make it through the Diabolos NPCs with only one aggro. Heart poped and most of the people thought it was over and we should farm...but myself and a couple others convinced them to give it a shot. The fight lasted about 3 minutes and I think only two people died. It was definitely worth it. With that, my FFXI completion percentage draws one notch closer to finish. If I don't count the little quests then I'm left with: some ToAU missions (on the excavation chamber BC, hoping Myst wants to log in sometime to do it), a few Assaults in the higher ranks, 3 of the Salvage areas, Vrtra, Hydra and Kymeria (sp?). I think that's everything I haven't done yet. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007
3:41 pm	Full Current Anime List Okay, I'm home now. I decided to stay the whole 8 hours so that I could get home early on Friday still. The full list of current anime series that I'm watching: Bleach Daa Daa Daa (not going to count this since AnimeOne is über slow) Death Note Ghost Hunt Kiba Mamoru-kun Manabi Straight Nana Naruto Powerpuff Girls Z Pumpkin Scissors Red Garden Romance of the Three Kingdoms Sailor Stars (not counting this either since it's been out, but another group has been releasing it?) Saint October (haven't mentioned this one in my LJ yet) Saiunkoku Monogatari Sci-Fi Harry Shuffle Memories (not counting this one until it starts becoming a real series and not just flashbacks) Soukou no Strain Strike Witches (not counting this one unless more than just the 8 minute OAV come out) Sumomomo Momomo Tokimeki Memorial: Only Love So that's 17 current and active anime series. Add to that SG1, SG:A, 24, Heros, House, CSI and CSI: Miami and it becomes apparent that I have too much free time. (Comment on this)
7:19 am	At least it's not ice About a foot or so of snow fell in my area last night, which isn't so bad considering how much people were worrying about it all day yesterday. Having lived in the Rochester area for a few years, though, I can say that I've seen much much worse (and still had to go to work/school!). I still may just leave after lunch though, and only go for 6 hours today (<3 flex time). My sister and her friend came up to stay at my apartment last week in order to see a concert in the area. I decided to use that opportunity to try my hand at some cooking and fried up some sata andagi. They turned out pretty good, in my opinion. Make sure to eat them hot though as they taste better when they are. Also don't make them too big or the inside may still be doughy. The main problem I had with these was that the batter was really really sticky, but after asking Tempest and a co-worker here that cooks, I'll try putting either flour or cooking oil on my hands to prevent them sticking so much to them. I've downloaded some more anime series to watch...let's see if I can remember all the new ones. Kiba - Set in a somewhat futuristic time where there's some sort of disease going on in the world, one boy named Zed is determined to get out of there. Through some course of events he finds himself transported to another world where people can use something like magic and summon spirits to fight each other. I've only seen 5 episodes so far, and I know that there are more than 45, so I'm not sure if this is another long running series like Bleach and Naruto. Mamoru-kun ni Megami no Shukufuku wo - A boy named Mamoru starts attending a school for Beatrice users (the name for the energy that they can control to do magic-like things) and as soon as he enters is asked out by a girl at least a year older than him. As it turns out she is feared among the school as being one of the most powerful Beatrice users in the world...but she's deeply in love with Mamoru for some reason. The student council has plans to try to tame her using him. It's kinda funny...definitely very shota-esque. Manabi Straight - In the future birth rates have declined a lot, causing less and less students in schools, and school overall to be disregarded in some cases. At a school whose name I forget, school spirit is really low and the only member of the student council is the secretary. One day a very energetic girl named Manabi transfers in and wins over the crowd to become the president of the student council. She's determined to make the school a more lively place and restore school spirit. I've only seen a couple episodes, so I don't know if there's any plot to this or if it's just an episodic comedy/slice of life genre series. Elfen Leid - zomg this anime is kinda weird. There's a virus that causes some girls to be born with horns and develop the ability to have extra invisible hands that can lift, throw or rip apart everything...and pretty much all of them have a desire to kill people. However...a guy and a girl make friends with a couple of them and live in a house together...but an organization of people are out to kill the girls with horns. This anime can be funny one moment, and then turn to graphic violence...it's very weird. Oh yeah, and every main character has some sort of mental instability...seriously. It's 13 episodes and I finished it last night...I enjoyed it but watch at your own risk. Nana - There are two girls named Nana, one is an eccentric lovey-dovey type and the other is a friendly but punk-looking band member. They both are traveling to Tokyo for different reasons and happen to meet on a train along the way. They don't exchange phone numbers afterwards, though, but through a twist of fate end up looking at the same apartment and decide to become room mates. That's all I've gotten to so far, so I'm not sure where this series is headed. One of my co-workers told me about this and said it was an anime "dealing with the problems that the girls face in Tokyo," so that's all I really know so far. It seems pretty good though. That's all that I can remember...let's see if I can list all the currently running series that I'm watching: Bleach, Naruto (zomg, finally past the fillers), Death Note, Kiba, Manabi Straight, Mamoru-kun, Sci-Fi Harry, Red Garden, Soukou no Strain, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Ghost Hunt, Nana, and...bah, I know there's more...I should make this list when I get home tonight and can see them on my computer. Anyways, that's 12 right there. In FFXI news: Dedicated group got to level 38 on Sunday. I'm hoping that blue magic spells get better in the future, so far they seem kind of a waste. Although we've talked about switching up jobs in the 40's so I'll most likely be going Corsair at 42, which seems like it has had more DD output than my Blue Mage so far. One good thing about 38 Blue Mage is that I can use a Dispel spell now...I just have to go learn it. >.> Leveling up the rest of my jobs to 37 is going well. They're all past Qufim level now: PLD31, DRG26, SAM25, MNK25 and PUP25. It shouldn't be too much longer now. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
6:04 am	Upgrades away Nothing happened last weekend, which was a change since it meant I didn't have to drive anywhere. I think I only left my apartment to check the mail and do laundry. :X Anyways...since it had been bugging me how, for some reason, my G4 desktop kept reporting that the hard drive the system was on was filling up after a few days of uptime, I decided to get a new one. I picked out an IDE 320GB HDD for, like, $90 and got it on Monday. Installed it easily but to my surprise it was only showing up as 128GB. :( I did a quick check on the Apple forums and it seems as though any Mac with an IDE controller made before 2002 wont recognize past 128GB of a HDD. ; ; However, upon talking to a friend in FFXI and looking around online about the problem I came to discover that there's a software driver I can get for $25 that will allow me to access the full capacity. Granted there's a slight problem if you have stuff stored past the 128GB mark that tries to get accessed before the driver loads, but since I can just use it as a storage HDD (and reinstall Mac OS X on my 120GB HDD) then there shouldn't be a problem. I also picked up some Cat6 cables because I had noticed that 3 of my 4 computers were running at only 100Mb/s even though I use a gigabit router. Now they're all running at 1000Mb/s which doesn't really get me anything in terms of internet speed, but it helps a lot when transferring files between the machines. >.> I've downloaded a few more anime series to watch, but I can't remember which ones I've already commented on. I'll get to that next week. In FFXI news: I got my Herald's Gaiters on Saturday! Yay!! ^^ Very happy. It's kind of rare that I get to go to Tiamat because of work and sleep, I think this was only the 3rd or 4th one I've been able to go to since I reached the number of points needed to be able to bid on the gaiters. This brings my end-game item wants down to just the Crimson Mask (I'm not counting Salvage, Dynamis, Assault, etc. because you don't camp those...just run them a lot). I'm not even really all that interested in the Crimson Mask either...it's a good piece for RDMs without a Relic Hat but I mean...come on, it's RDM. >.> Some of the sea stuff would be nice too but...F'n sea. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007
7:21 am	It's... A friend of mine that I met at work left for another job in the same company but down in Maryland. Grant and I hung out with him on Saturday and played some board games...although that meant that I had to miss out on EarthDawn. ; ; Sunday was cool though, with a trip up to Ithica for the Savage Worlds group I play with. My character continues to be the most offensively powerful...most likely due to the Bolt spell being powerful and how I made my character very proficient in spell casting. The other players built their characters with a number of skills and spread their points out, which is something I don't feel really works in most systems. I simply focused as many points as I could into spell casting power and haven't really had a need for much else. I want to pick up a new party buff-ing power though, so that I can try to help out that way once in a while and not try to steal the spotlight or something. In FFXI news: Grant has left FFXI, only remaining in it for a month. The rest of us are still going to continue on with our set group though. We've leveled our 40's a bit and are going back to our 30's tonight. I guess we're going to skip out on the Promyvions for now and maybe do them at some later date. We tried 6 rounds of Under Observation on Sunday morning. Lost the first one because of Breakga, but won the next 5. Unfortunately the only good drops were 1 scroll of Erase and 1 scroll of Utsusemi: Ni. I'm now 0/20 on seeing a Peacock Charm drop from that BC...quite annoying. :( (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
8:41 am	Not much this week Went up to my mom's again last weekend for some stuff. I stayed at my sister's place and we watched Escape to Witch Mountain and Return from Witch Mountain...two of our favorite movies from when we were kids (I happen to have found the DVD with them at Wal*Mart randomly). This weekend I definitely have a Savage Worlds game on Sunday and hopefully an EarthDawn game on Saturday. Busy again this weekend, but at least it's more local. >.> Since I haven't done the separate day thing yet I'll do it now. FFXI news: The set group has gotten up to level 30. We're going to get the items needed for Aht Urgan access tonight (although Brandon doesn't have ToAU yet). In the next couple weeks I hope to try to clear the first three Promyvions to get access to Tavnazia with them and begin working on the CoP storyline. Of course we'll alternate that with some exp. I've also been grouping my Corsair with Frank's MNK and Sarah's BLM and we're at 40 (I was going as Beastmaster, but now that it's at 37+ I'd rather level something I want to take past subjob level). Our next plan is to level Friday afternoon. My current self-goal is to finish getting the rest of my jobs to 37 so that I have everything at subjob level and can also get rid of all the low level gear I wont need (as long as I don't do the single BC20 or any Eco Warrior quests then I can get rid of anything pre-30 that I don't need). Currently this stands with: PLD31, SAM22, MNK20, PUP20 and DRG10. Dynamis-Beaucidine tonight...hoping for the BLM Relic Coat to drop (finally). (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 17th, 2007
10:28 am	All of this and some of that Back up to the Syracuse area last weekend for my mom's retirement party and since she's a high school math teacher, her co-workers were high school teachers that I had. I also get to go back up there this weekend for yet another event, but hopefully I'll at least get the last weekend of January free...well, the Savage Worlds group I play with is on that weekend so I get to drive out to Ithica then, heh. Januray is so busy. Hopefully I'll get the Karaoke Revolution and microphones that I ordered before going back up to my mom's this weekend so that I can have something new to mess around with and get made fun of for. :) I watched the first two seasons of Winx Club and I must say, 4kids sucks. The show itself is the standard "magical girls" stuff, but as I was watching it, the show and dialog seemed kind of rushed and a little awkward. So I did some research and found out that 4kids did a crap load of editing and rearranging of this show (as they seem to be well known for). I was able to find the first two episodes being distributed on BitTorrent in the original Italian and the UK English dub and while the UK English VAs weren't as good as the NA English VAs (for the most part), the dialog was much better and the pace of the two episodes was much more reasonable. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 10th, 2007
8:59 am	Well, it actually started snowing Went back up to my mom's on Friday-Saturday of last weekend and spent some time with my cousin at his baby shower. After that I drove back home and played some EarthDawn with the gaming group I run with. There wasn't really much gaming per se, since we haven't gotten together for about 2 months and there was lots of catching up to do, but it's fun to hang out nonetheless. I watched quite a bit of stuff this past week as well. Fanguad introduced me to two anime series, Yume Tsukai (Dream User) and Sci-Fi Harry. Dash introduced me to a Disney cartoon called W.I.T.C.H. I watched all of Yume Tsukai and while I liked the premise, the series itself was fairly disappointing. They spent the first 9 episodes doing random missions to help people out and to explain how things worked for the Dream Users (people would manifest nightmares into the real world and they would combat it with magical dream-based powers) and then the final 3 episodes gave a quick plot and story and then the whole thing was over. To me it seemed as though plot was introduced too late into a 12 episode series for it to be of much use. Maybe I'm totally wrong and there will be more episodes, but from episode 12 it didn't look that way. Sci-Fi Harry was the next one I watch, 13 episodes released so far, not sure how many will be in this series. The premise is basically about how a low self-esteem high school student develops telekinetic powers and the problems that start happening to him as a result of it. The story is done in a pretty dark manner and it starts off pretty slow. If you start watching this I recommend sitting through the first 3 episodes before judging if you like it, because the end of the 3rd episode is when things really pick up. W.I.T.C.H. is pretty awesome, I have to say. Even if it is something targeted for young kids (5 girls get mystic transformation powers, Sailor Moon-esque) I still found the series to be entertaining. I just finished up the 2nd season last night (26 episodes in each season) and am anxious for the next. The last 6 or so episodes in the 2nd season were particularly awesome, but I don't want to give anything away. W.I.T.C.H. kinda reminded me of another cartoon I have seen a couple episodes of, Winx Club. Same sort of premise with the magical powers and all that, so I downloaded the first two season of that and will check it out to see if the story is as good. As always I'm taking recommendations for other good anime series. Although I probably should slow down so I can save my free time to finish FFXII. >.> (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 4th, 2007
8:37 am	Fa la la la la, la la la la So the whole winter holidays have come and gone, now I'm back at work. It was a fun 1.5 weeks of visiting friends and family. First to my mom's boyfriend's house where there was a Christmas party with my mom's side of the family, then on Christmas Eve a party with my dad's side of the family, then a nice trip to Ohio for a few days at Dash's house for a rockin' New Year's Eve party. I'm surprised that Dash's house is still okay after the 16-17 people that were in there for NYE...but I guess we're not really the type of people that go around breaking things, huh. >.> I took yesterday off from work as well so that I could get a day of rest (after a vacation for sure!) which also helped me catch up on the anime I had missed. As for presents I got the Rosetta Stone Japanese language software (which I still haven't installed yet), a Rice & Vegetable steamer, some more fox-related items and a few gift cards. When I got home and checked my mail I found a confirmation letter from JET. It doesn't say anything except that they got my application and are processing it, but that's still a good thing since I now know that I didn't mess it up and got everything they needed to them on time. Now to get back to work for what remains of this week, then back up to the Syracuse area on Saturday for a cousin's baby shower. (I'm thinking about typing up a separate post for FFXI-related stuff on a different day, so I wont put any here) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
8:23 am	Snow commeth So I got my JET application out again this year (thanks a bunch Phaser and Tempest!) so let's hope that this year, I will finally be selected to go. I wont know until I have my interview until January at the earliest, then it's another romp down to NYC for me. I went over to a co-worker's house on Saturday and yesterday and played this board game called Puerto Rico. It's pretty a pretty cool resource management board game, I'd check it out if you have any interest in them. Between the two days we played 3 games (each last about 1.5 hours) and I won one of them. :O No new anime going on, but I am keeping up with everything that I'm currently watching with no trouble. Also the hit new show, Heros, is doing pretty good and is getting pretty close to the end of the season. It'll be interesting to see if they keep going with it and if the second season will end up as good. Only two and a half weeks until winter vacation. :X In FFXI news: Yeah, back to FFXI news. DDO seems to be a thing of the past and only one of my friends still plays it daily. I was able to hit 75 on Saturday and began leveling Corsair on Sunday, currently @500 to level 35. However I've got 3 friends that have recently returned to FFXI and I've been busy doing the PL thing, so I might not be able to get back to Corsair until their jobs are set for the set group we have planned. I'm gonna be leveling my Blue Mage with them, which should be fun. I've noticed that with my return to FFXI I seem to have lost a lot of the pressure of progress in the game...which is a good thing, mind you. People get addicted to MMOs for various reasons and I realized that my reason was simply because I didn't want to be left behind on anything. I felt that if I wasn't playing I was missing out on advancement and wouldn't be able to catch up. That's probably part of the reason I was so into DDO, one or two of my RL friends would log in and do whatever regardless of if anyone else was on yet that had wanted to do it. >.> So now I kinda feel freed from that, being in no real rush to complete any goal. As long as I can stay that way I should be good with getting a lot of other stuff done in real life (or other video game life!). However, this change has led me to be more of an ass to people that seem to be idiots, as can be seen in this picture of a party I left before it started. Ah well, I may not care when I get there but that certainly doesn't mean I will sit in a horrible pickup group. (That party was PLD, SAM, RNG, other melee DD, BLM, WHM(me) btw, at 73+). (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 29th, 2006
8:21 am	Vacation over :( Thanksgiving is over, but it was nice to have two days off. Went up to visit family (of course) and had Thanksgiving with my mom, her boyfriend, one of his daughters, her husband and their three kids. It was pretty cool all around. I ended up staying at my sister's apartment and ended up watching one of the worst movies ever: Garden State. It's bad...it has no plot at all. Avoid it. I didn't play any FFXII this past week mainly because I didn't feel like bringing my PS2 up with me. I did play about 16 hours of FFIII for the DS and I must say it's pretty good. The storyline is supposedly mostly intact (I wouldn't know since I only played the game on an emulator for 15 minutes) however they did change around the main characters from 4 generic orphans to actual people with names, backgrounds and personalities. Be that as it may, it's still a linear storyline much like the RPGs of the NES era. The graphics are awesome, the music is pretty good and the gameplay is easy to use. The game is fairly challenging though, I've been used to save points and something to restore HP/MP within a dungeon for a long time now; however in FFIII there are no save points in dungeons so you have to go the entire way and beat the boss in one go. You can still quicksave and what-not if you have to turn the game off, but if you lose to the boss you have to start over. No new anime to report but I did catch up on Saiunkoku Monogatari (21 episodes fansubbed so far) and it's pretty good. It does remind me a lot of Fushigi Yuugi, like Tempest told me, but it's definitely more down to earth and less epic. Tsubasa Chronicles 2nd season is over and the last bit after the ending scene left me confused. They said it was all over but...the storyline isn't! It didn't sound like they were just talking about the 2nd season so I'm a little confused. If there's not going to be another season then maybe CLAMP intends on doing a movie to wrap it all up? I fail to believe that CLAMP doesn't have the money/support to keep this show running. :P In MMO news: Haven't touched DDO in a couple weeks, mainly because my friends' schedules have changed a bit and we had to call off the dedicated group since we couldn't find a day for all 6 of us to be there. Two of them are also on the LotR beta but can't talk about it due to an NDA. Because of this I seem to have been drawn back into FFXI. Even more-so, I started leveling WHM again and have already gone from 71 to 73. Exping doesn't feel as bad as when I left, so I guess a two month hiatus really helped. I hope to get WHM to 75 by Sunday so that I can shelve it forever without the constant "it's not complete" looming over me. I also tended to my chocobo. It's up to day 93 and I noticed it's stats haven't improved in a long time, then I read that pretty much everyone got some sort of message on day 63 and their chocobos haven't improved after that. So, I retired mine last night and got a Chococard from it. I'm gonna try to mate with some colored chocobos and see if I can get a new non-yellow one and try to take more care with its stats. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
7:23 am	Turkey day commeth Woo, I get Thursday and Friday off from work this week for Thanksgiving. Gotta love end of the year holiday vacation time. I'm gonna be headed up to my mom's for Thanksgiving and visit my dad sometime as well. Not sure if it's going to be just me and my mom or if her boyfriend and his daughter will be there. I got my DS Lite and FFIII DS as well. Haven't had a chance to play it yet (just got the game last night) but since I don't feel like bringing my PS2 up for Thanksgiving, I'll be able to play it while I'm there. I haven't really been doing too much this past week. I already watched through all the anime I had and I don't know if I'm up for getting yet another series just yet. I haven't been playing DDO very much either since most of my friends aren't. I've actually started playing more FFXI and even went out to level WHM, it was crazy. I wish I could spend more time on FFXII but for some reason it's hard for me to play console games alone for any extended period of time. Hmm...I think I'll leave it at that for now. Maybe a review of FFIII DS next week or something. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
8:20 am	guruguru mawaru Thanksgiving cometh and I get Thursday and Friday off next week, joy. Gonna be going up to my mom's for Thanksgiving, then visiting my dad afterwords or something. I should have my DS and FFIII by then, but I might bring up my PS2 and FFXII as well. >.> Nothing really happened this week, so I'll cut right into some anime-goings on. Finished up School Rumble. It seems like there will be a 3rd season so I can still hope for some sort of resolution at the end of all this...who ends up dating who and what-not. I don't really like it when shows just end it without some sort of conclusion. In any event, the end of School Rumble marked the end of my anime backlog! Now to download more stuff. Per Tempest's suggestion I nabbed Saiunkoku Monotagari however it appears that I can't get very far into it because the main group doing the fansubbing has yet to complete episodes 5, 6 and 7 even though they've done every other episode 1-20. >.> Of the other two groups, one has stopped distributing those episodes and the other's BitTorrent errors out on me. Hmmm...Tempest, I'll need you to send me 5-7 if you have them. :P I've also started checking out new anime (or at least newly fansubbed) since I figure if I get into an anime within the first couple episodes then there's a smaller up-front time commitment and it's easier to stay cought up. So I started up two that looked somewhat interesting, Red Garden and Soukou no Strain. Red Garden is about a group of four girls that live in NYC. They wake up one morning with no memory of what they did the previous night. That day they find out that one of their classmates that each of them were friends with had passed away. Later in the day they are each drawn to the same spot where a man and a women approach them and tell them that the four of them died the previous night, and now they must fight these crazed-people in order to keep on living. It's a fairly dark story so far and not much of the "why" has been explained yet, but it seems cool. Soukou no Strain is about a girl named Sara who is becoming a pilot of a Strain (mecha) in order to follow her brother into the front lines of a futuristic war. The main problem is that the group they are at war with is a long way away, the front lines are 130 light years away, and they don't have faster-than-light travel yet. On the day before Sara's graduation the acadamy is attacked by the enemy and a man that looks similar to Sara's brother seems to be on their side, so now she must try to find him and figure out why he defected to the enemy. Umm...I've only seen two episodes so far. It's a futuristic-mecha anime, so I'll have to see how it goes. In MMO news: Dynamis-Tavnazia was cancelled last night due to too many people unregistering. I'm begining to seriously doubt that Obsidian has enough commitment to actually win the stupid zone...I'd really like to get it completed. My Cleric in DDO is now mearly 5.7k exp away from level 12 (the new max level). While I wont get any new spells at this level, I'll still be able to pick up a new feat and raise one attribute point. Plus being at max level is pretty cool. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 9th, 2006
8:28 am	Welcome to Ivalice FFXII is totally awesome. I've just gotten past the point where all the characters are introduced and finally in your party at once, so I can't comment on the game as a whole, but so far I've been impressed with everything. The battle system is fun; while it resembles FFXI it's much more streamlined and faster paced. Gambits are simple and efficient ways to get your characters to do what you want without needed to monitor everything in a fast-paced battle. The license board is pretty cool, it's nice that it doesn't determine every little thing about character advancement like FFX's Sphere Grid, so there are still character levels in FFXII. I don't know how long it'll take me to beat it, I've been going at a sort of slow pace (like I usually do with RPGs). I've already gotten to a nice leveling spot and unlocked a fair amount of the license board for the characters, hehe. The spot had enemies running towards me, and with the right gambits set up I could chain 70-90 enemies without touching the controller (after that their numbers seemed to dwindle and I had to zone out then back in to get them to respawn). It felt like cheating but...gambits. >.> The graphics are impressive, the music sounds great, the opening movie was quite epic. It's definitely worth it. On the anime front...let's see. I finished the first season of School Rumble and the two OAVs that went with it. It was a pretty good series overall, mostly humorous except for a couple painful times. I've got the second season downloaded and ready to watch...I've just been playing FFXII and keeping up-to-date with the other anime I watch and haven't gotten to it yet. I started a new (or newly fansubbed at least) anime called Tokimeki Memorial...yeah, after the top-hit dating sim. I was expecting a "Brother, it's time to wake up" at the beginning, but there wasn't one. My only experience with this series was Tokimeki Memorial 3 (the one that Fanguad had) so this could be following a game or it could just be it's own storyline. I've only seen the first episode so I can't comment on any plot yet. That brings my current anime list to: Bleach, Naruto, Pumpkin Scissors, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Tsubasa Chronicles, Death Note, Sumomo Momomo, Powerpuff Girls Z, Welcome to NHK, Tokimeki Memorial and maybe 1-2 others that I can't think of. The only catch-up anime I need to watch is School Rumble 2nd season. It may be a long list but it's easy since I have to wait for new episodes to come out, so it's not like I have a lot of backlog (anymore). I'm hopeful that someone will pick up the last few episodes of xxxHolic before it's released here, but I don't think that'll happen. I also hope that AnimeOne isn't dead and will finish up Daa Daa Daa, but I'm not so sure about that either. :( In MMO news: Dynamis-Beaucidine last night in FFXI. I realized that it was the first time I had logged into FFXI for more than 5 minutes in about a week and a half. BLM Relic Body didn't drop, I'm not sure how much longer I'll have to wait for another one. In DDO my Cleric is up to level 11.3, getting close to level 12. My Wizard hit level 9 so I got to mess around with 5th level spells. It's still pretty fun. And...I cancelled my account for PSU. I'm not sure if I'll even go back to play more before my account is gone on December 2nd. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 1st, 2006
8:16 am	Super Ghouls and Ghosts Halloween was yesterday, oooooohhhh, spooky. I got no trick-or-treaters though, they tend to shy away from apartment complexes, I guess. I didn't bother buying any candy anyways because I didn't want to have it there asking me to eat it all afterwords. >.> I went and saw an opera last Thursday called La Bohème. It sucked, really badly. It's not just me either, the person that I went with (who likes operas, but hadn't seen this one before) agreed with me that it was pretty bad and probably not a good one to show to someone that had never seen an opera before. I've been playing some Phantasy Star Universe online mode a bit this week. I'm a little disappointed, given all the hype I was given by some friends. I guess I didn't really know what to expect since they had all played Phantasy Star Online. Mainly the game is just one big level grind...you'd probably think I'd enjoy this, given how I play regular RPGs and it's kinda true; however the prospect of paying money to grind through the same missions over and over again isn't really appealing. If there was more to do then sure, but so far the game only really consists of grinding missions for levels, money or items and using your Partner Machine to synth new weapons and armor. The game seems to lack a community feel with the absence of guilds. The chat system is pretty horrendous as well. Overall it doesn't seem like many people would get to know others through just the game itself. I wont be renewing my subscription, but I'll probably play more during my time. Battles themselves are pretty fun, and the missions only last 10-15 minutes tops with a full party. It's also pretty easy to solo if you want to. Story mode is there at least, so it's not as if I bought just an MMO. I'll probably finish up story mode after I beat FFXII (which should be at my door today!). If anyone wants to check out some screen captures and videos that I made then go here: http://www.kainsin.com/~kainsin/PSU/ Oh yeah, and while the game does install a root kit (GameGuard) there's no CD key or verification that you bought the game at all, even if you want to play online. So you can always just download the game to play through story mode or register an account with Sega to play online and you don't have to spend the $50 on the actual media. In anime news...I've been watching more School Rumble, almost done with the first season. The funniness of it has increased a lot from the first few episodes and the retardedness has dropped drastically. The opening song is quite catchy too. Hopefully I can finish up all of it this weekend but...FFXII... (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 26th, 2006
7:07 am	soro soro Saul's wedding has come and passed. I wish I wasn't sick the days before the wedding and I just hope that I wasn't still contagious during the wedding. :( The wedding itself was cool, the sushi ran out quickly as expected. ;) It was good to see everyone again, even though we did meet up last month. :P I finished off the past episodes of Tsubasa Chronicles, so now I'm fully caught up with that. There was something a bit odd about this anime and it took me a while to realize it...the people are a lot like the ones in Card Capture Sakura. I guess that's to be expected but what I really mean is that (with the exception of Kurogane) the characters only exist in two states of emotions: cheerful and concerned. No anger, sadness or jealousy. With Tsubasa Chronicles taken care of, my attention is now on catching up with School Rumble. I had seen the first 3 episodes but that was a long time ago, so I started over. Each show seems to be split up into 3 small stories, with a few of the early ones being extremely painful to watch...much like Ichigo 100% I was sitting there not looking at the screen wondering how characters could be so retarded. It seems to have gotten better after 5 or so episodes, with some of them being fairly funny. Unfortunately for me the series was licensed in the US, which means I have to download the episodes I don't have from friends rather than being able to use BitTorrent. Once School Rumble is out of the way I will be completely caught up with every anime I've downloaded so far. That's means I can stay up-to-date with currently running shows fairly easy. Also I'll try to make sure to download completed series only if I know I'll watch them within a week. MMO stuff: Module 3 was released yesterday for DDO. It brought with it a lot of updates: an Auction House system, improved vendor interface, locking items to prevent selling/dropping, increasing the level cap to 12, a new region with more quests and monsters and a variety of smaller things. It was a massive update and everything about it was great. Luckily I had hit the level cap on my Cleric on Monday, so all I had to do to get to level 11 was just go fight a random Giant. Boom, level 6 spells, baby. I'm still trying to figure out which ones are best to use. Heal is only good in certain circumstances, really...Blade Barrier seems a lot weaker than I had hoped. Hero's Feast is kinda moot when you have Remove Fear and any of the Heroism spells. I need to test Summon Monster VI and see how it performs. Mass Bear's Courage seems pretty good though, as long as 3 or more people could benefit from Bear's Courage you save spell points with it. Phantasy Star Universe was delivered yesterday as well. I spent some time installing that and starting up the offline Story mode. The voice acting is pretty lame and the opening song is a direct translation of the Japanese song in English (which means it's just sentences to music, rather than rhyming and sounding like a song). The gameplay seems pretty cool though. It's pretty tough to navigate with a keyboard but works well with a controller. My PC controller only has 2 shoulder buttons, though, unlike the 4 on a PS2 controller. The 2 that are missing are instead placed to the right of where the 4 symbol-buttons are on the PS2 controller. This wasn't a big deal for FFXI but it poses some problems in PSU since I need to hit on of those as well as the square-button at the same time to shoot my gun...which is kinda hard to do without repositioning my hand. So I'll either have to figure out which buttons can change around, or go out and get a PS2->PC converter and use a PS2 controller (hopefully one that I wont break due to static discharge). I'll get around to the online Network mode soon...maybe not tonight or tomorrow, but definitely by this weekend. FFXII ships in 5 days. I should hopefully get it next Wednesday. :) (Comment on this)