17th birthday! Yeah!

Anyway, I saw New Moon recently for kicks and it was pretty amusing. It was actually a lot better than Twilight.
These screencaps suck--like, a lot--because I got them from a torrent cam, soooo yeah. Sorry for the hideous quality.
( picspam and commentary )

Since I am super excited about HG/SS, I am going to waste time by dumping snazzy pixiv fanart and ranting in unusually long post. I am actually supposed to be memorizing an entire page of something in Spanish, but that can wait. I've got it memorized, it's just a little... shaky.



( picspam ahoy )

Well, I got a PSP recently pretty cheap off of eBay. I'm really, really glad I did after seeing this:




Female protag? In P3? Holy hell. 

I'm pretty excited, not gonna lie. As atrocious as I think fem!Orpheus looks, the female MC looks pretty all right. Not sure about the hair (I know, I'm picky) but hey, it's a female MC. I'll take what I can get. I was a little confused at first as to why she was smiling (silent protags don't smile, after all) but the more I look at it the less it looks like she's smiling. So who knows.

I really, really hope you can date the girls as the female MC. I highly doubt that will happen but it would be so fabulous if it did. I'll be happy just to have the option to date Akihiko, though, I guess. And Junpei. It would be really great if this game allowed the male MC to date Tanaka too haha. There was always something a little off about his S. Link, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch.



In other news, I got Star Ocean First Departure. I keep trying to convince myself that SO is a crappy series and that I don't like it, but I guess  my subconscience won out this time. I'm only two hours into it so I'm still not sure what I think of it but it's all right so far. Except for the voice acting. I really don't think I'm that picky about voice acting but this... ergh... it's bad.

Well I saw HBP yesterday and DAMN IT WAS PRETTY. The cinematography was great--very visually appealing (yes, that's important to me!). My only real complaint is that there really didn't seem to be a whole lot going on, somehow. I kind of understand why they added the whole Burrow scene now. The movie seemed kind of short, too, which was a bummer. But it was still amazing!


General thoughts:

Harry seemed surprisingly chipper throughout the movie though, which was... weird. But cute, in a strange way. A very refreshing change from his angsting in OOTP. And Hermione, on the other hand, was unsurprisingly a bit moody due to the whole Ron/Lavender thing. Draco was ridiculously angsty, but that's only natural as well. Tom Felton did a really good job portraying that whole thing, I thought. Snape's wig's hair cut was something I was not very fond of though. His hair looks a bit more... shaggy? I miss the greasy look! I was really disappointed that there wasn't more of Pansy. When she showed up so much in the very beginning I really got my hopes up. Same with Luna.
The movie was very, very pretty though. The cinematography was amazing and everything was so bright and pleasing to look at. The transitions were a bit... sub-par, but it was so pretty that it really didn't matter.


Shipping thoughts:

Honestly, I thought they handled Harry/Ginny a hell of lot better than the books did. Well, aside from that godawful shoe-tying scene. And the weird scene where she tried to feed him a biscuit.  Ron/Lavender was hilarious. The look on Lavender's face the whole time they were talking about Amortentia was really funny. I'm not so sure about Ron/Hermione, though. I don't remember if the whole
Dumbledore: how about your time out of class. You seem to be spending a lot of time with...
Harry: oh, no, no. Hermione? No, she's brilliant but... we're just friends.
(or something to that effect) exchange was in the book but I don't remember that. It seemed kind of haphazardly thrown in there as a kind of apology for the Harry/Hermione-ness of the prior movies. Like, "hey guys, sorry the directors fucked up the canon ships in the other movies! Here's a reminder that Harry doesn't like Hermione that way, in case anyone forgot!" Yeeeah... it wasn't very smooth.

As far as subtext and accidental shipping moments are concerned, I did not appreciate the weird Slughorn/Ron moment. That was really something I could have done without. The Snape/Harry moments were sadly brief and there were very few. But the Snape/Draco moments were fabulous. I was especially surprised when Snape shoved him against a wall and ravished him threw him against a wall like that. I actually find Snape/Draco to be extremely boring, but that scene... caught my attention. Snape/Draco interests me quite a bit now, after that scene. The lack of Bellatrix/Narcissa was disappointing, though.

So I just finished SO4. At the beginning I thought it was horrendously boring and I was doing all I could to slog through it and get my $50's worth. It took some time, but I eventually grew to like it. I think it definitely helped that the easy mode was so easy. SO3 had a rather difficult easy mode in my opinion. I've never played SO1 or SO2, but I SO3 was actually my first real video game (if we're not counting Pokemon) and I really liked it. Anyway, back to SO4:


Plot: 7/10
I thought it was a little bland at first. There didn't appear to be much of a steady plot until maybe disc 2. It turned out to be pretty interesting though, especially with the plot twist at the end. And the fact that the ending was not nearly as confusing as SO3's ending really helped haha.


Battle: 10/10
I'm not really sure what to say here. The battles were a lot of fun and they weren't too hard either. The only problem I really had with the battle system was when you tried to cast a spell/use an item on a party member, it was sometimes a little difficult to tell who the arrow was pointing at. That may have had something to do with the fact that I have a lousy SDTV, though? It's ancient. I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the problem.


Other gameplay(?): 6/10
The cutscenes. Oh god, the cutscenes. I used to absolutely love cutscenes. In this game, I got pretty tired of them after the 50th cutscene or so. I have never, ever seen so many. Oh well, at least they were pretty. And using cutscenes did seem to be the best way to move the plot forward in those areas in which they were used, I guess.


Graphics: 10/10
The graphics were really good. Some things looked a little funky on my ancient TV, but overall it still looked pretty impressive. When I first played SO3, I thought the graphics there were the best thing ever. Looking back... wow, SO4's quite an improvement in the graphics department! But I was a little bummed about the whole anime/CG swap thing. That was a little unnecessary and sometimes the CG faces looked a little ridiculous. For example, Edge's face when he says "That's the women's bathroom..." makes him look like he's in dire pain. It's a little... odd.


Characters: 7/10
Edge: what kind of a name is "Edge Maverick"!? Though I'm probably a little biased. I have to admit "maverick" has taken on some unfortunate connotations for me since the '08 elections. I can't help but think of Palin whenever I see that, now. Anyway, I thought he was a extremely obnoxious at first. The angsting over the pseudo-Earth did not help my opinion of him. In the end I kind of liked him, though. Not sure what changed my opinion.
Reimi: okay, Laura Bailey was her VA so I was determined not to dislike her. And I didn't. I actually liked her quite a bit. Her ponytail sometimes looked like a tail, though--like it was moving on its own. That was a little strange, but pretty amusing.
Faize: favorite character. I usually prefer female characters with his character type, but it doesn't really matter. Faize was very likable the entire time. He seemed to be the most three dimensional of the characters.
Lymle: I despised Lymle at first. I thought she was completely obnoxious and her voice just irritated me. She grew on me though, and by the end she was one of my favorite characters.
Bacchus: Bacchus is adorable. And that scene with Edge, Welch, and him was hilarious.
Myuria: I thought I'd like Myuria a little more than I did, but I still really liked her. She was interesting.
Meracle: completely obnoxious. I never changed my mind about her. Her ending almost changed my mind, but not quite. I'm not very fond of the whole cat-girl trope, but that aside she was just... irritating. The voice acting for her really did me in, I think.
Sarah: I thought I would dislike her, but I didn't. She was kind of funny, and the glasses were definitely a plus /shallow. The voice acting seemed just a little sub-par, but it was still suitable.
Arumat: I could not stop calling him "Albel" the entire time. I liked Albel, though, so that's not really a bad thing. Arumat was pretty all right.
Welch: second favorite character. She was by far the funniest character and she added quite a bit of humor to the game. I loved all of her cutscenes and, since Laura Bailey was her VA, the voice acting for her too, of course.


Overall rating: 7/10



Pairings I like in this game--mostly in order:

1. Faize/Lymle--best pairing in SO by far. Their ending was kind of sad and extremely adorable.
2. Arumat/Edge--the cutscene with them and Meracle in the storage room was hilarious.
3. Eleyna/Meracle--I couldn't help liking it after Meracle's ending.
4. Myuria/Reimi--I thought it was kind of interesting--Myuria's questionable comment about girls needing to get hands on each other or whatever made me laugh a lot more than it should have. I didn't think there would be any [even misconstrued] basis for Myuria/Reimi.

I suddenly feel like writing reviews. I'll probably do that a lot from now on. I strongly doubt anyone will read them, but personal reference is as good a reason as any, right? I'll try to do that ridiculous 8/10 rating system thing but I have a tendency to rate everything either extremely high or extremely low per game/movie/etc. so I might drop that after a while. I'm going to try to avoid summarizing, since that takes up too much time and space... and I yammer on enough as it is. Plus there will be a section for pairings, because I really can't help myself (MUST. SHIP. EVERYONE. NO EXCEPTIONS.).

(note: I'm only at the very beginning of August)


Plot: 10/10
A murder mystery is a pretty typical plot for a movie or a book, but I haven't seen it used quite the way it is in P4 in any other video game. In essence the game is a murder mystery, which is pretty straight forward, but the context makes it very unique.

Battle: 8/10
One thing that really bothers me about the battle initiation in P4 is the weird camera angles. While you explore the dungeons, the camera angles are completely different from how they were in Tartarus from P3--and not in a good way. The angle switches sometimes at very inconvenient moments when you are trying to hit a shadow. The shadows are also smarter in P4, and it's significantly more difficult to get the advantage in a battle because of their heightened senses. Don't think you can simply march up behind them unnoticed anymore. The actual battles, I have no qualms with. It's pretty annoying that you can't escape from battles right away anymore, but it's not the end of the world, and the battle system is pretty similar to P3's. There are some very convenient improvements in your allies' intelligence, however. Chie's follow-up attack is the definition of "amazing."

Other gameplay: 10/10
The S-link system hasn't really changed here, except that you no longer are required to date every girl-your-age (or about your age) S-link. You can choose a friend path, instead, which is very nice. You don't feel like a total asshole for 5-timing like in P3. Of course, maybe you never felt like an asshole in the first place because of that (since it is a game, after all), but I, for one, have a ridiculous guilty conscience that only kicks in for stupid things. I'm also extremely pleased that there are now S-links for everyone in your team. Moving around is also a lot easier in P4, and that square button saves a loooot of time. Also, I was a little horrified when I saw there were five stats to max out, at first, but it's not bad at all. The quests are an interesting new feature, too. They're not really new, per se, considering Elizabeth had optional quests you could do in P3, but the nature of the quests is a bit different.

Graphics: 9/10
Despite the game's gloomy rural setting, the places have a certain glow to them. Even when it's raining or foggy, it's very pretty. The change in the overall color tones of the different weather types adds to the mood tremendously, and I'd have to say a pretty near perfect job was done with that. The setting graphics have improved quite a lot from P3, and have a lot more detail and feeling. As for the character graphics, they're basically the same design type that was used in P3. They're cute and simple, but the extreme lack of detail is a stark contrast to the beautiful setting graphics. Nonetheless, they have their charm too.

Characters: 10/10
The voice acting was, overall, pretty good. Let me first say: P3 got a lot of flack for "bad voice acting," but in my opinion the only annoying voice was Fuuka's. I loved Junpei's voice (I love his voice actor) and Mitsuru's in particular. In P4, I have not yet witnessed any bad voice acting at all, though. Yosuke and Rise have great voices, and the rest are very good too. Nanako's voice gets on my nerves sometimes (often), but I am so thankful to hear Rise's lovely voice during battle instead of Fuuka's irritating one that it really doesn't matter. As for the characters in general: the characters who are not on your team or not in your family are, for the most part, not that interesting. I didn't like the designs that much and their personalities were either irritating or just plain boring. Some of their S-links are interesting despite their bland or annoying personalities, though. And, granted, I kind of gave up on Ai (who supposedly is very interesting) after hanging out with her just once. So we'll see, I could be wrong. But if I'm not? Characters still earn a 10/10. That is because of your teammates and the Dojima family. The characters are what really makes the difference between P3 and P4 to me. In P3, you have utterly cliche characters who are proved to be more than the cliches they stand for. And I know you probably think this is leading up to me saying how great the P4 characters are in comparison but, actually, the characters of both games are just as great--it's simply in different ways. P3 does an impressive job of making its characters into something more than their cliches, and I adored them. P4 deals with its characters differently. Instead of being shown that characters who seem over-the-top can be unique and personal, you are shown that seemingly very plain characters can be complex and very interesting characters even without having too much baggage.


Overall rating: 10/10




Pairings I like in this game--in no particular order:
(note: Souji is the semi-official name for the MC, so I'll refer to MC as such)

1. Souji/Yukiko--hmm... honestly I don't have much to say here. I usually never pair MC with anyone (I didn't in P3, at least), but I really do like Souji/Yukiko. I'm not really sure why, it's the sort of pairing I usually hate, but I just like it a lot. The only explanation I can think of right now is that Yukiko goes well with any main male character + Chie, and she and Souji look very nice together.
2. Yosuke/Chie--I never thought I would like this pairing so much but... damn! They are SO CUTE together. This is probably my favorite P4 pairing. I love the bickering dynamic (yet I hate Ron/Hermione... huh...) and while I usually am not a fan of canon pairings it does seem rather canon--it seems to be  hinted at more than a few times, at least.
3. Kanji/Rise--can't say much here, but I do love this pairing. It's adorable and ironic and just fabulous.
4. Chie/Yukiko--I honestly thought I would like this pairing a lot more, and was disappointed when I didn't. But I still really like it. The prince thing was cute and they suit each other very well. They also make green and red look great together, which is an extremely impressive feat considering I usually despise that color combo.
5. Dojima/Adachi--won't say anything here, don't want to spoil anything, but I love this pairing.