Title: GATE(ゲート) 自衛隊 彼の地にて、斯く戦えり (Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri), Thus the JSDF fought there.

The Summer Season is upon us! Kicking off a long a storied tradition here on the blog is Gakkou Gurashi!


Title: がっこうぐらし！(Gakkou Gurashi!), Living at School!
Production: Lerche (script by Nitroplus)
Airs: 09/07/15 (July 9th)
Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life, Horror

Spoilers ahead in my discussion of the series. I know a bit about it, and I really think it can be a really good series, so long as there's a balance in all of this series' parts.



It follows a general trend that I've noticed for this season. I worry about the adaptation. The adaptation of this and a few other series will make or break them - potentially differentiating a great series from a mediocre one. For this one, the make or break topic is balance. What makes this series so interesting is the juxtaposition of it's cutesy facade, and it's underlying zombie apocalypse survival story. The cute exterior is a pretty face - it lures you in, makes you like the characters, pick favourites. Then it switches gears, puts those same Manga Time Kirara-esque characters into life or death situations against zombies, which really need to be horrid and grotesque. The bigger the dichotomy between the two halves, the more impact they'll have, as neither half is strong enough to stand on it's own. The cute school life itself bellies are darker side, which needs to be taken care of carefully.

Another issue with this series is pacing. The key visual above gives us some information to work with. The main one is that teddy bear situated front and centre. It's there from the beginning of the series, but starts playing a larger role in the second act - which I honestly would prefer the anime not get to. As interesting as it is, the first act can easily be made into a 12 episode series. The split between the first and second half also works absolutely perfectly for a season finale, should they decide to use it. Rearrange a few scenes from the manga and you could have a classic Hollywood ending - and a really good one at that. The cast would be driving off into the vast world, leaving their old home behind. Fade to black. Next scene has a hazmat suit-clad team opening a briefcase full of materials they've sent out or left behind. Leaves it open ended, but is also a satisfying end. Going back to the topic of balance, a rushed, super dense adaptation would certainly emphasize one half over the other, and like I've said before, would result something less than what it could be.

I think of this series having as much emotional impact as Madoka could have. Now, before you start rolling your eyes going "Madoka is an overrated series", hear me out. They work in almost the same ways, using preconceived notions of what this kind of series is. For Madoka, the magical girl genre is synonymous with happy, cute, fun and whimsical. In the 3rd episode, Madoka took a decidedly dark turn with Mami, and progressively went further and further down that path. Gakkou Gurashi is the same. It's being advertised as a fun and cute series. Staff comments echo this, all of the promotional art out so far just reinforces this idea. They're playing this to their advantage. My hope is that they save the big shock for the end of first episode, or at least for the first half of it. Play it off as a generic school story, and drop that curtain so hard it blows everybody away. This series has the potential to be that and it all depends on how it's adapted.

In summary, Gakkou Gurashi's success depends on the directorial decisions in the adaptation. Do they try to appeal to the otaku crowd by playing up the SoL (Slice of Life) elements, playing up the non-existant fanservice? Do they rush through the first act to adapt parts later in the story (such as setting the full cast up)? Do they structure the series to have maximum impact - even if it means filling out episodes to delay the bomb drop? Is that filler going to do any of the above? Time will only tell, and for this one, I'm hoping that any PV they release plays up the SoL, but hinting at something darker. Please don't lay down all you cards before the rest of the cards are dealt. 

He was the boy who loved the Earth below
She, the girl who loved the skies above
He is the man searching the heavens
And she is the woman gazing down upon the Earth.

A heart breaking tale of those left behind, left clinging to fading memories. A heart breaking tale of those who have passed on, left watching over their loved ones from afar. This is the Gift of the Magi, and it's a one way ticket to Feels Town, so all aboard the Tears Express.

I really recommend this, even though it's only started a few months ago. Really, really strong first few chapters.


Title: マギの贈り物 (Magi no Okurimono), The Gift of the Magi
Author: Yoshizuki Kumichi
Genre: Seinen, Drama, Romance, Supernatural
Serialized in: Shueisha Grand Jump Premium
Status: Ongoing

Series Description: Five years ago, Hokazono Akari died in an accident. Now 23 years old, her boyfriend and childhood friend Shiki Daichi still hasn't found closure. While he chases after memories of her on the earth below, she uses every tool at her disposal in heaven above to force him to forget.

Thoughts: It's an absolutely beautiful story that tears at the heart strings. The alternating scenes between Daichi remembering Akari on Earth, and the Akari up in the heavens tearing up creates a touching, and heart rending story layout. The more she tries to make him forget, he recalls memories from further back, which is used to explore the reason for Daichi's fixation on Akari. Flashbacks are the main machine for exploring the story behind the two, but they also reveal a lot about Daichi's character. 

Daichi has a love for geology. As a child, he loved collecting rocks. Akari pursues astronomy, loving the stars and the constellations they form. There's a lot to this Earth-Heaven relation between the two. For Akari, Daichi is the ground beneath her. He's always been there supporting her, even if she didn't notice. For Daichi, Akari shines as brightly as the stars - she's smart, popular and at times, he's felt that she was as unattainable as an actual star in the sky. Daichi as a rock also has a flip meaning. He feels like he's a stone, stuck on the ground while Akari soars over head. Comparing himself to her, he's uninteresting and dull.

That's where the meteorite that Daichi gives Akari when he asks her out. It's both a star and a rock. It's a star (Akari) that's fallen down to the Earth (Daichi), and now that they're going out, represents a union of the sky and Earth. Now it's back up in the sky.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but all the metaphors just jumped out at me as I was reading this.

For this series, the best ending would be the horribly sad ending. It'd be Daichi finally moving on with his life. He's spent 5 years chasing memories of Akari and hasn't lived his own life since. Akari's reaction will be soul crushingly mixed. She'll finally have peace of mind, knowing that Daichi will be okay, but at the same time, absolutely heart broken. If I'm right, this ending might just cause another Great Flood, but out of tears. A 'happy' end of Daichi dying and being reunited would be a cop out end. The story is building Akari's anguish, and to have it all for naught would really ruin the story.

Etrian Odyssey has generally been a "hardcore" franchise in that, in addition to it's difficulty, has a list of throwbacks to the old table top RPGs, like Dungeons and Dragons. You make your own parties of all custom characters, you make your own map of each dungeon, and there's lots of little things within the dungeons that feel like stuff a dungeon master would throw at you. There aren't any checks to be made (you don't control stat growth), but it certainly maintains an old school vibe.

What really drew me into EOIV, was actually Sword Art Online's and Log Horizon's first seasons. Watching their combat and the raid situation really made me crave a party-centric RPG. Most of the games I play didn't scratch that itch - such as in the case of Bravely Default, characters had a relatively prepared role, and it was incredibly difficult to make them go against it. With 5 custom characters that I made and set up, I had the ability to form a party that would work specifically in ways I liked. In the beginning, I ran a rounded party, similar to what you might find in a small raiding team. I had a tank, a healer, a mage, and two attackers - one support and a main damage dealer. As the game went on, and that party seemed to run it's course is effectiveness, the tank was replaced by an archer who could inflict binding statuses. That party, while fun, burned through so much TP (tech points) per battle that it wasn't sustainable. Cue a whole new set of adventurers - a new party based, again, on a traditional raid team, replacing the main attacker with a class specializing in enormous amounts of damage. That team also proved to be inefficient, as the main attacker had an accuracy of maybe 75% or slightly less. My final team, the party that cleared the game, came from a mix of the two sets of characters. It's a purely offensive build, geared for sheer DPS (damage per second), involving two high DPS attackers, a main linking attacker (more on that later), a mage and a healer. The sheer amount party builds and composition that are possible is daunting, but at the same time, exciting. It means that your play style is likely possible, if you can find the classes and skills that match it.




Etrian Odyssey IV was a good length. Five lands, each with roughly 3-4 small dungeons and one main multi-floor dungeon. Some of these dungeons are puzzle oriented, such as the Windy Archives, where strong winds push you around the map like a Pokemon tile puzzle, or the Golden Lair, where you navigate a puzzle of freezing and melting pools of water to move forward. Quests you can pick up in town send you to all over the map - around the overworlds, and in every dungeon to hunt down items or monsters.

In the dungeons and on the overworld, powerful enemies known as FOEs prowl about, making them an obstacle to navigate around for lower level parties. Early in the game, these things are a real pain to get around, as they'll start following you once you catch their attention, and will give chase until you leave their roaming zone. Getting caught unprepared can ruin your day as defeat is an instant game over, unless you're playing casual, where defeat sends you back to town with 1 hp. On the topic of difficulty settings, I really enjoyed the two settings. Casual made things incredibly easy - to the point where I felt like I had made an invincible party, only to switch back to normal and have my day ruined by the same enemy I had just thrashed in the easier setting. The easier setting is nice when you're just grinding new parties up to level. Normal mode is the definitely the way to play the game.

Another feature I really liked was the map making. There's something satisfying about mapping out the dungeon, marking all the points of interest, doors, and shortcuts. Another great feature of the map is the ability to set up auto-pilot routes. Set down a specific marker, and when auto-pilot is on, you travel along those markers. For runs where I was constantly having to make run-backs against a boss, I would set up a route, activate auto-pilot and take over for battles. It's also really, really good for grinding, as you can just loop a route around a room, put the 3DS down and take over when a battle starts.

Story isn't something that this story emphasizes. You've got the main storyline, which is spread across a long series of quests, but outside of those, lore isn't really explored. You get a little bit here and there, but by and large, you'll be learning about the world through the mainline story.

Classes have a long list of skills, often with 2-3 "streams" of skills. They can also be assigned subclasses, which allows them to take a limited amount of skills from that second class. With this in mind, and 10 classes, you possibilities are almost endless. You might want to have a Landschnekt subclass Runemaster (mage), as the runemaster learns skills that boost elemental damage, which benefits the link skills (elemental chasing attacks) of the landschnekt. In addition to individual characters, you'll want to build a team that also works well together. For example, you might want an Arcanist, a mage class that inflicts status ailments, working with Nightseekers, who do best when attacking enemies inflicted with ailments.

Let's use my parties as examples. I've come to really love watching damage fly, using Landschneckt's link skills to deal a constant stream of damage in a turn. My party uses a Landschnekt as a linker, a Nightseeker for damage and multiple hits, and a Dancer for chasing, attacking after members in her line, as well as blade dance, which allows her to attack multiple times. If everything goes well, my front line might hit 24 times in a turn, between chasing and links. The damage adds up really quick, but requires a few turns of set up. Unlike my earlier party set ups, this one uses less TP because of how many attacks can be pumped out per turn. I don't have to spam skills, as the skill spams itself. My rear line has my Medic and Runemaster. The medic doubles as a fourth attacker, because she's not always needing to heal, while the runemaster swings enemy resistances while also throwing down heavy elemental damage. The best parties work like well oiled machine, where everything fits and works in tandem to produce enemy slaying results.

Overall, I really enjoyed Etrian Odyssey IV. It's a nice challenge, as well as being an excellent game to flex your RPG strategist muscles.

Ah, Cave Story. A beloved indie game from Japan, and likely, one of the first ones to become such a big success. It's probably known first for it's brutal difficulty, then for it's music, and then probably it's story. Oh, and let's not forget that the whole this was originally a one man production from Studio Pixel. The original is available for free, but also, remastered versions are available for purchase on Steam, the Nintendo eShop, and other fine places where video games are sold.

Putting it out there, I didn't finish it. I'm at the penultimate cave - an optional one required for the best ending (Bloodstained Labyrinth / Sacred Grounds, for those wondering). The Last Cave and the subsequent caves see a big jump in difficulty that cause them to raise sodium levels to boiling points. I spent maybe 4-5 hours just trying to get through The Last Cave (not actually the last cave), and can see myself spending at least that or more for the Labyrinth.

Despite not finishing it, I feel like I've played enough, seen enough and read enough to pass a fairly educated judgement on this one. Also, I am terrible at platformers.




Starting with pros, Cave Story was, and still is, an extremely well designed game. It's an example of the "show, don't tell" philosophy of design, whereby the levels are built to teach you mechanics, should you be willing to experiment and figure things out. A good example is the machine gun. Once you unlock the second half of the stage, there are a series of breaking blocks where you have to go down. So you jump and fire down at the blocks. In doing this, you'll (hopefully) learn that aiming the gun down lets you fly for as long as you have ammo to fire. The game gives very little explanation of it's mechanics outside of it's core controls, and forces the player to experiment.

The weapons are all very different, and when they're used effectively, make you feel like the smartest person alive. The weapons, and how they level up can allow you to make the most of a situation. The Bubbline, at level 3, can fire a stream of bubbles that float around you. Letting go of the shoot button will send them flying across the screen. Effective at knocking out low health flying enemies, but also serves as a pretty darn good shield against destructible projectiles that bosses throw at you. The fireball is a great weapon that travels along the ground - perfect for the critters in the Sand Zone. It also bounces off walls, letting you get to enemies at dead angles. The blade, while spammable at level 2, becomes a hard hitting AoE weapon at level 3, letting you take out Presses, hiding in nooks above you, just waiting to instantly kill you.

The music is great. Catchy melodies in areas you spend enough time in that they'll sink in. When you've spent over two hours trying to beat a level over and over again, however, you'll never want to hear it again. Just listen to the main theme! It's great, though I might say that a lot of the music is oddly upbeat, against the general tone of adversity. At the same time, I can't picture Cave Story with a different sound track, so it's all good.


On to the cons. I played the 3D remaster on the 3DS, done by NISAmerica, with Pixel giving input. For those interested, I recommend picking up the eShop port of Cave Story+ 3DS, done by Nicalis. It maintains the original pixel art and designs of the original game, and (personal opinion), is probably easier to see in. Cave Story 3D (not to be confused with Cave Story+ 3DS) has completely redone graphics - gone are the pixel art, replaced by fresh rendered environments and sprites. While it looks quite nice, I feel that it might be too much of a modernization. Not that I have a problem with it, because the pixel style isn't for everybody. NISA's version allows more people to experience the suffering wonder of Cave Story. However, I do think that they went a bit overboard with it. Lighting could have been done a wee bit better, as some dark areas are darker than they really should be, making it difficult to make out where the instant kill spike traps are. They, while red and should stand out, are hard to see against the dimly lit levels.

Another con, again personal opinion, is how complex the endings can be. There are several endings, ranging for "bad" to "best". Retrospectively, they make a whole lot of sense. Getting the Booster 0.8 from the professor means that the bottom of that pit he falls into is his grave. Not exploring the first Core boss room means that you'll miss the Tow Line, miss out on saving Curly, and ultimately be barred from the best end. It's things like these, while I acknowledge that it cultivates discussion and replayability, it is almost impossible to get the best ending without a guide. It's a game that doesn't tell you much, forces you to explore and really work your ass off if you want that best ending.


I'll probably come back to it sometime. The difficulty I had with the last few caves was rage inducing, but also the amount of time I sunk into a small section makes wonder if the last 3 caves equal the amount of time it took just to get to that point. Is the time I spent on the last 30% of the game equal to that other 70%? It might very well be true.

I'm so close to finishing it that it'd be a waste to not go for it. Reading up on the various ports, I discovered that the version I'm playing has a slight tweak to up the difficulty, so I might grab the Nicalis port to see if I can do any better in that.

Next game to take down, Etrian Odyssey 4 - an equally difficult and unforgiving game. 

60 hours, I've spent on this game. 60 hours. I'd say, playing extremely well, and skipping avoidable battles, you could probably finish this one in a minimum of 40 hours? You'd have to be playing really, really well, and skip a lot of the animated supers to shave off as much time as possible.

This has been one hell of a game. Crossing games from Capcom, Bandai-Namco, and Sega is no easy task. They managed to stitch together a working story (note 'working', not 'good') that ties all the different games into one. It reads like a big, ambitious fan fiction, but serves it purpose just fine. The real draw of this game is seeing all the crazy action and interactions between characters and companies. Some pairings really just work too well and lead to some funny conversations.

The guts of the game, the combat is what really differentiates it from other SRPGs. While the overview is typical, grid based movement, the combat is active, combo-based fighting game-esque. You input simple commands to get a 'move', with up to 6 moves per battle. You also get a solo unit as an assist, as well as a support pair if you're near to another pair unit, calling back to games like MvC's assists. It has all sorts of crazy mechanics in this, such as when you can score critical hits, or ways to build up meter to pull off the powerful super skills. The combat adds a welcome element of skill to the game, but as cool and interesting as it is, it eventually, and rather quickly, becomes increasingly difficult, repetitive and tedious.






The neat battle mechanics make it unique, but also work against PXZ. Battles take long, require concentration and attention, and, especially in the last handful of chapters, you'll be faced with several dozen of them per chapter. Chapters take at least 2 hours, because of all the characters on the map need to take their turn, and believe me, the game has no problem throwing several dozen enemies at you. There isn't really cannon fodder either, once you're in the late game, as you really need to be able to reliably land critical hits, which really up your damage output, to be able to take out the weaker enemies in one character turn.

The chapters can be quite frustrating as they're almost always multi-stage. You start off given a mission objective of "Defeat all enemies". 8 turns later, a boss warps in, bringing about 15 new enemies, changing your objective to something like "Reach the destination within X turns". Once you get there, another boss shows up, bringing along even more enemies, changing the objective to 'Defeat the boss', accompanied by the title drop of the chapter. That's a typical mission progression, which can really grind your gears when the intrigue of the combat has worn off.

A tip for those interested in the game. If the objective isn't to kill everything, don't try. I don't remember much of the early game, but the last chapter's objective is to defeat the final boss. All the regular enemies on screen, however, are all bosses from the previous chapters, meaning they're all packing over 100,000 HP, hit pretty hard and number well past 20. There's really no way to beat all of them, so I made a bee-line with a small hit-squad of nearby units to chip through the final bosses 200,000 HP and 10 square long shield. I ended up beating his ugly face in with the final hit of Kogoro and Mii's (main pair unit) super. Spent the entire super animation dreading the thought of leaving the boss with a few hundred HP (easily dealt with when your characters average 10-20,000 damage per turn), and being 1HKO'd by his counter super. If the main pair unit goes down, it's game over and boy, that last chapter is not one I want to do ever again.

I started this game almost 2 years ago, when it released on my birthday back in 2012. I think I got about 3/4 of the way through before putting it down for a good year or so after getting really tired of how long chapters and battles got. To the story's credit, it's kind of tough to know what's going on, or what will happen because of all the crazy stuff that happens.



Like Bravely Default, a big driving reason to finish the game was the reveal of PXZ 2, which likely will be localised, but no word on when it'll be released state-side. With Atlus now part of Sega, I'm hoping for them to make an appearance in the game. They fit the requirements, are generally rather popular and fit the rest of the cast.

Next game I'm working on will either be Etrian Odyssey 4 or Cave Story, neither of which I'm particularly looking forwards to.

After hitting a massive wall in G-Rank Monster Hunter 4U, I decided to go through my pile of unfinished games, throw caution to the wind and just go for broke with them. First on my list was Bravely Default, which earned a spot on my Top 5 of last year.

Before leaving it to collect dust, I managed to get up to the final dungeon and boss. I fell into a hole of trying to find a party combination that would have the best synergy and have the best SP efficiency. Previously I had 3 melee attackers with Agnes as the healer. I went for 2 mages, and two melee, which worked okay, but Ringabel as a second mage, while being quick enough to set up buffs, doesn't have the magic power to really be viable for magic damage. After leveling Ringabel as a mage for what felt like far too long, I went back to my original 3:1 melee:support party. It uses less SP, dishes out damage, and with the right subclasses, can also be flexible enough to exploit almost any enemy weaknesses.

The decision to finish it is partially driven to see the ending in anticipation of Bravely Default Second which hits North America sometime in 2016.




What drove me to put BD down was actually the feeling that Ringabel wasn't making any progress as a mage. While mage jobs gave him decent SP pools, he didn't have the magic power to be of any use. Watching him hit for 200 against regular, albeit late game, enemies was demoralizing. I wanted to have him as a mage to be able to heal and buff at the beginning of the turn, before any enemies had a chance to move. Turns out Ringabel's magic doesn't get to a level where he's a decent mage, unlike Tiz, who generally can act as any class comfortably.

Moving away from party talk, the repeating story of BD was an issue for a number of people. Each loop changes slightly, apart from the first, as has you accomplishing the same tasks every time. The physical action of this sounds a lot worse than it actually is, as you actually only have to do 4 boss fights, not the entire game over again. What really stings is the story. By the second or third loop, you should've gotten enough hints to piece together what's going on, but your characters keep going on the same path, especially Agnes, who stubbornly and naively refuses to believe the truth. In my case, where I somehow managed to spoil myself early on in the game, each loop was an aggravating test of patience with the characters.

As a lazy completionist, each loop was testing. You only have 4 key bosses, but with each loop, all of the previous bosses are mixed and remixed. The mixed bosses change the story of that world, especially in the final loop where everything is oddly happy.  The changes really make a difference in how difficult a boss fight is, as the bosses are grouped differently, often in a way that covers their weaknesses.

For those interested, Hard is probably the way to go if you really want to explore the combat, which is arguably the best aspect of the game. Normal airs on the easier side, but is the way to go when you really just want to get through the game quickly.


As of writing this, I'm working on finishing Project Cross x Zone, a game which I'm currently 60 hours into.