Learn Japanese to Survive: Three writing systems = three games

I found the first game in this series years ago, back when I was still working at the tourist information desk. I wishlisted it and a couple years later found the following two games. They're all called Learn Japanese to Survive, but also Hiragana Battle, Katakana War and Kanji Combat respectively. Each game focuses on one of the three Japanese writing systems.

Hiragana Battle
In this game we meet Claire who lives in a remote northern village/country. The village/country is attacked by a wizard and his hiragana shaped warriors. The village/country are unable to defeat the warriors, and enlist the help of Misaki, a Japanese tutor. Claire is joined by Eric and Leon and off they go to defeat the hiragana warriors. The group finds out that the warriors are being summoned by a wizard named Noburo and after they've saved their country from the warriors they head to Japan to bring the final fight to Noburo and his sister Hana. The game is very straight-forward. You'll learn all the hiragana characters, complete with writing animations, and there's the possibility of infinite repetition. There are a few pure vocabulary lessons as well, and if you do the side-quests you also get some basic phrases. I knew all the hiragana coming into this game, and I finished it only having learnt two new words (あひる (ahiru) for duck and もうふ (moufu) for blanket) :P That being said, I do have some questions regarding some of the words they used for vocabulary in this game. Like じどうしゃ (jidousha) for car. Sure it works and people will get what you mean, but it sounds strange. It's like if a person would go around referring to cars as "automobiles" and you'd low-key wonder which century this person comes from.

Katakana War
This game actually takes place in Japan! The player character is an exchange student who knows zero Japanese and they are joined by a bunch of other exchange students who also know zero Japanese, and a young Japanese English teacher named Daisuke, who initially shows the group how to defeat the katakana warriors and afterwards begins to teach the group katakana. This game takes place ten years after Hiragana Battle, and Daisuke has heard stories about it, which is how he knows how to defeat the katakana warriors. This game also has a dating sim aspect, but we don't get any romance, only friendship, which makes me sad because I want to keep Daisuke-sensei. Other than the dating sim aspect and the more polished look this game works exactly the same as Hiragana Battle. You learn the characters over the course of the game, along with writing animations, and once again there's the possibility for infinite repetition. There are also some pure vocabulary lessons and the side-quests add some more phrases and words. Same as before; I knew katakana going into this game and yet I kept mixing up シ (shi) and ツ (tsu), and ソ (so) and ン (n). Business as usual. I learned a couple of new words in this game too, like ほうき (houki) for broom and かんごし (kangoshi) for nurse. And I also have some questions regarding some of the words. Like イングランド (ingurando) for England... Last I checked it was イギリス (igirisu)... One of the few countries that don't have the exact same name in Japanese as in English. But same situation as with Hiragana Battle, a person would understand you no matter which one you use. Same goes for スクール (sukuuru) instead of 学校 (gakkou) for school and テキストブック (tekisutobukku) instead of 教科書 (kyoukasho) for textbook. In this game the warriors aren't summoned by magic, instead they have arrived from outer space to reclaim their ancestral home.

Kanji Combat
Once again we're a group of exchange students in Japan. This game has the most polished story and the characters even get proper background stories. This is the game I was actually the most excited to play, because while I do know kanji my reading has become atrocious since I graduated. So being all excited I brought out my old denshi-jisho (electronic dictionary) and got started. I soon realised that this game only covers the most basic kanji. Even including the ones learned in side-quests, I came away from this game having learnt only one single new kanji (算). Oh well... I did get my reading brushed up some. This game has a dating sim aspect, same as Katakana War, but in this game too, we only get friendship and no romance. Which sucks because I'd totally follow Elliott to London (why didn't I get to have a say in that!? T_T). In any case, this game takes place five years after Katakana War, which Elliot mysteriously knows about and never explains why he knows about it. Claire returns in this game and we also get a tie-in with the characters from Katakana War. We find out what happened to Misaki, Eric and Leon, as well as some more background information about Satomi and Kyoko from Katakana War. Basically this is the game that ties them all together. The gameplay is the same as in previous games, with one added aspect: settlement building, which I really liked tbh. One new kanji and a few new words. The mnemonics this game uses to remember kanji made me laugh out loud so many times. Some of them were so ridiculous! In this game the warriors are being summoned from a parallell dimension by shinto priests, who are in a cult dedicated to the obake (the warriors).

Bonus: Love Language Japanese
This is another kind of game that tries to teach the player Japanese. It's a visual novel dating sim kind of game while the other three are basic JRPGs. This game moves through the lessons at a much higher speed than the Learn Japanese to Survive games, but it also allows for infinite repetition and it tests you on everything all the time, to check that you're keeping up. It's the standard scenario for a dating sim imho: you're a guy, an exchange student, who comes to Japan and find yourself in a living situation with only girls. Your teacher and your principal are also women. Being a visual novel dating sim you have the ordinary set-up: Morning scenario before school and during school, in the afternoon/evening you get to choose one activity and then you have a night scenario before your character goes to bed and the whole thing starts over. This game teaches you a lot more grammar than the Learn Japanese to Survive games and even delves into basic sentence structure. However it only briefly touches on kanji at the end and for the rest of the game it's 90% hiragana and 10% katakana. I had forgotten how hard pure hiragana sentences are to read. Anyway, I went into this game expecting nothing, but came away being really invested in all the characters. Especially Miyuki. No surprise there, me falling for the kendoka :P If there ever is a second installment of this game I'm definitely getting it!

I'd say that if you play these games you have a good base for Japanese. The games teach you how to read and write, which is the first hurdle, and some basic vocabulary and phrases. However none of these games give you much on grammar or sentence structure, aside from Love Language. But if you're teaching yourself Japanese, then these games alongside Duolingo for example would go a long way. Reading and writing through games, grammar and vocabulary through Duolingo. You're not going to be fluent, but you'd probably be able to read some and hold a basic conversation with this combination.

Dealing with backlog: Fire Emblem Heroes

I started playing this ages ago, months ago. The first time I picked it up was probably last year, then corona came around and I suddenly found myself with time to play it properly.

So I've only played Fire Emblem since Awakening, which isn't very long, which also meant that a whole bunch of characters in this game were new to me. Obviously I mostly used the ones that I knew from before, but I did get a few favourites from games I haven't played; Altina and Nils being two of them. Although it became obvious he wasn't a top-tier character later on, I kept using Sandwich-Leo throughout Book 1, just for the hilarity of it. He literally throws sandwiches at the enemy! xD

The story is about the Kingdoms of Askr and Embla and their summoning stones. The stones can summon heroes from a lot of different worlds and different timelines of those worlds (which is how you can have like a dozen Camillas). The first storyline (Book 1) is about the initial fight between the kingdoms of Askr and Embla. They're at war and both are using the summoning stones against the other. Imho the first storyline was a bit bland, but it worked well as an introduction to the game.

"Long ago the four nations lived together in harmony, then everything changed when the Fire nation attacked" ... No?

Book 2 is when things start to get interesting. We have two new kingdoms at war; Nifl and Múspell. Múspell's aggressions spill over into Askr and Embla and they join forces with Nifl against them. Princess Fjorm became one of my favourite new characters.

Book 3 is my favourite storyline so far. In this storyline we fight against death, literally, and Hel. Hel and her undead soldiers travel from realm to realm, timeline to timeline, and completely obliterate them. The characters of Askr and Embla get to meet alternate versions of themselves and see firsthand of how they would (or wouldn't as it happens) handle the trauma of seeing everyone and everything they love get taken from them. Eir was an instant favourite of mine.

Book 4 is not yet finished but shows a lot of promise. It's a bit darker, just like Book 3, which I definitely approve of. This storyline takes us to the realm of dreams and the realm of nightmares respectively. Light and dark fairies create dreams and children usually spend a lot of time with the fairies in their dreamlands. Freyja, the ruler of the nightmare realm, attempts to plunge all of the real world into an eternal nightmare.

And then we have the massive amount of paralogues, which are usually season or holiday themed. The easter ones seem to be made for innuendos, and several of the seasonal paralogues made for a lot of giggles.

 Omg, Lorenz! Please make sure that your speedos cover your thing O_o

In general, I really like the whole Norse mythology take on the realms and stories, although the main characters (Alphonse and Sharena) leave a whole lot to be desired. I played this game mostly for the story and characters, but I have played around a bit with the arena and things like that. Even did a couple chapters on Lunatic difficulty with my lvl 40 A-team :3

Definitely will continue playing around with this when I have some time to kill.

Snowpiercer

This was another recommendation of Netflix's Facebook page. It seemed interesting so I started watching. At that point there were only three episodes available, because for some reason Netflix had decided to go old-school with this show and release one episode a week.

So for the past few weeks I've been following this show and it's been so so good. Both Andre Layton and Melanie Cavill are insane, but they work so well together xD

The story is post-apocalyptic. Basically the rich decided to use technology to cool down the earth to stop global warming, but they overdid it and turned the planet into a frozen wasteland where temperatures drop to below -100 degrees Celsius. All the survivors of the human race are on a train called Snowpiercer that's 1001 cars long and never stops its eternal trip around the globe.

The events of the show begin seven years after initial departure. The society on the train is class-based and bursting at the seams, the rich and the hospitality department struggling to keep it together.

Can't wait for the next season :3

My top 15 most played games

Seems like I make a post like this every few years. Here's one from 2017 and here's another from 2015. Why fifteen? Because from my last two posts I realised that 10 were too few and 20 were too many :P

1. The Elder Scrolls Online (ca. 2000 hours)
I got the add-on to find out how many hours I've played on my current characters and it's at 1525 hours. Add in the characters that no longer exist and I estimate around 2000 hours...

2. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (ca. 1300 hours)
851 Oldrim on Steam, 329 SE + some hours on Xbox 360 and some hours from when I played it before I got it on Steam.

3. Dragon Age Inquisition (510 hours)
So much fangirling over this game. Can I get DA 4 already?!?!

4. Fallout 4 (207 hours)
My favourite Fallout. Don't judge.

5. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (179 hours)
Welcome to potato land. Enjoy your stay... ♥

6. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (175 hours)
So amazing... ♥

7. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (154 hours)
There's a reason this game is still on Steam's top sellers! After 6 years...

8. Dragon Age Origins (147 hours)
Gameplay-wise the best DA. Story wise also really good.

9. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (122 hours)
Despite the seriously annoying dice-based combat and the non-existant map, this is the best ES game to date. If the previously mentioned things weren't annoying me so much I'd probably play this as much as I play Skyrim.

10. Final Fantasy XIV (110 hours)
Decent story, beautiful environments, great gameplay.

11. Borderlands 2 (100 hours)
POP! goes the bandit~~

12. Dragon Age II (96 hours)
The weakest Dragon Age is still a pretty good game :P

13. Mass Effect 3 (83 hours)
My favourite Mass Effect. Don't judge.

14. Mass Effect 2 (78 hours)
My least favourite Mass Effect, but long enough to get more hours than both Mass Effect 1 and Andromeda, both of which I like more. Also don't judge :P

15. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (72 hours)
Hidden gem and seriously underrated!

Bonus: The Sims 2
I've played this game for so long. It's been years since last time now, but I have played it on and off since release in 2004 and it's still the best Sims game ever. I have no idea how many hours I've poured into this, but I'm willing to bet around 500-1000 hours over the years.

Dealing with backlog: Bastion

I got this game on some Steam sale and started playing it on a whim. I've heard good things about it.

I really loved the narrator. He made the game, and made me laugh out loud so many times while playing. I also really enjoyed the art style and the graphics and the story seemed interesting, but also like it was added as an afterthought.

Unfortunately this game was too dungeon-crawler-y for me. Too much of "This is your base. This is a level. Clear the level. Update the base. Go to next level." Without any fluff. I like fluff. I want story fluff and engaging characters and exploration. Basically I need a game that's more open and less linear. The linearity of it is what ultimately put me off finishing it.

The narrator alone and the cute art style could've been enough for me to continue playing, but the linearity just took all the fun out of it for me. I got about halfway through until I added it to my DNF pile.

This is what covid felt like

At the end of April I got sick with symptoms I had never experienced before. At the time I was busy being sick and didn't think much about it, but afterwards I started to wonder whether I had had the corona virus. So in mid-June when they made testing available for free for everyone in the Stockholm region I decided to reserve a time to get my test done. 

From someone who doesn't get sick this was the worst I can remember ever being. I usually only get one or two three-day colds a year and nothing else. I don't get any of the seasonal flus. So with that in mind...

Even before I got proper symptoms something was strange, and I can't help but think that it's connected. For four or five days before I developed a fever I was so charged up with static that anything made from metal or had metal in it would give me shocks. Door handles, my phone, my laptop, keyboards, cutlery, keys... All the shocks I got on a daily basis ended up giving me a pretty permanent headache for several days. Then I got a stuffed nose which didn't help the headache.

Then came the fever and completely knocked me out. Even when I have my annual three-day cold I usually get a very low fever, enough to make me feel like something is wrong and making me feel tired, but it doesn't knock me right out. This fever made me feel like my head was wrapped in cotton and my brain was swimming. I couldn't focus on anything. The fever lasted for five days with the same level of intensity throughout.

The day after the fever set in came the pain. Every muscle in my body was screaming in agony. Every day I woke up to my legs feeling like they were burning. It hurt to lie down, it hurt to sit, it hurt to stand. It hurt to move my frickin eyeballs. But more importantly; it hurt to breathe. With every breath I could feel the contour of my lungs inside my chest. Deep breaths were out of the question. 

Back in April the medical advice was to seek help at the hospital if you experienced any covid-like symptoms, but knowing at least two people who had both had symptoms had been turned away at the door for "not being sick enough", I decided I'd rather avoid going outside all-together. Back then you didn't get to come into the hospital unless you were literally dying. 

I didn't get the cough or the sore throat (except the muscle pain) so a part of me wondered whether that was covid or if it was something else. I had my antibody test on June 30th. A simple blood test. They told me I'd get the result in 2-7 days. Today I got the result: positive. I have the antibodies, which means what I had in April was covid. 

I'm not in any risk group, but I work in a hotel in the Stockholm area, so I low-key expected to get it at some point. Getting it didn't make me worried about myself so much because I'm not at risk. What worried me was potentially, accidentally, giving it to somebody who is. So I always followed the rules and recommendations, and still I got it. Even now I make sure to follow the rules even though people with antibodies have been deemed safe to interact with people at risk. 

It never got bad enough that I ended up in hospital or ICU, like so many others that you read about. But this was the worst I can remember ever feeling. It came from seemingly out of nowhere, knocked me out for several days, and then vanished as quickly as it had come. 

They told us from the beginning that everybody reacts differently to it. Some don't even notice that they have it. I thought I would be one of those people that get to have it without noticing it. But here we go. This is a story from a completely and somewhat audaciously healthy person experiencing covid. 

I still say that I've been lucky. It went easy on me. Considering. 

My last 5 books: Mix-bag of fantasy, mystery, sci-fi and horror

1. A Thief in the Night, by David Chandler. I read the first book in this series, Den of Thieves, years ago, but the plot of that book was so simple and straight-forward that it carried straight over to this one and the small scattered hints in this book was enough for me to remember the whole thing. My initial thoughts when I started to read this book was that it read like a D&D adventure and the characters were pretty straight-forward D&D stereotypes; the sweet but dense knight, the sly thief, the cunning dwarf, the wise magic apprentice, and the barbarian who solves everything with violence. But just like in the last book I fell in love with Malden and I discovered that every part of the book that was just Malden, Cythera and Slag were amazing, and every part of it involving Croy and Mörget a lot less so. It read like a D&D adventure all the way through, but when the mystery evolved just over halfway through the book (around 275 pages in) things started to get really interesting and I found the book hard to put down. It's a good many-layered mystery reaching through the ages and those are great. There were a few instances where I was just waiting for the characters to catch up, where I had figured out where the story was going and they didn't know yet, but I wasn't so much further ahead of the characters that it became annoying. They caught up pretty quickly. All in all I did enjoy this book and I will pick up the third part eventually.

2. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie. This was an old Swedish translation that I got from my grandmother years ago. I really, really don't agree with the translation and half of the time I spent reading this was spent sighing in frustration at the translator's choice of words (and so many direct translations omg). The translation definitely lowers the overall grade of this book. When it comes to the plot I already knew it. I've seen several screen adaptations of this novel, the latest being the one starring Kenneth Branagh and Daisy Ridley. I still enjoy seeing the seemingly random clues come together and this book is probably the absolute best way to see the brilliance of Poirot's mind and Christie's pen. Who can pass up on a good whodunit story? :3

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke. This is a classic and a book I got from Blind Date. I saw the movie adaptation of this when I was around ten years old, and it was the strangest movie 10-year-old me had ever seen. I don't remember much of the movie, just the general dislike of too much weird, which put me off from reading the book. But when I got it from Blind Date I figured I might as well read it. And this book gave me the same feeling like Star Trek TOS and classic Doctor Who; gotta love the 1960's hope for the future! The book starts off with what's basically two prologues; one taking place in prehistoric times, and one taking place two years before the rest of the book. The connection between those two prologues and the rest of the story isn't immediately clear, but the pieces fit together perfectly as the story moves along. I love how the majority of the story is just basic space exploration (which features a renegade AI) before moving into a Lovecraftian Randolph Carter-esque ending. Did Bowman find the Silver Key somehere in the rings of Saturn? ;P From someone who isn't very much into sci-fi; I really liked this book (a lot more than I thought I would).

4. Classic Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories.
I love old-fashioned ghost stories and I'm happy to say that I had only read one of the tales included in this anthology before; The Tell-Tale Heart, by Edgar Allan Poe. I never pick this sort of book up to get scared, but mostly to enjoy the old-fashioned story-telling and hopefully to get a few chills. As expected the stories I did enjoy the most were the two by Charles Dickens and the two by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu; especially Narrative of a Ghost of Hand, which gave me such chills and stayed with me for a whole day. Man-Size in Marble by Edith Nesbit also gave me chills. Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost was a wtf scenario, but was obviously meant as a comedy. The levity of this story was much appreciated after all the doom and gloom which had been the book up until this point. The last story was Laura by Saki. It was extremely short, but very strange, and I'm not sure what to make of it. These were the stories that stood out to me especially, but I feel like if I go to honorary mentions it will be the rest of the book, however The Spectre of Tappington gets a mention for having a pants-obsessed ghost; A School Story gets a mention for having a perfect dun-dun-DUUUUN movie-ending, and Eveline's Visitant gets a mention for being so heart-wrenchingly romantically told.

5. And Another Thing..., by Eoin Colfer. As far as I'm concerned Hitchhiker's Guide should've ended after the second book. Everything after that was a tedious chore of reading and unfortunately this wasn't any better. I went in expecting nothing, but against all better knowledge hoping for something good. I planned on giving this book 100 pages, but I couldn't even get to 70 before I gave up. Seventy pages and literally nothing had happened, except for some painfully forced tongue-in-cheek writing that mostly served to annoy me because it was so bad. ugh

Control Z

I follow Netflix on Facebook and one point the trailer for this show came up on my feed. I thought it seemed interesting so gave it a go.

The show is Mexican and thus they speak Spanish. I don't speak Spanish (and I refuse to dub things) but slap some subtitles on there and no issue.

The show is obviously heavily inspired by Gossip Girls (and to some extent Pretty Little Liars, I think?), but it's less about the fancy upper-class privileged teenagers and more about the ordinary people. I was never a fan of Gossip Girl and while this show is inspired by it, it takes the premises somewhere completely different.

While it starts out as people dealing with having their secrets revealed and the aftermath of that, it soon becomes a sort of mystery/thriller as they try to figure out who the culprit is and why s/he did what s/he did.

I've read some complaints that the story continuity is slippery at best, but I didn't see that. To me everything that happened made perfect sense. But maybe you need to be a little bit broken to see it. If you have never struggled to fit in, then maybe this show isn't for you.

The season ends with something major happening and I really, really hope there'll be another season. I need closure!

Dealing with backlog: Deus Ex Human Revolution & Mankind Divided

Next up on my backlog was Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I've been curious about this game for some time and when I played it I liked it so much that I decided to get Mankind Divided as soon as I was done with Human Revolution.

Human Revolution was such an amazing introduction to the cyberpunk world of Deus Ex. I made sure to do all the sidequests to get as much out of the game as possible, and I loved everything about it until I was thrust into the DLC The Missing Link, midway through the game (Director's Cut does this apparantly) and for a second it seemed as if I had lost all my skill points. I was so pissed about this until some googling made it clear that you got them back in the end of the DLC. I would've played the DLC either way, but being thrust into it like that just made me hate it.

The environments of the game were amazing. I enjoyed running around in Detroit, but no place was as cool to explore as Hengsha. Adam didn't agree though, judging from his comment when you first approach the island. An island so crowded that they built a second floor... But it looks so cool *_*

The story featured several wtf moments, not the least the reveal about Eliza Cassan. The majorest (I made that a word, shush) reveal came just towards the end from Darrow himself. And in the end you have a choice to make how you want the story to end. Two choices if you didn't save Sarif and Taggart; four if you saved them.

I chose Darrow's ending, and lucky I did because Mankind Divided made it clear that that was the dev's canon ending.

While playing Human Revolution I didn't think much of it, but after finishing Mankind Divided I realised that I really missed the banter between Adam and Pritchard.

Mankind Divided was so much better than Human Revolution imho. It seemed more polished somehow. I put every effore into finding all the collectibles and doing all the sidequests while playing through this game

As much as I enjoyed Hengsha in Human Revolution, Prague was better in every way. So much to do, so many places to explore - I love it!

Mankind Divided had so many characters that I couldn't help but like. Delara was one. Koller another. Helle a third.

The story in Mankind Divided makes a lot of sense after what happened at the end of Human Revolution and the world has turned from a simple cyberpunk existance to a dystopian one. Especially if you're augmented. I really enjoyed running around the world trying to alleviate everybody's problems, while trying to take down a terrorist organisation and turn the world back to acceptance of augs.

The sidequests that had the biggest impact on me was The Harvester and The Last Harvest. While Human Revolution mostly made out augmentations to be this wonderful thing, Mankind Divided really took its time to show how they could definitely be dangerous and how scientific advancement isn't always done with good intentions.

After I finished Mankind Divided I felt sad that it was over. No new Deus Ex on the horizon. No more Adam. Tumblr fangirls had my back :3 All the edits on Tumblr are amazing.

Dealing with backlog: Borderlands The Pre-Sequel

Woop woop! A Borderlands game that didn't take us a whole year to complete! xD We started playing this shortly before we both went on holiday and then we played it almost every day throughout our holiday.

I've heard from several people that this is the weakest Borderlands, but I actually really liked it. I really, really enjoyed playing Athena and I really, really liked seeing Jack's character development. Running around Elpis was a welcome change of scenery from being on Pandora (even though Toni kept saying how he missed Pandora).

Being a low-gravity zone ofc there were lots of jumping puzzles and as someone who's notoriously bad at jumping puzzles, this was probably the only negative for me about being on Elpis. We kept having to come back to the Veins of Helios for sidequests and I hated that place, because I kept falling off the platforms when trying to get from one place to another. It's my constant issue with jumping puzzles in any game; either I jump too far, way clear of the platform; or I don't even reach it.

Elpis was so beautiful and I was almost sad when we left the moon and returned to Helios to finally fight Zarpedon and find the Vault, but boy was it worth it. The Vault was amazing and the final boss fight against the Sentinel was so frickin epic. Probably the best boss fight in all of the Borderlands games so far.

Then we got to the DLCs. Since the Pre-Sequel only had one story DLC and the other two were arenas, we decided to only do the story DLC. Neither of us are big fans of arena challenges. So off we went to Claptrap's Claptastic Voyage, which was a really cool DLC. I did not expect to go inside Claptrap, but oh boy is that robot messed up! Also it might be our fault that Claptrap only listens to dubstep.

Claptastic Voyage was chuckfull of puns and we had so much fun with this DLC, until we got to the final boss. Seriously fuck Sh4dow-TP! And we have to fight him twice. Omggg -.-

I really loved the glitchy weapons that came with the Claptastic Voyage. I got one pretty early on and was then stuck on using a frickin amazing laser weapon. Because it was seriously amazing. The damage was through the roof and ate through even the shields of bosses so fast it was ridiculous. But because it was glitchy (intentionally) it sometimes got stuck on firing and I had to wait until I had to reload to get rid of the laser beam. But so worth it.