Chapel Orahamm's Blog, page 29

Video Game Review Tuesday: God of War (PS4)

Pull at the heart strings, why don’t you? The video sections are just enough for you to feel that cold grip of the setting, the tension, sorrow, and frustration of the characters, and the slow growth they develop as they start on their journey.

I tend to pick up video games for my Christmas and birthday presents. Works easier. Wren usually says he doesn’t know what to get me. So, I tend to go buy games or plants, though I picked up a long board this year to learn how to ride. Anyways. I picked this one up 2-3 years back for Christmas? I think? I found a used copy of it for like $10 and was quite thrilled. I’d wanted to play it for a long time. Had no clue what it was about, the cover just looked epic. I’m one of those cover nerds, sorry.

So, I switch this thing on (p.s. I am not any good at actually playing games) and get through some of the movement tutorials. This one works out rather nicely and the graphics, for the age on it are still in that good category for me. For some reason, I didn’t realize there was a kid involved in this video game. I mean, they’re right there on the front cover of the video game. I just didn’t think they were a controllable secondary character.

This is a heavy rail game. It keeps you moving along a course of action. You have some will in the rail movement, a bit of exploring. For the love of all your xp, EXPLORE everything the game will allow you to before doing the “mandatory” tasks it will keep trying to pull you to.

I didn’t the first go around. Wren picked up the game from me a couple weeks later and I watched him scramble into a ton of places I didn’t even realize I could access when I did my first two hour run. Facepalm. He got so much cool loot. Jealous much. So, there’s a quick lesson for you.

Now. That rail bit. Oh My Freaking brute characters. I died. I died a lot. I’m bad at coordination, but it bites into my stubborn streak because of some of the awesome combo sets. That’s why I said, do everything in your power to find everything that will boost your xp before you get to the various bosses, ’cause those bosses are gonna make you cry if you aren’t good at games. *speaking from experience*.

Do I recommend? Uh…do you like smash ’em bash ’em style games? Yes? Then yes, do it. No? Then…probably not gonna be your thing.

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Manga Cafe Monday: The New Gate

This one is proving to be excellent the second time around. I caught it the first time just as the first couple chapters released and kept up with it for about 15 releases before life happened and I forgot to check in and keep up with it.

Getting into the second reading and seeing how far it has come, I’m still loving it. It has an old school version feel to Solo Leveling, but with good side characters that really add to the storyline. I mean, there is a reason there is a manwha called Solo Leveling.

This one though, The New Gate, it came out within the same time frame as SAO. So, I think when I first encountered it, I was a bit jaded with so many copy cat video game isekais.

Several years since then, and entering back into The New Gate, I have to say this one has a good feel all the way around with both MC and side character development. Sometimes it’s nice to run into a whole pack of OP characters.

There is a little bit of fan service, but not egregious enough to be overwhelmingly offputting. Seen way to much of that in other manga. It’s acknowledgable, but not unpalatable.

The art style, for the several years worth of releases it’s gone through has been relatively consistent from frame to frame. The panel work is spaced well. Large spreads are interspersed for dramatic moments without becoming overwhelming – looking at you Naruto.

In a way, it has that kind of…how can I put it…wholesome feel that I get out of the anime Gate or the manga 1/2 Prince. It gives you that JRPG feel, gives you the standard DnD classes and statuses, and just, at this point, a bit of nostalgia.

It’s not super dark like Goblin Slayer. I’d call it a decent manga that would appeal to a crowd looking for something a bit more harkening back to .Hack//Sign or Rurouni Kenshin. That feel of over powered characters that have regrets and wishes and a desire to exist. There are motivations pushing the plot forward without it dragging, great dynamic fight scenes as the MC learns about the world, and touching moments that are well timed without turning the thing into a tissue drama.

If you got through Solo Leveling, Overlord, and Log Horizon and are craving more, please for the love give me more, The New Gate can give you those needed Isekai feels.

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Sunday Afternoon Movie Review: Soul

A fantastically inspirational piece with a depth in both filmmaking, art direction, and character depth, I am thrilled to have been able to see it.

This is a platanic partnership that expands upon the concept of teacher and pupil. The idea that one teaches the other, and really references back to the old way of acknowledging that sometimes it is not the older of the two in the relationship that is teaching.

I do applaud the direction the team went with the concept of spark, which I do not want to spoil. So, all in vague terms. The idea that a soul is complete when it has found the idea of life intriguing. Not necessarily that the soul has found “a calling” or “the thing the soul will be best at doing”. No, it really went more towards, what makes life worth it? What is it about the world that someone would wish to be in it? That at one point in time, a soul decided it was ready.

I love this concept of portrayal. The idea that people aren’t here to fulfill a job, be a placeholder, or become something great. That instead, it is that a person found the idea of some aspect in the world fascinating, intriguing, beautiful.

In a way, it is both simple and complex. It heavy hands some of the metaphors, I mean, some kids movies do need heavy handed metaphors so the parents can enjoy the more subtle innuendos so as not to lose their minds. This one though, it really reached into some depths. The art form, stylistic approach, animated motion, and imagination within the show carried well for younger children who are not yet able to grasp some of the deeper concepts that older children would, and yet teenagers would find a different meaning, and then again it ages into the different phases of adulthood. It is one of those good movies that spans the age groups easily enough and speaks to each in its own time.

Did I cry? Almost at one spot near the end. Not so much because it was outright sad, but because of the depth of caring the main character had for his partner and his realization of his mistakes and his willingness to move past his own selfish desires to truely step into the role of a mentor. To become something more than himself. To become the teacher that he was not quite doing well at being at the beginning of the movie.

If I had to name a scene I liked the most, it has to be the monochromatic black and white sequence early on in the show when the main character falls off the moving walkway through the dimensions. I love abstract animation with music like that. Sort of reminded me of the Fantasia movies. Fantasia is my all time favorite movie done by Disney. So, it’s easy to appeal to me if someone gets artsy with abstract soothing animation and throws very well times music at it.

I’m going to deeply suggest this one. It does not hurt like Inside Out, Old Yeller or Coco. Not sure I can ever touch any of those ones again. Sorry, I cannot devote that type of emotional overload. Soul really carries itself in this new age and I’m thrilled with the direction it took.

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Book Review: The Shield Road | The Moss Baron

Ah, here it is. There’s this thing with writing that says the author should mention the name of the book within the stories themselves. We found the first instance of this happening here. Now, grant it, I’ve done that in each of my books up to now. The only caveat is when I combined the four main books into my omnibus The Kavordian Library. I never mentioned it in that compilation. That’s because I was going to mention it in The Feather on My Scale, which I’m working on, I hear you in the back yelling about my slow production rate, yes, I’ll get to it. Lay off, I’m in the midst of dealing with a bunch of grumpy merpeople in Melancholic Harmony!

Oh. *ehem* right. Back to The Moss Baron. Now we’re finally approaching the name of this road that everyone seems to find themselves connected to. All roads lead to Rome sort of vibes, huh?

Long low flat landscapes and having to go find firewood. I have to wonder. I used to live in a desert. Now I live in a forest. I remember sedge and tumble being easy kindling. This terrain for this story though, what type of barren waste is it? Low heather? Maybe that would be an easy firewood. It’s an odd issue I find in any writing where people have open campfires and they have to go find firewood. Forests can be difficult to find dry wood in. The rot sets in and smolders the site. Grasslands risk setting the grass alight, or not being able to find enough burnable to keep a fire through the night. Something for other writers to keep tucked in their cap.

Venison and hare. That’s quite a bit of meat for two people to work through. Poachers though, so it is what it is. No one ever claimed humans had the capacity to not waste what the earth provides. To move an entire carcass of deer, gut it, drain it, butcher it, for that matter to do the same with the hare, that’s quite a project to get into for a pair of travelers.

I love when green dye garments come up in historical fantasy text. It makes me curious as to what the sourcing was for the color and the fixative used on the cloth to make it stay. My familiarity with the arrangement has to deal with the deadly history of arsenic. Red for vampires is an interesting color choice. One made to reflect the blood they consume, but green would be a much better choice. They wouldn’t die from the arsenic. That or brown for the iron in the oxidizing blood. I digress. This has to do with a poor farmer in a green tunic, neither arsenic or vampires.

Allow me to have a moment here to sigh and point out that in each story, the use of the word clearly pops up for representing an image that is to be taken at face value. I’m being judgement here, but that one is getting to me a bit. I shouldn’t complain. I have speech patterns in my own writing that most likely drive people crazy reading my work. *Shrug*, to each their own I guess.

The concept of the moss baron and the emperor’s territory. It’s an interesting dilemma. Reminds me of mobs and yakuza in media. When the government no longer protects the people, the people learn to protect the people, until they get just a bit too loud and the government takes notice before everything crumbles.

This time around, the story reads more like the Witcher, which is an interesting change of pace. Maybe it’s the magic. Maybe it’s the horse.

So, this isn’t the end of the book, but I think you get the gist of the storytelling method if you’ve been following along.

There are liberties taken with character interaction that lead more to the depth of the author than the authenticity of the situation. I like that about indie books. Some interactions would have been ironed out and scrubbed from the script if it had been put through a traditional publisher. The voice though would have been lost. It’s a fast read. A bit of gloom from the environment. Little morsels and tidbits here and there for you to glean the encompassment of a story. Isn’t this how history tends to be presented to us though? In bits and pieces?

There are autobiographies, true. Even then, those types of histories are presented in cultivated increments. In parts.

The congruence of stories within The Shield Road lacks complete depth due to its purposeful structure. This is one of those incremental situations. One where the whole picture is face value. Toes flicking through the creek in early spring before the snow melt. Before the deluge. Before an epic unfolds.

Read it. But be prepared to have cliff hanger complex.

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May 2021 Review Schedule

May 1: Book Review: The Shield Road | The Moss BaronMay 2: Sunday Afternoon Movie Review: SoulMay 3: Manga Cafe Monday: The New GateMay 4: Video Game Review Tuesday: God of War (PS4)May 5: Lovestory Manga Wednesday: Majo no BiyakuMay 6: Mobile Game Review: Underworld OfficeMay 7: Anime Cinema Friday: Jujutsu KaisenMay 8: Book Review: Freedom’s Landing | Anne McCaffreyMay 9: Sunday Afternoon Movie Review: RangoMay 10: Manga Cafe Monday: Kumo desu ga, nani ka?May 11: Video Game Tuesday: Bioshock (PS4)May 12: Lovestory Manga Wednesday: Seikon no QwaserMay 13: Mobile Game Review: Phantom of the OperaMay 14: Anime Cinema Friday: Demon SlayerMay 15: Book Review: The Dragonbone Chair | Tad WilliamsMay 16: Sunday Afternoon Movie Review: ParaNormanMay 17: Manga Cafe Monday: Gokushufudou – The Way of the House HusbandMay 18: Video Game Review – Amnesia | Memories (PC)May 19: Lovestory Manga Wednesday – MurcielagoMay 20: Mobile Game Review: HavenlessMay 21: Anime Cinema Friday: Beyond the BoundaryMay 22: Book Review: The Eye of the World | Robert JordanMay 23: Sunday Afternoon Movie Review: CoralineMay 24: Manga Cafe Monday: The Legendary Moonlight SculptorMay 25: Video Game Review Tuesday: Bioshock 2 (PS4)May 26: Lovestory Manga Wednesday: Isekai PicnicMay 27: Mobile Game Review: Twilight BloodMay 28: Anime Cinema Friday: Blood Blockade BattlefrontMay 29: Book Review: The Sword of Summer | Rick RiordanMay 30: Sunday Afternoon Movie Review: Enola HolmesMay 31: Manga Cafe Monday: Overlord Buy Me Sushi

Anime Cinema Friday: As Miss Beelzebub Likes

To explain my love affair with this little pastel demon anime, let me set the seen. March 2019, Wren and I get it in our heads to go to Japan, finally. It was both our dreams. I mean, I pretty much got my degree in Asian Art History and Asian History specificially to study anime and manga.

This had just had a great run and was fluffy and cute and I might have had a thing for Miss Beelzebub…blame that on the fluffy soot ball things.

Ehem. Anyways. We get to Japan and see a ton of cool stuff.

Then. I find it. The holy grail. At least one of them. A manga bookstore in Akihabara. I am drooling on all the books and wishing I could read them (help me, I live in a crap state where I can’t find someone to correspond in Japanese with). I grab up That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. And then I see it. The last book in the pile at the end of the row.

Brown cover. First volume. Low and behold, it is the first volume of As Miss Beelzebub Likes It. I nab it, and have a minor panic attack as I make sure I have the correct coinage. Face down the honestly rather nice desk clerk where they give me my total in the slowest possible voice so I understand while showing me the bill total. My heart is racing. I give them change and I escape with my prized possession. To discover: I had bought the one with words. Not images.

And that was my introduction to what the difference was between a light novel and a manga. Congrats me. Face palm. It now resides on my shelf, longing for me to be able to read it, me longing to touch it. Star crossed lovers.

You get the jist.

It’s cute. It’s sweet. There isn’t a lot of dynamic relationship whose it what’s its. Her assistant has a crush on her. She’s just a little bit ditsy. I love it, and some day over the rainbow I will actually be able to read the book on my shelf and see what other glorious adventures awaits me outside of the anime. Loved that anime.

Suggest it. Yes. So many times yes.

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Mobile Game Review: Mystic Code

Okay, this one went down a lot better than Genius games that I’ve been reviewing the last few times. This has a vague otome feel to it with gaining people’s “intimacy” levels, though, I feel like that might be the incorrect translation. That it means friend or respect or admiration instead.

The graphics for this are good. There is a bit more interactive material around the major story line. The detective aspect of it is fleshed out with options. You do have to be aware of your hearts, keys, and clovers. There are in-app ads that run along the bottom of the screen and you can opt in to watching them to gain clover points. At a certain amount of game play, it will just auto load in ads, but it doesn’t break the story when it happens.

There is a decent recharge rate for hearts if you make a bad choice. However, because I am wary of wasting hearts, I did end up going through 2 bad endings in the first few hours of play out of curiosity. It makes you start back from the very beginning, you are warned. However, that isn’t entirely a bad thing. It takes a bit of juggling, but you’ll quickly figure out which answers will gain you those “intimacy” points, which pretty much means the characters either like or trust you and more routes open up.

Some of the character dialogue is going to sound contrived. That might be poor story building, but I have a feeling it has more to do with translation and cultural understanding or dialogue scripts. My major focus areas were in Japanese and Chinese history with Korea being a bit of a minor element. With some work, I have been slowly remedying this oversight (hello pretty manwha). This is why I’m thinking some of the speech patterns feel…rough? Not grammatically inaccurate, but more grammatically static. Maybe too formal? That might be the feeling I’m getting. Once you’ve gotten a good hour in on the game, the dialogue patterns become second nature and aren’t as in your face.

At this point, I haven’t had to lay out any money. I can appreciate the art and direction teams that took this and gave it a good run. I am more than happy to run the ads to gain the credits to keep the game moving along, and the pricing for the clovers does not appear at first glance to be egregious as long as you’re working your options in the game correctly.

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Lovestory Manga Wednesday: Kuroneko Kareshi no Asobikata

There are several books in the set of Kuroneko or Black Cat. This specific one tends to be popular because you can get hold of it over here in America, where as a lot of the others you have to find through manga websites or read Raws if you are able to read Japanese. Still working on that part.

The concept of a werecat is fun. I enjoy form-change characters. However, this one…is a bit cringy.

More like a lot cringy.

The graphics are decent. The panel cuts and the speed of the story are paced well enough for a bit of “homoerotic smut” story line. But why start the whole thing off on the MC liking to sleep around and then getting drugged by a different guy interested in him? Like, just because someone enjoys sleeping around doesn’t mean that you can just invite yourself into them without their permission.

This is a failure at consent from the very start.

Developed feelings and anything else that takes place in the story, seeing as it’s designed for the eye candy feel, are all secondary. The potential for trusting a character was obliterated from the beginning. Why is this such a popular line pursued in these types of stories? While we’re at it, wtf, why make the characters cry during interactions? Or ignore them when they say no and stop?

Again, publishing industry, step up and start turning away these types of stories. I don’t like the idea of telling people to censor stuff, but this kind of material needs to not be mass marketed in a positive light, which makes it look permissible because it has a trad press label associated with it.

Uneven character relationship balance from the get go, just to add to the list of major complaints.

This is a nope from me.

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Video Game Review Tuesday: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch)

I have a feeling this is one of the first games most people buy when they finally buckle and pay up for a Switch. I mean, that’s what my family did and what a few of our game group friends did, and there were only, like, 10 games available at that time.

This is freaking pretty. Are we getting the idea that I’m a lot more lenient on story matter if the graphics are spot on? The story in this is excellent, regardless. I did not grow up on Zelda games though, so this being my first exposure to the game series was either one of the best or worst decisions on introing me to the franchise.

I can’t play it worth crap. I’m terrible at puzzle games and I die…a lot. That dang kite.

So, after an hour and a half of futile frustration and just wanting to watch the pretty story I shoved it in Wren’s face and went “play this for me.” As is my habit.

A good 50+ hours later and the end of the major boss, I could say I really liked the game. Loved the storyline, loved the art rendering, loved the little koroko pop up puzzles. Those I could grasp. The dungeon puzzles? Nope. Just, nope, completely useless backseat driver here.

Handed it over to kiddo now they’re reading comprehension is up and they flew through that thing once they grasped the dungeon games. So, I’m sitting over here doing a review as someone who couldn’t even get out of the first event stage, having watched an adult and a kid do this run through and have a great old time. I could keep track of what recipes to mix and spot random koroko seeds, but after that, completely useless.

Honestly, I loved the story so much that I pre-order Hyrule’s Castle because I was hoping it was going to be a repeat of this world immersion. Wrong. Very wrong. I was able to play as a secondary character with Wren, which was fun, but the fact that it wasn’t open world exploration and rather major battle overload wasn’t what we were hoping for. Kiddo likes it a lot though and has been playing it for several weeks, so it’s got glowing reviews from that side.

Looking at other recent games that have come out for the Switch, Breath of the Wild, for art and storyline dynamics is still winning out several years later since it’s release date.

I can’t play it worth crap, but I would deeply suggest it for anyone who has a bit of game experience or is willing to curse at themselves for several hours if they are really bad at timing puzzles.

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Manga Cafe Monday: Kimetsu no Yaiba

The anime and the manga for this one are both spectacular. To be frank though, I liked the anime more. It did not provide as much depth as the manga, however, the art style was much more easy to grasp animated. The coloration was much more vibrant, lending the loud,heavy line work to really shine as a true style.

It plays rather well as a short version of most any shonen jump manga. Over powered MC learning to harnass his powers while going through struggles, trials, tribulations. It takes Naruto and Bleach up a couple notches, but doesn’t quite revolutionize the industry like Jujutsu Kaisen did.

Having the manga end early, rather than turning it into an “epic” with 500+ chapters was an interesting decision by the design team and appreciated from some of us older readers who were getting tired of the multi-arc format from some of the big manga series that just lose their robustness with yet another contrived “I got you now” villain.

I very much want to see off-shoot anime and manga that deal in the other characters, but as their own solid off-shoots and not some minor arc meant to break up the main story line.

It’s an easy piece to get into, and I didn’t feel let down when it wrapped itself up. I rather appreciated that the author knew when to start that process and didn’t push their luck in hoping they could invent yet another jumping-the-shark scenario. The characters are mildly static in a shonen jump stereotype way. That’s not always a bad thing, especially if you’re in the mood to have that and not have to grasp too deeply a revolution to the medium. Hence, why the art style is actually nice. That is the revolution over the content.

Suggest it?

Yeah. It’s a touch dark, but nothing most of the other major shonen manga and anime haven’t done already.

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