Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 12

A Tale of Two Dragons…

This is going to be a shorter post, less a review and more of a brief comparison between two versions of the same game. I got Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen for my PC to record a YouTube playthrough with a warrior build, and I’d gone about a third of the way through the main story when I felt an urge to play as an assassin instead. Instead of swapping vocations in the middle of my planned run, I went downstairs to fire up the Xbox360 version and start a new assassin build there. In theory, the games should be quite similar, given that they’re both the Dark Arisen version.

Certainly, the lighting is similar, but on the PC I had the option of installing a shader mod to get rid of the nasty banding in the sky that becomes more noticeable in the moments after sunset and before sunrise. Both versions have problems with objects and characters popping in and out of the game world, but the PC version has somewhat better draw distances. (But only somewhat, as it’s still entirely possible to have a crew of monsters appear right in front of my party suddenly, or to stop moving and then a second later have an obstacle appear from thin air.)

However, there are some pretty big differences that improve the game for the PC version, stuff that apparently never got added as a patch for the older edition. The HD graphics actually work on the PC, for instance, looking much sharper even when close up. On the Xbox360, even after installing the HD graphics pack, the game looked hideous unless I sat way far away from the screen. It was jarring because the NPCs and enemies were fantastically detailed, but the world looked worse than Skyrim, which for a few years was my graphical low bar for Xbox360 game graphics.

There’s also an included “eternal ferrystone,” which allows for unlimited fast travel between Cassardis, Gran Soren, and wherever you choose to set down portcrystals. I ended up taking advantage of the ability to restart the story by activating hard mode and swapping back to normal difficulty a couple times to get more port crystals, and the end result was being able to fast travel most everywhere on the map without the hassles that I’d dealt with on the Xbox version. There I constantly had to keep buying the regular variety of ferrystone, and at 2,000 gold per stone, their use was often prefaced by a lengthy debate about whether I would earn enough money at my destination to warrant using it.

(Side note: Gold must be plentiful in this world, considering how bad the inflation is. An egg sells for close to 300 gold pieces, and I’ve found armor and weapons going for over 1.5 million.)

But the number one biggest quality-of-life improvement in the PC version is a checkbox in the game options to turn off pawn chatter. It was such a sweet relief to find this feature, and I’d commented during one recording that maybe I was missing the pawn chatter. But just ten minutes into my new game on the Xbox version, I went to the menu and slid the voice volume to 0 so I could stop listening to nattering like, “Nature is unbridled here,” or “plants grow at the roots of these trees like so many verdant children,” or “crags hold ore, master. Perhaps there is aught to be found here.” And really the problem isn’t the delivery of these lines. It’s that every pawn says the same things at the same locations every single time. So a checkbox to shut the myrmidons up…it’s everything I could ever hope for to truly improve the game.

I wanted to do a comparison of Bitter Black Isle in both versions, but that may not happen. As much as I’ve tried to get into the DLC, so far, I’ve found the damage sponge bosses to be tedious regardless of which class I use. I’m not saying it will never happen, but seeing as how I have many other games I want to play, I see no reason to torture myself with hour long boss fights pressing the same buttons over and over again.

But for now, if you wanted to know whether to go Xbox360 or PC, I’d definitely suggest going to the PC Master Race. If you really need the console experience, just do what I did and plug your Xbox controller into your PC.

Netflix Nosedive: Penny Dreadful (Beware: MAJOR spoilers)

Before I begin, I want to apologize if this post is too long or rambly. Temperature shifts here in Pavia have rendered my brain somewhat useless, and I have trouble focusing. But we just finished watching this show, and if I don’t review it now I’ll forget all the finer points I feel need mentioning. But if you decide the review is too scattered or long for you to finish, I’m okay with that. In fact, for you, the early bailer, I will give you my final verdict now: 3 stars, a mixed bag of good, bad, and absolutely pathetic.

Let’s also get the spoiler warning out of the way because to unpack the hot mess that is Penny Dreadful, I’m going to have to spoil pretty much every story arc and character. I could in theory just write up a blurb of a review that spoiled nothing, but that blurb would leave you with the impression that I hated the show. The truth is that my feelings are more complicated, much like this series’ stretching attempts to make a grand unifying evil theory.

But I’ll be kind enough to put all the spoilers behind a page cut, so if you long to see this without knowing anything about it, bail out now.

So, Penney Dreadful at its core is about three white guys whose defining traits are that they are all wankers. Not likable wankers, just wankers. Oh, sure, the story in season one might have you thinking it’s all about Vanessa Ives, a witch possessed by a demon and pursued by…possibly three “Masters” over the course of three seasons. After all, Vanessa has a role in the story and multiple flashback episodes that build on her back story. But the problem is, Vanessa is just a woman pursued by otherworldly courting men, and her worth as a character is never viewed outside of that value as a bride to evil.

Let’s start with season one, which had the most potential and where most of the characters were in a state closest to likable. (Note: I said closest to likable, not to be confused with actually likable.) Vanessa Ives approaches one Ethan Chandler, an American sharpshooter touring England with a shooting exhibition modeled around a false yarn of his fight with Custer. We see right away what kind of man he is as he fucks and discards a local lady, who rightly calls him on his honey-coated bullshit by pointing out that he didn’t even ask for her name before preparing to dump her and move on.

Vanessa wants Ethan’s skills as a gunman to help her hunt down her best friend, Mina Harker. Oh hoh! So the villain must be Dracula! Yeah, no, not yet. First we have to go through a season of nosferatu-like vampires who work in service to Amun-Ra, or seem to, anyway. This brings me to the real problem with all of Penny Dreadful, the villains. The main characters are all warts and fascinating details, but the villains are just…cardboard props with no motivation beyond “get Vanessa.” There’s supposedly prophesies to explain their needs, but even in the first season that motivation is pretty weak.

But let’s set that aside to meet the rest of the league of extraordinary gentlemen (redux). There’s Dr. Victor Frankenstein, initially brought in to study the bodies of slain vampires. In the first season, he creates his finest opera of science, a creature named Proteus. Proteus seems like a nice enough monster, and in addition to learning new things quickly, he begins to recover some of his old memories of life on the sea. Before he can sort out who he is, though, Proteus is killed by the real monster, whose “birth” used a different and more painful method. This character, forever dubbed Creature in the subtitles, (hubby needs them because he’s losing his hearing) actually has two names over the course of the series, but in the first season, he’s Caliban.

Caliban has a flashback episode showing that he has some righteous anger and daddy issues because Victor abandoned him for being a very colicky baby. This by itself might be okay, but Caliban seeks out Victor because he has a right to a mate, and the world’s women are just denying him the vag he so righteously deserves. Yeah, Frankenstein’s monster is the world’s first incel.

Caliban kills good old Dr. Van Helsing because Victor is taking too long to make him some undead vagina to call home, and then wanders around menacing Victor to get to work. So eventually Victor finds his woman in Brona, a prostitute with tuberculosis who is shacking up with…Ethan Chandler. (Because everyone and everything have to be connected.)

Then there’s Sir Malcolm Murray, former great explorer of Africa, who, along with his former slaver manservant Sembene, serves in the role of Great British Bastard. He basically hates Vanessa, but he also needs her to find his daughter Mina. Much of their relationship in the first season is spent with barbed words, little efforts to wound with insults and reminders that neither is a good person.

So far, this is mostly fine with me. I’m okay watching a story where the protagonists are mostly assholes, and despite the swerve from Dracula to Amun-Ra as the Big Bad, I enjoyed watching the drama unfold between all of these characters. Yes, they’re all assholes, but they’re fascinating assholes played by good actors.

I haven’t even mentioned Dorian Gray, who is extremely true to his literature form by being the kind of man who brings out the worst in everyone. His relationship with Vanessa is what allows her inner demon to regain control of her, who is eventually exorcised by Ethan. Why does an American gunman suddenly know Latin? Who knows, and who cares? It’s a great scene even if it makes no sense.

With Vanessa “saved,” the team tracks down Mina and the Master vampire for an exciting shootout that see Malcolm kill Mina while declaring Vanessa to be his daughter now. Which means Vanessa gets saved twice in the same season by men. (Oh, and Amun-Ra is either a weak ass spirit inhabiting an ugly vampire’s body or he’s a complete no-show. Either way, he’s the worst defined Master of all three seasons.)

Before closing out the season, Victor opts to suffocate Ethan’s girlfriend with a pillow rather than wait for her to die from all the blood in her lungs. To be fair, he did at least ask permission to put Brona out of her misery, and she gave it on the promise of coming back to a better life. (Remember this because it becomes relevant very soon.)

Also before closing out the season, Ethan is pursued by agent of Pinkerton hired by his father to return him home. They think they’ve cornered him before he transforms in the light of the full moon to reveal he is the wolf man. This is not the surprise it seems, given the various clues throughout the season. (Also, if I’m being honest, the new Teen Wolf series did a better wolf man makeup job.)

Moving on to season two is when the plot creaks out some ridiculous mistakes in an effort to introduce the new villains and pad out an investigation against Ethan. But at first, the story seems like it would be very exciting, with Ethan and Vanessa attacked by shape shifting witches. These women scurry away after Vanessa starts growling out the same language they speak because…I don’t know.

That’s how I could sum up most of season two. The big bad is Lucifer, who hired these witches to torture Vanessa like that will somehow convince her that deviled dick is best dick. The real problem is the head witch, who was a medium from the first season. Why is she a problem? Because the show forgets that Vanessa sat right across a table from this unaging, unchanging women. During a flashback episode, Vanessa recounts how she met these witches, and she twice looks the villain in the face from a close distance. So how is it that she didn’t recognize said villain across a table despite this wicked witch killing her mentor?

But that’s not the only problem with the season. A new inspector is brought in to Scotland Yard to investigate the massacre Ethan committed in the inn where he’d been shacked up with Brona. It would be one thing if the new inspector looked at the crime scene and a former murder in season one and decided the two were linked. That would make him a super detective. But when one of the witches kills a young couple and steals their baby, Inspector Rusk declares that these crimes, despite being vastly different in execution and intent, are in fact both related to the same monster. Thus the brilliant detective is reduced to a blithering idiot who “just knows” magic was involved. I can’t OY VEY strongly enough at this.

While I’m on the topic, The stolen baby’s organs are needed power a super realistic voodoo doll. As the season progresses more of these dolls are made, which leads me to assume more babies were stolen. Why does Super Inspector Rusk never notice these cases? Why does the story so conveniently forget a major detail like this? Ugh. Let’s move on.

the next “mistake” is Victor, who despite knowing that his improved method of resurrection will grant Brona access to her memories sooner rather than later, decides that it’s best to weave a story that she is really his cousin Lily, come from the country to live with him. After touching her dead breast once, he’s decided to fuck over Caliban (now AKA John Clare) by seducing the creature’s bride to be. It’s the dumbest gamble because Victor already knows how the process works, but derp, let’s just let this bad idea run on until Lily randomly meets Dorian Gray, at which point Lily drops Victor like a bad habit and also tells John/Caliban to take his undead dick and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

I do want to give credit where it’s due on a subplot involving a trans prostitute, Angelique, who courts Dorian for affection. I knew that couldn’t end well, and it didn’t, but before reaching the point of tragic tragedy, Dorian is such a peach about his new lover. When Angelique first strips to reveal her dangly bits, Dorian smiles and happily takes her to bed. When Angelique is insulted by a man during one of their adventures together, he’s quick to stand up for her. (Though he’s too much of a gentleman to actually strike the offensive man. I won’t deduct points for that.) When Angelique dons men’s clothing and asks if Dorian can love her without the makeup and dresses, he replies, “I love you for who you are, not for how you dress, Angelique.” Bravo, sir. You almost even got a tear out of mine eye for that answer.

Dorian even hosts a coming out ball for Angelique, inviting the cream of London to view his new lover. It’s almost too good to be true. But then it is, because Angelique uncovers Dorian’s portrait, and with his secret revealed to a mortal, Dorian has to kill Angelique. Hubby wanted to complain about that, but I pointed out that he used a poison to kill Angelique almost instantly and painlessly. So yeah, he’s a bastard, but he is at least a considerate bastard.

In this season, Vanessa gets the chance to do all the saving, but it’s mostly because the “father of all lies” makes the world’s most unconvincing argument for why they should get married. So Vanessa tells the devil to go to hell, the men are saved and…eh, it’s mostly done.

The wrap up to this season sees Ethan taken back to America, John/Caliban sailing to Antarctica, and Sir Malcolm bound for Africa to bury Sembene. (who died an inglorious death, befitting a side character who isn’t white. Don’t roll your eyes, I’ll cover a white side character in season three who gets to ride off into the proverbial sunset, and also talk about how Sir Malcolm gets himself another magical native to replace the one he just lost.) Victor’s hosting a drug-fueled pity party for one, leaving Vanessa all alone. This is all set-up to make the third season’s theme “We’re getting the band back together.”

So, the big bad of season three is Dracula! This should be a step down at this point because Vanessa has faced Amun-Ra and Lucifer, but the show struggles to insist that Dracula is actually Lucifer’s brother, and like his brother, Dracula needs Vanessa to bring about the end of times. Again.

At this point I need to address a side character I’ve not mentioned during season one or two, Ferdinand Lyle. An Egyptologist first brought in to study the first prophesy written in hieroglyphics, Mr. Lyle returns in season two as the lap dog of the head witch, a role he rejects to become an honorary member of Team Wanker. Being a gay jew in a country not known to tolerate either tribe, he is a cheerful little man who I found myself loving over all other characters, and as such, I also found myself dreading the moment he would die.

At the start of season three, Vanessa has shut herself up in Sir Malcolm’s mansion, letting the place and herself go because all the men have left her. But not Mr. Lyle. He demands an audience, and upon seeing the trash and dirty dishes and insects and…and everything, he just smiles and says “I love what you’ve done with the place.” At this point, I started to tear up. Mr. Lyle begs Vanessa to get help, referring her to an Alienist who helped him recover from depression, and as he offered her unconditional love with no strings attached, I really started to cry. In a show full of glorious bastards, Mr. Lyle was the genuine truly nice guy. (The only reason he was helping the witches was because they were threatening to blackmail him using his gay lovers as reins to control him.)

So I suppose it’s only fair that Mr. Lyle exits the show by being exiled to Egypt. His employers somehow got wind of his proclivities and decided to send him away rather than institutionalize him. It’s perhaps the one arc of the show that I felt was merciful on the writer’s part, and considering how everyone else fares, it’s worth mentioning.

Let’s get back to Vanessa and the alienist Dr. Florence Seward, who is a clone of Vanessa’s murdered mentor from season two. (Because once again everyone and everything has to be connected.) The Alienist is the catalyst for Vanessa meeting Dracula, making her seemingly good advice dreadful. (that play on the title is only half intentional.) I called Dracula out long before his reveal, even as my hubby said, “No, you’re probably wrong.” But what I didn’t see coming was a twist reveal during a hypnotism session with Dr. Seward. In looking back at her memories of the padded room where she was kept decades before, Vanessa sees that the orderly who cared for her is…John/Caliban. (Because once again everyone and everything has to be connected.)

It’s here that the story strains to make Dracula and Lucifer brothers, and it’s just one more example of how these great characters are squandered on a plot that sucks harder than Dracula’s minions.

Dorian and Brona/Lily start up a woman’s revolution by liberating the most abused prostitutes they can find, a plan Dorian quickly begins to regret because these are all man hating women, and he is after all a rich white dude. He sees how this is all going to go south when Brona/Lily sends her crew out to amass a pile of hairy man hands on his dining room table, so he lets Victor kidnap Brona/Lily and tells the platoon of prostitutes to get the hell out of his home. Brona/Lily’s left hand woman refuses and stabs Dorian, which doesn’t work, of course, and this sends everyone else packing. The young apprentice, though, decides she would rather die than go back out into the harsh world, and Dorian grants her a quick death.

Victor, working with Dr. Jekyll now, has an initial plan to wipe Brona/Lily’s mind so he can have a nice docile wifey/cousin/daughter again, but after Brona/Lily makes an impassioned speech about needing to own her scars, Victor decides to get off the Douche Train and just let her go. So Brona/Lily goes back to Dorian’s, finds her army gone and her apprentice dead, and…she just leaves.

John/Caliban finally has flashes of memory that lead him back to the family he forgot, a young son dying of tuberculosis and a wife struggling in a factory job trying to keep them both alive. John/Caliban first sets about robbing random dudes to get money for his family, but after a chance meeting with Vanessa, he is convinced to return home and rejoin his family. His son dies, and his wife demands that either John/Caliban take the body to Victor, or to never come home again. So John/Caliban also opts to get off the Douche Train by sending his son’s body off in the Thames river and walking away. Like Brona/Lily, he just leaves. That’s the end of their arcs, neither of which are cathartic or even slightly satisfying. They weren’t important enough to get a proper send-off like Mr. Lyle, and that rubs me the wrong way the more I think about it.

While all this is going on, Ethan is saved from Federal Marshals by hired gunmen sent by his father. He then kills the gunmen during a full moon and is reunited with the last surviving witch daughter from season 2, who wants to serve Ethan so Ethan can serve Lucifer and bring about the end of times…AGAIN. (Seriously, you can’t trot this shit out twice in the same season and expect me to care. The end of times has to be used sparingly or it’s pointless.)

Meanwhile, Sir Malcolm is back on the coast of Africa wondering whether to give up on this whole manly rage gig when he’s approached by Kaetenay and tasked to travel to America to save Ethan. It’s here that the timeline becomes the most tortured. How long does a ship take to travel from Africa to America? How long does it take to journey across America by rail and by horse? Don’t bother doing the math because the answer is, “Just enough time for everyone to be conveniently reunited.”

So Ethan and his new lover reunite with Ethan’s two adoptive dads to meet his real dad, and at the same time Inspector Rusk arrives just in time with a US Marshal. Just in time for what? Why a huge fight scene, in which Ethan loses his witchy lover, Rusk gets another one of those inglorious deaths, and Ethan, Kaetenay, and Sir Malcolm head to London to “save Vanessa.”

But that’s not gonna happen because despite knowing who Dracula is, Vanessa decides that Dracula’s pathetic excuse of a speech is instead Very Compelling Stuff and opts to go for The End of Times. (AGAIN) So Ethan and crew roll up to have one last fight kill Vanessa, and that’s the end of the show.

Before I go on, I have to point out how localized these End of Times are in all supernatural shows. This same thing rubbed me the wrong way when Buffy did it, and then when Angel did it. The END of TIMES is always affecting one location, and if the shows were to continue after The Day Was Saved, no one else in the world would even know something happened. It waters down the scale of the threat, and frankly, I’d like to see that threat cranked up higher. Much as I’m tired of zombie fiction, at least those writers know to go big or go home. These End of Times prophesies need to go the same route, or else they’re Just Another Day at the Office.

I guess it made sense to someone that once Vanessa was gone, the show was over. But even two days out from the finale, I’m left disappointed. Vanessa, supposedly a fierce and powerful woman, is time and again shown to give in with a bit of recited poetry or the limpest of pleas to be the Bad Guy. At least Ethan’s halfway turn to evil made more sense because the witch who tried to turn him made a more compelling argument for why being good was pointless. Vanessa just gives up, and then she gives up on life and lets Ethan shoot her so she can’t be courted by some other otherworldly dude.

So…yeah, I liked most of the characters, even the bastards, but the villains were just so lame, and the over-arcing plots and their attempts to unify everything and everyone fell flat for me. Your mileage may vary, but the best I can give Penny Dreadful is 3 stars, and I’d be hard pressed to recommend to anyone except fans of the old stories. If you’ve read the books that inspired the show, you’ll love the characters like I did. But the story they’re in is so flimsy and nonsensical that it leaves me feeling like these fantastic bastards are wasted for nothing.

Netflix Nosedive: Kingdom

I am sick to death of zombies, and have been for a few years now. In films they’re the laziest monster, laying around for years without reaching an expiration date, yet always seeming to last just long enough to catch their victims. (Seriously, you want me to believe that 20 years after the pandemic infection event, there’s still armies of fresh corpses waiting to snack on four people? Oy.) In video games, they’re a programmer’s dream come true, since they barely need any AI or pathing coded in. Just fill a map with a hundred copy-pasta enemies and clock out. Problem solved.

More to the point, zombies in any medium just don’t scare me any more, I think because I’m over the hill and looking at a real death more squarely in its hollow skull sockets. Besides, if there ever really was a zombie apocalypse, I’m in lousy shape and would likely die in the first five minutes. I’m okay with that, and I’m making my peace with death rather than whistling past the graveyards. It’s just that now, it takes more than an shambling corpse to scare me. (Side note: killer sharks still seem to work on me for some reason I can’t explain.)

So what would it take to convince me to watch yet another zombie show? Turns out, adding political intrigue during the late Joseon period in Korea. Give me a scheming handsome prince with muddled but mostly good intentions, an evil young queen and her equally evil daddy, and suddenly I’m hooked like a catfish to stink bait. Despite being the centerpiece to this story, for me the zombies fall by the wayside under the weight of fascinating characters and even more intriguing political machinations.

Based on a comic series, Kingdom begins with an investigation into a treasonous message that the king is dead and soon a new king will rise up to take over the country. Minister Cho Hak-jo suspects the message is being sent by Prince Yi-Chang, whose claim to the throne is now in jeopardy because his mother was a concubine, while his step-mother the queen is pregnant and seemingly ready to deliver a true heir soon.

The queen and minister both claim the king is very ill, forbidding anyone from entering his palace, but a servant is soon eaten by the king, suggesting he isn’t just dead, but undead. The body of the dead servant is carried away to a country hospital, where, in a moment of head banging stupidity, a soldier decides to feed the patients the body to prevent them from starving. From this mistake, the zombie apocalypse begins.

But never mind that, because it turns out the prince really is behind the treasonous message, and upon learning of his father’s plight, he only becomes more invested in overthrowing his step-mother and her minister. But for every positive change he enacts to garner support among the common folk, Cho Hak-jo finds ways to sabotage his efforts. It’s this tug of war that kept me tuning in, and the times when I gasped out loud weren’t cause by terror of a zombie, but instead were sounds of shock or surprise at the latest twist in the plot.

I want to talk about many more of the cast members with gushing praise, but IMDB is fairly light on the casting credits, as well as the character names, leaving me grasping at roles in the broadest sense. There’s the duty bound nurse, the mysterious sniper, a newly appointed minister of a small town, his weasely assistant, and the prince’s loyal bodyguard. All of these characters are fantastic, and after the midway point, I found myself commenting to my husband, “I hope a zombie doesn’t get them.” (Obviously I can’t say if they survive or not because spoilers.)

If I have any complaints about the series, it’s that damned cliff hanger of an ending. How can anyone be so cruel as to leave viewers hanging like that? It’s damned wretched cruelty, is what it is, and whoever decided to end the season that way should be forced to attend a grand buffet and be forbidden to eat anything. They can watch everyone else eating and complimenting how good the food is. (I mean, sure, I can think of worse punishments, but I need these people to survive to make season 2. Preferably without a frickin’ cliff hanger as bad as the first season.)

I’ll give Kingdom 5 stars. It takes a genre I’ve grown tired of and breathes new undead life into it by forcing the monsters to share the stage with ancient politicians, and that addition makes all the difference in the world for me. I’d recommend it to fans of zombies, historic dramas, or West Wing.

Netflix Nosedive: Aggretsuko

Oh, man…am I glad I started Aggretsuko late, because now I know there’s a second season coming, and that eases the torment of this show ending way too soon for my liking. That alone should tell you I loved this series. I’d seen in a couple other reviews that it was very melancholy, but that wasn’t my experience with it. I laughed until I hurt during most episodes except for the last and the Christmas Special (Which I’ll also cover in this review.)

Also, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can avoid spoilers for this one, so if you want to go into the show clean, just stop now.

Also, this is my first exposure to the cast, as I never saw the 100 one-minute episodes that originally set up the story. So any experts who note mistakes in my review, please, keep your snickering to respectable levels.

With that out of the way, Aggretsuko is a Sanrio show for adults. The main character is Retsuko, a red panda who works as an OL (office lady) for a big company. She’s part of the accounting department, and after five years working in the same dead end position, she’s a bundle of raw nerves that seek release through singing death metal. That’s the whole premise in a nutshell, and it’s what drew me in, the curiosity to see where that angle would go.

Retsuko is a woman of two distinct halves, one shown to the public because shes believes it is what’s expected of her, while the other is her wild side, one she hides until it is later discovered by some distant co-workers. The more public side is too afraid of conflict, which is what leads to her being put upon by her pig boss Director Ton, and by her Komodo dragon senior, Tsubone. Overworked and often insulted and demeaned, Retsuko frequently seeks escape into a karaoke bar to scream out her anger, usually while drinking heavily. In short, a typical weekend plan of someone in their mid-twenties working in a job they despise.

When I put it like that, yeah, the show does sound very melancholy. But the tone is frequently buoyed by Restsuko’s reactions to situations, or by the wide cast of co-workers surrounding her. There’s flighty gazelle Tsunoda, an “Instagram girl” who uses flirting with the boss to lighten her workload. She acts ditzy, but reveals later on that she knows exactly what she’s doing, and that she’s aware of the hatred her co-workers feel for her. She also doesn’t care, because if she can use her looks and charm while she still has them, why the hell not do it? (And I can totally respect that once she lays it out so honestly.)

Ms. Washimi and Ms. Gori are an eagle and gorilla who work in upper management jobs, making them idols in the eyes of Retsuko. What she doesn’t know is that they notice her, and they have their own misconceptions about her. These two end up becoming her closest confidantes out of the office thanks to a bonkers Yoga instructor, and are the only ones who know about her death metal persona. Ms. Washimi is very reserved, but also very easy to anger, while Ms. Gori is highly excitable, though prone to disastrous romantic relationships.

Then there’s Fennko, a fox who spies on everyone and is something of a social media police officer. She’s the closest thing Retsuko has to a best friend, and when she’s needed, she never fails to be there. (Even if sometimes her protective efforts don’t always work out.)

Next is Haida, a hyena who has a crush on Retsuko. I fully admit, I started shipping these two late in the season when I realized Haida is into punk and metal. This is part of what makes him perfect for her because like her, he’s very much mild-mannered in the office, but he has that hidden wild side. The Christmas special expanded on this further, but when the credits rolled, I shouted, “No, you fool, take him to the karaoke bar! It can’t end like this!”

But then one of the themes frequently explored by the series is how so many dreams end up falling by the wayside as we simply try to press on in the here and now. Retsuko first dreams of working with Puko, a long-time friend who has plans to set up an import shop. But that falls through, and so she latches onto the idea of marrying some guy to become a housewife, thus escaping the job. Problem is, Retsuko is more discerning about who she wants to live with, and even after she tries to convince herself she’s found true love, she can only keep the act up for so long before she has to give up on the fantasy.

I think one of the best moments in the series comes during this fantasy phase, but first I have to backtrack. Several episodes before, Retsuko was called out by Director Ton during a company outing. Drunk and enraged, Ton drops a battle rap insulting Retsuko, who initially stays in her meek public mode before suddenly snapping and going full death metal on him. (This scene is comically explosive, sending the rest of their co-workers flying around the room and leaving Ton’s clothing shredded as he collapses to his knees. Now that’s an epic rant, y’all.) The next day Ton claims to have no memory of the fight, and yet, during a lecture about Retsuko’s mistakes due to her “love blindness,” Ton abruptly says, “I know you don’t like too long lectures from the shitty boss.” That’s what Retsuko screamed at him in the song, and I think he claimed to forget so they could both get back to their jobs. He calls her short-timer and claims he wants her gone, but in truth, she may be one of his best employees if his pride would ever let him admit it.

That’s what the series does best, presenting these people as stereotypes, and then peeling back layers of caricature to show little hints of who they really are. Tsunoda isn’t as shallow as she pretends to be, and for all his bluster, Ton…no, Ton is still an asshole, but like Shrek, he’s an ogre with layers. Haida isn’t as meek as he comes across, and Fenneko isn’t really a cynic. Even Retsuko’s short-term boyfriend Resasuke ends up revealing something of himself beyond his space-case behavior at work. He isn’t right for Retsuko, but he’s not a bad guy. In fact, getting to know what distracts him makes him a bit more charming, even he is still a bit of a weirdo.

The Christmas special sees Retsuko pursuing yet another fantasy, this time attempting to learn how to be an Instagram girl from Tsunoda. Things begin to fall apart on Christmas Eve because she can’t find anything interesting to snap pictures of. She’s overthought the problem for too long, and as such has nowhere to be. Because she chooses to remain in the office, of course Director Ton gifts her with more work.

Haida has plans to throw a small party for friends, but because he fears rejection, he ends up not inviting Retsuko. Seeing her Instagram dinner, he slips into depression, but Fenneko notes it’s all an illusion, and she’s actually still in the office.

Meanwhile the hot dates Ms. Washimi and Ms. Gori had both turn out to be busts, and they round up Retsuko and drag her out of the office for a Christmas dinner at a standing room only Soba bar. Which is where Haida finds her, and Washimi smartly assesses the situation and drags Gori away. And cue me shouting about when not to end a Christmas special.

I would love to gush about individual scenes and characters for a lot longer, but I’ve already spoiled enough. I’ll stop myself and give Aggretsuko 5 stars. I can’t wait for season 2 to arrive, and I can’t recommend it strongly enough to anyone who know the truth, that work is a four letter word.

Game review: Pac-Man 256 for Android

Endless runners aren’t really my thing. I did enjoy Jetpack Joyride for several months, but most of the games in the genre get stale for me in a week or two. Pac-Man 256 got stale around the two hour mark.

Bear in mind, Pac-Man was one of the first arcade games to show up at our skate rink and movie theater, and it was the first game we got for our Atari 2600. Alongside Dig-Dug and Galaga, I’ve got Pac-Man on my PS4 whenever I need a quick pellet munching fix. I owned the Tiger Electronics LCD version of Pac-Man. You see what I’m saying? I love Pac-Man, and I don’t like this endless runner version of it. Not at all.

My problems with this game can be traced to the procedural generation and the blind spots created by the way the maze appears from the top and right of the screen. I might be aiming for a specific path, only to see that way is now blocked by several ghosts, and I’m dead with no chance of course correction.

The game places emphasis on eating chains of dots, resetting the counter each time Pac-Man hits an empty space. But the maze is full of blank spaces, and again, you can’t see them until you’re practically on top of them with no way to backtrack, and thus you can’t plan how to get a pellet chain up to 256, which the game rewards you for by wiping out all the ghosts. When I got the reward, it wasn’t skill, just blind luck that I happened along the right path.

Let’s talk about the ghosts. Part of the appeal of classic Pac-Man for me is management of the things I can see. There’s only four ghosts, and based on their colors, I can somewhat predict their behavior. In a way, Pac-Man 256 is angling for the same idea, but procedural generation pops out so many ghosts that at times it is impossible to avoid them. Adding insult to injury, ghosts will sometimes be added on screen right in front of Pac-Man. In a straight corridor and being pursued by any other ghost, this just feels like a huge “fuck you for playing.”

There’s also a vague threat munching up the bottom of the maze, Glitch, but I honestly don’t know what happens if Pac-Man gets caught by the cloud of multi-color numbers and letters. My focus always has to remain up and right, so as far as I’m concerned, Glitch is a non-threat.

I will say that the power-ups are clever, but even after multiple upgrades, I can’t see much change in how long they last. Usually they run out right when I need them most, which leads to another death. This might have been less frustrating if power-ups had some kind of visual or audio indication that they were running out, but that seems to be asking for too much.

This brings me to my last complaint: the ads. When I die, I have the option of watching an ad to continue. If I choose to end the game and start over, I’m offered another chance to watch an ad in exchange for a gift of some extra coins, the currency to upgrade power-ups and continue from a death without seeing an ad. Randomly, I’ll just be shown an ad, even if I haven’t asked for one. None of this would be quite so annoying if it wasn’t the same ad for the same game. Every. Single. Time.

I would like this game with several provisions, with the first being an option to buy the game and opt out of all advertisements. Secondly, I would like to see some sort of logic filtering the appearance of the ghosts, or a limit, at the very least. The internal coding should have something like “if there’s already 10 ghosts in one section, don’t randomly spawn another 3 in the same section.” The final wish is that there would be no “gotcha gaps” in the maze. If I have to backtrack to dodge a ghost, killing my pellet chain, that’s fine. But the way the game drops the chain for me because EVERY path ahead has a gap is…it just feels cheap.

I’ll give Pac-Man 256 3 stars. It’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not what I’m looking for when I need a Pac-Fix. But hey, it’s free. So if you want to try it and don’t mind ads, give it a shot.

Book Review: The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

It’s been ages since I put out a book review, and it took me several months to work my way through The Fifth Season. I want to assure you right away, this was not because it was a bad book. Quite the opposite, really. I’ve just been having brain problems because of MS relapses, and there were days when I couldn’t retain anything I tried to read. This makes it hard to review something if I can’t remember it, so I usually put the book down on those days and wandered off to play Dark Souls.

Let us begin with where my interest in the series started because it wasn’t with me buying the first book. I bought it for my husband, who was about to go on another long distance flight for work, and I remembered N.K. Jemisin being a writer I followed on Twitter who writes fantasy, and hubby loves fantasy. So one book purchase later, I went back to work on my stuff and promptly forgot about it.

Then in mid August, the 2018 Hugo awards winners were announced, and here’s N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky winning Best Novel of the Year. So I do a bit of digging and see that all three books in the trilogy won a Hugo, and The Stone Sky also picked up a Nebula and a Locus award. That makes the whole series a bit more intriguing. I mean, sure, one book in a series wins, you’ve done good. But if the whole series wins year on year? Then you must have done something special to earn that kind of praise. So, is that the case?

Well…I think the first book does deserve its award. (Obviously I can’t speak on the other two because I haven’t read them yet) From a reader’s perspective, it’s very good at building a world that may or may not be Earth roughly twelve to fourteen million years in the future. (Or possibly further ahead, and please understand that my knowledge of plate tectonics is somewhat faded and I can’t recall when the continents are next due to collapse back together into a single supercontinent.) In this world, the health of the continent and the people living on it rests in the figurative hands of a gifted group of people called orogenes. (I’d say what they do is geomancy, but that’s beauty of writing your own story. You can call your magic people whatever tickles your fancy.) These orogenes are feared by the normal “stills” and the book opens with an angry orogene showing exactly what the stills have to fear by shattering a fault line and destroying many cities in the process. The resulting clouds of ash and soil also kick off the titular Fifth Season.

I now have to post a spoiler warning for the things I’m going to discuss next, so if you want to go into this book with as little preparation as possible, stop here and just go buy the book already. Nothing I’m going to talk about means this is a bad book, and I’ll even go one step farther and give you the final verdict ahead of the spoilers. Four stars, with solid writing and a fascinating vision of a far distant future. I highly recommend it, so head on out to your nearest bookstore or Amazon and pick it up.

Still here? Okay from a writer’s perspective, there was a major problem that kept pulling me out of the story. The book is written from three narrative angles, with one using the very bold choice of second person perspective narration. (ie: You are the person this is happening to now. You inhale sharply and ask, “Me? This is my story?” But even without anyone answering, you know it really is.) Because of three lines in the other parts slipping into second person perspective, I have a theory that the book was originally all written in the same way. Either the writer or the editor opted for a change, possibly to make it harder to guess that all three perspective are actually the same person at three different points in their life.

But this change is also what kept pulling me out of the story to ask, “But if there was this earth shattering event, why are two out these three people not noticing any disasters?” The answer comes about three quarters of the way into the story, that Damaya, Syenite, and Essun are one and the same. It’s still good writing, but from a writer’s perspective, I really would have preferred the book all be in second person perspective even if it ends up giving away the twist much earlier. That’s just my opinion, though, and again, it doesn’t make the book bad. I’m sure most casual readers won’t even notice or care about the disparity of time between the three perspectives, and the twist for them will seem all the more clever for not looking at them like an editor squinting, hunting for cracks to fill in.

Now, I want to talk about the book’s racial message, because it is on point. The reigning rulers are colonizers who have instituted a forced breeding program on orogenes, looking for a blend that is controllable and at the same time powerful. Those who are powerful but impossible to tame are lobotomized and put to work in “nodes” that still quakes through the mind-numbed orogene’s involuntary control of their powers. Those who can handle trauma like having their hands intentionally broken by their handlers are trained in a school where they are basically taught to hate themselves for being evil. Their handlers are possibly another breed of orogenes, but one implanted with a device that allows them to negate the powers or orogenes, rendering them helpless. (At one point, I thought to complain, “And none of these orogenes learned anything like martial arts to turn the tables?” But then I thought on it and realized that of course their masters wouldn’t allow any fighter training. Why would you give your slaves the tools to escape?)

But the real real kicker is the term the still have for orogenes, and it leapt out at me about the third time it was explained as a slur: rogga. Go on, change the first two letters and go “Ooooh.”

So yeah this, story is talking about race, about how colonization and indoctrination keeps certain races down, and how one day those races might rise up and violently strip the reins of powers away from their masters. The Fifth Season is the start of the revolution, and I don’t know where it goes in the next two books, but I am intrigued enough to find out. Which is why I bought the second book while I was still halfway through the first.

So I return again to the question I posed before: is this worthy of an award? Absolutely it is. If so, why did I drop a star from the rating? It’s a personal nitpick, one born of having to edit stories and being trained to spot little details. For most people, it simply won’t matter, but for me, the constant questions I had about the timeline pulled me out of the story, breaking the immersion for me. So that’s what cost it a star. But it’s still a brilliant book, and I’d highly recommend it to you. I’d say I’m digging into the second right away, but that’s not usually my style. But I do have The Obelisk Gate loaded on my Kindle, and it’s definitely on the TBR list for this year. If you still need more incentives than that to pick it up, I’m sure all the other positive reviews out there can eventually sway you.

Netflix Nosedive: Happy!

I went into Happy! not knowing what to expect and having low expectations because I’m not a fan of Christopher Meloni. He’s one of the main reasons I gave up on Law and Order: SVU because the writers forgot that all these cases still have to go to trial, so if you have a detective strangling, punching, or attacking suspects, then those suspects just got a get out of prison free card. So no, the ends do not justify the means no matter how badly the writers want to peddle that fantasy.

After two episodes of Happy! I sort of made my own head canon that Detective Nick Sax and Eliot Stabler are actually the same person, and that this is what happens when a cop with anger issues finally goes too far. Nick isn’t just a slightly bad cop at the start of Happy!, though flashbacks in later episodes show he was long before his fall from law and order. (See what I did there?) No, now he’s a hit-man working freelance for the mob in a town where pretty much everyone is a bad cop. He’s an alcoholic and drug addict, looking like a homeless person that collects change fiending for their next fix.

Nick’s life changes when he suffers a heart attack and during the ambulance ride sees the imaginary friend of a kidnapped girl. Happy is a cheerful blue…there’s probably a words for a horse with a horn and wings, but it’s escaping me. It’s not pegasus, and it’s not unicorn…unisus? Pegacorn? Chaka Khan?

Anyway, Happy is concerned with the well being of his friend, Hailey Hansen, who shares a connection to Nick even if Nick spends two episodes avoiding the issue. To be fair, he’s also dealing with the fallout from a hit job that went sideways, with the local mob bosses believing he now possesses a password to an encrypted file that will make the recipient “untouchable.” (It’s a MacGuffin, but I won’t spoil what it really is.) Nick was in fact too busy being a douche to hear the password, so he doesn’t have any idea what anyone is talking about.

Let’s get back to Hailey, who was kidnapped at a live children’s show event by an Evil Santa who manages to make the tattered collection of ornaments and toys attached to his red suit terrifying from the very moment he appears the first time. I never had any issue with jolly old Saint Nick, but this guy could have given me issues if I’d seen this show as a kid. He’s also running closer to the Krampus shtick with his job stealing kids, but later episodes show that he’s actually working for someone else, and that person is also working for someone else, and the higher up the ladder the story gets, the creepier the villains become. I know, you’re thinking “there’s something worse than Evil Santa?” Oh yes, yes there is, and the guy at the top is a real mind fuck.

I’m feeling conflicted about the length of many of these limited series, having seen a few thanks to Netflix. On the one hand, every story is allowed just enough space to breathe without having to add extra padding to fill out a full season of 24 episodes. The results are leaner and more intense, like an expensive liquor consumed neat instead of a cheaper variety mixed with generic cola. On the other hand, coming to the end leaves me wanting more. I know Happy! is go for a second season that will be on SyFY this March, but I live in Italy and we don’t get SyFy. I have to wait until SyFy is willing to sell the season to Netflix, and that likely means waiting until 2020. Which sucks because I want more, and I want MORE NOW.

There’s a whole lot I’m not mentioning in this review because it’s all spoiler, and you want to be pleasantly surprised by every new reveal in this story. It’s trippy, vulgar, and twisted, and an all around a good time for the whole family…or, maybe put the youngest kids to bed, though, unless you want to give them some kind of Santa phobia. I give Happy! 5 stars, and I impatiently await Season 2.

This is not a review of Cross Code for PC

I hate turning this into a habit, but I have a choice of not writing about a game I can’t finish and moving on, or writing on my feelings up to the point that I stopped playing, and I’d really rather get new posts out for y’all, even if they’re incomplete opinion pieces on games I don’t want to force myself to continue playing.

This time the game is Cross Code, a somewhat nostalgic RPG/puzzle platformer that looks great, has a fantastic soundtrack, and an intriguing story premise. Unfortunately, it’s the puzzle portion of the game that’s dulled my interest in continuing. Where I stopped was a few hours after completing the second of four dungeons to acquire the game’s four elemental powers, ice, fire, shock, and wave. I can say that I rather enjoyed the combat, and some of the platforming sections. But the puzzles just drag on an on and on and on and on and…and if I haven’t made this abundantly clear, most overstay their welcome, pushing aside all other aspects of the game. Keep in mind, I’m someone who loves puzzle games like Portal and Portal 2. This is just too much puzzle for me.

From what I’ve been able to sort out from the story, Lea is a player in a unique VR RPG. Rather than log into a game server to play a virtual character, players log into a physical avatar who stays on a real island. Lea apparently had played this game before, but something happened to her that wiped her memory and left her in a coma. A scientist got desperate and decided to try logging her back into the game, and while Lea is still comatose in the real world, she’s got enough brain activity to play as her avatar. The other catch is, she can’t speak due to some kind of malfunction in her avatar, creating a charming reason for her “silent” protagonist shtick.

Each time Lea logs out, her dreaming mind conjures fragmented memories of playing the game with other people, hinting at something really quite intriguing, and I really wish I could power through the puzzles to see more because the story was the main reason I hung on as long as I did.

Combat is similarly fun to play. In addition to a dodge move, Lea has a gun, a shield, and several flavors of melee attack that can be upgraded with extra levels, and augmented with elements as she completes dungeons of the “path of the ancients,” the whole point of the game. Think of it as a company applying gamification to research projects, enlisting the help of gamers worldwide to solve the puzzles left behind by an ancient alien civilization. It sounds cool, right?

Sadly, at least for me, I’ve hit my limit for puzzle solving, mostly because so many of the puzzles punish a whiffed input and force me to go back to the start. Several of these kinds of puzzles involve using one element to, say for instance, freeze a water drop, shoot the ice to launch it, run across a narrow ledge, turn, switch elements to fire, aim the gun with the right stick, and fire at precisely the right angle to launch the now steaming ice into a barrier. The more of this kind of puzzle I came across, the less I wanted to finish the game.

There’s also a kind of platforming puzzle in the outer world that involves sorting out the right order of raised pillars to hop to and find a secret passage or item. But imagine doing twelve of these hops and then whiffing the last one. Go back to the start and eight hops in, whiff an input. Oh, go back and do it again, moron. WHIFF. Go back and do it again, moron. WHIFF. OH FOR THE LOVE OF…

Ahem. So that’s it for me. And please keep in mind, this is just my opinion. If you really love puzzle games that require fast reflexes and damn near perfect timing, this could be your cuppa. For me, it just became a grinding chore that sapped out all the fun I’d had with the combat. For 20 bucks, it’s not a huge loss to drop this after roughly 43 hours of game time. I also got it one sale for 15, so I’ll chalk it up to a game in the “not for me” department. It’s not terrible, and the puzzles do have a well developed sense of logic to them. It’s just that for me, there is apparently a point of having too much puzzle in my RPG experience, and considering I’d yet to complete the other two elemental dungeons, I suspect I would have ended up hating this had I attempted to finish it. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

Netflix Nosedive: Lucifer

I knew just from watching the trailers that I was going to like Lucifer, but I had no idea how much I would love it. The premise is summed up in the introduction text nicely, that the devil used to rule over Hell, until he decided to take a vacation in Los Angeles. Lucifer Morningstar is a narcissistic, self-centered, permanently horny immortal teenager, forever pissed off at his parents about being kicked out and branded “the great evil” when he’s clearly more sociopath than psycho.

And if I made him sound dreadful, he is. BUT, those are also his good points. Yeah, really.

Bascially, Lucifer is sort of like The Mentalist’s Patrick Jane, if Patrick had never given up the family business. Lucifer gets into detective work due to the murder of a pop singer he helped with a favor, bringing him into contact with Detective Chloe Decker, a woman he cannot use his powers of persuasion on. This intrigues him, and he begins inviting himself along to all her cases until she finally relents and calls him her partner.

Chloe, by the way, was not always a cop. She started out an actress and made exactly one film, Hot Tub High School, one of those titties out teen comedies that everyone has seen at some point, even her own daughter, who’s maybe nine. Her complaint about the film is priceless: “It’s not even in HD!”

Speaking of Trixie, Chloe’s daughter, I have never seen a child actress more perfectly capture the delicate balance of sugar sweetness and capricious delight. Most writers try to make TV children either perfectly good or “problem kids,” but Trixie is something in the middle, and it works so well. Even her intro in the first episode, in how she deals with a bully, shows that this is a girl who will drop the sugar and spice when the situation calls for it, and I love her for this.

On Lucifer’s side of the “family,” there’s his brother Amenadiel, who initially comes in as a straight man to Lucifer’s sneering jokes. His job, as he sees it, is to get “Luci” to return to Hell and his career of full-time tormentor. His role in the show changes over time, due in large part to the influence of Mazikeen, Lucifer’s right hand demon and part-time bartender. Mazikeen actually longs to return to Hell and resume her duties as lead torturer of the damned. But so long as her boss wants to stay on Earth, she sticks with him. Or she does at first. Like Amenadiel, her role evolves over time.

I also can’t forget to mention Lucifer’s shrink, Dr. Linda Martin. She’s delightful, both in her random nervous tic facial expressions, and her reaction to Lucifer always, ALWAYS taking her advice the wrong way and doing the exact opposite of whatever she says. She spends a long time believing that Lucifer isn’t really the devil, and that his whole act is metaphors to cover his insecurities. But eventually she is let in on the truth, and the fact that she still goes on being the therapist to the devil is just one more part of what makes this show so damned good.

Everyone in this show evolves in some way. There’s even a comatose cop who goes through a process of change throughout the first season. He’s a suspect, then he’s not, then he is again. It’s crazy, but it works. There’s also a character who seems like a throwaway joke who later resurfaces to become a threat to Lucifer’s role as a civilian consultant for the LAPD. I did not see it coming, and that’s a hallmark of great writing, making a twist that’s foreshadowed, and yet I still get blindsided by its return.

The second season cranks the family angles up even more for both Chloe and Lucifer. On Chloe’s side, her estranged ex-husband and co-worker Dan Espinoza (who I regret not mentioning for his role, but figure it’s best to leave that part be so you can discover his story on your own) suggests finally getting a divorce, and Chloe chooses to leave her mother’s old home, taking on Mazikeen as a roommate. This change ends up doing wonders for Mazikeen, including an episode where she handles babysitting Trixie on a special holiday. (Trying not to spoil it, because it’s so, so touching.)

For Lucifer, (I’m sorry, there’s no way to avoid this spoiler) the new addition to his family is…his mom. Her plots and schemes make it clear who Lucifer got his narcissism from, and her attempts to integrate into human life, including exploring sexuality, bring moments of comedy gold as both Lucifer and Amenadiel react to her like little kids discovering their parents doing something naughty. Her story is the center around the regular mysteries of season two, and at its conclusion she makes a rather grand exit, leaving season three with a notable void.

Sadly, Netflix only has the first two seasons, so I have to wait to see more. But I am definitely on board to see more of this. I love how even the most tense moments can suddenly be lightened by a one-liner, and the evolving families, both human and celestial, are brilliant. I’d give Lucifer 5 stars and recommend it to just about everyone except perhaps the devoutly religious.

This is not a review of Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash

Let me say that I really wanted to like this mod. I went and downloaded a fresh copy of the Prepare to Die edition of Dark Souls to play it, and the enthusiasm I’ve seen from some YouTubers certainly had me excited to try the mod out. I found the mod developer’s description particularly intriguing:

Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash is the original Dark Souls (2011), re-imagined and massively expanded. It’s my vision of what Dark Souls might have been if FromSoftware had been given an additional six months to develop content for the game.

But, this and several other quotes on the Nexus Mods page are either hubris or straight up lies. I want really badly to find something nice to say, like “there’s some interesting ideas here,” but even trying to use faint praise is hard because those good ideas are marred by bad execution.

Let’s start with another quote, shall we?

Triumph in new boss battles, most of which are designed to promote novel gameplay rather than sheer increased difficulty.

Well, considering the modder nerfed all weapon damage, nerfed armor protections, nerfed shield stability, and screwed with how stamina works, I would strongly disagree with this statement. Furthermore boss damage, and indeed all enemy damage, appears to be cranked up, so much so that even after upgrading my knight’s armor, I was still taking massive damage from starting area minions.

Setting all of that aside, some of the new boss battles are bjorked. I ran into Capra Demon outside of his usual grotto, and I got him down to a sliver of health when he vanished. A second later a new health bar appeared with the name Capricious Thrall, except, there was no boss to be found. I wandered from one end of the alley to the other before tabbing over to a browser to look up this guy, and oh yeah, he can tend to glitch through the floor. Well no sweat, I figure I’ll just quit and reload. Once that clears the boss battle fog, I planned to head to Sen’s Fortress, where the boss is supposed to appear if he isn’t defeated in the Undead Parish. But no, he isn’t there either. Anor Londo? No.

And why is this important? Because you have to defeat this new boss to gain the ability to warp between bonfires. Because even something as simple as collecting the Lord Vessel was broken by this guy’s “new” gameplay features.

There’s “new” rings, most of which repurpose the old rings, except now they all suck. The red tearstone ring, which previously boosted damage when a player’s health got low, now only improves the effectiveness of shields with low health. Several other rings pair up a bonus with a HUGE penalty. What was, to me, formerly the greatest ring in the game, the Slumbering Dragoncrest, has had the silent movement ability removed entirely. Now it grants five attunement slots at the cost of further nerfing all melee weapon damage. The list of changes would be impressive if they didn’t ruin every item in a similar way.

Even magic has been ruined. A pyromancy build can usually kill slimes in the Depths with one blast of combustion or fireball after upgrading the flame hand to around +4, but even at plus +9 I was using two blasts, which makes the whole process of collecting upgrade materials even more tedious. (And of course the drop rates seem to be nerfed as well, even after finding and equipping the Gold Serpents Ring) I frankly pity anyone going into this wanting to do a magic only run because of how badly the magic system got ruined.

Speaking of tedious, soul vessels, normally a great way of leveling up, now grant “special powers” rather than release souls. Or…sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they do. The mod is so bjorked, it’s never consistent in how any of this works. But the point is, when they don’t give more souls, that leaves players with just killing stuff to level up and buy stuff. Which means the epicly long grind times of Dark Souls are now extended even further. Yay! That’s exactly what I was hoping for, an even longer time spent doing nothing fun.

Most of the changes amount to change for the sake of change, and not for any real innovation. Done in a more thoughtful manner, this could have been a fun way to get back into the game. But more often than not, it’s changing enemy positions to unsure more “gotcha” moments, or changing the way a trap works to enure a quick death. Or, for a more specific example, extending the lifespan of a fireball attack in Sen’s Fortress to ensure that no matter how high your life points have been upgraded, you will die. It’s not novel gameplay changes. It’s capricious malice intended to make an already challenging game just that little bit more irritating.

I could go on and on listing my frustrations, but instead I’m going to go back to that first quote one last time:

Dark Souls: Daughters of Ash is the original Dark Souls (2011), re-imagined and massively expanded. It’s my vision of what Dark Souls might have been if FromSoftware had been given an additional six months to develop content for the game.

Sir, that would imply that despite turning out a highly polished and addictive game, the company would suddenly choose to break it. Which is what happened here. Daughters of Ash is a broken mess that may someday live up to half the hype the modder has built up. But it’s too late to interest me in this new vision of Dark Souls.

In conclusion, I’ll say that the real problem is one of poorly managed expectations. Had the modder said something like, “This overhaul is my attempt to make Dark Souls feel fresh and new again, even to long-time veterans,” I might not feel so annoyed. It’s the sheer hubris of claiming this is somehow a massive improvement on what is a great game. It’s not. It could one day become a fun new twist on the classic formula, but I won’t be sticking around to try that out. I’m done, and I’m going back to Dark Souls Remastered to play the game the right way.