I had a slightly more coherent post but my virtual dog ate it and I had to rewrite it from memory. Sorry about that.
As some of you probably noticed I've been posting a new romance series called Unexciting Date recently. It's a story about two awkward low energy goobers going on dates, as you can imagine. They have pretty unique dynamic and humour, good banter and nice, low stakes adventures. It's a very chill and light read.
I have a bit of a problem starting anything new at the moment but this series quickly became one of my must reads whenever a new chapter drops. It's great.
Sounds like a solid way to end the year. I'll bookmark the post as to not spoil myself on of the Devil but your thoughts on later episodes look promising.
Just to be clear, I don't know if it added more reading on top of combat or as a potential alternative since I didn't play it yet. I just heard there's more of it (though I wouldn't say no to improving the ratio between peaceful and combat scenarios).
My problem wasn't that serious (I enjoyed the combat and only dislike the large battles) but I can see how it can be a run killer. I'm not sure if that's of any help but I saw mentions that Hong Kong has more reading than the two previous titles, I'm definitely looking forward to that.
I'm not sure why I hate myself this much but I spent New Year's Eve (or rather the rest of the night) reading Narcissu 2nd. Tears were shed.
It blindsided me quite a bit as I expected a continuation focused on a point of view protagonist of the first story only to get a prequel starring Setsumi (the other main character from 1st) and Himeko (a new character with similar but different role to the former) instead. It also focused on a pretty different kind of sadness - not of those passing but rather those who witness the process. That's kind of how I interpret it anyway.
Despite this change of perspective, the writer managed to express the emotions just as well as they did with the first one. They are really good at this and considering there are a few more stories in the series, they have plenty to share about this topic.
My head is filled with a jumbled mess of thoughts and emotions, and I had no time to process them yet so all I'm going to write is this: Narcissu 1st & 2nd are beautiful stories and I love them deeply. I also hope to never read them again. I'm going to need long break filled with much MUCH lighter stuff before I get back to another serious title. While stories like these are great, they are also pretty devastating as I'm a big wimp when it comes to such topics and can only take so much before ending as complete mess.
Speaking of other stuff, the last third of the year or so served as a warm up to slowly build up towards larger VNs. I'm still not ready to go all in but my main goal for this year is to finally get to Steins;Gate (and of The Devil! I think I'm finally close to being ready for that as well). I don't expect to tackle them in January but I'm sure I'll get there in 2026.
Edit: I opened Narcissu to check something out and just hearing the music made me cry again. I'm not going to check anything any more. (╥﹏╥)
Regardless of their differences it was still tied to the first game, not making use of this connection doesn't make much sense. At least it wasn't the case of (new) Prey where they forced the name of a completely separate game to bump up the sales.
Yeah, PE2 can be like that. I vastly prefer the first one as well but I also think that the sequel isn't bad, it's just not necessarily what I'd like from a follow up. That's why I think it's worth suggesting anyway - some people might find it to be more enjoyable than I did.
Heck yeah, Parasite Eve recognition! It's a fantastic RPG and one of the more unique ones thanks to its setting and gameplay - I wish later games kept the latter at least. If you didn't play PE2 it might also be worth a shot. It's a bit different, both in terms of story and gameplay, but it's still a solid and enjoyable title.
I talked about Hero Killer (a manhwa about... I mean, you can probably guess) and my numerous issues with it multiple times in the past. It feels like a bunch of loosely connected ideas rather than a planned out story, characters don't really sell the seriousness of what's going on, action can be overwhelmingly chaotic etc. Despite these issues I keep coming back to it and I'm not sure why.
My best guess is the panelling as this series can get pretty creative with scene transitions and presentation in general. There's enough eye candy that it could maybe possibly somewhat mask everything else, I think? I dunno.
Anyway, I basically caught up with the latest chapters of this and some other series - not enough to write about but I can at least pop in and confirm I'm still reading things.
No problems updating on my machine, the whole process was smooth and painless. I do however think Cosmic could use more time in the oven as in its current form it doesn't feel and work as well as GNOME did for me.
It's not unusable mind you but it's missing polish, some settings either don't exist (night light) or aren't as robust as before (I can't use numpad numbers for keyboard shortcuts for example) and certain apps aren't as good in my opinion (I regularly switch between COSMIC files and the old file explorer). I'm also used to my old workflow so I'll need some time to figure out the best setup going forward.
I'm not sure if it's actually the case or if I'm just trying to justify my own inability to proceed but I feel like the game fails to properly convey how to proceed at certain points. Things are relatively easy to figure out once I know what I'm looking for but getting to that point can be hit or miss.
That said, these hit or miss points vary with each playthrough for me so I'm leaning towards my brain failing to figure things out.
Depends on how they're going to define "shard" going forward. I doubt it's planned as 1000 people spread over all 5 systems (if we're talking about 1.0 release), especially with the amount of points of interest they're planning to plop all over each celestial body. Perhaps that's just the next step of what we have and not what they're aiming for with 1.0?
Seeing confirmation that S42 STILL isn't in beta does not inspire confidence. We had multiple announcements about the game being "feature complete", "playable start to finish" and "almost ready" throughout the years - saying the same thing year after year is pretty meaningless at this point.
Just push it out and start working full time on SC, I beg you.
Essence_of_Meh @ Essence_of_Meh @lemmy.world Posts 1,110Comments 1,254Joined 2 yr. ago 
I had a slightly more coherent post but my virtual dog ate it and I had to rewrite it from memory. Sorry about that.
As some of you probably noticed I've been posting a new romance series called Unexciting Date recently. It's a story about two awkward low energy goobers going on dates, as you can imagine. They have pretty unique dynamic and humour, good banter and nice, low stakes adventures. It's a very chill and light read.
I have a bit of a problem starting anything new at the moment but this series quickly became one of my must reads whenever a new chapter drops. It's great.