Sorry these Week in Gaming articles have been so sporadic the latter half of this year. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of review gaming and whenever I’m not review gaming, I’m never sure I have enough to say about other games to put out one of these articles. After the disaster that was Orange Season: which I thought was going to be a great fall game but ended up so bad I put it down early, I got a couple of recently released fall Nintendo titles to play which are very much appreciated. I’m currently mainly working my way through one of those, the first one they released, and sitting on the other one until afterwards. Hopefully I’ll have those reviews out before the year is over, or at least one of them. But on the side, I’ve finally jumped back into Stardew Valley, always a good farming game that never disappoints.

I’ve been getting the urge to go back to Stardew Valley all year but I’ve been holding back, waiting on that 1.6 update content to hit consoles and now it finally has. I quite enjoy playing Stardew on my Switch with an 8bitdo controller. I had a beach farm I started a while back, maybe last year, that I had planned on being my very first Joja route. However, I only ever got a little bit into the first year’s summer. So, since the new update is now out, I decided to start over on that route and deleted my old file. I know I read somewhere that there would be new postgame Joja content to make the route as substantial as the community center one is, thus this seemed like the best idea for me to enjoy the new content. I also ended up joining a friend online in a new multiplayer farm as well where we’re trying out the meadow farm map with blue grass.

So far I’m right about where I left off from my last attempt at this beach farm before the update. I’m in the middle of the very first summer. I always play Stardew pretty slowly, I’m not an efficient farmer whatsoever. My house doesn’t have a kitchen yet and I’m still trying to decide what tool to upgrade first, now that I have the money to go with the copper bars. My pickaxe being so weak in the mines since I’ve reached the icy area, has been an annoyance. Also, watering crops by hand on the beach has been quite slow. Yet on the other hand, I want to upgrade my regular axe a few times asap so I can clear out the regular dirt area the beach farm has that’s full of giant logs, then I can set-up my crops with sprinklers. At the same time though, I might already be about to unlock the greenhouse by the time I would be able to upgrade my axe enough, so maybe I should just focus on my watering can and pickaxe after all. I’ve mostly been collecting the stuff required for the community center because I wanted to try and do it myself as much as possible for the various rewards, and then I plan to buy a Joja membership near the end. I figure maybe I’ll leave the hardest community center requirements, like a lot of the fishing, left undone and buy my membership once I’ve at least donated all of the required farming and mining related items. – Jenae

I’ve been doing a lot of retro gaming lately, both on original hardware and through recent remakes, and it’s been a ton of fun. My sister and I recently finished Lufia, which wasn’t as good as Lufia II but had a ton of charm all its own, and getting to see the evolution between the original and the sequel reminded me of just how much innovation happened during the SNES years. Jumping from that to Mega Man Legends on the PS1 was a different kind of reminder that those early years of 3D were rough when it came to control schemes. We opted to use the directional buttons for turning and the shoulder buttons for strafing, but even then controlling Mega Man around the 3D world comes with a major learning curve. The world of MML is incredibly charming, with that 90s dub you either love or hate, and wacky hijinks abound. The cast is impeccable, honestly. I understand now why Tron is so beloved. The comedy isn’t always a hit, but I have been having a great time watching these characters interact. The animations are also beautiful, and I adore Mega Man’s expressions. That being said, we eventually caved and used a GameShark code for invincibility so we could see more of the story rather than fight with the controls, though the safety buffer it provides has given me a lot more practice with the control scheme, since I do engage with it to the best of my ability. It’s fun when you get the hang of it, but it hurts my hands after extended periods. If ever a game would benefit from a remaster with modern controls, it’s Mega Man Legends. Maybe then I’d finally get to read the dirty magazines, too.

In modern retro news, I’ve been having a blast with the Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake. What a stunning glowup that retains the charms of its NES roots. I’m too old and busy to deal with the grindy nature of the RPGs I grew up with, so having some nice QoL updates here have made playing it incredibly comfy while remaining nostalgic. It’s visually gorgeous, with colorful, vibrant locations, beautiful lighting, and fun voice acting that really gives the characters some pop. I went with the most basic setup of the hero, warrior, mage and healer, but I’ve only reached the second major hub so far, leaving me plenty of time to experiment with new party configurations. The Dragon Quest difficulty feels a tad on the easy side, but I know I don’t have the patience to move up to Draconian, so I’m pretty happy having this to sit back and relax with a couple hours a night. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Nov 10 – 16 appeared first on oprainfall.

Manga

Rebuild World

Rebuild World is a manga I had come across about two year ago after a recommendation, though I admittedly dropped it after having read the first few chapters. Dystopian settings usually don’t draw my attention, however, there are elements of bio-manipulation and AI that were hard for me to overlook. After shelving it for some time, I now decided to give this manga another look, mainly because the light novel came to my attention recently. Simply, I wanted to refresh my memory before deciding as to whether I would give the first volume of the LN a try.

This manga, and its parent LN story, follows the journey of Akira, an orphan from the slums located at the edge between one of the remaining bastions of civilization and the rest of the dilapidated world. Humanity had reached its pinnacle with technology and bioengineering, however, said bio enhancement led to the near extinction of humanity. The world is now roamed by bio-techno- enhanced animals that stand guard over the old world ruins, full of technology and items that can make one tremendously wealthy in current society. Brave individuals, called hunters, set out into the old world for these relics in the hopes of riches and power.

Akira is one such individual, however, as an orphan from the slums, he is no hunter, and terribly underprepared to face the wilds of the old world. Desperation forces him out into this dystopia with a mere pistol, and when faced against bandits and those enhanced beasts, Akira can only run. Fate would then intervene when Akira is approached by a beautiful woman, one only he can see. This woman, an AI augmented reality projection named Alpha, immediately becomes his companion by commanding Akira to move, lest he wishes to die. Surviving an onslaught of lethal proportions, Alpha later explains that Akira is quite special to be able to see her and promises to help him. Now accompanied by this AI AR projection, Akira has a fighting chance in the world, yet the reasons for why Alpha offers to teach, guide, and protect Akira remain a mystery.

I have to say, I’m feeling the same intrigue that I once felt previously and maybe this time I’ll read a few more chapters of the manga. The same con that dissuaded me though, Akira’s dull, uninspired character, is something which I’m again finding difficult to overlook. I guess I’ll try to tolerate it, as the action and mystery of the world are attractive enough for now. – Drew D.

Flying Witch

I’ve liked this manga right from the start, with its themes of magic, mythology, and the supernatural. Flying Witch follows the light-hearted story of Matoko Kowata, a 15 year old witch-in-training. She moves in with her relatives in the countryside to continue her studies while also attending regular school. She’s incredibly casual about being a witch, as are her relatives, and soon many new classmates and friends learn of her abilities.

I think what truly makes this manga stand out is how it pulls off the slice-of-life genre so well. This is a story about a witch, yet it takes a poignant down-to-earth approach. We readers are made aware quickly that this is a very sweet, playful story that never takes the supernatural elements too seriously. Combining magic and the supernatural with slice-of-life themes and the overall inviting feel of charm and casualness are what I find most impressive, especially considering how easily the mangaka pulls this off, too.

The artwork is only a bit on the minimal side, but given the length of each chapter, it’s understandable. I do wish chapters released sooner than three months apart, but that’s just me being greedy and wanting more.

For those looking for an easy read with plenty of charm, light-hearted humor, and approachable fantasy elements, then I can most definitely recommend Flying Witch. – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

The post Oprainfall Week in Anime & Manga: Nov 3-10 appeared first on oprainfall.

When this week’s Cooking Eorzea column goes live, it will be the first day of this year’s Saints Wake event in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. It will also be the start of the end of the year rush through October, November, and through the Starlight Celebration and into the Heavensturn.

It doesn’t honestly feel like the holiday season is starting for me until the FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Halloween-equivilent event begins, and then everything happens so fast that I find myself almost unable to keep up with it. I find myself organizing a pair of Secret Smilebringer events in real life, the weather turns incredibly cold, I travel to see people, I shop for sales, and I wonder how I am going to make the next year better than the year that just passed as I somehow also find the time to squeeze in doing the fun little events that happen in game.

Somehow, I will still find time to write this column as we go along through the busy upcoming holidays.

Now, if only I could figure out a costume to wear…

If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.

Recipe of the Week

This week’s side dish comes from the Thanalan region and it has a ‘Medium’ difficulty! While this is the 50th dish in the cookbook, it is only the 49th one I’ve made. I am deliberately waiting to make The Minstrel’s Ballad: Almond Cream Croissants until the very end of the column, since it has an Extreme difficulty rating.

I have never used arborio rice in a dish, let alone making risotto of any sort. I was honestly quite excited to see a dish that often gets featured in cooking competitions on TV, and I was extremely hopeful that I would be able to make it with no issues.

Anyway, here is what the Cheese Risotto is supposed to look like:

Featured Ingredient of the Week

Arborio rice is an Italian rice used in making risotto and rice pudding. Normally, when I use rice in a recipe, I first cook it in a rice cooker. Making cheese risotto was the first time I’ve ever used rice raw within a recipe, and I honestly found that to be so unique to use. All of this made me want to pick arborio rice as my ingredient of the week for this week!

My Cooking Attempt

First, a shot of all the ingredients used for Cheese Risotto:

First, I peeled and minced up the parsnips. This week’s Cooking Eorzea column was actually the first time I have ever bought parsnips in my life.

Setting the parsnips aside, I next peeled and diced up the onion. I had forgotten how the tears from chopping up the onions sting in my eyes!

Finally, I minced up the garlic.

I then measured out the chicken broth, added in a sprig of rosemary and a bay leaf, and brought it up to a boil.

While the chicken broth heated up, I shredded the Parmesan cheese wedge.

Once it was boiling, I put it on a different burner on low and then I got out another pan and melted butter into it.

Once the butter was melted, I added in the garlic, the parsnips, and the onions. I then blended them all together in the pan while they softened for about five minutes.

Once the vegetables were ready, I added in the arborio rice, and I stirred to coat the rice with the butter and vegetables. I then let it all sautée for a couple of minutes.

Once the rice was ready, I poured in a half cup of white wine and blended it in too. I kept blending it in until the white wine was fully absorbed by the arborio rice.

Next came the longest, most annoying part of the dish. I kept measuring out a half cup of the chicken broth (after I removed the rosemary sprig and bay leaf) and adding it to the main dish. Once I poured out the half cup, I would whisk it all together inside the pan to blend it all together. I would keep mixing it until all the liquid was absorbed. I would then repeat it again and again and again. The longer I worked, the more engorged the rice became, and the longer I had to stir into order to get all the liquid soaked up.

Once I FINALLY got all the broth used up, I took the pan off of the heat and added in the cottage cheese and the shredded Parmesan cheese.

I then sprinkled in pepper and salt on top for seasonings.

I then blended all of that together again.

I then scooped the cheese risotto out into a bowl and added the furikake on top.

And here is this week’s final Cooking Eorzea dish for Cheese Risotto!

I am going to be honest about this week’s Cooking Eorzea dish: I didn’t care for it. It wasn’t because the dish was bad – far from it – it was more the texture. It reminded me of thick porridge, and the parsnips and onions gave it a bit of a soft crunch on top of that. I didn’t care for how it felt in my mouth, to be honest. Additionally, I wish it was a lot cheesier than what it was!

Afterword

If I was to make this dish again, I would want to make it with a lot more cheese. I would probably also try to mince the parsnips up even more, as the soft crunch got distracting after a short bit. I would probably try to add in even more salt and pepper than I did to see if it enhances the flavor further. I just don’t know if I could get past the texture of the arborio rice when mixed in the other ingredients!

Alright, it’s time to run through the list of people that I want to thank for making this week’s column possible! First, I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look- including this week’s one for Cheese Risotto. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on X– and you really should look at them!

Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. Even though we are far and away into Dawntrail at the moment, it took the efforts of both to create Eorzea as it stands today.

Next Time, In November

Imam Bayildi is the next Side dish that I will be making in Cooking Eorzea!

I have never actually baked eggplants before, and so I am excited to work with it. Please be sure to return in November to see how the dish turns out!

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Cooking Eorzea Week 49: Cheese Risotto (FINAL FANTASY XIV Online) appeared first on oprainfall.

We haven’t put one of these out in a little while.  To be honest, I usually have the most time to put out these articles myself, but I haven’t been doing a ton of for fun gaming in the last month or two. Most of my gaming was review stuff I couldn’t talk about in these Week in Gaming articles. However, I did play the Metaphor: ReFantazio demo the other week. I just didn’t get around to discussing it here, or in an impressions article of its own. Honestly, I’m now somewhat regretting playing that demo…because it was too fun and I don’t know when I’ll be able to play the full game. At the moment, it doesn’t seem like I’ll have a copy to play anytime soon. And thus, I was stuck playing an older Atlus RPG this past week, instead of the shiny new one that’s been all over social media. I’m jealous of all of you out there enjoying Metaphor right now.

Anyway, I recently found myself picking Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance back up instead. It seems like this year in general, I’ve barely made progress in quite a few games I’ve picked up and keep putting back down. When I last put down SMT5V, I had only gotten a bit past the beginning area of Shinagawa. Vengeance and it’s wonky, horrendous sound balancing, was what prompted me to buy wireless earbuds about 2 months ago now. Going back to it with my new earbuds has been really nice. There is still a bit of an issue with the wonky sound balancing, mostly I have to turn it up one or down one at certain parts, but overall I’m really enjoying it. It’s soooo much better having the sound right in my ears and not having to deal with it too much. Also, while my specific model of earbuds, the Soundcore P30i, didn’t come with a game mode option originally, they just recently received an update which added it. It turns itself off when I disconnect and turn off my Switch though so I have to reactivate it in the phone app each time, but I’m enjoying the fact that it’s there. I’ve opted to turn it on, default SMT5V‘s volume sliders which puts them all back at max and it is working out quite nicely for me. I just have to turn up the volume one for story stuff, and back down one for gameplay, so that isn’t too bad.

I managed to fully get through the rest of Shinagawa this week. I went from the main character being around level 31 or 32 and got him up to 36. I got to enjoy seeing the Fairy Village again and I’ve put a handful of new demons in my party. It doesn’t feel too old or repetitive revisiting the same areas again that I already went through in the original Shin Megami Tensei V, because everything is quite different with the new story. I mean I had read reviews saying it’s the same and doesn’t really change until about halfway through, but that doesn’t seem true at all to me. Things are already significantly different, one boss not seeming as big of a deal as they were the first time, your various friends from school following along with you a lot more and various other stuff. I haven’t been spending as much time exploring though and fully filling out maps. Vengeance doesn’t seem as crazy easy now as it did when I first started it, but I do believe it’s still significantly easier than the original and I haven’t found myself spending as much time on each map. Although, I’m sure I’ll revisit them all periodically to go locate more Miman and clear up quests and whatnot. – Jenae

It’s that time of year again, where I get to attend my favorite local con. This year, RetroGameCon extended to three days, and despite it being a relatively small affair, the extra time was a welcome addition. I love this con for its small size but variety of activities and vendors, and it never disappoints. It definitely got a bump in attendance this year, though, since almost the entire cast of Baldur’s Gate 3 were special guests, and the lines reflected that popularity. I haven’t played BG3 and so wasn’t personally interested in seeing the cast, but the enthusiasm from fans of the game was palpable. I was happy to see so many folks visiting my small con, but I have to admit it was also a bit overwhelming, and I’m not convinced the con staff were quite prepared for the attention having the BG3 cast would bring.

As always, my favorite part of RetroGameCon is walking around the various vendors and seeing what they had in store. There’s always a nice mix of video game and handmade items. I usually buy at least one item, though this time around I only grabbed myself a Suikoden II gacha in honor of that remaster finally coming out next year. I got Mikolotov, the handsome knight from Matilda! (I would have preferred Camus of the two, but one can never turn down a hunky boy.) We did find a couple sealed games for pickup and spotted several titles that I’d love to have some day but wasn’t prepared to pay for (sorry, Ys V), but even if we hadn’t, I just enjoy the window shopping. For my son, his favorite part of the weekend was the extensive free play area. Every year, there’s an assortment of old consoles, PCs, pinball and others for congoers to play. My son has recently taken a shining to pinball cabinets and spent a lot of time playing those, as well as hitting up the older PCs available. He had a ball with SimCity, played some Monopoly on Windows 3.1, and even took a turn at the Oregon Trail. His pioneers died tragic and avoidable deaths, and he learned a valuable lesson in actually paying attention to the amount of food and water he had available.

There were also a ton of board games available in a separate room, along with live concerts and panels. I sat in on an informative panel by industry veteran and Diablo IV writer David Rodriguez, and we all had a great time watching performances by Mega Ran, Danimal Cannon and Lame Genie on the main stage. There were also a ton of fantastic cosplays on display every day. Honestly, it was just a great weekend where we could hang out and immerse ourselves in all things video games, and I look forward to it every year.

In actual video game news, I finally started playing the Silent Hill 2 Remake. I am so far enjoying it, though I don’t feel I’ve played enough to give it a proper evaluation. I love the music and atmosphere, and the environments are gorgeous, with little blink-and-you-miss-it details I appreciate. The fact you can explore more of the city gives Silent Hill a lived-in feel that the original game lacked, though this is a double-edged sword. The fact Silent Hill is a real place means it should have a sense of actual people existing here, but I do feel like it detracts somewhat from the main premise of the game and the dream-like quality that permeated the OG. The voice acting so far is fine, just different than what came before, and the character models are well-detailed if oddly proportioned. I’ll have much more robust thoughts on this remake as I play more, but for now I’m impressed. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Gaming: Oct 6 – 12 appeared first on oprainfall.

I wasn’t expecting to go on a months-long hiatus again.

At the end of March, I got seriously injured and I ended up not being able to walk or live independently for months.

While I spent a lot of my recovery in Eorzea, I found myself being drawn into spending as much time as possible in the world of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth. I had tickets to see the orchestra performance in Los Angeles for the North American premiere, and then again to see the show in Munich, Germany a month-ish later, and I thought that I should play the game first.

A large part of why I wanted to see the concert in two places as far flung apart as they were is because I wanted to thank both Hamauzu-san and Suzuki-san for helping me discover my love for the piano through the wonderful music they created for the SQUARE ENIX game Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII. I talked a little bit about how amazing the soundtrack was earlier this year for the game’s tenth anniversary, and I wanted to take the time to thank them both in person for helping create my real love for music. It’s hard to explain how important music can be to me now, especially since I listened to so little of it in high school.

The fact that I wanted to thank both of them is a large part of why I pushed myself so hard through my rehab. If I couldn’t function independently, then I wouldn’t be able to make it out to Los Angeles – let alone Munich – to see them both.

I even got both of them, and both Mr. Arnie Roth and Mr. Eric Roth, to sign my FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth program – and you can see that in my final dish image for this week’s Cooking Eorzea.

You can check out my full concert review here. If you get a chance, you should really see the concert live and play the game. I promise you that you won’t regret it, and you can still even get tickets.

What about this column going forward?

I am definitely going to try to get back to doing this column weekly again when I can. I love cooking and Cooking Eorzea has been with me through so much of my life in California. It helped me handle my breakup after I moved here, and it gave me something to look forward to after the apartment fire I had. I can’t imagine not finishing this cookbook out: especially when there are simply so many amazing dishes left to try out!

If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.

Recipe of the Week

The 49th recipe in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook and hailing from the Hingashi region of Eorzea…is Chawan-Mushi! With a hard difficulty rating, this Cooking Eorzea dish is one that looks deceptively easy to make, but in fact can be quite hard to create if you leave air in the custard or you overcook it on the stove top. This is also the start of the Sides section of the cookbook! It is crazy to think about how much I’ve made so far, and honestly…how much more I still need to create.

Chawan-Mushi also has a lot of different meat options in it, and it reminded me a bit of the Bouillabaisse I made way back in Week 27 because of that.

Anyway, here is what the dish is supposed to look like in the hands of a professional:

Featured Ingredient of the Week

This week’s featured ingredient is mitsuba.

It is also probably the second hardest ingredient I’ve had to find for Cooking Eorzea since I started writing it, right behind the mahi-mahi that I had to end up ordering in another state and cooking at a friend’s place. I spent my weekend searching every Asia grocery within a two-hour drive of my phone, and I could not find it anywhere. It turns out that while Italian parsley is quite common…mitsuba is not.

I ended up having to order it online and having it delivered to my home. It was either doing that or do a day trip down to Los Angeles to try to get my hands on some.

Mitsuba, also known as Japanese parsley, is known for its three leaves and for having a slightly bitter flavor.

Honestly, it was because of the sheer difficulty of obtaining it that it stuck out in my mind so much. I didn’t want to compromise on Cooking Eorzea by leaving this ingredient, even if it really is just garnish, out.

My Cooking Attempt

For my first installment in the Sides section of Cooking Eorzea, here are all the ingredients that I ended up using:

I first sliced up the chicken into bite-sized pieces.

I then removed the tails from the shrimp and cut them in half.

Finally, I quartered the scallops.

Once all the meats were set aside, I sliced up the shiitake mushrooms and thinly sliced the kamaboko.

After setting all of those cut ingredients aside, I made the dashi stock. First, I added water to a pot, added a dashi stock packet to the pot, and then brought it to a boil for three minutes.

Once the timer was up, I pulled the packet out and then poured the dashi stock into a measuring cup.

Setting the dashi stock aside, I placed the cut chicken into a small bowl, measured out sake and soy sauce into it.

I then let the chicken marinade for about 10 minutes.

During the 10 minutes, I cleaned the small pot I made the dashi stock in, and then added water to it, inserted a steamer basket into the pot, and then heated it up.

I then started to make the custard. First, I cracked three eggs and then added the dashi stock to the bowl.

I then added the salt, sake, and soy sauce to the custard. I then whisked it all together inside the bowl. I had to be careful to only whisk it just enough to make sure that the ingredients were blended together, but not so much that the custard had too much air and bubbles in it.

Once it was all blended together, I started to filter the custard mix from pot to bowl and back through a fine-mesh strainer so I could remove as much of the bubbles as possible.

At this point, I started to assemble the chawan-mushi dishes. First, I put a layer of chicken pieces down and then topped it with the shrimp layer.

I then added a layer of scallops on top and then a lawyer of shiitake mushrooms.

Finally, I added a layer of kamaboko on top.

I then poured the liquid custard on top of the multiple layers until it was just barely away from the top of the chawan-mushi cup. I also used a toothpick to pop any bubbles that rose in the liquid custard so that it wouldn’t interfere with the custard setting.

Once the bubbles were all popped, I added the lids to the chawan-mushi cups and then added them into the steamer basket. It turned out I could only fit three into the pot at a time, and so I had to cook the fourth one later on.

After replacing the pot’s lid, I let the whole thing steam cook for 20 minutes.

After the timer was up, I removed the chawan-mushi lids and saw that the custard had set.

I then removed the cups from the steaming basket, and then added a layer of ikura and a stem of mitsuba to each one to finish off the dish!

And here is the final dish for this week’s Cooking Eorzea!

The overall dish was incredibly savory, and I was surprised that the custard really worked well with the mixture of chicken and seafood. I couldn’t really taste the soy sauce or the sake, and the ikura definitely reminded me of boba bubbles while I was eating the dish. Unfortunately, the custard didn’t fully cook through, and so it was a bit watery at the end. The fourth cup, the one that I made after these three, I cooked for around 6-7 minutes longer, and that one cooked through.

Overall, it was a very unique and enjoyable dish, and one that I wouldn’t mind making for other people…if I could find mitsuba a little easier again.

Afterword

If I was to make chawan-mushi again, I would definitely let it cook for more than twenty minutes. I had no issues with the custard itself, other than I didn’t let it cook long enough. It was quite enjoyable, and I could see it being a fun side dish for people to enjoy.

This is where I start with the ‘thank yous’…Even if it has been awhile! I want start off by thanking Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on X.

Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. When I wasn’t spending my recovery playing FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth, I spent a lot of it in Eorzea.

Next Week

Assuming I don’t get injured again, next week’s dish is Thanalan’s Cheese Risotto!

As I am sure you won’t be surprised by…I haven’t made this dish before either, and so it will be a brand-new experience for me to explore!

Please tune in to see how it goes!

Have you made chawan-mushi before?

Have you been to the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Cooking Eorzea Week 48: Chawan-Mushi (FINAL FANTASY XIV) appeared first on oprainfall.

You can also buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

2024 marked my tenth year of in-person Dragon Con events. Even though I’ve been writing about this convention that takes place over Labor Day weekend since I first joined oprainfall in 2015, the first time I attended in-person was in 2013. It was my first real convention ever at the time. And even excluding the 2020’s online-only event, I still find myself with brand new things to attend after a decade of solid attendance.

When I first started to attend Dragon Con 2013, Thursday nights was the night when people started to arrive and there weren’t any panels. In 2024 though? Thursday night is the night for Dragon Con Wrestling. With this year being the twenty-fourth show, Dragon Con Wrestling fills up the Marriott Regency Ballroom to capacity before the show event starts and you get to see all the kayfabe, babyface, and heel cosplay wrestlers enter the squared circle and wrestle. The Hooligans- the biggest, rowdiest fans who all come dressed in matching outfits and cheer and jeer as needed- show those who are new to pro wrestling that it’s okay to cut loose and juts have fun.

While Dragon Con Wrestling may all be a work, it was fantastic to watch all those participants pull off some genuinely amazing moves and fights back to back across the three-hour time block. And at the conclusion of this year’s series of matches, the work became a shoot as the overarching plotline- to prevent Dragon Con Wrestling from falling into the hands of Scott E. Cramton of the Establishment- happened as AJ (one of the founders of DCW) formally stepped away from the event.

Dragon Con 2024 was also the first year that I was ever part of a live album. Raspberry Pie, who I first saw at FreeCon a half-decade ago, announced through an email that they are making a live album at Dragon Con and they invited everyone to come be a part of the record. While Arizona Drive-In did not make the cut, so many other songs did, and I cannot wait to buy the CD when it comes out and hopefully hear myself as part of the crowd on it! It is also worth noticing that they all take the time to say ‘hi’ to anyone who wants to stop by the merch table afterwards.

If being part of a music album wasn’t enough, I attended my first Dragon Con game show too: the Match Game. If you somehow missed seeing the show on the Game Show Network with Jamie Farr as a perpetual guest, then the rules are simple. There are celebrities of various levels of fame on the stage, and two contestants are called up. The host reads a fill-in-the-blank question for one contestant, and the celebrities write their answer on a whiteboard. The contestant then gives their answer, and they see how many celebrities’ answers match the contestant’s answer. The Dragon Con Match Game has clearly been going on for many years, and it was filled with a LOT of fun answers and humor all throughout the entire panel. The best part, though, was that whenever someone won, they would try to take just one prize and then the host would tell them to go take a lot more because he does NOT want to be taking any of the prizes on the table home with him.

There were small moments that I finally also got to enjoy for the first time! Towards the end of Dragon Con, I finally saw DragonConTV (“DCTV”) film a segment live. I was passing through the Marriott, and I saw them interviewing Batman of all people! DragonConTV is the television network that runs 24/7 during the convention that you can watch before/after panels and in your host hotel room. If you don’t want to brave the two-plus hours outside to watch Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, and Elijah Wood (aka ‘Hobbits’) reflect on their careers and lives, you can just turn on the TV in your room and watch it all there. And thanks to the power of Discord, you can even submit questions to be asked during the panel too while watching it on TV! More than just showing off panels, there are fun nerdy music videos, comedy skits, and bumpers that play all throughout Dragon Con too. I have never seen a segment before actually being filmed, and it was really cool to see it happen in person.

Another small moment that I got to experience for the first time, even though I have been going to Dragon Con for ten years, was a marriage proposal. During Firefly Drinking Songs on Friday night (think songs about the show/movie Firefly set to original and non-original tunes), a man took the stage during the set and asked his girlfriend- who made both their costumes- to spend the rest of her life with him. And naturally, she said yes. It’s one of those you-had-to-be-there moments, but it was absolutely unforgettable to see. I’ve met multiple people who have gotten together with their significant other at Dragon Con before, but I have never seen someone take that next step before- much less at a sing-a-long panel!

Finally, Dragon Con ends on Monday. Almost everyone is leaving and going back to their own lives once the Closing Ceremonies panel is wrapped up. I stuck around for another day to see Avril Lavigne perform, and so I wondered around the hotels on Monday afternoon to see how different things looked. As I was walking by the Marriott Regency Ballroom, I peeked in to see 1) windows everywhere and 2) the tech group for Dragon Con had finished their eight-hour loadout and was about to take their ‘family photo’. Naturally, I volunteered to take it for them- and I took a photo for myself, too. I always leave Dragon Con on Monday to either go home or to cover another event such as Nintendo Live 2023: Seattle. Staying behind this year meant that I got to see Dragon Con end for the first time, and I got to see all the hard work that the volunteers put into wrapping up the event even after everyone else has left.

And the thing is- this was just my experience at Dragon Con this year. There is so much to do that I still missed out on and that I wished that I could have made the time to see despite some panels making their appearance year after year after year. Dragon Con is one of those events that you will never feel like “I have seen it all” at. I’ve been going a decade, and I can absolutely attest to that. If you’re looking for something to do over Labor Day weekend in 2025, you should really consider heading down to Atlanta, Georgia, and make time for Dragon Con.

You won’t regret it.

You can buy a membership for next year’s Dragon Con here.

Have you ever been to Dragon Con?

What is a panel that you wish you could see that you haven’t before?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Even After Attending 10 Years, I Am Still Seeing New Things At Dragon Con appeared first on oprainfall.

Manga:

Solo Leveling

Since I had recently watched the first half of the first season of Solo Leveling, I thought I’d re-read (binge) some of the manhwa to compare. I think I’m leaning toward writing a review once the entirety of season 1 debuts, which, as far as I’ve heard, should continue this fall. When I talked about the anime a few weeks ago, I had mentioned how the adaptation more closely follows the manhwa rather than the light novel regarding its story details and character depth, or lack thereof. Having re-read the first thirty some odd chapters, I only reconfirmed what I already knew. Still a fun, quick read, yet it reaffirms my desire to see more from the anime. I can hope, right…?

Also, as I had said previously, the art of the manhwa definitely outshines the anime’s visuals. A sharper, deep style really makes the manhwa pop, whereas the anime looks too similar to other anime productions. Yes, the anime captures Sung Jinwoo and his exploits fairly well, but I can’t help but think it also has a common, general feel to its production, versus the manhwa which just has more vividness and a raw or feral edge to its visuals.

I’ll go into more detail comparing the aesthetics of the manhwa and the anime when the time to write that review comes. I’m also hoping the second half of season 1 sees a visual improvement, for as of now, my re-read of this manhwa is only demonstrating to me what could have been. – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Anime & Manga: Sep 8 – 14 appeared first on oprainfall.

Light Novels:

Spirit Chronicles Volume 5 – The Silver Bride

In preparation of my next review, I spent this week wrapping up my read of Spirit Chronicles Volume 5. I had expected a long-awaited return to previous storylines, a bit of development with the major isekai event that happened in Volume 4, and I had hoped we would have more time with some of my favorite characters. Unfortunately, my high hopes were not quite met, with only brief moments with my favorites, more setup than substance, and an unexpected storyline in the second half of the novel.

Well, I’m happy about the long awaited return of Celia, a mentor and the first friend of our hero, Rio. She plays a strong role in Volume 1, but is then sidelined until now. Four years have past since Celia and Rio had last interacted in the story, which actually seems a bit ridiculous given the vast abilities and resources Rio has had for some time now. Anyway, they have their reunion, Celia is upset with life, and Rio essentially brute-forces a solution, because he can now. Crude, yes, yet somewhat entertaining, though this volume features more conversations rather than action. Also, these convos are rife with classism, arrogance, entitlement, and plenty more that can make for a stressful impact on readers. Lastly, since the story is back to where the series started, plot points and characters introduced in Volume 1 are now being dredged up again, though I doubt they’ll linger for long, assuming the next volume plays out in similar fashion. – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Anime & Manga: Sep 1 – 7 appeared first on oprainfall.

Manga:

Otaku ni Yasashii Gal wa Inai!?

I can’t quite remember how I first encountered this title, but I’m glad I did. Otaku ni Yasashii Gal wa Inai!?, or Gal Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? is a high school slice-of-life manga depicting the relationship between an introverted, yet kind otaku, named Seo, and two gyaru. While Ijichi is your typical outgoing, energetic gal, Amane is cool, stoic and secretly an otaku herself.

One of the main themes of this manga is how differences in character or interests don’t need to be a wall or hurdle for a friendship to form and blossom. Another, more subtle, theme is how assumptions based on looks, style, or interests can be ignorant and shortsighted. Each character has their own personality and background, and although common interests and circumstances do help to initially form the friendship, the story allows these three to maintain their distinctions while growing, both individually and in their relationship. And sure, some of the common high school tropes come into play, like popularity, attraction, social hierarchy, as do the typical situations of festivals, exams, and summer vacation. Yet, this manga does a nice job of using these tropes merely as a step before moving forward to genuine character development and charming relationship building.

I will say, Seo, our male lead and titular otaku, is a bit trope-like and typical, especially when compared to the two female leads, so hopefully more background or more diversity in his character is introduced soon. As for the girls, they really make this manga. I love how Ijichi is so much more than the stereotypical gal, frequently breaking away from the expected. Amane’s stressing with fitting in, being social, and hiding her interests out of fear is relatable, and her coming out of her shell, similarly to Seo, is a pleasure to see.

No news of an official English release yet, though the fan-translations over on mangadex are satisfactory. Fun, funny, yet gentle and good-natured, Gal Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? is an easy recommendation. – Drew D.

Hajimete no Ojou-sama

Hajimete no Ojou-sama, The First Times’ Lady, is a lighthearted rom-com centered around sheltered princess Ojou Kotone. Ojou, in order to experience life beyond her affluent, yet limited upbringing, is eager to learn more about the world and is ready to experience many new “firsts” for herself. Determined to be more self-sufficient as well, the story begins with her first hurdle of using a train ticket machine.

Suguru Sewa, a typical high schooler, sees Ojou having trouble and bluntly guides her through the process. Then, he witnesses Ojou’s next struggle of getting though the ticket gate. Seeing how helpless she is, Sewa can’t help but keep an eye on Ojou for the time being.

When they part ways, Sewa doesn’t think he’ll meet Ojou again, only to be shocked that Ojou has transferred to his high school and same class, all in order to continue her efforts of independence and learning about the world outside her affluence.

Hajimete no Ojou-sama is pretty obvious with what it delivers, yet it’s done notably well. This short publication has plenty of humor, from slapstick to innuendo, and lots of charm, too. Ojou is cute and a bit air-headed, but hides deep thoughts and feelings. Seeing hers and Sewa’s character development is a highlight of the manga. As is the ability for this duo to make the mundane and everyday into something much more. As I said, this one’s short, only 21 chapters, and I wouldn’t have minded more. Cute, funny, even uplifting too, I very much enjoyed Hajimete no Ojou-sama for its bursts of humor and lighthearted fun. – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Anime & Manga: Aug 25 – 31 appeared first on oprainfall.

After attending the debut performance for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour in Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to sit down for an interview with one of the two conductors for the tour, Arnie Roth. In Part Two of this two-part interview, we talk about how setlists are determined for Distant Worlds and FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, what he is currently listening to, about FINAL FANTASY VII- A Symphonic Reunion, and more.

If you missed Part One, you can read it here.

You can check out my review of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour here.

You can also purchase tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour now.

Finally, you can find out more about AWR Music at their official website, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and on X.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

OR: Did you pick and choose what music pieces to include in the setlist for the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour?

AR: No, that was actually picked by the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth team. [Tetsuya] Nomura was a big part of that, and the entire team. They gave me the line up – the one thing I am doing is shifting some of the score order. Which performance did you hear, the LA?

OR: The debut in LA.

AR: So, that was the first performance. And one thing that I had pointed out to them, even before we started the tour, was ‘wow, we have a very long first half in terms of the balance.’ It’s almost 60 minutes of music in the first half [and] the second half goes much more quickly. And there’s also another dichotomy in that we really had the end of the first half going into Golden Saucer.

We tried in Chicago, just this last Saturday night – we did two concerts. In the second concert, we shifted Bare Your Soul and Welcome to Golden Saucer to open the second half, and then Loveless, just to help with the minutes of music and also, programmatically, it makes sense. And I think we’re probably going to stick with that order. I have some influence in terms of helping with the order decisions, and that kind of thing.

In Distant Worlds, I have a lot more programming autonomy. I have a couple of framework and concepts that we try to stay with in programming, but they allow me to shift all the music scores. I mean, Distant Worlds, we have 160-170 scores right now. And so, you never really have to repeat everything, although there are a couple of classics that we like to show. But with Remake or Rebirth and Chapter Three, when it comes down the road, I think it’ll be very well picked and sculpted by the team.

OR: I was there on a very snowy night in March 2008 for the North American debut of Distant Worlds at the Rosemont Theatre in Chicago. Now for me, it was amazing and unforgettable hearing Distant Worlds from FINAL FANTASY XI Online expansion Chains of Promathia being performed life. What was that night like for you? What were your thoughts after that night was over?

AR: I do remember that fantastic opening night here. But it wasn’t the very first performance of Distant Worlds – the first on was in December 2007 with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in Stockholm. And I remember that being, again, because it was the first one, an unbelievable experience. One of the reasons it happened that way was because we had recorded our Distant Worlds I album with that orchestra and we happened to premiere there. Nobuo was there for that one, as well.

I also remember, probably the biggest shocking experience for me, was the very first Dear Friends in 2005 that I did. That was also in Chicago, in February at the Rosemont Theatre – you know, 4,000 people that sold out. And at the time, many fans weren’t sure if there were going to be more – Distant Worlds wasn’t created yet – but if there were going to be more concerts of this. So, there was a worry about that with a lot of fans. It was an absolutely electric moment, and so was the beginning of Distant Worlds.

But they’ve continued to be electric – especially when we play cities that we haven’t in before or that were rarely [visited]. Royal Albert Hall in London is fantastic, Carnegie Hall in New York [City], all the LA concerts are fantastic. But so is Seattle and San Francisco, and so is Berlin. [In] Paris – the French crowd is fantastic. The Italian crowd in Milan and Rome [are] fantastic. And southeast Asia is fantastic too, we want to get back to Australia again. We haven’t been there since 2018 or 2019? We’d like to get back there. We’re working on that for next year.

That was an electric moment, that first Distant Worlds – which other concerts have you seen?

“But thankfully, the series keeps going, right? So, there are new games, and there are some fantastic stuff in XVI that we are finally just now playing and that’s been a lot of fun to do. Everything keeps developing.”

OR: I’ve seen pretty much everything – and I [want] to ask you about FINAL FANTASY VII Symphonic Reunion which happened in June 2019.

AR: That was an unusual one, right?

OR: It was! While it showed the playthough of the entire FINAL FANTASY VII game on PlayStation One, what threw me about it – and I wrote about this – there were 14 live performances, three piano solos, and a lot of pre-recorded music playing. It’s the first and only time I’ve been to a FINAL FANTASY concert that didn’t have a fully live score. Can you talk a bit about that?

AR: Just to point it out – that was a one-time performance. It was conceived of by SQUARE ENIX. They brought me in as conductor. I didn’t produce that, and I didn’t pick the pianist or any of this. They wanted me to conduct those scores. I think they, honestly, know that there needed to be improvements on all of that.

The point of doing that concert was not clear to a lot of the fans, and to call it a concert, as a matter of fact – as a lot of fans pointed out – there was a lot of pre-recorded video on that too. So, it was a little confusing to fans because it was billed as a concert. SQUARE ENIX understands, they read all the feedback and they understand that. I really don’t have any more comments about it, other than it was an assignment that they asked me to conduct. We did that.

I think they were, maybe, trying to introduce – remember, a lot of things for many years were programmed around E3 in LA. I think that was one factor about this as well. ‘What are we going to do for E3 this year?’ or something like that. If I recall, it was alongside E3 or around that time, I could be wrong. I don’t think they’ll do that again.

OR: They did another concert, KINGDOM HEARTS Orchestra -World of Tres- the night before. I reviewed that one as well. It was an interesting event.

AR: That may be more convention-style than concert-style. They were heading that direction for those like-presentations. So, we’ll be working on a lot more projects as well with them going forward.

OR: When we briefly met at FINAL FANTASY VII Orchestra World Tour in Los Angeles, I asked you this – but I want to ask you here again. With Distant Worlds and A New World: Music from FINAL FANTASY– which your son, Eric Roth, conducts – and other various concert series, all of that music is drawn from the mainline numbered FINAL FANTASY entries. There are amazing tracks from sequels, such as Lightning’s Theme – A Distant Glimmer from Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII, that would be amazing for an orchestra to perform. Is it a conscious decision to limit the music to only [the] mainline numbers? If so, why?

AR: The answer is very easy. Yes, it is a conscious decision. Yes, I agree with you that there’s lots of other music on the offshoot games. So many of them, way more than the main roman numerals, right? It was a conscious decision simply because every single concert has a limited amount of minutes. If your goal is to represent FINAL FANTASY I through XVI, you’ll already, even if you just did one score from each of those – you’re already at two hours of music.

If you also have a couple of classics that have to be in there: two from FINAL FANTASY VII, two from VIII, two from XIV, or whatever – you have really eaten up your concert right away. It’s really a function of time, not anything else.

We have talked at times about doing some kind of a gala where we could present other things over several days. Maybe at some point in the future, we’re able to do that. But thankfully, the series keeps going, right? So, there are new games, and there are some fantastic stuff in XVI that we are finally just now playing and that’s been a lot of fun to do. Everything keeps developing.

And the other thing is that SQUARE ENIX is allowing me to do more themed Distant Worlds concerts. So, instead of this kind of broad-representing everything in every Distant Worlds concerts, I am able to do a thrust of XIV or XVI or maybe VII-IX-X, or whatever it may be. So, we’re experimenting around with being able to do that kind of thing. It doesn’t mean we’re not performing things from the other games, it just means that there may be a little more concentration.

Now, that worked very well when we had our concert in Carnegie Hall and Seattle with Soken, and we’ll be having more of those concerts. But we’re encouraged by that kind of programming, that that might be another way forward.

OR: Is there any particular piece that you would love to conduct from FINAL FANTASY that you haven’t done so yet? Anything from a spinoff?

AR: You know, that’s a tough question. I don’t think I can give you a specific piece. There are some specific pieces that we haven’t been able to perform very much. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve brought back Dancing Mad – people ask for that all the time. It was programmatically perfect for bringing back at the 20th anniversary of FINAL FANTASY VI, and also, it’s referenced in XIV. So it fit very well in that program, and we’re going to try to do some things like that going forward.

But trying to give you a specific piece that we haven’t done? I don’t have that for you right now. We get suggestions all the time, by the way.

“So, I will never take it for granted that we’re just going to keep going forever and be able to do these [performances] because there can be COVID or any number of things that will stop us in our tracks.”

OR: Your son, Eric Roth, is a conductor in his own right, and he is also conducting multiple stops on the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour too.

What is it like for you to have him both follow in your footsteps and yet standout beyond them as an accomplished conductor in his own right – including on the A New World: intimate music from FINAL FANTASY series? I did attend [it] in Berkeley, California back in April 2022.

AR: I mean, it’s fantastic. Eric has a bachelor, masters, and PhD in music, music composition, and scoring. He has a wonderful analytical mind for these things. I think early on, it wasn’t necessarily decided that he was going to go into our commercial trust that we’re in.

But, I think once he started doing some of these concerts, he’s absolutely fallen in love with it and he’s embraced bringing in a lot of new scores, which has been really a lot of fun. We get a lot of latitude from what we can do with A New World, and we’re able to bring in a lot more new scores there. With Distant Worlds, we have to go through a larger approval process and there are many teams that we go through with SQUARE ENIX. With A New World, we do have approvals, but we can suggest a lot more and they are allowing us to do a lot more. Eric has had a great time doing that. Yeah, it’s fantastic – it’s really great – that he’s able to do that.

But I’ll tell you: We’re building up so many productions these days, and there are more to come here in the next few years. We probably will be looking at adding another conductor because [of] the amount of stuff going on concurrently – this is the first time, historically, that SQUARE ENIX has allowed us to do [this]. I’m in Japan doing [FINAL FANTASY] VII Rebirth, Eric is doing Rotterdam and Munich and Rome, right?

This is the first time that they’ve allowed the same production to be in two different continents at the same time. Previously, they didn’t allow that. They’re expanding with all that stuff. Now that they’re allowing us to do that, it allows us to plan other types of events like that. So very interesting, moving forward. It’s opening the door to a lot of interesting scheduling and programming.

OR: Who are you currently listening to?

AR: I’m listening to – well, let me preface before I get into that. I’m constantly listening to all the music that I have to deal with in our concerts. Especially go into VII Rebirth – tremendous amount of listening to the mini demo scores and all that we’re sent, along with sending the scores. That takes up a lot of my time.

In terms of casually listening? There’s some great new jazz artists that’ve come out. You know, there’s some wonderful contemporary classical music that I’m listening to. But I will tell you that a famous Chicago symphony musician once said to me: ‘Music is my life, all day long and all night. Every week when I go home, I like some silence.’ *laughs* And the reality is: refreshing one’s ears is a real factor. Listening to other things, other genres, and not the repertoire that we’re working on all the time. But I have to tell you that the ear and the brain are a muscle that has to be exercised as well.

The more that I can get the scores into my head – and I will say also that in VII Rebirth, we have many more medleys that we’ve had in previous productions. And with that is a lot more demanding tempo transitions, sections, and things like that we have to move 100 musicians on the stage into that. And some of these are what we call in the industry ‘scissor cuts’. There is no setup to it, you just go right into the next tempo. So, teaching that, and showing that – again, with the hands – is a big mental exercise and something I work on so that in my limited rehearsal time with them, I can pull them through on all this. It is very important quality – I am spending a lot of time working on these things.

Samara Joy: a beautiful jazz singer – I’ve really enjoyed her work. There’s a whole bunch of singers that I’m enjoying working with. I’ve also enjoyed working with Amanda Achen recently, she is doing a great job. And we’ll do more [with her].

OR: Last question: To those people out there who are thinking about attending DISTANT WORLDS or FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, or another production put on by AWR Productions but haven’t attended one before, do you have anything that you want to say to them?

AR: Well, there’s a couple of things. One is that we were shocked, when we did the recent FINAL FANTASY XIV/XVI Distant Worlds programs, we had a tremendous amount of people attending who had only gone to XIV Fanfest or that kind of thing and were attending a Distant Worlds concert for the first time. That is very interesting and gratifying to us. That means that we’re bringing in yet more fans, because we have tremendous very loyal Distant Worlds fans who come back for many concerts. That’s one thing.

The other thing is that we tried to keep these concerts extremely fresh – and by that, I mean there are new scores coming all the time. Not only new but bringing back some scores that haven’t been performed in maybe 10 years. Recently, we brought back things like Vamo’alla Flamenco from IX, or as I mentioned – Dancing Mad. And the [Maria and Draco] opera we did in San Francisco, recently. We love bringing these things back. We love doing that. For fans that have not gone to Distant Worlds, I think that they know the community already, they don’t need me to say ‘Talk to the fans who’ve been to Distant Worlds, don’t listen to me trying to explain why you should come.’ I will just say that most people who’ve attended have said that it is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the real diehard, the real core, FINAL FANTASY fans to hear these things live with 100 musicians on stage.

And I don’t take this for granted. I mean, putting these productions together is a very big piece of work each time. A hundred of the top musicians in the world in each city, you really have to kind of work at all the logistics involved. Availability, venue, sound – all of these things are part of it, and the rehearsal schedule. So, I will never take it for granted that we’re just going to keep going forever and be able to do these things because there can be COVID or any number of things that will stop us in our tracks.

I would encourage people: take advantage of it, we’re trying to present these concerts in as many cities as we can that can support it. It’s just not possible to bring it to some of the very small, smaller, population bases – even though we have. We’ll go to Omaha, and we’ll go to some of the smaller cities, but we can’t do it very often with that kind of expense and personnel. But we really try to bring it all over the map in North America and [to] many cities in Europe as well. We’re expanding in southeast Asia; we’ll do more concerts there. And we want to get into Australia and some of the other territories as well.

OR: Thank you!

I want to thank Arnie Roth and AWR Music for taking the time to set up and participate in this interview!

You can (and should!) purchase tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour now.

What music pieces would you like to see in a future Distant Worlds performance?

Are you planning on attending FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW (Part Two): Conductor Arnie Roth talks FINAL FANTASY Orchestra Setlists, What He’s Currently Listening To, and More appeared first on oprainfall.

After attending the debut performance for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour in Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to sit down for an interview with one of the two conductors for the tour, Arnie Roth. In Part One of this two-part interview, we talk about his background, the role a conductor has in an orchestra and with a video game concert series, and more.

You can check out my review of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour here.

You can also purchase tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour now.

Finally, you can find out more about AWR Music at their official website, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn, and on X.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Operation Rainfall: My name is Quentin H. with Operation Rainfall, and you are?

Arnie Roth: Arnie Roth – I am the producer, conductor, and music director of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour. I also did [FINAL FANTASY VII] Remake [Orchestra World Tour], producer and conductor of Distant Worlds for many, many years, NieR – another video game series – and several others. But that’s me!

OR: You said in an interview with GameCloud back in January 2016 that you studied the violin when you were eight, and that became your focus when you received your Bachelor and Master of Music degrees at Northwestern University before you gradually shifted into a role of producer, conductor, and composer/arranger. And I think this started with the video game Halo where you were a musical arranger alongside actually performing the violin on the score in 2001, and as a composer/conductor on the movie Barbie as Rapunzel in 2002.

What made you want to go from only playing music on the violin to being more involved with the whole creative process? It is a pretty big step, after all.

AR: You have to actually go back and look – I commend you on the history. But you have to go back and look at more, because that will inform the decision a little bit. Yes, I was a violinist for…I don’t know how many years…Fifty years? Or more? But the point is that as I was doing more and more national television and radio recording work, album recording, and things like that – I was doing a big volume of writing arrangements for the various artists and products as well.

As I would do more writing, I would be asked by the actual artists themselves to come out to do the concerts live when they performed these new arrangements. So, I was doing more and more conducting and writing and arranging. Eventually, some artists started asking me to produce entire concerts and shows for them. Diana Ross, Peter Cetera, Jewel, Charlotte Church, a whole bunch of artists over the years.

And that led to my being appointed the music director and conductor of Chicagoland Pops Orchestra here in Chicago. That orchestra was in existence for a good number of years. While it was in existence, we were doing research about new products and new entertainment options because I would be creating the subscription series every year – three or four artists, that kind of thing, with the orchestra.

I decided after researching about what Japan was doing with video game concerts in the late 1990s and early 2000s to offer to do Dear Friends: Music from FINAL FANTASY. And that was actually the start of all the video game production in terms of AWR producing concerts.

Yes, you’re correct: I did, as a violinist and an arranger, work on Halo. Because it happened that the two composers, Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori, very close friends of mine – they were working here in Chicago, and we were working on many other projects. It just happened that they were working on Halo, and I helped them with some orchestra arrangements on that.

“And I can stretch these things with particular poignant moments with Aerith or an exciting moment with a battle medley. We can go further with that live in the concert. We can do bigger hits on some of the same points, different than what they saw in the game – yet preserving the performance as very much the same as they are dealing with in the game.

So yes, we’re trying to stay as close to the performance template as they heard in the game, but we make the music breathe alive.”

OR: Did you have a background in playing video games before this?

AR: Not really before that, only just casually. Not with the intent of it ever becoming a concert situation. Which is interesting in and of itself – I mean, [that] my life went that direction. I think you need to look again at a wider net, if you look at what orchestras are doing these days. There’s an awful lot of movies with live orchestras happening. This never happened 15, 20 years ago. That started happening almost concurrently when we were starting to introduce video game concerts. I think there is kind of a broadening of all these things. At the very beginning, it was something like ‘is that really going to be a ticket-selling entertainment item?’ Many orchestras and presenters didn’t believe that [it would be] at the beginning. So, it’s taken a good number of years – now it’s quite in-demand – and we’re going all over the place, all over the world, with these things. But it’s been an interesting road.

OR: Did you see the movie Tár?

AR: I did.

OR: During the [movie’s] opening, Lydia Tár talks in an interview about how time is the essential piece of interpretation, and how her left hand shapes the music while her right hand marks time and moves it forward and stops it as she wishes.

In the lead up to the ending where she is conducting a Monster Hunter: World orchestra performance, the film takes pains to make it look like she has no ability to interpret that game’s score beyond what is on the paper and what the composer thinks about it.

How true is this? Are you merely a human metronome through and through at a video game concert? Or do you have the space to interpret the music score of composers like Nobuo Uematsu, Masayoshi Soken, Yoko Shimomura, and Masashi Hamauzu for yourself to an orchestra and for the public?

AR: There’s several parts to that question.

From the movie Tár, and I only saw it once – but at the end of it, where she was sayin the basic concept that you’ve giving the orchestra the basic timeframe work with your right hand, mostly – those that are right-handed – and with your left, you’re doing some separate cuing and shaping. You’re doing that with your right hand as well. There is a lot that can be done with the two hands. There’s a lot you can do with the two hands with shaping music.

Now, you have to look at what we do in the various productions. There are productions where we need to stay very faithfully with the pre-lay and the tempo met[ronome]. Sometimes that’s met with a click track that’s fed to some of the musicians in the orchestra and the conductor. Sometimes the entire orchestra – I can give you examples of that kind of thing.

I am very fortunate that for Distant Worlds, they are allowing me – and this is very much because of the way we started this with Nobuo Uematsu – but they [SQUARE ENIX] are allowing me and AWR to be more free to conduct this music without a click track. It’s my duty to get close to the way that all the fans have heard it in the game, of course, and Distant Worlds was kind of a unique situation. In Distant Worlds, we have each one of the scores represent one song or one sequence from a specific game. And obviously, in Distant Worlds, we’re trying to represent the entire FINAL FANTASY series as much as we can.

So, that’s challenging in and of itself. But the idea of having freedom to be able to stretch a cadence a little longer, to be able to push a tempo a little faster – we use synchronizing techniques. Obviously, it’s not using a click track with Distant Worlds, for the most part. But there are visuals, there are various things that I can watch on the conductor video [so] that I know the arrival point is happening [for it]. And knowing the music really well, I am able to accelerate to get to that arrival point – or if we’re ahead, I’m able to pull it back a little bit.

The good news is that all of these things are not designed by SQUARE ENIX to be what we call ‘hard sync.’ To give you an example of ‘hard synchronization:’ if the rabbit hits the wall, and the cymbal crashes five seconds later, even a five-year old knows that there is a problem, that the sync isn’t working. So, we never have that kind of thing like a cartoon – slam into a wall, everything has to stop or crash, right? We have battle scenes, of course. It’s mostly gameplay cuts and things like that. So, that gives us more flexibility in terms of our sync and how tightly we have to be in sync with that.

Now FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth – we are staying very tightly in sync with the video as much as possible. But still, we’re staying in the same template of not using a click track for the entire orchestra. As soon as you do that, if you put all the musicians on stage with a click track, they start tuning out some of their own performance. They’re focused in on the metronome that’s going on in their ear, basically. And we really prefer for the orchestra to work with me, musically, if the music can breathe.

You also have to look at this from a video game standpoint. These players, of listening to the same recording of the same music with the same dynamic progression and the same tempo every time they play the game. For the first time they come to the concert, and all the sudden they can see the full dynamic range, really, pianissimo and fortissimo off the top – because in the game, they don’t want the players to have to reach for the volume, obviously, reaching to move it up and down all the time. So, it’s very compressed, right? Everything kind of meets in the middle. So, we can do that. That’s another function of what the live concert can do.

And I can stretch these things with particular poignant moments with Aerith or an exciting moment with a battle medley. We can go further with that live in the concert. We can do bigger hits on some of the same points, different than what they saw in the game – yet preserving the performance as very much the same as they are dealing with in the game.

So yes, we’re trying to stay as close to the performance template as they heard in the game, but we make the music breathe alive.

“You’re pointing out…some of the reasons and directions that a conductor can have on the performance and the very reason that we’re not using a metronome or a click track.

It’s for that reason I can shape that Aerith’s Theme melody with the pianist. I can ask where they might put the emphasis on which note to make it a little more poignant or make a little more finality to the cadence of that melody. There are all these little things that I can do with rehearsal.”

OR: I want to follow up on that. How do you see your relationship with the orchestra? I know that Andris Nelsons, who is the music director at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, believes that the composer is the driving force, the conductor encourages and leads the performers, and there is a hierarchy there. How do you see your role with them?

AR: The conductor is the leader. The orchestra doesn’t start, doesn’t pause, doesn’t take a tempo for any of this without the conductor showing them. And he or she is also the leader in terms of making the musical interpretation and statement. You can set up a click track and a metronome, and just have them play the notes. And certainly, all the greatest orchestras have played many of these pieces, classic scores – you know: Brahms, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Ravel – they can play this, that isn’t the issue. The notes are there. The issue is trying to make a musical statement, and pulling it back, arriving at a certain point, maybe you want to accent something new in the rhythm to push a particular structural point you’re trying to show people.

All of these things have to be thought about by the conductor in advance of any rehearsing. And I’ll say another thing: musicians are very particular about rehearsal technique. It’s critically important that you not waste their time or any rehearsal time. That you really have a plan mapped out, that you make very good use of all the precious seconds and minutes you have. For many of these things – because we don’t have that many rehearsals – they may be fabulous musicians, but you really have to have a plan heading into this of how much time can I spend on this score, how much can I move forward. How much I’m able to show them in the concert – and I don’t have to go over this again in the rehearsal. I can save some of the gestures for later.

I will tell you that when I first started doing these, you filled up the experience of how to do this over many years. This isn’t something you learn immediately. And that’s one of the issues for conductors: There’s not as much opportunity for new conductors and young conductors to get out there and practice rehearsal technique. That’s really critically important.

OR: To add on to that: Looking at the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour schedule: on August 31st and September 1st, you conduct the Osaka Symphony Orchestra, on September 7th and 8th, you conduct the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in Kanagawa, and then on September 13th, you conduct the Metropolitan Festival Orchestra and Singapore Choir in Singapore. You’re working with all of these orchestras in a very compressed time [window] as a guest conductor because you’re not their full-time conductor.

AR: Correct.

OR: Taking Aerith’s Theme in the performance’s second half as an example: you can easily explain the technical language of the score. For example, asking your pianist to play a D Major triad in inversion followed by a first inversion A minor triad, all of these broken chords in common time – it is the famous six-note non-functional harmony everyone recognizes.

But how do you get across the emotional and associative language of that music’s heart with the game, its story, and its characters in that narrow of a time window with these different orchestras you’re popping in with? After all, technicality alone doesn’t show the soul of a musical piece.

AR: You’re pointing out by that question some of the reasons and directions that a conductor can have on the performance and the very reason that we’re not using a metronome or a click track. It’s for that reason I can shape that Aerith’s Theme melody with the pianist. I can ask where they might put the emphasis on which note to make it a little more poignant or make a little more finality to the cadence of that melody. There are all these little things that I can do with rehearsal. Every one of these three that you just mentioned – Osaka, Tokyo Philharmonic, Metropolitan Festival – and by the way, this next weekend, I’m going to Forth Worth for the Fort Worth Symphony – I’ve worked with every single one of those orchestras before in the past. So, although I am a featured guest conductor, these are all familiar orchestra who’ve worked with me. I’ve worked with them many times, and I have no problems with them.

So, I’ve worked with all of them before, so it won’t be a big surprise to them or to me to work together. Not only that, but when you mention something like Aerith’s Theme, this is something we would have played in Distant Worlds concerts as well. So, they have some experience with that. We’ve actually gotten to an age with video game music – particularly classic ones like Aerith’s Theme, One-Winged Angel, To Zanarkand – for many of these orchestras have played these things with me before. So, there is some knowledge of what I’m going to do with them.

With FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth – there’s a lot of big surprises in there for them. Even though a lot of it is based on things, you have this huge battle theme from FINAL FANTASY VII, you have this really difficult J-E-N-O-V-A battle epic – lots of very difficult things. You also have the very fun Suzuki scores that we are doing: Bare Your Soul and Queen’s Blood, the card game, is fantastic. And by the way: [Queen’s Blood is] very difficult for the orchestra as well. It’s a very fast tempo thing. And in this concert, the orchestra’s being asked to do many different styles.

We have a big band in Queens Blood, you have a grand parade in Rufus’ Welcome Ceremony, you have all this battle music, and then of course, you have this classic, poignant music like Aerith’s Theme. I would say more than Remake, we have many more styles in this one that an orchestra has to be able to handle well.

OR: One of the biggest surprises for me at the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour was that No Promises to Keep was presented as an instrumental, and that in the game itself, it is a vocal song.

Why go that route in presenting that score instead of having a guest vocalist, assuming Loren Allred wasn’t available, [to] perform it at different stops? To add onto that – how did you go about adapting a vocal piece to become an instrumental?

AR: You actually heard the adaptation of the vocal piece as an instrumental. It’s really not my decision whether to use a vocalist or not. [SQUARE ENIX] made a decision that if we were going to present this as a vocal, we had to have Loren Allred. She wasn’t available for the entire tour, which is no surprise. We were very fortunate to get her to be available for the New York performance, and that’s the only one she’s doing. But the reality is that SQUARE ENIX made the decision that we would do it as an instrumental.

I understand the frustration with that, and we could have hired another vocalist to do it. They didn’t want to substitute with somebody who wasn’t in the game. I will tell you that it’s a challenge for me, in that one of the ways that you can do that is give the first violins the basic vocal melody for most of it and then it goes to some other instruments throughout the arrangement. That’s the easy way to replace the vocal. What’s difficult for me, speaking of timing here, is trying to match the tempo exactly with Aerith on screen singing this thing and her lips literally on the same rhythm as we’re doing. That one is kind of tough to do with the orchestra. You can be a fraction of a second off, but I think everyone understands that it is an instrumental, it’s not a vocal singing that, so. But other than that, I think it works, but clearly everyone loves that song, which is interesting to me.

You know Nobuo is famous for that kind of song – it’s his classic M.O. He’s done a lot of those pop classic-kind of songs. You think of Kiss Me Goodbye, you think of Eyes On Me – they are all in that ‘mold’ of Western-classic song-style. A different one is like Suteki De Ne, from [FINAL FANTASY] X, which is quite different. We love that. Or the anthem from FINAL FANTASY XIV, Answers, very different, a beautiful piece. We love all the different songs that are involved. We just actually worked with Amanda Achen doing a lot of the XIV songs that Soken has written, and she’ll be doing more work with us as well.

And that wraps up Part One of our interview!

Please return on Friday for Part Two where we talk a bit more about the setlists for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour and Distant Worlds, about the one-off FINAL FANTASY VII Symphonic Reunion concert in 2019, and more!

Tickets for FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour are on sale now.

Have you attended FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour? 

If so, what do you think of it?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post INTERVIEW (Part One): Conductor Arnie Roth discusses FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, Conducting, and More appeared first on oprainfall.

Flame Fatales 2024, hosted by Frame Fatales, is running from August 18, 2024, to August 25, 2024, on Twitch and you can check out the upcoming runs here.

You can also donate to the Malala Fund, this event’s charity, here.

It is Tuesday night. I have laundry to do, an interview to work on transcribing from FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour, and yet I cannot tear myself away from watching as much Flame Fatales as possible on Twitch while they raise money for Malala Fund. If you’re not familiar with Flame Fatales, then what you need to know is this is one of two events put on every year by Frame Fatales: a community of women and femmes who love speedrunning video games, raising money for charity, and gaming in general. Frame Fatales welcome cisgender, trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming individuals, and all you have to do is DM their Instagram account or email them to join.

I’ve been catching Flame Fatales (and Frost Fatales, their wintertime event) since 2019, and I always find myself setting aside everything else I have to do that week to see as much as possible of it. While Flame Fatales does come under the larger GamesDoneQuick (for which I covered AGDQ 2020 in person) umbrella, these Fatales events feel like a bunch of friends got together, decided to do some genuine good in the world, and host some of the best speedrunners in the world while occasionally letting absolute chaos reign inside the studio in the process. It’s like the best possible real-life version of Kidsongs.

All of the speedrunners, donation hosts, commentators (or ‘couch’), and volunteers for Flame Fatales come from the people the Frame Fatales community represents. And I wasn’t joking about the high quality of the runs. If you’ve got 12 minutes, check out this run from Tuesday night by Zoreowo, as they play through the Valve-classic Portal BACKWARDS with dizzying speed and skill and while also doing their own commentary alongside their couch:

You cannot watch that run and tell me that it wouldn’t fit right in on the Awesome/Summer Games Done Quick stage. I caught it live Tuesday night, and I just couldn’t look away. And you know what? Every single run, no matter the title or genre, is like that.

In between the runs (which you can check out the whole week’s schedule for here), there are the in-studio antics. Every morning, Flame Fatales opens up with the latest installment of Screen Savers – a speedrunner-centric take of The Office, with the slogan “your time matters!” – plays. This scripted serial skit is earnest in its humor while it also does not take itself too seriously. Whether it’s Swiftalu’s joyous obsession with cats, Kungfufruitcup’s grizzled “I’ve been working here too long” attitude, or Rubiehart’s hilarious take on being a boss, these morning skits are simply fun to watch and really set the Frame Fatales events apart from the larger AGDQ and SGDQ events as a scrappy, indie event all of their own. This sense of fun persists all throughout the day during The Chomp (where they recap the day before and talk about the upcoming day’s runs), the prize segments (anytime Corvimae appears, I know that I am guaranteed to be falling over laughing), or the random other studio segments and interviews that are occasionally interspersed in.

For all this crazy fun and high-end speedrunning, Frame Fatales successfully demands to be taken seriously as they raise money for charity. This year’s Flame Fatales charity is the Malala Fund, an international, non-profit that advocates for girls’ education. You can (and should!) read more about them on their official website, but the Malala Fund invests money in everything from supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education for young women in Pakistan to creating safe learning spaces for girls in northern Nigeria. And this year, Frame Fatales got the Malala, the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner who co-founded Malala Fund alongside her father, to sit down for an interview with frozenflygone to open the event up:

Take the time to watch that interview and the questions frozenflygone asks, as you won’t regret it.

As of me writing this article, Flame Fatales has raised $38,542 USD for the Malala Fund so far. That’s a lot of money that will do a lot of good in this world. And you know what? Flame Fatales is not even half-over yet.

There are still runs for Sonic CD Restored (run by FawkesRocks), Sonic Origins (SnowballSMB), and Sonic R (Risuruuu) today. If you’re free tonight, then there is a bonus game for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (goodgortho) and an expert guitar showcase in Rock Band 3 (dijonketchup) to watch. And as we head into the weekend, you can catch runs of a Fresh Hops kazio run by frozenflygone, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (Master Collection) by Kialee, and Super Mario Odyssey by CheeseJay to close the event out. The run that I am personally looking forward to the most is to see Corvimae run Pokémon Alpha Sapphire with Sanjan and Swiftalu on the couch on Thursday afternoon. This is because I know that will be a blast to watch as these three riff off of each other (especially since Corvimae and Swiftalu have been incredibly funny and entertaining when on camera together/separately in the past) while also showing off all of three’s deep knowledge of the Pokémon franchise and speedrun strategies.

In other words, there is literally something for everyone to watch during Flame Fatales. And if donating for women’s education is not a good enough reason to watch, then how about possibly winning some awesome prizes?

Every day of Flame Fatales, there are various prizes that you can win for donating. For a minimum donation of $5, you can be entered to win something incredibly cool like a Sleepy Kirby Perler (donated by gretaicevixen) on Day four. On Day three, a minimum donation of $50 earns you an entry to win a papercrafted doghouse from Silent Hill by Sky Burkson. And if you donate $200 cumulatively over the entire Flame Fatales event, you can win a bundle of Fire Emblem’s Edelgard Axe, a Nintendo Switch, and a copy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, all donated by Cute Monster Props. Just look at the axe you can win:

If you tune into Awesome Games Done Quick and Summer Games Done Quick, then you should definitely take the time and catch a run or two (or three!) of Flame Fatales. And you should definitely donate some money to the Malala Fund through the GDQ website and go buy some of the official event merch through The Yetee, who donates a portion of the merchandise’s proceeds to the Malala Fund as well. When you donate, be sure to select an incentive. These incentives do everything from make the speedrun harder for a particular game to naming a character or even picking which ending to achieve. They are a fun way to influence the event itself, and they give minigoals throughout for donators to watch.

The event runs from 12:30 PM Eastern to roughly 12:30 AM Eastern every day through Saturday night, and they replay most of the day’s events overnight as well. And any runs you miss are put up fairly quickly on the GamesDoneQuick YouTube channel.

If you’ve made it this far, and you’re somehow STILL not convinced that Frame Fatales deserves your time and your charity dollars, then let me present you with this run of Waluigi’s Taco Stand from Frozen Fatales 2023’s event.

While Char_bunny and jenneticist were racing to see who could complete the game first, there was simultaneously a donation bid war going to determine what ingredients (ranging from eyeballs to bully horns and hot sauce) the two runners were then going to build their tacos with live on camera to eat afterwards. Oh, and they are both dressed like Waluigi in the ROM-hack game because a pre-run donation incentive was met. And finally, as you watch this, just keep in mind that Char_bunny does not like spicy food. I cannot think of anything that so perfectly encapsulates the humor, friendship, craziness, and quality speedrunning that Frame Fatales puts into every single one of their events than this video below:

Take the time to tune in during the rest of this week to Flame Fatales. And go donate to the Malala Fund while you’re at it. You won’t regret it. Trust me.

Flame Fatales 2024, hosted by Frame Fatales, is running from August 18, 2024, to August 24, 2024, on Twitch and you can check out the upcoming runs here.

What is your favorite run from Flame Fatales 2024? What are you looking forward to seeing?

Let us know in the comments below!

The post Flame Fatales 2024 Is A Fun And Amazing Must-Watch Speedrun Event appeared first on oprainfall.

Currently Airing:

My Deer Friend Nokotan

The series definitely has kept it random type of humor and smallest amount of plot as possible. For a show like this though it is route they probably should go with. One of the recent episodes stayed very much this route with it being made up of a bunch of different short random stories. Though it kind of doesn’t really make it too much from a regular episode other than being able to put more random gags in. The series is very fourth wall breaking with it more or less admitting it is brain rot which is not much of an exaggeration. They have added a few more characters in and I do like it when they bring in their home room teacher. It is keeping up with its image as being a dumb comedy and I am fine with that. – Walter

You can watch My Deer Friend Nokotan on Crunchyroll.

Anime of the Past:

Solo Leveling

Having enjoyed the manwha and having read (most) of the Light Novel series thereafter, I though I would explore the anime adaptation of Solo Leveling. Twelve episodes released earlier this year, and with a supposed second half of season 1 due to release before year’s end, I thought now was as good a time as any to give this a watch.

For those unfamiliar, Solo Leveling depicts a world under constant siege by monsters originating from dungeons; parallel dimensions that connect to the real world via gates. Ever since the first gate appeared, individuals around the world awakened to superhuman abilities. Appropriately dubbed hunters, these awakened individuals are the only ones capable of fending off the monsters and protecting earth from annihilation.

One such hunter, Sung Jin-woo, is labeled the weakest hunter, as he struggles against even the lowest grade of monsters. With an ill mother and college-bound sister to care for, Jin-woo endures his harsh life. On one particular dungeon raid, he encounters a second dungeon within the first, and after a disastrously deadly series of events, Jin-woo experiences a change in himself and his perceptions regarding gates and dungeons. For it seems Jin-woo has been granted the impossible ability to increase his power through training and combat, and has been granted a guiding interactive system similar to those seen in RPGs. With newfound power and advantages, he has unknowingly been placed into a fated story full of strife and against unimaginable adversaries.

As an anime, I expected a mix between the visual strength of the manhwa and the light novels’ greater depth and detail of its story and characters. What I experienced instead was a familiar effort, one too similar to other shounen anime productions, and one lacking a bit in depth. It more closely resembles the manhwa regarding story and character development, as in there isn’t a whole lot beyond the basics and the necessary. There are a few forced scenes full of lore dumping, too. The quality of its visuals also leaves me wanting, as the efforts of late manhwa artist Jang Sung-rak, nicknamed Dubu, ranged from excellent to downright spectacular. Perhaps my expectations were too high, as the anime’s style, while serviceable, is average at best. Add to that a handful of action scenes overly reminiscent of Naruto or Bleach and you have, again, an average effort overall. I do hope the latter half of season 1 sees more of what originally makes Solo Leveling so distinguished.

A final thought, I find it odd, and a touch excluding, that the Korean dub seems to be only available to Korean residents. As it’s based on a Korean manhwa, I think I would have liked to have heard Korean voice actors. Well, not that I know any Korean anyway. – Drew D.

You can watch Solo Leveling on Crunchyroll.

Manga:

Yasashii Hikari

When I came across Yasashii Hikari, I never expected I would discover such a hidden gem. This is a story of how an overworked salary-man, Miyake, finds solace and renewed purpose within a laid back community on an isolated island. Upon his first day, Miyake meets high schooler Hiyoko, who guides him around and introduces him to the charms of his new home. From there, we are treated to innocent interactions, inclusivity by his new community, and a wonderfully calm aesthetic, though moments of stress or excitement do pop up now and then. Its relaxed country setting, the appreciative attitudes and outlooks of its supporting cast, and the subtle blossoming of a sweet relationship were all a pleasure to experience.

I couldn’t have expected just how much this story resonated with me. It goes to show how you just never know when a feature, mention, or suggestion will lead you to something truly outstanding. From a quick click in order to read a synopsis, I was soon completely drawn in and immersed. I can easily recommend Yasashii Hikari looking for a bit of charming solace. – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Anime & Manga: Aug 11 – 17 appeared first on oprainfall.

Once again, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve added to Week in Gaming. A few weeks ago I wasn’t doing any major gaming and was making barely any progress playing Persona 3 Reload on and off. This past week I’ve been playing Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid which I’ll be writing a review for in the future, so I won’t be discussing that yet obviously. And other than that, I’ve hardly done any other gaming this week. However, just yesterday my wireless earbuds I finally bought arrived. The sound balancing in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance was so wonky and out of whack, I finally took the plunge and bought my first ever pair of wireless earbuds. I’m no audiophile but, wonky bad sound balancing is my main, potentially only, gaming pet peeve and I play my Switch a lot now days, mostly docked. After looking through the budget options available, I started watching a few different pairs of Anker Soundcore earbuds on Amazon. Most of them have great reviews, they’re relatively budget friendly depending on the pair and there’s a Soundcore app that works with each pair and includes various settings.

Originally I found very little if anything about people’s experience using wireless earbuds on their Switch without an adapter, since the feature’s been added to it by Nintendo. I got input from some people who said it worked great undocked with their wireless earbuds, even cheap pairs. But considering I mostly play docked, and for undocked gameplay the Switch has a headphone jack, that info wasn’t the most helpful. Although, getting confirmation they could work without lag and reading all the good reviews about the earbuds, I finally took the plunge and spent $30 on Anker’s Soundcore P30i model. Unfortunately, I did end up with a pair without a low-latency game mode option in the Soundcore app, I believe I thought all of the sets I was watching had it. Regardless, I’m now quite glad I bought them anyways.

I’ve never had wireless earbuds before and after testing them out a bit yesterday, I found out that there isn’t this horrible game ruining lag like people seemed to think, or have stated there would be in what little I was able to find on the subject online. People claim Switch has bare minimum bluetooth support which won’t pick-up settings and that without a game mode or adapter they’re terrible and lag horrendously. After testing it for myself, I think they’re quite good honestly. Feeling like they have to lag and expecting it, I think I’ve noticed or feel like there may potentially be a minuscule eighth or quarter second lag possibly, something around that at least. But I’m not having any major issues. The place where I believe I can tell for sure there is some slight delay, is just when going back to the menu, or back to a game from the menu, and then once the sound starts up after that quite minute delay, it seems to be fine. I’ve messed around switching between game thumbnails quickly in the main Switch menu, I’ve selected stuff quickly in menus and did some fishing in Animal Crossing: New Horizons when I got on last night for the fireworks event, and they seem pretty good still. I did start to wonder in ACNH if there was more lag than I thought. I thought I was starting to notice that very minor delay ever so slightly. But again, the fact that after researching it, it sounds like there has to be this horrible lag no matter what, I may simply be expecting it and that’s making me believe I’m truly noticing it. I should also probably mention, my Switch is connected to a small standard HDTV, not a smart TV. That may help lessen any potential lag as well.

I still need to do some additional testing, try them in Theatrhythm Final Bar Line perhaps, the only rhythm game I have on Switch, or in a shooter such as Splatoon 3 and/or Perfect Dark. I did try them with online multiplayer last night in ACNH, I joined a friend for that weekly August fireworks event. That might be my favorite seasonal event in the game. And yeah, like I already said, I’m not noticing any major lag. I do think and hope they’ll work for now, for the reason I bought them. In the future though, when I have more cash to spare for wireless earbuds, I’m hoping to maybe upgrade to the P3 model, or just any other well reviewed Soundcore wireless earbuds that actually have the low-latency game mode my current pair is missing. Oh that’s another thing, despite reading that my Switch wouldn’t pick-up any special modes set on my earbuds, the Soundcore app lets me connect them to both my phone and Switch at the same time. When I’ve messed with what settings they do have, the surround sound, various equalizer options, etc., my Switch picks it up and it works just fine.

Anyway, the reason I’ve decided to discuss my wireless earbuds experience this week, with a docked Switch, is because I had such a hard time finding any info about it myself, when attempting to research it beforehand. I figured I should put this out there for anyone else who wanted to know I suppose. Maybe one of you will find this info useful. And if not, well it’s the only gaming I can talk about this week. I’ll keep making Natsu-Mon progress and hopefully I’ll be able to write my review soon. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

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Currently Airing:

No Longer Allowed in Another World

I decided to dip my toes back into the world of Isekai because I’ve been feeling the need to watch some enjoyable trash, and No Longer Allowed in Another World hit all my buttons. Big busty elf priestesses, cat girls getting groped by trees, truck-kun finally receiving the adulation he deserves, a protagonist who absolutely Does Not want to be here – it’s got it all. The idea of there being another world that summons dying humans to give them a second chance at life, but the most recent person they choose is Osamu Dazai, who notoriously does not want to live, is such a fantastically incredulous setup I had to see it for myself. And it honestly worked pretty well. Interrupted right before committing double suicide with his lover Sacchan, Dazai finds himself in a Western-styled fantasy realm where he’s the hero destined to save everyone. He’s greeted by a blonde elf named Annette, who has ushered in countless other heroes over the years and grown disillusioned with her role; however, not only does Dazai want nothing to do with saving the world, he has abysmal stats to the point he’s actively dying of poison. His blase attitude intrigues her, though she’s unable to stop him from leaving on his own. While wandering, he finds a cat girl being attacked by a Death Tree, and his pitiful non-attempt to save her finds him trapped in hits clutches. Hilarity ensues. His interactions with both women are honestly pretty funny, and his actor delivers deadpan lines with fantastic comedic timing. This was a super breezy first episode with enough hooks I’m willing to give the show a real chance. If you like your Isekai with a dash of irreverence, you could choose worse than this. – Leah

You can watch No Longer Allowed in Another World on Crunchyroll.

Days With My Stepsister

I went into Days With My Stepsister expecting some horny trash, only to get swept up into a contemplative, melancholic, and slow burning examination of loneliness and the distance that exists between people. Yuta Asamura and Saki Ayase are classmates who suddenly find themselves siblings when their divorced parents marry. Despite being in the same class, the two have barely interacted before, and are as close to strangers as possible – only now these strangers need to navigate living together and the changes that come with inviting someone new to live under your roof. Both Asamura and Ayase are content to remain distant from each other, two people who simply share a home, but despite their best efforts they slowly connect, learning more about each other while breaking down the barriers they’ve each put up following their parents’ divorces earlier in life. The show captures their sense of uncertainty and awkwardness beautifully through the deft use of the camera, often lingering on empty hallways and dark spaces, the characters just out of frame or passing like ghosts across the screen. Reflections are used liberally. The scenery here is as much a character as Asamura and Ayase, setting the mood and conveying more through silence than most shows do their dialogue. Stepsister has been an absolute treat to watch, with surprising emotional beats and two main characters who I can’t help but cheer on. This one is absolutely worth your time. – Leah

You can watch Days With My Stepsister on Crunchyroll.

The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies

Having vanquished Byakuya’s familiar, the Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant continue their charade of being enemies, only for Mira’s henchmen to go and actually kidnap Byakuya, bringing her to their evil lair to be tortured. Mira takes this about how you’d expect. Every interaction between him and Byakuya remains a joy, with her quiet naivete complimenting his over-the-top infatuation. Every time he loses his cool because he can’t handle how cute Byakuya is, I feel it. She is just absolutely the most adorable. This episode gives us some more insight into why Byakuya is the way she is, finally beginning to peel back the layers of her nonchalance to let her personality peek through. Despite being half length episodes, this show is still the one I most look forward to every week, because it fills my heart with such joy to see these two characters interact. We’ll finally meet another magical girl next week, and I cannot wait to see what happens. – Leah

You can watch The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies on Crunchyroll.

Nyako to Hakase (Nyako and Doctor)

Nyako to Hakase, or Nyako and Doctor, is a short manga series that follows the daily lives of a doctor and her cute cat maid, Nyako. The doctor is more of a researcher who one day simply wanted a cat girl companion, and so she created one. From there, we are treated to a charming series of slice-of-life chapters depicting the doctor’s and Nyako’s days.

This became an instant favorite of mine since its debut, and every chapter has been a treat. The doctor is eccentric yet caring, especially regarding Nyako. Nyako herself is easy to frighten, yet adorable, inquisitive, and incredibly kind. It has been a pleasure to watch as Nyako expresses her curiosity, playfulness, and kindness.

This manga has just ended, having been published on the author’s twitter since 2021, and I’ll certainly miss this one. Adorable and funny, it was always a welcomed bright light every time a new chapter was released and translated. Whether through the author’s future works or through an extra chapter, I hope the author chooses to revisit this series someday, allowing us to check in on these two again. – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

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Currently Airing:

My Deer Friend Nokotan

So I’ve been waiting on this one for a while even before all the memes started rolling out. I randomly took a look at the manga a while back and didn’t really think this one would be getting an adaptation. That being said I’ve been liking it so far. It follows the former delinquent Koshitan, who has changed her ways and is seen as the perfect student, while trying to hide her past. However things go awry as the strange deer girl Nokotan appears, who immediately can tell what she was like and transfers to her school. Koshitan ends up becoming the club president of the “deer club” and is forced to take care of Nokotan and the chaos that follows her. I’ve heard some comparison to Nichijou with this one, which I don’t completely agree with, but I wouldn’t blame anyone for saying they are similar. While Nokotan is definitely strange, the other characters that appear also have their quirks with Koshitan being the only seemingly reasonable one. One thing I always like is how almost no one else is bothered by Nokotan’s antics and seems to see it as normal, though quite a bit of it is at Koshitan’s expense. I wouldn’t say that this is a series for everyone, but if you want an out there comedy, this one will work. – Walter

You can watch My Deer Friend Nokotan on Crunchyroll.

Manga:

Sore wa Rei no Shiwaza desu (It’s the work of the Ghost)

Over the past two weeks or so, I went ahead and re-read a silly romance, high school life manga called Sore wa Rei no Shiwaza desu, or, It’s the Work of the Ghost. This follows the blossoming relationship between Torii Nozomu, a second year high school student and new transfer student, Kirishima Kyoko. On the outside, Kyoko is a cute, charming young lady with an approachable personality. However, only Nozomu can see that Kyoko is haunted by a frightful-looking apparition. A female ghoul haunts Kyoko without her or anyone else aware, yet Nozomu can see her clearly.

Despite this, Nozomu musters his courage and befriends Kyoko. And this is what ultimately drew me into this manga. You have a new student, Kyoko, in new surroundings and not knowing anyone. She happens to be placed next to Nozomu, and he, regardless of the floating terror behind her, steps up and helps Kyoko adjust to her new surroundings. From there, a lovely friendship and more, forms, full of concern on Nozomu’s part, yet also brimming with all of the fun, emotional, and caring times and situations that accompany a high school life romcom.

A bit more ecchi than what I typically read, Sore wa Rei no Shiwaza desu is nonetheless a fun story with moments of genuine emotion and depth. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any official English release, nor plans for it, but the fan-translation over on mangadex is serviceable. – Drew D.

Youkai-tachi no Iru Tokoro (Where the Yokai Are)

I also came across a charismatic one-shot called Youkai-tachi no Iru Tokoro, or Where the Yokai Are. I guess I’m in a bit of a supernatural mood with my reading choices, not that it should be a surprise given my penchant for fantasy and fantasy-esque genres.

Similar to It’s the Work of the Ghost, we again have a main character, a middle schooler named Ginji, who can see spirits. However, these spirits simply choose to reveal themselves only to Ginji. With his kind nature and his rural home, many yokai have settled around and befriended Ginji. However, when they find out that Ginji has aspirations of leaving the countryside for a high school in Tokyo, the yokai stress out and begin taking actions to prevent their friend from leaving.

Mid in length, there’s plenty of humor and feelings of friendship to be had in this read. Fan-translated and available on mangadex, this is a quick, yet charming read for anyone looking for a heartwarming story with a dose of supernatural. My one critique would be that I simply want more and wouldn’t mind in the least if this were serialized. – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

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Symphony of the Night – Dracula X Chronicles version

A little while ago I replayed the Dracula x Chronicles version of Symphony of the Night. Mostly the same experience as the PS1 version, I have to say, I don’t mind the small changes between the two. The voice actors are the most obvious difference, but I was never as obsessed about them as others across the internet. I particularly like the extra Maria boss fight, and I wish the developers had added more beyond this. I recall hearing that the Saturn version of the game had additional areas, or at least the data for them was left over, so I wouldn’t have minded seeing the original developers’ ideas fleshed out. I guess I’m always wanting more in these instances.

Anyway, I can blitz through this pretty fast, even faster than Aria or Portrait, which is why I just went ahead and played it in a sitting or three.

One thing I’ll mention, I always took issue with the unique weapons and how rarely they drop. I also never liked how some enemies drop equips that are already available in the castle. Similarly, I never like it when castle items or weapons found later are worse than items found earlier. I just never understood the logic behind such decisions.

Equips other than weapons were never special either. I do always get a kick out of the Crystal Cloak, though, and how the sprite artists made it semi-transparent. I’m impressed with the imagination it took to do so every time I see it. It’s a personal favorite.

I’ll be done with this by the time this contribution gets published. As for what’s next, I’m leaning towards more manga and LN reading than gaming, so I’ll see you over on that weekly post. – Drew D

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

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Currently Airing:

The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies

I don’t usually watch short episode anime, but I made an exception for this one. The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies (aka Mahoaku) is just too charming to resist. Byakuya Mimori is an orphan girl who works hard at her many (many, many, many, many) part time jobs, including being a magical girl. On one of her magical girl outings to defeat an evil rampaging dragon, she comes face-to-face with the Evil Empire’s right-hand man, Mira – who instantly falls head over heels in love with his enemy. Rather than engage in battles as they should, Mira instead takes to bringing Byakuya gifts, and the two slowly grow closer and learn more about one another. This pleases neither Mira’s evil cohorts, who insist he needs to take care of the magical girl, nor Byakuya’s magical girl familiar, who may or may not be yakuza.

It’s a fun but heartfelt genre spoof, gorgeously given life by Studio Bones, who lovingly convert the detailed and delicate manga by Cocoa Fujiwara into colorful, striking animation. Each episode is only 12 minutes, but they pack so much into each, and it never feels like you’re losing out on the extra 12 minutes you’d get in a full episode show. Fujiwara unfortunately passed away before the series finished, so I’m curious to see if Bones will give the story an ending or stick to only what Fujiwara was able to create. Regardless, I’m along for this ride. – Leah

You can watch The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies on Crunchyroll.

Manga:

Papa Told Me

When I last contributed to our Week in Anime & Manga recap, I talked about Papa Told Me, an episodic slice-of-life manga that mostly centers around Chise, an elementary schoolgirl wise beyond her years, and her author father. I had also mentioned last time that I had finally reached or was approaching chapter 100. I was looking forward to a mostly familiar experience by this point; however, the chapters that have followed have been vastly more whimsical than earlier ones, and many have been open-ended in their stories. No definite beginning or end, these particular chapters drop readers in at a moment where there may be a shift in someone’s life. We get to see some of the proceeding events, only for it to end openly and leave us with a sense of knowing that there is more to come, we just won’t see it. I cannot help but see the parallels of this style to real life, as we take actions and live our particular, individual moments, and we know more is in store, yet we don’t know how our personal storylines will end.

Another note, Chise’s maturity and leadership has begun to challenge her father’s role in the story. He has become a passive passenger rather than a teacher or leader as a parent ought to be. Several times, Chise has appeared to be the more reliable and reasonable of the two. Yes, she’s the MC, but undermining the father’s character does zero favors for a moment of humor or progress in this stand-alone chapter style.

Regardless, I’m almost at the end and will tell you my feelings once my journey with this mostly delightful manga ends. – Drew D.

Karakai Jouzu no (Moto) Takagi-san

It’s always melancholic when a great series comes to an end. Earlier this week, Karakai Jouzu no (Moto) Takagi-san or Skilled Teaser (Former) Takagi-san, just had its final chapter released in Japan. This manga takes place years after the original Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san (Skilled Teaser Takagi-san) where Takagi and Nishikata are married and have a five-year-old daughter named Chi. Teasing is, of course, one of the main themes, yet family, growth, experiences, and appreciation are all themes of this manga, too. Just as lighthearted and entertaining, (Moto) Takagi-san was an absolute pleasure to read.

This series ending is made even more melancholic, as once the final spin-off series ends, that will mark the end of the entire Takagi saga. Since 2012, we have enjoyed the teasing skills of Takagi throughout her middle school years, as well as into her and Nishikata’s adulthood. We’ve seen her love for Nishikata blossom, as well as Nishikata’s own realization of his feelings for Takagi. We also got to see how great they are to each other and as parents to Chi. I, and I’m sure plenty of fans, would have liked to have seen their highschool and college days, but, as of now, we are being told that this is the conclusion of the Takagi era.

*Sigh*… I’m realizing more and more that I’m finding it hard to say goodbye. Yes, I’m overjoyed that we received a wonderful manga and so many excellent spin-offs too. And yet, these goodbyes are becoming more emotional and tougher as time goes by… – Drew D.

Light Novels:

Spirit Chronicles – Vol 4

I’m almost finished reading volume 4 of Spirit Chronicles and I’ve also begun writing my review. While trying not to sound like a broken record, I reiterate what I said last time, in that this volume has marginalized most of the supporting cast again, but this time to introduce one new main character, yet two others who will mostly likely end up on the ever-growing list of side-characters. It’s a shame because the author, Kitayama Yuri, has such a talent for creating and developing characters. And so to see so many characters forgotten along the way, I can’t help but feel like this series is becoming an ongoing cycle of missed opportunities.

I am hoping the flow of new characters finally ceases and we get to spend more time with those we have, as so many of them are unique and intriguing. Not to mention the list is already immense and any more, at this point, may just dissuade me from immersing myself, as I would then know that disappointment is all that awaits. I want to keep reading, but author Kitayama is making me work for it… – Drew D.

What anime are you watching? What manga and light novels are you reading? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Anime & Manga entries here!

The post oprainfall Week in Anime & Manga – Jul 21 – 27 appeared first on oprainfall.

This week in gaming I continued to progress through Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. I’ve made it up to chapter 4 and I’m very curious to see who or what KeA actually is. Finding out about Lloyd’s brother would be very interesting to at this point. Hopefully I can finish this one up this week and get some answers.

I also started looking at the Nintendo Switch version of Tokyo Xanadu eX+. I can say so far the localization seems to flow better than the previous releases and the game runs really well on the Switch. I know it should since this started life as a Vita title, but with Switch ports you never really know til you dig into them. I hope to have a full review ready soon. -Steve

I honestly haven’t been doing a lot of gaming lately. I’ve been spending my free time watching random shows, badly attempting some art stuff and playing a tiny smidgen of games on the side. I always play a bit of mahjong every day on my phone via Mahjong Soul and Riichi City, but other than that, I’ve been very slowly making progress in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. I’m still pretty close to the beginning of the Shinagawa area. Also, this past weekend while I was away from home and only able to play my Switch undocked, I didn’t really want to play SMTVV. All the of the visual details are a bit small undocked. And thus, I actually ended up finally starting Sea of Stars which I’ve been sitting on for a long time now. I’ve been sitting on quite a few games actually, and as usual, I have now started yet another game I probably won’t completely play through and finish all at once. Nonetheless, I got into it and played for a few hours. I’m not too far into it yet, but I think I may potentially enjoy this game a bit more than Chained Echoes, the last big 16-bit indie RPG I played a chunk of. All of these indie RPGs inspired by famous games of the past, tend to have more tedious battles that start to wear on me pretty quickly. But at the moment, I definitely am enjoying Sea of Stars’ system a bit more. It’s not too overly complicated and while early battles are a bit challenging, it doesn’t feel like every single battle is a whole ordeal in itself. Though I have gotten stuck a few times and had to restart when these large ant looking things kept inviting their friends. But other than that, battles seem to be relatively reasonable and the atmosphere of the game is as charming as expected. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

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Castlevania – Portrait of Ruin

Since my last contribution to our Week in Gaming post, I played and completed Castlevania – Portrait of Ruin. One of my favorites of the series, this plays and feels like a true Metroidvania without forcing tacked-on controls or stylus-based play mechanics the way they were with Dawn of Sorrow.

For the uninitiated, Portrait of Ruin follows vampire hunter Jonathan Morris and his friend the talented witch Charlotte Aulin, as they investigate the appearance of Dracula’s castle. A vampire by the name of Brauner has taken over the keep, channeling Dracula’s and the castle’s powers for himself through the use of his magic paintings. Having suffered a tremendous family loss during World War I, Brauner intends to use these powers to remake the world, again engulfed in a world war, to end all strife and finally create a peaceful existence for himself and his daughters.

Before starting it, I distinctly remember being upset with the art direction, as they did not opt for Ayami Kojima’s talents, instead adopting a more common anime style. Anyway, soon after, I noticed that the game itself still looks great, combining detailed 2D sprites with the use of 3D backgrounds throughout. The soundtrack has several real bangers, too, with remixed classic tracks and new music composed just for this title.

The gameplay is still fun, though I encountered the weird difficulty curves I remembered from previous playthoughs. I felt like I would swing from underpowered to overpowered, back to underpowered in spurts. I also did not entirely enjoy the game’s quest system, as so many quests are only complete-able or even available towards the end of the game. Being a completionist, I, of course, mulled through them all. I also did something I hadn’t done in previous playthroughs: I never powered-up Vampire Killer. I, instead, opted to complete the game using alternate weapons and a heavy reliance on Charlotte’s magic. Especially using Charlotte more than I ever did previously, I think this ended up being my most enjoyed playthrough. And so, flaws aside, I had fun re-experiencing this chapter in Castlevania. – Drew D.

I started the week by finishing off The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3^rd. I really enjoyed this entry in the series and I learned a lot about all of the characters involved, especially Renne. I knew she had some bad stuff happen to her, but I had no idea how messed up it really was. No wonder she is a bit crazy and lays everyone that gets in her way to waste. Anyways, I’m looking forward to seeing her more as I play through the rest of this franchise.

After that I started Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero. I was pretty excited to see a new region in this world, and Crossbell doesn’t disappoint so far. The cast of characters here is great. Lloyd is a bit of cheesy guy, but he is very likable. The deadpan Tio basically stole my heart from the beginning and I can see why she is so popular among the fans. I can’t wait to see more of the antics from this crew and where this adventure leads me. – Steve

My whole week has been solely dedicated to getting through Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion, Dawntrail. After the universe-ending stakes of Endwalker, it’s been nice taking a detour and helping out Wuk Lamat and company on an entirely new continent. I’ll have a fuller review ready later, but so far I’ve really enjoyed this expansion. Wuk Lamat is a great character, and spending more time with Erenville and Krile is never a negative. XIV has always excelled at world building, and getting to see a new region and people’s for the first time, and building up their political and cultural structures, has been such a joy to experience. The music as well has been phenomenal, with Soken pulling out all the stops to bring forth newer styles with varied instruments that really fit the tone and messaging of this expansion. I’ve also been having a blast with the fights and dungeons. This has been an all around enjoyable time and I am so excited for when Arcadion drops in a couple weeks. – Leah

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

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