Animal Crossing

Most important development in Animal Crossing is the formation of WhatsApp group of all the cousins currently living the AC life. Some of them had started long before me, and got really excited for a new edition. Most of the family with Switches already have it. We just need to convince the rest of them to get it and bring the rate to 100%

              As far as the game goes, I’m pretty close to paying off my house. I have donating most of the things to help build Nook’s Cranny. Nook gave me a complimentary ticket which I used to go on a vacation on a random island. I got a few coconuts and mined some iron. I came back to my island and planted the coconuts to have some variety to my island’s flora (or fauna? I forget which one is which). Maybe I should get another ticket to go mine more iron. That should help me finish Nook’s Cranny a lot quicker.

              Money is easier to come by this time around. And that is without investing in the turnip market. The tools breaking down is annoying, but after the success of Breath of The Wild Nintendo will be leaning on this game mechanic pretty heavily. Breaking of the tools does allow the economy of the game to move along. There are points players can earn for doing different chores. Sometimes building tools can be one of the tasks that can net points which are then used to buy things from alternate market.

              Time travelling is the most common form of cheating in Animal Crossing. Players can move the system clock to quickly earn more money and unlock recipes. It also lets the player catch bugs and fish that appear at certain times of the year. I am not too keen on doing that. It seems like too much of a hassle to deal with the clock. Messing with the clock may cause problems with other games. If I do decide to invest in the turnip market, messing with the clock may cause me to lose my investment.

              I have been planting trees every day. The aim is to have at least some fruit to pick every day. As an added bonus, I will have some fruit every day. If anyone decided to come to my island there will always be some fruit for them to pick.

              Not much else to do except decorate the house. I don’t really have enough recipes to go for any kind of theme. Also not creative enough to decorate a house in a meaningful way. Maybe I can convince my wife to help me with it. She has almost zero interest in video games though.

5/30/20

I’ve spent the last few days playing A Link to The Past but have been logging in to Animal Crossing just to keep the streak going. My house is still one room, but now it is a bigger room. So is my loan. There is quite a lot of things strewn about in the name of decorations. Even more things are just sitting in my storage because I have yet to figure out what to do with them. I have been planting trees everywhere. The thought of cutting them down when more people move in bothers me. I truly wish there was more space on the island.

              Speaking of moving in, Tom Nook has confided in me that at least three new residents will be moving in on the island. He wants me to make a bridge so they can move in the suburbs. Nook is a diehard capitalist when I ask him to make renovations to the house. Nothing gets done until the loan is paid and a new loan is accrued. But he suddenly becomes a socialist when he needs me to do something for him. All of a sudden helping him is for the good of the island. This bitch needs to pay me for putting down a bridge or making things for his customers’ houses. I have been trying to convince my wife to play this, too. Hopefully she will be moving in on the island soon.

              Once Nook’s Cranny has been completed (and it is oh so close to completion) I will be able to trade in Turnips. And not a moment too soon since I will be needing to do that to pay Nook off. Fruit sales are barely making a dent in my loan payments.

              I can see the appeal of the game. Especially when talking to my friends about it and sharing what I have learned, helping others while playing. But I still think I will be bored of it pretty soon. I also have a feeling a big reason I keep playing this is to avoid playing Resident Evil. I know there is sunk cost fallacy at work here, but recognizing it is not the same as avoiding it. It isn’t as if I don’t enjoy it. It is hard to justify being stressed for fun at the end of the day after being stressed for work during the day. I’d much rather be on my island (which is literally named garden) with bright colors and mindless fun.

06-01-2020

Animal Crossing

              I know I had said I will be getting on the Animal Crossing train on the first floor, but I have been debating on whether I should buy this game or not. I know for a fact that I will play for a bit and then get bored and not log in for a long time. And then I will be too scared to log in and see my town be a ghost town. I finally broke down and bought it. Not only did I buy it, but I got the digital version instead of a physical copy. To be fair I was always going to buy a digital version. Due to the way this game is played, it is better to have a digital copy so I can have a regular game in there to play and pop in AC to complete my chores every day. I think changing a cart in and out will be too much of friction and keep me from coming back to this game.

              The main reason I bought this game was the fact that so many of my cousins already have this game. At least one of them I convinced to buy it before I even got it. I would love to have the ability to visit the other islands some time in the future. Since I don’t want to go online and find strangers to visit virtually, I am really glad I have friends and family who give me the option for virtual vacations. It would be nice to get fruits and recipes from a different island.

              Last Animal Crossing I played was the 3DS version “New Leaf”. It is a fun game to play in small doses. I ran out of things to do in there pretty quickly though. At that point I stopped playing. I imagine the same thing will happen with this one, too.

              Right now I have moved in to a tent on my new island. I say my island but this is clearly a Tom Nook venture. My island is named Gulshan. Hopefully, I can soon pay the debt off and move into a house. In my two session, I have mostly collected trash and made furniture out of it. Other than that I have bought a few clothes.

              One other thing to do on the island is fishing! Fishing is one of those minigames that are seen in all types of games. So I will probably be rating fishing for quite a few games. Fishing is barely a minigame here. There aren’t much in the way of mechanics. You cast your line wherever you see the shadow of the fish, wait for the fish to bite. When the fish are just close by there is a soft sound. Once they actually bite it is more of a deeper sound. So the whole game is to hear for the deeper sound and pull. If you are too early, or too late the fish escapes. There are other aspects to it though which have more depth to it. Fresh water fish are different from the saltwater fish. There are different ones to catch at different times of the day. And I think there may also be seasonal changes, too. The type of fishing rod does not make a difference in catching. There are no stats to rods other than durability. Better rods last longer. But they also cost more in terms of resources used. Even so, the fishing portion is very satisfying. I can sit and fish until my rods break. Depending on the type of fish, it could be lucrative, too.

              There is also bug catching which I dabbled into a little bit, until my net broke. That was annoying to the say the least. How strong can a bug be to break my actual net. I will do more of bug catching later. First I got to move out of the tent. Just like in real life, you can’t really experiment with too many hobbies while living like a hobo in a tent.

5-28-2020

I Have finally paid my debt to Tom Nook. It really didn’t take as long as I thought it would. I just started playing last night and I’m already out of the tent. But now I owe him another 100,000 bells for the house he’s going to build me. When I say I’m out of the tent what I mean is I’ll be out of it by tomorrow.

              I also found out if you catch enough bugs then you can have a museum open up on your island. I have put a request for that in also. That should be ready by tomorrow as well. There are a couple of other inhabitants on the island and they are still in tents. I don’t know when they will be getting their houses.

              Today I found a recipe for an axe, but I can’t make it yet. I had found a stone which I sold without thinking about crafting. I think I will have to wait until tomorrow for the island to produce another stone to make an axe with. And then I can use that axe to beat up boulders and get more stones. One of my least favorite things in New Leaf was running out of things to do. Clearly that aspect of the game will not be going away. And yet there are a lot more activities to do this time around. I have been wondering if other people can visit the island when I’m not there.

              One more difference compared to the last AC is my character’s position in the game. Player character in New Leaf is the mayor of the town she has moved in to. What little bit of the story I remember is about how she is moving to the town after taking the mayoral job. Which raises all kinds of questions about the state of democracy in their county. Nook is the de facto leader of this community since this settlement is his venture (yay capitalism!). Maybe there will be election later on, once more people move in and Gulshan is no longer a single tent community. But I really doubt Animal Crossing is equipped to handle nuances of democratic elections.

5/28/2020

Persona 5 - Introducing The Class President

This is a hard game to put down. Even though this is my second back-to-back run, I still can not stop playing it. So in an effort to not have all my time consumed by Persona 5, I have decided to only play it during the weekdays, and dabble into other things on the weekends.

For a modern JRPG, it is quite striking how on rails this game is. Some of it is to be expected from a game that imposes strict timeline limitations on the players. There is a finite amount of time that can be spent in the game. Each time an activity is undertaken, the game clock moves forward. This means each activity comes at the expense of everything else that was available to do at that given time. Considering not all activities are available at all times, there is a serious FOMO associated with each decision. This causes some annoyance when the player is railroaded in to conversations that end with only option being going to sleep. Then the player wakes up to be stuck into a similar situation and suddenly a few days have passed without me doing whatever it was I wanted to do. When Joker does get a say, both the choices are just different phrasing of same thought. First I though it mattered what tone I use, but I don’t think it makes any difference. This is just a modern version of “But you must!” trope of the JRPGS

There are a few days before we will know if Madarame has had a change of heart. He will not press charges against the team until his exhibition wraps up so that he can avoid any negative publicity. He has sequestered himself in his house. This deadline is still a few days away. In the mean time there are quite a few things we can do.

The next palace is being set up in this interval. There is a Yakuza boss who has been blackmailing school children in to selling drugs. Makoro Nijima will be the student of focus for this palace. She is Shujin student council president. More interestingly she is the younger sister of the prosecutor who is interrogating Joker in the present timeline. Makoro is being pushed by the inept principal to investigate the Phantom Thieves. I think this is the where the plan to frame them for all the Metaverse crimes starts formulating.

During her investigation, Makoro gets in to it with Ann. Ann accuses her (somewhat unfairly) of turning a blind eye towards the transgressions of Kamoshida, which culminated into him raping Shiho and her subsequent suicide attempt. This hits Makoro hard and drives her even more towards solving the mystery of the identity of the Phantom Thieves.

I find the expectations everyone seems to have for the student council president to be hilarious. When I was in high school, the only things student council had to worry about was setting up homecoming and prom and maybe come up with the design of the class shirt. In this school the president wants her to solve a crime, the police has not been able to solve. The students want her held accountable for the crimes of the teachers. While walking to the school one morning, Joker eavesdrops two students stating they have lost confidence in her ability to govern because of all the recent news about the coach physically abusing the students. She is not governing shit. The only thing she realistically has any control over may be what time the pep rally starts.

Mokoro teams up with the gang to find the drug runners so they can figure out who is blackmailing all the students. While investigating around Shibuya I ran into a pretty sleazy guy. He was trying to convince a school girl to shoot porn. He did not come right out and say it but the context was pretty clear. Persona 5 really does not shy away from the social problems relevant to the younger people of today. After running into few dead ends (figuratively and literally), I was able to find the rat faced Yakuza boss who was responsible for using the students to traffic drugs. Mokoro, in her bout hot headedness, runs straight in and gets caught. The others don’t have any choice but to go in after her. Here they have pictures taken which makes it look like they are hanging out with Yakuza. This puts the whole team in a compromising position. This guy is a low level Yakuza with dreams of rising through the ranks. His name is Kaneshiro. And to make his dreams a reality, he isn’t using Square Space like normal people. Instead he has been extorting students. So he asks the team an exorbitant sum of money or else he will release the pictures on the internet. This will get them expelled from school. And we all know that will go on the permanent record which will follow them all their life. Kaneshiro gives them a few days to come up with the money, thus establishing the timeline for palace completion.

Next time tune in to see the Phantom Thieves as they attempt a bank heist.

05-04-2020

Persona 5 - Madarame

Having the end game weapons does make it easier to run through the palace in one go. There wasn’t much to do in this palace except to get to the end. The only reason I did not complete in a single day was due to mandatory break where the team has to go back to the real world. Since this is the subconscious of the villain, the events of the real world change the structure of the palace. This will come into play a few more times later on, but not as much as I wanted. This is such a cool concept. Doing something in the real world changes how the villain perceives himself and the world around him. And that change is manifested in the palace by making it easier to traverse. I wish there were optional events the player could use to trigger these changes. As it stands, all the time it happens is mandatory.

When confronted, Madarame talks of a mysterious black clad figure. He thinks the mysterious figure is also part of the Phantom Thieves. The Thieves were baffled by this. They have no idea who this is. This is the earliest Akechi’s presence in the metaverse is mentioned. He has been active in the metaverse for a while at this point. He is probably keeping an eye on all the people who are criminally attached to Oshida. Both Akech and Oshida will become known much later during the story of the game, even though both have already appeared or mentioned by this time.

Sayuri is the last famous piece of art Madarame has produced. It will later turn out even this was not his creation. This is a portrait of a woman looking lovingly to one side. Whatever she is looking at is not in the frame. The portrait is famous for the mystery of what has elicited such a strong look of love from the woman. Some say she is a mother looking at her child, while others contend she is looking at her lover. There is only a black cloud where the object of her affection should be. This piece has also been famously stolen. During part of the game, Ann has to open a door within Madarame’s house. This is the instance of causing a change in the real world to trigger a change in the event. When the door is opened we see there are multiple copies of Sayuri sitting inside. Madarame has been running a scam with this piece. The picture was never stolen. He has made multiple copies of it. He tells art collectors that the piece has been recovered but he can not come out and say that because he would owe money to the insurance. So he wants to sell it because he is in a bad shape financially. The collector buys the copy from him but does not tell anyone due to the respect Madarame commands. He has been doing, among other things, to fund his lifestyle.

Portion of the money he gets from this scam goes to Oshida (I will explain who he is when the time comes, I promise). This is probably why Oshida is using Akechi to spy on Madarame within his palace. But Akechi apparently is not as good at keeping himself hidden and Madarame has noticed him lurking around here. This is the first palace where the Thieves have come into direct collision with the machinations Oshida has put in place. Kamoshida was not important enough to garner any attention from the higher powers at play here. He was a school teacher who turned out to be a rapist.

During this play through, the life simulator parts of the game hold more appeal to me. I have already seen the dungeons, and have collected most of the personas I can. I am trying to get through the palace in the least amount of days possible. This way I have most of the time left over to upgrade my social links. Having maxed out the social skills in the last playthrough has helped quite a bit. It means I don’t have to worry about spending time reading books or bathing and stuff. Also all the social links aspects are open to me right from the start. There are still time gates for some of the friendships. Some friends just don’t become available until a certain date. There are others which can not proceed until certain story events take place. Even with those there is so much to do. I don’t think there is enough time to do everything even in two playthroughs.

My playtime is significantly less this time around though. On my initial run, I beat the museum in about 20 hours. This time I got done in about 10 hours. At least some of it is from skipping all the cutscenes. Another chunk of time is saved because I have better understanding of each palace. I don’t waste time figuring out where to go this time around.

During the boss fight, Madarame turns into paintings. Each one has different weaknesses and strengths. A party attack of any kind will inevitably heal at least one of the paintings. His manifestation is not as grotesque as the previous boss, but it is definitely more challenging. This battle foreshadows the final boss battle. The mechanics are pretty much the same albeit this battle being the simpler version. Madarame is beaten, Yusuke has joined the team and now we wait for the teacher to have a change of heart.

04-29-2020

Persona 5 - Madarame’s Palace

            I have not completed this palace yet, but a few things have stood out to me so far. Madarame’s sin is plagiarism (Kamoshida’s sin was lust and related atrocities). The manifestation of Madarame’s palace being a museum fits better with his theme than Kamoshida’s castle did with his theme. The man is an artist so it is only natural that all his work would be on display in a museum. It symbolizes first and foremost his narcissism. Almost every piece of art he is famous for, was created by someone else. Even his most famous piece was made by someone else. His only inspiration was hiding the baby so the look of love from the woman became mysterious. Back to the point of art itself. None of the pieces hanging in the museum are actual pieces of art. They are all portraits of his students. He justifies stealing the work of others by thinking he is creating the artist itself, so every work they create is his creation.

            There is a small cut scene where the chief of investigation agency is musing about the sudden confessions of Kamoshida. So at this moment in the story, the grand plan of framing the Phantom Thieves has not been set in motion. That makes sense considering the actual group has just been formed. It will only be later when the powers that be will treat the Thieves as useful idiots to shift the blame of all of their crimes.

            The game deals with Ann’s discomfort in posing in the nude in a very trivial manner. I kept looking for an option to break in without putting her in a compromising position, but there wasn’t any. I know that it was necessary for the story to proceed the way it did, but the flippant way both the boys went about coercing her into doing it left a bad taste in my mouth. It is even worse when you put it in context of what has happened with her and Shiho. The fact that she was being forced to perform sexual favors by Kamoshida means she probably has some degree of residual trauma lingering. This situation may be more traumatic than usual for her. I wish it was dealt with a little more tact. But then again, these are high school students. Maybe not having a whole lot tact is on par for them.

            It is notable the game makes a special effort to highlight those who may be a force of corruption in the education system. If this game was made in the United States, Betsy Devos might have had her own castle in here. There are two villains who directly damage the students by compromising the education system. Then there is one more who manipulates students. And lastly, there is the principal who just wants to get ahead and does not mind using the students. Since the main characters are students, it is logical education and the school system would be the focus of the narrative. More importantly, the game is trying to say the rot that eats through education decays the whole society. It is only understandable then the rehabilitation of the whole of the society should also start from the schools and the education system.

            Ohya the journalist makes her first appearance here. She is investigating the claims that Madarame has been stealing art from his students. She will feature more prominently much later in the game, but the seeds of relationship with her are sowed here.

4-28-2020