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My usual luck is back again!


Only took 330 rolls (pity) to get her but I did get 10 Locustas and a freebie Tlaloc so that's some silver lining. With this I am officially going turtle mode until Aesc to at least guarantee her plus swimsuit Castoria. Worst case if my luck persists I'll miss out on Melusine but hopefully I don't go to full pity 4 times in a row.

Oh yea that does sound like a pretty big deal. Well I hope you managed to take some time to grieve and that your living situation wasn't severely impacted. Of course don't worry about replying to me if you're busy or just not in the mood. I'll still be here if you decide to take a break. For now I'll just reply as usual.

Unfortunately my job thing did not work out and I effectively wasted 2 months of my life on this (including interviews and waiting). It is nice being able to sleep again and catch up on some games but it is annoying that I did all that for nothing. Especially since it looks like they didn't really have any intention of hiring me in the first place unless I managed to magically gain 3-5 years of Docker experience during the 2 weeks. It was a case of us pushing a bad connection too hard to the point where they felt obligated to give me a "chance" for appearance sake but not really.
I'm still deciding what to do going forward but I think I'm done with internships at this point. Unless there's a concrete contract with payment involved from the start I'm just not gonna do any of this stuff. I'll just focus on learning a coding language and doing my masters like I mentioned a while ago. There's zero pressure for me to start earning money right now other than me just wanting to.
I've had to shift my sleep schedule this way many times in the past so I was able to adapt in like a week. I'm still going to bed around 11-12 now and waking up at 8-9 which is still relatively "normal". Although unless something comes up quickly that's likely to keep getting pushed back like I said.

It was a screeching parrot that never shut up and bit you whenever you got near his cage including to replace the food/water. It hated being in the cage, kept chewing through everything and managed to escape into the room multiple times. We kept it for 5 years and it was a total menace until we finally decided to give it away to some bird sanctuary. It was the worst concoction of bad breed, not being hand raised, and having owners not equipped to deal with him. The breed was Alexandrine parakeet if you want to know what not to ever buy.

I understand if they have to cut you off at a buffet if you're eating too much but surprise charging you at the end is complete bullshit. I'll have to be careful and confirm what their terms are then if I do ever go to one. Although lowkey I'd probably refuse to pay or dispute the charge on my card if they did that.
Nah the eel was just on top of some rice wrapped in a little seaweed strap to keep it on. I took one bite raw and dipped the other half in soy sauce. If the one you like has a special sauce it might not be regular eel nigiri then. I never tried ramen. I know it's such a famous Japanese dish so I'll probably try it but I'm not a fan of noodles in general.

Legends Arceus is set in ancient Sinnoh and yes some of the characters are ancestors of the DPP characters. The village boss guy Kamado is professor Rowan's ancestor. Akari is Dawn's obviously. Arezu Mars', Volo Cynthia's etc. Though they did add some new characters like Irida who don't resemble anyone. But even for the ancestors they changed them enough so they don't feel like generic clones. There's just a resemblance but they have their own unique personalities.
There was a lot of interesting stuff leaked but the Typhlosion memes were just hilarious. I love Mega Lopunny's design but it's a really fun Pokemon to use as well. They really took mediocre mon and just made it amazing.
I did like Dawn a lot back when I watched the show as a kid. Anime wise she'd still be up there for sure. The games just have so many great characters though that don't even exist in the anime.
+1 on Paul
I do recommend playing SM. Just play the original games and not USUM. They made some big changes to the story which I think really lowered its quality/impact. Other than that I think they did some really new, interesting and bold stuff with the games. Z moves were probably the last good mechanic they made too. I think the peak meta was Megas plus Z moves.

Unfortunately Journey's was bad to okay. They really did Galar dirty by making this season a mix of all the regions. Even on that side they did a pretty bad job. There were a few episodes where they meet up with Dawn or go back to Alola but most of it was just boring episodic stuff that didn't have anything to do with Ash's previous adventures. Also adding this new character Gou as the secondary protagonist was the worst decision they could have made for this season. Could have used ANY of the SS characters and it would have been better. Or maybe have Ash travel with old companions for a period while he's in a given region. Gou is also just an annoying whiny generic guy who he really brought down the quality of the season. Meanwhile Koharu/Chloe is voiced by Kana Hanazawa and she saved the show from being terrible during the downtime/filler. She's not the most amazing character ever and didn't get nearly as much focus as she deserved but she was at least nice to have around.
And yea you probably heard about Ash's world championship performance. That part of the show was definitely fun but a lot of the victories were undeserved especially since Ash only used his newly caught Pokemon. Like no Charizard Greninja dream team to showcase his years of accomplishments. Nothing. Just hey, here's Pikachu OHKO-ing a champion level Gastrodon from full by deflecting a rock back at it with quick attack. Brilliant strategy and writing all around.

Hmm okay I'll keep those FF games in mind after I'm done with VII. Btw have you played any Kingdom Hearts games? I know it's like Disney stuff with some Final Fantasy characters mixed on. I always thought the main girl with the red hair looked cute but never played it. Might be a good game to check out after i finish remake.

Yea it's definitely not any of those girls either. I Googled DMC girls to take a look and it might have been this one?
But I'm not completely sure. I just remember it was a music video for one of the songs and cute a girl popped up for a few seconds.
They're making another DMC show? Looks like it's some sort of Western thing though. Well let me know if it's any good.
So Patty is only in the anime but is still cannon in the games even though she only has a voice appearance over the phone? Well okay at least it's not just some non canon filler thing.
Didn't even know there was a new Bleach game but I guess the timing makes sense with the final season approaching.

Priconne might have been my favorite gacha game but of course that's the one that gets shut down first. Even setting aside Rem it had many great girls like Kokkoro and Neneka. RIP
Speaking of Rem, it looks like they immediately announced season 4 of Re:Zero after the 3rd one ended.
Rem is on the cover so God willing they rushed through the shitty story and she's finally gonna wake up some time in season 4. I think that was the early estimate from what LN readers were saying all the way back in 2016.
Then I'm actually gonna go back to watching to show instead of just bitching about it every time a new season comes out.

I lowkey considered rolling for Shuten (Ibaraki also on the banner) but then I looked at the upcoming characters against and decided against it. Congratulations on getting her regardless since I know you tried getting her before. Hopefully she serves you well. I like the Dioscuri girl but her brother's always there and he's an asshole so ehh. Very unlikely to ever pull them.
On that note:
Only took 30 pulls so I'm pretty happy with it. Still have no idea if she's any good meta wise but the second I saw this artwork 2-3 years ago I knew I was 100% gonna pull. Looks like it's another loli to adult ascension situation so I'll probably leave her like this. And since my pulls were lucky it means Beast Draco is next.
Unfortunately that's clearly where all my luck went since I rolled for this cow girl and Iansan in Genshin today and my rolls were disastrous. Lost the 50-50 on Varesa, full pity both times and I didn't even get C6 on Iansan (4 star). Just ugh.

I started FFVII remake but only got up to chapter 8 where Cloud falls down from that reactor and now I'm suppose to do some side quests with Aerith. I really liked the expansion of the story especially stuff like hanging around with Tifa and learning about life down in the slums, but as far as the main story changes like with those dementor things I'll have to play more of the game to tell if they're good or not.
Gameplay wise though, ehh....This is gonna sound bad but it reminds me of that shitty SAO game I played a few months. It's definitely not as bad but a lot of the mechanics are similar and not in a good way. Like all those airborne enemies that I have to jump up to hit. Enemies tracking you with 0 delay and performing instant attacks with no warning that also knock you down and you can't quickly recover. Also I hate that stupid action gauge that makes it so I can't disengage and heal.
I know there's a "classic" mode which I haven't tried yet but the description doesn't sound like it's exactly like FFVII. Maybe I should give it a try.

On another note, did you heard about that much anticipated samurai game that just came out where you get to play as a legendary black samurai and kill a bunch of Japanese people while destroying their temples and stuff? It's 100% historically accurate and I hear it's been doing really well on Steam. Apparently it's so good Ubisoft decided to copy it and release a parody game but this one is clearly better and more historically accurate.
Literally the same day Disney also released their new film, Snow Woke and the 7 CGI abominations so I've been having lots of fun watching the downfall of both. XD

Not sure it would be a hunting adaptation vs a more recent one from when humans were already living in societies. When you have artificial light I guess there's no real reason why the entire society would need to be inactive for a 3rd of the day when they could be doing something productive. But for some reason our modern societies seem poorly optimized for that. When there is night work its always seen as some unusual thing that a person can maybe do once a week but not regularly. I guess depending on the type of programing work you might be able to just do it at night and nobody would ask when you did it. Or maybe working some sort of online job where the company is located in another time zone.

There have been some updates on my job thing. I did end up getting the call I was waiting for and have been working another internship this past week which is why it took me a while to respond. I've got one more week of unpaid and then they're either gonna start paying me (probably a 1-2 month contract to start) or its gonna fall through and I'm gonna have to do something else. Honestly I'm okay with either outcome. Either I start making money or get to go back to sitting at home and am probably gonna learn a programing language in that case. As for my sleep schedule I ended up just not sleeping at all the first day until I got back home and then went to bed at like 5pm (so ~26h of no sleep). Then just kept doing that a few days and last night went to bed at 10pm. I guess that's "normal" now as long as I don't mess it up during the weekend.

Nope never even seen a hamster in real life but I did get bit by my parrot and it ripped right through the skin on my finger. And a stray dog bit my leg once. That's about it. We have some bears in the national parks but nowhere near the capital where I live. But I've seen enough of them online to know how dangerous they are, especially when they start getting used to humans and associating them with food. They're fast, can climb and will rip you to shreds for no reason. I love foxes so people hunting them really upset me as a child. Like there was that one movie with the fox and the dog.

I wonder how expensive that all you can eat option is since sushi isn't very filling and I could probably clean out several portions if they let me. Regardless none of the sushi places around here offer it. It's a very luxury food choice. About double the price of a pizza or something at a Chinese restaurant.
I did end up having some sushi last weekend (partly due to the conversation we had XD) and got one of those eel nigiri to try. It was definitely fine but I wasn't blown away or anything. Closest comparison I could make is probably squid. I've never had takoyaki either. I'd love to try it along with other stuff I see all the time in anime.
Now I'm starting to wonder whether we have any Japanese food restaurants other than just sushi here. I'm sure there are some. Might look into that next time I wanna eat/order out.

Legends Arceus was probably the best Pokemon game they've made since BW2. It still could have been way better if not for some issues but I still enjoyed it. Unfortunately doesn't look like they're gonna be fixing those in the new ZA game and are probably gonna go backwards instead.
Regardless, Akari, Arezu, Irida. Just hit after hit after hit. And I loved the atmosphere of the game with being in an old village setting and exploring the wilderness. I would happily live there and marry any of the 3 girls I listed.
It did have some weird new mechanics which made some battles difficult but really it's all one battle where they make you fight against a full team of 6....and then a legendary without healing that 1 shots most Pokemon. In their defense it is a post game battle but still part of the story. Kinda like Red on Mt. Silver I guess. Was a badass af moment though.

lol must be hard having Typhlosion as your favorite ever since those leaks XD My favorite Pokemon is Mega Lopunny.
I started watching the anime during gen IV so that's where most of my nostalgia is. Favorite movie would be rise of Darkrai. But I did watch the entire series (up to BW) twice when I learned you could find all the episodes online. Then I took a multi year long break from the franchise but came back recently to watch XY, SM and Journeys.
Hard to say which season is my favorite but gen IV probably had the best story and overarching narrative. Although SM might be my favorite because it has a chill atmosphere and doesn't take itself too seriously. Also has the best girls. I love so many of them but my favorite human character is Lillie. Moreso the game version but anime version is fine too.
Haven't played SV either but I think the character designs really took a hit with this generation. Especially since Marnie, Gloria and Bea were in the previous one.
I do like Iono and Lacey at least so clearly they can still make good looking characters when they want to. Regarding Mela, I don't know what those boots and hair are but I guess her face is cute. I play Pokemon masters EX (gacha game) and they recently added her which was my first time even seeing the character. Didn't pull.

Well sure if I never played any game made after 1997 I probably would give FFVII a 10/10. The main competitor would be something like Pokemon Red. But gaming is one of those industries where visual quality just skyrocketed exponentially up to a point. These days the "improvements" aren't nearly as noticeable. Something like Dark Souls wouldn't take much of a hit for being an old game. Or something like Touhou 6-8 where the visual quality doesn't take away from the gameplay experience at all. Or I guess maybe the sprites would. But yea 1997 to 2011 vs 2011 to 2025 is a completely different ballpark when it comes to quality improvements in games. But I heard FVII was insanely advanced for its time even. Like super hard and expensive to make.

For people who went from being fans of FFVII to seeing Advent Children, I'm sure it was an insane amount of hype to see those old chibi characters animated like this with those improved 3D models. For me I already saw the remake models but at the time it would have been insane. But really it's not about the focus on action, the story parts they decided to focus on where just the wrong ones. Like we could have seen the direct aftermath of the meteor disaster and Cloud/Tifa starting their new life. Opening the bar, Cloud doing odd jobs and eventually starting his delivery business, getting his bike. You have to read the Tifa novel to learn about any of that. Advent children just glossed over it and expected you to read the novel or connect dots together from small details.

"On the Way to a Smile" is a series of short novels and they are divided into these "episodes". That stupid OVA is an adaptation of episode Denzel (I skimmed through it, Tifa shows up for like 10 seconds when she answers the phone call) but then there's also Episode Tifa (the one I'm talking about where you learn about her and Cloud's lives from the end of the game up to Advent Children. It's short and I do recommend reading it), episode Yuffie (haven't read it yet, I might), episode Barret etc.
Speaking of FF waifus, do you have any other recommendations for this series past VII? Like ones you think I might like. I'd at least consider them.

Hmm I don't think any of those DMC girls were the one I saw. I think it was a girl with pinkish hair but I could be misremembering. Lady looks the best out of the ones you listed. Also apparently there's an anime and I immediately noticed this girl: https://myanimelist.net/character/5500/Patty_Lowell
Wonder if she's in any of the games or just that.

The fights with regenerating villains are always so stupid. I remember even back in DBZ when the entire Buu saga was characters beating him up over and over and over again but it just doesn't matter because he's a squishy gumball and always regenerates. Even when Vegeta completely obliterated him with his sacrifice he just comes back because ehh the arc need to keep going. Such lazy writing.
Grimmjow got done dirty for sure. We didn't get to see what Nel was doing but hopefully it won't go that way for her.
I don't know if Uryu at least learned something that might help them defeat Yhwach later. That would at least make sense writing wise but I don't think we've seen it so far. I guess the blonde guy did tell him Yhwach's backstory so maybe he didn't know it? Also if Ichigo really could have killed Yhwach if they had fought 10 minutes sooner, Uryu probably fucked everyone with his interference.

I've seen Himiko around a lot. All I know is she's a crazy girl with a knife (possibly yandere)? I'll probably like her. Don't know anything about the other one. Nice to hear that about Ochako and the animation so I'll definitely keep my expectations high going in.

Anyway since my free time might be non existent soon I decided to start FFVII Remake over the weekend and at least get through some of the game. Then maybe I'll play it on workdays for the 2-4 hours of free time I manage to scrape by even if I'm not in the mood. Might just be how things have to be going forward so I'll give it a try now.
Also Priconne did another Re:Zero collab with a swimsuit Rem but unfortunately it's JP only because Global shut down 2 years ago (RIP). Thankfully some guy translated it and uploaded the event plus bonding scenes on YouTube so I can at least watch it there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KaAbVolM6c
I'm way more interested in this than some shitty 3rd season where Rem is completely absent.

That's interesting since I'm the same way regarding sleep schedules and pretty much every friend I made on the internet says the same thing if the topic comes up. When I don't have to wake up for anything my body just naturally pushes when I need to sleep back until around 5 AM and then I sleep to 1-3 PM. Makes me wonder if there's something natural to it even though society forces us all to live in this 9-5 workday schedule and hates people who are "night owls". I actually considered getting a security job that has night shifts but the problem there is they keep changing your shift around. You don't just get to work at night consistently.

Capybaras are basically giant rodents and I have no doubt those teeth could chew straight through bone. They might be mild mannered but you never know with large wild animals. I'm also terrified of bears for similar reasons but that's probably more common. Meanwhile I've always loved foxes since I was a kid. My parents jumped through hoops to find me a stuffed fox for my birthday since nobody made/sold those.

I was never a big watcher of PewDiePie but I started following him around when he first started playing Minecraft. Already well into his YouTube career and closer to his current upload schedule. Later I started liking him way more because of his family vlogs in Japan. He just seems like a really genuine dude at least from everything I've seen of him. Also stuff like his learning to draw and reading philosophy books. Actually setting a good example for his audience unlike most influencers. He still posts videos but definitely not daily anymore. Usually vlogs or gaming stuff.
If his house in Japan was burglarized I imagine it must have been an organized thing where they knew who he was and that he'd likely have money/valuables. Like you say Japan is one of the safest countries in the world but having that kind of money with lax security is always gonna draw unwanted attention.

I love everything salmon related even setting aside sushi. Just cooking it a bit with some salt tastes so good. So yea when it comes to sushi salmon based dishes are also my preference. Sashimi, nigiri, maki, all amazing. The sushi restaurant I frequent has meal sets where you get more value and they have a salmon one so that's usually what I order. Comes with Miso soup as well which is a huge bonus. You have got to try it next time you're at a restaurant that has it.
Don't think I've ever tried eel but sure I'll see if they have it next time. You can always order extra individual pieces if you want.

I saw emerald weapon has 1 million HP while my character's damage is capped at 9999 per hit. Yea just no thanks. I hate damage caps like that especially when enemies have way more HP. And the fucking time limit. The reward was just some crap I was never gonna use anyway. I just got Cloud's ultimate weapon from the one that runs away, got his final limit break from the battle arena thing and then went to stomp Sephiroth. Of course I had Tifa and Yuffie's limit breaks unlocked too. Oh and I for sure used them both completely wrong than you're meant to. Tifa was my full mage and Yuffie was my support/healer. They were just the characters I wanted to use and those were the classes I needed XD
The main Pokemon games were always piss easy as far as I was concerned. You can basically win any battle with just your overleved starter using neutral moves. And maybe one evolved bird as backup. Legends Arceus was probably the hardest one. Don't think we've talked about Pokemon before btw. I used to be a huge fan so it might be a fun topic.

Never played Cave Story but I've had situations where I've had to jump through hoops like that to save a specific character. Most recently with Melina in Elden ring XD
If I really care I'll replay the whole game. If it's for something stupid then maybe I'll just watch the alternate scene on YouTube or something.
My first impressions of Yuffie were not good with how hyper active she was and then running off for no reason instead of joining my party because I asked her name, forcing me to replay the last 2 hours. But after we got to Wutai and her actual story I did start liking her. Of course I thought she was cute from artworks before even touching this game.
If I was gonna rate FFVII I would give it a 7/10 which is really unfair considering the game came out almost 30 years ago and I'm comparing it to stuff like Nier:Automata and Elden Ring. But just the graphics and gameplay hold it back a lot even though it has great story and characters. With that said the remake could easily go up a few scores since it addresses both of those issues. So here's hoping it lives up to its potential.

I think consoles have put gaming in a real bad place over the years with stuff like console exclusives making you buy a whole ass console just to play 1 game when you have a perfectly good PC (or even different console). Same with handhelds and bullshit like that when all this stuff could easily run on PC and does with emulators.

Last Order was basically just a recap of Cloud's backstory from Zack's perspective. I never played his spin off game but I basically pieced everything together from the main game and Advent Children. Seemed like a cool guy and a mentor character for Cloud.
Advent Children was good but not amazing unfortunately. Putting so much focus on those random new villains, the Turk guys and that sick kid Cloud picked up was not a good call when making a finale type sequel to a game like FFVII. I'm pretty sure each of those 3 groups got more screen time in this than Tifa. Definitely more than Yuffie and the rest that basically just got cameos. So yea that was disappointing. I did get that Cloud vs Sephiroth fight that I (and I assume many other fans) have been wanting. So that was nice.
We did at least get to see a little of what Cloud and Tifa did after the game events but there really wasn't much focus on it. I did read some short novel thing called "On the Way to a Smile" which went into more details. They're living together with Marlene and that new kid as a "family" but don't seem to actually be dating or anything. By the end of the movie they made up but their relationship is still left ambiguous. I don't get why you'd do that in what's basically the conclusion to the story. It's not like you have any reason to bait the audience unless they were considering more sequels at the time. Guess I'll have to wait and see how the remake goes about it.

Never played any DMC game but the franchise is on my radar. I think I saw a cute girl in it at one point or another. Although I know it's mostly about some guy Vergil being a badass.
I only remember hesoyam because I spammed that whenever I needed to heal. Which was a lot XD

Uhh yea sure you could view it that way. Although it was more of a situation of thinking: "Okay what skills do I have that I could make a career out of? Speaking English and computer stuff." And computer stuff pays better plus I can do it in English. But obviously the reason I know computer stuff is my dad teaching me about computers since I was like 3 so it is connected.

The Nemu episode was great but it looks like this is probably the end of her involvement in the story unless there's a group photo or something at the end. I know it's all hype and stuff that Bleach came back but these same enemies coming back to life over and over again is just so fucking stupid. Clearly Kubo just needed lesser enemies for the side characters to fight and got too lazy to design more. This is like the 3rd time they've fully come back to life and while alive they can all just take infinite beatings and keep regenerating. That is the most boring type of ability for characters to have because it makes actions/attacks have less meaning. I love fast paced battles where every movement is important and any attack has big/lasting consequences if it connects. So the opposite of this show right now.
This is basically why I've been giving the new Bleach seasons 8/10s after the initial one.
Oh and fuck that poison blood guy. His ability is so stupidly broken and annoying. You walk into his massive range without even noticing and just insta die without him having to do much of anything. Wow so cool. And of course hitting him does nothing either because he's also invincible on top. Should have just made Nel and Grimmjow immune to his bullshit because they're hollows and have them fight him. At least that would have made some sense. Guess it might still happen but Grimmjow is down for nothing. Meh.
Uryu just switching sides again without really having accomplished anything by pretending to work for Yhwach. About what I expected.

Haven't seen any of MHA but I definitely plan to so no spoilers please. It's a show I keep wanting to watch but then a new season gets announced so I figure I'll just wait for that one to finish airing and before you know its 9 years later, the manga's over and the anime is about to end too. At this point I might as well just wait for the whole thing to end and watch it at once. Mostly avoided spoilers but I do know many of the characters by now. Expecting Ochako to be my favorite but keeping an eye on Tsuyu as well. Her derpy frog face is surprisingly cute.

I still had to go to the university building itself for exams and such but it was still very convenient getting to avoid all the hassle of going there every day. The thing I hated most about school was having to sit there for ~6 hours a day doing nothing for half of that time.
Depending on the job sure but the one I'm currently trying to get would involve doing the 9 to 5 or whatever the exact hours are. There's actually been some movement on that so I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.

Oh yea I heard that thing about tattoos in Japan. It's because having them is associated with being Yakuza right? Thankfully I don't have any issues on that front but I guess it's just another reason not to make permanent cosmetic changes to your body like that.
Yea cat island might be a destination too. Capybaras seem kinda terrifying so maybe wouldn't be jumping at that opportunity.
I've known about the Yakuza franchise for years but never played anything from it. I saw a bit of the new Pirate yakuza in Hawaii game and it seems ridiculous but in a fun way. Maybe I'd enjoy it but definitely not a priority right now.
Are you talking about PewDiePie? I know he moved to Japan and has a kid now. Guy really made his money and is living the dream now. Definitely won at YouTube.
Anyway before I take the trip I'll look into possible tour agencies or read on forums if there are any good places to meet English speaking Japanese people. Idk it's still in the theoretical phase for now.
Not sure if its common to make statues for manga authors but AoT was a pretty massive worldwide phenomenon. The statue is of Eren, Mikasa and Armin as kids looking up at the big damn that inspired Isayama to create the walls of AoT. Pretty inspiration but like I said it's pretty bitter now. Not even sweet really.
Never heard of the Naruto theme park. If there's Hinata related stuff I might be interested. Yes I do love Japanese food especially sushi and miso soup. Definitely something I would like to sample while there. I even learned how to use chopsticks although I'm probably not the best at it.

It took me like 8 days to finish disc one, 2 days for disc 2 and 1 day for disc 3. Really disc 3 could have been 1-2 hours but I followed the guide and spent a whole day grinding, collecting all the items I never used and doing pointless side quests. Then beat the final boss effortlessly since I was so overprepared. I definitely wasn't speedrunning either since I collected basically every single item in the game and the only thing I didn't do was waste time on minigames like breeding the birds etc. Also didn't kill the giant emerald and ruby weapons. Only did the one that dropped Cloud's ultimate sword. So yea I think I experienced most of the game. Probably didn't take as long since I didn't waste time exploring with the different vehicles and stuff because the guide told me where to go. If I was a kid I'd probably spend a month wandering around looking for secrets (or the story) etc.
I'm used to being able to miss character from Fire Emblem but those encounters are usually pretty straightforward. They usually have some special dialogue hinting that they might be willing to switch sides and then you just have to talk to them with a specific character. And if you kill them they're dead which makes sense. With Yuffie
she just runs off for no reason like asking her name and then you miss her forever. Pretty lame. Btw I didn't even know Yuffie was gonna be in this even though I've seen artworks of her before.

Unfortunately I was already spoiled about Aerith's death although I had no clue about the circumstances around it. It's one of the like 2 things I knew about the game going in, the other being Cloud having a big ass sword XD I'm sure it was a big emotional moment for lots of people growing up but I'm so desensitized by now with stuff like AoT and Danganronpa that it's hard to get me emotionally invested in anything. The outdated presentation and spoiler probably didn't help.
At least the stuff regarding Cloud's past was completely unknown to me. They definitely had me going for a bit there wondering what the fuck was going on with the town etc. I thought he might really be a clone or something made with Cloud/Tifa's memories but in that case her being so attached to him made no sense. The reveal of him being one of the masked soldiers was pretty insane.
I thought the story was great but the ending felt a little anticlimactic. Specifically Sephiroth was so chatty before but he literally doesn't say a word during the entire encounter with his real body or anything. And then Cloud has his final 1v1 battle against Sephiroth's human form but just one shots him. Probably should have made that more of a scripted battle where they fight a bit first. And talk ffs.
Other than some of those nitpicks I enjoyed the story and characters a lot. It was a great game despite some of the jankiness that comes with being a 30 year old game.
Tifa was also way more girly and waifu-y than I would have expected based on her design which was nice to see. I love the duality when girls are badass but also have that softer side to them. Her interactions with Cloud were pretty cute and wholesome.

Has there ever been a PC port of something that didn't have terrible optimization at launch? I remember when I played Nier:Automata on PC years ago it kept crashing and that was a common complaint. More recently The last of us and that SAO game. Companies just do not care about PC ports at all. They don't even make a playable default control layout. Imo the devs should be required to beat the game with the default controls they set up before releasing it. That would fix a lot of these issues.
Yea I see Tifa's tights now that you bring it up. I also kinda prefer the older design without them. Not sure why the change.

Haven't watched Advent Children yet but I did already come across that information about the complete edition so I am planning to watch that version. There's also this 25 min thing which I'm not expecting much from but I'll watch it anyway: https://myanimelist.net/anime/408/Final_Fantasy_VII__Last_Order
After that I think I'll just read Tifa's wiki instead of playing those other games to see if there's anything interesting. And then FFVII remake of course since it's a different timeline or something. Predicting right now that Aerith will either not die or get revived somehow.

I always played San Andreas with every cheat enabled and still had trouble with that train chase despite using bazookas, flying cars and jet packs XD

My dad used to help me with PC building since knowing that stuff was kinda his job but he doesn't play video games so these days I'm probably more informed about the new graphics cards and stuff. But yea its definitely useful to know so you don't get scammed, waste money or overpay for stuff.
Laptops are also often difficult to do maintenance on or replace parts and stuff if something breaks. Usually the manufacturers don't want you opening them up at all and either paying them to fix it or buying a new one. Same thing with mobile phones.

It's basically impossible to "legally" watch anime in my country other than a very limited selection of shows usually with terrible dubs. So yea i don't care. in Japan they can just watch it for free on TV with no effort at all. If I could do that I probably would.
Can't say I'm too hyped about what I've seen of Nightreign so far but sure we might be able to make that work by the time the game comes out. We'll come back to that in a few months.

I could see the slime author just wanting to write an isekai story but having to add in cute girls because that's the only way anything sells. I only watched it for Shuna so case in point. In the past I did have an elitist phase where I'd scoff at fanservice and watch "serious stuff" for the plot but these days I don't have the time or energy to care. If I'm gonna watch one of the 50 million things on my backlog, might as well be something with attractive characters in it. If the story ends up being good its a nice bonus.

Small update, I did finish FFVII today since it turns out discs 2 and 3 were way shorter. I'll tell you my full thoughts next time but if you wanted to mention any spoilers feel free to do so now. I'm gonna watch this thing next since it's suppose to be a sequel to the original game: https://myanimelist.net/anime/317/Final_Fantasy_VII__Advent_Children
And then I can go into Remake with the same information older fans would have had.

lol no there wasn't much balancing going on. When we had classes it was maybe 4-6 classes per day and since Covid we've had the option to listen to them all online and it counts as attendance. So I could just join the call and play a gacha game or something in the background. Usually I'd be done by 1 o'clock and have the rest of the day to do whatever. The comparison between that and actually having to wake up early, get dressed, commute to work, sit there for 8 fucking hours, commute back. And then I'm tired for the rest of the day and can't do anything that requires brain activity like play/read through a game's story. That's why I took a break from Lostbelt 7 until the weekend the week I started my internship. So yea night and day. I guess the weekend is the only saving grace where you might be able to enjoy something. At least until you get to use your vacation days.
The course was simply IT (Information Technology). At a 4 year private university fully accredited by Europe and all that. Anyway the job I was talking about last time might not end up happening after all. Or it still might but it's less likely than a week ago because of government instability shit. Regardless I'm already considering other options like getting a masters degree and possibly learning a coding language in the meantime (I have some knowledge from classes but not enough to work). Looks like coding is where all the money and jobs are at. In that case I might postpone my joining the workforce for another year which might not be the worst thing.

I think any plane I could take to Japan would leave me in Tokyo so I guess exploring that city is sort of a given. I'd like to do a month long trip where I visit various places. For example I saw one hotel which is like a traditional Japanese one with a hot spring like you see in anime. Staying in a place like that for a few days might be nice. There's a place called Fox village where they have a bunch of tame foxes running around which might fun. Other than that I'd wanna their traditional temples and other landmarks. It would be great if I could meet some Japanese people while there to show me around and stuff but I don't know how realistic that is. Oh and I wanted to visit Isayama's hometown where they have that AoT statue built. Although that part's just bitter now so I don't know if it's even worth the effort. But going there once was on my bucket list.

Was way harder to set up than it should have been, but I did start playing the original FFVII on PC. Installed 5 different versions of the game before I could get one to work because I kept getting errors. Turns out my antivirus didn't like a game made in 1997 for some reason. So I turned it off and now it works. Looks like this is yet another game that ended up being 10 times longer than I anticipated. Started playing it blind and quickly got lost when the world map opened up. Trying to figure out where to go when there's random enemy encounters every 2 seconds is so fucking annoying. Then I found out Yuffie running away means she's never gonna join your team so I had to load an old save and replay 2 hours of the game. And from that point on I've just been hugging the guide. Just how it's gotta be I guess. Currently at the part where you get the plane (boat) and now I'm suppose to go back to the Gold saucer for a date with (hopefully) Tifa. That's 4 days of playing and I guess I'm almost a 3rd of the way through since the guide says disc 1/3. Yaaay.....
I'll be honest, the story's great, I love the worldbuilding and characters, the battles aren't even that bad despite the weird mechanics. But everything else including pacing, movement, controls, other mechanics, constant random encounters, minigames, easily missable content etc is definitely hindering my enjoyment. So yea I REALLY hope the remakes kept all the good parts and fixed all these issues in addition to the insanely improved graphics.

I don't have a fucking Playstation so Remake's gonna be PC or backlogged indefinitely like Xenoblade Chronicles 2. And after how horrible that one SAO game's port was (I still finished it including all DLC), it will probably be PC unless it literally won't run.
I mean I said I was playing this for Tifa in the first place so shouldn't be too shocking of a revelation who I like more. I did know about Aerith's existence before but her design is just ehh. So far her personality in the game is fine so I don't dislike her but it's not much of a contest.

The Alter skin changes Kingprotea's voice lines to match the new personality but she only has a few new lines. But yea there's 2 more alters in this lostbelt other than her and Nitocris. I won't spoil who but they're both girls that I don't have. All 4 are girls. Grand waifu order ftw.
For the grail fronts I usually end up using Kama and having her solo everything. 50% NP charge, heal, stun (charm), guts, good neutral damage on almost everything. But yea I do wish they let you use more servants and craft essences.
That battle did inspire me to level Anastasia archer's skills in case I need to use her again. For single target damage she's legit good.
Btw I forgot to talk about the Valentine's scenes last time but Melusine and Okuni's were great. They're both explicitly in love with us and I enjoyed every second of it. Melusine especially might have skyrocketed to my favorite servant that we have at Chaldea at least (not counting Type/Redline Okita or Lostbelt 6 Castoria).

I might have played some Vice city when I was really young but San Andreas is the game I played the most of and completed the main quest line. I loved that horse with no name song on the radio.

Hmm interesting. I'm using a GTX 1080ti graphics card which is a few generations behind but it was literally the best one of that series so it still holds up pretty well against the newer ones.
But yea it runs pretty much everything I need really well so I have no plans to upgrade until it becomes necessary. I'm not as informed about processors and the whole Intel vs AMD debate but I'm using a Intel i7-11700K. Don't know anything about motherboards but mine is apparently B560M PRO-VDH (MS-7D18). And you have double my RAM. I should really get more RAM.
Gaming laptops are a scam. The specs you see for them aren't real. They're laptop versions of the part which are way worse than the regular desktop versions. The fact that they are much thinner without a giant cooler/fan to cool the parts down should tell you everything you need to know. That stuff's not for decoration.
They can be useful to carry around for work and stuff but if you can pick a desktop for something always pick it. Especially for the same price with "same" specs.

Yea nah I don't have much disposable income right now for aforementioned reasons so I download most of the stuff I consume (anime/games) using torrents. But you know what, for Elden ring I will definitely buy it when I am able just to support the developer. And maybe try out some of the online content. I accepted your friend request btw. I guess if I lose my MAL account that's a way to contact me.

Yup Slime is a light novel. Still publishing. No clue how much of it is adapted in the 72 episodes that are out but season 4 has been announced. I guess the excuse for the MCs denseness this time around is he's mistaking any romantic affection they show him for admiration since he's their leader and like a god to them. But that doesn't mean the trope isn't still annoying. At this point they've basically both announced publicly that they're gonna compete to win him over and be his bride, and his reaction is just "Huh? Anyway about that road being built." The romance in this show is zero.

I don't think we've talked about IRL stuff much in the past but I recently graduated university and am basically doing some internship type stuff to see if I can get a job. Hopefully that will happen in the next 1-2 months and then I'll finally have some disposable income to spend on stuff I want like a trip to Japan. Unfortunately it would also mean significantly less free time to spend on anime and games which I've already massively cut down on in recent years. I'm glad I was able to finish a few games like Dark souls and Elden ring before that happens though. And my Bleach rewatch from some months back. Still thinking about what else I could do. Spent the last 2 days playing the remake of the first Fire Emblem game and it was pretty meh tbh. The modern ones are way better if we ignore the English version censorship. Probably not gonna play any more old games from that series for now. Maybe I could try Final Fantasy next? I know there's a million games in that series but I could probably at least do the ones Tifa is in.

If you've been paying attention to JP banners you'll notice there's still no U-Olga on there so this was completely unexpected for me too. Maybe they're just not ready to give us a servant with an AoE basic attack kit yet? I guess maybe they'll add her at the end of the new story or something. Anyway yea probably one of the biggest plot twists so far.
This lostbelt has a lot to do with alters so you'll see how all that works. The other alters like Kingprotea are only skins though. I've already had her for a while so I did get the alter skin for free. Her personality is definitely different, not sure where you heard that. She's way more bitchy and aggressive but maybe in her heart she's still nice and likes us. Idk. Definitely prefer her regular version regardless. Was still nice to finally see Kingprotea in the main story.
Tenochtitlan is definitely a nice pick up herself. She's a legit pretender but her true name probably means nothing to you just like it didn't to me since we both don't know anything about mesoamerican mythology.
lol the way I remember it she karate chopped our entire ship in half almost killing us. Since you already figured it out yea it was Kukulkan. Insanely OP character narrative wise. Felt pretty good using her in game too but it was probably a buffed version.

Yup losing 6 of my best servants for nothing in the very first battle definitely sucked XD Thankfully a lot of my random 4 stars like Anastasia archer pulled through big time. I only pulled her for waifu but she has a legit single target NP that let her solo a level. I guess it was fun strategizing with some of these lesser used servants but I wish they gave us more heads up and structured things a little better.

Fuck if I know which RE game it was. I think I had a gun and was outdoors fighting some zombies or something. I probably only played 40 minutes of it and was getting nowhere so I stopped. Kinda insane I even remember it was RE but that part's pretty vivid. My brother didn't play it either so we must have gotten it for free or one of our friends just gave it to us. I'm sure the game was fine but clearly it just wasn't the right time for me to play it. I did play stuff like GTA San Andreas back then and also some Tomb Raider game which I did beat. The plot had to do with king Arthur so maybe you'd know which one it is if you're familiar with that franchise.

I've built plenty of PCs before but never had to rearrange my room for it. Unless you didn't have a PC in that room before? We can talk about the specs a bit too if that's something you're interested in.
Yea Slay the Princess is on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1989270/Slay_the_Princess__The_Pristine_Cut/
"The Pristine Cut" is the new version with the extra content which I guess you just get when you buy the base game now. Price is 17.5 euros for me. I'd say pretty worth it.
I do have a Steam account and you can add me if you want but tbh I don't really use it much. Mostly used it to play DOTA 2 and haven't logged in in years but I just did and it works. I think you need this to find me? https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198046990699/

Oh okay so I guess you haven't watched the show and only saw Shion's design somewhere. When I wrote my last message I was in the middle of watching the spin off season but the main show is 99% plot/wolrdbuilding and like 1% romance/fanservice. So it's really not the usual harem/isekai for better or worse. The show is 70 episodes in and Shuna and Shion are still the only 2 girls who explicitly like Rimuru romantically. But he's one of those shitty oblivious protagonists who doesn't pick up on it. That's why I prefer characters like Rudeus from Mushoku Tensei who's a million times more relatable. Doesn't want to change the world but just do his own thing and maybe save the girl in front of him if he can. And if she's cute he'll acknowledge it and maybe try to romance her like any normal person would. Don't know why anime/LN writers are so against making characters like that.

Welp I'm done with the Lostbelt. The entire thing is indeed out although I can't say the same for the overarching story. Without spoiling anything, we did get some answers as to what's going on but those just opened up a ton of new questions and the main story is still far from resolved. If you read the in game announcements you might have noticed that the prologue for what I'm assuming is part 3 also just came out. It's only ~20 minutes of exposition and then it looks like we're gonna have to clear a bunch more singularities/lostbelts/whatever they're gonna call them before the main plot can resume. I assume that's where playable Tiamat comes in so the first one should be around April? Nothing much of note until then.

As for my thoughts on Lostbelt 7, I'd say it was good. Nowhere near as good as Lostbelt 6 but it's probably the second best one regardless. I'd put it somewhere around Babylonia. Maybe a bit worse. We do get to see Nitocris Avenger eventually but she has a pretty minor role all things considered. Regular Nitocris is what we get for 90% of this which is nice for her but I barely got to learn anything about her Avenger version. You probably know more than me if you've just read her profile/voice lines.
Other than her we've got this new girl who I didn't pay any attention to at all before I read the story but now I'm lowkey considering rolling. I don't want to spoil anything but just wait until you get to use her in the story. She's fun and badass as fuck.
It's funny but she reminds me a lot of the Pyro archon from Genshin which actually makes perfect sense since both this Lostbelt and Natlan are based off of ancient South American civilization. So both characters probably take inspiration from the same Mayan gods. Just an odd coincidence that both came out the same month at least the English version. And then there's the 4 star pretender girl which I'm hopefully gonna be able to get as a freebie later.
Anyway let me know when you play the Lostbelt so we can discuss the story. One bit of advice, there's gonna be a section where you have to fight many battles in a row and you can't reuse servants between battles. Don't use full teams and instead only send in 1 appropriate servant at a time or 2 if they need a support. If you get stuck (run out of servants) you have to redo the whole thing which would be disgusting. I figured it out in time but I could see casual players getting hard stuck on this part. Unless the game gives you some work around.

I'm actually pretty sure casinos are forced to disclose their rates as well or at least their slot machines have to have some minimum odds by law which inspectors can check. Regulating gacha games in this way was probably done as an extension of regulating gambling. Right now these games are taking advantage of legally not being considered gambling and the politicians don't understand technology well enough to update the laws.

I say fanservice but really it was just a scene of adult Nel hugging Ichigo and Orihime getting jealous. Really tame stuff in the grand scheme of things. I still haven't read the Bleach chapters to see if anything more was cut out. Maybe I won't until the entire anime is done but I definitely want to do it some day.

Yea there's plenty more I could say about Slay the Princess but if you do want to play it it's probably best to go in with as little info as possible. Just load the game up and enjoy. I think I tried one Resident Evil game on PS2 but was too young to even know what I was doing. So I have basically no knowledge of that franchise other than it's some horror game where you shoot monsters right?

I dropped GT during the part where Goku was still a kid because I thought it was so stupid coming out of the Buu saga. Just the massive power regression made it seem like some pointless filler thing. And I wasn't old enough to want to watch it for Pan just because she's cute.
My understanding is that GT is universally hated but I don't know if there's some exception to SSJ4 specifically. I've obviously seen screenshots and I do think it looks cool. At least more so than just giving them blue hair.
Never heard of Jackie Chan Adventures but I assume Jade is that little girl on the cover. Probably tomboyish with some martial arts skills despite being a kid? I can see the Pan comparison.

For me Shuna is best girl no contest. Super adorable, ideal waifu and I love her Japanese Oni Princess/Miko aesthetic. Meanwhile I'm starting to genuinely hate Shion at this point. All she does is fight with Shuna over Rimuru even though she's the one constantly hogging him, and her bad cooking gag is so overused I've seen it 5 times in the last 3 episodes. No exaggeration. It's insane that there are effectively only 2 girls in the whole show right now and they STILL can't balance their screentime properly. Fucking painful.

I've been pretty busy with IRL stuff this past week so haven't had the time to do much of anything but I'll probably go back to playing the Lostbelt today. Still not entirely sure whether the entire thing is out or if there's gonna be a part 3 coming out at some point but guess I'll find out soon. Currently at section 14 and still no Nitocris alter. Just a lot of buildup for the regular Nitocris which is honestly pretty nice. She barely did anything in the 5th singularity and mostly just simped for Ozymandias.

I've been hearing for years now that China is gonna crack down on gacha games but don't know if anything has come of it. But I do know the only reason these games even tell us the drop rates is because of regulations in Japan and China so I do think it's a good thing. Worst case the games would shut down and something better would take their place. Best case they adapt and become more player friendly without all the shitty forced gambling. Apparently the US government recently fined Genshin for some of their practices specifically to do with their in game currency. You don't use US $ to gamble, you use money to buy currency to turn into a different currency to buy a 3rd currency which you use to actually gamble. The argument is that doing that obfuscates how much money the player is actually spending which very well might be why they do it that way. In FGO it's money to quartz to gambling so I guess there's less layers to it.

In my case there weren't actually that many Fate servants I already wanted. Most of the ones I like I found through FGO specifically. Sitonai and Jack the Ripper were probably the only ones I wanted beforehand and even then Sitonai is FGO exclusive. The actual Fate character I liked was Illya.
Yea I likely showed you Skirk when she was first introduced saying I wanted her eventually but she's actually becoming playable now. It's still a few months from now but soon enough to start saving.
In other Genshin news here's the new character coming next patch: https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Yumemizuki_Mizuki
She's cute enough but I'll probably be skipping. More importantly we're going back to Inazuma for an event which means I'll get my yearly 2 minutes of Ayaka. Can't wait.

Well great. I'll probably join you in the Nitocris A. club in 6 months and spend 900 quartz to get her....
How's your lostbelt progress going? Any actual thoughts on Nitocris A. yet?

So you think Radagon is more of a split personality rather than just the same person having multiple sexes. I guess when it comes to ancient mythologies and gods anything can go. Probably doesn't seem woke because it's not shoved in our faces at all. To the point I didn't even notice while playing.

Have you seen the Bleach season yet? I have a few complaints about it but won't mention them yet to avoid spoilers in case you still haven't seen it. Nel unfortunately didn't do anything past showing up and like 1 fanservicey scene. Unfortunately any potential ship between her and Ichigo has already sank.

Slay the Princess is a western visual novel style choose your own adventure type of game. Not sure if you've played games like Portal or The Stanley parable but it has that type of vibe to it. There's a narrator trying to get you to slay this trapped princess (as the title implies) and then there's like 20 routes you can go down depending on which choices you make. The most obvious one being whether to kill her or help her escape. It has great voice acting, tons of great art, funny moments, wholesome moments, mindfucky moments etc. The princess in question is pretty cute too.
Definitely one of the more unique games to come out over the past few years. I'd definitely recommend it. Only takes around 4-5 hours for a full playthrough. More if you want to go back after to explore all the different branches.

I'm probably not as big of a DBZ fan as my username would imply but I have at least seen all of DB/DBZ/DBS. I do think it's a fun series and all that but there's better written stuff out there for sure. As far as Daima is concerned, looks very reminiscent of GT which I dropped after a couple of episodes. Some random excuse to make Goku a kid again. Traveling with random new characters we don't know or care about. Toriyama is dead so he's probably not writing it either. There's a chance I check it out but I'm definitely not excited for it or anything. If anything I might go back to finish GT since at least Pan is cute and I never got to see SSJ4. I think the idea of bringing their tails back for it was cool af.

I also watched the first season of this: https://myanimelist.net/anime/37430/Tensei_shitara_Slime_Datta_Ken
but then got busy so I put it on hold. Probably gonna continue that now as well. Again 8/10 so far.

I can sorta look past it if we're talking about luxury cosmetics rather than a core gameplay feature but even then I think the recent drama was over an 80$ WoW mount. The really expensive stuff is probably because of loot boxes and the community decide what it's worth in real money. I don't think the company actually charges you 10,000$ for a different gun cosmetic. So it all comes back to gambling in videos games. So toxic and predatory. Don't think there's much anyone can do about it until laws are passed to ban/regulate it. It's obviously what makes the most money and people are never gonna stop playing out of principle.

In Genshin specifically the rates are so bad that you only have a ~24% of getting a 5 star before reaching pity so really you should be expecting to hit it every time unless you're completely ignorant of the rates. Even if you get "lucky" and hit that 24%, you might be getting your 5 star at 70 pulls instead of 80 (pity). Whooo such a big deal right? So really the odds are even lower to drop one early enough for it to even be relevant. The only real gamble that matters is whether you win the 50-50 to get your limited banner character. And if you don't it's guaranteed on the next 5 star. So that's why in this game specifically I'm assuming hitting the pity as the norm hence the 300$ buyout. Anything else you get is just extra because you got especially lucky. It's not what anyone should ever be relying on.
While we're on the topic of Genshin they announced a timeline for the next 6 months and this girl is suppose to become playable: https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/Skirk
Welp I know what I'm gonna be saving for next.

Looks like they added Kirei as a New Year banner so I guess they wanted to keep that for some reason? Meanwhile the timeline for the new content releases is like 2 weeks earlier than JP from 2 years ago. The banners also aren't 100% identical. They keep doing random ones that JP never did or celebrating recent events like the FGO remaster that weren't there 2 years ago. But yea the result is no Nitocris alter in story yet while her banner is about to expire. Even more reason to just wait the 6 months tbh. They said part 2 is coming out mid January so maybe you'll get to play the whole Lostbelt at once.
Well congrats on your Kirei at least. Looks like your luck is back to normal.

Oh interesting. I did read that some story items appear in that chest if you delete them but didn't think the lava ring would be one of them. In that case it might have been in my chest but I never noticed. One benefit of getting it from the centipede though is using it in the fight itself. Especially if you die the first time and keep the item.
If I ever fight Melania again I'll try dual wielding + jump attacking before running away/dodging. And then yea I could swap to shield for Waterfowl if I need to.
Still haven't read the wiki but I remember from the story that Radagon left Rennala to go marry Marika and that set a lot of the events into motion. So I am curious what that decision meant. The god entity giving up on sexual reproduction for some reason and deciding to just spawn children by itself? Also I know Melina gave us a bunch of hints through all those Marika quotes but I'm still not even 100% sure why she broke the Elden ring. Just to watch her children fight and let the best one rule?

I watched both Canaan and the new Bleach season. I did notice the main girl in Canaan looked an awful lot like type moon characters but didn't draw any further connection. Looks like Nasu did write it but I don't think it's part of the same universe as Fate and Tsukihime. Or who knows technically it could be. It was decent but very much gave off style over substance vibes. Cool action scenes and themes but the worldbuilding and story was pretty weak and not very well explored. The 13 episode runtime didn't help with that. Still gave it an 8/10. Same score I gave the Bleach season actually. Won't spoil that one but a lot of stuff is getting annoying/starting to piss me off. Like the same enemies coming back to life for the 5th time because the story obviously needs someone for the side characters to fight. On the positive side there was a little Nel screentime and we finally got a substantive Nemu episode. I should probably read the corresponding manga chapters just to check if anything's been censored after that first season.

Also have you ever heard of this indie game called Slay the Princess? Apparently it got a deluxe edition type thing that added some new endings so I basically went back to replay it and see the new content. It's even better than I remembered honestly.

Realistically they should be charging maybe 5$ per character? Considering a normal game costs 60$-70$, you're unlocking 1 character out of like 50 and only getting one copy when you need 7 plus their weapon to fully max them. Yea around 5$ seems pretty reasonable. I was so shocked when I learned Genshin would charge 300$ to guarantee a character outright. I guess that's why they use the gambling/gacha mechanic to mask those absurd prices. Nobody would pay that much for a character but they would pay 25$ for a chance at getting them. And when that doesn't work of course you'll pay again to reach that pity point so you don't waste the currency already spent. So predatory and it's actually so disgusting we have to engage with this system just to play games with all these great girls in them. All the best character designs seem to go into gacha games or Vtubers these days. At least that's the case whenever I see a cute artwork and look a character up.

Oh is that an OC? Dang it. It's definitely hard to tell what's what when all you've got are some concept arts from novels and such. I'm also seeing stuff calling Nitocris Alter Anubis so that makes things even more confusing. Speaking of, Lostbelt 7 part 1 is out and for some reason they decided to flip the banners around and make her the first banner instead of Kirei. Really strange since I've already cleared the available story and she hasn't even appeared in it yet. Kirei has so him being first like in JP would make more sense. Or honestly either of the other 2 servants. I was gonna pull for Nitorcis but I think I'm gonna hold off for now. Right now she's solo on the banner with no rated up 4 stars but if I wait another 6 months it looks like Tlaloc should be on her banner which would be a very nice extra. So waiting seems like the smarter option overall.
Regarding the Lostbelt itself I'll avoid spoilers in case you haven't played it but so far it's just been okay. The worldbuilding with the area is definitely very cool/unique and I'd say lives up to the hype of being the final Lostbelt. The story itself has had some pretty unexpected developments but I'm not particularly invested in any of the new characters yet. Of course that might change in part 2 but at this point I'd probably put it on the level of Camelot. Like 7/10.

Yea and I 100% killed the Centipede Demon without cutting off its head for the ring so what are you suppose to do in that case? Just use the shortcut like I did? But if you attack the spider girl or her servant you'd get locked out of that covenant so would you just be softlocked at that point? Seems like a really weird thing for the devs to do considering how easy it would be for a unknowing player to end up doing both of those.

The annoying thing is these players assume that playing the game with no summons, no ashes, no shields, no items (except flask), no buffing incantations, no magic, no ranged weapons, no heavy armor is "normal mode" and then if you use any one of those it's like switching the game to easy mode. But who decided that? You literally start the game WITH a shield so why would not using one be the default? I guess my contention would be that yes shield is normal mode and removing your shield would be a handicap/hard mode. Anyway I never went into these games to become some expert player. I just wanted to clear the content which I accomplished without any overt cheesing imo. It's not like I sat in some corner where Melania can't hit you and bowed her to death.
Lots of stuff does still need to be dodged which is why I always make sure I'm at medium load so I can still normal roll when necessary. But I also love using heavy shields/armor so that usually means lots of points into endurance plus a load increasing ring/talisman. Sometimes I even take the armor off and just go shield plus weapon for light roll.

If you're fighting Melania with mainly dodges I'd suggest trying to use a shield just for Waterfowl Dance maybe? Sure that block will heal her but if you're dodging the other stuff I'm sure you would out damage her heals pretty easily. That's probably the strat I would try since it's just that one skill that's very difficult to dodge. Other than that I'm pretty sure just walking bellow her avoids the first and 3rd wave. It's just the second one that's problematic. Same with her egg explosion thing later.
I barely remember Placidusax so I'd say Bayle fight was better.
lol no I did not see that multi-clone grab attack. How the fuck do you even dodge that?
It's actually kinda ridiculous they went to the effort of making counter items for Maliketh and Mohg but nothing for Melania. Shackling her during stage 1 would accomplish absolutely nothing but it's still weird how they didn't include anything at all.

Light armor is just strictly worse than heavy armor in general. And Radahn's DLC armor is just lighter. It did allow me to scrap the load increase talisman at least.
Oh well that sounds absolutely awful. I fought Elden beast without the horse at first and it just kept running away after every attack. Would have been so annoying to fight that on foot. Maybe ranged attacks were the play? Well glad I avoided that regardless.

Radagon was pretty weak imo. I could tell immediately when fighting him it was just stage 1 of something. Also apparently some plot details flew right over my head. I guess Radagon and Marika are actually the same person with multiple sexes/genders because gods or something? I didn't pick that up at all and assumed Radagon was just chilling there too and Marika was the broken statue. I should probably read the Wiki to get more clarity on the timeline and what was actually going on.

Obviously Margit on NG+ was easy af because I just massively outleveled him. I didn't play well at all. Just ran at him with dual halberds and hit him a couple of times. Not sure I'd do any better now with 5 non upgraded flasks and a long sword like I had when I first fought him. I definitely improved in terms of knowing what to do and when in Elden ring but not sure I did mechanically overall.
I guess the teleport traps were Elden Ring's version of mimics. For me I think the Dark souls Gargoyles and giants looked way better. That's my main complaint regarding monsters. Oh and those big bears were such bullshit. Should have been 3 of them in the entire game and they should have been guarding some legendary loot. Not having them all over as regular mobs.

Well for me I watched some anime like Blue Archive and Gun Gale Online II. Also watched the second season of Squid game yesterday. I assume you've at least heard of that show if you haven't seen it. Other than that been busy with Lostbelt 7 obviously. Now that I'm done I'll probably watch https://myanimelist.net/anime/5356/Canaan
and then the new Bleach season which finishes airing tomorrow.

The only gacha game I've spent money on so far has been Genshin impact and it was on the 5$ Welkin Moons that give you extra gems every day you log in for a month. Basically 2.5X's your daily rewards. Total amount ends up being about the same as spending 25$ to buy the gems outright so it's very good value. Although the prices are stupidly high to begin with so maybe that's a bad way of looking at it. Like 300$ for a guaranteed character. What in the fuck??? Or you can do dailies for 3 months and get it for free which is how I got 95% of my characters.
I have my FGO code backed up so I should be able to recover my account if something happens but not having it attached to an email is still pretty shitty. If I did lose the account it would definitely suck and I would 100% stop playing the game because what would be the fucking point. I had a scare with my Blue Archive account a few months back and thought I had fully lost it for like an hour or so. Gotta say it didn't feel as bad as you'd expect. My mentality was basically: "Well fuck it. One less gacha game I guess." And it's not like I care about it less than my other games or don't like the characters as much so I imagine my reaction would be similar if I lost the others. Also lost Priconne ~2 years ago because the global version went EoS while the JP is still thriving and all you should need is like 3 employees to add an English language option to that. But no we can't do the simple/obvious thing because...reasons?

This Anubis?
Holy fuck I want her. What is FGO doing keeping this from us?

I never went down to the lava lake with the half dragons or the hidden bonfire to begin with. Don't know if I even had the charred ring but I definitely never equipped it.
I just read some off hand comment that the walk back was too long "even with the shortcut" so I assumed the shortcut was the fastest way to get to it. Which is definitely not the case now that I know. And yea they definitely picked the worst possible titanite demon to make respawn. It will kill you too if you run past it without actively dodging or using stealth.

I read people saying how shields are too OP in DS1 and make the game too easy/trivial but then whenever a streamer is playing it they tell them that shields suck and you should 2 hand the sword. Then the person always goes "Oh okay" and never touches a shield again even if they were parrying like a god up to that point. So which fucking is it then??? Are they OP so you're a noob for using one or do shields just suck so I guess I'm a pro for beating the game with something that sucks. This is probably one of the most inconsistent/split communities I've ever come across.
But yea my shield transition into Elden Ring has been fine. I definitely think they're worse here and there's no god shield like the Sif one in DS1 but they still serve their purpose like lower ranking ones did. You just have to manage the stamina bar and know which attacks to still dodge etc. Also even if you get guard broken through the shield you still take basically no damage from the attack itself so that's very nice. Of course guard counters existing is a big buff so I guess it balances out.
I don't like relying on rolls because you have to know the exact timing for each attack but I guess fighting every boss 20 times until you figure it out is how you "get good". I think shields give more consistency and that's super important with drawn out difficult content. Of course I can still roll when needed as I always make sure to stay at medium load.

I'm sure it sounds like I'm just used to the halberd which is why I think it's so good but at this point I genuinely think it's one of the best weapons in the game. I've tried all sorts of different weapons out, and by the DLC I was upgrading every cool looking one to +9 or 10 to test damage and they were still just worse. Like that sunflower one you mentioned or Rhaddan's sword etc. Only thing I didn't try was respecing into int or dex but for my stats/playstyle I think the halberd is just the best. I think the devs intentionally put it at the start of the game to give the more casual players something OP to just beat the game with. Apparently it used to be even stronger and they nerfed the damage at some point.

That Nito vid is funny but unfortunately it wouldn't have helped me much since the problem would be the 6 skeletons hitting me while I'm trying to guard that XD Knowing the sound cue exists would have completely changed the fight though.

I think Melina starts hating you because she thinks you agree with the frenzied flame and want to destroy/reset all life on earth. If you do purge it later I don't think the devs though that far ahead story wise which is unfortunate. I wish there was another ending where you do exactly this series of events and maybe have to collect all the great runes too, and then Melina would stay with you to make sure the frenzied flame stays in check or something. Maybe with some feelz/romantic undertones as well since you did it to save her. The DLC could have added this as a reward for beating it but they decided to focus it 100% on Miquella and the new NPCs instead. That's the only disappointing part about the DLC I think.
As is the frenzied flame ending is the only one she appears in and it feels kinda unfinished like it's setting up for a sequel or something. Letting her kill you at the last second to stop the frenzied flame could have been an interesting alternative ending as well.
I did look up some of the lore that flew over my head while playing. Like I had no idea Ranni started the entire series of events that lead to the Elden ring being shattered. Also yea it looks like Melina is Marika's secret daughter which I guess makes sense based on your interactions.

I definitely overreacted a bit when I was ranting about Melania earlier. She's definitely not the worst boss in the series despite how frustrating she is to fight. Just her cool attack animations and lore would obviously put her above that threshold. I think she would have been a great boss if they just reworked her a bit. Like no healing but more HP and less stagger for example. Lore wise she's suppose to be the scarlet rot boss, I don't even know why she's the one who gets the healing mechanic.
Or you could make it be life steal so it doesn't go through shields. I think shields hard counter her entire kit though which is why they decided to do that.
I blocked that Waterfowl thing pretty consistently with shield (and walk under the 3rd hit) so that was my solution. Of course it heals her but it is what it is. Just have to out DPS her elsewhere. But you can tell they really didn't want you to play like that. I saw some people fighting her with dodges and the healing mechanic becomes irrelevant. Sure she lands a potshot here and there that heals her by 5% but it's whatever. Not the 50% to 80% like when I block a combo. It's kinda funny since me and her both hard counter each other's playstyle.
She was definitely easier after the DLC but definitely not the stompfest I expected (hoped for) either. Ended up sticking with my original strategy and just forced trades with guard counter which stance breaks her after 3 or 4. She heals a lot but it's still a net positive for me. Same thing works during her second phase although things are way more chaotic. I got a bit lucky during that run since she got pushed up against a wall and I managed to double team her with my knight for a bit which lead to a stance break during phase 2. I took a screenshot during the execution since it was a guaranteed kill at that point and I was pretty hyped.
I'd say she's still easily the hardest boss (for me) DLC included although that's largely due to my specific playstyle. She's probably easier to dodge against than Messmer/Rhaddan and she also farms HP off your summons which is another thing I heavily rely on.

For Promised consort Radahn I did maybe 30 tries initially and kept getting him down to ~15% health which might seem close but that's around when both my summons die and I could only get in 2-3 hits fighting him solo after that so there was no win con. So I looked up a guide and right at the top it said "Recommended scadutree level 20, minimum 18). My level was 17 :D
Honestly I didn't know what the maximum was so I didn't realize I was so far behind. So I farmed it up to 19 by going to some ones I definitely missed and probably could have easily won with just that change. But I also read "don't summon support since it's bad and raises the bosses hp".....
At scadutree level 19 and no summon (except my knight) I was so comfortable fighting him and aggressively taking trades during both phases. Only took me 3 tries at that point. That's why I wouldn't put him as the hardest boss over Melania although I obviously see why you'd think that.
Actually by sheer number of attempts it took me, crucible knight at Redmane castle is the hardest boss XD

It was such a chaotic and messy fight but I beat Bayle first try.
I was surviving against him for a bit and about halfway through the fight I noticed both my summons were afk and I was fighting him solo. I knew the run was 100% fucked unless I got back to them so I started running around the edge and healing through all the damage I was taking because I wasn't blocking anymore. At one point I survived at 1 HP but I managed to find them and we got the kill. I hate how the summons don't follow you and sometimes afk against a boss like that.

That's still one of the best shields in the base game just in terms of guard and damage negation but it's so heavy that I had to get naked to use it. Very situational and I only used it a few times. Yea I beat Astel twice. Was easier the 2nd time and I just used my normal gear.
After finishing Ranni's quest I pretty much started skipping all the NPC stuff wanting to just get through the game/bosses. Of course Melania totally ruined that plan but regardless I skipped all the volcano manor stuff and just beat it as a dungeon. So no claw for me. It is interesting that they added more gimmick items for specific bosses but kinda useless if you miss the item. Wish there was a "turn Melania's healing off" item XD
I was so scared fighting Maliketh even though it took me under 10 tries. Basically beat him by abusing his aggro on my summon during a lucky run. And then got in 2 potshots after the knight was dead. Lowkey he may as well have been the final boss of the base game.

I've beaten the main game by this point but I didn't bother sending a 3rd message just to tell you since it should be obvious I'd waltz through it after already beating Melania and Rhadann.
I actually decided to handicap myself a bit so as not to make it too easy:
I'm wearing the new DLC Rhadann armor which is actually way worse than the heavy armor I had been using and also that shield is way worse than the DLC one or even the towershield I had been using before that. But this set looks cool so I figured fuck it, lets beat the game in this.
Final boss took me maybe 3 tries because I couldn't dodge the stupid glowy sword attack from my horse. But on the 3rd try I just fell off the horse and healed through it twice:
Odd choice to make the final fight a horse battle but it was whatever. Kinda a letdown compared to all the great rune bearers.

Ranni summon sign:

Elden Lord from a different ending:
I watched the rest on YouTube and I pretty much agree Ranni's is the best. It's the only one where you end up with a waifu instead of sitting alone on a throne. And breaking the Elden ring cycle is probably for the best too. Don't think Melina would be against that choice either. Frenzied flame ending is the only competition but like I said it feels kinda unfinished. I am very curious what the story is with Melina's eye. It opens up at the end and also, her and Ranni have opposite eyes closed. I wonder what that signifies.

Doing NG+ a bit just to beat Margit with no summon this time:

And this is how long it took me to realize you could dual wield weapons:

I did beat every remembrance boss so yes Midra too and all the rest. Not every catacombs/minibosses but probably still did like 80% of them. RIP Leda along with any hopes of a helmetless model for her.
I heard about the new Elden Ring game so that's good news I guess. Doubt I'm as hyped as you since I'm definitely gonna take a long break from souls like games now but I'll probably play it eventually. Doesn't seem to be a sequel from what I've heard but let me know if Melina does somehow show up in it.

I know I ranted a lot in my earlier message but I just wanted to give a tiny tiny little update:

That definitely sounds like something she just said to make Shichika not be as sad about her dying. Or maybe it was her intent when she first sought him out but definitely not by the end of the show. Otherwise there would be no point saying it.

Never heard of Archie Sonic. Somebody recommended me the IDW comic while we were talking about Cream saying she got screentime and was presented well there. So I started reading it on a whim. But I guess there is a lot more Sonic content out there if I cared to look. Not really interested now but maybe some day.

I know some popular manga get colored versions but it's definitely not the norm. Like I remember reading they're gonna re-release all of Attack on Titan in color. Meanwhile in the West publishing comics in color initially seems way more common. Of course that means it takes way longer to release but it is an interesting cultural difference.

That's the banner where you spend some low amount of premium currency for a guaranteed 5 star right? I'm fully f2p in FGO so I never paid much attention to those banners. I assume it wasn't too expensive though. They're just trying to get your foot through the door of spending real money on the game. Well hopefully you manage to get some use out of Sigurd.
I actually started playing FGO during the Voyager event when it was like 2 day from ending. So I skipped all of the story to rush through it and get the free Erice before it ended. Needless to say the support servants hard carried me since none of my servants were even leveled past 60. I guess it worked out since they never reran the event and I did get Erice along with NP5. But because of that I have no idea who Voyager is other than that he's a foreigner.

In other news Melusine banner is out so this shouldn't be a surprise:
Had to spend over 500 quartz for her though which is kinda lame but at least it wasn't full pity.
I did get this as a freebie though:
I mean it's a pretender that I have now. I think you rolled for her at one point right? Overall a disappointing pull session but whatever. I'll probably still go for Nitocris on her banner and if my luck there is also shit I'll just do Tiamat, Aesc and Castoria swimsuit. I should be able to manage all of those unless my luck is beyond shit. And then the other Lostbelt 6 girls can wait until next year. At least I have all of their base forms now. And Melusine is a great lancer so I'll definitely be using her a lot.

I think the original Sif was just protecting Artorias' grave but the post DLC one might have been trying to stop you like you said. Or else just fulfilling her duty.
I was using the Firelink shortcut to get to Capra so it wasn't too bad?
For Bed of Chaos I was running from Spider covenant room through the shortcut all the way to the boss like a retard. Looks like the one you're talking about is shorter but you do have to swap the rings out. I think I generally hate insta kill pitfalls in games especially during a boss battle. Like maybe the boss takes 2-3 hits to kill you so at least there's some leeway but if you fall you're just dead. Insanely OP especially when enemies are knocking you into the hole. Felt that way during Sonic as well.

Well in my case I brought my DSI mentality into Elden ring and the results have been mixed. Blocking definitely isn't as effective and most bosses have multiple ways of countering it but it's still very helpful if you use it right. Like if you notice the grab attack coming you can just roll that. I noticed a lot of insta kill big explosion stuff can be blocked while taking minimal damage so I find that more reliable than trying to dodge it and risking the whole run.
I was hoarding the Rune Arcs for a while but I did start using them whenever my held number was higher than 15. I guess it's not that bad since for most of the lower to mid level bosses I'm not really going into the fights expecting to die. I'll usually tank and heal through stuff even if I don't know the moveset. But I find having one active during exploration segments puts too much pressure on me to not die so I'm back to not really using them much.

I don't like the durability feature as a way to make you swap weapons. What they should do is have better weapon progression so that my lance that I got from the first miniboss isn't still the best weapon I have 150 hours into the game even ignoring upgrades. I think killing a big boss and getting a big boy weapon as a reward is a feeling I just didn't get in both this and Dark souls. Like even the Godslayer sword I got was just in a chest behind what's effectively a miniboss. It wasn't a boss soul weapon. I crafted basically every boss soul weapon just to try the attack animations out and I never feel like I want to use any of them. The lance is just so good with its range, damage and even decent attack speed. It even has an ability that buffs both attack and defense. Why would I ever not use this???
You can probably tell I've defaulted to basically never swapping it out. It's just the weapon I'm most comfortable with and exploring new/unknown/scary content with it feels the most safe. Oh and did I mention a horse rider originally dropped it so it's probably one of the best mounted weapons too XD

Apparently Nito screams before doing his bullshit scythe attack. If I had known that it probably would have been a relatively easy fight even if I played normally. My biggest issue was being paranoid literally every second thinking it was about to happen. I saw some other people fighting him and the big skeletons don't even agro unless you walk to them. So you can just fight the 2 small ones and Nito. I could 100% beat it in 2-3 tries now with no invisibility or divine weapon.

I had to do some awkward key binds to where "C" is my jump button so it's not something I use too much unless necessary. Only time I'm really jump attacking is on horseback. The bad thing about having a good jump feature though is that it means they're gonna make harder jumps XD
I don't know anything about those DSII-DSIII girls. I went into DSI pretty much blind too. Was only vaguely aware of some Elden ring girls because of artworks and some drama from a few years back.
And yea while I haven't beaten the game yet I'm pretty much aware of the entire plot because I was looking up ending requirements and such. Apparently Melina always sacrifices herself to burn that tree unless you have the frenzied flame so she'd be dead in all of those endings. And if you get frenzied flame she gets mad thinking you want to destroy the world and leaves. So I guess that ending would be the closest to a "Melina ending" even if it might not be a happy one.

This is probably a good time to bring this up:
If you can't tell my eyes are yellow there and that's in front of the frenzied flame room so it should be obvious what I did. I wasn't planning on doing it but then some NPC in the snow area went all: "You know it would be a total bitch move to let the girl sacrifice herself so you can become lord. Who would follow a pussy lord like that?".
And then I went: "I know you're playing me right now...but you're right". So I went bellow the capital to get it and then Melina left even though I literally only got this to save her. I feel kinda like Eren Yeager when he did the Rumbling and tried to make Mikasa hate him even though all he really wanted was to protect his friends.
We know how that turned out but unlike him I actually have a plan.

So I do this right:
That's the tree burned with the frenzied flame so Melina survives.

Then I do this girl's quest so I get a golden needle at the end:

Next I need to beat Melania to turn it into Miquella's needle and then I can reverse the frenzied flame and get Ranni's ending like I originally planned. Melina probably never shows up again but canonically she survives so in my head cannon maybe she eventually realized what I was doing. You'll notice a lack of screenshot here and that's because beating Melania turned out to be harder than expected because of her BULLSHIT FUCKING HEALING MECHANIC. I've gotta say they hit one of my few triggers with this and that's infinitely/passively healing bosses. Not counting one time heals or phase changes or something like drinking a flask that I can see and take advantage of. This has to be one of the most frustrating things a game designer can do because normally when you deal damage that's tangible progress being made but when she heals it all back it's all fucking lost while you're of course running out of heals etc. Most I've done after 50+ attempts is get her to ~50% (2nd phase) then she does some insane combo which either kills me and heals her back to 90% or I survive and it heals her back to 90% because it doesn't even matter if you block it. So because of that there's literally NO win con for me playing it like this. And I've gotta say this actually ruined the game for me for a couple of days because everything else I was doing in it was just no fun/felt pointless. Oh but it's an optional boss so just ignore her, yea suck my fucking dick. No idea why they decided to add this healing BS and it just pisses me off. Worst boss fight in the series. Not Bed of chaos. This one.

Anyway with all that said I had no choice but to set the fight aside and strategize. I guess one way to beat it is to learn her moveset and dodge literally every single thing so she doesn't heal. Yea fuck that, I'm not doing that. Instead my current plan A is to beat the DLC first and come back to her later when I'm way more leveled and then just brute force it. You might be thinking: "That's a bad idea because there's guy called Messmer in there who's even harder and he's gonna fuck you in the ass".
And you would be right and he absolutely did do that a fair number of times. But the thing about Messmer is he doesn't heal every time he does an attack so if you keep whacking him enough times he eventually goes down:

So yea that's done. You can probably guess most of the DLC is also done if I've already beaten him. And yea I'm close to done with it by now. I beat him yesterday so now there are 2 more optional bosses and then 2 more mandatory ones judging by the Remembrances page. I'm level 200 which is 50 higher than when I last fought Melania. Hoping to get at least another 10 before I finish this and then we'll see if it goes any better.
I've gotta say the DLC's been great and I'm having fun with the game again. I also feel way more confident and like I'll be able to smash her after all this. But I'm not being overconfident yet. I also have a plan B and C if this doesn't work out. Plan B is to use Fia's one time cheat item I got from clearing her quest along with some other buffs and then probably just 2 hand my weapon and try to out DPS the healing. It is a one time use consumable so I should only be able to try it once but I already looked up how to back up my save so I can reset and keep doing it over and over. Might count as cheating but I already consider Melania's healing mechanic to be bullshit so I'm allowed to bullshit the game back. I'd say I'm justified in doing pretty much anything that doesn't directly alter the game's mechanics.
Plan C is to respect for Messmer's weapon and try that against her. I know that goes against what I said about weapons earlier but his looks like it would be really good against her with the spear throw and the insane combo which would probably fuck her up good. Might respec for it anyway later just for fun.

My main problem with Margit is I kept running out of heals that also didn't do much for me to begin with. Kept getting him down to 30%, had no flasks left and then just died. If I did the bottom area first and got 2 more flasks + the flask upgrade, I 100% would have been able to beat him with no spirit summon. But at this point I don't care. I'm not even trying to not use summons to see if I can do it "legit". Soon as I walk into a boss room I'm summoning my Redmane knight Ogha and then seeing what the boss actually is/does.
Yea if summons are cheating then why isn't using flasks cheating? I mean the boss can't heal so that's not fair. Unless you're fighting Melania then you can use them I guess XD

Godrick's rune is pretty much the one useful one until late game. Right now I think Morgot's is better for the HP since the difference between 80 and 85 strength doesn't matter much. At this point I can brute force Crucible Knights with my lance by just taking trades and healing. I'm sure the castle fight that gave me so much trouble would be a cake walk with my current character.
With enemies that punish healing like that I think you just need to lock them into an animation and then heal right in their face instead of trying to back far away. They're not gonna animation cancel to chase you but if you run far away they can dash and hit you before the heal animation ends. At this point I'm often using the same attack window to just heal right next to the boss instead.

That shield breathes fire while blocking but every time I've tried using it the enemies burn through my stamina in 2 seconds and kill me. A different one shoots projectiles. I found this shield in the DLC which seems to be the best shield in the game right? I'll try it against Melania although the shield quality was never really the issue. Been using the same Manor Towershield for 90% of the game and it works fine.

I beat Rennala in 2 tries. The first time I killed her and then died to her giant summon while she was giving her post defeat speech. Pretty lame honestly.

The game plan for Astel was me distracting him while my knight shoots him from a distance. But by the kill run I was pretty much doing most of the damage myself. Just whacking his legs whenever possible. Needed fast roll to dodge the grab.

I thought I accidentally did something to piss the dogo off but turns out it was scripted. When he calms down you can give him deathroots again and he leaves after you give him all of them. Then I fought him again later at the dragon place and turns out he's actually Maliketh the Black Blade. What an insane reveal!!! At least it would have been if I had paid more attention to the lore and knew who that was but he still looked sick as fuck. Loved that fight. Definitely a contender for my favorite boss of this game. Messmer too.

Tree Sentinel is actually what dropped the halberd to begin with and they sometimes use the shield too. The two are literally a pair which makes sense. No I never used the skill in combat. I rarely use skills because I need my full mana reserve for the summon. Although I did start using the 0 mana cost crystal tear so I can chain a few buffs at the start of the battle. Like "Flame protect me" against Messmer.

Mohg dead in 3 tries:
Fun fight though. I just healed through his phase transition thing. Also thank you devs for making bosses like him, Messmer and Maliketh transform at around half HP unlike Melania who you have to bring down to 0 every time. Just cut her head off while she's on the ground. I'm sure that would have done it.

A few more highlights.
Me and my waifu about to beat Morgot first try:
That is a different lance btw. One that takes ashes but similar attack animations. Easiest boss of my life:

Me taking a selfie while my knight finishes off Fia's champions that we're clearly way too overleveled for:

This fucking section with the invisible assholes:
Would be fine if they didn't grab/backstab you as literally the only move they use. I just smacked them with that godsword.

My DLC gear:
Basically used exactly that for 95% of it.

New waifu?
Had to smack some simp down too who was salty only I could hear her.

Who's this?

The fucking boar rider boss.
Everything about him made the usual horse combat mechanics not work making me use the boring ones. Second worst boss in the game?

The tree or something:

Another new waifu?
She looks pretty nice with the helmet off from what I've seen in artworks. Wonder if she'll ever take it off in game.

Anyway I'm thinking I'll finish DLC today or tomorrow. Then if Melania dies quickly there's only like 2 bosses left in the main game which I expect to be a joke (compared to what I'm beating now). So 2-4 days until I clear the game? Hopefully.