Online Journal

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Saturday, March 31, 2007--Today, I went to Michael's place to play EDF, and we beat the game. Then, Michael had a new board game called Battle Lore. It's an interesting game, but it feels kinda hardcore and is awfully close to miniature wargaming, which I'd like to avoid.

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Friday, March 30, 2007--After work, I went to Michael's place to play EDF. Bugs must die!

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Thursday, March 29, 2007--After a few weeks of not going to the gym, I finally return to the gym. And I failed to run my 1.25 miles. Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaailed!

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007--Apparently, Terminator 3 was on TV today, so I watched it. (I missed the first half-hour or so of it, though.) Everybody was right. It's not as good as the first two.

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Tuesday, March 27, 2007--It's ironic that just after I posted an entry saying that I'm caught up on bloop entries, I immediately fall behind on my bloop entries again.

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Monday, March 26, 2007--I should now be caught up on bloop entries.

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Sunday, March 25, 2007--Today, I just played more Phantom Brave (got halfway through chapter 6), made egg-chicken-sausage fried rice (used too much oil), and watched Sunday night TV. The Battlestar Galactica season finale was just Holy Hell!

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Saturday, March 24, 2007--Last night, I dreamt that I danced with Little Vivian and taught her how to waltz. It was amusing.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 3) Total: 4

Today, I went to see the new Ninja Turtles movie. At first, I was kinda worried when it was 15 minutes until the movie started and the theater was empty. And then, I was even more worried when it was 5 minutes until the movie started and the theater was suddenly full of kids. (And I mean suddenly.) But despite all that, it was a pretty good movie. That movie has single-handedly renewed my interest in Ninja Turtles.

After the movie, I went to Michael's place to play his new Xbox 360 game, Earth Defense Force 2017. It's a low budget but mindlessly fun 3rd-person shooter. It's fun.

Good Night, Duckie!

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Friday, March 23, 2007--After work today, I went to draft at Uncle's games. It was the usual Time Spiral-Time Spiral-Planar Chaos draft. There were 17 players, so we divided up into a table of 9 and a table of 8. I was in the table of 9. And since the skill level of the players here was a lot lower than the skill level of the players at Microsoft, the signals were really hard to read. In fact, I daresay that half the table wasn't even signalling. (And the half that was was so confused that the signals didn't even make sense until the third pack.)

So yeah. In the first pack, I try to get myself in white, as my pack had neither red burn nor black kill. However, I was quickly cut off, and I had difficulty determining which color I should go into. Suddenly, in the second pack, I get passed all of the black removal and blue bounce and counterspells, and I end up soaking up something like a dozen or so black kill cards from the second pack alone. It was really weird.

Then, in my Planar Chaos pack, I open a Damnation. (That alone more than made up for the $12 I spent on the draft.)

Anyways, given the really weird draft, I ended up building a really weird deck. It was primarily black and blue with 16 removal cards, 18 land, and 6 creatures. I also splashed some white to run Merieke Ri Berit. Over the course of the night, I ended up removing white altogether and going back down to 17 lands. Here is my deck in its final incarnation:
7xIsland
10xSwamp
Wipe Away
2xCancel
2xTemporal Eddy
Synchronous Sliver
Errant Ephemeron
Spell Burst
3xBlightspeaker
Feebleness
3xDash Hopes
Assassinate
2xSudden Death
2xTendrils of Corruption
Damnation
Gorgon Recluse
Muck Drubb

Curse of the Cabal was originally in that deck, but I cut it.

Anyways. in my first round, I played against Conrad. I forget what kind of deck he played, and I forget how the games went, but he trounced me pretty badly. After the game, I pulled the white and the Merieke Ri Berit from my deck. She sucked. Badly. Record: 0-1

In the meantime, Michael was still on game 1 against Jeff. He had gotten Jeff down to 5 life, but Jeff was making a comeback and eventually defeated Michael. Afterwards, I looked at Michael's deck and made a few tweaks for him.

In my second round, I played against Erik, who was running some kind of red-green deck. He trounced me as well. Record: 0-2

In my third round, I played against Ross. I forget what kind of deck he had, except that it had some blue in it. And he played some Gossamer Phantasms. (Which I really dislike, given my propensity to kill them with cards like Dawn Charm, Healing Leaves, Brute Force, etc.) But alas, the Phantasm was beating on me for a few turns as I (ironically) couldn't find a kill card for it. Except for the Tendrils of Corruption I was holding, because I wanted the life gain, and you can't drain life a Gossamer Phantasm. Eventually, I managed to draw my Muck Drubb. And I had tons of mana. So I cast the Tendrils of Corruption on the Gossamer Phantasm, triggering it's "sac me" ability. Then, after the Phantasm died, but in response to the Tendrils of Corruption, I cast Muck Drubb and redirect the Tendrils to itself, thus killing it and gaining 5 life. Was it a good play? Who knows. All I know is, it was amusing. But I still lost. Record: 0-3

In my final round, I played against a kid named David. He, apparently, was rather inexperienced with MTG in general and had went with the strategy (draft the strongest card, regardless of color or deck). Which, of course, is a pretty bad strategy. (Even the most beginner-ish of beginners know to try to limit themselves to 3 colors, preferably two.) Not only that, but he had a 70+ card monstrosity of a draft deck. In the first game, I managed to pulmogorize him. In the second game, I got off to a bad start. He managed to play a Havenwood Wurm and Vampiric Link (the black Spirit Link) it. After hitting me for quite a bit of damage, I tried to Damnation it. Unfortunately, he Spellshifted my Damnation. Fortunately, my Damnation was Spellshifted into an Assassinate, which still killed off the Wurm. Hehe. Oops. That was the turning point of the battle. After that, I managed to take control of the game while David was apparently color screwed. After whittling him down to 2 life, David managed to flash in a blocker. I Dashed Hopes it and smashed face for the win. The cruellest part is, even if he had the life to pay, I had a Cancel in hand and the mana to cast it. Record: 1-3

Michael, on the other hand, had managed to win 3 games in a row for a final record of 3-1 and managed to win 4th place and get 3 booster packs.

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Thursday, March 22, 2007--Here's the review on La Pucelle that I sent to Avalanche Online:

La Pucelle is a good game. It really is. It's just unfortunate that most people who've played La Pucelle played Disgaea first, and La Pucelle is basically a primitive version of Disgaea.

(One quick note: La Pucelle came out before Disgaea, but Disgaea was ported to America before La Pucelle was. I have no idea what the story is in Europe, but the point is, contrary to popular misconception, La Pucelle is not a prequel to Disgaea. In fact, storyline-wise, La Pucelle and Disgaea have nothing in common. La Pucelle is more like a prototype for Disgaea.)

So anyways, La Pucelle is basically a primitive version of Disgaea. As a result, it ends up feeling like a rather unpolished version of Disgaea. And yet, La Pucelle still manages to give itself its own distinctive feel.


STORY/CONCEPT

Compared to Disgaea, La Pucelle's story is a lot more serious. Whereas Disgaea had a comedic story with serious moments, La Pucelle has a serious story with comedic moments. That's not a bad thing, though. Many of the scenes are rather touching and heartwarming or heartbreakingly sad.

Not only that, but La Pucelle also has a great cast of highly entertaining characters, from the enthusiastic Culotte who wants to prove himself to his crush, the highly conservative and deeply religious Alouette to the tough and confident pirate Homard and his jealous fairy companion Papillon.

Unfortunately, the good storyline and cast was badly hurt by the horrible voice acting (more on this later). Not only that, but this English version of this game was massively censored, removing virtually all of the game's religious symbolism. The translation of the dialog could have used some improvement, too. As good as the story was, it was nearly ruined by bad localization.


GAMEPLAY

The first thing most veteran Disgaea players will notice is that the gameplay of La Pucelle is a lot slower. That's mainly because every attack, be it a regular attack, team attack, or a special attack, takes place on a special battle screen rather on the battle map. When battle start getting really complicated, the special battle screen can also occasionally make it unclear who is attacking, who is supporting, and where the attackers and defenders are. On the bright side, the special battle screen makes for some pretty amusing battle animations.

Like its successor Disgaea, La Pucelle's AI is pretty bad. (Of course, that's to be expected, because La Pucelle came before Disgaea, and technology generally doesn't get worse with subsequent releases.) However, La Pucelle's battle system makes the bad AI a lot harder to exploit. First of all, without the Staff Masteries we had in Disgaea, mages tend not to get a lot of range with their spells, meaning you'll rarely be able to bombard enemies from so far away that they simply won't know how to respond. Speaking of which, outside of magic spells, ranged attacks are extremely rare, and those that are available can generally only hit two squares away. This usually means that no matter what tactics you try to use, you'll generally end up going face to face with your enemies in close combat.

Not only that, but unlike in Disgaea, once you perform an action (be it attacking, using an item, or even supporting an attack), your character can no longer move that turn. This means that once you use a character to attack, you're really committing to the attack. Gone (or rather, yet to come) are the days where you can attack an enemy, and then run to safety on the same turn.

The plus side is that in La Pucelle, Team Attacks are guaranteed to happen if you attack with two, three, four, or even five adjacent characters. When used properly, this allows you to gang up on monsters in a two-on-one, three-on-one, or occasionally eight-on-one battle. Unfortunately, "Team Attacks" work on defense, too. If you attack an enemy with a regular or a team attack, it will always counterattack with its adjacent allies. Still, the prospect of pounding your enemies with three or four of your characters at once is always fun--and often a good strategy in the early game.

But enough about the battle system. Let's talk about Dark Portals and Dark Energy. Dark Portals and Dark Energy are aspects of the battlefield that change the properties of whatever square they're on (kind of like Disgaea's Geo Symbols, but much different). I won't go into the details of Dark Portals (this is a review, not a walkthrough), but the short story is that Dark Portals emit streams of Dark Energy, which have elemental properties and can power up or power down characters (ally or enemy) based on elemental affinity (or lack thereof). Dark Portals, however, can be eliminated by purifying them, and Dark Energy streams can be redirected or merged. If you manage to direct the Dark Energy streams into a large enough loop and then purify a Dark Portal at the source, it will trigger a powerful Miracle Attack.

Except that these Miracle Attacks aren't that powerful, and enemies killed by a Miracle Attack don't give experience. Given their high complexity and their blatant lack of power and rewards, for most of the game, you won't even bother with Miracle Attacks. In fact, if it weren't for the fact that Dark Portals spew out enemies every 3 turns, you could probably ignore them for most of the game.

That and, you need to purify Dark Portals to level up your items. Yes, like its successors, La Pucelle allows you to level up your items as well. Except that, the process is painfully slow and generally not worth the effort on all but the most powerful of items that you're probably not going to bother until late in the post-game.

The thing that hurts La Pucelle the most, however, is the lack of character creation. Instead, in La Pucelle, you gain allies by purifying monsters on the battlefield. At first, this makes it seem like you'll have a bit of trouble building a good team. On the contrary, throughout the course of the game, La Pucelle provides such a variety of monsters in battle in addition to a large cast of storyline characters that you actually have a pretty good selection of characters to choose from.

And despite all those flaws, La Pucelle can be pretty fun just by sending your characters into battle to smash face, then sitting back and watching the animations.


SOUNDTRACK/VOICEOVERS

Tenpei Sato wrote the soundtrack for La Pucelle. The music is good, although not as good as his works in Disgaea and Disgaea 2. The only memorable songs are the Rosen Queen Co. theme and the Demon Lord boss battle theme, but mainly because both of those songs were re-used in Disgaea and Disgaea 2 (although only the Demon Lord boss battle theme made it into Disgaea unaltered). It's still a pretty decent listen, though.

The English voice acting, however, was just horrible. And this is coming from someone who sometimes watches American dubbed anime (notorious for having bad voice acting) and doesn't mind. The English voice acting was that much WORSE. If you play La Pucelle, I strongly recommend playing it with Japanese voiceovers. While this gamer can't understand Japanese, and therefore doesn't know how good or bad the Japanese voiceovers are, it's almost impossible that the Japanese voiceovers are worse than the English voiceovers.


GRAPHICS

The graphics are your standard NIS Strategy RPG graphics: 2d sprites in a 3d world. Nothing fantastic, but nothing horrible, either.


CONCLUSION

So La Pucelle is basically an unpolished, primitive version of Disgaea. Except that Disgaea was a kickass awesome Strategy RPG, so La Pucelle turns out to be a pretty decent game. Even though it felt like several steps backward after playing Disgaea, it still entertained me for quite a long time. It's not a must-play game, but if you're a die-hard Strategy RPG fan, then I recommend La Pucelle to you.


PROS

• fun, if a bit simplistic, gameplay
• entertaining storyline

CONS

• horrible English voice acting
• no character creation

OVERALL RATING: 6 out of 10

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Wednesday, March 21, 2007--You know what today is? It's the Vernal Equinox. Starting today, the days in Washington will be longer than the days in California. Hurray!

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Tuesday, March 20, 2007--Apparently, there was an all-Berkeley alumni lunch at Cafe 9 today. Since Feng works in building 9, I predicted that I would randomly encounter her in the cafeteria. And I did.

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Monday, March 19, 2007--Today, Chao came to visit, so after work lunch breakfast work, I went to Bellevue Square to meet him and our friends Cat, Sean, Rohan, and Alexis for dinner, which we ended up having at Cheesecake Factory. Mmm... cheesecake...

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Sunday, March 18, 2007--Today, Chao came to visit, so after work lunch breakfast, I went to Feng's place to meet him and his friends Feng and Amy. And then we went to Seattle, where we went to the Pike Place Market and the Aquarium and the Chinatown. Apparently, girls are easily impressed by cute, cuddly little animals.

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Saturday, March 17, 2007--Happy St. Patrick's Day!


Today, Chao came to visit, so after work lunch, I went to this place just north of Crossroads Mall to meet him and his friend Feng to play some pool. Feng is like the queen of pool, or something.

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Friday, March 16, 2007--

Today, Chao came to visit, so after work, I went to Denny's to meet him and his friends Feng, Wong-Kai, Eugene, and Bonnie for dinner. Apparently, at a right angle, Bonnie looks exactly like Cindy. D'oh!

(Also, I got a haircut today.)

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Thursday, March 15, 2007--Beware the Ides of March...


Today, Chao came to visit, so after work, I went to Claim Jumper to meet him and his friends Feng, Wong-Kai, and Eugene for dinner. Mmm... dinner...

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Wednesday, March 14, 2007--Happy Pi Day!

Today, I saw 300. It was all right. It was a bit stylized though, but entertaining nonetheless.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 4) Total: 10

Pi Night!

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Tuesday, March 13, 2007--After work, I played a booster draft with the guys in the Cafeteria 16.

My first pick was a Sudden Death, but then, I was quickly cut off from both the black kill cards and the red burn, so for my second picks and after, I grabbed mostly white weenies. After a while, I noticed that blue was under-drafted (well, blue and red, mostly, but without burn, red is pretty weak), so I went into blue. Here's what my deck ended up looking like:
10xIsland
7xPlains
Piracy Charm
Merfolk Thaumaturgist
3xErratic Mutation
Tidewalker
Shaper Parasite
Wipe Away
Primal Plasma
Temporal Eddy
2xSynchronous Sliver
Spell Burst
2xSidewinder Sliver
3xBenalish Cavalry
2xWhitemane Lion
Revered Dead
D'Avenant Healer
Moorish Cavalry

Interestingly enough, I also drafted a fourth Benalish Cavalry, but just couldn't fit it into my deck.

First, I played against Brain (not the Crossroads one), who had drafted a Thallid deck. In the first game, I got really good draws and just rushed him to defeat. In the second game, he managed to beat me narrowly with a last second Fortify to overrun me for some 16 or so damage. Then, in the third game, I was mana flooded, and he easily picked me apart.

Then, I played Matt, who had a black-white deck featuring cards like Dauthi Trapper, Circle of Affliction, and Pentrarch Paladin. He beat me easily the first game, but in the second game, he was mana screwed and lost. The third game was pretty close, but toward the end, he managed to overpower me and win.

Finally, I played against Ken. He beat me easily in the first game. In the second game, I got him down to 1 life, but he made a come back and managed to overpower me, using a combination of Reality Acid and a creature that could bounce any permanent he controls.

Yeah, blue is not my color... except in Planar Chaos, where Erratic Mutation is fun.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 3) Total: 4

Good Night!

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Monday, March 12, 2007--

I make my triumph return to the Gym... and then eat fish sticks afterwards. These fish sticks were about twice the size of the ones I ate before, so I only had 8 of them.

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Sunday, March 11, 2007--We spring forward early this year.


Today, I had to drive Mom back to the airport so she could fly back home to San Jose.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 6) Total: 12

Hmm... that's all.

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Saturday, March 10, 2007--

Anyways, today, Mom and I went to the Bellevue Square mall, where I discovered that Orange Julius does exist, so I got some Strawberry Julius at Orange Julius. Mmm... Strawberry Julius at Orange Julius.

Then, we went to Thai Ginger, where we got some Thai Curry. Mmm... Thai Curry...

Then, we went to Mervyn's, only to discover that Mervyn's had closed all of its stores in Washington and Oregon.

Then, we went to Kiku Sushi. Mmm... Tempura Soba...

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 4) Total: 10

Mmm... Good Night!

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Friday, March 9, 2007--Duckie had another cs61c crisis, so I helped again. Damn assemblies!

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Thursday, March 8, 2007--Apparently, Beth is short for Elisabeth.

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Wednesday, March 7, 2007--Today, mother came to visit, so I picked her up from the airport.

I have a fax machina now.

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Tuesday, March 6, 2007--My mother's coming to visit tomorrow, so I spent today cleaning up my apartment. Hurray! It's clean for the first time since I got back from Christmas vacation!

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Monday, March 5, 2007--Work is tedious. Isn't it always?


Also, I worked on Hyperman Chronicles. Good stuff.

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Sunday, March 4, 2007--Today, I went to Michael's place for a board game party. While waiting for the other fiends to show up, we played a bit of Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the 360. It amused me.

Then, gradually, Elena, Sean, and Ruby show up. And we play Would You Rather. No, it is NOT a perverted game. Elena won, but I was close behind her.

After that, we played Illuminati. It took 4 frickin' hours, and we still didn't finish. (Games tend to stall up really quick (or is that really slow) when people start interfering or teaming up when one person is close to winning.) Eventually, we just decided to declare Elena the winner, because she was closest to winning. Incidentally, she won with the Discordian Society (the Weird group), the same group that Little Vivian won with the one time I played with her.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 6) Total: 7

Afterwards, we went to dinner at Kiku Sushi, and apparently, we were the last customers before the place closed for the night. Heh.

Good Tempura Soba!

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Saturday, March 3, 2007--Today, I played more La Pucelle. *LP*So today, I play through chapter 12, the last chapter. I manage to make it to the final boss, but get my ass kicked. So then, I spent some time training my guys up to level 30ish, and then I was able to beat the final boss, although only barely.*LP*

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 4) Total: 8

So yeah... I beat La Pucelle today. The time on the clock at my last save point was 44:56:47, and my characters were roughly at level 35, except *spoiler*Salade*spoiler*, who is at level 50 when he first joins the party. La Pucelle is an okay game. Not great, but not bad. I'd give it 6 out of 10, slightly better than average. Of course, it seems a lot worse than it is because Disgaea is so much better (and Disgaea 2 is so much better than the first Disgaea). Although the gameplay isn't as polished as Disgaea, one of La Pucelle's strengths is in its story. Unfortunately, the American English voice acting is so bad, it kinda took away from some of the scenes' power.

End of the Night!

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Friday, March 2, 2007--Today, at a morale event at the office, I saw The Prestige. It's a pretty good movie, although it is non-linear, so...


After work, I played La Pucelle. *LP*So I finally finish training up my replacement chars (Homard, Yattanya, and a siren). However, apparently, the next boss fight is a 2v1 battle between Eclair and Culotte vs Dark Eclair, and since Eclair was under-levelled, I got my ass kicked. So I went to train Eclair. I guess I should use her instead of Yattanya. After defeating Dark Eclair, I can now transform between Eclair and Dark Eclair, and Dark Eclair is quite powerful.

Also, apparently, at the end of chapter 11, I fought a battle against Dark Croix. Prier and Alouette came back, but Salade also joined my party. And he's at level 50 while everyone else is only at level 20ish. Needless to say, he kicked ass, despite not having any equipment. I think I'll incorporate him into my team since he's so powerful. Anyways, this ends chapter 11, and I decided to call it a day.*LP*

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 4) Total: 9

Good Night!

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Thursday, March 1, 2007--

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