Season's Greetings!
Atelier Thighza, episode 1
Our Heroine is a slacker born to a pair of hard-working farmers, whose first mistake was letting her dress like a streetwalker instead of an actual farm-girl. Their second mistake was not beating her enough at an early age so she’d respect her parents and do at least a few chores.
But no, Our Bored Slacker Teen bullies Her Childhood Boy-toys into running off to play adventurer-for-a-day. Meanwhile, Our Merchant And His Wandering Poster Girl arrive in town accompanied by Mister Research Alchemist and Miss Paizuri (seriously, the outfit restraining her massive breasts has a pair of arrows that shout “insert cock here”). Then there’s an unrelated younger girl trying to sneak off, the town guards who catch her, the random guy who sees Our Slackers running around causing trouble, and holy fuck is this cast getting big and we’re only 16 minutes into a 48-minute double episode.
Worse, apart from the exposed skin that the camera zooms in on, I’m not finding Our Barely-Restrained Airhead very likeable. They keep giving her heroic camera shots as if she’s making profound statements and achieving great deeds, when the only thing she’d actually win if the writers weren’t on her side is a Darwin Award.
Verdict: I stopped watching less than halfway through. I don’t know if I’ll finish this mass of vomitous exposition and unfounded optimism, much less watch more episodes.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 2, episodes 1-3
First up, everyone but the two leads gets to go on a comic-book side adventure, about half of which was spoiled in the trailer. I have no idea why the medical team shoots up and beats up; that’s not the fan-service I’m looking for.
Second, Our Lead Characters return for a courtroom drama that is heavy on the 21st-century race/lgbtqroflmao allegory and light on, well, anything else. Hopefully they can now stop writing about Illyrian Pride Month for the rest of the series.
Third, beings with superior genetics should sleep nude; is that too much to ask for, especially now that Paramount+ is merging with Showtime, the network that put boobs into Stargate? That aside, the brief La’angirie-service helped… distract from… her partner’s lack of… experience at playing James T. Kirk (his performance is fine if you just treat him as Some Guy Named Jim, and much better than he was in the previous season). I’d say this was the best of the three.
Verdict: other than the promised crossover with the animated Trek series, I’m looking forward to this show.
(Llenn-service is unrelated)
Tears Of The Kingdom, playthrough 2
Before I knew it, I’d run out of shrines and lightroots, and the only major thing left to do was go fight the Big Bad. Instead, I started over on a different user profile (“hi, Drew!”), and took advantage of things I’d learned, like how to quickly get the Hylian Shield and Master Sword, and most importantly, how to really use the new powers, which at first glance look less useful than the ones in BotW, but in fact are much subtler and synergistic. I also knew where to look for the Glide armor, although I ended up doing the challenges in reverse order.
I suspect that when I go back to the original save, the final battle will be fairly trivial with maxed-out stats, fully-upgraded armor, and an inventory full of combat goodies, so I’m going to try to get to it a lot sooner on the second save.
Unrelated, Nintendo announced two upcoming amiibo, but people who data-mined the source already figured out the serial numbers, so you can burn your own and use them today. The Gerudo King amiibo is seriously OP, frequently dropping 41-damage Gloom Swords. Fuse them to any Gerudo weapon and you add double damage, which will one-shot most enemies early on.
(amiibo drops progress more easily than in BotW; you just need to finish the first Robbie quest in the Depths to unlock good weapons, bows, and shields, as well as plenty of buff/cash foods; getting the shrine sensor is actually more difficult, since you need to finish at least one of the temples to unlock that quest chain)
Witcher 3: Endgame, episodes 1-5
They’ve promised to replace the lead actor next season, which really drives home how much this show depends on One Man Who Gets It. Expect season four to be canceled before it airs.
I may binge these over the weekend; it depends on how the on-again-off-again thunderstorm predictions pan out. I got enough wind Thursday night to take down tree branches and scatter the landscaper’s seed-protecting straw matting a good distance, but not much in the way of actual rain. Every time I look at the weather forecast it’s different, but at least we didn’t get choked with Canadian Climate Arson fallout on Friday, so that’s progress.
(unrelated patriot is setting off fireworks)
Comments via Isso
Markdown formatting and simple HTML accepted.
Sometimes you have to double-click to enter text in the form (interaction between Isso and Bootstrap?). Tab is more reliable.