Monday, January 18, 2021

My Favorite Anime of 2020

Ironically, despite spending so much time at home due to Covid in 2020, I actually watched less. Part of it was a lull in the number of series I was actually interested in, but also (as happened last year while I was dealing with cancer) my daily ritual of coming home and watching a half hour of anime while eating dinner didn't happen anymore. It wasn't that I wasn't eating dinner anymore, but the ritual changed and I ended up reading the news instead.

I did see a few things though, and here they are, presented in the order I watched them.

Carole & Tuesday

When this first came out, I remember it being a "big deal" because the series was from the same director as the beloved Cowboy Bebop, but the reason I watched it was more for the music and the light sci-fi touch to the story, which places it on a terraformed Mars where musical acts are supported by computers that will generate the hit songs for them. The first half is a lot of fun, the second not so much, but the two leads are energetic (one being a person of color who isn't drawn as a caricature) and the music is fantastic. It feels very much like a love letter from the Japanese director to western music.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

I was already planning on buying the novel series before I started watching, and after I did, that cemented it. The series is obviously fond of romance games and since protagonist Catarina has been reborn inside the last video game she played, she actually knows some of what's about to happen and she doesn't like it! Catarina's attempts to avoid death and exile (as the villainous rival character) start from her childhood years and she's so caught up in trying to cheat fate that she completely misses how good everything has become for her.

Psycho-Pass 3: First Inspector

The movie that wraps up Psycho-Pass Season 3. Surprisingly, given the limited run time, it manages to do exactly that in a satisfying manner while also setting up for a fourth season. Not every question gets answered, but it hits all the major ones while still being entertaining as a movie. Watching Season 3 beforehand is a must, as there is no attempt to get the viewer up to speed.

Norn 9

Adaptation of the Norn9 visual novel following a group of young people gifted with special powers on a journey to see the World on a magnificent flying ship, the Norn. I liked this a fair bit better than most otome adaptations because of its effort to integrate multiple storylines while still serving up the main plot. In some cases it actually does better than the source material, and the original ending is on par with those in game (or even better for some characters).

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense

This isn't really a series for the ages, but it's a nice look at what virtual reality gaming can be when it's not trapping people in the world of the game or turning everything into a death match. Maple is a complete VR MMO newbie and as such, makes new player mistakes in her character build because no one honestly expects anyone to play like that, but she makes it work. She's so good natured that no one really faults her for playing her way (especially since playing her way actually works for her) and even the people in rival guilds are really just rivals because they're having a guild vs guild match and not because people bear grudges. This makes it a nice series to cuddle up with.

Monday, January 11, 2021

My Favorite Games of 2020

I'm getting better at not buying more games than I can consume in a year, but I still play the occasional free-to-play indie title and wind up with a number of commercial games through promotional giveaways. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed.

These are the 12 games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2020, in the order I played them. If the game is available on multiple platforms, the one I played on is listed first. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

AI: The Somnium Files (Switch, PS4, Windows) *

I didn't think I'd find one of my top 3 games right out of the gates, especially since it had a fair number of early road bumps that would have turned me off had this been any other game. Date and his AI partner Aiba make for a winning team though, and I lived for their banter. By the time I was about a third to halfway in I was seriously invested, and by the time I finished I was sad that it was over. This might be a game about solving gruesome murders, but the frequent moments of levity keeps it from getting too dark. I also like Date for being able to keep a professional face for his job while being a complete dork on the inside. It makes him highly relatable.

Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly (PS Vita, Windows) *

A mystery visual novel with romantic overtones. The mystery element is an overwhelming part of the main story, with the romance tacked on as alternate and arguably optional endings so this is probably not a first choice for romance fans, but the mystery is fantastic with two big twists which put a number of events in a different context on replay. Though the characters start out as five strangers trapped within a mysterious manor, there's so much about that statement that isn't necessarily true or doesn't properly represent their true situation.

9:05 (Web)

I played this little text adventure web game because it was in an article I read about the best video game endings and it promised that it was a short 5 minute playthrough. I think it was actually closer to 10 for me and I did not like the surprise ending. Ironically, 9:05 was created to show why it's a bad idea as a game writer to hide certain things from the player, and in that respect it works beautifully. So I agree with the author, that this is supposed to be bad!

Valkyria Chronicles (PS3, PS4, Switch, Windows)

If you ever wanted a change of pace from medieval fantasy and far future sf for your strategy RPG, Valkyria Chronicles has you covered with its WW2-inspired low fantasy gameplay. The small touches like having characters break line of sight, take cover in tall grass or behind bunkers, are details you just don't get in similar titles out of Japan. Magic is rare so most of your squad consists of regular people running around with guns, and each one of them is an individual with their own backstory. The watercolor-inspired art style still holds up twelve years later, and the overarching story does too.

The Sexy Brutale (Windows, PS4, Switch, XB1)

I'm not entirely sure what to call this. Maybe a puzzle-adventure game? The protagonist is stuck in a time loop inside a marquis's manor and is tasked with saving the guests from the mansion's murderous staff. Though the subject matter is dark, the game itself is more of a black comedy, with staff taking a certain amount of glee in their over-the-top murders (and the sheer variety of ways they can off someone). By taking advantage of the time loop, the protagonist can learn which events need to change in order to prevent a murder, and each "solved" murder gives new abilities that can be used later in the game. Took me about 9 hours to complete, which felt like just the right length for this kind of game.

Return of the Obra Dinn (Windows, PS4, Switch, XB1) *

As chief inspector of the East India company, the player is dispatched to investigate the listless Obra Dinn, which has drifted into port with damaged sails and no sign of the crew. Armed with a mysterious watch that allows the wielder to see and listen to a dead person's final moments, the inspector is tasked with documenting what happened to all the souls on board. There are no jump scares, but the atmosphere can get unnerving just because there are a lot of dead people to catalog and most of them did not go out on pleasant terms. A lot of the gameplay is unraveling the mystery, so the less you know going in, the better.

Norn9: Var Commons (PS Vita)

Otome visual novel following a group of espers on a flying ship in an alternate 1919. Unusual for having three playable protagonists, all voiced, and a total of nine fully fleshed out romance routes. One of the better otome I've played, but really faceplanted on anything that wasn't romance, resulting in unanswered questions and a half-baked frame story. Taken in pieces it's fine, but this is a case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Some of the parts are pretty good though!

Path of Exile (Windows, PS4, XB1)

Gritty action-RPG in the style of the Diablo series. You mass murder monsters and they drop loot. It's free to play and microtransactions are only for cosmetics or quality of life (like additional storage space beyond the generously sized stash they give you to begin with). The skill tree is pretty gnarly, but as a result it's super customizable so if you want to do something weird like a melee witch or a cold-blasting ranger you can. Path of Exile has a feature called "leagues" where every three months a new league is introduced with its own special set of mechanics to liven up the game and give something new for players to do. Leagues can be hit or miss, but the right mechanic can add enough spice to play through the game again.

Murder By Numbers (Windows, Switch)

Murder mystery game combined with solving nonograms to earn clues. Music is by the same composer as the Ace Attorney series and it really shows. Most of the tunes are really good, though they may start to grate if you're slow at solving puzzles (I had to mute a couple times because I couldn't take them anymore). The mysteries are entertaining with the usual colorful group of characters for this type of game, and considering the game takes place in Los Angeles, the cast is fairly diverse with a woman of color in the lead role. I would have to say though that I'm not good enough at nonograms to love this game though, and there was a point where I had to take a long break, not because I lost interest in the story, but because I honestly couldn't look at another nonogram, and that may impact your enjoyment of the game.

Cafe Enchante (Switch)

Romance game based around the owner of a cafe that serves a group of non-human regulars. The first half of the game is very low stakes, slice of life storytelling, which makes it a bit jarring when things go off the rails in the second half for most of the routes. Three of the five endings are on the bittersweet side, which I did not expect given the fluffy intro about life in a cafe with non-humans (with all that absolutely gorgeous food art). I enjoyed this game a lot, and I hope it gets a sequel/fandisk, but I also have a lot of bones to pick with it.

Hatoful Boyfriend (Windows, PS4, PS Vita, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS)

I technically finished this back in 2015, but only did one ending and never got to the fabled Bad Boys Love ending which turns the rest of the game on its head. Now that I have, I'd have to say that the world building is pretty good and deceptively deeper than you would expect from a game that presents itself as a high school romance with pigeons. The gameplay itself is not to my tastes though (I found several of the choices to be too arbitrary and I dislike stat building in visual novels) so I wouldn't have given it another shot if not for a walkthrough.

Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle (Switch, PS4, XB1, Windows)

Technically seven games in one since this is a collection of Capcom's old beat 'em up arcade brawlers, but because they're all short individually I decided to count them together. Final Fight is the most polished of the bunch and is the marquee title, but I bought it for The King of Dragons which is my childhood favorite. I also enjoyed Knights of the Round and Warriors of Fate, though I wish the latter had been accurately translated as a Romance of the Three Kingdoms game.

Monday, January 4, 2021

My Favorite Books of 2020

My 2020 reading year didn't go off as planned, particularly in regards to picking up new reading material, but with all the staying at home that had to be done, I ended up mostly reading backlogged physical and ebooks.

These are the twelve books I enjoyed the most, and in the order I read them. My top three picks of the year are marked with an asterisk (*).

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

I picked this up for Kindle a while ago when it was on sale for a quarter (!), figuring I'd never get it cheaper short of going to a library. It's one of those books I'd always heard about, but never read while growing up, and while the Vietnam allegory is pretty apparent once you get to the middle section of the book, a lot of the societal changes come off as insensitive as best and homophobic at worst. Though the protagonist tries to be a decent guy and avoids being a jerk to any of the numerous gay characters that appear later in the story, he never gets comfortable with the thought that a queer society could be just fine even if it's not for him. If you can ignore all that (and it's all over the later parts of the book), it's not a bad story about a soldier just trying to find his own piece of heaven, but it hasn't aged well.

Baccano! Vol 6: 1933 <First> The Slash -Cloudy to Rainy- by Ryohgo Narita

More Baccano! The series works much better in the 1930s than the 2001 of the last installment, and we get to return to the woes of our favorite mobsters. In particular, this book focuses on Tick and Maria, who were minor characters previously, when Luck Gandor sends them to negotiate with some new hoodlums in town, who happen to be Jacuzzi Splot and his gang! Dallas is finally pulled out of the river, Firo has to deal with the psychological burden placed on him by inheriting Szilard's memories, and Ronny from the Martillo family gets to hint at his true colors. There's a lot going on as usual and Narita's sense of comedic timing is on point, knowing exactly when to turn the worst tension into an incredible joke.

Baccano! Vol 7: 1933 <Last> The Slash -Bloody to Fair- by Ryohgo Narita

The second half of the Slash arc ramps up with Vino being called into back into action after having been a non-appearance most of the previous book, and we get to see him and Chané as a romantic couple for the first time, which is a bit weird if you haven't watched the anime, because the specifics of how they became a couple are skipped over for another time in the books themselves. Tick and Maria go through their own bit of character development making them worthwhile additions to the pre-existing cast. Though they're clearly as morally impaired as most of the cast, I can't help rooting for those two.

The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

I'd been wanting to read this ever since I heard this was Sherlock Holmes in space and Watson is a spaceship. I'm not sure I see the parallel between The Shadow's Child and Watson, other than through being a detective's partner, but Long Chau is definitely a far future Holmes; prickly personality, eccentric habits, and all. This was a really swift read and The Shadow's Child is a fantastic narrator, but the mystery was solved a little too easily for me. Still, I'd definitely be interested in a sequel.

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom! Vol 1 by Satoru Yamaguchi

If you need a light and fluffy read, this is a surprisingly short first volume that serves as a sort of extended prologue to Katarina's plans to avoid getting either exiled or killed. Katarina is initially the spoiled daughter of a duke until she hits her head one day and realizes that in her previous life she used to be a teenager in our world until she got into a car accident while riding her bike. More than that, she seems to have been reborn as the rival character in the last video game she was playing, the otome Fortune Lover, and the rival doesn't have a single happy ending in the game! Now that she's armed with knowledge of her future, Katarina puts plans in motion to change her fate, but she's also prone to overthinking things and/or making strange jumps in logic, making multiple characters wonder just what happened to the duke's daughter.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Murderbot continues to be a fantastic narrator, though I wasn't sure where the story was going considering the ending for the first book. Being a construct of few wants (other than good entertainment), Murderbot didn't seem like one to go off on unnecessary adventures, and the answer is searching for what really happened that caused it to start thinking of itself as Murderbot in the first place. The soul searching was worthwhile, but I wished that had been the climax of the story instead of the other plot thread, which I was much less invested in. ART was the highlight of the book though and I'm disappointed the research vessel and Murderbot parted ways at the end.

The Legend of the Galactic Heroes Vol 3: Endurance by Yoshiki Tanaka

Though I enjoyed the previous two LoGH volumes, the first third of Endurance was aptly named, spending an enormous amount of time on setup and political maneuvering before getting to the central conflict (the worst part being that the setup ends up being for a future book and not the current one). Yang's chapters continue to be a highlight, given how politicians and enemy combatants alike really don't know what to make of the guy. Reinhard's chapters are unfortunately more distant. Emotionally he's suffered a great loss since the end of the last book, but his loss is also the audience's loss as it makes him a much harder character to relate to. No doubt some of that is intentional, but I found I just didn't like his chapters as much.

86 Vol 1 by Asato Asato *

The first book of the 86 series is surprisingly weighty for a light novel series and was originally conceived as a stand alone so there's no need to commit anything further. Though it's primarily a war story following a remote commanding officer of the ethnic majority and her squadron composed of the oppressed minority, it's laced throughout with an exploration of government sanctioned racism and how privilege can blind otherwise "nice" people. Lena's growth over the course of the story, and realizing that it may be impossible for her to ever truly become a comrade to her soldiers, is quite frankly a conclusion I didn't expect to be reached. The combat and war segments are good too, but it's really the interpersonal relationships between Lena and her squad that make the book sing.

The Daedalus Incident by Michael J. Martinez

There are essentially two stories in this book; one following a mining operation on 22nd century Mars with a strong hard science fiction slant, and a one following the crew of the 18th century sailing ship the Daedalus, which is pursuing pirates and a rogue alchemist across the solar system with a golden age science fantasy feel. (Think of the animated Treasure Planet movie or the D&D Spelljammer setting.) The sub-genre mixing is fun and unusual, but I developed a strong preference for one storyline over the other, and the two take a long time to meet, so reading was an uneven experience. I kept wanting to hurry up to get back to the team I liked better.

The Venusian Gamit by Michael J. Martinez

The third book in the Daedalus Trilogy and the one with the best pacing. You can really see how Martinez's craft improved since the first book, and there are fun moments like the two dimensions meeting up again. I wasn't surprised to read in the notes at the end of the book that Martinez wrote the trilogy for Weatherby. You have to really like sailors on 18th century ships to write this stuff! It was an exciting read all the way up until the end when I realized that not all of my questions were going to get answered. But if you don't sweat the details, it's satisfying enough.

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart *

Set in an East Asian themed island nation, The Bone Shard Daughter mostly follows the struggles of Lin, the imperial princess who is desperate to prove herself worthy of being her father's heir, and the smuggler Jovus, who is looking for his missing wife. The world building is quite good, particularly the imperial constructs, and I'm really interested in seeing Lin's path forward after all the upheaval at the end of the book. It's not going to be an easy one!

Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa *

Really impressed by this Japanese-inspired fantasy that introduces just enough Japanese language that the culture comes across, without overindulging. Yumeko and Tatsumi work well as the dual narrators with their differing attitudes and points of view, and they're distinctive enough that they can be told apart by narrative voice alone. This is the first in a trilogy and the end of the book is very much a break before starting another story arc rather than a complete ending.