Arbitrary Utopia

This is going to be a fun one.

I don't know why but I finished GEARS of DRAGOON -迷宮のウロボロス-, in the sense that I completed every ending and collected every CG. All I can say is, what a journey it has been. I almost thought I wasn't going to survive the storm of cliches that the game brought to my little world. Once again I was left speechless, or rather too busy laughing at what I perceived to be a lack of sincerity and professionalism on the game writers' part. How they can read their own stories and not fall off their chairs laughing is beyond me, seeing as how my chair almost fell off me and flew straight outside the window.

Gears of Dragoon is a dungeon crawler, much like the classic Wizardry and the newer Etrian Odyssey, except its poorly designed 3D dungeons are painful to look at and frustrating to navigate through. Wait, I was supposed to start with the better aspects of the game first. It's actually a decent game with a surprisingly addictive enchanting system. I probably had more fun crafting and enchanting equipments than rushing through the dungeons just so I could get to the next chapter. The art is alright and some of the music tracks are fairly good, but it's never a good sign if I brought up the art and music so early. Indeed everything else about the game left a pretty bad impression on me, with the most glaring problem being the terrible writing.

It's like they added Conrad just to fill up the space

Ever wondered what happens when the most generic characters come together in a most generic story? Gears of Dragoon comes dangerously close to that. The main character Ladius, who conveniently has amnesia, is irritatingly impetuous and stubborn. Filia, whom I take to be the main heroine since she gets the most scenes, has a repulsively bubbly personality which turns out to be "fake" as she is really an overpowered and emotionless anti-Durga/Rudra (why the Hindi names?) killing machine called Dynamis. Oh and her only flaw is that she can't cook. Bravo Japan, you've done it again. Who'd have thought that it was a bad idea to put a powerful system on someone who would then develop a weak, dependent and unstable personality? Right, Noel?

Next Season

The show goes on even if it weren't what it was meant to be.

First of all and about two four weeks late, but Happy New Year to everyone who frequents or happens upon this quiet corner of the internet. I hope you all find some ways to take it easy in these rather troubled times.

Anyway, a little update on my misadventure in Gun Blood Days. I actually managed to gain the top spot in the Boss Raid and got a Diamond Mitsuki Naruse as my reward. It was a short-lived victory however, as I turned Mitsuki into a much stronger Lunette Gien, but failed limit breaking her and ended up with a mediocre Silver Kyouko Oribe. Others probably thought I was a bit crazy. On the bright side, I did complete collecting the Witch Girls, with the last two, the one-eyed Ozu Karuma (the only one with a very odd name, probably a reference to the Wizard of Oz) and the blue-haired Ao Mizuki coming in after a streak of good draws. Now with the witches and Hisumi who came about when I least expected, as well as a Royal Bronze Himeko all in the bag, I have more or less collected all the cards I wanted. Time to quit. Other than that, an unlikely alliance formed between us and Saber, both in and outside the actual storyline, was an amusing recent development. I was worried that the already dominant Japanese Liberation Front, commonly referred to as 'Crows' due to their logo, might take that chance away from us. But the deal went through for us quite smoothly in the end. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" indeed.