You’ve probably figured out that I watch a lot of wuxia dramas by now. I’ll admit that most of them are really cheesy. You usually don’t get very deep stories away from them, either, a lot of them ultimately being about defending China from some outside force.

Quite frankly, I kinda get tired with all of the nationalism. I mean, it’s kinda unrealistic for people of most time periods to care about who is ruling them. Nationalism is actually kind of a recent “invention,” after all. Furthermore, sometimes it just becomes absurdly silly, like Return of the Condor Heroes. Thankfully, the Duke of Mount Deer, based on the novel, The Deer and the Cauldron, is nothing like that.

The story takes place during the Qin Dynasty, so it’s fairly modern for the dramas I’ve watched. At this period of time, China is have troubles with internal rebellions and outside pressure from Russia.

Actually, upon watching you the drama, you’ll find that it’s very different from other wuxia dramas. The first thing that you’ll notice is that the Wei Xiaobao, the main character, is pretty odd. He’s the son of a woman who works in the kitchen of a brothel, for one thing. He is uneducated and illiterate. He doesn’t know any martial arts and just doesn’t have any good traits in general, save for his wit and his loyalty to friends.

It’s his loyalty to his friends that makes the drama really interesting. Through a series of coincidences, he happens to become a member of the Heaven and Earth Society, a secret society serving the royal family of Taiwan that was created to restore sovereignty of China back to te Hans (the Manchus having invaded and taken over several decades ago.) Ironically, Xiaobao also becomes the best friend of Kangxi, the second Qin Emperor. Obviously, Xiaobao has a bit of a problem on his hands dealing with both sides.

One of my favorite things about this series is the soundtrack. It has one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard for a wuxia drama. It stomps all over my previous favorite soundtrack, Tiān Lóng Bā Bù. It’s hard to describe how good the music is, though, so you’ll just have to take my word for it or watch the drama for yourselves. Overall, I think everything makes this drama my overall favorite drama I’ve ever watched.

Well, I finally finished Mana Khemia this morning… at 6 AM… I think I clocked in about 47 hours when I finally got to the last boss. I must say, it almost feels like the characters did nothing of severe importance. I was initially going to complain about that, but then I realized that the game didn’t really need that. I mean, the characters are schoolkids, what do you really expect them to do?

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It seems a lot of people have been talking about Aya’s new haircut. I really have to agree with those (I don’t know who you are) that don’t really like it. Sure, some people may attribute it to me, in general, preferring longer hair to shorter hair, but that’s not the case here. Even I can admit that short hair can be really cute when done well

I really just don’t think it’s well done with her, though. I mean, it’s the kind of haircut I would expect from a male j-rocker (which isn’t so bad, seeing as they look kinda feminine…) I think blondish hair on Asian girls always looks wrong, anyway… You can see a good comparison of her old haircut and new one on Jappy Dolls.

The Onion recently wrote an amusing article about Liberty City, featured in the recent Rockstar game GTA IV. For those unfamiliar with The Onion, it’s a fake news site filled with humour and satire. You can read the “news” article here.

One of my favorite lines:

“The police just let them go, and 20 minutes later they’re shooting at the very same criminals from helicopters,” veteran crime reporter Mike Whiteley said. “That is not proper law enforcement. We may be seeing a return to the bad old days of 2002, when the police, the FIB, and even Army tank battalions would leave countless bodies on the streets while attempting to capture just one man on some sort of joyful mass-destruction spree.”

Well, finals are finally over. That means it’s finally time to rid myself of the awful backlog I’ve accrued over the years. This is made easier than what it sounds since some of the RPGs actually suck and therefore I just might skip them altogether (I’m looking at you, FFXII.) Anyway, I’m looking into knocking 3-4 RPGs off the list (and adding DQIV to it, as well.) Without further delay, here it is:

• Mana Khemia: I started playing it and I thought it was ok. Then I got Persona 3: FES and haven’t played it since.
• Persona 3: FES: Technically, this is cheating. I finished it this morning at 3 AM (EST) Man, that last boss was painful. I was stuck on him for two days Fun game, though. Definitely would skip on it if you don’t like dungeon crawlers (though, you should get it if you’ve never played the original Persona 3 since this includes an updated version of that.)
• Final Fantasy XII: So, I’m almost certain that I hate this game. Battles seem to be mostly level dependent and not strategy dependent and grinding is very boring in this game. This is near the end of the list.
• Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance: I actually got this game a very long time ago (way before FFXII) I’m not sure why I haven’t played it that much. I think it’s just that I’m too lazy to hook up my Wii just to play it…
• Brave Story: I’ll admit, this game is kinda boring. The story doesn’t seem very deep. This will go near the bottom of the list, maybe a slight before FFXII.
• Front Mission 4: This may sound silly, but the reason I stopped playing this game was because I could hardly read the text. I have a bigger screen now, though, so maybe I can finally play this game. It seemed pretty good from what I can tell.
• Mass Effect: I don’t actually have this yet, but I’ll most like be getting this when it comes out for the PC. Too bad about the draconian DRM…

Looking at the list above, it doesn’t seem to be very long. A lot shorter than what I thought it was going to be. Of course, there are two more games that should be on that list, but they’re so horrible, I can’t even bear seeing their names. Now, let’s see how many of these I can finish before DQ IV comes out (which will be all of these on hold for a very long time.)

Found by one of the neoGAF members… It’s too bad that I don’t quite get all of the Metal Gear jokes since I have yet to play a single game…

For those of you with Japanese PSN accounts, I would recommend getting the demo for this fighting game by Arc System Works. The demo includes a story mode for one character (Marco) and a Vs Mode where you can select one of two players (Marco and Urs.) 1up has confirmed that this game is actually coming to the United States.

My favorite thing I like about the demo is its art style. It’s only apparent when you select Story Mode, though, since it features character portraits. It’s really too bad that Arc System Works chose to put 3D models in the game which look ugly by comparison. The fact that the character models are low-res doesn’t help :-/

Battle Fantasia is coming out for both the 360 and PS3. To see a video of the game in action, go here.

This is actually not joke. Koei is actually releasing Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI for PC in the States in the summer. I might actually be inclined to double-dip and buy the PC version, just for the added convenience. The PC version also apparently has better graphics than the PS2 version. You can see the PR here.

So, I finally got Patapon. There’s not much I can say about it that the video below doesn’t already explain. You tell the patapons to do certain actions by beating on your drums (in 4/4 time, usually.) Most of it just requires you to be able to keep a beat (which is a bit harder than it sounds,) although some commands require you to do a bit more work.

One thing I didn’t think of was how hard the game could be sometimes XD. Especially since it’s really easy to get slightly off beat when you’re in fever mode. Ealier in the game, being in fever mode isn’t that big of a deal. But later, messing up can really screw you over :-/ By screw you over, I really mean, you really want to get it back before you forces dwindle a lot when facing an onslaught.

In my opinion, the only annoying part of the game is some of the lack of direction they give you. For example, when they tell you that you need a certain juju in order to pass certain levels, you don’t really know exactly where that is (you can usually find them by killing certain animals.) Besides that, I would call it a nice pick-up-and-play game.

So, I finally got my order of Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis on Wednesday of last week. I’ve hardly gotten a chance to play it, however, since I have this SSBB tourney to participate in and have various other schoolwork to do. Oh, I like how I listed them in that order >.>

Regardless, since I did get the premium box set, I decided to upload pics for you all. Please enjoy them below. Before anyone asks: yes, I totally did take these pictures on my laptop becuase I have no other empty space in my tiny dorm room. -_-;;

This is indeed would be the most awesome game ever. I’ll let the video speak for itself. You can watch it at Nico Nico Douga or see it below.

Hyped yet? Unfortunately, this is just some elaborate April Fools’ joke that some Japanese guy made. T_T

Do you like Gunstar Heroes? If yes, then Noitu Love 2 may be the game for you. The game is kind of like Gunstar Heroes, except with less shooting, and way more punching. It’s pretty fun, even though the demo, at least, was pretty easy.

The game is developed by Konjak, which most people have probably not heard of (myself included before this game was mentioned to me.) You can find his site here. He was kind enough to release a demo for his upcoming game. You can either get it from his site or download it here.