Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes Review: I Was Hoping For More

Story:

Three Hopes is a re-telling of the story from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It diverges from the main timeline by introducing a new player character, Shez, as a student at the academy and having Jeritza fill in as a professor instead of the previous protagonist, Byleth. Solon is outed early and Monica is saved from Kronya. There are three routes depending on which house you side with after the prologue:

A rivalry between Byleth and Shez is set up but awkwardly incorporated and has very little impact on the story.

Blue Lions (Kingdom):

In this timeline Dimitri never goes insane because the Remire Village Massacre, Flame Emperor, and his exile never occur. With Dimitri cognizant, he assumes more of a leadership role and the responsibilities that go along with it. Most of this route's focus is on protecting the Church and the Kingdom lands from the Empire's incursion, which requires a bit of backtracking across the same areas multiple times.

This version felt the most unfinished out of the three arcs and lacked the emotional punches of its Three Houses counterpart. The Agarthans replace Edelgard as the main villain because she essentially becomes a vegetable for most of this route and then turns into a Hegemon Husk in a single cutscene for no discernible reason. The Blue Lions path comes the closest to ending the war Edelgard started, but then Claude plans to continue that war with the Church himself in the future.

Golden Deer (Alliance):

The Golden Deer path goes in a new direction by having them ally with the Empire instead of the Kingdom and by having them actively attack the Church, more so than Edelgard herself. This route makes the Church out to be a bigger menace to Fódlan's safety than "Those Who Slither in the Dark", further downplaying any threat posed by the Agarthans (the "Big Bad Evil Guys" of Three Houses), who were already weak villains.

Claude's past with Almyra is brought up, only to be dropped and never spoken of again. It felt the most padded out of the three routes; lots of attack X territory, but then 'oh no' there is an emergency elsewhere so we have to abandon the progress we've made here to deal with this other threat. It is the only path where all three nations have a chance to remain independent, although that seems unlikely.

Black Eagle (Empire):

This route felt the most grand in scale in terms of its cutscenes, plot twists, surprise attacks and treachery. They are the only group to not fully trust Shez (which is sensible) and had the greatest opportunity to uncover more about Shez's past. They never do though, and the final boss battles are against the same two from the Blue Lions and Golden Deer routes but weaker. The war also goes on with no foreseeable end.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is Dynasty Warriors type hack-and-slash with a handful of button combos. You can pause the gameplay to issue commands to your teammates to perform certain actions in real time, like defending allies, attacking a target, or opening chests and the AI is competent enough to accomplish most tasks. It was simple but entertaining enough to hold my attention. Like in Three Houses you can train units and change or upgrade their class. Supports return but they are restricted to certain characters.

Conclusion:

Three Hopes simultaneously gives too much and too little. After two 100+ hour long games, 7 different paths (10 if you count allying or not with Byleth) and encyclopedias worth of dialogue, I still know next to nothing about Sothis, the Nabateans, Arval/Epimenides (counterpart to Sothis), and the Agarthans/Slitherers. Everything else, be it the land, noble legacies, crests or war history is laid out in painstaking detail. We never even get any proper interactions between Sothis and Arval (her rival?). I did at least sense a bond between Arval and Shez, which I never got with Sothis and Byleth. The Agarthan/TWSITD faction still felt undercooked and in need of a separate route; cut content hints at one having been considered. I was hoping for a little more than the same war fought with the same people but slightly different and unfinished as all the routes conclude with a cliffhanger ending. Why weren't the Agarthan's a playable route? Why wasn't the conflict between Sothis and Arval more of a focus? That's the stuff I didn't get in Three Houses and wanted to know more about. In the end they just generate more questions than answers:

• How did Epimenides lose Arval?
• How did Shez end up with Arval?
• Did Shez's mother (biological or adoptive) have anything to do with it?
• Where did Sothis come from and why did she decide to stay in Fodlan?

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Music to Level Up Your Day: Cyberpunk 2077 (Part 1)

I don't know much about musical theory, nor am I a musically inclined person. However, I do love to listen to video game soundtracks. They can be a powerful listening experiences in their own right, or be as evocative as the scores composed for film. Each of these posts will feature a sampling of music tracks from a single game title, or series/franchise in some rare cases. A complete list of these can be found on the Video Game Music page.

Composers: P. T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybyłowicz, and Paul Leonard-Morgan

Singers: Aligns & Rubicones, REL & Artemis Delta, Jason Charles Miller, Alexei Brayko,

Release Date: February 15, 2022

A freelance mercenary known as "V" (Vincent / Valerie) operates within the independent megacity and city-state known as "Night City". They are reluctantly imbued with a cybernetic "bio-chip" during a job that contains a digital version of the legendary rockstar and terrorist, Johnny Silverhand. The two are forced to work together when Johnny's consciousness begins to overwrite V's own. To survive they need to find a way to separate - something that could kill one or both of them.

Multiple licensed music artists from around the world contributed to Night City's fictional radio stations, with the real-life band Refused providing music for the fictitious band, Samurai. The songs vary widely in style but all touch on Night City's socioeconomic situation, violence, rebellion, death and suicide. The music was purposfully varied to reflect the different regions and groups within Night City. Some parts are "super dirty, super heavy" to make the player feel like "the perfect killing machine", while others are "beautiful and ambient" to reflect the nature of the city as both a "pretty and scary" place to be. In an interview the composers stated that they wanted to give 80s music a 90s flair, which they achieved by using analog synths for almost all of the music so that it would be electronic but "with a warmth to it". The soundtrack has been described variously by the team as "noisy, aggressive, industrial" and "psychedelic, edgy, and uplifting".

Friday Night Fire Fight | (Radio Song)

V | (Protagonist Theme)

Antagonistic | (Radio Music)

Night City | (Radio Song)

Reaktion | (Radio Song)

Resist & Disorder | (Radio Song)

"Hard to decide which of your friends get to die, isn't it?" - Johnny Silverhand

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Garden Life: A Cozy Simulator Review: There Is Room For Growth

Review based on patch 1.8.0.0

It is refreshing to get a gardening simulator that isn't about growing and selling vegetable crops. Instead the player cultivates a community garden full of decorative plants and lawn ornaments. The locals will provide a few seeds and tools to get the player started, but to earn money you will need to create flower bouquets from clipped flowers to sell in the marketplace via an honor system display. There are four seasons, but these are mostly cosmetic and only impact the availability of certain items in the shop.

Flower sculptures are a goal for the player to work towards. In town there are pre-made wooden frames over which flowers are placed. Each one requires a set amount of a specific plant variety.

Each species of plant is available for purchase in the marketplace right away, but only as the 'base' variety. Special color variants are obtained randomly from seeds produced by mature plants in the garden. There is also an assortment of gnomes, trellises, planters, wind chimes, benches, and ponds to decorate the yard with. These can be rotated, stacked, and clipped into other objects. However, there is a limit to the number of plants and decorations you can have. After planting the greenhouse I had reached about 80% of the plant cap, so I needed to lean heavily on decor to fill out the remaining bare patches of the yard. It was disheartening, but I can accept that this is likley due to hardware limitations. And it isn't like these plants are static; when clipped the leaves grow back, they climb rocks and buildings, and they grow or wither in front of your eyes.

It would've been nice to have had animals like hummingbirds or butterflies show up when certain plants are grown. Instead the most you get is fish by placing a statue near a stream. There are so many improvements and additional decorative plants or elements such as xeriscaping that could be added in the future or in a sequel. I would be excited for anything new from this humble little game.

NPCs only appear as 2D images next to a dialogue box, but are all excellently designed and very likable. What little story is present was surprisingly touching.

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The Mighty Nein: Season 1 - Bigger And Darker

The Mighty Nein is an adult animated series based on campaign 2 of the Dungeons & Dragons web series Critical Role. Critical Role is a group of professional voice actors that get together to play D&D 5th edition. The cast own the intellectual property and have already produced a number of licensed works based on the show. A single Critical Role campaign will consist of a series of story arcs, played over multiple sessions. Between or sometimes within the major story arcs, the characters rest, resupply, or go on side quests. While each campaign centers on a different party of adventurers, the campaigns are all set on the various continents of Exandria, a world of Matt Mercer's creation.

Campaign 2 ran from January 2018 to June 2021; totaling 141 episodes with an average runtime of 3 to 4 hours per episode. It follows the adventures of the Mighty Nein party and is set primarily on the continent of Wildemount roughly 20 years after the Legend of Vox Machina. The Critical Role cast reprise their characters for the show, which consists of 8 (50 minute long) episodes.

Spoiler Warning: I am going to give a synopsis of each episode and my opinions at the very end.

Unicorn Overlord Review: Classical Fantasy

The story is a simple black-and-white tale of a righteous prince using his magical ring to defeat an evil overlord. The exiled prince Alain will lead his Liberation Army in a campaign across the the five realms of Fevrith, freeing captured towns to gain access to shops, taverns, and unit upgrades. The massive cast of characters all have distinct personalities and managed to stand apart visually from one another. There are a number of slice-of-life support conversations that open up by having units fight together on the battlefield or dine together at a tavern. These character stories were compelling enough, but none stood out as particularly surprising or unexpected. The ones I remember the best are Amalia's (demonic?) possession and Auch's desire for approval from his late mother. At various points you can choose to execute or recruit a former enemy, but as far as I can tell there is no reason not to recruit every single time, as there are no negative consequences for it and execution will lock-out side quests. I did like that every member of the Liberation Army felt like they had a good reason for being there, be it ties to the royal family or for personal gain.

There is a great diversity of races, consisting of humans, elves, winged celestials, and various beast races.

Units move in real-time across an overworld map, capturing command posts and dealing with concealed enemy units and choke points. Siege weapons and traps may also be employed. When two units meet it will initiate a battle that plays out automatically in real-time without input from the player. The skirmish lasts until one side is depleted of people or until points used to perform actions are exhausted on both sides. Before deployment, teams (units) of up to five characters are arranged in a 2x3 grid. The order they will attack in is determined by their 'initiative' value. Arrangement also matters. Some classes are better at guarding (themselves and other units) and are best positioned in front of or next to long range classes. Items that increase speed, damage, and defense can also be used in advance.

Unicorn Overlord is a decent strategy game that almost anyone of any skill level can get into. Its gameplay mechanics are easy to grasp and just complex enough to keep them engaging.

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