GoGo Yubari

Belatedly, I guess the one thing you really get out of Ryujin that might be useful in other times you need to use stealth is a mission gives you access to Manipulate, a high-level social skill, regardless of how many points you've put into that branch. The mission that comes after it would absolutely infuriate you, though. The order in which I've done things and what I've chosen to do or not do has completely taken a crowbar to the game's sense of immersion (spoilers for the main plot and the Freestar Rangers plot:)

I doubt you'd get much out of the good parts of it and would just despise the bad, and it's not like the Freestar Rangers where you get something genuinely invaluable out of it. I'd just skip it.

It absolutely has the vibe of a Comedy Central animated series that quietly lasts three to four seasons despite every single aspect of it being miserable and the only people who have any fond memories of it also like to reaffirm that all comedy is bad now because it's too Woke any time you try to talk about TV with them. hahaha, yeah, Search Party is fantastic but it's the absolute opposite of an easy watch and only gets more like that the longer it goes and the weirder it gets.

Yeah, Young Sheldon is fascinating to me because it airs after Dynamite and I always find the snippets of that that I've seen to be way better than the snippets of Big Bang Theory I see before Dynamite. Like, it's pretty much a punchline for desperate spinoffs and yet it seems like it's way better-made. The main fascinating with BBT airing before Dynamite is I usually get to be shocked to see who all turned up on that show. Sometimes it's people who make a lot of sense (Star Trek alums), sometimes it's Walton Goggins of all people.

I feel like 2 Broke Girls basically came out right at about the time the public/pop culture was starting to sour on '00s mean-spiritedness. I love Kat Dennings and I'm glad Garrett Morris got a steady network sitcom paycheck during the '10s but I bounced off that thing real quick.

I liked it more than the first (very good movie that I think runs a little too long, Andy Garcia's Kingpin isn't quite enough for me as the central antagonist). Not my favorite animated movie ever but maybe my favorite of the last decade?

UPDATE: Nope, that character is not in the live-action series. I suppose trying to depict an octopus man who fights with eight swords at once probably is in fact the bridge that's a bit too far for an adaptation like this Still, they did a great job, and it's so cool that there's a fun adaptation of a series that I love dearly but is just such a massive thing to actually recommend to people. SPOILER for the end of the season and a little bit of speculation for season 2, which will include some spoilers for the original: Not sure what that is but FWIW I think the fluff (not the filler!) is part of what I would say would be fun to take in watching the anime! The major differences between the anime and the live-action first season to this point would be (I guess kind of mild spoilers?):

I mostly love the skill tree, though only getting to add a point after each level does feel slightly stifling after a certain point in the game. Would have liked some sort of milestone system to get bonus skill points. I get the strong impression that this is going to be another one of those games that ultimately will reward the people who stayed away from it for a year or two while the devs continue to flesh it out and tweak things that don't work, a la Cyberpunk 2077 or, well, Fallout 76.

I feel like I've stumbled across a bunch of things early on in the cities but not on planets. Of course, I'm also basically not really engaging with that side of the game beyond what I absolutely have to. No outposts or anything like that.

Think I finished up with Ryujin. Final mission...

Main plot spoilers, still keeping it fairly vague:

So the cargo and stuff like that is found in build mode, which is in the list of options at the bottom. It's not very intuitive, I only just started learning about that stuff because I needed to attach modules to my ship for a Crimson Fleet mission.

Yeah, the only things I can really think of in terms of "we're not doing this for practical/how it would look in live action" reasons tend to be in relation to the main characters, like not having Usopp's actor wear a prosthetic nose and Sanji's eyebrows don't do that curling thing at the end, and those just make sense from a practical perspective to not want to do with characters who are going to be in every episode from their introduction onward. There are characters who've gotten got or had their roles severely reduced but to the point I'm at none of them feel like characters I would have been appalled at losing. There's like all of one character left at the point I'm at (effectively what feels like the start of the live-action version's Arlong arc) that I think is both a) a character that'll require real work creative/resource-wise to adapt and b) a not-necessarily-essential character that I'd still be bummed to not see show up so I'll be curious to see if he's around or not when they get there.

The way I'm doing it is mostly just kind of bouncing between them all ("them all" being the main story, the Terrormorph plot, the Crimson Fleet, the Freestar Rangers, and Ryujin) so I think I'm off Ryujin for a bit. We'll see. Playing it that way is hilarious because it's absolutely screwing with the main story. There were two different missions in the main story that I could basically just waltz in and out of with zero effort because as a member of the Crimson Fleet, the pirates just all kind of sit around and hang out while I walk through their base and grab the artifact I need. Thanks, guys! Enjoy being a menace to someone who isn't me!

I almost never preorder games but I think I'm going to have to with Rebirth. I still haven't played the real game but going by the demo I got the sense that I'd be using that "press down on the pad and see reminders as to who the characters and the kingdoms and events being referenced are" feature a lot.

Thusfar the Ryujin Industries stuff isn't great. Pretty much just "go here, sneak to a container, steal or add a thing to the container" or "go here and pass a persuasion check" (and my character's built towards passing speech checks so not too much suspense there, and while I like the system they have for it half of the time it just boils down to feeling like the conversation is "hey, do this thing" "ok I guess I will, leave me alone" instead of feeling like you've really persuaded someone).

oh my god, F-Zero 99

Ran into my mom and dad at Cyberpunk City's dance club. My mom was openly considering trying some drugs and said it'd be best if we both pretended this whole conversation never happened. Kids Stuff is the best trait/perk by a mile.

Just did the Akila City stuff with minimal incident, guess I got lucky. Thusfar the only one of the main story missions I've really dug is retrieving Barrett. Fun character. The UC Vanguard stuff is all great thusfar. Been holding off on doing more Crimson Fleet stuff because I'd like to get a couple more conversation skills (gotta try to play all sides, baby) before I dive back into it, the Terrormorph stuff is also really good.

Yeah, right now my play time is basically like doing one Constellation mission every couple days and otherwise just filling my time with side missions. I should probably learn how to set up an Outpost soon because I've got crew members who'd be best utilized on one of those, I guess mining resources or something like that?

Yeah, I haven't advanced the Constellation stuff in a couple days now in favor of doing stuff like infiltrating the Crimson Fleet or helping the miners on Mars get better equipment to work with (at one point I had to get myself hired as a shitty middle management guy's assistant and I was honestly kind of hoping I could just keep going back there and doing dumb officework in the middle of all the space pirating and whatnot I'm also doing). I'll probably start on one of those three missions for Constellation I was offered tomorrow.

Unfortunately I think I'm way too entrenched in how it functions as an adaptation to really have a good answer. I feel like the right answer is probably "watch the first episode or two and if it's not doing anything for you by the end of that it's probably not for you." If I had to guess who'd get into it would probably be people who like MCU stuff but are up for something a little more earnest and fantastical?

I'm three episodes in. I think they're doing as well as you can possibly expect anyone to do with a source material that hard to adapt to live action on multiple levels. The changes they've made to the story all make perfect sense to me as far as compromises to make or priorities to shift, and certain ways they've mixed little things up I think is pretty cool. The cast is strong. Inaki Godoy has won me over to live-action Luffy in a big way, he nails that indefatigable optimism in a way that fits the tone of the series rather than going full-cartoon with it. In general seeing a live-action version of a character tends to throw me for a loop for a bit -- it feels a little like coming across a really good cosplayer at a con in most cases -- but I feel like the style stays consistent in a way I respect. Like it's not a cartoon, but you'd never mistake it for being anything but an adaptation of a fantastical comic/animated series. Another thing on the way they're adapting it is...