4 Jun 4705 - Erring on the Upside

Upon the arch face of oblivion a positive sword rises.
Within the deeps and the hollows a tale of hope spreads.
Beneath the interlaced canopy ferns rumors abound.
Throughout the land, there lives one comma between us, and them.

For the rest of the summer, there will be no Starcraft-Metroid crossover games of D&D at my house. I'm willing to continue to discuss things and have actions take place in-game, and to develop, but for one of the main characters leaving for awhile: it's off. We came to a point in the story where all you lot have to hide out for a year, and for only partly contrived reasons.

I mean, if you want to see how leaving the cloister goes, I guess I can work that in sometime. I don't really want to see it.

Anyway, I hope I gave you guys an interesting adventure even without any die rolling or combat. I realize that I chuckled a bit much while watching you read all the messages from the different factions. That's the first time in a long time that I've had my factions actually create an intrigue. I was pleased, even tickled, to see all your reactions. I couldn't get that silly grin off my face.

This also means that my Friday nights just freed up, so again, although no one seemed to register a comment last week, I'll be polling interest in game night switching to another night maybe. I don't know if there should be a switch, just asking around to see if we can find a better night for everyone. Some of us work on Fridays, for instance, and can't go as long on Thursday nights for want of sleeping for work the next day.

I'm playing through Castlevania: Curse of Darkness now, and am enthralled. I had played the precursory title Lament of Innocence on the PS2 as well and loved it. This is every bit a Castlevania game and a great follower of the many traditions that entails. Also, you as Hector, the Devil Forgemaster and main character summon innocent devils to do your bidding. Then you train them by making them battle. Then you evolve them into new forms. Then they produce devil shards, which are eggs used to summon new devils.
So basically, the game is Castlevania + Pokemon. Instead of 500-odd monsters though, I think there are more like 40, and of those, maybe 16 are actually the high-end monsters that you actually want to be using. Last night, while wandering through the dark woods behind the aqueduct (note, there's always a dark wood or garden and an aqueduct, it doesn't matter whether you're roaming a castle or a countryside. Welcome to Castlevania), I found a tower in the middle of a grove surrounded by Fire Demons. Now, these weren't really hard guys per-se, just harder than everything else around the same path. So naturally I thought the tower was important, or at least, owned by some important man. To my delight, the tower was a pit of trials. Fifty floors of progressively more challenging fights. Every floor divisible by 5 held a potion, and every first level of a set of ten had skeletons in it instead of a harder-than-before enemy. By the time I got to the top (50 floors of this, whew) I had faced enemies that I had seen nowhere else yet in the game. And lo, the treasure at the top was a thing that let me have another accessory equipped (read: a cool and worthwhile find), and not only that!

But out in the foggy night sky around me, I could make out the silhouette of yet another tower somewhere else in the countryside. So I get to do it again for bonus!

I have a high threshold for Castlevania games, and their repetitive tendencies. For instance, no Castlevania game that I have seen makes mention of the word Castlevania as a place name in the game itself. All the names are real-world, or at least based on real-world games. This amounts to a ballsy move, given the current state of games out there. I suppose on some level the PS2 Castlevania games are part of the Konami v. Capcom answer to Devil May Cry and its various flavors. I'm fully on the Konami side of this one, though. DMC make me want to cry, devil or no. As for a reason: the word hyperbole comes to mind.

So if before I wasn't playing enough pokemon...

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