I managed, but I’m a glutton for punishment. In the first one you can kind of go guideless as long as you know a few fundamentals: determination is most important as it gives more skill points and easily pays for itself - by endgame you easily have everything capped. Certain combinations of skills also become game breakers, like being able to duplicate items or pumping up exp gains, etc, but the game isn’t that hard and if you want to do everything you have to run multiple times anyway. That holds especially true in SO2, apparently.

On that note, SO games use divergent path storylines but rather than being a “choose a faction” or something, it’s dependent on party members. In SO1, it’s basically three ways things pan out for certain arcs depending on who you recruited, with some members required for others. Luckily there was a flowchart, so blind-ish runs can sorta use that without blatant spoilers. It gets kind of interesting because certain mutually exclusive characters are related in unpredictable ways, so multiple playthroughs kinda reveal more depth… at least as far as a game originally made for SNES can be.

Luckily the game isn’t that long so it wasn’t much of a chore to do multiple playthroughs, especially with fast forward functions of ppsspp emulator. Doing it on original hardware might have been more of a chore, though.

The skills system really calls out for a guide, it’s really easy to misallocate points early game. Or at least that’s my understanding; I did SO1 on PSP recently but uses the same system more or less and you can make life a lot easier with proper planning.

The recent remaster supposedly has better documentation, although I’m not sure I like it better.

I’m starting up… Pokemon White Version 2 completely out of the blue because RetroAchevements is beta testing their multiset feature and I’m a sucker for the Professor Oak Challenge grind. (It’s pure madness, truly a waste of time grind beyond human comprehension, but it’s also an excuse to binge watch stuff and keep my overactive brain in check).

As always I recommend RetroAchevements in general, though. Truly an endless supply of old stuff to do!

I’ve been holding out for a Full Body experience but might just have to emulate it at this point. Although missing out on cutscenes is a real shame-- when it first came out, my wife and I played the game and watched the scenes together and uh… was an interesting and tense situation. Lol

NPR yesterday mentioned quite clearly in an interview with John Bolton that economic sanctions are the biggest factor in Iran, and very much on purpose. It is a US strategy, even pre-Trump.

He acknowledged the cultural upheaval that’s been going on years ago, too, and also that negotiations with their regime is a “waste of oxygen.” But sanctions were definitely central.

Though I suppose NPR isn’t really sensationalized… you wouldn’t interview John Bolton if you wanted sensational news.

Pfft. We know guys who look like that prefer meth or heroin. That’s definitely heroin Jesus.

Yeah… That’s a violation of FERPA and is reportable offense that’ll get ya fired or sued. Lol

I’ve been using rEFInd for my dual boot and it shows a Tux, but that’s mostly cause I haven’t been tinkering with it. Now I’m tempted to use anime girl personifications of OSs instead, which would be really classy, I bet.

Pretty tempting to keep hitting it until I pull a Thanos, but I’m not sure what to do with all my cat clones.

Reading your comment made me read the life story and yes. It is a really fucked up life story.

90s and early aughts are in a weird place radio-wise, maybe because they’re still touring in many cases. So I’ll hear them on a station dedicated to older rock, alongside GnR, Doors, whatever; turn to a contemporary alt station and it’s 90s bands alongside newer stuff like Tame Impala or Sombr.

Then there’s Sublime which… uh, kinda unique because the dead lead singers son is the new singer and they sound exactly the same so it’s like they time traveled from 90s to today. Lol

Glad I’ve got close friends in Chile, cause the North hemisphere ain’t looking so hot.

Let’s say hypothetically, a person like myself went full dictator in the US and seized hundreds of oil tankers across the world these in the name of fighting global warming. What would happen?

There’s lower hanging fruit like kidnapping billionaires and whatnot, but it’s a fun thought experiment if the left actually had someone the way the right pretends they do.

This has been around for a long time, before Netflix. My dad and much of his generation get lonely when the TV is off, so he leaves it on at all times on whatever, while working or watching sports. Network TV does this with predictable crime dramas and sitcoms, cables got Hallmark movies and reruns of family guy, etc. Half-tune is a popular format for pretty much most age groups.

I explicitly don’t do this, but I do have podcasts for my second screen in a sense-- only I won’t do them unless it’s a grindy game or Minecraft or something, and usually the podcast is taking my cognitive attention. It’s disruptive if it’s a thoughtful activity, like scrolling social media (though I guess the fediverse is a little more engaging than slopbook or whatever).

We’re on Lemmy and no one has suggested Red Hat Chili Peppers? For shame.

Then again, I use Arch…tic Monkeys.

That’s a bummer to bring up. Except he admitted to what he did (which by 2025 standards is super benign) and felt shame over it. I don’t get the same sense here. What did Franken end up doing anyway? Podcasting?

Thinking about it, it’s probably not a terrible move on his part, overall. Dems can probably retain the governorship and this frees him to do other things. His replacement is probably worse, but it’s not like he’s retiring (although with how awful people are to him and his family, taking a break might be a good personal move… he has compassion and the attacks on his family probably really hurt).

A Hello Kittypede Ouroboros. I like it. Sounds symbolic for late stage capitalism.

There’s no denying that outdoor cats kill birds but you’re right that those numbers are inflated. Plus, the problem with looking back 70-100 years back isn’t just methodology but it’s the fact that stray and feral cats are much better maintained in the last few decades. It’s a problem many counties actually bothered to tackle with high profile neutering campaigns and such. So, I bet the numbers are probably lower than collisions at this point.

Context also matters a lot-- cats are, like us, an invasive species. The most evidence of it being a problem are in places where there were no major predators for birds (mostly thinking of islands like New Zealand). But that’s less a matter of bird deaths so much as a matter of man made ecological changes leading to endangerment.

It’s also weird how much easier it should be to just not have clear glass skyscrapers murdering thousands of birds vs what, killing off cats? What even is the end game to that statistic, lol.

I recognized the shiisaa immediately! Very cute, my Okinawan wife would approve. Too bad we skipped our New Years cards this year because of bad timing and illness. Still ate Okinawa soba with pork belly, though!