Today I started thinking about whether such a thing as vocal majority exists. You often hear conflicting groups call the opposition a vocal minority, but when you get down to enumerating them, it feels more like there’s an equal number of all the people making noise. A number that is nowhere near the amount of people that you would think is affected by whatever issue,.

Obviously, the majority silently supports one side over the others, and I think part of what drives some to be as vocal as they are is the fear that their side isn’t the majority supported. If they didn’t have that fear, after all, what could ever drive them to be so vocal? You only need to fight for what you believe when you feel like it wouldn’t be supported (at least that’s what I think)

This came to mind after seeing some more localization discourse today over the recently released VN Nukitashi. It apparently had some choices made that are having people call out the “woke left” and saying that the people defending the translation choices are only a vocal minority. Which got me to wonder about who the vocal majority were, and coming to the conclusion that the vocal majority has probably never been a thing.

Okay, never is a bit far. Maybe there have been things where you could argue there was a vocal majority in the sense that change was made. I guess more talking about a lot of the culture war shit that plagues social media today.

Oh, and in regards to my own thoughts on Nukitashi’s translation, I’m not really in support of a lot of the examples I’ve seen of it’s choices (Big Bang theory and referencing Donald Trump is both a bit of a turn off) Though as a supporter of progressive ideas of the left, I am annoyed seeing people call it the “woke left” I’d love to just tell those people off, but I know that I’d be wasting my valuable time..

Anyway, June is almost over and it’s finally starting to feel like summer proper. By that, I mean disgustingly hot outside and annoying tourists everywhere. I’d honestly love summer if I didn’t have to deal with either of those things, but where I live makes that not an option.

The one thing I like about summer is storms. Although I obviously don’t like them when they ax my power, something about rain and a gentle thunder gives me a feeling that I can only describe as a mix of nostalgia. We could also really use the rain right now with the fire danger being high, so I hope that we get some soon here.

The other main thing I like about summer, I guess, is that it tends to be the time of year that things I’m interested in get announced. We just had the new e3 (Summer Games Fest) which I’ll get to in a second, and coming up here we’ll have Anime Expo where a bunch of announcements relevant to my Japanese media interests will be made. Everyone always seems to save their best for the summer (and when they don’t, it tends to be a pretty dull year)

Summer Games Fest itself only had one real game that I was interested in, and that was FF7: Rebirth. The internet is wild with theories about whether there’s multiple timelines, but honestly I can’t really follow all the conspiracy theories. I just really enjoyed the first rendition of one of my favorite games of all time, and I’m excited to see more. In particular, I hope to be able to see more Yuffie and Gold Saucer, but I love everything about it.

Nintendo direct, which I just kind of lump in with SGF since it happened in the same month, had two announcements that I was interested in; Super Mario RPG and Star Ocean the 2nd Story remakes.

Super Mario RPG was actually the first physical RPG game I ever bought. Before that, I had only played RPGs through emulation due to not having much money and living in an area where video games weren’t readily available. I remember specifically finding out about it online and placing an online order to a store in Duluth called Funcoland (that would eventually become Gamestop) I loved the hell out of it (being both Mario and an RPG fan) but I eventually lost it when I loaned it to a kid I knew (actually he did return it to me after his sister drew all over it with marker, but I don’t know what happened to it afterwards…)

The remake looked good, although a part of me wasn’t as excited for it as you might expect. I don’t know if it’s because I was hoping more for a Chrono Trigger remake (that had been rumored before the show even started) Maybe I just haven’t played it in so long to remember how much I loved it. I don’t know. Still I’m not going to say I’m not excited, just not on the same scale as Star Ocean the 2nd Story

Star Ocean the 2nd Story is in my opinion, and many others, the only real good Star Ocean game. People will defend the others, and I can say that they do all have their pros. I don’t hate any of them actually. It’s just that where the rest of the Star Ocean series is mostly a bunch of average RPGs with a few neat ideas, 2nd story is a fantastic RPG.

I saw one person on Twitter the other day who was complaining that Star Ocean 2nd Story was being remade before Chrono Trigger. He had never played 2nd Story, but his argument was that Chrono deserved a remake more because it was one of the greatest games of all time. I replied to him and said that while 2nd Story might not be Chrono Trigger level, it’s also one of the greats, and it deserves the remake more because I believe in remaking the games that need more attention before just remaking the games that overshadowed them (in the sense of making less people aware of them)

He disagreed, and I would probably have argued with him more if he didn’t admit to thinking negatively about it because it was an action-RPG. Which sort of pissed me off, but I can’t really say anything against preferences (Though I do think you can be a bit more tolerant and let other people’s preferences get the spotlight sometimes)

Sorry, I’m got on a bit of a tangent. A big part of the reason I love Star Ocean 2 has to do with the timeframe I played it in and the fact that one of my online friends at the time also really loved the game. We never really talked about it that extensively, although I do remember one time we talked about one of the characters being a druggie and smoking bounced checks (It’d take several paragraphs to explain the humor in this. Just assume it’s stupid because we were teens and it probably was)

For those who’ve never played it, it is an action RPG. Think Tales of, but the more recent installments where characters can run on a 3D field. Also think more science fiction, but imagine it sort of like an episode of Star Trek where a character decides to ignore the prime directive and engage with an underdeveloped world.

Okay that’s not really a great description if you don’t know Star Trek. Maybe it be better to compare it to a type of isekai anime series. The protagonist is from a futuristic world tossed into a more primitive one. The plot goes crazy from there.

I guess the big thing is the skill system. You can level these skills that are used outside of battle for various things. Some let you call a form of transportation, some make items, some let you steal items from NPCs (Though don’t do it when you have party members or you’ll lose affection) Yes there’s affection too, and it determines who you end up with in the ending. Thus there’s a bit of replayability (though the endings are generally not that involved)

I’d like to say more to try to sell this game to other people, but I’m terrible at that kind of task. The only other thing I could say is that when the special edition dropped for 200 bucks, I, with no hesitation, decided to buy it. This despite it being overpriced and trying to save money now. That’s how much I love this game. The only things that can really top it are probably FF7, Suikoden II, and maybe Wild Arms 2 (also maybe Chrono stuff)

Since we’re talking about games now, I might as well mention that I still haven’t finished reading Sakura no Toki and I just started Final Fantasy XVI. Not going to talk about either of those this post. July I’ll most certainly have some stuff to say about FFXVI at least though.

Been playing through Fate Grand Order’s story mode lately since they released Lostbelt 6 (if you don’t play it’s essentially the 6th chapter of part 2 of FGO’s main story, and if that sounds confusing.. Well it’s Fate) It’s the one chapter I’ve been looking forward to the most (and part of why I ended up coming back to FGO a couple months ago) It’s pretty good, although I did end up spending money to roll characters again (ended up getting NP5 Morgan and NP4 Melusine, don’t worry if you don’t know what that means)

It’s bad because I KNOW I will probably be spending again once FGO’s anniversary hits (for those that don’t know, the North American server I play on is 2 years behind the Japanese one, so it’s known what gacha banners we’ll get ahead of time) There’s two banners I find myself not being able to resist. Part of me feels like I should not and just drop the game after I finish reading Lostbelt 6, but I know I can’t do that.

What’s worse is also spent money on another gacha game, Honkai Star Rail. I wasn’t intending to, again, but I also wasn’t expecting to like the gameplay as much as I did (I thought I’d get sick of it like I did with Genshin Impact) The good thing is, I think I mostly have what I want now (apart from one character I’m saving for), but the fact I don’t know what’s ahead like FGO does concern me a bit.

I also bought a bunch of shit this month. Some of it was practical and needed, but some stuff was more of my weak willpower. I think for the next few months I need to stay off of the internet more and occupy myself with other things..

Speaking of occupying myself with other things, I’ve been working on remodeling my room again. I actually made quite a bit of progress this past week, and it’s getting to a point where I might actually want to show off how cool it looks. Though I expect that to be another couple of months yet as I’m waiting for one specific thing I still need to change.

What else.. Hm, I guess I’m tapped out of ideas. Might just have to call it good here.

See you all next month!