音時雨 ～Regentropfen～

Even though I should have finish some notes about the largely mutated "lantern" image art, the majority of my free mind had been gone into the world of dark souls. I know I'm dying way too frequently, by all kinds of things, from walking into an endless hole by myself, forgetting the stamina bar while keep doing shield-guard, losing balance while rolling through layers of swinging axes, or messing up so many keys -- the control is indeed complicated!
But still, It's fun. And I've learnt that one important technique: hit and run~

The main topic today, the make-up of:

記憶の再結晶化を司る番人達
Although I don't know how shall I put it into English words. "Guardian girls of memory recrystallisation" sounds a little "hard", doesn't it.
More importantly, while assigning a title always is hard and the outcome is rather unexpected. This array of text I got was really a mixture between the standard Yorlga concept and my mind deviations -- plus, it's of a lot of characters! (；´∀｀)

Outfit:
Yorlga is always with an intense taste of the Taishou period, so the outfit must be of a good matching => kimono dress, a bit board under that kind of environment but isn't yet off too much. As for the colouring, unfortunately it's the same red+blue scheme again (at least they're in a lighter shade this time). I'm not sure if next time I shall use a different colour scheme, but blue+red and its relative shades do make a good harmony. I definitely need to have a try of other combinations though.
Not sure if I've mentioned it before, that I'm slightly mirroring "Alice in wonderland" while colouring the blue dress. In this case, the wonderland can be nothing but Yorlga's imperial capital.

Background:
Glowing jars, sort of a lantern-ish object. Before I came to a final idea regarding to what's inside, I changed my mind of the initial design, I removed the green field, but I didn't want to throw out those zoomed-in flowers in the foreground. So I sent them into the glass jars.
For a new set of floor ornaments, to further echo with the primary inspiration, I got many flower-shaped lanterns, both on the ground and as the new foreground. About the sky. Originally it was full of fireworks, but when I re-drew the entire floor, they also got dimmed out. In addition, I got a huge crystal cluster behind, once again as a reflection of Yorlga's unique sleeping-crystal (or whatever it's supposed to be).

Effect experience:
Working with crystals, and then the flames, with mostly watercolour brushes is the winner.

Next:
The draft was almost ready even including the background, and following my current plan, time for some (Taishou-romantic) "kinema mosaic" blending with (black) military uniforms.
I am excited, especially for the outfit, and its overall ambience.
Can't say when it's going to come true though..

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Maeda Jun is having a new "Love Song" project! But sadly the featuring singer isn't Annabel.. (even though I know it may not be possible at all I'm still having such a little wish) Instead, that's someone that I don't even know how to pronounce her name, although I'm pretty sure I've seen her name for a few times before, somewhere.
I'm afraid I'm going to pass it, for such (?) reasons.

##
Just noticed my "R" key begins to show a sign of death! It'd be fun to get an order of how each of my keys retires.. xD

##
Double stop! I'm taking more seriousness in it!!

Again, my near-death D key has caused so much trouble whenever I'm coding or doing regular writing. It's now giving no response unless I do a hard-press, and in turn puts a string of D's that I have to trim out.
Although I wished Q could just break instead of D, it won't ever happen as D definitely gets more used compared to Q...
Didn't Holmes said that the most frequently used English letter is E? And why it didn't happen on my Ctrl first?

"Dark Soul" so far gives me a much stronger feeling of nothing but the purest evil. Those experienced ones don't need any explanation, do they?
Yet I'm not saying PsychoBreak AKUMU is easier. Just, playing the former makes me feeling that my analogue sticks would be worn out quick..
Generally there's no BGM in game, but each Boss has its own limited jukebox. I'd like to say they sound great, but I really don't have much attention in each fight. Usually it's entering the Boss room and getting killed within 3 seconds..

Like this... thing, which put me into exactly the situation above.

He's cool though! Frankly he by himself isn't really a big problem (in a sense); his two dogs are, plus the moveable range you have (trees so often made me blind)! °A°
Dogs are annoying, in whatever games (Biohazard, Silent Hill, and this); I'd prefer fighting the dark knight over this!

Any way...
The OST gave me a good time this afternoon. Another great game soundtrack found!

Now, less evil in this section.

In this week, I've watched two players playing the sounds hot game "Little Nightmares", as I'm never going to play it myself. It's not worth doing, not my style.
Perhaps the most common thing for people who just clear it for the first time would be thoughts like "I don't get the story".
And this is why I'm not tending to have a favour on it.

When there're not so many in a similar style like Limbo just got released, people found it's interesting, worth digging a lot from many aspects in order to assemble for an entire core. Being positive, I'm willing to assume the staff does have a deep meaning hidden behind, however, I hate things become too veiled. It's a responsibility for the authors to make others understand. If things become too vague, no matter what a wonderful idea is hidden behind, it would more likely cause misunderstanding and negative attitudes.
Don't think a mysterious-ish atmosphere can win much. The lack of story (and/or enough hints) means the staff wasn't sure what story they were come up with, or merely being just lazy, etc. In either case, there's no much difference from finishing a sudoku grid. Although yours may be more of some addition of action, colours and whatsoever.

Things I'm completely positive are like the environment does look good, and the little girl "looks" cute. << which are easy to achieve. Story is the pith, just like melody in a musical composition. u_u

Finally, it's time to get the "lantern" inspired artwork done..
I mean, it's 99% done. I just need a proper title.
It's graphically not related to lantern any more. Since last time I talked about the background, I had added a few new elements. I've got a new crystal cluster (supposed to be the yorlga crystal! :3) thing as the far-end background, and replaced the original grass-ish floor to a more wild shining flower field. As the foreground I removed the flowers in focus (they got put inside of the glowing jars), and instead there are many bigger flowers that look like lanterns. Even though I'm trying to keep the original motif "object", it's really more of fantasy over a grotesque night fest.
I still want to use a long title, just to echo with its mental root.
So hopefully it's getting the last stroke tomorrow~

Since I'm not a brain scientist, today's topic is of course about the ultimate (?) ridiculous Psycho Break AKUMU difficulty.
However, I managed to get it done!

... with 400+ deaths, and I have to mention, that I loaded my manual save in chapter 6 to upgrade, and thus I "lost" ~200 deaths in the never-ending two-room. So the real death count should +200 roughly though (I had LOTS of upgrades).
Still, it's better than what I thought, which could be over 1k deaths.

Halfway of the play through, I gave up recording the death count categorised by different enemies. After each death and during the 30-second-ish long loading screen, I tended to think about the strategy rather than drawing an additional line in the piece of death record paper.
AKUMU it's challenging, but I don't think I'll come back to do it again! I don't mind the one-hit death, but once again, the loading time is just way too long (I'm not confident at all to "not" die due to this or that mistakes. -_-'')

I didn't skip any cut scenes this time, hoping to find more new clues about the story. From the very beginning when the city collapsed, I began to think about Inception, which sadly I've forgotten most parts about its plot. Indeed the environment of such a ruined city is my favourite through the game... it's not what I want to talk though.

I haven't played nor got spoiled by Kidd's DLC, so for now, its my current understanding. After seeing the ending scene, I'd like to think they didn't escape/wake up completely, yet. Even with all the surrounding people from the police, it's still inside of the dream. In my opinion, the only "real" scene is the moment right before its ending, where we see Kidd and Tatiana together. The rest, all in a "dream" or a sort of advanced version of "nuroimaging", when multiple's brain are connected together. In chapter 1, the three receive the order and head to the hospital, soon the interruption comes, indicating that's already inside of such unreality. In the following chapters, unrelated scenes keep getting blended and transmitted into each other, including people involved like Joseph or the doctor. Previous memories imported into STEM system, and exported into current receivers at the terminal. In the very, very centre of that layers of worlds made from imagination, that's Ruvik and his spreading pure evils.

Being a nerd in studying living being's brain alive or in a bizarre way, Ruvik caught the attention from Doctor (don't know how to spell his name at all). They soon "collaborated", and Ruvik could make even bigger progress because of "samples" from Doctor. His goal, since lost his sister, could have become to get her back to life, perhaps through STEM. At a stage when it's mostly finished, Doctor betrayed, could because he wants to get all the honours, and has realised Ruvik's brain would serve an important role in STEM, plus (?), Ruvik might cause huge problem because of his research (pure guess).

Yet inside STEM, Ruvik became the core. Thoughts sent into STEM later from people who couldn't survive gradually turned to monsters. All of them want to return to the reality, and in my understanding more like reincarnation through replanting back into some living person's mind. In that case, according to those many audio records, two thoughts inside of one brain clashes, they would either kill each other, or eventually reach to a state of coexistence. Ruvik's target is Leslie (finally I understood why Doctor murmured "Leslie is the key" in chapter 4), but he perhaps also attempted to test on everyone inside of his world. After the second Laura fight, he said something like Joseph is not of hope for him, and later on when Seb helped Kidd, there's a scene that Ruvik attempts to transport into his mind.

Regardless, Ruvik might have a chance at the end when Leslie "melted", Laura won't be revived, because Ruvik is dead, and even after that, she becomes the ugly spider lady and just kills everyone she touches -- impossible for her to come out!

Too many memories and living thought get connected, and the inner world is exploding and becomes more and more complicated. As a new recipient, s/he may have an independent "core" with a mirror of Ruvik at the centre. The two are linked somehow, and to escape, one has to defeat the mirror core, like what players do in chapter 15, go out of "this" layer of STEM, sees Ruvik's brain, destroys it, and returns to the "previously recognised" reality. Meanwhile, the deeper core somewhere far away is still affecting this layer of normality, and this layer gets to merge into another one. Maybe after many layers, Seb will really wake up. I'll believe Joseph would survive too, so would Kidd who is an agent that is all I know from a quick glance of spoiler. Posters and newspaper and all other notes are fragments remained when two minds merge, while they're all based on the reality. After the story begins, we learn more truth from touch others' thoughts, which in turn all gather to one single point, the STEM core.

When someone dies inside STEM, others could see that when they wake up, and thus there's nobody in Leslie's tub, maybe he's alive in another layer, or maybe he really melted. Others may be forcefully connected to STEM, but I just don't know why Doctor is there too. Maybe to look for Leslie, who is another precious sample after surviving from Ruvik's connection but got lost this time.

I like this type of story (and I just hope what I've just wrote above is making a bit of sense), while the ending is sort of open, yet from all clues, it seems there's a clear answer. Definitely I'll find a time to get the DLCs and find more hints!

Besides, I just got this:

Pretty much because of people I follow on youtube keep referring to this and thus got me being curious.
Yet the first thing I did after game start was something worthless...
that to knead out a Leon S. Kennedy face! without knowing a single thing like what this game is all about AND knowing the character will have a hood/hat/etc...
By the way, I named the character "Ruvik"... (´・ω・｀)