Game EXP: Creepy Tale: Some Other Place (NS)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Creepy Tale: Some Other Place through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Creepy Tale: Some Other Place
Systems: PlayStation 4, Windows, mac OS, Linux, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: February 21, 2020
Publisher: Sometimes You
Developer: Creepy Brothers
Time Spent: < 5 Hours 

Creepy Tale: Some Other Place is the latest in the Creepy Tale series of indie point-and-click adventure games from Creepy Brothers, although this is the first game in the series that I've personally played.  Unlike other modern point-and-click adventure games like Thimbleweed Park and Dropsy, or Goetia, Creepy Tale: Some Other Place (CTSOP) doesn't feel like it overwhelms the player with piles of inventory to sort through or a walkthrough to solve every other puzzle (put a pin in that last bit).  CTSOP feels like it is more reliant on atmosphere and creepy/unsettling visuals to tell their story and that is something that I can get behind.

In classic Alice in Wonderland fashion, Creepy Tale: Some Other Place follows the character of Martin who is forced to chase a small hairy creature who steals his bucket of fish, into the hollow of a tree that transports him to another world filled with monsters, gnomes, magical wells, and dark forests.  The majority of the story here is told passively through Martin, who seemingly reacts to events happening around him as he travels from Point A to wherever the next thing is.  The game is made up of 10 individual chapters and it's not always clear what needs to be done or what Martin has to accomplish or who to interact with to reach the next chapter.  On one hand, I really like this approach since it isolates each chapter as its own puzzle without needing to bring anything over from previous chapters, at least for the first two-thirds.  In the back end of the game, you do find a ring that is used to interact with objects and creatures that are used in multiple chapters, but thankfully not as an inventory-specific item.

As far as the puzzles go, I never found them to be too difficult or obscure at least until after I found the ring, which created a second layer to simple puzzles that required you to find an object to give to someone or something else.  It's one thing to find an object and determine where it might go based on the number of items in your inventory and where the game says that an object can be used, but it's another when you have an item that affects specific objects and you have to determine how and when to use said item in order to trigger a specific animation or reaction.  I have had to use a walkthrough for four of the puzzles, one related to the aforementioned ring, and one other because I didn't know that you needed to leave the room/screen where the puzzle itself was located.  In my defense, two of the puzzles included visual elements that were really difficult to see on the Switch's screen.

Only needing assistance for four puzzles in a point-and-click adventure game in fewer than five hours for a point-and-click game I think is an amazing ratio, especially since I feel that the puzzles aren't laughably easy.  They include the kinds of puzzles that make you feel smart when you solve them and wish that someone was watching you solve it just to show off; but we all know that if there had been another person watching over my shoulder I likely wouldn't've been able to figure out demon skull tooth puzzle.  Most of the puzzles are the kind that just make you feel good after solving, while still maintaining the creepy atmosphere that has been established throughout the entire game.

I've really enjoyed Creepy Tale: Some Other Place, and I am pretty excited to have found out that there are three other games in the series that look similar in tone, complexity, and quality. The games are currently on sale through November 4th on Nintendo's eShop and as part of Steam's Scream 3D sale.  I may jump on the rest of the games, if not now, then maybe we'll have a series feature during October 2025.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Fear of the Conscious Mind

P.S.  I don't have many end-game pictures/videos because The Squire somehow took out the micro SD card from the back of the Switch this last weekend while we were staying at Conklederp's parent's house and I've yet to find it/get it back.  Let's hope it doesn't get vacuumed up.

MIDI Week Singles: "Name Entry" - Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (NDS)

 

"Name Entry" from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin on the Nintendo DS (2006)
Composer: Michiru Yamane
Album: Akumajo Dracula Gallery of Labyrinth Original Soundtrack
Label: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami

I feel like there's something a little bouncy to the music Michiru Yamane wrote for Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin that fits both with the Nintendo DS aesthetic and the continued use of the anime look that started back with Dawn of Sorrow.  "Name Entry" occurs just when you would expect, after you select which character you're playing as (more become unlocked after finishing the main game with Jonathan and Charlotte), you enter your name, and then interestingly enough, design a logo that as far as I can recall, has no real bearing on the game.  And that's it.  It is vaguely reminiscent of "Behind the Gaze," one of the songs that plays in the "Burnt Paradise" stages/paintings, but that might be trying to read too much into it.

So let's just enjoy our final foray into Castlevania for the time being with our celebration of the music that plays briefly while we enter our names in the red book.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Gaze Peacefully into the Past

Demo Time: Portrait of a Torn - Demo (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Portrait of a Torn -  Demo through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Portrait of a Torn - Demo

Systems: Windows, Linux, 

Release Date: October 24, 2024

Publisher: Poysky Productions

Developer: Indigo Studios - Interactive Stories

Time Spent: 65 Minutes

Portrait of a Torn - Demo is an interesting game from a couple of angles.  First, and admittedly so, I could not get the game to run very well on the Steam Deck and that wasn't for any lack of trying.  The first time booting the game, I ran it as is without any compatibility settings and that game ran horribly.  Kind of.  It ran, but the game maxed out at 6fps even on the lowest graphical settings.  Now, I acknowledge that games don't need to be 60fps to be playable and even sub 20 can be playable depending on the game, but I just could not handle these measly 6 frames per second.  So I gave up, and went to the compatibility settings, first trying Proton Experimental then moving to Proton 9.0-3, 8.0-5, and finally giving up with 7.0-6 because it's not that the game wasn't running, is that it wasn't running well.  So I went back to Proton Experimental and that kind of worked until it didn't.  I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I would frequently get a brief message of "Attach HorrorEngine Blueprint to Players Camera!" on the loading screen that I couldn't make out and the game would end up stalling before needing to force quit.  I finally got the game to semi-run using Proton 9.0-3 which is where we now find ourselves.

[From here on out, there are going to be massive spoilers sprinkled throughout.  You've been warned.]

If you just watched the video, you can see that the game does not run very well, but it does run at least well enough to get an idea of what Indigo Studios are trying to accomplish with this title.  In this demo, you play Robert Candell, a soldier who is home from the war (more on this in a bit) and walking through his family home finding it eerily empty.  Not entirely dissimilar to the basis for Gone Home, but that's the closest comparison I can make to that game.  

The first thing that stuck out to me was that the voice acting sounded very emotionless and my first thought was that it was an artificial voice recording or an AI voice reading dialogue.  The presence of what felt like AI-generated pictures in the game didn't add to my confidence that the voice acting was not from a real person either.  At least all of their fingers could be accounted for and that's not inherently something to knock a game for, but it was something that I noticed in Robert's self-monologues to the player and the other two voices we hear in the game in the form of letters to Robert's mother.  I don't know if I was feeling more critical because of how the game was running, but that could be a very real possibility.

For most of the game, you walk through rooms in the Candell house opening doors and clicking on items found in those rooms.  I assume you could either just skip all of the downstairs rooms and b-line it for the bathroom to find Robert's bedroom key which would then activate going back upstairs to check on his mom after leaving his bedroom, which then leads you through the trench scene to finding the memorial and the end of the game.  I make this assumption because I don't want to boot up the game again not only because of how slow the game runs, but also because I'm prompted to either uninstall or install Microsoft C++ Visual Runtime if I use any of the compatibility settings, but for all I know, the game requires you to go through each room before entering the mom's bedroom with dialogue from Robert saying that he wants to do something else first.

My biggest gripe with the game was not how poorly it ran on the Steam Deck or the AI voice and AI pictures, but with all of the historical inconsistencies and how the game felt like it couldn't decide when it wanted to take place.  The first thing was Robert's wish that his mom had ordered pizza, implying that she could have called up a local pizzeria and had them deliver in 30 minutes or less.  But that didn't mesh well with the photo of Robert and his army buddies looking like they were circa mid 1940s (maybe?).  Then there was the letter from the Army sending their condolences for Robert being killed in action.  With the US Air Force symbol in the upper left-hand corner.  With the letter dated November 1952.  So a few things.  The largest war that the US would have been involved in in November 1952 would have been the Korean War, so I guess that's okay.  However, the US Air Force symbol was officially adopted in 2004.  Then, after you finish the letter and try to leave, you find yourself outside in a rain-soaked trench with Robert exclaiming "The trenches."  The problem with this is that trench warfare was not common outside of World War I, although I did read that the Nazis continued to use trench warfare to a certain extent in World War II, but not by US troops, and again not very much in the Korean War.  I know I'm making generalizations here, but having a story take place in a war-torn trench heavily implies World War I, 32 years before the Korean War.  I can't comment on the language used in the letter though, if it's military appropriate so I'll leave that be.  I'm not a military person by a long shot and I had to look up dates, although I felt that the logo/symbol on the letter looked far too modern of a design to exist in 1952.  That was the crack.

The game ends with Robert finding a memorial to him downstairs and the front door opening revealing a mysteriously dead-looking woman, who is not his mother otherwise I feel like you would have heard Robert say, "Mom!?"  After following the woman through, you're in a similar position to the opening of the game with a dark void and a door, which is where the demo ends.  There are plenty of implications here, that you might be visiting another home of someone who died, or possibly Robert's home again but at a different time, either before he went to war, or sometime after.  Plus the mystery of who the woman is and how she is connected to Robert and what he is experiencing.  So at least there's a little bit of a mystery there apart from Robert's story, which seems like it's solved at this point?  Maybe not?  Maybe the main game doesn't focus on Robert Candell and this is more of a demo for the game and the mechanics?  I guess we'll find out when the game releases (yesterday, October 24th).

MIDI Week Singles: "Name Entry 2K2" - Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (GBA)

 

"Name Entry 2K2" from Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance on the Game Boy Advance (2002)
Composer: Soshiro Hokkai
Album: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon & Castlevania: Concerto of Midnight Sun Original Soundtrack
Label: Konami Music Entertainment, Inc.
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo

"Name Entry 2K2" is possibly one of the most early-2000's name for a song in a Castlevania game ever.  Something about the early 2000s lent itself to naming every other thing with "2K" and that works here too.

Interestingly, "Name Entry 2K2" was originally titled "Underground" and was first used in the Famicom Disk System version of Castlevania during the name entry screen and was omitted entirely from other releases of the game.  This is a slightly beefier version of "Underground" but the song is essentially all here and then additional themes were written by Soshiro Hokkai, building off of what Konami Kukeiha Club had previously written.  The song itself is quite dramatic* and foreboding for an opening menu and name entry screen, but again, because it's Castlevania, overtly dramatic fits well here.  It was 2002 after all.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

* P.S.  Although can it really be any more dramatic than having someone sing "Lord have mercy" before you start a game?

First Impressions: Balrum (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Balrum through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Balrum
Release Date: February 29, 2016
Systems: Windows, iOS, Linux
Publisher: Balcony Softworks
Developer: Balcony Softworks
Time Spent: 5 Hours 20ish Minutes

What first drew me to Balrum was the isometric point of view and the visual aesthetic that is reminiscent of both the Diablo Engine and Infinity Engine.  The similarities end there as Balrum contains a fairly robust crafting mechanic that lets you cook, create potions and poisons, create buildings and repair structures, create and repair weapons and armor, and harvest nearly everything in the game that is not a bush or a pile of rocks.  The game harkens back to that mid-late 1990s PC adventure game era where a wrong misstep could lead to death and woe be the player who doesn't save often because the autosave feature seems to be few and far between; I've only seen the game autosave when I entered a nightmare sequence upon going to sleep.

I had originally planned this as a Game EXP article, but upon only gaining enough experience to reach Level 2 after nearly 3.5 hours, I knew that there was going to be a lot more than what turned out to be the starting tutorial area, being the starting village.  And I'm okay with that.  I really enjoy the direction the game is going and its lack of handholding.  Once you understand that the game is purposefully not pulling punches, but not in a way that feels entirely unfair, it becomes a lot easier to enjoy.  The one note of contention is that while your character starts out at level 1, nearly everyone in the village is around is also level 1, but has four times as many hit points and all hit really hard, which is relevant because accidental stealing is a real thing that can happen because of the controls.  In one instance I accidentally aggroed a villager by picking their produce and triggered all other villagers in the vicinity and was promptly killed; you can watch that here at the 2:59 mark.  What also bothered me about this was that the character was programmed to attack you for "stealing" even when the game doesn't specifically tell you that you're stealing; although maybe I should have noticed the tilled earth under the mushroom and that it wasn't growing on grass?  Either way, I think that that was a bit of an overreaction both in terms of the character and the devs for having something like that escalate that quickly without any way to de-escalate the situation.

The controls are probably my least favorite thing about Balrum.  You have the option of using either the mouse to click where you want to go, kind of, or WASD.  Because this is an isometric game, WASD feels the least natural in terms of moving about the world, so for the most part I've been using the mouse to click where I want to go.  Sort of.  When you left-click, you hold down the button and drag the cursor for your character to follow and when you release the button, they stop where they're at, not where you click.  When you right-click on a square on the map, your character will go to that spot.  Essentially having to drag your character across the screen and leave it to the computer to decide how they walk around obstacles has led my guy to walk through minor traps.  When you're using the left-click method of movement (lcmm?), if your cursor hovers over an NPC and you're within talking distance of them, the dialogue box will automatically pop up, which has led to a fair amount of talking to people when I don't want to.  Moving items around in your inventory feels a little strange too and there've been several instances where I've left a crafting table because I want to click on an object and drag it over to the crafting window, but because I held down the button, the game reads that as me telling my character where to walk; instead you're supposed to single-click the item to pick it up and then move it.  Lastly, separating items, when you have 10 pieces of wood and you only want to put 5 pieces into the fire, requires you to hold the shift key and click the item, whereas to me it feels like you should be able to right-click the item to bring up the same window; except right-clicking an item usually is the "take item into your inventory" button when you're looting.

I can definitely see myself coming back to Balrum after this current spat of games I have lined up for articles in the coming weeks.  Howlongtobeat suggests that the game could take between 30-70 hours, although that's likely dependent on the character build, and individual playstyles of the four people that rated it.  I'll probably end up being close to the 70-hour mark if only because I think I took a slightly more difficult route by having my character be focused on spellcasting and alchemy, but maybe that just means that I'll be augmenting my lower HP with more health potions and making that sweet skrilla by selling all of the gear and materials since I won't need it to craft weapons...except that my guy is wearing armor and wielding a shortsword.  I'm sure that I'll continue posting gameplay videos up on YouTube, so check back semi-frequently on our Balrum [A Stage Select Start Playthrough] on a weekly basis and I'm sure we'll reach the conclusion by the end of some future month.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And You Always Seem Outnumbered

MIDI Week Singles: "Requiem" - Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (GBA)

 

"Requiem" from Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on the Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch (2001 - 2021)
Composer: Konami Kukeiha Club
Album: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon & Castlevania: Concerto of Midnight Sun Original Soundtrack, and Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Label: Konami Music Entertainment, Inc, and Limited Run Games
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Kobe

Yes, I know that "Requiem" was first used in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood during the naming/file selection screen, but since I first heard this song in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, that was the focus I wanted to go with.  From what I can tell, the version of "Requiem" is the same in both games, although interestingly, this was not included in Castlevania: Dracula X, the bastardized version of Rondo of Blood.

Similar to "Prayer" from Symphony of the Night, "Requiem" here uses a single phrase for the entirety of the song, "Kyrie eleison," being Greek for "Lord have mercy."  I like the idea of a Belmont, or in the case of CotM, a Morris, receiving a blessing from the church before going into battle against Dracula.  Although with "Requiem" being the title, it could just as well be for the death of the protagonist.  Either way, this was, and is in my opinion, another great way to kick off a Castlevania game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I'll Shake This World Off My Shoulders

P.S.  The only thing that bothers me about this song, I have my catholic church going years to thank, because after singing "Kyrie eleison" you would sing "Christe eleison."  Both phrases were also used as responses at certain times during the mass, usually after a reading from one of the books in the Bible leading up to one of the gospels being read.  It's crazy how that sticks with you, even after 20+ years.

Game EXP: Ale & Tale Tavern (VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Ale & Tale Tavern through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.]

Ale & Tale Tavern
Systems: Windows, Linux
Release Date: September 5, 2024
Publisher: Grab the Games, Upgrade Point
Developer: Scienart Games
Time Spent: 2 Hours 24 Minutes

Ale & Tale Tavern is essentially a tavern management sim where you can make your work as complicated and as stressful as you want.  Its core mechanic plays similar to a lot of mobile job management games where you are initially limited in what you can create for your patrons and you have to make that item and serve it to them within a certain amount of time or your customers become angry and you presumably lose gold or experience points or you have fewer clients; I'm not actually sure on this but I'm just assuming because I'm that good of a tavernkeeper.  As you gain experience, you level up and gain access to additional recipes which expand your menu as well as expand the list of things you need to do in order to make more complicated and thereby higher costing and higher exp items; we'll get more into this later.  All to further your goal of developing and expanding your existing tavern, although I'm not honestly sure of the end goal as I haven't progressed that far in the game yet.

We're jumping a bit ahead here, but the beauty about Ale & Tale Tavern is that you are allowed to set your work hours and your menu.  You are not constantly inundated with people wanting a pint of barely ale or a bowl of barley porridge.  Randomly generated characters will only show up after you flip the sign in front of your tavern to "Open."  If you have a recipe book with eight recipes for your patrons to choose from, you can select what your menu is, if you want, you can only decide to serve porridge.  This is important because you are required to purchase your mugs, bowls, and a lot of your starting ingredients from a merchant just outside the tavern, so if you're our of barley to make porridge or ale, you can select on the fly to only serve boiled corn instead, and that is all that people will ask for.  I feel like this option greatly eliminates the amount of pressure on the player to constantly maintain an inventory of ingredients and takes away the fear that the game will all of a sudden inundate the player with people making complicated requests that might have a high overhead cost and time commitment.

On that note, Ale & Tale Tavern can be played as a single-player or co-op up to four total players, which is what this game really feels how it was meant to be played.  You could one person taking orders (you click on a patron), one person prepping the food/drinks and washing dirty dishes, one person serving and bussing, and one person procuring ingredients either from the merchant or from the garden outback; or refilling the bucket with water from the well which is a required ingredient for nearly everything in the game.  As a single-player game, it can get a little hectic trying to perform all of the tasks by yourself.  Keeping track of your inventory, people's order,s and the water level in the washing tub.  At the same time though, I feel that you would also need to be in constant communication with the other players to make sure that anything purchased is what is actually needed, like another sack of barley and two more mugs and not a jukebox; I also don't know if the money earned at the tavern is usable by other players or just the hosting player.

When you need to restock your inventory or just take a break, you're able to close your tavern regardless of the time of day or night.  Sometimes you just need to catch your breath, or because maybe you ran out of money and you need a quick spot of gold so you take a delivery order which can be all well and good, except you don't have a map or a handy Skyrim-esque compass.  Luckily someone put up the occasional road sign so you can find your way back to the tavern, but make sure to bring a torch if you're going out after dusk because things get dark when the sun goes down.  Who knew?  The biggest downside to making a delivery is that you end up losing any mugs or bowls you take out there whereas in the tavern, you can just pick up after people leave, wash, and repeat.  I think there might be some kind of hidden durability mechanic here because I could have sworn that I had one or two fewer mugs/bowls and one point during my third playthrough.  I also read on the Steam discussion pages about people losing their mugs/bowls, likely because they despawn if you let them sit too long, so maybe I just forgot to pick some up after a customer left?

While Ale & Tale Tavern is mostly a fun game with a reachable point of zen, there are some elements of the game that I'm not a particular fan of.  Already mentioned is the lack of maps or compasses to get you around the the world without feeling lost and the feeling that the single-player game could reach a point where your immediate tasks feel more like a real job and less like an escape.  The voice acting, unless it's an AI-generated voice, for the scarecrow is both annoying to listen to and a bit cringy with it being hung up on you growing "magic weed" and your character being offended that this animated anti-crow device would suggest something so illegal.  Maybe it'll be explained later?  Either way, I personally find the scarecrow annoying.  Combat is also something that feels needlessly difficult, especially in a single-player game.  Your starting weapon, the axe, only does minimal damage while the zombies (or orcs, boars, or wild dogs) do 15-20 points of damage and with two attacking simultaneously, your health can drop rather quickly.  On top of that, respawning costs you 10% of what gold you're carrying, and from what I've read, there are no health/stat boosts and no armor, so you just have to learn how not to die.  Yeah, I know.  Git gud.

I'm only 2.5 hours on the Steam Deck without any real issues* and my tavern reached level 7, which is anywhere between a third and a fifth of the way through the game, depending on what is seen as the end game.  There is a fun game here, possibly a fun co-op multiplayer game that I'll likely never get to play unless I want to play with random people and hope to the spirit of Alexi Laiho that they're actually there to do a job and not dick around like the hired help that they're supposed to be.  If you're at all interested in seeing how great I can run a cozy little tavern in the middle of a fantasy setting with the cleanest well this side of the River Isen, I have a playlist with three videos up (likely more coming later) on the YTubes that you're welcome to peruse.  

And maybe have a pint or three before you leave, yeah?  Just don't abscond with the mugs, they're not cheap.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

The Grass Will Be Greener One Day I Expect

*P.S.  The only problem I experienced was that the L/R shoulder buttons that operated the scroll wheel when selecting items in your scroll wheel inventory (as opposed to your backpack) were flipped, so the L button scrolled to the right, and the R button scrolled to the left.  I know I could have changed this in the button customization settings, but it seemed like just a little too much trouble to switch the button mappings around.

MIDI Week Singles: "Prayer" - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PSX)

 

"Prayer" from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PlayStation, SEGA Saturn, Xbox 360, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 4, iOS, & Android (1997 - 2020)

Composer: Michiru Yamane

Album: Akumajo Dracula X ~Gekka no Nocturne~ Original Game Soundtrack, Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Label: KONAMI, Mondo

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo

We continue our dive into music from Castlevania with "Prayer" from Symphony of the Night.  This music plays during the opening menu and profile creation.  Similar to "Epitaph" in that "Prayer" is a much slower and more thoughtful song than a lot of the other songs in the game, something that will carry through the rest of the series as it delves deeper into what is now known as Metroidvania (or Search Action games in Japan).

Something that I'd always wondered was what the lyrics were to this song and if they in fact meant anything or if they were just liturgical in origin.  From what I found out, the music is originally composed by Michiru Yamane, although who's to say what influences she took from religious hymns and if there were any specific songs that she drew upon.  The words on the other hand seem to have a more battled history as, more often than not, you are likely to come across a completely wrong reading/hearing of what is being said as evidenced in this Reddit thread from three years ago, and only recently and presumably accurately updated only seven months and 12 days ago.  I agree with /u/atom_jiro that the lyrics are:

Auri largo (Perfectly Pure)/

Auri Marie largo (Almighty pure Mary)/

Auri largo (Perfectly Pure)/

O'largo auri largo (Almighty perfectly pure)

Now, I'm no scholar in Latin, so again, I'm going to side with /u/atom_jiro with not only their translation but also their interpretation of Latin.  I did like that they didn't try to make a direct comparison to how it relates to either Alucard, Richter, or any other of the overarching stories in either Rondo of Blood or Symphony of the Night, and left it up to the player to make their own interpretations.

And that's what we'll do here too.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

And Their Sky Cries Mary

Monthly Update: October, 2024

 

Jesus H. Christ, where do I start?  Do I start with the dogs?  Do I start with the cats?  Do I start with the absolute shit storm going down in [insert part of the world that is missilling anyone else]?  Do I dive into the cesspool of ultra-conservative bullshittery conspiracy theories?  Do I continue with the anti-Semitic bullshit that's even surrounding Hurricane Helene?  I just don't know where to start?  So instead, let's briefly hard 180 to something else, like video games because I just can't with people's shit right now/ever.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  We've been mentioning Keymailer so much over the last couple of months you'd think that this is a paid ad on a podcast.  The truth is that I haven't been buying/leasing many games so this has been a source of acquiring games to play, share, and talk about.  There have only been a few games that have been offered outright as opposed to me being the one who requested them, but I don't make the habit of requesting games I'm not already interested in.  Sure, there've been some duds, but there've also been some bangers too, just like purchasing/owning games that you've never played, it can sometimes be a crapshoot.  Something that I'm surprised about is that my YouTube channel has grown a bit with walkthrough/playthrough videos, but that's also because I've been making public my MIDI Week Single videos linked in each article; there are a few exceptions like when I already link from a composer's own YT video so that I don't redirect traffic away from their own video/music.  Don't worry, I'm not going the route of a VTuber because that's just not me at all.

But speaking of YouTube videos, I've recently had a spat of hiccups with Steam's now built-in video recording functionality.  Be it videos not being able to be exported for one reason or another, or videos not being able to be uploaded after being successfully exported, things are not great on that front.  They're alright, and it's forcing me to find workarounds that I've kind of taken for granted these last couple of months.  But right now, for instance, I have part 3 of a 50ish minute session with Ale & Tale Tavern uploaded to my laptop, and part 1 is being uploaded to YouTube because it won't upload to my Google Drive; so then I'll have to download it from YT and splice it together with parts 3 and 2 (assuming I can even get part 2 uploaded somewhere.  And then in other issues, I'm just straight up unable to export a video file and Steam just tells me to "Try Again (2)" without any further explanation as to what I could possibly do differently or any hint as to what (2) means in terms of "Error #2?" maybe?

All the things I do in an attempt to further the growth of our site and YouTube channel, all in the name of looking attractive to publishers in the hopes that whoever is in charge of dishing out review keys, "Yeah, we like that site's chutzpah."  But that is about where it stops.  I do feel the pull of the masses when a video for one of our MIDI Week Singles gets a few thousand views in a month whereas another video might get fewer than 20.  When I look at the analytics for articles and the site in general, I'll feel the pull to do something specifically for the clicks or the likes or the views, but I always come back to doing articles that I want to write and to share music that I want to share, and not another track from Skyrim; don't get me wrong though, I do love that soundtrack.

And speaking of Skyrim, I recently got back into The Elder Scrolls Online as it recently became closer to Steam Deck verified than it had been in the past.  Something about the separate game loader having hiccups with the Steam OS had recently been ironed out so I thought it high time to revisit Tamriel in the second era.  I had tried to get back into it by playing on my laptop back in March 2022 when I used my in-game Crowns currency (back from when I was paying month-to-month back in 2014) and purchased the Morrowind expansion.  Only to have Morrowind become free less than a month later.  Ah well.

That's just the way the kwarma egg cracks I guess.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Epitaph" - Akumajō Densetsu / Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (NFC/NES)

 

"Epitaph" from Akumajō Densetsu / Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse on the Nintendo Family Computer / Nintendo Entertainment System (1989/1990)

Composers: Hidenori Maezawa, Jun Funahashi, Yukie Morimoto

Album: Music from Akumajō Densetsu Kuro, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse - Original Video Game Soundtrack

Label: Konami, Mondo

Publisher: Konami

Developer: Konami

Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (originally released as "Akumajō Densetsu" in Japan) was the first game in the series to offer the player the option to name their name, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense since the game uses a password, although the name you chose is used during the end credits, crediting you as playing Trevor Belmont.  The point is, that there had never before been a need for a screen to enter the player's name in a Castlevania game, and "Epitaph" was the first song used for this purpose.  

I chose the music from the original Japanese release of the game mainly because the song has a much fuller sound created from the custom Konami sound chip that added two additional square sound waves.  The melody is the same between the two versions, but I prefer the Japanese version's sound quality.  Admittedly, this is also the version that I am most familiar with outside of the game since the soundtrack I bought at a Star Trek convention* in the mid-90s had this version and at the time I didn't notice the difference.

The one question I have about this song, is what the "whaw-whaw-whaw" sound that happens at 0:13, 0:35, and 0:56 is supposed to be?  Is it just a random sound effect?  Is it supposed to be a creature noise?  Is it an engine trying to start?  I genuinely have no idea as I don't recall that sound effect happening in the game, but I very well could be wrong.  Just my thoughts and questions as we enter a month-long celebration of music from the Castlevania series.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental