My first post on my new zonelets blog!! I've been playing Shin Megami Tensei II lately, as well as listening to Venus in Leo by HTRK. This blog will probably mostly be about whatever game I'm playing and what music I'm into when I feel like talking about it

The Game

So I'm literally playing Shin Megami Tensei II as I'm writing this (Going for the Neutral ending, or as I like to call it, the "no genocide" ending), and while it's been super enjoyable so far, I'm also looking forward to finishing it. Not only so I can get into other games, like the new Yakuza game, or El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron (both of which I picked up today), or No More Heroes, or Persona 4 Golden, but also just to get a break from snes pixel-art graphics.

Don't get me wrong, this game is v e r y pretty, I'm just kinda tired of it by now. ESPECIALLY since I played the first one pretty recently, and they look mostly the same. On top of that, the game design is very dated. I'm talkin backtracking and unclear progression, though I will say this one's a bit better than the first one in these regards. Specifically, when the game wants you to go to the "underworld" (not hell, that's later in the game), it doesn't give you a story reason to do so until you get to the bottom of 3 (THREE!) dungeons, all of which lack any amount of the resource you need to even use demons!! After that stretch I decided to grab a guide for bits where I'm mostly to completely lost.

On the bright side, the story is super engaging, the gameplay is butter smooth and kind of addicting, and even with the above issues I've still played to this point, I still finished the game, nearly 40 hours in. I hugely recommend this game, mostly for people who want a version of Pokemon that plays out like Evangelion, especially if you can deal with some outdated game design.

The Album

Now Venus in Leo is a really cool album to me. I don't actually remember putting it on my RYM wishlist lol, but I am GLAD I did. It's this really cool mix of ambient guitars/synths, shoegaze/dream pop vocals, and mechanical drums, all played at a very slow pace. It really seeps into your brain, in the way only ambient music can, but with pop hooks there too, which honestly just blows my mind. Also the vocals remind me of Panchiko, which seems just a bit suspect, as the members of Panchiko are anonymous, but nahhhhhhhhh i'm sure they're not the same band...

Yeah, so that's the first post here. This blog will supercede my old one, as this platform seems a lot more interesting to me personally