Tales of the Aggronaut

Hiragana Boss

March 12, 2018 by Belghast

Saturday night on the Podcast we talked a bit about the things that were announced during the recent Nintendo Direct. This caused me to veer off topic a bit and talk about Phantasy Star Online 2 that was announced during the Japanese only segment of the show. There is apparently a new version of the game coming to the Nintendo Switch which I guess makes sense given that the game currently runs on the PS Vita as well as PC and PS4. Since the Switch is a region free console… it made me wonder if maybe just maybe we would finally get to play this game. Unfortunately though there would still be the language barrier and I somehow doubt I will be learning to read and understand Japanese before the release of the game.

Phantasy Star Online is an important game to me, because more or less I consider it to be my first real MMO. I remember playing it for hours on the Dreamcast hooked in over the rather crappy dial up connection, eventually replacing it with the network adapter and a 50 ft ethernet cable run into my office. I was serious about this game, enough so that I had a keyboard hooked up through a janky adapter to allow me to communicate with other players more easily. If you are curious about where this screenshot comes from, there is another post on Aggronaut talking about getting the PC based Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst up and running. That was another nonsense weekend project that I did some time ago and was able to flip back into playing a Cast Ranger almost as though no time had passed.

I have known for awhile that there was a way to play Phantasy Star Online 2 on the PC and that there was even the option of a good english patch. However I was under the false assumption that it was complete insanity to get up and running. It was around this point that Thalen reminded me that I did in fact go through some absolute insanity to get the Chinese exclusive Monster Hunter Online up and running on a whim, and that surely nothing else would be that amount of silliness. I mean for that setup I had to fake a Chinese regional ID card… so he had a point. Probably unintentionally he started a thread in my mind that ultimately lead to me figuring out how to get PSO2 up and running yesterday morning shortly after editing the podcast.

The truth is it is pretty straight forward. You need a couple of things to get it working and I will quickly run down those and how to actually make it work. I highly suggest using Chrome for the right click translate option on pages… which will get you part of the way but will not help at all for images.

Direct X 9.0c – if you do not for some reason already have this.
A Sega ID – will talk about this more in detail.
Phantasy Star Online 2 Setup – straight forward install that is unfortunately in japanese
PSO2 Tweaker – assists in configuration and applies english patches
You Need 53 GB of Space – this game is huge
Choose Ship 2 – this is the unofficial English community

The Hiragana Boss

The most crucial step here is setting up your Sega ID. There are numerous resources that walk you through the process, for example I watched this video to get me started. The truth is google translate can get you through most of this, but as the final step you are going to have to face what I call the Hiragana Boss. The page has a captcha on it, but said captcha is not surprisingly in hiragana given that this is a Japanese market exclusive game. They present you a sequence of handwritten characters and you need to respond in kind… and for me at least I do not have my keyboard or windows configured to do this. This mean’t I had to leverage a website that offered a keyboard and the ability to copy and paste characters from it.

I thought I was reasonable at pattern matching, and managed to get through the equivalent Chinese boss while doing my Monster Hunter Online nonsense. However what makes this one so much more difficult is that people write characters slightly different than the perfect keyboard version. Look at your own handwriting, when you create a lowercase h for example… it is always going to be significantly different than a serif or sans-serif h on a keyboard. It took me roughly fifteen attempts before I finally got the character sequence correct with a lot of trying to figure out where the “signpost” character was or which “L with an accent” was the one I needed to match up to the one I was seeing in handwriting.

If you can pass this test however you are essentially there. The install itself was relatively straight forward and my only suggestion is to ignore the text on the install buttons and just pretend it is any other windows installer. The final step is to install the PSO2 Tweaker pictured above and let it patch your game. It runs through a long file system check and then prompts you asking if you want to install the English patch, which you likely do given that you have gotten this far in the guide. The only thing of note is… this is a volunteer fan patch and as a result not every possible instance of Japanese is swapped to English, however from my experience the critical path seems to be allowing you to progress and even enjoy the story bits. If you run into issues there is a fairly active Discord community where you can ask specific questions.

If everything went smoothly, you will be staring at the Character creation screen in no time. I wound up creating a Cast Ranger like I played in PSO on Dreamcast, but you have a bunch of options that did not exist back then including the Summoner class. At some point I plan on playing other things, but for the moment I am having a lot of fun with the Ranger which has a much wider skillset than the original. Right now I have three weapons that I can swap back and forth between… the very familiar Assault Rifle, a semi-sniper/semi-rocket-launcher “Launcher” weapon, and an energy gunblade of sorts that lets me upper cut mobs into the air… and shoot them before they land. I believe Ashgar was going to also do this nonsense and had planned on playing a Hunter so I will be curious to hear what his experience was as well.

For a game that released in 2012 it still holds up graphically pretty well. There are scenes like the above screenshot that are just gorgeous… and then there are scenes that absolutely feel a little dated. In some ways I think the fact that they have tried to make the game feel so familiar to PSO1 players is what is holding the graphics back. It is very much the same sort of game where you explore a closed circuit map that is connected to other maps by for lack of a better term zone borders. If you played the original game it will be deeply familiar to you, and if you didn’t… it is going to seem a bit limited. So far there seems to be a big boss battle at the end of every “zone” which maps up pretty closely to the way the original PSO was as well. I remember fighting some big dragon thing at the end of the forest area for example, and this time around it is a giant rock ape thing.

The game seems to have a ton of systems that I do not fully understand. For example in the above image you see a blue and a green icon hovering above the ground. These are harvest points… but I am not entirely certain yet what I do with the things I harvest from them. Some appear to be materials and others just ended up being food that I could get a buff from. All in all though I had a lot of fun yesterday and now have PSO2 installed on both my gaming rig upstairs and my laptop downstairs. I particularly like that you can shift the ranger into over the shoulder shooter mode which seems to fit most of the weapons available for that class turning it into a corridor shooter . The nonsense wings I am wearing are from augments that the game gave me… and thankfully the later upgrades I found were a little more low key.

I am sure over the coming weeks I will talk more about this game because the story is interesting… but also a little crazy in that Persona series sort of way. This morning I largely planned on writing out how I went about getting connected for all the folks out there that are not a big fan of digging for information in YouTube videos. It is not as silly a process as I feared and in truth other than the Hiragana boss it really is no harder than getting signed up for any other online account. If I had even the most rudimentary understanding of Japanese it would have been significantly easier. I have a feeling Ashgar for example… who has actually taken some courses will be able to breeze through the part that stalled me for a bit. So far it appears to be a really fun game that is free to play, and while I see places where I could be spending money I have not really encountered the need to (nor do I think I can even figure out how to put money on my account).

Certification Get

March 9, 2018 by Belghast

This morning I really do not have much to talk about so you are getting a super non sequitur image. Last night I came home, ate some pizza we ordered in, messed with this image for my twitch profile, played a little boy band simulator, and then finally crashed around 9 pm. This entire week has been odd for me because it has felt like nothing was quite normal. Monday was a super meeting packed day because I knew I would be in training from Tuesday to Thursday and today will also be a super meeting packed day because anything I could not do on Monday I shifted to Friday.

My key focus for the last few days has been trying to cram as much information as I could about the ITIL framework into my brain in preparation for the certification exam that I took yesterday. Originally the plan was to take the exam shortly after lunch at 1:35 pm giving me a little bit of time to chill but also largely be in a very fresh state for the test. The problem is when we first tried to sign me up for the online proctoring the site was having a lot of issues. It turns out that while we got a voucher to pay for the exam… they didn’t actually book it and as we started trying to log in to take the test it turned out I still had yet to lock in a time. The soonest time available was at 4:15 giving me several hours to just kill.

Luckily the training company was a home converted into office space and with it a couple of super comfy couches that I proceeded to chill out on for a few hours. During that time the trainer and I got to talking and found out that he too was mostly an MMO gamer and was also a long time raid tank. So for roughly three house we shot the shit and talked about the things we enjoyed playing, and our experiences in raiding and how they ultimately translate to the business world. Guild leadership and raid leadership were ultimately the things that convinced me that I could in fact handle the fact that work kept pushing me closer and closer to management, so it was a super interesting conversation. I am wondering if maybe it would be something worth talking about on AggroChat.

The mishaps did not end with the timeframe shifting however. When you take one of these online proctored tests they have you download this client that ultimately ceases control of your machine while you are taking the test. Apparently it also monitors like every aspect of your system, and about halfway through the test the proctor warned me that my laptop was about to lose power and that I should pause and plug it in. Thing is… it was plugged in, so I had to scramble and try a bunch of different wall outlets until I found one that was actually working. Thankfully I finished with plenty of time to spare allowing me to go back through all of the questions a second time before finally submitting my answers.

The ITIL certification requires that you get 65% and on a 40 question exam that ends up being that you can ultimately miss 14 questions and still be fine. I ended up missing 5 questions giving me an equivalent percentage grade of 87.5%. However upon finishing the exam… I damned near had a heart attack because the first number I saw was 35… for the number of questions I got right. However my brain immediately assumed that was my percentage and that I had failed completely. The other person going through training at the same time as me apparently missed 4 so that means both of us passed easily. Largely all I cared about was passing because my predecessor failed his first time and I did not want to return from class in that state.

It’s weird when your entire week has been consumed with one activity… and then it is finally over without a whole lot of fanfare. I largely came home and collapsed on the sofa and spent a good chunk of the evening fighting drowsiness. When my wife said she was about ready for bed around 9… I opted to follow her and while I had intended on sitting in bed and playing Monster Hunter 4U on the 2DS XL I was asleep before the news came on at 10. I also slept solidly throughout the night and woke up about 10 minutes before the alarm went off. In theory I needed the rest because it was a crazy ride of a week. Next week however I promise that this will in fact return to being a gaming blog.

Moogle Charro Suit

March 8, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I had all of the intent in the world to come home and stream some Monster Hunter World nonsense. Wednesday is likely going to be one of those days I stream because it is a relative dead spot for the rest of the Moogle’s Pom team. When I got home from training however I was just mentally toast and was not sure if I could handle non-streaming interaction… let alone being “on” while playing something. As a result I slipped into the comfortable chill of Final Fantasy XV. As you can see I have decided to go with a completely different outfit for Noct because the Mariachi Charro suit with a Moogle Riding a Chocobo on the back is freaking amazing. I’ve always thought the classic Mariachi attire looked classy as fuck, and since FFXV is sorta this weird homage to the Americas it sorta fits. I also swapped the Regalia paint job for a classic two tone with black/gold rims and the black and white interior.

This is mostly going to not be a post about Final Fantasy XV but I had some screenshots to break up the blocks of text so I am using them. I’ve been in ITILv3 certification classes and it is simply a lot of information to consume and remember. What is making things more difficult is that some of our practices at work go against the norm and even attribute completely different meanings to some of the terms I am going to have to be tested on. Some of my peers talked about just being mentally toast when they got out of class each night and that is precisely what I am going through. We’ve taken six quizzes, a 40 term vocabulary test, a bunch of brain dump review sessions… and today is the day. We have a handful of study activities and a practice test… and then finally at 1:35 to be exact I take the online proctored certification test.

I spent some time reading last night and watched a few study guide videos… but I could tell that no more data was going to fit into my brain that evening. Its almost as though there is some maximum buffer of learning that I have reached each day and only sleep manages to come along and clear it out. At this point we have covered probably well over 100 specific terms that we are going to need to understand and differentiate from other super similar terms. It is not like my job is on the line if I don’t pass… but I will catch massive hell because my predecessor did not when everyone else that went through a giant class together did. So far I have made roughly 80% on all of the quizzes so I am trending to be able to make the minimum of 65% needed to pass the test and get certification. Ultimately I will feel better once I have taken the practice exam and seen how I do on that.

In the meantime… I am ready for some normalcy to return to my week. I’ve been in training each day since Tuesday with my entire focus being absorbing as much raw information as I can. Coming back to work Friday and doing normal tasks is going to feel super odd given that I have been holed up in a classroom for the last three days. It honestly may not be until the weekend that I have decompressed enough from this experience to be able to interact with other human beings on a regular basis. I have stuff that I ultimately want to do in both Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter World, and I have not even had a chance to check in and see what the weeklies are this time around. I know the Wiggler quest ends soon, and then shortly after that the Anjanath Horizon Zero Dawn quest. I need to make sure that everyone I know has the bits from that quest they still need before it poofs.

On the Final Fantasy XIV front I need to burn through the rest of the main story quest so that I can unlock the rest of the dungeons needed for Expert Roulette. I would really like to get into a comfortable pattern of coming home and doing the few daily roulettes for bookrocks in order to catch up gear wise. I would also really love to grab some people I trust and run through Rabanastre so I can get some quick explanations of the fight before I start tanking it on a regular basis. I could in theory run it as Samurai, but I am not sure if my gear is good enough to get in there on that class.

Finally last night I spent a little bit of time downstairs in bed playing around with my 2DS XL. Firstly I have to say how much better I like using this than the 3DS XL. For whatever reason the screen on the 3DS always screwed with my eyes. I could never actually see the 3D paralax effect and as a result everything just looked fuzzy even with the 3D settings flipped all the way to the lowest settings. As a result the 2DS screen looks so much crisper and as a result every game just feels better. The other awesome side effect is the fact that it is so much lighter, and also qualifies as a “New” device meaning I can finally put some of my favorite SNES games on it. I managed to catch Monster Hunter 4U on sale for $8… but sadly at the time of posting this it has gone back up to its full price. I started that game and already like it more than I did Generations, and I managed to defeat the Well-Done Steak boss on my first attempt because of figuring it out from World. These games feel so fresh and new… and I have to think a lot of my reluctance to play them had to have been how much the screen frustrated my eyes.

One Big Download

March 7, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was mostly an evening filled with frustration… at least the tail end of the night. I’ve talked about this before but I have a slightly different setup from most people in that all of my gaming stuff is upstairs in my office with both consoles and my real gaming pc hooked up to my 4k television up there. My wife needed to grade last night which is traditionally a downstairs activity and after about an hour and some change I felt sorta bad being upstairs while she was downstairs… when I was technically playing something I could play on the laptop. So I stopped the stream and headed downstairs to in theory chill on the sofa.

The core problem with that idea is that FFXV is a 75 gigabyte download which took legitimately a couple of hours to download over the wireless. However once we reached what I thought would be the end of the download… it stalled out for thirty minutes with zero activity. In the past when this has happened I have paused downloads in steam and restarted… and then things wake the hell up and finish up. That was not at all what happened this time however and the game decided to start downloading everything again. So when I finally gave up last night we were about 40 gb into download number two… and I have zero clue if it actually finished over night.

According to Steam I have spent 72 minutes playing Final Fantasy XV and for the most part it feels great and looks amazing as a PC game. There are some weird hiccups where the game would freeze but I was not sure if that was part of the whole combat engine or not. It would always happen after I did a big attack so maybe this is something that also happened on the PS4 that I am simply not remembering. As far as the actual feel of controlling the game with mouse and keyboard… it feels amazing other than the menu interactions. What it seems like you would logically do is select the menu item with your mouse, but that is not at all what happens. Instead you have to sort of scroll through the menus with WASD or a super awkward move the mouse in a general direction to pick an option scheme.

Combat however feels way more fluid for me using a mouse and keyboard than a controller which is ultimately the mode of the game I am going to be interacting with the most. This is one of those times that I am super thankful that the game is constantly prompting you which button you should push when, because it allowed me to drop right into the game and start playing rather than trying to memorize the keybindings. The biggest thing that just feels instantly better thought is basic sword attacks because I always felt like I was never quite dexterous enough with my fingers to do all of the interactions I needed to do. I was constantly missing blocks and parries which are things that I just sorta now do instinctively with a mouse.

I didn’t make it super far into the game because of the nonsense I tried to do with the laptop, but I did make it to Gauldin Quay which moves the story forward a tiny bit. That said I was absolutely more into doing the side quests than I ever cared about the main story. All in all I am happy I wound up picking this up for PC and look forward to making it further than I did on the console. This is mostly going to be a downstairs and chilling game for me, and the demo performed well on my laptop. Sure it lost a lot of detail that I get on the full gaming rig, but it will be fine for running around and slashing things to death.