Yousei Teikoku - Rebellion Anthem

Title: Rebellion Anthem
Artist: Yousei Teikoku
Release Date: August 25, 2010

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Tracklist:

1. rebellion anthem
2. still alive
3. rebellion anthem (instrumental)
4. still alive (instrumental)

Download: [HF]|[MU]

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Since watching her short version PV, I've been waiting for this single for how many days, it sure took quite a few days before I can finally find the full single. Anyway this single just made my day, her songs are getting better and better. From One to Baptize and now this, I really like their recent singles post-Gothic Lolita Doctrine. Should there be a third Gothic Lolita series, I bet it would be an epic compilation, hopefully greater than GL Propaganda :3

P3P Fever

It took me roughly 3 weeks (almost all while playing in the bus and in bed before sleep -_-) to complete my first playthrough of Persona 3 Portable - the first of maybe a few more playthrough, probably. Playing as Female main Character (FemMC in short), indeed it gave me a rather new perspective and experience as the game claimed. I mentioned "first" playthrough because I planned to replay the game again somewhere near the future - as MaleMC. Although MaleMC are pretty much similar to the storyline back then in Persona 3 FES, there's a few reason for me to replay the game as MaleMC though.

1) I only play as FemMC on Hard mode (for the sake of item carrying over to New Game+), so next time I want to play the MaleMC route on Maniac (item can't be carried over to next playthrough).

2) I only got 99% Persona compendium completion in my FemMC playthrough, and the remaining 1% cannot be gained in any way from that playthrough, because that 1% persona can only be obtained in MaleMC route (Susano-O MaleMC version). Hence why the MaleMC route I decided to play next.

3) I still haven't finished a few quests in my FemMC playthrough; namely some of the front doors in Vision Quests (Power and Speed door I believe), as well as defeating the "Ultimate" boss, T******e at the top of Monad. Although I managed to fuse the ultimate persona Orpheus Telos, I still haven't trade item for Armageddon, which is totally needed to defeat him. Hence I just decided to do these unfinished task in my next playthrough.

4) My Orpheus Telos and Messiah skill kinda sucks...I don't mind Orpheus since it won't be carried over to NG+, but I definitely want to try fusing Messiah later because he didn't inherit any of the "final 4 spells" - Thunder Reign/Ragnarok/Nilfheim/Panta Rei, which I want badly...

My rating for each Social Link in P3P, FemMC:

• Fool (everyone in SEES) - 5/10 -Auto-rank up, storyline and nothing really memorable

• Magician (Junpei) - 9/10 - although Junpei's character is kinda meh, but I have to say his Social Link is one of the best in P3P, even without Lovers route (though we can still become Lovers later in the game)

• Priestess (Fuuko) - 6/10 - Nothing really changed compared to P3FES afaic. Cooking, cooking and cooking.

• Empress (Mitsuru) - 7/10 - I didn't fully complete my Empress SL in FES, but it doesn't look any different in P3P FemMC either. her responsibility as Kirijo next head, arranged marriage etc...

• Emperor (Hideyoshi)- 8/10 - For some reason I like this SL. Hideyoshi as a person can be a pain in the ass at the beginning, but later I really like the way he changed.
• Hierophant (the old couple)- 6/10 - Again, little to no change from FES.

• Lovers (Yukari)- 6/10 - So...why Yukari remained as Lovers even after we play as FemMC? The story of her SL also didn't changed much compared with FES, minus the obvious lover's route (duh yuri)

• Chariot (Rio)- 9/10 - Nice to see new character. Rio ♥♥♥ I like the final 3, 4 ranks of this SL, when Rio admitted his love for Kenji and thereafter scenes :3

• Justice (Ken)- 2/10 - FFFFFF the SL that I didn't favor the most. Seriously what's with this lovers relationship between a 16-years old high school student with some 12 years old boy? In the end I'd rather stick with friend relationship... WHERE'S MY CHIHIRO щ(ﾟДﾟщ)

• Hermit (Saori) - 6/10 - New character, but not much in this SL that interest me.

• Fortune (Ryouji) - 4/10 - Now we can form lovers route with Ryouji, but I personally don't like Ryouji as a character, so I just stick with being friend. Well at least better than Ken's SL.

• Strength (Koromaru) - 7/10 - spending time with dog, huh. Well at least the SL brought back the memories of Koro's deceased owner.

• Hanged (Maiko) - 6/10 - Nothing changed from FES. Some little girl getting frustrated at her parent's argument and feel like running away. p/s I heard that we can form lovers with her in MaleMC...ZOMG

• Death (Pharos) - 5/10 - Same as Fool, automatic events and nothing significantly interesting.

• Temperance (Bebe) 6/10 - Same as in FES, except some options I remembered the first time when he asked how to say "farewell" in Japanese.

• Devil (Tanaka) - 6/10- Same as FES, again.

• Tower (Mutatsu) - 6/10 - Same as FES, again.

• Star (Akihiko) - 9/10 - Better than FES, now with Lover's route available. Kinda funny to see Akihiko getting embarrassed everytime they went to eat ramen, while the FemMC getting some vicious glare from those girls who always chase Aki :3

• Moon (Shinjiro) - 10/10 - Probably my favorite SL in P3P. The best part if when he cook for everyone at the dorm, and during the extra scene, we even have the option to become lovers...how nice. Too bad he...he... ;_;

• Sun (Akinari) - 7/10 - Same as FES. Sad fate for this young man...

• Judgement (everyone in SEES) - 3/10 - there's not even a story for this. Reach tartarus top floor and tadaaa, your Sl is maxed.

• Aeon (Aigis) - 5/10 - FFFF Yuri in my game 屮ﾟДﾟ)屮 Actually it was perfectly fine when it was MaleMC, but the dialogue really didn't change much for FemMC and made it look like Aigis is being Les to the FemMC. Her attachment to the main character is just too strong -_-

Overall, I find myself really enjoying P3P over the course of these 3 weeks. The addition of Skill Cards made Persona fusion to fight the ultimate boss much easier than FES, and the addition of extra quests in Vision Quests adds some more challenges to the game. The only drawback of the game, at least for me is the lame ending (really, "you die and we'll still remember you, you revive and we forget everything, but somehow we still remember because of a certain event").

Now gimme P4P, or the next Atlus's project on PS3/360!

[DotA] RD's replay of the month - July & August

Finally a post after almost a month, after a few "minor" things happened to prevent me to spare time on this blog.

Nevertheless, I only just realize that I forgot to put a post of my favorite DotA replay for July, partly because so many huge things happened in those month (ESWC, G-League, WCG ASIA etc), which made selecting good replay partially difficult. And even this month there are also some great tournaments being held in China, including Intel Extreme Masters and National Electronic Sports Open 2010. So many great replays, in the end I can only pick a few as my choice for these 2 months.

Starting with my favorite replay for July:


[WCG ASIA 2010] Grand Final: Nirvana.my vs Starboba

Events: World Cyber Games 2010 - Asia
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.67c, version 1.24e
GameMode: -cmoi
Length: 63:38 minutes

Replay download: [gosugamers]

The reason I like this replay is Starboba's unorthodox draft of picking a combination of mass heal+armor debuff strategy, which worked really well in this game. Their strength truly shine in teamfight when SP's ultimate, Warlock's mass slow and WD's bouncing stun combined to disrupt Nirvana's coordination, then added with Slardar's armor penalty and Jugger's menacing Spin and Omnislash (don't forget his Healing Ward too). It was clear that Starboba intended to do this strat for the grand final right from the start, evident by the very short time taken by Soso.on to pick each heroes (less than 10 secs for each pick).

Nevertheless, SB's way to victory was also helped partially by some of Nirvana's uncharacteristic mistake. Mushi's doesn't seem to be at the top of his game, and at one point when teamfight ensued near Roshan, he opted to continue hitting Roshan (almost died) rather than focusing on SB's heroes, and as a result, Nirvana lost the teamfight.

Overall it was a really nice game to watch, action packed, great execution of strategy and good team clashes. The only downside of the game is that Nirvana made too many mistake that cost them the game.

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Now, to the replay of August. I had a hard time deciding for this one, because as I mentioned before, there are many great replay coming from the recent Chinese tournament, but not many of them actually have a distinct feature, or something that made them a memorable replay (eg 2 rapier medusa/mass push strat etc). Hence, my pick for replay of the month, August:

[NESO 2010] Playoff - LGD.SGTY vs GD

Events: National Electronic Sports Open 2010
Maps/version: Dota-allstars 6.67c, version 1.24e
GameMode: -cm
Length: 82:49 minutes

Replay download: [gosugamers]

Long game. This game is played in best of 3 format in the last 16 round of NESO, held in China 2 weeks ago. An event which saw the return of Chinese powerhouse CityHunter, the crack in LGD's domination, as well as the exposure of pub star like Ckk and Nada to competitive dota. With ckk on SF and ZSMJ on Medusa, you really would expect something awesome to happen in this game. As I said previously, the game probably didn't have anything spectacular in term of innovation in strategy, or a gamebreaking teamfight that triggers a comeback. But it was full of actions and imo worth the watch if you want to see some great kunkka/shadow fiend play.

LGD themselves played a part in their defeat as Ch's venomancer and 2009's Rhasta was caught so many times, giving GD the opportunity to gain the upper hand in many team clashes. On a note, at one point ZSMJ's medusa had over 10k gold due to some insane farming, unfortunately it was not enough to save LGD. This time he decided not to go for double Rapier (as he did against EHOME), which IMO is the right thing to do because the rest of LGD heroes can be taken down easily by GD, making it almost impossible for Medusa to wield Rapier safely. LGD eventually lost the game 2:1 and was knocked out to the loser bracket, but for some undisclosed reason the decided to forfeit their loser bracket game...a sad end to LGD's journey in NESO 2010.

p/s: the other 2 games of LGD vs GD are also nice to watch.