Well, it’s Thursday once again and the start of August. I beat Fire Emblem Warriors; Three Hopes on the first, so I can sum up my thoughts. It wasn’t as good an experience as Three Houses, to be honest, but it did have more than a few good parts. It was incredibly satisfying to play as Edelgard in a Dynasty Warriors-styled game, and Tara Platt was, as usual, at the top of her game bringing the Adrestian Empress to life. Faye Mata returned as Petra, and seemed more aggressive than she was in Three Houses, while Hubert, played once again by Robbie Daymond, seemed to be more relatable than in the first game, making it clear he was trying to avoid disaster and even saying things like “We’d best get all our waterfowl in a row.” This was also Billy Kametz’s swan song, him dying a couple of weeks before release and his character, Ferdinand, getting quite a meaty role. Monica was brought in for Three Hopes, Colleen O’Shaughnessey reprising her role from Three Houses, this time we learn Monica is not just a disguise for Kronya, but the daughter of a Baron with an open, lesbian crush on Edelgard. Platt and O’Shaughnessey have worked together before, playing the blonde lady ninjas Temari and Ino, respectively, in Naruto. The game almost automatically gives you several characters as recruits at the end of multiple chapters, notably the entire Ashen Wolves house, all the Golden Deer save Claude and Hilda (and if you kill Jeralt as I did, Leonie), Ashe and Mercedes from the Blue Lions and Shamir from the Knights of Seiros. My favorite recruit was Marianne from the Golden Deer, a quiet, kind mage who can speak with animals and has full support ranks with both the protagonist and Bernadetta in this game, played by Xantha Huynh. She was a kind sweetheart (I think her actress probably is, too) and you really wanted everything to go well for her. My second-favorite was Mercedes, she was also a sweetheart with a motherly quality (baking sweets and healing wounds) who had support ranks with Lysithea and the protagonist. I believe her actress’ name is Melissa Fahn, I haven’t contacted her on Twitter, nor do I know if she’s even on it. Dawn M. Bennett did well as the woman version of the protagonist, who I named Yuri after Yuri Lowenthal in the event I married Edelgard again. However, Edelgard and Monica were too cute a couple, so the protagonist gave her special item to Petra (it also fits the protagonist’s nature better, she prefers fighting to politics and legislation and she’d find the former with Petra and the latter with Edelgard). However, there was only a letter from Petra as a “pairing epilogue” in this game, as opposed to the whole team as it was in Three Houses. The game’s narration also gave this route a downer ending, and I suspect it would do the same for the others considering we witnessed the deaths of the most miserable people in Edelgard’s life and a choice out of our control meant the war would resume perpetually every few years, apparently. Aside from that, the only major complaints are you could spare (but not recruit) Annette, keep Jeralt alive and possibly recruit Byleth, and I didn’t know how to do any of these and the protagonist talked about being a mercenary about as much as Torres on NCIS talked about being undercover, as in, it became one of their only major character/personality traits. Also, these didn’t really detract from the game’s overall experience, the thing that did the most was that the ending was lackluster compared to the emotional release getting there by the sudden downer statement. One last thing of note is Caspar’s father was played by Richard Epcar, who you may know as several Power Rangers monsters, Etemon and Myotismon from Digimon and the title character of Bobobo-bo-bobobo, a robot who uses the technique “fist of the nose hair!” I was a little giddy when I saw his name in the credits.
Last week’s favorite music releases were mostly debut singles for future albums. There was “Crazy Times” by Sammy Hagar and The Circle, for an album of the same name due out September 30th. The band is Sammy Hagar (my 5th favorite singer), guitarist Vic Johnson (my 10th favorite guitarist), bassist Michael Anthony (2nd favorite bassist) and drummer Jason Bonham (4th favorite drummer, son of John Bonham, 2nd favorite drummer). Ringo Starr (Most favorite drummer) released a single for an EP scheduled for September 16th, as did Smith/Kotzen, their EP a live EP scheduled for the same day. Their bassist, Julia Lage, is my 10th favorite due to her enthusiasm playing, check out a YouTube video of them performing Iron Maiden’s “Wasted Years” to see her jumping and rocking from side-to-side. Last in Line also released a cover of “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles (Last in Line’s drummer Vinny Appice is my 9th favorite), their EP is due out on Veteran’s Day. Orianthi released her first single from her next album, Rock Candy, due out October 14th, and Bishop Briggs released a single co-written with K.Flay called “Revolution,” no album announced.
This week has already seen singles from Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pat Travers and Alter Bridge, there will also be a new live album from Alter Bridge tonight. Tesla, the 80s metal band, also has a single coming out, and Brothers Osborne, a country duo of brothers with lead singer a gay man, will take part on a Tribute album to John Anderson.
For my last bit of news, I’ve said “I’m going to quit video games after Three Hopes,” through this Spring and Summer. The lackluster ending has made me decide that was a foolish idea. It was honestly created because when I was a kid, I told my brother I was going to collect every Godzilla movie ever. He replied I couldn’t collect the ones made after I die. This created a mindset that I needed to establish cutoff dates for entertainment to ensure I’d die satisfied. With the microSD card almost full, me feeling guilty asking my family to pay $65 for games and there no likely way I’d afford a Switch successor, it seemed like now was the time, I’d just play fighting games and their story modes to unlock characters when I felt like it. It no longer seems like now is the time to make such a change, but I’m going to take a break from gaming aside from that mentioned above since I’ve played so many games since the pandemic started almost 2 ½ years ago. I know I want to play Splatoon 3, aside from that, all my brain can think of right now is “a fighting game that has Tara Platt and Abby Trott in its cast,” which may already exist, I may even already have it, I don’t know everyone they’ve played. But I definitely feel like I need to relax more with games and stop the mentality that they are life-or-death. After all, they’re games, and as Tom Selleck said in Mr. Baseball 30 years ago, “games are supposed to be fun.”
Lastly, here’s my revised top 10 bassists:
1.) Geezer Butler (NIB (Live 2013)-Black Sabbath)
2.) Michael Anthony (Mikey Bass Solo (Live 2014)-Sammy Hagar and the Circle)
3.) Rudy Sarzo (Crazy Train (Live 1981)-Ozzy Osbourne)
4.) Duff McKagan (Eat Me-Ozzy Osbourne)
5.) John Paul Jones (The Crunge-Led Zeppelin)
6.) Jeff Ament (Breath-Pearl Jam)
7.) Glenn Hughes (The Crow-Black Country Communion)
8.) Mike Inez (Hollow-Alice in Chains)
9.) John Deacon (Another One Bites The Dust-Queen)
10.) Julia Lage (Hate and Love (Live 2022)-Smith/Kotzen)
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