Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

@D-Star92 Indeed. Cool you like the Rosalina book. Yeah, I got a set of the Unicorn Academy books as a Christmas gift, mostly because I enjoy the cartoon on Netflix. It's cool to read the original story, it's much different than the cartoon. I want to try to get the first book of Star Friends just to give it a chance. I've heard of that series, never read it. Glad to hear something good about Rainbow Magic.

Ooh neat, it even says special edition at the bottom of it. That's a really nice book.

Yeah, I remember getting one a long time ago, and apparently I still have it.

@Nep-Nep-Freak The way I treat streaming, is like cable TV. I can watch shows and movies, but like cable, I don't own it, and they can be removed. I always buy my favorites in physical media. I bought the Smurfs movie on Blu-Ray a few months back, and I have two anime Blu-Rays being delivered soon. Wanted to get two movies in series I like, Girls und Panzer and Kinmoza.

I do find it funny, the few times I wanted to watch something on Paramount+, I just avoid getting the service and buy the show or movie on DVD/Blu-Ray.

@Sunsy, that's exactly how I do things. I want to make sure that I eventually have access to all my favorites in the future. Just that makes physical media collecting worth it.

Heck, thanks to some Christmas money, I have a sealed Blu-Ray for Hyperdimension Neptunia the Animation (one of my favorite animes ever, which is based off the series that the characters in my avatar are from) on the way which should be arriving next week. I've watched the anime on Crunchyroll twice already (once by myself, and once with a younger sibling). I couldn't find it in stock anywhere online, since it came out years ago. Thankfully, I managed to find an unopened Blu-Ray on eBay for just $60, which honestly isn't much more expensive than the $40-50 that new anime Blu-Rays always cost these days 😀.

As for cable, I haven't really watched much of it for most of my life. My family had it in my earlier childhood years, but in the late 2010s we switched to streaming on Roku (though we did have a pretty massive DVD and Blu-Ray collection, which we still have now). Everything about streaming was (key word: was) amazing. Hardly any paid monthly subscription had commercials, and almost every monthly subscription was under $10 a month. We had Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, YouTube, PBS (the free version), and PBS Kids. We also got Disney Plus when it first came out, but eventually swapped that, Netflix, and Hulu out for Paramount Plus (which we also dropped almost a year ago). A few other services joined the ensemble in the early 2020s (R.I.P. Pokémon TV, I only got to use it for about a month before its discontinuation was announced). Now all we have in terms of streaming services are YouTube, Prime Video, Crunchyroll, World Watch (a kid-friendly news program with one 10 minute episode almost every day), Tubi (hardly ever used), PBS (still the free version), PBS Kids, Angel Studios and the Chosen app (though I also got Netflix for three different months in 2024 and one month in 2025 so I could watch the newest Pokémon anime, but now I just watch that one online through... not through the most legal means... 😅... though I love it a lot, so I'll make sure to buy legal DVDs of the series to make up for it when they come out). My three younger siblings pretty much only watch YouTube, and it's been that way for years. I prefer TV shows in the episode format and movies so I mostly watch Crunchyroll, but I do like some stuff on YouTube as well. My family started cutting out more streaming services over the past few years, but I am the one in the family who, frankly, despises them the most, because they started out so good, but many of them just became... mind my language... horsecrap. I don't even know how much longer I'll use YouTube because of the stupid AI age verification thing (I don't despise AI like some people do but I think using it for age verification is just a stupid and awful idea). I sometimes feel like I was one of the first people in the world to join the "cancel streaming services" club. Back to cable: I have watched some stuff on cable at hotels when we're on vacation, and at Grandma and Grandpa's house at Thanksgiving dinner, Grandpa is always watching football on cable so I watch a bit of that, because why the heck not (though I'm not really a sports guy).

And, I crafted a massive wall of text. I started with talking about cable but ended up ranting about my blatant disliking of streaming services, lol 😛.

@Mariotag Yeah, I agree and I think the animal characters and Yggdrasil were probably my most favorite from FEH so far, but also some of Book 9. I found a lot of the past Books to be pretty forgettable in comparison, it probably wasn’t until Book 5 or 6 that I found the stories got a bit more memorable.

Sorry. I do actually now get tired of typing so much. Much easier keeping these responses short…got sick and tired of those long paragraphs I would drop, and I assume everyone that read them got sick of them too.

I see, that’s nice to hear. I don’t really do Tempest Trials since I don’t actively play FEH, but it’s nice to hear they are addressing the divine power thing she had. When they started Book 6, I initially found it weird how they brought up the divine power thing and then didn’t address it for a while. It seems like they kind of set up certain plot points or details, but instead address them through that I guess?

@Pastellioli Books 2-6 now have Tempest Trials epilogues. I think you can just look at them ingame if you want.

I really like the animal character designs.

I wasn't sick of the long replies. Just stressed out ig? But it was nice to address everything desired.

Also, didn't know HTF writers did Sonic. That was the thing I missed.

Noting that Prime 4 seems to be one big identity crisis...

@Sunsy Yeah definitely, plus Rosalina is one of my favorite Mario characters as well. Oh nice, it is neat that you'd get a different story in another media format. That'd be cool, do let us know what you thought of Star Friends when you read it, as well as Rainbow Magic if you decide to give it a chance.

Yep it is a special edition book, I'm happy I still have it. Thanks! It was a gift given to me and my brother long ago.

@Nep-Nep-Freak I like that too. Internet connections can get busted at a moment's notice, that's one reason why it's worth keeping our physical copies of movies/shows. I'm more old-fashioned, too... I've always liked having my favorites on some kind of physical media like DVDs and blu-rays. On a side note, I like VHS tapes too (I'm a 90s kid), but they're more fragile.

@Mariotag Interesting! Didn’t know they had those for the Books. Guess I’ll look at them soon.

I think the Book 8 designs are the best original designs in FEH in my opinion, of course from bias haha. While FEH may not be an entirely awesome mobile game, the artwork and character designs are absolutely fantastic.

Eh, I know there isn’t a limit to the paragraph length, but I got sick of writing long sentences, plus I tend to blabber a ton.

I found that fact very surprising, and I forgot to mention that Sega published that 360 HTF game I mentioned too! It’s funny how they somehow got two writers who worked on what might be one of the most infamous shows ever, to write for a kid-friendly game series, though, I think their writing on Sonic was a very mixed bag…but from what I’ve seen, a lot of Sonic fans thought their writing was garbage.

@D-Star92 Doing something simple would be good…I still haven’t made a drawing for a while, but if it has been a while since you last made a drawing, a simple one would be good to get back into the flow of things, before tackling more bigger and detailed artworks.

That sounds good! What makes making a playlist theme hard for me is that they can be themed around hundreds of situations or pretty much anything…it’s hard for me to decide!

Oh, gosh....
What I have done?
I bought LIGHTNING RETURNS FF XIII PS3 recently.
I was surprised to see the ESRB descriptor at back cover.
It was something caught me off guard.
I felt... wicked, guilty and I still accept that game. 😟

@Pastellioli Ye. Epilogues are nice. Almost missed them myself! And agreed on Book 8 being fave designs. Totally biased.

In my court here, they closed down our local Gamestop, starting Wednesday. (Grammar ppl have at me)
I'm extremely ticked off. Where I am is practically barren for reasons to go out, with this being the only thing left aside from family. Not like the store was doing poorly either! I lodged my complaint, but sounds like corporate has set their decision in, including effectively laying off everyone not only from here, but several other locations? Like, not only do the customers mean nothing, but the sales too?

@Anti-Matter Oh nice! Hope you enjoy!
LR is like, the exact opposite of OG XIII lol.
I actually enjoyed it quite a bit!

@Mariotag
I'm nervous with Lightning Returns gameplay as it given by deadline of 13 days in storyline to stop the Chaos.
The battle system was okay, I quickly grasped but I concerned the story line in the middle as I found the thing I concerned about from ESRB description.

@Anti-Matter It isn't even 13 at the start.
More get added as you do stuff.

I played by spamming the slow time ability.

What was your concern?

@Mariotag
Storyline content.
I saw something that concerned me after I watched the walkthrough gameplay from YouTube, there was a corpse on the street with some blood and note on their leg when Lightning visited Luxerion city.
The ESRB descriptor said there was a dead body on pool of blood and that was the scene I saw recently.
The ESRB description mentioned Blood, not Mild Blood. It has stronger impact with my acceptance considering adult contents like that can trigger my anger since I got traumatic experience by seeing such stuffs like that.
Many adult gamers will be fine with contents like that, but I'm not since the inappropriate stuffs I considered as offending stuffs.
For that "Blood" scene from Lightning Returns, it seems the "Blood" description only from a cutscene, not happened from gameplay since the violence level during battle was still same like previous games, flashy effects.

@Anti-Matter Ohhh. I see.
Yeah, Ig I'm too used to it.

@Pastellioli Yeah, it's been a while since I drew, so I'll start off simple. Life has been a little busy for me, lol. My birthday is also coming up later this month, so I do want to decorate for my party later on. I'll be putting on some cheerful Nintendo music while I decorate, too.

@Nep-Nep-Freak Indeed. Usually I try to buy the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital combos, so it tackles all three formats. All my digital movies are just the codes included with physical copies. This way if they're ever removed, I can fall back on the physical copy (also, I find digital useful as it reduces wear and tear on my DVD and Blu-Ray players). I always like to make sure I have a physical copy to a movie, show, or anime I like.

Nice, I'm familiar with the series. I have Hyperdimension Neptunia ReBirth 1 on PC, and Super Neptunia RPG on Switch. Nice work finding the set. As for the anime blu-ray I bought, I got them on sale from Sentai. The studio does sales couple times of year, sometimes I buy anime from them then. For me, it was Girls und Panzer das Finale 3, and Kinmoza The Movie: Thank You. I've been following those for years.

With streaming, I primarily stick with Netflix, Hulu + Disney+ (have the bundle), and Peacock (Trolls TV series on there, though I do own one of them on DVD... yes, a streaming only show happen to have a DVD release). I did use Crunchyroll years ago, when it was still free with ads. Yes I got ads, but I didn't have to pay for it. Last time I used Crunchyroll was actually on the Wii U. I do watch YouTube too. Oh dear, the YouTube AI age verification scares me. I watch mostly gaming content, but I do watch full episodes and shorts from official cartoon and animation channels. Because these get marked as "made for kids," it makes me watch that stuff less, just so I don't get flagged. It makes absolutely no sense to need to show ID to watch a family friendly cartoon. I am an adult, but I still enjoy cartoons.

Don't worry about it, I can go on and on sometimes.

@D-Star92 That sounds really cool. Kind of, Unicorn Academy is based on the books, the books came first. The story is very different than the cartoon. For example, a character named Valentina. In the cartoon, she's the mean girl, who's still one of the main heroines, stopping the evil forces from destroying Unicorn Island. Despite her attitude, she's still good in the cartoon. In the book however, she's just straight up nasty to everyone. Also, the cartoon has a villain, whereas in the book, there's someone trying to ruin the island by tainting Sparkle Lake (the source of Unicorn magic), freezing it, now in book three, ruining the Unicorn food supply. The thing is, this person hasn't been revealed yet. I want to read more to find out who it is.

It's been a fun read.

Will do, I did try looking for the books the other day, but the store didn't have any of it. Might have to try a book store or order online for a book of Star Friends.

That's really a nice gift. Glad you still have it.

Does anyone know if a Switch game from another region, such as the Asian version, be playable in English on a UK Switch? I know it would work ok on the console, but just not sure what language it would play in, or if it would have options to change it. Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, in this case. Saw a super cheap non UK version for sale.

@Sunsy Ah wow, I guess Valentina is more bad in the book, haha. Ah that's a shame. I checked Amazon, I did see they have both Star Friends and Rainbow Magic as of writing this post. I came across the latter thanks to one of those little library boxes that my area has.

I'm glad I have it too... especially since I love the classic Disney movies. Speaking of which, I want to watch one on my birthday since it's coming this month.

@Mana_Knight, I was curious about your inquiry and checked Luigi's Mansion 2 HD from Japan with the Cero rating on the cover via the Playasia website. It said that it was multi-language and had English. It might not be the exact thing that you're looking for, but it does seem like at least a bulk of Asian game releases have English support, from what I have seen. Hope this helps, and here's the link for the Japanese Cero Luigi's Mansion 2 HD on Playasia so you can see the proof of it including English (Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with games from other countries so you will have to find out how to change the language yourself*):

https://www.play-asia.com/luigis-mansion-2-hd-multi-language/...

@Nep-Nep-Freak Thank you so much for looking into that with such detail!!! I really appreciate it.