Sky's Write-Up Compendium

  In recent times, a lot of us might have heard some variation of the phrase “I wish this game respected my time” in online discussion. Time always seems to be a resource that we either have in abundance or are lacking, but we can all agree that it never feels good to feel like our time is being wasted. That’s why when people are discussing games, the idea that a good game respects their time comes up often.  People want their journey with a game to be as fulfilling as possible from the title screen to the end credits. Most games vary with their completion time, but no one wants to reach the end of something only to feel like they’ve had an underwhelming experience. But what does it really mean for a game to value a player's time, and how does it go about accomplishing that successfully? How does a game truly respect the player's time? People often zero in on concepts such as pacing and length as the main ways to gauge how well a game goes about accomplishing this, and while t...

  Dragon Ball has one of the most iconic ensembles of characters in modern times. The average person has a decent chance they’ve at least heard of characters like Goku and Vegeta. The franchise has become a cultural pillar, and that’s mainly in part due to how well defined and recognized the cast is. They’re all incredibly well designed, and despite how biased the series became towards some characters (Saiyans) as time went on, everyone had a role to play and the end result was a well-established long reaching friend group that’s captured the hearts of many since the series first began serialization in 1984. Today I want to put the spotlight on Piccolo, as he’s one of my personal favorites and I’d like to explore a bit why that is. Today's Topic of Discussion Piccolo’s biggest strength is his character journey. He sits as a sort of transitional character in the world of DB. He’s the last major villain of the first half of the story before we  enter the “Z” portion of the se...

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that whenever a person is describing the first Trails in the Sky (Sky FC), it’s often labeled as a "prologue" entry. Required reading material that a person has to sit through, a barrier to entry towards the wider Trails narrative. I understand why it’s viewed in this manner to an extent, as the main pitch of the Trails series has always been how it’s one of the few modern day JRPGs to focus on a large scale narrative, with each individual game connecting directly to the next to form something grand. Seeing as the original Sky FC is the very beginning of the adventure, some people delegating it to just being a prologue isn’t surprising. But personally, I’ve always found this mindset around Sky FC to be rather reductive and unfair to the game. While less thrilling and action-packed compared to later entries in the series, the charm of Sky FC can be found in how it embraces being a down-to-earth narrative.  More Than Just "Required ...

  Back on May 31st 2018, Blazblue Cross Tag Battle released in the US. The game was notable as it was a crossover between 4 different series: Blazblue, Persona 4 Arena, RWBY, and the topic of today's post, Under Night In-Birth (abbreviated as UNI). I had caught wind of the game due to my fondness for Persona 4. I was aware that Persona was a game series at this point, and while I had never touched P4A myself, the mere presence of the Investigation Team in the game was enough for me to keep my eye on it. At the time of release, I was just wrapping up my freshman year of high school and had no job, so I couldn’t pick the game up for myself. But that didn’t stop me from looking into things like the game's various story modes and character interactions, all of which oozed charm and humor. As I did, I found myself becoming more interested in the characters that stemmed from Under Night In-Birth. Something about them just appealed to me. The designs were simple yet effective, with j...