UrsineApathy [any, comrade/them]

“this UI and overall art style looks cool as fuck” and then hearing good music

The level of polish on the games is really what makes it shine. For me, I have a tough time finishing jrpg’s in general because they get pretty tedious after pkaying a while, but the music alone made me want to continue to play. It’s just so good.

If you really like P5R and want to try the others, a remake of 3 was recently released, called Persona 3 Reloaded, and another one for 4 is coming out in the next year or two. That helps make it not feel like you’re missing out on quality of life improvements if you want to go backwards in the series. Except for common themes, all the games have distinct story’s so you don’t need to worry about missing out on plot on anything.

Hope you like it!

If you already know you like the jrpg genre you’ll almost assuredly like the games. They’re wildly popular for a reason. The aesthetics and mechanics are pretty satisfying and well fleshed out, respectively. All the games are structured in a way that’s split between downtime and dungeon diving. During your downtime you build relationships(kind of a friendship simulator) with the story characters that affects your combat and gives you bonuses. The player has full agency to determine who they want to build relationships with. And if you didn’t know, the games are long and you can easily hit a 100+ hour playthrough.

The story and themes can be a little cringey, idealistic, and juvenile, but all the games do have high schoolers as their main protagonists so take it as you will. They touch on some adult themes(sexual assault, suicide, general societal assholishness, etc.) but don’t usually portray it in a satisfying way or explore them in a way beyond ‘this happened and I’m mad/sad about it’. It’s still good story for a major studio release, but some people do take issue with the way it’s done. If you want more overall adult themes you can look into the mainline SMT series which is where the Persona games are a spinoff of and are very similar in quality and gameplay.

In terms of where to start: The Persona series as everyone knows it starts with #3. There’s like a decade between each games release so there are massive quality of life and graphics improvements between them. I’d say start with 4 or 5 personally, but they’re all good in their own way and have a remaster/remake at this point. If you only plan to ever play one of them, go with Persona 5: Royal.

As a side note, Atlus always releases an updated version of each game a year or two after its initial release that features an expanded story, easier gameplay, and updated qol. Persona 5: Royal is the updated release version.

It’s cool if you just want to complain, the game’s frustrating, but don’t make a post titled ‘help’ if you don’t actually want help.

By the time the endgame approaches, I tend to have my base divided into walled off compartments

This is the proper way to do things, if the map allows for it. Granted I never did, but that’s just because I suck at eco management and my resources were always scarce.

There’s a technique you can do called a “scratching post” by the community. It helps to deal with the “single zombie ruining everything” situations.

If you have an isolated building, like a sawmill or cottage, or a space at the edge of a patrol where zombies can still get through if the timing is right you can place a single wood wall down just between the structure and the horde. Zombies will always prioritize attacking nearby walls over other structures so it will give you an extra moment to get some troops to the area before things get out of hand. Just keep in mind that zombies slapping on a wall will make noise that attracts more zombies over, but it it will buy you an extra moment to react.

I got clammed up on a run when I got to the level where the ‘zombie’ chainsaw mechs are the only enemy the spawns

It’s been a few years since I did my playthrough so don’t remember a lot of the later campaign missions, but mutants(the big chainsaw guys) are where the game really starts to punish you for the noise mechanics it never explained in the first place.

Oh you decided to make a miniscule amount of noise halfway across the map from a mutant? Shame. Now he’s already stomping his way to your base and bringing every single zombie on the map in his path with him. This game is such a cool and unique experience but boy does it punish you for things it just never bothered to teach you about.

I abandoned my first campaign and restarted when got to Coast of Bones. I had prioritized efficiency and soldier upgrades and I had no farms and no towers and it was just absolutely brutal.

Same, friend. I severely underestimated how tight you had to keep your patrols in the beginning. One stray zombie turns into a hundred instantly.

I legitimately needed to put the game down for a month or two in the beginning because the learning curve was so frustrating for me.

If it’s your first time running through the campaign, don’t do the tech tree blind. I’m not an amazing rts player and I genuinely needed to abandon my first two campaigns because I just prioritized the wrong techs and made the missions unwinnable.

You will be severely punished on quite a few missions if you don’t have the Ballista and Tesla towers unless you have god gamer status micro abilities and apm or know what to expect in the mission. Both towers have aoe attacks that can single handedly hold waves back if they’re placed strategically. Also, the train resource techs are insanely powerful because it’s just a free resource drop every in-game day and you can get things like iron to make soldiers without needing to secure a resource node. Later in the game, snipers are better than soldiers in every way. Get a deathball of them and win.

Besides standard eco/expansion rts advice, one thing the game doesn’t necessarily tell you is that there is a hidden “noise” value of actions that attracts zombies. Rangers make very little noise and soldiers make a lot. Noise accumulates on a per-tile basis so a military unit that is standing still will slowly accumulate noise(even if they aren’t firing), but if you set them to patrol a few tiles there will be little to no noise accumulation. Besides that, just make sure you wall up and maybe have a few fallback points you can defend at because this is a game where if a single zombie manages to get through your patrols you lose the entire mission. It’s really rewarding to play, but also super frustrating (and time consuming) to learn.

I know absolutely nothing about knitting. What I do know though is that that looks really freaking cool! The pattern and color gradient are super aesthetically pleasing.

Yeah, that’s not a valid notation I’ve come across in my music journey. I’d agree with you that it could be a placeholder symbol in that context, but I don’t know why they wouldn’t just restrict the pages instead. It could also be a unicode or file type issue like slatun mentions too, but overwhelmingly, unless you’re working in a specific music softwares ecosystem and expect to be able to edit it, sheet music is just given as a pdf or image file and it shouldn’t matter.

The first couple of days of sobriety were always so strange for me. I’d try to go to sleep (or more accurately stare at a fucking wall or tv for hours until I eventually succumbed to it) with an unfocused but overwhelming feeling of dread and anxiety, but the first few days waking up without being hungover were so awesome and energizing. I’d be tired as everloving shit because of the miserable sleep and chemical changes, but somehow still feel better and more capable than I did in years. That’s all to say, I’m sorry I missed the boat to help you last night, but I hope you have an awesome fucking morning because you’ve earned it.

There will be good days and bad days and the nature of the beast changes as the days turn to weeks turn to months but every day gets a little bit easier. I started drinking for somewhat similar reasons to you, but I don’t want to assume I know your struggles so I won’t say anything more. Even so, it might be hard to see when times get tough, but life is still better in every way without the drink. Stay strong friend.

anyone who finds it difficult probably has trouble eating and shitting

Maybe don’t put down and call someone genuinely asking for help a moron???

I’m glad it’s a skill that’s come easy to you. Not everyone has had your experiences though and not everyone was taught the basics. Fuck off with that attitude when someone is just trying to better themself.

Cooking is easy man. Just follow the recipes.

Cooking is NOT easy and most recipes are frankly bad or lazy and expect you to have a certain skill level. If you don’t know enough already to know how to vet which ones are good then it’s going to be difficult and overwhelming.

I agree that breakfast items are a good starting place, but please don’t try to downplay how much knowledge and work goes into making successful dish. That’s just going to lead to frustration.

A lot of the difficulty in learning to cook is that you simply need to know the ingredients. You need to know how to prep it, how it changes as you cook it, and develop an intuition for when you need to adjust the recipe because very rarely are you ever going to follow a recipe word for word and a lot flat out lie about cooking times and expect you to have a basic level of knowledge already. It feels like a lot, because it IS a lot.

My partner was in a similar situation when we first met. She hadn’t eaten or heard of a lot of ingredients and got stressed out when I tried to watch or help. A big help for her was to use a meal service, like Blue Apron or Factor. They come with very accurate recipes and all the ingredients are partially prepared and portioned, so no shopping and you have everything you need. I know it doesn’t help with the two week period you have, but when you’re back home and if it’s in your budget it could be something to look into that could really help.

Just remember that learning anything is a process though. You’re going to make some burnt or nasty food sometimes, but don’t let it discourage you!

Edit: I asked my partner if she would have liked to have done anything different knowing what she knows now and she still recommends using the meal service. She said that specifically a lot of recipes expected you to know what “small dicing an onion” or “mince two cloves of garlic” meant and was supposed to look like, but they included accurate pictures of what they looked like prepped and that it was very helpful to make sure you had everything right before you even started cooking while also working on your knife skills (which is equally as important for cooking and also having it not take an obnoxiously long time).

She also mentioned that since you have roommates, you might be able to gift a week or two of free referral meals to each other to essentially get a month or two of free meals between all of you. It’s been a few years though and I’m not sure exactly if that’s changed over the years.

Yeah, I’m in the same boat. For every game that I actually own that’s on the list I’ve at least played it enough to find out it’s not quite for me or I got halfway through and put it down with the intention of coming back, which is just a bad habit for RPGs in general for me because I tend to burn myself out on them. I had to stop playing Witcher 3 halfway through because my brain hates me and I need to find and clear every map objective.

The only actual exception is Dwarf Fortress and that’s only because I have over 1500 hours in Rimworld and I know how much of a learning curve there’s going to be when I start it. I’ve just never had the mental fortitude to devote the time to it yet.

I’m of a similar mind, which is why that specific phrasing caught my eye. I always have a deep yearning to just be better and it’s felt like the only way I know how to reach towards that is to remove the things that seemed to be impeding me. But this also came with the drawback of feeling like I can’t have anything at all, which is also just not a healthy mindset.

I’d actually say I’m in a similar camp. I wouldn’t describe myself as spiritual, but I also certainly wouldn’t describe my main motivations for personal change as mostly material. My main goal was always to just be present and be at peace with myself. As someone who is (mostly) sober, my main impetus for that decision always was, as you say, that I wasn’t comfortable with an external stimuli ruling over me. My motivations were always less material and more internal, however. I can’t be reliably present, emotionally and physically, for myself, my loved ones, and my community if I’m always beholden to a substance.

if you find that, I will be so happy for you, just don’t give up if this takes a while

This gave me a bit of a chuckle. I love and appreciate the sentiment, and this isn’t the space to go into details, but my journey has already been a long one. I do thank you for helping to empower my spirit while going through the process though!

I have a volunteer shift at the library tomorrow evening so I’ll be sure to check if that book is in their catalog! It sounds interesting. I appreciate you sharing your experiences and wisdom and I appreciate you!

Honestly, thank you for this comment. I’ve been struggling similarly to OP for a long time and these are things I very much needed to hear.

Not to become a monk or ascetic

It’s quite funny to me that you phrase this like this because I was talking to my partner, literally in tears, sometime last week about how I felt like I genuinely needed to live the life of an ascetic in order to be anywhere close to achieving and maintaining the goals I have to develop myself positively as a person. Like, I don’t understand how my brain can do a task like reading, feel absolutely amazing afterwards, and then still feel like there’s some insurmountable hurdle in doing the task again the next time still. It’s genuinely baffling.

I noticed that too, but the shadows in this are what’s really bothering me (ignoring the uncanny valley aspect I guess). The doorknob, woman, and pictures on the wall are all casting shadows from a point light source directly below the inside of the door just out of frame despite it being a very bright sunny day outside.

I love the composition of this. It’s lovely.

Holy crap. I’ve heard this song so many times in my life and I don’t think I ever connected that that was the lyric (even though it’s literally the song title and I guess I’m a dumbass)