After 143 Hours... We Finished Persona 5 Royal

Good morning everyone,

Last night's stream of Persona 5 Royal certainly saw me doing what the game said to do and 'Take My Time' when it came to trying to anticipate how much content was actually left, as I certainly wasn't rushing to finish the game, because I wanted to streak to last at least four hours. Turns out there was six hours worth of content left based around how I was choosing to handle the last trip into Mementos and doing other things (messing around with the Batting cages, spending time with some of the Confidants and unlocking stuff in the Thieves Den 

Now... let's talk about that battle against Maruki which is probably the most drawn out pain in the ass boss fight in the entire game with how many phases it had. Sure we got a HP and SP reset with each phase, but it was a battle that boiled down to 'But wait there's more...' when it came to obviously points of where it should have ended. We defeated Maruki's Persona... no wait... he evolves his Persona... then he gets eaten by his Persona... then it boils down to a fist fight... like really? The Holy Grail to Yaldabaoth boss fight wasn't nearly as padded as Maruki's was.

Now of course by the time we finished that fight it was 10:12 PM... but we didn't finish the game until 12:19 AM... because of all the cut scenes and extended dialog sequences I've managed to find pepped into the last stretches of time. Sure There's the time skips, but there is a lot to see, and when you are given time to roam around there are little nuggets and references one can find that serve as nice callbacks.And since I've been playing Persona 4 Arena, and seeing the 'Men In Black' involvement with characters from Persona 3... I'm betting those were who was chasing the Phantom Thieves at the very end.

Overall, Persona 5 Royal was an awesome experience and I look forward to playing it again on the Xbox side of things in 2023. 

Persona 5 Royal (PS4) Trophies

• Take Back the Future: Completed every Palace.
• The Path Chosen: Watched the ending.
• The Phenomenal Phantom Thief: Obtained all trophies.

Twitch Clips

• It's Showtime! The Defeat Of Jose!
• Boom... Headshot 
• Roses For Makoto 
  

During the stream we got a raid from Redneck_23 who was playing American Truck Simulator 19 over at twitch.tv/redneck_23!

For last night's raid, we dropped in on YrGamerBunni who was playing Halo: Infinite and Fortnite over at twitch.tv/yrgamerbunni! 

On a side note, Persona 5 Royal is only the 5th PlayStation title that I've gotten the Platinum Trophy for... the others being NCIS, WWE: Legends of WrestleMania, X-Men The Arcade Game and Sonic The Fighters.

There is a question of what will be featured on Friday's now... and the top two contenders are Dragon's Dogma and Persona 5 Strikers. We'll see what I end up deciding 

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured a brisk workout because I woke up super late. Still kept the daily streak going which was good.

While my fantasy baseball team had a great week last week, this weeks looks like it'll be a problem with Bryce Harper having to deal with a blister issue.

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.      

For tonight's stream... well, it's back to Persona 4 Arena to continue going through the story mode of that game, which means sitting through the visual novel parts. Good news is I believe we can basically go through everyone's story straight through because we tackled Labrys's story last week. So we should be able to knock off at least three characters stories tonight.

So on that note, we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Vampire Survivors: Simple, Difficult And Awesome

Good afternoon everyone,

Last night's stream of Vampire Survivors was a lot more fun than even I was anticipating as I figured out what combination of items worked out best for me, and having some runs that lasted over 20 minutes!  One thing I did realize is that the Pentagon power up is a great screen clear, but it not only takes out enemies, but also all the XP gems and pick-ups that are on screen. In terms of levels, I did make it to the 3rd level of the game overall, and found the mandatory item... but to progress further would require a lot grinding to build up the powers up one can have heading into a level. The music in the second stage, the library is pretty kick ass. Of course there was a hilarious moment that when I took a break I forgot to un-mute my mic.

Also the stream featured the unboxing of the latest Funko POP I've added too my collection of WWE's Becky Lynch, in particular the 'Becky Two Belts' variant, so now I have all three Funko figures of the last Superstar in wrestling that really had my full attention.

 Vampire Survivors Achievements

• Lightning Ring: Defeat a total of 5000 enemies.
• Magnet: Find a Vacuum.
• Arca: Get Fire Wand to Level 4.
• Porta: Get Lightning Ring To Level 4.
• Mortaccio: Defeat a total of 3000 skeletons.
• Cross: Find a Rosary.
• Duplicator: Get Magic Wand To Level 7.
• Clover: Find a Little Clover.
• Poe Ratcho: Get Garlic to level 7.
• Spellbinder: Get Runetracer To Level 7.
• Pentagram: Survive 20 minutes with any character.
• Inlaid Library: Reach Level 20 in Mad Forest.
• Stone Mask: Find a Stone Mask.
• Suor Clerici: Recover a lifetime total of 1000 HP.
• Thunder Loop: Evolve the Lightning Ring.
• Dairy Plant: Reach Level 40 in Inlaid Library.
• Milky Way Map: Find the Milky Way Map.
• NO FUTURE: Evolve the Runetracer.
• Magic Banger: Find the Magic Banger.

Twitch Clips 

• Becky Two Belts In All Here Big Headed Glory
• That is just mean game! 
• End of my best run 25 minutes, level 70
• We finally got a health item but... 
  

During the stream we had a big raid from Kalenal who was playing Tunic over at twitch.tv/kalenal! 

For our raid, we dropped everyone off over at YrGamerBunni's stream who was playing Mass Effect 3 (Legendary Edition) over at twitch.tv/yrgamerbunni! 

Now that I think about it, yesterday was the most achievements I've earned on a game through Steam in quite a while since I've mostly focused on console gaming over the past 18 months.

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 daily workout featured Uppercut Combo #1, Hook Combo #1 and Waist Shape Focus Combo for 30 minutes.

Capcom had some interesting thing in their showcase, with Monster Hunter Rise getting a big update, Exo-Primal getting a new trailer, hype for the Capcom Fighting Collection and Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium. I know a lot of folks are excited for things being added to Resdient Evil VILLage with it getting a story expansion and a third-person mode.

Speaking of Capcom, Dragon's Dogma has celebrated its 10th anniversary and I totally forgot LvStrkr gifted me that game early last year.  Really going to have to give that a look probably once Persona 5 Royal is finished.   

Put in the pre-order for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge, so I we'll be featuring that on Stream for Saturday this week. I now have to think of when was the last time I did anything associated with the Ninja Turtles on my channel and I think it was with Out of the Shadows back during my 2nd or 3rd year of streaming. Oh wait, I know I played the Arcade ROMs of the Arcade Game and Turtles in Time.

Started work on the latest commission fan fic request, and I'll admit I'm lifting Cody's post match interview whole-sale to serve as the introduction and awkward transition to the action. 

If you're looking for tools to help with streaming or communicating from home with work, check out what Xsplit offers over at Xsplit.com, use the promo code CASDEN to save 10% on your order! If you're looking for just general stuff, of course you can swing over to Amazon using my affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3L8N1Yj.   

For tonight's stream, we'll be getting back to Persona 4: Arena and working on the story mode... and I realize that there is probably an efficient way to go through it. 

So on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!

Today's Notes 5/2/21

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night's stream of ESPN Major League Baseball saw my 2004 Phillies sweep the Cubs in the National League Division Series and the Diamondbacks (who beat the Astros in the first round) in the National League Championship series. Now I went into last night thinking I'd alternate between playing and simulating the games (i.e. play games 1, 3, 5 in the Division Series and games 1, 3, 5, & 7 in the LCS), however, because game two in both series were actually won, my plan went right out the window when it game to LCS because why not go for the sweep right? Anyway, over the American League side of things, The Red Sox got through the Twins and Mariners (who beat in the Yankees in the first round), and near as I can tell, they won game six on the ALCS by hitting 2 grand slams in the bottom of the ninth. So Saturday's stream will be a showdown between my Phillies and the Red Sox in the 2004 World Series... and I'll play each game as we'll be looking to sweep the Sox. 

Twitch Clip: This Ball's Outta Here!

Twitch Clip: Hell of a way to end the inning

Big thanks to long time friend of the channel ShadowStrkr who gifted me Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen for Xbox One / Series, looking into it I see it's a 100+ hour game to finish but I do at the least want to take a look at it, so we'll do a demo-night featuring it sometime in the near future!

Another friend of the channel Kalenal, asked if I ever played The Curse of Monkey Island, and I have, granted I haven't played it since 2018. But considering my fondness for Lucas Arts games, I think we're probably do for another run of the Monkey Island games... and hey maybe I can track down the PS2 version of Escape From Monkey Island, since that is the one game in the saga I've never played.

With Mass Effect Legendary Edition coming out on the 14th, finding short games to add to the 2021 tour becomes a little bit of challenge. But since I haven't played many PC games this year, I think a return to the Nancy Drew series is needed, with Nancy Drew Dossier: Resort To Danger/ It shouldn't take me more than a night to get through, and we'll probably start early to give myself extra time to get through it!

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 session saw me getting the achievement for using Bernando 10 times with Free Exercise sets, and at this point we're up to 58 points as it relates to his Best Friend achievement. The daily set today lasted 47 minutes and I did another 18 to make sure we burned 1000 calories. I'm hoping to do the weekly stream session in the morning because we'll be having someone come in the afternoon to check the washer & dryer which were acting up last Monday.

It's Sunday night which means Overwatch is on the agenda, and we'll be messing with Quick Play matches and whatever arcade modes spark interest this week (Mayhem, maybe Mystery Heroes).

And on that note well see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!