Fault - Milestone One (PC)

Fault - Milestone One is a kinetic visual novel. Therefore, you play it just to enjoy the story as there are no meaningful choices or any other thing that you can do to influence its linear storytelling. The presentation is gorgeous, with crisp beautiful artwork, and backgrounds that move at times, and plenty of CG scenes. However, one glaring omission are voiceovers, there isn’t even any Japanese voiceovers. As a result, it feels a bit silent at times, as if something is missing.

The story starts off with a tense premise. A country is being invaded, and the princess, along with her guardian, narrowly escapes. This is a unique world filled with mana, and people use mana for everyday life, as well as using it for combat. The pair, Princess Selphine, and her guardian Ritona, manage to escape somewhere far away. They must now get their bearings, as well as figure out how to return to their country to find out what happened.

The visual novel has a ton of exposition. It takes time to explain the various concepts of mana, its world, the setting and how everything works. This means that it dumps you with text upon text of this stuff at the beginning. It also tends to focus upon the characters’ inner thoughts, as they voice what they are thinking, but this isn’t interesting for a lot of the time where this happens.

The princess is young, and despite her dire situation, she just enjoys being out of the country. It’s like she is travelling for the first time, wanting to experience the culture and enjoy new things. Ritona is a lot more reserved and guarded, she knows the seriousness of the situation that they are in. The pair easily meets new friends in new places, who helps them upon their quest. It can be a complete mood whiplash when it changes from an invasion to one where the characters were whisked away to an unknown place to explore.

The story mostly takes place in one setting, and it’s got a lot of tropes wrapped around it that it can’t quite shake off. There’s the whole magic vs science rivalry, where the protagonists come from a country where they can use magic freely. This is compared to the city that they arrive in, which is the complete opposite and manages to achieve a lot of what magic can do, but via science instead. The other major theme is the story wants to create a high emotional peak. It wants to create an emotional attachment between the player and one of the characters.

There is a strong theme of love and familial bonds. Given that the game is short, it tries for a quick payoff, so it ends up falling somewhat short of what it aims to do. The method of creating that emotional attachment, as well as the story itself, can feel methodical and cold. However, the game uses unique pieces of music, that helps to hammer some of its themes in place, to the point where you can say that it will elicit some emotion out of you at its climax.

Despite shrouding one of the characters in mystery, it is very easy to guess their background. What was more satisfying however was the full revelation of the history of the character, and how they came to this point. The journey wasn’t what you would have expected, even though the writing and story developments are nowhere near the quality of any other visual novels that are considered all-time greats.

This is a short game, and once the major arc is over, you kind of know that the game will be over soon. However, it’ll still surprise you at how soon that is. It’s like they were starting to say their farewells, and then boom, it ends. It is supposed to be a cliffhanger but is too abrupt. If you’re a fast reader, then the visual novel can be finished within two hours, otherwise it’ll be 3-4 hours. Given that there are no alternate endings and only one inconsequential choice in the game, there isn’t any replayability.

Overall, Fault - Milestone One is an average visual novel. For a first chapter that is designed to suck you in, it doesn’t do a great job at hooking you with the characters and its settings. The change from the opening scene to the subsequent chapters where the core of the story takes place felt completely different, like there was tonal incompatibility. There are a lot of awkward exposition dumps, and in general, the things that the story tried to do, others had done it better.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations Legacy United Sandstorm (Leader)

Review:  #803

Name:  Sandstorm

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Autobot

Line:  Generations - Legacy: United

Year of Release:  2024

Size Class:  Leader (Wave 2)

Mold Status:  new

HELICOPTER MODE:

Sandstorm, based on his G1 design, transforms into an orange and black helicopter.

This is a really good helicopter mode, especially when you consider that he is a triple-changer.  There is basically no vehicular elements present, it's really impressive.

While sold as a Leader classed figure, he is only slightly larger than a Voyager figure.  He makes it for it with some added complexity to his transformation scheme, so he feels more dense.

It's only when you look underneath that you can see elements that betray he is a triple-changer.

His main gimmick is having three modes, but there are small plastic wheels that allow him to roll on a flat surface (kinda as the "front" wheels are the vehicle's wheels which doesn't quite work in this mode) and the rotors which rotate.

The two robot weapons can peg to either side for storage.

The figure comes with a cage, complete with a working winch.  This can be plugged underneath the helicopter mode, and if you have a Transformers stand (like from the Masterpiece figures), then he features a slot for that too.

An excellent helicopter mode, and it is surprising at how good it is.

TRANSFORMATION (TO VEHICLE MODE):

This part is where you realise how they were able to manage to get such a good helicopter mode, basically because he is a shellformer.  The helicopter is mostly panels that will fold away.  The majority of the back folds on top of the front, and then you flip the figure upside down.  Unfold the wheels to the sides and then realign a few other panels, such as the windshield and roof, and you're done.

VEHICLE MODE:

Sandstorm second alternate mode is an off-road buggy, and... it's definitely not as good as the helicopter mode.  This mode suffers the most and has the most compromises.

The back isn't that much better either, given you can see halves of the helicopter's cockpit, as well as the tail rotor, which tries to pass itself off (unconvincingly) as a spoiler.

Size-wise, he stretches out a bit here and is bigger than a Voyager, but there are more hollow areas compared to the helicopter mode, which was very compact.

In terms of where some of the robot accessories go, part of the cage (the part with the bars) is removable from his back, but the buggy looks better with it.  The grey plastic piece can peg onto the bottom of the vehicle.

From the side, you can tell how heavily compromised this mode is.  The vehicle looks like a mess, and doesn't gel together properly.

The gun can peg on top of the cage for storage.  Of note, while the wheels aren't quite rubberized plastic, they are close as they are softer than normal plastic.

This is not a good mode, but you will give it a bit of leeway given it is a triple changer, and usually, one mode has to suffer.

TRANSFORMATION (TO ROBOT MODE):

Considering he's a triple changer, he isn't actually that hard. The front splits into two, and extends to form his legs.  The sides are his arms, and then you just flip the head up from beneath the windshield.  Most of the complexity is going from buggy to helicopter, as most of the helicopter is already folded away in buggy mode, ready for robot mode.

ROBOT MODE:

Sandstorm's robot mode is another mode where it is compromised for the sake of bring a triple changer.  At first glance, he isn't too bad and to be fair, it is fairly decent.

However, he has pretty much all of the helicopter mode folded up on his back, creating a very decently sized backpack, which is as awkward as it looks.

The head sculpt feels very G1, it's big and blocky.

He isn't very tall in robot mode, in fact, he's shorter (when you compare to the height up to his head) than a typical Voyager.

Articulation is okay, he has joints for his head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles.

He comes with a fair few accessories, including two guns, and a cage.

The grey gun can peg onto the outside of either forearm, which looks pretty good there.

While the bigger black gun can be held in either hand.

There is a design flaw with the figure that should be noticed, and that is his chest assembly, which includes the shoulders, does not stay pegged well, so it will constantly come loose and detach.  This is quite annoying since it'll detach whenever you want to move his arms.

Finally, the cage can be held in his hand, it looks okay, and you can kind of store it on his back if you don't want to use it via the 5mm peg.

A decent robot mode, but one that can definitely be improved upon, at the very least, fixing the loose torso assembly.

OVERALL:

Sandstorm is a nice figure.  He has a lot of flaws, particularly surrounding his buggy mode and robot mode.  The helicopter mode is frankly, amazing, while the buggy is heavily compromised, and the robot mode is passable.  There's just a bit too much kibble on his backpack for it to be good though.

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Attack on Titan: The Final Season - Part 2 (2022)

The second part of Attack on Titan: The Final Season is 12 episodes long. It begins straight after the previous season, and you get two full episodes of fighting. While it is not quite the same desperate battles of the characters against the titans you still get big titan on titan action. Although with the advancement in tech and the introduction of more contemporary weapons, it’s lost a lot of its charms.

However, the fighting is secondary to the plot given that Eren is on the cusp of something big and important. There are still too many things that we don’t know about, and the season continues the trend of cutting off from the present day or the current scene to do some exposition. It’s not ideal, and what we find out wouldn’t blow your mind. One thing though is that the anime continues to give you some incredibly tense moments and cruel surprises. The fate that befalls some characters will leave you speechless, although you suspect that there might be one or two ways out of it.

As the viewer, you also feel the same frustrations as many of the characters. People whom you had trusted flipped around to betray you. With the invasion by an outside force, you now must make the decision on whether to help that very traitor to protect your city. Making it even more complicated are that it is not black and white. Every person has their own, often understandable, reason for fighting. It’s only really Zeke and Eren that are either still shrouded in mystery or have irrational reasonings.

Part 2 has some crazy developments. For better or worse, the anime keeps a lot of things in the dark and even when it explains things, it doesn’t explain everything at once, leaving a lot unsaid. This allows unexpected developments and plans nested within plans. It doesn’t get to the point of being too confusing or ridiculous, but it gets close. You’ll get things where Eren is portrayed as morally grey and even eventually becomes the villain, with some retcons coming out of the blue.

Another good thing the anime does it evoke emotions from the viewer from things such as characters doing all they can to do something that might not be the right thing. Even when you don’t fully understand their motivations, enough is show that you still feel some sort of support, such as Annie from the first season. There are idealistic themes being portrayed here about family and bonds.

Part 2 continues with the slow pacing that is interspersed with significant movements in the plot. Progress feels deliberate and meaningful. You know and feel that the story is heading towards its ending, and it makes you wonder how it can possibly end with all sides satisfied. It builds into the iconic scenes of giant titans walking in the background giving a chilling feel like the apocalypse is arriving, and it is.

Characters are a bit scattered, but the various groups and factions are slowly converging to a single point. Due to both sides hating against each other, understandably, given the situations when they were growing up, there is extra significance when the characters being to slowly set aside their differences. They don’t forgive each other, but at least they respect and see each other’s perspectives, which is an impressive thing to do. Characters are shown to constantly make extremely tough decision that you can see that it hurts them physically. They are backed into a corner and are forced to do what they must to survive and move forward.

The season finale has high stakes for its battles, so all the characters on both sides are giving it their all to protect and achieve what they believe in. the sad part is that you can understand the reasoning on both sides, and it is hard to pick one to win. You know which side will win of course, but it is still tough to see characters die, seemingly when they didn’t have to. It truly highlights the lack of a distinct right or wrong between the two factions.

The constant flashbacks are not great for storytelling pacing purposes. It’s kind of annoying when the last episode is dedicated as such, but it somewhat finally bridges the gaps in the events. By the end of this part, we have seen the whole process from start to finish and there shouldn’t be any gaps of knowledge left.

Overall, Attack on Titan: The Final Season - Part 2 is good. It can be somewhat slow in the middle but not largely so. Part 2 is bookended by some great titan appearances and battles, particularly the one that is towards the end of the season. These battles feel meaningful and isn’t battling for the sake of action. The finale showing the destructive power and impending doom from the titans is impressive and felt like what the series was building up towards.

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