I’ve just been reliably informed that next month is August. In fact, it will be August in just over two weeks from the time of this writing. (Which was yesterday, as of the time of this posting.) That means Blaugust is back. Head over there to Tales from the Aggronaut for all the details. Thanks to Belghast for making these awesome images available! I have to be honest. The idea of writing a blog post every day for a month elicits a heavy sigh from me. (1719 words.)

I’ve heard about a thing in Final Fantasy XIV called the “Trust System.” I didn’t pay any attention to it. Why would I? It’s called a “trust system.” Typical of most things in Final Fantasy, there is nothing within the words of that name that even remotely implies what it actually *is*. If they had called it what it is, which is apparently “AI Party Members For Completing Main Scenario Quest Dungeons Solo,” then boy would my ears have pricked up fast. (897 words.)

Another super easy month to figure out. It was Bloodborne on the PS4. I basically only play one game at a time anymore, and have little interest in anything else until I finish with it. Bloodborne (PS4), ~50-60 hours. Time estimated by looking at how long I ran OBS Studio on my PC, which was 50 hours. However when I finished the game and entered New Game+ last night, the total save game time was 68 hours, but that extends a little bit into May as well. (239 words.)

Bloodborne: It’s fantastic. I’m not even finished yet and it clearly deserves to go into my entirely fictional All-Time Hall of Fame Game Library. That’s it. That’s my impressions. If you like this kind of game, it’s a must-play. (If you don’t, then you probably won’t like it, because it is the quintessential version of this kind of game, the template from which all others of this kind of game are poorly copied. (1767 words.)

I probably won’t play Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion. I’ve had a lot of fun in Final Fantasy XIV but it occurred to me that the game isn’t made for me anymore. Bye bye spunky porcelain-faced Miqo'te in the Bain mask. That became really clear when I watched the Square Enix event for E3. At the end of the event, Twitter exploded with excitement over a bombshell surprise reveal. I watched the entire E3 event. (880 words.)

Someone on Twitter asked a question that gave me an extremely rare idea for a blog post that I haven’t already covered before: Gaming Chairs. So, my PC chair is on it's way out, and starting to get uncomfortablke. Anyone have any decent recommendations? I was thinking on looking at all those "gaming" chairs that are all the rage since I'd like a higher armrest and some comfort but…y'know, need suggestions — Marc Evans (@CommanderFlynn) <a href="https://twitter. (859 words.)

I wrote this tweet this morning: Man, when I hear people talking about E3, I realize I must not be a gamer AT ALL anymore, if I ever was. This must be what it feels like to leave Scientology. — Endgame Viable (@endgameviable) <a href="https://twitter.com/endgameviable/status/1138085833490276352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 10, 2019</a> It’s a tweet that deserves to be a full blog post. But I have this terrible habit of saying everything I want to say in two pithy sentences, with little room for expansion. (744 words.)

This should be a pretty short list. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, 53 hours. I finished my first playthrough and started NG+. I got bored about halfway through NG+ though. 7 Days To Die, 2 hours. I don’t remember why I played this. I think I might have been playing it while listening to Critical Role early in the month. I have thoughts about the newest version but I can’t remember what they are at the moment. (334 words.)

The following is a list of Sekiro video episodes I recorded in my first blind playthrough, with descriptions for each. This is the document from which I will be cutting and pasting all my YouTube video descriptions. You can use this as a searchable index to see the odd path of progression I made through the game. One interesting thing about From Software games is that everyone plays it differently, and it’s fun to see how others may have taken different paths. (9036 words.)

I finished my first blind playthrough of Sekiro* this past week, so I can finally post my thoughts about it. It took me two months and two days, or 76 game hours by the game’s accounting. I recorded 95 roughly 25 minute videos documenting the journey. There might be some minor spoilers below, but nothing about the story. I'm part of the 22.7% club! Now I enter the second phase of playing every From Software game: Learning about all of the things I missed or did wrong the first time, as I finally go around reading about the game (a little bit, at least-there is still a lot I can discover about the story and different endings on my own). (2247 words.)

Yes, I’m still playing Sekiro, so nothing else to talk about. I will publish a massive, massive post when I’m done (I’m on what I think might be the final boss as I’m typing this, then I have some backtracking to do). I’m aware that there’s a new episode of GW2 but I couldn’t care less. I’m aware that WoW Classic is in beta but I couldn’t care less. I’m aware that there’s a new thing coming for ESO but I couldn’t care less. (3237 words.)

I’m still playing Sekiro, so not much to write about until I’m finished with it. Until then, more notes on Game of Thrones! Thought I should post them before the new episode airs to lock in my predictions for the Internet office pool. Episode 4 Seeing from Twitter that there are spoilers for the episode and not even 5 pm yet. Was there another leaked episode? Probably. Undoubtedly. I had to find the leaked episodes last season so I could watch them before people posted spoilers from them. (2245 words.)

The following is a slightly edited but mostly unedited copy of the notes I take while watching Game of Thrones. I watch with a laptop and bash out thoughts as they occur to me, then I go back after the show and fill in extra details in brackets. I had ideas of turning these notes into real posts but since I never did it for season 7, and there’s over 4,000 words of stream-of-consciousness commentary down below, at this point you just get what you get. (5888 words.)

It’s been another odd gaming month. I thought I would be playing a lot of Sekiro, but it turns out I’m just not in the mood for it, or any games really. I’ve gotten much more enjoyment from consuming plain old non-interactive video content in my free time (ie. mostly Critical Role). Sekiro, 28 hours. I am currently on the “Guardian Ape” boss and not terribly interested in putting in the repetitive practice needed to get past it. (327 words.)

MassivelyOP asks: “How obsessively do you plan your characters?” At first I thought they meant the *appearance* of your character. So I tweeted my usual I-can-say-everything-that-needs-to-be-said-about-MMOs-in-one-sentence-and-hoo-boy-does-that-make-blogging-hard response to most discussion topics: Honestly these days I just click randomize a bunch of times and then "Enter Game" … I've been burned so, so many times spending an hour in character creation only to find that everyone looks exactly the same from the back. (797 words.)