The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition

The logo for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
Steam Page (The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages)

So I forced myself to actually beat Skyrim. Not in a negative way but in a “I’ve put more than 300 hours in to this game and never beat the main story I REALLY SHOULD” so I finally did. I mostly always got distracted by new releases, which Stardew 1.6 almost threatened to, but this time I said I’d finish before I do anything else so I did!

It’s uh. Skyrim! What can I say about it as a review that thousands of other people, some of which it’s their job, have said before? I do find it more fun than Oblivion, I think it’s fun to run around as a lizard, and so on. But… well here’s some things I guess?

  • The main plot is, neat I guess? Kind of dull!
  • The Civil War plot is just dull at best, and not good in general. If you’re playing as an Argonian or Kjaiht you have no reason to join the Storm Cloaks, but also the Imperials are shit too! I finally did it (Imperial) to finally say I did it
  • The good stories as always are the side stories, be it major like the Thieves Guild or more minor ones like the Daedric quests.
  • Never play it without mods
  • I never use the shouts! All these abilities and almost all of them feel inferior to… being a werewolf! Or stealth kills! Or the bow! Wow!

And that’s it really! Woo! I did it! Only 450 hours before I finally did! I hope you didn’t expect an actual wordy view of the game. Again, it’s Skyrim, there are people who have made much better posts about it than I.

A screenshot of the Steam library banners for both the original and special editions of Skyrim, showing approx 450 hours between them both.

Mocked up album art for the Pokémon Masters EX Gamerip OST as well as an official art piece, from left to right: Johto with art of Neo Champion Silver, the middle being key art from the 4.5 anniversary event, then Paldea with Geeta

PMEX Gamerip OST – 2024-02-27

Mocked up album art for the Pokémon Masters EX Gamerip OST as well as an official art piece, from left to right: Johto with art of Neo Champion Silver, the middle being key art from the 4.5 anniversary event, then Paldea with Geeta

A big update for trainers, but not so big in music so once again this is two game updates (2.41 and 2.42) rolled in to one update post!

The full collection is here, with relevant credits and folder structure.
Update only tracks are here.

Changelog in the archive and below:

2024-03-01 Changelog

Filenames have changed in some instances so please either delete the old ver or update the tags manually yourself! Folder structure remains the same.

00 – Masters Originals/Pasio
= Track 214 “Battle! (Prestige Event) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)” now Track 52
+ Track 212 – “Battle! (Thanksday)”
+ Track 213 – “The Battle Rally”
+ Track 214 – “Photoshoot”

01 – Kanto
= Track 202 “Battle! (Kanto Trainer) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)” now Track 20

02 – Johto (No Changes)
+ Track 16 – “Battle! (Johto Neo Champion) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)”

03 – Hoenn (No Changes)
= Track 207 “Per Aspera Ad Astra (Pokémon Masters EX Version)” now Track 27

04 – Sinnoh
= Track 201 “Battle! (Clan Warden) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)” now Track 21 and titled “Battle! (Hisui Warden) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)”
= Track 204 “Battle! (Pokémon Wielder) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)” now Track 22 and titled “Battle! (People of Hisui) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)”
= Track 202 “Event: Galactic Awakening – Old Chateau (Pokémon Masters EX Version)” now Track 23 and titled “Old Chateau (Pokémon Masters EX Version)”

05 – Unova (No Changes)
06 – Kalos (No Changes)
07 – Alola (No Changes)
08 – Galar (No Changes)

09 – Paldea
+ Track 4 – “Battle! (Geeta) (Pokémon Masters EX Version)”

 

A red anthropomorphic dragon, DarkOverord Occassus, standing in the middle of a path that has grass to either side. It is looking rather serious and ready to fight as it looks to the viewer, a sword in its right hand while its raised left hand is covered in lilac energy which has a tear in space being dragged from under its hand. Above the left is some disintegrating card with unknown text on it. Behind the dragon is a glowing purple magic sigil. The background is mostly a fairly clear sunny day, however the right quarter is at sunset, with crackling yellow energy on the border of the day and sunset region of the background. Above the sky is a large purple crack in the sky that looks like the tear below the dragon's left hand.

On the Border of Incident – Riftmaker’s Resealing Attempt

A red anthropomorphic dragon, DarkOverord Occassus, standing in the middle of a path that has grass to either side. It is looking rather serious and ready to fight as it looks to the viewer, a sword in its right hand while its raised left hand is covered in lilac energy which has a tear in space being dragged from under its hand. Above the left is some disintegrating card with unknown text on it. Behind the dragon is a glowing purple magic sigil. The background is mostly a fairly clear sunny day, however the right quarter is at sunset, with crackling yellow energy on the border of the day and sunset region of the background. Above the sky is a large purple crack in the sky that looks like the tear below the dragon's left hand.

“Excuse me!? I’m the cause of this incident!? Young Sigel, you’ve spent all day aimlessly wandering around performing the most lacklustre investigation I’ve seen you do in a while, and then you have the audacity to blame me! It’s taking a lot from me to even perform this blending of time, I’m not some being who can easily manipulate boundaries, to seal the real cause of this incident but if you’re so intent on fighting me then very well…

Show me, o foolish Guardian of the Order who skirts responsibility, your actual resolve so I may send you to that who you truly should be fighting!


I figured for a year of the dragon (Wood Dragon, 2024) I should actually do art with DarkOverord, in fact other than the reference, this is the first rendered piece with the original DarkOverord since 2021!

I so rarely actually do art of DO actually using its abilities, especially in more rendered pieces like this, that I wanted actually do that for once. So here DarkOverord is, clearly initiating some kind of attack after splitting time in this area in two. The rift above them is a coincidence, DO blundered that in to existence either in the future or past (it’s paradoxical like that) and can’t reseal it.

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Some extra information! The piece is actually inspired by a pair of pieces I did in my 2015 Sketch-A-Day challenges, 157 and 158 respectively, but I’ve changed up the context a little.

A dragon flying in the air while pointing at a figure who has their back to the viewer. The background is split in sunset and night. A lizard flying in the air while performing an attack to target a dragon who has their back to the viewer. The background is split in sunset and night.

Also hey wake up new magic circle dropped instead of me reusing the sigil repeatedly that was only meant to be JOS’. Did you know I hate working in Inkscape? I do now!

The left sigil was done with vectors in Paint Shop Pro 9 in 2015 and while I managed to get PSP9 to export at 4500×4500, it wasn’t happy about that ‘cus it’s an extremely old art 32-bit application, so I knew I had to try doing this in something more modern and christ it doesn’t work how I’d like it to… BUT I am happy with what I finally got out. Also I refuse to use two triangles for magic circles ‘cus that’s the Star of David and has connotations when paired with magic that I frankly refuse to get involved with.

JOS’s
A green magic circle
DarkOverord’s
A purple magic circle

Art Archives (2013 to 2023)

So over on my Patreon I post monthly (and then yearly) art archives! It’s not too complicated a concept really but generally this is everything I’ve done in a month/year, including silly doodles I’ve done, and on higher tiers there’s access to higher resolution files and so on! Of course what’s more special about these archives is they don’t include that patreon banner I stick on stuff because I have to advertise it somehow! :V

I also then (intend to at least) a month in to the next year make the standard resolution images public (I.e. 2023’s archive comes out on the 1st of February), what a concept right? I’m not sure I ever put the the past couple years out there beyond having them accessible to patreons a month early before the post goes public over there. So this is me just making sure I post it publicly in more places than what is effectively a tip jar!

A change I’m doing now is that at this point it’ll be worthwhile giving access to the higher res art too via my commiss.io, so now you’ll find digital art packs for 2013 to 2023. Patreons will always still get these in advance as part of their reward tier however (as well as getting immediate access to these files when I post new art regardless).

Packs over on commiss.io:

Free standard res art packs, PWYW but their base price is $0:

High res art packs:

MEGA alternate uploads for the free packs

Just in case you don’t wanna give commiss.io your email for free things :V

A red vampire hedgehog looking a little scared and concerned at its hand now wing as it shifts in to a bat form. It says out loud "Wait, what the...? No no no no no no no no no no (cut off the screen edge) It's stood in a wood panelled room with a little table connected to the wall. The window is open and you can see outside and the moon is currently large in the sky behind the silhouettes of other houses. In the lower left is a doodle version of the hedgehog now in bat form saying "Note to self: Do not think of flying when not concentrating. This is fine, advantageous! Just... Not right now."

First Bat Shift

A red vampire hedgehog looking a little scared and concerned at its hand now wing as it shifts in to a bat form. It says out loud "Wait, what the...? No no no no no no no no no no (cut off the screen edge) It's stood in a wood panelled room with a little table connected to the wall. The window is open and you can see outside and the moon is currently large in the sky behind the silhouettes of other houses. In the lower left is a doodle version of the hedgehog now in bat form saying "Note to self: Do not think of flying when not concentrating. This is fine, advantageous! Just... Not right now."

So you’ve been turned by a vampire, you’ve got sick new fangs, cool eyes that you can use to put prey to sleep, you’re struggling with being very thirsty but it’s growing on you now, and started seeing others as food and/or heat sources now you don’t make it any more on the account of the whole *gestures* not living thing, your body keeps acting on instinct but it’s been mostly fine ‘cus it’s been to feed. Cool!
Then you idly thought about flying without thinking about it and oops turns out the myth about bat forms is true! You’ll work it out!

 Oops the vamp train has well and truly left the station now so I guess we have a bloodthirsty hedgehog now.

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Touhou Gouyoku Ibun ~ Sunken Fossil World.

TH!7.5 Sunken Fossil World key art for Nintendo Switch (with the translated title)
Steam Page (Touhou Wiki)

I finally got around to finishing this, which is good ‘cus when I first played it the final story wasn’t in (as it was added in the Switch ver and later updated in the Steam ver) and honestly it’s been a while but.

It’s. A game! A “horizontal side-scrolling danmaku water action game” if that means anything! I get what they were going for but it I now have cramp in my wrist oop. Conceptually the ideas work, but everyone (especially Murasa) either feels super sluggish or has feel like they don’t have much air control, or both!

Because of getting to the penultimate character back in 2022? 2021? I admittedly have forgotten a lot of how I felt about except just, frustration. Everyone would be fun to play as if the game didn’t seem to actively hate you. Oh well, that’s the last Windows Touhou game left on my list (that’s playable) now cleared. Finally.

On that note I could never find non-YouTube rips of the additional Switch tracks so I finally just did it myself here: No More Going Through Doors & Secret God Matara

Potion Craft's Key Art

Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator

Potion Craft's Logo
Official Site

Well I’ve got all the achievements now so that’s certainly time to write about this! I actually got this when it was in Early Access back in 2021 before it released, and beat it back then, but since then it’s gone gold and they added achievements to it. Well, more specifically to Steam, there are technically “achievements” in game but that’s getting ahead of myself.

On the surface it’s a fairly simple puzzle game as the aim of Potion Craft is simple: You’re an alchemist, you’ve opened up shop so you can research, create and sell potions. To do so you to chart a course on what’s called “The Alchemy Map” using your ingredients which all lay out their own path on the map, to reach a potion effect to brew a potion like so:

A composited screenshot of Potion Craft showing the path for Terraria and Waterbloom and the path they've laid out to a heart icon on the map
I’d joke this image is spoilers, but you’re given this by the tutorial

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