Fire Emblem Three Houses - I The Best Professor

I got Fire Emblem Three Houses for my birthday this last summer, and I've finally had the chance to play it - after managing to take a break from Minecraft for a bit. That's a hard thing to do sometimes! I'm glad I managed to though, because Fire Emblem sucked me in good.

If you're not familiar with Fire Emblem, it is a Tactical RPG set in a medieval fantasy world. There's plenty of characters and you level them up and assign them various classes as you progress through the story. This Fire Emblem features a hefty first half of the game where you play the role of a professor educating these young, up and coming lords and ladies. You can build relationships with them and guide them down their (or your) desired route of progression. There are options to do some of this automatically, but I enjoyed manually teaching my students.

I spent about 90 hours playing through the game - which is a bit longer than the average, but I liked talking to everybody! You have a choice early on which house you'd like to join and teach. This is effectively a choice about which characters you want to play through the game with and which story you want to experience. I'm terrible at making choices! This game is full of them. The nice thing is it warns you up front if the choice you are about to make will have permanent repercussions to the story. So don't fret the other choices throughout the game - they mainly help you build bonds with your students.

For my first time through the game I chose The Black Eagles house. This means I've got Edelgard at the helm and her whole crew to work with. Choosing was tough, as there were characters I liked my first impression of from all the houses. In the end, I grew to love every one of the misfits in the merry band I chose. I was even able to recruit Felix from one of the other houses.

Throughout the game there are days where you'll be able to explore the school and fish, garden, collect items, have meals, train skills, and bond with students. At the end of each month the story mission takes place. You can also take on quests and have non-story battles through the month to level up characters and collect rewards.

Now that I've beaten the game I have access to the New Game+ which I'm hoping to have the time to come back to one day. I'm super curious as to how the other houses stories unfold. Also, I'm excited to start a new game with the ability to carry over a lot of what I earned and collected in my first playthrough. One day. One day.

Something I don't think I ever fully utilized was the battalion system. This is a new mechanic to the Fire Emblem series. Having a battalion equipped to a unit boosts some of its stats, but it also gives them the ability to perform a gambit - a sort of special attack. Despite spending lots of time leveling up everyone's leaderships skills I never really used the gambits all that much. I've heard they're more useful in harder game modes - maybe I'll try to utilize them more in my next playthrough.

Overall, the game was excellent! It pulled me in. I enjoyed playing professor, I fell in love with all the character's in my house, and I enjoyed the battles. The battles themselves got a little easy the further I got into the game and the stronger my characters became. The final battle however, was a good difficulty. Maybe I'll try a harder game mode next time to have more of a challenge. The game was great, and I can't wait to play it again and experience a whole new story.

All New Shop Vorgus on Zazzle

I've been hard at work updating the brand for good ole' Shop Vorgus. I decided to keep the squid octopus thingy as my logo, but I gave it a new look and will be making it consistent through all the platforms. I've posted some of the sketches on my other blog, Sketchbook Vorgus, if you want a peak at the design process. Below is the final design!

I've cleaned up a lot of stuff at Shop Vorgus, organized things, and also added some new designs. In the future I'd like to expand to other digital marketplaces, but for now I'll focus on finishing up the original Zazzle shop. Below are some of the collections I've put together in the shop - click on them if you're interested, thanks!

Popular Clothing
by Vorgus

Laughs and Giggles
by Vorgus

Geek Out
by Vorgus

Around the House
by Vorgus

Triangle Dude Comics Most Popular
by Vorgus

New Digital Sketchbook - Sketchbook Vorgus

It dawned on me that I haven't let all you wonderful people know about my new sketchbook blog.

It all began when I noticed that conceptart.org completely disappeared! This was a bit of a shock because it seemed to me to be a fairly active community, at least when I was posting there more often a couple of years ago, but I suppose things might have changed. What this meant though was that all of my sketches, doodles, and studies that I had uploaded over the years had been snapped out of existence. Thanks Thanos...

So, I had decided to start another blog just for that kind of content, Sketchbook Vorgus!

I realize it won't ever have as much traffic as it did over at conceptart.org, but maybe it will get some. By putting it on blogger my hope is that it'll be less likely to just vanish, though who knows with Google because they make a lot of things that sometimes just vanish. I'm hopeful though. My other hope is that by creating a blog for that kind of content I'll be keeping myself to a semi-regular posting schedule. I still do a lot of sketching and drawing and doodling so the content is there - now I just need to post it!

Here's a taste.

If you're interested in this kind of stuff, drawing, sketching, study, perspective, etc. then I hope you'll check out Sketchbook Vorgus some time. It's still early days so there's not a ton there at the moment, but with time I'm hoping I'll fill it right up!

All New Triangle Dude Website

Triangle Dude Comics has a new home! Same website, tdcomics.com, but now it's hosted on Blogger. It looks nice and new, while also looking pretty much the exact same. However, now it's free to host! So that's the big change for me. It has everything from the old site, sans the downloadable desktop wallpapers. If that's something people really want me to bring back then I'll do it, but for now they are gone.

That's it! Just a quick update. Hope everyone enjoys the new site :)

Superbia's Tank is Alive!

That's right! The board game I've been been working on, for longer than I'd like to admit, is finally a thing that actually exists. It's printed. It's playable. It's available for purchase! It's a real thing.

All the parts of the game!

Here's a quick blurb about the game:

A lost civilization known only as Superbia has been discovered in uncharted territory. Ancient and valuable tank part artifacts have been uncovered. Now, military organizations around the world have pledged to fund expeditions for the retrieval of these artifacts.

     Players give their tank commands to progress through the expedition. Shoot opponents to set back their advances, research locations to find powerful new tank part artifacts, and move all the way to the end to win! Develop a strategy utilizing a wide array of artifacts to complete the expedition and become the ultimate tank commander.

A game mid-play.

So, some thoughts...

One, as I mentioned, this took a lot longer than I thought it would. The game went through various revisions and one huge revision where half the game completely changed. The gameplay should have been hammered out first and foremost before I started creating art for the project. Luckily, I was able to reuse most of the art throughout the various revisions, but there were definitely some things cut that I had spent lots of time on.

The board and accompanying hex tiles were completely cut from the game!

Two, I think I've learned how long I can work on something until I start getting tired with it. Not to bash the game itself, but the process of creating the game was becoming a grueling slog. I was ready to be done with it a long time ago. The broken gameplay and subsequent huge revision to the game was a swift kick to moral, but I'm glad I stuck through it despite wanting to give up.

And three, I'm really grateful that my friends helped test the game out - especially one long night where it became clear the game was nigh unwinnable. I really appreciate the critiques and ideas from my friends and wife. Also, how awesome is it that there is a print-on-demand board game store? I'm glad to live in an age where something like The Game Crafter exists.

Well, thanks for reading, and if you ever get a chance to play Superbia's Tank I hope you have a fun, good time and thanks for trying it!

Some cards from the game!