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Hey, look, Baldr Sky Zero 2 [WARNING: 18+ content], which will at least address one of my complaints about the first game by having Meryl as a winnable character. Interesting that they decided to have Shizel as the other winnable character, though - I guess she was a lot more popular in Baldr Sky than I knew? Interesting how they're declaring that this will "complete" Baldr Sky Zero, though, something they didn't state in the runup to the previous game (unlike Dive1, which by the nature of the name, was clear about what was happening).

As you may have gathered from my previous post, I have a Kindle. In this case, it's a second generation Kindle Paperwhite, which I purchased so that I can access the Amazon.co.jp marketplace (my previous third-generation Kindle Keyboard was unable to do so).

I've been checking out several e-books that are available, and rather understandably, I've downloaded several samples. And... some of them really make me wonder what the hell the publishers are smoking. Cases in point:

• IS <Infinite Stratos> volume 1, where you get to read an amazing 12 sentences of the book to decide whether you want to purchase it.
• Which is an improvement over Strike the Blood volume 1, where you get to see the title pages for chapter 1, and that's it.
• Or Date A Live Touka Dead End, where you get to see the disclaimers for the book, and that's it.
• The same holds true of Bungaku shoujo, where you don't see anything from the first chapter.
• This isn't restricted to light novels, either. In Kami nomi zo shiru sekai volume 1, you get to see the "prologue" and the first chapter's title page, and that's it.
• Which is admittedly better than Mahou senki Lyrical Nanoha Force volume 1, where they cut you off before showing any story.

You'd think that publishers would realize that a sample should be, well, a real sample so that a customer would be able to make an informed decision, but... maybe not?

This isn't to say that all of them are bad. Several of them are quite good, such as the samples for Hidan no Aria volume 1 and Kikou shoujo wa kizutsukanai volume 1 on the light novel end of things, and Minami-ke volume 1 for manga.

Many people have noticed the difficulties of buying the media you care about in the country you care about when it comes to digital downloads of video and music. Some people have noticed the difficulties of buying the media you care about in the country you care about when it comes to digital downloads of video games. There has been remarkably little discussion about the issue when it comes to digital books, though, at least in part because of how little it's in your face.

Take, for example, the fantasy novel by David Eddings, Pawn of Prophecy, which starts off his series The Belgariad. Normally, if you go to Amazon.com from the US, you see no indication that an e-book version is even available. However, if you happen to come from a foreign IP... this is what you see instead:

	Hey, look! A Kindle version! ... What happens if I click on it?
	That looks like what I want! Time to buy! Sign in, and....
	Huh?
	Meanwhile, on Amazon.jp....
	Or Amazon.co.uk....
	...Or Amazon.de....

From what I can tell, this comes down to the idiotic policies of Random House, who own the copyrights in the US. They don't seem to have recognized that e-books are a great way to sell books from your back catalog, even for ones that have a fairly large following. What's even more ridiculous is that the international arm of the same publisher (Transworld Publishers) has already released electronics versions of the books!

Left hand, meet right hand. sigh

In the meantime, I'll go buy these from overseas. At least the Kindle is able to keep books from multiple accounts on a single Kindle simultaneously (unlike the mobile phone versions of the apps)....

About a week ago, I finished my first playthrough of Baldr Sky Zero (Sakura's, if you're curious). I've been thinking about it on and off as I started approaching the conclusion of the game, and these are a few of my musings. The short version is: not a horrible iteration, but it's nowhere to the level of Baldr Sky.

Story/Characterization

• imho, the main character's not very relatable. Compared to the two previous Baldr iterations (Force and Sky; Bullet is a remake so doesn't count for this), Edward [WARNING: 18+ content] is an extraordinarily self-confident person, to the point where I would call him smug.
• In a somewhat similar vein, I'm not particularly enamored of the main heroines, either. I'd argue that there's a problem when my favourite characters in the game are secondary characters [WARNING: 18+ content].
• And... the story? Giga/Team Baldrhead decided to do something that's effectively a 180° change from their previous games:

  This. Honestly, I'm pretty disappointed. Team Baldrhead's done a pretty good job (well, at the very least prior to Material Brave) of having the different characters' storylines tie together in a relatively organic manner (yes, you can point to Sora's storyline in Dive2, but the way it tied together fit really well). As a matter of fact, the ending felt a lot like that from Material Brave, with Meryl substituting for Ena, essentially declaring that there will be a sequel by leaving things open-ended at the end. Bleh.

• And the vaunted connection with Baldr Sky? I have yet to see anything meaningful, although it may be in one of the other two storylines....

Gameplay

• Team Baldrhead tried to mix things up a bit with this iteration. I believe a previous version of the game system page noted that they were aiming to encourage players to use the long-distance weapons more, so they tried to balance the game in that direction.
• In a sense, they did. But by nerfing close-ranged combat.
  • None of the weapons provide armour any longer, meaning that if you're surrounded during close-ranged combat (which happens pretty often), you're going to be taking a beating.
  • Healing only occurs at the end of combat, with no per-kill healing (although there are options to increase end of combat healing). Given that close-ranged combat was traditionally about taking enemies out quickly and being willing to accept those hits to be able to land hits, it breaks that balance.
  • No Pile Driver? What the hell?! 😛
• Other miscellaneous combat thoughts:
  • Having different-sized usage limits for each weapon becomes an annoying exercise in juggling weapons. I've found that the most effective (??) way of handling this is by using a weapon until it needs to be reloaded, which means that there's very little cross-attack usage.
  • Weapons only reload when they're completely exhausted. So you'll be shooting weapons into nothing between fights, which just feels ridiculous.
  • Combat feels a bit slower, a bit more "floaty" than the previous games. There's something missing, but I have difficulty putting my finger on exactly what it is.
  • The weapon selection is somehow less "fun" than previous iterations, as a lot of the attacks with character have disappeared.

Artistic

• I suppose this is the price of going 3D, but it feels as though the simulacra have lost some detail - perhaps it's just the shading that's different? Simulacra variety also seems to have gone down, and map/tile variety has gone down even more than that. In general, the world feels much smaller than it did before.

Technical

• The game runs pretty well - I'm running it at 2560 x 1440, maxed settings except for SSAO (which drops the frame rate noticeably). Granted, this is with a Geforce GTX 770....

All in all, Baldr Sky Zero feels like a definite step back from Baldr Sky Dive 1/2/X, which is unfortunate. I'll be waiting for the expansion to Baldr Sky Zero, to see if they addressed some issues (like they (arguably) did between Material Brave and Material Brave Ignition).