Soooooo. I have been playing quite a lot of The Last Remnant - I'm currently just about to head into the Aqueducts in Nagapur and I've done all but two of the sidequests available. I'm saving those ones for grinding purposes (Cosmos Maiden and Wisdom's Echo). Both Rush and David have randomly learnt Blackout II, skipping Blackout, without me even quite knowing how that happened. Huh.

But. EMMA. Stupid bloody Squenix and their Aeris-style whallops. (Warning: major spoilers in the video.) I am also now deeply afraid of the Conqueror. Is it wrong that I want to see Conqueror/Emma now?

It says something about the way my mind works, though, that I'm not yet at the end of the first disk and I've already daydreamed up a dystopian AU where Rush is on the Conqueror's side.

However, stupid bloody Windows Vista keeps taking exception to TLR. Among other things, it has a) randomly sped up the battle speed in the middle of one battle and now I can't get it back to normal so Rush & Co look like the Energiser Bunny on speed, b) has bluescreened TWICE while I was playing the game, and c) keeps freezing the game in the middle of fights. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes not.

It says something that in the eight-odd years that I used Windows prior to getting the new laptop with Vista, I never once had a computer bluescreen on me. Since getting Vista? Three times in a year. Twice in the last fortnight.

...why is the Gae Bolg a giant penis?

What the fuck, Squenix. What. The. Fuck.

(The Last Remnant finally finished downloading, so I am currently sort-of levelling by cycling through the Gaslin Caves and the Ruins of Robellia Castle. Rule of thumb with any RPG: if you have an opportunity to do stupid amounts of levelling really early on, do so.)

Steam is going to drive me mad, I can tell.

I bought The Last Remnant PC version a couple of days ago and it arrived on Thursday. I thought installing it right there and then would be lethal considering that I have a job to apply for, work to go to, and still those areyougame fics to write that have been eluding me.

HOWEVER. Squeenix appear to have decided that they would put the game itself online, to be installed via Steam, and that the two DVD disks in the box were for something entirely different that I haven't quite worked out yet.

So now The Last Remnant is downloading to my computer at a rate of 235kB/s.

All. Twelve. Gigs. Of. It.

I'm really glad I have Dissidia to tide me over...