James Williams.me

James is a standard issue nerd, practically to a fault. He was learning BASIC while his peers were learning to throw and catch. He enjoys walking around a well-lit 3D-rendered landscape but would prefer to stay indoors. He won't dance (don't ask him) but he will /dance and /manderville all night long. If you're interested in an in-depth analysis between the command techniques of various Starfleet captains, you are going to have a great time with James at parties (this is a lie: James doesn't go to parties).

Professionally, James is a seasoned developer with nearly two decades of experience. He enjoys all sorts of different programming languages, platforms, and programming methodologies. His own personal style is a spicy mix of functional and object-oriented: he even nearly understands monads!

When he's not working, he's probably poking at his personal programming projects. Beyond that: you might find him playing a turn-based RPG (or watching a Let's Play of a more action-oriented RPG), editing pictures in Photoshop, reading a novel with a spaceship on the cover, and always always always drinking far more tea than can possibly be wise.

(The lemur's name is Gary.)

James' Resume

My Recent Activity

I was inspired to go do some stuff in Final Fantasy 14 instead of Persona 5 today.

And I kind of feel bad about it?

There are all these people wanting to hang out with me and I'm off doing something else.

I'm stopping Ryuji from going to the beach! I'm being a bad friend.

I guess that's the mark of a good game.

Played a little bit today to move the story along, but the game crashed after a long sequence of not being able to save (or forgetting).

So I guess I get to do some stuff over! At least it's fun!

I didn't play all day today (I had to do taxes :( ) but still spent several hours in and around Yongen-Jaya.

I'm still in between Palaces and just working on building up my confidants. This boy has such an expansive social calendar. When I was his age, I had four friends and we all just hung out together. There were very few choices to have to make.

I've found that this game has a real Civ effect on me; but instead of "One more turn..." it's always "Just one more day and then I'll save and quit..."

But one more day can quickly turn into a week.

Spent all day today on this. I unlocked and completed Futaba's Palace.

That storyline was just incredible -- and Futaba's crowning moment of awesome at the end was just ::chefs kiss::

The boss fight at the end of the Palace was long and drawn-out and I'm very glad I'm playing on easy. The SP management was bad enough as-is. I fear what it would be like on normal.

This is a pretty good game, it turns out.

Spent all day yesterday running around in Hydaelyn. Unlocked the Namazu quests and, perhaps most importantly, finished ranking up with the Kojin. I love my fake-turtle friends and the manta ray mount I got for my troubles.

It's time to conquer Doma Castle, but it'll probably be a bit before my static is ready for it.

That's good for me: I need to level up Summoner/Scholar so I can play all the roles when we're ready for it. Right now, I'd have to tank with Paladin. But I like being flexible for the group.

That was a full day of Persona-ing.

Finished Kenshiro's Palace, did several Mementos requests, and unlocked a couple more Confidants.

It turns out that the Royal edition I bought on Steam came with some SP-restoring items I wasn't using. Between those and easy mode, it's suddenly become very easy.

Which I quite like.

Great game as long as you don't try to play it too seriously. =)

Made it fairly far (I think) into Kaneshiro's Palace today.

I increasingly realize that it's not just the dungeon maps that I don't care for but the whole dungeon experience.

I am immensely enjoying figuring out how to spend my time each day, getting to know my friends and acquaintances, and learning about the story.

But the actual dungeon crawling and combat and Persona management? It's really not my cup of tea -- even on easy mode, the resource management around SP is becoming a bit stressful.

I'll stick with it because everything else about this game is an absolute masterpiece. But I think what I really want is an expertly-crafted slice-of-life visual novel dating sim without the JRPG parts.

I'm not sure that exists. Even leaving aside the differences in taste of what "expertly-crafted" means, I'm not sure the non-combat portions would have as much impact if you weren't trying to optimize social links and things to benefit it.

It's an interesting problem and one I'll have to start hunting around for.

All Activity