I play a lot of American Truck Simulator and after hours of tweaking I'm finally getting a nice playable product. I found that my overall clarity is much better with the Oculus Quest 2, but I feel like it should be better with the Valve index. I have gone though all of SCS forums and settings. Have any of you been able to play without the glittering and stretching in your index? I have an i7 10900 and a rtx3080. The Q2 looks pretty good but I can't get either headset to get anywhere near 1080. Am I missing something or is it not possible?

I play a lot of American Truck Simulator and after hours of tweaking I'm finally getting a nice playable product. I found that my overall clarity is much better with the Oculus Quest 2, but I feel like it should be better with the Valve index. I have gone though all of SCS forums and settings. Have any of you been able to play without the glittering and stretching in your index? I have an i7 10900 and a rtx3080. The Q2 looks pretty good but I can't get either headset to get anywhere near 1080. Am I missing something or is it not possible?

I remember my mother’s 1977 BMW 320i was the only constant fixture in my periphery for the first seventeen years of my life. For a sizeable portion of my youth, I loved and obsessively ruminated on BMWs. They were a cherished gift to me from the world and best suited for my Aspergian sensibilities (clinically diagnosed). From memory, I could recite every model, feature and accessory for all of the 1980-1996 model lineup. Despite this, I specifically did not love our BMW. The entire time, it remained to me an unfortunate afterthought of a car. “Why don’t we ever have a good BMW?” was one of my usual, elementary school gripes. We got close at least one time with the near-purchase of that European-spec, e23 745i, but it just never happened.
I remember learning and committing to memory that our BMW’s original owner was a Palo Alto woman, a Stanford University professor. The woman seemed to enjoy driving the car too much, leaving it uncovered under the California sun and not maintaining it properly.
I remember the story of my father doing the pre-purchase inspection of the somewhat high-mileage, paint-damaged–albeit comparatively young–BMW in 1983. He summarily advised my mother not to buy it. Being the spark plug that she is, she took this recommendation under advisement and went ahead and bought it anyway.
I remember that this event–this BMW–is how my parents met and eventually decided to marry. He was her diligent, cautious, attentive mechanic, and she was his young, attractive, female customer. I assume that since it was the 1980s, my mother had legs–of the ZZ Top variety–and was well informed on how to use them.
I remember the story of my mother leaving a bag of peaches on the rear seat floor boards that eventually decomposed into a mound of organic glue and permanently fused to the sun-bleached, shit-stained beige carpet.
I remember hearing about how my mother would drive the BMW from El Sobrante to San Jose–fifty-plus miles–with the low fuel indicator light illuminated. My father would sit in the passenger’s seat, white-knuckled, a bead of terror sweat likely running down the side of his temple.
I remember the BMW sitting behind the laundry area of our Redmond home’s garage–an unassembled and deconstructed husk–unstarted for five-plus years.
I remember all of the BMW’s transformations from “anthrazitgrau” to “teal” to “lexus pearl white.”
I remember my mother deciding that the interior was going to be replaced and the color was going to be changed from beige to black. My mother purchased replacement Recaro seats for the BMW, but opted for the least expensive variants possible. I was deeply troubled, at the time, that the front bucket seats were charcoal cloth and the rear seat was black vinyl. My father’s contribution to the chaos was purchasing black door panels whose styles didn’t match one another because they were each sourced from separate BMWs of stylistically differing generations. To me, this all felt entirely criminal. I was present at the junkyard for at least one of these door panel purchases. The donor BMW was sad and pathetic, I recall. My father told me not to get too close to it because there was broken glass present. I complied.
I remember when our BMW was in a transitional state and didn’t have an interior, but was in drivable condition. My father amused us both by driving it up and down our Redmond street. He expertly operated the clutch and accelerator while sitting precariously atop a piece of scrap two-by-four that was balanced between the driver’s door sill and the center hump that ran the length of the interior. I sat in the passenger's side footwell and clapped like a seal while we both laughed hysterically. It was one of the few times my father didn’t seem so stoic and cautious. It was totally unsafe and a wonderful bonding experience that I absolutely cherish.
I remember seeing the aftermath of a semi truck that, after missing its intended turn, elected to come to a full stop on a highway near our home. The driver then attempted to correct this error by reversing, without looking, toward the front-end of our BMW that my dad was driving at the time. Without enough time to reverse, my dad was hit. The recently repainted grille and hood were smashed-in. My mother drove to pick my father up in our brand new Jeep Cherokee while I accompanied her, sitting in the back seat, nervous, but excited about observing the damage. I knew my father was alright, but I brought an open bag of candied pecans as an offering to comfort him. When we arrived, he was not interested in the candied pecans, which was odd to me. I was, however, awash with relief because I wasn’t actually that interested in sharing them, but simply wished to express my concern. I took advantage of the moment to eat the rest of the candies, which under any other circumstance, would have not been allowed.
I remember seeing the BMW at the body shop waiting to be repaired–how a working-class man expertly removed the BMW emblem that was on the smashed hood with a flat-blade screwdriver and gave it to me as a gift. The emblem was relatively new at the time, a replacement for the original one that had just previously been replaced. The otherwise pristine emblem had a small indentation from the damage. I was in possession of the emblem until 2001 at which point I threw it in the trash.
I remember my irresponsible sister–as a condition of her owning it–was required to maintain the BMW and this included washing it. Despite her protest, the one time I did actually see her wash it, she was sure to use a green scrub pad and managed to destroy the majority of the paint’s finish.
I remember my mother paying actual money to have the paint repaired.
I remember my sister absentmindedly losing one of the BMW’s original keys at the Costco in San Leandro. It was the only one of the three original keys that still had its black, plastic head. My mother had duplicates made, but they were not adequate. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive my sister for this offense.
I remember being present for the replacement of the BMW’s rod bearings in our San Antonio Avenue driveway. My sister previously flooded the engine in water and the BMW no longer ran correctly. She stated that it was misfiring and producing blue flames from the tailpipe. I started the engine when the job was completed–momentarily channeling my inner Frank Zappa–and told my father the BMW sounded like something that could only be described as “canned soup.” It sounded clunky and misfire-y and shitty: like canned soup.
I remember my father, dirty and grease-stained, being very confused by my aforementioned remark.
I remember standing on our hand-laid, herringbone, reclaimed brick driveway, staring at the dirty-white, thoroughly beaten-up BMW that was recently abandoned by my sister, asking myself how much I really cared about it. That day turned out to be instructive: it was the first time in my life that, retrospectively, everything could have been different. I would not even closely resemble the person I am today, save for choosing the direction that I didn’t choose. I had to decide to pursue the Jeep Cherokee that I loved, or rescue the BMW that I always knew. In my sixteen-year-old mind, acquiring the BMW would be an effortless slam dunk that the Jeep would not. The Jeep would require more effort to acquire, but it was also the one I really cared about. I was concerned that if I didn’t save the BMW right then and there it would go away. Both options were untenable for me. I could feel both of my recently divorced parents staring at me as I weighed the two options. Going with my gut and not my heart, I chose to capitulate to anxiety and doubt by choosing the way I did: the BMW. My rationalization was that there was still time to save the Jeep. I could figure out how later; I just needed more time. I drove the BMW from the San Antonio Avenue house to the Central Avenue house on or around the first day of October in 2001.
I remember that I bought the BMW from my mother for “$1,500.” I paid $500, my father paid $500 and my mother “paid” herself $500.
I remember immediately discovering the joys of the junkyard and making my first purchase of a stained, yellow, molded carpet from some tragic donor. I wanted a filthy carpet because my plan was to also be filthy. I sought to trash my interior and not care about maintaining it because I wished to lean into my “gross teenager” aesthetic. I wanted to be able to drop frenchfries and soda and lucky charms and not give a shit. At the time I was able to comfortably exist in one of two paradigms: abject filth or obsessive cleanliness. There was no middle ground. This is something that remains to be true to this day, except I can now only tolerate the latter. My yellow carpet lasted for less than one month before the anxiety of it being filthy overcame me and I removed it, throwing it away as quickly as possible. I reinstalled the previously removed carpet and was angry about it.
I remember installing makeshift rear headrests that didn’t fit correctly. I used a hacksaw, a pair of unmatching black, cloth headrests purchased from the junkyard, two pieces of reclaimed wood with unmeasured holes drilled into them using a Victorian hand-crank-operated drill and several rubber bands. Many European-spec BMW 320i models were available with optional rear headrests, but models for the American market were not. This was terribly aggravating for me at sixteen-years-old.
I remember Jolene asking me for a ride home after school. I was uninterested in performing this favor, but complied because doing so was considerably less taxing than thoroughly explaining why it made me uncomfortable and didn’t want to do it. That was a nice, fall day in the afternoon and I can still recall the look of tree-lined Central Avenue as I drove past High street. I came to regret doing this favor as someone from my high school saw us and relayed to others what I’d done. It was then rumored that Jolene and I were romantically involved and this turned my stomach in a way I cannot adequately describe.
I remember Chris and Jasmine asking me for a ride to their respective homes after school while they canoodled in my back seat like the two love-struck, teenage assholes they were. They were both overly attentive, flattering, and obsequious toward me during the drive which made my desire for total silence all the more blinding. The useful moron I typically was at the time, I received this all as clear confirmation that they had no respect for me. I was, however, less uninterested in driving them than I was Jolene, but still just as mortified by the prospect of explaining why I didn’t want to do it as opposed to just doing it. These were people I didn’t really know and had no interest in helping, but I did. They never spoke to me again. This is correct.
I remember Danny looking at the BMW, telling me it was a “hooptie” and asked me if I agreed. Being neither of his ilk, nor of his particular caliber, I wasn’t sure what that word meant, so I nodded and escaped the situation as quickly as possible so as not to be roped into further discourse. Danny is a twat of a man and now, aptly, a real estate agent.
I remember how the BMW never easily started. I assume it was an engine compression issue.
I remember a brisk, overcast fall morning, how the air was cold and wet. After pulling out of the Central Avenue driveway, a thin layer of mist condensed on the windshield. I had trouble seeing as I drove, but I didn’t want to smear the moisture on the glass because it would have left annoying smudge marks when it dried and smudge marks are extremely difficult to clean off of interior windshield glass. Seeing no other available option, I continued to drive down Central Avenue crouching, peering through the thin slit of cleared glass that was closest to the defrost vents blowing at high speed. The glass wasn’t clearing fast enough, so in an outburst, I punched the top of the glass near the rear-view mirror in a logical attempt to bully the glass into clearing more quickly. A thin, meandering line suddenly appeared, bisecting the sheets of glass, suspiciously close to the spot my knuckle just struck.
I remember telling my parents that a crack in the windshield glass had suddenly appeared and that I had no idea how it got there.
I remember my first job was at an ice-cream shop in my hometown and how the BMW was not considered a form of reliable transportation to and from it.
I remember being so aggravated by the BMW after two months of owning it, that I told my mother if she didn’t take it back, I’d have it crushed.
I remember being told that I would receive $700 in exchange for the BMW–$200 more than I’d personally paid–but never seeing this money and wondering what happened to it.
I remember expressing a renewed interest in the Jeep Cherokee now owned by my father, but being told I couldn’t acquire it because I wouldn’t be able to materialize the lump sum of cash required to purchase it, quickly enough.
I remember resigning myself to my fate and not making any real attempt to fight for the Jeep: the thing I loved most at the time–the thing I thought would solve all of my problems. I could have done a lot more, but I chose not to. The Jeep was then sold to some sexually attractive dad and his obnoxious, harpy wife soon thereafter.
I remember the BMW also going away, back to mother’s condo on Shoreline Drive to live out the remainder of its days with her much the way it did in the early 1990s: parked and languishing.
I remember my mother moving to the house on Macarthur Boulevard and the BMW being sequestered in the damp, crumbling cement garage that was carved out from the side of the hill under the house.
I remember bird feces and a layer of cement dust coating the top of the BMW the last few times I saw it.
I remember replacing the BMW’s starter–an abject nightmare of a repair–in an effort to correct the starting issues. This repair corrected nothing and was completely unrelated to the actual problem.
I remember my mother surprising me by stating in or around 2002 that she was going to sell the BMW after twenty years of clinging to it, dragging it along with us everywhere we moved.
I remember the first prospective buyer of the BMW was a buff, extremely handsome, 30-something black man in a skin-tight, white t-shirt and black jeans. I fantasized about the man possibly sweeping me off my feet and taking me far away from this place. I was still technically a minor at the time, but only in the ways that mattered.
I remember hoping and praying that the BMW would start-up quickly enough not to raise any eyebrows as to its viability and reliability. It did. It would seem that it wanted rid of us as surely as we wanted rid of it.
I remember the man being allowed to go on a solo test drive, unaccompanied, and me and my mom not really caring if the BMW never came back.
I remember the transaction being completed and the BMW being sold for $1500.
I remember, with absolute crystal clarity, observing the BMW drive away for the last time, north on Macarthur Boulevard, disappearing beyond the sunny horizon after cresting over a hill, never to be seen or heard of again.

New York, 25th March 2023: Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp. and inventor of Moore’s Law — the credo of endless technical advancement that came to characterize the digital age — has died at age 94.
New York, 25th March 2023: Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp. and inventor of Moore’s Law — the credo of endless technical advancement that came to characterize the digital age — has died at age 94.

Who Was Gordon E. Moore

An American engineer and businessman named Gordon Earle Moore co-founded Intel Corporation and served as its emeritus chairman. He was also the first person to advocate Moore’s law. Moore’s net worth was estimated to be $7 billion as of February 2023.

Quick Facts About Gordon E. Moore

Born:1929, San Francisco, CADied:March 24, 2023Organizations founded:Intel, Gordon, and Betty Moore FoundationAwards:National Medal of Technology and Innovation, MOREBooks:Linking Trade and Technology Policies: An International Comparison of the Policies of Industrialized NationsChildren:Kenneth Moore, Steven MooreEducation:California Institute of Technology (1954)

Education

The University of California, Berkeley awarded Moore a B.S. in chemistry in 1950, and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena awarded him a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics in 1954.
Moore joined the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, after receiving his degree, where he studied the physical chemistry of solid rocket propellants used by the U.S. Navy in antiaircraft missiles.
Moore quickly concluded that the commercial sector offered more intriguing research opportunities with higher potential rewards.

Moore’s law

Despite all of his achievements, Moore is perhaps best recognized for one very straightforward insight.
In 1965, Moore was invited to forecast trends for the following ten years for a special issue of the journal Electronics.
Moore developed what is now known as Moore’s law after studying previous advances in the number of transistors per silicon chip: The number of transistors per silicon chip doubles per year.
Moore changed his time frame to two years in 1975 as the rate of expansion started to slow down.

The Integrated Circuit

The initial method used chemical printing to make computer chips in large quantities as opposed to individually. The second, proposed by Noyce, involved packing several transistors—the on-off switch of computers—along with the cables necessary to connect them onto a single patch of silicon.
The integrated circuit that turned into the microprocessor at Intel was this one. The integrated circuit was concurrently and independently created by Jack Kilby, a scientist with Texas Instruments.
The race in science and business that Moore’s Law put in motion was sparked by integrated circuits and the ability to mass fabricate them.
Fruit orchards in the nearby countryside were turned into Silicon Valley, a haven for high-tech start-ups, as a result of the exodus from Fairchild.
A “family tree” of dozens of enterprises from the valley with roots in Fairchild is featured in an exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
In an interview conducted in 2015 for the Chemical History Foundation, Dr. Moore remarked, “It felt like every time we had a new product idea, we had numerous spinoffs.” “Most local businesses may trace their roots back to Fairchild even now. It was the setting that got the engineer-entrepreneur rolling.
Fruit orchards in the nearby countryside were turned into Silicon Valley, a haven for high-tech start-ups, as a result of the exodus from Fairchild.
A “family tree” of dozens of enterprises from the valley with roots in Fairchild is featured in an exhibit at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.
In an interview conducted in 2015 for the Chemical History Foundation, Dr. Moore remarked, “It felt like every time we had a new product idea, we had numerous spinoffs.”
“Most local businesses may trace their roots back to Fairchild even now. It was the setting that got the engineer-entrepreneur rolling.
In 1975, Dr. Moore took over as CEO after Mr. Noyce. When Dr. Moore and his tenacious successor, Andrew S. Grove, refocused the business on producing memory chips rather than chips that processed information, crucial days lie ahead for the corporation (logic chips). That turned out to be an enormous financial success for Intel.
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Basically, I got accepted to both unis to an identical program. I'm plannin to work in law in the future, that's why Politics Philosophy and Law is the major of choice. University of Southern California has by far a more favourable location, but also is triple the price. Money is not that big of a problem, so I try to focus on education and employment potential. Rankings show 2 completely different pictures, where according to QS - USC is only half as good as Warwick, while according to USNews - USC is one of the T30 schools. How else can I conpare these schools to decide which one to go to? The A2C (american 6thform subreddit) is too one-sided. Help me decide!

I’ve only met Mexican people with Arab names so I’m not sure if it’s exclusively Mexican or it’s common in every Latin American country, but I’m Arab and every time I meet an Elias, Omar, or Fatima or another Arab name that’s not Arab, I’m always so curious on how they got their name. Was there some kind of diaspora or something?

I'm an American(I specify this because American English is spoken differently from queens english) attempting to learn Spanish. I am making good progress at understanding and writing the language, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to roll my tongue properly. I can say words like mujer with relative ease, but words that have an r in the middle of the word like supermercado and Amayrani are a bit difficult. And I can't even make an attempt on words with a double R, such as perro or ferrocarril.
Tl;dr does anyone have tips for rolling the tongue, specifically for words that have a double R?

I was reading about the latest Trump rally in Waco, Texas. Since Trump left office, he's largely been absent from UK media (which has been nice!), until recently when he resurfaced amidst his possible pending arrest.
Trump is closely associated with far-right Christian nationalists in the USA. However, nothing I've read about him suggests he holds any genuine religious beliefs himself, though he seems to pretend to be a Christian in order to appeal to a certain demographic of voters. His personal life is just a mess, with affairs and divorces, plus the hush money he paid Stormy Daniels.
Then looking at the Waco rally, Ted Nugent spent his speech saying all kinds of hateful things. He claimed in an interview that Trump was the president who best represented the 'conservative family values' of the area. Clearly he doesn't - he's been married three times and had multiple affairs, not to mention the myriad misogynistic things he's said.
People can change, but there's no evidence that Trump has. Why would conservative Christian people love/worship a man like him or quite obviously does not represent the values they profess to have?
While it's easy to see this as an American phenomenon, sadly it's widespread. Even here in the UK, it's not quite as dramatic, but it's still present. Boris Johnson, another serial adulterer with goodness knows how many illegitimate children, remains extremely popular among right/far-right Christians. Again, this is despite him not holding Christian views himself and living a life that is conspicuously not Christian in nature. He lies constantly, and is currently being investigated into whether he mislead parliament (which he's already admitted).
Despite all this, several of Johnson's more sycophantic supporters, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, are practicing Christians and again, I just don't get it. As a Christian myself, I'm not bothered by the religious views of any politician. I'm more interested in their policies and their integrity; however, I do expect politicians of any leaning to live moral lives, and those who are constantly embroiled in sleaze and deceitful behaviours I cannot support. It's not just making one or two human mistakes, but when it becomes a habitual aspect of their lifestyle.
Conservative Christians are so often obsessed with sexual purity and traditional family values, yet they congregate around men (sometimes women) who obviously don't live out sexually pure lifestyles. These people seem to be able to lie and cheat as much as they like, and people don't care and seem blind to the hypocrisy.
Trump and Johnson are just two examples among many from across the world and I really don't understand it, but I'm trying to.

There are eras within bands when a legendary band just can’t miss. Everything they do could be one of their best according to someone
You could argue several era for them, but for me, the Beatles 1965-1966 were revolutionary, vital, and they didn’t waste a single song. The singles are good, the b-sides are good, the outtakes are good.
Nirvana circa Nevermind were untouchable. Every single B-Side or outtake could be a hit single. Many of the songs for In Utero are already written and in the loop. They produced an absurd amount of better than great material and they changed the face of music in a way that hadn’t happened since the fucking Beatles. Resulted in a cache of what is undoubtedly some of the most vital and best rock music ever made.
In my personal opinion, whether you like him or not, Billy Corgan could not miss during the Siamese Dream to Mellon Collie era. The shear amount of good songs he was able to produce is outrageous. Siamese Dream’s B-Sides (see: Pisces Iscariot/Deluxe edition of Siamese) were better than most anything anyone else was going. Between Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie they produced SD, MCIS (a double album), a contribution to the Influential Singles soundtrack, Pisces Iscariot, and the Aeroplane Flies High boxset. That’s a stupid amount of solid material and resulted in multiple absolute all time classics.
Pink Floyd from 1972-1975 recorded 2 classic albums (Dark Side, Wish You Were Here), a criminally underrated soundtrack (Obscured by Clouds), the psychedelic mastery and spectacle that is the Live in Pompeii, and had written, demoed, and played live the majority of the Animals album. Everything they touched was fucking gold. Again, another band pushing music forward and revolutionizing recorded sound and musical technology. Results in multiple contenders for the greatest album ever made.
Dylan may have had several eras like this.
It depends on your point of view when you think they were at their best, but if you look at it from the point of view of “when did they become the most influential and best band on the plant.
Radiohead had that era, in my opinion from the Bends to Amnesiac. The high points of the Bends are some of the greatest of their career but they were yet to be a household name. They’d yet to produce something so far ahead of their peers that you couldn’t help but think they were doing something rare and special. OK Computer is flawless, revolutionary, and between the B-Sides, material from the minidiscs, and the fact that many future songs are already kicking around, the staggering consistency suggests it could’ve been a double album, triple album…it wouldn’t matter. If they were to put the effort into it…it was going to come out as a work of art so staggering great that it marvels you. An absolute glut of brilliant material. Man of War and the Alternate Lift are as good as anything on the album. The next round of recording produced two classic albums in Kid A and Amnesiac…again, pushing music forward in a revolutionary way and furthering the technical possibilities of recorded sound. They had revolutionized music in the same way that only Elvis, The Beatles, and Nirvana had before. Changed everything.
Revolver, Nevermind, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Dark Side of the Moon, and OK Computer represented total sea changes. The world was literally different after them.
It’s rare that we get a space in time where we are lucky enough to witness such an improbable combination of genuinely brilliant artists hitting their stride hard, the right place and time, and having something like King Midas’ touch on everything they do, leaving us with music that comes along and exhibits pure mastery of their art and essentially makes everything around it null or inconsequential.
We are very lucky to have been around to see Radiohead be Radiohead. True Genius is exceedingly rare.

Hey guys ,
How's life treating you,
Long story short , I am an medical student outside US , I went into some bad depression in my first med 1 and my current med 2 year (Live in lebanon so financial problems that could have made me leave plus family member got mentaly ill for 50 days and went to hospital which was a horrific experience, also lived far away from family etc...) .
So these past years I've been doing pretty much below average. I never failed a module, but I passed pretty near the bar.
I've got very good connections with doctors in the US , someone to help sponsor my visa , and my university has a decent rate of matching (had 90% this year, although we are a small class (65) and only half of the class applies).
So the American doctor who is telling that he'll help with everything regarding finding mentors and all told me no one will look alot on your preclinical grades but as an IMG you must aim for 85-90th percentile to apply to a nice speciality on the step 2 since step 1 is now P/F, and get decent med 3 and med 4 grades.
Now the problem is, I am always afraid and doubt is controlling my mind that " Is it possible that I pull myself from this 2 year ditch and do so well on the step2 which I aim to take in about a year and a half or so ?"
Regarding how disciplined I am , I am super disciplined (if you take the overwhelming anxiety and previous depression out of the equation) . I can study for very long hours , start at 5 am studying before going to class / hospital and study after coming home well. I can maintain a very good study life balance .
​
Any words of encouragement , stories of hope, anything that can help me reduce these doubts that I can't do it in my mind? I will be very grateful.
​
Thank you kind person for your time and help!

I studied here in Qatar in an American Curriculum school and am a filipino. I mostly see arabs in the university so I'm not sure how likely they'll accept me. I'll still try to apply I just want to know how often do they accept other nationalities. I have a 3.82 GPA and pass their requirements of SAT and IELTS and want to go to College of Engineering for Architecture.

Not sure if this is the right subreddit or flair for this, but I hope I can get some answers nonetheless. 😅
So I've been writing mainly fantasy in the last year but a few weeks ago I started a YA novel project that takes place in an American high school (for a change). Story and character building work well so far, the only problem: I am European and have never been to an American high school. I know that all High Schools are different, but it's very generic and I just need to know what is possible and what isn't. The knowledge I have comes mainly from some basic research and watching American media content, but I have some specific questions:

1. I need my protagonist to be a professional swimmer. Do American high schools have swimming teams? How would competition work there (like against other schools)?
   
2. I understood that extracurricular activities in high school are relevant for college applications. How does that affect Senior year students? Does someone from college come to watch them? Do they get a stipendium? Or just higher chances to get into college? How do the final exams work?
   
3. Is there a difference between college and university? How much does a normal college cost? And how much would you pay for a top university like Harvard or Stanford? Is it even possible to get there without rich parents?
   

I might have some follow-up questions later but this is what came to my mind right now, I am grateful for every input 😊

This post was inspired after watching these two videos about the dungeons of TWW: https://youtu.be/Y7ydu5xtB4Q, https://youtu.be/fnu0lgpDXAw. Check them out!
The Rito and Koroks tribes, from The Wind Waker, each have two dungeons connected to them in the game. Both tribes began their current existence as a result of the Great Flood, adapting to their new environment. But their histories go back much further, to the ancient Kingdom of Hyrule, when they were the Zora and Kokiri tribes respectively. One of the two dungeons connected to each of the tribes is linked to their current existence on the Great Sea, whereas the other dungeon is connected through a Sage to their ancient past. Both of the two dungeons connected with each of the tribes are linked thematically.

Multifaceted Elements

Let’s start with the Rito tribe, who used to be the Zora tribe in the ancient past. The Rito live on Dragon Roost Island, and the dungeon linked to their current existence is Dragon Roost Cavern. The guardian deity of the Rito is the dragon Valoo, who lives on the peak of the volcanic Dragon Roost. To again the ability to fly, each young Rito performs a coming-of-age ceremony, which involves journeying through the Cavern in order to reach Valoo, and receive one of his scales. Therefore, it’s easy to see how this dungeon is strongly tied to the tribe’s current existence.
As already mentioned, Dragon Roost is a volcano, and [the interior Cavern is full of pools of magma. Therefore, it would be easy to say that this dungeon’s elemental theme is Fire. However, that is not necessarily the case. While the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time is found within the volcanic Death Mountain, in Skyward Sword the second dungeon is also a series of caverns within a volcano, but it is called the Earth Temple, not the Fire Temple. The heart of the earth is hot and volcanic. Both Dragon Roost Cavern and the Earth Temple from SS are very natural structures. They are the natural caverns inside of a volcano, instead of intricately designed structures. As such, they reflect the primal nature of the earth.
But, this leads us to the second dungeon connected to the Rito’s ancient past, which is also called the Earth Temple, but which is most definitely not a natural structure. Medli’s ancestor, the Zora Sage Laruto, serves within this temple. The Earth Temple in TWW is essentially a tomb or crypt, and it is ornately decorated and designed, in contrast with the natural Dragon Roost Cavern. Link must bring light to the darkness deep under the ground. In another contrast, the temple has no real significance to the Rito living on the Great Sea. But, in the ancient Kingdom of Hyrule, this temple was an important structure where a Sage prayed for the gods to power the Master Sword.
Despite their differences, what connects Dragon Roost Cavern and the Earth Temple is their common elemental theme – Earth. We see two sides of the Earth Element. The primordial power inside of a volcano, and the dark resting place of the dead. One is natural, and the other constructed.
Do we see these contrasting sides of a shared elemental theme within the two dungeons connected with the Korok tribe? Yes!
The Korok tribe lives on Forest Haven island with their guardian deity, the Great Deku Tree. Forest Haven has a sister island nearby, named the Forbidden Woods. Both islands are again natural structures that seem to exist within the trunks of massive trees. While the Deku Tree currently forbids the Koroks from travelling to the nearby island, its interior features the Kokiri symbol, which indicates that the tribe lived or visited the island in their past. As for the Element associated with the Forbidden Woods, it’s clearly the Forest Element.
But, what about the second dungeon connected with the Koroks?
Makar’s ancestor is the Kokiri Sage Fado, who serves in the Wind Temple. On face value, this dungeon seems to have a completely different elemental theme to the Forbidden Woods. However, in the Zelda series, the Elements of Forest and Wind are strongly tied together. As that link highlights, this connection is highlighted in multiple games, both before and after TWW. In the Wind Temple itself, Makar is used to grow trees within the temple. But, just as with the contrast between the previous two dungeons we discussed, the Wind Temple is much more of a designed and constructed building than the Forbidden Woods. It is full of mechanical traps and machines designed to create wind drafts. Therefore, in a curious way we again see the two sides of the featured Element, both the natural and the constructed. Forest/Wind can be a wild forest, but it can also be advanced technology.
As we can see, these pairings of dungeons with the same elemental theme help us to see that an individual Element can encompass a range of attributes and properties, some natural and some not.
But, there’s something more that these dungeons, in particular the Earth and Wind Temples, can teach us about the nature of the Light World, and about the gods who created it.

Multifaceted Gods

What is the purpose of the Earth and Wind Temples, and the Sages who serve there?
The King of Red Lions tells us:

マスターソードが退魔の力を失ったのは 剣に神の力を注ぎ込んだ 賢者たちの身に 何か起きたという表れだ
It seems that something has happened to the sages that imbue the Master Sword with the power of the gods so that it has lost its anti-demon power.
賢者は、このハイラルの北にある風の神殿と 南にある大地の神殿で それぞれに、神への祈りをささげているはず
The sages should be lifting up prayers to the gods in the Wind Temple in north Hyrule and the Earth Temple in south Hyrule.
お前は、その２つの神殿におもむき 賢者の身に何が起こったのかを調べ 再び剣に退魔の力を蘇らせるのだ
You must go to those two temples and find out what has happened to the sages so that the anti-demon power can be restored to the sword.

The Sages pray to the gods in the Earth and Wind Temples so that the Master Sword can have the power to repel demons/evil. How exactly do the Sages pray to the gods?
Laruto says:

退魔の力を蘇らせるには 私に代わり この神殿で 神に祈りを捧げる者が 必要なのです
In order to restore the anti-demon power to the blade, someone to pray in this temple in my stead is needed.
私の 血を引き、この聖なる楽器を持つ者
The person to do this is the one descended from me, the one who possesses this sacred instrument.
アナタが今、指揮した曲は その者に神への祈りの曲を思い出させ 賢者として目覚めさせるためのモノなのです
The song you just directed will cause that person to remember the song used to pray to the gods and awaken them as a sage.

And Fado says:

その剣に、力を取り戻したいんだろ？
You want to return power to that blade, right?
それだったら、オイラと同じ この楽器を持っているヤツを探して さっきの曲を教えてあげな
To do so you need to find the guy who has the same instrument as I do and teach him that song.
オマエの持ってるタクトは 昔、オイラたち賢者を指揮して 神様を呼ぶ曲を演奏する時に使われてたんだ
In ancient times, that baton you have was used to conduct us sages when we were playing the song to call the gods.

The prayer to the gods was in the form of a song, played on the sacred instrument. And, we know which songs they were: The Earth God’s Lyric and the Wind God’s Aria (just called the Earth God’s Song and the Wind God’s Song in Japanese). As the names suggest these are the gods of the temples. The Earth God is worshipped in the Earth Temple, and the Wind God is worshipped in the Wind Temple.
Who are the Earth God and the Wind God?

The name's Zephos. I'm the god of winds.

Case closed for the Wind God, right? Well, not exactly.
While it’s true that Zephos is a god of winds, is he really the Wind God of the Wind Temple? Remember, that the Element of the Wind Temple is Forest/Wind, and Zephos has no discernible connection to Forest throughout the game. Also, the song used to call Zephos is the Wind’s Requiem (Song of Wind in Japanese), not the Wind God’s Aria.
Thankfully, I don’t have to argue the case that Zephos isn’t the Wind God of the Wind Temple, because the game straight up tells us who it is:

Outset Island was said to be blessed by Farore, the Goddess of Wind. -Tingle (Tingle Tuner)

This dialogue is easy to miss because it’s only seen when using the Tingle Tuner mechanic. Also, I don’t have the Japanese, so I can’t check exactly what it says there, but the word for god(s) can be translated as goddess(es) depending on the context, which has precedent in the Zelda series. Either way, Farore is the Wind God.
This makes sense with everything we know throughout the series. Farore is associated with Forest. The forest regions of Faron are named after her. It’s Farore’s Pearl that is obtained from the Great Deku Tree in Forest Haven. She is also associated with Wind. A spell in OoT is called Farore’s Wind. Forest/Wind is the Element most closely associated with Farore. This is further emphasised when we consider that Forest/Wind is the Element most strongly linked to Life, and Farore is the Golden Goddess who breathed life into the Light World.
Farore is the Goddess of Courage. Farore is the Goddess of Forest/Wind. And, Farore is the Goddess of Life.
What about the Earth God?
Well, if the Wind God is Farore, then the Earth God must be one of the other two Golden Goddesses.
Out of Din and Nayru, I think it’s fairly obvious that the Earth God must be Din. She is the Goddess of Power.

その たくましき 炎の腕を もって、地を耕し、赤き大地を 創る。
With her strong arms of flame, she cultivated the land and created the red earth.

When looking at the raw power found within Dragon Roost Cavern, we see a reflection of Din’s Power. It’s true that in OoT there is a spell called Din’s Fire, not Din’s Earth. And, the quote above does mention her arms of flame. We could well think that Din is the Fire God, and whose to say that she isn’t? Dragon Roost Cavern highlights the strong connection between Fire and Earth, so this could very well be a parallel of the thematic tie between Forest and Wind. Either way, Link receives Din’s Pearl from the Rito, and it is a Rito who must be the Sage of Earth.
Din is the Goddess of Power. Din is the Goddess of Fire/Earth. And, Din is the Goddess of…
If we are following the pattern above for Farore, she was also the Goddess of Life. Therefore, that would mean that Din is the Goddess of… Death? Is that even possible?
I think the answer is clear when we look at the Earth Temple. Her temple.
Remember, the Earth Temple is essentially a tomb or crypt. This is one of the varied aspects of Earth that it reflects. Thanks to Zeltik’s latest video, I now understand what the large statue in the Earth Temple represents, something that had previously eluded me. As Zeltik points out, it’s essentially the image of a Redead. But it’s not exactly the same. This one appears to perhaps wear a crown. Is it possible that this large statue isn’t just a representation of a regular Redead? In a temple all about Death, is it possible that this statue represents Death? Or the God of Death?
Interestingly, the eyes of this statue are a symbol combining the sun and moon, reflecting the light and darkness that are key to this temple. The statue itself reflects this dual nature. When no light is shining on its eyes, it is grey and dark like the Moon. But when light is reflected into its eyes, it shines brightly like the Sun. The fiery Sun, a fitting symbol for Din. But so it seems, is also the cold darkness of death.
You might be wondering, can that really be so? Isn’t death associated with evil? Could Din really be the God of Death?

Gods of Life and Death

First of all, Darkness (what Shadow is called in Japanese) is one of the Elements. It’s a fundamental part of the world the Golden Goddesses created. So is death. The creation myth of Hyrule doesn’t mention anything about life originally being immortal, or death being introduced later. All the creation of the Light World, including the gods on it, can die. Most are mortal. Therefore, death and the afterlife are part of the creation of the Golden Goddesses. Death in itself has nothing to do with evil, Malice, or demons. That is something else entirely. In fact, Malice and demons are the result of refusing to accept death and move on to the afterlife. They are contrary to the Order established by the Golden Goddesses.
As I have done in the past, I think it would be helpful to look at some real world religions for comparison. Let’s as always begin with the religion of Japan, Shintoism. How is death introduced in its creation myth?
You may know by now that the chief god of the Shinto religion is Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess and progenitor of Japan’s Imperial Family. She is the obvious analogue for Hylia. But just like Hylia, she is not the creator god of Japan. Amaterasu is the daughter of of two gods who created the land (who are themselves the creation of higher creator gods). These two gods were a male and a female, Izanagi and Izanami. The two descended to the land they had created and had children. Unfortunately, Izanami died while giving birth to a god of fire.
The myth then follows:

Izanagi lamented the death of Izanami and undertook a journey to Yomi ("the shadowy land of the dead"). He searched for Izanami and found her. At first, Izanagi could not see her for the shadows hid her appearance. He asked her to return with him. Izanami informed Izanagi that he was too late. She had already eaten the food of the underworld and was now one with the land of the dead. She could no longer return to the living but would try to ask for permission to leave.
The news shocked Izanagi, but he refused to leave her in Yomi. While Izanami was sleeping, he took the comb that bound his long hair and set it alight as a torch. Under the sudden burst of light, he saw the horrid form of the once beautiful and graceful Izanami. She was now a rotting form of flesh with maggots and foul creatures running over her ravaged body.
Crying out loud, Izanagi could no longer control his fear and started to run, intending to return to the living and abandon his death-ridden wife. Izanami woke up, shrieking and indignant, and chased after him. She also sent Yakusa-no-ikazuchi-no-kami (Raijin) and shikome (foul women) to hunt for Izanagi and bring him back to Yomi.
Izanagi burst out of the entrance and pushed a boulder in the mouth of the Yomotsuhirasaka (黄泉津平坂; cavern that was the entrance of Yomi) to create a separation between the world of the living and the world of the dead, as well as separating Izanagi from Izanami.
Izanami screamed from behind this impenetrable barricade and told Izanagi that if he left her she would destroy 1,000 residents of the living every day. He furiously replied he would give life to 1,500 residents.
Izanagi is said to have performed ritualistic cleansing, harai, after witnessing the decomposing body of his wife. This is the traditional explanation for the purification rituals often performed at Shinto shrines in Japanese religion, where shrine-goers wash themselves with water before entering the sacred space. While he bathed, Izanagi gave birth to the sun goddess, Amaterasu, from his left eye, the moon god, Tsukuyomi, from his right eye, and the storm god, Susanoo, from his nose.

Therefore, Izanagi is a god of both creation and life, and Izanami is a god of both creation and death. This husband and wife pair of creator deities encompass both life and death.
When looking at other religions for parallels, I believe that those of Meso/South-America are appropriate for TWW. The Tower of the Gods is closely linked to the Golden Goddesses, and the visual design of that dungeon and its boss (and the Rito culture) are clearly partly influenced by Meso/South-American design.
In the Aztec religion, there are the twin gods Quetzalcoatl and Xolotl. Quetzalcoatl is the feathered serpent god of the Sun, wind, wisdom, and life. Xolotl is the dog-headed god of fire, lightning, and a soul-guide for the dead. Twin gods that encompass both life and death. Interestingly another Aztec god, Mictlāntēcutli, who is the god of the dead and king of the Underworld, looks very reminiscent of a Redead.
This is only two examples from real world religions, but I think it clearly illustrates that there should be no theological objection to Din being one of the creator gods, the Earth God, and the God of Death.
I have previously highlighted how in the beta version of OoT Din was the god worshipped in the Gerudo’s Spirit Temple. That temple has many clear connections with death and the afterlife that I have thoroughly explored previously. While the beta version is not canon, there is nothing to contradict Din still being the God of Death in the Light World.
This all leads to one final, and obvious, question: What about Nayru?

Life, Death, And…?

It’s well known that the developers of TWW had to cut two dungeons from the game in order to make the deadline for release. Aonuma commented on those two dungeons while promoting TWW HD version:

“I’m aware that lots of users wanted those two missing dungeons to be implemented in Wind Waker HD. But to be honest, we’ve already used those two dungeons for other titles after Wind Waker already,” says Aonuma, laughing. “So right now, technically, they don’t really exist anymore…”
“We didn’t exactly use them as-is and implement them into another game,” clarifies Aonuma. “We’d add some [of their] features to other dungeons. So they’re in different dungeons now.”

If the developers had been able to include those two dungeons, it’s very likely that they would have been paired thematically like the other two pairs. It’s very probable that the first dungeon would have been completed in order to obtain Nayru’s Pearl. And, the second dungeon would have been linked to another Sage and their temple. There would then have been three pairs of dungeons, just like in SS. By looking at the existing two pairs, we can speculate about what the last pair may have involved.
We know the central god would have been Nayru. She is the Goddess of Wisdom. She is also the Goddess of Magic. What Element does she represent? The most obvious answer is Water. From OoT, the Mark of Nayru has been similar to the Crest of the Zora, the Water tribe. Therefore, it’s likely that there would have been a Water Temple and Sage. This feels thematically correct next to Earth and Wind, for a game set on the Great Sea.
It’s possible that there may have been a dual aspect to the elemental theme, as there was with the other two pairs of dungeons. The most likely candidate is Ice. In the beta version of OoT, the Water Medallion was originally the Ice Medallion, just as the Forest Medallion was originally the Wind Medallion. Taking into consideration Aonuma’s comments about aspects of these two cut dungeons being incorporated into the dungeons of later games, I wonder if some of the ideas ended up in Lakebed Temple, or Snowpeak Ruins from TP. Or maybe the Temple of Ice from PH?
On the other hand, instead of Ice perhaps Water is paired with something else, like Lightning. That Element is associated with Nayru in SS, through the Lanayru region. Perhaps the Sandship dungeon from that game includes elements that would have originally appeared in a dungeon from TWW. There’s no real way of knowing, but it’s fun to speculate. It’s also not clear what tribe would have been associated with her in the present day. The obvious answer would be the Zora, but that might have involved changing the history of the Rito. We will probably never know.
Lastly, if Farore is the God of Life, and Din is the God of Death, what does that make Nayru? How could there be a third aspect to a pair of clear polar opposites? I think the answer is hinted at in TWW, and it’s something that has become a greater feature of the world-building in the Zelda series over time: Artificial Life.
In the Tower of the Gods, we see automatons such as the Servants of the Tower and Gohdan itself. Living constructs. In SS, we have the Ancient Robots, who were created by the dragon Lanayru. And in BotW, the Ancient Sheikah, a tribe associated with Wisdom, are responsible for the creation of the Guardians, and the Divine Beasts. Nayru is the Goddess of Wisdom and Magic, so it makes sense that she would also be the God of Artificial Life.

Unstable Elements

While it has been fun to learn about Din’s role as the God of Death, and the wider range that the Elements can encompass. It’s important to realise that none of this is set in stone. Just as with real world mythologies, things can change over time. Attributes and qualities can be, shared, removed, or swapped between entities. Just because something is true in one game, doesn’t mean it can’t be changed in a future game. For instance, why is Faron, and not Lanayru, the Water Dragon in SS? Still, I hope you have enjoyed this exploration of the expanded role that the gods and elements can take within the world of Zelda.

Hi, as somebody who is not American, taxes look very confusing to me. I have an offer 10k TA position, 30k GSR per year. That's about 40k in total. How much would I need to pay for taxes?

No amount of, or combination of words, could possibly get across even half of the insanity present in this game. Nothing could even remotely match the experience of bearing witness to the scale of events in this game, even more so beholding the utterly absurd gameplay balance or lack thereof. On all accounts, this is a video game that wants you to suffer before you get a moment of relief, and stumble around in the darkness for hours before you get some sort of light that makes things legible to you. It's a playable form of untangling hundreds of cables behind a TV stand, if all the cables were covered in barbed wire coated in lemon juice. If you've ever tried to untangle multiple sets of composite cables from one another, you've essentially played Star Ocean 3.
And you know what? I think I absolutely loved it for exactly those reasons.
I'm going to spoil it rotten in this post, so please, be cautious.
I need to address the elephant first. Yes, I thought the plot twist was... an interesting direction to go in. I'll be approaching this entirely from the lens of this game alone, and not the franchise as a whole. I can't make much of an argument in the way of defending how it affects the other games. Execution wise, it was quite poor. I believe there was missed potential in utilizing the concept of an entire universe being contained within a digital space, beyond having it be threatened to be deleted or having crazy ass creatures suddenly start roaming around. I thought the executioners and convictors were all really well designed, especially the former, but again, there was a lot of missed potential. I feel their introduction was WAY too close to their true origin being revealed. It was built up pretty interestingly, especially having people in the Sphere refer to them as gods. But, ultimately, they don't make proper use of this entire concept until the exact very end, where the characters seem to suddenly care about the fact they're all just digital programs. There seriously wasn't enough recognition from the main cast after being told they're all just artificial. It's like they care for one second, the entirety of disc 2 goes by, and then they care again at the end. There's hardly any emotional distraught, second guessing, or basically anything natural of what you'd expect from someone who just found out about something like that. I hate to say it, but it makes what could otherwise be a really interesting dilemma paired with good characters seem extremely paper-thin. But, in all honesty, it's not like I came to this game to be wowed by a super philosophical look into existence or get pulled into some real Xenogears tier shit. I just wanted a dumb game to enjoy at a surface level, and you know what? It did exactly that very well. The main plot outside of all this, despite being pretty generic up until the twist, was strung along well enough. I was compelled enough to make it through the gameplay, but ultimately, I'm not left wanting to sing it's praises beyond saying yeah, it's alright. Cliff is my man, though. Nothing will erase that.
How is that gameplay, though? Well, to put it bluntly, I have never played a game that so outwardly hates the player in my life, and yet, it seems to beg you to break it. Let's get it straight. I highly, highly doubt most people beat this game without spending significant time guiding themselves into making the best possible weapons they could've got. Personally? I broke it out of spite. The gameplay was really not clicking with me for the first few hours despite how much I enjoyed the atmosphere and pacing, so I said screw it. I got myself a million regeneration symbols in the aqueducts, farmed the black knights when I could, spammed the HELL out of blazing sword, and got the holy sword + gatling gauntlets ASAP. Before all this, though? Oh, it was a horror show. Imagine a game where sometimes, the AI is genuinely better off standing still and doing nothing. You think I'm joking, but no, I'm dead serious. Standing still is how you block light attacks in this game. The AI will not, and most likely can not, keep themselves alive. Even with gear from the depths of heaven, and levels out the wazoo, a normal encounter could see any of my AI party members dead or soon to be. There's two reasons for this. One, the lesser, is that running out of MP kills you. This is good for you if you want to kill some bosses in literally two hits, but terrible for you in every other possible way. Two, the greater, ENEMIES HURT. It does not matter how hard you try to break the game, it does not matter how hard you grind, enemies will absolutely hurt you. One on one, most can be dealt with easily. But in any more than one on one, you will find that this game loves to see you stagger in place. The AI does not compute with this. In a game where your best strategy is to be as aggressive as possible, your best bet is to stunlock the enemy before they stunlock you, and the AI simply does not understand this. At their worst, they prioritize spamming attacks until their fury is gone, and then just sit there right in front of the enemy until it regenerates. In the case of magic users, they have no situational awareness. They will cast magic that heals enemies due to elemental affinities and never learn from this. Your only shot is to manually disable their casting of that spell BEFORE the fight. Oh, and did I mention the micromanagement you have to do? Healing is not at all viable to be left in the hands of the AI, due to a bad combination of both their own poor actions and the often incredibly rough casting times (which is different per character and actually makes Albel the best healer, if I remember correctly). If you want to heal as actively as the AI can in other games, your best bet is to manually switch to the healer and do it yourself in a dire situation, assuming they aren't already in a lengthy cast animation. Which, again, sadly leads back into the strategy of literally just letting them sit there and do nothing as a safety precaution. This is all rendered a moot point if you're killing enemies fast enough to not even take any damage, but to get there, you kinda have to... Y'know, break the game first. Which requires playing the game. At a base level, the buttons are often unresponsive and chaining can sometimes be a pain, but you eventually get used to it. There are unintended combos of normal attacks that the game doesn't inform you about, like Fayt being able to do two long-range heavy attacks, which leaves the enemy airborne, only to follow up with a standard light attack, which will be rendered as an anti-air and naturally flow into a third hit. The AI literally cannot do this. The intricacies of each character and their attack style having player-only gimmicks makes each one worth controlling for yourself at least a little bit, so I'll give them that. Although, there's another big issue, and that's attacks simply missing enemies a lot of the time. Oh man, nothing caused me more strife in learning this game than handling the fact your attacks will often just, not hit. Not because of a fickle hit chance, but the hitboxes being weird and the attacks not properly adjusting their angle once they start, making the startup time once you get close enough often put you in a situation where you're guaranteed to miss. On low or flying enemies... Just imagine it. I'll save myself the pain of remembering. As for battle skills, it's a lot like what I expected out of Star Ocean as I know it from my limited experience. Some are bad, but some are good, and the ones that are good, ABUSE THEM. Fayt will learn a skill early on called side kick. Set this to your light and heavy close-range slots. Cancel it into itself repeatedly. The abundance of I-frames will render you a force even the stat-checking enemies in this game will shudder at the thought of. Even better, Cliff learns hammer of might. Spam this even harder than side kick. You will win. But, because of this, I often found myself using only the skills that were good, and not even bothering trying to make the lesser ones work. The only time I ever genuinely changed my strategy of side kick into side kick was when I got dimension door, upon which I set it to my long range attack and used it as a chance to... get close and spam side kick. You see the problem, right? Characters like Adray also simply have no good battle skills that deal damage without exposing them to an easy stagger. There's a clear line between good and unusable in this game, and that's just sad.
As for the raw balance itself, imagine this. I spent several hours gearing up to break this game from hour 10. As soon as I could, I got the proper inventors needed to create orichalcum, the item that breaks the game wide open. In short, proper usage of this item allows any weapon to receive 8 copies of an attribute that raises its attack by 500. For comparison, the best weapon you can buy from a shop in this game has no more than 900 flat damage. Cliff, by the end, was close to 5000 total damage in his status screen, and my team of Cliff, Fayt, and Adray went into the final boss all with similar enough stats. My defense values were closer to 400-500, as armor is much harder to break. Cliff was level 70, Fayt was 69, Adray somewhere in the 64-68 range. So, how did it go?
The final dungeon's enemies were draining Adray's MP significantly due to their health pools, Cliff died about 5 times total going up to the final boss, and Fayt was the only one who didn't die once on account of being who I was controlling. Each encounter was 30 seconds minimum, which you probably wouldn't expect from a party full of weapons with absurdly overblown damage. Oh, that must be a fluke, surely. How did the final boss go?
He party wiped me with one attack after a 10 minute attempt.
There it is. The epitome of this game's balance. No matter how high you get, no matter how stupid you become, if you don't DEDICATE yourself to the grind, you will be squashed. It was after getting wiped that I learned the final boss, in his second phase, is level 120. There is no level scaling in this game, but it should go without saying that a level 120 boss versus a level 70 character is a significant power difference. And this was with my, in total, 10-15 hours of grinding across my 35 hour play time. Most of that was spent turbo'ing encounters that dropped unusually high XP and the eventual grind to perfect my weapons. And still, it was just barely enough. It was a damn fun experience to break the game wide open from hour 10 to 30, but once I reached that cutoff point around the revisit to the shrine of kaddan, I realized just how genuinely screwed up this game's balance really is. I'm making an effort to avoid my issues with the late game dungeon design, as I had the power of savestates with me so my input would be lessened in value, but it only furthered my belief that this game was made as an experiment in frustration for players. Do you like one way doors? Tri-Ace hopes you like one way doors. After a certain while, you literally see the same four enemies copied and pasted repeatedly in the final few dungeons, and they're all boring as hell once you fight them for the 10th time. Even more so when you're sometimes forced into encountering them due to the tight corridor design or literally teleporting into them with no chance to get away. If you're looking for an exercise in your patience, by all means, try out this game's endgame.
So, I'm cutting out A LOT of this game and focusing only on what really sets it apart. So far, it may sound like this game is an offense to god and that I believe it should be burned and thrown into a landfill. But... No. I don't. I actually find myself really, really wanting to play it again in the future. Not for any feigned sense of enjoyment, but out of the genuine enjoyment I had in actually achieving what I did. The game spited me, and so, I bit back. In doing so, I was treated to a surprisingly interesting experience that truly tested me and forced me to git gud at the end, in spite of all my hard work. Like the final attempt of a master attempting to outdo his student, only for the student, despite all the hardship, to finally manage to outdo his master in the end. Yes, it's a painful experience not many would sign up for. But god damn does it feel liberating. You have to run off spite and motivation to see the game through, otherwise you probably won't make it. None of this makes the game good suddenly, oh, far from it. I'm not gonna be telling any of my friends to try out this "underrated masterpiece". But what it did do, is make me understand it a little bit more.
Let's say that something like Persona 5 is the base line of the scale of "casual to hardcore" JRPGs. Anyone can pick it up, even non-fans of the genre, and get through it just fine. A 1 out of 10 in terms of hardcore nature. Let's go on to say that something like SMT: Nocturne is where I'd place the middle of the post. Yes, this game is hard as nails, and it will test veterans and newbies alike, but ultimately anyone can still pick it up, understand it, and conquer it without giving up, be it a painful journey or a swift one. And, in the process, players will be made much more used to the high difficulty nature of the game, which will help out significantly if they were to try out similarly challenging or harder games. 5 out of 10 on the scale. Star Ocean 3, finally, is where I'd place the very end of the hardcore scale at. It is not placed there of raw difficulty, but rather, entirely in how the game is executed. This is not a game anyone can casually pick up without issues, newbie or veteran of the genre. You will understand some concepts, but fail to grasp others without dedicated research into this particular game. The game wants you to LEARN it, make a game plan on how to approach it, and THEN play it. Then, once you've finally gotten a proper handle on it, it'll yank you around from corner to corner without stopping for a second. Whether you fall off and get back on, or fall off and call it quits, depends entirely on if you're motivated to work with the game. You really do have to want to improve if you're going to actually improve. Is that even worth it? That depends on your opinions. Not everyone enjoys having to work entirely off of spite to finish a game. So, uh, to keep it short, 10 out of 10 on the scale.
To summarize my incredibly long and bloated spiel on this weird game: Did I enjoy my time with it? Very much. Would I play it again? Totally. Do I want to recommend it to other people? No. I respect this game, but I do not think it is misunderstood or overhated. People are well within their right to call it bad and not worth playing. But, in spite of it all, I can't help but be fascinated with how this game turned out. If my ramblings on that spurs someone else to try it out of curiosity and have a good time, I'd be happy, but I wouldn't use it as an excuse to try and paint it as misunderstood. I don't think we'll ever see a game like this again, where the end product is so perplexingly torn apart, that people like me end up making walls of text like this trying to say I enjoyed it despite how objectively bad it is. Hell, I won't make fun of people who praise every part of it for a second. Everyone likes different things, and anyone can love anything. But I never expected myself to love something I hate so much like this.
As a final note, this game contains easily some of the best works Motoi Sakuraba has ever produced for a soundtrack. I love this guy's work so much, and the fact I had never heard more of this game's soundtrack shocked me. It was the highlight of the whole thing for me, where everything else faltered at times, the soundtrack literally never let up. Even that weird disc 2 boss theme with the sampled rap lyrics? Yeah, I dig it hard. I cannot believe this was done months before his work on Tales of Symphonia, what I had previously held as my favorite of his work prior. It's like the guy switches his brain into different modes for different franchises. What a legend, honestly. That's finally all I have to say on this game, a few hours after beating it. I enjoyed spilling my thoughts about it on here, even if it'll cause me to be branded a heretic for one reason or another. I'd love to discuss it some more with others, be it positively or negatively.
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Glory to Airyglehh, by the way.