My Opinion: BlazBlue

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BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger is a really fun 2-D fighting game and it's also really beautiful to look at. I'm not a fan of fighting games so I hesitated a little before actually buying this game (even though I actually saw footage of the game two days before I bought it :D). I really didn't made my mind until was in the store purchasing it. The reasons I decided to go for it and buy it were two: the first that the game is visually astounding and the second is the right-stick controls, which made it easier for noobs to do all the cool stuff without doing the button combinations. Thanks to the right-stick even a noob could enjoy playing this game, but the right-stick will limit you as it can't do all combos or special attacks. BlazBlue comes with many game modes such as arcade mode, story mode, versus, training, theater, gallery, and online multiplayer.
The Story Mode is long for fighter game, to bad you never understand everything that is happening. Yet you do learn the personality of each character, and how they behave with the others and why. You also get a little background for each character, but at the end the story is confusing. This also happens because you play a different story for each character and something different happens. There is a real ending, once you pass it once with each character available in story mode, but this real ending is also somewhat confusing. Even though the story is confusing I did enjoy playing through it and watching the story videos.
The arcade mode is what you expect, you battle a series of characters and that's it. You do release a special attack or form for you character once you pass the arcade mode, so it is worth passing with all characters at least once. Some characters do interact with each other before a fight, but it's not much (which s a good thing, we do have a story mode after all). The other modes are self-explanatory, so I won't explain them.
I really liked BlazBlue; I admit I don't play it too often though to the fact that I'm not a fan of fighting games. The game is beautiful to see and fun to play, so I recommend it to everybody from noobs to hardcore gamers who are interested in a good fighting game.

Clannad, the graphic novel, the series, the movie, but not the manga.

About two months ago I watched Clannad, and recently The After Story (about two weeks ago), and the Clannad Movie (last weekend). I started watching Clannad for a simple reason, one day I was just bored and felt like watching something new, but calm. While I was watching the first season I felt this anime was just going to be a good timekiller, with no real drama, at least not enough for me to feel excited. And yet I still watched like 12 or 10 episodes per day finishing the first season in about two or three days. I can't really explain why I saw it so fast, I just did. Now I'm not saying that nothing happens during the series, I was never 'sitting on the edge of my seat' excited, but I still wanted to see the next episode as soon as possible. And in reality many things do happen, but I always had this feeling that at the end everything would stay the same. But I will not say if that feeling was correct or not, for the safety of those who haven't seen it. Once I finished the first season I decided not to see the After Story for a while longer, due to the fact that I saw the first season to fast (or did I?).

After watching the first season I decided to play the graphic novel. But I can't say if the anime is an accurate adaptation, because I didn't follow the anime's story. I only passed the game once, and I didn't even meet the main character (Nagisa) in the game. For those who like this type of games I do recommend it, as it is very interesting, and when replaying the story can change in many ways (I started a second play-through but never finished it). I stopped playing due to having the game installed in windows, which I was to lazy to use just to play this game. So for a while I didn't see anything Clannad-related.

About two weeks ago, one Friday night I was bored and decided I will 'start' watching the After Story. So I started around 9:00pm to see the first episode, and Saturday morning at around 7:00am I had finish all 22 episodes of the main story (as it does include 3 extra episodes). This was weird because my plan was to see only two or three episodes and not 22, o'well. The After Story begins where the first season left on, and it concentrates mostly on the two main characters (Tomoya and Nagisa). I feel that if I say anything more about the story I will spoil the series in some way directly or indirectly, so all I have to say is: Watch it, it's cool. One last thing the movie is a good interpretation (not the same) of the whole series, so I recommend watching it after seeing the series (both seasons).