Niahak's Place

I’ve been on the internet long enough to remember when you dialed into a specific subset of the “internet” and durable websites were rare. In that time I’ve been on a lot of websites, especially forums. We’re now in a place on the internet where the bulk of discussion happens on monolithic sites, and ends up being shallow, combative or generally misunderstood. I’ve always preferred the forum format because it is interactive, generally promotes equality of readership (i.e. it doesn’t bury/surface things quickly like Reddit does) and it is durable (i.e. even a months-old topic can resurface, with all the context intact). Although there are things to like about formats like Reddit or Discord, those kinds of communities tend to be insular and celebrity-focused. That’s if there is any sense of community at all.

When I was bringing videolamer back online early last year, it brought back a wave of nostalgia for how I used to use the internet – rather than refreshing resetera or reddit, monolithic single points of entry for discussion, I used to frequent a half-dozen forums at a time. Discord looped me in to where the communities from some of them are, but there was a hole where Kongming’s Archives (and its forum counterpart, The Scholars of Shen Zhou) used to be. While the Archives are a fantastic resource for fans of Three Kingdoms or related games, the forum (or at least how I used it) is a broader discussion group. I have fond memories of reading discussion on the forum or diving into the officer biographies on KMA going back to the mid-2000s, so seeing it “partially online” was distressing – it has more than 20 years of discussion archived, so the forum itself has become an archive of odds and ends around discussion of Three Kingdoms and related (or tangential) games. I can’t think of anywhere else I would look for discussion of Fantasy Sango / Genso Sangokushi, as one of the more esoteric examples.

Anyway, I was very glad to see Kongming’s Archives and SOSZ have resurfaced. Thanks to James for his work reviving a dedicated, warm community. While I haven’t been an active poster for roughly a decade, I’m excited to see it back up and running. Cheers to those sections of the internet keeping forums alive.

As a reminder, these entries contain direct, unmarked spoilers for Strange Journey (specifically the Neutral path finale). If you’re reading this, please be aware.

I actually completed Strange Journey in November and had most of this written by mid-December, but I wanted to ruminate a but on it before putting it up on the internet where the world can see.

Overall I enjoyed Strange Journey Redux, but it was still longer than I feel it should have been. Specific “this is too much” moments are Carina (did we really have to chase Horkus three times?), Eridanus (teleporter maze + fetching forma for the bad guys), Horologium (11 floors…yeah). Fornax + Grus actually weren’t that bad, from memory. Antlia was fantastic, Bootes and Delphinus were kind of tedious but okay.

If SJ were about half its length, it could have been a snappy “sci-fi horror survival” story with a pro-ecological message and engaging characters that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. With the co-op system and demon fusion pain, and dungeons that go longer than they need to, it’s an incredibly slow burn even if it’s fairly easy to pick up and put down.