There’s not a lot to report for the weekend.  Class is gearing up for the big finish, and it’s taking its toll on other activities.  I did manage to install Dark Souls II and kill a pair of giant mole-cyclops’s, but that’s about it.

I made a special trip on Saturday morning to a friend’s house to coach him on the first Dark Souls.  He grabbed it on a Steam sale a while ago and hasn’t felt brave enough to really dive in.  Now he’s two bosses in and will finally be able to summon me for co-op.

Thanks to DSCFix, we’ll have a much easier time finding each other’s games.  Hurray for the modding community!  After I left his place, he kept plugging away at it, so I think that deep satisfaction of hard-won victory has its hooks in him.

My wife and I grabbed some Dynasty Warriors time in the evenings, and we’ve finally completed the alternate story for the Kingdom of Jin.  At last, Sima Yi has been made into an interesting character.  In a play to snag extra characters for Dynasty Warriors 8, Koei made the decision to include Yi’s wife, Zhang Chunhua.

Despite being a mother of two grown men, she’s depicted as a soft-spoken woman and an equal in beauty to any of the female cast.  Her manner, however, hides a real ball-buster who never raises her voice but has her husband well under her thumb.  As a result, the interactions between Sima Yi and Zhang Chunhua are some of the funniest scenes in the game and definitely the high points of the Jin campaign.

DW8

She politely stands to the side of her man as he attempts to run a kingdom, but when she interjects, Yi quickly considers and does as she says.  The greatest testament to the keen mind of Sima Yi is not his battle strategies or his national policies, but his readiness to stop in his tracks and say “Yes, Dear”.

Once again, Koei shows me how fun some of their less popular characters are by limiting my choices on each story mission.  In the PS2 days, no one in my company ever picked Sima Yi as their main.  He was a weird guy in a silly hat who fought with a fan made of feathers.  Even though some of his combos did crazy beam attacks, we did not give him a chance.

By taking away the option of avoiding him and adding some interesting facets to his character, Koei has shown us that even the least popular picks have a place.