Senjyogahara Hitagi Garage Kit COMPLETED

Product Page: e2046
My Gallery

My second GK(garage kit) build is Senjougahara from Bakemonogatari. She was the first character to introduce the concept of tsundere to me. I am super happy with it. I think the colors are spot on, they're even better in person. This kit has over 50 pieces, a huge jump over my first model. I am especially proud of how the floor turned out, totally worth doing it twice. The kit actually came with a different configuration, so the torso and hands come off with magnets to give it interchangeable skirts. (Pics of that in the gallery above.)

All the little pieces of stationary were a complete nightmare, but they're what make it so special. This pre-painted PVC figure is so expensive it kept me from this model for so long. Future floor polish worked great to make the transparent pieces virtually clear. The same shading for the hair and body was used as the first one, dark/light coats and pastels respectively.

**note: I know the difference in spelling of her name on this page. The title indicates the way it was posted on the product page, I recognize the second spelling in the body as correct.

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Platinum Watch: #54 Apotheon

Apotheon is the 54th game I got 100% of the trophies in. If you think that is a lot, I've been earning trophies on PlayStation system since they were introduced in 2008 with Super Stardust HD. If you don't think it's that many, I only earn the platinum in games I really enjoy.

I ended up really liking this game, though in the beginning I was doubtful. When I heard it had Metroidvania elements, I winced. I generally like 2D games where there is a clear path of what to do. It took many hours to adjust to clearing objectives in Mercenary Kings, and I never got much further into that game. Maybe it was the setting in Apotheon that kept me playing, with a very similar setting and story to God of War. It wasn't until about 2 hours in and many internet searches that I understood most of the intricacies of this game. I feel they could have done a better job explain things such as the shield bash mechanic, weapon durability, or the stamina bar. The combat gets really fun, though on Warrior (normal, default) difficulty gets easy as you get stronger, by the end I felt invincible and didn't even use a majority of available items and potion buffs.

That was the good, now on to that bad. Selecting the weapon or item you want is a HASSLE. There is no quick select. You need one. Period. Then there's technical issues. There is about a 20% chance opening a chest for awesome items, and is a required trophy, that the game will crash. This happen countless times and ended up with me saving before and after each chest. Which work most of the time unless I was in combat or the room is spinning. That leads us to the second tech issue. After saving in the spinning room, I would spawn in a wall, outside of geometry keeping my in the game and would result in instant death. Luckily the game has a good auto-save feature with 3 saves to revert back to a safe save. But this want the only time it happened, Half a dozen other times enemies hit me through walls, I even swam through one unable to get back in. Items would also become unreachable this same way. The issue left many feeling of unfairness while play.

All that aside, in 11 hours*, this is a great and fun Platinum.

*I will fully admit I used a well known glitch to skip the extra play-through on Olympian difficulty. I am bad at games, I like to feel powerful. The extra challenge on higher difficulties was of no interest to me.

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Kashiwazaki Sena Garage Kit COMPLETED

Product Page: e2046
My gallery

This was my first garage kit build. Overall I am very happy with this kit. The was virtually nothing wrong with the kit when it arrived such as broken pieces or bubbles in the resin. A common complaint of e2046 is the over sanding of seam lines, but those complain might be old or too picky because there was a bit, but it wasn't a big deal.

I believe this is my first 1/7 scale figure because it is by far the biggest figure on my shelf. I am very happy with the colors, though I wish the top coat had less gloss. The body is shaded with pastels, but it is hardly noticeable. The hair is shaded with dark and light airbrushed acrylic paint. The base has a layer of 60 grit sandpaper and painted to look like she is at the beach. Recently I added shells to the bottom to further the beach look.

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