FIRST IMPRESSIONS // Fire Emblem Fates & Limited Edition Bundle

Hey guys!

So, again, it's been a while since I last posted a blog, especially a gaming post!

Last year, Nintendo announced that they would be releasing a new Fire Emblem game, Fates (IF in Japan), which would have 3 different paths you could choose from - or you could choose all 3 by purchasing all 3 paths.. I really loved Awakening, the previous game in the series, and I've played most of the older games in the series that have been released over here, so needless to say I was mega excited! They also announced that they were going to release a limited edition bundle, which I really wanted from the second I saw it on a trailer.

Unfortunately for me, however, the UK/Europe release date wasn't until May 20th - a couple of days ago!

So, there's three different paths you can take in the game. Basically, you were born in the kingdom of Hoshido, but were stolen by the king of Nohr & raised there. The first few chapters show a little bit of life in both kingdoms, before you're asked to pick a side in chapter 6. There's Birthright - where you side with your birth family in Hoshido, Conquest - where you side with the family who raised you in Nohr or Revelation (which isn't out until next month) - where you don't pick either side. Whichever side you choose has different consequences, and each side is basically a whole different gaming experience. 

In Birthright, the kingdom of Hoshido is heavily Japanese influence - the buildings are based on traditional Japanese ones, they chose a lot of red & white in the colour scheme & the music is also Japanese influenced. Nintendo recommend that you choose this path first if it is your first Fire Emblem game, or you like to take it slow - it's a lot easier to get gold & level people up with side quests on this version, so it's a good way to ease yourself in.

In Conquest, the kingdom of Nohr is dark & based on vampires - the kingdom is in darkness & quite gloomy, and the main colour scheme is black & purples. They recommend this version for more experienced Fire Emblem players, as there aren't as many resources in this one - you have to spend your money wisely, as you can't just go on a ton of side missions to get money & experience.

I was browsing Twitter around a month or so ago, and I saw that GAME had tweeted about the limited edition bundle going up for preorder on their site, so I immediately went to preorder mine - especially as they'd put EXCLUSIVELY AT GAME, so I was wondering if Nintendo were going to sell a bundle at all. I was successful, so I was really excited that I'd managed to get the bundle - it included all 3 paths of the game on one cartridge, an artbook, a steelbook case & a double sided poster.

A few days later, I received an email from Nintendo - as I'd previously registered to be notified when the game wet up for preorder from them - & I saw they were selling a similar bundle, but theirs had a double sided commerorative coin & a free theme for the Nintendo 3DS, plus they had the matching New 3DS coverplates! So, I had a quick discussion with my brother & he said I should get the Nintendo one, as it was the same price as GAME but had a couple more things included, so I preordered their bundle & the coverplates. I then cancelled my GAME preorder, as I didn't need two bundles.

I was so excited for it to arrive, I've been avoiding watching videos or looking at anything about it online so that I don't see anything that'll spoil it for me, as it's been out for longer in Japan & the USA. Finally, however, it came on Thursday (a day early!) & I was so excited to unpack it & get playing! I really like everything in the bundle, I have the Awakening artbook too so they'll look nice together, plus I have a few other steelbook cases to display with the Fates one! The symbols on the coin are the symbols for Hoshido & Nohr, which I like a lot! 

 The coverplates!

The Nohr/Conquest side!

The Birthright/Hoshido side!

For my first playthrough, I decided I wanted to go with Hoshido & take the Birthright route - I want to play them all eventually, of course, but I thought I'd do what Nintendo recommend & take this route first. As I'm writing this blog post, I think I'm on chapter 12, so I thought I'd give a quick first impression while I'm here.

As in Awakening, you get to customise your character - in Awakening, it was Robin (although you can rename them), in Fates it's Corrin. There's a few more options to customise Corrin with, which I thought was a nice touch! 

 This is how I customised my Corrin/avatar!

I don't want to go into the story too much, as I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to play, but I'm really enjoying the story of Birthright so far! I like how most of the chapters have such beautiful Japanese music & scenery, it's nice that the majority of characters on this path have Japanese names too. There's quite a few different side quests you can spend some gold on, so you can level grind if you need to & I'm finding it fairly easy to level up & raise the support between characters even without grinding! They kept the same art style as Awakening - there's sprites for much of gameplay (and they've added feet, as many people complained about the lack of character feet on Awakening) which I like a lot. The story is really gripping, and I feel like I'll be onto Conquest in no time, if it keeps sucking me in like this!

So, there we have it - the limited edition bundle & my first impressions of Birthright! Are you planning on getting the game at all? Which path will you choose if you do? 

Happy playing!

xo

My Piercing History!

Hey guys!

When I was in my mid to late teens, I decided I wanted to get piercings – I’d wanted my lip pierced since I first got into AFI & Davey Havok had his lip ring, & over the years, the list of piercings I wanted grew. Thankfully, I didn’t get every single one on my list – I remember at one stage I wanted the bridge of my nose pierced (no offence intended to anyone who has/had one, I just look back now & realise that it really wouldn’t have suited me) but I did get a few!

Before I start – I can’t remember the exact dates, or even years, that I got my piercings, or exactly when I took them out! I know roughly what age I was though!

First off – when I was 16, I knew the first piercing I wanted to get was my lip. I’d wanted it for years (as I stated above) so one weekend, I decided to just go & get it done! I went to Old London Road in Kingston for this piercing – I got most of them here, I think - & I think I took a couple of my friends with me too, for moral support. It didn’t hurt at all, but I remember looking down at the needle in my lip before closing my eyes so I didn’t have to look, haha! I actually got it done just before my GCSEs started, so I had to cover it up with a plaster for my exams so I didn’t get marked down for having it (my school were weird for things like makeup, piercings & hair dye). I had this piercing for the longest time out of all of my piercings – I only took it out when I had my tonsils out about 3 years ago because I had to & by the time I was less groggy, the hole had closed (I’m one of those people whose piercings close up pretty quickly). I still miss that piercing to this day & I keep getting really tempted to get it back! 

Next up – I loved my lip piercing so much that I decided to get the other side of my lip pierced too (that’s called snakebites, for people who might not know). It was about a year later I think, so I persuaded a friend to come with me again & I went to the same place, as I’d had no problems with it before! When I first had it done, I loved it – however, I eventually got bored of having it after about 6 months, so I took it out & let it heal. I actually got it pierced again before I went to college in 2009 though – I have a ton of pictures of me with lip rings in – so I had it redone, then when it healed, I got rings instead of studs for a while! I didn’t really like the rings, though, so I went back to studs. Again, I got really bored of having snakebites & felt like I had too much metal in my face, so I took out the left side again (the first lip piercing was on the right, so when I had the second ones, they were both on the left)

When my grandad died, I was devastated & I knew I wanted to do something a bit rebellious, if you will. So, a few days after New Year’s Eve (when he died) I met up with my best friend Jen & headed into Kingston again to get my septum pierced! I got it done with the staple looking bar, as I’d heard they were easier to flip up & hide. No one knew about this piercing for ages – I did show my mum, but she thought it was fake at first - & if I remember correctly, I only got caught out because someone tagged a picture of me with it down on Facebook & my family saw it, so I had to come clean, aha. I only got rid of this because it fell out in my sleep one night & by the time I woke up, it’d closed up on one side & I was too scared to force it though, so I had to just leave it to close – I was getting a bit bored of it by this point, though, so it was probably a blessing in disguise.

I also got my nose pierced when I was at college – I think me & one of my friends went to Up In Smoke in Croydon to get it done. I got mine pierced with a really thick ring – which I regretted – but I loved that piercing a lot. I didn’t want it done with a stud, as I knew I’d just end up losing the stud, so I always had a ring in. I took this out because it got a lump on it & my mum make me take it out, so I reluctantly did. 

Finally – I got my nose pierced again about a year & a half ago! I got it done at Tattoo UK in Twickenham & got it redone in the same spot as my first nose piercing. I’ve had no problems with this one & I love it!

So, that was the story of my piercings! I’ll insert some photos too, so you can see what I looked like with piercings. 

Do you have any piercings? What do you have/what would you get?

I'm Back // An Explanation

Hey guys!

So, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed, I haven’t actually blogged in a while – around a month or so now.

I wanted to write a post to explain a little bit about why I haven’t been around & blogging, so that’s pretty much all I’m going to talk about in this post, hopefully I’ll get back to posting some more interesting content again soon.

Okay, so the first reason is my laptop screen. I broke it before Christmas & just haven’t got round to sorting it out yet – I’ve been putting it off because I had more urgent things I had to pay for first, meaning that I’ve not been able to afford it. Now, I should be able to afford to get it fixed very soon, which means that I’ll be excited to blog  more, instead of getting frustrated that I can’t see what I’m typing properly & being sad that my screen is ruined (the crack has spread since I first did it, so it’s gradually been getting worse & worse.

The biggest reason, though, is that I’ve just not really felt particularly inspired recently, I felt like I was stuck in a rut with blogging, that I was going through the motions with all my posts & that my ideas were all stale & boring. I felt like it was probably for the best that I took a step back from blogging to reassess what I like about blogging again, hopefully come up with some ideas & just generally make me want to start writing again – hopefully it worked, as I have a (small) list of ideas which I’m reasonably excited about!

So, if anyone was wondering where I’d gone, don’t worry – I haven’t dropped off the face of the Earth (yet), I’ve just been taking some time away from blogging/Facebook to regroup! (Also, I don’t really use Facebook all that much anyway)

I feel like I haven’t really expressed myself as well as I wanted to in this post – I’m sorry if this post is a bit all over the place – but I just wanted to try & explain where I’ve been hiding for all this time! Hopefully, I’ll fall back in love with writing/blogging again soon – I’ve definitely missed having this little corner of the internet to express myself in – so watch this space & I’ll be back soon! 

Thank you for sticking around & reading this – I appreciate it so much & I love each & every one of you who read this blog!

February Favourites!

Hey guys!

It’s now the beginning of a new month (hello March!) which means that it’s also time for a new favourites post! I try not to post these every single month, as I’m worried they might get boring if I post them all the time, plus I recently did my yearly favourites for 2015, but I wanted to post one this month because I have a few things I really wanted to write about!

It’s also a leap year this year, which meant an extra day to get stuff done! I spent mine sorting out some books, shopping, playing games and writing this blog post – how did you all spend yours? 

Before I start, a disclaimer – I either received the things in this post as a present from a relative, or purchased them with my own money. All opinions in this post are my own.

Okay, let’s get started! 

Yankee Candle Simply Home Toasted Marshmallow Wax Melt 

I got some Christmas scented wax melts a few weeks after Christmas, and this was one of the scents included. I’m a sucker for the Fireside Treats Yankee candle, and this smells similar, but sweeter, which I actually like! I usually have it burning for a few hours at night, and the scent fills my room nicely (my room isn’t the hugest room, but it’s a decent size, so sometimes I find it hard to find scents that linger). I’m not sure if they do it year round, but I would definitely purchase it again! 

Block! 

I downloaded this app on a whim when I was browsing the app store – something I do fairly regularly when I’m bored – and stumbled across this game. In this game, you have an outline of a shape (usually a rectangle) and some other oddly shaped colourful pieces, and you basically have to fill in the rectangle with the colourful pieces. It can be pretty hard sometimes, but if I’m having trouble with one, I’ll just come back to it later. There’s quite a lot of difficulty ratings to choose from too, and a couple of special modes, including double and rotate. It’s quite addictive, so beware! 

Wrigleys Bubblemint Gum

Chewing gum is one of the things I always like to have handy in my bag – I keep some in my makeup bag too, sometimes – and when I heard about bubblemint gum, I wanted to give it a try! It basically tastes like bubblegum, but it’s actually a chewing gum! It makes a nice change from mint if you’re craving something a bit sweeter. 

Pokemon Red

Okay, so when this game originally came out, I was really young and it was my first ever game! I loved it so much, and I played it endlessly for ages. So, when Nintendo announced last year that they were re-releasing it on the 3DS, I was almost as excited as I was when I was tiny. It came out on Saturday (20 years to the day that it was first released in Japan) and I’ve been playing it pretty much ever since! The music, the graphics…it just screams NOSTALGIA at me and I’m loving every single second of it! 

(I don't know why these pictures are sideways, they were the right way round till I added them to this post...)

Pokemon Cover Plates

To coincide with the remakes of Pokemon Red, Blue & Yellow, Nintendo released some new cover plates for the New 3DS, with retro Pokemon sprites all over them – I knew I loved them the second I laid eyes on a photo of them, so I preordered them and they arrived two games before the games came out. I love them!

They’re the only glossy cover plates I own so far – I have about 4 different sets so far – but it actually looks pretty good on them anyway. They contain the original 151 Pokemon (and Mew) and the colour of the Pokemon coincides to the type they are – for example, electric type Pokemon are yellow, water type are blue, etc!

I think I’ll be keeping these on for a while – at least until I expand my collection some more!

Clinique Happy Perfume

I got this perfume in a set with some body lotion for Christmas off my uncle & aunt (thanks again uncle Carl & aunty Di!).

I’d never actually tried any Clinique perfumes before – I like their makeup and skin care though – so I didn’t know what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised! To me, it smells pretty floral and girly, which will be perfect for summer, as it’s light and fresh and just all round a beautiful smell!

Blaqk Audio – Anointed (& being on their site)

One of AFI’s side projects, Blaqk Audio, recently announced that they’ll be releasing a new album very soon, and this was the first single from it. It sounds quite different to their older material, but I really like it, and I’m excited to hear the rest of the album. They’re described as an electronic music duo, but this song sounds darker and heavier than usual!

They also asked fans to get anointed before the song’s release, and featured photos on their site. I was one of the fans on there – I’m not sure if I still am – so that was an amazing moment for me. 

MAC Viva Glam Lipstick – Ariana Grande Collab

Admittedly, I didn’t even know about this until I was reading through some other blogs and saw a couple of people reviewing it.

I’ve been looking for a really nice deep plummy/wine shade of lipstick for a while now, with not much luck. I’m also not the kind of person who wears anything on my lips very often, so I don’t know that much about lipstick! However, when I saw swatches of this, I was sold – it’s the perfect shade that I’d been searching for! It’s also matte, which is a plus, as I’m loving matte makeup at the moment! Plus, it’s a Viva Glam collaboration with Ariana Grande, and all proceeds go to an HIV/AIDs charity.

I really like it on me, too, and I’ve had compliments from people about it, so it’s a striking colour which is surprisingly wearable! 

Superdrug Strawberry & Raspberry Hand Sanitizer 

For a few years now, I’ve kept hand sanitizer in my bag – you never know when a bathroom isn’t going to have soap, or if your hands get sticky or feel dirty when you’re out and about. I’d never tried the Superdrug ones before, but they were 2 for £1.50 recently, so I picked up this one and the aloe vera one.

This smells amazing, and it feels really nice on your hands – some of them can make your hands feel sticky, but this one doesn’t. It’s bigger than most brands, too, so it’s better value for money, plus I like that it’s bright pink, so I’m less likely to lose it in my bag!

Ben & Jerrys Minter Wonderland Ice Cream

Okay, so I’ve always really loved mint choc chip ice cream, but hardly anywhere seems to sell it (not near me, anyway).

I was in my local supermarket a few weeks ago, just browsing the frozen food area because I needed some raspberries for smoothies, and I came across this little gem. It’s peppermint ice cream with massive chunks of dark chocolate in! Peppermint is one of my favourite mint flavours, so I had to get it and try it, and I’m really glad I did, as it’s probably my all time favourite ice cream flavour now!

Sadly for me, it looks like it’s either a seasonal flavour or it’s been discontinued, as my local supermarket were selling it dirt cheap the other day to get rid of it, so it looks like I won’t be pigging out on ice cream for a while now! 

So, there we have it – my February favourites! Do you like any of the things I mentioned, or will you be trying any of them out? Let me know, and see you next time!