Chapter reviews on the cage

Demographics:

• US citizen
• Suburban PA/ Greater-Philadelphia
• Public non-magnet high school
• No legacy, female, Immigrant parents
• African-American descent (Ethiopian)
• High-Income

Intended Major(s):
Neuroscience/Neurobiology (Maybe pre-med)
Minor in general chem?
UW/W GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

• UW GPA: 3.9/4.0 and W ~5.2/4.0
• Rank: 1/492
• Test scores: 35 ACT

Will be taking a total of 14 AP classes by the end of high school (in 5 right now so I don’t have many scores to put on here but my record is pretty good as of the 3 I already took)
Awards/Honors

• Public Speaking 5th place Pennsylvania - TSA
• Biotechnology 6th place in Pennsylvania – TSA
• Debating 7th place in Pennsylvania - TSA
• Audio Podcasting 4th place in PA
• AP scholar w distinction (projected)
• Class treasurer
• Valedictorian

Extracurriculars (incl. summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

• Yale Young Global Scholars Alum
• 2 year researcheintern @ Drexel College of Medicine with Harvard Alum professor
• Intern @ medicinal chem. biopharmaceutical firm for 3 years w/ PhD professionals
• Neuroscience youth network - founder and executive manager of int’l neuroscience network for HSers founded with fellow students @ Brown pre college
• TSA (3 years) - Worked with fellow students to develop projects to compete at the regional, state, and national levels (see above for awards)
• Leukemia and Lymphoma society student visionary of the year -- 1.5K raised individually, 40k+ raised with team for leukemia research and patient help
• Environmental club president -- Led school chapter in planting over 500 native plants around the school, attended conferences and gave speeches on the importance of environmental help
• Orchestra - 10 year violinist, volunteer in helping students learn violin throughout HS
• Community service – 200+ hours/year in volunteering misc.
• NHS member
• Brown PreCollege programs (2 neuroscience courses)

Essays/LORs/Other

• Essay will be written about how I lose a part of my Ethiopian identity when I straighten my hair and I ended up quitting sports and finding myself in neuroscience because of it (probably)
  • I plan to get it reviewed by some amazing writers i know in my life (teachers, friends, etc.) so i think its safe to say this could be like a 9/10?
• LOR #1- PI @ Drexel Uni lab (Harvard Alum) (10/10)
• LOR #2/#3 - either my 2 year bio teacher or 2 year chem teacher (9/10 for either)
• Should be a good counsleor rec (probably around a 8/10)

School list:
Reaches:
All ivies, MIT, JHU
Targets/Hard-targets:
Villanova, Lehigh, NYU, Boston College, UMich (Ann-arbor)
Safeties:
University of Delaware, University of Pittsburgh
Please let me know what you think/ what I can do to still improve my app!!

Demographics:

• US citizen
• Suburban PA/ Greater-Philadelphia
• Public non-magnet high school
• No legacy, female, Immigrant parents
• African-American descent (Ethiopian)
• High-Income

Intended Major(s):
Neuroscience/Neurobiology (Maybe pre-med)
Minor in general chem?
UW/W GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

• UW GPA: 3.9/4.0 and W ~5.2/4.0
• Rank: 1/492
• Test scores: 35 ACT

Will be taking a total of 14 AP classes by the end of high school (in 5 right now so I don’t have many scores to put on here but my record is pretty good as of the 3 I already took)
Awards/Honors

• Public Speaking 5th place Pennsylvania - TSA
• Biotechnology 6th place in Pennsylvania – TSA
• Debating 7th place in Pennsylvania - TSA
• Audio Podcasting 4th place in PA
• AP scholar w distinction (projected)
• Class treasurer
• Valedictorian

Extracurriculars (incl. summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

• Yale Young Global Scholars Alum
• 2 year researcheintern @ Drexel College of Medicine with Harvard Alum professor
• Intern @ medicinal chem. biopharmaceutical firm for 3 years w/ PhD professionals
• Neuroscience youth network - founder and executive manager of int’l neuroscience network for HSers founded with fellow students @ Brown pre college
• TSA (3 years) - Worked with fellow students to develop projects to compete at the regional, state, and national levels (see above for awards)
• Leukemia and Lymphoma society student visionary of the year -- 1.5K raised individually, 40k+ raised with team for leukemia research and patient help
• Environmental club president -- Led school chapter in planting over 500 native plants around the school, attended conferences and gave speeches on the importance of environmental help
• Orchestra - 10 year violinist, volunteer in helping students learn violin throughout HS
• Community service – 200+ hours/year in volunteering misc.
• NHS member
• Brown PreCollege programs (2 neuroscience courses)

Essays/LORs/Other

• Essay will be written about how I lose a part of my Ethiopian identity when I straighten my hair and I ended up quitting sports and finding myself in neuroscience because of it (probably)
  • I plan to get it reviewed by some amazing writers i know in my life (teachers, friends, etc.) so i think its safe to say this could be like a 9/10?
• LOR #1- PI @ Drexel Uni lab (Harvard Alum) (10/10)
• LOR #2/#3 - either my 2 year bio teacher or 2 year chem teacher (9/10 for either)
• Should be a good counsleor rec (probably around a 8/10)

School list:
Reaches:
All ivies, MIT, JHU
Targets/Hard-targets:
Villanova, Lehigh, NYU, Boston College, UMich (Ann-arbor)
Safeties:
University of Delaware, University of Pittsburgh
Please let me know what you think/ what I can do to still improve my app!!

I'm sure everybody was taken aback by the sudden return of the Glorious King Gojo. Of course, there are so many explanations ranging from it being Gojo to a possible Yuuji domain. I love all of these explanations but wanted to explain one that I think is somewhat likely and very fun to consider:
Yuta returned and has inherited the Six Eyes
A key aspect as to why I do not believe the ghost is Gojo is due to my belief he should be dead. However, if he has returned, I ain't mad at it. Furthermore, the term 'ghost' is the same word Sukuna used to describe Kashimo - who is an incarnated player. The incarnation aspect suggests that this is not truly Gojo but a body that has taken his abilities - or even appearance like the granny's seance for Toji in Shibuya. Additionally, the editor's note placed special attention to the eyes rather than the overall appearance.
translated as 'revenant' here
EDIT: Though ofc this could just refer to someone who has "resurrected" like Gojo seemingly has.
This is assuming Yuta did not die following his first encounter with Sukuna. Considering he still had tricks up his sleeve like fully manifesting Rika, combined with Sukuna's decreased output, and Rika continuing to rescue Yuta - chances are high he comes back imo.
I will also be assuming that Yuta can inherit the Six Eyes due to his distance relation to Gojo via Sugiwara-no-Michizane. The Six Eyes is inherited via the Gojo clan; however, I do not believe this eliminates Yuta as a possible host. Furthermore, there seems to be an aspect of divination in choosing Six Eyes users which I will reference later.
Gojo and Yuta's relation confirmed
Stemming back to his reintroduction with Yuuji, Yuta has been described with similar energy and abilities as Gojo without the same skill set.
Chapter 143 when Yuta appears in front of Yuji, Choso, and Naoya
I believe discussion regarding this translation specified Yuta as second to Gojo in special abilities. Can't glaze him too hard as I am a Hakari enjoyer lol.
Either way there is a clear connection that Yuta is only a couple steps, give or take, behind Gojo. He has accumulated all sorts of techniques and may even have the limitless; however, the barrier separating them is the six eyes.
Sukuna noting that even if Yuta copied Limitless, the Six Eyes is essential for its use
Confirmation Sukuna's CE has dropped to Yuta's level
The comparison that Sukuna CE has fallen to Yuta's CE levels emphasizes to me that a revived Yuta, Yuuji, and Todo are necessary to seal the deal. Though Todo and Yuuji are of course putting in major work right now.
The final nail in the coffin is the six eyes.
Finally, I will be reviewing the seemingly intertwined destiny of the Six Eyes, Star Plasma Vessel + Tengen, and Kenjaku - as confirmed by Tengen.
Were they born again or awakened?
In the description, Kenjaku successfully killed the SPV and SE users as newborns. Despite this, both reemerged on the day of the merger to prevent Tengen's evolution. Similarly, a SPV was found shortly after Riko's death. Additionally, we learned that Yuuki was a SPV candidate for Tengen as well.
In parallel, I am suggesting that there are multiple Six Eyes candidates existing at once. This will allow the Six Eyes and SPV users to always facilitate Tengen's merger or counteract Kenjaku. These candidates could simply awaken since newly born users would be useless in helping Tengen.
Kenjaku transforming Tengen into a fetal form could be an indicator that the great merger is his evolution that fate has worked so hard to prevent. With Gojo dead and Tengen's ascension imminent, I believe destiny has awakened a new Six Eyes user - Yuta.
This ability will essentially raise Yuta to the level of Gojo - accompanied by a fully realized Yuuji and Optimized Todo. This trio could complete the fight against Sukuna while achieving Gojo's dream of allies on his level.
We'll see the embodiment of this panel. Insert Hakari and Megumi somewhere tho lol
Thank you all for viewing this post. I hope you enjoy and please share your thoughts. It would be greatly appreciated since this post hurt my soul a little as a Hakari stan. I do not doubt Gojo was right about Hakari reaching his level but his path there will be tough - especially when compared to a Yuta with the Six Eyes.
P.S.: I also recognized a Yuta with SE could be insanely broken which is a major factor why I consider this less likely.
Anyway, yall enjoy and have a good one!

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.
Rotten Tomatoes: N/A
Critics Consensus: N/A

	Score	Number of Reviews	Average Rating
All Critics	%	0	/10
Top Critics	%	0	/10

Metacritic: N/A (0 Reviews)
Sample Reviews:
​
SYNOPSIS:
In the great tradition of Warner Bros. Pictures’ iconic Westerns, “Horizon: An American Saga” explores the lure of the Old West and how it was won—and lost—through the blood, sweat and tears of many. Spanning the four years of the Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, Costner’s ambitious cinematic adventure will take audiences on an emotional journey across a country at war with itself, experienced through the lens of families, friends and foes all attempting to discover what it truly means to be the United States of America.
CAST:

• Kevin Costner as Hayes Ellison
• Sienna Miller as Frances Kittredge
• Sam Worthington as First Lt. Trent Gephardt
• Will Patton as Owen Kittredge
• Jamie Campbell Bower as Caleb Sykes
• Giovanni Ribisi as Roland Bailey

DIRECTED BY: Kevin Costner
STORY BY: Jon Baird, Kevin Costner, Mark Kasdan
SCREENPLAY BY: Jon Baird, Kevin Costner
PRODUCED BY: Kevin Costner, Howard Kaplan, Mark Gillard
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Robert J. Scannell, Danny Peykoff, Marc DeBevoise, Armyan Bernstein, Rod Lake, Charlie Lyons, Barry M. Berg
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: J. Michael Muro
PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Derek R. Hill
EDITED BY: Miklos Wright
COSTUME DESIGNER: Lisa Lovaas
MUSIC BY: John Debney
RUNTIME: 181 Minutes
RELEASE DATE: June 28, 2024

this is a thesis statement that i want to show that religion has positive and negative effects on human societies. Hi everyone, today I want to discuss something that, after a few months of research, has stuck in my head and I can't let go of. This post is not meant to be an argument for God in any particular manner, but if some people in the future want to use the data provided in this post to "prove" anything, they are, in my opinion, free to do as they please.
Today, I want to show the effects of religiosity on individuals and society. I will use as many studies as possible to make my point.
First, let's consider religion's effect on the health of individuals and society as a whole. According to a systematic review of 3,000+ studies, the overall effect of religion on health is positive (1). According to this literature, there are many sources of these positive effects, such as social connections and support, health behaviors, substance abuse and addictive behaviors, mental health, psychological well-being, personality traits, and character strengths. Keep in mind that the link provided is only a summary of 3,000+ studies on the subject. For a better understanding, there are specific chapters (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7). Additionally, for any reason, religious therapies appear to be better than secular ones (19). To be honest, I found only one meta-analysis that showed a positive but non-significant effect of religion on health, mainly from China (20), but other similar meta-analyses still show positive effects (21). A later systematic review reviewed studies that tried to establish causation, and those studies still found positive effects (8) (22) (25).
Besides health, there is also a lot of research on the effects of religion on education (religious vs. secular institutions) and religious families vs. secular families. Most of these studies find positive effects of religion on educational outcomes (9) (10) (11).
Religious people tend to be more moral than atheists. For example, they tend to commit fewer crimes, do more volunteer work, and donate more blood (12) (13) (14) (31) (32). Some might ask if these effects come from religiosity per se or if we can replicate these effects without religion. I am sad to say that I think it is impossible because most of these positive effects come from intrinsic religiosity (15). This means that belief is the main source of these positive effects. We know this because when we compare intrinsically religious people to extrinsically religious people (such as cultural theists who may use religion to achieve their ends but do not genuinely believe), we see that most positive character traits come from intrinsic religiosity (16) (17) (18).
For better or worse, religious people tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives (23) (24). Maybe that's the reason why religious people commit less suicides (34) (35). However, religiosity also has its negative side. For example, religious people tend to discriminate against immigrants more than atheists do, but a meta-analysis states that this comes from the religious community rather than the belief itself, so it may be extrinsic religiosity at work (26). Religious people also tend to have more negative views of homosexuals than non-religious people (27) (28). However, studies and meta-analyses claim that LGBTQ+ people tend to be healthier when they are religious than when they are not (29).
What I tried to show in this short essay is that religiosity has many positive effects on society that are often not acknowledged in primary debates. Some can even make a valid case with data that, on average, religious people tend to live healthier, happier, and more moral lives than atheists. If anybody wants to read more without sacrificing 100+ hours, just use the last link (33). It is a pretty good summary of the findings in a single short study of six pages.
I also want to say that I don't want any fights in the comments or insults. Questions should be about the primary purpose of the essay; otherwise, the chance of responding is very low or non-existent.
Anyway, I want to thank everyone for reading my short essay.
(1) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3_3
(2) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3_4
(3) https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3_5
(4) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3_6
(5) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3_7
(6) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3_9
(7) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3_10
(8) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12486
(9) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1163/1570925042652552
(10) https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20798348
(11) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00433-y
(12) https://sci-hub.se/http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935383.013.005
(13) https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/6/193
(14) https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2024-54904-001.html
(15) https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-1005-9_1585
(16) https://sci-hub.se/https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.48.2.400
(17) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9133607/
(18) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(00)00233-600233-6)
(19) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20760
(20) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1017/S0144686X20000835
(21) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.877213/full
(22) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2019.04.045
(23) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-016-0332-6
(24) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-022-00558-7
(25) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2020.1729570
(26) https://sci-hub.se/https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1080/10508619.2019.1570814
(27) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/10508610802471104
(28) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01461672221135956?casa_token=C3UwD_Iijt8AAAAA%3AHYr8kctnqzYAxWrJm07H_vURFnkqrb-fjYvp7mjlP-dKLSUkg6itvYD8VTYfntA5g-sLRCjG-NIK
(29) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/19359705.2019.1645072
(30) https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-32474-001
(31) https://www.scielo.bj/rbp/a/6SQKWBQ7LmpfJRRctHzYf5G/
(32) https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JBSED-02-2023-0007/full/html
(33) https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417721526
(34) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9315464/
(35) https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-13439-001

Hello everyone
First of all, I want to give some context to what exactly is going on and why I want to ask whether or not it is a good idea to relaunch my novel.
First of all, there is my novel, Valkyria Squadron, the link Valkyria Squadron Scribble Hub. I've been working on it for a long time, a project of many years, almost 7 years of planning in my head, 3 years of writing. So far there are 280 chapters, more than 750 thousand words, 354.6k views, 5782 favorites and so on.
So far so good, good numbers I think.
The problem I have is with the reviews. My novel has an average rating of 3.6 and dropping, which, based on the comments I've received, is turning off a lot of people, maybe too many. And while I wouldn't normally pay much attention to that, it's supposed to be a rating from the readers themselves.
The problem is that I've realized that my novel and its rating are currently in a weird loop that I don't think I can get out of unless I somehow reset the rating.
It all started in the first days of writing my novel, the illusion of being written, the initial adrenaline, the joy of knowing that there were people out there reading what was so personal to me. The problem is that English is not my first language, and the tools I was using were not the best, so those first chapters received very strong negative reviews, which I still agree with today, those chapters were a disaster, plus added to the already complicated plot of the novel made the first chapters look like a complete disaster.
Once again, I agreed with the criticism myself, so of course I tried to improve in that particular aspect. Time passed, I improved as a writer, I could organize my ideas and how to present each chapter better, the tools improved, I learned a lot more English and grammar. But I was always bothered by that rough start of my novel, so I worked tirelessly to improve those first chapters over time, during these three years that I have been writing the new chapters, I keep revising the first chapters to improve them a little more.
The real problem?
That the comments complaining about the grammar never stopped, and the negative reviews got even louder, indicating that the first few chapters were worthless garbage.
What happens is that the chapters they complain about no longer exist. New people are now reading what is essentially the 4.0 edition of the early chapters, and they are still complaining. They are still complaining about how horrible the first chapter of the whole story is, even though it is a completely different story now, even with different characters.
The only thing that has not changed over time has been the analysis of the novel and the comments of the chapters because I never deleted them. At the beginning they were more than deserved, but now after so much time and so many arrangements?
And I understood that new readers only saw the comments complaining about the grammar and they also started to complain about the grammar and how poorly written it is, without ever saying exactly what's wrong or how to fix it, they just "feel in the force" that something is wrong.
So I guess I'm stuck in that cycle right now. A new reader comes in, sees the novel with a low rating by Scribble Hub standards, maybe reads the synopsis and plans to read it. They see the reviews about the horrible grammar from people who never got past chapter 13 of 280. They read the revised 4.0 version of those chapters and then complain about the bad grammar too, leaving a negative rating because it's poorly written, not because of the story itself or sometehing else.
At first I was a conspiracy theorist. But recently I have received comments from new readers who have read a bit more and mentioned that they also believe that the comments and analyses they saw before reading it were much harsher than what actually happened, and that it put them off reading the novel in the first place because of the large amount of criticism it received from other people.

In a fascinating study, evidenced for a possible landing sight for Lehi in America has been discovered within easy travel distance to Palmyra, NY. If substantiated, it could add weight to an Atlantic migration, the controversial Solutrean Hypothesis, in addition to the traditional Siberian route. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2024/05/19/first-americans-chesapeake-parsons-island/
The link is behind a pay wall. Here’s the article
PARSONS ISLAND, Md. — With the Chesapeake Bay sloshing at his knee-high boots, Darrin Lowery stood back and squinted at a 10-foot-tall bluff rising above a narrow strip of beach. To the untrained eye, this wall of sandy sediment is the unremarkable edge of a modest island southeast of the Bay Bridge. To Lowery, a coastal geologist, its crumbling layers put the island at the center of one of the most contentious battles in archaeology: when and how humans first made their way into the Americas. The story of the first Americans has long been a matter of public and scientific fascination, undergirded at times by vicious disagreements. The timeline of when people arrived has shifted earlier in grudging steps over the past century, and scientists today mostly agree people were in the Americas at least 15,000 years ago. Story continues below advertisement
Lowery’s site and others like it could revise the story again, pushing back the timeline earlier than most experts thought possible. In total, Lowery and a motley crew of collaborators have discovered 286 artifacts from the site on the island’s southwestern edge. The oldest, they reported, was embedded with charcoal dated to more than 22,000 years ago, a time when much of the continent would have been covered in ice sheets. If Lowery is right, Parsons Island could rewrite American prehistory, opening up a host of new puzzles: How did those people get here? How many waves of early migration were there? And are these mysterious people the ancestors of Native Americans?
Casts of tools found at Parsons Island are seen on display. Lowery and his team have unearthed 286 artifacts from the site so far. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) New claims of sites dated this far back face a wall of skepticism, rooted in legitimate scientific scrutiny and in the threat they pose to long-entrenched views. To complicate matters, Lowery — who has been affiliated with the Smithsonian but does much of his work independently — presented the results of his study of Parsons Island in a 260-page manuscript posted online rather than in a traditional peer-reviewed journal. The peer-review process is designed to help validate scientific claims, but Lowery argues that in archaeology it often leads to a circle-the-wagon mentality, allowing scientists to wave away evidence that doesn’t support the dominant paradigm. He says he isn’t seeking formal publishing routes because “life’s too short,” comparing this aspect of academic science to “the dumbest game I’ve ever played.”
The island is also a challenging site to study for a variety of reasons — most poignantly because it is rapidly eroding as the land subsides and sea level rises. The spot where the artifacts were found is now covered by the choppy waters of the bay. “The visit reinforced my will to invest my time into this time period, because it’s a very fragile record,” said Sebastien Lacombe, an archaeologist at Binghamton University, who visited the island in 2017. “It’s at risk of disappearing, and we’re at risk of [allowing] these sites and artifacts to lose their meaning forever.” ‘A weirdo kid’
Darrin Lowery walks a beach on Parsons Island. Most of the artifacts were excavated by erosion, discovered on the beach after they had already fallen out of the bluff. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery began exploring the Chesapeake shoreline as a child, wandering his backyard on Tilghman Island, about 15 miles southwest from Parsons Island. In 1977, 9-year-old Lowery picked up a distinctive fluted stone projectile point. A few years later, he saw something similar on a documentary on public television, in which a Smithsonian archaeologist explained it was a Clovis point, a relic of what most people then believed were the first Americans. For the last half of the 20th century, the peopling of the Americas followed a tidy narrative. Humans traveled from Siberia across a land bridge that connected Asia and North America during the last Ice Age, when sea levels dropped. They then migrated southward around 13,000 years ago, when the ice sheets covering the continent retreated and exposed a previously impassable inland route. These people — named after a site in Clovis, N.M. — left behind distinctive, fluted stone points that have since been found scattered across North America. Story continues below advertisement
Lowery turned to his dad and said, “I found one of those.” He found more by walking the shoreline every day. Lowery made discoveries as he meandered, and he began to understand how seasonal patterns, sediment movement, wind and waves could unearth ancient treasures. “I was a weirdo kid,” he recalled. He trained as a geologist, and it was geology that initially attracted Lowery to study Parsons Island. In 2010, he published an article in Quaternary Science Reviews describing layers of windblown silt deposited between 13,000 and 41,000 years ago at Miles Point in eastern Maryland. But the geological record is like reading the CliffsNotes version of a book, and he was frustrated by an “unconformity” in the sediment layers where thousands of years were missing, like someone had ripped out those chapters.
Parsons Island is rapidly eroding. The archaeological site is now covered by the Chesapeake Bay. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery and a colleague were prowling around in a whaler, looking for a spot that might fill in the blanks, when they spotted a black streak of sediment rising up out of the bay. They pulled up to Parsons Island and thought they had found “the Rosetta stone” to decode the geology. Parsons is a 78-acre island less than a mile offshore that is privately owned by the Corckran family, which uses it as a family retreat. With the Corckrans’ permission, Lowery and colleagues began to visit regularly. The bluff layers preserved a remarkably intact geologic timeline going back more than 40,000 years. Then, one morning in August 2013, the team discovered a leaf-shaped prehistoric stone tool jutting out of this crumbling wall. They knew from the work they’d already done that it was probably quite old. Story continues below advertisement
On a recent visit to the island, geoarchaeologist Daniel Wagner demonstrated why. He stepped back to scan the cliff, then tapped a narrow spade into a light tan sediment layer just above his head. That, he said, is the geologic “chapter” where they’d expect to find Clovis artifacts. Lower layers were set down before Clovis. The palm-size tool Lowery and his colleague found came out of the dark sediment layer near their knees. The scientists used two methods to date the sediment around the artifact, both showing it was more than 20,000 years old. They scoured the beach on 93 visits and conducted a formal, top-down excavation, collecting the 286 artifacts. They sent out sediment to labs that specialize in studying ancient pollen and microfossils called phytoliths to help reconstruct the ecosystem at the time. Back then, this region wouldn’t have been a coastline. The sediment the tools are embedded in dates to the “last glacial maximum” — the scientific term for the most recent coldest period of the Ice Age. In the final analysis, Lowery thinks the artifacts may have been transported downslope before they were buried, making them between 15,000 and 20,500 years old. “This was a swale, where water was collecting,” Lowery said, envisioning the ancient landscape. “You’ve got a dune. It’s got sedges and small trees on it that are windblown and all contorted, and then behind it you’ve got a little pond.” That pond may have attracted prehistoric bison, musk ox and llamas, whose fossilized molars he’s found scattered on the island shore. And it may have been what attracted the mysterious people who left behind a cache of stone tools. A story in flux
Parsons Island is seen from nearby Kent Island in the Chesapeake Bay. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Parsons Island is the latest addition to a growing list of what are called pre-Clovis sites. But while the long-held “Clovis First” theory has crumbled over the past three decades, that has only deepened the debate about how much earlier the first Americans arrived. Claims of early sites present a challenge on two fronts. The first is technical: Dating a site convincingly can be difficult, depending on the context. Sediments can shift or be disturbed. What at first look like artifacts can turn out to be “geofacts,” created not by humans but by natural processes or animals. As a result, many pre-Clovis sites “enjoy a Warhol-esque 15 minutes of fame, and then they disappear” because of real problems with the geology or the methods, said archaeologist James Adovasio. In 1973, he began excavating Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, which dated back 16,000 years. It was instantly mired in controversy, and the site still has its critics today. The second challenge reflects the culture of science. For a long time, people who claimed to find pre-Clovis sites were swimming upstream against deeply entrenched thinking. Tom Dillehay, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University, began working on a site in southern Chile called Monte Verde in 1977, which was dated to 14,500 years ago. He recalled a group of researchers he calls the “Clovis police,” scientific gatekeepers who summarily rejected any pre-Clovis sites, sometimes for valid reasons and sometimes as a knee-jerk reaction. Monte Verde began to change that. In 1997, a group of respected archaeologists visited the site and declared it authentic. “It took about 25 to 30 years for Monte Verde to be accepted,” Dillehay said. “We went through hell.”
Holly, a German shorthaired pointer, runs across a bluff top on Parsons Island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery says he isn’t interested in running that gantlet. He noted that he drew on multiple labs and methods for dating the Parsons Island artifacts in an effort to ensure that any one extremely old date isn’t a fluke. He’s also invited other researchers in to visit and study the site. That approach irritates some scientists. David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University, said in an email that he would not discuss Lowery’s claims “until they go through the wringer of peer review and get published.” Others like Stuart Fiedel, an independent archaeologist based in western Massachusetts who has been skeptical of other sites, say the site should not fly under the radar just because of Lowery’s unconventional process. Story continues below advertisement
“There are people I know in the field who will not pay any attention to it, because it has not been peer-reviewed, which I think is kind of sticking your head in the sand,” Fiedel said. “It’s there. We can’t act as [if] nothing’s been found there.” Share this article Share
A bigger issue may be the site’s rapid erosion. Most of the artifacts were found after they’d fallen out of the bluff, which means their place in the geologic timeline is obscured. Nine artifacts were found in place, and only three were able to be dated using charcoal flecks found next to them. Steven Forman, a geoscientist at Baylor University, helped date the sediment layers at Parsons Island, corroborating findings from another lab. He said that it’s hard to find the artifacts in the kind of bulletproof geological context needed to support extraordinary claims. “The case is not as tight as we like to see it with other sites,” Forman said. Michael Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University who has worked on pre-Clovis sites and excavated at Parsons Island, thinks he probably got there too late, when most of the artifacts had already been eroded out. Still, he pays someone to monitor the bank profile on a regular basis, because he’s ready to jump on a plane if they see something in place. “Too bad we didn’t get there four to five years sooner,” Waters said. Enter ancient DNA
An ancient bovine tooth is among the fossils found so far on Parsons Island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Parsons Island isn’t the only site that could dramatically push back human arrival in the Americas. Last fall, a study published in the journal Science described fossilized human footprints discovered at White Sands National Park in New Mexico that have been dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. That stunning finding suggests people were here during the Ice Age — much earlier than most experts thought possible if the first humans arrived via the Bering land bridge and inland corridor. The dates at White Sands are still being disputed because of questions about the methods. But the timeline collides head-on with another exciting line of evidence: studies of ancient DNA. By examining genetic material preserved in bones and teeth and comparing those samples to modern populations, scientists have been able to track when populations mingled and became isolated from one another, offering a new window into patterns of human migration. Story continues below advertisement
In broad strokes, they’ve found that the ancestors of Native Americans split from ancient Siberian populations no earlier than 23,000 years ago. The studies can’t say where such splits took place, but many scientists interpret genetic evidence to mean that the ancestors of modern people weren’t in the Americas until much later. Genetic studies suggest that Native American ancestors traveled into what is now the United States between 17,500 and 14,600 years ago. Joe Watkins, a senior consultant for Archaeological and Cultural Education Consultants in Tucson and a Choctaw tribal member, said that he sees a few problems with using the still-evolving DNA evidence to decide how ancient sites are related to modern-day people. “The reality is genetics does not equal culture,” Watkins said. He also argued that there are still too few samples of ancient DNA in the Americas to be sure they capture the whole story. “Trying to create population histories based on 10 people, if you will, is a little bit of a scientific conundrum,” Watkins said. It could be that additional ancient genomes will one day help fill in the blanks. Another possibility is that earlier sites could represent small, isolated groups of people who didn’t contribute to the ancestry of living Native Americans.
A tree-lined path leads to a beach on Parsons Island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) “Let’s suppose you have a successful population colonizing an area, and then one day, 15 males go out and get eaten by a short-faced bear,” Lowery said. “You reduce the genetic diversity, and bada boom, bada bing, game over.” All this explodes the neat picture of one population migrating into the Americas as ice sheets retreated, hunting big animals like mammoths and giant sloths, driving them into extinction as they went. If there were small groups making their way into the New World, with different stone tool technologies, and far earlier than previously believed, how did they get here? People could have migrated along the coast by boat, following a “kelp highway.” It’s also possible the ice sheet was not as impenetrable as experts have long thought. Lowery’s longtime collaborator, Dennis Stanford, proposed that people crossed the Atlantic Ocean in what is known as the Solutrean Hypothesis, though that idea has been rejected by many archaeologists. To resolve the question, scientists need to keep looking for more evidence. Archaeology is a historical science, and unlike chemistry or biomedicine, where researchers can perform the same experiment over and over again to see if they get the same results, consensus is built by argument, counterargument and new evidence. To a certain extent, older ideas and prejudices also fall away as new people enter the field, said James Feathers, who performed dating on samples from Parsons Island before he retired from the University of Washington. “Sometimes you have to wait for people to die off,” Feathers said.
Alex Corckran, whose family owns Parsons Island, stands on a beach on the southern side of the island. (Michael Robinson Chávez/The Washington Post) Lowery is determined to keep motoring around the Chesapeake, researching the ephemeral landscape that he loves and that may contain clues about human prehistory. He acknowledges that the sites, perhaps a little bit like him, are “persnickety” but that shouldn’t deter interest in them. Instead, it should spur more. He noted that if a pod of silverfish was found gnawing on documents in the National Archives, people would be galvanized to act. “I view it as my swan song,” Lowery said, “to say you can learn a lot from [an] eroding site if you do a little bit of effort and look at it systematically.”
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a review by Evan Landon

I remember distinctly the first time I saw the trailer for Last Voyage of the Demeter and just shaking my head as they butchered Bullet With Butterfly Wings with some stupid techno downbeat. Why do they do that shit? They take a song that everybody knows, then shoehorn that shit in so hard that it's comical. “The world is a vampire” with a bunch of reverb and synth drums while a monster stalks his prey is so corny and lazy that I want to punch a kitten. “Oh, it's a movie about vampires? Ohhhh let's put that one Smashing Pumpkins song in it and make it suck.” Talentless, generic hacks are behind that brilliance on every level, I'm telling you. After seeing the 1931 Tod Browning movie as a kid, I immediately wanted to read the 1897 Bram Stoker novel from where it originated, and I have to say that it was not the kind of read I was expecting. The entire novel is told through letters, journals, and newspaper articles which is not the kind of thing one would expect when it comes to one of the first horror stories, but that also was what gave it its appeal, I think. It was different... Just because something is different does not make it good; however, this one was good enough to be adapted into a stage play in 1924 by Hamilton Dean & John L. Balderston. Hey, that was 100 years ago! I bring the whole Dracula origin because that is the part in the novel (Chapter 7, to be exact) where it is told through the Captain's Log which I found the most tedious and somewhat boring. When they said that they were doing a film based on that, I was very quick to dismiss it when it finally arrived, but watching it gave me a different feeling altogether. Was it a good feeling? Meh. What I did enjoy about this movie was how they were able to somewhat build a narrative out of a nothing burger in the novel. The gore is adequate for CGI, so I don't worry too much about that because there are some okay close-ups that make up for it practically. The acting is on point too with Liam Cunningham as The Captain, David Dastmalchian as his first mate, and Corey Hawkins as the ship's doctor. The only problem I have with having a black doctor on the boat in the 19th century is that there were not a lot of black doctors (Cambridge alumni or not) around at that time, so it's shoved in there pretty hard with no real reason. They acknowledge it, but that does not change the conveniency of the writing. Then there is the Transylvanian woman who was placed on the boat for Dracula to snack on, so those boxes got ticked for the suits because everyone needs to have representation in every movie nowadays. What did not work was mostly the lack of gore or “Dracula” himself. We are used to seeing ol' Drac as a beguiling count who borders on romantic, then crosses that border. Also, the fog and mist coalescing with the lack of lighting and flowing motions of the camera makes this difficult to see, much less watch. Although the acting is great, the characters and dialogue between are not interesting enough to truly value and what would stand as a story is very flimsy; but again, there was not much to work with in one chapter of a novel that is basically just a captain's log. When you have tentpoles so weak to build upon, I guess what you want is something outrageous to gain some weight. What is the story, you ask? A 19th Century English supply ship named the “Demeter” is coming from Romania to Britain and its contents happen to contain a monster that feasts on human blood. Chaos ensues, as the crew not only try to make it to shore, but also to save their lives. Maybe even their souls! The Last Voyage of the Demeter is an interesting look at the most overlooked part of the source material, but nobody really has any original ideas anymore, so might as well. Released by DreamWorks Pictures, it pulled in $21.8 million against a $45 million budget, so I would not expect to see a sequel that was teased at the end. This is the end, for this movie, anyways. With all the other “Dracula” movies out there, I'd say go with one of those instead if you are looking for the classic Dracula character. It's literally just a giant CGI man-bat version of it, which works and doesn't at the same time. 

2.5 out of 5

If you're curious about my thoughts on previous Yakuza games, here are my much shorter (except for 4, thats pretty long too) reviews for Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3 (Remastered), and Yakuza 4 (Remastered).
This is a Part 2 to my Mega big Yakuza 5 review. In the first part I covered the plot and it was absurdly long because I am psychotic. If you want to read that you can read it here: https://www.reddit.com/yakuzagames/comments/1cvry2x/yakuza_5_a_mega_big_ole_reviewsummary_for_a_big/
Combat and Gameplay: I generally felt Y5 was a bit of a step down in gameplay compared to Y4 sometimes. I think Saejima was way more bearable to use in Y5 but I generally found the combat to just be less? fun? it felt a little bland. Kiryu felt much slower for some reason. Akiyama still felt great to use and at times a little better. Shinada's combat style was not my cup of tea. I can respect a characters combat relying on weapons but his felt repetitve and honestly the weapon to bare handed combat for him didn't feel good either way. Haruka's was great though obviously. I never felt such joy or excitement then when I first started the dancing gameplay in Y5.
The upgrade system was lame I did not enjoy it, I ended up just keeping on auto upgrade so I didnt have to bother. It felt like a downgrade back to Y3.
This game was mostly really easy, granted I do play on easy because I happen to be a shame to the video game community, but I very nearly turned it to normal many times. Haruka's dance stuff was so fun I actually did try it on every difficulty mode, hard mode was so fun!
As sure as random combat encounters are in the streets of Yakuza, my complaining about these encounters after every review is just as, if not more expected. Yeah obviously the mugging in this game was excessive for me. I went everywhere by taxi just to avoid getting attacked a billion times on one street. And it is kind of at it's worst in this game not just because of how often you're getting attacked but also because of the battle fields. At first I was pretty excited because the space you can fight was so large I incorrectly assumed you could just leave the fight, wrong. While a bigger battle space sounds better on paper, it's actually a horrible idea. I cant tell you how many times I would have finished fighting three of the goons but the fight wouldnt finish because there was two more hiding AROUND THE DAMN BLOCK. It was so irritating. They did take a step in the right direction by letting Kiryu have a ward off bracelet that kept the attacks mostly at bay, it was so nice I wish other games did that in case you want to just walk around for a change or better yet the rest of this one! Because as far as I could tell none of the others had similar items, and the mugging was at it's worse with Saejima in his city enviroment. It HAD to be bugged with the amount of times i'd get attacked in that area, I probably fought more people there in the brief stint I was there compared to all of Shinada's area. So basically yeah I hate the random fight encounters and it is always one of my main complaints with these games.
I liked the tower sweeps in this game, but the one you do as Kiryu near the end of his section had a horrible situation that I have to complain about, mostly because i'm an idiot. There's an area midway through the sweep where the doorway is lit on fire. Me being the genius I am, I grab the fire extinguisher, point it at the fire, and simply throw the whole thing into the flames. Cue the next 20 mintues being me panic running and collapsing into the fire trying to get the extinguisher :(.
Side Stories
Yeah so this game on top of its massive plot and its many new areas, also added on entire side stories for each character! I'll go through and talk about my experience with each one.
Kiryu: The Taxi Driver
Oh My God. This did NOT have to be as fun as it was. I was amazed that Kiryu even knew how to drive let alone was this good of a driver. So there are three types of missions you can get with this, Racing, Taxi driving where you drive, and taxi driving where you talk. I did literally every possible thing you could in this side story. The racing is a ton of fun, there is a bit of a plot to it that basically consists of batting a rival gang of street racers and leads into your taxi boss's trauma and whatever, I didn't really care for the plot but all the gameplay was stellar. I found the missions with just the conversations to be a bit boring, but my favorite was actually doing my job and driving people to their destinations. What a blast.
Saejima: The Hunter
Okay now I can talk about the bear plot. Saejima's side story is massive and I did love it. I wont go through and summarize the whole thing but Saejima basically stays in the village with the old man who saved him from that big bear he beat up and dedicates himself to finding the bear and hunting it to help the old man and the village. There's lots of ups and downs and twists and turns and I really enjoyed it! I liked the twist that the old man was an escaped convict/former hitman as well.
As for how the gameplay of this sidestory works, basically you go to the mountain and do hunting. You lay traps, shoot animals, etc. As you work through the plot you have more acess to higher parts of the mountain. I can definitely see this gameplay not being it for some people, but I actually really enjoyed it! I do have some complaints tho, I really wish you didn't have to start all the way at the bottom of the mountain everytime, or ESPECIALLY have to walk all the way back down when you're ready to leave. I had hoped those shacks you built would serve as fast travel spots but nope. Also the gameplay is a bit clunky here, I love clunkiness so it isn't a big deal but the male deer charging at me no matter what everytime got hella irritating. Also I was stupid during one of the evil bear encounters and when I was supposed to run I stayed and thought I was supposed to fight him and I sat there fighting for my life for literally thirty minutes before I was like "hmmm whats taking so long?" Anyways I did like it and did literally every mission I could except one lousy mushroom quest because I rage quit it.
Haruka: She's an idol or whatever
Yeah this is the best one. There's not much of a seperate plot here as it basically directly ties into her main plot but it mostly consists of her doing idol activities in preperation for each level of the Princess League competition and eventually her debut.
There are lots of different types of games here. There are actual performances which duh they're amazing. There's dance battles or solo battles where you basically do a dance battle...alone? those are also always fun. There are handshake events which took awhile for me to get the hang of, I think they needed way better directions to be honest but once I figured it out it was alot of fun. There are interviews, these are fine except I hate that they make me answer under a time limit STRESS. There's TV appearances, these range from going on a comedian interview show where you have to answer questions then do quick time events, to running ?, to doing various yakuza mini games like pool or air hockey and more. The running show was so weird, the producer was always like creepy as hell and I really dont get what the point of that show was. The minigame shows varied on fun depending on if I liked the minigame.
Now dear reader, I know what you've been wondering this whole time, youve been BEGGING to hear. What is Alex's Haruka song ranking? Im so glad you asked.
So not including the dance battle songs cuz duh she doenst even sing them but I do like "Like a Arabesque" the most out of those.

1. So Much More: Like obviously right? This is the greatest song of all time! I should be studied next to Bohemian Rhapsody, Nessun Dorma, and Moonlight Sonata.
2. Dream: Technically a dreamline song but who cares. This shit made me CRY. The lyrics are ssoooooooooooo goddamn.
3. Because I Have You: This might be a hot take because I do think's it's less well made then Lonliness Loop, but I still would just rather listen to this. It's a jam, SUE ME.
4. Lonliness Loop: Honestly not a bad song either, I just find it to be thematically the weakest as well as feeling a little awkward execution wise. Still a jam tho!

What are YOUR song rankings?
I also like that the songs some what reflect Haruka's state of mind at the time of her performing them. At the time of So Much More she is just really excited for her career and incredibly optimistic. Then during Lonliness Loop she's generally dealing with the heaviness of her career and isolation of it and if I remember correctly, Park had just died when she went on to perform it. Then Because I Have You is building up to the eventual decision Haruka will end up making at the end, she's realizing how much she misses her family but her dream is still ahead of her, just super duper close. Lastly Dream, the tear jerker, and tragically not on the OST, is about Haruka's dream finally cultivating. She is in this moment achieving her dream, but she's thinking of her family and is grateful to them for supporting her this way. THIS SONG IS FOR KIRYU. Like bro, amazing.
Shinada: Baseball
Anyways lets talk about baseball. I didn't love it. At first I kind of did because I was like omg thank god baseball is way easier in this game if I'm going to be expected to do it way more often. But omg bro its TOO easy. It's just boring man. There's no room for anything interesting or diverging about it. Kiryu's could be pretty repetitive as it's just driving but they offer three different types of driving games within it, Shinada's is just a bunch of the same hitting the baseball game. Granted I liked the little story with him helping the little boy be a good pitcher. I found the main story within it really boring? I struggled to pay attention but the ending to it was cute. Yeah I guess I just dont have as much to say with this side story. I did most of it too, I think I missed one baseball mission? I did enjoy the coach missions that he sends you on for training. Well most of them...THAT UFO ONE WAS EVIL. I've never seen a machine make you get a stick in a tiny hole (thats what she sai-) before as the goal to get your prize like WHAT?
Side stories final thoughts: And thats the side stories! They were alot of fun (mostly) I wish Akiyama got a side story :(. I can't think of what they'd give him to do but I would take literally anything. Any potential side story ideas for him?
Substories
My god I did like 95% of the substories. I did SO many.
Kiryu had a really good lineup of substories. My favorite was EASILY "From a far-off land" I cried so hard doing it bro. Basically Kiryu thinks of his kids during Christmas time and he sends money to each of them so they can get what they want for Christmas. Thing is he thought alot about each of them, it wasnt him just throwing twenty bucks per kid at them through the ATM, no, he sat there and was like "Well Shiro would really like this book, I think it costs about this much so I'll send around this much to cover it" But he does it with ALL OF THEM and its so stinkin cute I disintigrated. My second favorite goes to "The other Haruka" as you can imagine anything reminding me of the kids will be my favorite. This one is good for obvious reasons. As for a weaker substory, I really didnt care for "A knock on the door" Honorable mention to the series of substories with Yuya in them! This game was tragically the only one that didn't have Kazuki in it at all.
Saejima's were the weakest and here's why. Because you only get one chapter in his city area, all of them are incredibly fast. One of them is literally just briefly talking to a guy like ???. He does also have several substories on the mountain but they're more related to his side story so I dont really count them. Anyways, my favorite of his was easily "The Little Match Girl" I CRIED, listen im a sucker for the little match girl story and this was just really adorable. I also loved the substory where he dressed as Santa and had to escape a bunch of kids. His worst is probably that one where he just talks to that guy called "Snow Festival Performer". Mostly to set up the revelation.
Haruka wise, I liked any of her substories where she hung out with Akari, but my favorite overall was probably the one where she does the Okinawa magazine interview it was so cute and it made me wanna cri. Least favorite wise, I hated "starbound" it just felt meanspirited. Haha she's fat, grow up.
Akiyama had alot of fun ones. The best probably being either of the two where he DOES A DANCE BATTLE. It was fucking amazing. I also really enjoyed the "Quirky Idol" substory. I did not like "giving up on a dream" Akiyama was once again being mega weird and creepy, I hated that.
Shinada is much better in his substories then he is normally. My favorite's were "Daddy Papa" and "The Scoop Photo", that guy had crazy hair. I did not like the store clerk one because I am incapable of math.
And thats the substories! There's also the Tatsuya quests. Although I like Tatsuya and I made sure to do all of them, I don't think this was well executed. They dont feel very rewarding and taking Tatsuya to the resturaunts is really awkward, I wish they added like mini cutscenes of dialogue where each person got to know Tatsuya with every resturaunt encounter or something. But it wasn't that bad I hope I see him again.
As for the revelations, I am a huge fan of revelations in the Yakuza games. They cut back on them alot in this one sadly but at least we still got some. Also I know there were weapon revelations but I somehow found none of them so Im going to just talk about the normal ones. Well, more like rank them.
Saejima: This was funny in a looney tunes way, I loved it.
Haruka: Okay I hated the substory starbound but this was so stupid I couldn't help but lose it while watching.
Shinada: This was just really cool.
Akiyama: I can respect that performance
Kiryu: Althought I like the guy and respect the situation, the revelation in itself wasn't super memorable.
There you have it!
Lastly, the settings.
Yakuza 5 is wild because every character (except Akiyama) got their own unique area in the game, plus there is also Kamurocho. Saejima actually got TWO if not three if you count the prison. I found Kiryu's to be really lovely, it's probably my favorite honestly, at least out of the new ones. I felt like I really got a good feel of the place and it had such a relaxing atmosphere. Because of the slow nature of this part of the game, it really had time to develop a unique identity especially because Kiryu was so familiar with the locals. The mountain was a better setting for Saejima, I wish they just expanded the mountain rather then have him go to the city. Saejima's city, While I thought this area was my favorite beauty wise. we aren't there long enough and it feels to restrictive on where we can go. Satenbori felt like coming home and it was SO lovely and nice just like I remembered, no notes. Shinada's lacked alot of character. I actually thought it was Kamurocho for way too long because it looks so similar to it. Granted I get Japan can't look too different from well, Japan, it just struggled to stick out in my mind. It's unique feature was the large park area and that was pretty cool but I like never went over there. Lastly, Karmurocho is as lovely as ever, im amazed they still let me go underground even though we barely spend any time in the city, like there was no need for them to let me but they did and I appreciate it. Goodbye intricate rooftop access though, you will be missed. The Kamurocho hills additon made the whole place feel quite unfamiliar honestly. It was a strange feeling walking around it but I still thought it was pretty cool!
Did anyone have a favorite city we visited?
And that concludes my Yakuza 5 ramblings about everything other then the plot. If you read this AND part 1, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. Im excited to discuss this game with people because I loved it alot! Feel free to comment on either post if you want to, otherwise I'll finally shut up.
8/10

If you're curious about my thoughts on previous Yakuza games, here are my much shorter (except for 4, thats pretty long too) reviews for Kiwami 1, Kiwami 2, Yakuza 3 (Remastered), and Yakuza 4 (Remastered).
All of my reviews are made pretty quickly after I finish the game, this was written right after I finished but I haven't posted it till a month later because its so long I thought no one would ever read this but whatever I gotta get my truth out there.
Per usual I played the remaster of Yakuza 5. I'm not sure of any outstanding changes or things of note like with 3 or 4, but if something I say is exclusive to the remaster please let me know! I may sound overly praising or overly critical of this game, who knows but please be kind when you tell me i'm an idiot for feeling the way I do! Lastly and most importantly please please please don't spoil future games in the comments! Also warning I'm way too active in the comments section.
Because I am an utter psycho and decided to write a fuckin bibles worth of yakuza 5 ramblings, Part 1 is just reviewing the plot and Part 2 goes over everything else. I split this up last second so there's likely some spots where I say something like "we'll expand on this later" then I never bring it up again, that's because it's probably in part 2. If you want my thoughts on things like the substories, side stories, gameplay, and settings you can read Part 2 here: https://www.reddit.com/yakuzagames/comments/1cvrybw/yakuza_5_a_mega_big_ole_reviewsummary_for_a_big/
The Plot:
Like with Y4, I will discuss my thoughts on each section of the game rather than in one long chunk just because I find it more fun. I'm not even gonna try to not summarize this time because this game is so big it needs broken down.
Part 1: Kiryu
You might often find me compare Y5 to Y4 a lot in this review because they're honestly quite similar games and feel like a package. When I started playing 4 I was worried I wouldn't like playing as primarily strangers for a majority of the game, but one thing they did absolutely right was making Kiryu the final protagonist you play as in that game. So going into 5 I was very apprehensive about starting off with Kiryu, I worried they showed their hand too soon and that it would be difficult to stay invested the whole time.
With this feeling going into the game, I was immediately somewhat losing it over Kiryu being an incognito taxi driver with the worst disguise of all time (some sunglasses and a face mask, don't worry he's literally the only one in the game that seems to think it's a good disguise). Right off the bat, this game feels...sad. Kiryu watching Haruka giving an interview on the TV and storming out rather then defend her to some losers who don't get what ART is, was SAD. This part of the game felt so mundane for awhile, but not in a bad way! You wakeup as Kiryu, walk to work, drive your taxi, and go home late at night (usually) alone. The whole time my eyes were drawn to a facedown picture frame and wondering what it could be, but I certainly had a guess. Kiryu is going through a hard, isolating, and depressing time and you can feel that so well from the game and how they have you play as him. Anyways there's also a random gal named Mayumi that will not leave Kiryu alone despite him asking her to. All you're doing by the end of chapter one is going "Huhhhhhhh?" Anyways Kiryu is approached by two dudes named Morinaga and Aizawa in chapter 2, telling him Daigo was???? Kidnapped?? GASP.. Admittidly I wasn't too fond of this duo at first. One thing that was consistent through my playthrough is that I was completely incapable of predicting anything correctly, and it had felt like these two were gonna be my pals for the rest of the game and I just wasn't clicking with them. Not to mention this weird semi-one sided-romance going on with Mayumi.
In chapter 3, we begin with the most heartbreaking thing that could ever happen to me, Yakuza 3 superfan. Kiryu has been pushed out of running the orphanage by a lady named Miss Park. It's all making sense now. He does it so the orphanage can have money and so Haruka can follow her dreams. DOESNT MAKE IT EASIER TO DEAL WITH FOR ME :( . Then we meet Watase, first thoughts? I was like "god I hope this guy isn't the main villain he's kinda lame" Soon after we meet Aoyama and I thought literally the same thing. Clearly by this point in the game I didn't have the highest hopes. I was mostly sad and not liking most of the new characters. But then... things take a turn.
Mayumi was actually a spy! thank god honestly. Kiryu meets Aoyama again but then Morinaga shows up and fuckin kills Aoyama and says he buried Aizawa alive HOLY SHIT? and then soon after I'm told Majima is fucking dead. Figured he wasn't actually dead cuz I've seen pictures of him from later games but holy shit I somehow cried just at the THOUGHT of him being dead. Also at some point here we met a detective who is an important player in this story but at this point not too integral. Also before Kiryu leaves he picks up the picture frame and its the orphanage ;-;
Kiryu final thoughts: This part of the game was fantastic. I'm so glad they started with Kiryu in this case despite my initial unsureness with it. Chapter 4 especially is when everything really falls into place and starts going 100 miles an hour but I also love the slowness of the previous 3 chapters. I do wish we got more Morinaga as this is unfortunately the last we hear of him despite this being a wonderful set up to a really interesting villain. Mayumi was a pretty shit character per seemingly always with any full grown woman in Yakuza games. While I think it's cool she was secretly a spy she was clearly an afterthought as we never hear about her again so that's cool. Basically a mixed bag of new characters overall.
Part 2: Saejima
I jokingly said to myself "Wouldn't it be funny if I had to spend half of this section breaking out of prison again. Thank god that's not the case." and continued hanging out with Majima until I was arrested for two more years of serving my sentence and OH NO IM BACK IN THE BUILDING.
Yeah I was VERY unsure about breaking out of prison again being a good call. Thankfully, and sorry to Y4, this is a much better prison sequence. Another thing I was really unsure about was BALD SAEJIMA! But actually... it kinda slays harder? In Y4 he looks like that guy from the game The Hatred (an insult) maybe it wouldn't be so bad if bro washed or brushed it but he never did and so instead bald was a slay. Anyways We're dropped in at nearly the end of Saejima's serving period with his group of friends/cellmates, newest one being some dude named Baba. We are relentlessly tortured by the scariest man I've ever seen, Viktor Zsasz-I MEAN! Kugihara. Who's honestly scarier looking then Zsasz somehow. But it is ON because Viktor Zsasz framed my bestie Baba and I will not let that slide so I beat the fuck out of him and it's revealed Zsasz was instructed to be a dick to me. By who??????????????????? Then it's double revealed to me that Majima is dead and I'm sad all over again :(
Turns out our warden is actually really chill and nice and somewhat tries to help us survive. What a breath of fresh air after Satan (Saito) from Y4. This guy is so cool infact we are encouraged to break out by him. So Baba and I do in the dead of the night and tell me why I cried over leaving my two other cellmates ;_; they were such bros. Zsasz hinders my escape and we fight, but my absolute PAL Himura fuckin shoots him it was an amazing turn of events and I cheered so loud and was devastated to leave him behind but anyways-
FUCK YEA SNOW MOBILES (they were kinda jank to control honestly but its the thought that counts). I am so glad I didn't know I was going to be fighting a bear going into this because that was easily the most camp thing ever and so hilarious. Then some old guy saves me (and later Baba) and we chill in the mountains for a little while. The mountain has a whole crazy detailed side story of it's own that I'll explain in more detail later but basically it was cool.
So then a ton of important stuff happens in Tsukimino, most notably we hang out with Baba in a bar which is great because I love Baba and him and I are super tight and he's easily the only person I could ever trust at this point without potential for betrayal! :)
Anyways me and Baba fuckin kidnap this guy because his chair is by a sewer manhole? He's gone in a flash so all I can imagine is dragging him down the hole by his ankle or something. Then we talk for awhile, Majima is mentioned woohoo, THEN HE'S sniped! The way I gasped. Longstory short :( Baba is the one who sniped him and not only that he kind of set everything up and wasn't my best pal all along :( Why Baba Why? Then Baba basically confesses his love for Saejima and can't go through with killing him, AAAAAAND Im back on the Baba train. That detective I mentioned from earlier arrests Saejima but not to throw him back in jail, to assemble the Yakuza avengers.
Final Saejima thoughts: This was shockingly fantastic. I was probably least impressed with Saejima's section in Y4, so it was shocking to have basically the same structure and general narrative beats but done well. It wasn't perfect, I didn't love it as much as Kiryu's section as I'm partial to a slow burn, but it was fun I have no real complaints, except MAYBE more then one chapter in Tsukimino would be a better choice.
Part 3 (first half): Haruka
I did not know I was going to get the HONOR of playing Haruka going into this game. We start off very strong, dancing to the greatest song of all time "So Much More." I mean we really get the full idol experience here with mean ass teachers and shady management. I didn't expect to get an Idol simulator in my Yakuza game but it might be the best thing ever. I decided right off the bat to put everything I had into this section of the game so immediately I did literally everything I could. Most of this chapter feels like a bit of a reflection of Kiryu's were working and going back home alone, it's all as monotonous and isolating as can be (except you're a predebut idol) and I love this. We quickly meet a girl who will serve as my bestie named Akari and yes I indeed would die for her thank you. Meeting Akari introduces us to this sections version of combat, DANCE BATTLES! I know some people might be disappointed you don't get to punch people as Haruka, and I get that, but this feels like a more genuine gameplay style for her character. It's hard to imagine Haruka fighting thugs in the street due to her personality (not that i'd be against it, especially after that weird virtual reality game where I get to wack dudes with a wand) plus I found this gameplay style so refreshing. I was never groaning or sighing because I had to dance against someone. I think it helps that I wasn't forced to do it 15 times in a row walking down the street, but I had the option to most of the time unless it was part of a quest. Maybe that's how all the gameplay should be? I don't mind being approached by thugs sometimes but it always feels like it happens too often in these games and with getting the option to while getting to walk around carefree otherwise in Haruka's section was just SO NICE.
Anyways, We get the whole set up here, we are participating in a competition show that will single handedly set the course for our debut. We're competing against this band called T-set. I hate them so much. They're so mean :(. At some point we see Miss Park absolutely SLAY and tell off Haruka's dance teacher and she doesn't take his shit at all. At this point I was like "Uh ohhhh I don't wanna like her but...she kinda rocks" my decent into stanning Miss Park only continues from there. We have to go convince some guy named Christina (interesting name to take but also a slay, much respect to Mr. Christina and his fedora) to be our new dance instructor. This causes drama with me and Akari which devastated me because I love Akari but we made up like immediately so it's chill.
Then at one point, I forgot the context, Haruka is shopping for a gift for Miss Park when stupid T-set shows up and STEPS ON THE BROACH I BOUGHT FOR HER. I was back and forth on them until now, now they may burn in hell. Especially after they made Haruka get on her knees and beg for forgiveness like ???? what gives ??? Park shows up and SLAYS and gets rid of them. Park then wears the broach :(((((((((
Then one of my favorite parts happen in chapter 2, Haruka and Miss Park go hit the town and just bond together. It's so stinking cute I wanted to cry. This whole time I was trying to not get emotionally attached to Park because it really felt like she was gonna end up betraying us. But the night continued and we get some mother daughter vibes going, even so far as holding hands????? Also Im somewhat glad I didn't get to wear the outfit I bought at the store with Park because I was going for a Cheetah girls inspired look then realized far too late how tacky that might come off, not everyone is Raven Symone ya know?
Anyways at this point I'm like wow this is the cutest game ever, nothing can ever go wrong, Park MIGHT betray me but I don't even care. She gives us a cool pen and a tragic anime backstory with an abusive ex husband and everything and we call it a night Well the next fuckin day my world crumbles because PARK IS DEAD! She "committed suicide" as if!
Part 3 (second half): Akiyama
I can't tell you how devastated I was to realize I'd only get to play as Akiyama for half of a section of the game. However, I was also thrilled to see him at all. Apparently he's opening a Satenbori office and also he is the one who financed Park's dream to debut Haruka so that's how he has a hand in all this. There is tragically very little Hana, she calls you twice and both times were fantastic but I wish I had more :(. Anyways Akiyama has heard about Park's death and goes to the office and meets Haruka. I didn't think they'd even really know each other and assumed we'd have an interesting reveal that they both know Kiryu later but nah they know each other. It honestly probably works better this way because we don't have time for such trivial things! Akiyama is a fuckin detective now. I don't know why he has been tasked to do this but he does it so well I don't even mind. He quickly figures out Park didn't actually kill herself and they simply need evidence to prove this. I'm unsure when this happens but at some point while talking about the mystery SOMEONE FALLS OFF THE ROOF! It was Horie :( who I haven't mentioned yet but he's my manager and a real pal. Thankfully he lived but we found out that the former dance teacher pushed him off. I think he also killed Park or Kanai did, who knows, either way someone did and they suck for it.
Chapter 4 has a lot going on, but basically the president of Osaka talent is sus and he's also the secret chairman of Ousaka Enterprises, which is a different thing... but sounds similar. Ousaka is basically a higher up family in the Omi alliance, so he's part of the bad yakuza!!! Haruka keeps doing the competition and T-set keeps sucking. She wins the princess league by a landslide. I don't even see the point in a third round if she won both of the other rounds? Is the third round just worth more points? Either way Haruka destroyed them and they suck. Her poor vocal instructor is working as her manager now. At some point we find out Parks ex husband was none other then Majima! Which is quite the revelation. Japan is such a small world, everyone seems to know each other. This does mean that Majima at least hit Park (I think after her abortion) and I think he's like 10 years older then her yet they were already married when she debuted at eighteen... Is it time for me to confront the possibility that my favorite crazed murderer might not be the most upstanding citizen?
It ends with Haruka being kidnapped, (nothing out of character there), and Akiyama saving her. He and Haruka make their way to Japan for the big ole concert Park had been planning. Wow this story is really picking up! I hope nothing grinds it to a sudden stop!
Part 3 final thoughts: God this was amazing, every step of it. My only complaint is I wanted more, more Akiyama and MORE dancing but I might be the only one who wanted 40 more hours of dancing. Detective Akiyama and Haruka duo was not the team I knew I needed but Im glad it happened. I found all of the music and gameplay here SO fun and I loved the plot too. I really liked Parks character. I wouldn't necessarily hang out with her, but I found her to be pretty well written and its hard to hate anyone Haruka clearly treasures, I am very sad she is actually dead because up until the end of the game I kept thinking she was going to come back.
Part 4: Shinada:
We have come to a sudden stop. We start with a flashback to 1997 where Shinada has debuted as a baseball player for the wyverns, don't forget this moment because the rest of this section of the game constantly calls back to it. In the modern day Shinada is a loser who is really heavily indebt and lives in a weird grimey rooftop shack. He also now writes like ? smut articles ? And he's friend with a girl named Milky which is the craziest name I've ever heard. A loanshark who talks about his kids a lot constantly follows Shinada around and takes his money. There was a lot of promise with this gag, like maybe instead of letting me keep the 100k and still acting like I'm broke he shows up after every side mission to rob me but nope. At the end of the chapter we run into a masked man who is frankly just Daigo stealing Kiryu's disguise idea.
Shinada and loanshark (his name is Takasugi) walk around town looking for leads on uncovering the truth of Shinada's past. Because you see, Shinada one time got fired from baseball cuz everyone thought he cheated, oh you already knew that? yeah same but don't worry you'll hear it at least 40 more times. Daigo asked him to go look for clues about this, why does he care? I still don't know honestly. Takasugi is forcing him to go because...I guess money? and he's walking around with me and were acting like friends now for some reason. Shinada is incapable of having any agency for himself, he just does what people tell him to. He also keeps nearly dying like a looney tunes character with shit falling out of the sky and stuff. Eventually we find out the Nagoya family fixed the match and then some guy Shinada used to know does get smashed like a looney tunes character. Skip ahead, were called to help by Milky and she betrayed us. I am sad cuz I thought Milky was a friend for life. Turns out literally everyone Shinada knows aside from the fkn loanshark are evil, even the old baseball lady. This plot was so convoluted I frankly don't understand why they were doing what they were doing, all I know is they were more like a neighborhood watch situation then Yakuza even though they seemed to do the exact same thing. Also when I say literally everyone he knows is evil I mean everyone, even his old coach or whatever. For way too long I thought they meant the middle school baseball coach so I was hella confused. Anyways we then find out that actually Takasugi is Shinada's number one baseball fan. Okay? Anyways
Chapter 4 things finally pick up a little. Daigo reveals himself like anyone ever was doubting it was him, and he also reveals he cares because he went to highschool with Shinada. Is that fr how were connecting this? Daigo got expelled from highschool because he protected Shinada from a rival school. Once again, okay? I guess Shinada doesn't like that Daigo is a yakuza and punches him out the door. I wasn't a fan of this. Daigo goes down pretty easily, pitiful Daigo strikes again. I love him but can he do anything right? Anyways I guess the fight meant nothing cuz they're pals now and go to Tokyo together. We get a cut to Takasugi getting his money back from Shinada as well as a signed baseball...okay that's really cute I nearly cried. I wish they actually left it there but instead Shinada runs away last minute to meet up on that stupid baseball field from 1997 that we cant go 5 minutes without hearing about and we fight this guy named Sawada who was like the kind of mastermind and also the pitcher. Had Sawada not thrown an easy pitch, Shinada wouldn't have hit it and thus been kicked out for cheating. We fight some Omi then play baseball and OMG WHY ARE WE DOING THISSSSSS
Finally it ends and we go to Tokyo
Shinada final thoughts: If you cant tell I was not a fan of this. I found Shinada to be really inconsitently written. In side missions or when he's playing off of certain characters he's quite entertaining and un, but most of the time, he seems to just be a blank slate who does whatever and only talks about baseball. And omg maybe if I liked baseball this would have been the best thing ever but we did not need THAT much baseball talk or constant referencing to that baseball game in 1997. I get its central to his character but it became a meme how often he'd get misty eyed and talk about getting kicked out. Why did he move Nagoya to escape his image as a cheating baseball player when 1) he constantly talks about it anyways, 2) everyone literally knows who he is here anyways. They make it seem like at first he wants nothing to do with baseball anymore but he also goes to the batting cages all the time and also thinks about nothing but baseball. The plot here is just SO hard to follow and not at all what I want to be dealing with after we were really in the thick of things with part 3's ending. I'm not saying it was impossible for this to be good, I think there was so much potential here! Like seemingly all of Yakuza 4, the concepts are there but the execution is iffy. I think it's biggest downfall is when it happens. It would have made so much more sense to make the last section before the finale the Haruka section. Shinada would have felt much better to play as maybe as a part two or even a part three, but NOT part four. The odds were stacked against him being amongst a cast of characters that I already know and love. I definitely was more of a Tanimura fan, but I liked Shinada as a person. His inconsistent writing, unfortunate story, and tendency to be a little annoying really dragged this part of the game down for me.
Part 5: The Finale
This finale is crazyyyyyyy so strap in. I would expect nothing less then insanity from this game. First Kiryu shows up in Kamurocho WERE HOME BABYYYYYY. Were being followed by BABA!! I missed him. We fight for fun or something then we cut to Saejima who is meeting with the detective who tells us we gotta find Morinaga. OH YEAH THAT GUY. So we go to the Florist and we go to the arena only to find... AIZAWA??? The fuck? I thought Morinaga fuckin killed him cold blooded and made me think he was a cool as fuck villain. Only to find out that GASP Morinaga is actually dead. At this point I literally don't believe it because I guess I was in my era of not believing anyone ever dies.
We go to Akiyama who is told by Osaka ceo to not let Haruka perform. Akiayam says hell no. We also find out that Park and him planned to make Haruka and T-set a group and debut them at the same time but I somehow missed this when playing and didnt realize that till way leter. ANYWAY At some point we also see the CEO doing naked push ups in his penthouse which was so weird. ALSO there is a Date-san reveal. The scream I screamt! I didn't know I missed him or needing him so much in a game till I saw him again. Usually I'm wondering why he's even there or what he adds but I finally get it now, he adds being Date to the table and that's all you need.
Then I do a tower sweep at Kamurocho hills and OMG is this what Majima was building the whole time? To be fully honest it's beautiful and im very proud but its so different and lowkey off-putting. Kind of like Majima himself. I miss him. A whole game and I only be hearing about him second hand its not fair. Question, did literally anyone choose Saejima to do the tower sweep? Anyway were on the top of the tower; Kiryu, Saejima, CEO Katsuya, and Watase. We all have to fight eachother to draw out the one true bad guy and also cuz this is a yakuza game, so off our shirts go and everyone fights. Basically everyone gets shot and the bad guy is revealed... THE DETECTIVE. Who saw it coming? I still kept thinking Park would come back or Morinaga but by this point I was definitely suspecting him too. I don't fully get why he's doing all this but long story short he's purging both the Omi and Tojo of nice? Yakuza? I guess? I think it mostly has to do with him making way for his son to inherit a role in everything but thats not further explored till later. Not to worry tho! Daigo has shown up!!!! But because he is Daigo you should definitely be worried because once again he cant do anything right and he gets shot by Kanai. God dammit Daigo. He is now in critical condition, this is the SECOND TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED DAIGO. He's such a damsel in distress, never change.
Baba tells Haruka the message Kiryu had for her, to never give up. He also asks her to come with him to convince to Kiryu to chillax but she refuses. Sad for no one but me. At the New Serena, where that absolute BOP of a song is blaring, Kiryu is sleeping, while the rest of the crew are chilling and chatting. I forgot to mention Akiyama and Shinada briefly teamed up but frankly who cares. Shinada talks about baseball alot here too just incase you were worried he wouldnt. They conclude that detective bad guy is gonna attack Haruka's concert which I will NEVER allow. I guess Shinada's purpose here is actually tha the knows the stadiuk layout pretty well which I will buy in to. Also I believe here Haruka gets told about her and t-set being a band together now called Dreamline. I also dont love this. The idea of it is fine, Im all for a disney channel original movie plot where the bullies are actually great and we all become friends at the end but the issue is they don't properly develop T-set to do that. The short haired girl gets one little moment of being somewhat nice to Haruka then the very next time I see her she's stepping on my boss's broach and making me beg on my knees like sorry but it's really hard to come around on liking them. Even now when Haruka stumbles duing practice they're rude! This is a tragic ending if anything but Haruka seems happy I guess... Dont worry they will be nothing more then Haruka's glorifed backup dancers.
Okay final chapter, and it's a doozy. We send Shinada of all people to go help Haruka at the stadium, I know i just said I get he knows the layout of the stadium but like :( he's literally the only one who hasn't met her. I guess they don't end up interacting really anyways. Saejima is going to go after Majima because btw he's alive and at the top of the millenium tower. Akiyama and Kiryu stay on the ground to defend against attackers and they probably punch/ kick at least 10000 men. All the while Haruka gives her concert. But Baba is lurking and gonna shoot her, I thought he learned to be good again but whatever. Him and Shinada end up having a confrontation that ends in Baba losing and he's about to kill himself when !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my prison besties and the wardon show and up stop him! Oh my god I loved that so much what a nice resolution for Baba and I love that those guys went straight to a Jpop concert just for their pal. Meanwhile Saejima confronts Detective evil man on top of the millenium tower and !!! there he is, finally Majima is here. But he is not having a good time, turns out he's allowed himself to be captured and tortured for the sake of Haruka and now Majima and Saejima have to fight for the same reason. Then! Daigo shows up, while im literally begging him to actually shoot the bad guy but instead they all talk. Haruka is safe from harm (Baba wouldn't have done that shit anyways) and we officially learn about the plot of him attempting to put his son in charge of everything. Kiryu goes to Tojo headquarters to stop whoever this suspicious son is and Akiyama fights Kanai. Then literally all our friends ever show up to help and that was damn cute.
Kiryu shows up and it's eerie, completely silent with dead people everywhere. We go to the meeting room and the guy behind it all along was Aizawa. I definitely did not see that coming because I forgot he existed. But I suppose thats the point, he was so unassuming. I guess that means Morinaga actually was dead all along. We fight Aizawa while Haruka sings a song that seems very pointed at Kiryu wins (duh) but he is not doing well and tries to make his way through the streets. Meanwhile Haruka announces her retirement because she cant hide who she is or stay away from her family any longer and runs away to find Kiryu and THE GAME ENDS. Other games gave me a after credits scene that somewhat eased my concerns, but 5 is a overall very sad game and it's scene is her managing to him but he's bleeding out in the streets and falls unconcious in her arms.
Finale final thoughts: This was quite the finale! It was much better then Shinada's section but it was still a bit messy and left a lot of plot threads up in the air or had some unfortunate revelations. Nothing bad but things I think shouldve maybe been revealed earlier, like Aizawa. Only finding out with like 20 minutes of the game to go makes it feel too empty or even rushed when we know this game is otherwise not rushed at all. I was a little sad about the ending, I don't think it was bad at all I was just sad. The whole time I imagined it ending with the whole gang going to Haruka's concert and having a good time. For once I dont think the game fully dropped the ball on the finale like they tend to do so I commend it for that.
TLDOverall plot final thoughts: As a whole this is one of the most well written Yakuza stories since Yakuza 3 (obviously in my opinion). I can see that for some people all the plot twists and surprises might have felt like too much but I loved it, I never once could predict where this game was going. Morinaga dying off screen was such a let down and missed opportunity, at the end of Kiryu's section I was thinking he was going to be the best Yakuza villain in awhile but instead he went out in such a lame way. I do kinda wonder who killed him, I assumed it was just the detective guy but Aizawa seemed at least somewhat sad about Morinaga's death. I wonder if that was all a show? Another thing I dislike not just because of how it went, but also that it ended up going no where, Mayumi. They made quite the big deal about her at first and I do like the plot twist that she was a spy, but she wasn't even really acting any different when she was in spy mode and in normal mode. Plus you literally never see her again. I think Saejima's section was just very reminicent of his in 4, but done well. Aside from it taking quite so long to get to the city, by the time you leave it feels slightly rushed. I think the chapter in the woods didnt need to be its own thing. Absolutely no notes with Haruka, only that I'm sad this is all we will see of Park, I found her to be a really interesting character. Akiyama is where my main issues arise, only because I really do think he needed his whole section. He felt a little tacked on otherwise when I think he really didn't need to feel that way. I had hoped he would be part of half of Haruka's section then half of Shinada's where he is used to introduce us to Shinada as a character. But instead we get dropped into that like nothing. I know im probably the only one who cares about Hana this much but I really wish we got more of her. I basically said all my issues with Shinada at the end of his section but once again, I really didn't enjoy that plot. The finale was a mess and unfortunatly left at quite a cliff hanger which I wouldve rather it didn't but Im also okay with how it did. Some other things I wanted in this game was MORE MAJIMA I get why he wasnt for narrative purposes but Im gonna say that in every game. I wouldve loved more Okinawa orphan content. That being said there is way more content for them in this then in Y4 which is wild considering we spent like 5 seconds in Okinawa during a flashback and you never actually see them. It was so nice to hear what theyre up to second hand and some of the side missions expand on them a little more but I am devastated they werent there.
Lastly to briefly compare it to Y4, as they do feel like connected games. Y5 realy does feel like they took all of the concepts of the 4th game that needed to be reworked, and then re-did them to be better. The villains are better, prison break outs are better, and just like way more. I do think there are things in Y5 that are lacking compared to Y4, like general atmosphere, and I do think Tanimura's section in 4, as flawed as it is, is better then Shinadas. Akiyama's in 5 is great, but I love his in Y4 more simply because he doesn't have to share the spotlight. But I really have to emphasize, story and character are done better in Y5, ATMOSPHERE is done so much better in Y5.
TLDR for the TLDR: I liked this game :)
And there you have it, the longest goddamn review of all time. It was a really great game and I wish I could play it for the first time again because it was just SUCH a great experience. If you read this far I am so impressed by you and eternally grateful you even cared to. Please let me know your thoughts! I'm so excited to talk about this game with people. As for my rating, It was going to be a 10/10 until I got to Shinada's section now I'm in between an 8 or a 9. Ill just say 8/10 to be mean.
I am already neck deep in Yakuza 0 so I'm excited to write a much shorter review for that one soon.
Thank you for reading!

Anna Megill, Lead Writer:
QA Tester: Cyberlore Studios, 2004 - 2004:

• Quality Assurance: Playboy: The Mansion.

Various roles: Smith College, 2004-2008.

• Technology Wrangler.
• Provided tutoring and training in technology.
• Advised students on academic paper writing, and taught workshops on grammar and style.
• Editing.

Writers/QA Lead: Pileated Pictures May, 2007 - Sep 2009.

• Writers/QA Lead: Littlest Pet Shop: Marketing and game text, also editing.
• Writers/QA Lead: Planet Cazmo.
• Quality Assurance Insecticide: Primary in-house tester.

Lotcheck QA: Nintendo, 2009 - 2010.

• Editing game text and manuals.
• Compliance testing for all titles.

Writers/QA Editors ArenaNet LLC, Mar 2010 - Sep 2012.

• Writers/QA Editors: Guild Wars.
• Writers/QA Editors: Guild Wars 2.

Writers/Narrative Designers: Murdered: Soul Suspect.
Writers: Ubisoft, May 2014 - Aug 2014:

• Writing for Assassin's Creed Victory/Syndicate (Uncredited on final game).

Creative Director: Project Untold, Nov 2014 - Jan 2015:

• Writing, editing and marketing text for unreleased projects.

Writers/Narrative Designers: Cynixy LLC, Jan 2015 - Jan 2017:

• Writing, editing for interactive media projects, websites, games and installations.
• Work for Arkane Studios, Exploding Rogue Studios (TTRPGs), the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and George Washington University.
• Writing and editing for promotional materials and news releases.
• Ghostwriting.
• Editing.

External Writers: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider.
Pre-Production Narrative Lead: Control:

• Writers on Control: AWE.

Lead Narrative Designers: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

• Left in January 2021.

Former Lead WriteNarrative Lead: Fable:

• Left in Ausust 2023.

August 2023 - prior to joining CDPR: Unknown.
Non-Fiction:
Writer: The Game Writing Guide.
Writer: The Pocket Mentor for Video Game Writers.
Alexander Freed, Writer:
Started off writing short fiction.
Freelance Game Designer, 2002-2006:

• Writing for TTRPGs, developing IP, and editing for various companies, including Alderac Entertainment Group, Bastion Press, CCP/White Wolf Publishing, Dream Pod 9, The Inner Circle, Morrigan Press, and Steve Jackson Games.
• Worked on Tribe 8, Mage Intruders Encounters With the Abyss, The Complete Book of Denizens, Secrets of the Ruined Temple, Omni Eco and Astral Realms.

Senior Writer and Managing Editor: Star Wars: The Old Republic:

• Original Lead Writer on Rise of the Hutt Cartel left prior to the release of the DLC.
• Freelance Writer on Galactic Starfighter, Shadow of Revan and Knights of the Fallen Empire.
• (Base game) Alongside Hall Hood, he assisted Lead Writer Daniel Erickson in managing the rest of the writing team.
• Lead WriteManager Imperial Agent class storyline and its content during Rise of the Hutt Cartel.
• Wrote three articles for the game's website including one about how to write something within the Star Wars universe and an introduction to the Imperial Agent class.
• Involved with the creation of a large amount of non-class specific content
• Wrote much of the Imperial storyline on Makeb.
• Wrote Wrote KOTFE Chapter 10 Anarchy in Paradise.

Shadow Realms (Canceled game):

• Initial IP and design conception alongside the Lead Designer and Creative Director.

Co-Writer: Star Wars: Uprising.
Editor: The Banner Saga 2.
Editor: Tyranny.
Additional Design: Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Worked on Shuyan Saga.
Writers: Star Wars: Battlefront 2.
Freelance Writer and later Studio Writing Director: Fogbank Entertainment, 2017 - 2020:

• Wrote the entirety of the Eternal City.
• Reviewed final scripts for all their games/shows.
• Wrote additional content for their Storyscape app.

Additonal Design: Anthem.
Additional Writing: Wasteland 3.
Senior Writer: Battlefield 2042.
Freelance Writing/Narrative Design/Consultation for various studios:

• Ranging from AAA to Indie.
• WB Games Montreal, Archetype Entertainment, ZeniMax and others.

Comics/Graphic Novels:
Writer: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Blood of the Empire.
Writer: Star Wars: The Old Republic, Lost Suns.
Scriptwriter: Dragon Age: The Silent Grove.
Scriptwriter: Dragon Age: Those Who Speak.
Scriptwriter: Dragon Age: Until We Sleep.
Writer: Star Wars Purge: The Tyrant's Fist (Story arc).
Writers: Anthem: Strong Alone, Stronger Together.
Writer: Assasin's Creed Valhalla: Forgotten Myths.
Writer: Violet Dawn.
Books:
Writer: Battlefront: Twilight Company.
Writer: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Novelization).
Writer: Alphabet Squadron.
Writer: Shadow Fall.
Writer: Victory's Price.
Short Stories:
Writer: The Last Battle of Colonel Jace Malcom.
Writer: One Thousand Levels Down.
Writer: The End of History.
Writer: Contingency Plan.
Writer: The Man Who Built Cloud City.
Wrote original short fiction for magazines and anthologies:

• including the magazine Interzone and the anthologies The Book of More Flesh (Eden Studios), Path of the Just (Guardians of Order), and Robots and Time (Altair Australia).

Non-Fiction:
Published articles on Gamasutra.
Wrote blog entries on his personal website.
.
They also have several of the Cyberpunk 2077 writers still at the company, though most of them seem to be working on The Witcher 4, and Mike Pondsmith will likely be involved with the game's development.

Hi gainers,
I have just finished running Super Squats by Randall J. Strossen and wanted to share my results. There are plenty of discussions of this program out there already, but I figured sharing my experience with the program can't hurt and can hopefully be interesting, or maybe even useful to someone. This was my first time running a "proper" program (i.e. one designed by a prefessional) and it has been by far the most productive training block I have done so far. Since I am a beginner, I'm not calling this a review (I don't have the training experience to offer any kind of expert opinion). This post is meant rather to show my results as a beginner on the program and to share some of my thoughts about it.
[Before, 82kgs, 10 April 2024](https://imgur.com/a/super-squats-before-82kg-10-04-2024-PvPBvIl). NSFW. Pics taken the day after the first workout.
[After, 86kgs, 18 May 2024](https://imgur.com/a/loPa07y). NSFW. Pics taken the day after the last workout.
Background:
M30, 6'2", no athletic background. Typical denizen of this sub in that I could always eat loads and not put on weight blah blah blah. Worked out in my teens with weights in my room but never maintained a consistent schedule long enough to see significant results. Fast forward to 2 years ago when I started doing bodyweight workouts at home and making an effort to gain weight. Had some success and then started going to the gym at the start of this year. Did a 4 day/week UppeLower split with some success. My weight had fluctuated between a very skinny 67kgs to around 73kgs throughout my twenties. Prior to running Super Squats I had already bulked from 74kgs at the start of December to 82kgs at the start of April (I started taking creatine in January which definitely contributed to this weight gain).
The Program:
Super Squats is a book, which is short (less than 100 pages) and contains everything you need to run the program. Although the book was written in 1989, the routine it outlines is based on old-school squatting programs utilized by strongmen from the 1920s onwards. A chapter is devoted to this history of squats, the "master exercise". There are a couple of anachronisms (my favourite is referring to the hamstrings as "thigh biceps") but overall it is well-written and presented.
The program itself is a six week full-body routine, with the choice to run it 2 or 3 days per week. I won't spell out the whole program here (just buy the book), but the core of the routine is, of course, a single set of twenty heavy squats, with the trainee taking at least three deep breaths between each rep. The squats are supersetted with a set of light pullovers or Rader chest pulls to stretch the rib cage. The starting weight for the squats is a weight you can do for 10 reps (and yes, you really do twenty reps with that weight) and the program stipulates that you must add at least 5lbs/2.5kgs every single workout. The program is fairly light on volume (especially if you run it 2 days per week like I did) but what it lacks in volume, it more than makes up in intensity.
There is no way around it: heavy, high-rep squats are deeply, profoundly, brutally unpleasant. There is no stipulation for rep cadence or how long the set should take, you can take as long as you like, but completing 20 reps with good form will require having the bar on your back for at least 3-4 minutes. From week 2 onwards, the single set of squats always took me more than 5 minutes (and it always felt much longer).
Performing warm-up sets slowly and deliberately was crucially important. Before I even got to the warm-up sets I performed a few reps of touchdown-squats on a box, and a few more of goblet squats with a light kettlebell, opening my hips against a resistance band to prime my glutes and quads.
Super Squats is the embodiment of "mind over matter". The book has a whole section on mindset and positive visualization to help trainees to manage the seemingly impossible task of squatting a 10-rep weight for 20 reps. It sounds stupid, but by the second half of the program, I had gotten into a ritual of giving the bar a firm slap, as a jockey would slap his racehorse, before I started the set, cementing my effort to view the bar not as an enemy to overcome but as a friend helping me to achieve my goals.
Reps 11 and 12 were usually the hardest. By the time I got to ten reps my legs were already trembling. My whole body was drenched in sweat, the weight of the bar impossibly heavy resting on my traps, crushing my whole body into the ground. Time had slowed to a crawl, and the thought that I was only half way would be enough to sap my resolve if I let it. Once I got to rep 13, comfortably more than halfway, I no longer had to think about breathing. I was sucking in great lungfuls of air automatically and heaving them out so hard I sprayed the mirror in front of me with droplets of spit (yes, of course I wiped it down afterwards). Once I got to rep 17 I knew I had the set in the bag. No matter how tortuous those last three reps, no matter how long they took, no matter how many heaving breaths I had to take, I could do 3 more reps.
During week 2 I had what I think is the closest I've ever had to an out-of-body experience. It was as if I was watching someone else perform the agonizing reps while I talked myself through the rest of the set: "Breathe, good, deeper, you've got this, next rep, nice. Keep going".
Breathing is the key. The book talks at length about the importance of deep breathing throughout the set. Pretty quickly, I found that deep breathing was the only way to keep from passing out or collapsing mid set, though as I said, deep breathing becomes automatic about halfway through the set (there's simply no other way to stay upright with the weight on your back). A very helpful tip from the book is to suck in an extra gulp of air on top of your already full lungs for each of the last reps.
If all this sounds a bit exaggerated, try the program and see for yourself. But I'm not trying to put anyone off with this description, quite the opposite! The great thing about Super Squats is that the difficulty of the squats is directly proportional to the feeling of giddy elation upon completing the set. I always felt great after the set, and rode the feeling of accomplishment for the rest of the day. The program really pushes you beyond the boundaries of what you think you can do.
My Progress:
I started the squats at quite a low weight of just 40kg. The book recommends erring on the side of starting too light, and then adding more weight if needed, so that is what I did. Remember, the program stipulates a minimum increase of 5lbs/2.5kgs per workout, but there's nothing saying you can't add more. Once I realized the weight was too light (I managed 21 reps for the first workout) I simply increased the weight by 10kgs on the second workout and continued with the 2.5kg increases from there.
Before starting Super Squats I had had a two week break from training due to illness, so I started with too-low weights (I exceeded the target rep range on all exercises). So I increased the weight by 5-10kgs depending on the exercise for the second workout. The program has varying set numbers and rep ranges for different exercises. As a general rule, I increased the weight once I could hit the target rep range for the first two sets of each exercise, but I did not stick to this rule every workout.
The only thing I stuck to was the minimum increase of 2.5kgs for the squats every workout. I managed this consistently until the final week, when I failed on the eccentric of the tenth rep with a weight of 77.5kgs (a 5kg increase on the previous workout). My legs just gave way and I could not get back up. I did two more sets to make sure that I at least performed more total reps than the previous workout. Then, in the last workout, I amazed myself by succesfully performing all 20 reps with the same weight. Definitely the hardest set I have ever done, and I was completely finished afterwards, but the highlight of the program for sure.
Other ups and downs: I lost reps on Bench and Bent-over Rows on both workouts of week five, but got them back in week six and set new PRs on both. A good reminder that progress is rarely linear. My left knee started hurting in the last week, but thankfully the pain hasn't persisted. I guess my form might have broken down a bit too much in one of the last workouts.
Diet:
The book's diet advice is very simple: lots of calories and protein, with the majority coming from healthy whole food sources. Nothing surprising there. The book has two recommendations in addition to meals for achieving these goals: milk and shakes. The book doesn't use the GOMAD acronym, but that's basically what it boils down to: a recommended minimum of 2 quarts (about 2 litres) per day in addition to meals and snacks, with a recommendation to increase to up to a gallon (nearly 4 litres) per day if you can.
I was somewhat surprised to see that the book recommends home-made mass gainer shakes for trainees who struggle to eat enough solid food (the book refers to them as "blender bombs" which I think sounds much cooler).
I am not vegetarian, but I don't eat meat very often. I live with my fiancee, who doesn't like meat, and since we eat dinner, the main meal of the day, together, we eat a lot of plant-based meat substitutes. I did, however, eat meat more often than usual during the program. My typical diet looks something like this:
Breakfast: Usually muesli, with seeds, fruit (apple or banana), yoghurt, and a scoop of unflavoured whey protein.
Lunch: Usually eggs, fried or scrambled in butter, served with wilted spinach on wholemeal toast or with pasta and pesto. If not eggs then leftovers from last night's dinner. My local supermarkets do a rangle of reasonably healthy frozen meals and during the program I ate these a couple of times per week, always going for chicken dishes with plenty of vegetables.
Dinner: Something based around the aforementioned meat substitutes. Favourites include spaghetti bolognese (with plenty of cheese of course), chili with black beans, sour cream and guacomole served with rice, and burgers with fries for a "junk"/"dirty" option.
I don't count calories but I do roughly track protein, aiming for 2g per kg bodyweight and topping up with whey protein as needed.
During Super Squats, I upped my creatine dosage from 3.5g/day to 5g/day, added extra snacks to the above diet (nuts, dark chocolate etc.) and also milk and shakes as the book suggests. For the first three weeks I had a daily shake consisting of whey protein, milk, cocoa powder, banana, peanut butter and oats. The shakes helped with weight gain, but they proved unsustainable, as they led to some, er, digestive issues. Ok, they gave me explosive diarrhoea. See [this review of Super Squats](https://empire-barbell.com/2021/07/23/super-squats-review-of-the-legendary-20-rep-squat-program/) in which the author recounts ingesting a shake according to the book's recipe before starting a work shift and shitting himself during the shift, lol.
I hadn't really drank milk for several years prior to the program (I tend to prefer oat milk with my muesli) but I did increase my milk consumption slowly over the six weeks. For most of the duration I drank a couple of glasses per day, totalling only about 500ml -1 litre. Only in the last week did I make a serious effort to drink at least 2 litres per day. Turns out it's really easy to drink a lot of milk, and a very cost-efficient way to get lots of extra calories and protein. Who knew haha.
Rest and Recovery:
I've been having trouble sleeping lately, which was the reason I opted to do the program 2 days per week from the beginning (the book recommends starting with 3 days and dropping down to 2 if you find you can't recover sufficiently between workouts). I was a very deep sleeper as a child but those days are long gone and these days the slightest noise seems to be enough to wake me. My fiancee gets up early for work during the week (her alarm goes off at 4:45am), ivariably waking me before it does her, and we have a cat, who tends, as cats do, to go crazy in the small hours (her new favourite thing is scratching frantically on the closet doors). I've tired everything I can think of short of getting rid of the cat, which I'm not willing to do for the sake of gains. Hopefully she will mellow as she gets older. If nothing else, I guess it's good practice for when we become parents lol. Suffice to say it's rare that I get an uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep.
I tried to do everything within my power to get as good sleep as I could (making an effort to get to bed earlier, playing with the cat to tire her out, etc.). I still made good gains despite overall poor sleep, but there were definitely some days when I could have gotten to bed earlier.
What I liked about the program:
Super Squats is a simple, easy-to follow program which is practically guranteed to lead to growth. The non-negotiable nature of progression from workout to workout gives a strong incentive to eat enough and get enough rest. I seriously can't see how someone could follow this program, increasing the weight as prescribed, and not grow.
Another thing I liked was making significant progress over a short timeframe while only training 2 days per week, leaving more time for life outside the gym.
By far the biggest benefit of the program, hower, is the lessons it imparts and the mental toughness it inculcates. Lessons you can only learn by standing under the crushing weight of the bar for 20 reps. Put simply, you are capable of more than you think you are, and this program teaches you that in a way that words never could. I feel that I now inderstand intensity as a training variable far more deeply than I did before the program. After running Super Squats I understand why it is so often recommended to beginners.
What I didn't like about the program:
The individual workouts took far too long. This was by far the biggest thing I disliked about the program. The book claims that the Basic Routine should take less than an hour to complete, but I found that I rarely completed a workout in less than 90 minutes, and several times it took me a full 2 hours. Granted, this was partly due to training in a busy McGym, where waiting for equipment is often a factor, and I feel like I spend half my life searching for locking collars, but even so, the long workouts were grinding. Another big factor is just how exhausted you are after that set of squats. I often felt like I was moving in slo-mo, with the stiff-legged deadlifts (themselves no easy exercise) and calf and ab work still to get through.
The other main negative factor was how daunting the squats are. I rarely looked forward to workouts, and often actively dreaded them. I really had to psyche myself up to go to the gym on this program, despite knowing that I would feel great after my workout. That next set of squats was always looming ahead menacingly.
What I would do differently:
The biggest thing I would change is doing the milk properly from the beginning. By "doing the milk" I mean drinking at least the recommended 2 quarts per day. I would also probably leave the shakes out, and make an effort to eat cleaner. I kind of gave myself free reign to cut corners and do what it takes to gain on the program (spooning peanut butter from the jar and ice cream from the tub, eating "junk" meals like burgers and fries or frozen pizzas a couple of times a week, etc.).
I would have chosen a different abs exercise. I did hollow-body crunches, but since these can't be loaded (as far as I know) I had to resort to adding extra reps and then an extra set to add progressive overload. It would have been smarter and more time-efficient to simply choose a weighted abs exercise and increase the load each workout.
I could have been more diligent about consistenly increasing weight/reps on all exercises other than the squats. I feel my progress on the other lifts could have been better.
The book does not mention cardio, and in fact states that trainees should move as little as possible outside of training to allow for maximum recovery. I will definitely add some light cardio in the form of walking the next time I run the program (thanks to u/MythicalStrength for pointing out that since the program is based on old-school principles, it is likely assumed that pretty much everyone would have been doing a fair bit of walking before lifestyles became so sedentary in developed countries). Over the weekend between weeks five and six my mother came to visit, and in the course of showing her around my city I did a lot of walking that weekend (15k steps each day). I think this may have contributed to the failure on the first workout of week 6 by eating into my recovery. Ideally, I would just do, say, a 30-40 minute walk on off days throughout the program.
Most of all, I would trust the process. Of course this is easy to say with hindsight, but there was a point in weeks 3-4 where I got quite demotivated, felt like I coudn't notice the program working (of course not - visual changes take longer than a couple of weeks!) and felt quite tired out from all the eating, so I ended up eating a bit less for about a week in the middle of the program, which quite possibly contributed to the strength losses in week 5. Again, progress isn't linear, but if you stick to the program over six weeks it will pay off.
Conclusion/Next Steps:
Running Super Squats over the last six weeks has been without a doubt the most physically and mentally challenging thing I have ever done, but the payoff has been well worth it. 4kgs gained in 6 weeks and invaluable lessons learned. I'm going to have to go clothes shopping and replace most of my wardrobe. Shirts and T-shirts that were loose are now tight, and my old slim-fit T-shirts now look comically small. Even my straight-leg jeans are now tight fitting (my fiancee said the other day, "Those jeans are a bit tight on you now, huh? But your bum looks great!").
Being on the taller side, I still have quite a lot of frame to fill out, and I still have a lot to learn about training. I will definitely be running Super Squats again in future. I am especially interested in running the Abbreviated Program, consisting of only the squats, pullovers/Rader chest pulls, bench, and bent-over rows. This would solve the problem of workouts being too long, but I imagine it would be extremely challenging, since you should increase the weight on all exercises each workout, not just the squats. With bench and bent-over rows offering less overall muscle fibre recruitment than squats, and 2.5kgs being the smallest weight increase logistically possible (in my gym, anyway), I imagine that this would be challenging in the extreme.
The book suggests running a strength-building training block after the 20-rep squat program, consisting of more sets with lower rep ranges. It even suggests alternating between six weeks on the 20-rep squat program and six on the strength-building program, extending Super Squats well past the initial six weeks. While this approach is intriguing, I want to try something different, and I would rather have more training days in the week in return for shorter individual workouts.
I've ordered a copy of 5/3/1 and will probably run 531 for Beginners, and then see which template I run after that. I have my eye on the BBB Beefcake 3 Month Challenge, but I'll see when I get there. For now, I'm going to dial back on the eating, to around maintenance levels, for at least a couple of weeks (I need a break from stuffing myself all day).
In the meantime, I can't recommend Super Squats enough! You will surprise yourself on this program.
Well, that turned into a huge wall of text. Thanks very much for taking the time to read if you got this far!

I want a small cage to bring my budgies outside for a little and I was thinking of this one:
The bar spacing is half an inch which I am getting mixed reviews on if its too big or not. Does anyone have suggestions on similar travel size cages?
https://www.amazon.com/Prevue-Pet-Products-Travel-Carriedp/B074FCFG7K/ref=sr_1_7?crid=26EDNSF62VRQ0&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.R-mhovCJUevyAaBXnZxapsDaN-nFci3-IYnFzOIb_dsDufoAOXmJ8EC6ULi-cM2ANs5zP0_qQWht8VBxKQn8GcguQXb6u-uLAR0PrvwnSv1G2tsAOVytSjmbt_JHtnx30bhga9QtDR32ij0Uadp3lu9f3c4N_9gqzmuqIoVP9BUPG0LuRaUHa7NsUjapk6qdC1GfIG-EXrnEVGqmgmVd1a71nC_BAXUaRLQrKIF4R5XjKe2phUbcriJScyrVpqzA3Y4MsZJoZ0Gw4B31TikVjPyndmudjg5tQoRuqY8Ys_U.SQI6tQns-yL-FAIKjXGx4HDc2-yPPw6PXWtf6bcLl48&dib_tag=se&keywords=portable+bird+cage&qid=1716125806&s=pet-supplies&sprefix=portable+bird+ca%2Cpets%2C93&sr=1-7

Last Updated List: 19/05/2024
 
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.

• To trade you must respond to this thread first, I will not respond or accept anyone outside of this thread, only exception are unless we've traded more than once before.
• Only interested in trading for games on Steam.
• I don't do Humble gifts whether receiving or giving, all my keys are in unrevealed form right after purchase.
• No interest in any keys from an unofficial retailesource (aka grey market), curatoreviewer keys (aka beta/reviewebeta-testing/etc.), abandonware, keys for games that are already free on Steam itself, Steam profile-limited keys, and only slight interest in VR-titles and/or de-listed games (no banned games).
• Anything marked as wishlist/paypal, it's self-explanatory and I won't look through lists.
• All my keys are EU keys, if you are outside of EU, make sure you double check for any region locks for your country. For quite a few which I was aware of I already listed the region lock, however this is not my responsibility as I did specify the key's region.
• When buying, I only accept payments in Euro's. Minimum purchase of €1,00. Fees are on buyer.

If you're either trading or buying please state the game(s) you are interested in and your offer (game(s)/list/price).
 
Info:

• Region (and keys region): Europe
  
• IGS Rep Page
  
• SteamTrades
  
• SteamRep
  

 
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
 
List of games:

• 100% Orange Juice
• 16bit Trader
• 20XX
• 4089: Ghost Within
• 9 Years of Shadows
• 911 Operator
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• A Game of Changes
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• Fall of Porcupine (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Fantasy Kingdom Simulator
• FAR: Lone Sails
• Fast & Furious: Spy Racers Rise of SH1FT3R
• Feel-A-Maze
• Fight'N Rage
• Figment
• Finding Paradise
• Firelight Fantasy: Resistance
• First Class Trouble
• Fishermurs
• Flashback
• Fly O'Clock
• For The King
• Forgive me Father
• Fred3ric
• Frederic: Evil Strikes Back
• Frederic: Resurrection of Music
• From Space
• Frostpunk
• Fury Unleashed
• Garden In!
• Garfield Kart
• Garfield Kart - Furious Racing
• Generation Zero
• Get In The Car, Loser!
• Gloria Victis
• Going Under
• Golden Light
• Golf It!
• Gone: Survival
• Good Night, Knight
• Gotham Knights (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Graveyard Keeper
• Gray Dawn
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Guts and Glory
• GYLT (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
• Hamilton's Great Adventure
• Hands of Necromancy
• Hard West
• Heads Will Roll
• Hell Pie
• Hellbound
• HELLCARD
• Hellslave
• Hi-Fi RUSH (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
• Homestead Arcana
• Home Sweet Home
• Homeworld Remastered Collection
• Honey, I Joined a Cult
• Hue
• Human Fall Flat
• I Am Fish
• Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure
• ICEY
• Inertial Drift
• Inexistence Rebirth
• Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
• Internet Cafe Simulator 2
• Interstellar Space: Genesis
• Is Simon There?
• ITORAH
• Jagged Alliance: Rage!
• JANITOR BLEEDS
• Jotun: Valhalla Edition
• JUMANJI: The Video Game
• Junkyard Fury 2
• Just Die Already
• Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
• Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition
• King Arthur Collection (Sub ID 25825)
• King of Dragon Pass
• King Of The Castle
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance + Band of Bastards DLC (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition
• Kingdom Wars 4
• King's Bounty: Armored Princess
• Kitaria Fables
• Kitchen Simulator 2015
• Kraken Academy!!
• Kyle is Famous: Complete Edition
• Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
• Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
• Life is Strange: True Colors (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Lila’s Sky Ark
• Little Orpheus
• Loddlenaut
• Loop Hero
• Lord of the Dark Castle
• Lords and Villeins
• Lords of Football
• Lost Castle
• Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack
• Lucius III
• Lumberhill
• LunarLux
• Mad Max
• Mafia III: Definitive Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mago
• Maid of Sker
• Mail Time
• Main Assembly
• Maneater
• MARSUPILAMI - HOOBADVENTURE (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Marvel's Midnight Suns + DLC (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons
• Medieval Kingdom Wars
• Mega Man Legacy Collection
• MegaRace 1
• MegaRace 2
• MegaRace 3
• Men of War
• Metal: Hellsinger (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Metamorphosis
• Metro Simulator
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition
• Midnight Fight Express
• Minute of Islands
• MirrorMoon EP
• Monaco
• Moon Hunters
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
• Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mortal Kombat XL
• Moto Racer Collection
• Moving Out + Movers in Paradise DLC
• Music Racer
• My Little Universe Soundtrack (DLC)
• My Little Worms
• Mystery of Unicorn Castle: The Beastmaster
• Mythforce (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mythic Ocean
• Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder
• NARUTO TO BORUTO: SHINOBI STRIKER
• Nash Racing: Pursuit
• Nearly Dead
• Necronator: Dead Wrong
• NecroWorm
• Neon Abyss Deluxe Edition
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
• Nimble Fish
• Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• No Place Like Home
• Nobody Saves the World
• Nomad Survival
• Oaken
• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
• Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
• OlliOlli World
• Onde
• One Finger Death Punch 2
• One Hand Clapping
• Onee Chanbara Origin (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Operation Tango
• Orange Cast: Sci-Fi Space Action Game
• Orbital Racer
• Orcs Must Die! 3 Complete Bundle
• OTXO
• Out of Space
• Overcooked
• Owlboy (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Paint the Town Red
• Papo & Yo
• Patch Quest
• PAYDAY 2
• PC Building Simulator
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID)
• Plunger Simulator
• Police Stories
• POSTAL 2
• Primal Carnage: Extinction
• Prodeus
• Push The Box 3D
• Qbik
• QUAKE II
• qubo
• RAD
• Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
• Radio Commander
• Railway Empire
• Recipe For Disaster
• Red Faction: Armageddon
• Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
• Red Solstice 2: Survivors
• Redout: Enhanced Edition + 5 DLCs
• Regency Solitaire
• Regions Of Ruin
• Remnant: From the Ashes - Complete Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Remnants of Naezith
• Repetendium
• Resident Evil 0 HD REMASTER
• Resident Evil 4 (2005)
• Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
• Resident Evil 6
• Resident Evil Revelations
• Resident Evil Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition
• Retrowave
• Reventure
• RHEM I SE: The Mysterious Land
• Rhythm Sprout: Sick Beats & Bad Sweets
• River City Girls
• River City Ransom: Underground
• Road 96 (Region Lock: Sub ID)
• Röki
• Royal Battleships
• Rustler
• Saints Row (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Salt and Sanctuary
• Sanctum 2
• Sands of Aura
• SATAZIUS
• Satellite Repairman
• Say No! More
• Scarlet Tower
• Scars Above
• Scorn
• School Years
• SEGA Bass Fishing
• Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story
• Severed Steel
• Shadows: Awakening
• She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
• Shift Happens
• Shing!
• Shut Up And Dig
• Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
• Sine Mora EX
• Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
• Silent Service
• Sinking Island
• Sir Whoopass™: Immortal Death
• Skeletal Avenger
• Slaycation Paradise
• Small World + 1 DLC
• Snafu
• Sneak Thief
• Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts
• Snowtopia: Ski Resort Builder
• SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
• Sorry, James
• Soul Grabber
• Soulblight
• Soulstice
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Sparkle 2 Evo
• Sparkle 3 Genesis
• Sparkle ZERO
• Spirit of the Island
• SPOOKWARE
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
• Stacking
• Starblast
• Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords
• Startide
• STASIS
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Steel Rats
• Steelrising (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Strange Brigade
• Streets of Fury EX
• Strider
• Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones
• SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator
• Sucker for Love: First Date
• Suite 776
• Sunblaze
• Sunlight
• Sunset Overdrive
• Super Catboy
• Super Indie Karts
• Super Magbot
• Super Meat Boy
• Superbugs: Awaken
• Superliminal (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Survive the Nights
• Swag and Sorcery
• Switchball HD
• Sword of the Necromancer
• Syberia
• Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Synergia
• SYNTHETIK: Legion Rising
• System Crash
• S.W.I.N.E. HD Remaster
• Tacoma
• Tallowmere
• Tenta Shooter
• TERRACOTTA (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Terraformers
• Terror of Hemasaurus
• Tesla Force
• The Amazing American Circus
• The Banner Saga Trilogy Deluxe Pack (Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Bluecoats: North & South
• The Callisto Protocol (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Chronicles of Nyanya
• The Citadel
• The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Dark Eye: Memoria
• The Dream Machine: Chapter 1 & 2
• The Dungeon Beneath
• The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos
• The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard
• The Esoterica: Hollow Earth
• The Evil Within 2
• The eXceed Collection: Aural Brutality Edition
• The Executioner
• The Falconeer
• THE GAME OF LIFE
• THE GAME OF LIFE 2 (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Gunk
• The Haunting of Billy Classic
• The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing: Final Cut
• The Initiate
• The Initiate 2: The First Interviews
• The Inner World
• The Knight Witch (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Legend of Tianding
• The Long Reach
• The Moment of Silence
• The Quarry - Deluxe Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Quarry – Horror History Visual Filter Pack (DLC)
• The Red Lantern
• The Sapper
• The Talos Principle
• The Talos Principle: Gold Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Tarnishing of Juxtia
• The Tenants (wishlist or Paypal only)
• The Town of Light
• The Undying Plague
• The Witness (wishlist or Paypal only)
• There Is No Light: Enhanced Edition
• This War of Mine
• Those Who Remain
• Through Abandoned: The Refuge
• Ticket to Ride
• Timberman
• Time Lock VR
• Time on Frog Island
• Tiny Tina's Wonderlands: Chaotic Great Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Tinykin (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Titan Quest Anniversary Edition
• Toki
• Toodee and Topdee
• Totally Reliable Delivery Service
• Tower of Time
• Townsmen - A Kingdom Rebuilt
• Train Simulator Classic + 2 DLCs
• Trifox
• Tropico 3 Gold Edition
• Tropico 4 Collector's Bundle
• Troublemaker
• Trover Saves the Universe
• Turbo Overkill (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Turmoil
• Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
• Turok
• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
• Twin Mirror
• Two Point Campus (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Ultimate Zombie Defense
• Undying (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Unity of Command Trilogy
• Up and Down
• Vampire Survivors
• Vanguard Princess
• Verdun
• Violett Remastered
• VirtuaVerse
• Voltaire: The Vegan Vampire
• Wanted: Dead (wishlist or Paypal only)
• War for the Overworld
• Wargroove
• Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon + Soundtrack DLC
• Warhammer 40,000: Armageddon - Da Orks
• Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector
• Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach
• Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide
• Warhammer: Vermintide 2
• Wayward
• West of Dead
• What the Fog
• Where The Water Tastes Like Wine
• Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus?
• Within Skerry
• Within the blade
• Wobbledogs (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Wolfenstein 3D
• Worms Rumble
• WWE 2K23 (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Yoku's Island Express
• Yooka-Laylee
• XEL
• XIII - Classic
• X-Morph: Defense Complete Pack
• Yakuza 4 Remastered
• Yakuza: Like a Dragon (wishlist or Paypal only)
• You Deserve
• Zombie Army Trilogy
• Zombie Driver HD
• Zool Redimensioned

Last Updated List: 19/05/2024
 
I'm primarily looking to trade for games from my wishlist, otherwise I am also open to selling them. I am not interested in games I already have and all games I'm getting are for me and activated on my own account. Other than that feel free to offer your list of Steam games and something I may not have and fulfills my criteria I could/would be willing to trade for it/them.

• To trade you must respond to this thread first, I will not respond or accept anyone outside of this thread, only exception are unless we've traded more than once before.
• Only interested in trading for games on Steam.
• I don't do Humble gifts whether receiving or giving, all my keys are in unrevealed form right after purchase.
• No interest in any keys from an unofficial retailesource (aka grey market), curatoreviewer keys (aka beta/reviewebeta-testing/etc.), abandonware, keys for games that are already free on Steam itself, Steam profile-limited keys, and only slight interest in VR-titles and/or de-listed games (no banned games).
• Anything marked as wishlist/paypal, it's self-explanatory and I won't look through lists.
• All my keys are EU keys, if you are outside of EU, make sure you double check for any region locks for your country. For quite a few which I was aware of I already listed the region lock, however this is not my responsibility as I did specify the key's region.
• When buying, I only accept payments in Euro's. Minimum purchase of €1,00. Fees are on buyer.

If you're either trading or buying please state the game(s) you are interested in and your offer (game(s)/list/price).
 
Info:

• Region (and keys region): Europe
  
• IGS Rep Page
  
• SteamTrades
  
• SteamRep
  

 
I kindly ask of you is to be reasonable when making offers to make it a fair trade for both of us.
Let's have a good exchange/trade!
 
List of games:

• 100% Orange Juice
• 16bit Trader
• 20XX
• 4089: Ghost Within
• 9 Years of Shadows
• 911 Operator
• A Demon's Game - Episode 1
• A Game of Changes
• A Juggler's Tale
• A Normal Lost Phone
• A Plague Tale: Innocence (wishlist or Paypal only)
• A Tale of Paper: Refolded
• ABZU
• Aces and Adventures
• Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion
• Afterimage (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Afterparty
• Airborne Kingdom
• Alien Breed 2: Assault
• Alone in the Dark (2008)
• Amanda the Adventurer
• AMID EVIL
• Amnesia: Rebirth
• An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire
• Animal Shelter (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Anomaly II
• Anomaly: Warzone Earth
• Arcade Paradise
• Arcade Spirits
• Archipelago
• Arizona Sunshine: Deluxe Edition
• Arto (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Ary and the Secret of Seasons
• As Far As The Eye
• Ashina: The Red Witch
• Athena Trivia
• Attack of the Earthlings
• Autonauts
• Autonauts vs PirateBots
• Axiom Verge
• Axiom Verge 2 (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Back 4 Blood (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Backstage Pass
• Baobabs Mausoleum Ep. 1 Ovnifagos Don't Eat Flamingos
• Batman: Arkham Asylum Game of the Year Edition
• Batman: Arkham City - Game of the Year Edition
• Batman: Arkham Knight Premium Edition
• Batman: Arkham Origins
• Battlestar Galactica Deadlock Season One
• BattleTrucks
• Beacon Pines (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Beat Or Die The MiniGames
• Beholder
• Ben 10: Power Trip
• Beyond the Long Night
• Big Crown®: Showdown
• Bighead Runner
• Bionic Commando
• Biosys Inc
• bit Dungeon II
• Black Book
• Black Paradox
• Black Skylands
• Blackguards
• Blackguards 2
• Blasphemous (Region Lock: EU/US only)
• Bleep Bloop
• Blind Fate: Edo no Yami
• BLOCKADE War Stories
• Blood And Zombies
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (wishlist or Paypal only)
• BomberZone
• BPM: BULLETS PER MINUTE
• Brick Breaker
• Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
• Bud Spencer & Terence Hill - Slaps And Beans
• Buggos
• Calico
• Caliper
• Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
• Cardboard Town
• Carton
• Castle Defender
• CastleStorm
• Cat on a Diet
• Caveblazers
• Cavity Busters
• CHESS CROWN
• Chicago 1930 : The Prohibition
• Children of Silentown
• Chorus (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Chronicon
• Citizen Sleeper
• City Siege: Faction Island
• Cobra Kai: The Karate Kid Saga Continues
• Colortone
• Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
• Company of Heroes 2
• Company of Heroes 2 - Ardennes Assault
• Company of Heroes 2 - The Western Front Armies: Oberkommando West
• Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor
• Cook, Serve, Delicious!
• Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!
• Cookie Cutter (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Copy Kitty
• Coromon
• Corrupted
• Cosmic Star Heroine
• Crash Drive 2
• Crazy Machines 3
• Creepy Tale 3: Ingrid Penance
• CRYPTARK
• Crystals of Time
• Cthulhu Saves Christmas
• Curse: The Eye of Isis
• Cybercube
• Dad Quest
• Dark Deity
• Daymare: 1998
• Dead Estate
• Deadlink (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Dear Esther: Landmark Edition
• Death's Gambit: Afterlife
• Deathtrap
• Decarnation (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Decay: The Mare
• Deceive Inc.
• Decks Of Power
• Deep Despair 2
• Deflector
• Deponia
• Desert Parkour
• DESOLATE
• Destroy All Humans!
• Dicey Dungeons
• Dinosaur Fossil Hunter
• Disciples II: Rise of the Elves
• Dishonored
• Dogfight 1942
• DOOM II
• Drawful 2
• Dread Templar
• Dread X Collection
• Dread X Collection 2
• Dread X Collection 3
• Dread X Collection 5
• Dread X Collection: The Hunt
• Dreamscaper
• DreamWorks Dragons: Dawn of New Riders
• Driftland: The Magic Revival
• Drunken Robot Pornography
• Dungeons
• Dungeons 2
• Dungeons 3
• DUSK
• EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 The Shadow of New Despair + 18 DLCs (Complete)
• EARTH DEFENSE FORCE 4.1 WINGDIVER THE SHOOTER
• Eldest Souls
• ELEX II (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Eternal Threads
• Everhood
• Evil Genius 2: World Domination
• Evoland Legendary Edition
• Expect The Unexpected
• Extinction: Deluxe Edition
• Factory Town
• Fairy Escape
• Fall of Porcupine (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Fantasy Kingdom Simulator
• FAR: Lone Sails
• Fast & Furious: Spy Racers Rise of SH1FT3R
• Feel-A-Maze
• Fight'N Rage
• Figment
• Finding Paradise
• Firelight Fantasy: Resistance
• First Class Trouble
• Fishermurs
• Flashback
• Fly O'Clock
• For The King
• Forgive me Father
• Fred3ric
• Frederic: Evil Strikes Back
• Frederic: Resurrection of Music
• From Space
• Frostpunk
• Fury Unleashed
• Garden In!
• Garfield Kart
• Garfield Kart - Furious Racing
• Generation Zero
• Get In The Car, Loser!
• Gloria Victis
• Going Under
• Golden Light
• Golf It!
• Gone: Survival
• Good Night, Knight
• Gotham Knights (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Graveyard Keeper
• Gray Dawn
• GRIP: Combat Racing
• Guilty Gear X2 #Reload
• Guts and Glory
• GYLT (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Haegemonia: Legions of Iron
• Hamilton's Great Adventure
• Hands of Necromancy
• Hard West
• Heads Will Roll
• Hell Pie
• Hellbound
• HELLCARD
• Hellslave
• Hi-Fi RUSH (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Hollow Knight (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!
• Homestead Arcana
• Home Sweet Home
• Homeworld Remastered Collection
• Honey, I Joined a Cult
• Hue
• Human Fall Flat
• I Am Fish
• Ice Age: Scrat's Nutty Adventure
• ICEY
• Inertial Drift
• Inexistence Rebirth
• Injustice 2 Legendary Edition
• Internet Cafe Simulator 2
• Interstellar Space: Genesis
• Is Simon There?
• ITORAH
• Jagged Alliance: Rage!
• JANITOR BLEEDS
• Jotun: Valhalla Edition
• JUMANJI: The Video Game
• Junkyard Fury 2
• Just Die Already
• Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth
• Killing Floor 2 Digital Deluxe Edition
• King Arthur Collection (Sub ID 25825)
• King of Dragon Pass
• King Of The Castle
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance + Band of Bastards DLC (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Kingdom Wars 2: Definitive Edition
• Kingdom Wars 4
• King's Bounty: Armored Princess
• Kitaria Fables
• Kitchen Simulator 2015
• Kraken Academy!!
• Kyle is Famous: Complete Edition
• Legend of Keepers: Career of a Dungeon Manager
• Leisure Suit Larry 7 - Love for Sail
• Life is Strange: True Colors (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Lila’s Sky Ark
• Little Orpheus
• Loddlenaut
• Loop Hero
• Lord of the Dark Castle
• Lords and Villeins
• Lords of Football
• Lost Castle
• Lost Planet 3 Complete Pack
• Lucius III
• Lumberhill
• LunarLux
• Mad Max
• Mafia III: Definitive Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mago
• Maid of Sker
• Mail Time
• Main Assembly
• Maneater
• MARSUPILAMI - HOOBADVENTURE (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Marvel's Midnight Suns + DLC (Region Lock: Sub ID) (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mechs & Mercs: Black Talons
• Medieval Kingdom Wars
• Mega Man Legacy Collection
• MegaRace 1
• MegaRace 2
• MegaRace 3
• Men of War
• Metal: Hellsinger (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Metamorphosis
• Metro Simulator
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor GOTY
• Middle-earth: Shadow of War Definitive Edition
• Midnight Fight Express
• Minute of Islands
• MirrorMoon EP
• Monaco
• Moon Hunters
• Morbid: The Seven Acolytes
• Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mortal Kombat XL
• Moto Racer Collection
• Moving Out + Movers in Paradise DLC
• Music Racer
• My Little Universe Soundtrack (DLC)
• My Little Worms
• Mystery of Unicorn Castle: The Beastmaster
• Mythforce (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Mythic Ocean
• Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder
• NARUTO TO BORUTO: SHINOBI STRIKER
• Nash Racing: Pursuit
• Nearly Dead
• Necronator: Dead Wrong
• NecroWorm
• Neon Abyss Deluxe Edition
• Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl
• Nimble Fish
• Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• No Place Like Home
• Nobody Saves the World
• Nomad Survival
• Oaken
• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
• Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty
• OlliOlli World
• Onde
• One Finger Death Punch 2
• One Hand Clapping
• Onee Chanbara Origin (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Operation Tango
• Orange Cast: Sci-Fi Space Action Game
• Orbital Racer
• Orcs Must Die! 3 Complete Bundle
• OTXO
• Out of Space
• Overcooked
• Owlboy (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Paint the Town Red
• Papo & Yo
• Patch Quest
• PAYDAY 2
• PC Building Simulator
• Pathfinder: Kingmaker - Enhanced Plus Edition (Region Lock: Sub ID)
• Plunger Simulator
• Police Stories
• POSTAL 2
• Primal Carnage: Extinction
• Prodeus
• Push The Box 3D
• Qbik
• QUAKE II
• qubo
• RAD
• Rad Rodgers Radical Edition
• Radio Commander
• Railway Empire
• Recipe For Disaster
• Red Faction: Armageddon
• Red Faction Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered
• Red Solstice 2: Survivors
• Redout: Enhanced Edition + 5 DLCs
• Regency Solitaire
• Regions Of Ruin
• Remnant: From the Ashes - Complete Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Remnants of Naezith
• Repetendium
• Resident Evil 0 HD REMASTER
• Resident Evil 4 (2005)
• Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition
• Resident Evil 6
• Resident Evil Revelations
• Resident Evil Revelations 2 Deluxe Edition
• Retrowave
• Reventure
• RHEM I SE: The Mysterious Land
• Rhythm Sprout: Sick Beats & Bad Sweets
• River City Girls
• River City Ransom: Underground
• Road 96 (Region Lock: Sub ID)
• Röki
• Royal Battleships
• Rustler
• Saints Row (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Salt and Sanctuary
• Sanctum 2
• Sands of Aura
• SATAZIUS
• Satellite Repairman
• Say No! More
• Scarlet Tower
• Scars Above
• Scorn
• School Years
• SEGA Bass Fishing
• Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story
• Severed Steel
• Shadows: Awakening
• She Sees Red - Interactive Movie
• Shift Happens
• Shing!
• Shut Up And Dig
• Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
• Sine Mora EX
• Sigma Theory: Global Cold War
• Silent Service
• Sinking Island
• Sir Whoopass™: Immortal Death
• Skeletal Avenger
• Slaycation Paradise
• Small World + 1 DLC
• Snafu
• Sneak Thief
• Sniper Elite 4 Deluxe Edition (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts
• Snowtopia: Ski Resort Builder
• SONG OF HORROR COMPLETE EDITION
• Sorry, James
• Soul Grabber
• Soulblight
• Soulstice
• Space Crew: Legendary Edition
• Sparkle 2 Evo
• Sparkle 3 Genesis
• Sparkle ZERO
• Spirit of the Island
• SPOOKWARE
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy
• STAR WARS Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast
• Stacking
• Starblast
• Starpoint Gemini 2 Gold Pack
• Starpoint Gemini Warlords
• Startide
• STASIS
• Stick Fight: The Game
• Steel Rats
• Steelrising (wishlist or Paypal only)
• Strange Brigade
• Streets of Fury EX
• Strider
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As I was studying for the SHRM-CP exam, I came across several posts on here that were useful in helping me along the process, so I thought I would share some information on how I passed for future test takers. Please note that I did NOT purchase the SHRM Learning System. I studied by myself using free online resources and a few books I bought off Amazon. Prep/Study Time
I studied for about 4–5 weeks. On weekdays I studied between 1–3 hours per day, on the weekends I would do 4–6 hours per day, and during the last 7–10 days, I studied about 4–6 hours per day. Of course, I took a few nights off here and there as well. Keep in mind that you may need to study more or less given your work experience (I have a Master’s in I/O Psych and about 2 years of relevant work experience). To be honest, I wish I had started studying 2–3 weeks earlier. I would recommend giving yourself at least 1.5–2 months to prepare for this exam.
Resources:

1. SHRM BoCK — This is a free PDF that you can download off the SHRM website. I used this resource to guide my overall learning. I dissected the entire document and made flashcards on Quizlet for everything I did not know. In particular, I focused on the “key concepts” for each section and made sure I knew the definition of each term. There is also a glossary of terms and definitions at the end of the document, so I added all those terms into Quizlet as well. The glossary does not have every definition you will need to know, but it’s a good start. For the terms I could not find a definition for, I would either

A) Google it
B) see how the SHRM website defines it,
C) use one of my other resources to find a definition
D) go to Youtube to learn more.
2) SHRM-CP Exam by certexamdb Test Prep: You can find in here
I explored a few different practice exams, but this was by far the most useful. You cannot use this as your only resource, but it is a great start.
3) PHSPHR Professional in Human Resources Certification Study Guide by Anne Bogardus: You can actually find a PDF of this online for free. At some point throughout the study process (usually after a practice exam), you will likely realize that you need to go into more depth with certain concepts. This is where this study guide comes in. I didn’t read it word for word, but I spent a few hours skimming through it, went through some of the practice questions at the end of each chapter, and read in detail certain sections that I was weak on. This resource is very detailed but not too complicated which is great. I would highly recommend allocating 1–2 study days just for going through this resource. Keep in mind that it will provide you with more detail than you need, but you can just focus on the concepts that are relevant to the SHRM-CP.
4) SHRM-CP/SHRM-SCP Certification Practice Exams (All in One) by Kelly and Simon-Walters. About 10 days before my exam, I came across this resource which consisted of 500 questions that were broken down into each of the sections outlined in the SHRM BoCK. When I took the practice exam in the certexamdb Test Prep I scored terribly on the situational judgment questions. This book is GREAT for preparing you for those questions. Just keep in mind two things when using this resource:
It will consist of some questions with terms or concepts that you did not come across in any of the other resources — you can just ignore those (it’s extra information that you do not necessarily need), (2) the quick answer key has some inaccuracies (ignore it) but the answer key with detailed explanations is correct so make sure you use that when scoring yourself. Make sure you answer both the SHRM-CP and the SHRM-SCP questions (they are both relevant). This really helps with the situational judgment questions, but also with knowing how some of the terms and definitions apply in a real setting. When focusing on these questions, I realized that I had memorized some definitions, but I still didn’t know how to apply those concepts. This book helps with that.
5) Quizlet Flashcards created by other people — A lot of people have created quizlet sets (even from the Learning System) that they have uploaded. Those are free, so make sure you use them! Also, some people have even created practice sets for exam questions (which I think are from the learning system as well), so make sure you review those as well! Basic Study Tips: Unfortunately, without the Learning System, there is no single resource that you can use to prepare for this exam. Therefore, make sure you use a few resources just to make sure you get exposed to most of the material that will be on the exam. As you go through each resource, keep revising your flashcards and adding new ones. Make sure you periodically review flashcards as you go rather than waiting to cram everything in a week before the exam. When you go through practice questions, you will soon realize that you often need to know more than just the definition… you need to know when and how something applies as well. For example, you need to know what FMLA is, but you also need to know what the eligibility criteria is, when it is applicable, etc… I had one massive set of flashcards (about 500), and then I also had smaller sets of flashcards for some sections (e.g., a set for HR Laws, another set for Finance/Accounting terms). I would memorize using the smaller sets, but then I went through the giant set I had created a few days before my exam to make sure I knew everything. Do a ton of practice questions and understand why you got certain questions wrong.
6) SHRM LMS Books
Here’s a quick overview of the step-by-step process I took to study and prepare:

1. Go through SHRM-BoCK and create flashcards
2. Go through and memorize SHRM Learning System Flashcards (You can find these on Quizlet and search “SHRM Learning System”)
3. Take certexamdb Test Prep Practice Exam, review, and identify weak areas.
4. Go through the Bogardus PHSPHR book and focus on weak areas (fill in flashcards)
5. Memorize the newly created flashcards for weak areas, flag ones that you continually get wrong or confused with.
6. YouTube hazy concepts and terms to gain a richer understanding, use Khan Academy when applicable.
7. Retake certexamdb Practice Exam
8. Go through questions in the book by Kelly and Simon-Walters
9. Identify weak areas, read through explanations, create and memorize flash cards as needed
10. A few days before my exam, focus on my large stack of flashcards, go through other people’s flashcard sets, and go through practice exams on Quizlet.

Exam Experience and Takeaways
I finished the exam in a little over three hours. You get no breaks, but you can always take them as needed. Time is likely not going to be an issue. Here are some takeaways that I had about the exam: — There were surprisingly few questions on US Employment Laws & Regulations and Labor Unions. I spent a lot on these sections when studying, but there were not many questions at all on these topics. — The test questions were different than any of the practice exams I had taken (however you should be fine as long as you know the material) — The situational judgment questions can be exhausting with having to read 2–3 paragraphs for each 2–3 questions. — Make sure you carefully read the question. For example, you are often asked “what is the first step you would take” or “what strategy would you use.” These can be tricky, but they can also easily reveal the right answer. — No matter how hard you study, you will encounter a few questions where you come across terms that you’re unfamiliar with and you will have to guess blindly. Just try to eliminate what you do know is wrong and take your best guess. Don’t stress too much about it. — Use the highlight, strike through, and flagging options during the exam. It helps a lot. — Often, the correct answers for the situational judgment questions have something to do with (1) getting leadership buy-in, (2) having HR be a strategic partner, (3) making sure the action is aligned with the org’s mission and vision (4) HR being proactive, (5) doing a needs assessment of some sort, (6) having HR be some sort of facilitator.