Lurker > Dels

Squall Leonhart - Haven't played
Ramza Beoulve - Haven't played
Eiko Carol - 6

DragonGargoyle posted...

I should probably get started on XIV soon, idk how much longer it's going to be active for

...a very long time. they plan to go for at least another 10 years. i mean, consider XI is still online and even getting updates, i don't think you have to worry.

i get paralyzed when i have choices

is that good or bad

so is this based on the ps1 game or the gamecube remake? or wasthat a remaster. because maybe emulating GCN is still the way to go for game 1...?

Oh. I used to play MGS 1 and 2 as a kid, I think I beat 2, I remember starting 3 but didn't like the big open jungle-ness and survival aspects so I never played it much. I've always thought I should go back and play them again but there's been so many re-releases it seemed daunting to figure out how to do it. I had no idea this was coming out, might be time to play them finally.

how was the premiere, without spoilers? i'm really debating whether i want to watch. well, i don't want to , it's moreso if habit/fomo makes me watch anyway. any signs of toning down on stuff like jeff/the contestants talking non-stop about how being on survivor is the most life-changing thing ever, tribal councils being an analogy competition instead of talking about the actual game dynamics, the non-stop tragic backstory segments, and (this one i know there's no chance of) everything being about advantages and a million idols?

so wait, it's just an image in the top right corner, it doesn't actually have their voice or ever speak? it just smiles and nods?

so wait, the actor's union is currently on strike (partly) because they want to make sure company's don't get to own their image forever, but these people just signed theirs over willingly?

i'll change to 6/10 actually. 5/10 is too harsh. fairly sure i still liked it, like, it wasn't boring or anything.

don't think i remember a single thing about it. but not in a "i should abstain" way, in a "it wasn't memorable for a reason" way

5/10

pjbasis posted...

I like how the main characters of this trilogy are apollo, phoenix, and maya

poor trucy doesn't even get her own intro slide

7/10

this was a fun episode which, in retrospect, was the start of the "netflix-ifying" of the show (i.e. being less deep)

the way i felt about it was sort of like, it was the most straightforward possible implementation of the idea. like if you asked a writer's room for all the first ideas that come to mind for a story about a dystopian social credit score and then just put them all in, but never really tried to mine your brain for anything beyond the surface level ideas.

i feel bad giving it a higher rating than i gave some of the earlier episodes because i think it's probably worse than them, but, like, it was still a really fun episode, so.

i can see that part being unintuitive. it took me a moment as well to realize that was a thing i could (and should) do.

NBIceman posted...

About how far am I through the game once the fifth character joins the party? Halfway-ish?

yeah basically

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Dahngrest Theme gets tons of praise because so much of the OST is incredibly mediocre that it comes out of nowhere.

It's like it's the first time you even notice Vesperia even has music.

This was my exact experience lol. Didn't realize it was that common since I hear people praise Vesperia's soundtrack all the time. I think Vesperia started a trend in Tales where the sound effects were too loud (at default settings, i guess) because I could never hear the battle music enough to notice any of it.

oh i get it now, TC wanted to ask "what are some good sakuraba tracks outside of his standard battle theme type" and inflammatory statements get more clicks

RikkuAlmighty posted...

He has one song.

Interesting claim to make when the Baten Kaitos remaster just came out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z38dY57VEZQ

8/10

to be honest i was going to say that i have no memory of the DS game at all. i remember i played it but i can't remember a thing about it. i don't think it was particularly good. still cool news though to see them put out a game like that so many years later.

doubles huh. i didn't remember that part lol. ye sounds like a system issue to me!

6/10

i thought you'd for sure be the person to be like "what are you guys complaining about, this game is great, you're all overthinking it"

th3l3fty posted...

I don't hold it against you, I simply bring it up as a part of VGMC history and the shaping of the nomination process, just like Repus getting his own rule for nominating every version of Bloody Tears imaginable

i don't understand how it was even an issue anyway. didn't we just give those tracks... 2 nominations total? was the nomination field so wide that just having 2 nominations was enough to guarantee a track got in? because if so then yeah that seems like more of an issue with the nomination system to allow that. just like it would've been a loophole in the system here if any single person could singlehandedly be the cutoff-tiebreaker by waiting until the last 10 minutes.

andylt posted...

Yeah, I understand that but it is part of the game I guess. Also I would be a little relieved at not having to come up with a way to narrow down 50 songs to 10 without starting a whole pre-contest contest >_>

Less than a minute left!

the last time i brute forced nominations in a music contest, lefty held it against me for... literally until this very day.

so i wouldn't!

well i won't do that. but if i did, it'd be funny that one person had the power to singlehandedly decide which 3-noms make it in instead of them having to go to whatever the play-in/tiebreak stage would be, which would be much more democratic

so basically, if someone wanted to, they could go through the list of tracks with only 3 noms and pick 15 of them to boost them to 4 and guarantee they get in?

is eastward like this too?! i'd actually heard so many good things about it lmao. what is it with this trend in indie JRPGs...?

i've heard crosscode is actually great though, i really should get to that game soon

i'm probably due for a rewatch anyway. i've always known it was considered a fan-favourite, maybe i'm missing something!

6/10

i recall not being particularly invested in this one and it's themes didn't feel particularly deep to me or give me anything new to think about. honestly i don't remember much about it at all. i think i found it very straightforward and predictable.

kevwaffles posted...

Question for those of you who have beaten this game AND The Messenger.

As someone who hasn't played The Messenger myself yet, don't elaborate on this too much. Does The Messenger take place in the second world? Or is it not that simple?

What makes you think that? I think it takes place in the first world... unless I missed something?

9/10

what snake said

again, a very "meta" episode that actually holds up a mirror in the sense that the in-universe characters are being delivered this message about how they need to wake up and take back control of their lives instead of just mindlessly watching TV all day - and the viewer basically watches the episode and says "wow that's so true, this could be our society, we should do something about that" and then just continues mindlessly watching TV and probably doesn't do anything at all

(and unlike the first episode, the characters are actually relatable hence the higher score)

MacArrowny posted...

Ah, I see now. Thanks.

Also I tried Wheels once and understood nothing. Was there a tutorial I missed somewhere?

start -> how to play -> wheels

i beat the watchmaker first try using assassin + priest. it's funny, when i encountered the one table that used assassin + priest i thought "lol, this will be the easiest opponent, all they do is slow me and heal??? i will crush them with high attack power units" and i got wrecked like three times in a row, it was the hardest table by far. so then i just used assassin+priest for the last couple of tables and won easily.

KamikazePotato posted...

Does anyone actually like this game? The topic has been 90% negative impressions.

if i didn't like it i wouldn't be playing it. i think the game is "pretty good" but the areas where it's weak just stand out a lot and some of them frustrate me because i feel they could've been anticipated and fixed

(i.e. ephraim's post above which i completely agree with - combo builds so slowly you almost never use them in random encounters and even in boss battles maybe once or twice but they don't do much, it's such a shame because some of them have really cool animations or a cool timed hit style but you barely get to use them)

also, yes, voice lines in battle would be great

i think we're going through a trend where devs are trying to find creative ways to put accessibility options in instead of just making an accessibility menu and i appreciate the innovation but i honestly hope it stops soon. if every relic was an accessibility/difficulty mode selector thing then i could just ignore them all but some of them are clearly meant to be neutral (like the star) and/or you're just meant to use them.

i definitely wish there was a training dummy somewhere though that helped you learn timings, at least.

Underleveled posted...

and that Wario was also their brother.

...Wario isn't their brother?!

I thought the level select screen in Mega Man was a character select and even though I was confused that my character seemed to always be the same I convinced myself that they did have slight differences based on the character I chose

MacArrowny posted...

I feel like if you prepare enough you should be able to break locks pretty much all the time, especially once you get the fourth character.

the thing is sometimes you don't have enough MP. before you get 14+ MP it's like, well, the game tells you "don't ever use a normal attack when you're at full MP, that's a waste!" so you spend 7 on a moonerang and now you're at 6/13 and oh look now the boss is doing a 3x moon lock but you can't hit it haha sucks to be you!

i guess i'm late enough i can prep for it more but even now it feels like whenever i save my MP for a lock it never comes, then when i finally spend it the boss does a lock next turn lol

catesdb posted...

since learning about the nourish boosting, i have done it successfully once

do you boost it when it hits a character or is it as he takes it out of his bag? i've been theorizing it's the latter but i still haven't gotten the timing

i thought the meta aspect was brilliant - the viewer goes through the same journey as the characters, starting from "what? this is weird, why would i want to watch this" to "wait are they actually going to do it? will i turn my eyes away if they do or do i actually want to see it???"

it holds up an actual mirror to the viewer, which the show basically stops doing after season 1 in favor of "look at this fucked up technology thing, wouldn't that be fucked up?"

hard to rate since usually my rating of a TV episode will be based on how emotionally invested i am in the characters and their stories and that's not really a thing in this episode, they are entirely there just to advance the message, but it's very well-done

8/10?

okay. that makes sense i guess.

i'm really trying to think, like, in a parallel universe where sea of stars came out for the SNES when we were 10 years old, would we grow up thinking zale and valere were amazing classic characters and have fond memories of the lore of solstice warriors doing elder mist trials? and if chrono trigger came out as an indie retro game on steam in 2023 we'd think crono was a boring silent protagonist and that a random frog and robot were not very compelling? i feel that's not the case! but who knows!

5th party member story spoilers i am one again very confused. so the narrator's room was in the water tower? or no? we try to open the door, we fail, then narrator says "they failed and died" but we jump to a parallel universe where they... instead went to an ice mountain? where is the ice mountain? how did they get there? then when they're done they're in the narrator's room and they are a bit confused but mostly just go along with it... ok? the whole sequence felt incredibly jarring to me.

i hope the takeaway from this game isn't "few skills bad, more skills better" but i worry that's what it will be. lots of games have a ton of skills and 80% of them are useless or just an excuse to have more buttons for the sake of it. having fewer skills but making you use them in lots of different ways is good design. this game just kinda doesn't do that because the combat isn't very dynamic.

i don't wanna be too negative on this game though because i'm still enjoying it and it is very pretty. the odd thing is we've all played JRPGs with poor characterization (see: most things made 20 years ago) but i guess the bar is just higher these days so it really stands out.

oh speaking of villains, i'm (third island spoilers) sort of confused about the motivation of the two mentor characters. like, the impression i thought the game was trying to give me was that they were cynical about the solstice religion and didn't want more kids to have to become warriors, which is fair enough. but their solution to this is to... summon a dark god to murder everyone and destroy the world??? like. that just seems inconsistent with their character unless i'm supposed to believe that they're actually just pure evil now? why is that the solution they turned to??? was that the only alternative? maybe this will make sense eventually because it doesn't to me right now.

i think it's alright. i think i kinda liked chained echoes more (despite never finishing it lol) but i can't put my finger on why. the combat could be it - there's not a ton of variety or even strategy so far. i do like timed hit systems but the timing on many blocks doesn't feel intuitive to me and i rarely succeed. hell i don't think i've gotten the timing on valere's staff skill right even until now, or zale's dash strike. and when the quiz mini-game asked me what garl's apple turns into when you get the timing right, that was the first evidence i had against my theory of "maybe healing skills can't get timed hits" lol.

writing this, i'm just realizing that this game has... zero status effects so far too. i mean a lot of classic rpgs made status effects useless against bosses and therefore useless in general but most modern ones find good ways to use them, plus buffs and etc. i wonder if this game will introduce any but with only 4 skill slots it seems unlikely. even poison is just an elemental attribute that doesn't actually poison!

I mean this doesn't look like just "basic sentence structure" it looks like it's either AI-written or it has literally zero proofreading.

i clicked on a random article to see for myself and this is the first paragraph

HoYoVerse released the 1.3 Honkai: Star Rail patch notes, which go over the new characters, multiple events, and maintenance compensation. The three new characters are the five-stars Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae and Fu Xuan, while Lynx Landau. Well also get access to the new Aurum Alley location, complete with a Aurum Alleys Hustle and Bustle event to introduce it.

while Lynx Landau...? Literally just doesn't finish the sentence.

but this isn't the only site like this, i've seen others. my phone's news feed aggressively shows these gaming sites to me and i click them sometimes and they're total nonsense half the time.

foolm0r0n posted...

There's gotta be a way to speed up combat thought right?

I've been waiting for it to stop telling me that I need to press A to deflect my moonerang or charge my fireball. It has not stopped yet.

i think wheels is neat but i'm not sure where it can really go since you don't have anything to collect for it beyond the other classes which seem to be all balanced anyway so they're not strictly upgrades. but maybe that changes when you get more than the copper wheel.