Lurker > Xiahou Shake

This gen seems to be doing quite a lot to kill the idea that publishers can just re-sell their entire library as "remasters" every gen, which is outstanding. These sorts of things should absolutely be done through backwards compatibility and patches, and it's great to see the majority taking that approach.

Of course, we've also seen some sticking rigidly to the old ways like Control and Spider-Man, but overall it's clear we're moving in a very positive direction here.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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Yakuza was a big part of me learning Mahjong well enough to actually play it in real life but after all these games I still haven't even attempted to really learn Shogi.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

PS4 easily. PS3 era was good enough and seemed next level at the time but this last gen has really revealed just how much it was the awkward transition phase between the PS2 and the actual future of games.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

Time to finally play these games I guess

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

Mac Arrowny posted...

What'd Shake post, anyway? I didn't see it.

Nanis23 posted...

Also curious to know what kind of spoiler he got

*Triple checks I'm actually in the right place this time*
My (not exact) post was:

This case does so much to sell how pure evil Kokichi feels once he takes the spotlight, aided by his always excellent voice acting and sprites. The later reveal that he's just a mostly good-natured kid playing pretend but is doing it so well that he pulls the wool over even Monokuma's eyes shot him up my character rankings.

Based on Anagram's post afterward, I'm assuming he stopped reading the post no further than "once he takes the spotlight" so I'm sincerely hoping that the bigger surprise still eludes him.

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What's truly ludicrous is how much effort this probably took for zero gain beyond just further spiting Kojima and the already limited number of people who had access to this game.

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Gah he saw part of it I feel fucking horrid.

If he stopped reading where I feel like he did then thankfully the bigger twist should be saved but jesus I've literally become everything I hate

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I feel like an absolute idiot, can't believe I made a mistake like that. Sincerely hope you didn't get much out of it, this topic has been an absolute treat to follow and I'd hate to ruin anything.

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With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

I feel like an absolute moron for posting Kokichi thoughts in the Anagram topic - thought I was posting in this one. The post was only live for like, 5-10 seconds so I sincerely hope it went unnoticed, but jesus I'd feel fucking horrible if he saw. X_X

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

Shit I posted in the wrong topic - really hope nobody saw that.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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Yeah I actually kind of enjoyed Tsumugi's commentary on all the whacky shenanigans as a (mostly) straightwoman. Of course it all gets wildly recontextualized when you realize her actual role which is kind of even better.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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I viscerally hated the Atua cult and that's precisely why it's so great

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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Sekiro's Japanese audio is extremely good and fitting but GYOUBU MASATAKA ONIWAAAAAA by himself almost tips it in favor of the dub.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

Yes

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

All the dudebros who play Call of Duty and nothing else will be thrilled to know this can install Call of Duty and nothing else.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

Another splendid year, with some truly fantastic write-ups! Thanks for always putting so much effort into this series - it's a legitimate highlight of the season for me.~

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

Oh my goodness those Kaede percentages. I absolutely can't wait for his reaction to 3-1.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

After 2016 I can't help but feel nervous no matter how certain things feel.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!

Hajime having a brain and being able to figure things out on his own was one of the first things that got me on his hype train to start with. Makoto absolutely stumbles through DR1 by the grace of Kyouko and (to a lesser extent) Byakuya.

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paperwarior posted...

I run into this limitation a lot on Steam. It's worse there because you have to enter your password each time you switch users.

Steam has a "Family Sharing" feature so you can register access to another library while staying logged in to your own account. You only ever have to actually log in/enter a password if you somehow lose the registration. (Usually the fault of a person changing hardware or something.)

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Way too many amazing games this month, it's like all of 2020 post-COVID got compressed here. Yakuza is the only guaranteed instabuy for me but I'm sure there will be others. (Not getting Cyberpunk until I get an RTX card, which... may not be for a while.)

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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Trick 'r Treat

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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Outer Wilds

Legitimately one of the best games I've ever played as first experiences go but the entire game is progressed by your own knowledge so it's really impossible to have that experience a second time without a memory wipe.

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I swear TheRock topics are like weekly manga - there's some fun in popping in for each chapter but I'd rather just wait until the whole arc is finished.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Visually the only negative I have is why does the death and victory text look so dull?!

This is the worst thing - the fancy text/subtext on those screens is one of the only things I give DeS over DaS! Gotta have my "bring more souls, slayer of demons."

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Oh hey, I had to look this up since I was going to comment on it - I didn't know that Makoto and Nagito shared the same VA in the dub as well! That was an extremely cool bit of weirdness in the JP track to compare the performances so it's very cool that they kept that while dubbing it.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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KamikazePotato posted...

Stuff

Literally all of this. Thank you for perfectly encapsulating what I intended to say and sparing me the effort.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

That reminds me of another Byakuya issue. He has the worst voice acting in the series!

Statements like this always throw me way off and I have to remember that most of this board played the games with English audio.

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Anagram posted...

Hm, the more I think about D2, the more I dont understand why the murder structure mirrors D1s. Nagito even comments on this and uses it to predict 2-4s murder, yet it turns out theres no force motivating them to be similar. Was it just a big coincidence?

I have a personal theory on this based on the whole Nagito "Naegi Makoto Da" anagram and other character similarities that DR2 was originally going to be a straight up MGS2 twist on the first game but was rewritten/toned down at some point. As it stands the best explanation is just the influence of the Junko AI, but that can only explain so much.

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Nagito is the best character in the series IMO, sorry you didn't like him! (Though at least you placed 2-5 in its rightful spot.)

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Xiahou Shake posted...

I can't play until lunch time - how's the performance? I've been pretty leery about it based on the footage we've seen.

Finally got to play and I guess I'll answer my own question - it's really terrible. Sucks extra because the game itself seems super cool! Impa especially is an absolute blast to tear up the field with. But yeah this game is really highlighting the need for a new Switch with better hardware.

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Yeah I think it's interesting that you play a series about high school kids being forced to kill each other to "feel good." Maybe you're really a member of V3's audience after all!

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Put me in the camp that doesn't see 3-6 as suicide at all.

They were in a situation where they were going to die no matter what they did - that had already been decided for them. They just made a practical choice to throw up a giant middle finger to the system that put them in that position to start with, bring the chief instigator down with them and - potentially - stop any further deaths from happening.

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Travis Strikes Again is actually a pretty incredible game if you're interested in Suda51 himself, as he really pours out his feelings on games and the process of creating them throughout it. It's almost like a playable autobiography if you're consistent at reading between the lines. If you just want to play a No More Heroes game though, it certainly isn't that.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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I can't play until lunch time - how's the performance? I've been pretty leery about it based on the footage we've seen.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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I kind of love that 40 years later, Friday the 13th can still "get" some people who are going back to watch the original for the first time. Absolutely everyone knows Jason but I feel like comparatively few know about the first movie's reveal.

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2-5 loses out to 3-1 for me because while Nagito's RNG murder gambit is absolutely fucking genius, that's really all the case is, and it's very short and straightforward besides. 3-1 has much more going on in addition to the switcheroo.

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MysteriousStan posted...

Mostly everything about V3 is just depressing as hell...which for a series that focuses so much on despair, I never really thought of DR1 and DR2 as despair inducing but V3, man. Probably why I still think about it a lot months after playing it.

Kokichi "ruining your fun" in 3-4 and having to prove that it really was Gonta was so soul crushing and depressing, even as someone who's typically extremely resistant to that sort of stuff. For all of DR's themeing it was probably the one time the series made me feel legit despair.

For these and other meta reasons I still say DR2 is my "favorite Danganronpa" since it's more in line with what the series typically is and is much more replayable for it, but V3 has a strong claim to easily being the best VN of the bunch overall.

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Hajime is my personal favorite protagonist but Shuichi is probably the "best" just in terms of writing.

Mac Arrowny posted...

It was disappointing that he didn't really have to come to terms with his true nature, too.

Don't believe Tsumugi's lies. (Most of what she said is probably true, but she was 100% lying about the "true nature" stuff since we directly saw in the prologue that they kidnapped people for the show.)

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Oh boy I sure do love spoilers for Danganronpa.

3-1 blew my fucking mind in a way no piece of mystery fiction has done since Umineko.

2-5 wasn't quite there but it was still legitimately brilliant as all hell.

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Mahiru is one of maybe, like, two believable characters in the entire franchise. Honestly I think she gets enormous points for feeling so real in a universe of total weirdos.

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Even with that explanation, the game had gone gold so is it accurate to say this delay is entirely because they need to crunch on a day one patch? The base game must be a complete mess optimization-wise if that's the case.

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A super messed up story to be sure. Spelunking has always been pretty solidly in the list of thrill-seeking activities that just welcome way too many horrific situations for me to ever consider it. I was terrified watching The Descent even before the spooky stuff started happening!

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azuarc posted...

I honestly never made any attempt to metagame or think about and project what was coming. I just took it all as it came and let myself be surprised.

On one hand this is so hard for me to imagine doing when it's a mystery and, at least to me, the whole point is to see how quickly you can figure everything out. On the other, just taking everything as it comes must be one hell of a rollercoaster with this series sometimes.

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UshiromiyaEva posted...

Best girl incoming.

https://youtu.be/Oaf2gUhy74o

If you know, you know.

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Stay safe, weaku!

A friend of mine is just barely inside the evacuation zone and had to roll out this morning. My girlfriend lives in the area too so I'm hoping they lock this one down reasonably quickly. X_X

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Anagram posted...

So, uh, are my character and case rankings normal, or what?

You put Byakuya in the top three so you're good in my book! Really though it's pretty standard except for Byakuya and Toko, who people vary wildly on. You're also on point at least IMO about DR1 not really having any "great" characters. The sequels are both lightyears ahead in that regard.

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Mother of god, these playoffs. Tigers and Moist Talkers both lose for playing too hard and getting nuked by the sun/black hole. Meanwhile the Magic manages their best trick of all - making all of my coins disappear.

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
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That write up on The Empty Man has me extremely interested

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Let the voice of love take you higher,
With this gathering power, go beyond even time!