Lurker > pyresword

I didn't get far enough to rate it because I didn't like the gameplay, but as of about 6-10 hours in I thought the story was really good.

Teddie is actually one of my favorite characters in the series.

Morgana sucks and Koromaru may as well be an NPC.

What is this

Junpei is a top 2 major character in the series while Yosuke and Ryuji are probably both in the bottom 5 or so.

7.5/10 mainly because of Roxas. The Nobodies are also a relatively cool concept even if I'm not sure they always followed through.

3/10

I like Steven

This is a plot trope I enjoy that I feel is often used poorly.

In terms of how well I think the time travel elements are utilized I think I'll go with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. (strictly speaking not a loop really, but whatever...) My favorite overall story that contains significant time loop elements is probably either Steins;Gate or Madoka Magica (early 2010's anime). I'll mention Steins;Gate is also really close to the top just in terms of how well it utilizes time travel.

Yeah I should clarify I mean specifically in the context of Harry Potter.

The problem with them leaving Hogwarts is that Hogwarts is an interesting setting which the series has spent time developing. The English wilderness, or really anywhere else in England, is not.

So really I guess it's not necessarily so much a problem with them leaving as just that the locations in which the story actually take place just all suck.

What do we mean by "ended"? I don't like most of the content in book 7 but the final third or so is actually resonably good.

$500 in an MTG championship event

Wordle 214 2/6




Pretty sure I should just quit while I'm ahead.

To me it's pretty easily Chrono Trigger but I also am probably using a different definition of definitive. The way I'm thinking of it is more like "this is the game people would point at to illustrate what a JRPG is", and not necessarily just the game the most people would recognize.

Of course there's also different stylistic trends between modern JRPG's and JRPG's from ~1990-2005, so maybe you'd use like Persona 5 or something for the former category. IDK.

I guess 7/10 overall.

Labrys's route was actually really great, and I tend to form overall opinions on things based on how good the good parts are. The rest was pretty mediocre though for the most part. I remember Mitsuru and maybe Naoto having decent stuff I guess.

Wonder Egg Priority sucked even without the special episode tbqh.

Oh oops ignore me that was already there.

Uhh...Final Fantasy IX I guess

Hollow Knight

I thought season 2 of Quintuplets was not good. Season 1 I liked but wouldn't have said it was great or anything.

I agree with those criticisms of MHA overall but I do think that at least some of the characters are in more of a grey area.

I'd classify it more as a case of there being a small number of exceptions to constitute a token effort in justifying the message/themes, but yeah.

I'm specifically thinking of characters like Twice and Gentle Criminal who fall pretty squarely in the category of "good people who have been labelled as villains". There's less examples on the Hero side, but Endeavour was already said and I think there's arguments for characters like Hawks also.

Inviso posted...

Haven't Played:

Hey You, Pikachu!

You are a fortunate soul.

Hey You, Pikachu!

PA Works has done some of my favorite shows! Just not that one.

Really they are pretty inconsistent in general, but their high points are better than most studios can claim imo.

Aquatope on White Sand had a really good first episode but it never clicked with me much after that. Should get back to it at some point maybe especially since I think I'd like the 2nd half more.

Eggnog is one of the foulest beverages ever invented.

I never saw the original but this movie was really really good.

Snowfields was not one of my favorites but that says more about how much I liked the rest of the game than it does about Snowfields.

Medium. Anything adjacent to medium is acceptable but both well-done and rare are terrible.

I only watched like 4 episodes of To Your Eternity but I thought it was terrible. The writeup doesn't really give me any hope that it gets better either.

I suspect this will be looked at dismissively by fans of the show because obviously the show is about change and development, but for those things to have any impact the show needs to do something to get me invested from the beginning, and this show was pretty much the opposite. It did very little to get me emotionally invested in any of the stories, went through great strides to make me dislike the main character, and was just actively unpleasant to watch for like 80% of the time that I stuck with the show.

Blue-Eyes White Dragon (LOB) - 3
Blue-Eyes White Dragon (SDK) - 8
Dark Magician (LOB) - 5
Dark Magician (SDY) - 8
Venusaur (Base) - 3
Charizard (Base) - 7
Blastoise (Base) - 6

Odd Taxi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI_cLtW3PnA

7/10

Pretty fun story overall. Had a legitimately adventurous feel to it which was missing in the later games in the series I thought.

Separate comment but at least in the anime I do think that the very end is pretty dumb. I've heard it works better in the visual novel which based on just how VN's work in general is probably true, but I doubt it is better by enough to matter. I just don't care because the characters and everything leading up the end are so great.

plasmabeam posted...

Damn, looks like another one I gotta add to my list

I will say this game is firmly within the romance visual novel genre and if that doesn't appeal to you then you probably won't like it.

I only really liked one of the Illumina courses (Not this one...think it's one andy hasn't gotten to yet). Not my favorite part of the game by any means, though I guess I like them more than the Rainbow Cloud level of the original.

I only saw the anime but the anime (including After Story) is somewhere in the 9 to 10 range.

Seafloor was a top tier course even before the far superior alternate route tbqh. Just a great level all around. Really close between that and one other for my favorite in the game.

Beach is definitely one of the weaker courses but I liked pretty much all of them in the base game.

Final Fantasy XIII by a longshot. How or why I kept going is a mystery to me. I guess it helps that the game was actually decent from like hour 5 through hour 20.

I loved New Pokemon Snap. Really fantastic game. Game looks gorgeous and there's lots of fun interactions with all of the pokemon.

Also there was way way more content than I expected. Like 2-3 times as many levels as the original game, and they all have night versions or different routes or whatever which are legitimately different experiences. The levels themselves were also really cool with the highlights (Elsewhere Forest, Lental Seafloor) being head-and-shoulders above anything offered by the original game. Also haven't even touched the DLC which reminds me I should give that a try...

I don't really buy games on release unless I have prior exposure to the series, but I guess this applies to The House in Fata Morgana. Can't even think of another example that satisfies even just criteria 1 and 2 though.

8.5/10

Meh. Certain individual arcs are easy 10/10 material, but they can only carry the game so far. The first arc is fantastic and Kamoshida is such a great villain--easily the best of the series. The conflict is personal, and he feels like a totally real and utterly vile character. Basically everything you could ask for in order to get me invested. Also, the content of palace 4 definitely makes my shortlist for best character arcs in video gaming, period. Stories of healing are pretty much always the best types of stories there are and this is a good one.

Otherwise though, the individual arcs are...fine. (Except when they aren't--see palace 5) The overarching story is pretty weak, has problems with its structure, and goes out on a whimper. And the cast chemistry in this game is somewhat lacking in this game as compared to 3 and 4, which was what went a long way in making those games memorable. I do like the characters as individuals here, but it feels like there's something missing in the group dynamic, idk.

Lots of things that are decent but nowhere near as good as the community says they are.

pyresword posted...

It's really neat how I can view Fate Shirou, UBW Shirou, and HF Shirou as meaningfully different characters

I guess to clarify a bit: I don't mean like he's written totally differently, which would be bad. He's the same character in all the routes but the experiences he goes through during the events of the story cause him to develop and change in distinct ways in each of the routes, and I always felt the direction was reasonable and justified.

This is tricky. I'll go with an 8.5/10, with the caveat that I'd rate the different routes of the VN somewhat differently.

The Fate route is something like a 7 or 8; the UBW route is something like a 6 or a 7; and Heaven's Feel is something like a 9 or a 10.

Overall rating is a bit higher than the sum of its parts because I like how the 3 routes taken together provide something of a complete picture of Shirou and his ideals and how they can change. It's really neat how I can view Fate Shirou, UBW Shirou, and HF Shirou as meaningfully different characters, which isn't something I can recall too often from other VN's I've read. You get this a bit from the other characters also but you unsurprisingly get the most insight into Shirou since he's the main character.

Also the rating probably should have said as much but I do count Heaven's Feel among my all-time favorite stories.

I haven't played any of these but I like the Outer Wilds base game more than I liked the Re:Zero anime.

The problem with the depth in Tales of the Abyss is that each new layer is just as nonsensical and insufferable as the last.

I am exaggerating to make a point admittedly and it was a decent game in spite of the problems, but Tales of the Abyss is my poster child for depth that doesn't actually add anything to the experience.

Vesperia > Berseria > Symphonia >>> Abyss > Arise

masterplum posted...

If you like VNs it's quite good but if you don't it doesn't do anything else particularly interesting

I don't really disagree with this but also I don't think there are any VN's at all which I would recommend to people who aren't VN fans, and this one is easily in my top 3 or so.

I might be forgetting when it was but either way it's not great.

I don't necessarily mind the idea of starting players off with less options so as to ramp them up to the battle system. The fact that it's specifically tied to an item doesn't matter since it's unmissable--it's basically the same as unlocking a new ability after a certain plot point.

That said, iirc they don't actually give you this option until like 8-10 hours into the game which I feel like is where the real problem was.

I'm no expert on indie games but I enjoyed Outer Wilds.