#i did not hate that game but i think my biggest gripe is that it had all the edges filed off

[lith-myathar]

.

[danielnelsen]

gotta be real, im very sorry guys, but ive gotta take a break from haterism, im actually enjoying most of this lore lmao

[redjennies]

me talking to Martin Bauer in Act III:

[lafaiette]

Do you also feel like there is an ungodly amount of trash talk about Solas? Which would be fine but there really aren’t very many options to defend him????

That’s my biggest gripe so far. Like I feel like they are taking the choice away from me by making me be antagonistic towards a character that I don’t want to be antagonistic to in a game that is supposedly about CHOICE.

Sorry Lafiatte I’ve been feeling spicy about it lol.

OMG YES (under the cut because spoilers)

Everyone detests him, Harding is angry with him even before Varric gets stabbed, all insist what he did was terrible, that he was always distant and prickly, when we know this wasn't exactly true - he didn't want to grow attached to people in DAI for obvious reasons, yes, but he was always kind with his companions and the people in need. He always approved when the Inquisitor performed a kind action (like leaving flowers on a tomb) or said something nice.

If you use the outside camera when the Inquisitor first arrives in Redcliffe, you can see Solas kneeling down to help some hurt people on the road. That's who Solas was, not the cold person everyone (especially Harding) describes.

Also, no one wants to understand his POV - I think I have seen only Davrin "defend" him in one occasion, and Rook can sometimes say something positive about him ("He's lending us his help", "He's been nice so far" etc.), but it's really, really frustrating. Also, the constant repetition of the theme of regret - sometimes the dialogue seems written for 5 years old children playing a Pokemon game.

It's like the devs wanted the new players to hate him, and the old fans who never liked him to finally have the chance to say how much they can't stand him. Meanwhile the players who genuinely liked him, friendly Inquisitors and romanced Lavellans, are swept under the rug.

"Oh... you like Solas? Damn... good for you, I guess..."

I'm glad some people are liking it, but I can't see any love for the fans and the setting in this game, only fatigue and hurry. Understandable, after ten years of development hell, but damn, I'm sad.

[friendlybowlofsoup]

Another Update

Hello Friends,

I have a rather long (but optimistic!) update to share with you all today. As many of you are probably tired of reading these kind of posts, I have a TL;DR here, but I did want to share what has been on my mind in that past half-year that I haven't been here.

It has been rough, and busy as always, but I think I'm finally facing myself and my project for the first time in a very long time.

TL;DR (it's actually long, I have a lot to say (*_ _)人)

I soul-searched and decided to stop compromising on my own feelings with regards to this project. I gave in to everything I wanted to do.

Plot changes, which means some character changes, which means some of the demo is outdated.

GotRM will be switching over to Twine.

----

OH MAN DID I SUFFER THE LAST FEW MONTHS

After my previous update, I hunkered down and really analyzed how I wanted to proceed with GotRM as a project. Because even prior to that post, I had already been going through long periods of hiatuses (which you are all aware of), and while I didn't lie about school taking up my time, I was also harboring a growing dissatisfaction with my own writing that really killed my progress for a long time.

So after everything had settled, I sat down and forced myself to peel apart my work. I know I said I would answer asks, but I uninstalled all of my social media and put aside this blog to focus. I made a note of all the things I liked and didn't like, and I made a list of things I wanted to change or improve on. The biggest point was that I also looked at my efficiency during actual writing sessions: how much of my time was spent writing vs. fighting with code? How could I change that?

And after a lot of deliberation, I figured there were a few things I had to change from the ground up, summed up in four points:

My working style was super incompatible with grad school. I can't spend 20-30 minutes scrolling up and down CSIDE checking code or looking for narratives while also jumping between chapters to make sure events line up. As this story grows, the more difficult it becomes to keep track of all the branches, so I needed an alternative working method, which I am adhering to now, and it prioritizes efficiency.

I hated the way I was tracking and coding stats in-game. I have griped so much about coding stats, and I have adhered to such a rigid style that I really felt trapped whenever I was confronted with balancing them out. So I'm throwing that to the wind and redoing how I utilize and convey them. Player-side, this decision doesn't change much since I never fully utilized stats in the demo anyway, and the stats page with indicators will still exist, but I'm getting rid of stat bars and how I treat stat checks.

The story I want to write now is different from the one I started out with. I've known for a while that GotRM was becoming far more than the tiny, wishful novella that I wrote as a teenager. I held onto that old story for a long time, but there's just so much I want to change that I realized I'd been clinging to a story I no longer enjoyed writing. So I spent the majority of the last few months rewriting GotRM from scratch. I redid some worldbuilding, I changed a lot of plot points, and I fixed a lot of characters' backstories accordingly. This meant scrapping stuff from even the demo, but that turned out to not be the biggest issue because:

I wanted to branch away from ChoiceScript. Honestly, I never really cared about getting officially published, but the camaraderie in the forums and on Tumblr were why I committed to CS and CoG. However, ultimately, I really want the functionality that other tools can offer GotRM, and so after a long internal debate, I will be switching over to Twine. Fortunately, since I was rewriting everything anyways, this has been relatively painless, and passage mapping has made everything so much neater. I am trying my best to make it up to chapter 2 before I release the new demo, so please look forwards to that!

And so yes, I am still here, chugging along.

I love this game and this story: it's been my creative escape for as long as I could remember, and you can imagine how frustrated I was when I realized I was starting to dread working on it.

I am forever learning more about myself and my writing style, and this is simply more of that journey. Thank you everyone for sticking around, for joining the discord, and for checking up on me--that I have all of you has truly been a dream.

Hopefully more updates to come soon! I understand that there may be questions about these new changes, so please ask away! I will (try) to release some asks that I've been working on in the drafts too, but I will wait until at least tomorrow to release them so that this post doesn't get drowned out immediately.

And as always, with a lot of love,

FriendlyBowlofSoup (Mei)

[dragonwysper]

Just finished Mouthwashing, after hearing all sorts of snippets of fandom drama about it. I'd stayed away from all that because I didn't have the context, but now I do! So I'm blasting you all with my thoughts.

Long post. Be prepared. Spoilers for Mouthwashing and CW for in-depth discussion of SA below.

So the biggest aspect of the drama side of the fandom that I've been seeing is how the game handled Anya's rape. Some people think it was devastating and properly showed the awfulness of Jimmy, and feel Anya's trauma was portrayed accurately and handled well. Others think Anya was somewhat one-dimensional; she was given a stereotypically female-specific trauma to match the different pain/traumas of the other crew members, and feel the subject wasn't given enough weight and respect.

After having played the game (while also going into it with the knowledge and expectation that it would be about SA), I can see both sides. Though I think my thoughts on everything come from some core details.

Firstly, the core theme of the game is not SA. It's karma. Jimmy is a terrible person who doesn't care about the pain he inflicts on others, as long as he gains something from it. The game follows him as he destroys the people around him, and treats them like fodder to fuel his own goals. We see all of this catch up to him in the end, and he's sortof divinely punished, or overcome with guilt, or whatever it is, because of it. Each person's harm is unique and everybody has their own micro-themes, but the core theme of the game is overwhelmingly karma.

Essentially, this is not a game about SA. This is a game about a terrible person getting what's coming to him.

Secondly, rape as shock content is a common gripe regarding mostly horror movies. It's a quick and easy way to create motivation, so much so that it's turned into its own subgenre of 'rape and revenge' plots. Think I Spit On Your Grave style movies. The other side of the same coin is objectifying the victim, which creates an exploitative feel. The act of the rape itself, and furthermore the shock of it, is more important than the victim and their feelings and trauma. Rape is detached from the lasting harm it causes, and is more something to justify getting up in arms about something/someone rather than a trauma.

And while we do see some of Anya's trauma from SA, Mouthwashing by and large is not meant to be a commentary on SA specifically. Again, it's about how terrible of a person Jimmy is, which makes the SA, at least in part, a tool to make the player hate him.

Ultimately, if Mouthwashing was changed to where Anya faced a different form of harm from Jimmy, instead of SA, it would still be just about the same game. You could still make a convincing game with karma and bad people getting their comeuppance as the core theme. And that I think is the most important realization to have about the subject.

Anya's SA was the first trauma, and the details of the aftermath are what kickstarted the plot, but it was, intentionally or not, a tool to make you hate Jimmy. Because the game isn't about Anya and her trauma. It's about Jimmy and his karma.

I think Mouthwashing is fascinating, and that theme of karma is not something I see done well very often. I think the style of the plot and all the little details that expound upon the micro-themes of the game are extremely well done. And I think it did handle its themes of SA better than a lot of content that discusses it. But it's not perfect, and it falls short of really digging into the true weight of it. It's not a game that makes any real progress on the portrayal of sexual trauma in media. It's cleaner and less graphic than 'rape and revenge' stories, but it ultimately still relies on exploiting the shock of rape to serve a 'bigger' plot.

It's late, I'm tired, and I'm struggling to properly word what I'm feeling, but hopefully my interpretation of nuance comes through.

[moonpaw]

Would you be willing to explain why you don't like insurgence and xenoberse? I also keep seeing them recommended, but I'm currently playing uranium.

insurgence seems to be an over the top edgy game that's just super not in my wheelhouse

xenoverse because i did play through that one and its just. so goddamn lackluster. the plot and gameplay was constantly pissing me off 😭 though i think my main issue was that i was pretty excited going into the game because i watched as several people overhyped it, calling the story fantastic and the best thing ever and then i played it and it was just... not.

it was ALRIGHT. i guess. but eurgh. my biggest issue is the other playable character (that you don't choose) only showing up like a handful of times (i think literally can be counted on one goddamn hand) and is heavily shoving a romance in your face from the moment you meet them. which whatever, ok, sure. except. if you choose to play as a girl, the boy option, LOOKS VERY MUCH LIKE YOUR DAD. and it just made the whole thing SUPER uncomfortable to me to the point i had to restart the whole game over to choose to be a boy instead because at least the girl doesn't look like either parent even though i still very much hated the whole forced romance crush thing. but hey. at least it didn't feel like i was being flirted on by a younger version of your dad 😭

also the gameplay itself was just. really felt like it was all glitter and hype and then felt like ass trying to actually play and make sense of from a plot perspective

and then my next gripe is your dad and this one is end of game spoiler territory

the game is focused on finding your dad who got kidnapped at the beginning of the game (10 years ago) except oops! nope! he's the leader of the villain gang! also he's SILVER FROM THE CANON SERIES (with your mom being leaf!)

and him being the leader of the big bads just. GOES AGAINST HIS WHOLE CHARACTER?? hello. hello. hello. i still had the whole elite 4 or whatever post game there was but finding out it was silver just. made me stop playing it pissed me off soooooo much

[spitblaze]

Look Octopath Traveler 1 is a game that has left a very strong impression on me and one I love dearly and one that I'm well aware is gonna bounce off of some people. That's fine, not everything is for everyone, but instead of hearing 'this why this game sucks' from someone who doesn't like the game I'd rather you hear 'here's what I love about it' from someone who does, especially because of how much of my enjoyment is found in the parts that some people hate.

So, mechanically speaking- Octopath Traveller is REALLY fun, but you need to actually engage with it. For some people, combat in turn based rpgs is just overleveling and then mashing 'a' until you win. You can't really do that with Octopath- much like a lot of my other favorite RPGs, you NEED to employ strategy in order to succeed. You will of course eventually reach the point where you can breeze through enemies, and the level progression of 1 is PAINFULLY slow at times, but that just makes it all the more important to think strategically.

Narratively, it's not like...the deepest thing in the world. That's fine, not every RPG needs to be operating on a million levels of narrative depth. I wouldn’t call it 'shallow' either, but the meaning found in any given narrative is fully subjective. What REALLY captivated me was the characters. Their personalities are very distinct, and if you're the kind of person who likes to fill in the gaps yourself, there's ample room to do that. The lack of meaningful narrative interparty connection in 1 is frustrating and off-putting to a lot of people. And I get it! That's easily one of my biggest gripes with 1 narratively, with such effort put into character writing and not even implying that things connect until the post-game secret superboss. But, like I said- if you're the kind of person who likes filling in the gaps yourself, it gives you MORE than enough to imagine their interactions and their lives outside of what we see. The hole doesn't feel like a staring, gaping flaw to me and a lot of others- it feels like it’s inviting you in, to use your imagination and consider narratives between characters that the game doesn't provide itself.

And like...I get that that's not everyone's bag. If you prefer narratives with less of those gaps, Octopath 2 is an upgrade over 1 in like...every conceivable way. I still love 1 dearly, but like in the same way that even though Pokémon Emerald is my favorite I more than recognize that it's FAR from the series peak. If the mechanics of Octopath put you off too...honestly,.play Live A Live. That's the game it's inspired by, and the team that made Octopath did the remake of it. And if you're like me and love the room to use your imagination that Octopath 1 has...might I recommend the Etrian Odyssey series?

[subspaceskater]

Do you have any celeste mod recs? My friend finished Farewell a while back and I feel like she'd enjoy chewing on some more fun level designs.

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay i love questions. i'm gonna go through some basic stuff before i get into my personal recs.

so if she hasn't done any modding at all then the first step is installing the modloader. it has all the information you'll need on now to do that https://everestapi.github.io/

don't worry about downloading dependencies when you get the mods, when you launch the game through the modloader it'll go through and download all the dependencies you're missing.

then go here to find map mods. there's all kinds of other mods on the site but those are to be applied per taste so i shan't recommend them. https://gamebanana.com/mods/cats/6800?

what i did at first was just kind of sort it by most downloaded or most liked and then just read the descriptions for the top ones and downloaded whatever i liked the sound of. there's a lot of good mods out there and the scene is just getting bigger and bigger!

there's also the celeste modding central youtube which has trailers for things and is a good way to find mods that maybe came out recently https://www.youtube.com/@CelesteModdingCentral

another thing to do is just like pay attention to difficulty levels on the mods.

beginner levels are usually a-side to early b-side difficulty

intermediate are late b-side, most c-sides, and some of farewell

advanced are around or higher than the difficulty of the hardest farewell and c-side maps and will often introduce mechanics that arent in the vanilla game but aren't too difficult to perform if you've already cleared farewell

expert is above all vanilla difficulty and will introduce mechanics that are hard to do! lots of scary shit here. but very cool looking maps. i havent really finished any expert mods but i've been able to clear a few rooms in the ones i've tried/the ones in collabs.

grandmaster is above everything else. this is where you go when you're bored of expert or really wanna do sicko shit. it's cool.

however it's also important i think to play maps that are below the difficulty level you can complete. because a lot of them are fun! and cute! and just because you can clear it in one try with no deaths doesnt mean you won't enjoy the experience. a lot of them have really cute custom art or music or custom mechanics and they're completely worth it.

now i'll put my actual recs under a cut

of course i'll just start by saying the 2020 spring collab is maybe the most well known mod because it is so fucking good. this is a great place to start and a great place to just have a big mod with a bunch of maps in it that you can complete without digging for a ton of things.

the strawberry jam collab, secret santa 2022, and secret santa 2023 are also all really good. the second two have lots of in jokes between modders that i dont really get because i only really play mods without being involved with the scene but that doesn't detract from them being fun to play.

i will say that my biggest gripe with collab packs is that sometimes there will just be a level in one that i hate. never like a bad level but just something that is antithetical to what I enjoy in a map! and it feels a little bad to be like "no i'm not fucking doing this" and just ignore one map in a floor and then not be able to do the big combination map at the end. but it's fine. maybe you aren't as whiny of a bitch as i am.

glyph is a huge one that a lot of people love. it has a bunch of really cool stuff. cannot recommend glyph enough. it has its own b-sides.

into the jungle is a custom campaign the ramps up in difficulty starting from where 7-A was.

rupture is really good. short intermediate mod with 16 rooms.

lucy's summit is a fun beginner difficulty summit remix. (a kind of mod that just sticks to vanilla level theming.)

cosmic sands is a short intermediate map with some fun mechanics i enjoyed a lot

sentimental is a 10 room intermediate map with some cool secrets

and nutty noon :) kirby.

that's probably enough recommendations.

[yesiknowlahee]

I have A LOT of thoughts on Dawntrail. Do not open this if you haven't finished it.

Seriously if you go below the cut and haven't finished, it's your fault. I tagged it. I warned you up top. Warned. Extra warned. W A R N E D for spoilers.

Okay so let's begin.

My RUNNING MAJOR, ABSOLUTELY BIGGEST GRIPE is that the game plays Show and Tell. And I would like to *do*

The biggest one is that- so this expansion we are a side character. Very rarely do the events circle around us, we are pretty consistently supporting someone else. And that is FINE. I am more than okay with that. BUT it means that we do miss out on seeing and experiencing certain things.

An example is catching the Llama at level 90. A quest Wuk Lamat goes on off screen. I would've loved to have gone either with her, or played as her, and had the opportunity to try it for myself. I think that would've given us an opportunity to appreciate her journey as a character more, and been more engaging than the cutscene we got. And realistically, we could've had both.

Another point at which I would've LOVED to have seen or interacted with, was finding out a trade agreement had been made with Radz at Han, and the dragons coming in, and generally, the defense of Tuliyollal during the second invasion. Literally getting to interact with any of that. I would've been fine if that had been a VERY long duty or two consecutive duties, just to experience that aspect a little more.

Inb4 "but development time, they can only do so much" I am not willing to give concessions to this big a company with some of the most popular games in the world. They have had concession and patience from me for four years. Now, I am going to have critiques.

Another point at which I would've liked to DO rather than being shown- the train scene when we're shooting at things. COME ON. GIVE ME A LITTLE POINT AND SHOOT MINI GAME. Cutscenes are cool, but I want to play with what you're showing me and feel immersed.

Finally, as someone who is an omnicrafter at 90, that is acknowledged all of ONCE. I realize not everyone is, but a lot of us are. It would be INCREDIBLY cool if they gave us a temporarily optional quest in which we got to help repair the ini'hana float, like a custom delivery. Or something that they found to be within reason. Just, a little more to let me interact with the classes I have at hand. It would be a really great opportunity to immerse me as a player. Same goes for when we're cooking. I'm glad I got to help but maybe a little mini game would be nice.

Overall I unfortunately feel our questing is a bit of a stale slog.

If you've read this far, you're probably thinking,

"Okay you're bitching, so what did you like???"

The cultures. I thought it was absolutely beautiful and wonderful, the first half of the expansion- I had an amazing time. I LOVED the journey we went on with Wuk Lamat. I liked trading with the Pelu Pelu. I loved ini'hana. I got to develop a love for the people with Wuk Lamat, and I really appreciated that. Tural was wonderful. I had a lot of fun in the first Dungeon. I didn't hate the others, but because I loved the beauty of the Turali aesthetics so much, I felt disappointed the further we got into Alexandrian sci-fi vibes, and when we went to Shaaloani. The game even acknowledged we'd seen this before. It wasn't really fresh. And while it laid important groundwork, I feel it could've been more interesting.

Meeting versions of people from across reflections feels a little lazy to me.

Other things I take issue with, the game is *too* formulaic at this point. The expansions follow the same formula. The dungeons. They bring the same characters from different worlds back from across expansions. Come on. Deviate. Please.

This is our THIRD FINAL BOSS IN A ROW where the final dungeon is their memories. And we go through a world of their lost people for the final zone. Come on. C O M E ON. It was cool for Emet. I tolerated it for Sad Bird. I cannot do another glowing white girl that numerous problems coalesce around. (No I am not implying that Emet is ShBs Token glowing white girl, that is Ryne. Who is just *Minfilia again* )

And in us getting that key and them setting us up for interdimensional fusion, I fear that we may be on the precipice for more laziness. And that is really disappointing to me.

So, let's end this on a few positives. Because I didn't hate dawntrail. But there were a lot of decisions made that I am concerned by or disappointed by.

Gulool Ja, I am his guardian. Wuk Lamat said we're family. Imma be his aunty and we're going places. Love that kid. Enjoyed the motif and discussion of family that stayed at the center of this Latin America centered expansion. That was beautiful and I enjoyed it.

Bakool Jaja. ;)

SEEING THE ADOPTIVE PARENTS AND THE BIRTH PARENTS AND THE CLOSURE THE CHARACTERS GOT AND HOW THEY PROCEEDED WITH THE KNOWLEDGE. OH MY GOD I LOVED THAT. THAT WAS BEAUTIFUL. I CRIED SO MUCH IN LIVING MEMORY. SO. SO. MUCH.

Koana's growth brought me A LOT of joy.

Sena Bryers performance was delightful.

A lot of the character designs were wonderful.

I'm looking forward to further interacting with the world they've built.

They almost made me like Solution Nine. I'm sorry but we cannot keep ending the expansion in Scifi fuck nowhere guys.

Also if you come in to these comments and rts and try to defend ANYTHING with "Well in another final fantasy--" no. Make it stand on its own. A GAME SHOULD STAND ON ITS OWN. ESPECIALLY A MULTI EXPANSION MMO. PEOPLE SHOULD BE ABLE TO ENJOY JUST THE EXPENSIVE ASS MMO. References? YES. GO FOR IT. but no defending bad writing by saying it is a nod to another game. I don't care what you're nodding to. I care that your nod can't stand by itself.

H o p e f u l l y I'll be able to come back to this years from now and be able to appreciate it as a foundation for other expansions, like I do appreciate Shaaloani more *after credits rolled* than I did when I was doing it.

Side note I'm pretty sure my fiancé's colleagues heard me SOBBING over Erenville and Cachiua's goodbye in their meeting this morning. Whoops.

You see how long this post is? I wrote it while the credits rolled. They're STILL rolling.

TL;DR I want to interact with more of the stuff in the immersive world they're creating and I would like them not to do the same thing *over and over* as far as flow and the nature of the final bosses and zones go.

[flares-of-arcadia]

Some messy thoughts on RE7 (with mentions of 8)

just beat RE7. I wish I had paid more attention when it first came out and I watched my brother go through it, because holy shit I fucking loved it

Under a read-more for length

After playing through 7 on my own, it's hard to believe that I didn't really get into the fandom until Village. Or, well, it does track that I saw scary women in 8 and started paying attention... I am nothing if not predictable

And honestly, a big part of why Village sunk it's claws into me is because it's flawed, or at the very least felt like it had a lot of missed potential. All of the antagonists were so interesting, and I felt like they didn't get as much attention as the Bakers did (there are so many things to look at, storytelling in the environment, AND we learned more about them in the DLC). Wanting to fill in those gaps for the 4 Lords and Miranda is what made me so invested in the fandom

(also because I'm really gay)

If you're familiar with my main blog, you might know that my biggest gripe with Village is that we don't get anything between Mia and Miranda. Having now played through 7 (and read literally every file), I feel even more strongly about what was missing. Or, at the very least, what I wanted from it.

Annnnd that's just in terms of story, gameplay is a whole other thing, but I'd want to replay 8 before getting too much into it.

But back to just talking about 7 for a tiny bit longer, as chaotic as my thoughts are:

Loved the soundtrack. Also hated it because, as a horror soundtrack goes, it was Very Effective. Didn't appreciate one of the tracks having some monster noises, tho. That was already a tense section and I hated getting false alarms about whether or not there was a Molded around the corner. And!!! Honestly the version of Go Tell Aunt Rhody didn't need to slap as hard as it does. I'd listen to that shit in my free time

Ethan is an interesting protagonist? I love him, don't get me wrong, but there are a couple kind of quirks that make it hard to interpret him. Most of the time he feels like a silent protagonist, but in cutscenes he's very vocal. It gets weird once the cutscene ends with something dramatic and he immediately shuts up.

Like, after we first reunite with Mia, we reach a dead end, Ethan goes to check another room, and while our back is turned we hear Mia scream. Ethan yells her name, we rush back to the room she was in, and then Ethan just doesn't say anything else. Doesn't call out to her, doesn't say anything about the new pathway, nothing. There are more examples but this was supposed to be quick

I love Mia. She's a badass, she's a liar with temporary amnesia, and she's a Fucking Badass. Seriously wish we had a chance to play as her again in Village. I do kinda wish we got more glimpses into her relationship with Ethan, but hey that's what fanfiction is for

I feel so bad for Eveline. I get that she was beyond the point of saving, but fucking hell, you read the files and you look at the photos (and you think about what we know from 8 about Miranda's role) and she's suddenly very understandable. It's tragic, everything that happened to her, even if she went on to inflict tragedies on others.

Okay I have more thoughts but my thumbs are tired from gaming + immediately typing on my phone. Love y'all byeeeeee

[penguwastaken]

On ‘Danganronpa Togami’ also, I would be of the viewpoint that most of what happened in the present in terms of actual events not merely spoken of was real (unlike the interpretation of certain others) and that the way Borges worked was essentially like a more advanced versions of the vision filters from ‘Black Mirror’, replacing what was seen/heard by Blue Ink with regards to the identities of (some of) the people who were being encountered then being obscured/replaced with others if they seemed to contradict what Blue Ink’s reality (as Byakuya’s biographer) was supposed to be, and what words they were saying. That what can be guaranteed to have been real 100% would be those scenes Borges wouldn’t have had the right context to in order to properly filter it off into something else, like most of the Ultimate Despair encounters, Byakuya calling Junko, the brief Mukuro encounter, Toko showing up and Genocide Jill going into action, etc., as well as any information given by characters in the games (like there being 15 to 108 Togami siblings). One particular fan theory building on this concept that I like being that the real Shinobu who died was the actual decapitator in the island flashbacks, Borges having switched around the identities of the major players in terms of what they did in presenting a facsimile of the past for her to look back upon. And that while the Ultimate Imposter may very well have been one of the many Togami siblings, it didn’t matter anymore to his present goals with Ultimate Despair, the ‘Kazuya’ Orvin made that way basically to see how his original plan might have gone if he hadn’t met Junko. It was a trilogy that seemed to assume one had played the other games/read the other novels, that its readership would understand what certain things would be referring to, even if not explicitly spelled out.

What would be your thoughts on the trilogy?

Ignore everything below, my mind has completely changed (lol). Read my updated review instead.

If you want a very short description of my opinion of Danganronpa Togami, it's basically this image.

I can't help but think that maybe if i read the Kagami Family Saga novels or if there were just better full translations, maybe i would have liked Danganronpa Togami more. But the truth is, I REALLY don't like Danganronpa Togami. It's honestly one of the worst media experiences I've ever had 😭

My biggest gripe is that i hate that any flaw with its storytelling can be exempt by just saying "well actually it was all fake and you don't know what's real and what isn't" because that just makes it worth nothing, if the bad stuff can be exempt then so can the good stuff. And it is HEAVILY implied that a majority of the novel is fake, the themes rely on it, it's the main point of the novel. And if they were real, that would make it actual dogshit and also just noncanon because it would contradict Danganronpa 3 and Zero.

I genuinely can't tell if I really like the twist or if I really hate it because it makes so much sense in retrospect but getting to that point was an actual pain to read, and the implications of it are also so baffling.

There's so much god awful stuff in this book like Kazuya and Suzuhiko, the weird recurring incest stuff, Byakuya's really bad and flanderized characterization, and all the absurd stuff that happens like Sakura projecting herself or the despair novel but it's all dismissed by the "it was all made up" thing which is so awesome but so stupid at the same time. If that twist was in literally any other novel I might like it but it's handled so poorly that I end up despising it.

Basically, I don't like this novel. And while parts of it matter, for the most part it can be easily dismissed because most of it was canonically made up.

I shouldn't have to read a completely separate book series to enjoy this. There was no need for all of the gross and poorly handled incest and sexual abuse stuff. Byakuya's characterization just makes him insufferable and his entire motive and actions is kind of gross. And to top it all off, NONE of it mattered. It's not like V3 where the events had an effect on the people involved or changed something, the book literally just describes it as another weekend in Byakuya's life and it's all forgotten and most of it didn't even happen. I sat through all of that for none of it to even matter. Basically what it results is self nullifying nonsense that means literally nothing as none of the events happened.

I'm sorry if you like this trilogy, I just can't find many positives. I went in thinking that maybe the hate for it was unfounded, I wanted to like it. I mean, I think Danganronpa 3 is great, I found redeeming qualities in Danganronpa S and Ultra Despair Girls. So if anyone can find something to like in an unpopular piece of Danganronpa media, it would be me. And honestly volume 1 wasn't even that bad, I remember thinking that it was kinda dumb but harmless. But my experience with Danganronpa Togami can best be described as a decent into madness. I have a lot of issues with it, but that's just my opinion.

[neurotic-sinkhole]

A Crown of Candy is my favorite setting and season Dimension 20 has done so far. The way Calorum was meticulously crafted in both lore and actual mechanics demonstrates complete mastery of GMing. Political intruige is such a fun yet unsettling type of campaign, and in one of my own campaigns I've GM'd, I looked towards the world building Brennan and the Intrepid Heros did in the world as an inspiration.

With that being said, there were parts I wasn't a big fan of.

I only discovered D20 about a year and a half ago, so I wasn't around when A Crown of Candy was coming out. I have no idea what the discourse surrounding the season looked like at the time. But seeing the current Rat Grinders discourse, I can put together the peices of how bad fans at that time could have been.

Now, with ACOC, my personal gripes with the season aren't little scenes I disagree with. I've rewatched the season many, many times- and every. single. time For Candia Pt 1 (second to last episode) makes me genuinely upset. I'm a Survivor fan. I've hatewatched many hours of TV but preservered simply for the sake of completion for a lotta content. But that episode, the decisions made by some of the cast in regaurd to their character's alleginces makes me so angry.

From what I gather, there was a shit ton of hate to Emily based from her portrayal (and i guess just existance?) as Sacharina. While I don't think Sacharina was a perfect character, the choices Emily made as Sacharina were nowhere near as upsetting to me as Murph's as Theo.

((This is spoilers if ya haven't watched yet))

In For Candia Pt 1, there's the whole conversarion between the Momma Poppa lonely twin inner House Rocks family about how Amathar isn't an adulterer. They talk about how he's actually legally King! And they make the decision to tell nobody, not even Theo, because it isn't the time. Because well, there is literally war going on, and also because they're nervous about it weaseling rebellion in the troops and companions they so desperately need to work together- if but just for a few more hours.

Then the swifty thing happens, Sacharina tells Theo, and the exact thing Ruby DIRECTLY MENTIONS being nervous about happens. Theo can't keep the secret and tells people.

Now, I know that within the cannon Theo wouldn't know Ruby said that. Him knowing that is straight up metagaming lol. But what Theo does know, and hears directly from Sacharina's lips, is that SWIFTY found this out. Swifty, the "advisor" to his queen who is a known shit starter and murderer. Theo only checks if the queen is telling the truth- not Swifty, and doesn't think to double check this info.

Theo says he's known Ruby since she's been alive. He's known Amathar for decades. But he'll take the word of a rampaging violent maurader such as Swifty, who he's only known for a series of weeks.

Everybody- the cast, the other characters in game, MURPH HIMSELF- has waxed poetic about the importance of honor to Theo. Yet he forgets it so easily at times that he needs it most and it drives me WILD.

This is probably my biggest complaint with ACOC. And I know this issue does not come from some weird sense of "morality" or just straight up sexism/racism/queerphobic tendancies like a lot of the issues d20 fans come up with. It's a genuine critiqe of a character not based off of their behavior but choices made. It's criticism that garners conversation. I bet there are people who will think I'm wrong, and that's fine! I think you're wrong then too, and that's it. I don't think you're immoral or a bad person for not having a different viewpoint than me. It's interesting in a way that stirs myself and others to delve further into the season I love so much.

Because that's what fandom discourse should look like. That is what disagreements within online spaces should look like. Especially when the events being dissected are about little food people in the dice game.

[motionpicturedemise]

myth's game writeup of 2023

i waited until the new year to finish this in case i managed to beat a game during december. i did not. ANYWAY.

this will contain new games as well as games i only got around to in 2023. light on spoilers but be warned

Octopath Traveler II (2023)

as far as i remember, this was the first new game I played this year, and god did it deliver. I've been a fan of octopath since the first one came out on switch in 2018, counting it as my favorite game of all time, so to have a sequel after all this time was thrilling. it did almost everything octopath 1 did and better. new path actions, day/night system, branching stories, fucking boats?? incredible.

my biggest gripe has to be the new hidden classes. I started with throne so getting inventor 10 minutes after my chapter one did definitely fuck up the progression a little bit. I think I preferred ot1 hidden classes. while the dungeons were underwhelming, the boss battles really make you fight for these secret techniques, something absent in 3 out of the 4 hidden classes of octopath 2.

overall: 4/5 BP.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed (2023)

xenoblade 3 as the end of the klaus trilogy really didn't sit well with me, for reasons that don't belong on my review of its dlc, but future redeemed fixed nearly every problem i had with base xc3 — both story and gameplay wise. it ties every xenoblade game and even some of gears and saga into a neat little 40 hour bow, and is truly a love letter to the entire series. I can only think of one problem I still have with it. the fucking menu music.

where do i even fucking start with this one really. relatively speaking, I'm a new xenoblade fan, having started xc1 in march 2022 during a harrowing experience with adhd meds, and since then it had kinda consumed me. I finished it in about a week, went on to watch xenoblade 2 because I had heard the gameplay wasn't great, and got my hands on xenoblade 3 day of release.

overall: 5 dance apples.

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

as someone who was not immune to the hype surrounding botw, I had high hopes for the sequel. hopes that were painfully, slowly, fed into a trash compactor over my playthrough. this is another game I got on release day, lining up outside gamestop in the heat, and lets not forget that it's the only first-party switch game with a price tag of seventy bucks.

the game plays like a tech demo. I have a lot of love in my heart for it. the story was better that botw, the world was more expansive than botw, but the problem here is that everything it does is directly compared to breath of the wild. it doesn't get enough time to shine, because we're in the exact same world as 6 years ago, but instead of pinkish black malice we have blackish pink gloom. i much prefer the runes to the zonai abilities, and the sense of wonder that permeated breath of the wild is replaced by a sense of nostalgia that just doesn't appeal to me much.

all of this isn't to say it's a bad game. I think it's a great game, honestly, but a great game that wasn't meant for me. I've seen the insane shit people do with ultrahand, but it just... isn't my style.

overall: 441/1000 korok seeds

Pikmin 4 (2023)

it's pikmin. i dont have much to say about it. it was a lot of fun, loved that part where i bulborbed all over those guys. im not a gameplay reviewer, at heart i mostly talk about story, and a game like pikmin doesn't have much for me to comment on. good fun. lived up to expectations. probably wouldn't replay.

overall: 7500 sparklium

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood (2017)

oh, stormblood... the rage you still fill my veins with. I'm not going to spend too long on this one because I have better things to do with my life than shit on an expansion everyone already hates, but let me make it clear I actually do have reasons for disliking it.

having ala mhigo built up since the very start of a realm reborn, only to have half of the ala mhigo expansion take place halfway across the star, was very disappointing. the monotony of the three areas in gyr abania compared to the three far east areas was very disappointing. the treatment of the people of the steppe and honestly that entire segment in the main story quest was very disappointing. hien, as a character, in his entirety, was very disappointing.

I will say it had strong parts. the 61-70 quests for several jobs were the strongest in their entire story (see: dark knight). the dungeons started to get more interesting. it gave us the quest Child Labor, which is hilarious and I'll never be finishing it because I want it there forever.

overall: 1/3 WHM Lillies.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers (2019)

ffxiv immediately got better the second 4.0 was over. even the patch quests instantly shot up in quality. it's not even funny. the lead up to shadowbringers was the most fun I had had with the game since a realm reborn, and all of the first was heartbreaking to go through even though I was spoiled on That Character's Identity.

the duty trust system (is that what it was called?) made dungeons much more fun. getting to go through hell with alphinaud alisaie and thancred made everything 10x better, even if it was a lot slower. the story, again, heartbreaking — ryne's arc in particular felt like being stabbed by thousands of little needles while trying to play. in the best way, of course. and amaurot... amaurot. getting to quote our favorite knight in there was my 8th umbral calamity.

shadowbringers also marks when a lot of your job's functionality is really unlocked, so doing the level 80 raid series was genuinely a ton of fun. and again the thousands of little needles. i cried at least 7 times during the main story.

overall: 85/100 kenki gauge.

Katana Zero (2019)

possibly my favorite game this year. the protagonist, zero (or as i like to call him, katana from zero,) ticked all the boxes for a character I'd be absolutely obsessed with. true enough, i fell in love. the fast-paced gameplay, the diegesis of gameplay elements which would typically go unquestioned, and the care that seeps through every dialogue choice all solidify katana zero as one of my favorite game experiences ever. I'll leave it at this, because I encourage everyone to at least give it a try.

overall: Yes, that should work.

Fire Emblem Engage (2023)

this is one of the few 2023 releases on this list that I didn't get on launch, because at the time I had relatively little interest in fire emblem as a series. then I made a lot of friends who enjoy it, and in october, bestie sen decided to buy it for me as an early birthday present. everyone say thank you sen.

considering this is my first fire emblem game, i have absolutely no deeper insight into how it matches up compared to the others, and plenty of people more eloquent than me have already talked about that. what I do know is that the gameplay was surprisingly fun as my first tactical rpg, and the story was passable. all the characters were appealing in one way or another, and I'm still mad I had to choose between marrying kagetsu or fogado. they're both my husbands at heart.

overall: I didn't internalize enough of this game to come up with a clever rating.

Fire Emblem Engage: Fell Xenologue (2023)

I was expecting the dlc to continue the main story, so I put it off until I had finished the base game. in hindsight, I regret it, because I'd love to have brought the winds and twins with me to fight their evil versions and alternate universe dad. the story was... alright. I really liked all the small battle interactions between fell characters and our party members which they would've known. I instantly recognized fogado in chapter 1 because I am in love with him by the way.

overall: i dont know. 1¾ dragonstones

with 2024 upon us, I'll probably be writing reviews for games as I play them. I'm trying to use tumblr more as a social platform instead of just reblogging. we'll see how that plays out. if you like any of these games (yes, even tears of the kingdom) please talk to me about them! that's all for now. look out for my mangled thoughts on SANABI and Nier: Automata next :)

[wardenhowe]

okay. veilguard thoughts.

first the positives!! i really really enjoyed the gameplay! it felt fluid and the combos were a lot of fun and i liked the warrior skill tree!! also the loot system was perfect for me, a person who despises micro managing inventory! the armours and such were also really cool looking generally, so that's neat!! the level design was so good as well!!! as someone with no orientation skills at all i rarely got lost and the environments were nicely designed and invited to explore without being overwhelming!!

i also liked all the companions! i do have problems with their, mostly, one dimensional characterisation but i did think everyone was genuinely intriguing and the companion quests were always something i looked forward to!!! bellara i love you so much btw davrin i'm coming to romance you soon. neve. my life belongs to you.

the story was. okay i guess. as good as it could've been with the premise i suppose. well actually. the venatori and antaam were deeply uninteresting and i don't understand how not a single dalish clan followed their own gods and that sucked imo. i liked the five seconds we got of the butcher but generally speaking my god the minor antagonists SUCKED. you're telling me elven slavers would follow elven gods? i don't believe it sorry. the antaam were just the worst qunari lore in one group so didn't enjoy them either. like. let elves be evil. let diversity win. they have enough reason to want to bring the current world to an end and return to the glory of the elven empire let's be real.

the evanuris were okay i guess. i didn't love nor hate them. solas was a joy. i never wanted answers for all the secrets of the universe but if they had to give them to me then i'm glad it's all solas' fault unironically! so that part was fun. he was an amazing quasi antagonist and even if i expected his betrayal it still hit me emotionally! the rest was like. 4/10 at most.

and my biggest gripe with this game is how much they disregarded the previous games. like it wasn't even funny anymore at a certain point lol. i'm glad they killed varric even if i cried like a little baby but jesus christ not even SINGLE mention of hawke okay lol. generally it's like. every single veilguard companion could have been replaced with a previous companion and the story would have benefitted from it. i understand it's a lot of effort to write with all the different world states in mind but all i really want is for some of my decisions to have counted. i also put a lot of effort into these games you know? just give me a letter or a throwaway line instead of the obvious way they did not talk about the previous games. also. thanks for obliterating southern thedas lol

also! the factions? mostly so BORING. why couldn't these questlines be about internal struggles?? THE CROWS??? such a let down. i loooved treviso but wtf. minrathous was like. so sanitised. where are all the blood mages and elven slaves?? i don't get it. i think overall the factions were so boring and "good guys". the only saving grace for the wardens were evka and antoine whomst i absolutely adored!

so yeah. very enjoyable to play and i liked the characters but um. idk. it felt the opposite of rewarding to be a long time player of this franchise. i never wanted the big lore reveals they gave me. i wanted to see how this world reacted to me and my pcs and i wanted to see my little blorbos evolve. so in that regard it was a big disappointment. it was extremely beautiful and fun so i'm giving it. like a 6.5 or even a 7 out of 10.

also i certainly hope thedas will call a new age cause i think it's time lol significant events certainly took place to justify that

[0heartangel0]

Many months ago (March-May), I played and beat Tactica. From when I hit 'start' to when the credits rolled, I had many thoughts on this game, and for a while, I was too afraid to share them. But after these past few months of ruminating, I've finally wracked up the courage to come out the closet to say:

I hate it. It's not good. It was frustrating from beginning to end. I don't even think the dlc will change my mind on things if I ever think of getting it.

Now, before you raise those pitchforks, I'm not saying you should also hate it alongside me. If you like it, that's okay, and all the power to you to do so. I'm just here to go into too much detail as to why I personally don't have the same opinion. Much like my last big post, I'll be doing this in parts because I have a LOT to say. So, strap in, 'cause

PERSONA 5 TACTICA IS NOT GREAT: A VERY ODDLY-CONSTRUCTED RANT

Pt. 1: The Positives

Okay, I'm not gonna be entirely negative here. There are a couple of good things, believe it or not.

For starters, the art is very good. I know some people might not like it for how it not only strays away from the original's art style, but is made to be more cartoony, but to that I say that that's a rather close-minded way of looking at it. In its own right, it at least has an identity of its own outside of the original, and the cartoonish art style gives way for more expression on the characters, both face-wise and pose-wise. Each still of the characters breathes life into them, and there's even some unique ones depending on the circumstances of the scene.

There's even some moments of full art pieces, and they're gorgeous:

I heard some people compare the art style to that of Persona Q's, but I'd say it's more on the lines with Panty And Stocking's, and I love its art style!

The cutscenes.....well, it depends on which ones you're talking about. Most of the 2d ones are good, but some are dragged down by not-so-good blocking and camera work, especially one in particular (don't worry, we'll get to that one...). The 3d cutscenes...aren't great. My biggest gripe with them are how the mouths move, which looks so weird and awkward, and you notice it from the very first cutscene (skip to when Yusuke and Futaba start talking). The shading and lighting also seem off, but I think that's just me.

Oh, right. Positives. Positives! POSITIVES!

Uh...OKAY! As much as I don't like the vast majority of the characters in this game (I'll elaborate on this in the next post), three of them are handled really well: Futaba, Yusuke, and (surprisingly enough) Lavenza.

Futaba still reigns supreme as p5's best girl (and by 'best girl' I mean out of the PT girls, she's the most entertaining and interesting one. To me), and retains her usual quips and personality. But not just that. Out of all the PT, she has the best chemistry with Toshiro. Not only does she have the most/best banter and talks with him, but they even have the most emotional interactions together.

Before fighting Yoshiki, Futaba tries reassuring him that his mother did love him, due to her own experience of the brain tricking her into thinking hers didn't love her, either. However, she dances around even talking about her own mother, and is super awkward the whole time.

This makes sense, considering the game takes place about 6-7 months after she joined the PT, so she'd still be very socially awkward. It's also a big contrast to Strikers, taking place about a whole year since her joining + having recently started attending high-school, so she's shown to be much better with communication by then.

Another good interaction is after Toshiro finds out the truth behind what happened to Eri Natsuhara (God, that name...), and gets super depressed, requesting the thieves just leave him behind to die. Futaba then does what I wish I could do, which is slap him across the face. She then tells him that she knows what it's like wanting to die, thinking you're the cause of someone else's misfortunes, but if she climbed out of that, he can too. She later makes him coffee with Yusuke, who reveals to Toshiro that she needed help with it, much to her embarrassment.

As bizarre as it is, I do love their chemistry, and I love how Futaba's handled in this game because of it.

Yusuke is rather bizarre for me, because (and I must be honest), he's a character I don't focus on much in comparison to the rest of the Thieves in P5. That isn't to say he's a bad character by any means; he's great! It's just, while he has his funny moments, I always found Ryuji as the character to give me the most laughs. He has his emotional moments, but characters like Futaba I would resonate with more.

But in Tactica, my God, is he entertaining. Out of every character, he has given me the most laughs (aside from maybe Lavenza, but we ain't there, yet), and still stays true to his character. His most notable moments are in Kingdom 2. For instance, when the gang are trying to save a bunch of citizens while acting like Samurai/Geisha, picking team Samurai will result in Ann using her terrible acting skills to get a drunk aizen to cough up the information, only for him to obviously be confused with the way she's acting. Yusuke then uses this opportunity by claiming that Ann's just drunk, and needs somewhere to lie down. Oh, the place where those citizens are is the perfect spot! Where was it, again?

The aizen falls for it, and tells them where it is. But just as he's sobering up, and is about to report them, Yusuke knocks him out, saying:

Love this scene! (And yes, I know this scene is optional, for you can choose to go with the geisha group instead (Haru, Makoto, and Erina), but I preferred to go with the bois + Ann (and can I just go off on a tangent to say having Ann be a Samurai is so smart and refreshing? As a character that's always depicted very feminine, seeing her in more masculine garb is really fun and great. Also, she's adorable in the getup)).

Later on, in order to get inside Yoshiki's palace, Toshiro devises a plan to dress all the townsfolk as the Phantom Thieves as distraction. The real kicker is that Yusuke was the one to come up with the designs to them, much to everyone's horror:

So, in conclusion, Yusuke's great. Love him.

As for Lavenza, wow, did she get an upgrade! I might go as far to say she's the only character to get improved upon in this game. For most of the first game, she's split into Caroline and Justine, and we're only properly introduced to her by the end, where she serves her purpose as help for the final battle + exposition (I hear she gets more in Royal, but only played Vanilla, so can't exactly comment). However, she's given more screen time in Strikers, which would've helped to expand on her character.

EEEEeexcept she's instead left there to exposit on how there's an impending doom + fusions. That's it. The most memorable scene she has is right after Zenkichi awakens to his Persona, where she drags you into the Velvet Room to explain to you what the Apostle Arcana is (I don't think she does this for The Hope Arcana, which makes this scene more unnecessary and ironically hilarious).

So it was a huge shock when she popped up in Tactica, exuding a personality that was merely hinted to us when she was split into two people. And a welcomed shock, at that, because this personality is fun and downright entertaining.

For one, she is full-on chaotic. With the current state of the Velvet Room, she takes advantage by modifying and testing it out through....violent methods:

She even dresses to match with the theme of it being an armory/forge, wearing a blacksmith's apron and welding mask.

Her hammering down the melted-together gears that form the newly-fused Persona is really cute and more energetic than that of a traditional Velvet Room fusion. Also, the fusion accident cutscene is something that has to be seen. You won't regret it.

She even makes guns for you-

Well-

Not for free, anyway.

Yes, she still reprises her role as the exposition-dumper, but they at least gave her more of a character that might make you more interested in listening to said exposition.

Also, she almost runs over Ryuji with a train:

(Let's play a game: who'd kill someone the quickest: Haru when driving a car, or Lavenza driving the Velvet Express?).

I would show more examples, but Tumblr is mean, and won't allow me to have more than 30 images per post (the reason why I made my Shibuya Arc Zenkichi rant into 4 part posts in the first place). Just know that Lavenza is cute and unhinged, and is the best she's ever been in this game.

The other thing I like about this game is....is....uhhhhh....OH!

The voice acting's great as usual, including the voices for the new characters!

Leeana Albanese gives an energetic and spunky performance as Erina, while MacLeod Andrew's delivers a more serious, yet goofy performance as Toshiro. The casting director (can't find the credit for that) made the right calls for their newly-required cast!

And.....and..........AAAANNNNDDDD I like the secondary Persona mechanic! Not only does it allow you to further modify your other party member's Personas, but Joker can finally keep Arsene for the entire game, instead of fusing him for the first hour or so! YAY!!!

There's also......also.........also.................

Okay, I got nothing else. That's all of the positives I could think of for this section. Everything else is just a bunch of cons.

Mourn this part of the discussion, because we're not seeing anything else positive (maybe some decent bits at most, but that's about it for me). Let the negativity begin!

Pt. 2

Pt. 3

Pt. 4

Pt. 4.5

Pt. 5