#i’m never getting over the visuals of the ds games

[silent-partner-412]

they should remake fe1 again but give every character giant anime eyes and neon hair and goofy outfits like engage just to make everybody mad. it’ll still look 10x better than shadow dragon.

[xb-squaredx]

B-Squared's Top Games of 2024!

Another year has come to an end, and you know what that means! Reminiscing on all that I’ve played and engaged with this year but uh…times are tough and I’ve had to be even MORE selective with money for new games this year. Most of what I played was older games on sale so I can’t quite give you a Top 10 List of my favorite games from this year…best I can do is a Top 6. Regardless, let’s talk about the new games I DID manage to play this year!

#6: PRINCESS PEACH SHOWTIME!

It’s been quite a while since Princess Peach got to headline her own game, but the surprise reveal of Princess Peach Showtime last year was a highlight. Compared to Super Princess Peach on the DS, a very by-the-books and easy platformer, Showtime has more going on with it from a mechanical standpoint and has a lot more potential moving forward as a possible franchise. Peach has to save the day by taking on a number of roles in magical plays, and so she’s constantly swapping between being a sword fighter or a superhero, alongside a mermaid or ice skater. Levels are relatively short and straight-forward, with each outfit having its own gameplay style. Admittedly the game is quite easy and a bit on the short side, but it’s a great way to showcase Peach in a way we haven’t seen until now. The developer, Good Feel, managed to make this game a real visual treat…though sadly the performance suffers a bit, like most late-gen Switch titles. On the whole I think this game has a lot of charm and personality, though I do wish it had a bit more meat on its bones. It really feels like a sequel could flesh things out a bit and be really special, but it’s a good foundation for the Mushroom Kingdom Monarch to really strike out on her own.

#5: UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II [Sys: Celes]

I’m on a never ending quest to play as many fighting game franchises as I can, and French Bread’s own Under Night In-Birth series is one I haven’t gotten around to until now. The latest in the series, it furthers the overarching story while serving as the most polished entry yet. The game’s presentation is pretty stellar; with really clean hand-drawn sprites and some colorful, gorgeous backgrounds, coupled with a fantastic sound track to tie it together. Seeing as most fighters these days are fully 3D, it’s good to see French Bread holding down the fort with a 2D title. As far as the gameplay goes, it has an interesting mixture of accessible controls with a lot of hidden depth. There’s the GRD (grid) system that basically acts as a tug-of-war between both players. Every ten seconds or so the game tallies up who has the most GRD filled up and bestows a buff that leads to more damage and a potential combo cancel opportunity, making for an interesting pace where proper offense AND defense is rewarded. You earn GRD by attacking or defending, but can also use GRD as a resource for certain actions, so there’s some interesting risk and reward that takes this concept further than a more traditional super meter (which exists here too). Under Night II is also notable for finally bringing proper rollback netcode to this series, so it can finally have playable online. All things told, there’s a lot to like here, but as I’ve only recently gotten the game and haven’t poured THAT much time into it, I’ll have to leave it here.

#4: SUPER MARIO PARTY JAMBOREE

Party games are often derided as nothing but shovelware, but the Mario Party series has been able to survive for quite a while, so they have to be doing SOMETHING right! The Switch games have seemingly gotten over the slump they originally found themselves in after a few experimental titles from developer ND Cube, with each game getting better overall. Super Mario Party Jamboree combines the newer minigames and partner mechanic of the first Super Mario Party on Switch with the updated online and remastered maps of Mario Party Superstars to make the definitive Mario Party experience. The partner mechanic has been further fleshed out, with partners doubling the effects of pretty much every space or board interaction…but that goes for both good AND bad outcomes. Coupled with partners being easily stolen by other players, there’s a lot more risk and reward with them in this game, so you’ll have to think strategically when it comes to using them. On top of that, this game also has some interesting new modes, including the return of a single player campaign, alongside an 8 player co-op mode AND a 20 player online battle royale race. It’s probably the most ambitious Mario Party in a long while, and it’s been a blast with friends…the only real downside is how long some of these games can last, drawing the parties out. All things told there’s worse problems to have!

#3: RIVALS OF AETHER II

The original Rivals of Aether is one of my favorite fighters out there, and my favorite non-Smash platform fighter, so I was already pretty excited about a full sequel, but Rivals of Aether II has managed to meet all my expectations and then some. The game looks great in 3D with a really flashy style, but the game isn’t content with just a visual upgrade. Rivals II attempts to smooth over some rougher elements of the first game with some new mechanics, like grabable ledges on top of shields and throws, alongside further fleshing out each character’s moveset with even more specials. Being able to do special attacks from ledge, when rising from a knockdown, or during a grab adds a lot to a given character’s kit. Really, the characters themselves are the highlight here. Each fighter feels really unique both from each other and compared to other platform fighters. Kragg is a super heavy character who can alter the terrain of a stage at will, on top of having a solid projectile to dominate in a way most heavies fail to in other games. Newcomers like Fleet or Loxodont also bring some nice variety to the game. Fleet is a very agile zoner, floating through the air as she aims her bow and waits for the perfect shot to snipe her opponents, while Loxodont is like the lovechild of Super Smash Bros. Ganondorf and King Dedede, another heavy character who commands great range and can be a real juggernaut with his magma armor. Rivals II boasts rollback netcode for some great online and has a roadmap with tons of new modes and features planned too, with all post-launch characters being free. I really want to see this game be as successful as possible, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it grows. It would honestly probably be my Game of the Year…if my potato PC could run it better.

#2: PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE LOST CROWN

Earlier this year I played the demo for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and was immediately hooked. It took me longer to get to the full game than I wanted, but it ended up being worth the wait. I’m not really all that familiar with the franchise, but The Lost Crown was a really solid, seemingly standalone adventure that sadly didn’t seem to hit for most. The reveal of the game got a lot of mixed reception and its sales were lackluster, which is a damn shame because it’s one of the better games Ubisoft has put out in years. Considering how bad the company has been doing lately, on top of the toxic culture that enables abusers in high-up positions, I suppose this is just karma. All the same, I do want to highlight what some very talented people did at a company that clearly doesn’t deserve them.

Playing as an elite warrior working for the royal family, Sargon finds himself trapped in a mysterious mountain where time flows all over the place and he’ll have to fight all manner of monsters to get to the bottom of this mountain’s secrets as he attempts to save the kidnapped prince. The Lost Crown ends up being a fun mixture of 2D action game and Metroidvania or “search action” as some call it. My biggest compliment to this game has to be the overall feel of the controls. Sargon feels great whether he’s slicing and dicing foes or performing some tricky jumps. You gain more interesting tools and abilities as the game goes on and they really put you to the test at points. Boss fights are often full of spectacle and really pushed me at times, and I felt compelled to scour every inch of the map until I found everything. It does suffer a bit from the “Ubisoft Bloat” problem that plagues so many of their other titles, but it was a blast from start to finish and was well worth the time I put into it. We’re certainly spoiled for choice with solid Metroidvanias these days but it’s always great to see some AAA efforts sprinkled in with all of those indies.

#1: SPLATOON 3: SIDE ORDER

This year saw the conclusion to Splatoon 3’s planned content, and as I went into with a previous post, one of the highlights of its roadmap was the paid single-player expansion. Side Order had been teased before the original game even released, and it was ultimately worth the wait. Once again starring Agent 8, the protagonist of Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion campaign, players are trapped in a virtual world and have to repeatedly ascend the Tower of Order in an attempt to save the world from a looming threat.

While Side Order is still a third person shooter like Splatoon games past, it also incorporates rogue lite elements. Each floor is randomized with a number of different objectives, layouts and enemies to deal with. Adding to that, you get different power-ups for each floor and can eventually give yourself some really impressive builds that can bend the game so far in your favor it becomes a real power fantasy. That said, you’re expected to fail quite a lot, so each attempt gives you a currency to spend on permanent upgrades to make sure each future attempt goes by more smoothly than the last. Considering this is Nintendo’s first real take on this genre they did a great job, creating a satisfying loop that kept me coming back for more. I poured SO much time into this game over the year, to the point that my thumbs were hurting, and that’s honestly never happened to me before. I’ve had my qualms with Splatoon 3 proper, but the single player stuff has never been an issue, and Side Order continued that trend. An addictive experience that I couldn’t put down to the end, I’d consider this whole expansion to be my Game of the Year. Is it a little sad that it’s DLC and not a completely new game? Sure, I guess….but tons of people are gonna say that Elden Ring’s DLC counts for this so why not Splatoon?!

CONCLUSION

So here we are, another list of games done for another year! I really do wish I got to play more games this year but sometimes things just don’t really go that way. From indie hits like Balatro or Mouthwashing to other big hits like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, not to mention the Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remake OR the Mario & Luigi: Brothership Mario RPGs…there was a lot there that I just didn’t have the ability to play this year. Hoping things look up next year because there’s never really been a shortage of great games to play. Obviously you can’t play everything, but it’d be nice to have a bit more variety in my picks for my top games of the year. I still had a lot of fun with what I DID play, at least. Stay tuned for my year-end wrap up for this year in gaming on the whole though!

-B

[sickficsforthesoul]

Here is a second prompt!

Epileptic Suga having a seizure for the first time in front of the first years, maybe in a tougher situation to handle like a bus ride 👀

:)

-Lu

This one took me a little while, but it's done now, so enjoy! As mentioned in a prior post, this fic is part of the Setter Health Conditions (SHC) universe, so it might be referenced in other fics taking place in the universe. (Fun fact, this fic was originally titled "Into the Sugaverse" before I edited the title to be less cryptic.)

That One Bus Trip

Epileptic Suga with caretaker Daichi

Word count: 3447 words

Daichi was stressed. That wasn’t a new thing, though. With three siblings and two very busy parents, Daichi’s life was near-constant chaos. Though right now, the current cause of Daichi’s stress was sitting right next to him. Suga was curled up against Daichi on the bus seat. They were driving home from a weekend training camp in Tokyo. It was only early evening, but Suga looked quite sleepy leaning against Daichi’s arm.

“Are you okay, Suga?” Daichi asked quietly. They were seated near the back of the bus to keep an eye on everyone. The first years sat in the row in front of Daichi and Suga, and Daichi didn’t want to broadcast Suga’s private business to them (or anyone else on the bus, for that matter).

“Yeah,” Suga groaned as he shifted against Daichi’s arm. “Just feeling kind of off, ya know?”

Daichi’s eyes widened in alarm. “What kind of “off,” Suga? Like off off?”

“Off off,” Suga agreed, pressing the side of his face into Daichi’s club jacket.

“Do you want me to get someone?” Daichi muttered urgently.

This wasn’t good. Feeling off off was how Suga liked to refer to having an aura, and an aura meant a seizure was coming soon. And to make matters worse, they were on a bus, hours away from home. If Suga had a seizure now, it would be chaos. Everyone would panic because only Daich, Asahi, and Mr. Takeda knew about Suga’s epilepsy (Daichi wasn’t sure if Coach Ukai knew, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Suga never mentioned his condition. Suga was very shy about sharing his epilepsy with others. It had taken Daichi and Asahi cornering a first year Suga in the locker room after a particularly long practice to get Suga to tell them anything, and they were some of Suga’s closest friends.)

“No,” Suga murmured. “I have my medication. I’ll take it, so hopefully, things won’t get too bad.”

Suga leaned forward and rummaged through the bag at his feet, producing a medicine bottle seconds later. Daichi grabbed a water bottle from his own bag and presented it to Suga, who took it gratefully. Suga shook out one pill from the bottle and swallowed it down with a gulp of water. He handed the bottle back to Daichi and bent down to his bag again.

Daichi turned to his bag to distract himself from all the possible futures flashing through his mind. Even though Suga had taken his medication, that didn’t guarantee nothing would happen. Similar to migraine prevention medication, Suga’s medicine only worked some of the time. Daichi was praying to every deity in existence that it would work this time because he hated Suga seizing in any circumstance, but especially on a bus with their loud, emotional teammates. Suga didn’t seem too panicked on the surface, but Daichi was keenly aware of the setter’s clenched hands and furrowed brow. Suga was worried too, but he was far too prideful to ever tell anyone directly.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Daichi ordered, voice low to keep their conversation discreet.

“Okay,” Suga yawned, “I think I’m gonna take a nap. This medicine always makes me drowsy.”

“Alright,” Daichi nodded slightly. “Just try to stay calm. Getting worked up will only make everything worse.”

“I know, Daichi,” Suga huffed good-naturedly. “I’ve been dealing with this for years. I think I know how to take care of myself.”

Daich chuckled and patted Suga’s head with his free hand. “I know, I know. But I’m still worried, you know. I’m your best friend and your captain. I think I have the right to worry about you sometimes.”

“You’re such a dad, Daichi,” Suga snickered mischievously. “Dad... Daichi… Oh! Dadchi! From now on, I’m gonna call you Dadchi.”

Daichi sighed wearily. “How can you be so responsible one minute and then so childish the next?”

“It’s a gift,” Suga smiled goofily. Then a yawn escaped his mouth, and he blinked slowly.

“Take a nap, Suga,” Daichi said, slipping off his jacket to drape over the setter. “You’re tired, and it’ll make you feel better.”

Suga hummed in agreement, leaning against Daichi’s side and snuggling under the jacket. He sighed contently and closed his eyes. Within minutes, Suga was sleeping comfortably against Daichi’s shoulder. Daichi smiled at the sight, silently resigning himself to being Suga’s pillow for the rest of the bus ride. They still had over three hours left until they reached Karasuno High School, so Daichi was hoping Suga would be able to take a good, long nap until they arrived.

With Suga sleeping soundly, Daichi could finally relax. He gazed out the window at the setting sun, admiring the beautiful colors as the sun disappeared from the sky. Suga’s body was warm, Daichi noticed. Not feverish, but warm enough to keep Daichi’s body pleasantly warm as well. The bus was also fairly quiet. Most of their teammates were either reading or playing video games (even Kageyama was attempting to work a DS after Hinata’s incessant nagging). After two days of grueling training, Daichi’s body was begging for a break, and between the warmth and quiet murmurings of his teammates, Daichi felt himself nodding off too. His head drooped against Suga’s, and Daichi was asleep almost instantly.

X

When Daichi awoke, he noticed light flashing through the very dark bus. Lifting his head drowsily, Daichi quickly found the light source. Someone (probably Tanaka or Noya) had brought a portable DVD player onto the bus, and everyone (minus Suga, Daichi, and Asahi, who had donned an eyemask and fell asleep sometime after Daichi had) was gathered around it watching a movie of some sort.

Daichi yawned and pulled out his phone. He sent a quick text to Ennoshita asking about what movie they were watching. Ennoshita replied with the title (“Into the Spider-Verse,” apparently) along with what he’d missed so far. The movie was only a third of the way done, so Daichi hadn’t missed too much. Suga was still sleeping soundly, so Daichi didn’t dare move. He couldn’t see the movie, but that was fine so long as Suga was asleep and calm.

Suga continued to sleep for another half hour at least while Daichi ignored the DVD player in favor of looking at his phone. During that time, Ennoshita texted frequent updates on the movie, summarizing the plot, characters, and visuals with stunning clarity. Daichi would occasionally see some bright flashes of light, but he was too focused on his phone to register the problem the lights might pose. Daichi was snickering at the reveal of Doctor Octavius when Suga stirred next to him.

“You’re up, huh?” Daichi murmured to a drowsy Suga.

“Yeah…” Suga yawned, eyes still shut.

“Are you feeling better?” Daichi asked gently.

“A little, yeah,” Suga hummed, shifting to a sitting position and cracking open his eyes.

“That’s good, at least,” Daichi smiled, reaching over to grab his jacket from Suga’s lap.

“I guess,” Suga sighed, his brown eyes still half-lidded with exhaustion. “What’s going on?”

“We’re watching a movie. Into the Spider-Verse, apparently.” Daichi lifted his phone to show Suga the screen. “Ennoshita’s been keeping me updated. He’s actually pretty good at it too.”

Suga grabbed the phone and scrolled to the beginning of Ennoshita’s recent texts. He took a moment to read before handing the phone back to Daichi. “You’re right. He is pretty good. Is the movie still on?”

“Yes,” Daichi nodded, “The DVD player’s in the aisle. We can watch it if we move over a little.”

“Let’s watch it,” Suga replied. “It’s not like we have anything better to do right now.”

“Okay,” Daichi agreed easily, sliding over into the aisle to watch the movie. Suga moved too, taking Daichi’s now-vacant seat.

They settled down to watch the movie without much trouble. The occasional bright flash made Suga wince and turn away for a moment, but the instances were infrequent, so Daichi didn’t think much of them. Suga seemed to be enjoying the movie too. He laughed at the jokes and fawned over the action sequences. Daichi wasn’t surprised. He’d known about Suga’s nerdy side for a while now.

To be fair, Daichi was also enjoying the movie. The soundtrack and animation were very well done, and Daichi was always a sucker for action movies. Perhaps that was why Daichi forgot about the danger the movie could pose to Suga. Daichi was so absorbed in the movie that he failed to notice Suga’s furrowed brows and rapidly paling face. The final straw for Suga’s fragile health was the collider scene. The frantic, aggressive flashes of light sent Suga’s body headfirst into an epileptic episode.

At first, Daichi thought Suga was just shivering. Small trembles wracked Suga’s frame, but when the trembles grew stronger and more sporadic, Daichi became concerned. Turning away from the DVD player, he squinted through the dark at his best friend, and what Daichi saw was horrible. Suga’s body spasmed erratically while Suga’s eyes were blown wide with panic and distress. Tears slipped down Suga’s cheeks as a soft whine escaped his mouth. Suga’s eyes settled on Daichi, silently begging for help.

Daichi was panicking, but Suga needed him, so he had to focus. Daichi quickly wrapped his jacket around Suga’s head and neck, creating a cushion to protect the vulnerable areas during Suga’s thrashing. Then he carefully scooted Suga’s body farther into the seat, so he wouldn’t fall off and hit something against the bus floor. With Suga in a secure position, there was nothing left to do now but time the seizure and wait for it to end. Daichi hated this part the most because he was powerless to help his best friend.

Their teammates slowly started to notice that something was wrong. Suga’s breathing was irregular and audible over the movie to the people sitting near Daichi and Suga. Ennoshita sent him a text a minute later to make sure everything was okay. Daich responded with a cryptic text that told Ennoshita something was wrong but didn’t specify what. Naturally, Ennoshita sent more texts, each becoming more and more worried, though he thankfully had the sense to keep his inquiries in texts instead of voicing them aloud.

Suga’s trembles finally slowed, and Daichi checked the clock on his phone. The seizure had lasted for just over two minutes. While not ideal, the seizure was still under five minutes. Seizures lasting longer than five minutes tended to be the most dangerous ones, so at least Suga avoided that.

Now that the seizure was over, Daichi needed to get Suga help. So Daichi got to his feet and walked down the bus aisle. Most of his teammates grumbled in annoyance, but Daichi caught the worried gazes of Ennoshita and his seatmate Kinoshita. He gave them a small smile, hoping to convey that things were getting better, but the duo still looked worried. Daichi continued on his trek and finally reached the front of the bus. Thankfully, Coach Ukai was driving while Mr. Takeda was helping Coach Ukai navigate from the front bus seat.

“Mr. Takeda?” Daichi leaned towards the club advisor, keeping his voice low.

“Daichi?!” Mr. Takeda yelped in surprise, but he quickly fell silent once he saw Daichi’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Suga had an… episode,” Daichi whispered to the club advisor.

“An episode?” Mr. Takeda blinked in confusion. “What kind of episo- Oh!” Mr. Takeda lowered his voice out of courtesy to Suga and his privacy. “Suga had an epileptic episode?”

“Yeah,” Daichi sighed tiredly. “His seizure lasted for a little more than two minutes. He’s resting now, but we should take him to a hospital to get checked out.”

“Of course!” Mr. Takeda nearly shouted again. “I’ll let Coach know right away! Do you need any help with Suga?”

“I don’t think so,” Daichi shook his head. “I just might need help getting him off the bus when we get to the hospital.”

“Alright. I’ll find the nearest hospital and tell Coach to get us there as soon as possible. Can you keep Suga comfortable until we arrive?” Mr. Takeda asked.

“I’ll take good care of him,” Daichi replied firmly.

“I’m sure you will,” Mr. Takeda agreed before he moved to the driver’s seat to let Coach Ukai know about the change of plans.

Daichi returned to his seat swiftly, anxious from leaving Suga alone for so long. Suga was still lying across their seats, but he was conscious and relatively alert because he turned his head when Daichi got back to their seats. Daichi sat in the aisle to keep an eye on Suga, rubbing the setter’s ankle soothingly. Daichi and Suga stayed like that until the bus pulled into a hospital parking lot.

Cries of confusion and irritation broke out until Mr. Takeda silenced them with an uncharacteristically stern stare. “Move out of the aisles, everyone. The paramedics need to use them.”

Everyone obeyed immediately, but looks of confusion were etched on most of their teammates’ faces. Two paramedics boarded their bus, with Mr. Takeda directing them back to Suga and Daichi’s seats. Daichi moved out of their way, helping them pull Suga into the larger paramedic’s arms. Suga remained limp in the paramedic’s hold, though his eyes darted over to Daichi as the paramedics carried him away. Daichi waved reassuringly, and Suga flashed him a brief smile before his eyes fell shut. That caused the paramedics to panic and rush off the bus. Daichi watched them place Suga on a waiting stretcher from the bus window, and then his best friend disappears into the large white building with the paramedics.

X

They weren’t allowed to see Suga for the next few hours. Their teammates’ confusion had morphed into shock and despair once they realized that something was wrong with Suga. The first and second years badgered Daichi and Asahi relentlessly until they finally caved, informing the team of Suga’s epilepsy. Daichi also explained why Suga was currently in the hospital, and Tanaka looked guiltier by the second. Daichi reached out a hand and rubbed the spiker’s shoulder, explaining that it wasn’t Tanaka’s fault. He didn’t know about Suga’s epilepsy until a few minutes ago, so there was no way for him to know how dangerous the movie would be for his vice-captain to watch. Tanaka still moped in his hospital chair until they were finally allowed to see Suga.

It was very early morning when a nurse approached their group with information about Suga. She pulled Mr. Takeda and Coach Ukai away for a few minutes to inform them of Suga’s condition. With Suga’s parents out of the country for work, they were acting as Suga’s legal guardians while he was in the hospital. Daichi waited with the team until the two adults returned to their group.

“Suga will be fine, everyone,” Mr. Takeda smiled exhaustedly. The events of the night had taken a visible toll on him. “He was just dehydrated and exhausted. He’s on an IV right now to get some fluids and nutrients into his system, but he’ll be okay after getting some rest.”

“He’ll be released soon,” Coach Ukai continued gruffly. “They’re just waiting until his IV is done. We should be out of here in an hour or so.”

“Can we see him?!” Nishinoya and Hinata asked eagerly.

“Yes,” Mr. Takeda laughed at their antics, “but you have to be quiet, ok? Suga might be asleep, and we shouldn’t wake him if he is.”

“Yes sir!” The duo nodded before dashing down the hallway.

“Wait!” Mr. Takeda let out a panicked cry. “You don’t even know Suga’s room number!”

Mr. Takeda chased after the two, and soon the entire team was running down the hospital hallway to Suga’s room. Mr. Takeda directed them to take two flights of stairs and a long corridor to reach Suga’s room. Unsurprisingly, Hinata and Nishinoya were the first to the door, with Kageyama and Tanaka not far behind. Mr. Takeda caught up with them, forcing them to wait until everyone had gathered to open the door. Daichi pushed his way to the front of the group, citing his captain status. Suga was his best friend, and he was going invoke his captain rights if it let him see Suga faster.

Mr. Takeda opened the door, and the Karasuno VBC filed into the room silently. Daichi stared at Suga as he entered. Suga was awake and sitting up in his bed. He looked exhausted, but his face had color, and he looked much better than he had hours ago. Suga watched them all carefully, offering them a wave. The IV in his elbow bounced in time with Suga’s wave. Once everyone was settled into the room, Suga gave them a warm Suga-Smile™.

“Hey, guys,” Suga said with exhausted but genuine enthusiasm. “What’s up?”

“SUGA!!!!” Hinata, Nishinoya, and Tanaka yelled, launching themselves at Suga.

They piled themselves on top of a shocked Suga, but he was quick to pull the trio into a warm hug.

“You scared us, Suga,” Daichi said quietly as he sat on the side of Suga’s bed.

“Sorry. I should have told someone earlier,” Suga sighed, snuggling into the cuddlepile on his lap.

“It’s not your fault, Suga,” Asahi hummed from the other side of Suga’s bed. “You can’t control your epilepsy.”

“I guess so… But I still feel bad for scaring you guys like that,” Suga confessed, eyes full of guilt.

“It’s okay, Suga,” Hinata chirped from the cuddle pile. “We’re just glad that you’re okay!”

“Thanks, Hinata,” Suga laughed into the blocker’s red hair.

“Hinata’s right,” Ennoshita chimed in. “I just wished you’d told us about your epilepsy earlier.”

“I know I should have, and I’m really sorry.” Suga bowed his head in apology. “I just hate talking about it. Daichi and Asahi basically had to kidnap me to get me to tell them about it.”

“Is that true, Daichi?” Nishinoya asked excitedly.

“I guess so…” Daichi laughed awkwardly. “In our defense, Suga was very stubborn. That was the only way we got Suga to talk to us instead of changing the topic.”

“Was I really that bad?” Suga cocked his head to the side.

“You were,” Asahi nodded solemnly. “I didn’t think we’d ever get you to tell us anything.”

“You’re always so negative, Asahi.” Suga poked the ace’s arm lightly. “It’s that negativity goatee, I swear.”

“My goatee has nothing to do with it!” Asahi whined sadly.

Suga giggled lightly at his friends, and Suga’s laugh was always infectious. The cuddle pile trio was giggling too, and then Daichi and Asahi joined in as well. Soon, the entire team was laughing, even Mr. Takeda and Coach Ukai. The previous events were long and stressful, so now everyone was finally relaxing a little.

The team chatted amongst themselves quietly until a nurse entered the room to check Suga’s IV. She declared that it was done and swiftly removed the needle from Suga’s elbow before the setter could even process what was happening. The nurse left the room for a moment and returned with a wheelchair for Suga to sit in. Hinata, Nishinoya, and Tanaka clambered off Suga’s lap, so Daichi and Asahi could help Suga into the wheelchair. They wheeled Suga out to the bus and got him situated on a bus seat near the front, so the adults could keep an eye on him. Daichi also sat beside Suga to help him if need be.

Everyone boarded the bus, and they were on their way back to Miyagi. Suga leaned his head on Daichi’s shoulder, eyes heavy with sleep.

“Daichi,” he yawned heavily. “Thanks for everything today.”

Daichi smiled tiredly at his best friend. “Sure. I’m always here for you. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” Suga hummed happily. “I’m glad you’re such a good friend.”

“Thanks, Suga.” Daichi yawned as well. “You’re a pretty good friend too.”

“You’re still better,” Suga teased lightly before a big yawn escaped his mouth.

“And you’re still exhausted. Get some rest. I’ll wake you up when we get back,” Daichi said softly.

“Thanks, Daichi,” Suga murmured as his eyes slipped shut.

“Any time, Suga,” Daichi whispered as he felt his eyes grow heavier by the second. He leaned his head on top of Suga’s. The adults would wake them when they got to the school, Daichi reasoned before his eyes shut completely. Karasuno’s captain was asleep in a matter of seconds, taking a well-deserved nap after the chaos of the past few hours. The bus wouldn’t arrive for a few hours, and Daichi was content to nap with his best friend as the bus rolled on through the night.

[everygame]

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (Nintendo 3DS)

Developed/Published by: Intelligent Systems / Nintendo Released: 20/04/2017 Completed: 07/04/2022 Completion: Finished it (but not the post-game dungeon.) Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Well, colour me surprised, but I… loved this?

While it was admittedly, uh, eight years ago, I bounced off my last attempt at enjoying a Fire Emblem game, Shadow Dragon for Nintendo DS, and to this point it’s like… the only time I ever received hate mail over a write-up (for being totally wrong or whatever). I’m still pretty sure Shadow Dragon isn’t a particularly great remake (although I’ll admit that I wish I’d been able to cop the Switch re-release of the original version–Wario64 did his best, but I was never quite in time) but I’m exceedingly pleased that taking a yen for this after seeing Cory talk about this briefly on My Life in Gaming paid off. Especially considering that the 3DS is now in its twilight year and sooner than later getting a copy of this for a reasonable price will be as annoying as getting a copy of Shadow Dragon & The Blade of Light for Switch full stop.

I think what works in Fire Emblem Echoes favour is that it’s a remake of what is generally considered the red-headed step child of the series already. Whereas my experience of Fire Emblem previously has been to bemoan that it’s not a “pure” tactics game like its brother Advance Wars, here the game is much more of an RPG with frequent short battles in dungeons to grind, making the fuzzier “your tactics don’t need to be as rock solid as long as you are stronger than the enemies” style finally click.

It’s also, probably, that the game looks great. It’s nice to revisit the 3DS after a decently long break and remember just how well developers could use the hardware. There’s an odd dot-pitch to the screen as a result of the 3D, and while i know it doesn’t work for a lot of people, nostalgia has given it the feel of a visual style the same way PS1’s warpy textures are now celebrated. Sure, like any tactics game you’re going to fast-forward through the attacks, but there’s an intentionality to everything here that speaks to it as one of the last big games for the system.

The story is also… uh, well told? It’s unfortunately a big ol’ bag of cliché, but thanks to a translation from 8-4 that I’m pretty sure did most of the heavy lifting, I was never actively annoyed at it. I mean, I’m totally over ~destiny~ plots, and it’s a bit unfortunate that this one spends so much time in the early going yelling “it doesn’t matter how you were born! What matters is what you do!” only to basically undo all of that by the end, but the story at least doesn’t get bogged down with filler.

Actually, the structure probably helps. The game is split so that you play as two armies progressing at the same time, lead by the game’s dual protagonists Alm and Celica (impressive that her parents named her after one of Toyota’s best, and sadly defunct, car brands.) This helps with an issue I remember from Fire Emblem games (and probably what screwed me in Shadow Dragon): that you end up with so many units, and you’re trying to keep all the ones you like levelled up, and then you end up with everyone underlevelled. Here, you’re pretty evenly splitting your army, so you end up with 20 units that are all at a good level by the end of the game. 

Well, sort of. You still need to decide to more-or-less concentrate on 10 units a side from a pool of 30-odd total, and while I did piss a lot of experience up the wall on some sub-optimal units, there are enough grinding opportunities it was alright. In fact, I’ll use this opportunity to mention something about Echoes, and I believe the Fire Emblem series as a whole, that to me shouldn’t work but weirdly does. The games have a levelling-up system with high variability, meaning that a unit in your game can grow totally different from someone else’s, and if you just have bad luck, a supposedly top-tier unit can get a bunch of crappy level-ups and just be shite (it’s not common, but it could happen.) So you actually slightly benefit from leveling up more characters than you really need to see which way the wind is blowing, and you can also just ignore a character that is generally considered to be good if you don’t like their character and you’re having good luck with another one. Maybe I just liked a lot of the characters (they don’t all get much to do, but the in-battle conversations fill out their characters well enough) but watching their growth was actually exciting enough that I did do some grinding to choose between them and didn’t mind at all. 

This is even, honestly, a game where I could believe that going for the perma-death option might even… work? The game includes at least nine opportunities to resurrect dead units, and it might add a bit of spice to the game on normal considering I probably only lost about that many units in the game anyway. 

(That said, I’m the kind of person who will just restart a battle to avoid death, so I didn’t go for this. I wish I wasn’t, but I am. If you’re not this person, might be worth it.)

Anyway, even with a bit too much pissing about, Fire Emblem Echoes only just about managed to outstay its welcome, which felt a bit more related to the deflating ending of the game. No spoilers, but a lot of characters do things that don’t actually make a ton of sense, and the game annoyingly sidelines Celica and her party for the entire last dungeon. Considering a lot of my favourite characters were on her side (I put so much effort into crafting a Ladyblade Sonya!!!) this was a big time bummer (and I know they get their own end-dungeon, but it’s like… hours earlier???) 

I suppose there’s a post-game dungeon, but apparently it’s stupidly hard and feels unnecessary enough I wasn’t in the mood for it. Still. This is really good and you should probably pick it up if you like tactics RPGs that are heavy on the RPG before it’s stupidly overpriced, if it isn’t already by the time I post this.

Will I ever play it again? I won’t; by the time I’ll ever take a mood to play through the post-game dungeon I’m sure I’ll be like “how do I play this again?” and not bother. I’ve got a copy of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, though, so I’ve got that to look forward to/be disappointed by, idk.

Final Thought: I didn’t notice how aggressive Nintendo was with DLC on the 3DS (even though it’s a system where your “ownership” is awkwardly more attached to your specific 3DS rather than your account) until recently. There is a ton of DLC for this that (to be honest) you can definitely skip unless you really want to grind far beyond what you would ever need to in the main game that in total would cost you as much as buying the game as a second time. Wild!

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[zosonils]

Crossover you say 👀

OKAY SO. SONIC COLOURS/MEGA MAN CROSSOVER

i don't have much in mind story wise, but i'm thinking it takes place under the same conditions as worlds collide, which i insist on believing also happened nearly identically offscreen in the game timeline because nobody can tell me otherwise. fairly basic setup of eggman and wily teaming up to cause problems on purpose and sonic and rock working together to stop them, and now there's wisps in the mix >:O i'm sure i could think up a fun excuse plot for why sonic colours happens twice and also mega man is here now, but mostly this was just an excuse to put the special interest in the hyperfixation and come up with some fun weapons for rock based on my first and favourite sonic game

each robot master is based on a wisp from either version of the original colours, which causes a little confusion given that you end up with two burst men and drill men but these ones have different EWN-XXX serial numbers and are entirely unrelated to their canon mega man counterparts. i haven't actually drawn the robot masters yet or thought up designs or personalities, just come up with their weapons and what stage they'd inhabit, but maybe i'll do that sometime. the robot masters are something like this

EWN-010 BURST MAN - weak to drill dash, gives bursting blaze, sweet mountain stage

EWN-011 ROCKET MAN - weak to cubic satellite, gives rocket jump, terminal velocity stage

EWN-012 DRILL MAN - weak to spike spin, gives drill dash, tropical resort stage

EWN-013 HOVER MAN - weak to rocket jump, gives hovering shockwave, starlight carnival stage

EWN-014 LASER MAN - weak to frenetic void, gives prism laser, aquarium park stage

EWN-015 CUBE MAN - weak to prism laser, gives cubic satellite, wii game land stage

EWN-016 VOID MAN - weak to bursting blaze, gives frenetic void, asteroid coaster stage

EWN-017 SPIKE MAN - weak to hovering shockwave, gives spike spin, planet wisp stage

i wrote up some really detailed information on how all the weapons work but i'll put that under a cut to prevent this post from getting too long! if you don't feel like reading massive paragraphs of game design ideas, here's the microsoft paint scribblings i did of all of them [sonic is there too]

BURSTING BLAZE

a chargeable attack that blasts out a sphere of fire to deal damage. charging it longer sends the fire out further and increases its damage output, but costs more weapon energy. without any charging it's a pretty standard low-range attack, but at maximum charge it functions as a screen nuke on par with the likes of rain flush, tornado blow, or astro crush. if rock takes damage while charging bursting blaze, he'll automatically release it at whatever charge level it was at when he got hit. in addition to the obvious usefulness of a fucking screen nuke, a less- or uncharged bursting blaze can be a handy way to quickly get some personal space in a tight situation.

cost: 1 unit when uncharged, 7 when fully charged [28 uses uncharged or 4 fully charged from a full gauge]. has five in-between charge levels costing 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 units from least to most powerful.

i came up with this name first because i wanted it to have blaze in it because i fucking love blaze the cat.

ROCKET JUMP

an explosion that launches rock much higher than a normal jump would take him, about the height of one screen. in addition to the explosion at the bottom dealing damage, rock's body deals contact damage until his upward momentum stops, which tears through enemies with low health or a weakness to rocket jump but doesn't protect him against bulkier foes or stage hazards. while he can still move left or right while rocketing upwards, the only way for rock to stop moving upwards is to either naturally run out of momentum, hit a ceiling, or take damage.

some platforms can only be reached by using rocket jump.

cost: 3 units per use [10 uses from a full gauge]

obviously a joke based on the rocket jump technique in a lot of video games, lmao. rock blows himself up and ragdolls so hard he clips out of the interstellar amusement park and sonic watches as he falls past every kill plane and into infinity forever

DRILL DASH

a dash attack slightly faster than the slide going straight down, sideways, or diagonally down-left or down-right, similar to the pile driver but shorter and without upwards reach. has fairly low attack power, equivalent to two mega buster shots, but pushes surviving enemies back, allowing them to be hit again and again with a chain of drill dashes. underwater, it moves significantly faster and further, and can be fired up as well as down, unlocking eight-directional dashing.

if rock hits a solid wall he'll bounce off of it, but if he hits certain types of dirt-like walls he'll drill into them, which can uncover helpful items like health and weapon refills and occasionally 1-ups or e-tanks [probably in scripted locations].

cost: 2 units per use [14 uses from a full gauge]

i've never played mighty no. 9 but i've seen footage of like the dash thingy he can do? because it probably looks kinda like that.

HOVERING SHOCKWAVE

fires a shockwave that doesn't hurt any more than a standard mega buster shot [unless the enemy in question is weak to it], but stuns most enemies and has a fairly decent range. if you fire it in midair and then hold down the attack button, rock's falling speed will decrease dramatically, and he'll continue to float until either he hits the ground, the attack button is released, or he takes damage. hovering will cost additional energy, and if hovering shockwave is used in midair it can't be used again until rock hits the ground at least once.

cost: 1.5 units per use [19 uses from a full gauge], plus an extra 3 units per second of hovering, for a total of a little under 9 seconds of hovering taking the initial shot into account.

this one's pretty directly lifted from the hover wispon in sonic forces.

PRISM LASER

a laser projectile that either bounces off or goes through anything it hits a set number of times, maybe three to five. if it destroys an enemy its movement is unchanged; if it hits a wall or an enemy that doesn't immediately die to it then it bounces instead. can be fired in all eight directions, but once fired its trajectory is out of the player's hands. basically imagine gemini laser, then imagine it being obscenely better in every conceivable way. best used in enclosed rooms where it can bounce around a lot and doesn't have much opportunity to get lost offscreen.

some rooms have prisms in them like the ones in colours that automatically redirect prism laser, guiding them to destroy enemies blocking paths and the like.

cost: 6 units per use [5 uses from a full gauge]

cyan laser was my favourite colour power when i was a little baby because haha bright colour funny sound go wheeee. prism laser is probably overpowered because of this bias lmao.

CUBIC SATELLITE

summons four [?] orbiting cubes that shield rock from one hit each. they deal damage to enemies they touch unless said enemy is immune to the power. standard shield weapon, blue cube is a lame overly situational gimmick and i couldn't think of anything better. rock can still fire and charge his mega buster while shielded, but obviously can't use any special weapons. every time a cube is destroyed, the remaining ones spin faster, looking something like the tubinaut badnik from sonic mania. that's just a visual effect i don't know what else to write here it's a shield weapon.

cost: 3.5 units per use [8 units from a full gauge]

i think i'd like shield weapons more if i knew how to use the attacking ones to actually attack. i used leaf shield about 3 times in mega man 2 and every time i flung it in the wrong direction and got hit anyway.

FRENETIC VOID

sucks in any enemies that rock is facing for as long as the attack button is held down, drawing them to a point just in front of him. when released, the blasters on his arms [which in this form morph to look like the purple frenzy mouth] crunch down in front of him, dealing slightly more damage than a charged mega buster shot to anything that's been pulled in close enough and knocking back anything that isn't destroyed. rock can't move while using frenetic void, and if anything hits him while he's vaccuuming he drops the move without the finishing bite or knockback. this move can also draw in most types of bullets, which are absorbed and disappear if they reach the void, or continue in whatever direction they were pulled in if the move ends before they get there.

cost: 3 units per use [10 units from a full gauge]

i thought it'd be cool to combine purple frenzy and violet void somehow. i used void for the robot master name because i believe in sonic colours ds port supremacy, but the decision was ultimately pretty arbitrary.

SPIKE SPIN

what top spin wishes it was. a close-range attack where spikes emerge from rock's body as he does a speen, giving him a somewhat bigger hitbox. when he hits an enemy, he bounces off of it in a manner similar to the way sonic bounces off of everything he hits. the move lasts as long as the attack button is held down, draining weapon energy over time, and rock can still walk and jump while speening. some projectiles will bounce off of spike spin [generally small bullets like those from mets or sniper joes will bounce off while anything stronger will still hurt], and holding the move makes rock immune to spikes, allowing him to walk over them safely until his weapon energy depletes.

some items may be tucked away in places that are difficult or impossible to reach without walking over spikes, requiring the use of spike spin to reach them.

cost: 4 units per second, for a total of 7 seconds of spinning from a full gauge. the first unit is depleted the moment the button is pressed so the move can't be scummed into lasting longer.

honestly now that i'm thinking about this i might change spike spin to act a little more like how pink spike spindashes, but i was overcome by a desire for justice for top man.

i don't know how to end this post lmao but i've been thinking about this crossover for days on end. i know damn well it's a pipe dream but right now i'm in just the right mode of hyperfixation that if sega and capcom announced a sonic/mega man crossover in a video game that isn't smash lmao i would ASCEND

[punkbirb]

my thoughts on shining pearl

no worries, theres no spoilers

wow. ive never been driven to write anything about pokemon before. i’ve been playing my whole life, and I’ve played every mainline game, including remakes- except for black and white 2.

shining pearl has made pokemon FUN again. it has stayed so true to the original, and I so deeply appreciate that. all the small quirks of the game that I remember so fondly have made me fall in love all over again- to the point im willing to go through the trouble of getting the pokemon ive had since i was 8 off of the old ds games and onto my switch. I love the fact that this game doesnt hold your hand. It took over a year after the release of sword and shield for me to give it a try. Sword and shield- while cool in concept- were so heavily disappointing for me. the wild area was a really neat thing that I enjoyed, but it made it....too easy. it was too overwhelmingly big and just gave you any and every pokemon for no work at all. there was no reward in running up to a glaceon just standing there, waiting to be caught. I found it needless to do anything in that game because if I wanted a dusknoir all I had to do was find it roaming around the same spot it always is. forget trading and special items for evolution! it defeated the purpose for me. and items....my goodness the fact that game just gives you infinite gold nuggets and evolution stones and other items made the careful selection of focusing on developing a handful of pokemon redundant. it’s as if the focus was mostly on giving you free money for the overly expensive clothing choices rather than making it a special feature that you had to make careful decisions for. i feel like sw/sh had a lot of potential, but just lost focus on what the game was supposed to be about.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the fact nintendo brought over the ability for your pokemon to follow behind you from heart gold/soul silver. I think i’ve been quietly begging for years to see this. I’d always adored that feature and wondered why it wasn’t more common. All the small details, like the polishing of the badges and playing music notes on them, contests, to the stickers on the ball capsules, berry planting, to the mining and secret bases, to the poffin making- even the fact that the pokemart isn’t crammed into the pokecenter all struck high chords for me. call it nostalgia, but the way it’s kept true to the original form with a few little new tweaks here and there (like the underground caverns that minimize the concept of the wild area from Sword/Shield, and the minimal focus on the wardrobe changes) is exciting. What would really solidify the deal for me is if they brought back the little item in ss/hg that turned the music into the original 8bit tracks (I know that pearl/diamond wasn’t 8bit, but hearing the original tracks would be so cool). 

I do appreciate the fairly new-ish-but-not-really concept of the visual aids and battle mechanics of friendship with your pokemon carrying over into s.pearl. it’s been over a decade since i’ve played the original D/P (wow, makes me feel old), so I don’t quite remember what generation this became a mechanic. however, I feel like somehow this game kept specifically all the things I like about pokemon just for me. while i do remember using maybe 2 or 3 specific pokeapps on the watch feature, i’d forgotten how convenient it could be. I’m excited to see if any new ones have been added. Speaking of, the addition of the HM one (which I dont recall, forgive me if it isn’t new)- I so greatly appreciate that A) gym badges are required to use certain ones and B) I don’t have to waste a move slot or use a HM-designated pokemon to use HMs. I feel like requiring badges to progress with HM usage keeps true to the original pokemon journey- which is what I look for in these games. I appreciate the small backtracking aspect here and there after an HM is obtained. It urges deeper exploration and reminds you that you might not be able to progress in one particular area just yet- but don’t forget about it and some nifty rewards will be found if you come back. certain points in the game- like how to obtain a spiritomb from a certain ruin (I think)- i’m fondly remembering that “hey eventually I’ll get this pokemon here” but I don’t exactly remember how- so it’s a nice challenge that brings back that journey aspect. maybe it’s an unfair edge in terms of experience since i already know where to go and mostly what to do- but slowly recalling little bits of forgotten information are, again, making it fun, and making me really love the work that went into remastering this game. the little hint box on the menu is a nice touch for someone who is forgetful like me. Nice to open up the game after I’d been away and not have to think about “wait, what am I doing here again?” It isn’t so direct that it’s just a statement telling you specifically what to do- but rather “explore X city!” 

sometimes it takes me awhile to warm up to new mechanics, such as dynamax or the mega evolutions in x and y. while I understand there needs to be some way to keep pokemon fresh and exciting- it can be a bit much sometimes. it’s honestly a nice change of pace to nix that in s.pearl (at least, so far- im only just leaving veilstone city). It’s a lot less to keep up with, and honestly they never really did much for me to start with. maybe I’m just too stuck on older gameplay. I do think they’re very neat mechanics, and have made stories interesting (since they’re usually used as plot devices). while I always thought it should’ve been an option to turn off the “super effective/not very effective/etc” tags under the moves, I suppose I wasn’t surprised to see it in s.pearl. When that mechanic was first introduced I thought it kinda took away the point of learning move types- but this isn’t really a gripe. It can definitely be a lot to keep track of- and I still even forget the whole ghost-dark-psychic type efficiency wheel. I think a lot of trainers (especially those who are new to pokemon) appreciate it.

even the battle initiations are a nice little nod to the original games. it was cool to recognize the static image of a trainer in their original battle pose for them to then burst into the 3d movement we’ve come to appreciate. the backgrounds are beautiful and feel more realistic (not literally of course) to the area you’re battling in. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the big-headed chibi overworld view, but seeing the fully rendered battle animations made me think that it’s a sort of modern take on the old, original style of the pixel sprites. definitely warmed me up to the cutesy-ness of it all.

I feel there is a huge swarm of trainers everywhere- which has been kinda annoying, but then again I probably got used to the lack of them in shield. I’d forgotten about the VS Seeker- which is definitely a nice item for when I need to grind later. I’ll admit, Roark defeated me twice before I could beat him. I honestly liked the challenge of it. It was nice knowing that i’d have to either train, train, train, or go catch a machop to use against him rather than just being handed a badge for defeating his team in 3 moves. I’d chosen chimchar, and with his lack of defense, one little fighting-type move alone wasn’t enough to defeat a team of 3 rock-types. It was wonderful to see such an early-on test of type and team efficiency!

being gifted a jirachi from a random NPC early on in the game was a nice shock to me. Not sure if that was part of the pre-order gift yet, but it was definitely a hook!

overall so far this game is not just nostalgic, but somehow very refreshing. I’m definitely looking forward to Arceus in January, and s.pearl has given me revived hope for the series. I enjoy the challenge of the game again- and I love that everything just isn’t thrown at you all at once. You have to explore and you have to work for most rewards. The selection of pokemon in grass isn’t overwhelming- it’s nicely paced, making you take on that original style of hand-picking a team that’ll best suit your needs for the moment rather than just having a plethora of variety at any given time that don’t really give you much challenge for facing the next gym.

I love this game!

[vg-sanctuary]

The World Ends with You

Jupiter - DS - 2008

[screenshots from Nintendo Life, jack-reviews.com, and LPArchive; please excuse the low res, I couldn’t find better ones]

TWEWY is an RPG with modern (circa 2008) style and character designs by Tetsuya Nomura, the director of Kingdom Hearts. I meant to write about it the day its sequel NEO: TWEWY came out but missed that by a few days. anyway, I think it's reasonable to call this game the epitome of the Nintendo DS. it has every feature to be expected of any game on the wildly unique handheld: a touch-based minigame with wireless multiplayer and little bearing on the main game, a sleep mode puzzle, touch controls, forced use of both screens, and gameplay and plot designed to be enjoyed in short bursts. it's loaded with cool ideas, some of which are more than questionable, even barring the crazy DS features, hence the remakes. (savvy readers will notice I left out the iOS and Switch platforms and, while there are remakes of the game for both platforms that have extra content and a more elegant combat system, they don't hit quite like the DS original.)

I don't fancy myself an RPG fan for the most part. the usual high fantasy themes and turn based combat are boring to me. usually, if an RPG has either one I'm not interested, and this has neither of those. I decided to try TWEWY while collecting DS games, and the plot and combat had grabbed me within two hours. I haven't mentioned the awesome music and visuals, both wonderfully stylish and unique in the same way Persona's UI is stylish and unique, only this game uses the style on its game world and characters instead of menus.

the premise is the antisocial protagonist, Neku, wakes up in a killing game wherein each day has a mission that he and his partner either complete or face erasure. after a week of these missions he'll be free. I can’t tell you the massive general plot spoiler that makes the whole thing so compelling as it goes on, so this section of the post is sadly pretty short. there is an anime that goes over the main events, but it's only four hours long compared to the game's 20, character development is sometimes lacking in detail or totally inaccurate, and it generally doesn't include the hardships you would go through as a player e.g. having to try a boss five times.

almost everything about TWEWY's gameplay is intriguing, so I'll try to be concise. combat is a strange beast that comes from developer Jupiter's need to use both screens to the fullest. by the way, don't let this wall of text scare you away from the game; it introduces these mechanics much slower and it's easier to understand and use. the bottom screen is gesture-based ARPG combat where, for example, short swipes over an enemy makes Neku use a sword attack or touching somewhere on the screen makes him fire a bullet. the exact gestures and attacks are determined by what pins he's wearing. the top screen asks you to use the d-pad to attack with Neku’s partner and navigate along a tree of cards where getting the right card grants a star; enough of those allows you to use a powerful and health-restoring fusion attack. there's this green light puck that passes between characters when the one holding it does a finisher and multiplies the finisher's damage with each successful pass up to five times, but disappears if held by one character for too long. fortunately the game has an auto mode for the top screen that's roughly equivalent to mashing left or right on the d-pad so you don't have to try to split your brain between both, but you get a little more experience if that's turned off. I love the bottom screen and the idea of the top screen but could never really get my head around doing both at once. maybe the intent was to focus on the character that has the puck and leave the other standing still or spamming defense? (in NEO: TWEWY, the light puck mechanic was changed to beat drop combos, where using a different character to attack shortly after a finisher gives you some charge for a super. no attention splitting, just fun ARPG combat with an interesting combo system that can inform what pins you use.)

turning up the game's difficulty makes enemies stronger and mostly drops different pins. there aren't random encounters: you have to scan for enemies and mostly get to choose which encounters to take. you can choose to fight multiple in a row without getting health back between them and multiply your drop rate multiplier, with enemies getting stronger the more encounters you take. you get your health back when you return to the overworld, which cuts out a lot of the obligatory spending for healing items and the trouble of running out for the player. there are still some pins that can heal you during a battle, though.

leveling up, instead of arbitrarily increasing every stat, only increases your HP, but you can turn your level down to lower your HP and multiply the drop rate of pins by one for each level. other stats can be increased with clothes or food, with different foods permanently increasing different stats and have different calories. each character can only eat so much in a single real time day, which is wack but still interesting. the food system in NEO is similar except without the per-day limit, and I think it's a great idea that gives the player agency in terms of what stats they want to increase and whether they want larger or smaller boosts.

pins can evolve when leveled up enough, but may only evolve if you give them the right kind of pin points, which is like experience for pins. there's PP from battles, from the game's proto-StreetPass mingle mode (that you could only get randomly roughly every hour, from other folks in TWEWY's mingle mode, or from other DSes running any wireless software; thankfully this is removed from the remakes but it's a neat idea), and from turning off the game for up to seven real time days. if a pin reaches max level with the wrong kind of PP, you have to go get another one to evolve it, but I don't think there are any super rare pins that evolve. the game doesn't show what kind of PP you need to evolve a pin, so while it's a cool idea, there's a fair chance that you'll miss lots of evolutions and not even notice.

there are lots of rare pins that can be worn as a set to do something ridiculously powerful, but you have to go out of your way to get them, like the Darklit Planets. it's a set of seven pins that are useful alone, but if worn all together they become three times more powerful. they all drop rarely from bosses on the highest difficulty. I love wacky, mystical, obscenely powerful postgame stuff like this but can't be bothered to actually go and get it. some games give you their best weapons last, which is always a shame because there's nothing to use it on, but in TWEWY, there's a boss rush that saves your best time and lots of bosses to re-fight for their rare pins, so you'll have a reason to fight bosses until you've got every one of those rare pins.

speaking of postgame, TWEWY's is rather extensive, with a bonus day focused on the Tin Pin Slammer minigame and goofy non-canon alternate personalities plus four sort of tedious missions for every ingame day that unlock secret reports for much more lore about the Reapers' Game. (one of the missions for every day is "find and destroy the pig Noise," which mostly have puzzle-ish fights; one is killed by closing the DS and opening it again, which is the sleep mode puzzle I mentioned.) if you get them all, it unlocks a special scene in the ending, but again, I can't be bothered to do that kind of postgame. not all of it, anyway, the bonus day's missions are too tedious for me.

in Tin Pin Slammer, the minigame with almost no bearing on the main game, you use your pins to play kinda-sorta Beyblade. every pin has different stats, many of which are hidden, and different amounts of the different weapons to stun your opponents' pins with. it's a rather extensive side mode and a totally unnecessary inclusion, but really fun anyway, and can be played wirelessly with others. there are some other mechanics that are also interesting but not quite worth adding any more words to this ridiculously long post, including a brand trends system and an interesting way to limit running from fights.

even with all of these words and some pictures, I seriously can't offer a glimpse of the vibes, the combat, the music, the story, the characters, the entire energy of The World Ends with You in a blog post, and in my opinion, it's not the same without the crispy DS sprites or peculiar dual screen combat. if you like the DS, 2000s energy, or action RPGs, this is an essential addition to your library if you don't want to track down a DS copy or you prefer more elegant combat, try one of the remakes instead. you're this far into the blog post, so I'm sure you won't be disappointed. (NEO: TWEWY is very good too and has a free demo on PS4 and Switch; while not the same, it's still worth trying. it carries a modernized audiovisual energy of its predecessor, more elegant combat improvements to other TWEWY systems.)

[kinglarrykoopadx]

Top 10 games i wanted to get

This is a personal list of games I want to get but I just can’t. Ranging from “maybe someday” to “get as fast as possible”. I’m gonna input some rules to my list to make it more fair. First off, I’m counting the games from the 8th to 9th console generation only, cause I ain’t wasting my money to buy an old console for like, what, one game? Second, no mobile games, because most of the time, they’re free even in the pre registration state. Yeah, there are some paid games but they’re pretty scarce. Speaking of pre registration, third, no pre orders, so I don’t have to regret wasting my money when I eventually get the damn game. That being said, pre orders of ports of games from older console generations will definitely count, so long as I’ve already played them or were interested by them.

10. Bug Fables

Bug Fables and I have a love-hate-ish relationship. On one hand, I wanna get it to see what of the old Paper Marios that got the fans to crazy town. On the other hand, some TTYD related salt lingers in me like how well butter sticks on bread. On the other other hand, I’m cursed with somehow finding more interesting games. Maybe one day I’ll get it, but for now, I’ll give it a pass thank you very much. But hey, I did say I’m considering buying it. Which no, it doesn’t mean I wannna see any “pLaY bUg fAbLeS” comments around, how many times must I tell you lot that shoving a game up my ass is less advertising, more making me resent the damn thing?

9. Crash 4 : It’s About Time

I’mma be honest. After watching some Caddicarus and AntDude, I’m willing to give the marsupial a chance. I did play the mobile game and it was fun but it’s a mobile game so it didn’t count. I am considering getting Crash 4, but I’m on the verge of rethinking if this was a good idea. From what I heard, this is a short ass game, and I’m not selling my soul to the completion devil to extend my game time. Bug Fables and Crash 4 are honestly, interchangable as fuck.

8. Crash Bandicoot : N Sane Trilogy + CTR Nitro Fueled

For N Sane Trilogy, it’s so I can know the context of Crash 4′s story and play through it. For Nitro Fueled, I’m getting it for funsies, I mean for fuck’s sake they added in the crates as racers, the only weird thing that can combat it is Piranha Plant in Smash. But the microtransactions make me rethink it, so maybe someday.

7. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX

Now we’re getting to the games where I have some interest in getting. Here we have the remake of Mystery Dungeon Red/Blue from the GBA/DS which I adored dearly. I was a fan of the Mystery Dungeon series by watching people play them, and playing some myself. I’ve played Gates To Infinity and never finished it (The farthest I could go was in the Holehills), I played Super but also with Gates To Infinity I never finished it (I think last I checked I made it to Entei) and now, I’m kinda planning to get it. Why is it this low? Key word “kinda”. Overtime, my interests for this game kinda fizzled out because it was a case of Bug Fables. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to try it, problem is that in time, my interest sparked into other games, which we’ll see later on.

6. Yo Kai Watch 3

In case you never got the memo, I’m a huge, HUGE fan of Yo kai Watch. If it weren’t for this franchise, I’d probably be more interested in something like studying and see gaming as irrelevant. The 1st game was kinda weak sauce, the 2nd game is the best in the franchise, and I really wanted to get the 3rd game. From what I’ve seen, it looked fun as hell. Problem is, the stupid virus made it hard to salvage a copy and even then, it’s a really rare 3DS game since the number of copies Level 5 made for this game are scarce as hell. Shame really, it was content packed and everything, but whatever.

5. Bugsnax

Bugsnax for those who never knew, is a game about snacks that are also bugs. After watching a couple playthroughs, I was willing to give it a try. And that’s where problems rise. The problem with Bugsnax is that it’s a PS5/PC exclusive (at the time of writing this top 10) and I’m not buying a PS5 for one damn game, and I normally don’t use my PC for gaming. Maybe one day when Young Horses port this cute game to the Switch I’ll give it a try, but for now, I’ll wait.

4. Mario Golf Super Rush

I know I said no pre orders, but this one’s an exception. I’m actually real hyped for this one, for starters, it’s not tennis for once, fucking woo, and the story mode made it look like it’s a pretty promising game, since people liked the story mode in the GBA games. Yeah, the visuals look lifeless, but do I give a crap? I’m just relieved Nintendo still knows that Mario sports games don’t just consist of tennis. And who knows, maybe the stars may align and we can get a new Mario Strikers or Mario Baseball with Nintendo purchasing Next Level Games and this game coming soon.

3. Bowser’s Fury

This game was one of the most anticipated Mario games for the switch simply because it was the banner for the future of 3D Mario. And from what I’ve seen, it’s pretty good. I mean, for starters, you team up with Bowser Jr so this game is already eyecatching from the start. The game has you collecting the 50 Cat Shines to awaken the Giga Bells and stop Fury Bowser which is a solid premise. Fury Bowser being the main highlight of the game because he’s the game’s blood moon. When he’s out, be ready to be pummeled big time. With rock music playing in the background. It didn’t make it to the top 2 of the “most wanted” games, but it is hella close.

2. Hollow Knight

After seeing people play it and listening to some of its musical scores, I’m willing to give this game a big fat chance. Hollow Knight is some Metroidvania game involving a lone soul in search of the source of ruin of the kingdom of Hallownest which is a solid as hell premise. On the way, you’ll meet some kind NPCs and traverse unknown lands and the DLC added to this game made it more than worth it. Lifeblood which has patches and a new boss namely Hive Knight, Grimm Troupe which from what I’ve heard included the most fun boss in Hollow Knight, Hidden Dreams which included the White Defender and Grey Prince Zote, and Godmaster, which is the game’s True Arena. Needless to say, I’m definitely gonna buy this game when I have the chance.

1. Miitopia Switch

As a fan of the 3DS game, I was hyped as hell when Miitopia was ported over to Switch, and I had every right to be hyped. Those Twitter users don’t know what the hell they’re missing out on. The combat is amazing, the characters are on point, hell, the demo had a lot of replay value. And when you make a freaking demo replayable as hell, that’s a sign of a kickass game. This is the game that can take my $50 with no hesitation. Nintendo, take my money, I’ve got a quest in need of reimagining.

[bottlecaprabbitgames]

Fellow switch owners... what’s the games you would, like, tell other people to buy? I want to make a list for things to try out and get when I can, as my laptop can’t really handle a lot of games! I’ll add a list of my recs of things I prefer on Switch and I’ll add on for what you guys tell me!

Sally Face (it plays WAY better on Switch in my honest opinion! It’s also my second favorite indie game, right behind Stardew Valley. The only reason it’s not #1 is because I’ve supported SDV since before its launch and still actively do! But Sally Face is a VERY close second and it’s all done by ONE guy!!! Mr. Steve Gabry!!!!)

Stardew Valley. I honestly will continue to buy Stardew Valley on EVERY platform I can (I own it on PC, mobile, AND Switch) because it’s a phenomenal game and I want to support Mr. ConcernedApe as much as possible. It plays really nicely on Switch in my opinion, I really suggest trying it out on Switch if you enjoy the game on PC or mobile, if nothing else but to have it as a backup and support the creator, he’s a super nice dude who deserves it!!

LEGO Harry Potter. Yes, yes ok I play it. If you’ve played it on DS or PC... you’ll find the Switch edition is incredibly different! A WHOLE buttload of stuff was changed, Faye and I barely recognize it but it’s actually a lot more fun!

Eyes, the horror game. I’ve played this one a long time, since it was available on mobile YEARS ago, and it’s gotten better over the years! It’s only like $3-4 and it’s pretty fun! I stopped after 3 tries tho because I kept getting jumpscared, LMAO

TWD series. I find it kind of easier to play the games on Switch versus mobile? But to be fair, you can pirate this one for free on PC, I’m just putting it up there for people without a PC/a PC that can run it.

Earthworms. It’s an interesting narrative story, though the puzzles are INCREDIBLY difficult, and there’s not a good guide out there that’s not video based; this is not a game for someone who is easily frustrated with puzzles like me, as I full on rage quit multiple times.

I also have Darkwood, Amnesia Collection, Cuphead, and Ghost Files: Memory of a Crime, all of which I enjoy so! The only game I DON’T recommend is Bad Dream: Fever, as it has a game-breaking bug that’s never been fixed in the switch edition!

Yalls Suggestions:

Oxenfree - horror game based around a group of friends, has a very stylized art style.

Animal Crossing - I share this recommendation given I also want this one bc I love the old games, but it IS expensive!

Someone also recommended some VNs! Piofiore, Collar x Malice, n a couple others.

Choices That Matter - someone recommended both of these games and I believe theyre a type of IF!

Werewolf Heart Of the Forest - Don't know much about this one, but I think it's either an IF or visual novel!

Little Nightmares - I also recommend this alongside a commenter! It's a super cool game, one of my fav platformers, I just don't know if it runs well on switch as I don't own it yet.

Neverending Nightmares

Omensight

AER: Memories of Old

Spiritfarer

Another Sight

[hopeymchope]

If you like Danganronpa, you might like...

I’ve discovered quite a few games/animes I’ve loved and even new fandoms by using recommendation engines/following online message board recommendations for people who already like the Danganronopa games or anime or manga, and I thought I’d give a quick rundown of how these things have worked out for me.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, honestly... it’s just time-consuming to write it all up, y’know?

Today, I’ll focus primarily on the video game side. If I put “Danganronpa” (any entry) into a recommendation engine, these are the results that I see spit back at me the most... and now that I’ve tried all the most common results, here are my findings.

Persona

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: The storylines have teenagers in Japan having to investigate dark goings-on while counterbalancing that with scenes of daily life that are lighter and more humorous. There are also “social link” scenes with the other characters that could easily be compared to the “Free Time Events” in DR, wherein you learn more about the lives of your compatriots via some one-on-one time.

What I Played: Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden on my Vita, then Persona Q on my 3DS. And I watched the main anime adaptions for 3 and 4...

Did It Work for Me? Will it Work for Others? Persona 3 and 4 absolutely worked for me. Q didn’t so much; the Etrian Odyssey-style map-your-own-first-person-dungeon gameplay was a turnoff. Regardless, it’s hard to pin down exactly why there is SO DAMN MUCH crossover between Persona and Danganronpa fans - probably more than anything else I’ve got listed here - because they’re actually very different. These are RPGs with turn-based combat and fantastical story elements involving magic and mystical beings and other worlds. And yet... I do feel the tonal similarity, and the characters feel like they could be at home in a DR game or vice-versa. And I deeply loved 3 and 4. (The stories are individualized to each numbered entry with the exception of the two “Persona 2″ games, so you can jump in on any numbered entry without any problem). I am excited to one day play 5 (although it is so much easier for me to play portables so I really, really, really wish there was some portable version of 5 in existence). Also note that the “social links” didn’t exist UNTIL Persona 3, so you can’t really go back and find that aspect in the first few titles. I can’t say these will work for everyone, but the massive amount of fan overlap says something, so if you’re game for a turn-based RPG AND you like Danganronpa... have I got a soup here for you.

Zero Escape Series (”9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors” + “Virtue’s Last Reward” + “Zero Time Dilemma”)

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: Dark, complex storyline filled with twists, memorable characters trapped in killing game, a mysterious mastermind, visual novel-style presentation, off-kilter humor interjected at surprising times.

What I Played: All three games on the Vita (the first two are collected as “The Nonary Games”).

Did It Work for Me? Will it Work for Others? Yes and yes. Aside from maybe Zanki Zero (see below), this is probably the most obvious thing to recommend to Danganronpa fans, and I’m kind of surprised there isn’t even more of a fandom to it. I can see why it doesn’t have as big of a following as DR - I mean, the humor isn’t quite as widespread and the characters are a bit less quirkily odd - but it’s hard not to get sucked in and fall in love with these stories. The big point of separation for DR fans is that instead of “Trials” where you use logic to solve puzzles, you have to constantly do “escape rooms” and use logic to find your way out of those rooms by doing point-and-click style hunting for items and solving puzzles in those rooms. Just like in DR, however, you’ll find that the more you fail, the more the game gives you increasingly blatant hints as to what you’re supposed to be doing, so it’s not like anything should get you stuck for too long. There’s also the somewhat obtuse nature of how to progress at times, but if you use the branching storyline map whenever you get stuck to look for updated items, you’ll probably be just fine (I hear the DS version of the first game doesn’t have such a map - or even voice acting - so you may need to beware of that being the most obtuse version out there). I loved these games, even if my rankings for them are probably out of sync with how most of the fandom seems to feel.

Phoenix Wright

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: Visual novel-style plot and investigation scenes, murder trials with logic puzzles where you need to point out flaws in testimony/falsehoods using evidence, plenty of humor.

What I Played: All of the first game (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) on the DS

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? Well... this is a little unfair, because I played the first one of these before I ever played Danganronpa, but... I didn’t like it. The humor was... lame for me? and I found the trials excruciatingly difficult because MY version of how the logic was flawed was never exactly how they wanted me to approach it. It was a matter of me attacking the wrong parts of sentences over the same general facts but... yeah... I didn’t get into this. Maybe I’m dumb, or was dumb, but it didn’t click for me and I only got through the first game using a guide and expending a lot of patience. I later tried out the anime because I heard it had a good rep (and this was after getting into DR and anime in general), and I didn’t care for that either. So I don’t know about this one.. it wasn’t up my alley. Will it work for other people? Well, clearly it DOES work for other people or this wouldn’t be considered a similar recommendation that comes up so often, typically in the top three of “if you like DR games” results! I do think the humor is FAR different than that of Danganronpa’s, and the characters lack the same kind of nuanced depth you see in DR (but again, that’s just from me playing the first game). But it’s easy to see from the “Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d” that there are elements that would definitely appeal to DR players. Give it a try for yourself if you aren’t already a fan, I’d say. My experience feels... esoteric to what most people think. I may need to try one again. These are on tons of platforms nowadays, many with demos, and often at discounted prices.

Zanki Zero: Last Beginning

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: It’s made by largely the same team using the same art style and presentation stlye and is an extremely dark story full of unique personalities and LOADS of weird off-kilter humor with zany mascots somehow overseeing apocalyptic circumstances and the characters look and act like they could easily be in DR and...

What I Played: The whole lone game from start to finish on my PS4.

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? HELL YES. Everyone who likes DR should really give this a chance. It gives off so much of a similar vibe despite being a “survival”-style game with navigation puzzles rather than logic puzzles, and you can turn off the survival/combat aspects entirely if that’s not your thing! And the story is excellent and the characters are excellent and really just please play this. Underrated game of 2019, and most underrated game that needs a fandom that I’ve ever played.

Fire Emblem

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: The bonding sequences you get when your units stand next to each other could be compared to FTEs. It’s got an anime design aesthetic, and the story can go pretty dark. Characters may suffer permadeath (even if other characters won’t react to this fact), so I guess there’s that...

What I Played: Awakening and Fates on the 3DS in their entirety (Yes, I did all three routes on Fates).

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? I can’t say I fully “get” this one. Fire Emblem is a turn-based strategy game that takes place in a medieval setting, so why is it always turning up in recommendations for people who play Danganronpa? Yes, I did enjoy it quite a bit. I became a newly minted fan of Fire Emblem. Success! And yet... I don’t know that the crossover is obvious to me, nor do I expect it would be a clear-cut case for most DR fans. I don’t even know that all of the traits Iisted under “Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d” actually apply to the whole series. I suppose that any game series that has a balance of darkness and humor plus a “character bonding” scene mechanic might just fall into the “if you like Danganronpa... “ pit, regardless of how incredibly different EVERYTHING ELSE is. But perhaps there’s a deeper connection here than I realize. Care to theorize?

[kuiperblog]

DRPGs: function over form

I have an odd affection for DRPGs, or “Dungeon-crawling Role-Playing Games,” which are sometimes referred to as “Wizardly clones” in the same way that early FPS games were called “Doom Clones.”

Legend of Grimrock is an indie game that I’ve found is closest to actually emulating the feel of the original Wizardry games from an aesthetic perspective while updating them for modern graphics; most of the examples from recent history are Japanese and feature anime-style character designs, with Etrian Odyssey being perhaps the best-known (and best-selling).

I describe my affection for DRPGs as “odd,” because few other games have the ability to thoroughly captivate me for the time I’m playing, only for me to completely forget everything about them when I’m done playing them.

For example, I recently noticed that Demon Gaze 2 was on sale for 75% off in the Playstation store. I’m keen to try it out, since I enjoyed the first Demon Gaze game so much that I took the time to 100% (I earned the “platinum trophy” so that anyone on my Playstation Network friends list can see the evidence of my achievement). This is a task that reportedly takes around 50 hours. I say “reportedly” because it’s based on other people’s reports of how long it took for them to “platinum” the game; I can’t really recall from memory how much time I spent playing that game, or really anything else about it for that matter.

I cannot express how weird it is for me to not have a memory of have any specific memories of playing a video game, especially one that I spent that amount of time playing. I can still vividly remember a specific game of Dota 2 that I played over half a decade ago. I could talk for paragraphs about an indie puzzle game that I played for 2 hours in 2012. You could ask me to talk about any of the N64 games I played as a middle schooler and I could probably recall many specific memories from the time I spent with those games.

And yet, when it comes to Demon Gaze, I remember nothing. Not the characters, not the plot, not any of the specific milieus or setpieces. And, truthfully, it’s probably because caring about any of these things is never really something that the game asked of me in the first place. I earnestly tried to remember anything I could about Demon Gaze, and here is a full, comprehensive list of what I came up with:

There’s an NPC whose character trait is that she’s always sleepy. I think she lived in the basement of...something. I think your “home base” was an inn, and she lived in the inn’s basement, and you would sometimes have to talk to her to do certain things or something.

One of the levels had plants and was mostly green. Maybe multiple levels, actually. I want to assume this meant there was a hedge maze, but I’m not actually remembering a hedge maze; I’m just assuming that a dungeon-crawling game plus a green area must mean there was a hedge maze.

One of the levels involved climbing a tall tower, or maybe descending into a deep pit. There was definitely verticality involved, and the map was cylindrical.

I think the main character used swords. But maybe they didn’t. I’m pretty sure that you could dual-wield at a certain point in the game. (I think part of what made the main character so strong was the fact that they could equip an artifact that let them dual-wield?)

That is truthfully and honestly the full extent of what I remembered about the game before I started writing this post and digging up screenshots which reminded me of the main character’s heterochromia. When grabbing screenshots for this post, I found one that showed a character’s class as being “Paladin,” and my reaction was not, “Oh yeah, Paladin was totally a character class in this game,” but “Oh yeah, Paladin totally sounds like a character class that could plausibly be in this game.”

Normally, I’d have memories of specific boss battles, or setpieces, or characters, or story moments. But in place of those, I have memories of looking at Google Sheets that people had made to list all of the items that dropped from certain areas, and ranked them to let you know which items were the best. I could more vividly tell you the decor of the room I was in when I unlocked the platinum trophy than the final boss I beat (or item I obtained) to unlock it. (Being a game for a portable system like the Vita, I actually have memories of many locations and “setpieces” associated with that game; just not locations in the game.)

DRPGs are, maybe more than any genre, a game that is experienced through a layer of abstraction, and I think this is best illustrated by the Etrian Odyssey, which lives in the DS family of systems, which are notable for having two screens (as is suggested by the name “Dual Screen”). Here’s a screenshot that shows what the game displays on both screens when you’re dungeon crawling:

On the top screen, you see the environment you’re exploring in all its 3D-rendered detail. On the bottom screen, you have a map of the area you’re navigating, with the arrow in the middle indicating your current position and orientation. And for the vast, vast majority of dungeon crawling, my attention is focused solely on the bottom screen.

This is, I gather, how most people play DRPGs. Etrian Odyssey puts even more of the focus on the bottom screen by forcing you to draw the map as you walk (hence the bevy of icons and paintbrushes it offers you when filling in the grid). If you try to play by looking at the environment, you’ll quickly realize how much of the area is just copy-pasted assets that are difficult to navigate by. The map isn’t just a “guide;” the game feels less like a first-person dungeon crawler and more like game with a top-down POV where your avatar is represented by that arrow on the map. If you watch gameplay videos and only pay attention to the top screen, you’ll be blown away by how fast it seems like people are moving, but it makes a lot more sense when you realize that people are only paying attention to the map: people will see, “okay, I want to walk north 5 tiles, turn 90 degrees left, then walk west 2 tiles,” and then just input that series of actions faster than the walking animation can actually play out on screen.

I’m half convinced that the reason Etrian Odyssey took off more than any other DRPG is that, due to being on the DS, it has an entire screen dedicated to the map, whereas in a game like Demon Gaze, your screen is mostly taken up with what amounts to decorative filler while the part of your brain that’s focused on gameplay has to focus on a mini-map in the corner of the screen:

So, perhaps you can understand how it is that I played this game for 50 hours, yet have no recollection of the scene/location depicted in this screenshot. It’s because close to 100% of my focus was on the mini-map. I experienced most of this game as an abstraction.

There’s a real sense in which DRPG players (I’m talking about myself here) want everything in the game to be an abstraction. The ideal length for a combat animation is “as long as it takes for me to read how much damage the attack did, so please just advance the battle as fast as I’m pressing the X button.”

Video games are inherently abstractions of real things, like the way that adding the pyramids to my build queue in Civilization V is an abstraction of what it’s actually like to build the pyramids in ancient Egypt, or left clicking in Counter-Strike is an abstraction of what it’s like to fire a gun, but they usually try to call back to the things that they’re abstractions of. Civilization gives you an inspiring quote from some historian describing the pyramids, and Counter-Strike tries to have animations and sounds that somewhat reflect the behavior of real guns. But in DRPGs, I don’t want the combat to be the simulation of my character swinging a sword on an enemy. All I care about is watching the numbers flash on screen, and the reward isn’t “you’ve triumphed over this vile forest-dwelling enemy,” it’s “the number on your exp meter went up.”

While games like World of Warcraft eventually become like this for a lot of people (a game with a hundred buttons that is all about managing cooldowns), you at least start from a place of walking your avatar around the world and performing actions that make your wizard look as though you’re casting a spell.  But most DRPGs start from the position of “all you care about is the numbers, right?” The game is an abstraction unto itself.  It is a game that is made for people who like looking at spreadsheets (and I most definitely spent a decent chunk of time looking at spreadsheets).

Maybe that’s why they can get away with having character designs often clash with the art style of the environment and enemies, and sometimes with the art style of other party members. Several of the character portraits in the above screenshot seem like they were drawn by different people, and there are some moments that, when you look at them in a screenshot gallery, make you think that the characters just don’t belong in the world they’re inhabiting. And while the game is sometimes visually non-cohesive in a way that becomes really obvious if you pay attention, the truth is that when you’re actually playing the game, you’re not really paying attention to all that.

For another example of this, I like to turn to Stranger of Sword City, which has a really cool aesthetic that hits you from the moment you pick up the box (or look at the title screen):

The original release of the game, on Xbox 360, was remarkably consistent with this specific style. But the Playstation Vita version of the game (which was later ported to PC)  gives you an updated character creator and your options include, well, a variety of options drawn in a variety of different styles.

I just looked at the screenshots on the Steam store page for the Stranger of Sword City and, well:

Yes, that is a Prinny in the bottom left corner. Yes, Nippon Ichi did publish this game, why do you ask?

I think one of the reasons I don’t tremendously mind the aesthetic choice (or is it a lack of choice?) in a lot of DRPGs like this to randomly have anime-style characters (even when they might be dissonant with the rest of what’s on screen) that I don’t necessarily need my paladin’s look to really communicate that they’re a holy warrior or whatever; I really just want them to be eye candy that I can appreciate in the moments when I’m distracted from the numbers. But in the end, it doesn’t actually matter that much, because, well...

DRPGs feel like they are all about function over form. (The “looking at the mini-map and not the 3D environment” is a microcosm of a playstyle that’s encouraged by a design philosophy that seems to apply to nearly everything in a “good” DRPG.) This puts them in stark contrast to, say, Persona, which involves a ton of dungeon crawling, but relies heavily on the style (which includes the battle music, the stylish combat animations, and the quips that your characters make in battle) to make that part of the game interesting.

When you down all of the enemies in Persona, part of the “reward” for that comes from getting to deal a bunch of damage to all of the enemies, but a huge part of the reward also comes from the feeling of visceral pleasure that comes in the moment when Akihiko senpai says “I’ve been waiting for this!” and you smile and agree and say, “Me too, Aki. Now give me that shot that’s so iconic it became a meme template.”

I probably would not have made it through dozens of hours of crawling through Tartarus in Persona 3 if Mass Destruction weren’t such a banger of a battle theme. But I spent just as much (if not more) time dungeon crawling in Demon Gaze despite not having Lotus Juice’s rap verses soothing my ears during those battles, which I guess maybe stands as a testament to how good Demon Gaze was at making the game fun?

Ultimately, the abstraction that every RPG leveling system gets toward is “your character gets stronger.” Maybe DRPGs are better than any other genre at removing any abstractions that would serve as a barrier between you and that goal.  And the best DRPGs also give you formidable challenges that give you ample reason to want to become stronger: games like Etrian Odyssey are notorious for their difficulty. I feel the difficulty is a bit overhyped; much like my feelings on Dark Souls, Etrian Odyssey only really feels “hard” when compared with other games where the player is never put plausibly close to a failure state whereas Dark Souls and EO actually punish the player for making mistakes, and EO also has the “X-factor” of having enough variance (due to things like random crits) that you actually do want to give yourself a decent margin for error. Which is to say, EO is one of the RPGs where you actually care a lot about having a team that’s strong enough to kill a boss in 8 turns instead of 10 turns, since that’s 20% fewer chances for an unfortunate event to send you back to home base. Powering up your team in EO feels important and significant way more than it does in a lot of other JRPGs.

There is a very real sense in which the entire point of the obligatory spreadsheet companion is to aid you in your quest to become the strongest you can be by breaking the game somehow. The thing I do remember about Demon Gaze (not concretely, but in the abstract) was that there were some item/class combinations that were wildly better than the alternatives. Some might deride this as poor balance, but in my eyes, “breaking” a game in that way is really more akin to “solving” it, in the same way that one might “solve” a puzzle. I did it: I found right combination of skills and items to trivialize the game’s difficulty! Huzzah! In a “well-balanced” game where all items and classes were all carefully tuned to be equally viable, such a thing would not be possible. Thus, what others might consider “poor balance” in some DRPGs is actually an essential and core part of what compels me to spend time with those games.

I feel like these factors and more make DRPGs somewhat unique in a way that probably contributes to them reviewing poorly. For example, if you look among discussions on DRPG forums about recommended games, there seems to be universal consensus that Stranger of Sword City is a great game (with many praising it as the best DRPG they’ve ever played), but on OpenCritic, only 45% of critics recommend it, and I think all of this is perfectly encapsulated by a 6/10 review from TheSixthAxis:

Stranger of Sword City excels at one thing, and really flounders at the others. It’s a rewarding experience if you’re a fan of challenging RPGs and gameplay depth. If you’re a fan of well-written dialogue, engaging music or proper difficulty curves though…well….there are a lot of other video games out there that may suit you better.

And that’s the kind of thing that makes me want to locate a guide, crack open a spreadsheet, and start a new save file.

Anyway, the Stranger of Sword City is on sale for 80% on Steam right now. That’s $4, for a game that I paid $40 for when it first came out on Vita! I’m tempted to buy it again, just for the convenience of being able to play it on my monitor without having to dig around to locate my old Vita TV.

[alexis-dot-com]

Template nicked from someone else who didn’t give credit to OP

Quick reasons for each pick: Persona 3 is the perfect mix of JRPG, visual novel, hope and despair. It's my favourite game in a fantastic series. The story, characters, music and gameplay are all top-notch. You gotta play this game. Yakuza 0 is probably my favourite game in the series from a story stand-point. There's drama, intrigue highs and lows. One of the best stories in gaming. Muramasa The Demon Blade's art is just gorgeous. All hand painted with some vibrant colours that bring the Edo period of Japan to life. Atlus has a killer music team. Everything they touch is gold. Their soundtracks for the SMT series, Persona, Catherine, are all incredible. From jazz, to rock, rap to pop, it's all amazing. Castlevania is a difficult series at the best of times, but the third game on the NES is rough. The platforming, enemy placement, and stiff controls make for a frustrating mix. Definitely worth a play, though. The Jackbox games are all fantastic ways to spend an evening with friends. Whiplash, Drawful, Tee KO are personal highlights. Resident Evil 6 wasn't too well received by many, but I loved every second of it. Main issues people had with it were the focus on action over horror, and the over-use of Quick-TIme-Events, but it's a big, dumb action game that's a ton of fun to play. I don't have the energy to rant about Fortnite. It's just so mediocre. The World Ends With You is easily one of the best DS games. The story, music, gameplay are all fantastic. Absolutely underrated, and I can't wait for the sequel. Mortal Kombat is just okay. The amount of praised lumped on it is just not justified. Warner Bros. spent so much money on the latest entry and it does not show. The animations are stiff, which leads to limp feeling attacks. I highly recommend a series by SugarPunchDesignWorks on Youtube that go in depth on all the issues surrounding the bad animation in that series. The Last of Us is my pick for Best Voice acting for this one scene alone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Csw8G6yruE And while Resident Evil 1 has some absolute stinkers looking back, It's amazing to see (or hear) just how far acting in gaming has come. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjbNvS1LYD8 Zagreus from Hades is such a great protagonist. The way he speaks to people is so chummy, calling everyone "mate". His voice lines also act as tutorials for the game, and with thousands of unique lines of dialogue, you really get to know his personality over the hours. Juri Han is a bastard but she's my bastard. She's one of the villains from Super Street Fighter IV, and she just chews the scenery. Her gameplay reflects her toying personality, with counters and a keepaway play style. Link is a silent protagonist so you might be wondering how he's my favourite one? His animations are top-notch. He's a complete dumb-ass, from happily eating rocks, to punching treasure chests open, he's an absolute idiot, but he's also the saviour of Hyrule. Sephiroth is similar to Juri in that he likes to toy with the heroes. He crops up everywhere through Final Fantasy VII just to mess with Cloud. He's menacing when he needs to be though, and terrifying as the story goes on. Ellie (from the Last of Us Part 2 specifically) suuucks. She went from my favourite character in the first game to the one character I couldn't stand in the sequel. She's so hell-bent on revenge that she's blind to everything else. She just makes the most idiotic decisions throughout the entire run-time. I remember playing Super Mario World at a cousin's house when I was around 4? It was a ton of fun and it really opened my eyes to a whole new medium of entertainment. Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, the developer of the Yakuza franchise deserve more recognition, and I'm happy to see them get it in recent years. The Yakuza series is (mostly) focused on one character, Kiryu, who was a member of the Yakuza (Japanese Mafia), but just wants a quiet life. Needless to say things don't go his way as he's roped back in with every new game. Rockstar games make highly produced games, sure, but I feel their attention to detail takes away from other aspects (like if the game's even fun to play). Red Dead Redemption's horses have balls that shrink in cold areas! But the game's an absolute chore to get through, with slow animations for everything from picking up ammunition to looting enemy bodies. I'd love to see them focus their attention to actual fun gameplay than horse nuts. The Walking Dead is depressing. The visual novels, the TV series, and the game. The latter is probably the most depressing however, as you control characters who are forced to make decisions nobody should ever have to. I've not even finished all of the series because I need to take a year-or-two break between them. There are a million horror games that could have taken the place of "creepy" but Bioshock has such a unique environment that it has to be here. The world of Rapture, being at the bottom of the ocean is terrifying because you can't exactly escape. It's oddly beautiful at times, however, with whales swimming by among the skyline, and schools of fish visible through apartment windows. Katamari Damacy is always there to liven things up though! In Katamari, you play as the Prince of All Cosmos who needs to roll up objects to make an even bigger ball to create stars for the universe. It's an odd, funny, and addictive game that never ceases to cheer me up. I don't spoil the ending to Metal Gear Solid 3, but I will say it was pretty cool to see one of the final frames of the game be used as its box-art. Kojima's Metal Gear series is too long to summarise here so I won't even try. The salute Big Boss gives at the end of the game, though was the perfect send off to a hugely enjoyable game. This is how you make a game packed with details and fun gameplay, Rockstar. If you read all of this, jesus, get a life.

[megatentious]

Fragments of Forgotten Message Board Posts

Dragon Quest wasn’t always my favorite RPG series (I have three favorite RPG series right now). But here is a short story with a couple of twists and turns about how it became my favorite; also, this story is my personal retrospective review of Dragon Quest 7.

My first memory of Dragon Quest, before it became the series that makes my heart feel full, was a short preview of Dragon Quest 6 from the EGM import corner. I must have known about Dragon WARRIOR much earlier than that (even though we never had a Nintendo I was sufficiently FF-enthused to know about the Big Rival to Final Fantasy) but memories work in funny ways and that’s the one I have. I remember the caption on the screenshot pointed out how impressive it was that there were so many items on the bookshelves. I remember thinking this game looked so incredible, and how if it was anywhere as good as “Final Fantasy III” that it was going to be a must play.

But how was I going to play it? The answer, in 1995, was to have a best friend who went to Asia every summer and brought back dozens of carts and CDs each time. One of those carts was Dragon Quest 6, and once I scooped out my Super Nintendo’s innards to allow myself the ability to play, I was treated to an evocative campfire and SNES strings and a dream-like atmosphere that was everything I’d hoped for. I could only manage to get through a few hours of it without any JP language skills, but that was more than enough to leave a lasting impression.

I know that Dragon Quest 6 is a weird answer to the question of the first Dragon Quest you played. I’m not one of the NES kids who started with Dragon Warrior, or any who started later with the ports on Gameboy Color, or anyone who started even later with the ports on DS or 8 on PS2 or 11. I began my affair with Dragon Quest with expectations that this series had top of the line production values, and so this may begin to explain the mindset with which I approached Dragon Quest 7.

DRAGON WARRIOR VII is a game I bought at launch on my six year old Playstation after years of waiting, ready to experience this storied series in English for the first time. I don’t know why I didn’t know about any of the GBC ports, but despite some trepidation at the environmental visuals I was excited to start. And for the first 40 hours or so, I had a wonderful time. The structure was so intriguing to me, the battle scaling so modest but compelling. However, by Hour 100 (this is a period of time in my life in which every RPG I played got finished no matter what) my attitude about the game and Dragon Quest in general reached the point where 10 years later I was still sufficiently … passionate enough to make message board posts like this:

So the upshot here is that Dragon Quest 7 was a game that made me resent a series I was supposed to love, which in my mind made this game unforgivable. Months after making this post I would finally play Dragon Quest 5 on PS2 on my laptop and my love for the series would skyrocket further (one day I will write an essay about that perfect game and the lengths I went to more perfectly play it). And then one year after that they would announce a remake of DQ7 for Nintendo 3DS.

This announcement. Rather than do what everyone was expecting and churn out yet another DS-engine (which was based on the OG DQ7 engine!) “remake”, this was a full visual overhaul with 3D cutscene direction, maps for all dungeons, a fragment finder, and symphonic soundtrack. In other words, a remake that addressed virtually every complaint I had with my original DQ7 experience.

Time to briefly return to that original DQ7 experience. How to reflect on my memories of that playthrough? The memories I had when I made that angry post? The memories of making that angry post? The memories I have today? The truth about that experience is that I played DQ7 in the worst possible way you could play it. The game felt boring and repetitive to me in the back half because I marathoned it all at once over the course of a few weeks. The characters felt lifeless to me because I never actually used party chat (and party chat was more limited in the PSX version). The music began to grate on me because I wasn’t listening to dreamy Super Nintendo strings or more crucially, the full symphonic soundtrack I would later associate so strongly with so many of my personal Dragon Quest experiences. 

And what about those vignettes I called charmless and dull? Well, even by 2014 I was hedging on that, wondering in message board posts if the visual and sonic revamp with actual cutscene direction would allow these stories to leave more of an impact for me. The ultimate answer to my hypothesis was unequivocally, yes, these stories left more of an impact for me.

I’m never the one you’ll hear arguing against a game giving you friction (my other favorite RPG series is SaGa), but in this case all of the QOL smoothing in the remake, the fragment finder, the previous event summary, the in-game mapping, the tablet consolidation, all of this allows you the space to refocus your attention on the game’s most potent strengths. Rather than leaving you with a sensation of oppressively aimless retreading and a feeling of being lost (and not feeling lost in the good way, like many of my favorites in my other other favorite RPG series, which is the one this tumblr was supposed to be exclusively about) the smoothness of play lets you see the slowly unspooling world (love a psx rpg with a slowly unspooling world!!) not as a constellation of chores but for what it truly is.

That true and modest spirit of Dragon Quest, these warmly human fables that are meant to linger with you, that one line buried in party chat that is meant to devastate you, a nested series of stories that build and connect over time until you’re left marvelling at the genius of the construction. When I made that post in the past, I didn’t have any memories of the story of the noble priest of Vogograd and the truth that is left to a future generation of children to build. Is it 20 years of age and experience and memories that allowed for me to find that story so moving? Or was it the space the smoothing in this remake left for me to better understand the meaning of this game? 

I bought the DQ7 remake at launch five years after making that post, and I started and finished the DQ7 remake 5 years after buying it, which is, again, 20 years after I first finished it. How much time has to pass before you revisit the first Dragon Quest you ever finished, playing through the game you thought you hated, but maybe always suspected you could love? When do you allow yourself to return to old memories and then make new ones? 

Time hasn’t erased every one of DQ7’s problems, there is still some dungeon padding and some repetition, and there are also new problems with occasional localization issues and symbol encounter issues. But as with any game, you form memories of flaws and memories of strengths, and if you watch the credits and listen to the symphonic credits theme and search your heart and the memories of the flaws already seem distant, then you know you’ve just played a game that is a great. Dragon Quest 7 is a great game and a great Dragon Quest. You know you truly a cherish a series when you are willing to wait until it is the perfect time to play, and time after time, whether for DQ3, or DQ5, or DQ11, DQ is the series I cherish enough to wait for. 20 years after finishing was the time I needed to revisit DQ7, and closing this loop is the perfect gift I could give to myself.

In conclusion, Square Enix please announce HD 2D DQ4 ASAP for me thank you.

[johannesviii]

So I guess I’m hyperfixating on Death Stranding at the moment

And since I’ve finally finished the story after playing it for like 100 hours over the course of seven months or so I guess I have Opinions(tm) about things I didn’t like in the game

They’re eating at my brain so I’m gonna put them all in a single post to get them out of my system once and for all so I can enjoy the rest in peace

Spoilers, obviously

Hi welcome back to ‘Johannes is obsessing over yet another video game with horror elements in it’! I guess!!

Our latest entry in that category was Until Dawn but since UD can be played in like 6/7 hours and I spent 100 hours of my life on DS, as you can guess we’re talking about a full-blown hyperfixation, the kind that physically hurts because I can’t focus on anything else even after having finished the storyline

But it was super gradual. Again, seven months. I barely made any progress from December to May because I was only doing side-deliveries at the beginning of Chapter 3 instead of... you know... advancing the plot. It became an honest-to-god special interest about two months ago, then 6 days ago while playing chapter 10 it reached hyperfixation levels and now I am in PAIN

I hate my brain

Anyhow

At first I wanted to list the good and the bad hings in it but there’s too many good things to list them all in full, excruciatingly long details, so

Very Quick And Very Incomplete List Of Good Things That I Love

It’s a post-apo game based on travel, logistics, and good will, and it straight up goes AGAINST the whole ‘survival of the fittest’ trope that SO MANY post-apo things try to push!! YES

I insist but it’s built on helping each other and keeping everyone alive, seriously that is my shit right there!

The online community is wholesome?? People leave stuff everywhere, you never see anyone but people put little helpful signs and send you likes, and in my game we almost managed to repair all the roads together

There’s so many new & strange allergies and disabilities and phobias in this post-apo world and? nobody is trying to ““fix”“ anyone?? Like Heartman with his padded floor and his little box that brings him back to life constantly. He’s just... living like that. Nobody’s going “hey maybe you should get another heart operation buddy”

The hero and his phobia of being touched. I. Loved. That. The quiet scenes when he was just talking with Fragile, sitting next to her. In any other context this would just be two people sitting next to each other and talking but it always feels so soft and intimate everytime he allows another human being to just. be next to him. I love it. I love them

Everyone crying constantly because of chiral allergy!!

I loved all the important characters bar one (Bridget/Amelie)!

Why is this walking simulator so enjoyable why am I enjoying the fact that holding L2 + R2 while walking feels like holding your backpack and that you have to relax at times just like you’d have to if you were actually holding a backpack

Seriously. Why

The atmosphere was so great, the music was fantastic and the visuals were on point. A E S T H E T I C

The ghosts!! The giant Beached Things!!! Chiral crystals look! like! creepy hands reaching for the SKY!!

THE RAIN DESTROYS THINGS AND KILLS PEOPLE BY ACCELERATING TIME THIS IS SO COOL SHUT UP

Everytime the game got surreal it was electrifying

THE SURREAL WAR SCENES ON CLIFF’S BEACH

Everyone is using emojis

There’s guys addicted to delivering packages in that game and they’re trying to steal our stuff and we’re like “haha they’re dumb” but we’re basically addicted to delivering packages as the player. So yeah that was pretty fun

Terrorists thinking humanity isn’t going extinct fast enough and wanting to just rip the bandaid and speed things up. Simple but effective concept

People ask for SUPER VITAL ITEMS right next to completely trivial stuff and I’m LIVING for it. “Please fetch my toy dinosaur”. I feel you dude

The most isolated characters are like "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THIS THING I LIKE" in your emails because they haven't had contact with other humans in years, it's super relatable

There’s a farm where people use the fact that Timefall rain accelerates time to grow food super quickly in one (1) Timefall and harvest everything just before it starts to die and I LOVE that detail of worldbuilding so much

YOU’RE FIGHTING BEACHED THINGS WITH YOUR OWN BODILY FLUIDS IT’S SO STUPID BUT ALSO SO COOL?? I love yeet-ing my own blood at eldritch entities

THE T W I S T S

All the fanservice (bar one detail that I’m gonna complain about later) is on dudes. This game reeeeeeally likes to show dudes naked or somewhat naked. Mostly the main character but this mocap also L O V E S Mads Mikkelsen and there’s a shit ton of homoerotic shots in there

I love Sam the antisocial papa wolf delivery man and if someone touches him or his baby again, I will cry

LOU. LOU LOU LOU PRECIOUS BABY I’D DIE FOR YOU. Wait I did

I love Fragile and how brave she is and how she keeps helping people even if most of them wrongly think she’s a terrorist and yes I will eat this cryptobiote thank you

I love soft science boi Heartman who keeps dying again and again and is a bit too much interested in bodily fluids

I love garbage man Higgs and how complex, funny and still somewhat tragic this memelord actually turned out to be in the end

Seriously I want to stop fixating on this character but you can’t give me YET ANOTHER character who wants to die but at the hands of someone else, that is unfair to do that right after my fixation on the new Doctor Who Master

So yeah Higgs is yet another character who makes me want to grab him by the lapels and shake him and yell WHY! ARE! YOU! LIKE! THIS! STOP! BEING! LIKE! THIS!!

Cliff broke all three of my feelings beautifully and in excruciatingly well-acted scenes that transcended the sometimes lackluster dialogue

John made me cry during That Scene

Mama your background was tragic and terrifying and you didn’t deserve any of this shit and I love you

Deadman was more funny than anything, really, but I still liked him even if he had no sense of personal space whatsoever and it clashed horribly with Sam’s phobias

The ending had some sad parts but was mostly positive, thank goodness

Now I’m gonna explain things I dislike and this looks long but it’s actually only 5 main things so I bolded them to avoid confusion

Things I really disliked (and could have been handled wayyyy better)

We all know it but Kojima isn’t a master of subtlety and some parts of the dialogue kept repeating the same informations again and again AND AGAIN and I was like “ok ok I get it”

The dialogue can be so bad at times seriously

Kojima is a bad writer there I said it

It was particularly annoying with Amelie/Bridget and the fact she’s a horrible person trying (and failing) to justify her actions wasn’t helping

Bridges protocols are incredibly intrusive. All of them. I know it’s framed as bad and Sam hates being spied on all the time and in the end he destroys the device that does that, but I wish someone else would openly criticise it in-game

I guess Deadman sort of did but still

Also I know the whole BB technology was Bridget’s idea, and since she’s the actual villain it’s framed as a twisted, evil thing during the ending, but I wish that had been framed like that much earlier ; a lot of Bridges employees just... seem to accept the idea that their employer is using premature babies and their dead mothers as useful, if disturbing, devices. They seem to justify it by “uh we stole that technology from terrorists” to try to cope with the idea but... yeah.

I mean, one of the points being made very early on is that Sam sees his BB as his child who must be protected at all costs instead of a detection device, but I really wish he wasn’t the only one to object to that thing

Again, the game DOES frame "using babies and their dead mothers as tools” as evil and twisted, I just wish it was given a lot more weight and way sooner

Now let’s talk about the Token Straight(tm) in this game

In any other kind of context it would be a joke! But Death Stranding literally has a Token Straight Guy!

I mean, there IS a few hetero couples among the Preppers. Not a lot, mind you. Like, there’s the Montaineer and his wife for instance. But they’re just there and it’s not what their side plot is about

No I’m talking about this piece of shit right there

This f█cking Junk Dealer guy complains the girl he loves is dead because of Bridges and emotionally blackmails us by sending us old holograms of her before her supposed death (somewhat disturbing holograms too because she looks... pretty young in them), then he sends us on what’s essentially a suicide mission in a BT infested zone, THEN when we give him proof she’s still alive and living in another bunker nearby, he won’t go there himself to check??

But SHE’s like “ok, bring me to him, then!”

He doesn’t deserve you, girl

I’ve already seen several people pointing out that carrying a woman as cargo on your back is... debatable at best and sexist at worst, but that part didn’t really bother me to be honest? She asked to be carried to him and it’s her choice. She was talking to us the entire way too, so that made things a lot less awkward. Also Sam has this phobia of being touched by other people so I bet carrying another human being on his back isn’t fun for him. It was also super stressful to do, to be honest.

And then there’s this EXTREMELY AWKWARD scene when they’re reunited and decide to get married, and thankfully Sam finds it just as awkward as we do because he’s standing super far away from the bunker in a “can’t they talk about this later - I’m right there” way. And I’m under the impression it was intended as cringy, in a “yeppp young people in love are Like That” sort of way, so I can accept that, to be honest. If you don’t take that scene seriously, it’s pretty fun in, again, a cringy sort of way

BUT

Then you receive more emails later and this piece of shit guy complains about her and he’s like “ugh WOMEN” or “marriage is the worst” and they end up divorced in record time and she goes back to her bunker

Which isn’t my problem with this subplot either, I promise I’m gonna explain myself eventually but this context is important. It’s okay to have characters who are pieces of shit like this guy who reeks of incel cologne. It’s alright. Not every character has to be a role-model. It’s good to have characters you can hate.

BUT THEN they get back together later to try to patch things up and you learn he was part of a gang who murdered her parents even though he protected her against the rest of the gang and that’s what I hated about that storyline. I guess if you squint it can be read as “this woman is making REALLY BAD life choices” but I read it as “he saved her so she owes him something, he can’t be entirely bad” and y i k e s this left such a bad taste in my mouth, good lord.

But yeah miss Chiral Artist you’re making really bad life choices please get away from this dude as soon as you can, thank you

Also don’t do this ‘sending Likes’ pose ever again, it was hilarious but also you made me use the word “cringy” several times in this paragraph even though I absolutely hate cringe culture, look what you made me do

Now I have to talk about a scene that was intentionally disturbing as hell but ONE (1) detail in it was disturbing for the wrong reasons

To be honest, I really don’t like the Metal Gear Solid games and one of the reasons is the rampant sexism in them so I... was kind of bracing myself for Death Stranding and expecting it to have at least SOME really bad fanservice with a woman at one point or another but to my surprise?? There was none? All the fanservice is on dudes??? Hello? I really liked that (well at some point Fragile takes a shower in our room but we see literally nothing except her shoulder and then Sam looks away)?? What a refreshing change

THAT BEING SAID

And if you played the game you know exactly what I’m about to talk about

Yep this is the part where Johannes complains about how the bomb flashback was shot

Ok so I guess I should also give some context in case someone is reading this but hasn’t played the game, but the deal with this scene is that our friend Fragile was betrayed by her colleague Higgs who used to be a porter but became a terrorist after meeting the “main“ villain of the game. First he secretly put a thermonuclear bomb in one of her deliveries so she’d nuke an entire city without even knowing it, and everyone after that thought she was a terrorist. And then he tried to do that shit A SECOND TIME, but she noticed and decided to toss the second nuke into a bottomless lake of tar. But he caught her just before she reached the lake and he decided to give her a sadistic choice, which was “teleport away and the bomb stays there and nukes the city, or carry it to the lake but only in your underwear under this rain that speeds up time and it will do enormous damage to your health and your body”

And of course being the hero she is, she decides to take the second option

And it’s an incredibly disturbing scene and it’s genuinely hard to watch

But it’s also the ONLY time a woman is in her underwear in this entire game and there’s A COUPLE of shots that were male-gaze-y at the beginning before she started to run and the really horrific part started.

So in a way I guess it could have been worse? way worse, even

But it still tarnishes an otherwise disturbing (and harrowing at times ; seriously I know I’m oversensitive but it was physically painful to watch) scene with unnecessary shots

We know Fragile had a young body before this happened, this isn’t the point of this scene, guys

Whoever decided to keep these shots (probably Kojima let’s face it), that is bad and you should feel bad

Idk how to do a visual transition for that next one because I do not want to screen that memo

So here’s a screenshot with a nice landscape instead

tw: acephobia

Now I have to talk about something I like the GENERAL IDEA of, but not how the IN-GAME MATERIAL ABOUT IT was written

Because I have to talk about that “asexual world” memo

First I have to say that I absolutely love the fact that a mainstream game openly says in-game “this future is full of asexual people" and?? it’s just that, it’s a part of this world. That’s just how things are. It’s normalised. I love it. For crying out loud this memo has the word demisexual in it. I can’t think of any other mainstream game that had this word in it so far.

It should have stopped there and let me enjoy that in peace but it didn’t

THE MEMO ITSELF WAS CLEARLY WRITTEN BY SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THESE CONCEPTS and there’s some really bad stuff there. I’d say it’s accidental acephobia but it’s still there. I’m not the best person to talk about this because I’m bi, but it still rubbed me the wrong way

The words this memo uses near the beginning are “"sexless lifestyle” among young people” and yikes, my dude. “Lifestyle”, uh? Really?

And then it goes on about how these new labels were already more and more common “among young people before the Death Stranding” and it also rubs me the wrong way, in a “wow young people and their weird labels lol” sort of queerphobic way?

However I’ve seen a post pointing out that the line “One theory posits that the Stranding accelerated the proliferation of these sexualities” was maybe a way of saying ‘yo asexuals are causing the end of the world’ but... I don’t see it, tbh? In the context of the game, society is extremely divided and a lot of people live in complete isolation and social norms have heavily shifted and it’s kind of normal that there’s queer people visible everywhere now, aces included obviously, because nobody’s bothering to hide it anymore. It’s a post-apocalyptic world! People are just being themselves! A lot of characters also seem to be bi/pan! They’re just vibing ok

At least that’s how I read that part, I can understand if someone had a problem with that bit but I didn’t

BUT! THAT’S NOT ALL because the memo concludes (I’m paraphrasing) “the birth rate has dropped, which might be a problem, but harassment and assault have also dropped, which is good, so idk it’s 50/50″ and. like. I get the intention. But it’s clumsy as hell and very bad. Please don’t confuse abuse of power and attraction. They don’t go hand in hand. Don’t do that. Please. And you know that aces can have kids if they want to, right. Come on. It’s 2020 my dude. This shit is harmful

Also. Like. It’s the end of the world in this game. People don’t want kids. It... has nothing to do with aces. Reality itself is crashing down. People are reluctant to have kids because reality.exe might f█cking crash down at any given moment!

Or a Beached Thing could VoidOut their city!

Or someone might send them a nuke, not naming names!!

Anyway!!!

It’s really badly written and whoever wrote it should educate themselves and maybe get an ace to re-read their stuff next time??

Again I’m not the right person to talk about acephobia and I bet an actual ace would have plenty more to say about this

Thankfully it’s a memo written in-game by a random Bridges councellor and NOT by any important character that we actually know

"I must preempt myself by admitting that I do not have any empirical data" yeah so, f█ck off maybe

So I’m just gonna call that guy “another piece of shit character” but it still doesn’t excuse the fact that the memo was written by someone who thought it was a good idea to put it in the game

Just let me enjoy my super queer post-apo world in peace and don’t write shit like that in your game thank you and goodbye

Minor stuff I also disliked but it wasn’t as awful

I get that Sam is upset at the end because Lou is dying but the way he said goodbye to Fragile broke my heart. It was abrupt and you KNOW he’s upset and wants to have nothing to do with Bridges anymore and that’s very understandable but it isn’t her fault

Seriously I want them to be friends again

I’m gonna pretend they’re friends again after Lou is saved and that Sam is a freelance porter again and sometimes their paths cross and they just talk together in the middle of nowhere and share cryptobiotes

The pacing is weird, there’s this deluge of plot in the beginning and the end but not much in the middle?

The BT boss fights could have been these epic Shadow of the Colossus showdowns but no, they were relatively standard boss fights. Wasted opportunity

The running on the Beach scene sdfghjhgfdsdfghjhgf that was... dumb

A lot of preppers are interesting in one way or another but some are just boring. Also I wish the design of their bunkers was more varied

Amelie/Bridget’s motivations are all over the place, both creating Bridges AND the Demens is... a lot? I know she both WANTS and DOESN’T want the actual, final end of the world to happen but that is a lot to take in and it’s all very confusing

Who the hell cares about ‘rebuilding America’ I just want to build a network where people can help each other

The ‘likes’ are fun but don’t make much sense

In conclusion

Death Stranding Good

Some stuff Bad

Some stuff Very Bad (but it’s just one memo out of 100+ memos, thank god)

I’m still hyperfixating

Send help

[u23art]

A LOOK AT NEO: THE WORLD ENDS WITH YOU (SPOILERS AHEAD)

A Look at Neo: The World Ends With You (Spoilers Ahead) The World Ends With You was and is a very special video game. It wasn’t just a typical RPG, it was an experience that took the gimmick of the DS’s two screens and created a wholly unique style of combat. That combat would in turn compliment the characters, and those characters would enrich the story all the more. Anyone who played it through fell in love with it and waited enthusiastically for any kind of follow up to it. And on July 27th, 2021, Neo: The World Ends With You. The story is a familiar affair. The protagonist Rindo gets sucked into the Reaper game and his party has to survive over the course of a week or 3. The gameplay consists of fighting the enemies such as the noise and the Reapers, collecting and leveling up pins, replaying segments with time travel, “remind” mini games and deep diving into NPCs for fighting challenges. This game, is middling at best. I’ll explain this by drawing comparisons between Neo and TWEWY, an entirely fair comparison to make. First on the chopping block, the combat. The first game required the player to split their attention between controlling one character (Shiki, Joshua and Beat) with the directional pad on the top screen, and then activating pin psyches with the stylus on the bottom screen with Neku. It sounds like a mess on paper potentially but it could be mastered. By making uninterrupted combos you could build up a meter to 3 levels which could unleash limit break moves with visual flair unique to the partner character you have at the time. In Neo, everyone uses pins, and your interactions with your party members amounts to a tap of the buttons they’re mapped to. This can be a disorienting affair, especially when you have pins equipped to the trigger buttons on one side. This ends up making no particular character feel unique with the exception of their evasion animation. Psyches in the first game were a manifestation of characters channeling energy through objects, Shiki fought with Mr. Mew, Joshua with his phone and Beat with his skateboard. Only Neku had the power to fight with pins. In combat, the characters don’t matter, the pins do. When everyone’s super, no one is. The smaller touches peppered into the game during navigation like “remind” and “diving” are forgivable. Remind is a cute unscrambling mini-game and diving can provide extra fights with extra rewards. The character shoka’s ability, flight, is more often a miss as what could have been a useful fast travel option ends up being an option to look in nooks and crannies of the map with usually nothing to find. The absolute worst new edition to this game, is time travel. During points of the game, usually when you’re about to go up against an anticipated big fight, Rindo can take away a player’s right to choose and force you to replay segments. Within the context of the story, this is meant to make a fight easier despite the fact that a fight is supposed challenge a player in the first place and shouldn’t be something to avoid. You travel back and replay scenes but you have to select dialogue options to make the scene play out differently. Heck, most of the time there are no dialogue options, Rindo will automatically alter the scenario.

This is especially annoying during the final big stretch of the game. The final week boasts the grand finale of facing against Shiba, Kubo, and a giant noise phoenix. In a typical RPG, you earn the chance to face the ultimate foe when you’ve conquered the challenges in a final area. Before you can face these bosses, you have to cycle through eons of text as you repeat events over and over again so the characters can move events in their favor. This doesn’t build excitement or tension, this doesn’t challenge the player’s mastery over the gameplay, this is utterly deflating. Time travel in this game is wheel spinning fluff that asks nothing of the player and trivializes the problems in the game, and is a problem that’s reared it’s head in other Square games, but I digress. My next shortcoming I’ll be forthcoming with. With the exception of Shoka, the protagonists made for this game: Rindo, Fret and Nagi; they could not carry this game without the help of the legacy characters. At least not with how they were written. Sure, it’s conveyed that these characters have problems and insecurities to overcome, but I ask you this; at what point in the game did those 3 have any friction between eachother? They’re passive aggressive towards eachother, but that’s it.

Rindo has an apparent inability to make decisions as the game explains and yet uses time travel to fix events from the moment he realizes he has it. Fret forces himself to be cheery and deflects responsibility with no proper explanation besides a quick mention of how a friend of his died. Same with Nagi, why does she so heavily retreat towards her favorite game for comfort and obsess over collecting merchandise? There are arcs here ready to be explored yet they’re never leaned on or overcome, any chance to get meaningful stories out of these characters is squandered. In the spirit of fairness, Neku’s reason for being emotionally distant isn’t explored but that problem still manifested in captivating ways, like when he’s so indifferent about being involved with people that he was willing to murder Shiki to get out of the Reaper Game. Even without that, TWEWY still had strong personal stories with Shiki and Beat who both struggled to either be comfortable with themselves or overcome their feelings of inadequacy. On a petty point, design, specifically with Rindo and Neku. I hate Rindo’s design, his coat is outrageous and the mask annoys me. Not because he has one but because he’s not wearing right, if he’s not properly wearing it over his nose then it’s just a jaw bikini. As for Neku, he puts on display Nomura’s perpetual weird fascination with plaid that won’t go away and keeps appearing in his current character designs. His coat is dumb and clashes with his motif. Petty point #2, the final phoenix boss. It makes it’s appearance after very little build up after another villain was being built up….in a game about time traveling. I’m getting flashbacks to Final Fantasy XIII-2 and I don’t like that one bit.

I think there was potentially a good game to be had here, and here’s how I’d fix it. 1. One partner at a time. Bring back the double character play style, you couldn’t do it with touch features because the switch couldn’t replicate the DS experience in a way that’s comfortable to hold. But overcome that problem and you have time to explore the characters. 2. Shoka could have been the protagonist. She’s a recovering antagonist, that’s an issue to be explored and was such a waste to keep to the way side.

3. Character specific weapons. Rather than collect pins, shops could offer items the character could use as weapons. -Fret could manifest power from scarves. -Nagi could summon varients of her favorite Elestra character through her own preferred pins. -Beat would have Skateboards

-Neku could get a selection of pins to use. -Shoka could also summon, like monsters from FanGo because she cherished her time with Rindo. Give the characters abilities derivative of their personalities. Uniqueness for the characters is so important for the sake of the games name. The World Ends With You. Neku’s world was small to him because he isolated himself, by knowing other people did he learn life can be so much richer.

I understand my criticism is biting, but this game is a sequel in name only. TWEWY is a phenomenal game to have as a foundation to build upon, but this game at most becomes a cautionary tale of what you shouldn’t do when making a follow up to TWEWY. Please Square, have more thought put into the writing of your new RPGs. And for the love of God; Stop. Using. Time. Travel. In your stories. You sure do like having it in your games despite the fact that you don’t want to make games for the Chrono Trigger franchise anymore. Like time travel? You’ve already got a franchise for that.

[blazehedgehog]

Is it bad of me to wonder if Boost gameplay just isn't worth it for SEGA to attempt anymore because the "best" one of them is still literally, from its conception at that, 50% non-boost? Even Super Mario Sunshine, rushed as it was, still had the same controls for most of the game (Shadow Mario's worlds being what, 1/7 of each level?), and a lot of the more infamous levels still are "FLUDD being used in a horrible way" so it's not like you can say they didn't stick to a central gameplay theme.

What game are you actually talking about, though? I’m going to assume it’s Sonic Colors, since that’s the only game you’ve mentioned that fits the bill of what you describe.

Maybe you saw this ask, but I do not consider Sonic Colors to be “the best one” by any stretch. Like it’s a fine game, I guess. I don’t hate it. It has some of the best visuals on the Wii, it has very nice music, and it plays well enough...

But I also think it misunderstands a lot of things. It’s far too controlling. Like, by Sega’s own admission, Sonic Colors was them trying to make a Sonic game to appeal to Mario fans. So that’s where you get things like the wisp powers, because those are blatantly and intentionally trying to mimic the suits you get in Mario.

Except that in Mario, you get tools. You pick up a fireflower, and you have this great multi-contextual ability that applies to a wide range of scenarios. The same goes for the raccoon suit, cat mario, whatever. They are intended to be general gameplay modifications.

The wisps in Sonic Colors are all designed to be used in one extremely specific scenario and they are almost totally useless outside of that. Laser is made to be reflected off of prisms, hover is made to follow trails of rings, drill literally only works in areas marked to be drillable. You can kind of coax and massage alternate uses out of some of those, like laser can be good for blasting through a big group of enemies or to gain a little extra height, but in general the gameplay flow goes:

They give you a wisp power in one room

In the next room is the puzzle that uses that wisp power

Either you succeed or fail at the puzzle and the wisp is gone now

And the same goes for boost. You are only meant to boost in extremely small scenarios where they give you boost to use. They only ever give you just enough boost for that one section, and when that boosting section is over, chances are you are either empty or close to empty on your boost meter.

Sonic Colors is a game that when it tells you to jump, it expects you to ask “how high?” You play it exactly the way they demand, or you play something else.

And these are problems that only got worse once you start talking about, like, Sonic Lost World and Sonic Forces. They only got more and more and more rigid. This is actually something I spend time talking about in the upcoming Sonic Forces video I’ve been promising for years.

I’ve also talked about this with other people recently, but I think generally the reason people are tired of boost or don’t think boost works anymore is simply because Sega is bad at utilizing it well. There are games out there with what I would call “Sonic Vibes” that I think show what Sega could be doing with Sonic, but aren’t.

Like, Mario Kart, right. Mario Kart is stellar at introducing platformer elements in to what is ostensibly a racing game. I think recently on this very blog I mentioned Airship Fortress from Mario Kart DS as an example of this, where you’re dodging bullet bills in the opening of the course. You’re also dodging Monty Moles, fire criss-crosses the track at certain points, there’s big jumps to cross huge gaps... this game came out years and years and years before the first 3D Boost Sonic game and Sega never took any lessons from it. Ever. No Boost Sonic game has ever had levels this dynamic.

Or what about games like Rollcage, GRIP, or Distance? Distance especially, since it gives you easy access to a jump button and expects you to flip and spin around tracks to land on sections of road that might be above or beside you.

Like, it’s no surprise someone would get bored of Boost Sonic games when Sega only ever uses them in a super narrow, restrictive sort of way. They’ve had like, four ideas total for those games, and they’ve squeezed three or four games out of just repeating the same things over and over and over. There’s a whole range of possibilities and they abjectly refuse to explore them.