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vanguard333

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Everything posted by vanguard333

  1. I recently resumed my first playthrough of Persona 5 Royal; I was in the middle of the January part of the game when I had to stop playing it for a while due to being very busy. I'm hoping to finish this playthrough quickly, as well as finish playing through the game Ocean's Heart, and start playing Super Mario RPG Remake.
  2. @Integrity I see. Being brand new to the series, I'm a sword-&-shield main, so the mobility and the wirebug techniques made sense to me (using the sword as a flail via a wirebug and using the wirebug to propel the player upwards in a shield bash). I can see how the way they're used in combat for other weapon types would be more nonsensical. And yeah; getting knocked to the ground without a wirebug can be annoying. I quite enjoyed exploring and learning the maps, but I am brand new to the series. Incidentally, as a brand new player who is neither a fan of combos nor combat that involves learning the opponents' tells (though I guess the latter makes a lot of sense as the player inevitably fights the monsters more than once), I mainly relied on the sword-&-shield's ability to use items without sheathing the weapon, and on learning monsters' weaknesses: learning to throw flash bombs when Rathalos is airborne, learning to break the wing-spikes of a Barioth so it slides around, using the surrounding environment when possible, etc. I decided to watch the trailer for the game "Rise of the Ronin" that was announced at The Game Awards; I am probably not going to get the game for many reasons, but I am surprised by the time period they chose to set the game in: the Boshin war between the Shogunate and Emperor Meiji's forces in the late 1860s. The end of that war marked the end of the samurai class (making it rather weird that the game is called "Rise of the Ronin" when ronin were masterless samurai). Other than that, I don't know too much about that time period other than that the shogunate lost and then the Meiji restoration rapidly modernized Japan, so I can't say how accurate the game looks. Incidentally, why did several announcements have "rise" or "fall" in their titles? Rise of the Ronin, The Rise of the Golden Idol, the two Final Fantasy 16 DLC episodes: "The Rising Tide" and "Echoes of the Fallen", etc. Shortly before the Game Awards, I saw a video that pointed out how often "Rise" and "fall" have been appearing in game titles, and I might only be noticing it because of that video, but it's still a bit weird.
  3. That's cool; as someone whose starting point for the series was Rise and who played it single-player, I agree that the game's a great starting point for those wishing to play monster hunter alone. One thing I hope the next game adds in this regard is that I hope it includes a way to pause the game when playing alone; one thing I really don't like about games that try to be simultaneously single-player and multi-player is that they never seem to provide a way to pause the game when playing solo. I'm curious, why do you hope wirebugs don't come back? I would be fine with them not coming back as they're something that mainly made sense for Rise but wouldn't necessarily make sense in other games (much like the Rampage), but, much like the Rampage, I really liked it; I thought it added a lot to traversal.
  4. Indeed. That's one of the reasons I've largely stopped talking about Star Wars; the other being that that I just grew disinterested in it (or at least in Disney Star Wars; I still like the original six films) as a result of all the bad films and shows that Disney was churning out. After Rogue One but before 8, Solo, 9, etc., I was looking forward to the idea of an Obi-Wan spinoff, because I could see a bunch of different ways it could be done really well, and yet, by the time it actually released, I was so disinterested in Disney Star Wars that I didn't bother watching it, because I knew it would almost-certainly be bad. Oh, and to be clear, I did not enjoy film 7 either; it was not a good movie. All it did well was create an illusion for many that the next films would be a lot better, and I imagine a lot of the anger channeled at film 8 at the time was partly from that illusion being broken. Going back to games, I don't know if this is unpopular or not, but I've grown tired of large open worlds. I still like open world games, and I really liked Tears of the Kingdom, but after playing it, I realized, "If the next Zelda game is open-world, I hope its open world is a lot smaller and more crafted". It's becoming clear that there's a limit to how big an open world can be while still making sure almost everything in it is carefully crafted; Tears of the Kingdom was in development for four years and it was a direct sequel that resulted from the dev team having too many ideas for Breath of the Wild DLC, and it still managed to have a lot of repeated content (and I don't mean repeated from Breath of the Wild; I mean content within the game itself that is repeated a lot).
  5. Yeah, that's really annoying; it's especially annoying to hear people use stuff like critic vs audience score to pedal politics when the particular movie/show/game is one that you yourself happen to dislike, because then the person also tries to lump you in with them. I remember being someone who happened to dislike The Last Jedi when it released, and the subsequent two years were made very annoying. Anyway, both user scores and critic scores have their faults. I personally try to largely ignore them and only listen to reviews from people that I trust.
  6. Fair enough, and I just double-checked the release date and realized it released earlier in the year than I thought it did (October 27; I misremembered it as releasing sometime in November). I do stand by the other two remarks: Cyberpunk 2077 is not an ongoing game; it is a zombie game that ate its last piece of brain before being put to rest, and it is definitely not worthy of being nominated for any "best community support" awards; neither is Destiny 2.
  7. Aether; the clear winner is Aether. That said, Aether should only really be something Ike has, and it was annoying that Chrom and Lucina had it in Awakening, so I can understand it being disqualified. Sol gets a little bit of health back while Luna does extra damage. Since they're both random, I don't ever want to rely on either of them, and in that regard, sol is just a bit more useful; I don't want to rely on getting health back, but, if it happens, that frees up the healer to do something else. The extra damage from Luna is less useful when it happens. In any case, I like these abilities more for the fun when they appear, not for their tactical usefulness.
  8. I know this thread is specifically about the games that were announced at the Game Awards, but I would like to take just one moment to have a laugh at the Game Awards: 1. Alan Wake 2 is the guy who showed up late to the party; so late that no reasonable judge had time to determine if was any good or not, and it still walked away from the party with three prizes. 2. Best Ongoing Game award went to a dead game that just received its last embalming (Cyberpunk 2077). 3. Cyberpunk 2077 and Destiny 2 receiving "Best Community support" nominations is a bit like Ganondorf being nominated for "most benevolent King of Hyrule". ...And that's really all the jokes I can make, as no other awards were weird/obvious corporate catering; they were just extremely predictable. That said; I know there was a lot of star power this year for video game performances, but how did Matthew Mercer as Ganondorf not even get nominated? Anyway, back to the games: Visions of Mana looks neat; I always cringe whenever a video game character slams their sword into the ground, but that's a small nitpick. I like that the art style of the Trials remake is largely retained while having the graphics be all new; it looks nice. Monster Hunter Wilds... It looks neat; I like the idea of a mount that can glide, though I'll probably miss wirebugs. I think I would have to see more of the game first before deciding whether or not I'm interested in it; my first Monster Hunter game was Rise, and part of that was from Rise having been the right game at the right time for me specifically. Plus, I liked a lot of the things that are unique to Rise: I liked using endemic life, I liked temporarily controlling monsters, I liked the palamutes and the wirebugs, I liked The Rampage (though it was a bit too tailored for multiplayer), and I liked followers; as someone who played the game single-player, I liked bringing NPCs along for the hunt that found the right balance of being useful without doing the work for the player. With this game, all we know so far is that there's a palamute-like creature and dust storms.
  9. I'm not; Nintendo already announced a lot of 2024 releases back in October, and I think, if Nintendo is going to make any announcements soon, it will be in one of their Nintendo directs. Plus, I don't think Nintendo has anything huge to announce right now, so soon after Tears of the Kingdom and Mario Wonder. Also, the only Nintendo announcement I remember from The Game Awards last year was Fire Emblem Engage DLC, and none of Nintendo's recent big releases are going to have DLC; the Zelda team has confirmed that there are no plans for Tears of the Kingdom DLC (which makes a lot of sense as Tears of the Kingdom was born from the team having too many ideas for Breath of the Wild DLC). I think it's too soon to tell; all we really saw in this trailer was a mount that can glide, a desert with some new wildlife, and a sandstorm with lightning strikes. That said, the mount makes me think they're probably going to combine aspects of World and Rise for this game; but that's just me speculating as someone who has only played Rise.
  10. I am in full agreement; it really is just the size of the BotW fanbase + circumstantial factors, and there is not a significant enough audience for a second BotW/TotK Hyrule Warriors. I am only saying that, unfortunately, business executives have an unfortunate tendency to just look at numbers and precedence, so I can't discount the possibility of it happening even though it is definitely a bad idea.
  11. Indeed; that's one reason I was saying that I could see it. My two predictions, including the one of another Hyrule Warriors that this time pretends to be a prequel to TotK instead of BotW was mainly meant as a joke; I probably should have stated that they were jokes. As for why some think there's a large market for another one, I think there's a simple answer: Age of Calamity sold 3 million copies; outselling every previous game in the Warriors franchise. Of course, that argument doesn't take into account many different factors, such as the following: 1. Age of Calamity released in late 2020, when we were all trapped inside and there wasn't much competition 2. A not-insignificant number of those copies sold can be attributed to false-advertising that made the game seem more relevant to the Zelda franchise and BotW than it actually was. 3. The hype around Age of Calamity died very quickly after release and, at this point three years later, most people have forgotten that the game even existed. However, I can't quite completely dismiss the possibility of it actually happening because business executives aren't likely to consider those factors; they're likely to just see the sales numbers. I mainly meant it as a joke, but yes; I am probably underestimating Atlus.
  12. Yeah; I hope they're not making another Bravely Default. I never played the original Bravely Default games; only the demos, but every demo of Bravely Default 2 left me feeling disappointed in a way I didn't feel with the Bravely Second demo, and I think it's because the first two Bravely Default games, while by no means masterpieces, had a lot that made them stand out and be memorable that Bravely Default 2 just doesn't have: the hand-drawn environments and the creative fourth-wall breaks being two examples, and while I wouldn't expect a Switch game to have features that were clearly made with the 3DS in mind, Bravely Default 2 didn't really have anything in their place. I could see a Warriors game that uses the League of Legends IP. It's unlikely, but I could see it. I have some more predictions: 1. Hyrule Warriors: The Imprisoning War. There will be a trailer, it will open with one of King Rauru's lines from Tears of the Kingdom about the founding of Hyrule. We then see footage of Hyrule at the time of King Rauru, and then Aonuma appears after the trailer and says, "This game takes place tens of thousands of years before the events of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. In that game, the Imprisoning War was mentioned, but the actual event itself wasn't shown in full. In this game, you'll be able to experience the events of the Imprisoning War." However, there's a strange zonai construct shaped like a celery stick that wasn't in any of the flashbacks... 2. A developer at Atlus says, "Now that we've finally exhausted every type of Persona 5 spinoff imaginable, here's what all of you have actually been waiting for" and we get a tiny little teaser for Persona 6 that doesn't provide a release year, let alone release date.
  13. I haven't been playing anything lately, as I have been very busy. My plan is to finish my playthrough of Persona 5 Royal that I'm almost done (I'm in the middle of the Royal-exclusive third semester), and then either finish Ocean's Heart or start playing the Super Mario RPG remake. Regarding that last one, I have never played the original Super Mario RPG and I am hoping to go in blind (or at least, as blind as I can go into the game; it is a game from the 90s and I already know one or two things as a result of pop-cultural osmosis). However, there are some things I would like to know in advance: 1. Is there anything permanently missable in the game? 2. Is there anything else where, when playing the game, you thought, "I wish I knew that on my first playthrough"?
  14. Interesting; what I had read on Wikipedia (so take it with a grain of salt) was that some people mistakenly thought Lord Byron wrote The Vampyre and Lord Byron went out of his way to confirm that Polidori wrote it. Yeah, I imagine they probably would have included Lord Ruthven eventually. That said, I imagine that, if he were to be put in a game, his binding oath ability would have to be purely a story mechanic, as I don't see how one would incorporate that into gameplay.
  15. I honestly have no idea. (A quick Wikipedia read later) The answer is yes and no. Apparently, one night, the author: John William Polidori was with Lord Byron and Mary Shelley, reading aloud a collection of French horror stories, when Lord Byron suggested that they each write a ghost story. Mary Shelley wrote a story that would eventually become Frankenstein, and Lord Byron made and quickly scrapped a short story, then Polidori later used that scrapped story as the basis for The Vampyre. I honestly don't know as I haven't played any Castlevania games. (A quick Wikipedia and Google search later) Huh; I guess there isn't any Lord Ruthven in the games. I guess not using him as a main villain then makes sense. Even Varney turned out to be Death in disguise after all. I'm very surprised that Lord Ruthven has never appeared in any of the games; he is the first modern literary vampire; why wouldn't the games use him?
  16. Trailer for... I'm guessing a graphics and modelling tool?/10 I don't know much about graphics/modelling tools, but I guess it looks neat.
  17. I still haven't watched the show, but I just learned recently that a vampire named Lord Ruthven is mentioned in the show as an enemy but does not appear. I happen to know that Lord Ruthven is the name of quite possibly the oldest vampire character in English literature; predating Dracula, Carmilla and Varney the Vampire. He is the villain of the 1819 short work, "The Vampyre" and he is a properly scary and manipulative villain, and one of his main abilities in that story is that he can force people to swear an oath to him and, if the person breaks that oath, the person dies. The creators of this show needed a villain after exhausting Dracula, Carmilla and Varney/Death, they were aware of Lord Ruthven, and they didn't make Lord Ruthven the villain?! That just seems like a really weird decision to me. Incidentally, there is an animated series I have watched where Lord Ruthven (or at least a character named after him) is a major character: it's an anime called The Case Study of Vanitas.
  18. Same, except I have never played League of Legends; I don't play online multiplayer games at all. I did know a little bit of the lore of League of Legends before watching Arcane, but not a lot. I see; I honestly don't know much about Twisted Fate. I would say that I hope Warwick appears in season 2, but I think it's pretty clear that Warwick's definitely going to appear. Since Arcane is about the conflict between Zaun and Piltover, one character that, in hindsight, I'm surprised hasn't even been mentioned yet in the show is Janna: in the lore, she's singlehandedly responsible for keeping Zaun's air pollution from killing everyone and she's greatly revered in Zaun because of it, so I'm a little surprised she was never mentioned and that there wasn't a statue of her in Zaun or anything like that. Since season 1 did set up that Noxus is likely to get involved, I wouldn't be surprised if Urgot makes an appearance.
  19. Huh; this is news to me, but I haven't spoken to many in the Monster Hunter fanbase and I'm brand new to the series, with my first Monster Hunter game having been Rise. I really enjoyed Rise; part of it was a case of right game at the right time, since I had just played a ton of demos for various story-driven JRPGs at the time and I really needed something with deep combat and a focus on the core gameplay loop, but I went back to it a year later to play the Sunbreak expansion, so I clearly enjoyed it for more reasons than just that. And, honestly, I'd really like to see the next Monster Hunter game bring back at least some gameplay elements from Rise, such as the wirebugs and the followers mechanic introduced in Sunbreak (I mainly play single-player and I liked a lot of the characters in Rise, so the follower mechanic was great for me). What I hope to see: 1. It's not a game, but now that there's an official release date for season 2 of Arcane, an official trailer for it would be cool to see. 2. Either a new 2D Zelda game or an Oracle Remake bundle that includes the cancelled third game. Tears of the Kingdom just released this year, so the latter of the two is a lot more likely, but I do miss how previous 3D Zelda games had 2D Zelda games released in-between them. What I Predict: 1. No real announcements from Nintendo, as Nintendo already made a lot of announcements for its 2024 games. 2. An Assassin's Creed game set in whatever historical period is closest to the current bandwagons. Last time it was Vikings.
  20. I've seen that video as well; it was pretty good. Seeing other IPs get their own Paper RPG spinoffs would be neat, especially if they're more like the earlier Paper Mario games.
  21. Huh. I didn't know about that; I didn't really pay attention to the game awards last year. Not disqualifying Genshin is definitely not good. I honestly don't think either of those will win; Genshin, maybe, but I think the discourse around Baldur's Gate 3 is enough to enable it to win. If I'm wrong, I'll be surprised, but I probably won't give it much thought afterwards.
  22. I'm hoping Tears of the Kingdom will win, but I'm expecting Baldur's Gate 3 to win; the sheer hype, momentum and coverage surrounding Baldur's Gate 3 was simply too immense for it to not win. I'm not really too interested in Game of the Year; to me, The Game Awards is a joke, so the only award they give that I pay any attention to is the Player's Voice Award... and Baldur's Gate 3 is probably going to win that one as well.
  23. Oh, yeah; I forgot to include Punch-Out... and Ice Climber, now that I'm thinking about it. I could include them now, but they'd have an unfair disadvantage for being added after quite a few people have already voted. True; true. It wasn't until the sequel that Medeus' backstory was finally given and, even in that game, the focus was really on Gharnef as the main villain, and even then, Gharnef and Medeus could only be hinted at because the game's plot revolves around the twist of Hardin being brainwashed into seemingly being the main villain. At least an adaptation could finally give Medeus some extra time and actual character.
  24. To be fair to Medeus, Medeus' backstory provides a lot of material for potentially interesting characterization: he was the only Earth Dragon who wasn't too proud to consider becoming a manakete, and as a result was the only one who didn't degenerate, and when Naga sealed away the maddened Earth Dragons, he kept watch over the seal until he saw how poorly human societies treated manaketes, and he abandoned his watch to create the manakete-supremacist Dohlr Empire. That's a lot that can be worked with for interesting characterization. Of course, nothing about his backstory other than founding the Dohlr Empire was revealed until the sequel, but at least parts of it could be revealed or at least hinted at in advance when inevitably giving him additional scenes for a show. @Shrimpy -Limited Edition- That image is truly terrifying; what show or movie or thing is that image from?
  25. If they were to go to the effort to CGI Christopher Lee as one of the characters, it would have to be the sage Gotoh. Wendell is too small a role for the effort, and Lee would've been perfect for the role of Gotoh back when he was alive, right down to Gotoh's portrait in Shadow Dragon looking a lot like Christopher Lee's Saruman. I don't know about Danny Devito as Malledus, but he'd probably make a good Gharnef. He has proven from roles like Penguin that he can play an effective scheming villain.
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