vanguard333

A reminder that I still have yet to play Sacred Stones because my first Fire Emblem game was the game that released after it: Path of Radiance. Incidentally, is anyone else feeling that the "[barebones description]/10" joke is getting a bit old? I do miss when the opinions stated were more varied and I regret that I was one of the earliest to do the "[barebones description]/10" joke a lot.

That scene is far more believable in LEGO Indiana Jones than in the original live-action film. Perhaps the sad part is that the fridge would've made sense if the fridge had been far enough from the blast that he just needed protection from shrapnel and radiation, and not the force of the blast itself.

I finally finished Persona 5 Royal! One 2024 gaming resolution completed, and we're still in the first week of 2024! After so many hours spent (my playthrough was somewhere around 170 hours long; I'm guessing that I was very inefficient), it feels good to finally have completed the game. It's a great game with a good story that had a lot to say, and the Royal-exclusive storyline is great as well. EDIT: I just completed the game Ocean's Heart. It was a lot of fun; it's easily my favourite 2D Zelda-like (though that's not saying much, as its only competition among games I've played is Blossom tales). I will say, one advantage that indie games have over big-budget games: brief end credits sequences. I don't want to sound old, but I remember a time when big games had end credits sequences that were skippable or fast-forwardable. Today, that seems to be a lost art, so I'm really grateful that Ocean's Heart was a solo game and, as such, had a very brief end credits sequence.

Here's the games I played that released in 2023: Here's my awards for these games: Game of 2023: Tears of the Kingdom Here's the games released earlier that I played in 2023: Here's my awards for these games: Best Game Played This Year: Persona 5 Royal Best DLC: Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak Best Indie Game: Ocean's Heart

I'm continuing Persona 5 Royal since I made a 2024 gaming resolution to finally finish playing it. I just located the treasure in the final palace. I hope I will be able to finish the game soon. I recently got, but have not yet played, the Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection. I liked Battle Network 5 and 6, and I've been meaning to play the earlier Battle Network games, as well as finish Battle Network 6.

For me, definitely The Legend of Zelda. Outside of that, Fire Emblem and I guess Super Smash Bros.... I'm more someone to have favourite games than favourite franchises. I do really like the BoxBoy franchise; they're really good puzzle-platformers. I'm not a huge fan of Metroid as a whole, but I did really enjoy the Metroid Prime trilogy, so I could consider myself a fan of the Metroid Prime sub-franchise. I used to be a Pokémon fan; I largely quit after gen 7 and have only played Legends: Arceus since then. Other than that, I've more been a fan of individual games than franchises. I like Shadow of the Colossus, but I have not played any other Team Ico games; I mostly loved Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, but I have not played any other Ys games; I like Persona 5 Royal apart from the fact that my first playthrough is over 160 hours long and I somehow still haven't finished it, but I haven't played any other Persona games; etc. EDIT: I just remembered the Mega Man Battle Network and Star Force games. I enjoyed the last two games in the former and all three games in the latter.

Part of me would hope that they'd still look like paper in other spinoffs like Heroes, as it would be both distinct and hilarious. I don't think it would be too incongruous though; everyone in Heroes is a 2D sprite outside of CG cutscenes. It would only really be incongruous for something 3D like a Warriors spinoff or a revisit of the Emblem Ring concept in the mainline game.

I just finished playing the Super Mario RPG remake, with the playthrough having been about 20 hours long. Since the game is a JRPG, I was expecting it to be a lot longer, even though I remembered that it's also a Mario game from the tail end of the SNES era. When I say completed, I also went out of my way to fight Culex. However, I have not done any of the postgame content that the remake added. It was a lot of fun. It wasn't very difficult or challenging, and I think I was probably over-levelled for a lot of it (I finished the game with my characters at level 29), but the gameplay was still fun. I like that all five characters get the same amount of experience points regardless of whether or not they were in the fight and, with the exception of Mario, they can be swapped out at any time without losing a turn; it means I can freely use all five characters whenever I want and I'm not having to either alternate between them or pick three favourites and bench the rest like in other JRPGs. I mainly used Mario, Geno and Mallow, but I still used Peach and Bowser fairly frequently. That said, there was one thing I really did not like: isometric platforming. I get that it's a Mario game, so there needs to be some platforming as a nod to the main series, but isometric layout and precision platforming with small platforms do not mix well in my experience. I like the story; it's very straightforward but it's a lot of fun. That said, there were two unanswered questions that didn't sit well with me: I might've missed something, but I could've sworn that the reason that Mallow was sent away and had to be raised by the Frog Sage is never actually revealed. What is Smithy supposed to be? I figured from the name "Smithy", his army being living weapons, and his home world being a dead world where there's only him and his weapons and anything that isn't a weapon is a ghost, that he conquered/destroyed all life in his world and intends to do the same to the Mushroom Kingdom, but, when you finally face him, he too appears to be a robot. Who, if anyone, built him? Overall, it was a lot of fun.

The Blood Pact inflicted on the Daein King by Ashnard was mistaken for a plague, so the death-by-broken-blood-pact probably presents itself in a manner similar to a terrible disease. The way Lekain describes it to Pelleas reinforces this, saying that, when one king (implied to be the King of Kilvas before Naesala) broke his blood pact, one person died the first day the pact was broken, then two the next day, and so on; starting with one individual dying and rapidly growing in number of deaths would look very similar to the outbreak of a terrible disease. The blood pact seems to be made for binding rulers; when a ruler breaks the pact, it is the ruler's subjects that suffer the price. As such, though it is not directly stated, I think that rulers are all that the blood pact can bind.

Interesting. To be fair, I think part of the idea is that Garp is being held back by his internal conflict in regards to Luffy: he likes that Luffy is pursuing his dream but hates that said dream is becoming king of the pirates, with his main fear seeming to be that one day Luffy will come to regret becoming a pirate & enemy of the world government that will inevitably hunt him. Speaking of which, I like that it's ambiguous as to whether or not Garp is telling the truth about having been just testing Luffy's resolve the whole time, or if he originally was genuinely trying to stop Luffy and only changed his mind at some point during the show. It was cool to see Koby throughout the show. When he was first introduced, I figured he'd be a character that would only appear in the first episode and maybe reappear a lot later, and I was surprised that he wasn't. Interesting to hear that manga/anime Koby did what I figured live-action Koby would be. I was also surprised to see the axe-hand captain's son stick around; I thought he was only going to be in the first episode as well. I do like the character development he received, and Zoro calling him "haircut" in episode 4 was hilarious. That's hilarious. I can see why they chose not to do that in the live-action version; it would've been hard for the actor to call his attacks with a sword in his mouth. EDIT: I just watched the Studio Ghibli film Castle in the Sky for the first time. It was my first time watching a Studio Ghibli film, so I figured I'd start with the very first Studio Ghibli film, much like how someone watching the Monty Python films for the first time might start with Holy Grail. But also, out of all the Studio Ghibli films that I've heard of, it was the one I was most interested in watching: I like stories with sky islands, I like adventure stories, and I kept seeing commercials for the 2003 English dub of the movie when I was a kid. Before watching it, I had to decide: original Japanese, or English dub. Normally, I would choose the original Japanese with subtitles in a heartbeat, but I knew that, for this film, Mark Hamill does the voice of the villain in the English dub, and he always does a brilliant job when voicing an animated villain: The Joker, Fire Lord Ozai, Captain Stickybeard, etc., so I was seriously considering watching the English dub. Ultimately, I went with the original Japanese audio with subtitles. I can definitely say that it's a classic for a reason; it's a good story that's beautifully animated. I especially like how it's a story of a fallen civilization that fell for a reason and that it's the villain that wants to revive said civilization; I'm going to guess that it inspired Wind Waker in that regard. It's also easy to see the ways it inspired Tears of the Kingdom: a sky island with both guardian robots and gardener robots, the main heroine having a necklace with a magic crystal, a sky island surrounded by a perpetual storm, etc. One question I have: is the movie supposed to take place in a fantasy world or our world? I would've guessed from all the craters, steampunk flying machines that wouldn't work in real life, fantasy minerals, etc., that it's a fantasy steampunk world (and, when Miska unleashes the castle's main weapon, I figured that the craters were the result of said weapon being used on the land long ago), but characters reference things from real life multiple times in the film: Pazu mentions the book Gulliver's Travels, Miska mentions the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah as described in the Bible when talking about the castle's main weapon, etc.

I see. Interesting to hear how the characters are different from their manga/anime versions. I did like Zoro being the only one disagreeing with the idea of calling one's attacks; I thought it was a funny reflection of how he's always serious when it comes to combat while while Luffy and Sanji, both raised by friendly-&-bombastic-yet-fearsome pirate captains, would naturally both have the same love of calling their attacks. Plus, Zoro's main swordfighting technique involving putting a sword in his mouth, so it makes even more sense that he wouldn't like the idea of calling his attacks. Does he call his attacks in the manga/anime?

I recently watched all eight episodes of the live-action adaptation of One Piece. I have never read the One Piece manga or seen the One Piece anime; the idea of over 1,000 chapters and over 1,000 episodes in an ongoing series has been far too daunting for me, but I kept hearing about this being the only good Netflix live-action anime adaptation, so, since it was only eight episodes long, I decided to try it... and I really enjoyed it; it was really good. I really should stress that, going in, I knew almost nothing about One Piece. Here's the sum total of what I knew: Everyone's hunting a dead pirate's treasure Luffy has rubber powers thanks to a fruit that, if you eat it, gives you powers at the cost of being weak when immersed in water. There's a guy who dual-wields katanas while putting a third sword in his mouth. There's one blond guy that's a massive pervert. Anyway, here's some of what stood out to me with the live-action One Piece: 1. The acting is brilliant across the board; the actor who plays Luffy is especially impressive in constantly radiating shonen-protagonist energy and knowing exactly when to be serious and when to be a goofball. Other standouts include the antagonists: Garp is well-acted and I like the character's struggle to accept that Luffy's chosen to be a pirate, I'd list live-action Buggy the Clown among the good Joker portrayals, Kuro manages to come across almost as an effective horror villain in a normally-lighthearted pirate adventure story, and Mihawk is a fantastic indicator of what's to come. 2. The blonde guy isn't a pervert in this version; he is a shameless flirt, but he never does anything disrespectful or that would make the character annoying instead of funny. 3. One of my favourite scenes would have to be Zoro thinking about his past and the promise he's carrying while escaping a well Kuro's pirates placed him inside. In a lot of stories, it's often the case that a flashback of a character's past and motivation is just inserted when a character is isolated, but in this scene, his successful climb out of the well is intercut with the flashback of him choosing to carry his and his late friend's promise in a way that wordlessly tells the audience that he's actively thinking of that moment to spur him on; it's a really clever bit of editing that really enhances both scenes. I know that, since I'm talking about a live-action adaptation, I'm technically not talking about anime, but I hope this still counts as an anime discussion as I am discussing an anime adaptation.

The explanation probably lies in the fact that all these recent anime with long, overly-descriptive names are Isekai, and the two things that have come with that: 1. There are so many new Isekai that each new one is desperate to make theirs sound unique and creative when they aren't, leading to the overly specific and overly descriptive titles that outright tell the audience the one specific thing the show does differently. 2. That lack of creativity probably means that not much thought is being put into the title, which means not much thought is put into making the title concise. I think this is definitely the case because, if you look at recent shows that aren't Isekai, they all have normal titles. I just quickly looked at a list of ongoing shows and here's what non-Isekai names I found: Spy x Family, Fieren: Beyond Journey's End, The Apothecary Diaries, The Ancient Magus' Bride, Shy; the list of normal names goes on. Then there's the list of recent, ongoing, or upcoming Isekai: Chilling in Another World With Level 2 Super-Cheat Powers, A Playthrough of a Certain Dude's VRMMO Life (which I suppose technically isn't an Isekai, but these VRMMO anime are definitely part of the same boom as Isekai), Butareba: The Story of a Man Who Turned Into a Pig, etc. There are some concise names I didn't include, but I didn't leave out any long names from the non-Isekai list.

For me, I think being the first game I've played in the series probably helps, but it is not a guarantee. The Legend of Zelda: my favourite game in the series: Spirit Tracks, was definitely not my first Zelda game; my first Zelda games were the original, Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask; all on the Collector's Edition on the GameCube. However, as a kid, I didn't get very far on any of them, I ended up missing Twilight Princess for a long time as a result of indecision on whether to get the GameCube version or the Wii version, and I skipped Phantom Hourglass, so Spirit Tracks ended up being the first Zelda game that I completed. Fire Emblem: my first Fire Emblem game: Path of Radiance, is still my favourite Fire Emblem game. Pokémon: my favourite Pokémon game is Platinum, and it was definitely not my first Pokémon game. Before that, I had played Pokémon Fire Red and Pokémon Sapphire. However, they were both my brother's games; Diamond was both the first Pokémon game that was mine and the first one where I really began to fully understand how to play it; the first game where it clicked, and Platinum was essentially a better Diamond. Mario (3D): my first 3D Mario is Sunshine, and it definitely is not my favourite, as even as a kid, I was not blind to its faults that I later learned were a result of its rushed development. My favourite is Mario Galaxy. Mario Kart: Mario Kart 64 was my first Mario Kart game, but my favourite would have to be either Double-Dash or Mario Kart Wii.

First, I'll go over my 2023 gaming resolutions: 1. Finish Blossom Tales 2: This one I did not complete. I think part of it was my annoyance that, while some problems from the first game were addressed: enemies no longer all deal the same damage and the dungeon design is more interesting overall, the problems that I found particularly annoying are still there: the world map is pretty much useless for navigating and doesn't have anything for keeping track of things you've found but need to return later for, NPC dialogue is still randomized for most NPCs, etc. That said, I still want to complete it. 2. Play Tears of the Kingdom: I anticipated that Tears of the Kingdom would be far too big for me to complete before 2024, and at that point, we only knew of the Sky Islands and not the Depths; I guess I went beyond my own expectations for this one, as I played and completed Tears of the Kingdom this year. 3. Get some semblance of a start on the game I'm developing: I found a good engine for the game, but I underestimated how long it can take to learn how to use a game engine. That said, I have been learning, and I have made some good progress developing what is going to be the core gameplay feature of the game. 4. Finish Monster Hunter Rise and the Sunbreak expansion: I did complete this resolution. I have not done everything that the Sunbreak expansion has; I haven't fought the last two monsters that were added or all the risen versions of the game's elder dragons, but I have completed most of the game's content and this leaves me stuff to return to if I want to return to Monster Hunter and don't want the upcoming game. Now for my 2024 gaming resolutions... I can't think of any games that have been confirmed for release in 2024 that I'm particularly interested in playing, nor any games that I've been meaning to play for a long time, so this list won't be long and will probably be updated in the future. 1. Finish Persona 5 Royal if I don't finish it by the end of this year: I'm currently in the final part of the game and I really want to beat it before 2024, but I also have a bunch of other things I want to do before January, so, if I don't complete it this month, this will be one of my resolutions. 2. Complete at least a basic demo of the game I'm developing: Now that I have a game engine, and now that I'm making the core gameplay feature of the game, I intend to create a demo consisting of the first mission of the game. I hope that I can at least complete that.

True; they were odd ducks, but they were still mainline Zelda games, yet I've seen them increasingly dismissed as spinoffs when they aren't forgotten entirely. And, while they certainly had unique control schemes centered entirely around the DS touchscreen, I don't think that is the sole reason; after all, Skyward Sword was also centered around a unique control scheme, and no one ever dismisses it as a spinoff; it's still recognized by everyone as a mainline Zelda game.

I don't want to be pedantic, but there are actually four Xenoblade games: 1, X, 2 and 3. Of the four, I've only played 1 and X, and the one that I enjoyed most was the one that's most often forgotten: Xenoblade X, mainly because it had fantastic exploration. 1 had a good story, characters and worldbuilding, but I could not enjoy the gameplay. I don't like the MMO-like combat and the exploration in 1 was not fun.

I started playing the Super Mario RPG Remake a few days ago. I just defeated the boss of the mines area and obtained the third star, and my party currently consists of Mario, Mallow and Geno. Having never played the original SNES game, I can't give any thoughts on the remake as a remake; I can only say what I think of it on its own merits. I'll start with what I don't like so far: 1. I still don't like isometric formats; the 2D nature of it makes me want to use the control pad, but everything being diagonal means Mario is usually having to move diagonally, and holding a diagonal on a control pad is neither fun nor comfortable. 2. I am having a ton of trouble with the Yoshi racing mini-game; it's essentially a barebones rhythm game where you press a and b repeatedly in time with the rhythm, but I can't figure out the timing. I tried listening to the drumbeat, and I tried turning the volume down to zero and focusing on the visual indicators; neither worked consistently. 3. One thing I've never been a fan of with RPGs is having replace items with new ones that don't do anything in gameplay and just have bigger numbers. I really enjoyed using the green shell as its animation makes it really easy to get the action command timing right, and then I got to the mine area and had to replace the green shell with gloves that have better numbers but a harder-to-read attack animation. Now, onto stuff that I like so far: 1. The game looks amazing and the animations have a ton of charm. 2. I like Mallow and Geno; they manage to fit nicely in the Mario world while also fitting as JRPG main characters. Their designs are very creative, with Mallow being a living cloud (by any chance, is he the same species as the smiling clouds that Lakitu ride?), and Geno being a star-being inhabiting a toy because their mission requires a physical body. 3. I'm fine with RPG armour and weapons that have different numbers so long as as it actually invokes some element of choice, and the armour introduced in the mine area do offer that: giving a choice between increased defenses and increased offense + speed. That's nice.

I see. Thanks. In any case, I can think of an opinion I have on 2D Zelda that is definitely unpopular: I would like to see a single-player 2D Zelda game with the four Links gameplay from Four Swords Adventures. I mentioned earlier that there are things 2D Zelda games can do that 3D Zelda games can't; one of them is Four Swords, as the 2D top-down perspective is better-suited for controlling four characters on one screen. One thing that can be seen with Tears of the Kingdom is that the camera doesn't keep all the sage spirits on screen at the same time as Link even when they're near him. Nintendo has only ever used the idea of multiple Links for multiplayer games, but I enjoyed playing Four Swords Adventures single-player, and, when playing it single-player, it had a neat formations system: the Links could be arranged in a horizontal line, a vertical line, a diamond (back-to-back-to-back-to-back) and a box. I think it would be really cool to see a single-player game with a proper overworld and dungeons that uses the four Links idea. It doesn't have to be four Links; it could be Link and three other characters, but I just think it would be neat to see it used for more than just level-based multiplayer games.

I see. By the way, does my statement about missing 2D Zelda count as an unpopular opinion?

I don't know if this is unpopular, but I miss 2D Zelda games. With the exception of the time between Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, there was always at least one, and often two, 2D Zelda games in between the 3D releases, but there were none after Breath of the Wild other than the Link's Awakening Remake, and it has been eight years since the last 2D game: Tri Force Heroes, which was a level-based multiplayer game. The 3D Zelda games are great, and I'm not trying to argue that the 2D games are in any way superior, but there are things that the 3D games can do that the 2D games can't, and there are things that the 2D games can do that the 3D games can't; I'm trying to imagine something like the wall-merging from A Link Between Worlds in Breath of the Wild, and it just wouldn't really work. It also doesn't help that, in their absence, there's now this growing perception that only the 3D Zelda games should be considered mainline games. Ever since Tears of the Kingdom, I've been in a lot of conversations with fans where I've brought up a 2D game like Spirit Tracks, only for someone to reply with, "We're talking about the mainline games", and, when the 2D games aren't being dismissed as spinoffs, they're just outright being forgotten. Thankfully, there have been some good indie game attempts to recapture the magic of the 2D Zelda games: Blossom Tales was alright despite its problems and Ocean's Heart is really good, and the creators of Shovel Knight are making one called Mina the Hollower, but they have yet to take off the same way that other genres like Metroidvania have among indie games. I didn't watch the Game Awards; did they really drag Aonuma off of the stage?

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.

@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.

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.

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).