vanguard333

I know it was a joke, but it was a joke that made me realize that I probably could've been more clear.

I was referring to Rogue One when I said "spinoff"; I even outright said, "Only six main Star Wars films and one spinoff" with the implication in-context being that the six main films are the OT and the prequels.

Dual-wielding could be interesting. My one issue with it would be that, in real life, wielding two weapons (other than weapon-&-shield) was very rarely done in a dueling context, and pretty-much never done on the battlefield. The extremely few cases of battlefield dual-wielding were cases of improvisation when a better option wasn't available, like one Celtic story of a warrior using a spear and a sword because he didn't have a shield. Dual-wielding was more prominent in dueling contexts, but even then, it was uncommon. The most common cases of it were cases of a sword and a dagger; the most notable examples being rapier-&-dagger and katana-&-wakizashi.

Never seen Lego Batman, agree about Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker being the best Batman film, extremely vehemently disagree about Snyder Cut being second best; I'd list Batman films I think are better than it, but the list includes pretty much all of them. Not only would I rather watch the theatrical version of Justice League than watch the Snyder cut, but I honestly would rather watch Batman & Robin than watch the Snyder Cut. Revenge of the Sith is definitely the best of the prequel films and it does manage to get a lot right. I wouldn't say it's as well-written as anything in the OT, but it definitely managed to do key moments correctly (Order 66 being a big example). Rogue One was okay. It's definitely the only Disney Star Wars film that I enjoyed. I think its main problem is that its core cast of characters, apart from the droid and the blind temple guardian, are not very memorable. Gareth Edwards can direct a decent plot and good action, but he seriously needs help when it comes to characters. The title still holds true; there are only six main Star Wars films and one spinoff film.

I disagree. I think the Original Trilogy still holds up: A New Hope didn't have much new when it came to storytelling; it was in many ways a classic Hero's Journey with a Space Epic reskin. But cliché doesn't mean bad; I've seen a lot of people these days defend bad storylines because they were at least surprising and the alternative would've been predictable; I strongly disagree with this notion. Tropes are tools; it is not the use of tropes and templates in-of-themselves that make a story bland; it is the use of these tropes without any thought or storytelling effort put into them. A New Hope's narrative may not be conceptually fascinating these days, but it is a reasonably-well-constructed narrative with a solid and interesting cast of characters. Empire Strikes Back is commonly held up as an example of a good sequel, and for good reason. The writing competency and the interesting characters are still there, and now it is telling something more original: a story where the heroes are constantly on the run and don't actually win; their only 'victory' being that they manage to get away, but the tone of the ending makes it clear that they still lost. Even today, that is hardly cliché. Return of the Jedi does rehash a lot and suffers for it; there's a reason it isn't as highly regarded as the others, but it still maintains a mostly-competent narrative and that core cast of interesting characters are still, well, interesting. As for the prequel trilogy... well, they're bad. There's no getting around that; they are poorly-written. However, they still manage to somewhat impress because they are at least interesting; the overarching narrative of a well-meaning but ultimately-rotten republic being corrupted into an evil empire is ultimately very fascinating at the conceptual level, and in every moment in the prequels, it is clear that there's an interesting story that it's trying to tell. Empire Strikes Back is looked back upon most fondly by a lot of people because it is both conceptually fascinating and competently structured. The rest of the OT are the latter, while the prequel trilogy is the former. The biggest problem that the sequel trilogy has, aside from very obviously not having had a plan, is that they are neither. I will admit that I did grow up with the prequels and the OT, but the thing is that I'm not a huge fan of the series; I liked the films, but stuff like SpongeBob and Zelda were a bigger part of my childhood than Star Wars. The Star Wars films were just fun films; my nostalgia for them is very limited.

My condolences.

That happens as well. You're welcome.

Fair enough. I was never trying to suggest that Lehran's Medallion was at the level of the One Ring or that it was malevolent; only that it's an item that brings calamity. Also, try to avoid double-posting.

Wasn't this basically Lehran's Medallion? Apart from a few, anyone who dared touch it would go berserk, and though it was revealed that the being imprisoned within it wasn't actually evil, releasing said being still caused everyone to get turned to stone.

That could work, though I think that might be going a bit far to the point of making them almost useless. I wouldn't know; I haven't played the games that Kaga made after he left IS. Thanks.

Flails could be interesting; they would struggle with accuracy but can bypass any defense bonus from shields. Another that I could see is guns, as in very early guns such as the Arquebus and the hand cannon. These would have 1-2 range like bows and spells and would be unable to double-attack, but they'd deal a lot of damage. Personally, rather than see new weapon types, one thing I think would be really cool would be to see special subtypes of existing weapon types. For swords, that could be infantry-only greatswords; for lances, that could be pikes; for axes, poleaxes; etc.

So, I finished watching all three seasons of Golden Kamuy, and it has easily become one of my favourite anime. It's kind-of tricky to recommend; on the one hand, it's brilliant: the story is fantastic and the characters are very fun to watch and very compelling. On the other hand, it's very genre-defying: it's a historical fiction treasure hunt story set in Hokkaido (the northernmost main island of Japan) shortly after the Russo-Japanese War (around 1905) that at times can almost seem like a Japanese western, so it's harder to recommend because of how difficult it is to describe. But I do highly recommend it nonetheless. But seriously; I would highly recommend watching it; it is really good. One thing I like about it is how educational it manages to be; most of the time that I see something under the genre of, "historical fiction", it is very clear that absolutely no actual research was done and that it's less historical than Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but with this show, it is clear that the writer did a ton of research, especially into Ainu Culture (the Ainu being the original inhabitants of Hokkaido before Japan colonized it), and it really helps the story.

So... something sort-of like Boudica? Only joining an army instead of leading an army (and the husband dying in battle).

I recently finished the second Metroid Prime game: Metroid Prime: Echoes. Overall, the game was pretty good; almost everything in it was somehow simultaneously better and worse than they were in Prime 1. So, now I'm onto the last game in the trilogy: Metroid Prime: Corruption. One thing I can say right away is that it is very obvious from the start that this game, unlike the previous two, was made to be a Wii game. The motion gimmicks are mostly harmless, but I can see why they might annoy others. The increased focus on action, undoubtedly to capitalize on motion aiming, is also readily apparent. I think it is rather neat, as right from the beginning of the game, it's clear that the game is going for being a big, climatic, epic finale to the Prime series, rather than a typical "here's an isolated labyrinthine area to explore", which I find interesting. Speaking of which, being able to pilot the ship is an interesting idea for a Metroid game, though I'm not sure if the idea works. A big part of a Metroidvania is exploring a labyrinthine area: exploration being more determined by where you can't go than where you can go, and it's hard to make it that there's places you can't go in outer space, so the ship so far has basically been a glorified level-select. I get it; using the ship for a big action sequence would be more Star Fox than Metroid, but I can't help but wonder if more is going to be done with the ship in this game or not, and if not, I can't help but wonder if more could've been done with the ship. The fight against Meta Ridley in the elevator shaft was a fantastic boss fight. The boss fights in Prime 1 and 2 were very much hit-or-miss, but the boss fights in this game so far have been really good, so I hope that remains so. One thing that caught me off-guard was the sudden introduction of full voice-acting. The voice acting is oddly quiet and hard to hear compared to the background noise, and the lack of subtitles or dialogue boxes in cutscenes meant that I found myself having to turn the volume up until the game was rather loud just to hear the dialogue. Audio mixing really is one of those things where, when it's good, you don't notice it. Here, I noticed it. EDIT: I'm a lot further in the game now; I'd say somewhere around halfway through skytown. Now I have the ship grapple beam, so the ship is useful for more than being a level select & save station, and I have to say, it is a lot of fun to use the ship for puzzle-solving. Perhaps my favourite example would be on Bryyo, where, to obtain an item, I first had to unlock a shortcut connecting two separate areas, then use the ship to carry a large item from one of those areas to the other. EDIT: I just completed the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The series started well and ended well, and it's honestly hard to see how they'll follow up from this with Metroid Prime 4. For one thing, the titular Metroid Prime is dead thanks to the complete destruction of phazon.

Believable.

A very good point; this isn't, "This console lets you play these fun games that we've built specifically to make the most out of it"; it's "This console lets you play these games that we've taken hostage". It's true for a lot of recent console exclusives and not just Microsoft, but Microsoft is acquiring them in vast quantities in a desperate bid to stay relevant in the games industry.

I can't speak for everyone else, but for me, I do think that this, as you put it, "arms race of acquiring exclusives" is harmful for the industry. I can't think of a single microsoft-owned property that I want to play, so there's definitely no bias from me in that area.

I can't speak for anyone else, but as for me, I try to avoid leaks; that's the main reason I didn't make a thread about them.

Thanks. I think FE has used it before, but not for the protagonists, unless you count Sigurd & Dierde. I suppose there's also Edelgard's crush on Byleth in every route, but since that's guaranteed to be unrequited in every route except the one where you side with her, it doesn't really count as an example either.

Hm... My favourite Pokémon is Torterra, but I don't think a slow turtle really fits a Warriors game. You already listed Decidueye. I suppose Gallade then.

Ah, I see. That makes. There'd probably still be a ton of jokes along the lines of, "How can these Pokémon possibly be beating Bidoofs by the hundreds; Bidoof is the ultimate Pokémon!"

Why no Bidoof? I'm not even kidding; Bidoof has apparently become a meme like that of the Shaggy meme, so I suspect that a lot of people would be really upset if there was a Pokémon Warriors without a Bidoof.

That just gave me an idea: the main lord is the one in love with the Camus (who, as a result, would be promoted to one of the main antagonists). Basically, they met before hostilities broke out and perhaps were even arranged to be married; then hostility broke out and the two of them end up on opposite sides. Final Fantasy XV, back when it was Final Fantasy Versus XIII, was going to have something like this: the love interest Stella (later replaced with Lunafreya after the game was rebranded) was going to be an antagonist. So, basically an FE game where the lord character is a non-combatant? That could potentially be interesting. However, getting rid of "game over if this specific character is killed" does mean that there would have to be more conditions for failure in order to compensate.

I agree; this is bad for the industry, and Microsoft isn't doing itself any long-term favours either. It's a desperate attempt by Microsoft to stay relevant after a major blow; the same mentality that led to the kinect. Let's just hope that the deal gets blocked. …Has the deal been approved yet?

The problem with that is that console sales don't really line up with that thought; the truth is more complex than that: The GameCube had the unique IPs, but its sales still proved disappointing and third-party developers still flocked to the PS2; the Capcom 5 being the most famous example of the latter. The Wii was a huge hit, and its success was largely driven by casual gamers, for whom the Wii and its motion controls proved very appealing, and that success ended up being a fad because Nintendo had no idea how to hold onto this unexpected new audience. The success of DS and the 3DS was through Nintendo being king of the handheld gaming market and through the two screens being a genuine innovation. As for the Switch, its success has been through attracting both the handheld and the home-console gaming market in a way that the Wii U tried and failed to do. Also, I'm not talking about weak hardware vs strong hardware; I'm talking about the best-selling consoles selling as well as they did because they had something no one else had that had immediate appeal: the PS2 was a cheap DVD player, the Wii had motion controls, the Switch has being an effective hybrid of portable and home console, etc. All the PS4/PS5 and the Xboxes have are games they've taken hostage, which does affect sales, but is a stopgap at most.