vanguard333

You still would've been in time to do this if you had waited until the start of 2022; most "top -- games of [insert year here]" lists that I see get put online are usually posted after the year's over.

A port of a game is an old game modified to run on a new system, a remake is a reconstruction of an old game from a modern lens, and a remaster is something in-between. However, in recent years, I've been ever-increasingly noticing something I think should be considered a fourth category: a reskin. Basically, it occurs when a game is developed in the hopes of getting the profile and profit of a proper remake or remaster, but it only puts in the effort of a port, and to hide that fact, the game is given just enough superfluous changes that the marketing can call it a remake or a remaster, even though the game may as well just be a port. These superfluous changes being mostly visual, and usually never actually a visual enhancement; just a visual change, is the reason I thought "reskin" would be a good name for this. What do you think? Do you think it deserves its own label? Can you think of any particular examples? Also, if anyone has an idea for a better title for this topic, please let me know.

I also finished that for the first time this year. Just wondering: how did you play it? Were you playing the original version or the 3DS remake? If the former, how?

I figured that was the case as well; I'm just saying that the hashirama cells do provide some in-story justification for it. Anyway, I forgot two other cases of eye removal in the Naruto franchise: Toneri taking Hanabi's eyes in The Last (and Hinata taking those eyes back), and Urashiki Otsutsuki ripping out his rinnegan and eating them in the Time Travel arc in Boruto. With Toneri, it's entirely offscreen and the only in-story justification for Toneri having the means to carry out this procedure is that the branch family on the moon always had their eyes removed to power the Tenseigan. Hinata removing Toneri's eyes and giving them back to Hanabi is offscreen and can be justified by Sakura being there to do the procedure. For Urashiki, it's entirely on-screen, and it is framed as being extremely gruesome (as it should; it's him removing his own eyes and eating them). He doesn't show any visible pain when doing this, but that is thoroughly justified by him having completely snapped at that point, to the point where he was vocally willing to kill Boruto despite him knowing that Boruto is Momoshiki's Vessel and him being forbidden from killing other Otsutsuki.

Hm... Good question. In the genjutsu Itachi placed on Sasuke, Itachi just removes one of Sasuke's eyes and places it in a jar to preserve it, and it is shown to be extremely gruesome. When Obito's sharingan is removed and placed in Kakashi, it is shown to be a delicate process involving "surgery"/medical jutsu. We are never shown how Madara implanted his rinnegan into Nagato, but we do know that Uzumaki descendants often have a minor healing factor and can survive things that would kill others, so that probably made the process easier. Sasuke receiving Itachi's eyes is a surgical process that happens entirely off-screen. Every time I can think of where it's a case of someone just removing someone else's eye and inserting it in one of their empty eye sockets, it's with characters like Madara and Obito, which can be somewhat justified by the healing factor that the Hashirama Cells in their bodies provide.

There are quite a few examples I can think of; I avoided listing examples in part because the list would be really long. Funny enough, though I have seen Naruto, I wasn't actually going to list Naruto or other anime; I was going to list examples like Zant getting hijacked by Ganon in Twilight Princess. That could be the case, but most of the time, the story would've been better if they just let the current big antagonist be the final ultimate villain. I'm rarely one to notice when a character has one singular mole, but I know what you mean; for me, being someone with freckles, I always find it weird how, most of the time, when a story wants a character to have freckles, that character will only have four freckles arranged in a diamond on each facial cheek, and nowhere else. They pretty much never have any more freckles than that or anywhere else on their body.

That is a bit weird. Perhaps the weirdest part is that, in the genjutsu where Itachi removes one of Sasuke's eyes, it definitely isn't treated like it's nothing, and that was just a genjutsu. Part of it can be explained with healing jutsu, but it still is weird.

I guess I'll count it then. It would be a bit hypocritical if I didn't; I listed Majora's Mask, and I did start playing it several times when I was around five, but being a five-year-old playing Majora's Mask, I didn't get past the first three-day loop.

Eh; I'll let it count. How far did you get when you first played it?

I haven't played it, but I have heard of it. I've never really played any of the Star Fox games and I'm not really a fan of them (I know that Adventures is very different from the rest of the series, but that's beside the point). EDIT: Anyway, I just played more Metroid Prime, to the point where I've beaten the first main non-tutorial boss fight (the giant plant monster) and I have reached the snow area. I've gotten used to aiming, but platforming in first-person is still a bit of a pain, especially when I was in the magma area. So far, the Metroid games I have played are this, Super Metroid and Metroid Dread, and of the three of them, so far, the only one with boss fights that I've enjoyed is Metroid Dread. As much as I enjoyed the exploration and atmosphere of Super Metroid, the boss fights really weren't fun for me; they were often claustrophobic and a bit clunky, for lack of a better word; I was particularly disappointed with the Ridley fight. The plant monster boss fight in Metroid Prime isn't bad; the concept is fairly sound: you have to shoot the sun lamps to knock the monster out, then blow up its core with a morph ball bomb, and repeat three more times, each time with a different lamp. The monster is also large and imposing without making the boss arena too claustrophobic. The problem I had was that, once I got into the rhythm of stunning the monster, shooting a sun lamp, moving to the next sun lamp, stunning the monster, shooting the next lamp, etc., the boss became kind-of dull. It was also really easy on the third and fourth phases because the lamps are only so far apart; it's actually at its most difficult on the second phase because you have to run halfway around the arena to get to the second lamp instead of just a quarter of the way in the 3rd and 4th phases. Perhaps the monster should've gained a new attack or increased in size in the latter phases? EDIT: I just beat the second boss of the game (the giant rock monster); this was a much better boss fight than the giant plant monster. It was a bit less puzzle-like, but it more than made up for that in the moment-to-moment action. EDIT: I've made it to the Omega Pirate boss fight, and I can easily say that I'm glad that there's a save station only a room away from it, because this boss is easily by far the worst I've encountered in the game so far (and that I've encountered in a long time, to be honest); almost everything about it seems designed to kill the player in a way that's extremely unfair. First, there are several pools of phazon in the boss room, and since the boss is colossal, the camera is aiming up at it, so you can't see any of these phazon pools while you're trying to avoid its attacks. This means that you will inevitably be stepping into the pools and taking damage. Then there's its attacks. Its shockwave attack is fairly manageable, but its other attacks are ridiculous: it can unleash a missile barrage that has a huge blast radius and isn't headed towards you, but is headed towards where you're going, so unless you change direction immediately when he fires the missiles, or if you weren't moving when it began firing them, you will get hit and lose a fair bit of health. I've heard that its missile launchers can be destroyed, but I haven't figured out how, and that would only be scratching the surface. Then, if the Omega Pirate gets close to you at any point (which it will, as the boss is huge and the arena isn't), it will immediately unleash melee swipes with a far bigger hitbox than itself and tear a ton of health. Then there's the fact that it spends most of the fight with a shield up that absorbs everything except missiles and the flamethrower; the former of which is limited-supply and the latter of which requires being pretty much at melee range and consumes missiles anyway. As for how to beat the Omega Pirate, it has four weak points that the player must destroy. Once the player does so, it turns invisible and teleports to one of the phazon pools to regenerate those weak points, so the player has to use x-ray vision to spot it and attack while it's regenerating to damage it. Very straightforward, except it spawns beam pirates during this phase. The only way to see which beam will hurt these reinforcements is to go out of x-ray vision, meaning you can't see the boss, and you cannot defeat all the reinforcements before the boss regenerates. If you try to ignore them to focus on damaging the boss, they will attack Samus relentlessly, and their attacks add up. I'm playing on normal difficulty, and every other boss has pretty much been easy until now. But this one has beaten me twice now, and unlike in Metroid Dread, where I kept going after losing to a boss because it was my fault that I lost and I needed to fight smarter, this one feels like, when I beat it, it won't be because I changed my strategy; it'll be thanks to pure luck. Who designed this boss fight?!

Here we were discussing Naruto overcoming his loneliness and all that, and crunchyroll's YouTube channel completely coincidentally posted this clip on the same day: Definitely another one of the best moments in the series.

…Unfortunately, I must point out that the rule I gave was that the list had to consist of games you played.

Just for clarification, is this a best games list, worst games list, blandest games list, etc.?

Indeed. One of my favourite moments in Naruto (not my absolute favourite, but definitely within the top 5) is after Naruto beats Gaara and this conversation happens: Naruto: "They're my friends! I won't let you hurt them" Gaara: "Why? Why would you do this for someone other than yourself?" Naruto: "Because they saved me from myself! They saved me from my pain and loneliness"

Merry Christmas!

If it would be easier, instead of writing a best games list, you could write another list, like a worst games list, blandest games list, etc. Yeah; I suppose it has been a bit barren. That's one reason I said that the games don't necessarily have to have released in 2021; they just have to be games that you played for the first time in 2021.

For me, the theme I like the most and that I think has the most heart in it is that of overcoming loneliness. Naruto does start off as an underdog in the sense that he's untalented, but that's really just an obstacle for him; what drives him and his character journey is his need to overcome his loneliness. He grew up hated by almost everyone in the village, and was raised with no one to return home to. Out of everyone in the series, he would've had the most reason to want vengeance against the Leaf Village and the shinobi world... yet he doesn't; he just wants everyone to treat him with basic human decency.

Create a list of your favourite games of 2021. The list can be any length between three games and ten games (not including honourable mentions), and it can include any game that you played for the first time in 2021, even if that game was not released in 2021. If you want, you can also write a list of your top 3-to-10 worst games of 2021, blandest games of 2021, most disappointing/pleasantly-surprising games of 2021, etc. Here's my top seven games of 2021:

Are you familiar with weight? Spells sometimes have weight in FE, so low strength can impede a mage in those games.

I was thinking low HP and extremely low strength. I was also thinking of a moment where, after a grueling march to a fortress, he vomits and passes out; worrying everyone in the army.

I agree. In fact, one idea I had for a while was that there should be a Fire Emblem game about two brothers: the older brother is a typical swordsman lord and is the crown prince, while the younger brother is a frail and sickly mage lord.

One story trope that I really dislike, albeit with one exception, is the trope where most of the story's conflict is against a particular antagonist, that antagonist gets enough development, buildup and focus to be interesting and compelling, only for their position as the main antagonist to be promptly hijacked by someone else who declares, "Sike! I'm the real antagonist!" when they haven't received anywhere near the focus, attention, or buildup needed to be a compelling final antagonist. One of the main reasons I really dislike it because it often feels hollow; we spent all this time focused on the conflict between the protagonist(s) and the first antagonist, only for it to be upstaged by the new villain. But, even when the old villain isn't developed enough to be even remotely interesting as an antagonist, it will still be problematic because it often leaves a ton of loose story ends untied and just causes more problems (Snoke's death in The Last Jedi and the leader of The Hand's death in Marvel's The Defenders are good examples of this). The one and only exception; the only example I can think of where this trope did manage to actually work, is this (Black Clover spoilers ahead):

That's the reason I also mentioned Lucina from Awakening. Micaiah is one of my favourite lord characters to use gameplay-wise as well. I like the idea of a light mage lord and she is a pretty good unit outside of her speed.

What about Micaiah? She's a strong main character overall. She does get overshadowed a bit, which is a shame, but she still is a strong character. There's also Lucina. I can't believe I'm about to compliment Awakening, since I'm rather placid on it overall, but the story does utilize Lucina very well, all things considered, and she is a strong main character.

Thanks for all the advice. It will probably be a while before I play the game, but thanks. Backtracking is fine when done well. I usually point to Ocarina of Time as a good example because of all the different shortcuts for getting to and from older areas. How well does FF7 handle backtracking?