Slumber

The only notable case in my experience is Raven and Hector. I honestly feel like that support chain is a no-brainer, and it just doesn't happen.

I'll also start with a Zelda: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: This is the first instance in my life that I feel like I really discovered that games could disappoint me, and I largely blame it for making me the jaded gamer I am today. It's the whole reason I got a Wii, and I just found the artstyle dull, the overworld empty and lifeless, and the wolf segments bored me to tears. It's the only video game I ever recall falling asleep to, during the water temple. Kingdom Hearts 2: This one I found disappointing when I went back to it. I initially really liked it, but upon replay, I just hated it. It just completely killed the magic of the original game for me with its shift in priorities. Burnout Paradise: Burnout solidified itself as crazy arcade racing. Paradise toned this down, and running the same 5ish routes got very boring, very fast. Grand Theft Auto IV: An example of a silly game franchise trying to take itself too seriously. Liberty City wasn't a pretty bad map with little to do in it, and it just goes to show that trying to model the a game environment off of real life doesn't mean it'll automatically be interesting to play in. God of War 3: Never huge on God of War, but this was just a very dumbed down God of War game after 2 almost established itself as a proper action title. Super Mario Galaxy: Might catch heat for this, but I hated the merging of 3D Mario and 2D Mario game design. The fun of the other two 3D Mario games(To me) was picking an objective and figuring things out on your own, possibly finding a different Star/Shine in the process. Galaxy just altered the levels so that you could really only tackle whichever objective you picked, and I never got attached to any of the levels like I did with 64 and Sunshine. Also another case of a game just scaling back basic gameplay elements that were very important in previous entries for no real good reason. Final Fantasy X/XIII: Both games I hated when going back to. X I loved as a kid, but upon replay many years later, I hated the characters, dialogue and setting. XIII I was never super hot on, but I liked it well enough. Then I booted it up again about a week after initially beating it, and almost immediately it left a bad taste in my mouth. Same problems as X, but worse, on top of the narrative delivering itself in the most frustrating way. Star Ocean 4: SO3 was a dumb fun action RPG with some doofy characters and dialogue, and SO2 is legitimately great. SO4 was a trash fire almost from top to bottom. Dragon Quest IX: I know it's the core audience, but I think gearing this game so hard towards the Japanese player-base left this a pretty disappointing game. Fire Emblem Sacred Stones: Another game I thought I enjoyed souring itself like crazy upon replay. I've addressed my grievances a ton about it. Fire Emblem Awakening: This shouldn't need much explanation here. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim: I still mostly like this game, but the scaling back in RPG elements killed a lot of potential this game had, and they godawful combat of the TES games couldn't carry this. Fallout 4: Good ol' Bethesda, killing the roleplay elements and making the game less fun, while absolutely butchering the tone and storytelling that Fallout is known for. Resident Evil 6: Turning Resident Evil completely into a spectacle action game was stupid. 4 and 5 towed the line in this regard. 6 crossed the line and tripped over it in the process. Uncharted 3: Uncharted 2 being a crazy spectacle action game was novel and made sense in a lot of ways. By 3 is was clear they were kind of running out of ideas, and the fact that there's like 2 hours of blatant filler in a 9 hour game purely to deliver more spectacle is baffling to me. It was probably the first time I felt that this emphasis on spectacle over gameplay is going to be very bad for gaming, which I feel I was pretty right about. Dark Souls 3: This is an interesting one, since I think this is a better game than Dark Souls 2 and Bloodborne, but the fact that this curbs so much form other Souls games just left this a less special experience. Even with DkS2, it felt like they had some new ideas and were trying different things and twisting DeS/DkS1's ideas, but DkS3 just felt like they were going back to the well and copying DeS and DkS1. Weapon Arts also sucked, would have just preferred Power Stance coming back.

VIII is the most newbie friendly. It's relatively simple and straight forward, but very polished and has a better presentation. I personally prefer VII(It's my favorite game of all time) but it's arguably the most hardcore/demanding game in the franchise, and it takes a while to get going. Of the DS titles, V is also really good and high quality.

Sekiro Yes

Goddammit does Days Gone look less and less interesting since the initial reveal. And the initial reveal looked like the most committee decided game ever.

Miyazaki has said that Armored Core isn't dead so I wouldn't be surprised to see that come up at some point. Maybe at E3. Or maybe that's when we'll the "Not really but kinda" Souls RPG. With Sekiro being essentially a reboot to "Tenchu" with Souls elements, I'm interested to see what they'll do with other games in their established franchises, now that From is a big studio with tons of hype behind it. I still think the dream From project would be a Souls-styled Berserk game. You can tell Miyazaki has been dying to make a Berserk game with how many references he puts in his games.

Beat it. 's good. Really don't know how I'd rate it next to the Souls games, or even if it'd be appropriate to. I think I'd give it like an 8-8.5/10 overall, though. Fun fact: My first save corrupted about 20 hours in, a little over halfway through the game, and I struggled a bunch in that first playthrough. My second playthrough I managed to blow through, and I don't think any of the bosses ever took more than 5 attempts afterward. Even the optional endgame bosses went down pretty quickly with proper prep.

I'd say to some degree, yes. Especially if you don't care for PvP. Soul Memory ruined PvP potential for that game. In a few ways, DkS2 is Dark Souls-lite. The level design's not as strong as the rest of the franchise, and the bosses can feel pretty lack luster at times. Not to say it's easy or anything, just that some aspects don't quite feel all they way fleshed out. But it's also the most content-rich DkS came, arguably the most balanced game in the franchise(You can make almost any build work and all combat options are fairly viable) and it definitely has its own unique feel. DkS3, by comparison, feels great, but kind of rides off of DkS1 like crazy, and it really doesn't feel like it has an identity compared to DeS, DkS1 and DkS2. I'd still put it near the bottom of the Souls rankings, but I'd put it above DeS. Anyway Sekiro gud.

Welcome. Only nerds are allowed to shove nerds into lockers here.

I like Iucharba's design and personality more, and it's interesting that he's the only Fighter in the game. But Iuchar is just so much better as a unit. That horse is so valuable in FE4.

Because hardcore DB fans really don't like GT much outside of SSJ4 Goku/Vegeta/Gogetta, and Super has effectively made it completely non-canon. It works in Xenoverse or the other ARPG/Light-fighting games because the cost of developing a character in those games is much lower. In a game like DBZF, they'll develop what's most likely to sell and flesh out their roster... ... which makes me question why they'd go with GT Kid Goku, who isn't very popular, and will likely have just a bunch of Goku moves, only with the Power Pole.

There's a manifesto(Of course there is). Surprise surprise, turns out this was an attack inspired by Trump and fueled by far right echo chambers on the chans.

The thing with Bernie is that he's proven that he's good at connecting with the blue collar working class. It could be a double edged sword for Trump if he keeps trying to scream that Bernie is socialist. I'm probably being optimistic, but it might end up having the opposite effect he thinks it will.

A few of my grievances with the MPD will be alleviated if they can put Jacob Wohl behind bars or at least shut him up for a bit. How did he not get in serious trouble for the fake allegations against Mueller?

It's really not too hard of an FE. It has some of the easiest one-on-one encounters, and most units that get a Holy Weapon are nearly unkillable.

Keyword here, things Ephraim does. Lucina doesn't do much. She tells Chrom and Robin that bad things are going to happen and that they need to address it, but she herself does very little after the assassination attempt on Emmeryn, which is the 6th chapter in the game. And after she reappears near the end of the Plegia stuff? I don't recall a single thing she actually does that isn't just going along with her dad and Robin. And Ephraim, while he's mostly missing from the first half of the game, after you pick the lord you follow, his route is ultimately the one that's more important to the plot(Though this mostly just amounts to chapter 14). And after that? He and Eirika absolutely share the spotlight and are both just as important.

I've had this argument before, but a plot happening "because" of a character, without actually "integrating" said character only amounts to so much. Literally the entire game happens "because" of Robin, and not much happens "because" of Chrom, but I'd argue they're pretty close in terms of importance to the things going on in the plot, since the two have a lot more agency(Chrom especially for the first 2/3s) within the game to actually affect it. After the Plegia arc is finished and the children start crossing over, Lucina runs out of things to actually do. She mostly just follows Chrom and Robin around after that point.

Even though she's a Lord class, Lucina is 100% a secondary character compared to Chrom and Robin.

The Souls games generally don't go out of their way to brutalize you. There are a handful of absolutely dickish things in the franchise(Bed of Chaos, for example), and those usually become memes in the fandom for how bad they are. Most of the time, if you're going somewhere in the games and it seems impossible, it's to deter you from going that way. Tons of people went through the Graveyard in DkS1 as soon as they entered the main hub area, and kept dying. They'd get upset and drop the game without the game telling you, through gameplay, "Hey, this is a mid-late game area, maybe go somewhere else instead." And that kind of leads to what I think is where people get the wrong impression of the Souls games. I think there are probably people out there who just constantly hear about how hard and unfair the games are, and just assume that the Graveyard is par for the course. What the games actually do, however, is ask you to be paying full attention to more than just what's directly in front of you and approach everything carefully. The games communicate almost everything through gameplay. The dragon bridge in DkS1(Or DeS) being a good example. You'll see a scorched up bridge with burnt bodies and enemies on it in the distance, and if you're just focusing on the enemies, you'll get roasted from behind by the dragon that caused said scorch marks. It's part of why people like me enjoy the games so much. It's not just that the games are a fun challenge. There's usually a purpose for everything on screen, and it ties in with why people get so invested in stuff like the lore, even though the games make it as obtuse as possible. If you see somebody who has played the games for years, there's almost a language to it. It's why there are people that do naked soul level 1 runs, or people that do no-hit marathons of the entire franchise. The games are incredibly manageable, and they're really not as hard as what you build up in your head when you first start playing them, and it's why once the games "click" for people, they get hooked. I dropped the very first game in the series, Demon's Souls, for 6 months because I couldn't get through the very first post-tutorial area of the game. Once I had some time to sit on it and came back to it, it only took about an hour for everything to start making sense. And I've been a fan of its style for almost 10 years at this point. Back to Sekiro, I'd highly recommend trying it if it comes out and you're still interested, but just remember to be patient with it. It might not click right away.

Now that DMCV is out, here are some choice songs I really enjoyed from it that aren't the big ones that we've known about for a while:

I've been looking forward to it since the teaser at The Game Awards a year and a half ago.

It would be nice if more support-based elements showed up in the main story, and vice-versa.

Easy and a ton of filler.

I mean, the issue with Peri being appointed by Garon is that this doesn't mean that Corrin has to accept her. By the time Peri joins in CQ, Corrin's pretty firmly on the "Yo, my adoptive dad sucks" train. The moment her Hans-iest proclivities pop up, the same old question of "Why the hell is she accepted in this army" will still be a major issue with her just existing. It'd really only explain why Xander kept her around. The only way, IMO, to fix Peri is to either make her an entirely different character or get rid of her entirely. It's not a simple shift in representation through supports like Camilla could potentially be saved by.

I'd agree with Camilla. The first defense whenever I say she's a dogshit character is usually people pointing to a few lines that appear pretty sparingly in her supports. You have to dig pretty far to get anything other than "She's crazy, she manipulates everyone around her, she threatens to kill her friends and loved ones all the time, and she seems to have no moral compass". More emphasis on why she's like that would make her 100x better. I'd also say Peri, but she's unsalvagable. The premise her character is built on is much less interesting than Camilla. Camilla's more frustrating because there's something there, but the writers thought it wasn't as interesting as the batshit yandere big sister bits.