Slumber

Strained relationships in the Pats, Tom's getting old. I think the current Pats' dynasty isn't long for this world. Which THANK GOD. Maybe the AFC will be interesting finally.

I still somehow have to expect that the Pats will get 2 touchdowns in the next minute, because it's the goddam Pats.

I've always maintained that it's absolute nonsense that drunk drivers rarely get stuck with more than manslaughter. Manslaughter implies an accident or no intent. There's no excuse for somebody deliberately getting into a vehicle while intoxicated to not get charged with intent. There's intent the minute they get into the vehicle. It's always the worst when this happens. There's no sense in these kinds of deaths.

Using the image and music of a dude who was notoriously strict about the use of his image and music 2 years after his death is just... All sorts of wrong. It's not like it was a caring tribute to him like the Vikings' opening game last season where they played Purple Rain. I highly doubt Prince would have been okay with this. It was just "Here's Justin Timberlake doing nothing special... AND NOW A PROJECTION OF AN OLD PRINCE PERFORMANCE EVERYBODY!"

That halftime show was one of the most tasteless things I've ever seen.

I have to root for the team that knocked out MY team, despite all of my misgivings with the Eagles. Plus, a team getting their first SB win is always nice(Although, it would make the Vikings an even BIGGER embarrassment for having THAT good of a win/loss record and THAT many playoff appearances without a ring. There'd be a pretty huge gap between them and #2 without Philly being the #2 anymore).

I have a tendency to give Conquest more slack for at least being interesting in what it tried to do. Birthright doing the standard FE thing(Post-path split) and still having really bad writing won't get nearly as much leeway as the one that tried something different and still had really bad writing. That said, my tune will change if IS ever tries the "Yeah, you play as the bad guys and the dialogue/plot is really edgy in the most shallow way" route ever again. I don't think that Conquest being more interesting than its more standard counterparts means that it's the model FE's story should ever go ever again. I feel like this should go without saying, but the bogus "Vampire Emblem" leaks that took over the community months ago had me realizing how bad of a direction this would be for the series. But yeah. Somebody who fails in a unique way will always get a bit more credit from me than somebody who tries to follow the crowd and fails just as bad.

What deck building games usually don't have: RPG elements(IE stat boosting and character progression) A 10 year old protagonist who is out to save the world from evil organizations A determined rival who is trying to challenge you every step of the way A linear, segmented game structure Pokemon has these, and the only deck building games you'll find half of those elements in are all Japanese, so... I can't think of a western card game that is at all structured or presented like Pokemon, which is an RPG, and the other elements are pretty distinctly Japanese(Arguably barring the linear game structure, but that's still mostly a Japanese thing when it comes to RPGs). A JRPG. You tell me what Dark Souls does that is distinctly Japanese beyond the lack of dialogue options. It has a much more open ended world, more loose, action-oriented gameplay, a pretty wide-spread lack of typical JRPG tropes, a heavy western aesthetic, and a moment-to-moment game experience where you do stuff like fight the undead on your way to kill gods.

Mother is a JRPG, Pokemon is a JRPG, Fire Emblem is a JRPG. I don't even know why something like Mother is even on the table when its gameplay flow is near identical to Dragon Quest, the exemplar JRPG. Linear and sandbox might make more sense on paper, but the whole idea behind "western" and "Japanese" monikers for RPGs is the design sensibilities of the games. Yes, not all WRPGs are strictly sandbox, not all JRPGs are strictly linear. But you can pretty much play a game for 10 minutes, before you even get an idea if a game is sandbox or linear, and quickly determine if it's a JRPG or a WRPG. You don't even need to play them on most cases. Again, the blurriest this gets is Dark Souls, which is made with Japanese cultural sensibilities(It's basically like somebody remade Dragon Quest 1 and Castlevania at the same time while watching Berserk, and turned it into an action RPG) but you could also beat the whole game and never realize it was made by Japanese people. Even something like Dragon's Dogma wears its Japanese sensibilities on its sleeve more than Dark Souls, and DD was aping far more from the west. I do think, as Japanese culture becomes more mainstream in the west, and Western culture influences Japan more, that eventually these classifications will become meaningless and even sillier.

It's still a western RPG. The Witcher, a game made in Slavic/Eastern Europe, is still considered a WRPG. It's more based on the cultures that make the game more than strictly the location it's made. Western culture=Western RPG. New Zealand is about as east as Japan is, but it's still "culturally" western, and an RPG coming from New Zealand would likely be called a western RPG. Similarly, something like Dark Souls is generally not considered a JRPG, since although it's made in Japan, it doesn't really fit the "JRPG" mold. Its influences are far closer to WRPGs, but it also isn't really that. The whole thing is dumb, but that's gamers for you.

Specifically this. Iron Man mode in XCOM hardsaves your game, and overwrites autosaves. So if a unit dies, there's no save scumming, they're dead for good. Since Fire Emblem doesn't have such a feature, Iron Mans are self-imposed.

Hm... I haven't played Total War in a long-ass time. And Ancient Chinese history is fascinating, obviously picking the really good bit here with the Three Kingdoms. I may have to pick this one up.

I'm guessing people saw Glade as dead last and went "Wait, he's Finn's best friend?" and shot up 100 spots. Also, the standard characters that people liked are already in the game, so now people are picking ones that are also good characters/units from their games. Maybe I'll start giving a shit about Heroes again when Canas gets in the game. Also Leif was #9 on the male side? How the hell did that happen? Not that I'm complaining, I like seeing my favorite lord get some love. 2 units from Thracia in the top 10 makes me feel all warm and tingly.

Wait a minute, wasn't Glade dead last?

Yes, but they're story weapons like the Falchion and the Yato, which can't break or the story'd be effectively over(Plus it's not like weapons had durability in Fates, anyway). Supposing FE goes back to giving weapons like the Wolf Beil, the Rapier, the Ettard, and things like that, a Forge would make perfect sense.

Even then, there are cases where you would WANT to repair hard to get or one of a kind items, like the lords' prf weapons, or early game killing edges. Mid game gives you rare Silver weapons and Brave weapons that end up sitting in the convoy once they get low on durability, or go unused completely.

Doesn't explain why the system doesn't come back AFTER FE4.

I suppose this is true enough, but even if it wasn't how he truly felt, it's still what he did. It shouldn't take much stretching to see the similarities between Rudolf and Walhart, right? And that Walhart is what Rudolf would be if Rudolf truly was what everyone thought he was?

I still don't know why they never brought back the FE4 forge system. I liked that you could repair any weapon whenever you were at the base for a price.

The ideology is ultimately the same, though. For Walhart it was "The strong deserve to lead and live on, and if it has to be me, so be it." For Rudolf it was "The strong deserve to lead and live on, and if it has to be my son, so be it." Both of them were effectively "testing" the world in hopes of getting people strong enough to stand up to a major threat. Walhart was more one-dimensional and cold-hearted about it, but they were trying to accomplish the same thing. Rigel under Rudolf acted very much like Valm under Walhart.

Arguable. Walhart is far closer to Rudolf, in both appearance and ideology, than Alm is.

Says who? I'm actually getting incredibly discouraged by all the people saying "Man, game's dead. Not coming out this year. Nintendo's said nothing. They don't care about Fire Emblem." and other hyperbolic anti-circle jerk statements, because it's an incredibly pessimistic point of view. I, for one, have hated the "drip-feed" style of game announcements that have been prevalent for a while, and I'm actually very happy that game developers and publishers have started to go in the route of waiting until they have substantial information to reveal, and the game's close to release. I ended up really not liking Fallout 4, arguably the game that restarted this trend, but I was insanely happy that it came out only a few months after it was revealed. I maintained my hype for a good 5 months before its release, and I never lost excitement over it like I did with so many other games that get revealed 3 years before they come out. Sure as shit was more excited for Fallout 4 after its reveal than I currently am of the Final Fantasy 7 remake, which hasn't had a single real gameplay trailer in the nearly 3 years since its announcement. And it's REALLY tough to say "It's a bad marketing decision" when Fallout 4 was the one of the best selling game of 2015. The game absolutely eclipsed its predecessors. On top of this, in an age where game delays are SO prevalent, a game being shown off for the first time when it's 90% done with development is such a reassurance. If a game's release date is a few months after its reveal, development will be nearly be at the golden stage where the game is ready to print. Being able to look forward to a game is one thing, waiting years and years is another. Microsoft has straight up come out and said this is their new unveiling strategy, because people aren't super into this whole "Reveal a game, watch it get delayed 10 times, while people excited for it wonder if it ends up canceled" trend that a lot of developers/publishers have followed throughout the HD era. Plus, it IS in Nintendo's MO to do this. Fates was revealed only a few months before its release in Japan(Shown in January, came out in June). Echoes(Shown in January, came out in April) was revealed a few months before its release. Oh, and of course Awakening, which was revealed in February and came out in April. Super Mario Odyssey of all things was revealed 9 months before it came out, and that was again, one of the best selling games of last year. Are you guys kind of seeing why this pessimism is incredibly frustrating? There's 0 foundation for it. You guys are upset that you don't know anything yet and are already assuming the worst, when past trends have nothing to justify it. It's so goddamn frustrating to click on any thread about this game and see "Still no news and the game's supposed to come out this year, Nintendo is trying to kill Fire Emblem again." or "Sigh. I guess there's no way it's coming out this year." every time.

Favorites: JRPG Survival-Horror Strategy(Real time and turn-based) Arcade Racing "Character action" Least favorites: Modern 3D Adventure games(Loved the Walking Dead season 1 and Until Dawn, though) Third-person-shooters-that-care-more-about-the-plot-than-the-gameplay-with-boring-stealth-segments-and-constantly-take-control-away-from-you(MGS got away with this by having a ridiculous plot and putting stealth first... every other one in the genre? Not so much)

Yeah, Byakko's fun. His transition is certainly something I can't remember seeing in an MMO.

Eagles: Great defense, solid everything else. Quarterback is a former joke who has started to come into his own after their star QB went down. Terrifying defensive line. They were the favorites throughout the year until Carson Wentz went down, now they're the underdogs in the SB. Despite being the easier of the two teams to root for, they have far and away one of the worst(If not the worst?) fanbase in the NFL, which is more prominent in the years they do well... This is the best year the Eagles have ever had. Patriots: Great offense, solid everything else. The team is full of braindead meatheads like Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski who are absolute savants when it comes to football. They, like damn near every year for the past decade, were one of the favorites throughout the year, and once Carson Wentz tore his ACL, they became the favorites all year and are the favorites to win the SB. They also have a reputation as cheaters, and people who don't like the team will regularly remind you of this.