Zapp Branniglenn

As per the Game Awards FAQ: Games are nominated by a selected Voting Jury of over 100 organizations representing different facets of the industry (reviewers, influencers, esports, and accessibility experts). These same people are 90% of the voting weight for each category, leaving the remaining 10% to the fan vote

My GOTY is Hi Fi Rush, followed by Resident Evil 4 Remake. I've got some serious hangups about a Remake winning one of these things so I'm hoping it doesn't even if I literally can't think of any way it could be improved, conceptually or on a technical level. It's hard not to notice that Mario is the only one on the list that is neither a sequel nor a remake. Then again that's pedantic. It's not like it's the first or even tenth 2D Mario. It's just the first 2D Mario where Miyamoto was shooed out of the office. Overall I'm rooting for either Baldurs Gate 3 or Mario. I haven't played either, but they are the two games whose artistic and technical quality was in the greatest doubt. Whose surprise factor is closest but not especially within striking distance of Hi Fi Rush My Expectation has not changed over the years: Zelda will take it. And the rest will run away with a bunch of no brainer, smaller categories. Heck, Disco Elysium didn't even take a GOTY nomination and still ran away with four awards total. Baldurs Gate 3 is a game that people actually played, by comparison. It stands no chance of being forgotten.

No control issues? Yeah that's what everyone thinks until they get to Pipe Vault's platforming sequences. Even SMRPG speedrunners occasionally flub the tight enemy dodges outside of battle, and these are the same guys that do 100 frame perfect Super Jumps while looking away from the screen, talking to twitch chat. Anyway I will be playing the remake, but I'm not focused on whether it surpasses the original. I just want to play a comfy, nostalgic game artfully reimagined. If it captures 100% of what made the original game great, then it's a success. If there's any area I'm worried about, it's the re-translation. Ted Woolsey is the grand storyteller of SMRPG. He gave voice to every one of those characters. Wrote those goofy item descriptions. There's going to be an opportunity to fix his mistakes. Should we call Koopas Koopas instead of noko nokos? That's a deep philosophical question that would force me to quit if I were hired onto this remake.

you should be getting it back broken

Ah. I can definitely envision them making that restriction during play testing. It's because if the opponent were holding it as they got launched offstage, Link could detonate and kill them extremely early. Like Snake's C4, except Link didn't find an opening to stick the opponent. So you might say "don't pick up Link's bomb then". The problem is that Ultimate changed items so that you pick them up involuntarily whenever you do an A move near them. So here's the common scenario that was probably bothering them during testing: Link pulls a bomb and throws it at his opponent. The opponent is running toward Link and does a dash attack. They have caught the bomb. Link blocks the attack, shield grabs, and tosses them offstage. Detonation, death at 50%. Very frustrating. Even if it didn't kill outright, the bomb could detonate in the middle of someone's double jump and there's no reasonable way to guess when to air dodge the explosion (Ultimate also changed it so you get One Air Dodge per air time). A good player would know to get rid of a bomb immediately, but Smash is built with players in mind that would fail to notice the bomb in their character's hands. And even a good player has no way of making their character Not pick up a nearby item. It's out of their control.

I don't have a first hand experience of Thracia's mechanics, but isn't the need for more staff users heavily influenced by the fatigue costs of using a staff? It certainly feels like Fatigue was intended to deliberately limit how much you get to play with these toys. It's certainly worth comparing how powerful staves are game to game, and their availability. But I do think the understated reason for Echoes at the top spot is the exclusive access to those spells on this one class. If you dropped Mae and Boey into a different FE game, they would eventually be able to Physic and Warp if you made them Heal a bunch after promotion. The only competition for support are the funky hidden spells Echoes added to some characters. Most notably Sage Tobin learning Physic. But I don't see any other case conveniently on such an optimal class change

It always bugged me that PSI Magnet healed the user, when it's the MP Drain spell in canon. Of course, every one of Ness and Lucas' special moves are breaking canon because they don't learn any of them. Anyway, I don't like healing in fighting games. So if it were up to me, PSI Magnet would power up the next special move. Like Cloud's Limit Break mechanic, each one is the same attack but stronger with extra properties. Implying that the boys are spending more PP than they normally would on a higher tiered version of their spells. PK Fire Beta instead of Alpha could be a wider explosion. Thunder sends them further. You've got the classic cloud conundrum of him needing to burn his limit break to recover even when he didn't need the better version to make it - that rewards the opponent for knocking Cloud offstage and not having to worry about that Limit Break. You could push the concept further to have Tier 3 Omega versions if you collect more charges, or alternatively turn Magnet into a new move when a charge is already absorbed - like Cloud's finishing Touch. I'd love to see a representation of PSI Rocking and PSI Love, since those are Ness and Lucas' signature moves from their games. We can also make it so that you gain a charge every time you boop the enemy with the magnet hitbox. That way this mechanic is still relevant in a matchup that has nothing to absorb, like against Captain Falcon

Clerics are known for doing one thing, but that doesn't mean that one thing doesn't have nuances game to game. Today we're looking at infantry healers, whatever their class' name is. Take them with you, and you'll be very glad you did. How you want to factor in healer classes also capable of fighting before promotion, or combat classes that promote into Bishop is entirely up to you. Here are our previous discussions Myrmidons / Swordmasters Mercenaries / Heroes Thieves / Assassins Fighter / Warrior Brigand / Pirate / Berserkers Archers / Snipers Nomads / Bow Knights Armor Knights / Generals Cavaliers / Paladins Dancers / Refresh Units Pegasus / Falcoknights Wyverns Lords Troubadours / Valkyries Dark Mages / Druids Here are my rankings based on the games I've played / replayed since 2017 Next week we will be talking about Mages / Sages

The poll has closed. Based on these results, Tomorrow our next subject will be clerics / bishops (infantry healer) classes. Following that, Mages / Sages, Manaketes / Beast units, and finally infantry lancers

The Minority Party fears enfranchising voters, this is true. It's also why they'd get behind raising the voting age to 21. Then to 24 in three more years. Then to 27 three years after that... Federal holiday Election day would be great, as would expanding it into Election Week or Weekend, so people can show up on whichever day works best for them. Of course holding the Polls open for more days costs more money. The US has more elections than any other country and we sink a lot already on having them. Last month I voted on yet another Recall election because these are notoriously easy to make happen in California. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor costs just cause a thousand people said "sure, I'll sign. What's it for?". And it was hundreds of millions$ for that unsuccessful governor recall a couple years back. My state has mail in voting, so I feel like we've already solved this Election Day issue via that alone. But recall rules are definitely something I'd want to see reformed.

Pete Davidson is my fancast for Tingle.

I'm not the sort of person to interrogate plot contrivances like that. But is it ever expressed within the film that she thinks she needs his help? I recall her already planning to set out on her journey before bumping into Mario. And as they leave, one Toad asks who's the new guy and she answers "he's....not important". Her expressed interest in him was that he looks like her - whatever she is. She "needs" him to solve the mystery of who she is, but not to save the day.

Mel Gibson Solid Snake holds a place in my heart. Right next to Kyle Reese Solid Snake on the NES boxart.

The only portrait I wanna talk about is Lorenz reimagined as Sean Connery's character from The Rock Edit: Wait a minute, FE3 came out two years before that film...

Just the usual Movie Too Woke youtube chuds. The most inane clip I've seen posted around is one of them saying it "emasculates Mario that he has to rely on powerups to win". Buddy, that's Mario. He uses power ups. Just like in the games.

I'm happy to hear that it's live action. If it were just another Mario Movie, then the best we could hope for is a 90 minute collection of cutscenes depicting a story I'd rather play than watch. I want to see something that's not safe. A swing for the fences. Not looking forward to the Discourse (TM) when it comes out though. Seeing how the internet reacted to Peach in the Mario movie, they are NOT equipped to handle Zelda's titular character. I'm expecting a dynamic similar to the DIC saturday morning cartoon series. Link and Zelda are just hanging out in the post game, thwarting Ganon like the heroes they are, but they are so over each other's bullshit when they're in a room together. Do that, but obviously not have them be at the top of their power level so we have a proper action adventure arc, classic zelda item collection, etc

I'm in the middle of a pretty intensive rom hack right now. Every turn is a fresh hell of needing to knock out threats on player phase while also softening the next wave on enemy phase. And oh look, there's the reinforcements from the starting position here to see if I did it all fast enough to cover my flank. The steps are usually: High priority target selection. Can't have my paladin on the front while that halberd is in play. The bolting mage or ballistae is close enough to take out - can I move my frontline up to support that kill or are we leaving them alive? Answer is usually to move up. Look at my backline of units / the units with the least Mov. They have the shallowest pool of targets that they can reach. Figure who they'll be taking on first, because we don't want them having an empty turn unless they have staff utility or mounted rescue that could prove useful in case of failing a dodge/hit. Bet on that crit? Support boosted killer weapons can get up to 40% crit chance. If they can knock out the toughest guy in one hit, that's ideal compared to two of my guys spending their turn to take out the same enemy. If the crit failed, then I ended up spending two units anyway. By now half my units have moved or I'm about to move once that space is clear of that enemy. The rest are mopping up injured targets and setting up to make the enemy phase safe. More bodies is its own way of managing risk. If it's a high deployment map I've typically got one or two units I'm okay with losing. Because they don't have supports with my crew or their stats are only just barely working out for this point of the game. They're usually taking up the most bold positions. If they survive, great. But their reward is probably sticking their nose into the next meat grinder lol Someone died and I'm not okay with that: Game is bullshit

I just loaded up Three Houses to check the Fiendish Blow situation and yeah. It just disappears from Lorenz' equipped skills when he reclasses to dark bishop. No message that something happened. Only becoming selectable again when he's a different class. It happened again with Steal when I turned Catherine into a Thief. At least that's a case where it makes sense to stop the player from doing something redundant. Someone on the dev team really looked at Dark Bishop, made the nerf, and didn't continue to address stacking different types of Blow skills, or stacking weapon faires, or anything else obviously abusable. Don't let anyone ever tell you Three Houses wasn't balanced, because this is the proof one guy did something. I was thinking about how I could expand the scope so that there were more entries to talk about. Especially since the last two games that are freshest in peoples' minds have neither type of unit. It was going to be just Manaketes besides. If we did Beasts alone, I would have just one game to talk about: FE9. And maybe a rom hack's secret character. I'm in favor of combining, but I'd like to hear from anyone else how best to handle this situation

I don't know of a mounted mage class that isn't a promotion of an infantry mage class, or the troubadour's promotion in GBAFE. And I think it would be too superfluous to do a thread on what only exists as a promotion branch. Well that's annoying. I can stack multiple different Blow skills, but not two of the same? Got to be an oversight

This has completely shifted my opinion of Follower AI. Wow. Like how Trico in The Last Guardian behaves like a big dumb animal because, well, look at him.

I am in fact one of the dozen people on this planet that has recruited and used Etzel and I didn't think it was pertinent. He doesn't appear in realistic, serious playthroughs of the game, because if someone did get 26 units killed (+ replacements), they probably already put the game down by chapter 17x. A soft iron man that doesn't reset on Marth's death? Really the most likely scenario is how I came to use Etzel: "I want to complete the Event Recap on my DS cartridge". If you want my review of Etzel, he's okay. Kind of like a worse Cecilia that lost her horse. D rank staves so he can't warp for the portion of the game where that really matters. He can't class change into Bishop to address that either. FE11's Master Seals are tight, so it's handy that he joins pre-promoted. His Base Mag is really high, equal to Gotoh in fact and he can wield Merric's excalibur (pretty good odds Merric is dead, too, if Etzel is on the team). But the list of reasons why Gotoh is good would run pretty long before getting to "and he can use Merric's Excalibur" But the crux of why I didn't mention Etzel is FE11 itself. I approach that game differently because looking at the units that happen to join in each class feels like I'm missing the point of FE11 by a wide margin. Changing class is free in a literal sense and most units don't have anything other than 1-3 base stats and some weapon exp. No personal skills or affinity for any class It does seem a little discordant, even accounting for the fact that Three Houses' class based system is very different and includes a whopping five tiers instead of the contemporary two (some classes had to be made up! And some are fulfilling multiple classlines, like The Great Knight). I added a small edit to the bottom of my ranking about how if I did exclude Dark Knight from Three Houses it would rank above FE6 instead. However I did provide my own reasons why I ultimately would prefer to include Dark Knights in a Dark Mage discussion. I didn't say so in the OP of this thread, but I'll reiterate that I encourage anybody to use their own justifications and framework for their own lists. I can see how my list, positioned in the OP, can appear authoritative on "what's allowed", but in truth it's the opposite intent - and part of why I throw it in a spoiler tab. This also goes for how one wants to approach individual games. I spent much of my Three Houses write up clearing up misconceptions about Class Masteries, since there wasn't much to say on the class' performance. And I don't see how Dark Knight's mechanics in Awakening should impact this game. How would mastering Mage affect Fiendish Blow? They stack. Now Hubie does +12 damage. You're absolutely right that Hubert would prefer to be in Mage over Dark Mage (even after picking up Fiendish Blow) because being in mage gives him ten charges of Fire, an accurate, low weight spell that's valuable than 2x Miasma charges. Heartseeker is a great skill to help his accuracy, but Hubert does not always have the movement range to get that close, and if he dies on retaliation than it's not an option for him. Warlock removes access to Fire so it's a big downgrade. Nothing about that class aids his combat unless you really want Bowbreaker. This is also why I complimented the class for Lorenz, not just Hubert. He'll lose 3 and 2 charges of Ragnarok and Agnea's Arrow compared to Warlock, but Heartseeker is a nice utility. He's barely bulky enough to sit on the frontlines of maddening, and all units benefit from it, not just the user. Dark Bishop slinging a Fire spell is also +2 damage over Warlock doing the same. And Frozen lance with +7 damage makes it more than comparable damage to Lorenz' nuke spells. Warlock is just...not great. Even in the No DLC meta, but we'll get to its problems in the Mage discussion.

All of us can remember the first time we read a Dark mage explain their craft in a support conversation and we whispered to ourself "Whoa. Lore." Here's our previously discussed topics. Be sure to vote in the poll for what you want to talk about next, as it will determine the order of remaining classes. Myrmidons / Swordmasters Mercenaries / Heroes Thieves / Assassins Fighter / Warrior Brigand / Pirate / Berserkers Archers / Snipers Nomads / Bow Knights Armor Knights / Generals Cavaliers / Paladins Dancers / Refresh Units Pegasus / Falcoknights Wyverns Lords Troubadours / Valkyries Here's my ranking of Dark Mages, based on games I've played / replayed since 2017

Spooky games month! Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways The Callisto Protocol: Final Transmission Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within Until Dawn

I think they came pretty close to Alucard In Smash, given how much love and care his assist trophy has. And the boss fight with his Dad. But the Simon + surprise Richter reveal was perfect. No Notes. Favorite character trailer for Ultimate. Can't believe Luigi is hecking dead. Alucard would be a pretty neat addition in the future though. Especially if Sephiroth doesn't make it back, they really do have very similar aesthetics. And also a Ski Jacket alt, and an NES Zapper outfit for Mii Gunner. I'm dying for more Captain N representation out here now that the whole gang is finally in Smash. Daisy's pink dress is my stand in for Princess Lana. A koopaling setup could be great for the Belmonts in the future. As would Snake. And maybe even Bomberman in light of Bomberman R giving him seven siblings. Konami really keeps things in the family, but in a not-gross way.

I disagree! Not to derail the discussion, but if you swapped Catherine's base class from Swordmaster to Mercenary her stats would be noticeably worse at every recruitable chapter. And her outrageous starting stats are her most compelling feature as a unit. Plus I've been thinking about how, if I'm recruiting her just for chapter 5 to be easier, I'm leaving her in Swordmaster for that map, regardless of if I'm using her long term. It's a long map with a lot of level ups. I'd put off Str+2 if it meant guaranteeing her more permanent stat ups. And if I'm really using her for just this arduous map, her being a mercenary would drop her sword performance by a whopping 6 damage (12 with Thunderbrand) - not counting any discrepancy in her strength stat from auto leveling as a mercenary. Plus a ~64% chance that his crest adds 5 or 10 damage if my mental probability math is on point. Thaaaat's if you can hit him twice though. I don't know how many people noticed but Swift Strikes lacks a hit bonus like every other brave combat art. It really depends on the accuracy of your weapon choice. I also would champion the bow and gauntlet scenarios not just for the greater hit rates on the weapons but the general lack of Bow and Fistbreaker on enemies. I don't have a working memory of which class has which breaker, only that there are disproportionately more swordbreakers compared to anything else, and flying monsters have +30 avoid to all three of the weapon triangle. Pallardo's actually weaker than the thieves, until he reappears with Avoid +10 and a speed ring to hit 57 Avoid. But if we looked instead at the regular thieves, we're still talking 48 Avoid with an 80 Hit lance along with 12 Dex and 12 Hit from Lance Prowess 4. 56 displayed hit, and you gotta land both. Though this is a textbook map to find room for Swordbreaker and get further into 2RN's good graces. Agreed. They're both cases of, "I wouldn't use Y over X when I have the option of either at equal cost". They're also incidentally easier classes to get into for more characters (Reaching C in Bows and C in Swords from E is faster than B+ in just Swords!). I don't really get down with the notion of this canto+magic class is still good from that alone. Because you can only choose to be one class at a time. Your performance in each class does not exist in a vacuum, you're weighing the options against each other for each map. And it's not like there's a good class mastery to sweeten the deal or a fundamental difference that makes Holy Knight better than Dark Knight for any individual map. The only scenario where that vacuum seems relevant is a draft run where the classes are drafted, not just the characters.