Samias

I think the outer wall spikes were always there. Notably all spikes vanish when Stallord is firing his fireballs at you. How merciful of him. This was a problem in the original but it sucks there's no Sun's Song/Song of Double Time/Song of Passing in this game. Poe hunting can only be done at night and it would have been more helpful than the lantern now that the game has an area counter as well...

Anime logic. Periods only exist when they mean something to the narrative. In Fatesland, magical anti-aging freezes your menstrual cycle so you can be fertile forever.

I met him at PAX by sheer coincidence while standing around and while it was brief, he never came across like he does on the internet. In fact he was pretty friendly, maybe even a little shy. He is gigantic in width though and dwarfs me in size. The holier-than-thou part of his videos is definitely for humour's sake. Patronizing and obnoxious? Who knows, it was too brief of a meeting to tell and those are his honest opinions he's presenting in his videos. That said his podcast personality is usually more humble than what he presents in his articles or Jimquisition videos.

Ha, this is going to go nowhere considering Digital Homicide's track record of dealings with Jim and other YouTubers. No sense of integrity is not how I would describe Jim Sterling. He runs an ad-free website and YouTube channel and is very upfront about how he reviews things and where his money comes from. He blasts shitty developers on Steam Greenlight for their Unity asset repackaging garbage (hence why he's in this situation in the first place) but also AAA bullshit from Ubisoft, Konami, Activision, EA etc. He also has a tendency to issue corrections/apologies whenever he's factually wrong and someone has let him know on his website. Now, what would you actually call Jim? Giant gaping asshole? Raging sexually deviant SJW? More accurate descriptors. I can see people being annoyed/disgusted by his holier-than-thou internet persona. I didn't like him much either in his Destructoid and The Escapist days, although I find he's more entertaining and freewheeling as an independent journalist.

Undertale, which I played back in January. But I have so many multiplayer games with endings that are just so far away... I'm never gonna see the damn end credits of MH4U despite recently hitting G rank and sinking in like 90 hours! And FFXIV never ends, though I am fully caught up in the story but am a terrible raider. But hey, I've seen the end credits for A Realm Reborn and the first credits of the expansion content, which felt a whole lot like a full RPG to me.

Shigure has his own niche as a flying Rally specialist who can take care of himself. Plus his chapter is very easy so he's a good pickup whenever you want him although it will probably be late. While Caeldori is better in combat, Shigure still has some good utility. His biggest issue is that he rarely gets a worthwhile skill inheritance from his mother. Chances are you'll get luck+4 unless you pick him up late. Kiragi is best picked up late with auto promotion. His chapter is a bit tougher but Kiragi is generally pretty safe. Then he can auto level into lance ranks by going Kinshi Knight immediately. That alone will set him apart from Takumi and Setsuna. His personal skill is also ridiculous for enemy phase or for getting danced. He's one of the better children even if he doesn't get an amazing prf bow like his father. I can see him being "just another archer" if he joins too early though.

I love this game to pieces. Although some characters were so much easier to use than others (Everyone vs Savyna... the animation speed for Savyna makes it so much harder to use her + limited elements...) and the voice acting + intentional-but-poorly-implemented echo filter were atrocious. Still full of brilliant ideas and a plot with some great hooks, twists and turns. I find RPG fans generally know and like the first game but the 2nd came out so late in the GCN's life that it was much easier to overlook. I liked the sequel even more though some people are mixed on the giant battle system overhaul. Personally I preferred the faster ATB queued actions-and-combo system of Origins a LOT. Way less dead time than the original even if your deck is more generic. Also the sequel nixed the strange filter on the voices and hired better actors overall.

Current gen Nvidia and AMD are pretty much on par with each other, perhaps with AMD getting the edge currently. Generally speaking the differences look like this: Nvidia: +Better energy efficiency, runs cooler, quieter fans, better driver management, less reliance on the power of your CPU. PhysX and Hairworks are optimized for Nvidia products because they were built by Nvidia in the first place. -Current drivers are SHIT. Very hard to find a stable driver for Windows 10 at the moment. Current generation of cards are not as optimized to move into DX12. GTX970 has less VRAM than advertised (3.5GB rather than 4GB) AMD: +R390 is nearly as powerful as GTX980 but closer to the price point of the GTX970. Superior VRAM. Already has DX12 support. -Older generation AMD cards have poor drivers. Generally louder, larger and more power hungry than their Nvidia counterparts. Many games are also optimized to run on an Nvidia card rather than AMD (see: PhysX, Hairworks) I don't game super hard so the 970's cheaper price point is fine for me right now but my EVGA-branded card has issues with running its fan and partially overheating and I recently had to get an RMA when my previous card died. Although my system is only a year old and I just got the GPU replaced I'm tempted by the R390 or perhaps some of the next gen cards if my current brand of card continues to be temperamental. The Pascal architecture is just such an improvement on Maxwell that it motivates me to want to get a replacement for stability's sake. I don't know if AMD has any big changes on the horizon as the R390 is already a major improvement over their last gen as far as architecture is concerned. I feel like they'll continue the trend of brute power over fidelity.

Yeah she's good at farming for resources but I ended up not liking her as a combat unit. Her base class is not really good other than the money making aspect. If she doesn't get a strong and speedy mom or you don't build her a Miracle build then she's kind of suspect for long term viability in-game. She's a monster for endgame My Castle battles though.

Playing through Birthright I didn't plan for super optimal children or anything but ones who stood out as not great: Super outclassed tier: Hisame: His father isn't very good (I got extra screwed and he had 4 res as a 20 samurai. Seriously.) and Hisame is just so average in every way. Shigure, Shiro, Kiragi and Caeldori are just better than him outright as far as physical units go. Dwyer: Essentially worthless personal skill for the main story. Another staffbot but doesn't have as good of a class set as Mitama. Simply not useful. Situational but not amazing tier: Rhajat: I did use her as a chapter as a pre-leveled magic unit with fem!Corrin Felicia as her mother but her skill was 11 at her base of 20/4?! I should have picked a more skillful mother but talk about deficient... She's probably better in Revelation where Hayato gets free levels. Midori: Even though Kaze is great, Midori needs to obtain some procs from her mother to be worthwhile, or else she's just outclassed by Kiragi. Great for making money but Lethality is the only offensive proc skill she has guaranteed access too. The list of mothers who give her activation skills and worthwhile stats is pretty thin as well. She's better than the above on this list but honestly her personal skill is the only reason why. Asugi is simply easy to screw up if you think he'd prefer a physical class due to his class set, however he excels more in magic and should pick an appropriate mother for that. His physical side is still salvagable but with a base 50% mag growth before his class and mother's modifiers, he really wants an explosive shuriken *at least*.

Rough doodle of Juno cause I'm trying to get myself all jazzed for going back to work but my drawings are ass from playing too many video games D;.........

Hmm Zelda buffs but aside from the ftilt change it doesn't really look all too beneficial to her. Too bad she didn't get anything like the major overall to movement options Samus got. Also no Jigglypuff changes qq

. It does. Basically they just reengineered the controls and people familiar with Zelda games in the past are finding the controls to be less intuitive. If only I had known the whole no diagonals thing for the King Bulbin joust before it would have been much easier. Instead, it was super frustrating. However the second time around was easier other than Epona getting caught on the corner of a ledge unable to move for about 10 seconds.

Go into your collection screen, then go to options. Scroll down a bit and you should see an option to change your aiming perspective. I can't remember exactly how they word it but since there's not much to toggle it should be obvious.

Yup. This is how it originally was in Twilight Princess anyway on the Wii, but with the HD resolution it's even easier to get a precise shot. It's just better than 1st person even if Link is hanging out in the corner, due to that targeting reticle showing you exactly where your arrow is going to hit. Also I didn't think the swimming controls were that good either, at least for tight corridors. In a big open area like against Morpheel it's not bad but there's a rather enclosed space just before getting the boss key and it was not fun trying to get through those doors. Felt about as clunky as Majora's Mask and the Zora form to be honest... actually, the Zora mask feels better because at least I can super jump out of the water. Here, you have to let go of the swim button to surface with no method of fast breaching. THEN you can climb on land instead of swimming into the wall like a doofus. I didn't like how Skyward Sword controlled in water either (ugh those motion controls) but at least that game also had Link able to leap gracefully out of the water too. In TP HD, Link also has a tendency to turn backwards underwater when trying to simply go up. Might have something to do with inverted vertical though, despite those being the default. Edit: For Epona control woes, apparently diagonals just don't do anything. When dashing, you're best off hitting a hard left or right to make her go in the direction you want.

Yeah, but bouncing off walls and listening to the noise it makes is classic hidden wall finding tactics in 3D Zelda. It's weird to just have Link clip right through and not react. Also I've had some shadows glitch out when near corners. The models are lit but not as dramatically as WW, since the characters also glow to keep in the theme of a "light world". Also had some instances where Link's ground shadow wasn't visible from all that far away from the ground, making it kinda painful to gauge some drop downs. However I haven't run into anything game breaking, just annoyances like Epona getting stuck on a corner pixel for a good long while. I remember OoT3D had that infinite pieces of heart glitch from the Gravedigging tour.

There is some minor touch up of the MIDI but nothing has been fully reorchestrated. Some of the difference in quality is because the music files are not as compressed.

I think if you consider the split timeline that is canon in OoT's ending, doesn't that mean every time you turn back time you've left a doomed timeline behind where everyone DOES die? Also MM has you assisting numerous ghosts pass on. There really is a lot of death involved.

WWHD didn't remove any of that. I think they were only referring to random chests, to make them more worthwhile to dredge up. Also seems like I'm in the minority here not enjoying the wolf songs, even as a kid. I love the songs chosen but the arrangement made out of pitch bent MIDI wolf howls felt more like a butchery than a good homage. There's something about it that just feels extremely silly despite the serious visuals. Personally I feel Twilight Princess has one of the weakest of all Zelda soundtracks especially on the heels of Wind Waker, which was one of my favourites. Doesn't help that TP did not get the remastered soundtrack treatment that parts of WW got. Some songs, like the night time Hyrule field music, could have been much better with a resampling. However Twilight Princess does have a wonderfully spaghetti western Hidden Village shootout and the silliness of that always puts a smile on my face.

The real question is, will they ever address the end of AA4. And from the looks of it, probably not. Oh well, older Maya looks so good and the Tigre costume for Phoenix is fantastic.

Most of the treasure charts led you to chests with silver rupees and pieces of heart though, so at least you got something REALLY good out of those. And they removed the need to translate 3 of the charts, which freed up a ton of rupees to spend on... well, nothing. Or maybe doing the merchant trading sidequest for the magic armor or spending a little extra time at the auction house for that speed sail. [spoiler=Twilight Princess plot spoilers]I realize this is an old game but in case people are playing for the first time... spoiler tags. I've been playing Twilight Princess for a few hours each day. The dungeons are fun and longer than average compared to LTTP or OoT, but ugh. All the stuff in between. I never understood the kidnapping at the beginning of the game. Every other game usually imperils characters who have some important role in Link's destiny but these kids aren't anything special except they're Link's friends. So the fact they get nabbed and Link doesn't has always left me scratching my head. Taking over 2 hours to get to the first dungeon was a drag, and then doing all that back and forth so early to get into the Goron Mine was also kind of a downer. I don't really like the King Bulblin fight the first time as it's just a bunch of repetitive sword flailing while running around in circles up until the joust, which just ends super fast aside from screwing up the timing a bunch. The early bosses are also VERY easy. Fyrus's recovery animation is so long I can nock another arrow and aim it perfectly just in time to make him vulnerable all over again. And the wolf howling segments are just... oof. Never did like them. Song of Healing as wolf howls is very cringeworthy. Oh well, I do enjoy tracking down the golden bugs between areas at least, and the dungeons themselves are quite well designed once you get to them. I'm looking forward to the Lakebed Temple as I like it more when the dungeons are confusing and challenging and I remember it being one of the harder dungeons with an easy-but-fun boss at the end. I switched my targeting to 3rd person to get the old reticule back, which is a lot more accurate than the new 1st person mode IMO. I'm glad it's an option to change it. I wish the Wiimote was supported because the fishing hole in TP was sooooooo good, I'm gonna miss the semi realistic reeling motion when I go back to it.

Although it's not the same as the concept art shown there, palico hunters at least get an opportunity to use boomerang centric combat. In fact the palico hunters with a point build system are apparently super fun to play, plus there's all the hunting styles, it's easy to understand why we didn't get new weapons. MH5 might revisit these ideas in the future anyway.

I actually agree Fire Sanctuary just kind of felt like a worse Earth Temple, but to be fair the Earth Temple was REALLY good. Twilight Princess also has neat dungeons but it's a shame the parts in between have such poor pacing. It's why TP sits below LBW, OoT, WW and MM in my head but I would rather replay it over some of the older 2D Zelda games.

Designing a good puzzle that is intuitive but still challenging is actually difficult even if you have building blocks set in front of you. Just like map design in Advance Wars is still very difficult even when the game hands you a toolbox with all the pieces, you always need to consider how placing one part is going to impact how it plays. OoT Master Quest is a very different game from OoT despite sharing the bones. The overworld is the same but the Deku Tree went from being a 10 minute romp to a good 30+ mins with a lot more combat and traps to contend with like fire keese before you get a durable shield. Jabu Jabu's belly is all about bizarre cow switches and barely involves Ruto anymore. Things like that need a lot of planning to surprise people who have played the original game to death.