BrightBow

This whole "vote with your wallet" rhetoric is even more displaced here then it usually is.The vast majority of the profits from these companies comes from a minuscule subset of players who spend thousands of dollars on a single game. They make their games with the specific purpose of milking these people. Which means that these companies do not care about the money of small fish like myself who only pay 60 bucks once.

I'm surprised that lootboxes of all things prove to be so lucrative. I can't imagine paying money for the mere chance that I get something that I want. I suppose most of the profits must come from relatively few people who dump thousands of dollars into these slot machines. Either way, this is an utterly awful trend. The profits that come from microtransactions mean that games will be specifically designed to milk what the industries calls"whales" as much as possible. And with so many people willing to play devil's advocate for these business practices, they have little reason to slow down with this. And if nothing else, it really shouldn't be a controversial opinion to say that if you pay like 60 bucks for a game then the game shouldn't constantly ask for even more cash.

This is fantastic news. It's always great to hear that people I do not know make a ton of money.

What Aimee said about you not being able to sell weapon as raw materials is another reference to the forging point system that was removed from this version. Forging Points are acquired by selling weapons. And since the Silver Card enables you to buy weapons for the same price they are sold... well, this would enable you to get an infinite amount of Forging Points for absolutely 0 cost. So they accounted for such an exploit by temporarily preventing players from earning Forging Points. It's still possible to sell weapons, you just wouldn't get any Forging Points from it. Maybe you actually did this offscreen, but the Silver Card can also be sold for a decent amount of cash once you are done using it. You can absolutely get that Bolting. For one thing there is the Disarm skill. But also, long range magic has a minimum range of 3, so if you surround that guy he will have no choice but to switch to his 1-2 range weapon. But the biggest problem is the weight. The Bolting is significantly heavier then Heather's base strength. And I'm sure it's not a surprise for you if I tell you that her growths aren't of much help here. Speaking of range, if a Sniper promotes they actually get the ability to attack at 3 range. Mind you, in this game attacking at 3 range makes your accuracy drop significantly. And yes, this also applies to ordinary Longbows, even though those already have heavily reduced accuracy. Needless to say that makes Longbows pretty bad in this game. And I'm pretty sure that General was not causing any lag. There is a bit of a quirk with the Axe throwing animation of Dragon Knights. Not only do you have to wait for the axe to return but once they catch it they still do a little wave with that weapon. You can't see that because the camera stays focused on the target, resulting in an awkward pause until the battle can continue. Now the reason I know that is because in the options you can switch the battle camera to a fixed side view like in the 2D games. So there you can see what takes the Dragon Knights so long. And since they no longer wear those fancy hats I would like to clarify that Lekain and Hetzel are indeed the two senators that we saw in Sanaki's chambers back in PoR. Numida and this new flamboyant guy are entirely new though. Nephenee, Brom and Haar joining makes absolutely zero sense. This war doesn't even involve Crimea. Doing favors for an old acquaintance only gets you this far. Nevermind that these three have other duties back at home. I don't want to complain about it though because that way you can actually use them... but yeah, it's just plain dumb. Brom and Nephenee don't even have an info conversation to acknowledge their presence.

Dr. Brighton Sharp and Dr. Arlan Flat from 20XX. If you manage to barely pass a stage with a sliver of your health left, you can count on these two to cheer you up with their unwanted advice, mocking comments and sadistic pleasure in your eventual demise. The fact that 20XX is a Rougelike game of sorts and therefore always has you playing with high stakes makes their neverending attempts to add insult to injury especially effective.

I forgot, I also once tried to buy Castlevania: Circle of the Moon but ended up with a copy of the GBA port of Castlevania 1. The thing is, both games are simply named "Castlevania" in Europe and I bought the game used without any of the packaging. Of course I pretty much fell in love with Castlevania 1, so that was a good mistake to make.

I bought Metroid Other M At least I got it on a sale for 10 bucks. Still, this is probably the first game where at some point I just said to myself: "You know, I'm not having fun. And I've played for long enough that I should have gotten to the part that is fun. So I won't let this game waste any more of my time." The story is one thing but the controls of the game are just atrocious and completely unintuitive. The last straw was a quick time event at the end of the very first boss that I didn't even noticed was a quick time event because it takes place during normal first person view. First person mode freezes Samus in place, so what I was trying to was to leave that mode in order to get out of the way of the boss' attack. Once I realized after a few deaths that I wasn't meant to leave this mode, I instead did the second most lntuitive thing and started shooting at potential targets. Because hey, they put me behind my gun so clearly they want me to shot something. That didn't do anything either, so I died a few more times after that. What I was intended to do was to perform a dodge. Which you can apparently still do in first person despite the mode freezing your movement otherwise. And regular movement and dodging were both performed with the d-pad. At this point I'm not sure if I still articulate myself in a comprehensible fashion, so let's just say that this is basically like if in other games regular walking was disabled... but you could still dash with a double tap. Also Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. Not gonna count Awakening here because in that case I couldn't possibly have known just how bad it was. Nobody was saying a bad thing about that game at the time, least of all it's obnoxious cast of sociopaths and it's self-serving protagonists. But by the time of Conquest I should have realized that it would be impossible to find any enjoyment in that game, no matter how good the map design and mechanics may turn out to be. I mean, most people probably wouldn't touch even the most delicious meal after someone vomited all over it. But since I'm an idiot I just had to take a big bite out of it. Also, I bought an SNES classic. I don't necessarily feel like I made a mistake but spending so much money on a few games old games from which I own most on Virtual Console already clearly wasn't the right thing to do. As far as I am concerned, that's just an objective fact.

I'm glad that we do have a translated version of the extended script of 2-E. https://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/scripts/game-script/part-2-final-chapter-elincias-gambit/ What I find most notable is that Ludveck gets to properly elaborate on his outlook: I would like to see Ludveck's face when he learns that not only did Elincia go through with this, Lucia didn't even end up dying. For all his talk about merely wanting to test Elincia, his reaction towards her decision to sacrifice Lucia shows that Elincia staying the queen was never an acceptable outcome for him. It's the one time in the entire arc where he actually looses his cool. It's a bit of a shame that the return of the Greil Mercenaries overshadows the conclusion of Elincia's character arc. It doesn't actually invalidate it because Elincia made her decision and spoke the word before Lucia got saved but I think that it does at least distract from it. I like to think that in recent years Part 2 got a bit more respect but back when the game came out I recall that it was basically universally dismissed as mere filler. Since we are in Part 3 now, I suppose this is the right time to point out that Master Crowns do not work on Mist. For whatever reason Mist has her own unique promotion item. And said item only appears very late in the game. And no, there is no story significance to that, they just drop it in your hands. Fortunately you can still promote her by simply getting her to lv 21 but of course that's gonna take a while. And of course we come close to "the house" on the second map of part 3. Do you remember that? If you sent most characters into the house at the center you get a Seraph Robe. If you sent Oscar, Boyd or Rolf into it, you will get no item but you will get a very significant info conversation in the next chapter.

Well, I did mention that Chrom supposedly broke the castle wall. A castle wall is intended to withstand entire armies and siege weaponry, so that implies an absurd amount of strength on his part. Chrom even claims that he did it during training, so apparently he is so strong that he broke the wall accidentally.

Ike is really nothing special compared to the Awakening folks. When he was a level 1 Ranger, he was awkwardly waving a training sword around. On the same level, Chrom was performing superhuman acrobatics against Lucina. He also claims to have broken the wall of Ylisse's castle, evidently leaving a hole large enough for a grown woman to pass through. The holy blood folks from Jugdral may be able to compete. It's hard to pin them down in terms of power but it's rather telling that there is some dialog in the final chapter that suggests that allies without any holy blood are no longer meant to be on the battlefield at all. That implies a ridiculous difference in power.

The Wing Sage Maraj? Wow, this never clicked for me until now. He most certainly matches that kid's attitude somewhat. Anyway, Parity is now a command skill, so it doesn't hinder Lucia at all. Magic Cards are indeed almost completely worthless. There is one good thing about them though: They do not allow for a counter attack. And since they can still be used to trigger battle conversations, they could be useful to meet the requirements for some really well hidden stuff in this game. You probably know already, but Authority Stars only count for the unit who actually leads the army. So Lucia's stars won't actually help you later on. And man, Nealuchi got really lucky there. As you could tell, Crossbows are quite a bane for most fliers. Even Laguz kings fear them. As if Dragon Knights needed even more of an edge over other fliers. Btw, Warriors cannot actually use regular bows, only crossbows. But Archers can still use both. A fun way of using Crossbows is to combine them with the various Laguz Slayer skills. In case you are not aware, it's random if Laguz are able to raise their gauge if they are attacked. So it's not a good idea to rely on that. Fortunately you will soon be able to buy Olivi Grass in bulk. It's not an unlimited offer but they will always offer you several in each chapter. After this chapter the shop becomes available. I suppose you passed 2-3 already, so I hope you didn't overlook that because the 2-3 shop sells a Hammer and a Riders Bane. Hammers in particular are really good in this game since enemy Armored Knights lack any real weakness otherwise, thanks to their high speed and resistance and the fact that mages kinda suck in this game. Skills will stay locked for a while longer, though.

I didn't have access to Internet those last few weeks, so I am only starting catching up now. That might have been for the best. With this game I would have been a bit worried about all kinds of beginners traps, so I probably would have said to much. But sorry if I am saying something you already know. Even if battle animations are disabled, you can still display them by holding a button like in more recent games. Unfortunately I don't remember which one and it doesn't exactly help that this game can be played with a million different controllers. The game actually has two versions of the script, one essentially being an abridged version. And unfortunately the only version of the script that got translated is the abridged one. The Serenes Forest page has translations for a few of the later chapters but that's about it. Unfortunately none of them translated the Part 1 chapters. I would really like to see those since there is a fair bit of weirdness going on in Part 1, like that thing with Laura that you noted. Having two versions of the script is a really baffling decision. I'm going to copy the relevant passages from the Nintendo Dream Interview on this subject since half of it is devoted towards clarifying that the difficultly level does not affect the number of chapters and therelike: Since I didn't copy the editors notes, I should clarify that Hard Mode refers to Maniac Mode here. The full passage can be found here: https://serenesforest.net/general/interviews/radiant-dawn/nintendo-dream/page-2/ I am particularly baffled that Yamagami specifically mentions that they cut scenes that focused on character building. One doesn't care about a story if one doesn't care about the characters involved in it. So that's just about the worst place to make any sort of cuts. Anyway, this decision is all kinds of interesting given the very barebone dialog in the 3DS games.

Maybe. I have no admit, it didn't occur to me that both themes might be used in the same book.

Your AI controlled comrades if you play Expert Missions offline in Xenoverse 2. Despite what people say, the ally AI in Xenoverse 2 is not actually worse then that of the enemy. It just so happens that in the story mode your allies have heavily gimped attack power. Even with their ultimate attacks they can barely leave a dent in the enemies, leaving the player to do all the work. But Expert Missions are another issue entirely. Expert Missions are specifically designed to be tackled by an actual team and have all kinds of mechanics not found anywhere else in the game. And the AI simply cannot do a lot of the things they are required to do in Expert Missions. Like, if a human player gets hit by a brainwashing attack, they get transferred into a different stage where they can beat up an evil clone to free themselves. If the AI is hit by a brainwashing attack, dealing with that is all up to you. They also suck at avoiding this attack in the first place, which often results in a total party kill unless the player bails them out. The AI also doesn't know how to deal with Marbling Drop and Peeler Storm, which can also result in a total party wipeout. They also don't know how you can bypass Auto Dodge. And no matter how good you are, you absolutely need allies, even if it's just the AI. There are a variety of reasons for this. For one thing all these missions have a tight time limit, so you need them to help dealing damage or to distract the enemy so that you can spam powerful beam attacks. Then there are the giant Ki ball attacks. Dealing enough damage to push them back is basically impossible to do on your own. And there is no other defense against that move. Because of this trying to beat Expert Missions offline is extremely frustrating. If the AI doesn't want you to win, no amount of skill or strategy can compensate for this. That new Broly mission in particular really amplifies this problem. A fantastic run can get ruin instantly if your entire party decides to get wrecked by a single Peeler Storm because Broly simply isn't going to give you the space needed to revive your allies. And you can't fight back to give yourself that space. You can't push Broly back because he has Super Armor. And the Super Armor in Xenoverse is complete bullshit. It cannot be bypassed in any way. Neither throws, charged attacks or Supers will cause any sort of knockback. The only way to deal with super armor in this game is to deal a certain amount of damage to temporarily disable it. But without the ability to cause knockback, you will always leave yourself completely open if you try to attack. And once Broly lands a hit on you, you are as good as dead. Not just because his attack power is absurd but because all of his attacks deal a huge amount of stamina damage, regardless of whether you block or not. So even if you somehow survive one of his combos, you won't have the stamina left to avoid the next one.

They probably did. At least for the recruitment theme. Because the funny thing is, Radiant Dawn did indeed have an all new recruitment theme. It's just never actually used. Here it is if you've never heard it: https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/108-Character-Joins.mp3 Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? At least there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, so it's strange that this theme wasn't used. Of course I can only speculate but maybe they felt like it was awkward to have a fancy new recruitment theme, when these kind of recruitments very rarely happen. I believe it only plays for Meg, Aran and Heather. Everyone else joins without asking or is playable the moment they enter the map. But whatever the reason may be, chances are the decision to scrap the new theme was made late in development, so they wouldn't have had the time to make a new one.

I think I'm going with Mystery of the Emblem Book 2. https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/210-Theme-of-Encounter.mp3 A nice little touch about Mystery of the Emblem is that it uses two different arrangments of the FE1 recruitment theme. While the Book 1 version is energetic and triumphant, the Book 2 version sounds far more darker and downright desperate at times. It makes for a nice contrast, especially considering that the main villain of book 2 is someone for who the upbeat version used to play back in book 1. For comparison, here is the book 1 version: https://serenesforest.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/108-Theme-of-Encounter.mp3

Well, in Hyrule Warriors for the Wii U, you also needed a Link Amiibo to unlock the Spinner

The thing with the rooster is that it's a bad selection from every conceivable angle. That the game pretends that the Fire Emblem series is only 5 years old and not 27 is only one aspect of it. Like, sure let's look at it form a gameplay perspective. As it has been mentioned countless times, there are sword users everywhere. ...which of course they also had to make worse by including the weapon triangle. And even as mere characters, these guys are not very varied. I mean, we have Lissa, Sakura and Elise, no less then three representatives of the "little sister" archetype. And we have Gharnef, Validar and Iago. There are even two player avatars in this. And quite frankly, in this case one would be one too many. And most importantly: They are all nobles. Normally in Fire Emblem games you have people from every path of life uniting under a single banner. Here it's just a bunch of princes and princesses. There aren't even any interesting oddball choices here either. Like for example Smash had Mr Game & Watch, R.O.B.,and Wii Fit Trainer. Here it's just the guys on the cover of Fates, the first few characters of Awakening, and the guy from Smash and his girlfriend. With a selection this uninspired, there is not a whole lot to look forward to unless there is a character you particularly care about.

I'm not sure if that would have worked. Just ignoring the issue doesn't seem possible to me when the president keeps obsessing over the topic and keeps making noise. Eventually his base would demand for the NFL to take a clear stance. And that's assuming Trump's base doesn't just interpret the NFL's inaction as opposition to the president right from the start. I mean, they even freaked out over Vogue putting the statue of liberty into the background of one of their magazine covers because they thought it was an attack on the Trump administration.

So I was actually right about this? I figured I must have missed something with the way you firmly laid the blame for this on the NFL. Of course it's not their fault that they got dragged into such a mess by Trump. I mean, what could they possibly have done to avoid a situation like this? If the president demands for players to be fired, they can either fire that player and support the president or don't fire that player and oppose the president. Either way they would be making a political statement. And even from a purely soulless business standpoint, supporting their players still looks like the best thing to do to me. I mean, the president is extremely unpopular. He started out loosing the popular vote and his popularity kept dropping from there. So they would piss of even more people by actually supporting the president. And that's not even counting the people who just don't want to see politics involving themselves in sports like this, and would therefore hate to see the NFL submit to a politician's demands. Not to mention if they would actually submit to the president, then this would encourage politics to get involved into sports more often, and consequently loose-loose situations like this would occur more frequently. And this is absolutely not something that the NFL could want.

The NFL challenging Trump? Wasn't it the other way around: Trump rallied his base against the NFL and demanded the protesting players to be fired? After being put into this situation by Trump anything they could have done would be a statement of support or opposition of the president. In a loose-loose situation like this, I would say that supporting their players is the most moral thing they could do.

To draw upon the relevant quote: Lyn: “If Lord Athos hadn’t erected a barrier when he did… We would have lost both you and Nils……” Athos: “If he’d truly wished to kill you, even my power could not have saved you.” And when Athos attacked Nergal on their next encounter, he just shrugs it off effortlessly. They even scripted that fight so that Athos would deal far less damage then he should according to the displayed numbers, which further bolsters his claim that even legendary weapons can't really harm him.

One of the houses right at the start even gives you a Warp Staff. So you are clearly expected to use them. My favorite way of dealing with this map is to use the Thief Staff to steal the Berserk Staff from Coen, then use the Berserk Staff on Reinhardt. If you do that, the Mage Knights will kill themselves trying to attack Reinhardt. And Reinhardt himself will get killed by the Ballista immediately afterwards. Of course that way you don't get the Holy Sword for Olwen.

Only 99% of the earth? What's with the remaining 1% then? I would have figured that the resistance would be in hiding somewhere and not really controlling any actual territory. Anyway, Knuckles as the leader is definitely a good call. Sonic is usually to much of a free spirit to lead anything. Guess that means there is no Sonic Fighting Academy or Sonic Military after all though. This kinda reminds me of the first Sonic Rush. Or to be more precise, this seems very unlike Sonic Rush. I mean, in that game they introduced Blaze, who is basically an alternate universe counterpart to Knuckles, being a very serious and devoted loner who is the guardian of the Sol Emeralds. So naturally Knuckles didn't actually do anything in that story. The one who had to kickstart Blaze's character development just had to be Sonic, even though the two of them really don't have anything in common and Sonic just looked all kinds of awkward in that role. Long story short: It's nice that it seems like they avoid that here and put Knuckles somewhere where he makes sense.

FE2: Mathilda - There is only one god in Sofia and her name is Mathilda. She is such a blast to use with her crazy stats in every area. FE3: Sirius - Pretty much the same as above, really. FE4: Leaf - It's just so very satisfying to build this guy up from a hotheaded scup to an amazing Master Knight able to keep up with those who use the holy weapons. FE5: Mareeta - While she isn't all that great as a unit, one can't deny that she always delivers a great show with her ridiculous offensive power. Of course it doesn't hurt that that there is some good drama surrounding her. TRS: Raquel - As a prepromote Archer who joins very early, she avoids the usual pitfalls for archers. The downside is her inability to deal lethal blows to human enemies, which makes her a pretty interesting prepromote to use. FE6: Echidna - It's actually kinda amazing how bad her supports are. They are all exclusively about other people. So honestly, she is just here because she is a fun unit with a cool design. FE7: Pent - Same as the above I suppose. But of course he is far better as a unit. FE8: Lyon - He is a very compelling villain. FE9: Jill - I suppose this is fairly self-explanatory for everyone who played this game. FE10: Yune - To be honest, I find it really hard to articulate why I like her so much. Especially without writing an entire essay. So let's just say that she is just a really engaging character in what little time she is around. FE11: Wendel - It's great having a competent Sage so early into the game. FE12: Sirius again, I suppose. FE13: Sumia - I suppose the term "favorite" is a bit misleading here. She is all kinds of annoying but it's just hard to come up with an Awakening character who is not utterly loathsome. So she kinda wins this one by default. FE Fates Conquest: Niles - Oh hey, it's mister "Even if you cry or scream, I won't stop." *sigh* Yeah, the friendly neighborhood rapist wins this one, the bar is really that low. Although it helps that most of the time he is fairly likeable, coming across more like a well-meaning prankster rather then a sex offender. He is also refreshingly down to earth compared to the rest of the cast. It was also rather interesting to use a magical archer. FE SoV: May - Behold the power of having actual voiced dialog. Every time May opens her mouth fun is to be had. Not like there is much else to look forward to on Celica's side of the story. It also helps that she is a very capable offensive mage. I'd say she is a lot better then in the original Gaiden.