#i can technically just change settings for NPC's to just ignore the player. but then he wont do fun things like follow you and open doors

[rambunctioustoons]

I'm too stupid to understand coding and mods. but very funny I cannot for the life of me switch Moon's settings in Gmod to make him friendly asdjakdjs.

[rainofaugustsith]

SWTOR: On Switching Factions

Faction switching. Your ex-Jedi is disenchanted. Your Imperial Agent wants to work for the SIS. You've been able to declare your loyalty to the other side, and so far all it's gotten you is some questionable cantina meetings. 

Spoilers for Iokath, Onslaught and Osssus

I think that despite the challenges, this is something SWTOR's devs will have to approach more directly eventually. Yes, we understand the willing suspension of disbelief, but for some characters it's completely impossible that their old faction would trust them in any way. There's the Jedi Knight, who can be denied a Master title at the end of their class story if they are too dark-sided. There's the smuggler, who may have opened fire on Republic ships and started a pirate empire. There's the bounty hunter, who may have blown up the ship of the Darth they were working for. There's the Imperial Agent who may now work for the SIS. There are all eight classes able to choose to ally with the Sith Empire in KOTET and all eight classes able to freely choose to support either side on Iokath, an act that leads to the death of the other faction's leader.

If a character has been actively working against their old faction for several expacs now, why does it make sense that they would be put in a position of great trust? It doesn't. And yet, on Ossus only Major Anri comments, and then only briefly, if an Imperial sided with the Republic on Iokath. If a Republic character sided with the Empire on Iokath, it's casually brought up in a news interview and then never again. While Tau and Darth Savik can question the player character's judgment, again, there are no repercussions, and they are still left in positions of great authority and responsibility.

Republic traitor Ror encounters Imperial Major Anri on Mek-Sha. 

At some point, it's going to fall apart. So far, if you are in the Untitled Saboteur Game you have caused major damage to your old faction on Mek-Sha, Onderon and Corellia, as well as more minor damage on Osssus and Dantooine. Somebody should have noticed already, and there's no way it can continue indefinitely. But how?

From a technical standpoint I don't think we are ever going to see a scenario where your character completely changes every single thing about themselves - all their abilities; titles, access to the other side's heroics from earlier in the game, etc. I think there's still much they can do.

New planets, new coding?

I think that trying to recode/flag PCs so they can walk into the opposite faction's fleet or homeworlds would be too much trouble, and lead to nothing but a mess of errors. If a PC who has defected needs to visit, say, Tython or Dromund Kaas they could always do what they did in the SoR Prelude flashpoints, the end of the Jedi Knight story and KOTET chapter 2, and make it an entirely different instanced area or different version of the planet that is not connected to the class story open world.

I also think it would be problematic to try to switch defectors over so they can access the other side's heroics or repeatable quests, so it would perhaps end up being that the old content is still accessible and the newer content is where they are recognized as defectors. There's already a lack of continuity and consistency with the old content so I don't see this as being problematic - for instance the NPC quest giver of the Tatooine bonus series still refers to my Sith Inquisitor as being an apprentice of Lord Zash, even if she is now the Alliance Commander and hasn't had anything to do with Zash in a decade of the story timeline. My level 75 Alliance Commander Sith Warrior can still fight the Hate Machine on Korriban. Yeah, it's out of order, we know, leave it be.

For content going forward, though, I think it could be more feasible. They set up Iokath so Republic OCs who chose to switch faction allegiance could enter the Imperial base and access the Imperial vendors and vice versa. On Dantooine and Onderon there are also specific quests/drop points for saboteurs that differentiate them from loyalists.

There are also quite a few planets where there are clickables, missions and resources which can be accessed by players in both factions from SoR onward. On Rishi, both factions can talk to Harlow Ricks; on Yavin 4, Oricon and Ziost they have the same daily quests. On Zakuul and Odessen all the medical droids, etc. are neutral and can be used by both factions' OCs. Thus, I'm assuming that there are ways to implement things so the bases and NPCs aren't hard-coded to only respond/reject to a specific faction.

New icons?

I'm thinking each class should have a new icon on the nameplate for anyone who has defected. Maybe the same icon they originally had, but in a different color.

New abilities?

I think switching everything would be a coding nightmare that would likely break the characters. However, I've noticed my "fallen Jedi's" eyes going red from time to time now. If they ever raise the level cap or offer a NEW ability or two, I think they could potentially code it so that saboteurs could train an ability more in line with their new faction, ie, a fallen Jedi learning lightning. They already have different abilities for different advanced classes; they could add one universal for all specs that is for saboteurs. There could be a 'secret trainer' on Odessen to teach it - like the training holos on Zakuul and Asylum who can accommodate all eight classes - so it's available to all factions.

A Jedi with glowing red eyes and power?

New Names?

5/8 of the class names are faction specific. A few, like "Sith Warrior," "Imperial Agent" and "Jedi Consular" could be changed just by lopping off the first word, and there are several like the Smuggler which really don't need anything at all since they are not faction specific, but the others are trickier. But since it's mostly just used on the  login screen, it doesn't seem necessary to change it.

As to how the character is addressed in game, that changes several times just over the course of the class stories, and again once you get to SoR and again at KOTFE - the Imperial Agent goes from being called 'Agent' to "Cipher Nine' to 'Legate' to 'Cipher Nine' to Commander, for instance - so the ability to change seems feasible. They could keep using "Commander" as it's a neutral Alliance title. "Agent," "Captain," and "Hunter" are also neutral. The Trooper may have been demoted since they have switched from the Republic to the Imperial military, but they may also may be given the same or a higher title, like General, in recognition of their service as the Commander of the Alliance.

For the Jedi and Sith? This gets tough because switching factions does not necessarily mean they intend to become a Sith or Jedi (Scourge certainly worked with the Jedi Knight without flipping over, for example). As I recall from the Jedi Knight story, the Republic characters completely ignore Scourge's title and do not refer to him as 'Lord Scourge' and I can't see the Sith Empire referring to defected Jedi as 'Master Jedi' either. Perhaps they will need to clarify your Jedi or Sith characters' intentions in the story. They could formally give a Sith lord or Darth title to the Jedi who have switched - Empress Acina or Vowrawn would certainly have that capability. Giving a former Sith a "Master" title might be trickier. The Jedi who were originally Sith seem to have to start at the bottom, and having the Alliance Commander referred to as a padawan would just be...weird. So they could always just go with the neutral Commander in all cases, or other titles like Battlemaster or Wrath.

Companions

I think it's inevitable that a defector will lose some companions - including those considered "main story." There are a few that are so staunchly loyal to their faction that they will not entertain the idea of working with you if you switch. In practice this may end up being like the "departures" that occurred after Ossus, ie, the companions send letters telling you that they are leaving, but they remain active in your companion list and can be accessed and used for questing or crew skill missions at any time.

[venusmages]

Cyberpunk 2077 non-spoiler review

Anyways here’s my writeup about my least favorite parts of 2077 for people who are interested in seeing if it’s for them. Both going to talk about content as well as gameplay. This is for PC version, too, because I know last gen consoles are suffering terribly rn and I wouldn’t recommend the game if you’re not going to be playing on PC. At least not until it’s on sale or the issues have been resolved. It really, really shouldn’t have been released on last gen consoles at all in my opinion - or at least should’ve been released on consoles LATER.

If you like Saints Row, GTA, Mass Effect, Shadowrun, or the Cyberpunk genre in general - I definitely think this is something you might want to take a peek at! I wasn’t anticipating the game until about a month or two before release - so maybe that’s why I’m having a blast - but It’s one of my favorite stories from the past decade as far as sci-fi goes. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and It’s really impressed me. I can’t even go into detail about all the things I LOVE because I really want folks to experience it themselves. Just know there’s a very intricately detailed world, all the characters are memorable and insanely well realized and complex, and the story is great fun. Also made me cry like 5 times. It’s become one of my FAVORITE games very quickly.

I’d also recommend Neon Arcade if you want someone who’s been covering the game for quite a while, including the technical and game industry aspect. He does well to go into some detail and even though he’s a fan, I’ve found him to be largely unbiased. I’m not going to go into industry politics here because I feel that’s up for everyone to decide on their own terms.

No spoilers, things to keep in mind, content warnings, etc. below!

CONTENT WARNINGS and issues with plot/story

this setting is dark. very dark. if you struggle stomaching things like dystopian landscapes, body horror, physical, mental and sexual abuse, corporate and gang violence, abuse of children, harsh language, and concepts that mess with the perception of reality - this game might not be for you. It’s a very mature setting, and I don’t mean that in the Adult Swim kind of way. I mean it in the ‘oh shit, it went there’ way. In my opinion I haven’t run across anything in it that was handled distastefully when it dipped into the depressing, but dark and gritty isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I wanted to give a disclaimer.

The game’s universe in advertising and working for the lower class also exploits sex/sex work quite a bit. This is part of the lore itself because in this universe everyone’s become desensitized to sex and violence to the point that marketing embraces it and makes it ridiculous. I feel it’s very obvious that it doesn’t condone this message and is instead a commentary on consumerism - but people still might be uncomfortable seeing a lot of suggestive stuff all over the place regardless. 

Women in game are naked more often than men - even though there is nudity for both. This is likely a mix of appealing to the Gamer Boy demographic (even though the story does NOT actually), or the fact that media is way more cool with seeing naked women than seeing full frontal nudity on men. They probably had to tone some of it down to avoid going above an M rating. 

The story is amazing, but sometimes it dumps a lot onto you at once. It’s one of those sci-fi stories that you have to really be following the names, faces, and concepts continually to get it all down. There’s a lot of betrayal, background players, etc. I think by the mid-way point I’d mostly had it, but It’s pretty dense. However it’s still amazing. You might just need two playthroughs before every tiny detail clicks - because there’s a LOT of details. 

Honestly I think it would help to read up on the lore first so you’re not going ‘what’ constantly. But people have seemed to manage fine without that also! Neon Arcade has a really nice series of videos (like 2 or 3) that get you up to speed with the universe. It also helps you decide if the tone is right for you. 

I think the main story should’ve been longer, also. I don’t mind a 20 hr story, especially in a massive RPG, but It feels like they really struggled to cram as much into that time frame as possible. It skirts the edge of being nice and concise, snappy, and tight - and needing just a few more moments to take a breath and wait a second. This is helped if you do a lot of side quests.

The straight male romance option, River, is INCREDIBLY well written but he doesn’t tie into the main plot in any way whatsoever. It’s very strange and feels like they either ran out of time with him, or slapped together a romance with him at the last second. All the other romances at least know what’s going on with V’s story - meanwhile River has no idea, and you can never tell him. He’s an amazing guy though and I highly recommend his questline. He appears in ACT 2.

In general I’d say not to bother with the romances. There are only 4 total, and while the romancible characters on their own are really well written, the romances themselves are just kinda meh. One romance you don’t even meet until act 3. I don’t think they should’ve been included in the game at all, because they definitely don’t feel as fleshed out as everything else. 

CDPR also sometimes forget that women players or gay men exist. Panam and Judy have a lot more content than River and Kerry for example. I don’t think this is intentional, they just have a large fanbase of dudebros. It only shows in the romance content and the nudity thing though.

Johnny, Takemura, and Claire should’ve been romances and I will fight to the death on that. 

There are gay and trans characters in the game and their stories don’t revolve around their sexualities. It’s very Fallout: New Vegas in it’s approach to characters: IE. you’re going to love them. All of them. 

V’s gender isn’t locked to their body type or their genitals- but to to their voice. I don’t think it’s the best solution they could’ve used but given how the game is heavily voice acted I assume that was what they had to work with. 

Some of the romances are locked to both cis voices AND body types (not genitals if I recall but body shapes). That’s disappointing but I assume it was because of scripted scene issues and/or ignorance on the dev’s part considering the LGBT NPCS are so AMAZINGLY done. There’s no homophobic or transphobic language in the game - though there are gendered curse words and insults if that bothers you. 

Some characters MAY suffer from ‘bilingual people don’t talk like that’ syndrome. But it can be hard to say for sure given that translators exist in this universe and the way they operate aren’t fully described. It’s only momentarily distracting, not enough to take away from how charming the NPCs are.

The endings are really good don’t get me wrong but I want fix it fic :(. All of the endings out of like 6 (?) in the game are bittersweet. 

Both gender V’s are very good but female V’s voice acting is out of this world. If you don’t know what voice to go with/are neutral I’d highly recommend female V. Male V is charming and good but he feels much more monotone compared to female V. 

V has their own personality. To some this won’t be a detractor - but a lot of people thought they’d be making absolutely everything from the ground up. V is more of a commander shepard or geralt than a skyrim or d&d pc, if that makes sense. You can customize and influence them to a HUGE degree, some aspects of V will always be the same.

Streetkid is the most boring background - at least for it’s introduction/prologue.

GAMEPLAY/TECHNICAL

If you can run your game on ultra, don’t. It actually looks best with a mix of high and medium settings. Unless you have a beast that has ray-tracing - then by all means use ray tracing and see how absolutely insanely good it looks.

There are color blind modes for the UI, but not for some of the AI/Netrunning segments in cutscenes. Idk how much this will effect folks with colorblindness but those segments are thankfully short. 

There was an issue with braindances being an epilepsy trigger because for some reason they decided to mirror the flashing pattern after real epilepsy tests - probably because it ‘looks cool’. I don’t have epilepsy but it even hurt my eyes and gave me a headache. Massive oversight and really goddamn weird. Thankfully this was fixed.

There is no driving AI. Like at all. If you leave your car in the street the traffic is just going to pile up behind it. It’s one of the very few immersion breaking things I’ve encountered.

Sometimes when an NPC is driving with you in the car, they’ll drive on the curb and/or run into people. It’s kind of funny but can occasionally result in something weird. Feels very GTA  - but nothing excruciating. 

The camera angle feels a little too low in first person mode when driving on cars. You get used to it though. 

The police in this game feel slapped on and I hope they improve it. Right now if you commit a crime, you can never tell what will actually trigger it. And if you just run away a few blocks the police forget about it. 

Bikes are just way more fun to ride than the cars are. 

You CANNOT respec your character after you make them. Ever. it sucks. Go in with an idea ahead of time what you wanna do - it’s better than being a jack of all trades.

as of now you also CANNOT change their appearance after you exit the character creator. This, also, sucks. Make sure you REALLY like your V or you’re gonna be replaying the openings over and over like I did. 

Photomode on PC is the N key. Had to look it up. The mode itself is great though

Shooting and Mele fighting feel pretty standard. I don’t have a lot of shooter experience besides Bethesda games so anything feels better than that to me. So far I’ve enjoyed stealth and mele the best, but that’s just my own taste! The combat and driving aren’t groundbreaking by any means, but they’re still very fun. I look forward to running at people with swords or mantis blades, and zipping around the city on a motorcycle to see the sights. The story, lore, and interesting quests and characters are the real draw here.

I haven’t encountered any game breaking bugs in 80-ish hours of play time. One or two T-poses, a few overlays not loading or floating objects - but nothing terrible. Again, my experience is with Bethesda games. This is all usually fixed by either opening your inventory and closing it again, or exiting out and reloading your save. 

The C button is mapped for crouching AND skipping dialogue by default. That’s terrible. Change it in the settings to be HOLDING C skips dialogue and you’ll be gucci.

There’s apparently a crafting system. I have never been inclined to touch it. But I also play on easy like a pleb so IDK how it all scales otherwise.

The mirror reflections can be a little bit weird, at least on my end. They always end up a teeny bit grainy despite my computer being able to run everything on Ultra Max. You can still get good screens out of it though!

So many people text me to sell me cars and I want them to stop. Please. also the texting menu is abysmal. The rest is ok tho

It’s pretty clear when you’re going to go into a ‘cutscene’. all cutscenes are rendered in-engine BUT you often will be talking to other characters at a specific angle or setting. The game locks you into this usually by having you sit down. It works for me - after all we do a lot of sitting- but it IS very obvious that it’s a way for the game to get you in the frame it wants to display.

That’s all I can think of rn! If you’re interested but wanted to get a slightly better idea of whats going on, I hope this helps. I’m really enjoying it and despite my issues it’s exceeding my expectations. I’m going to be thinking about and replaying this game for quite a while. 

[danni-dollarsign]

A Critical Look at “Pokemon: Sword and Shield” From a Casual’s Perspective...

A/N: Hey! if you’re reading this, then thank you! I don’t know why, but I thought to myself, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool to write a pointless essay about a Pokemon game?” And then I realized today was the 1YR anniversary of SWSH, so I figured I might as well just do it! So even though I’m late and probably nobody will really care to read all this nonsense, I wrote it! If you’re interested in all the analyses of PKMN SWSH, but aren’t too invested in the technical mumbo-jumbo used by the more hardcore fans, then maybe you’ll enjoy this. 

Also, it’s worth mentioning that I’m literally just some rando on the internet saying my opinion. None of this should really be taken SUPER seriously - it’s mainly designed to provoke thought rather than try to argue any specific idea. So if I say something that you don’t agree with, you got two options: 1) Draft a constructive comment or DM to me and we can discuss calmly like adults, 2) shake your idea and ignore this. There’s really no need to get heated up over a video game essay, of all things, so let’s not do that lol. 

But other than that, yeah! If you’re interested in more stuff like this from me (in-depth analyses of Pokemon games from the perspective of a low-key casual), lemme know! I’d love to chat with anyone about this awesome series.

So, without any further ado, let’s get into the essay (warning: it’s like ~8k words).

Introduction...

Welcome to the wonderful world of Pokemon! Love it or hate it, Pokemon has had a huge impact on popular culture in countless countries in a number of different ways, sparking memes, dreams, and happiness everywhere! It holds a very special place in my heart - Pokemon was a game that I got to share with my two older siblings, was one of the first fandoms I got into, and was a big reason as to why I grew to love creative writing so much after writing a couple fanfictions for the games. I’ve been playing Pokemon ever since my brother gave me a copy of Pokemon: Ruby and have been a devoted fan ever since. While I may not be super into the strategy and damn near mathematical aspects of gameplay, I’d like to consider myself a relatively knowledgeable fan with enough extra knowledge to give a look at one of these games from a casual, yet analytical view. So what game other than the newest title, Pokemon: Sword and Shield, with its release anniversary being today? In this casual online essay, I hope to describe all my thoughts of Sword and Shield (which I’ll shorten down to just “SWSH”) from the perspective of the everyday Pokemon fan.

General Gameplay...

Many top-title games of Nintendo are best known for their simplicity: in Super Mario Bros, you’re a mustachioed red guy jumping on monsters to try and save some random princess (who may or may not be in this castle); in The Legend of Zelda, you’re a green elf-looking guy slashing wildly at monsters with a sword given to you by some old guy in hopes of defeating some ultimate bad guy; and in Pokemon, you’re a child wandering around the region catching monsters who also accidentally saves the world before becoming the very best (like no-one ever was). And while the games themselves have grown from that initial stylistic simplicity, some have lost that creative in-depthness in favor of being playable for children. This is probably the biggest issue with the newer Pokemon games as of late.

Regardless, let’s look into the playability of SWSH.

It’s played like your regular Pokemon game; you’re a kid who journeys to become the Champion of Pokemon Battling with your friend, catching monsters known as “Pokemon” with pocket-sized balls dubbed “Pokeballs.” But I’m sure you’re all aware of that information, and are instead asking “Well, what’s the deeper plot?” Yeah, no, that’s it. You’re a kid catching Pokemon to become champion - oh, and you also accidentally save the world from a power-hungry businessman - but that’s neither here nor there.

Plot aside, the game is a bit barebones. It’s pretty linear gameplay (literally linear - the map of the Galar region is almost exactly a straight-line waltz from Postwick to Wyndon, which is a bit weird after dealing with the giant, sprawling maps of earlier generations) where you travel from place to place, beating gyms and catching ‘mons, before getting into a couple scuffles and becoming champion. For an RPG-styled game, it comes off as much too simplistic for older fans (I’d even reason that it’s too simplistic for younger players, as well). While I will say, I don’t exactly miss the days of hopelessly wandering around a pixel city, trying desperately to figure out how to move on to the next town because the answer to the puzzle is hidden in this giant area that my little peanut-brain couldn’t figure out at the time. But it is a bit demeaning to get “Hey, do you know where to go?” and  “Hey, follow me so you don’t get lost!” and “Oh, yeah, want another tutorial on how to easily catch Pokemon for the fourth time in a row?” every two seconds in a city where there’s only two places to check out.

But we can’t really discuss the gameplay of Pokemon without discussing the highlights of the region. Ever since the transition from 2D to 3D, Pokemon games have begun a trend of gimmicks - which I like to call “battle enhancers” - that they use to add uniqueness to their games. X&Y had Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon (and USUM) had Z-Moves, and now we have Dynamax! As we all know, battle enhancers are the strategy by which the player uses some extraterrestrial/magic stone to physically enhance one pokemon at a time for a certain period of time - in the case of Dynamax, the pokemon either grows in size or changes in form, gaining the ability to use special type-based attacks for a duration of three turns.

Honestly, I think it’s a pretty fun mechanic! Dynamax combines the good components of both Z-Moves and Mega Evolution - new forms, awesome moves, and a ticking clock. It adds a bit more strategy to the battle enhancer, where the player actually has to plan out who and when to Dynamax (though it’s really not that hard - most everyone will save it for their ace or the pokemon with the type advantage at the very end of the battle, because that’s what you do). But it’s fun and creative, making the battle a bit more exciting when you see your beloved ace become gargantuan on a field while the audience chants in excitement. Initially, I was skeptical of the battle enhancer, but once I threw myself into the game and really got into it, I felt it was fun and cool for the region. My feelings were further improved when I learned that Dynamax was inspired by the idea that the Nintendo Switch had the potential to be played on the TV as well as in a hand-held mode. The idea of turning pokemon “big” on a “big-screen” is really just so cute to me, really. Overall, it’s a fitting concept that is paired well to the game when everything is considered.

But when you look beyond the Dynamx experience to find more content in the game… there’s really not much else. Many people (including me) were ecstatic to hear about the free-roam areas in SWSH - the Wild Areas. Here, you can do all the fun grinding stuff that makes Pokemon games a bit more challenging and fun - hatching eggs, shiny-hunting, running around in circles, Dynamax dens, etc. But when looking at other Pokemon games, that’s really it. Let’s examine Pokemon: Sun and Moon, for example. This game really shines not just for its refreshing setting and compelling plot-line, but also for it’s amount of cute and quirky mini-games to be enjoyed for a good while outside of the main story. Pyukumuku Chucking, Mantine Surfing, the Alolan Photo Club, Ultra Warp Ride Travel - a good handful of mini-games that appeal to different kinds of people! All of these mini-games aren’t just tossed in there, either - they have a fitting place in the culture of the world and add to it, rather than just reiterating it. But when you look for mini-games in SWSH, you won’t really find anything aside from just battling. Sure, there’s the Battle Tower, as well, but I’ll personally say that I’ve never been a fan of the concept of post-game NPC battle buildings. For a hardcore player, they might be fun, but as a casual who can’t devote the time to really dig into understanding how IVs and competitive breeding works, they’re really no fun. Not to mention that nothing is really being added or developed with these battle buildings; they don’t add to lore, they don’t add to the culture of the region, you don’t even really gain anything from it - they’re pretty much just places to battle the occasional familiar face and that’s it. While I’m sure plenty of people adore these facilities in the games, I’ve never been too partial to them (I’d even prefer those god-forsaken casinos over another goddamn battle frontier).

But my biggest problem lies with the release of the DLC. While I’m not against the idea of DLC in general, both The Isle of Armour and The Crown Tundra left a bitter taste in my mouth when I started thinking about the issue of playability in SWSH.

I have always been more invested in the storyline of Pokemon games rather than the battling aspects. Usually I’ve always just gotten through the main story, then wandered around to find extra post-game content or mini-games, and then moved on to other games. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing - I just figure that the games have served their purpose for me upon completion, so rather than bore myself wandering around and doing things that don’t interest me, I go find another game that has more story-based content. That being said, I finished SWSH in less time than any other Pokemon game (I’d say somewhere around twenty hours, complete with me running around in circles like an idiot before rushing through content intermittently); as a result, I was no longer actively playing the game by the time the DLC was announced.

I’ll be honest and say that when I learned about all that was being offered in both sets of DLC, I felt a bit betrayed. I’m well-aware that Nintendo is a corporate business, and therefore will always prioritize financial gain over their fans’ lasting enjoyment of their titles - that’s just a fact of life. But I couldn’t help but feel like I paid a bunch of money for the bundled titles, only to play a game that hardly could be considered worthwhile or satisfying without added headcanons or fan-works, and then get told that extra content is available that may or may not add satisfaction to the experience that’s already long since ended for me. It was just a bit disappointing - and I’m not talking about the whole “Dexit” deal (I actually was on-board with the idea of having no real National Dex - I felt it added realism to the games and would force players to get to know the new Pokemon instead of just choosing the same team they always have since Gen 1 or whatever). My gripe is that I paid for a whole game, wasn’t satisfied with the result, only to hear later that the content that I might have been missing is available to pay for? That’s incredibly annoying. Not to mention that I was further disappointed after learning about the contents of the DLC, but we’ll get into that later.

Overall, the playability of SWSH is very basic, but can be enjoyable if you suspend belief and just enjoy it for what it is. When it comes to storyline, it’s not much of a game, and doesn’t sport much post-game content besides battling.

Immersion and Ambience...

Many of my friends can attest that I tend to like silly, fantastical concepts because I personally love to throw myself into the universe being offered to me. Pokemon is really no different - the games have always sported a very immersive experience for me thanks to the combination of interesting regions and evocative music (especially the music).

I think that most every Pokemon fan has a specific region, city, and music theme that sparks a plethora of nostalgic emotions to the point of near tears. For me, that’s always been Pokemon: Platinum, the Twinleaf Town theme - just staring into the rippling reflection of the pond by the player’s home, listening to that beautiful synth clarinet playing that nostalgic melody - it makes my heart beat with so much fervent passion that I hardly have the words to describe it! And I think that sense of nostalgia - regardless of whether or not those memories are old or new - has always been a strong-suit for Pokemon games. They always have the ability to inspire such deep emotions in me and other alike in a variety of ways, further adding to the ability to immerse us into the game’s world. And whether your favorite area is as simple as Twinleaf Town in the Sinnoh region, or as agonizing as Rock Tunnel in Kanto, it’s the spirit of certain cities/towns/routes that further add to the immersion of the world in question. But how well does SWSH hold those values? Spoiler Alert: Not very well.

SWSH, in the end, is still a Pokemon game - so the setting is very vibrant and colorful and everything that can hold my attention for long periods of time. But the problem arises when one begins to progress through the game and continuously forgets what’s where and where’s what. A lot of the map is painfully basic (again, due to the literal linear nature of the Galar region) and the cities themselves kind of lack their own real originality. There was an attempt at unique cities that’s become iconic of the Pokemon franchise, but it doesn’t really stick. I think most people would agree with me that the only real memorable areas in the main game were Slumbering Weald, Ballonlea, and Spikemuth, and each of these areas have their own set of problems that also make them a bit difficult to fully enjoy. At their core, most all Galarian cities have the same basic set-up: basic green plants (if plants are in that area at all), the same brick roads that lead either to the gym or to a route leading in/out of city to another city, and a giant gym/key building in the center of it all. And that’s really about it. No real interesting buildings except for gyms and Rose Tower (and I guess technically the hotels), no extraneous locations that aren’t directly related to the plot or to gimmicks - it’s very bare-bones and really can take you out of the experience.

In a hard contrast, I’ll give the example of Generation 1’s region set up - every city has its own personality that also matches the feel of the region as a whole. Every city is based on colors, and each city is themed after that, respectively (i.e. Vermillion City, the city of sunsets themed around the color orange, is home to the Pokemon Fan Club and the kick-ass electric-type gym that initiates feelings of excitement; Lavender Town, the noble town themed around the color purple, is home to the Pokemon Tower and spooky spirits that inspire feelings of somberness and reticence). Obviously, this isn’t very realistic, but the trick isn’t to replicate reality - it is to inspire reality. The Kanto region is incredibly creative, and therefore is easy to immerse oneself into the world because it’s become a world we are actively interested in. We know that it could never truly be real or plausible, but that hardly matters when we are so enthralled with the colors and set-up and feeling of the towns. We don’t really get much of that in Galar. It probably isn’t such a great idea for your final city - being Wyndon - to feel blank and lifeless when compared to minor cities in the region. And even when we find cities that hold that uniqueness we desire like in Spikemuth or Ballonlea, there’s really no other reason to be there longer than just beating the gym. It’s sad, really. Spikemuth is such a interesting, creative-looking town home to such cool characters, and yet there literally is only one path to get in and out of the town - the town isn’t even given small houses to investigate like literally every other city in the region. It’s a waste of potential! The fact that I can’t investigate such a promising setting that inspires me really takes me out of the world, reminding me that this is just a video game in which you move from Point A to Point B. It’s no longer a fantasy world for me to explore, but instead a line at the DMV to get my Drivers’ License. The only real good thing about this is that fanfiction writers get so much free-reign when it comes to writing about the city - the only thing we really learn about the city is that it’s underfunded and gloomy and that’s literally it. I would have really liked to see more inspired cities around the region where things outside of the main plot can be done, but hopefully this is just a problem we’ll see in this region.

Probably the most important aspect of immersion (in my opinion) is the music. With the potential to make or break a game for me, I hold a lot of expectations on the music found in video games (I’ve been classically trained in music since elementary school, and have always had a fondness for video game music). Pokemon music has always been some of the most inspiring pieces of art in my life - whether it be the kickass battle suite of Champion Cynthia, or the somber piano melody of Emma’s Theme, the music of Pokemon has always been the first thing I notice and analyze whenever playing the latest title. That all being said, I have quite a few notes to make in regards to the soundtrack of SWSH.

I’ll start with the pros, first. Generally, every main title has had its own feel when it comes to the soundtrack - DPP was jazzy and smooth, Sun and Moon was based on popular Hawaiian music meshed together with classic Pokemon synths, RSE was all about the horn section (trombones and french horns all the way!). SWSH, at the end of the day, isn’t much different. The region is inspired by the UK, so it’s no surprise to discover that the soundtrack was inspired by popular British Rock. As a result, a lot of themes went really hard, keeping a hint of individuality even when some battle themes hosted similar instruments. The biggest appeal of the soundtrack, I believe, was found in the little moments, namely the cheers of the gym battle themes. I think it’s safe to say that most people get super hyped when they hear those rhythmical chants coming to life whenever in the final leg of the battle, right when you begin to Dynamax. That’s amazingly exciting, never failing to suck me into that exact moment to gather the power of God and anime to defeat my opponent. While I wasn’t totally rocking out to every single song that came on, I was pretty satisfied with the music of SWSH, overall. It’s not too bad, and hosts a few bops that I still seek out to get my blood pumping.

But, as to be expected, there are plenty of cons when it comes to the soundtrack of SWSH. I could go over this for hours and hours, detailing complex definitions of music theory and basic song comprehension, but I’ll just make this nice and simple: it was really bland.

Note that I said “bland” and not “bad” - the music is fine in my opinion, I just wasn’t feeling the same feelings as I had in previous Pokemon titles. It all felt like Pokemon music, but not much else. It was like remembering hints of a memory long-lost, but you don’t really care about to dig deep into your mind for context. Towns had music, routes had music, pokemon and characters had battle themes, yada yada yada, nothing really to write home about. If I had to pick a song that honestly, truly invoked emotions beyond “Oh it’s battle time, now”, it would have to be the Battle Tower Theme, and that’s most likely because it was written by someone else entirely (Toby Fox, also known as the creator of Undertale and composer of super hard-hitting jams). And the worst part is that I never would have even been able to hear the Battle Tower theme because I hate battle buildings (which is more of a personal problem, I know, but still). Honestly, I would have preferred hearing that theme as compared to Champion Leon’s battle theme - I feel like his champion theme was very bland and lifeless, simply holding all the required elements of a Pokemon battle theme just because that’s what has to happen. It’s uninspired, faceless, and corporate, only to be completely foiled by the unique blast of energy found in the Battle Theme, which just screams “Prove that you’re the best!” over and over to me (also known as a big theme in the Pokemon games, especially in SWSH).

That’s not to say that every other theme in the game was terrible. I much enjoyed Marnie and Piers’ battle themes, but for a different reason. As we know, Piers and Marnie host a more “punk rock” style when compared to literally everyone else in-game, a trademark of Spikemuth citizens. With their occasionally cold and prickly (no pun intended) personalities, their themes go a bit harder into rock-land as compared to characters like Hop or Bede. There’s no conflict of style there - it’s “punk” with “rock”, loads of guitars and bass with a hint of synths to keep that Pokemon flare, and fits a bit better in the setting of the world. Mild conflict arises when we start looking at characters who aren’t rockstars or idols - let’s look at Bede’s theme, for example. While it really isn’t a bad theme (it’s actually, dare I say, a bop), I wouldn’t exactly say that the resulting pieces fit neatly together like they do for the Spikemuth duo. Bede’s theme requires a lot of synths to accentuate his more flamboyant and immature personality, but also holds ties with the rock guitars while also trying so desperately hard to sound like a Pokemon song. Now, I don’t think “Pop Synth Rock” is anything bad, per se; I just feel like the added rock elements didn’t do much to add to the musical representation of our cliche jerk-face “rival”. It feels like the rock elements were an after-thought rather than a planned layer of musicality. I could really say the same thing about Hop’s theme, but then I would have to re-listen to Hop’s theme because I always forget what it sounds like even after listening to it a second before.

A big problem is that not many of these themes hold lastingly memorable motifs/melodies, which is a personal pet-peeve of mine in games where the music is highly esteemed. In pretty much every battle theme (except the generic pokemon encounter theme, which is the same melody in every Pokemon game, only with variations added to fit the music theme of the region) is just an on-going strip of notes that sound nice when playing the game, but if you tried to pick out the specific melody-line of that character, it’s a bit of work to really find anything. Let’s look at a more concrete example: Lusamine’s battle theme from Pokemon: Sun and Moon is up on my list of most memorable battle themes, and will do well without the extra influence of young me’s nostalgia seeping in like it would with earlier generations’ battle themes. Lusamine, as we know, was the elite antagonist of the game, being the leader of this esteemed Pokemon protection group who later is revealed to be using Pokemon for her own demented goals of perfection. Almost immediately, the player hears the signature accents of the harpsichord playing the prime motif before the piece digs into a full orchestration. It doesn’t sacrifice anything for the sake of “sounding like a Pokemon song”, nor does it sacrifice anything for the sake of keeping with the musical inspiration. Instead, it focuses on being exactly what it needs to be - a musical representation of Lusamine, hosting orchestra-based instruments (piano, violas and cellos, horns, violins, light pad synths, etc…). Most anyone can pick out a handful of memorable motifs from her theme (the main horns melody line, the harpsichord melody line, the mid-section cello and piano melody line, etc…), and those remain in our unconscious. So, it’s no surprise that when she becomes the “Mother Beast” later on, when the player hears hints of those signature melody lines becoming distorted in the madness of the new battle theme, it invokes a particular emotion that fits elegantly with the subject matter of the plot right then. In short, it’s musical storytelling done right. In SWSH, we don’t have that extra omph of emotionally-nostalgic motifs; instead, we just get songs that play in the background of this video game, and that’s really it. If you don’t like the song, good news - you’ll probably only hear it once or twice, depending on who the NPC is. If you do, then you’re out of luck for the very same reasons. This game lacks a very basic hint of soul to its soundtrack, which is really such a jarring idea especially when you realize that they paired up with a composer who arguably has mastered the idea of musical motifs (Fox).

This really isn’t just SWSH’s problem, either. I also went through a similar heartbreak in S&M during the final stretch of the main game; after battling Lusamine and saving the region from the threat of Ultra Beasts (more or less, anyway), we the player go to challenge the champion, who is revealed to be Profession Kukui since there really is no true champion for the newly-made league. It’s hard to go from an exciting, powerful battle theme like Lusamine’s to some generic, cardboard-cut-out version of a champion battle theme for Kukui. It’s hard to invoke any sort of emotional appeal when there’s no real inspiration to be felt in the music; with no emotional connection, there is no emotion. It’s, once again, just music that plays in the background of a video game. A similar experience happens in SWSH with the player’s match against Champion Leon; though we have the potential to gain an emotional connection to a Leon Theme motif, we don’t get that. Instead, we just get music that is programmed to be exciting for our championship match that will undoubtedly change our lives forever. Bland, boring, anti-climatic - all for the sake of coloring in the lines. This has been an on-going problem in Pokemon games for years in which the Championship Battle Theme is less interesting than the Evil Team Battle Theme, which probably isn’t a good idea. It’s annoying when your villain has a better theme than the literal strongest trainer in the region - it ruins the chances of likability for the region’s “good guys” and overall is anti-climatic when it is finally time to become champion.

Overall, the ability to immerse someone like me in a game is very important when it comes to retaining players. While SWSH isn’t the worst Pokemon game when it comes to immersion (considering the fact that I actually beat the main game, which I can’t say for other main Pokemon titles…), Game Freak certainly could stand to learn from the game’s shortcomings.

Creature and Character Design...

The monster design is arguably one of the most controversial topics when it comes to any Pokemon game. Some people only care about the designs of Gen 1, others accept everything but Gen 5, and a select few could rant for hours on the stupidity of literally every Pokemon design in the franchise. Regardless, the design of the Pokemon native to the Galar region is an important topic of discussion when analysing the potential for enjoyment of the game. After all, I’m an artist who loves drawing all my favorite characters as well as my favorite Pokemon, so understanding the designs of these beloved figures is vital to understanding the game in general. For sanity’s sake, I’ll only be discussing new Pokemon introduced in this region, and will be ignoring all previous pokemon that aren’t regional variants.

Overall, the designs of the latest Pokemon are satisfactory. Because of my tendency to always suspend belief in fantasy works, I’ve very rarely had much to hate about Pokemon designs (not even in Gen 5, though I don’t particularly like any of them aside from the game cover legendaries). SWSH didn’t really bring much to the table when it comes to brand-new Pokemon, but the ones introduced are fitting and interesting: the Dragapult line, all three starters (even if I did laugh for literal hours at the discovery of Cinderace’s typing), Wooloo and Dubwool, Yamper and Boltund - just to name my top favorites. And I was totally invested in the designs of the game cover legendaries, Zamazenta and Zacian, since they held cultural relations with the region’s inspiration and therefore had actual meaning within the game besides just being cool mythical creatures. Nothing really outright bothered me with the designs or pokemon choices in this game; as I mentioned earlier, I was okay with the idea of no National Dex for this region, and that all the pokemon allowed in this game matched with the region well-enough.

But, of course, it’s not without faults. I found there to be a substantial lack of original legendaries in this game - we only have three real legendaries to catch in the main-game, four if you consider the DLC. We had a similar problem in Pokemon: Sun and Moon, but it was later amended with the introduction of Ultra Beasts (which can technically be regarded as legendary Pokemon, albeit from another dimension and not technically Pokemon). In SWSH, we are only given the option of catching more than two legendaries if we buy the DLC - this is remarkably disappointing for those who are interested in seeing new, unique Pokemon designs. I know many fans are constantly frustrated with Game Freak’s tendency to overuse Gen 1 Pokemon, but the fact that nobody is bothered by the running trend of being able to easily catch a bunch of previous games’ legendaries is beyond me. It’s essentially the same thing, overly relying on the fanbase’s sentimental nostalgia rather than moving forward to create new creature designs. I know for a fact that so many people would have been excited to catch Pokemon with cultural significance (maybe like elf Pokemon that resemble that of Seelie/Unseelie fairies, or more Pokemon that resemble chess pieces, or maybe more Pokemon that follow a theme of medieval artifacts - there are many possibilities), so the fact that they skimped out in favor of making people pay for nostalgia is ridiculous to me. This was a majority of the reason why I rejected buy any of the DLC content - why would I pay for Pokemon I’ve technically caught before? I mean, I guess it can be more for the kids who have never encountered the older legendaries, but then again, wouldn’t it be more beneficial for your game to have Pokemon that actually represent the new region? Instead of just stealing other games’ legendaries for the sake of saying that you have them, they could have just worked a little harder to design maybe three or six more cool legendary designs and centered those guys around the two DLC locations instead of just having Calyrex for The Crown Tundra. At the end of the day, it’s really just a cash-grab; the only reason I could ever see myself understandably buying the DLC for SWSH would be because I wanted to interact more with my favorite NPCs, but then again, I can just look at screenshots on Twitter and feel just as satisfied.

But not all is lost in terms of designs. Now let’s get into my favorite design portion of this segment and discuss the NPCs.

First, we’ll dig into the rivals. Personally, I really enjoyed the rivals of this game; while Pokemon is definitely running on a formula, I still was able to find enough about the three rival characters to genuinely enjoy their presence whenever they came on screen. I suppose we can expect to keep seeing this new Pokemon Trainer Rival Formula: Kind of Annoying but Too Sweet to Hate BFF Rival (Hop), 2 Edgy 5 U Rival (Bede), and Some Pedo’s Waifu Material Rival (Marnie).

Hop is arguably one of my favorite Pokemon rivals of all time (right up there with Gladion from S&M). He’s one of the only Pokemon characters to get a realistic character development over the course of the game’s playable story, which really humanizes him and makes up for his occasionally annoying personality. Over the course of the game, Hop goes from silently residing in his brother’s shadow to learning to stand on his own without needed any outside validation; much to my surprise, it’s not some half-hearted transition. Hop doubts himself during the challenge, as evidenced not just by his dialogue but in the way he actively changes his team to try and be more competitive like everybody else. I remember feeling so heartbroken in realization that Hop stopped using his beloved Wooloo, which is rightfully paired up with the excitable boy. The idea that Hop uses Wooloo, a normal-type cute Pokemon that generally wouldn’t be used in a competitive team, really adds more dimension to his character; when he learns to enjoy himself instead of letting his doubts overtake him, he returns to using Dubwool and his favorite team, demonstrating how he would prefer to have fun as himself than be someone he isn’t. I found that to be a really wholesome theme to his character, one that we haven’t really seen in a Pokemon game yet - it was a pleasant surprise! Hop is sweet and kind, always wanting to motivate the player even when he’s in his own internal turmoil. With all that added with his adorable babyface and goofy/awkward preteen disposition, he really makes for a likeable rival character.

The next rival to be introduced is none other than our classic Mean Boy rival, Bede. He’s a character the fanbase is a bit more accustomed to due to previous titles’ rivals (i.e. Green/Blue/Gary Oak from in R&G/B, Silver from SGC, technically also Gladion from S&M…), so are quite a few expectations placed on his character as a result. Also true to the typical Pokemon Jerk Rival, he has a complicated homelife (he comes from an orphanage, as we later learn) and has a similarly complicated parent-child relationship to the leading antagonist of the game (in this case, Chairman Rose). Bede constantly assumes himself to be better than he is and isn’t afraid to be a total prick about it, choosing to bully Hop upon winning battles against him to boost his own inflated ego (though there’s hints pointing to Bede actually having rather low self-esteem). All things considered, I liked Bede as a character about as much as one can like a mean rival archetype, but I was more than pleased to discover his transition to a more likably mean-spirited character when he later returns to the game to challenge the player after being disqualified from the challenge. While we’ve had a likeable mean rival before (namely Gladion), Bede is something of his own entity with how he actually has an attempt at character development that leads him to a mini-redemption near the end of the game. He’s really the first mean rival to have a transition from total jerk to slightly-peeved tsundere, which was probably a good idea on Game Freak’s part so that we wouldn’t be left with a character we downright hated after the way Bede quite literally destroys Hop’s confidence. It’s nowhere near as impressive as Hop’s character development (which isn’t super impressive to begin with, but let’s ignore that fact for a bit), but it’s still interesting to see in a monster-catching game about being the best you can be.

And then, of course, we get to the cute-girl rival, Marnie, also known as the place where I get a bit mad again. I’d like to say that I absolutely love Marnie; she has an adorable design and interesting personality that captures my attention whenever she has screen time. But she serves one purpose in this game, and one purpose alone - being the main cute girl rival of the game. Marnie has the potential to be a similarly interesting rival (cute design that meshes “punk” with “cute”, has a wholesome and fun dynamic with her gym leader older brother, uses a Pokemon that isn’t considered to be a “competitive” choice as her ace, has a cool/cute personality…), and yet we probably only talk to her about five times over the course of the main game. Little is done with her character - in fact, the only real thing she does in the game other than becoming the next dark-type gym leader is that she helps the player sneak into Spikemuth after the gates have been shut by the remarkably-harmless Team Yell. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I would have loved to have seen more done with her character. With the boy rivals being more fleshed out than her, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth because the female rival is the one left with a blank personality (and I’m not just saying that because she hardly smiles - that’s really one of the only things we get about her that gives her an actual personality). My frustrations are further exacerbated because this has always been an issue in Pokemon games, in which the girl rivals are so barebones for seemingly the only purpose of serving as some neckbeard’s waifu that they can input a personality they desire despite the fact that she’s canonically a minor. Why put in the time to give dimension to Hop and Bede, but not Marnie? And we know for a fact that Game Freak has to recognize the lack of personality given to Marnie, especially since they had previously come out with Lillie’s wonderfully sweet character arch in S&M and USUM. Personally, I feel that it was because they didn’t feel like having a more punkish girl character who also had traditionally feminine-coded interests (she’s known to have been distracted during the gym challenge by the boutiques) and ultimately decided to just not give her any further personality other than that, perhaps fearing that it would dissuade the gross creeper fanbase from latching onto her. But that’s really just speculation, so don’t take any of my nonsense too seriously. Really, I’d just rather we had a girl rival with more personality to match the other two rivals so it wasn’t so annoyingly unbalanced.

Moving on from the rivals, we get into the designs of the League Staff of the game. In most other Pokemon games, I’d never really been too interested in the gym leaders; they had always been more of minor bosses, just faces that you saw for a couple of seconds before pummeling their ‘mons and moving to the next city. But in this game in particular, there was a sudden transition from simple puzzle master to a full-on celebrity figure. I really enjoyed this! It was so nice to actually have some information on the gym leaders other than what type they sported; suddenly, they have personalities and interests - they become real to the player. Not to mention that there really is a gym leader for everyone to enjoy, thanks to their unique personalities and styles.

I’ll be a bit honest and say that some of their clothing designs are remarkably stupid for even an anime-based RPG game (I mean, I know we joke about Leon’s terrible sense of fashion in the fanbase, but can we just pause and ponder what Piers’ wears? I mean, a leather jacket with spandex? Metal boots and a work-out tank??? What is he wearing?!), but it isn’t exactly distracting. In Western cultures in particular, we can see a trend towards the glamourization of the “athleisure” style, or athletic wear designed more for everyday use rather than just working out. It was kind of fitting to see this be the primary style for the gym leaders, who can basically be described as hierarchical sports stars. Weird? Sure. But in the context of the world, it all fits together, and once again adds to the immersion aspect of the game.

Looking at our main antagonists, they are designed quite well. Chairman Rose is designed to be quite easy and fun to hate (at least for me) - he’s an important-looking businessman who’s very impressed with himself, paired up with a beautiful yet terrifying subordinate woman who does most all the hardwork for him (...actually, they kind of remind me of an antagonistic Cl. Mustang and Lt. Hawkeye from Fullmetal Alchemist…). They also had noteworthy battle themes that popped a bit more than other battle themes in the game.

While they hardly count as antagonists, I’d like to also make a brief mention of Team Yell. They’re more annoying than anything, which is a trend that I’m not too sure how I feel about yet. It was definitely more likable coming from Team Skull, that’s for sure. I would have liked Team Yell doing a bit more damage, having them be a bit more unruly and controversial before evening them out with the whole emotional appeal of them cheering on for Marnie in hopes of saving their ruined town. But they weren’t too terrible in my opinion.

I could talk for hours on the champion of the region, too, Champion Leon. He’s a really fun and charming character overall, less of the supremely wise and powerful champion that we’ve seen in older gens and instead being a more quirky but worthwhile opponent on the path towards the crown. But I definitely preferred him more as a character than as a champion; even though his team changes depending on your starter, it’s not too challenging of a fight if you know what you’re doing, especially when you immediately know what his ace pokemon is (something we don’t really learn in other gens about the champions). While I’m sure the idea of a powerful but transparent champion can be done, Leon doesn’t really stand up as a powerful trainer when compared to other champions in the franchise. But he’s definitely still a fun, interesting character concept that I am grateful for in this particular game.

When it comes to the designs of the primary NPCs and Pokemon, SWSH continues to talk that line just above mediocrity. Not too bad, not all that great, but definitely not something to be forgotten. I’d reason that the primary strength of this generation lies within the characters that are introduced.

Uniqueness vs. Status as a Pokemon Game...

In regards to the uniqueness - how well this game stands on its own as an individual concept rather than just another Pokemon game - I’m a bit divided. On one hand, I’m a bit saddened by the watering down of content and constant reliance on concepts from older games. But I can also see that SWSH introduced a lot of interesting ideas that have inspired so many fans for this generation. And while yes, this gen didn’t have much to offer in terms of new Pokemon, new scenarios, or new lore, I do think that it does hold its own when compared to the other games in the main series. New characters are introduced to the player, all of which having good (and bad) traits that allow for lots of fan-created content with their essence; a new look into a brand-new battle enhancer that requires a different strategy than those of previous battle enhancers; a new culture found within the Galar region that can inspire many more thoughts and theories on the Pokemon world as a whole in a number of ways. We cannot pretend that SWSH isn’t an influential game just because it wasn’t ground-breaking; even with my extreme distaste for the Black and White games, I still admit that they led to important decisions and ideas that led to the creation of games I did enjoy. So, as its own entity, I think that Pokemon: Sword and Shield really has a lot of offer and would probably be an amazing game for a younger player who’s just getting into the Pokemon universe.

But I think that a lot of us long-time fans can agree that this game doesn’t quite match up with the others in terms of giving those real “Pokemon game” feelings. The problem with big-titles like this is that the company tends to lose sight of what really makes a franchise so influential isn’t the stuff found at face-value. It’s not the creatures or NPCs or game mechanics or design or any of that garbage - it’s the feelings we get when all of those things reach that perfect harmony. It’s the rumble in my chest whenever I listen to that famous intro-sequence of my old Pokemon: Ruby game; it’s the fire in my eyes when I went back to challenge Pokemon Trainer Red for the tenth time that night back in my old Pokemon: Heart Gold game; it’s the tears I cried when I watched the only interesting character, N, leave my playable character after his emotional spiel following the defeat of Ghetsis in my long-since abandoned copy of Pokemon: White. At the end of the day, Pokemon is more of an emotion I get rather than a game I play, and I think this is an idea that few people can recognize for themselves. And while I’m aware that I literally just spent several thousand words bagging and praising this game for all those face-value aspects, I also know that when you add that extra little bit of care to your work, go a little further with a character you know someone will adore, or try something new with that new battle theme, there comes a sensation that goes beyond that of love for a silly fantasy game. I’d like to think it’s something akin to inspiration.

Conclusion...

In conclusion, Pokemon: Sword and Shield is far from perfect. With a number of faults and disappointments, I can understand why a lot of fans were less than interested in giving this game the time of day. But I also want to say that this game deserves to be understood and appreciate for what it is, for what it’s done. Who knows what sort of new ideas this game has inspired? Whether it be in the name Pokemon game or someone else’s passion project, I am confident in the potential that this game has to bring someone’s dreams to fruition. It already has inspired so much amazing fan-content from the community; after so many years of being away from the fandom, SWSH was the game that drove me right back, giving me the drive to once again indulge in my middle-school days of sketching out my latest comfort character or writing out a million headcanons in a way-too plot-heavy story. Many fan-creators in this community feel the same as me, I’m sure, so it would be untrue of me to say that this game was anything less than what it was: a fun, simple game that prides itself in its characters and potential rather than complex combat mechanics or some corkboard-plot nightmare. It’s a game meant to be enjoyed, so we must remember to find our enjoyment wherever it can be found. For me, Pokemon can’t really do much wrong, but also is held up to a level of expectations that I can’t quite understand even for myself. This, at the end of the day, is a video game from my all-time favorite franchise; so long as I can find enjoyment there in it, then it’s worth it. In a world filled with nihilism and cynicism, it’s nice to visit a land where you’re wise to try and be the very best like no-one ever was, to be the next best Pokemon Master.

[askmerriauthor]

Skyrim Civil War Quest Alternatives

Because @techmomma and @askdeserteagle made me start thinking about Skyrim again.

I really dislike what we got in the Civil War quest line.  Mind you, I know I’m not saying anything new here - Skyrim’s been out for ages and we’ve all heard the discussions about how little influence your choices have, and that it basically has no impact on the game world either way.  But I’d still like to consider some alternative outcomes that would’ve been fun to explore and would like to invite y’all to give some ideas as well.

So to start with, we of course have the main three:

Join the Stormcloaks Side with Ulfric and give everyone you don’t like the boot, keeping Skyrim for the Nords and ensuring their religious freedom no matter who they have to crush along the way.

Join the Empire Side with the Empire and rejoin the fractured region under a single banner in hopes of standing unified against the Thalmor, despite an uneasy and extremely questionable “truce” with said Thalmor.

Don’t Get Involved Ignore the Civil War questline entirely.  Go fight dragons, eat entire cheese wheels, ignore the sporadic pockets of conflict between warring factions, be awesome.

See, now the trouble with all these is that there isn’t really any in-depth exploration of the ideas, implications, and consequences that come of your choices as a player.  In terms of overall impact you basically just pick whichever side you like/doesn’t suck as much to your tastes and the end result basically equals out the same.  Skyrim as a whole doesn’t feel substantially different at the end of it all.  Not getting involved, on the other hand, is basically just ignoring game content and also doesn’t yield any impact either.  The Civil War is touted as being this major element of the game yet you can basically ignore it for extremely little difference.  I’d love to see there be notable changes to the setting, the behavior of NPCs, and the nature of Skyrim itself when you picked a side or if you chose to keep out of it and let things play out on their own.  That’s sort of a core flaw for the entire game though; even when you do something really major like assassinate the Emperor himself that should logically have sweeping consequences, nothing actually changes.

Other alternatives I’d like to see are as such:

Negotiate Peace It seemed like we were supposed to get something in this vein but that it got cut from the final production.  In the face of the Dragon threat, the Dovahkiin gets the opportunity to call a ceasefire and bring all the various factions literally to the negotiation table on neutral ground.  Along the way some sleuthing reveals Ulfric is an (unwitting?) asset of the Thalmor, but we never get a chance to present this information!  In the end the whole thing basically goes nowhere - even if you keep everyone civil at the table, it all evaporates as soon as Alduin is dealt with.

The idea of Ulfric being influenced by the Thalmor and said Thalmor intentionally driving the civil war in an effort to weaken the Empire further is just so packed with potential.  It could drive Ulfric to change his ways and rejoin the Empire after recognizing the true common foe or send him further into zealous rage, blaming the Empire for allowing the Thalmor to infiltrate in the first place.  The Empire could have a new angle with which to rally the fractured Holds of Skyrim as they’d have clear evidence the Thalmor had already broken the White-Gold Concordat, or even try to use the revealed connection via Ulfric to counter the Thalmor’s efforts.

Ultimately, the “good outcome” of all this would be to present a single unified Skyrim with all factions coming together, driving out the Thalmor, and setting things up for a big looming confrontation as a new war promises to come soon.

Salt the Earth The opposite scenario to the above.  Instead of negotiating peace, the player has the option to go “you all suck, time for mayhem” and just goes ham on everyone.  The Dovahkiin becomes Public Enemy #1 and destroys not only the leadership of either faction, but the Jarls who support either side as well.  Total upheaval of power in Skyrim.  Since the Thalmor themselves have no core presence in the region there’s no directly harming them, but there could always be the option to wipe out their embassies as much as possible.  Since the Thalmor had a vested interest in seeing the civil war go on for as long as possible, it becomes a question of whether putting a violent stop to it all was a good or bad thing for them.  On one hand, the people of Skyrim will inevitably replace their leadership with a new, potentially stronger/unified force or even potentially rally behind the Dovahkiin as its conqueror/savior.  On the other hand, the Dovahkiin striking such a massive blow against the region on their own makes for a delicious opportunity to conquer Skyrim, hindered only by the threat of said Dovahkiin themselves.  After all, if this lone warrior could crush several armies on their own, maybe it’s not such a good idea to cross them...

Join the Thalmor I personally consider the Stormcloaks to be the “bad guy route” in the story choice, but let’s go even further and make a “really, REALLY bad guy route”.  Whether the player character is a High Elf or simply a useful asset of another race, they have the option of joining the Thalmor and furthering the chaos that is already consuming Skyrim.  Instead of overt conflicts and assaulting bases like we see in the standard Stormcloak/Empire route, this would result in a more subtle approach of infiltration, subterfuge, and sabotage.  Basically if you liked the Embassy Party stealth mission, the whole quest chain would be more of that.  You play all sides against one another and watch them tear each other apart, perhaps with some extra bonus options if you’re aligned with any of the various stealth/knowledge-based factions/Daedric princes.

Join the Forsworn You know who the real sons of Skyrim are?  Well, it’s technically the Snow Elves, but that ship has sailed.  In this case it’s the Forsworn who were forced out of their land by the colonization of the invading Nords.  While the Dovahkiin gets to learn about the history of the Forsworn in some considerable detail throughout the game, there’s nothing to be done with that knowledge.  The Forsworn remain a permanently hostile enemy faction just because.  Let’s go with a secondary route of making friends with the Forsworn and getting them some/all of their land back, be it through negotiation or uprising.

The Sudden but Inevitable Betrayal Regardless of what route you choose, there should always be at least one opportunity (if not several, ideally) to go rogue and turn the whole thing on its head.  Usher one faction to the cusp of victory only to suddenly backstab its leader.  Spend all your time undermining one faction for the apparent aid of a second, only to nip off and betray them both to a third party.  You should always have the chance to just upend everything, especially in the most dramatic and potentially self-destructive manner possible, for the chance of being a total mastermind or chaos agent.

[atamascolily]

I never actually read Junior Jedi Knights #1: The Golden Globe by Nancy Richardson before, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Like most of Star Wars Legends, it is a trip, but in a fun, if confusing way.

The academy was built to train people to become Jedi Knights, protectors of freedom and justice. Only beings who had shown they were skilled in working with the Force had been invited to attend the academy. Anakin was one of those chosen to attend the first session created for younger children and aliens.

So... Jedi Hogwarts, then. The first Harry Potter book was published in Britain in 1997 and in the US in 1998, and this book was published October 1, 1995, so it actually predates Hogwarts, but I’m still calling it that.

Leia “can’t bear” to have all three kids away at Jedi Hogwarts at the same time, so now it’s Anakin’s term. I’m raising my eyebrows because Leia is a politician assuming she’s not actually Chief of State right now; she’s super-busy and Winter took care of the kids for much of their childhood. It does explain why we never see anyone from the YJK books in this series, and the good-bye scene between Anakin, Leia, and Han is 300% more believable and heart-warming than anything in the Disney ST, so I approve.

Also, here’s some world-building for all your Yavin 4 fics:

“The Great Temple hasn’t been changed much on the outside,” Luke said. He had sensed his nephew’s curiosity. “But we had to change the inside in order to create the academy rooms. We’ve divided some spaces into sleeping and refresher units for you and your classmates. And we’ve hung heavy drapes above the open windows. The windows in the Temple have no glass because the climate here is so warm that we rarely need it. However, every few months we have terrible storms. The temperature drops and rain and winds whip through the jungle. When that happens the heavy drapes keep the temple warm and dry. There’s one place that we haven’t touched, though-the Grand Audience Chamber at the top of the Temple. All of the instructors and students here agree that it is just too beautiful to change,” Luke explained.

(And then everyone who’s seen the movie would be confused! LOL)

HAVE I MENTIONED HOW MUCH I LIKE THAT TIONNE IS A MAJOR PLAYER IN THESE BOOKS? Because I do. Traveling with Luke and rescuing kids, singing songs, being kind... #legend. I don’t think we ever see Kam, though, so I don’t know what he’s up to. It’s literally just Luke and Tionne, plus a bunch of NPCs here.

I don’t get how Anakin can be so good with droids yet not understand Artoo’s Binary, but okay. I love how Artoo just follows him around for... reasons, or he would except Anakin cheats by using the stairs. Ignore Artoo at your peril, kid.

More world-building:

Anakin had reached the Grand Audience Chamber. It was the highest room in the Temple, and unlike the other rooms, it had not been rebuilt for the academy. Gently Anakin pushed open the large doors. He walked into the center of the Grand Audience Chamber. The walls were a deep tan stone, worn smooth over the years. Blueleaf shrubs, the most common shrub on the moon, poked through several cracks in the stones. They attached themselves to the stone with suckers. The shrubs were electric blue, and as Anakin leaned close he could smell a spicy perfume.

(As an aside, I don’t understand why Legends makes the Grand Audience Chamber at the top of the Temple - the room we see in ANH seems too large to fit at the top of a pyramid the size the ones in Chichen Itza. Does anybody have any drawings of the interior of the Temple of Kukulcan or any other Meso-American step-pyramids  to confirm or deny this? Also, I don’t get why an audience chamber would be at the top of so many stairs - it seems like you’d want that to be closer to the ground for easier access for the plebes, and keep the upper levels as private space for the aristocracy. But I digress...)

Anakin meets Tahiri, who is from Tatooine and raised by Sand People, because we need to have more movie references and there are only like 5 acceptable planets for Star Wars writers, because movies, so that’s fine. Her defining character traits are impulsiveness, constant chatter, and a distaste for shoes.In light of the prequels, her comments on sand have aged well:

“Where I’m from it’s hot and there’s sand everywhere - gritty sand that sticks between your toes. So, aren’t you going to say something?”

Tionne shows up and sends them to bed. Anakin’s not a morning person. #Relatable. At breakfast, his reaction to Tahiri’s account of her dream in which he saves her on a river is priceless:

Anakin was silent. So this was what his brother Jacen was always talking about. I guess girls do get crushes on boys and say things that make no sense, he thought.

LOLOLOLOL. Also, Anakin says Jacen and Jaina are his best friends and Tahiri laughs and says No, I’m your best friend now like I said yesterday, and MY HEART. These kids. I love them.

Anyway, Luke lectures them on the Force, and it’s mostly Yoda’s sayings all mushed together, and apparently “Believe and you succeed” really is a part of it, so okay then. We swing suddenly from Anakin’s POV to Luke’s and it’s kinda jarring, especially since Luke is only interested in recapping his own personal history and has nothing new to say.

Anakin starts dreaming the same dream as Tahiri and hearing voices, so they sneak out to investigate even though Luke has explicitly warned them not to. Anakin’s so worried about being kicked out, it’s charming...

LOL, Tionne expects them to lift 2-kilo weights with their minds on the first day. What. They do it through the Power of Friendship, because of course they do, in between plotting how to get out of the academy and investigate the dream.

Fortunately, Artoo is there to help! Good old Artoo! He’s got a lot of practice in being sneaky. I have no idea why the raft is conveniently there waiting for them in the jungle, but okay. Tahiri falls in during the storm, but fortunately Anakin is able to use his lesson in TK to save her. They lift Artoo out the same way once they get to their destination, but Tahiri drops him in the water when her control slips. Good thing he’s waterproof!

Anakin name drops Exar Kun and a bunch of Yavin IV backstory. I like that Anakin is Indiana Jonesing his way across Yavin while simultaneously wondering if his uncle’s going to kick him out. Also Artoo brought the only light. They find a mysterious golden globe and a cute animal named Ikrit and cover themselves in glitter before heading back.

Tahiri’s already willing to sacrifice herself for Anakin in case Luke wants to kick them out and they’ve literally just met and this makes me wish I didn’t know what I know about NJO, because now everything hurts.

Luke’s waiting them for them, all stern in his Jedi blacks and.... Artoo steps up and lies for the kids, and he decides he’s not going to end their careers as a Jedi students just yet. LOL.

Meanwhile, Ikrit is curled up in Anakin’s bed - turns out he’s a secret Jedi Master and the voice in Anakin’s head. Turns out the globe is full of trapped children because Exar Kun is a jerk and they can’t tell any adults or it will be destroyed. Ikrit’s been sleeping for hundreds of years waiting for the right kids and he chose them. Of course, Anakin and Tahiri vow to do what they can to help, even though it’s going to be difficult, because of Luke’s lecture earlier, which Anakin can recite from memory (he really does have an eidetic memory, doesn’t he?). The end.

I have so many questions. Why did Artoo help them out? (I assume Ikrit, but I don’t remember if that’s ever explicitly spelled out. And can Jedi talk to droids with the Force? How did Ikrit meet Artoo? It just raises more questions.) Was it Ikrit or Artoo who set up the raft? How did they do that and where did they get it? Does Ikrit even have thumbs? Why couldn’t Anakin and Tahiri just walk to the Palace of Woolamanders or whatever? Did Ikrit really hibernate for four centuries straight or did he wake up every couple of years to stretch his legs and whatnot? Why did he do that rather than, you know, get help or something? Why has Tahiri been dreaming of the river her whole life, only for the dream to suddenly jump to Anakin? Is Ikrit sending her the dreams or is the Force?

 I like how there’s such an emphasis on training, when they’ve been on-planet for less than a week (three days??) because that’s how fast the plot moves when you’re eleven (and Tahiri is NINE!). These kids! Did I mention I love them?

Ikrit is technically a Kushiban and not a Hoojib as I’d originally thought. I’m not sure exactly what the difference is, since they’re both sentient telepathic lagomorphs, but that’s fine, I guess. I am fond of the Hoojibs, but I didn’t know about them until @joysweeper​ posted some Star Wars Marvel comics from the ‘70s with Plif, so they’re not exactly common knowledge. That said, I really like the illustration of Ikrit on the cover, and I’m also absurdly fond of him in spite of the fact that canon is so flimsy here.

[gegenji]

Merchant (MER) as a FFXIV Job

A while back (almost a year and a half now, in fact) I wrote a dissertation on how one could implement Beastmaster as a tank job using concepts taken primarily from how Summoner was being handled at the time. Given how things have gone since that point with the Arcanist-based pet jobs, its base concept seems all the more possible... though it's just as likely to become a Limited Job like Blue Mage just to allow for the full actualization of taming something and using it as your companion. Still, it was a fun thing to do and I’ve been mulling over doing another.

This is the actualization of that, albeit a rather spur of the moment one. Like before, it’s - as the title implies - the idea of a "Merchant" combat class that is actually an attempt at providing that Chemist-like job folks have been wanting. Just with some inspiration from the Bravely Default job of the same name, and some other gil-based concepts like Zenniage.

As for how it came about? It all just sort of... clicked into place during a conversation, honestly. Hopefully it all makes sense, too!

Disclaimer: As with the BST theorycraft post, this whole idea is just speculation and ideas presented for fun and as a mental exercise. There's likely to be gaping holes in the concept that would need to be dealt with to be executed properly, and things like potency and cooldown timers won't be delved into at all. This is all theorycrafting and spitballing, after all. Don't expect much else to come out of it other than perhaps some smiles on the part of the reader.

And, also like the Beastmaster post, this will likely get unnecessarily in-depth and wordy (as is my wont). So it will be put under a Read More just like the last.

High Concept: Merchant as an "Item"-Based Healer Job

As mentioned above, one of the abilities I've seen people lamenting not being able to do in FFXIV is throw potions at people, a la the Chemist in Tactics (though the job is also in FFV in a much more broken capacity) or - honestly - like what you can do in any single-player RPG like the non-MMO Final Fantasies. Of course, I’ve always had the mental block on actually thinking too deeply on it because the Alchemist already exists as a Disciple of the Hand class. Why would they make a Chemist job that would just confuse people?

There were other issues as well, of course. Most folks also wanted this Chemist job to use a gun too - another design decision taken from Tactics, since Chemist was among the three jobs that could use one (the other being Mustadio’s titular Machinist - a Squire replacement - and Mediator). This, of course, would step on the toes of FFXIV’s own Machinist job without some sort of variation to set it apart..Using two smaller pistols at once, for example. But I wanted to avoid as much overlap as possible - giving the job its own kind of unique identity - and that meant a unique weapon as well.

Then there's the problem that if the character actually had to use items, then that would require this job to have to carry around materials much like how Hunters had to carry around arrows or a Rogue their poisons in WoW. It would attach a cost to playing the job that - while fitting for the flavour - would be detrimental to the player since they would have to spend more gil than any other job. So, of course, the obvious solution for this is to nix that for the sake of gameplay.

With all this ironed out, the overall concept became one of the idea of a healer that uses "items" as a method of healing and support, where said "items" are just cooldowns like anything else. Like what you'd see with some NPCs or use yourself when playing as them. Just with some fun little additions to add a bit of mercantile flair to the job as a whole, all of which I'll delve into here.

--------------------

General Information

Job Role: Healer Primary Stat: Mind Weapon: Bag

You read that right! Bags! These were actually a weapon in Final Fantasy Tactics. Normally only usable by female characters, they had a random damage range like axes. However, for someone who is using items to heal, it also seemed fitting that they use the very bag they carry everything in as a weapon in a pinch.

Job Gauge: Profit Gauge

The Profit Gauge is a meter to display how much "profit" the Merchant has gained during the course of combat. Profit is used to increase the efficacy many of the Merchant's moves, allowing for big bursts of healing or damage at the cost of the resource. It also has a section to indicate whether they are in a Nald or a Thal Market.

Limit Break: Defibrillation

Taking all the energy gathered from the fight and funneling it into an experimental device, the Merchant jolts downed allies to life and heals everyone up to full.

--------------------

Expendable Resource - "Profit"

(The name for this resource has gone through a few revisions. First was Currency or Wealth, and then started moving away to the more abstract Gratuity before ending up as Profit.)

All things are made from aether. People, plants, animals, the land itself. As such, this also extends to the various concoctions made by (and oftentimes out of) these things. However, such things are never a perfect one-to-one ratio. And there's always some degree of excess.

The Merchant skims this excess from the potions and tinctures they use, gathering each extra little bit of aether in the crystal focus clasp set in their Bag. From there, they can infuse it right back into the next item they use - giving an extra little kick to the healing or damage that it might do.

This allows a Merchant to suddenly bolster the power of their abilities, but each use eats into that Profit. If they spend too much of it or use it too frivolously, they might not have enough saved up for when they actually need it, considering...

Nald/Thal Market

On the side of the gauge, there is a circle that is usually empty. However, after hitting a certain level, this field activates to symbolize the Merchant’s ability to identify the ebb and flow of the aether that is coursing about the battlefield. This is represented by a symbol of Nald'thal with an up arrow, a down arrow or a line along with a timer. These, in order, identify a Nald, Thal, or Even Market.

During a Nald Market, there is extra aether to be had - leading to a boost in the amount of Profit gained from each action taken. Conversely, a Thal Market means a dearth of aether, resulting in less Profit being gained with each action. An Even Market means no change to the Profit gained at all, and is the default when out of combat.

Once combat begins, a timer appears for the Even Market, and then it cycles into a Nald or Thal Market. After that subsequent timer runs out, it can refresh as the same Market or switch to the opposite. It takes a wily Merchant to capitalize on a Nald Market, gaining and spending Profit freely. But they should also make sure to keep some left over should it become a Thal Market.

--------------------

Combat and Mechanics

As mentioned above, the main idea of this type of healer is a healer that can - in times of necessity - have a sudden spike of healing or damage by utilizing the Profit Gauge. It's not unlike how a Scholar can use their Aetherflow stacks for a sudden Lustrate or Indomitability. However, a Merchant can constantly gain their resource unlike a Scholar, and thus their healing is more deeply tied with having this resource on hand to be spent.

The gain of Profit, however, is not a constant thing thanks to the shifting of the Nald/Thal Market. As such, playing a Merchant is about using their abilities to seek to properly utilize and cultivate this flighty resource. There are, of course, some abilities to allow them to circumvent or even ignore their Profit Gauge, but these are mainly for emergencies.

The overall idea is to be utilizing your basic attacks and heals to generate Profit at all times. These are generally low potency, however, and will require usage of your gathered Profit in order to put out any meaningful numbers. So, just getting a full Profit Gauge and then sitting on it until you need a big heal is technically a viable strategy, actively utilizing your Profit and the abilities that manipulate it will maximize both the Merchant's damage and healing capabilities.

And, due to the ability to burst damage as well as healing, the Merchant would likely end up one of the more damaging Healer options. However, this comes at the cost of eating far more into its healing. The other healers would likely be preferable for their consistent healing and damage numbers over the peaks and valleys of a Merchant. However, a properly played one makes a perfectly serviceable healer.

-------------------- 

Actions & Traits

Much like the BST section of the same name, the items listed are not in level order and are instead grouped as I feel would work best. The overall goal to show the items in each part of the kit for an overall whole. Potency, cooldown timers, and Profit costs are not included either and will instead be given in vague terms. I'm sure concrete values could be figured out for these, but that is a bit beyond the scope of this theorycraft.

Attack Items

Dark Potion - Deals unaspected damage.

Poison Breath  - Deals unaspected damage over time.

TNT - Deals unaspected damage to target and all enemies nearby it.

Zenniage - Deals unaspected damage, potency increases with Profit. Uses all Profit bar.

Support Items

Aqua Vitae - Restores target's HP.

Caligo Vitae - Restores own HP and HP of all nearby party members.

Savium Vitae - Resurrects target to a weakened state.

Iron Draft - Erects a magicked barrier which nullifies damage. Does not actually heal.

Samson Power - Increases damage dealt by a party member or self by 3%.

Goliath Tonic - Restores target’s HP, percentage matches Profit. Uses all Profit bar.

Market Abilities

Poor Quailty - Reduces the potency of the next Item used, but increases the amount of Profit gained off it.

Good Quality - Increases the potency of the next Item used by 50%, but uses a decent amount of Profit (~25-50).

Great Quality - Increases the potency of the next Item used by 100%, but uses a large amount of Profit (~50-100).

Speculate - Force a reroll of the Market, making it a Nald, Thal, or Even.

Ether Loan - Increase Profit Gauge by 30. Long cooldown.

Deep Pockets - Allows usage of Good Quality without Profit cost for 15s.

Traits

Pharmacology - Increases base action damage and restoration by 10%.

Pharmacology II - Increases base action damage and restoration by 30%.

Market Sense - Adds the Market indicator to your Profit Gauge.

Deeper Pockets - Changes Deep Pockets to Deeper Pockets, allowing usage of Great Quality without Profit cost for 15s.

Potions Mastery - Upgrades Dark Potion to Dark Hi-Potion and Poison Breath to Morbol Breath .

Potions Mastery II - Upgrades Dark Hi-Potion to Dark X-Potion and Morbol Breath to Dragon Breath .

Potions Mastery III - Upgrades Dark X-Potion to Dark Elixir and Dragon Breath to Dark Breath .

Mix Mastery - Upgrades Samson Power to Dragon Power, increasing the boost from 3% to 6%.

Long-Term Speculation - Allows accumulation of charges for Speculation. Maximum Charges: 2.

-------------------- --------------------

Afterword

Things have changed a lot since the last theorycraft I did. A whole new expansion has changed up how the jobs are laid out, their traits, and added whole new aspects and angles to them I didn't know about before. I had thought to update my Beastmaster theorycraft to match that, but I also felt that it might be best left as it is as a testament to the idea wrought at the time I put it to paper.

So, instead, I decided a new job was needed instead. I had been musing on how a job like Mime would work in FFXIV, mostly focused around expanding on the concept of Aetherial Mimicry and the Aetheryte Earring from the Shadowbringers Special Edition. Something involving having a basic set of moves, and then some others that changed based on the target you mimicked. And then possibly the idea of its gear shifting stats to match whatever they're mimicking (an idea brought on by a debate about alternate roles for existing jobs).

But I didn't think I had enough of a concept put together for a full on theorycrafting diatribe like I had done for Beastmaster. And then, when talking to some friends about the aforementioned debate and musing on what jobs were left... what jobs people still wanted... and some abilities that had been used in Final Fantasy games but not yet in FFXIV. And this is what came out.

Of course, even as I started writing, things shifted around. The concept of the Profit Gauge solidified with some lore to go with it, along with the addition of the Nald/Thal Market idea (for good or for ill). I was originally musing over trying to include a Slots-style system like Setzer has that would randomly boost (or hinder) the Items used for the next 15 seconds or something... but that seemed a bit too random for a job that already had this amount of variance, and a healer at that.

... Though maybe it can be a third part of the gauge in the future. With a button to spin it for varying positive effects.

Still, all in all, it was a fun exercise. Even if it came crashing into existence much more quickly than the slow formulation that was my Beastmaster concept. Do you like it better? Worse? Have any ideas of your own? Want me to try taking a crack at Mime anyway? Let me know!  

[kcwcommentary]

VLD6x03 – “Monsters & Mana”

6x03 – “Monsters & Mana”

I love this episode.

This show has done several non-standard episodes, and they are at the bottom of the list of episodes for me. This one is the exception. This is my favorite episode since season two ended (though I do like 3x05 “The Journey”).

The episode is basically the Paladins sitting around playing Dungeons & Dragons, and it’s great. When I first watched this episode, it was part of my big marathon of seasons 3 through 7, and I had no idea this episode existed. When it first started, I instantly thought it seemed like D&D, so the more I realized that it was, the more excited I got about the episode.

We start with a monster pursuing Pidge and Hunk’s characters. Pidge’s character is geared up in heavy armor, and Hunk’s character seems to be a wizard, what with his casting a lightning bolt spell. That spell does next to nothing, and as they run away, Hunk’s character says that he’s “a healer, not a fighter,” so then how did he get access to a lightning bolt spell. I mean, he looks enough like a cleric that I thought he was one, but the lightning bolt spell made me think I must be wrong and he had to be a wizard. It doesn’t really matter.

The ogre (looked like an orc to me, but they eventually call it an ogre) continues to chase them, and he has an ocarina that he uses to make Hunk fall asleep. Pidge is immune to sleep because she’s playing a dwarf character (of course Pidge’s character would be immune to negative things). She uses a jump attack to smash the ocarina with her axe, giving Hunk a chance to cast some binding spell on the ogre. Pidge whacks the ogre sideways with her axe (can’t show a big giant wound like an axe would cause), and they defeat him. In a bit of cross-genre RPG content, the ogre poofs into a floating crystal more reminiscent of monster deaths in video games.

The crystal is one that neither Pidge nor Hunk have seen the likes of before, and Pidge proposes taking it to an innkeeper who for some reason she assumes will know more about it than the two of them do. I know the episode is setting up the innkeeper being the villain, and I know this episode can be looser with logic given its non-standard style of story, but that is an unexplained jump in logic for Pidge to make. Apparently, Hunk’s character’s village was turned to stone, so that’s his quest, to un-petrify them. Hunk’s character, anxious about travelling to wherever they’re going, says of his village, “I mean, they’re not really going anywhere.” That made me laugh.

They arrive at the inn, but apparently have no money for food. The animation changes to have a 16-bit RPG style as Pidge smashes some pots looking for coins. I have smashed a lot of pots in video games in my life, so I love that moment. They take the coin and Pidge orders a “greasy meat pile,” which the Coran-innkeeper calls a “health plate.” It kind of makes me go eew hearing Pidge specifically order it “greasy.”

Coran’s innkeeper NPC is something. Seriously tall, like giant-level height, super muscular, but hair that seems like more of a feminine style, but ever still Coran’s mustache. The innkeeper says the crystal is the type some evil wizard named Dakin uses. He’s, of course, located inside a dungeon.

As the innkeeper tells Pidge and Hunk where that dungeon is located (mirroring Lotor telling the group about both Oriande and the rift between realities, wherein they fight at the end of the season), Shiro’s character in a shadowy corner of the inn speaks up. I super love Shiro’s character. He’s a paladin! It’s really sad though knowing that the EPs thought they were mocking Shiro himself by having his character be a paladin concerned with protecting and helping people. It’s kind of infuriating that the EPs think there’s something wrong with a person just being a good person like Shiro is.

Anyway, Pidge and Hunk go over to talk to Shiro. Hunk says his character is named Block, and that he’s a sorcerer. I’m kind of confused now. Not that this episode is adhering to an actual game system, but with Block having earlier said that he was “a healer, not a fighter,” his being a sorcerer doesn’t feel right. Being a sorcerer matches the spells he’s cast though, so it was that particular “healer” line of dialog that is the dissonant element. Pidge’s character is named Meklavar, a fighter.

I love Shiro’s character wearing a shiny crown/horn in place of his white floof of hair. He gives the backstory of his character. He was chosen to be a paladin at a young age. He was raised in a monastery, but one day a leviathan-demon attacked, destroying the monastery, and killing his master. (He was educated at the Galaxy Garrison, and one day a Galra ship attacked, setting of his quest.) The master’s last words and immediate death is making fun of the cliché of so many stories having of a character dying as they say something important, and I laughed. And then the master is still alive just long enough to speak again and die again. And Shiro, recounting the tale while sitting in the inn, cries a big, long tear. The moment definitely plays with some tropes.

Hunk and Pidge’s characters get up and walk out of the inn. (Granted, they’re playing characters in a game, but it reflects their non-game character that they walk away from someone they’re supposedly friends with. Any decent friends playing a game together like this want their friends to feel included in the game, but that’s not their behavior here.) The sound of Shiro’s voice panicking, saying, “Where are you guys going?” as Block and Meklavar leave really gets to me.

Then Block says, “Man, that guy was so boring.” This is the voice of Joaquim Dos Santos and Lauren Montgomery talking about Shiro, not just Block talking about Shiro’s character in the game. This infuriates me. This is textual proof to go along with what they’ve said in interviews about how this episode is supposed to be mocking Shiro. JDS and LM always thought Shiro was boring. That’s why they resented being told they couldn’t kill off Shiro. One, if a character is boring, as head of the creative team, it’s your fault that that character is boring. Two, Shiro was never boring. That they think of him as boring tells us about how JDS and LM think about people. They think that someone who wants to serve and protect aren’t good people, that there’s something wrong with them being that way, and that they think no one could find value in a character who displays those qualities.

Shiro’s character refuses to stay behind and runs to join Block and Meklavar. Then a giant mouse attacks, eating Shiro. Cut to the table that Coran, Shiro, Hunk, and Pidge are playing at. One of the mice is chewing on Shiro’s character miniature. Shiro is mildly incredulous that Coran is declaring his character dead in the game just because the mouse jumped on the table.

Coran says, “Don’t worry, you can just make a new character.” There is a differential in people who play RPGs demonstrated here: Some players really don’t care about characters. As some people far more clever than I am have said, they’re the kind of players who roll play, not role play. Player characters for this style of player are little more than the numbers on the character sheet. For others of us, the character is a lot more than what’s printed on that sheet. We invest ourselves emotionally in our characters, think about their backstory, and can’t just discard them so easily when they die in game.

Shiro takes his mini and puts it back on the table, saying, “I’m going to be a paladin again.” Yes!

Coran says, “Come on now, do you really want to play a paladin?” and then lists a bunch of other classes.

Shiro counters, “I don’t know what’s more fulfilling than being a paladin.” I love it!

And Coran is animated angry and yells, “But you’re already a Paladin in real life!” Coran then growls. I’m sorry, but no. Coran getting angry here is unjustifiable. Why does it bother him if Shiro wants to play as a paladin in the game? (Because it bothers the show’s EPs and writers that they have to include Shiro as a Paladin in the show. The EPs wanted to get rid of Shiro so that they could have Keith as the Black Paladin, and so they’ve written their anger at not being able to into Coran’s dialog. Of course, they were eventually able to talk their way into completely sidelining Shiro in seasons 7 and 8 in order to get what they wanted in having Keith be Black Paladin.)

Also, this is technically the clone playing the game here, not the actual Shiro. The show eventually blatantly proclaims the clone to be an “evil thing.” But here we see the clone and subtextually here he’s telling us how much being a Paladin means to him. Here the clone is showing us through that subtext that he is not evil. He, as much as the real Shiro, cares about helping people, about serving and protecting. We saw that in 4x01 “Code of Honor” when he begged the Black Lion to let him help the other Paladins. But again, the EPs think that this makes a person “boring.”

Allura and Lance enter the room and see them playing. Allura is interested in joining them, though Lance is skeptical since it involves a book. He also freaks out over the idea of a d20. Lance asks if they don’t all have something more important to do (ignoring the fact that he himself isn’t doing anything important right now). Pidge and Hunk are waiting on diagnostic to run on some system of the Castle Ship.

Shiro responds, “And I’m trying to take a mental break. We’ve been going really hard lately.” Awe!! Let Shiro have some fun! (Especially since the show almost never writes him to have any moments like this.)

Lance is more interested in playing once he hears that Allura wants to play. Sigh.

We return to their game. Block, Meklavar, and Shiro’s character are walking through the woods. Allura’s character, an elven mystical archer, joins them. Lance is a cat-eared thief named Pike, which he says is not a thief but a ninja-assassin. He poofs around with smoke bombs, and loudly yells about his character “lurking in the shadows, silently watching!” The effect of having him yell so loudly about being silent is funny. And then they see him stealing money from a pouch. So yeah, thief.

Allura’s character summons a flying mount that they all then ride on to the dungeon.

I love Block asking, “Did anyone remember to bring torches.” Needing to see in dark environments is something RPG players are kind of notorious for forgetting, so Block’s comment is so very meta.

Shiro then says, “I really think my character would have remembered to bring a torch.” I do agree with him, and a good dungeon master, game master, or as Coran’s calling himself in this episode lore master wouldn’t be so strict as Coran is here. It reads more like Coran is again voicing the EPs’ dislike of Shiro. Allura realizes her character an make an arrow glow, so they have light.

They come to a dead-end in the dungeon. Lance says, “Maybe you just have to knock,” knocks on the wall, and they door is revealed. It totally references back to 1x01 “The New Alliance” where he gained access to the Blue Lion by knocking on its forcefield. So of course, I’m now thinking of how Blue valued Lance so much that she let him in just because he knocked, and then by moving Lance from Blue to Red, that bond he’s had with Blue from the beginning was senselessly taken from him.

The episode then goes meta again by having Lance’s character, as the thief, have to check for traps on the door. My experience suggests that the presence and use of traps in D&D is such that players rarely speak about the process in any in-character terms, only in terms of game mechanics. The way the dialog is written here totally matches that real way checking for traps is usually handled in games. So, Lance rolls low, the trap is triggered, and everyone plunges down a shaft/highly sloping tunnel. Once they fall out into the open, Block casts a spell that gives everyone a flying chicken to hold on to so that they don’t fall. The chickens are funny.

Then, there’s a montage of the group fighting various monsters, until they come upon a giant pile of gold and treasure. Allura gets a “quick draw quiver with a magical creature-summoning arrow.” Pidge gets “goves of transmutation,” the description of which kind of makes me think of Allura’s alchemy. Lance gets an invisibility cloak. Hunk gets a bowl of endless food because of course he does. (Sigh.) And Shiro gets a “blazing sword.” This makes me think of Voltron’s sword’s flaming version, and then I again think of how this show takes being the Black Paladin away from Shiro. As soon as his character lifts the sword, he’s super excited, and then he gets hit by black and red lightning and dies screaming, his hair-floof crown and the sword being the only things left behind. And how do the others’ characters react? Pidge says, “Ooo, he dropped a rare item.” They don’t care about Shiro.

The innkeeper is the villain. A silly, simplistic twist like this is okay since they’re playing a game here, but it does reflect on what the show is doing with Lotor. Like the innkeeper, he was brought in as an ally to the Paladins, providing them with information about where to go and what to do, and then, out of nowhere really, he’s suddenly not a good person but a villain. It’s a process that’s fine when they’re all sitting around here playing a game, but the main show itself needed to do way better than this.

Shiro’s new character arrives, teleporting into the dungeon. Shiro’s twin brother Jiro, “here to complete Shiro’s quest.” It has to be a meta reference to the clone story. And still, his new character, like the clone, is a good person, trying to help and protect people. Pidge responds, “A paladin again?” with a lot of derision, so this is more of the EPs’ dislike of Shiro being written into the meta-dialog of the characters. It doesn’t hurt anybody for Shiro to play whatever character he wants, so how about you shut up, Pidge.

Dakin talks about Block’s petrified village, saying, “I’ve already siphoned off their life force.” Clearly, this is a cryptic foreshadowing of Lotor’s colony and the Alteans there being the source of the unexpected quintessence. It almost feels like this is the show semi-consciously recognizing that how the rest of the season writes Lotor is super underdeveloped and shallow. Either the writers know they wrote Lotor’s end badly and just didn’t have the writing skills to do better or weren’t allowed by the EPs or something, or they actually think they’ve written Lotor well and are just mirroring it here, unaware that this reveals how shallow they wrote Lotor’s end.

Dakin blasts Jiro with flame, and his shield even generates some glowing forcefield-like energy to help deflect the blast. I love shields as tools and symbols, so I love that his character has one.

The episode changes animation style again to look like that of a video game while Allura’s character shoots enemies with arrows. The party takes damage, and Allura uses a “healing arrow,” complete with yelling the name of the ability as she does so – that’s meta. There is something odd, in a funny way, of shooting someone causing them to be healed.

Jiro then vows to avenge his twin. I wish with this show had Shiro care about the clone after it falls as much as Jiro cares about Shiro. If the EPs thought Shiro was a boring character, then how about writing him to want vengeance against Haggar for what she’s done to him and to all the clones the same way Jiro wants revenge here? It would have been a plot that would have let the show wrestle with the implications and significance of the clone story instead of just instantly forgetting any of it ever happened.

The shot from behind of Jiro running toward Dakin… yeah, that’s nice.

They keep fighting, Block casting “embiggen” on Meklavar, who grows giant and axes Dakin.

Jiro speaks, but with Shiro-the-player’s comments, “This game is so amazing. It requires problem-solving, teamwork, creativity. All the skills you want to imbue when doing team-building exercises.” I love Shiro going a little nerdy in the moment. I love seeing and hearing! him be excited about something. He’s clearly having fun. And it also reflects his character as a leader that he sees the game through that lens of leadership and teamwork. But remember, this guy is supposed to be an “evil thing.” Grr.

And Lance then yells at him, “Stop trying to ruin our fun with learning!” Stop trying to ruin Shiro’s fun, Lance. This show lets Shiro have such little fun as it is!

Surprise, Dakin isn’t dead. With the show using Dakin to foreshadow and mirror Lotor, his not being dead here could be read as further foreshadowing, a hint to the viewer that Lotor’s story isn’t over just because he dies at the end of the season. But it’s not.

Dakin is now a dragon. Block is hurt, and Allura shoots another healing arrow. Pidge gets smashed by a dragon tail. Shiro tries to draw the dragon’s attacks away from the rest of the characters, just like a tank character like the paladin class usually does in RPGs. Hunk realizes they need a plan, so he casts a “secret” spell, and the players huddle away from Coran to devise that plan.

Pike distracts the dragon with his quick speed and cloak of invisibility. Block throws out some food from his endless bowl. Meklavar transmutes the food into oil with her gloves. Allura summons what looks like a hippocampus, a creature from Greek mythology with a horse-like body, fish-like tail, and wings. Jiro mounts it, lights his sword on fire, and sets the oil on fire. The fire destroys the dragon.

Victory.

Pidge and Hunk have a breakthrough on what they’re working on on the Castle Ship. Lance reacts, saying, “Somehow I understand the fantasy words better than the science ones.” Is that the writers telling us that they know they don’t understand the science they try to write into this show?

Shiro says, “I can’t get over how great that game was!” It’s so nice. This man deserves to have fun!

Allura comments about how the fun of playing has made the time go by quickly, and Lance, of course, responds out of his attraction to Allura, “We have pretty good time together, don’t we?” She says, “We sure do,” and this feels like it’s setting up the idea that the problem is Allura just hasn’t realized the right guy for her (Lance) has been there all along, and that she’s wrong for having not been interested in him before. I really do not like this trope of romantic storytelling (and the ignorance it demonstrates some men to have about women).

Lotor contacts Allura to tell her the ship is ready to begin testing. Lance is instantly dejected, but I guess at least this jealous reaction isn’t one of anger and arrogance. Coran offers another round of playing, and Lance says sure.

Shiro says, “I want to be a paladin again.” So much meta on this line. It reflects how being a Paladin is so fundamental to Shiro’s character arc, and it makes that the show takes being a Paladin away from him infuriating. It also again reflects the goodness of the clone, and it makes the show declaring the clone to be an “evil thing” infuriating. And of course, Lance and Coran react like Shiro’s wanting to be a paladin (and thus the show/EPs/writers thinking Shiro being a Paladin) is somehow weird.

It amazes me that the EPs thought this episode would get viewers on their side in thinking Shiro was boring. And if I understand the broader audience reaction to this episode, that backfired on the EPs, as this episode just further reinforced for viewers why they like Shiro so much. At the least, it did so for me.

[rat-game]

“It’s just pressing ‘A’ a bunch of times”: How to make turn-based JRPG Combat engaging

Abstract

In recent years many games have modified the formula that constitutes the turn-based jrpg combat systems in an effort to make the experience more engaging for players. In this article I first provide an exhaustive definition of what makes a games combat “turn-based jrpg combat” through a set of necessary properties. Additional properties that are commonly found yet not necessary are mentioned. An argument for how combat systems like this may inherently run the risk of not being engaging for plays is brought forward and multiple methods game developers have tried to solve this in the past are analyzed and evaluated: adding complexity, adding mechanical challenge through QTEs, adding visual flair, adding a gimmick and adding depth. It’s concluded that the optimal approach is using all of those methods in moderation while trying to avoid the pitfalls they come with.

I feel like in recent years game developers have come to regard turn-based JRPG combat in it’s purest form as inherently flawed. Many feel like they need to innovate, otherwise modern audiences will get bored, won’t feel engaged and play a more action-oriented or real-time strategy game instead. I would like to challenge this perception, explain ways how modern devs have tried to solve this problem.

What is turn-based combat?

First I want to define what I mean by “turn-based JRPG combat” (”tb combat” henceforth for the sake of brevity). This is not an easy task as most people will resort to an ostensive definition, naming games like Final Fantasy 7 and 3 (aka. 6), most of the Dragon Quest games, Mother 2 and 3, Suikoden, Chrono Trigger, Xenoblade, Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario, Pokémon, etc.. I agree that all of these are indeed JRPGs with turn-based combat but they’re also diverse enough that finding the least common denominator for these is anything but trivial. I think it is useful to give a well-defined description of each part that makes up the combat of games like these so I can refer to them with a general term later on. A game can be devided into what’s called scenes. Note that these are unlike scenes like those in movies or books, instead a scene in game development is a reoccurring state for whom layout, input-handling and other in-universe as well as algorithmic rules are defined. In JRPG there are often at least 3 scenes: the overworld scene is where the players moves their character, interacts with NPCs, enters houses, etc. The menu scene is where inventory managing is done, often different parameters about the game are displayed and equipment may be sold or equipped. A combat scene, then, represents the act of fighting something or someone in an abstract way. In Final Fantasy while in a designated overworld area the game may trigger a battle, encounter or what I will call “combat”. The entire layout changes, moving the cursor now selects an attack or enemy or an item instead of moving a character, you can only control the characters indirectly by selecting attacks or other such action and part of the screen has a menu from which to select these actions.

Figure 1: Boss battle against Ultros, Final Fantasy 6 (1994, SNES)

It is necessary for each entity participating in combat to have the same set of “stats”. A stat of any type such as a number of string or anything, really, is a property that can be interacted with through game mechanics while inside the battle scene. An easy example is Health (”HP”), usually all enemies and allies will have a number representing their health, dealing damage to an entity lowers this number, healing raises it. If the number reaches 0 the entity dies. Other examples of stats may include Mana or Action Points (”AP”), Attack, Defense, Speed, the name of the entity, etc.. I will consider the property (boolean) of wether or not a entity is an enemy or ally as a stat as well [1]. It is vital that each entity has the same set of stats, though some games may obfuscate them (such as the player not knowing how much AP the enemy has left). While this seems functionally indistinguishable from the entity not actually having the stat, this is not the case. It becomes important when considering abilities: an ability is any action that interacts with stats of any entity (or none). Since all entities have the same set of stats theoretically any ability could be executed by any entity. In my opinion this is a vital part of tb combat and all of the games commonly considered tb JRPG combat share this property [2]. If the player sees an enemy using an ability it will seem fair, they know that there’s a chance that they may get a similar ability later in game and more importantly, they know every entity is playing by the same rules. Later on I will discuss why this is extremely important for an engaging experience. A turn is a unit of measurements of arbitrary length. Each combat scene has to have the possibility of having at least <number of different entities> many turns. During a turn exactly one of the entities may choose an action such as using an ability or item, defending themself, fleeing, etc.. It is not imperative that entities may only act (that is choose an action) during a turn though most games follow this rule. Often the order of turns (the order of who acts before whom) depends on one or more stats or another property of the world or how the battle was started. For example in Pokémon the pokemon with the highest speed stat acts first but there are also abilities that make entities ignore this rule and always act first or even reverse the order of turns. In final fantasy and chrono trigger one of the stats of the entities is slowly rising, if the precentage bar is full entity may choose to act (c.f. figure 1, grey bar on the lower right of the screen) . This makes the order, length and number of turns flexible and the time in-between turns arbitrarily long (usually enemies act as soon as they are ready but the player can theoretically not start a turn until the battle ends), yet the turns still behave like in other tb combat systems.  To summarizes, the combat scene of a game is considered “turn-based JRPG combat”, iff 

all of the entities (both enemies and allies) have the same set of stats

the battle is divided into turns during which

abilities serve as a way to represent abstract combat, choosing abilities is the main gameplay

To finish of this section I’d like to give kind of a quick-fire round of properties that are commonly found in tb combat but that I don’t consider strictly necessary:

One of the stats is a “status” one or multiple out of a fixed number of them. Being afflicted with a certain status may have effects on the entity or the battle as a whole. For example a poisoned entity may loose HP over time, being stunned makes it so they can’t act during your turn, etc.. Being dead or knocked out may also be considered a status, it’s effect is being unable to act until resurrected.

Allies and Enemies can die or be knocked out (usually when their HP reaches 0). A dead enemy is removed from the battle, cannot be further interacted with unless resurrected. If either all enemies or all allies die the battle ends in a win- or fail-state respectively.

There is a visual representation of each entity such as sprites, names along with numbers or something similar (c.f. Figure 1). Resolving an ability has a visual representation, usually either an animation or sometimes just the changing of displayed numbers as damage is dealt.

Some of the abilities are instead considered “items”. These usually act as a one-time-use abilities, each entity may have a shared or individual inventory that contains multiple of these items. If one is used in combat it may vanish from the inventory, so for example if you have 3 bombs, using one in combat it will deal damage much like a regular ability would but instead of costing AP one will vanish from the inventory so only 2 are left. I refer to items acting this way as “usable items” (or “usables”)

Interaction with the game may be a lot more complex than just selecting something from a menu. This includes QTEs to block or attack, button combinations instead of selecting attacks, etc.. I will discuss these in a future section.

Winning the battle will reward the player party with experience or gold both of which may unlock new abilities or something similar outside of battle.

The set of entities may change over the course of the battle. This includes switching out team members, creating new ones (”spawning) with abilities or more entities joining for story reasons or something similar.

The combat scene itself may have certain properties. Examples include weather effects like rain, sandstorms or hail that apply a (de)buff or damage periodically. There may even be examples where the property breaks some of the rules of combat, for example an enemy attacking immediately after being struck outside of their turn. I will refer to these as “hazards”

An entities stats are dependent on their equipment, equipment are usually items that may be associated with a character by equipping them from the inventory outside of combat. For example equipping a metal helmet may grant the wearer more defense while equipping a magic ring will increase their magic power. Equipment systems can be very important to a game but if they can’t be engaged with during battle they are not technically part of it. An example of them being able to be interacted with are Pokémons held items.

Abilities may interact with each other. For example one ability may freeze an entity and another ability shatters them. In chrono trigger the players party members can team up for a single stronger attack that is dependent on who the participants are.

This list is not exhaustive, while the core axioms of the definition may not be diverged from, other aspects of the battle systems are hugely varied.

Realizing the Problem

Now that we have the technical stuff out of the way, let’s talk game design. There are two inherent complication to tb combat and they’re on the opposite side of a spectrum. For the sake of argument lets assume the difficulty is fixed at a certain level, no matter what mechanics exist or how they’re implemented. If tb combat is either too simple (that is the game requires little effort in understanding and applying the combats mechanics during strategizing) or too complex (that is understand and applying is too hard) it will result in the player having a bad experience.  Why is that?  Tb combat by nature is not mechanically challenging (at least in it’s basic form). Furthermore tb combat inherently contains a lot of actions that will be repeated over and over such as a entity loosing health, the player scrolling through a list, selecting which character to target, etc.. Tb combat has to rely on the mental aspect of it to be sufficiently challenging, even though a player may repeat a small set of actions hundreds of times if they have to think hard which action to pick when and strategize to solve the potentially extremely complex problems it will make for an engaging experience. It’s like doing homework for a subject that is really interesting to you, it’s fun to think about what to write, the act of writing itself is not. Similarly it’s fun to think about what actions to pick when and how to equip your characters and predicting what the enemy may do, selecting the options from a menu is not. If a tb combat system is too simple the player will spend most of the time not thinking about trying to come up with a solution, they will be stuck mindlessly doing the “writing things down” (pressing A) part. Because of the mathematical nature of interactions it’s also very easy to make a tb combat system too complex, if there’s hundreds of variables and interactions all going on at the same time the player won’t be able to solve or even understand the problem. If they can’t they again can only mindlessly press A. This is also why the fact that all entities have the same set of stats is so important, if the player is able to assume that they can strategize around all the entities playing by the same rules. They will know what the enemies abilities do and how they will affect other entities. If this symmetrical nature of combat is not present, the player will have trouble strategizing as suddenly everything can happen. This again leads to the player not being mentally challenged, all that’s left is pressing A.

How to Fix it

Naturally one will ask: How do we fix that? In my observation there are multiple approaches that are not mutually exclusive. I will explain which of these game devs took, why, and wether or not it can be successful:

i) Adding Complexity

Figure 2: Third party program for predicting damage dealt by one attack during a pokemon battle in Pokémon Sun & Moon (3DS, 2019)

This may be the most popular approach and can be observed in many well-reviewed successful games: If a simple battle system doesn’t engage the players, just add more. More mechanics, more abilities, more enemies, more items, more everything. A good example for this is the pokemon games. The game started out with about 150 pokémon, 4 stats, 15 types, no held items and 165 abilities (“moves”). Now, almost 15 years later we’re at 800 moves, 800+ pokemon, 18 types and countless new mechanics such as new hidden stats, held items, z-moves, mega-evolutions, etc.. I am not faulting pokémon for taking this route, one could argue it fits well with the collection aspect of that game but relating to pokémons combat specifically I think this more-is-better approach is anything but optimal. Side-Effects of using this approach are:

Redundancy: There are only so many good ideas to go around, once you go past that amount mechanics will be redundant. Pokemon may fullfill the same role, a move may have an objectively better version making it completely superfluous.

Readability: More things means more for the player to learn. This isn’t only related to tutorials, to truly be strategic and play at their best, players will have to learn bascially every move, every pokémon, every mechanic. Players who don’t won’t be able to strategize and as discussed above, this will decrease engagement.

Development Effort: This is not technically relevant to the player but more things means more chances for bugs to appear and obviously more work both as a programm, designers an artist.

Balancing: More moving parts means more interaction which makes balancing even harder. The recent pokémon generation cut almost half of all available pokemon citing the above mention growing workload and balance issues. All of the most well-balanced games from chess to star craft have one thing in common: they have as few pieces as possible. 

All in all I think increasing the complexity when you think your battle system isn’t engaging past a certain point is rarely a good idea. Games that have a story-reason or collection aspect may still profit from this approach. I also want to make clear that adding complexity inherently is value-neutral. In my opinion every game needs a minimum of complexity to not be overly simple but I see many games taking the route of adding just more complexity past a certain point triggering the side-effects.

(Other games that used this complexity approach are: Suikoden and it’s 99 party members, dragon quest and it’s many monsters and equipment, earthbound with all it’s weird status effects and hidden enemy weaknesses. Note how most of these games are still amazing games but in my opinion their tb combat system would’ve been a lot better if they turned down the complexity a little) ii) Adding Mechanical Challenge

Figure 3: Action Command in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (2003, GBA)

If the game isn’t engaging enough it’s not mentality challenged so the only thing left is pressing A which isn’t fun, why not make pressing A fun then? Many RPGs have gone about this by introducing timing or quick-time-event (”qte”) based mechanics tied to many game actions. Often during the attack animation a player will be tasked to hit a qte, if they fail the damage the attack may be redudde. Similarly there may be an additional input needed to defend, to flee, do certain attacks or sometimes even navigate the menu. Adding mechanical challenge will shift a tb combat system from something very abstract to something closer to resembling an action game. Games like the Mario RPG Series or Undertale have done this too great effect to the point where their battle systems only superficially resemble tb combat. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it exemplifies my main issue with this: making the player allocate mental resources towards mechanical challenge will have to necessarily take away from the strategizing part. Again this isn’t bad or good, it simply changes the game, people who like action games will like this version of tb combat better, people who like strategizing will like it worse. Either way it’s a fact that games who went this route were highly successful and loved by many, sometimes even opening the target-audience so that some people who dislike most tb combat games will still play one that’s action-focused. I personally think the adding qtes is a valuable tool but going too far in that direction may take away from the original appeal of tb combat. Interestingly there is another option here, making the original way of interacting with the game more engaging while not adding any additional qtes or inputs: time limits. Limiting a players time in some way will make navigating menus more stressful and thus challenging. Time limit don’t necessarily have to be a ticking clock, a soft time limit such as Final Fantasies “active time battle” introduces the time limit in a way that doesn’t feel stressful yet rewards quick actions navigating the menus. [4] iii) Adding Flair

Figure 4:  Animation for using a simple AoE slash attack in Octopath Traveler (Switch, 2019)

This option includes a wide selection of methods. While complexity focuses on the purely mental aspect and qtes focus on the purely mechanical aspect, adding flair will focus on the audio-visual one. The vast majority of time spend in tb combat will be watching menus and animations of the enemies moving, dying, attacks playing out, winning, etc.. Flair is not limited to visuals however, similarly adding music or even narrative elements will make the “watching things play out” part of tb combat a lot more enjoyable. Once again there is a trade-off here, if combat is too flashy the game may run the risk of reducing readability and making things hard to parse. Another common negative side-effect of this is that actions take too long to resolve because a lengthy animation has to play out. As flashy and stimulating as it may be watching the animation for the first time, if it takes 10s to finish and you will have to watch it hundreds of times it’s a good idea to give the player the option to turn off animations or give them a way to speed them up during battle. As with most games (including non tb-combat), adding flair is usually a good idea. A game that looks amazing and has a great soundtrack will usually be a better game for it. However it’s important to not go overboard as to not mar the interactivity and pacing of combat.

iv) Adding a Gimmick

Figure 5: Dialogue and social interaction with enemies during combat in Undertale (PC and others, 2015) The very first thing I want to say in this paragraph is that the word “gimmick” is used as a value-neutral term here (language barrier at work). With that out of the way, in the past few years more and more developers choose the approach of adding a mechanic that is not related to the set of base mechanics for tb combat outlined above, adding a gimmick. In Undertale (c.f. Figure 5), this is social interaction with enemies: Instead of attacking the player has the option of befriending or even romancing enemies. Damage values are replaced by the enemy responding with dialogue or a certain animation. Interacting with enemies this way will have effects on the overworld gameplay. This gimmick is mostly unique to undertale, yet there are countless different games with different gimmick. Possibilities are endless which is why most games will try to find their own gimmick, a thing only that game has. Being value-neutral this may add or detract from a game in general but the effect on the tb combat system is more palpable: Going outside tb combat framework has the risk of detracting from it, much like adding mechanical challenge in ii), adding a gimmick will necessarily decrease the complexity and depth of combat both mentally and mechanically. In summary adding a gimmick can be a great way to freshen up your otherwise stale combat system but in my opinion if a game dev is striving to make a great JRPG they have to be mindful of adding things that muddle that goal. Not striving for that goal while still wanting tb combat in your game can still results in an amazing and fun experience however. v) Adding Depth

The difference between complexity and depth is subtle yet crucial. Complexity is adding an entity, ability, stat or any other property an entity can have that was not originally part of the combat. Think adding a character, adding a new attack, adding a new component. Depth however is adding another interaction between already existing entities, abilities, etc. Adding depth will make combat more complex yet may not necessarily increase it’s complexity (depth and complexity can overlap and effect each other) as described in i). Examples of adding depth include:

making the AI scripts decision process more involved, for example each enemy entity may react to each others state (ideally dynamically, that is not following a fixed script) protecting their powerful yet vulnerable mage or trying to keep everyones health above a certain threshold

making the AI remember things the player did such as analyzing which move the player likes to use often and then preparing for that move in the future

making it so passive effects are not encapsulated but may increase/decrease/interact with each other. For example a ring may increase strength but gain an additional amount of damage when the players defense is boosted. Equipping another ring that boosts defense at the cost of strength will give the additional effect of the first ring. If the player now has an ability that lets say increases each buff to damage by 50%, the player will have to think about which combination of items to use and if the interaction is beneficial. There is no easy solution

making abilities interact, for example one ability may increase the next abilities damage and another ability may bounce from enemy to enemy 10 times but only do very little damage. If the order of execution is based on the parties speed values for example, the player will have to manipulate the speed such that the damage boost happens before the bouncing effect so damage buff will increase 10 fold.

status effects reacting to each other, for example trying to burn an already frozen enemy will thaw them, cooling a burning enemy will cure the burn

You may notice a trend in these examples, a lot of them are rules in the form of “if x and y, then z” where x and y are already existing mechanics or properties. Because both x and y already exist, adding depth will bypass a lot of the pitfalls of adding complexity while still gaining most of the benefits. It will make combat a lot more complicated but also interesting as suddenly strategizing isn’t just picking the clearly optimal option, it’s thinking through all of the interactions trying to find out which combination (and order) of actions will do the most damage. The more moving parts interact with each other the more dynamic the battle will feel while still being initially easy to understand because keeping the number of entities, abilities, stats, etc. low like this will cut down on time spend learning what everything is and instead make for more time experimenting, learning through interaction and emergent situations. I’m very much in favor of adding depth but it’s not always positive. Adding too much depth will inherently increase complexity and thus cause the same problems mentioned above. Furthermore adding depth will make the combat system harder to balance: if the game dev designs the system in a way where most of the interactions are emergent and not hardcoded they will have to do more testing and thinking things through to keep stuff from spiraling out of control (though to be honest it can be very satisfying to figure out a game-breaking combination if it’s complicated enough but the point still stands). In summary trying to reach an appropriate level of depth for your combat system is always a good idea in my opinion. Be aware that going too far may make things too complicated or unpredictable though.

Conclusion

I hope I made clear that I’m in favor of all of the methods mentioned above as long as each one is used appropriately and sparingly. Sometimes it’s okay to shift the game as a whole away from combat into more action- or narrative-oriented but if the developer decides that their game should have tb combat, any of the techniques mentioned above can be a valuable tool.

Addendum: Closing words

I want to end this piece with a little personal anecdote, as you can imagine I played a lot of games with tb combat, most notably I spend most of my teens on pokémon tournaments and playing old gems like earthbound that weren’t available to me as a child. I’m going to be honest, I didn’t like most of these games. When I played LISA: The Painful, I had a hate-love relationship with it. I thought the combat was pointless and shallow, the environment art was terrible and the story was overly edgy and not subtle enough. It took me 6 attempts to finish the masterpiece that is Mother 3 and even then I gave up 70% in and watched a let’s play instead because I didn’t want to grind and the music-related combo system just didn’t work for me. I played FF6 when I was in college and I was bored to death, every time there was a random battle from walking through blank space I groaned internally, doing the battles just felt like “deal damage, then heal, then deal damage, then heal” over and over for the entirety of the game. Honestly there really wasn’t ever a game with tb combat that I though flawless or at least as good as possible. Of course because I was a pretentious amateur I figured “I’ll just make my own game and make it better than all of them”. The more I tried to actually do that the more I realized that these weren’t flaws at all. There isn’t an optimal way to do things. While I still think it’s true that all of these games didn’t live up to my tastes, that has no barring on their quality or how successful they are in realizing their vision. What I’m trying to say is: You shouldn’t try to design tb combat in a way that is the best, you should try to design it so you, the designer, will like it best. Choose from any of the design methods mentioned above but be aware that there isn’t a concrete answer, there isn’t one specific point after which the bad side-effects of certain methods kick in. Just do a game you would love, if you do that I can promise you there’s a good chance that someone else will too.

Footnotes

[1] “is an enemy” is considered a stat since the game may allow for the property to be interacted with, such as when an enemy charms an ally and makes them fight for the enemy team or when an enemy dies and is thus pacified.  [2] I realize that this assertion isn’t falsifiable since if an tb combat system doesn’t share that property, it isn’t a tb combat system by definition. Apart from that I still believe that this property is crucial and most games I can think of share it. For the remainder of this piece it is asserted that tb combat has to be symmetrical.

[3] note: I will use pokémon as example to illustrate my points, if you are not familiar with the pokemon battle system consider skimming through this article though I don’t think it’s necessary to understand the combat system fully

[4] An additional way to introduce a soft limit that I honestly have not seen or used anywhere yet is limiting the amounts of menu inputs a player can do in some way. In rat_game specifically there will be one boss that instead of attacking when it’s their turn will attack every 5 menu inputs. This means a player is not necessarily limited by time but rather has to navigate the menus as efficiently as possible, otherwise they risk being attacked more than necessary.

[oreramar]

Crafting Magic Items in D&D 5e

Okay there’s really not much point to this ramble/rant, but I need to lay all of this out, because I’m mildly annoyed - not enough to be actually frustrated, but enough I need to air my grievances with the rulebook even to an uncaring void.

I was looking through the Dungeon Master’s Guide for D&D 5e and saw some of the potential downtime activities for party members - things to do if you give your party a few days, a week, a month off of campaign matters and battles to do their own things. One activity was Crafting Magic Items, and so of course I thought that looked nifty and took a closer look.

At the base, it’s pretty reasonable. Each rarity tier has a minimum level requirement plus a cost in gold, and the cost jumps exponentially as it goes up the tiers. Makes some sense, you can’t expect a very rare item to be as easy to make as one that’s merely uncommon, even if the cost gets kind of ridiculous by the end (500,000 gold cost to make a legendary item - granted, by the time you’re level 17-20, you’ve probably raided more than one dragon’s hoard, but that’s still a lot).

But then there are rules for how long it takes to craft as well.

See, you can only work on the item in 25 gold increments, one increment per 8 hour workday. So to make a Common level item, you need to be of third level or higher and to set aside four workdays - just a little less than a full 40 hour workweek - and 100 gold. Uncommon items require 500 gold and about 20 workdays, also for a third level character - so if your character takes weekends off to rest and recharge, that’s about a month of downtime.

Not bad, right? You could absolutely have your player character pick up magic item crafting as their downtime hobby!

Only if you plan to stop there, really.

The next tier is Rare: 5k gold, 6th level requirement, and 200 workdays. That’s seven thirty-day months practically without any breaks. Weekends off? I don’t have an exact calculation but my gut says that might push it closer to eight months, maybe nine if the character occasionally takes a little more than just two days a week to recharge a bit. It’s doable if your campaign does a one-year timeskip sometime after you hit level 6, but you still have to have the gold for it and you’re dedicating most of that character’s time to doing this.

Then there’s Very Rare and Legendary, and at that point...well, frankly, why even bother with the pretense that a character could conceivably do this as “downtime?” Once you get to those levels you’ve got a full-time, long-term job, because Very rare costs 50k gold, requires level 11 or higher, and takes 2k workdays, or 5.5 years practically without any breaks - probably something like seven years if the character takes weekends off and nothing else. As for Legendary...500k gold, level 17 or higher, 20k workdays - 55 years without breaks, more like 70 or more with weekends. 

That’s...that’s not downtime. That’s not campaign activities. That’s when the final evil has been defeated and sealed away, everybody’s already level 20, each character has insanely vast riches, and in post-campaign wrap-up you say that, yeah, your mage is going to settle down and devote bloody decades and most of their wealth to making the most powerful such-and-such in the entire world, so that maybe if your group returns to this world for a campaign two set a century later they might run across it someday. Hell, if you’ve got a human character (or another race of similar aging), a legendary magic item is their entire life, assuming they were in their twenties when the campaign ended.

Seriously, why did the creators of the game not just stop their chart at Rare and put a note in saying that Very Rare and Legendary items can only be made by powerful master craftsmen over long periods of time and are not downtime activities? Sure, lay out the numbers, but don’t give the base impression that a player could *totally* make their own version of the Holy Avenger to bring to the final battle against the Undead Lich Emperor of Darkness. It’s not happening, and they’re better off either hoping one is dropped in the loot or changing their dream entirely.

Just.

It’s disappointing, is what it is, to see something that looks like a cool mechanic for between adventures (and for personalizing the hell out of a party’s gear) only to discover that, in the most practical terms, that mechanic has a hard cut-off before it gets halfway through.

Maybe the intent is for players to band together for the difficult stuff, but even then it’s unfeasible, because every person working on the item has to have the level required, and must participate every day. So if you use the simplified math of dividing time by party (even if it’s technically incorrect for real-world physics, let’s go with it), a party of, say, four would still take 1-2 years for Very Rare. 10-20 for Legendary.

Still not downtime.

I understand that those last two tiers of items aren’t supposed to be easy to run across, so it does make sense to limit their production in some way or other. The thing is, you’ve already got some pretty hard limits in the level requirement and in the sheer gold cost, neither of which would be easily achieved for most NPCs in most worlds.

And, again, I might not have minded this so much if it weren’t for the fact that it was laid out in the book, in a chart, as if it was possible for in-game purposes when it so clearly is not, and is not meant to be.

Edit

AND ANOTHER THING (I just found out)

The downtime activity section tells you that an adventurer who crafts their own magic item(s) can sell them at regular buy price (usually adventurers find, on average, buyers for half the price for things they find or loot, probably because it’s pre-owned). Anyhow, the implication here is that you can make cool stuff for yourself, or you can make cool stuff and make a profit for yourself.

Sounds good, right?

Wrong.

Standard/suggested purchase price ranges for magic items by tier (found in a different section of the rulebook): 

Common: 50-100 gold. Uncommon: 101-500. Rare: 501-5k. Very Rare: 5k-50k. Legendary: 50k and up.

The top - top, not base - suggested price in each category is exactly what it costs an adventurer to make the damn thing. So, if the DM adheres to all the rules and charts as written, if you’re lucky in finding a buyer, you might recoup the gold you spent in making the item, but you won’t get anything more for the time you spent doing so.

How does this economy even work? Is the assumption that adventurers are hobbyists and inefficient with the gold in materials and time spent compared to whoever made the already extant magic items in this world? Does the value of a magic item depreciate that much even during the process of making it? Did someone just throw numbers around without actually thinking them through since it’s not really a necessary game mechanic? Maybe, I suspect.

Yeah, I’d just ignore the crafting rules in the book, or else make my own. By all means, make things difficult to create as they scale in power, but there’s bound to be better ways to do so than just making huge numbers as thresholds. (What’s that? To make a Holy Avenger-esque weapon you need the cooperation of a very powerful celestial being, like a Solar or an out and out God - one which might set you a quest or a test of some sort for instance - but once you have that it doesn’t take years and years and hundreds of thousands of gold to craft? Sounds like an adventure!)

[ryotaiku]

A defense of Skyrim in the modern day

On November 11, 2011 (11/11/11), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim released to mass critical acclaim. It won several awards, appeared on a ton of GOTY lists, and is still played to this day. I personally bought it in 2012, thought it was okay, then set it aside for other games. It wasn’t until 2014 that I fell in love with it.

But over the years, opinions of Skyrim seem to have gotten a lot worse.

Some people are put off by the bugs, others say it hasn’t aged well, but there are a few recurring opinions that I’ve never really agreed with. Or at the very least, don’t mind too much. Here are those opinions:

Skyrim has less/no choice

This first argument is different from the rest because it’s not just subjective; it’s just straight-up false. Regarding choice, he amount of choices you have in Skyrim are no more linear than the ones in Morrowind and Oblivion, and it makes me think the people who bash Skyrim are just nostalgic. But if the argument is that there are no choices at all, or that there aren’t enough compared to Morrowind & Oblivion, here are some of Skyrim’s choices:

Join the Imperials or the Stormcloaks

Join or destroy the Dark Brotherhood

Join the Dawnguard or Castle Volkihar

Restore or defile the Star of Azura

Kill Saadia’s bounty hunters or turn her in

Kill or spare Barbas for Clavicus Vile

Multiple dialogue options that require speech checks

And this isn’t even an exhaustive list. There are several choices in Skyrim that either change the reward you get, or affect the game world in some way. They take some time to get to, since you’re only directed towards them at certain levels, but they still exist in the game.

Skyrim is not an RPG

On the other hand, if you just don’t like the lack of RPG elements, and insist that Skyrim isn’t an RPG...

...what the fuck are you talking about?

Skyrim is full of RPG elements. Ignoring the decision-making aspects, and focusing entirely on the technical, here’s a list of things that I consider are pretty significant to what makes something an RPG:

Multiple stats & skill levels, and equipment that changes those stats

Endless variety in character builds with varying weapons, spells, & armor

Total freedom in what quests you do or don’t do

Takes place in a setting rich with lore, and has little details to reflect it

Persistent world, with every NPC (except enemies) serving a purpose

Unique NPCs that die never come back, they stay dead

Marriage options and various home options, letting you actually role-play

In what way is Skyrim not an RPG? I cannot, for the life of me, wrap my head around this argument. There are arguably games with deeper mechanics, but I don’t think the complexity of one RPG should negate the value of another. It’s basically gatekeeping.

Skyrim’s combat is too simplistic

A lot of people complain that Skyrim’s combat is just button mashing, and that there’s no thought to it. Just click and hope your damage is better than your enemy’s. But this one makes me wonder if people ever played any of the games before Skyrim. Because those are just as spamfest. In truth, arguably excluding Oblivion, Elder Scrolls games have never had good combat. Before Oblivion they were just dice rolls to determine hits or misses. Sure, there’s more going on under the hood in those games, but regarding player input it’s boring.

There’s no urgency to the story

This is more of a lore argument. I think Skyrim’s writing is fine for the most part, and it’s fine if you don’t like it, but this one got to me: The world is ending, Alduin is going to consume all that exists, and the hero needs to stop him. But nothing is really hurrying you to do this. For something called a world eater, Alduin takes his sweet time with eating the world. This complaint is certainly valid, and I always chocked it up to ludo-narrative dissonance. But then I remembered this quote that appears in the opening to Morrowind:

“Each event is preceded by a prophecy. But without the hero, there is no event.” -Zurin Aretus | the Underking

Alduin eating the world was prophecised. The Oblivion crisis was prophecised. Dagoth Ur was prophecised. But they never actually happen until the player initiates it. I think what this quote means is significant events don’t happen unless the hero is defeated in trying to prevent it. The story doesn’t progress until you’re there to progress it. Significant events don’t happen unless significant people initiate them.

And honestly, that’s why I still love Skyrim. Because no matter how long you spend away from a game, you can always come back to Skyrim and immediately remember where you are. Everything you’ve done will still be there. And even after playing RPGs with deeper mechanics, better-written stories, and sometimes just better gameplay, I still consider Skyrim to be a great game. And if you haven’t played it yet, I think you should; just to form an opinion of your own.

And if something feels off, you can always mod the game to fix whatever issue you may have. There’s a mod to do basically anything if you search hard enough.

[hustlemeanokay]

Fallout 76

Okay... I won’t talk a whole lot about it because it’s not even out yet. So, the hubs signed up for the BETA and he got to play a little the other day... if you don’t want to know anything about the game, this is where this post ends... but if you want my initial thoughts on it and are okay with MAJOR spoilers for what’s out there now? Well... 

It’s boring. It’s like... okay... so, the graphics look... pretty much the same. The same facial structures, the same hairstyles. Nothing note-worthy at all about that. The controls are the same, which is to be expected in a franchised game. But... okay, let’s just make this easier on everyone. 

1. The World

It’s... Fallout 4 with color and leaves. To be blunt, it looks like Fallout 4 with a mod on it, nothing new... like... at all. Okay, so maybe one thing is new. The pip-boy, but technically that’s “old” compared to FO4. 

2. Caps and Loot

I’m hoping this is a BETA thing because wow... just... wow. Probably 80% of the containers/cabinets etc that I saw hubs open were empty. Nothing. There’s like... nothing there... caps are proving to be hard to come by which isn’t that big of a deal because there’s no one to buy anything from. 

3. NPC;s

Don’t exist. There aren’t any. The only “other people” that you deal with are robots and voice recordings. You don’t see anyone else outside enemies. The other people you see, are just that, other people. It’s an MMO, we all knew this, but damn... that’s... all. 

4. No Pause/Safe Place

Because it’s an MMO, you can’t pause the game. This, in itself, is nothing new. But... there’s no where ‘safe’. You have to hope you won’t be attacked when you’re changing your equipment, checking your stats, or agonizing over which Perk card you’re going to use. 

5. Perk Cards

What the actual fuck. Okay, so... the idea is that instead of a perk chart, you get perk cards and these cards can be leveled up (so they say). But... you can only equip a set amount of these cards (I think it’s 8, but don’t quote me). Now, these cards do show their information in a more clear and concise way than the perk chart did, and the cards are nothing to balk at but... you only have so many slots and you have to choose which ones you want to equip. Which... can be challenging when there’s no safe place for you to do that. 

6. C.A.M.P.

Your camp. It’s like a portable workshop... it gives you a little parcel of land that you can build on (provided you’ve found enough materials... took the hubs awhile just to find enough wood to build 4 floors and three walls). Now, you do have one safe storage option. Your stash. (Or, any container you build but don’t quote me there because that’s just what I’ve heard). Your stash is only accessible by you, if you look in someone else’s stash box, you’ll see your stash. So, that’s how that works. You only get one camp... and it costs you 5 caps to move it each time you want to. Oh, and, there were a few new things in the building menus, but a lot of them were locked because hubs wasn’t a high-enough level. But there were also a lot of the same stuff... was.. kind of expecting more new stuff... but whatever, they’ve only had three years. 

7. Content

So far, and this is just BETA so I’m praying they’ll have more content come release day but I doubt it. There’s... no story... there’s... nothing. You wake up in the vault, you leave... you’re supposed to find the Overseer. That’s it, so far. Nothing backing anything up, no clear line of what the goal is... not even a hint. The only thing that’s been pushed a bit is the nuclear launch thing, which we’ve seen in trailers and other information put out by Bethesda. It kind of sounds like the goal is to get those nukes, launch those nukes, and... try to kill everyone? I don’t know. It’s very vague. In previous Fallout games, you started the game with a basic goal. How you got there was up to you but the goal itself was fairly clear once you left the vault. 

8. Events

Like other MMO games (-cough-Destiny-cough-) they are trying to do live events. Now... there’s a petite problem with this idea from the get-go... they’ve already said that there will only be a limited number of people on the same server at any given time. That limited number is 24. Now... the map, the world? It’s pretty damned big. And these live events are designed to have multiple people participating. Hubs tried doing a few, but even with three people in one, it was impossible. There were specific locations that people needed to defend, and all were getting hit at once. The players were quickly overwhelmed and over-run. Hopefully this is something they’ll work on. Unlikely, but they might. On a side note, I saw the final boss for one even was that moth-creature thing... level 50... so have fun all low levels out there! 

9. Destiny

Okay, this may seem like a duh but the game really does feel like a cheap knock-off of Destiny, as far as the MMO goes. They have “emotes” in there, your “team” is usually slotted for three people... the live events... there are just some similarities here. Now, that’s not a bad thing... except... it’s Fallout... not Destiny, not Fortnight, not WoW. This is just my personal pet peeve, but there it is. If you’re going to do things that another, successful, game is doing? At least do them better... or at the very least, on the same level. 

10. Skyrim

It’s very Skyrim-esq. Remember playing Skyrim? You could play for a few hours and be utterly alone, run into no one, nothing but a few animals and maybe a dragon or two out in the wild. Unless you went to a town, you were pretty much only going to run into enemies out there. It was a massive map, a huge world, and you were just... kinda out there... like at night... alone... kind of wasn’t that fun when it was like that. 

11. Weapons/Armor

Okay, so, obviously we haven’t seen the big ticket items. But... I will say this, your weapons break, you have to fix them... your armor? You don’t find it, you make it. In fact, looting seems to just be skimpy all around. A few things that the hubs found weren’t really armor, just clothes. The armor itself? Up to you... and the materials you’ve managed to gather. 

12. The Food/Water thing

So, they’ve leaned on almost a survival type setting here. Your character gets hungry/thirst... everything except prepackaged food/drink will give you some rads, some more than others. If you don’t drink/eat then you’re character will suffer. Also, a lot of items have a disease percentage attached to them. Hubs ate something that had a 7% chance of giving his character a disease and sure enough, bam. Now, this might be a BETA thing though. There are disease cures out there though, he found one. 

13. V.A.T.S.

Ah, vats. The saving grace of so many Fallout players. Now, this is probably a BETA thing but VATS are slow to activate... and because it’s MMO, it doesn’t slow time, just helps you aim. Or, it should. You need perk cards, see... to make it so your dude will actually hit that target. No perk card? Barely any damage done because they’re just firing willy-nilly, no more separate limb/body location selection. 

14. Congrats on Level 5, now die!

At level 5, it becomes open season on your character. At level 5, you can now take damage from other players... and they can kill you... and take your junk. All those precious materials you’ve been collecting, they can get them. When you die, there’s a little bag that appears on the ground with all the junk you’ve been carrying, nothing else as far as I can see... but anyone can just come along and pick that up. It’s their’s now. Now, there is this whole murder thing they are going to do, supposedly, where if you kill another player there’ll be a bounty put out on you and you, in theory, will be hunted down and murdered back? I’m not sure how that’s going to work. But... at level 5, you take damage, from all sources, including team-mates - though the damage is supposed to be reduced from them. That’s... going to result in a lot of accidental kills. 

Final Thoughts:

I’m nervous. I’m worried, for all the fans of the franchise. They’ve already come out and said “this isn’t a Fallout game” (could have fooled me with that name, though). It feels like they completely ignored the things that made Fallout 4 such a success... and instead, embraced the things that people didn’t like about Skyrim. I’m worried that what happened to Mass Effect, will happen to Fallout. People have been waiting for this game, super excited about it, couldn’t wait for it! And... the game they’re going to get is more... Fallout-esq. Not the next Fallout game. Like they wanted to cash in on the MMO thing but didn’t want to actually come up with anything new. Which leads to the next thought and worry... micro-transactions. Playing the game and seeing the lack of content... the skimpy supplies and loot... you can very easily see them adding micro-transactions and DLC’s that should have been a part of the main game. Which is just not a good idea right now, not ever really... when you pay $60 for this, which feels like it is, quite literally, a “base” game. 

But, it’s not all bad... 

There were a few things that I did like about it. The photo/selfy mode is cute, though wholly unoriginal... and they have instruments around the world that you and your friends can play together (like a band). You see your character performing some actions that you didn’t before (laying down)... though, there isn’t any “sleep” to speak of, your character just rests, but that’s because your character never leaves the public space of their MMO world. Even in their own home. 

Now, I don’t know what they’re going to do come release day, it could be totally different (probably won’t be) but it might. It could suddenly drop a whole main quest line because they wanted to keep it all hush-hush from people like me (who will go and post about the BETA). Who’s to really tell... but as it stands... I’m glad we didn’t buy a second copy so the hubs and I can play together because... it just seems... like a huge waste. Such a shame. 

[aion-rsa]

15 Best Video Game NPCs Ever

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Free Guy follows a video game NPC who becomes aware of the circumstances of their existence and uses that newfound awareness to become the star of a game that they were only ever supposed to be a bit player in. It’s ultimately a look at the little people in video games and how easy it is to ignore them.

Of course, most gamers know that NPCs can be so much more than non-playable characters. While there are some NPCs that are little more than seat fillers in some of the largest and most elaborate video game worlds ever, others have used their supporting roles to steal the show and establish themselves as legends in their own right.

From mistranslated villagers and merchants to dogs and knights, these are some of the absolute best video game NPCs ever.

15. Error – Zelda II: The Adventures of Link

With the immortal introductory line “I am Error,” this humble NPC from Link’s bizarre second adventure found a home in the memories of a generation of gamers that wondered what the story behind this seemingly glitched character was. 

It turns out that Error’s bizarre dialog can be attributed to good old-fashioned translation issues, but this is a prime example of a seemingly meaningless NPC’s ability to work their way into our hearts despite being given almost no time to shine.

14. The Merchant – Resident Evil 4

For anyone who played the Resident Evil games up until the release of Resident Evil 4, the joy of encountering “The Merchant” cannot be overstated. Just when you thought you were about to have to battle yet another insane villager in a Wicker Man setting, the Merchant speaks cryptically, opens their coat, and offers you a very surprising helping hand. 

The Merchant’s sporadic appearances and unique role made them an instant favorite among franchise fans, but it’s the character’s mysterious nature that makes them so compelling all these years later. We still don’t know a lot about the Merchant, and that’s the way it arguably should be.

13. Jeff “Joker” Moreau – Mass Effect Trilogy

There’s no shortage of incredible characters in the Mass Effect franchise, but since we’ve already shown a lot of love to the game’s best squad companions, let’s talk about one of Mass Effect’s best NPCs that can’t join your away team: Joker.

Along with being one of the best pilots in the Alliance fleet, Joker is one of Mass Effect’s most consistently funniest characters. BioWare did a brilliant job of growing Joker’s story arc in future games, but he always remained a source of strength was always there to help make the Normandy feel like a home.

12. Elizabeth – BioShock Infinite

It’s fascinating to see how divisive BioShock Infinite remains eight years after its release, but one of the things that the game absolutely got right was Elizabeth’s role as an NPC companion. 

At a time when it was still fairly common to have to babysit your companions (even though there had obviously been tremendous advances in that area by this point), Elizabeth proved to be a more than capable partner who not only used her unique abilities to help you out of tight spots but would even occasionally toss you ammo and health. Elizabeth is an incredible character in her own right, but few games have ever made an A.I. partner feel so invaluable. 

11. The Narrator – Stanley Parable

It feels strange calling Stanley Parable’s narrator an NPC given that they’re the main reason that this game is one of the best of the last decade, but this disembodied voice certainly meets the technical requirements for that role.

The narrator’s determination to get you to follow The Stanley Parable’s most obvious path forward is bested only by the dry, witty frustration he exhibits whenever you start to veer off-course. He’s the real star at this look at the relationship between choice and storytelling in gaming. 

10. Cortana – Halo (Franchise)

Cortana is absolutely a strong character in her own right, but the thing that makes her stand out among the best NPCs ever is the nature of her relationship with Master Chief and you as the player. 

Cortana is the voice in your head that manages to guide you along the path while making the world feel a little more interesting along the way. At a time when gamers grit their teeth at the mere mention of the words “Hey listen,” Cortana proved that it was possible to make such a character feel like an irreplaceable part of what is ultimately the player’s journey. 

9. Dogmeat – Fallout (Franchise)

Truth be told, you could fill a list of the best NPCs in gaming history with Fallout characters and it would be difficult to argue with you. However, it’s hard not to ultimately give the nod to Dogmeat. Not only is this companion one of the most consistent sights in the Fallout universe, but their status as the absolute goodest boy/girl is undeniable.

In a series filled with moral ambiguity and complex characters with unique agendas, Dogmeat is…well…a dog. They’re loyal, loving, and willing to help you in any way that they can. They’re as perfect of a companion as you could ever ask for, and they make the wasteland feel just a little less hostile. 

8. Phillip “The Bloody Baron” Strenger – The Witcher 3

In a game that’s arguably best known for a collection of side quests and side characters that are better than most of the main stories and main characters seen in other games, it’s telling that “The Bloody Baron” is regularly referred to as the highlight of this epic adventure. 

The Bloody Baron may get more screen time than the average NPC, but it honestly doesn’t take long for this morally complex and utterly fascinating character to simply steal the show. He’s one of the best examples of why you should take the time to get to know the various inhabitants of RPG worlds. 

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7. Sans – Undertale

While it sometimes feels like blasphemy to rank one Undertale character over another given how well-rounded and important so many of the game’s NPCs end up being, it’s hard to talk about the game’s best characters for long without the conversation turning to Sans. 

This apathetic skeleton’s most tragically relatable quality is his tendency to pivot between whether or not the futility of his existence is a reason to do nothing or if it’s all the more reason to relax and have fun. He practically embodies this game’s complex morality and wicked sense of humor. 

6. Hal “Otacon” Emmerich – Metal Gear Solid (Franchise)

Granted, Otacon doesn’t exactly make a great first impression (he wets his pants the first time you meet him), but this quirky scientist has to be one of gaming’s best examples of how an NPC can grow on you over time. 

While it’s easy to champion the way that Otacon becomes slightly more badass over the course of this series, his most enduring qualities are the two things that never really change: his weirdness and commitment to going above and beyond to try to help. He’s one of the most “pure’ Kojima characters. 

5. Tom Nook – Animal Crossing (Franchise)

The debate over whether Tom Nook is the quiet hero of Animal Crossing or little more than a loan shark who introduces this quaint world to the joys of capitalism will rage on, but nobody walks away from Animal Crossing without some kind of thoughts about this true icon.

Tom Nook helps you get started in the world of Animal Crossing and is often the character you need to go to whenever you want to move on to the next part of your adventure. He’s kind of a gatekeeper in that sense, but he’s also the thing that keeps the Animal Crossing experience consistently compelling. 

4. HK-47 – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

You do technically have the ability to control HK-47 during combat sequence, which means that their presence on this list could be considered a bit of a cheat. However, I dare you to play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and let that technicality get in the way of giving this character the love they deserve. 

While KOTOR’s morality system helped distinguish it from so many other console RPGs of its era, there’s always been something undeniably compelling about HK-47’s wonderfully uncomplicated moral code. He sees every human as a “meatbag” and struggles to understand why you wouldn’t just blast your way out of a situation. 

3. Solaire of Astora – Dark Souls

Solaire of Astora is everything that you’re not expecting to find in Dark Souls. He’s optimistic, friendly, and, if you play your cards right, helpful.

While it’s possible for Solaire to succumb to insanity if you make the wrong choices along the way, he’s best remembered for his unusual commitment to the idea that there is hope and good in the game’s overwhelmingly dark world. His viewpoint may be idealistic, but you cannot deny the purity of his spirit and intentions. “Praise the sun” indeed. 

2. Cave Johnson – Portal 2

It’s impossible to ignore that GLaDOS is indeed the most famous NPC in the Portal franchise as well as arguably one of the most memorable characters in video game history. Long after “the cake is a lie” became one of gaming’s most overused memes, though, it’s Cave Johnson that stands apart as one of this franchise’s greatest creations.

Cave Johnson is the former CEO of Aperture Science who apparently reached Mr. Burns levels of evilness before he died from moon rock poisoning. His incredible dialog (which, it must be said, is expertly delivered by the irreplaceable J.K. Simmons) includes some of Portal’s best jokes, but it’s when you start to spot the tragedy and world-building in-between his jokes that you really appreciate how much this character accomplishes.

1. M’aiq the Liar – The Elder Scrolls (Franchise)

I love an NPC who practically becomes the star of the show, but my heart goes out to the NPCs who occupy a small part of a game’s world but a large part of our hearts. So far as that goes, M’aiq the Liar may just stand alone. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

As the name implies, M’aiq the Liar isn’t always entirely truthful. While those lies are often hilarious and clever, M’aiq is best known as a kind of unofficial developers’ commentary track. He often addresses meta subjects regarding missing features and misunderstood pieces of lore but does it in ways that make it difficult to separate the world-building from the Easter eggs. He’s the perfect reminder of the ways that the best video game NPCs can surprise you. 

The post 15 Best Video Game NPCs Ever appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[entergamingxp]

Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris Review — Fails to Fully Actualize its Ambitions

August 11, 2020 11:00 AM EST

Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris attempts to revamp the franchise and breathe new life into it, with very polarizing results.

Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris starts players off with a bang, and for fans of the anime, it’s quite different from how the series starts. After a very basic tutorial that introduces the block, attack, and Sword Skills, you’re thrown in the season’s final battle against the all-powerful Administrator. The fight itself is impossible to lose, as nothing happens if Kirito’s (the protagonist) HP is depleted.

The mechanics of combat are simple and don’t require much effort to learn. However, the controls for combat are rather subpar. Somehow, the controls are both slippery and floaty, meaning it’s difficult to maneuver Kirito without him sliding around and completely missing the enemy. There is an upside to this opening battle and combat in general, at least — it feels incredibly satisfying when you land a skill. At this point in Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris, there are tons of skills to choose from and they all have that nice anime flashiness to them, not to mention the substantial damage they hit for.

Once the Administrator’s health dips below a certain amount, her and Kirito engage in a final heated clash of swords.

“The plot develops slowly, and I mean at an absolute crawl at times.”

After a bright flash of light, Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris‘s main story actually begins with a de-powered Kirito who’s been thrown into a mysterious but somewhat familiar virtual world known as “Underworld.” He soon meets a young man named Eugeo who helps him get accustomed to the village and the world at large. As Kirito explores more, he realizes what makes Underworld so special: the A.I. that populates the world behave just like humans and are completely unaware of their status as fictional beings.

Under the belief that Kirito is essentially a chosen one who is dropped into his world by the gods, Eugeo tours Kirito around his village and shows him the Gigas Cedar, a giant tree that drains energy from his village. It is his Calling — a special goal given to each villager to work towards each day or die trying — to cut down this tree with a power axe. Kirito tries to help but discovers how daunting the task is. Eugeo then reveals that his family line has been working toward this goal for 300 years now.

As Kirito and Eugeo work and train (with the former’s goal of figuring out how to complete the latter’s goal quickly so he can be escorted into the main capital) we also find out about Eugeo’s younger sister, Alice, and how she was taken away by an Integrity Knight for violating the taboos of the land. The plot switches its focus to saving her and it continues from there, following the general story beats of the anime with the exception of a new female character named Medina who joins the roster a bit later on.

The plot develops slowly, and I mean at an absolute crawl at times, as Kirito uncovers more of the secrets permeating the world. Though the pacing is off, I enjoyed watching their relationship mature and Kirito get to know each major villager. And because Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris has far more breathing room to spend on developing the characters, they feel more fleshed out and it’s much easier to become invested in their world and growth. Eugeo, of course, benefits from this fleshing out the most, unlike in the anime where they barely have enough time to get a sprinkling of chemistry before the story whisks them along.

Alicization Lycoris still features the classic mechanics of the series, such as building Renown. By either speaking with NPCs or by completing quests, you can increase this stat which determines how people perceive you. This also affects your Affinity with them as well. It’s similar to the stat found in other Sword Art Online titles, which has the same effect of allowing the player to recruit more party members.

“And while the combat has been completely overhauled and simplified to allow for a seemingly more accessible experience, it is not very good.”

This is also an important feature for the usual dating sim mechanic that is present in any SAO game. By answering questions correctly in the heart-to-heart minigame for each eligible bachelorette, you increase their Affinity toward Kirito, which can unlock a special ending and scenes with them. As usual, if you’re invested in that sort of thing, it’s there, but if you elect to ignore it, there’s no penalty against you.

Kirito and other party members possess several stats: System Control Authority, Weapon Type, Ex Skills, Persona, Anima, and their current Affinity with Kirito. There’s also Proficiency, which correlates with how often you use a weapon. Raising this stat, or its Bond, is important for mastering certain abilities. Requiring Kirito to essentially level up his weapon usage is a visceral way to earn his power and skill, and it matches perfectly with the more organic fantasy setting of Alicization Lycoris that rewards a hard work ethic.

You can also affix equippable abilities, called Attachments, to armor which can have a range of passive effects. More powerful Attachments tend to also have a temporary usage period to mitigate any overuse. Although these stats suffer from the same issues as other SAO titles, in that they’re often convoluted and not very useful, it has been far more streamlined in Alicization Lycoris. The UI is also much less cluttered and easier to navigate which is a refreshing improvement.

Combat consists of controlling Kirito as you give directions to your normally AI-controlled party during any given sorte. Your team can perform special team-up skills as well, which are vital for some of the stronger foes. And while the combat has been completely overhauled and simplified to allow for a seemingly more accessible experience, it is not very good. As stated before, the controls are often floaty and imprecise, despite the decent lock-on mechanics. And though skills are satisfying when integrated with normal combos to devastating effect, landing those skills can often be an exercise in frustration thanks to said skills having little weight and impact, as well as being difficult to time in the first place.

Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris is an experimental title to be sure. It eschews the tried and true conventions of the franchise and instead attempts to create a more unique experience. The beginning, despite its glacial pacing, is also refreshing in its focus of drawing out the personalities of both Kirito and Eugeo while creating a charming world that you slowly become invested in. Even the inclusion of Medina is interesting since she’s the first herald of how the story will alter from the second half of the anime. Her character itself is intriguing and I found myself wanting to learn more about her and her importance to the plot.

The biggest roadblock with the plot, though, is the same as in the animated version. Once you hit the Sword Mastery Academy, the plot takes a noticeable nosedive. The newly introduced characters are bland window dressing solely there to service Kirito’s (and to a point Eugeo) own arc.

Though I will admit that once again the title’s slower pace makes the characters a little more endearing in this incarnation, there is no excuse, however, for this game to still have the infamous sexual assault scene from the anime. And while it doesn’t graphically depict said scene, this would have been a perfect opportunity to completely remove it and create an entirely new scene that serves the same character arc purposes, since it’s already established that this game will be diverging from the original story.

“Alicization Lycoris‘s best feature is its multiplayer.”

Alicization Lycoris‘s best feature is its multiplayer, which you unlock after clearing the first chapter. It features a pretty competent character creator (decent options that are standard in any SAO title) to go along with the enjoyable mission and side quest-based gameplay that’s often a welcome break from the occasional monotony of the main game. It’s a shame that such a fun part of the game is hidden behind over 12 hours of initial gameplay.

However, neither the single or multiplayer can hide the technical and graphical issues. It’s important to clarify that these are easily the best-looking graphics to date in a Sword Art Online game. The environments are uniquely designed, vibrant, colorful, and sometimes even pretty. But there are plenty of poorly rendered textures and the pop-in is extremely noticeable. Even worse are the frame rate issues, which for a turn-based JRPG would be forgivable, but are absolutely unthinkable in an action JRPG where timing is vital and slowdown can cost you a hefty chunk of dealt damage. Fixes have been coming to at least improve the abysmal FPS, so hopefully, those who already purchased the title will have a better experience moving forward.

Overall, credit is due to Sword Art Online Alicization Lycoris for trying to change up the far too familiar formula of the franchise and offer both veteran and new players a brand new experience. But the problems in the plotline, gameplay, graphics, and technical issues impact it significantly. Although it’s not a bad game at all, it’s also not a very good one and becomes difficult to recommend to anyone outside of series fans.

August 11, 2020 11:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/08/sword-art-online-alicization-lycoris-review-fails-to-fully-actualize-its-ambitions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sword-art-online-alicization-lycoris-review-fails-to-fully-actualize-its-ambitions

[aflockofbyrds]

My D&D campaign that ran a little over a year ended last night, and honestly ended on the best note possible in my opinion. I let one of my players take care of it since he had a really good idea and jesus did he deliver. Gonna put this undercut because while it does connect to characters I RP here (specifically Garrett, Rose and Dusty) I will warn that it’s a tiny bit graphic because y’know, D&D and people fighting. Also it is LONG

So, we start out Christmas eve, at the players’ mansion they owned with the players + Garrett and Rose/friends of the players since the players are friends with them, with a party. We learn from our DM that since we took over a major company in the world, we’ve had multiple hits put on us, but none successful. Out of Garrett and Rose I pick Garrett since he’s a level 10 when she’s 9 which worked better with the party. Part way through the party, Tony, our favored soul of Nerull, hears a knock at the doors, answers it and finds a letter that says “Merry Christmas” on it, and a coin. He brings the coin in, and asks if anyone knows what it is, and when none of us can figure it out, Garrett casts detect Magic. Only for it to blow up in our faces, and while part of us are unconscious, in walks in the one person we all thought was dead, a fucking CE sorcerer kolbald named Alduran, who smirks, and knocks everyone else out. 

When we come to, we find small rock on the ground, which Tony picks up and immediately gets told through a message that everyone else at the party+ one player character (who wasn’t playing) and his entire family were kidnapped. Then the rock floated and lead the way to a statue where we got a couple friends, specifically Dusty since he’s a powerful NPC (both level and socially), Tina who’s a friend who can’t be violent, and Weave, a friend of the party that works with Alduran’s (technical) brothers, Zeke and Fizz, who went missing. We go into the portal that had opened up in the statue, and immediately, all of us are separated. 

Each of us go through our character’s nightmare situation. Tony is told to kill his adopted family, and when he refuses, he’s dropped out of the hallucination. Evee, our cleric, is told to drown after being left alone in the ocean, and she refuses, breaking her hallucination. Vel, a (male) drow scout, has to cut his arm off or die in a sacrifice to Lolth, and Illya has to watch her family die in a fire to escape. Vel starts to cut his arm off, and Illya tries to pull her family out of the fire, burning her hands. Neither of them wake up yet. Garrett’s on the other hand is to cut open his (hanging) sister to get the key to escape. 

He at first refuses, but when he hears her whimper he goes to help. Once he does, Rose falls on top of him, and he hears her bones crack. Garrett carefully gets out from under her, and stands up to look at her. She’s bleeding from her eyes and twitching, but not saying anything. The DM expected me to refuse to do it, but he forgot one thing. Garrett is part of the ruling elites of a drug cartel, and he’s already seen his sister die once (in a tourney that was held). So to put her out of her misery, he ended her. 

Garrett breaks out of his hallucination with that, and joins Tony and Evee with three unconscious people: Vel, bleeding from his arm; Illya, with burned hands; and a new character, Adrian, a warlock aasimar, who is tossing and turning. Tony woke the others out with dispel magic, and a door appears which has Dusty, Weave, La Mano (a disembodied hand who’s Dusty’s best friend), and Tina. We slowly make our way out, and into a room. 

This room fills up with toxic vapors which makes us start throwing up, and we notice enough vials for all of us to drink (minus La Mano bc he’s a hand and doesn’t need it). After a few minutes, of vomiting, we suck up our fears and drink the vials. They’re poisonous, and a couple of us get hit for Constitution damage (which we instantly have fixed bc the favored soul has a spell to fix it). We move on to the next room. 

Next room, we find a bunch of shells, and a timer that is counting down. In a stroke of genius, everyone except Dusty puts a shell to our ear. Second the timer hits 0, we see Dusty start screaming and holding his ears as blood trickles out. Then, the shells start growing across our face, suffocating us. Dusty, even though he’s fucked up, manages to break the shell on Garrett’s face while our warlock shatters the rest of them. We heal Dusty, and while he looks shaken, he’s fine and we move on. 

The next hell hole, is a room with a pendulum swinging back and forth. We have to roll a will save, which Weave (our tank), the warlock, and Evee fail. The three that fail see us that succeeded as monsters, and start to attack. The fight has Tony getting stabbed in the side by Weave, Illya having her arm stabbed through by him, Vel temporarily paralyzing Weave, and Dusty trying to kill him before he became unparalyzed. Eventually, Illya turned Weave into a lizard, and we figure out the only way to progress is to kill someone with the pendulum. Weave volunteers since there’s no way he’s useful as a lizard, and we can’t change him back. Second he’s dead, we’re teleported out of the room. 

We find ourselves in front of a map for a maze, and Tony and Garrett manage to take a picture before the party is hit with some kind of mostly debilitating spell. Tony and Tina manage to pass their checks, and are told by Alduran that we have to draw our own blood to proceed. Slowly and surely, all of us that are fucked up manage to draw our own blood. Evee by dropping her weapon on her own foot. Tina and Weave are the last ones, and all of us out watch on a TV screen as she tries to help Weave. Eventually, Weave makes it out, and we are stuck watching Tina on the TV. She tries to draw her own blood, but because of her vow of non-violence, she can’t. Her knife breaks when she’s tries, and we get a heartfelt good bye from her, in which she reveals that she’s not actually  aasimar like we thought, but a dragonborn. The video feed cuts out before she dies. 

Next room we enter, it’s a small platform with a pit on the other side, and a wall covered with half inch holes with the phrase ‘marry me?’ written over them. A feather is slowly falling to the ground, and as it comes closer we get more anxious for some reason. Even though we all have an idea about what will happen when we stick a finger in the hole, Vel goes ahead and does it, and he disappears leaving the hole he used bleeding. Eventually we all work up the courage and do the same, including La Mano. Last one was Illya who tries to catch the feather and when she gets close, is hit with a wave of extreme anxiety, and she almost runs into the pit to escape. She doesn’t and then we all get to the next room. 

This room is sterile white, and all of us are dripping blood from where our ring finger use to be, a black vein up our arms connecting to once finger, while the other arm has the word “forever” branded on it. The vein burns and hurts like hell. La Mano is also missing at this point. We slowly head out of the room through double doors with no puzzle in sight, and find a keypad that asks “How many are gone?” 

We answer three, and after video of our friends dying, the door opens to a cell block. There are multiple skeletons at first, but as we go down we see other races in them. All of them have scales and horns growing out of their skin, all in weird places. A tail growing out of a man’s side, horns growing into another’s eyes, etc. We walk down, ignoring them to another keypad. “How many are you willing to lose?” 

After some debate with Dusty wanting to put in 7, the remaining number of people, and other wanting to put in another number, we try 0 first. incorrect. We type one, and the door open. Tony takes a step in, and the door close before we can follow. We type in 6 and the doors open again, with Tony on the other side, and we head up the flight of stairs. 

At the top, we find a platform with a catwalk leading to it, and cages on either side. Adrian flies over to look at the cages and the person on the other side of the platform, then comes back to tell us it was Aldarun and our missing friends/family. Vel and Dusty moves first, casting invisibility on themselves and going to sneak attack Aldarun because they’re assassins and they studied him long enough to try and death attack him. Second Dusty steps on the catwalk, lights come on and Aldarun notices the party. Specifically, the party minus Vel and Dusty. 

We get a little monolog, and the platform drops after Aldarun mentions that “well, guess either Dusty or Vel are alive still since one of you set off the lights…” Dusty just barely keeps from falling, and Aldarun disappears into a glowing red crystal behind him. We realize this is a problem, but we need to save our friends, so we set about doing that. We manage to get Zeke and Fizz out before Aldarun reappears, as a horrific dragon. Second he steps on the platform, it collapses under him, and Adrian, Tony and Vel fall to the ground with him, with Vel and Adrian invisible. Dusty, Garrett, Evee and Illya are still on the other side, and Dusty casts feather fall on all of them, before shoving them in the pit to help out their friends. 

This dragon is pure white like Aldarun was, with red eyes, and a glowing red crystal on his back. Of course, this shit scares everyone except Death Jesus Tony and Illya, Dusty drops darkness, and the fight starts. None of us do any damage at first because of the fact Dusty covered the monster with a giant black void, but Garrett formed a plan to distract him after Alduran breathed a cloud of acid, lightening and fire at Evee, Illya and Garrett. The plan failed, and Aldarun immediately grabbed hold of Garrett because he want to prove how useless the distraction plan really was. Vel and Dusty stay off to the side, studying what they can to try and attack him, while Tony climbs his way along a wall to watch us, and Adrian tries to free people. 

While this is happening we start to notice the smell of burning flesh, and realize that the cages are starting to heat up. The people inside couldn’t tell us because they were unconscious and we are now fighting against the clock with this. Next turn, Garrett did the only thing he could do with his low health. He pulled off a necklace he had been saving for a fight against Vel and let it drop, and that necklace immediately exploded as it hit the ground. It went through all 7 charges that the thing had, dealing a solid chunk of damage to his health. Downside, it took Evee and Garrett with them, leaving only a pile of ash. 

Dusty immediately dispelled the darkness because he realized what Garrett had done, and Vel went to attack. Only to miss. Dusty went to attack, and missed. Finally, now that Adrian could see the monster, he flew above him, and dropped onto the crystal, attacking it right away. This make the crystal start sparking, and Alduran lashed a leg out at Vel, then tried to breathe the cloud of Acid/Fire/Lightening at Adrian. Only it caught. He tried again. It caught. Alduran roared at us, tried one more time only to have acid dribble down his chin, and he moved to take out Zeke and Fizz. Before he could though, he finally collapsed, dead. 

The world around us immediately shook, and Dusty rushed to pocket some of Evee and Garrett’s ashes to hopefully bring them back. Next thing we knew, we were back outside of the statue, with our friends and family badly burned but still alive, two piles of ashes, and three stones, one blue one (Tina), a grey one (Weave) and a sickly flesh tone one (La Mano). And as we stand there in shock, it slowly starts to rain, and with that, our year long campaign finally closed. 

[sally-mun]

As someone who hasn't, wouldn't, and won't be experiencing Major/Minor (or whatever it was called) could you perhaps analyze more specifically some of the things you felt were missteps more in depth, so others who decide they might want to make a visual novel or even just a story, might be able to avoid the same issues? I realize this might not be your area of interest, but I'm always interested in these kinds of analyses.

Man, where do I even begin.

I suppose I should start by saying that this game could have been fine; I don’t necessarily hate this game for the story, even if I think it’s uninspired. I play lots of point-and-click games and usually enjoy them (even the stupid ones) so long as they have merit in one area or another. But that’s the core of the problems with Major/Minor: It has NO merit to work with. Its construction shows absolutely no understanding of this genre of game design. Or of writing. Or of entertainment in general. Or of simply respecting one’s audience.

First and foremost, let’s discuss visual novels.

The critical difference between a novel and a visual novel is interactivity; a novel is a set and done deal that takes its readers along for the ride, whereas a visual novel invites the readers to be part of the ride itself. The direction of the story is influenced by the player, and this allows them to personally take ownership of later events. It’s the sort of game that tries to put you in the role of the protagonist in the most direct form possible. Like other first-person games your view as a player is exactly that of the character you’re playing, but in a VN’s case it’s like reading a comic book in a choose-your-own-adventure format.

Major/Minor not only fails on both the visual and novel elements, but it also fails when combined as a visual novel.

1) Visual

For the most part, visual novels don’t have a lot of action. They primarily consist of conversations with NPCs and usually take place in static locations. For this reason, both the characters and the environments need to have a lot of personality. Players need to feel like they’re actually having conversations with the characters and that they’ve entered a unique location that sees real use. This is the red, meaty center of how VNs engage and gratify their players.

Designing characters in a visual novel is about more than giving each one a different face; it’s about giving each character enough of a range of actions and emotions to sell the idea that the character is actually interacting with you, and in a way that’s truly unique from every other character. In real life, people do all sorts of crap when speaking: Our expressions change, we gesture with our hands, our posture varies, and sometimes we even have small ticks associated with certain topics or emotions. Between these visual cues and the actual discussions themselves, players ought to know the NPCs well enough to be able to describe them like real-life friends by the end of the game.

This brings us to Major/Minor’s first serious offense: Every character has one face. Typically in a VN, each character has a minimum of half a dozen expressions, poses, and gestures/ticks to match the different emotions they’ll need to exhibit over the course of their conversation topics. The characters in Major/Minor can only make a single expression and pose throughout the entire game, which immediately leads to some seriously disjointed discussions. It’s hard for me to take a character seriously when they say they’re angry with me when the art staring through the computer screen is bright, cheerful, and apparently mid-laugh. Sorry, NPC #672, I really don’t care that you’re allegedly on the brink of tears, because your singular piece of character art is so smarmy and mischievous that I forgot you were trying to tell me something tragic.

What makes this even more annoying is that most of the characters DO have a secondary piece of art, but it’s only ever used ONE time as an introduction to a new character before the game chucks it in the bin and we never see it again. Each character COULD have had at least two expressions if the dev had planned his commissions carefully enough, buuut instead he chose to get two shots that are barely distinguishable from one another so there could be a ~=*FLOURISH*=~ when we see someone for the first time. Granted, two per character still isn’t anywhere near enough, but it’s a hell of a lot better than just one! It makes me wonder why he bothered to spend the money on a second image for each character at all, since half of these commissions only get about 10 seconds of screen time. What a waste.

And hey, speaking of wasted opportunities, let’s talk more about the environments! Lots of visual novels don’t spend much energy on their backgrounds, and although that’s usually fine (albeit not my first preference), Major/Minor seriously needed to think more about its settings. For the moment I’ll ignore the laziness of the fact that the backgrounds are generic photos with a blur filter over them; what’s more important is that this game loves to tell us all kinds of random crap about the rooms we’re in, especially during the scenes that take place in Japan. This game would’ve benefited dearly from simply having more detailed backgrounds and just letting us observe the goings on of the room on our own. Y’know, because that makes it more... visual.

Honestly, if it were me, I would’ve taken it all a step further and gone full-blown Ace Attorney on the environments. In AA games, investigating the scene is very important because you have to look for clues. I’m not saying Major/Minor needed to let you hunt for items, but I do think that it could’ve cut a ton of random information from the text by simply letting us inspect the backgrounds. That way the players that want to know what a kotatsu is can find out on their own time and players that already know or don’t care can move on.

Something else that would’ve brought the game a much-needed boost of interest is cut scenes. As noted earlier, visual novels don’t tend to have a lot of action, so when something physical DOES happen, it makes an impact. One way to maximize that flash of excitement is with a cut scene – or at least, the visual novel equivalent of one. A “cut scene” in a VN isn’t typically a full motion video like most video games boast; it still makes use of a static image, but it’s an image whose quality far surpasses that of the rest of the art in the game. Maybe it’s abnormally large and the camera slowly pans across for dramatic effect, or maybe it’s a scene drawn from an interesting angle that isn’t the player’s POV. Some games take this even farther and really do animate their cut scenes a bit (usually on par with a nice animated gif). Lots of VN cut scenes make use of sound effects or action-specific music cues to keep the player emotionally involved with the scene, as it’s a moment that’s out of the player’s control.

Major/Minor, on the other hand, does none of this. Much like the drought of facial expressions, the game simply pelts you with paragraph after paragraph to tell you about the events taking place around you, rather than simply letting you see for yourself and be, y’know, involved. Even a handful of cut scenes that had some real effort put into them would’ve really given this game some pep. Not only would it have kept me engaged as a player, but it would’ve weeded out even more unnecessary narration.

Oh, and speaking of weeding shit out of the text…

2) Novel

The writing in this game badly, badly needed to be edited. Like, so badly it makes me physically hurt from how poorly this text is constructed. I’m not talking about the simple things like misspellings and failed capitalizations, I mean BIG mistakes, like sentence fragments and improper conjugations and completely misusing some words all together. It’s also excruciatingly repetitive. Never in my life have I ever seen prose that recaps itself so frequently – sometimes literally within minutes of the event that it’s reminding you of. It even recaps itself within the same block of text a few times.

It’s pretty obvious the dev never allowed a seasoned editor to proof the text, but it’s so unbelievably bad that I’m not even sure the dev himself ever gave it a second glance. It reeks of being a first draft that was never once revisited; actually, it strongly reminds me of the sort of stories I myself wrote when I was about 13. At that time I wanted so badly to write big, dramatic stories! Stories that had deep themes and lots of intrigue! With a complicated plot and several subplots!! And lots of characters that would all totally be different and completely matter!!!! But the problem was I was so wrapped up in wanting to make my stories big, impressive epics that I stretched myself way too thin and everything came out incredibly shallow. It’s honestly kind of eerie to think back on the things I wrote as a kid while I play this game. The similarities are so striking that I can’t tell if this is something the dev wrote at that age and just never decided to polish, or if he did write it as an adult but has the writing skill-level of a teenager.

But honestly, I’d overlook all the technical flaws and melodrama this guy could throw at me if he would just show and not tell. “Show, don’t tell” is one of the oldest rules in the book when it comes to storytelling, and for good reason: Telling instead of showing is not only fucking boring, but it treats the reader like an idiot. If a writer knows what they’re doing, they shouldn’t have to tell, because they’d just demonstrate those things instead.

For example, let’s examine another huge flaw with the writing: Incredibly shallow characterizations. Early in the game the player meets a character named Rook. Rook is very rude. I know this because the game tells me. All. The. Time. I legit don’t remember how many times the game has mentioned that Rook is rude at this point. The dev seems completely oblivious to the notion that you don’t have to tell the player these things. You can just… write Rook as being rude. Trust me, my dude, I can figure out if a character is an asshole or not. Not only can Rook’s rudeness be demonstrated by how he treats me as a player, but it can be further reinforced by other characters reacting to him in a put-off manner. If you’re so concerned that I won’t pick up on the fact that Rook is a rude person just based on how he behaves, then you’re doing it wrong, end of discussion.

But then, as I said, the characterizations are shallow in general. Everyone tends to have their one basic trope and the story rests on the idea that you know what the character is. None of the scenes go out of their way to really dig into who someone is – which is kind of amazing, honestly, since the prose is so obsessed with making sure you know the most inane and unrelated shit half the time – and even after I’ve known a character for several chapters they still feel like a cardboard cut-out to me.

To be honest, I’m kind of impressed by the sheer volume of ways that Major/Minor fails at showing instead of telling. It tells you what characters are like instead of just letting you interact with them, it tells you about the places you visit instead of just letting you view them, it tells you every single time the characters have a mood shift or expression change because it couldn’t be bothered to give them each more than one face, and it hamfists unnecessary information into the script where it’s unneeded and interrupts the scene – and THEN, it makes SURE you notice that it’s telling instead of showing by repeating those things over and over and over again!

All of this is further exacerbated, by the way, because the dev has no idea how to tell a story in the first place. Even with all the above flaws, I miiight have still been able to enjoy this game if it was just a compelling narrative in any sense of the word at all. I will happily deal with poor construction and telling-not-showing if the story still has some intrigue. Even a flawed story can have a mind-blowing plot and keep you reading just to find out what happens next, right? I thought so too, until I realized that Major/Minor goes SO far out of its way to spoil its own plot that it frequently makes you sit through scenes that you, the protagonist, are not even present for. Yes, in a game that’s built upon being a first-person experience, the story will slam on the brakes and take you OUT of the protagonist’s shoes to make you sit by as an observer to events that probably would’ve been an great reveal later on had the dev just kept his mouth shut.

3) Visual Novel

So the visuals suck and the writing sucks, but hey, lots of games get by without investing much in those areas. Could Major/Minor pull it together and at least give the player an interesting mechanic? Hahahaha no, of course it didn’t. As far as the gameplay is concerned, Major/Minor is so bad that in many ways I hesitate to even call it a game.

The cornerstone of visual novels is making choices. They can range from serious decisions that determine the overall outcome of the game or small cosmetic details, but either way, the core of this gaming style is putting the player in the driver’s seat as often as possible. When playing Major/Minor, however, the player is strapped into a straight jacket, blindfolded, and tossed into the trunk of the damn car. This game is so reluctant to surrender control of the narrative that it’s not uncommon at all to go through entire sections of the game having made no choices whatsoever. It fails so spectacularly as a visual novel that I’d be willing to bet that the dev had never played one before. He is astonishingly disinterested in what makes a visual novel enjoyable to the player.

There’s a principle in game design called Illusion of Control. The goal of this idea is to allow the player to feel like they’re in charge of the game while actually keeping them within strict boundaries. It applies to a lot of games, but it’s especially important in visual novels. Players need to be able to dictate how the story progresses, even if some of those choices make no real impact on outcomes. For example, players can enter conversation trees with NPCs that seemingly offer a lot of control – perhaps the player chooses the discussion topics, or can decide if they want to be shy or snarky in their replies – and yet at the end of the scene there could realistically be no change to the story’s progress. The greater point is that the player feels like they handled the conversation the way they wanted to. This allows them to still feel like they’ve gotten somewhere and that they accomplished something.

Major/Minor appears to scoff at the very idea of this, like the game’s worried you’ll cramp its style if it gives you too much power.The player is allotted no input whatsoever on how the PC treats the other characters, what subjects to discuss, where they’d like to go, how to react to the actions of other characters… It’s truly mind-blowing just how consistently the game misses opportunities to allow the player even the illusion of control. For example, there’s a scene where the player character (PC) is awakened in the middle of the night by a pounding on the door, and no options are offered on how the player would like to handle this. A better game might allow the player to choose if they want to pretend to keep sleeping, or call out to whomever is knocking, or try escaping out a window, or crack the door open to see what the person wants. Even if it’s an absolute necessity to the plot that this person enters the room, it’s still better to let the player choose, because there are a plethora of ways to redirect each of those options back around toward the character getting in.

Unfortunately, Major/Minor is just too damn lazy to be bothered with gameplay, and the PC just lets the stranger in with no input from the player. Soon after, the stranger attacks the PC, which would again be a prime opportunity for lots of reactionary options: The player could duck! Or the player could punch their assailant! Or maybe they could kick instead! Maybe they’d try to run away or call for help! Buuut no, Major/Minor really doesn’t care what you want YOUR CHARACTER to do, and it’s already decided that you’re going to put up no fight at all and immediately pass out. It’s by far one of the most unsatisfying things I’ve ever experienced in a video game.

The disconnect between the player and the protagonist is so extreme that I honestly don’t feel it’s a fair assessment to refer to the protagonist as the “player character.” It’s not uncommon for visual novel protagonists to speak in the first person, but in most games it feels like the PC is speaking on your behalf because they’re acting according to your will. The protagonist of Major/Minor decides so many things for themself that it stopped feeling like “my” character a very, very long time ago. This character isn’t me and never was; it’s the main character of a book that I didn’t ask to read, who very occasionally pauses to ask my opinion on something.

HEY HOWDY HEY SPEAKING OF PAUSING… If you boot this “game” up for a session, you’d better hope you have plenty of time on your hands to get through it, because you’re at the dev’s mercy for when you can save your progress. Being able to save anytime you want is a staple of visual novels because 1) people read at wildly different paces, and 2) for many people, excessive reading makes them tired. Not only that, but sometimes life just plain gets in the way and you have to pick up and go on short notice. Major/Minor ignores all of these factors and leaves the player relegated to appointed checkpoints throughout the game.

Now, I’m not necessarily saying that checkpoints are inherently bad, but they do need to be used very, very wisely. Any game (VN or otherwise) that doesn’t allow the player to save anytime they want needs to be sure checkpoints are reasonably close from any given location, and furthermore that they’re spaced at regular intervals. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, however, the dev flushed that idea down the toilet along with what was left of his common sense and parents’ love. Sometimes Major/Minor stacks save points practically back-to-back within the span of a few minutes, and in other cases I’ve literally played for over and hour before the game finally rewarded me with the option to save.

There’s no discernible pattern or technique that I can detect for when save points are bestowed on the player; you’re not even guaranteed an opportunity to save when the game switches chapters! I would say that I can’t fathom why the dev thought this would be a good idea, but let’s not kid ourselves here, it’s clear that the dev never thought this through in the first place. If he had, he might’ve noticed that players being uncertain about whether or not they’ll be able to save their progress discourages them from playing at all.

Also, before I fully move on from the game design, I just wanted to make a brief side note about the music. To be honest, I turned the music off a VERY long time ago, so I don’t even remember what it sounds like; however, I’ve read that all of the music in the game is from the free assets you get in RPG Maker. I’ve further read that the free assets (both audio and visual) were the entire reason the dev decided to use RPG Maker for this game in the first place, in spite of the fact that there are other programs out there specifically geared toward making visual novels. This is worth mentioning because it further highlights just how lazy this entire game is. It’s not a sin to use free program assets – that IS what they’re there for, after all – but when you ONLY use the free assets and then advertise your game on Steam for being sooo creative and original, AND have the gall to charge $20 for it?? Yeah, that’s a gigantic slap in the face.

Speaking of Steam, you’d think a game like this would’ve been weeded out by the gaming community for being the garbage that it is, right? After all, there’s a ranking right at the top of the page showing the proportion of good and bad reviews it’s gotten, and right now it says the feedback is “very positive.” I will say that I do take community feedback into consideration when I’m thinking about a game that I haven’t otherwise heard of before, and my misstep with this game has definitely taught me a valuable lesson. When I saw that the game is ranked “very positive” and I scrolled down to see several glowing reviews, I felt that was sufficient enough research to know if the game was worth my time and money.

However, upon trying out the game and realizing just how badly I’d been deceived, I did a little more digging. As it turns out, the dev is known for flagging negative reviews as “abusive” and getting them deleted, allowing him to effectively filter out the bad press so long as he can make some kind of a case to Steam. This debacle has taught me that it’s not enough to scroll to the bottom of a Steam page for user reviews, as those tend to be the most recent; what you do instead is click the “Read all [x] reviews” link, as those reviews are sorted by popularity. THIS is where you’ll find the reviews that the community has deemed the most helpful and informative, and in this case, it’s like night and day. ALL of the highest-ranked reviews of Major/Minor are negative, and the numbers are staggering. Literally HUNDREDS of people have ranked these terrible reviews as helpful, and most of them are in the 80-90% range on agreement. You have to load more reviews four times to find even one single positive post, and once you do start getting into the positives, the upvotes are significantly fewer.

SO, in conclusion...

I want to say that’s about all I have to give on this subject, but the sad truth is it’s not. I could probably critique this game line-by-line, moment-by-moment, if I really wanted to. Fortunately for my sanity, I really don’t want to. … Not right now, anyway. I’m sure I’ll lose it at some point and decide to go through and count all the missed opportunities in the game or something, but I won’t be doing that right now, thankfully.

So in the vein of others learning from the mistakes of this game: If you were thinking about buying Major/Minor, don’t. If you bought it a while ago during a sale and were thinking about starting to play it, don’t. If you’re interested in making a visual novel and wanted to learn from this game’s mistakes… Well granted there’s a lot to learn about what not to do, but still, don’t give this lazy, deceptive dev any more money. Learn from this guy’s shortcomings based on the feedback of players. Hell, read or watch a Let’s Play if you really want to experience it first-hand. Just please don’t buy and play this game. As a favor to ME, please don’t buy and play this game.

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